Scale by Geoffrey West

 Scale refers to the way quantities scale with size. For example how do calories consumed vary with the size of the animal. One might think if size doubles that calories should double but it doesn't work like that. Calories needed go up by 75%. The reason is that needed energy comes via the bloodstream with networks that split into smaller and smaller tubes to  reach every cell. This geometry allows larger animals to be more efficient. But correspondingly animals can only grow so much. Growing cells does double with a doubling in size so eventually the increase in cells cannot get energy from the network with slower growth. This also limits lifespans.

Interestingly as biological organisms humans need only 90 watts per day of energy, but with our culture and lifestyle we needs cars, roads, TV, etc., etc., which amounts to 11,000 watts, a tremendous increase. Companies also follow this pattern and mostly die out. However cities do grow exponentially. If its size doubles then both the good and the bad features of the city increase by 115%. The good part is that this makes for the innovations that allows humanity to grow exponentially as it has been since the industrial revolution. The catch is that the innovation that makes this possible has to happen faster and faster. Even now we can see that change happens so fast that an innovator with a good idea cannot implement it before it becomes obsolete. 

Scale is a thought-provoking book.

Galileo's Error Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness by Philip Goff

 Galileo's error was to base science on Mathematics considering only what things do and not what they are. Panpsychism is the view that consciousness is a fundamental feature of physical reality. It's not materialism or dualism. Everything has consciousness at its own level.  The problem to solve is how this basic consciousness combines as simpler things combine in larger things. Other books I have reviewed show how trees communicate for example. The What the Bleep do We Know movie show that water responds to messages. It seems like Goff is on the right track.

The Worm at the Core -- On the role of death in life by Sheldon Solomon et al

 According to the authors the fear of death is one of the driving forces of human action. "Cultural worldviews have offered immense comfort to death-fearing humans.....the second vital resource for managing terror is a feeling of personal significance, commonly known as self-esteem." Sites inhabited 28,000 years ago have burials with bodies elaborately prepared in death which indicates a belief in the afterlife.

The Gobekli monuments in Turkey date from 12,000 years ago. They predate the wheel and agriculture. There are no sign of human habitation or cultivation there. Each pillar weighs over ten tons so at least 500 workers were needed to drag, carve, and erect them. Perhaps first came the temple and then the city. Burying food with the dead may have caused sprouting of grain and led to the understanding of agriculture.

The Body by Bill Bryson

  Another informative book by Bill Bryson. 

1. How to Build a Human

     Genes provide instructions for building proteins (2 percent). Enzymes speed up chemical changes. Hormones convey chemical messages. Antibodies attack pathogens. Titin controls muscle elasticity.

3. Microbial You

     The only way to spread cold germs is by touch. Coughing, sneezing, and kissing didn't work well. In the US 80 % of antibiotics are fed to farm animals.

4. The Brain

     It uses 20 % of our energy. The limbic system -- hypothalamus, amygdala, hippocampus, etc., regulate memory, appetite, emotions, alertness, etc. Photons have no color, our brain creates our impression. Same for sound. 

5. The Head

     Six universal expressions, fear, anger, pleasure, surprise, disgust and sorrow.  A true smile requires a contraction that we can't control, so we can't fake it. Flashes of emotion betray our true feelings. We have as many as 33 sensory systems, like balance, acceleration, time, appetite, etc. Color-blind lack one of the three types of cones. We have three types of cones compared to four for birds, reptiles, and fish. Being nocturnal we gave up some cones to get rods. If we could hear quieter sounds we would hear the air all the time. We smell the world differently because only half our receptors are in common.

6> The Mouth

     We produce little saliva while we sleep ao microbes can proliferate and give a foul mouth in the morning. We have pain receptors in the tongue which chili peppers aggravate just like a hot spoon. Odors and flavors are created in our head.

8. The Chemistry Department

     As we age the bladder can't expand as much.

