Defenestrating Thoughts from the Bivouac

(I read this book a little over a year ago and am now finally getting around to reviewing it.)

Shortly after it came out, I read Tim Ferriss’ widely popular book, The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich. And then I felt slightly ill. Suffice to say, I didn’t care for the book at all. I’m really happy I got the book from the library, instead of paying money on it.

The first part of the book is reminder that life is short, so don’t worry so much and have some fun. Not a very original thought, but I suppose lots of people always forget this. He also tells us to read Thoreau, doing which would essentially makes this whole section of the book incredibly redundant.

And yes, “live your life now, don’t wait until later” is great advice, but just about every philosopher and good parent has been saying this for years upon years.

The rest of the book is basically a get rich quick type plan sprinkled into self-promotion and tips on how to eliminate wasteful time-consuming activities from your life. Basically he says, working a job is stupid, you should just sell something online and outsource every piece of the business so you can do whatever you want.

It’s good strategy, but let’s be honest; it’s not at all original. “Absentee ownership” is a tried and true income making method. The trick is that you need some income producing property or product. And that’s the tough part. Anyone can profit from an income generating asset. But how do you get one? Ferriss doesn’t really talk about how to do this.

Ferriss’ product (aside from the book) is some unregulated dietary supplement that body builder types use. So far, he’s a one hit wonder. Lots of of people hit it big once. I want to hear from the guys that do it more than once; those guys have real experience, skills and knowledge; they weren’t just lucky once.

A lot of the book is about how to use outsourced personal assistants to do your busywork for you. Generally this is a reasonable idea, but Ferriss takes it way too far. He basically says, “Why send your mom a birthday card like a sucker? I just have my assistants sign a card and send it with flowers.”

Sadly, I’m only barely exaggerating.

The other concept of the book I wanted to discuss is the idea of a “low-information” diet. Ferriss talks about having “selective ignorance” so that you ignore and don’t seek out information. For voting for president, for example, he ignores everything and then a week before asks some of his friends who to support, reads some news for an hour and then decides.

I’m really disappointed in this. This is basically voting for whoever is more popular. Instead of using your god-given ability to learn, reason, and be an intellectually curious individual, you’ll just go with whatever most people think.

What about learning, self-exploration, development of a value system and then acting on it? Nah… it’s easier to hang out at the beach. That’s just sad. If there’s ever a time to listen to Mark Twain, it’s in today’s world:

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

Lastly, Ferriss’ own auto-biographical elements make him seem like, well, a jerk. He brags about winning a big kick-boxing championship with basically 4 weeks of training. He explains that he lost nearly 30 pounds for the weigh-in and gained it back before the tournament. This way he was able to compete three levels below his weight bracket and got to beat up on those “poor little guys”.

Also, he exploited a loophole in the rules that said, if his opponent “falls off the elevated platform three times in a single round”, he loses. So Ferriss just basically shoved guys 3 weight divisions below him out of the ring and won the championship.

I’m not sure I’d brag about that.

So if you want to get rich quick, Tim’s got a great book for you. All you need are some affiliate marketers, a drop shipper, and a website. It’s so easy! And if you call now, he’ll even throw in an AbTronic!

In summary, don’t read this book. I think I lost 10 IQ points in the course of reading it. :-P

I used to be good about blogging about books I read, but for about a year now, I haven’t reviewed anything… so there’s some weirdness that I’ll start up again by writing about a book I’m just a few chapters into.

The other day while hunting for something to read, I picked up my copy of A Game of Thrones, fully intending to re-read the series.

But then I noticed a recommendation on the back cover that said, “Reminiscent of T.H. White’s A Once and Future King…” and thought, “Wait I have that book and still need to read it!” I bought the book two and a half years ago, using a birthday gift certificate from Crissy’s parents and still hadn’t read it. That’s pretty sad. :-(

So I started reading it last night and it’s really really good! I can’t believe I’ve never read it before. For tonight, I had planned a quiet evening reading, but after about 2 weeks of cold, cloudy weather, the sun finally came out.

