My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Besides its unique plot and enthralling story, Blindness is an inspired dystopian metaphor about civilisation, full of philosophical considerations and damn well written! Mind blowing. Definitely on my “Must be read once in a lifetime” list.

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My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Very good book, glad I read it, but not all parts of its content are equal.
To begin with, the book is divided into several chapters, each of which could probably have been a standalone booklet. It starts with the Vioxx and the fear of science generated by the irresponsable greed of some pharma companies. Brilliant.
The second story is about the anti-vaccine movement which is based on irrational beliefs about causes and effects as opposed to the clearly documented benefits of having the vaccines around. Just as brilliant.
The next part is a bit weaker in my opinion. I totally agree with most of Specter’s arguments regarding the crave for organic food, I certainly agree that “local” is better than organic from overseas, but I think he misses a point in considering that all organic eaters are irrational denialists. I believe that, at this point, he mixes up progress, science and corporate greed. For instance, I have nothing against GMOs in sine. But I hate the idea that the biodiversity can be threatened by a single company imposing its single variety of crops all over the planet. I hate the idea that most of the land owners depend on that one greedy corporation for the crops of the following year instead of just keeping a few seeds for the next season, as it has always been the case. And what happens if the corporation goes bankrupt during the winter? At some point, corporate greed (not to be mixed up with progress) is irrational. So long as the organic label is the only guarantee to avoid emptying another Sea of Aral of its water (which was needed for hyper profitable cotton plantations!), to avoid destroying the coasts of Viet-Nam to grow shrimps, to avoid overfishing endangered species, to avoid feeding cattle on antibiotics, etc. I clearly cannot hate it. But that’s the only bit of the book I didn’t agree with…
After that, the author carries on with Echinacea and the billion dollars placebo industry, based on belief (placebo, that is, in the best case… Despite being pointless, Echinacea, causes rash!).
He then attacks the “politically correct” value, demonstrating that refusing to consider genetic differences among ethnic groups is actually killing people.
And he ends with bioengineering, so brilliantly that I actually changed the way I view some of the problems the field raises.
So overall, except for the shortcuts regarding the organic issue, this a brilliant book based on a fantastic sum of knowledge and documentation. Great science journalism!

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My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A cocktail of neuroscience, surprise and humanism. My first Sacks. Certainly not the last one. Despite the many references to Freud and Bettelheim and the writing (a bit rough at times), this book is a masterpiece of story-telling. Hard to believe that the cases are all non-fictional. I’ll probably read it again.

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My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Beautifully written. The narrative somehow allows the reader to connect with the character, though it is quite obvious that beneath the genius lied a psychopath. Could he have done things differently (as I used to believe before I read the book)? Could he have been a better person, especially towards other human beings? I strongly doubt it. I’m fascinated by how that bloke could, on the one hand, strive to make the world a better place and to empower human kind, and the other totally lack humaneness. He did make the world a better place: I can’t imagine how dull a world without Apple products. I suppose that’s why everybody is so passionate about him. You can’t totally love him. You can’t totally hate him either. In any case you can’t remain indifferent. I couldn’t let go of the book until the very last page.

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My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Not having been brought up in an English-speaking environment, I’m catching up with the Classics.
This is a masterpiece of storytelling! The more I know Dickens the more I love him!

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My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Excellent introduction to human believing mechanisms. Michael Shermer covers pretty much everything from the foundations of moral values to religious and political preferences. Several perspectives (Evolution, neuroscience, socio/anthropology, etc). Cognitive biases and belief-induced historical and scientific misunderstandings…

Actually quite good.

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My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Pleasant. Definitely not the book I would take on a desert island, but I can’t say I didn’t like it. Alan Alda is obviously not a writer and his style can get a bit heavy at times. But I enjoyed the way he managed to turn his life into a story. Sharing his childhood experience with an immature father and a crazy mother without an ounce of pathos is definitely a brilliant prowess. Also learned much about the power of theatrical improvisation.

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I did say I would try and post something at least once in a week… Well that’s not it, is it?

I’ve just finished listening to the Daniel N Robinson’s brilliant lectures on “The Great Ideas of Philosophy” and I needed something entertaining for changers. Hence Bill Bryson. Again. This time, I’m listening to “I’m a Stranger Here Myself“, and it is just as funny and instructive as my previous hearings by the same author.

I stumbled upon a couple of thoughts about the notion of GDP, definitely worth meditating upon:

“We are treating the planet as a business in liquidation”, by the ecological economist Herman Daly.

“By the curious standard of the GDP, the Nation’s economic hero is a terminal cancer patient who is going through a costly divorce”, by 3 anonymous economists. Detailed analysis available here.

It’s the kind of book that totally changes the way you view and understand the world when you’ve read it. I’ll comment once I’m actually done with it.

Just wanted to quote a few lines, before I forget, which will probably change the way I view and understand my own little self:

(…) Think of someone heavily introspective, tortured by the awareness of his own ignorance. He lacks the courage of the idiot, yet has the rare guts to say “I don’t know.” He does not mind looking like a fool or, worse, an ignoramus. He hesitates, he will not commit, and he agonizes over the consequences of being wrong. He introspects, introspects, and introspects until he reaches physical and nervous exhaustion.
This does not necessarily mean that he lacks confidence, only that he holds his own knowledge to be suspect. I will call such a person an epistemocrat; the province where the laws are structured with this kind of human fallibility in mind I will call an epistemocracy. The major modern epistemocrat is Montaigne. (…)

Now, that really speaks to me! And it sounds smarter than “shy”, “introverted” or “unsociable”…

It has been a continuous effort keeping the book open. Descriptions of torture procedures and other psychological shocks are simply unbearable, but it was definitely worth reading the entire book.

Instinctively, I had always felt that something had gone wrong at the end of the cold war. Today’s unbalanced capitalism has nothing to do with the keynesianist model we knew until then, but I did not have the intellectual and cultural tools to understand the whole phenomenon.

Naomi Klein’s demonstration of the ideological links behind Pinochet’s Chile, the war in Iraq, Israel, and even the hijacking of natural disasters (Hurricane Katrina in New-Orleans for instance) are stunning! The Shock Doctrine or how a few super-rich become even wealthier by pillaging public wealth and promoting destruction and fear.

What a wonderful world…