Book 15 - SuperFreakonomics - Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner

The best laid schemes o' mice an' men

Gang aft agley

- Robert Burns

I'm still desperately behind. I think I should be at book 21 by now. I don't really have any excuses, I've just been doing other stuff and not reading. I'm tired of making inaccurate predictions about when I'll be caught up, so I won't. I'm just going to keep plugging away, and hopefully I can catch up.

Book 15 - SuperFreakonomics - Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner

In SuperFreakonomics economist Steven D. Levitt and writer Stephen J. Dubner follow up on the success of their 2005 bestseller Freakonomics, taking what at the surface might seem to be odd questions and applying principles of economics to explain the often surprising answers. In the first book they tackled such thorny questions as "What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common" or "Why do drug dealers live with their moms?" In SuperFreakonomics they continue their quirky microeconomic excursions with questions like "How is a street prostitute like a department store Santa?" and "Why should suicide bombers buy life insurance?" They also devote a chapter to cheap and elegant solutions, taking us to a think-tank led by a couple of ex-Microsoft chiefs, where they explore a number of seemingly viable solutions and surprisingly cheap solutions for global warming.

While Levitt is the economic genius behind these books, it is Dubner who makes this genius accessible. He has a clear writing style which presents Levitt's ideas effectively, and which avoids getting bogged down in numbers and statistics. Not to say that the numbers aren't there. Levitt backs up his numbers, and is careful to not mix cause and effect. That being said, you might not agree with every conclusion he makes. Still, it is fascinating the way he draws connections between seemingly unconnected things, and his ability to challenge conventional notions makes for a thought-provoking read.

Is this book for everyone? Probably not. Even with Dubner's clear prose, some people are still going to think there are too many tables and statistics to chew on. But if you are interested in the way economic incentives drive human behavior, this is an interesting read.

Book 14 - The Omnivore's Dilemma - Michael Pollan

Book 14 - The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals - Michael Pollan

What's for dinner? That's the question posed by Michael Pollan in this rather important exploration into the production and acquisition of food in America. Pollan explores the food industry by taking four different meals and tracing them back through their respective food supply chains: modern industrial farming, industrial organic farming, sustainable farming (usually organic, but not necessarily so), and Hunter/Gatherer. Each meal takes us increasingly closer to our primitive selves and the way that our bodies evolved to eat.

The first meal is modern industrial farming and corn is king. Pollan explains the evolution of the modern farm. How it stripped the land of biodiversity and henceforth fertility, the result being that it must be added back chemically in order for things to grow. This monocultural farming, ideally suited to the production of corn, combined with farm subsidies, has kept the price of corn low. What's wrong with cheap corn, one might ask? You might be surprised to learn its implications. Cheap corn results in cheap chicken and cheap beef. Again one might ask, what's the problem with that? Corn equals cheap calories - but not necessarily healthy ones - and these cheap calories in the form of sodas and high fat processed fast foods are largely responsible for the outbreak in obesity and its related diseases, not just in adults but in children as well.

It turns out that modern industrial organic is only marginally better, Pollan tells us. That's because a modern organic supermarket chain has one of the same problems a regular supermarket does: how to stock the shelves consistently and efficiently. Although they will feature some locally grown items, it is too inefficient for the organic supermarket chains to buy most of their stock from small producers. So while their producers might be leaving out the hormones, antibiotics and pesticides, many are using the same industrial techniques that conventional farmers use: monoculture, feedlots, tightly enclosed spaces for animals, etc. There has also been the development of "organic" convenience foods, which are just as highly processed as their conventional cousins.

Pollan then takes us to a sustainable farm. Pollan's sustainable farmer, Joel Salatin, is not so hung up on labels such as "organic." In fact many of these designations are a hindrance. Salatin concentrates more on creating sustainable ecosystems that cultivate food, rather than manufacture it. He raises chickens, cows, pigs, and a variety of crops, but principally, he regards himself as grass farmer. He carefully manages his plants and animals such that his farm is a symphony of symbiosis, each group of plants or animals providing benefits for another group.