As a result, we’ll probably go out somewhere. After all, sun is so rare in Seattle; you have to go out and play when you get the chance.

(And if you’re keeping count, it’s now less than two weeks before our big move to Boulder! 300 days of sunshine per year, here we come!)

If you read my review on Nickel and Dimed, you know that I didn’t like it. This book, written by Barbara Ehrenreich, discusses her experiment of living as an “unskilled worker” and trying to make ends meet. I felt that the author went into her experiment with the goal of proving her hypothesis that essentially the system keeps people in poverty. This “begging the question” led her to avoid opportunities that would have helped her situation. Most notably, she doesn’t even take the advice of her co-workers and maintains a condescending, defeatist attitude throughout the book.

I started reading her newer book, Bait and Switch, which claims to expose the middle-class working world. But I felt it was more of the same; assuming that it’s impossible to get a job and not getting it. Assuming all career help resources are rip-offs and getting ripped off. Too much pontification and too little unbiased investigation.

So these books got me thinking: maybe when people tell us that that your attitude is 90% of the battle, they are correct. If you go into anything expecting to have a bad time, you most likely will. Your brain harps on whatever negative it can find: you’re tired, the movie will be bad, dinner service will be slow and so on.

The opposite applies too. If you go to a bad movie expecting it to be bad and expecting to have fun laughing at it, you’ll probably have fun.

I came across this story about a guy named Adam Shepard who tested the “American Dream”. He started with what he was wearing and $25. By the end of ten months he had an apartment, car, and saved almost $5000.

Obviously, he had a very different outcome than Ehrenreich. One thing that is evident is that Shepard that a very different attitude. His premise is that you can work your way up from poverty and that’s seems to be what he achieved. In fact, he set out to “disprove” Ehrenreich’s book.

So what were the differences between Ehrenreich and Shepard? Until I read Shepard’s book, I can only guess. But it seems like the major difference was their attitude. Of course, their gender and age are different. But, I’m not sure how much of a difference this would have made.

There are lots of similarities: both of them had an escape hatch (a “real life” they could fall back too), both have college education, and so on.

Of course, the big question is: why do some people get stuck in poverty? It surely can’t all be attitude; presumably there is some degree of luck, health, and circumstances. Obviously being a young man with a college education helped Shepard a lot.

I added this book on the list of things to read. I’ll let you know what I think when I get around to reading it!

Given my huge backlog of books that I read but haven’t written about yet, it’s seems weird to write about a book I haven’t even gotten a hold of. But, it’s not everyday that Book 7 of Harry Potter is about to be released.

Despite my usual complaints about the Harry Potter series, I’m excited about the book coming out this Friday. In case you forgot, my complaints about the books are:

• Repetitive Filler Subplots - Slytherins are rude. Snape picks on Harry. Harry feels bad for himself. Hermione knows all the answers. And so many more.
• Unchanging characters - Neville is clumsy. Malfoy is mean. Yeah, yeah, we get it.
• Simple themes - Good is good. Evil is bad. Love and friendship are good. Hey, let’s add some depth here.
• Boring, straight-forward prose and tone - I’d love to see some clever humor or some intellectual subtlety here.

With the media frenzy, there are high expectations for this book. Plus, since this book has to actually resolve the story, we can’t have a bunch of filler subplots. Also, the characters will presumably have to change since they are involved in some extraordinary circumstances. And the prose, tone, and simple themes? My guess is that this will stay the same.

I decided to set very low expectations so that I will be happy with the book. With that spirit in mind, here are my predictions for the 7th book:

• Book 7 will be in the “Choose your own adventure” format.
• Voldemort is discovered to be the Dumbledore in disguise.
• Hermione is really Ron (this is explained by the use of Time-Turners)
• Harry wakes up at the end and we learn that it was all a strange dream. Harry resolves to stop eating gas station taquitos before bed.

