The 100 Thing Challenge by Dave Bruno

In order to further enjoy my wonderful new Nook, I was browsing through the e-books available from the library and came across this book. I'd remembered a co-worker a year or so ago having heard about it on the radio and it inspiring a great conversation between us, so I thought I'd read it.

The book is about a man who felt he was so overwhelmed by consumerism, that he wanted to limit his personal possessions to 100 things in order to help him overcome that. I think as a personal project, that's great and interesting, but the book itself is not that exciting. Dave didn't literally have 100 things. He had 100 "personal" things. So everything that was family use- like a fully furnished house and kitchen was fine. In my mind, that makes the challenge fairly uninteresting. Other than clothes, you could get by okay without all of the other stuff, which is largely what he did. But I suppose doing so does require you to step outside of normal consumerism, as he did, and it seems he got a lot out of doing so.

I really did enjoy Dave's insights in to how he had used possessions in order to experiment with different idealizations of himself. He used woodworking tools in order to harbor a fantasy of himself as a master artisan. He used fancy pens to see himself as an extraordinary businessman. He used camping gear and the like to imagine himself as a rugged outdoorsman. It's not that any of these are bad items or things to aspire to, it was that these objects became about something other than what they were and took him out of the reality of his life. It wasn't about making a shelf, or signing documents, or enjoying camping, it was about a pretend version of Dave. I can certainly relate to that feeling. I remember buying a bike with the fantasy of myself becoming an avid cyclist and then using it maybe three times over a year. Even as I never rode it, owning the bike let me pretend that bike riding was something that I did, or at least would do and was in a way a part of my self-image. But really, it was a lie and I think those lies are somewhat destructive because they take us away from reality and seeing ourselves as we really are. I'm not saying owning the bike was bad- and I'll probably get a bike again. It's that seeing objects as a symbol of ourselves is a negative. We are what we habitually do- regardless of the objects that we own. I loved this quote that he included. "To be humble simply means to be realistic about yourself."

While the book was overall a bit boring, I think this point about not letting objects affect how you see yourself really resonated with me and made the book worth reading. I am very much an advocate of simple living and I think it brings with it a great deal of peace. I think this insight of Dave's helps shed light on one of the ways in which it brings peace and helps you to embrace your life and more fully live.

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

One of my co-workers highly recommended this book as moving and inspiring. Since my incredible friend recently gave me a Nook, I checked out this book as my first library e-book. I am now a huge Nook fan!

The Alchemist is a parable about a boy named Santiago who follows his dream to go to Egypt. I could write a seething review of it- critiquing the nonsense religion in it, people having a destiny that the universe tries to help them achieve, and a general vibe that reminds me too much of The Secret. But I don't really want to. I rather enjoyed the book. If you don't take the metaphysical aspects of it seriously, it's a beautiful tale about how to enjoy life. It says to pursue goals, take risks, and enjoy the unexpected turns on your journey because the journey is the true treasure of life. And I think that's a message worth reading about.

A Human Being Died that Night by Pumla Gobodo- Madikizela

Under Apartheid, the white controlled South Afirican government allowed covert programs of horrific violence in order to control the black majority. After Apartheid ended, South Africa instituted the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in order to bring to light the atrocities that happened under Apartheid. Ms. Gobodo-Madikela was a clinical psychologist who served on this commission. She became interested in meeting with the commanding officer of government death squads, de Kock, after two widows of men he killed met with him and spoke of how deeply his remorse touched them.

This book talks about Ms. Gobodo-Madikela's meetings with de Kock, and their impact on her feelings on evil, remorse, and forgiveness. I enjoyed how fully she acknowledges that the circumstances of a person's life frame how they see the world and how easily they can push the person in to seeing evil as good. Yet, while fully understanding this, she never fails to hold them accountable and still call them evil. I think that's interesting. When a person feels remorse and I see their humanity, I want to call them good and their actions/ thought processes evil. But at that point, what does evil even mean? Almost everybody sees their own actions as justified. And those that do not see it that way and have no remorse are almost by definition insane.

While she holds de Kock as evil, she also argues strongly for his humanity. She states that so many around her wanted to label him evil and then see him as an "other". She states "demonizing as monsters those who commit evil lets them off too easily... [it would] excuse the criminal by dismissing him in the category of the hopelessly, radically other." She says we can't do that. Part of being human is being capable of great evil. To not see that and to instead separate it as something a normal person is not capable of is to fail to learn from the past's lessons about human nature. Only if we understand just how capable each and every one of is of committing evil can we truly question if we ourselves are committing evil.