Pollan's last meal is that of the hunter/gatherer. Pollan has never hunted before, but he befriends a man who teaches him to hunt wild pigs and forage for mushrooms in Northern California. Pollan explores the ethics of hunting, as well as the dangers of foraging and ties it all in with the theme of the Omnivore's dilemma.

This is a fascinating and thought-provoking book, and I recommend it to anyone that has to eat to survive. While it did not make me want to become a vegetarian or completely shun the conveniences that modern food production brings us, it certainly made me start to think about the true cost of cheap food. Pollution, loss of biodiversity, animal cruelty, obesity and other health problems are but a few of the hidden costs of our cheap food. Michael Pollan just wants us to get the math right.

Book 13 - Walden - Henry David Thoreau

The news of my demise has been greatly exaggerated. Just because I haven't been posting doesn't mean I haven't been reading. On the other hand, just because I've been reading doesn't mean I'm caught up. But school's out, and I don't think I'm going to take anything this summer so I should have a chance to get back in the game. There's this book, and then I have another book completed that I will write about the first chance I get. I'm also partway through two others. Still, I really need to be working on book 19 if I want to be on schedule, so I still have a ways to go.

As you might have guessed I had to read this one for school, but I had never read it before. At this point one might be asking, just what DID I read when I was younger? The answer is: not as much as I should have. Most of my early reading was in classic science fiction like Asimov, Herbert, Heinlein, Bradbury, etc., etc., although I did find room for some other things. Also, when I bothered to put down the frisbee and go to class, I had to knock through some Shakespeare and Hemingway and such, but still there are gaps in my literary experience that are big enough to drive a truck through. Anyway, lets get to it.

Book 13 - Walden - Henry David Thoreau

Walden is Henry David Thoreau's experiment in applied Emersonian philosophy. A great admirer of Emerson's work, not to mention Emerson's wife, Thoreau sets out to demonstrate his self-reliance by squatting on someone else's land a few miles outside of town. Thoreau spends the entire first chapter (which takes up about a fifth of the book), explaining in detail his income and expenses from the project. However, he leaves out key details, which tend to skew things a bit. Did I mention that the land belonged to Emerson, and that Thoreau didn't have to buy it or pay rent? Or that he lived but a short walk from the heart of Concord, MA, and frequently went into town to dine at his mother's house or at the house of one of his friends?

These details aside, his message is powerful: "Simplify, simplify, simplify." If you don't have a lot of stuff, you don't need a fancy house to keep it in, and you don't have to spend a lot of time cleaning it. If you don't eat a lot of food, you don't have to buy or grow a lot of food. He also tells us that "To be awake is to be alive." and says that "Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.

Some look to Thoreau as an environmentalist, and with good reason. Thoreau definitely espouses the small footprint idea and many of the ideas of the locally grown food movement. His descriptions of nature are as powerful as an Ansel Adams photograph. He also seems to be very much against technology and progress, but it's not really because he wants to save the planet. He questions the usefulness of a telegraph from Maine to Texas, fearing that they might not have anything to say to each other. He also questions the efficiency of taking the train, claiming the time you would have to work and the wages you would have to expend, it would have been faster and cheaper to get there on foot (we are not talking cross-country here, his destination was only 30 miles away).

Thoreau's powers of observation are formidable. No detail of the landscape escapes his keen eye. He offers us detailed descriptions of Walden Pond and it's surrounding environs as it moves through the four seasons of the year: the forest all abuzz with life in the summer; the cool crispness of the fall; the blanket of quiet that falls over the pond in winter; and finally emerging in the rebirth of spring. Along the way he relates histories of the area and its people, and even takes a pause to describe in incredible detail the war between two colonies of ants. While this was surely an illustration of the brutality of combat in general, considering the time it was written it might have also been a warning of the horrors of the civil conflict that was looming on our nation's horizon.

Maybe I'm getting used to the nineteenth century writing style, but I found this book easy to read. My only problem with it was that Thoreau's descriptions of nature can be so vivid as to be hypnotic, and I frequently found myself lost in a reverie, not knowing when I had stopped reading and when my imagination had kicked in. It is a worthwhile read, and like many of the books I've read for this course, it definitely stirred up some ideas in my dusty old noggin. I'd recommend it to anyone who hasn't read it, and to anyone who hasn't read it in a while.