Content tagged with “society”

“This book was written in 1985. The author died in 2003, and this is a second edition published posthumously in 2005. I don’t know if anything was changed, but it has an introduction by the author’s son (also an NYU professor, I gather). The author doesn’t like television, and he argues for about…”

“ It comes from the ancient Greek word ‘nomos,’ which means ‘custom’ or ‘law.’ The prefix ‘a-’ means this is the opposite of that. ”

“I have a romantic view of social clubs, especially those in London. I think I get it from James Bond novels. I love the idea of upper class Englishmen having a whisky at ‘the club’ while debating politics or other matters of world importance. This book is a wonderfully readable history of those…”

“(note: this is a weird one. This is both a review of this book, and experiment in reading style and strategy.) I decided to try something new with this book: I decided to give it one hour of my time, and see how much I could get out of it. If you search for ‘how to read like a graduate student,’…”

“Almost everybody has heard of ‘The 10,000 Hour Rule,’ which says it takes 10,000 hours of practice to master anything. I actually read the original study (PDF) last year. But I’ve often wondered about the limits of this theory. Does there exist people who simply will never master something, no…”

“This book was recommended by a friend. This friend is a social, religious, and political conservative, with very specific opinions on the separation of genders. I did not want to like this book. But, in the end, I agreed with far more than I disagreed with. The book is very well-written. The first…”

“This is a book about how we don’t like reality anymore. We like the illusion of reality. As a society, we’re addicted to farce. It’s almost hilarious that this was written in 2009. If only the author had seen what was coming. He talks about ‘the illusion of literacy,’ by contrasting it against…”

“I gave this book every chance, I really did. I didn’t abandon it, but I skipped around a lot. It’s purportedly about postmodernism . Or, perhaps about a history of how we ended up postmodern? I wasn’t sure. Each chapter was basically a history of many things, often pop-culture. I would read a…”

“As human beings, we chronically suffer from what I call ‘Gratifying Narrative Syndrome,’ or a desire to confirm narratives that we find emotionally or psychologically gratifying. You see these all the time – stories and paradigms that click with us for some reason, and that we very much want to be…”

“As I write this, America is embroiled in the Ukrainian impeachment crisis. The claim is that Donald Trump withheld military aid to Ukraine in exchange for a political favor – he wanted them to investigate Joe Biden’s son, who is (or was) likely to be Trump’s democratic opponent in the 2020…”

“I read this book for the pure titillation level, because I’m fascinated by high society in general and New York culture in particular. And the book delivered on that level – there are some horrifying anecdotes where of a woman trying to fit into Upper East Side mommies. Women who use Birkin bags as…”

“I had trouble with this book. It’s an examination of how trends move through cultures and are used to gain status. But, weirdly, it’s almost too basic. The author starts with a long-winded explanation of ‘status’ …which will surprise no one. It’s one of those things we all know, and I’m just not…”

“This is essentially a long-form rant against the fact that (1) people think they’re experts when they’re clearly not, and (2) they tend to look down on actual expertise and distrust experts. It was both inspiring and infuriating. The author writes well, but he offered no solutions. So, take it for…”

“I own 25% of Blend Interactive , which is a significant percentage. This chunk of ownership binds me to this company, in the sense that I see the company as a sort of extension of myself in many ways. I’m not a minor owner – I’m a significant part of the day-to-day operations, and my input goes a…”

“This is a theory that humans are inherently peaceful and are corrupted by modern society and economic systems. It’s mainly attributed to the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who wrote in his Discourse on the Origin of Inequality : …nothing is so gentle as man in his primitive state, when…”

“I didn’t get this book for about the first third of it. Then I figured out what it was all about – It’s about all the hidden things in life that we ignore from day to day. Where our food comes from, where are energy comes from, where our garbage grows, what’s in outer space, etc. We live in a…”

“This was a good book, though not quite what I expected. I guess I didn’t expect anything, but the introduction didn’t quite set the book up for what it was. The intro discusses a radio show replay the author heard. It was an episode of ‘Command Performance’ that happened right after V-J day back in…”

“This book caused quite a stir when it was published in 1994. This is the quote that upset a lot of people: The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there isn’t one. The author was basically saying that evangelical Christians have stopped thinking rationally about anything. Unfortunately, it was…”

“I like David Brooks. I like how he writes. It flows nicely. And this is good, because this book doesn’t really go in a straight line. It meanders. It wanders around a point, completely unfocused. ‘The First Mountain’ we climb is superficial success – money, job, romance. ‘The Second Mountain’ is a…”

“Marriage is a bundle. It is, all at once, a contract, a romance, and a spiritual institution. But I don’t think it’s going to stay this way. Marriage is actually three structures, layered on top of one another. As it’s most basic level, marriage is a contract . When you get married, you are…”

“Here’s an article which has reinforced a paradigm that I think gets ignored too often by the environmentally conscious: when considering an optional you find lacking, always consider the alternative or the default, and weigh the option against that . Because, no matter how much you don’t like…”

“This is simply the text of David Foster Wallace’s famed commencement speech given at Kenyon College a few years before he took his own life. What’s interesting is the format – it’s a tiny book (the speech is fairly short), and each sentence is on it’s own page. Seriously – an entire page is each…”

“An entertaining and well-researched examination of the ‘club economy’ – a world where ‘club promoters’ worked ‘models and bottles.’ There exists a job where you get models to nightclubs to just…exist. It turns out that rich men spend stupid amounts of money in the presence of attractive women, so…”

“Wonderfully complete history of Reddit, from the childhood lives of founders Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman, through the (ultimately tragic) life of Aaron Swartz. The book has short chapters, and is mainly episodic – each chapter covers some moment in the history of Reddit, and they’re all there:…”

“This is the story of class in America. Specifically the ‘lower’ class. In contrast to the Utopian image of Colonial America, the early years of the country were marked with extreme poverty. Before the slave trade geared up, most of the people sent to the New World were poor white people,…”

“I was thinking about marketing this week while I was on a trip, and two things occurred to me that I find distasteful about the discipline. I’m not claiming all marketing is like this, but I’d call it a majority, certainly. Marketing is often about lying. A lot of marketing is simply overstating…”

“Last year, I had lunch with a friend. She is very much on the Left, politically. I mentioned that I thought Bill Gates was a great humanitarian. She responded in a way that unsettled me (I’m paraphrasing). Sure he gives a way a lot of money, but we really need to examine how the world let someone…”