THE BIRTH OF A PHENOMENON
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From the first few minutes of this fantastic film, I could not stop watching.  Not only because I am one of those people now obsessed with the Facebook network, but because it seemed too incredible for words that something this great could be created almost by accident.

Jesse Eisenberg's portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg and Justin Timberlake's Sean Parker were spot on.

This film is described as the stunning tale of "a new breed of cultural insurgent:  a punk genius who sparked a revolution and changed the face of human interaction for a generation, and perhaps forever."

Unfolding in flashbacks and fast-forwards, this tale chronicles the creation of the Facebook phenomenon, while at the same time depicting the legal battles over ownership.

At the end of the day, despite these difficulties and obstacles, the last ones standing (Zuckerberg, et. al.) are "accidental billionaires," with Zuckerberg dubbed the youngest billionaire in the world.

If I could give more than five stars for&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/The-Social-Network-Two-Disc-Collector-s-Edition/dp/B0034G4P7G/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">The Social Network (Two-Disc Collector's Edition)</a>, I would.  But five stars it is.
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This short book discusses the history of the use of numbers to describe the world. The author starts off with a discussion on how numbers began to be used to describe physical items. Eventually, the discussion focuses mainly on the evolution of the use of numbers in the social sciences - hence, the birth of statistics. The book contains some fascinating information on how social statistics evolved, with an entire chapter devoted to Florence Nightingale. It should be emphasized that the focus is mainly on how numbers came to be used and not necessarily on the actual results obtained; thus, if the reader is expecting to see a discussion of the results, he or she may be disappointed at times. But this is a minor shortcoming. The book is well-written and clear. The author (deceased prior to the book's publication) was a well-seasoned expert on the history of science with a good number of publications to his credit.
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When taken in perspective this is a fascinating creation. Based on a lost manuscript written when Ms. Follett was nine years old, she rewrote it from memory at the age of twelve and was published and acclaimed by the age of thirteen. It represents a singular look into the mind of a child and the imagination of a prodigy.

Her father credits this miracle on both the nature of his daughter and technology:

"And, almost above all, having used a typewriter as a plaything from a time that she can't remember, she was able to rattle off an easy 1200 words an hour, without any awareness of the physical process, years before penmanship could have developed half the proficiency, even with intense concentration on the physical process alone."

He gives us hope to say the least that social media and texting may realize a positive aspect for our youth and our culture before it is has run its course in our civilization. In some ways the keyboard may reflect the only way that a written record can be created for the experience of the child's world.

The story foreshadows the future life choices of Ms. Follett including issues of love, insecurity, and abandonment. It is heartrending to read the conclusion of the novel when one reflects on the fact that one night in 1939 Barbara left her home with $30 in her pocket and was never seen again. She appears to have succumb to her thoughts and feelings recorded in her personal correspondence from 1930, "My dreams are going through their death flurries. They are dying before the steel javelins and arrows of a world of Time and Money."

It is also a joyful tale of freedom and the idealization of the primitive. Its uniqueness is as a novel, a de novo, in the original sense of the word.
2917819
I found this book facinating. It's a book that details a twenty year long private project to investigate the "paranormal" activity around various standing stones and circles in Britain. I can find NO OTHER book that covers this material in this way. There are many, thousands even, on the mystery of Britain's standing stones, but none that cover the scientific details of what "paranormal" manifestations occur at each site.
The book details many stone sites, but focuses on one particular site because the Rollright Stone Circle is the Dragon Project's headquarters. The evidence for the strange occurences around Rollright speaks for itself in "Places." Radio emissions at strange and unusual frequencies, repeated over and over in regular patterns, prompted many to suspect a military source. Yet when that is carefully ruled out, the signals still look "artificial." All compass deviations are carefully noted, and any radioactivity is also discussed in detail.
What I liked most about this book is how it approaches its unusual subject. While many "newage" books go over the top and become diatribes on how the stones were constructed by aliens, et cetera, this book remains clearly in the realm of real science. Yet it is not close-minded to the paranormal. It has a broad-minded and honest eye for what's happening at circles and standing stones. It uses science to prove its findings, yet does not descend to harshly worded debunkery, as many so-called scientific books on similar subjects often do.
There are some facinating hints and theories about the construction and use of stone sites by the ancients, as well as some ideas on how to use such sites today. I will be attempting the copper pyramid/photograph of crystal experiment myself very soon. Anyone who is interested in crystal power or orgone/ether  technology should definitely take a look at this book.
1554400
THE PERFECT MEDIUM: Photography and the Occult is first a catalogue for an exhibition now titillating the public at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.  Hopefully this exhibition will travel: if this fine book/catalogue is any indication of the exciting realms the exhibition explores, it should be a popular success.