Hopefully a mob of Potter fans won’t come after me for writing this. :-)

About a month or so ago, I finished reading Life of Pi, by Yann Martel. It won the Man Booker Prize and had a great tag-line on the inside cover: a story that “will make you believe in God.” Even though the book didn’t involve circles or apples, I felt I had to read it. :-)

It looks like I may end up being one of the few people in the world that didn’t love the book. Parts were entertaining and insightful, but other parts dragged the book down. Essentially, the book had three parts, first was the young boy (Pi) learning about different religions, followed by a discussion about zoos and animals, and last, a survival story of the Pi on a life raft on the ocean with a tiger. Tacked on at the end was the part that was supposed to make you believe in God.

The first part of the book was the young Pi’s journey into religious syncretism (I learned a new word!). As we’re introduced to Pi and a number of interesting secondary characters, Pi decides to be Hindu, Christian, and Muslim at the same time. Unfortunately, the “many paths to God” and “all religions are the same at the root” themes are barely discussed. Rather, any further exploration is put aside in favor of the old “a child is wiser than adults” theme, as Pi’s faith challenges his parents and priests from each religion.

I feel that Martel missed a huge opportunity here. His setting was very unique and engaging, exploring these religious themes in this context could have been amazing.

The next part of the book was a discussion about animals and zoos. Here the major theme was challenging the romantic view of nature: the idea that nature is an Eden-like state where animals have peaceful and happy lives. Most people instinctively feel bad when they see animals in a zoo, thinking that they would prefer to live in the wild. Like all things, this is arguable. After all, the wild is a pretty tough place: things are constantly trying to eat you while the things that you are trying to eat keep running away.

Martel presents a lot of good information here and this was probably my favorite part of the book. But the tone of this section came off as unnecessarily defensive and was distracting.

From here, we abandon the zoo and India, as Pi and his family take a boat to Canada with a handful of animals. The boat sinks and we’re left with Pi, a tiger, and a few other animals (zebra, hyena, and orangutan) on a lifeboat. This section is pretty interesting as the animals are clearly out of their element and it takes a while before only the tiger and Pi remain. The tiger, named Richard Parker, is very anthromorphized through the story.

Along the journey we get long descriptions of the Pi’s and the tiger movement on the lifeboat, but as we never got a clear description of the boat, it’s hard to understand how all this could be happening with a tiger on board. We also read about a hallucination where the boat comes across another castaway and later then an island of algae and meerkats. The latter is a straight-forward literary device indicating major psychological change, but most of the effect was lost since the island adventure was so nonsensical.

We also get a lot of details on how Pi survived on the boat: taming the tiger, catching fish, sharks, and turtles, and building a smaller raft for him to live on. We also learn how he reached a mutually beneficial arrangement with the tiger (Pi catches the food and feeds the tiger) which is similar to the relationship between a zookeeper and his animals.

Finally, Pi and the tiger get to Mexico and the tiger disappears into the forest. Pi is then interviewed by some insurance adjusters about the ship sinking. They express disbelief in his story and he tells them a much more realistic but disturbing parallel version of events that where the animals are replaced by other survivors from the ship. This version includes Pi’s mother’s murder and Pi murdering the cook.

Pi tells the insurance adjusters that since the “true truth” can’t be proven and both stories seem to fit the details, they should choose the story they prefer. By metaphor, the religious lesson is that we don’t believe in things because they are true, but because we choose to believe in what makes us happy. So why not opt for the more happy story, even if it’s not the more plausible.

It is interesting how the subconscious can push us to accept the happier story, but in this case, Pi is completely aware of both versions and consciously chooses the one over the other. As a result, the “religion is a better fiction” theme fails, because the story didn’t execute properly on it.

So ultimately I was a little disappointed by the book. It had some great themes and ideas, but failed to execute. The book was enjoyable and I’d recommend it to others, though I probably wouldn’t read it again.