9. The Skeleton

     Cutting the wrist is hard to get to the arteries. When you jump from height the legs crumple making death more difficult. The hands and feet have more than half the bones in the body. Tendons connect muscle to bone. Ligaments connect bone to bone. You need 100 muscles to stand up and 12 to move your eyes. Cartilage cannot repair or replenish itself. Slightly overweight people survive diseases better.

and lots more in 23 chapters

Rapid Virus Recovery free book

 Rapid Virus Recovery free book

Algorithms to Live By The Computer Science of Human Decisions by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths

 Despite its title this book is completely non-technical but the authors brilliantly explain in simple terms how algorithms (basically recipes) apply to human problems such as how many should one meet before choosing a spouse. The part that I wanted to especially remember is the last part about algorithms like the prisoners dilemma problem where the best algorithm for an individual is not the optimum which can only be obtained by cooperation. This reminds of a previous book Biotic Regulation and the Environment which shows that species work together to keep the environment able to support life and that going it alone leads to destruction.

Americana by Bhu Srinivasan

 American history treated from an economic point of view is informative and fascinating. The Pilgrims went from England to Holland for religious freedom but cam to America because of the hard conditions in Holland. They needed funds for the expedition and got them from England who needed settlers. His chapters on cotton, steam, canals, railroads, telegraph, gold, and slavery finish the first part. Each chapter highlights the economic importance signified by its title. Slaves were worth $4 billion dollars and the most valuable part of the US economy were not going to be freed without a fight. Politics is interesting but this well-written book shows that it's economics that makes the difference.

Breath The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor

 Effective breathing is really important for good health and long life. In a study by Buteyko "the healthiest patients breathed alike, too: less. They'd inhale and exhale about ten times a minute..." This book contains many other tips about breathing. Appendices give breathing exercises corresponding to each chapter. It takes more than one reading to distill the wisdom here but it is worth the effort.

With Malice Toward None A Life of Abraham Lincoln by Stephen B. Oates

 This is a well-written coverage of Lincoln's life with insight into his personality and his struggles and achievements. In one volume it gives one a feel for the times with an insight into Lincoln who was against slavery his entire life. He wasn't an abolitionist but felt the the country could not remain divided over slavery. He had hoped that if confined to the southern states it would eventually die out.

Energy, Hierarchy, and Inequality by Blair Fix

Living the Good Life in a Non-Growth World, Investigating the Role of HIerarchy

 This is an online essay 

The Elegant Defense: The Extraordinary New Science if the Immune System by Matt Richtel

 The author presents a really interesting of informative discussion of the immune system including many new developments. He makes it interesting relating it to actual cases. In the end it is a bit depressing to see that the patients suffer and die with medications to treat the immune system and then medicines to treat the side effect. By contrast the previous book I discussed, The Energy Cure, Unraveling the Mysteries of Hands-On Healing, describers a healers who cures cancer with no side effects. Western medicine seems to be going in the wrong direction and not taking into account other wisdom.

The Energy Cure Unraveling the Mystery of Hands-On Healing by William Bengston

 The author is a Sociology professor who learned to heal as a young man. He is able to cure cancers and some other ailments but not everything. He trained students to become healers and it turns out they could do it too. Since healing can operate over a distance it's hard to know if more than one person is present who actually is responsible for the healing. An appendix details the procedure for becoming a healer which involves creating a sequence of distractions to take your conscious mind off the healing process. The mind interferes and must be distracted. He also tested remote viewing and found that it worked sometimes, even if the viewing times were not synchronized. Asian medicine has a history of working with energy, and we should have an open mind to the possibilities.

The Modern Anglo-Dutch Empire: Its Origins, Evolution, and Anti-Human Outlook by Robert D. Ingraham

 This book talks about two forms of government, one that emphasizes the pursuit of happiness and the other property rights. Venice is the origin of the modern version of the latter and it moved to the Netherlands and England. Gottfried Leibniz was an outstanding advocate of government for the people. He influenced Ben Franklin and thereby the founding of the US.

Perfidy by Ben Hecht

 A journalist in Israel accused, in the early 1950s, Rudolf Kastner of collaborating with the Nazis in the killing of 1 million Hungarian Jews and the Israeli government sued him for libel. This book is the story of that case. Hecht portrays many of Israel's leaders as placating the British. American Jews incorrectly called an offer by Eichmann to trade Hungarian Jews for Trucks and other material as false causing the American help to flounder. 