For those who regularly visit channelers, mediums, spiritualists, or who follow tales and histories of the world of the occult then this volume of history and photographs will not be as shocking as it is for those less willing to suspend logic.  The photographs contained in this book trace auras, spirits, and phenomena dating form Victorian times to the 1930s.  It would appear that the advent of the camera proved to confirm the dalliances of the mediums who summoned the spirits of the departed for the eager (and willing to pay!) clients.  Photographs here show weird auras, shadows of beings, and phenomena not readily seen by the critical eye: are these the tomfoolery of the photographer manipulating photographic plates, staged bizarre frameworks that defy explanation outside the camera lens, or are these truly captured moments?  That is for the viewer and the fine writers to dissect.

The latter portion of the  book samples photographic portraits of various mediums, at times alone and at times with their assembled clients.  One of particular interest is the medium Eugenie Picquart who was said to enter a trance and 'become' the voice and guise of Sarah Bernhardt and Mephistopheles!  Spectacular theatrics that glow with both humor and invention - at the expense of the clients!  The first spirit photographer, one William Mumler, concocted a photograph of Mary Todd Lincoln with the spirit of the deceased Abraham at her side. Such was the credibility of public in the PT Barnum age - and beyond.

It is a book that opens the discussion of what is photographic art - representation or manipulation of an image - and if it is both (as we routinely see in galleries today), it is a powerful addition to the history of art making.  This is an entertaining, well-presented book of images only imagined by most.  Highly recommended.  Grady Harp, September 05
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Close masterfully communicates the pillar ideas behind the making of the Standard Model of Particle Physics and how - triggered by visionary-conceived experiments - confusing occurrences of productive mental leaps happened among the main players. He also expresses, in a refreshingly authoritative way, his personal judgment on the scientific and moral weight of certain contributers as well as their respective reception by the community as a whole. A skillful exposition of the following topics is performed: QED, gauge principle, screening by plasmas, superconductivity, perturbative renormalization, parity violation, quarks, spontaneous breaking of continuous, global symmetry (Goldstone), current algebra, Higgs mechanism, Higgs boson, proof of perturbative renormalizability in gauge theory, Bjorken scaling, asymptotic freedom, and the development of QCD. To me personally the book's main value is in resurrecting the spirit of controversy and painful paradigm shift in the process of establishing the successful gauge-field theory description of particle interactions that we are privileged to have at our disposal presently. Not least because of its cross references to condensed matter physics the book makes clear that genuine process in understanding Nature in all its universality is hard, idealistic, and sobering work which requires constant grounding by daring experiments. The biggest and most expensive physics machine ever built  - the LHC - certainly is such an experiment, and its promise to reveal a `total surprise' (p. 336, 2nd line from below) concerning the mechanism of gauge-symmetry breaking is audited by concerted and continuing efforts of thousands of highly innovative and hard-working experimentalists, technicians, computer specialists, applied mathematicians, and IT experts representative of supportive citizens and their governments that desire to know `was die Welt im Innersten zusammenhlt'.
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From the beginning of time and undoubtedly until the end of time man has been a curious race. With this curiosity we have found both ends of the thought spectrum being pushed.  Is there an omniscient being that created this world and us? Are we the result of evolution and the natural growth process of this world? Author D.R. Pope does an excellent job portraying both sides of the story for Science and Religion in this gripping novel.

