Frank Furedi – On Tolerance (2011)

Tolerance used to mean respect for the moral autonomy of individuals, the belief that, although I disagree with someone, I acknowledge their right to choose their beliefs of their own free will, and to speak them publicly, and that there is in fact a value in and of itself in being challenged by opposing views, even when they’re wrong. Moral and political judgment was a central part of tolerance, because without something to judge, there would be nothing to tolerate. Today, tolerance has come to mean non-judgment, recognition, and approval, and not of individual views, but of group identities. Paradoxically, this new tolerance is a dressed up version of traditional intolerance, and reveals its fangs when you confront it. We need the old form back.

Recommended: Strongly.

Greg Bear – Blood Music (1985)

After [being bitten by a radioactive spider] / injecting himself with intelligent microorganism, a [socially awkward teenager] / socially awkward scientist gets superpowers and [starts fighting crime] / sits at home and broods a lot, while observing his scientifically plausible transformation into a higher being.

Recommended: No. The more I read of biology and physics-oriented hard SF, the less it interests me.  Never mind the eukaryotes, show me the politics!

Daniel Kahneman – Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

The brain works in two modes: System 1, which is fast, automatic, good enough in many situations, but inaccurate in others, and System 2, which is slow, deliberate, and more rational. Using System 2 usually leads to smarter decisions, but is hard work, so that often when we get a question that should be answered by System 2, we substitute it with a simpler one that can be answered by System 1. This doesn’t mean snap decisions are worthless: Experts train their System 1 to recognize cues that enable valuable intuitive leaps. But this requires training, when it is possible at all.

Recommended: Strongly. This is a definitive book on the subject. My one objection is that long after proving that nobody has an intuitive sense of probability or statistics, psychologists persist in running experiments about people’s intuitive sense of probability and statistics. Why? Are they perhaps substituting a simpler question for a harder one? Also, don’t let people like Kahneman decide policy! Their research gives them authoritarian instincts.

Jon Ronson – The Psychopath Test (2011)

I normally mock pop-sci books that have only about 30 pages of actual content, and this is one of those books. The rest of it is just the author telling the story of what an amazing time he had travelling all over the world doing research: Talking to mad Swedes, Scientologists, potential psychopaths, etc. It’s journalistic filler, but Ronson is such a great storyteller that I couldn’t put it away.

Recommended: Reluctantly, but yes. Damn you, Jon Ronson. Damn you!

R. G. Collingwood – An autobiography (1939)

Collingwood believed that a philosopher’s autobiography should be about his ideas, and how he arrived at them, not his personal life. I approve. Collingwood had two ideas: 1) That a statement standing by itself is meaningless, unless you also know which question it is an answer to. Science is not an aimless discovery of facts, but asking questions, and forcing the subject matter to answer. And 2) that history is about understanding the thoughts and purposes of past people, about reliving, not reciting, events, and that it became a science when it stopped merely summarizing written records, and started forcing the records and archeological evidence to answer questions they had not been asked before.

Recommended: Yes.

Augustine – Confessiones (ca 400 AD)

You should always sample the original sources, to let the voices of the past speak to you in their own voice. I had the impression of Augustine as a theologian, but this work reveals him as a preacher and a poet, who struggles to find words to express his absolute love for and submission to God. A preacher, but not a wise one, and no philosopher. There’s no thought here, just emotions. The “Dark Ages” are a myth, but when you contrast Augustine to the pagan philosophers, it’s easy to get the impression of a culture shedding a heritage it has become too shallow to appreciate.

Recommended: No

▶

G. K. Chesterton – The Innocence of Father Brown (1911)

I first met Father Brown in the 1954 movie, where Alec Guinness plays him so convincingly that it’s his voice I hear in my mind when I read these stories. I don’t mind that the murderer usually turn out to be The Protestant, The Atheist, or some other soul that has been lost to the Catholic Church. It’s the religious dimension that gives these stories their appeal, the impression they give that, although being suddenly beheaded by a criminal mastermind is no doubt evil and inconvenient, what we should really worry about is lesser, everyday sins like fanaticism, coldness, pride, and greed.

