Books I don't recommend

It’s not often I say skip a book I’ve picked out to read, but skip Total Memory Workout: 8 Easy Step to Maximum Memory Fitness by Cynthia R. Green, Ph.D.  I’ve made it roughly half way through the book and have found little useful information.  So far, much of the book is on things that affect memory but most of it is standard scientific research from the late 1980s.  Much of the information has been debunked or in debate. 

The author talks about something called the AM principle.  That means “attention” and “meaning”.  The author says to gain attention you should block out outside distractions and focus on the subject at hand.  But the book is written completely opposite of that.  Every page or two is some anecdote or byline that breaks the attention of the reader, forcing you to lose your train of thought and attention.  Most are anecdotes that could have been shoved somewhere in the book if the author had been trying.  The anecdotes could have made the reading more memorable, as well.  As bylines, they really seem like the author was trying to increase the page count when she was out of ideas.

Unless the last half of the book gets better, I’m going to have to say skip this one.  Not a good start for chapter 5.  Third page of the chapter and the author is whining about how others have learned the memory palace and peg techniques.  “Let’s be honest: are you really that concerned with remembering absolutely everything?”  Yes, the answer is yes.  In doing so, I am more capable of serving the company I work for.  In better serving the company I work for, I get paid more.  Do I want to spend the right amount of time on each subject so as to not waste time?  Yes.  I want to improve the efficacy of my learning.  It doesn’t feel good to read an entire book and fail the practice tests because you don’t remember the subject.

So Ms. Green, I do want to remember everything.  Now stop whining and giving yourself a way out before you've even started.  Successful people decide where they want to go, and burn the bridge behind them so they can't back up.  Work smarter, not harder. 

Reviews and revelations

I finished Mastermind by Maria Konnikova on the flight to Houston, so that left me without books or material to listen to until I landed.  I’ve been in Clearwater since Tuesday (it’s now Thursday) and I’ve been reading the next book on my list.  This one is Total Memory Workout by Cynthia R Green, Ph.D.

I’m going to throw this book in somewhere over by Mega Memory in that it deals in a lot of platitudes and “you can do this” mentality.  It’s not a bad book in and of itself, but so far it’s a pretty generic book.  I guess simplicity is the only real trouble.

Flying home I am listening to an audio book by Niall Ferguson called The Ascent of Money.  It is quite an interesting look at the history of money, and shows quite well how the growth of money and it’s expansion around the world has evolved and changed.  Quite a good book, if I don’t mind saying.  It’s interesting to find that the bond market was created at a side step of the Christian idea that usury is illegal. 

There’s all sorts of interesting things in the book, and I would recommend it highly. 

I’ve been thinking about Mastermind again.  The author talks about the concept of distance, in which a person separates or distracts themselves from the problem at hand through various methods.  The goal of distance is to mentally step back and let the brain work on a problem without being consciously aware of that work.  The goal is to let the brain process everything it needs to, and come up with an answer that wouldn’t normally be possible. 

Now, I also read an article on Forbes, and another from richhabits.net on exercise and the rich.  It seems to me that the idea is to create a distance to any problem you may be facing through exercise.  Regular exercise provides that distance and separation from a problem so you can come back to the problem later with better insights and ideas.  Perhaps the rich have learned the idea of distance without even being aware of it. 

Things I didn’t know.

Lunch in Houston is done.  Waiting on the plane to Clearwater.  Somehow, I figured out how to turn off the vocals on Windows Media Player 12.  Listening to Maxwell Murder (Rancid) without lyrics was something I would have relished back when I played guitar.  I don’t do that anymore, but that’s because my guitars were one of the first things to go when I went broke. 

A few hours later, I figure it out.  Still in Houston, waiting on the plane.  I charge my phone to full at a charging station and it dies to half in less than an hour.  Wonderful.  So I’m eating the laptop battery to charge the phone so the phone can give me directions to where I need to go in Clearwater.  Which makes me think I should find where I’m going ahead of time.  And Google maps on my phone solves the problem in just a few minutes.  I think I will reboot my phone, though.  It shouldn’t be dying this quickly.

Airports are interesting in that they are slight microcosms of the rest of the world, just thrown all together in a compact, foot-mobile space.  I read an article by an Israeli responsible for security at Ben-Gurren airport.  And I begin to realize just how unsafe every airport I’ve been to is.  Airports are designed to provide the illusion of security to those who aren’t into dealing death.  There’s lots of people being very hands on and very invasive, and as Americans we’ve taken it for granted that is what security means.  But it’s security that doesn’t really secure anything.