Ms. Gobodo-Madikela also makes the argument for the necessity of forgiveness for all. She cites the healing power that forgiveness has on victims and evil doers alike. I found the book an interesting and honest exploration of these topics. She never fails to acknowledge her own capacity for wanting to justify evil as good in the name of a cause she supports and in so doing invites readers to see this within themselves.

I see this capacity in myself. I can think of several cruel things I've done and justified in the name of a "higher" cause. I've long thought the worst evils committed in this world are done by people who probably think they're doing something good. Whenever a situation becomes "us" versus "them" instead of two groups of deeply human people who might disagree, I think there is potential for type of dehumanization that can lead to evil.

Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen

So it took me forever, but I am finally done with this book!!! That doesn't come across as the highest praise, and that's because the last few chapters were so preachy and repetitive as to be slightly painful to get through. Which is a pity because the majority of the book was wonderful!

The book explores tons of fascinating topics about American History that don't often get covered because they don't fit in to a vision of America in which our founders were purely heroic and our nation moved ever forward in to progress. The truth is that life is messy. People, even great people, can do terrible things, or even just have a perspective that today would be foreign to us. The book urges for our history courses to teach this messiness and teach that there are unknowns and different perspectives. I've always loved history and that's because I've always seen it as a series of interconnected stories. But I think Loeswen is right that that is not how it typically taught. It's taught as a series of disconnected facts that are to be memorized. And that is a pity.

One of the insights he provided that I had no idea about is that when the pilgrims first settled, they weren't moving in to empty land. I mean, I knew there had been Indians but I assumed they were nomadic and weren't currently in the area the Pilgrims settled. Untrue! The Pilgrims moved in to already built towns with homes and crops that were growing. Via traders, European plagues had decimated the Indians living there to the point that the handful of survivors had abandoned the town for another village. Further, the people on the Mayflower chose that area for that exact purpose. I think that is beyond amazing because it's undisputed fact but even with a degree in history, I never learned it. And the consequence is a distortion. It allows us to think of the Indians as being less "civilized" than they really were and allows us to not dwell on the genocide that happened to the Indians (initially through complete accident).

Another example that I thought was interesting was the War of 1812. When I took AP American History in high school, I absorbed it. And I remember distinctly finding the War of 1812 perplexing. We were taught that it was caused by British sailors taking American sailors, trade issues, and a desire to expand territory (I assumed by taking British land). It just seemed off that Britain would take American sailors and that America would fight a war for British land without the Brits in the land supporting it. Here, I found the missing puzzle piece. Britain had mutual protection treaties with many Indian tribes in the Americas. The US could not expand to the West as much as they wanted to without causing war with Indian tribes that would in turn cause war with Britain. So they precipitated war and went to it. The result of the war was that Britain no longer signed mutual protection treaties with the Indians and the US expanded West. I certainly don't fault my high school history teacher for this, he was amazing and can't be expected to know every detail of everything that is commonly not taught. But this detail took a story that had been somewhat boring to me and made it interesting simply by making it coherent.

There are tons and tons more of enlightening examples that this book offers that are just eye opening. It reminded me of one class I took in college that really altered my perception on politics. It was called US Relations with Latin America. It was astounding to me how racist our politics had been and how easily we went to war for our own gain- especially wars fought largely for corporations. And just how many times we'd invaded Latin American countries! Something rarely covered. When taking the class, I resisted the message. Our teacher was quite liberal and at the time I was not. I remember wanting to see it primarily as racism we've gotten over and that while there may have been some wars that were indisputably fought for corporations, that time was behind us. We'd also learned from our rabid-anticommunism and that wouldn't happen again either. I had so internalized the message of progress that we're all taught, that it was hard for me to see what the teacher was trying to get at- that we need to be sure we don't do it again. But with time, the messages of that class sunk in. The issues that led to those wars were human issues of fallibility that could and do happen repeatedly. American society may improve in some respects and get worse in some respects at the same time. If we believe in continuous progress, it leads to laziness- because we know we're good and so what we're doing now must be good too. The point of teaching the underbelly of American history isn't to shame our past, it's to genuinely learn from it and try to make a better future.