The writing style is unique, but it strangely fits the bill perfect in blog-like entries. These blog entries allow you to feel more immersed in the story as you watch in unfold. This book will stir your mind and create thought provoking debates within your self. I will definitely recommend this book to friends that like this type of novel. However, I can see it is not for everyone, recommend this book wisely (it does feel like Science has the upper hand).
4288622
This book is a fascinating excursion through contemporary quantum physics,  buddhist emptiness, and Jungian psychology.  Much ado has been made in  pop-science about the failure of the Cartesian dichotomy and the search for  quantum-informed world-views, quantum physics and its possible effects on  health, consciousness, the nature of reality, and so on and on.  Some of it  is rather interesting. But most of those works remain at the level of  sympathetic magic, turning on mere analogies.  This book was written by a  practicing physicist and buddhist, and next to it, the highly influential  (but much over-rated) "Tao of Physics" pales by comparison.  The  author delves deeply into what it might mean to our world-view to take  seriously the non-local nature of physical reality and the fundamental  connectedness of the universe, as implied by Bell's theorem, buddhist  "dependent origination," and synchronicity.  If, like me, you  remember  learning about Kant and the death of metaphysics, you will find  the description of Bell's theorem as "experimental metaphysics"  (p. 75) simply staggering.  And if nonlocality does prevail in our  universe, it provides some support for Jung's concept of synchronicity, not  just for explaining those eerie coincidences but as an enlarged perspective  on linear cause-and-effect. Remember that Jung was not a physicist so in  some ways his theory needs to be informed by a physicist.  And anyone who's  had a powerful synchronicity experience knows how radically it can upset  our day-to-day notions of physical reality and causality.  Much of the  virtue of this book is that it isn't just some philosophical arguments and  popular science spiced up with a few graphs and equations.  The book  creatively weaves a view of physics, mind, and causality around  descriptions of the lived synchronicity experience of various friends and  colleagues.  For example, the "Philosopher's Stone" describes a  woman's shamanic experience of discovering a stone face by a lake-shore  (pp. 161-165).  "The spirits of the lake love to hear their old  name," she was told, "They respond."  So she chanted. Well,  they responded by directing her, via feeling warmth on a cold day, to a  small stone face laying on the shore (see cover photo).  It turned out to  be named Singing Stone, from an old Native American story about a woman's  search for her true self, and the stone itself "a compelling carrier  for the archetype of the self."  The story about Jung's  "Aion" spontaneously leaping several feet off a bookshelf (p.  162) is equally astonishing.  I'm a little surprised the author doesn't  discuss Everett's "many worlds" interpretation of quantum  mechanics--after all, it gets rid of the need for a external observer of  the universe by postulating the existence of all alternative event  outcomes, with some rather obvious connections to transmigration.  Despite  my sympathy, I also have to wonder about the merit of this connection with  "soul-making"--after all, buddhists don't believe in a soul, and  Jungian individuation is a quite different goal than Eastern liberation (p.  212).  But, given Jung's highly ambivalent attitude toward Eastern  liberation, that is a question that *no one* has answered yet.  The author  deserves a great deal of credit for even addressing that issue, let alone  for writing such an interesting book so clearly at odds with normal  materialistic science. Even if all you got was the beautiful drawing of the  Indian god, Ganesha (p. 74), the great photo of the impish John Bell (p.  122), or the fabulous picture of Pauli and Bohr, both middle-aged and  merrily spinning a top like a couple of schoolboys (p. 10), this book would  be worth its price. I strongly recommend this book to anyone with an  interest in Jungian synchronicity, or more than a passing interest in  either of the other 2 topics. In fact, if you're reading this review, maybe  now is time to buy the book!
1566147
George Musser delivers us an interesting look here at something called nonlocality in the physics world. Imagine two particles separated by a vast distance. Now imagine that when something is done to one of them, this action is instantly reflected in the other. Sounds spooky, doesnt it. Actually this phenomenon is seen in black holes, the horizon problem in cosmology where galaxies separated by millions of light years look similar, and, of course, in entangled particles.