Nickel and Dimed is a bestselling and highly acclaimed book written by Barbara Ehrenreich where she tries to live as a “unskilled” worker. She works as waitress, housekeeper, and then a Walmart associate, and recounts her experiences trying to make ends meet. It’s a great idea for investigative journalism, so I was excited to read it.

Unfortunately, the book was disappointing for a number of reasons. There was no discussion about potential solutions for the problems at hand, there was way too much liberal guilt and socialist platitudes, and the author spent more time talking about herself (mentioning she has a PhD. every other page) than talking about what she learned from her peers.

The author seemed surprisingly sheltered from the “working class” and came off as a upper middle class elitist. She never really talks to her co-workers to understand how they live and how they get by. And she never transcends her own sense of entitlement and superiority. For example, she considered going to California for her experiment, but didn’t because of her “worry that the Latinos might be hogging all the crap jobs and substandard housing for themselves.”

Take that thought and combine it with assertion that “the laws of supply and demand have been reversed. Rental prices skyrocket, but wages never rise.” It’s enough to make one’s head explode. If there are lots of people willing to work for low wages, the laws of supply and demand would assert that wages would not increase. To even consider that there is a direct relation between rents and low-end wages shows a severe lack of understanding of even basic economics.

Ehrenreich doesn’t stay at any job for more than 3 weeks and as a result exclusively lives in temporary housing. But temporary housing must, by definition, be priced at a premium. She even says that a family can rent a modest home for less than she paid for horrible temporary quarters. Yet, there are many, many pages dedicated to how hard it was for her to find affordable housing.

She gets extremely mad and offended some of the jobs require drug testing. Well, considering that lots of jobs today require it and that she even mentions a “chemical discrepancy” of hers before the test was scheduled, it’s silly to complain about.

Ehrenich rarely talks about her co-workers or what’s she learned from them. The one time that she actually talks to someone, they advice her to “find a church”. But she never goes to a church to get help for finding housing, a job, or groceries. Instead she makes repeated bad choices like $11 dinners, $30 on medicine to mask her drug use, and never sticking around on a job. Most times she doesn’t even properly quit her jobs, she just stops showing up.

She clearly said at the onset that she didn’t want to live the exact life of her co-workers. So in that case it would have been better to sit at home and volunteer as a social worker to get to know the “working class” and then research, research, and research.

Also I should point out, I hate the term “working class”. It’s very insulting and elitist, which is why I keep putting it in quotes. Except for a small amount of people, everyone works for the money they need to live their lives.

It’s too bad, the basic idea of the book is excellent. The lack of research, lack of follow-through, and obvious agenda ruined it. The problem of poverty is very real and more honest thorough discussion still needs to happen. Despite all the books accolades, I don’t recommend reading it.

A while ago I finished the fourth book of George RR Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice series, entitled A Feast for Crows. Like the previous three books, I did enjoy it. But this one seemed to move slowly and there were lots of distracting throwaway subplots. And again, none of the characters can get a break; I think they are all cursed like the tragic families of Greek mythology.

A strange thing with this book is that it only includes about half the characters from the previous books. The author notes that this was necessary because the length of the book was already too long. He could either tell half the story for all the characters (with a “To be continued…”) or tell the full story for half the characters.

I’m not sure what the better method of the two is, but I think most people would have preferred that both books would be released at the same time. The less wait, the better.

So with the story slowing down, half the characters missing, and the doom and gloom plot, this one wasn’t as good as the previous ones. When the next volume is released, I’ll probably just get it from the library instead of rushing to buy it immediately.

Last week I finished A Storm of Swords, the third book in George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire. Like the previous two books in the series, this book has plenty of murder, betrayal, and intrigue. Again there is very little resolution to the plot; every time a main character is killed, it seems like two more jump out to prominence.