I really enjoyed the majority of the book and highly recommend it. That said, I'd probably suggest stopping somewhere around Chapter 8 or possibly up to 10. The author has an ax to grind, and while you catch hints of it throughout, the first seven chapters are so rooted in well-supported fact, that it doesn't come across as extremely partisan, biased ranting. That's not so true of the last few chapters. The last few chapter do have some value, but they're a different book. And with the book being intimidatingly long, I think chopping down the book makes it more manageable.

Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife by Mary Roach

Most people believe that the soul lives on after death as an article of faith. Some people have attempted to test and study that belief through scientific means and this is the body of research that Mary Roach explores in Spook. As in Bonk, Mary Roach's writing is captivating. She writes with such humor and interest that I love reading her books and I come out of them having learned a great deal.

Roach does a thorough overview of historical research in to the supernatural and most of it, is... well, not very substantial. From studies of people who claim to be reincarnated, to psychics, to attempting to measure the soul, the key aspect of finding the research poignant seems to be whether or not you already accept the premise. But Roach doesn't just laugh at her subjects, she shows them as earnest people who truly believe and shows many who have extremely stringent scientific standards. She discusses fascinating scientific experiments that people are performing to test for the supernatural- like setting up a laptop close to the ceiling of surgical rooms that displays random images in the hopes that people who have near-death-experiences could report on what image they saw. There are others like this that would offer some level of true scientific creditiblity and I think it's wonderful that people are pursuing them- of course none have yielded results as of yet.

Roach also explores alternative explanations and is careful to try and give people the benefit of the doubt. She discusses theories that seeing ghosts might be related to electromagnetic impulses to the brain and offers pretty convincing evidence of this. Ever the trooper, she puts herself in one man's study where subjects are put in a sensory deprivation chamber and exposed to these electromagnetic impulses. And she has a bit of a supernatural experience from it! She also enrolls in a medium course to learn to become psychic. She finds that her fellow classmates aren't frauds, but genuine believers whose skills at reading people and making general guesses have convinced them of their psychic abilities.

Since this is about the science of the supernatural, it is certainly skeptical. But of course I'm a skeptic. I think someone with a different orientation would still come away from the book enjoying it, having learned from it, and perhaps with a few anecdotes that bolster their beliefs. I love that this book shows that science doesn't claim to have all the answers. There are some weird things that happen in this world and sometimes we just don't know why. I feel like lots of people want to insert an explanation that makes them happy and makes the world a little brighter, but the only thing really bolstering that belief is the desire to have the belief. I appreciate the world view that so fully embraces reality it says, "We don't know and that's okay. We'll try and find out if we can, but maybe we can't." And I have nothing but respect for the many scientists who are very much trying to find out.

Bossypants by Tina Fey

I've always been impressed with Tina Fey. Her sense of humor varies between a thoughtful depth and wisdom to a level of ridiculous absurdity that I truly enjoy. I loved her on Weekend Update, I thought Mean Girls was brilliantly touching while still hilarious, and I eat up 30 Rock. So when I heard she wrote a memoir, I knew I'd be reading it.

The book is mainly a look at her professional life with periodic insights in to her childhood. One thing that comes across very strongly is that she has an incredible sense of ethics that guides her. Given her level of success, it's pretty impressive that she's remained as down to earth as she is. The book doesn't reveal any shocking secrets or say anything ground breaking, but it does offer insight in to the mind of a very thoughtful and hilarious woman. And I found that well worth reading.

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach

I decided to start a book club here in Great Falls, and in preparation I went to Good Reads and selected some of their top non-fiction books as possible book club books. Everyone voted and somehow this book about sex was the winner. I finished the book last night and I really enjoyed it!

I might have oversold the book to my co-worker who recently started reading it and has surmised that it is kinda boring. To be fair, this is not an erotic book nor a "how-to". It's more a history of the scientific exploration of sex and some of the neat "behind the scenes" findings. It's hilarious to read about all of the various experiments that have been performed. Did you know that Kinsey had literally thousands of people come to his attic and video taped them having sex so that the could study them in detail later? Or did you know that many quadriplegics can still orgasm? This book will tell you how that's possible and what it means about how all of our bodies work. One of the most interesting details to me was that lubricant is actually blood plasma. Who knew?!? Also interesting was that women become physically aroused more easily than men, they just don't realize it. Even watching monkeys have sex will have a physical effect on most women whereas men appear to be pickier.

