FredZarguna

boring history from critical race theory perspective

Revisado: 02-27-25

uninspired narrative accompanied by monotone delivery. far too much historicity, leftwing political correctness, editorial comment. repetitive. needed an editor.

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Not Worth Your Time.

Revisado: 02-02-24

Of all "The Great Courses" this is the only one I've found not worth the time. It's genuinely awful.

First, the parts of it that are correct are very superficial.

Second, the lecturer is a Malthusian, so don't expect him to have the slightest idea of what he's talking about. He spouts off about "Goldilocks Zones" pretty much every other page, never acknowledging that, in fact, humans have prospered in some very hostile environments, and stayed in some Goldilocks Zones long after Goldy had fled the bears.

Third, he's got "Climate Change" on the brain. Yes, the Indus Valley Civilization was probably the victim of local--not global-- climate change. But even there, the larger civilizational structures declined over a period of 2-3 centuries as the inhabitants adapted to changing conditions, downsizing, and so on. And the inhabitants were NOT responsible for the climactic changes that led to intermittent, but long, droughts.

Bad as the early chapters are, the last four are an absolute train wreck of leftist dreck, which, quite frankly had me laughing hysterically at some points. He sounds like the Club of Rome in the 1980s which, newsflash, got EVERY SINGLE MALTHUSIAN PREDICTION THEY MADE WRONG. Laughably wrong. Stupidly wrong.

There are other points in the book where he just HAS to inject the most fashionably stupid leftwing drivel, asking, for example, what might the Africans or Aboriginal Australians have accomplished if Europeans had not "interfered."

Well, we don't need to speculate on that because they accomplished nothing, and would have continued to accomplish nothing whether Europeans came or not. The lecturer is an unserious person.

Finally, here's just a very small example of how silly this person is: in the period of the Jewish Exodus from Egypt and the resettlement in Canaan, he insists on referring to the land the Israelites came to as "Palestine." This is historical malpractice on the order of referring to Camelot as Westminster, or calling Alexander's Macedonia Yugoslavia. "Palestine" is a name that would not exist until almost 1600 years after the Exodus, when the Romans drove the Jews out of Judea and Samaria after the Jewish revolt around AD 70. To that point there was no such place as "Palestine" nor would there even such a place as Rome for about another 700+ years.

If you're interested, try to find the Great Courses on Egypt, Rome, and other individual civilizations, and don't waste your time with this awful, lightweight, politically correct pile of hot Malthusian garbage.

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Really not very convincing

Revisado: 08-12-23

The entirety of the thesis rests on the premise that Oswald and Sirhan were MKULTRA patsies. But there are A LOT of problems with these claims.

I'm only going to deal with Oswald, because this audiobook is all over the place when it comes to him. The author claims Oswald was a highly educated CIA officer with specialization in Russian language and culture. Then he claims Oswald was used as an MKULTRA patsy to take the blame for Kennedy's murder.

Do you seriously believe the CIA would subject one of its own officers to MKULTRA "hypno-programming?" If you do, you're quite gullible. According to the author, the CIA had many such subjects. If true, why would they use Oswald (or anyone else with the Company's fingerprints all over them) as a patsy? Why would they sacrifice a highly trained officer and turn him into a drone?

The theory that the CIA could have used Oswald to murder Kennedy makes some sense if he really was a highly trained operative. The theory that they used him as a patsy makes none. "Say guys, let's pick somebody with numerous, visible contacts with our agency in a very compressed timeframe in the years and weeks before the assassination, and use him for executive action, then discredit all that open source material with a flimsy story that he was a crazed loner." Sorry, they're not that stupid.

There are so many problems with this narrative besides the internal inconsistencies. He claims--on the basis of no citation whatsoever--that "Oswald was never in Mexico City." The evidence that Oswald was in Mexico city is compelling, and even most of the wackiest conspiracy theories authors don't dispute it. What they *do* claim is that someone in counter intelligence (probably CIA) appears to have been so desperate to keep Oswald from returning to the Soviet Union that they had an impersonator make various contacts with embassies during the time Oswald was there in order to discredit him.

There are a number of credible witnesses who have testified to this effect. But if Oswald wasn't even *in* Mexico City trying to get out of the US to a communist safe haven, there's really no reason for the CIA or COINTELPRO to make that effort; in fact, it would be another very stupid, unforced error.

Endlessly repeating that Allen Dulles and Richard Helms were bad people doesn't make this narrative more convincing. Neither does tediously reiterating the symptoms of "MKULTRA hypno-programming." This author accepts self-serving claims by Oswald and Sirhan that they actually "liked" their victims as gospel. What else do you expect an accused assassin protesting his innocence to say? "I hated Kennedy and I'm glad he's dead?" Please be serious.