Recommended: Yes, although the movie is a more coherent introduction, and should be watched first, to prevent Father Brown from taking any other shape in your mind than Alec Guinness.

Birgitte Kjos Fonn – Orientering, rebellenes avis (2011)

In the histories of Norway’s 20th century leftists, I see paralells to today’s rightists. You’d be surprised at how many there are. The radical leftists and communists at the newspaper Orientering complained about the oppressive climate for independent thought in Norway in the 1950s with many of the same words that the right use to complain about political correctness today. In other words: The largest difference between Orientering and Document is about 50 years.

Recommended: Yes. The book is sympathetic to Orientering, as one would expect, but not uncritical of their East Bloc bias, and this is in any case a far more interesting book than Frank Rossaviks SV.

Etter å ha flyttet inn i ny leilighet for noen uker siden er nå kronen på verket klar, mitt personlige bidrag til sjangeren bokhylleporno:

Ja, du har rett. Jeg kunne nok valgt en enda høyere oppløsning på bildet, slik at man kan studere alle de herlige detaljene.

Hyllene er laget av Risør Snekkerverksted, etter detaljerte spesifikasjoner: 9-10 hyller i hver reol, som passer nøyaktig til vanlige bokhøyder (18cm, 20cm, 23cm, ..) og dermed utnytter plassen maksimalt, samtidig som de bare er 22cm dype, som er nok til nesten alle bøker.

Her kan du laste ned regnearket jeg laget for beregning av hyllehøyder. Angi hvor mye høyde du har til rådighet, og så kan du eksperimentere og se hvor høye hyllene kan være. Dette kan du tross alt ikke overlate til tilfeldighetene.

Hans Olav Lahlum – Haakon Lie – Historien, mytene og mennesket (2009)

When Haakon Lie came home from the US after the Second World War, he was convinced that Norway’s future lay to the West, and over the following decades he used his considerable power in the Labor Party to make it take a pro-America, pro-Israel, and anti-Communist stand. In this, he was morally and strategically right, or at least more so than the shallower generations of leftists that came later.  He was also, reportedly, an asshole, but my one complaint about this biography is that it doesn’t examine the accusations against him more deeply. Haakon Lie comes across as temperamental and old-fashionedly authoritarian, but was that really all there was to it? Lahlum doesn’t settle this question.

Recommended: Yes.

Jack Williamson – Darker than You Think (1948)

I can sum up the thing that turned the staple foods of geek culture – werewolves and zombies and vampires etc. – into shit, with one word: Awesomeness. All surface, no soul. The only way to save these tropes now is to return to the roots, and this novel is one of them, an early variation over the currently popular theme of modern-day werewolves and witches fighting a secret war with humanity, with the main difference from the current products (True Blood etc.) being that it isn’t awesome. It’s human. All powerful myths are.

Recommended: Yes.

Jeg anmelder Raseri – en hvitings forsøk på en selvbiosofi av Cornelius Jakhelln i Morgenbladet:

Cornelius Jakhelln skriver i Raseri – en hvitings forsøk på en selvbiosofi at han har en indre fascist han kaller Sturmgeist, et rasende mobbeoffer som ikke føler seg hjemme i Det Nye Norge, og tiltrekkes av norrøne symboler og autoritær estetikk. En indre fascist er det nok flere av oss som har. Min egen hilser jeg på når jeg ser tilstrekkelig heroiske filmer, og jeg lar ham iblant slippe ut i form av et uforsonlig hånflir. Deretter er det tilbake i dypet med ham.

Hos Jakhelln ligger han nærmere overflaten. Jakhelln kaller Sturmgeist en parasitt, men det er kanskje riktigere å si at de lever i symbiose, for det er dette raseriet han kanaliserer ut gjennom sine dikt og bøker, og bandene Solefald og Sturmgeist. Det er ikke alltid klart hvem av dem som til enhver tid har overtaket.