This book is full of random facts and stories that are just kinda fun. The author's sense of humor made the book extremely accessible to me. Her writing style is fantastic and I now plan on reading all of her books. If you like science books and aren't squicked out by blunt talk about sex, I highly recommend!

The Overspent American by Juliet Schor

I saw this book on my co-worker's desk and asked to borrow it. The book explores our consumer culture and admonishes it. It instead advocates a de-emphasis on materialism and a focus on simple living. While I'm sure I don't always live up to it, the ideals and values espoused in this book are so thoroughly internalized in my way of thinking that I found the book a bit boring.

I do not highly value stuff and I never really have. I have always valued life experiences and financial security more than stuff. While I certainly splurge on occasion and buy myself nice things, it is pretty much always after months of consideration and research and the items receive a great deal of functional use after their purchase. When I moved up here, I sold/ gave away a ton of stuff and it reinforced to me how easy it is to accumulate more stuff than you need- even though I already felt I was pretty non materialistic. I think a good amount of the stuff was accumulated when I had my own apartment and to some extent wanted to "fill it". And while it was nice to have that stuff, I think in the future I'm less likely to buy new furniture/ decorations/ etc.

This year I'm trying to live off of a VISTA living stipend which comes out to below minimum wage. While I'm close to living off of it, I am subsidizing it a touch with savings. I think my lower threshold for a content, non-deprived feeling living experience involves spending about $12,000 to $15,000 a year. When I was making money, I did spend more than this. And when I go back to making money, I'm sure I'll let more expenditures come- exotic travel, maybe a new gadget, etc., but I'd like to make some of my lifestyle changes more permanent. After selling so many books when I moved, I don't think I'm likely to buy books anymore when I know that libraries are perfectly capable of ordering any book I might want. Right now, spending $10 at the movies sounds like a crazy waste of money when I know it will be rent-able on DVD for $1 in just a few months. I very rarely eat out right now- something I spent over $1,500 on last year!!! I've started really thinking about how much gas costs and calibrating that in to decisions about going places- something I never gave any thought to before. And these little things add up. I most certainly want to keep my basic living expenses as minimal as possible. I love the concept of not being owned by your life style and having the freedom to not have money concerns have a large voice in life choices.

If these concepts don't resonate with you, you might enjoy The Overspent American. Otherwise, I say skip it.

The Sexual Paradox: Men, Women and the Real Gender Gap by Susan Pinker

I ordered this through Inter Library Loan and unfortunately only read half of it before I had to return it in order to avoid $1 a day late fines. Since I only read half of it, I've debated whether or not to post an entry on it, but I've decided to go for it.

The book makes the claims that the biggest reason for the gender gap in pay has to do with women opting for more emotionally rewarding careers/ lifestyle choices than men. I found this argument to be quite salient. While there's no question in my mind that in some work environments sexism is probably alive and well, it seems to be pretty rare. In my experience, those women who are good at what they do and want to work 60+ hour a weeks seem to receive raises and get promotions just as easily as the men doing those things. But it does seem that there are fewer women willing to do that then men.

Pinker furthers her case by pointing to education statistics versus workplace statistics. More women are educated than men. On average, women do better in school, across the board, than men do. Many ivy league schools now have "reverse discrimination" in that while trying to keep an equal gender balance, the average male resume is less impressive than the average female resume. About half of all law school grads are female, but only about 1/4 of practicing lawyers are female. The academics clearly show that ability is far from the issue, and yet most women do not go after the most lucrative careers.

The book goes further to blame this difference on innate biology. It states that estrogen tends to create minds that are more empathic and social whereas testosterone tends to create minds that are better at single minded focus. She cites many studies that are pretty fascinating to support this. One study measured fetal testosterone levels in boys throughout pregnancy and found a direct inverse correlation between how much testosterone they had and their later verbal skills. Those with the most testosterone spoke later and with fewer words than those with less testosterone.

While I think she convincingly makes her case that men and women are biologically shaped to be a bit different, I do think she undersells the role that social and pragmatic concerns have on the gender wage gap. If a woman is socially considered to be more responsible for raising children than men, is it any surprise that she's less likely to work crazy hours and is more likely to value lower stress careers and more flexible work environments?

