FACTFULNESS Hans Rosling

 

I found this an interesting book, I trying to understand the source and accuracies of data-base anything in todays’ world.  He sets up the premise with examples of how the majority of experts will always 86% of the time gets wrong when trying  to guess the statistical  facts f life: 

• What age are most girls educated  
• Birth rate
• Etc 

Factfulness is recognizing when a story talks about a gap:

Beware of comparisons of averages

Beware of comparisons of extremes

The view from up here - everything else looks equally short but it isn’t

None of us has all the mental capacity consume all the information out there

Critical thinking is always difficult, but its almost impossible when we  scared

How to control  getting angs out of proportion : compare and divide  Never leave a number all by itself. 

Being always in favor or always against any particular idea makes you blind to information that doesn't fit your perspective. This is usually a bad approach if you'd like to understand reality. Instead constantly test your favorite ideas for weakness be humble about the extent of your expertise be curious about new information that doesn't fit information from other fields. Great knowledge can interfere with an expert's ability to see what actually works. We should be highly skeptical about conclusions derived purely from number crunching

To control the single perspective instinct get a toolbox not a hammer; thankfulness is recognizing that a single perspective can limit your imagination. Beware of simple ideas and simple solutions; welcome complexity combine ideas solve problems on a case by case basis. Resist blaming of any kind - much more complicated than that because the problem is that when we identify the bad guy you're done thinking. Its almost always about multiple interacting causes, if you really want to change the world and understand how it actually works forget about punching anyone in the face. (Story of college protests want to punch

1. Global      pandemic
2. Financial Collapse 
3. WWIII
4. Climate change
5. Extreme poverty

Education we should be teaching our children the fact-based update framework life on the four levels in the four regions. 

Need to teach our children humility (you need to speak about extensively about the limits of knowledge; happy to say I don’t know everything and I can  change my opinion.

Four Income Levels

1.Level One. - $2

2. Level Two - $8
3. Level Three- $32
4. Level Four -

Drinking Water

Transportation - foot - bike - Moto cycle  - car

Cooking : fire - tank gas - gas portable top -oven top

Eating 

Sleep

1B - NS. AMERICAN

1B - Europe

1b - Africa

4b - Asia 

The Coddling of the american mind

 The Coddling of the american mind

Listened  to the audio version - so no good notes. Enjoyed  should have read instead. but definitely worthwhile

The lack of challenging curriculum american schools

Time on the River. Bill Gardner

 Time on the River

Bill Gardner

A 200 day quest for a trophy muskey. On a  quest which explains well Blair , and a portion of me. This is a classic for any devoted fisher of trophy fish. Not unlike izaak Walton’s The Compleat Angler, or the Contemplative Man's Recreation written in the mid 1600’s. Though I believe this was written in the 1980s. Both great books if you are a fisher of any passion, which I am.

Smaller Country by Gael Faye

Small Country - Gael Faye

Small Country is a  harrowing

 tale of coming-of-age in the face of civil war, race relations, expansionism, class institutional rights' , colonialism. 

French-Rwandan Gael Fayeis  influences- rap laced with soul and jazz, semba, Congolese rumba... 

Small Countryis his first novel. It was a huge bestseller in France, winning the Prix Goncourt des Lyceens 2016, and is being published in thirty territories worldwide.
'A luminous debut novel...Faye dramatises the terrible nostalgia of having lost not only a childhood but also a whole world to war' Guardian

Burundi, 1992.For ten-year-old Gabriel, life in his comfortable expat neighborhood French father, Rwandan mother and little sister, Ana, is something close to paradise. These are happy, carefree days spent with his friends.

'Unforgettable... Gael Faye's talent is breathtaking

A happy childhood combusts when confronted with a world gone hey wire . Their country, and soon their peaceful idyll will shatter when Burundi and neighbouring Rwanda are brutally hit by war. Words such as Hutu, Tutsis, indentured servant ,slave, not as part of my common nomenclature gave me a new lens to examine the world. The simple becoming complex, and kindness and mercy being lost for evil and revenge. We need to live well so Christ will come, not the apocalypse to get rid of evil. 

"French-Rwandan Gael Faye-is an author, composer and hip hop artist. He was born in 1982 has a Rwandan mother and French father. In 1995, after the outbreak of the civil war and the Rwandan genocide, the family moved to France. Gael studied finance and worked in London for two years for an investment fund, then he left London to embark on a career of writing and music."

"He is as influenced by Creole literature as he is by hip hop culture, and released an album in 2010 with the group Milk Coffee & Sugar. In 2013, his first solo album, Pili Pili sur un Croissant au Beurre, appeared. It was recorded between Bujumbura and Paris, and is filled with a plethora of musical influences- rap laced with soul and jazz, semba, Congolese rumba... In 2018 he received the prestigious Victoires de la Musique Award.

Small Countryis his first novel. It was a huge  bestseller in France, winning the Prix Goncourt des Lyceens 2016, and is being published in thirty territories worldwide."

I've avoided most genocide books because reality is a little tough to swallow . Though just the other day I recommended The Rent Collector , which only changes the country not the impact or desolateness,of genocide.

A Far Country by Daniel Mason

A Far Country by Daniel Mason 

A coming of age type novel of a young girl's journey through a vast, unnamed country (I started with Brazil, shifted to Burundi  and settled on India) in search of her brother . When drought and war grip the backlands, her brother Isaias joins a great exodus to a teeming city in the south. Soon Isabel must follow, forsaking the only home she’s ever known, her sole consolation the thought of being with her brother again.  They have a stupendous relationship that has deeper connection than the normal bro/sis - Kinetic vibrant neural network. 

