Joshua

Pretty damming

Revisado: 09-29-21

The author waves a compelling, if occasionally over-sold, narrative of how the baby boom generation have acted in their own best interest to the detriment of the rest of society as a whole, and their children/grand-children in particular.

As the offspring of boomers, I found a lot to match the behaviors he describes as sociopathic with the behaviors of my own best known examples of the group. Divorce, financial profligacy, selfishness, gaslighting, refusal to accept personal accountability, disinterest in the welfare of others. I could go on, but it’s too depressing.

The diagnosis is clear, unfortunately the prescription, while fitting, will likely be difficult to implement. For all the reasons the author highlights.

An excellent read to help gen X and later put their frustrations into words, and for any self-aware boomer looking to be an ally. For the boomers who are epitomized by this book, I expect you won’t get very far into it. Which may be the closest you can get to determine for yourself if you are one of “those” boomers or not.

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Enlightening and infuriating.

Revisado: 08-22-20

Well written. Clear and blunt without making this white man feel attacked. It focuses not on white people as individuals (at least not unfairly) and instead focuses on the system itself. How it came to be. How it created the current situation. How it maintains itself. And, how it must be dismantled so as to prevent its replacement with something else equally abhorrent.

Had to put it down frequently just to keep my own visceral reaction in check. It’s angerIng to see how the rhetoric around us is so indifferent to the suffering of black men.

One particularly noteworthy aspect is how the author spells out the need to make the movement color conscious, but also inclusive of poor whites. Poor, regardless of race, have a lot of aligned interests. And the authors make a compelling case for building a new class based movement to undermine attempts to offer racial bribes to poor whites in the future.

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esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

Excellent and fair minded

Revisado: 09-09-18

I never read diet books, but made an exception for this one because I’m a fan of his videos. Also, I have a PhD in animal nutrition and have a deep frustration with the way human nutrition is conducted, interpreted and discussed.

To sum it up in a single word, this book was “refreshing”! An honest accounting of the data, or its lack, on numerous topics of particular attention in the popular press on nutrition. Areas where they have consistently gotten things wrong. Coupled with “common sense” strategies for eating. (Common sense is in quotes because this is common sense if you understand how digestion works, but is by no means the conventional wisdom if your nutritional knowledge is based largely on diet books or popular press headlines).

An excellent read, and I found myself nodding along almost the entire time. If anyone were to ask me what one book they should read about nutrition, it used to be the excellent “Big Fat Surprise”, but now I’d recommend this one first.

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esto le resultó útil a 2 personas

Way too predictable and simple

Revisado: 09-28-17

This is clearly written in the "Teenager in the post-apocalypse" genre, which I tend to enjoy. However, the author didn't seem to have any genuinely new ideas worth exploring, and instead pulled way to heavily from standard tropes for this kind of book. I'm normally pretty accepting of books (this may be only my 2nd or 3rd negative review in over a decade) for what they are, but this one is just not good.

The whole first chapter was an on-going stream of world-building vomit. Instead of peppering the book with a slow reveal of how things came to be, Jess simply dumps it all on us in the 3rd person omniscient like you would if describing the setting to a potential editor you are hoping will buy your book.

The characters had no real depth. The teenagers were way to accepting of injustice to be believable. The villains are straight out of a bad cartoon.

It's possible the book would turn things around later on, I don't know. I stopped listening with just under 3 hours remaining. But I didn't come across anything in the first 4 hours to make me give good odds. If you've never read this kind of book, or watched this kind of movie, then maybe this book will feel fresh to you, but if you've ever read anything similar (Hunger Games, The Reckoners , The Red Queen Series, The Lotus War, etc.) this will feel trite, rushed, and ill done.

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Squandered potential

Revisado: 08-06-17

The subject of the story is quite intriguing. However there are multiple failures to execute. There are ultimately 2 main protagonists, and I failed to care about either of them. Little was done to make me care.

Also, hard science fiction like this should probably get basic facts right that are based on the application of current technology. All throughout the sections where they are describing crop failures, and their approaches to solve the crises caused by the failures I found myself yelling at the book going "that's not how that works!!"

Overall I would not recommend this book to anyone.

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Odd mix of science, conjecture, and personal opinions

Revisado: 02-17-16

The beginning was heavy on conjecture and imagined stories of how things might have happened with a liberal sprinkling of standard stereotypes of the noble savage, which was annoying but forgivable since the record is more than a little space that far back.

The middle was pretty good. I learned quite a bit about some of the less common animals like camels, but most of the material is found in other books I've read.

The end just got weird. He starts moralizing about how abhorrent modern uses of animals are, despite having romanticized some earlier uses it at least give fairer treatment to abuse of animals in past eras. Seems to have bought the animal rights narratives about how animals are used today in agriculture and science without bothering to verify the accuracy of their claims (which as an Animal Scientist I can assure you are strongly distorted where not actually flat out wrong).

Overall I was disappointed by the entire experience because the annoyances at the beginning and the heavy handed moralizing at the far out weigh the benefits of the middle to me.

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esto le resultó útil a 4 personas

Exactly what you'd want

Revisado: 02-06-13

This book is exactly what you'd expect based on the title. An explanation of what is involved in statistical modeling, along with real examples of what causes a prediction to fail, as well as what helps a predictive model to be more accurate.

I have a fair amount of training in the hypothesis testing school of statistics, but am far less experienced with modeling. I appreciate the criticism Nate has for hypothesis testing, and found his explanation of "over modeling" to be particularly edifying. I'd suggest this book to anyone that has any desire to understand the modeling process, or to understand why certain modeling efforts are so fruitless (Earthquake, Economics, Etc.).

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The only flaw...

Revisado: 12-09-12

is that it isn't long enough. It is an excellent concept, and I hope that Brandon decided to make a full length novel with it. The potential is great!

A MUST listen!

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esto le resultó útil a 36 personas

A must listen for any registered voter!

Revisado: 11-07-12

The book explains the basics of economics in simple language. The author uses real world examples from multiple eras, nations and economic systems, along with more basic thought experiments from everyday life. He does an excellent job hammering home the basic by using progressively more nuanced real world scenarios.

I usually only listen to sci-fi or fantasy books, but I could not put this down. I'm going to buy the hard copy for my wife who doesn't like audiobooks. It's worth buying twice!

I was a little put off by the aerator at first because I kept thinking, "why is a Pearson's Puppeteer explaining economics?"

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Good addition to the saga

Revisado: 08-27-12

Overall I enjoyed the book. It'll make an interesting addition to the Enderverse after the other books are written. It is a little formulaic for OSC, since one of the main characters is a child genius, but that's to be expected.

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