Les resten hos Morgenbladet.

Sturmgeist selv synes jeg er alt for snill, og har erklært KRIEG mot sin vertsorganisme.

Øyvind Strømmen – Det mørke nettet (2011)

Ten years ago, I and many others started political blogs to understand the ideological background for the September 11 terror attacks. Now, the online hatred of Islam that grew out of that post-9/11 blog movement, has itself become part of the ideological background for Norway’s July 22 terror attacks. Øyvind Strømmen is an old ally from my own blog wars with the early counter-jihadists, and I agree with his analysis: The guilt rests with the terrorist alone, but you can’t understand his actions without understanding the environment he borrowed his worldview from. Just like al-Qaeda.

Recommended: Yes. There will be longer, better books later – also by Strømmen – but for now, this is the next step of the post-July 22 debate. Read it, or get left behind.

Dermot Keogh – Twentieth-Century Ireland (1994)

Ireland had a civil war, cooled down, and then nothing interesting happened for the rest of the 20th century.

Recommended: No.

Robert Silverberg – The Book of Skulls (1972)

Four college students rebel against rationality by embracing, on a whim, the faith that a cult in the Arizona desert holds the key to immortality. The story follows them as they drive across the country, and prepare for the price they will be asked to pay: Two to die, so that two can live forever. There are no clearly speculative elements here, and if it wasn’t by Robert Silverberg, you might not call it SF at all. But it’s the possibility that the cult’s promises could be real that gives this story its focus.

Recommended: Yes.

Jason K. Stearns – Dancing in the Glory of Monsters (2011)

Western media explanations of African conflicts tend to focus on “ethnicity” and “resources”, words that seem profound, but are too abstract to provide genuine insight, and end up making the conflicts appear alien, inhuman. Was World War 2 about ethnicity and resources? Well, yes, that too, but to go beneath the surface you must also look at specific ideologies and cultures, at individual personalities and local history. This is the perspective Stearns brings to the Congo war. He brings the war out of the fog of condescending buzzwords, and into History.

Recommended: Strongly.

Phil & Kaja Foglio – Agatha H. and the Airship City  (2011)

From reading the steampunk anthology earlier this year I learned that All Proper Steampunk is ugly, angry, and doctrinairely marxist, and that the rest is mere “Edisonades”.  Well, screw that. I want it to be whatever the Foglios are doing with the Girl Genius comics. I want “Adventure, Romance, MAD SCIENCE!”

Read: 44 pages.

Recommended: Only if you haven’t read the early volumes of Girl Genius, which this is a novelization of. Actually, even if you haven’t, read them instead. They’re fantastic. You’ll grin like a jägermonster.

John Medina – Brain Rules (2008)

Exercise and sleep are good for the brain, multitasking is a myth, stress makes you stupid, and repetition and repetition and multi-sensory input aids memory.

Recommended: Yes. It’s basic, but Medina seems to take science seriously, the snappy title isn’t stupid, and even his anecdotes are discreet. See, pop-sci authors, is that so difficult?

Jane McGonigal – Reality is Broken (2011)

Gamification is to add a layer of gaming mechanics (goals, rules, feedback and meaning) on top of everyday activities, to achieve something useful, or just for the fun of it. I’ve been experimenting with gamification since long before there was a word for it. But McGonigal brings out the cynic in me, and when I picture her gamified utopia, I see a world of superficial geeks using carefully designed Happiness Hacks to become the emotional equivalent of health freaks. It’s not that I don’t see how checking in to Foursquare, or taking part in Halo 3′s 10 billion kill challenge, can provide your life with a meaning that it otherwise lacks – I just don’t see this as something to aspire to. Nor do I see the millions of World of Warcraft players as an army of potential do-gooders who stand ready to Save the World, if only someone could translate this into the right gaming metaphors.

Recommended: No. The basic ideas are sound, but the uncritical enthusiasm makes you feel like you’re reading this from twenty years into the future, looking back on the naivety of an earlier generation.