Overall, I recommend the book. I wish I'd read the second half and could more thoroughly expound on her ideas. But from what I did read, I enjoyed the way she meshed her ideas and case studies with genuine scientific studies and statistics. It certainly is an interesting angle from which to look at the issue.

Cancer Milk by Seth Luther

I learned on my first day that one of my co-workers, a former VISTA, had written a book. It was described as being like Kurt Vonnegut's work. Since I read almost everything Vonnegut ever wrote, I figured I might like it and asked to borrow.

It was fun and totally lived up to the Vonnegut comparison. Lots of random stuff happening that somehow comes together to form a quasi-coherent story. The devil's son decides to spread cancer to the world and a boy who talks to goats must go to the goat home planet to find the cure to cancer. It was fun and I enjoyed. :)

Hollowing Out the Middle: The Rural Brain Drain and What It Means for America by Patrick Carr and Maria Kefalas

At my work, there is apparently a list somewhere of recommended reading that will help you understand the business. One of my coworkers had this book in their collection and mentioned it was on the list so I asked to borrow it.

The basic premise of the book is that every place has it's ambitious, non-ambitious, and those in between. In small, rural areas, the ambitious leave and those who stay have few and poor opportunities available to them. The book further comments that the small towns have designed the system in such a way that those from "good" families will be the ones that succeed and others will be looked over.

The lack of opportunities struck me a bit because people really don't make much here. Working the grant department, grants often have people's salaries listed in them if the grant is paying part of their salary. So I know what many people make. People with master's degrees are barely getting $30K. $50K puts you at the top of the pack. Admittedly, this is a non-profit, but my roommate has bemoaned the extreme lack of good paying jobs and it seems to be a common issue. Jobs are key to a successful economy and rural areas just don't have too many. That said, I don't know that there really is a "fix" to it as the book suggests. Let's say you got two really highly skilled companies in to a rural area and supported the schools in such a way that they were making enough skilled workers. What happens when one goes out of business or moves? Those skills aren't easily transferred in a rural area. Since employers can disappear at any time, it makes since that highly skilled jobs are concentrated in urban areas where workers have a multitude of places that they can turn to in case something happens to their employer. It also makes sense that rural areas tend to be concentrated with low skilled jobs that most people could potentially do. While it's unfortunate for those people that technology has made their jobs so extremely low skilled that they now pay very little and have fewer job opportunities in total, I feel like this book is largely bemoaning change. It's important to recognize the downsides of technological advancements and a service based economy and that's what I got from this. There are people out there whose lives are worse off because of things we largely see as positive and it would be great to help them. I am not convinced though that most rural towns truly can be revived to thriving economies.

Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely

This is a truly fantastic book. It's written by a Behavioral Economics professor and is all about the irrational idiosyncrasies of human nature. He explains dozens of fascinating experiments he conducted in which people consistently behave in ways that are "unexpected", at least from a rational viewpoint.

I initially heard of Dan Ariely by reading Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness, which cites some of his work. While Nudge was interesting, I think that this book has the interesting aspects of Nudge in far greater depth and lacks all of the boring parts. While the first chapter or two was largely a repeat of what I read in Nudge, the rest of the book really expanded on the ideas.

One of my favorite chapters was "The Cost of Social Norms: Why We Are Happy to Do Things but Not When We Are Paid to Do Them". In it, he claims that there are essentially two tracts by which we evaluate things- market norms and social norms. We are all social creatures and are happy to do favors. But if you put a price tag on that favor, we stop seeing the situation as social and we most certainly want to be paid what we're worth. Ariely performed an experiment in which he first asked students to perform repetitive, menial tasks for $.10, then for $.50. As typical market theory suggests, the $.50 group was motivated to work harder and performed more tasks. They then asked a group to do the same tasks as a favor, with no mention of a reward and that group worked the hardest and performed the greatest number of tasks. Which just shows the incredible motivational factor of social norms. He then introduced gifts in to the equation for the unpaid group- Snickers bars, Godiva chocolates, and nothing and found that all groups still performed quite highly and very similarly. Then he did the same, but referred to the gifts as a "fifty cent" Snicker bar and a "five dollar" box of chocolates. This language changed their motivation from a social arena to a market arena and their performance was reduced to what it had been at the cash level. I find this absolutely fascinating and totally believable.