A friend of mine told me the other day that these books are going to be turned into a series on HBO. Each book will take place over a season of shows, so there should be plenty of time to tell the story. My worry with this and all book-to-screen conversions is that they are either horrible or awesome. In this case, the book spends a lot of time with the characters thinking, so either the TV show either needs to have narration from the characters point of view or maybe have the characters thoughts voiced for the viewer (like J.D. on Scrubs, but sinister).

Also, I really like how each chapter of the book is told from a different character perspective and I think it would be cool if the TV episodes retain that type of point of view. Given the great things I’ve heard about HBO dramas like Rome and Deadwood, I think that this series should be pretty good. Of course, since I don’t have HBO, I’ll have to wait to buy the DVDs.

Again, I’d recommend the book. This one seems to have a bit of a slower pace in the second half of the book, while some important portions seem rushed. Also, some of the subplots in this installment seem a little unnecessary and the series continues to be a bit depressing as the main characters keep dying. Maybe I’ll try to read something a little uplifting before finishing the next book in the series. :-)

For my birthday (way back in November), Crissy’s parents gave me a very large and generous gift certificate to Barnes and Noble. And finally, after neglecting it for a few months, I used it and bought myself a very belated birthday gift:

• Lord of the Rings Box Set (Extended Editions) - The extended versions of this trilogy was been on my “want” list for a long time and when Barnes and Noble emailed me a 15% any item coupon, it seemed like a no brainer to get it. Of course, I now feel the need to seriously upgrade my tv and sound system in order to fully enjoy the movies. :-)
• Gandhi (Anniversary Edition) - I learned about this edition’s recent release from a “products you may be interested in” email from B&N. Since it had a really good sale price (woohoo!) and I remember the movie being excellent, I ordered myself a copy. And it’s another data point to support those “products you may like” emails.
• Sir Thomas More’s Utopia - I’ve read lots of discussion, never the original work, about More’s fictional island society where everything is uniform through the country’s many cities; whether it’s religion, customs, or education. The island has no concept of wealth, and everything is distributed equally with all property being communally owned.
• Plato’s Republic - “What is justice, and why should we be just, especially when the wicked seem happier and more successful?” are the central questions to this classic. This work is considered one of the greatest works ever produced for it’s profound impact on Western thought. If you ever watched me debate (NFL Lincoln Douglas) in high school, you would know that this is one of my favorite topics to discuss. Senior year, all my cases used “justice” as a core value, regardless if I assigned to be for or against the resolution. :-)
• Aesop’s Fables - a lot fables have similarities across cultures and religions, so I’m looking forward to comparing the stories of Aesop’s Fables with the stories in my copy of the Panchantantra.
• Machiavelli’s The Prince and Other Writings - this is another work that I’ve read lots about, but haven’t really taken the time to read thoroughly. I generally disagree with Machiavelli’s assertions about human nature and the “ends justify the means” political philosophy, so I’m excited to learn about more it.

The books that I bought are part of Barnes and Noble’s Classic Series. They are a nice package with the original work and lots of supporting material (biographies, discussions, and comments by other authors). Plus they have good binding, most have a hard cover, and they all have a low price.

The downside to this purchase is that it significantly increases my “to read” list. And, since the books I borrow from the library generally get read first (they need to be returned in 3 weeks after all), who knows when I’ll get around to reading these. :-)

When it first came out, I added Freakonomics to my “to read” list, but I never got around to it. Recently, the book was featured on Beauty and the Geek (the beauties had to read it and then interview the author, Steven Levitt). So I figured, if it’s good enough for them, it’s a solid part of pop-culture, so I should at least take a look at it. :-)

Unfortunately, like most of the books that are on the top 10 lists for non-fiction or business, the book had some interesting anecdotes, but not that much substance. A lot of the stuff really boiled down to common sense; which is disappointing because the book is supposed to answer lots of life’s mysteries by asking the right questions and drawing connections.