And unfortunately, if you approach this audiobook with the skepticism that it deserves, you'll find yourself saying "Please be serious" with alarming frequency.

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Jefferson, As Seen By Big Government

Revisado: 06-01-23

This is the "history" as it would have been written by the Federalists if they'd hired an academic prostitute to make some pretensions of objectivity. It's nasty towards Jefferson in every possible way. It portrays him as a shallow thinker (he wasn't) and a cartoon character (he wasn't that, either.)

The author repeatedly engages in his own fantasies about the current nature of America, and in wishful thinking about the Constitution. He is of the opinion that the 10th Amendment is a legal and cultural nullity; it is not. Even before the addition of Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett the Supreme Court had been trending far more Federalist than the author allows. He's also of the opinion that the New Deal and Great Society were unqualified successes. In fact they were catastrophic failures that have done NOTHING to improve the conditions of the vast majority of Americans--least of all those they were supposed to be helping--and their "crowning achievements," the Entitlement Programs, are bankrupting the country.

Why is Jefferson still an American icon, given the authors opinion of his irrelevance? Well, simply put, the author is a nincompoop. Americans remain deeply suspicious of government in all of its forms, just as Jefferson was. Americans aspire to a freer, more tolerant, and more open country, just as Jefferson did, even if we are almost as bad at realizing our aspirations as Jefferson was.

As for his view that Jefferson's approach to governance was simplistic idealism while the Federalists (and all later Big Government incarnations thereof) have been universally successful and that Jefferson's characterization of them as corrupt was nonsense, well, again, he is as completely mistaken as anyone can be. If we cannot characterize dangling bright expensive objects bought with money we do not have in front of voters as corruption, how should we characterize it? Stupidity? No, for it is done deliberately. Shortsightedness? But no, that doesn't do either. Hamilton knew he was writing checks the Treasury could not support. Indeed, he advocated it as a GREAT GOOD. Thirty-two trillion dollars later, we are the brokest country in history, and if Hamilton could not see it, surely from the vantage point of modernity the author must be blind as a mole rat if he can't.

Jefferson was correct about John Marshall, and the author is (as usual) mistaken. The Founders did NOT intend for the Supreme Court to have the power that it does, and contrary to his opinion, they did not even intend for the Federal Judiciary to have the extent of judicial review that Marshall thought himself entitled to. There already was a form of judicial review that had been exercised in England under the Common Law, and that was the extent of their endorsement. Indeed, they did not even intend the Federal Judiciary to be a co-equal branch of government. They set its personnel, its structure, and even the scope of laws it was permitted to adjudicate ENTIRELY under the power of Congress.

Finally, to comment on the Hemmings scandal, because another reviewer here--like many other misinformed people--seems to believe that Jefferson's paternity is now firmly established. This is false. All that the DNA test established is that some--but not all--of Hemmings children were fathered by someone in Jefferson's patrilineal line. That does not mean Jefferson. It does mean that Hemmings lied to her children about their patrimony, because one thing the test DID establish was that ONLY Eston Hemmings MIGHT have been fathered by Thomas Jefferson. But she told them they ALL were. And the man that disgusting Federalists used to impugn Jefferson's character in the first place, COULD NOT HAVE BEEN. The author, at least, gets this part right, although he has probably reconsidered his position since the DNA test, much as he has tried to toe the anti-Jefferson line everywhere else.

In fine and in sum: A book full of the author's opinions, conjectures, speculations, extrapolations and prejudices about Thomas Jefferson, but not very much history at all.

Best to avoid.

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Not really about the pagan world

Revisado: 04-01-22

it's really only about Rome a little bit about Greece. it's all right in and of itself but there are no more than a few minutes of the entire series of lectures in this course that have anything to do with pagan world broadly speaking there's nothing about pagans in Celtic countries there's nothing really about pagans in Persia there's nothing about any of the Hindu religion except for maybe 10 minutes spent in all of the lectures.

The lecture admits he is a class assistant in Greece and Rome. and I'm not faulting him but I do believe it is misleading to say this is about the pagan world it's about grease in room. That's an important but small part of the pagan world

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There Are 3 Sections. Listen to the First One.

Revisado: 07-29-21

The first section, which lays out a model of the neocortex that's the product of the author, his company, and former researchers is interesting, and worth listening to. The only flaw in the first section I would point out is that the author appears to believe that movement is necessary to intelligence. In fact it isn't. One of the most powerful capabilities of the neocortex is that it can run its own hardware to do simulations. In effect, to "move" through new experiences, thought experiments, and so on, w/no physical movement at all. And it does this every moment it's functioning.