I think that this chapter fascinated me so much because of my current work in Americorp. While I do get a menial living stipend, I am essentially a volunteer. I am operating on a social level. Many people who do Americorp end up in the non-profit sector and so the thought has been floating in my mind about whether or not that is something that I want to do in a year when my service is done. And in general I keep leaning towards probably not. This chapter completely explained why. When I think of working in the non-profit sector as a volunteer, it's social and I don't need real payment. If I were to think of it as a career, I don't think I would feel the same way. I would think of the market value of my time and skills and want to be paid accordingly. And I think that would mean not working in the non-profit arena. What can I say? I'm irrational- and predictably so. :)

Each chapter of this book presents equally fascinating and thought-provoking experiments. I could go on and on citing incredibly cool experiments that he performed, but you'd be better off just reading the book. It's pretty great.

Welcome to Montana!

I arrived in Great Falls, MT last Monday night. After unpacking all day Tuesday, I headed off to Helena for the Americorp Pre Service Orientation that lasted from Wednesday to Friday. It had all of the other Americorp VISTA members that had volunteered to serve in Montana for the year. I'm not sure what I expected, but I was really impressed with the people. Everyone was really accomplished. One girl had just gotten back from Ghana where she'd been on Fulbright scholarship to study the impact of culture on teaching methods. Another had been teaching in the Republic of Georgia. One guy had served in the Peace Corp. Just really cool people. The highlight of the event was one morning where we all sat in a circle and discussed our views on the causes of poverty. There were such a variety of backgrounds and experiences that it was fascinating to listen to.

On Friday, when we'd finished all the instruction stuff, they put us on a bus and

took us to the capital building to take our VISTA oath. The governor of Montana, Brian Schweitzer, actually did our swearing in, met us, and did a little Q & A session. It was pretty neat. The guy is quite a character. He takes his dog, Jag, with him everywhere. I got to pet Jag! Two ladies from my work who used to be VISTAs were insanely sweet and had driven up for my swearing in. After everything was done with Orientation, I met them at a restaurant and they gave me tips on adjusting to Montana. Interestingly, they're involved in policy initiatives and go to Helena a lot and we're friendly with several members of congress. I'm impressed with how accessible their state government is. Of course with so few people in the state, I guess sense.

When I got back to Great Falls, I got to be impressed with how much I lucked out in getting a nice and helpful roommate. We went and saw a movie on Saturday and afterwards he invited me to go dancing. He took me to a country themed bar that had a dance floor and live music. He'd gone there the week before and made friends with people, so we sat with them. I was shocked at how much the guys liked to dance. And I'd never seen dancing like this. I was really bad at first because I kept trying to anticipate what was going to happen. Then I got some pointers on how to follow and I think I improved. I took a video of the incredible dancing, but sadly it's too dark to show up on the compressed Blogger video tool. I think this link might work though: http://picasaweb.google.com/lauraah/MontanaAsOf01272011?authkey=Gv1sRgCMbGlYaI_bnOYg#5567095690430026658 Those two people were in our group and the guy was a genuine cowboy!

The next day, some people from work were having a football party to thank a bunch of volunteers who were going to be helping people with their taxes. The host, my current boss, lives just a bit out of town and here is the view from her back porch.

It was a really good week! This week I started work and it's been a bit slower, but good so far. The guy I share an office with and work with is really nice. He teaches at the local college and is in charge of their speech and debate team so he seems insanely busy. He's smart and a bit on the awkward side, so I think we'll get along just fine.

Pathfinder by Orson Scott Card

For the long trip up, I bought the audiobook of Orson Scott Card's Pathfinder. I'd heard good things about it and I have to say it was pretty decent. It is the first of a series so I kinda wish I'd waited to read it as I'm sure it'll be years before the next one comes out, but it was good for the car ride over.

OSC's later books have all been extremely preachy to the point of not being enjoyable. While this still had his trademark preachy issues, they weren't even remotely a focus which made it easy to enjoy. The book deals with kids with special abilities (it is an OSC book!) and in this one, time manipulation is a feature. While the exploration of the possibilities of time travel sometimes got extremely detailed to the point of being indulgent, I'm interested in reading the next one whenever it comes out.