Malcolm Gladwell (author of The Tipping Point) endorses this book and is quoted on the cover saying, “Prepare to be dazzled.” While it must have really helped Freakonomics sales by getting Gladwell’s fan-base to buy this book, after reading through it, I was left undazzled. And I had spent so much time preparing for “dazzlement”. :-)

One of the big things that bothered me about the book was the ridiculous amount of self-promotion. Every chapter started with an excerpt of an article lavishly praising Levitt. Technically these parts were written by the co-author, but hiring someone to sing praises about you is just silly. Plus, I’m already reading the book, there’s no need to continually sell yourself, unless you’re afraid that your content won’t stand on it’s own.

Levitt asserts that he uses advanced statistics (regression analysis) to separate out all the variables; this process, he says, allows him to bypass the old adage, “Correlation doesn’t imply causation”, to actually finding the causes. For example, he asserts:

If you both own a gun and have a swimming pool in the backyard, the swimming pool is about 100 times more likely to kill a child than the gun is.

I’m not doubting his analysis, I’m sure that if you do run the numbers to model all the occurrences of a child being in the same house with a pool and a gun, the pool is more dangerous. But that being said, a truer comparison would be with the instances where the child is using with both.

I would venture a guess that in Levitt’s data set, the child was using the pool orders of magnitude more often than the child was using the gun. So Levitt’s analysis is comparing the “risk of a child using a swimming pool” vs “the risk of a child being in a house that happens to have guns.” It’s slightly disingenuous because the conclusion implies the comparsion of usage between the two.

In any event, it’s still remarkably enlightening data that directly challenges most people’s conceptions of guns. After all, most parents would be perfectly happy with their kids swimming at a friend’s house, but would be uneasy about sending their kids to friend’s house where their parents have guns locked up.

One thing Levitt discussed was the role of hype and emotional manipulation, rather than using logic and reason, to convince people of something (which fits in nicely with my last post on Global Warming):

An expert must be bold if he hopes to alchemize his homespun theory into conventional wisdom. His best chance of doing so is to engage the public’s emotions, for emotion is the enemy of rational argument. And as emotions go, one of them — fear — is more potent than the rest. The superpredator, Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, mad-cow disease, crib death: how can we fail to heed the expert’s advice on these horrors when, like that mean uncle, telling too-scary stories to too-young children, he has reduced us to quivers.

Fear is a powerful force; fear of the imminent and uncontrollable is even worse. That’s why people are more scared on airplanes then when driving cars (lack of control in the airplane). It’s also why people are more scared of terrorism than a much more probable future death from heart disease.

Levitt’s big idea in the book, the idea that got him on all the talk shows to advertise his book, was his claim that the legalization of abortion caused a drop in crime 20 years later, since all the unwanted babies would have likely been criminals. All I can say is “Bah!”. His data supporting his assertion was lacking at best; his footnotes often referred to his own works or other pop-nonfiction.

Plus regression analysis isn’t without it’s own limitations. Unless Levitt’s model can predict trends in data other than the data used to create it, it is of limited value. And nowhere in the book am I led to believe that’s the case.

Also the book is full of pseudo-intellectualism. For example, when discussing the moral outcry on his conclusion about crime and abortion, he says,

If morality represents an ideal world, then economics represents the actual world.

Huh? That doesn’t even mean anything! Especially since his so-called “economics” at times depend on faith as much as morality does.

The book also had a discussion about raising children and if smart parents will have smart kids. The whole discussion is full of interesting correlations. Kids with lots of book at home tend to do better school. But is this because of the books themselves, or because parents with books at home are more likely to value education? Or is it because if you have books you’re likely more wealthy and thus have access to better education?

Ultimately it’s hard to tell. It’s like an old post I wrote about home-schooling: are home-schooled kids doing better at tests because of the home-schooling or is it that they tend to be part of the set of kids that are more likely to have parents that value education?

Anyway, Freakonomics is a quick read and has some interesting stories in it. I’d say to get it from the library. Don’t buy it; it’s not that thought-provoking and the shameless self-promotion will make you a little ill.