Poor Charlie's Almanack by Charles Munger

 Munger provides quite a bit of wisdom in this collection of talks. One really has to be smart to have great success and one has to know ALL the relevant factors. For example if you're a trick or two short you should know all the six or so standard methos, long suit establishment, finesses, throw-in plays, crossrulls, squeezes, and various ways of misleading the defense into making errors. Talk 7 shows why the accounting for stock options can lead to inflated estimates of company revenue.

The Other Brain by R. Douglas Fields

The neurons, which use electricity to communicate have been, until recently, the main focus of brain research. But only 15% of the cells in the brain are neurons. In 1990 researchers observed that the glia communicate chemically and are not just housekeeping cells. The author delineates the role of glia in helpful functions, diseases such as ALS and Parkinson's, and mental illnesses. It make the structure of the brain even more mind-boggling. 

Dark Matter of the Mind: The Culturally Articulated Unconscious by Daniel L. Everett

 This book is somewhat difficult to read but has valuable insights. Dark matter is what individuals build up through developing culture starting even in the womb but definitely at an early age. He presents a new theory of how culture, language, and the unconscious work together. "It is about how our unconscious is structured and infused with meaning by our individual experiences and social living."  He worked in the Amazon region and found tremendous cultural differences that caused him to change the direction of his life.

The Upright Ape: A New Origin of the Species by Aaron G. Filler

     The author presents evidence that evolution is not gradual with many steps over many years to make a significant change, but happens quickly in a generation with the assimilation of a single mutation. For example, in insects the nerve chord runs along the front of the animal facing the ground with the digestive track running along the back facing the sun. Vertebrates have the opposite arrangement. Perhaps one mutation flipped the insect version to the vertebrate version.

     The discovery of the Moroto vertebra showed that 21 million years ago a mutation occurred that created a new type of body plan: the hominoid body plan. This allowed hominoids to be bipedal. So our ancestors were bipedal that long ago and some descendants went back to the older way of walking but we didn't. 

    Although written for the general reader the book does give extensive details.

Mind: A Unified Theory of Mind and Intelligence by Frank T.Vertosick

 This is a fascinating book that describes all life as intelligent. Bacteria work as a group using genetics to adapt to threats. Humans takes years to develop an antibiotic but bacteria can defeat it in a year. Our immune system changes its own genes to remember antigens and learns millions over our lifetime. The author compares serial processing to the parallel processing of networks and shows how network processing creates intelligence.

Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut

 This is the only book you need to read to understand the human condition.  It is brilliant. Humans have big brains, and flexible hands that get us into trouble. The blue-footed booby evolved on the Galapagos to have smaller wings and dive much better for fish. Here humans evolve to better adapt to the environment. A must read.

The 10,000 Year Explosion by Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending

 The authors explain that the genes in a population can vary quickly if they are successful. For example blue eyes spread rapidly as humans moved north. It takes larger populations for the effect to propagate rapidly and agriculture allowed population to grow. 

They also explain how the Ashkenazi Jews got their smarts. Jews in other parts of the world were not known for intelligence. They suggest that genetic variants facilitate the nervous system. With only one copy of the gene the nervous system is improved but theat gene causes disease with two copies, such as Tay-Sachs and others prevalent among Ashkenazi Jews. This is similar to the gene causing sickle-cell anemia among Africans. The 3/4 standard-deviation IQ difference means the Ashkenazi population has six times as may highly intelligent members 

Lee and Grant by Gene Smith

 This is a fascinating dual biography. Grant failed in everything he did until 1860. He became a great general in the Civil War. His fame spurred him to the presidency at which he wasn't very good. He was superlative at one thing, winning the war.

"Cause Unknown" The Epidemic Of Sudden Deaths in 2021 and 2022 by Edward Dowd.

Every statement is documented. There are many photos of actual cases.

Geons, Black Holes, and Quantum Foam: A Life in Science by John Archibald Wheeler

 Wheeler, a genius who always strived to understand, combines his personal development with the general knowledge of the time in a readable, fascinating story. His student Hugh Everett developed a many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. "All of the things that might happen (with various probabilities) are in fact happening." This avoids the idea that classical measurements chooses one of these different quantum paths. 

In the chapter It From Bit Wheeler states "When a photon is absorbed, and thereby 'measured'--until its absorption, it had no true reality--an unsplittable bit of information is added to what we know of the world, and, at the same time, that bit of information determines the structure of one part of the world. It creates the reality of the time and place of that photon's interaction."   

In the chapter The End of Time. Time-reversal invariance means that for any motion that does occur or can occur, the motion is reverse is also possible. For large-scale events such as ripping a piece of paper in half, the reversal is possible but extremely unlikely so we won't experience it. Disorder is more probable that order so entropy increases. "The electron pays for its freedom to move forward and backward in time be remembering neither future nor past. We remember the past and are trapped in one-way motion through time." "It is more to be compared with temperature or entropy, concepts that take their meaning only when large numbers of particles are involved. Time, we must conclude, is of statistical origin, valid only when dimensions are large enough and conditions are not too extreme."

 

Neurogastronomy: How the Brain Creates Flavor by Gordon M. Shepard

      Humans have a good sense of smell but it isn't by sniffing like dogs. Our smell is retronasal which happens when breathing out through the nose while chewing and tasting. Smell receptors are on the inside of the nose connecting to the olfactory bulb near the front of the brain. 