The second part, in which the author attempts to attack some thorny issues has huge problems. He derides philosophers (full admission: I am *not* one, and usually deride them as well.) But it's clear he needs to study philosophy if he wants to make arguments in the area of qualia and consciousness, because that chapter is an embarrassing hash in which he doesn't even seem to understand the physics of color vision--AT ALL. The discussion of consciousness is equally silly. He should have had a better editor.

His attempts to allay the fears of those who believe AI is potentially an existential threat to the human race because artificially intelligent machines won't have the "old brain" that causes so much mischief (like, allowing us to have fun, enjoy work, love, motivating us to survive... you know, all the "bad" stuff.) In fact, on this point he is catastrophically wrong. artificially intelligent machines *will* without the slightest doubt have an "old brain." Wanna see it?

Go look in a mirror.

Just as our old brain still dominates us, it will also dominate AI, using our neocortex as proxy.

Finally on the point about there being no moral hazard in unplugging an AI, it's clear the author has no ethical sense whatsoever; the rationale he gives for why this would be OK is genuinely preposterous. These machines wouldn't have any emotions, so killing them isn't immoral. Just ... wow.

The third section of the book isn't even worth commenting on. It's his political, cultural, and religious (or atheist) perspective and if you like the garbage that leftists spout as enlightenment no doubt you'll love it, but it has nothing to do with the topic, no matter how hard he tries to stretch it into "I believe the right stuff because I have no false consciousness. You, on the other hand, live in a fantasy world." This is infantile, but given his obvious political perspective, unsurprising.

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esto le resultó útil a 112 personas

Laughably stupid attempt to revise history

Revisado: 04-25-21

Author presents a smattering of thoroughly disconnected historical facts and a large body of Japanese lies to make the case that (known) traitor Harry Dexter White somehow "made the Japanese attack the United States."

He calls the Japanese depredations in Korea and China in the 1930's "generally preferable" to those countries own self determination, the rape of Nanking "exaggerated" and the Bataan Death March "American propaganda." He also somehow believes that the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor was "forced by the US." This despite the fact that what he calls a US ultimatum "that started the war" asked nothing more or less of the Japanese than what both the League of Nations and the United States had said all along would be required to end the US oil embargo: withdrawal from Manchuria.

But this isn't new; the Japanese revisionists, in manner typical of spouse abusers have, for almost 80 years now, defended the attack on Pearl Harbor with no declaration of war as "look at what *you* made me do." It's complete rubbish, and someone claiming to write history should be ashamed of this, and other attempts to rehabilitate this vicious regime.

But then, pure stupidity enters the picture. That a second level treasury official was responsible for producing the "ultimatum" that "forced" Japan to attack the US on the basis of a single meeting with an NKVD handler is about as dumb as it gets.

There are much better treatments of the Communist infiltration of FDR's administration which was pervasive, deep and undeniable.

There are much better treatments of the plausibly available foreknowledge and deliberate refusal of FDR to warn career military commanders of the impending attack by the Japanese in order to drag an isolationist nation into the war.

This is neither. This is a laughably preposterous collection of non sequiturs and falsehoods.

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esto le resultó útil a 5 personas

It could've been great, sadly, it wasn't.

Revisado: 04-01-21

I see a lot of people like this book, which is fine, but if you're really a fan of true crime I believe you'll be disappointed. This is pretty thin; not much more than a collection of blog diary entries and magazine articles thrown together into a compendium, because, tragically, the murderer was still at large when the author died.

At times the writing is very good, and at times it's over-written. At times--as you would expect--it needs a better editor because the human interest stories without a perpetrator to tie them together seem repetitive and incomplete. Like a lot of blog diaries, there's author intrusion that you wouldn't find in a more professionally edited work. You might like that, but it detracts from the presentation.

Accept it for what it is: the incomplete contribution of a fine writer who died before her time, and you'll probably enjoy it. But it could--if fate had been kinder--been a lot more.

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esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

Some of the very best of the incomparable Borges

Revisado: 01-08-21

generally performed with just the right tone and effect. my only criticism would be that the authors pronunciation of some words is questionable in my opinion and his pronunciation of German is atrocious. fortunately there are not many German phrases or words in the book.

if you've never been exposed to Borges before, this work is an excellent place to start containing fiction, essays, and parables. That this man was never awarded a Nobel prize for literature is one of the great injustices of literary history.

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esto le resultó útil a 3 personas

PC nonsense masquerading as history

Revisado: 08-10-20

A book full of conjecture without any real historical research to back it up. Takes the point of view of British murderers and portrays them as heroes. Portrays all of the Americans as deficient in some way or another at best and, villains at worst.

These misharacterizations and many historical irrelevancies become more and more important to the author as this thin book goes on. Tedious, boring, and inaccurate.

Not worth even one minute of your time.

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esto le resultó útil a 8 personas