The author delves into the history of thought and philosophy concerning the idea of nonlocality. From Parmenides and Democritus of the fifth century B.C.E. and their conception of nature, through Aristotle, Rene Descartes, Newton, Hans Christian Orsted, Michael Faraday, and up to Einstein and other scientists of the twentieth century, we are given the history of thought on the subject. He then spends a bit of time reflecting on the work of many scientists in quantum mechanics and their discoveries and reactions to these strange phenomena.

On negative side, this is the second book Ive read by Musser, and I find the same style of explanation, which, to me anyway, is somewhat confusing. I just have some difficulty in really getting any clear substance from the material. I think there is too much meandering through all the ideas relating to the concept of nonlocality, and in an attempt to use analogies to make thinks more clear, I actually get more confused.
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This book describes a profound idea about something that must have happened. Imagine a time before writing, a time even before pictures.
The author draws in the reader/listener right from the beginning. Imagine yourself in this young artist's place. It is clear that this child, like you, has a gift for remembering the way familiar animals look. The child tries to help the elders to see them too by drawing pictures on the walls. This child was the first person to draw, the person who invented drawing. Imagine that!
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Scott takes a topic that has been blown off for over 20 years as a "conspiracy theory", (phantom time), and builds a remarkably air-tight case for just such a thing to have happened. Get ready for a complex read. He attributes much of his assertions to Heribert Illig, who in 1992 first theorized the addition of 300 years to the calendar. For many, this may mean very little, (other than, if its true we are living somewhere around AD 1718), but for those who understand Biblical prophesy, (specifically Revelation), as a Historicist, the implications are... well, VERY BIG. Honestly, I don't yet know if I agree or not, but there is this: (in Revelation 9, any Historicist will tell you the first locusts represent the Mohammedan invasions. Note the dark cloud that covers the sun.) This theory can exist harmoniously with an understanding of Revelation as a Historicist, but it changes much, and causes one to consider many things. It is well worth the time to read carefully.
4152115
When Charles Darwin sailed from Plymouth in his twenty ones, under Fitz Roy `s command  as naturalist in the Beagle swift-sailing on December 1831 to turn around the world, with the mission of make a set of measures and checks of scientist character, he was turning without knowing, the course of the story. Through these long five years his observations in Las Galapagos and Patagonia suggested him the first hypothesis about the species evolution through the natural selection process. This journey was more than enough to open the sluices of his overflowed imagination and intrepid talent that would lead to him to write "The species origin", a monumental slap in the face to the ancient beliefs.
Hemleben rebuilds step by step the civil and intellectual biography of this singular innovator and undeniable herald of the contemporary age.
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I think Dr Bejan may have discovered something profound here that could be as significant as the established fundamental laws (first principles) of thermodynamics and physics. The constructal law seems better suited for application to continuum-scale out-of-equilibrium flow processes, irreversible chemical reactions, and evolvable biotic (living) systems than other statements such as the MaxEnt or MinEnt. Recently, I have interpreted some theoretical modeling results on frustrated tumorigenesis and homeorhesis using the constructal law [...]. That said, The Physics of Life is a very readable account of some applications of this principle  ranging across the sciences  written in laymans style. It may also provide a much-needed theoretical peg to reformulate an evolutionary, ecological, and equitable economics on the global scale, and inform policy-makers on the nature of transnational migrant flows.
2252615
I found in this book important information on the power of the unconscious mind in the creation of new mathematics.

The author Jacques Hadamard's experience of suddenly getting a solution at the moment of waking from sleep and his testimony to the effectiveness of abandoning a problem and the resuming it later on aligns with my experience (on modest problems).

The inclusion of Henri Poincare's account of the sudden mathematical insight relating to fuchsian functions (that occurred to him just as he stepped on a bus) was evidence of the unconscious at work.

The book in effect discusses the four stages of thought (after Helmholtz and Poincare) of: Preparation (conscious work setting up the problem and trying to solve it); incubation (no conscious work on the problem) ; illumination (the fruits of incubation where an insight is received) and finally verification (consciously testing and verifying the insight).

