Action Figure Daniel

Category: Reading

  • “When Life Nearly Died” by Michael J Benton

    Benton does a fantastic job detailing the evolution of geology, paleontology and other related sciences over the past couple of centuries. The author actually details the two largest mass extinctions, though he gives extra coverage to the larger of the two (which is the namesake of the book).

    Interesting tidbit: most of our knowledge of these past two (of the five great extinction) has been put together over the past two decades. Sometimes I think that everything we know about the ‘dinosaurs’ we have known forever, but no, it is common for us to have only recently figured it out.

  • “The Signal and the Noise: Why so many predictions fail–but some don’t” by Nate Silver

    Though a long, dense read, Silver delves into the delightful world of data analysis with full force, sometimes barely slowing long enough to give a primer to the uninitiated. Topics range from the recent housing market crash to baseball. With each examination, Silver explain how data analysis function in the given field and work he has done in the field (if not to improve the analysis itself then to review the poor work of others).

    Interesting tidbit: Statistical analysis today is based mostly on the work of a man named Fisher who (in 1959) was arguing that there was no correlation between smoking and lung cancer.

  • “The Richest Man in Babylon” by George Samuel Clason

    Clason uses a fictional story line, set in the height of the Babylonian empire, to distill his wisdom on the accumulation of wealth and wise money management. While at times the stories seem unnecessary, they help to reinforce the importance of the point Clason is trying to make without bearing down into boring numbers and statistics.

  • “Heroes, Rogues, and Lovers: Testosterone and Behavior” by James McBride Dabbs with Mary Godwin Dabbs

    The Dabbs couple explore the profound and vast effects of testosterone on men and women from the youngest of ages (in utero) through mid-life. After childhood, they explore the three basic effects that are outlined in the title: creating heroes, rebel rousing and making lovers. While the presented research focuses on men, the Dabbs are frequently cite studies of women to establish a baseline of the norm before showing  how testosterone changed the default behavior. This book has greatly expanded my understanding of, and provided fascinating insight to, why both men and women behave the way they do.
    Interesting tidbit: Alfalfa and clover are estrogen rich and thus birth controlling plants. It is thought that the plants maintained this chemical feature to limit offspring of hungry animals and thus prevent overgrazing. Today, some million sheep go sterile each year in Australia alone from eating too much wild clover and alfalfa.

  • “And Then There’s This” by Bill Wasik

    Wasik presents a wandering collection of stories that track the origin (often created by himself) through their short lived lives to their ultimate demise. During this process, he does some analysis on what made the various stories thrive for the short time before ultimately dying.