The core exploration captures the fun, excitement and fear which are  normal migrant emotions. Being scourged by the elements  assisted though eventually always exploited by the 'horse' bringing them in; which in turns drives reinvention of the fringe-livers. Its as though she took a snap shot in time across the globe- of migrant experiences and  - US/Mexico, Sn Diego/ Tijuana Greece /Albania Bolivia/Venezuela. (If this interest you (see p 246) describing the Cambodian community which structured its-Caste structure, its society and even its survival within - "Trash" in Cambodia - Pol Po was as bad / evil as they get demonstrated in The Rent Collector by Cameron Wright ).

Wasn't aware of the of all the trials these people lives. Theirs is truly. rough and tumble existence, and in turn take  desire to survive. A worthy read

The White Book. by Han Kang

The White Book By Han Kang I really should spend more time pre-reading books and then my time spent reading books would be less for naught .I was a big advocate of this book on the basis I had read probably half of it and Han turns a lovely translated phrase. Then as finishing the last, I realized that reviews found online are fairly accurate: -ultimately a letter from Kang to her sister--offers powerful philosophy and personal psychology on the tenacity and fragility of the human spirit, and our attempts to graft new life from the ashes of destruction. A less than subtle hint the text may meander or plunge deep into the ashes of destruction. I kept expecting turning the corner and a smile surfacing- generally not to be. Perchance a silver lining behind the dark cloudy day. It’s well written and I enjoyed reading - I’m looking for a larger seeing of hope and happiness. The sad and painful is entirely too quickly at our disposal. Hope is what I carry with me. In the meantime a few bon mots: First one is way too personal about dealing with pain; as are all the other subsequently marked as I was reading the book. And looking back I don’t want to capture them , and hold them as my personal captives. I don’t them appended to my book of life. I’ll keep things that were positive, without denying the existence of the other-I simply prefer to advocate the other view.

Three Hours in Paris by Cara Black

Three Hours in Paris

by Cara Black

Genres: Mystery, Thriller, Historical Fiction, Spy fiction, Historical mystery

Not a huge World War II reader, not a huge spy novel reader; put those issues aside and it was a great book. 

The premise of the characters ;the multiple German approaches ,then the British multiple approaches taken back-and-forth. I loved it a lot the way it was presented. You cannot trust anybody in that world. Quick read, fun read, go check it out.

What NYT started saying “Cara Black’s Three Hours in Paris is a highly entertaining historical thriller of espionage and political double-dealing set in the unique atmosphere of Paris during the Nazi occupation...”

Piece of mind Michelle Adelman

Piece of mind Michelle Adelman

It discusses the courage it takes to break my face life each day as individuals and families together and alone as well as falling in and out of them in and out of dependences

When you have no choice you find a way to get things done but nothing you don’t dwell just do when you do you realize a lot of things take care of themselves.

Second Sleep . by Robert Harris.

Second Sleep . 

by Robert Harris.

1468. A young priest, Christopher Fairfax, arrives in a remote Exmoor village to conduct the funeral of his predecessor. .. Fairfax becomes determined to discover the truth. Over the course of the next six days, everything he believes--about himself, his faith, and the history of his world--will be tested to destruction.

1468 I assumed was during the birth of the renaissance in Europe- wrong

Cathedrals spoke of organized religion the way we are familiar with it - wrong.

Slow starting book means bad book- wrong.

Though a less than satisfactory ending I enjoyed the book and it quickly went by. Call to discuss don’t want to be a spoiler!

Life After Google by George Gilder

Life After Google by George Gilder

Much of the rest of Life reads as a stream of consciousness chock full of references to some of the biggest names in technology, along with lots of insider-y tech talk. As for bitcoin itself, it’s a junk currency.  It is because in terms of volatility, it exhibits all the dollar’s worst qualities in exponentially greater fashion. 


Google offers to its “customers” is free. Internet searches are free. Email is free. The vast resources of the data centers, costing Google an estimated thirty billion dollars to build, are provided essentially for free. Free is not by accident. If your business plan is to have access to the data of the entire world, then free is an imperative.


Money, like the cosmos, has become relativistic and reversible at will. The three hundred years of Newtonian prosperity having come to an end, the new multiverse seems unable to repeat the miracle of a golden age of capitalism. It is now widely held that citizens are essentially owned by the state on which they depend. Slavery, in the form of servitude to governments, is making a comeback as money transactions become less trustworthy.

Thinking is conscious, willful, imaginative, and creative. A computer running at gigahertz speeds and playing a deterministic game like chess or Go is only a machine.

The economy has arrived at a point where it produces enough in principle for everyone… So this new period we are entering is not so much about production anymore — how much is produced; it is about distribution — how people get a share in what is produced.Life After Google by George Gilder

Much of the rest of Life reads as a stream of consciousness chock full of references to some of the biggest names in technology, along with lots of insider-y tech talk. As for bitcoin itself, it’s a junk currency.  It is because in terms of volatility, it exhibits all the dollar’s worst qualities in exponentially greater fashion. 


Google offers to its “customers” is free. Internet searches are free. Email is free. The vast resources of the data centers, costing Google an estimated thirty billion dollars to build, are provided essentially for free. Free is not by accident. If your business plan is to have access to the data of the entire world, then free is an imperative.


Money, like the cosmos, has become relativistic and reversible at will. The three hundred years of Newtonian prosperity having come to an end, the new multiverse seems unable to repeat the miracle of a golden age of capitalism. It is now widely held that citizens are essentially owned by the state on which they depend. Slavery, in the form of servitude to governments, is making a comeback as money transactions become less trustworthy.

Thinking is conscious, willful, imaginative, and creative. A computer running at gigahertz speeds and playing a deterministic game like chess or Go is only a machine.

The economy has arrived at a point where it produces enough in principle for everyone… So this new period we are entering is not so much about production anymore — how much is produced; it is about distribution — how people get a share in what is produced.