Trip to Montana

I decided to join Americorp this year and am going to be working with a Financial Literacy program in Great Falls, MT. So on January 13th, after my nephew's birthday party, I started off for Montana.

My mom had previously offered to drive up with me so we decided

to make a bit of a road trip out of it and go and see Roswell, NM.We loved the tv show and thought it would be pretty fun to see and it was! We were expecting a real desert, but tv lies and it looked more like the prairie of West Texas. We went to the International UFO Museum while there. I overheard a little boy ask his dad a question and the dad incredulously responded, "You know that none of this is real, right?" and then the little boy replied "Then why are we here?". When I told my mom that story, she said she overheard a little boy ask his mom if aliens were nice and she said that it depended. Some were nice, some weren't. :-p We were hoping to hit a cheesy, touristy diner like in the tv show, but the only thing anybody knew of that was remotely like that was a McDonalds shaped like a UFO, so we checked that out.

Our next stop was going to be to to visit my sister, Emma in Utah but on the way up there we saw a sign for Arches National Park and decided that we just had to stop. It was beautiful!

Then we finally made it up to Provo, UT and got to see my sister, her roommates, and her boyfriend. My friend Mark, also drove down from Salt Lake City on Sunday to hang out with us. It was a really fun weekend!

When hanging out was over, I dropped my mom off at the Salt Lake Airport and drove the rest of the way. It is beautiful up here! Soon I'll write an update on my first week in Montana.

The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris

I really enjoyed this book. Harris’ thesis is that the common conception of morality as belonging to a realm separate from science is false. Instead, he argues that it should become a new field of science. He insists that morality is all about the wellbeing of conscience creatures. While I have always seen something similar as the basis upon which to define my own sense of morality, I have been more hesitant to claim it as anything other than my own preference for enjoyable life. If a theoretical person felt that counting the grains of sand on the beach was of the highest moral order, who was I to argue? Harris argues that this type of subjective morality is the cause of a great many evils and that if we do not define morality with his axiom, what else could it possibly be? If it does not relate to the wellbeing of conscious creatures, it is by definition of no interest to us. I find this reasoning to be extremely sound. He goes on to argue that while there is tremendous grey area, we have methods of measuring wellbeing and that clearly there are “good” lives and “bad” lives. This being the case, he argues that we should study in objective a way as possible what we can do to maximize wellbeing.

I have read several of Harris’ articles before and always found them off-putting. He is an ardent atheist who has an extremely negative view of religion. I tend to see more negative than positive come out of attacking religion at every opportunity. As he states in his book, people most often believe whatever it is that they believe for emotional reasons first and the rational reasons come second. With this being the case, I think that only those of us who already think like him- and perhaps those that are teetering close to the viewpoint- are likely to be convinced. I see great benefit in explaining my views on disbelief to believers, as to most believers, atheism is tantamount to an admission of having no morality. However I find that if they feel attacked (and some people seem to feel attacked no matter what) that they are not going to be willing to try and understand your perspective and will probably have an even more negative opinion of it. So I prefer discussions on faith versus skepticism to attempt to remain respectful and I feel that people like Harris make it more difficult for that to happen.

So, it was with hesitation that I bought this book- and even then I bought the audiobook. But I thought the premise of an objective morality sounded worth exploring even if it had a great deal of religion-bashing mixed in. It did not lack in the bashing, but it was also an extremely good read. I have long thought that we as humans are not a blank slate and that all of us tend to find fulfillment and happiness in our lives from the same categories of experiences. Certainly there are variances based on personality and upbringing, but the commonalities far outweigh the differences. In the past few years, I’ve read several books on the science of happiness, and all have indicated this same truth. Harris cites much of this research when exploring his thesis. Combining this science with the science of morality never directly occurred to me, but now that I’ve read this book, it seems self evident. Morality is not a distant, intellectual concept. It is a here and now factual reality. Our lives are spent trying to maximize our own wellbeing which typically also involves trying to maximize the wellbeing of at least those other humans who are closest to us. What better tool is there than the scientific method to ascertain moral truths? And in my opinion, it’s a hard to think of a more important field of discipline.

2011 Is Here!

I wanted to start a blog this year, so here it goes... One of my goals for this year is to read more and watch television less. I thought I might try and write about the books I read here as well as whatever else might come to mind.