A couple of suicide vests in those wonderfully long lines could take out hundreds before the person ever hits the so called “security”.  And if the bombers did what they did in Beiruit with the bombing on the Marine barracks, then you’ve got a giant clusterfuck of a situation where hundreds are dead.  But then, the security was always a knee jerk reaction and was never meant to create real security.  That takes different aims and approaches. 

I’ve long contended that we failed miserably after 9/11 and we basically gave the terrorists everything they could have wanted.  I was shouted down, but I don’t think anyone ever studied the aims of terrorists. 

I don’t remember the manual, but I seem to remember the aims of terrorism to be a few of the following: money, awareness, change behavior, kill enemies.  Well, when we change our behavior and everyone and their dog knows who Al Queda is, I’d say the terrorists won.  That’s not to say we killed a lot of them in the process, but they still won.  They got us to react to them permanently while they react to us momentarily. 

More airport fun

I’m at the airport, and for some reason, the Supersuckers Going Back to Tuscon is running through my head right now.   I’m headed back to Clearwater, Florida for training.  I’m sure there are plenty of things I could be doing right now, but all I remember is something I put on Facebook last night and I don’t think anyone got what I was saying. 

I read an article yesterday about the carbon footprint of the Tesla vehicles.  The article was very distinct in that the complaints about the vehicle were related to specific metals used in the production of the vehicle.  The end result is the Tesla has a smaller carbon food print than the guy who posted its’ diesel truck.  And then it struck me as weird.  My brain immediately jumped to a memory I have of burning poo in Iraq back in 2003.  And I kind of laughed, because carbon footprint seemed pretty ridiculous in comparison.  If you need a visual, watch the movie Jarhead.  You’ll see pretty much the same thing, described in detail.

And I think it could be because I’m reading a book about how to think like Sherlock Holmes (Mastermind by Maria Konnikova) and I just finished a section on creating mental distance, and I begin to think of this…

Be sure to establish your own priorities.  If you don’t, someone else is likely to set them for you and you may not like where you end up.

Make sure and use the principle of exclusion to keep others’ priorities out of your life.  Limit information in order to gain greater insight because it cuts down the signal to noise ratio.  I guess Konnikova put it accurately when she said more information is not always relevant or important information. 

And after a few seconds of thinking, I come to bread and circuses, and I begin to think the Romans were right.  The only thing is that the modern government has advanced the topic with the realization that not every person is going to respond to bread and circuses, but many will.  For those more advanced in life that have moved beyond bread and circuses, you have carbon footprints and global warming.  It’s all just a game to keep people distracted.

educational quandries

As parents of two kids and a half kids, my wife and I have decided to home school our children.  Bur what I happen to be thinking about is a couple of educational quandaries that have plagued me for years.  Both fit in the category of dual and incompatible teachings.

1)      Don’t talk to strangers.  The ability to talk to strangers is one hallmark of successful adulthood.

2)      Don’t tattle.  Make sure and let an adult know if something is wrong.

Taken of themselves, the ideas aren’t bad and seem to make sense.  Taken with the corollary, then the ideas can lead a two or three year old brain into fits because you can’t follow both at the same time.  You can either follow one or the other.  The kind of teaching that is contradictory just doesn’t work with kids. 

I’ve learned very well that “do as I say and not as I do” doesn’t work with kids.  My children act like my wife and I.  If you look at either of them and observe them, you see tiny little versions without all the adult pretense that says what you are doing is the right thing.  Kids are giant sponges, and they observe and follow everything they see.  You want your kid to stop screaming?  Stop screaming at the kid.  Where do you think the kid learned it? 

The first statement is the one that strikes me as the biggest failing of education.  How is it that we can’t teach our kids what will cause them to succeed?  It’s almost as if schools are doing their best to get children to fail.  The real problem is that the school just doesn’t see it.  The school is more concerned about teaching precisely what is on a test so the student can pass the test.  Yet teaching the material away from the context of the test also teaches the material.  Teaching to the test invalidates the test, anyways. 

At the moment, I don’t have an answer on how to fix these thoughts.  I just know that attempting to teach both ideas is wrong.  So we’re stuck back in a slightly different area, except this time our brains are now aware of the problem and can spend some time working on the problem.