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Random Thoughts/Good Reads

Brandwashed - Martin Lindstrom

[ame="http://www.amazon.com/Brandwashed-Tricks-Companies-Manipulate-Persuade/dp/0385531737"]Amazon.com: Brandwashed: Tricks Companies Use to Manipulate Our Minds and Persuade Us to Buy (9780385531733): Martin Lindstrom: Books[/ame]

Really an amazing book. Fairly quick read but this guy has worked with everyone.
 
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... Jesus had not called the faithful to His side in the sky; but then many believed the Lord would appear only to deserving hearts who could see, without trumpets or fanfare, that the time was at hand -- and, in fact, had always been at hand. For them, the Rapture was to be a poetical rising of the spirit; and though their bodies remained in Glasgow or Bangalore or Amsterdam, they would walk with one foot in Paradise and see what others did not: that their God was everywhere, hiding in plain sight, present simply for the asking. And those who could not see? They were condemned to living as they always had: in what some called Hell, this work in progress we call the world.

From All Cry Chaos, a Henri Poincare mystery by Leonard Rosen.
 
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edX - BBC
This autumn more than a million students are going to take part in an experiment that could re-invent the landscape of higher education.

Some of the biggest powerhouses in US higher education are offering online courses - testing how their expertise and scholarship can be brought to a global audience.

Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have formed a $60m (?38m) alliance to launch edX, a platform to deliver courses online - with the modest ambition of "revolutionising education around the world".

Sounding like a piece of secret military hardware, edX will provide online interactive courses which can be studied by anyone, anywhere, with no admission requirements and, at least at present, without charge.

With roots in Silicon Valley, Stanford academics have set up another online platform, Coursera, which will provide courses from Stanford and Princeton and other leading US institutions.

The first president of edX is Anant Agarwal, director of MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and one of the pioneers of the MITx online prototype.

He puts forward a statistic that encapsulates the game-changing potential.

The first online course from MITx earlier this year had more students than the entire number of living students who have graduated from the university.

In fact, it isn't far from the total of all the students who have ever been there since the 19th Century.
 
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korchiki;2174279; said:
Looking for some easy-reading material for the honeymoon in a few weeks. Not really into the sci-fi stuff but would like something interesting.

Any recommendations? They don't need to be new books.

Really? Honeymoon and you want to..............read?

Dude. Come on.

Kama Sutra is the only book I will recommend for this situation.
 
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'Depraved' sex acts by penguins shocked polar explorer - BBC
Accounts of unusual sexual activities among penguins, observed a century ago by a member of Captain Scott's polar team, are finally being made public.

Details, including "sexual coercion", recorded by George Murray Levick were considered so shocking that they were removed from official accounts.

However, scientists now understand the biological reasons behind the acts that Dr Levick considered "depraved".

The Natural History Museum has published his unedited papers.

Mr Levick, an avid biologist, was the medical officer on Captain Scott's ill-fated Terra Nova expedition to the South Pole in 1910. He was a pioneer in the study of penguins and was the first person to stay for an entire breeding season with a colony on Cape Adare.

He recorded many details of the lives of adelie penguins, but some of their activities were just too much for the Edwardian sensibilities of the good doctor.

He was shocked by what he described as the "depraved" sexual acts of "hooligan" males who were mating with dead females. So distressed was he that he recorded the "perverted" activities in Greek in his notebook.

...

Only two of the original 100 copies of Mr Levick's account survive. Mr Russell and colleagues have now published a re-interpretation of Mr Levick's findings in the journal Polar Record.

Mr Russell described how he had discovered one of the copies by accident.

"I just happened to be going through the file on George Murray Levick when I shifted some papers and found underneath them this extraordinary paper which was headed 'the sexual habits of the adelie penguin, not for publication' in large black type.

"It's just full of accounts of sexual coercion, sexual and physical abuse of chicks, non-procreative sex, and finishes with an account of what he considers homosexual behaviour, and it was fascinating."
 
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korchiki;2174279; said:
Looking for some easy-reading material for the honeymoon in a few weeks. Not really into the sci-fi stuff but would like something interesting.

Any recommendations? They don't need to be new books.

I hear that "Fifty Shades of Gray" is interesting. :paranoid: Give it to the new bride.
[ame="http://www.amazon.com/Fifty-Shades-Grey-Book-Trilogy/dp/0345803485"]Amazon.com: Fifty Shades of Grey: Book One of the Fifty Shades Trilogy (9780345803481): E L James: Books[/ame]
 
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Atomic bond types discernible in single-molecule images - BBC
A pioneering team from IBM in Zurich has published single-molecule images so detailed that the type of atomic bonds between their atoms can be discerned.

The same team took the first-ever single-molecule image in 2009 and more recently published images of a molecule shaped like the Olympic rings.

The new work opens up the prospect of studying imperfections in the "wonder material" graphene or plotting where electrons go during chemical reactions.

Continued...
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?Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all you don't know what work these conditions are doing inside you?" Rilke from "Letter to a Young Poet"
 
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Fantastic book

Replay by Ken Grimwood

[ame="http://www.amazon.com/Replay-Ken-Grimwood/dp/068816112X"]Replay: Ken Grimwood: 9780688161125: Amazon.com: Books[/ame]

Interesting variation on the "time travel" genre. The main character dies and wakes up in his college dorm at the age of 19, keeping his memory of the next few decades. He keeps "replaying" his life, making different decisions and trying to seek out others who are "replaying" their lives.
 
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Over the past two months I have become an avid reader of Front Porch Republic as it is a true home for my anti-modern, community-centered political and social views.

I thought about posting this article in the guns thread on the Poli Board, but as the point is to show how the gun debate misses the larger issues in play, I thought it would be better posted here.

http://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2012/12/the-culture-of-guns-what-about-the-culture-of-narcissism/

The Lanzas appear to have been a representative portrait of the culture of narcissism, painted by both the left and right hands that Lasch rightly slapped at the wrists. It is difficult to think of a better term than "narcissistic" to describe a father who abandons his mentally ill child, even if he supplies a six figure income to that child's mother. What is there to say for a mother who prioritizes vacationing over the care and supervision of her unstable son?

American culture preaches a crass consumerism that encourages citizens to place the flimsiest of their whims over the needs of others. Murder--for thrill, glory, or whatever Lanza's unknown motive--is the ultimate manifestation of narcissism. It is the literal destruction on another's life in the hopes of enhancing one's own.
 
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For those of you who enjoy history/military books: Three great reads in my recent past, two, Korea and All Hell Let Loose, by British historian, Max Hastings, and The Generals by Thomas Ricks.

Hastings gives what I think to be one of the most balanced, insightful accounts of Korea and WWII. He mixes quotes from privates, generals, civilians, other historians to give you a broader perspective. Things that stand out in All Hell: his loathing for MacArthur and Montgomery, his appreciation for the skill with which the German infantry fought, the turnaround in fighting skills in the Russian army, that atrocities weren't limited to the SS but were an early part of the behavior of the entire Wehrmacht.
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-e...l-hell-let-loose-by-max-hastings-6264766.html

The Korean book really pans MacArthur and the army, especially in comparison to the Marines and the small British contingent. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55407.The_Korean_War

Ricks book focuses on the training and personnel decisions of the Army's generals from WWI to today, especially focusing on the issue of relieving officers who don't make the grade. A very intense look behind the decision makers, their training, their experiences, their strengths and weaknesses and how all these play in to what the army accomplished or failed to accomplish. http://www.npr.org/2012/10/29/163185980/should-the-generals-get-fired-more-often
 
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