Listen, Liberal - or whatever happened to the party of the people.

 Bill Clinton became a "New" Democrat. He cut welfare, kept the high penalties for crack compared to powdered cocaine, and was going to cut social security until Monica intervened. He enabled the bankers by removing Gram-Schmidt controls. Because of globalization labor had less clout so he needed a more reliable source of funding. Democrats since Clinton have followed his lead. Republicans have old business corporations, and Democrats the new technocrat billionaires and some Wall St hedge funds. The working class traditional Democrat constituency have no representation. Liberals tout innovation and talk frequently about innovators as if that a path that workers whose jobs have vanished can take. Instead of jobs liberals promise inclusiveness for minorities and sexes which is nice but avoids the real economic issues.

How Vaccines Wreck Human Immunity by Jack Stockwell

 This short ebook is very clearly written making the essentials understandable. Our acquired immunity or humoral immunity has two types, T cells that aggressively fight the invaders and B cells that make antibodies to protect against this invader, giving lifetime immunity The T cells make you sick in the process of fighting the invaders. Those that succumb to a virus show weak nutrition and bad environmental poisons or even damaging medicines. 

So in a natural infection first come the T cells and the the B cells. Vaccines attemp to stimulate B cells to provide antibodies with the causing virus to get the T cells to reach and activate the B cells. Using dead virus does not stimulate the B cells so vaccine makers add poisons such as mercury or aluminum to get the immune system to react. All these antibodies with no virus to fight cause the autoimmune diseases which plague modern society. And they do not create lifelong immunity as did those naturally created. Polio and other diseases were on the decline before their vaccines were introduced. He asks if you would inject a neurotoxic substance that will get through the blood brain barrier and into the brain itself in exchange for not getting the chicken pox.

Vaccine Safety Manual by Neil Z. Miller

 This is a very thorough coverage of vaccines by disease condition. Mostly vaccines are ineffective and many, many examples are given of bad side effects and death. Autism is linked to the MMR vaccine. I would never get a vaccine after reading this and am sorry that my daughter had some and probably side effects like asthma and diabetes.

The Plant Paradox: The Hidden Dangers in "Healthy" Foods that Cause Disease and Weight Gain by Steven R. Gundry MD

 He explains that when animals came along plants developed defenses, poisons to kill them. They don't kill us but they do some damage. He shows the foods that are safe to eat and those that aren't and has recipes in the back of the book created by a chef. They are mostly vegetarian because meat has a different variant of a sugar than humans and so our autoimmune system attacks it causing disease. 

Conjuring HItler: How Britain and America made the Third Reich by Guido Giacona Preparata

 Britain and the US are not part of the Eurasian land mass. Britain's aim was to prevent Eurasia from uniting which would endanger Britain's empire. They worked to provoke Germany into WWI to weaken them. Britain pretended to support the Whites (the rich) in the Russian revolution but in reality were afraid that they would be natural allies of the German nobility and so covertly supported the Reds. They wanted to weaken Germany and Russia. To do that they had to build up someone (Hitler) to fight Russia and damage them both. This they did in the 30s. They even had some such as the Duke of Windsor be friendly to Hitler so that he wouldn't attack Britain. Hitler tried to ransom the Jews but neither Britain or the US would pay. Fascinating book with lots of insights.

The Wages of Destruction by Adam Tooze

 This is a thorough economic study of Germany in relation to the world wars. Just to mention a few points: He shows how the cycle of finance worked after WWI. The Germans paid reparations to the French and British who paid their loans to the US who made loans to Germany. In the early 30s Germany stopped paying reparations which broke the cycle and allowed their economy to prepare for another war. But they were deficient in many areas. Hitler hoped to defeat the Russians getting access to the food and mineral rich Ukraine. They planned to let the Slavs die. When that didn't work they weren't going to feed the Jews who was the least favored accessible victims. The economic analysis is fascinating.