     Knowing that, I chew much more thoroughly and get more enjoyment. In fact the pathways followed are similar to those in addiction which makes sense because being motivated to eat seems like a definite survival skill.

A Series of Fortunate Events by Sean Carroll

 This book shows the important role of chance. The asteroid that hit earth about 66 million years ago caused the large animals like dinosaurs to become extinct giving the opportunity for small mammals and later primates to thrive. If that asteroid had hit a few minutes earlier or later it would have landed in the ocean.  Continental drift is a slow process but the India plate is much thinner and moves a lot faster. Its crashing into Asia changed the climate to be more favorable to primates and then humans. So our species is lucky to be here. See also Full House by Steven Jay Gould that draws similar conclusions

Bernoulli's Fallacy: Statistical Illogic and the Crisis of Modern Science by Aubrey Clayton

 Bernoulli's fallacy is common in current statistical applications, where studies are often not reproducible. The problem is that investigators ask the wrong question. One formulates a hypothesis and then asks whether the sample data is consistent with that hypotheses. But what is really needed is to find which hypothesis is suggested by the data. 

One has to ask how likely is the hypothesis. Being consistent with an improbable hypothesis is not useful and can be very misleading. One need to state the prior probability of the hypothesis and consider alternatives. Bayesian methods are more appropriate than frequentist for many applications

A Lie Too Big to Fail The Real History of the Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy by LIsa Pease and James Di Eugenio

 available from https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/view/62353202/a-lie-too-big-to-fail-the-real-history-of-the-assassination-of-robert-f-ke

This book shows in great detail that a conspiracy was covered up and that there were many more bullets fired then Sirhan's gun held, even if he actually fired real bullets.

Plandemic: Fear is the Virus, Truth is the Cure by Mikki Willis

 One quote I don't want to forget is from CIA Director William Casey who said during a staff meeting in the White House, "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." The author states that "a simple scroll through the cognitive  minefields of social media confirms that Mr. Casey's program is indeed complete." 

Faraday, Maxwell, and the Electromagnetic Field by Nancy Forbes

This book provides an excellent summary of the fundamental contributions of Faraday and Maxwell. Faraday came from a poor family and was self-taught without much mathematics, but via careful experimentation developed the field concept of electricity and magnetism. Maxwell, an excellent mathematician, presented the fundamental equations of electromagnetism to which Einstein referred in his theory of special relativity. 

Maxwell's equations can be expressed using the divergence and curl which are ways of describing how vectors vary in a small region surrounding the point. To visualize curl think of water flowing in a river. The vector here is the speed and direction of the flow.  Imagine a tiny paddle wheel somehow fixed at a point in the river but with its axis free to take up any angle. If and only if the water is flowing faster on one side of the paddle wheel than the other, the wheel will spin, and its axis will take up the position that makes it spin fastest. The curl of the water flow at out point is a vector whose magnitude is proportional to the rate of spin, and whose direction is along the axis of spin. At a point in empty space the curl of the electric field force at a point is proportional to the rate at which the magnetic field force there is changing, and vice versa.

Divergence or div is a scalar. The divergence of the water flow at or fixed point is a measure of the excess of water flowing out of a small region surrounding the point compared with that flowing in. At a point in empty space the divergence of the electric field force and the divergence of the magnetic field force are both zero.

Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain by Antonio Damasio

 Damasio finds much wisdom in Spinoza's ideas.  For example, "Spinoza also proposed that the power of affects is such that the only hope of overcoming a detrimental affect--an irrational passion--is by overpowering it with a stronger positive affect, one triggered by reason. An affect cannot be restrained or neutralized except by a contrary affect that is stronger than the affect to be restrained ... Central to his thinking was the notion that the subdoing of the passions should be accomplished by reasoning induced emotion and not by pure reason alone."

"...More intriguing, however, was his notion that the human mind is the idea of the human body. ... As I shall discuss later I am convinced that mental processes are grounded in the brain's mappings of the body, collections of neural patters that portray responses to events that cause emotions and feelings."

Entangled Life by Martin Sheldrake

 Fungi and plants are entangled. When plants came ashore they didn't have roots. They paired with fungi. The plants could get energy via photosynthesis and the fungi could get minerals from the rocks and ground. Fungi are of prime importance in the development of life. This is a fascinating books explaining these relationships/

Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach

 "Radical Acceptance is the willingness to experience ourselves and our life as it is." Each chapter has case studies, insights from the author's life and exercises to become more aware of your deep self and the adjustments you have made to cope which are no longer necessary.  A lot of our habits and personality derive from our efforts to cope over the years, especially in childhood when we do not fully understand and often blame ourselves for events beyond our control. The exercises are powerful and insightful.

The Real Anthony Fauci by Robert Kennedy Jr.

 Kennedy gives a devastating portrayal of Fauci's years in government health. The lapses during the Covid-19 pandemic including not considering inexpensive effective treatments and promulgating vaccines with inadequate testing and many side-effects are completely understandable in the light of his handling of AIDS getting approval of the drug AZT for which participants had to be given blood transfusions to keep them alive during the trial. This book is a must read and a sad commentary on the state of our health system. This book is currently available for $2.99 on Kindle.