The style of writing is a little hard to read but the contents repay the effort.
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The ancient Greeks were as creative a people as any in history and the notion of extraterrestrial life as a viable reality probably begins with them. Mark Brake, the author of this fascinating and compelling overview of the nascent science of astrobiology, introduces his story with the nature of their early speculations. Alien Life Imagined is essentially an academic foray into the history of ideas rather than a textbook on the (imagined) biology of aliens. With the decline of the Classical world, speculative thought was constrained by religious dogma for nearly two millennia. It is not until Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo and Newton and the rise of modern science, that the unfettered human imagination is allowed free rein to wonder about whether or not we are alone in the cosmos.

With the rise of modern astronomy, the size and nature of the universe has been radically re-envisioned. Our new understanding of the vastness of space essentially means that questions about the existence of alien life has become a matter of statistics. It is a near statistical certainty that Earth is not the only home to life, so that we are now engaged in speculations of a biological nature. Using human imagination that is informed by structural and evolutionary biology, and by cognitive sciences, we can now theorize with some precision about the possible development of life across a Milky Way galaxy that is teeming with planets. Many of these exo-planets inhabit the so-called "Goldilocks" zone, in which conditions are just right for the existence of life. Alien Life Imagined is a brilliant history. It unravels the various threads which are the warp and weft of our view of the universe, our place in that strange and often hostile place, and our eternal fascination with the uplifting and unsettling realization that we are not alone. If you (like me) are fascinated by how speculation has been transmuted into hard science, you will find this book a necessary introduction to the birth and development of the brand new discipline of astrobiology.
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It came from nowhere and had no cause that the scientists could put their finger on.  It could have been unusual solar winds some researchers suggested, but really they were only guessing.  It began as a stiff breeze, then increasing at a steady five miles an hour a day.  It became a storm, then a hurricane, then a ground-stripping fury of titanic, unearthly proportions that threatened to wipe man off the planet.  Traveling from East to West it circled the globe, strongest near the equator, weakest at the poles.  It resembled those mighty gas flows that hurtle around Saturn.  It threatened to completely alter the planet beyond recognition.  Amid this natural fury Donald Maitland (doctor), Andrew Symington (radio expert), Steven Lanyon (submarine commander), Patricia Olsen (NBC reporter), Simon Marshall (TV expert) and Deborah Mason (secretary) will all increasingly struggle for survival as the storm grows.  Their paths will cross and intermingle.  Some will survive, but not all.  What is to be the fate of these characters, and indeed of human kind?

This is J. G. Ballard's first novel and it is a fine effort, certainly worth reading.  Many will remember this writer as the author of the memorable, social-realist novel&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Empire-of-the-Sun/dp/0743265238/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Empire of the Sun</a>, but Ballard began his career writing science-fiction short-stories for British magazines like <New Worlds>.  Some indeed consider his best work to be the early sci-fi short stories.  Knngsley Amis tipped Ballard as "the most imaginative of Wells's successors" and he indeed went on to write a number of memorable sci-fi novels, including&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/The-Drowned-World/dp/1857988833/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">The Drowned World</a>,<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/The-Crystal-World/dp/0374520968/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">The Crystal World</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Crash-A-Novel/dp/0312420331/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Crash: A Novel</a>.

By writing a number of interconnected plots Ballard manages to make this book interesting, exciting and yet realistic.  We do not feel that an unbelievable number of catastrophes, and slim escapes, happen to any one person.  We are rather given the impression of a disaster on a grand scale that affects the lives of many people in various different ways.

Despite there being so many characters most people are described well and have an individuality, though it should be pointed out that some are the more important than others and are more clearly defined.

Like most science-fiction stories this book requires a certain "willing suspension of disbelief" and I do not recommend it to you if you prefer 'real life' stories, but if you have imagination and a free-ranging mind you will enjoy this novel.
756081
I have long been intrigued by the ideas put forth in the late Julian Jaynes's "The Origin of Consciousness In the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind".  Jaynes's theorized that humans did not achieve actual consciousness until comparatively recent times (it varied from culture to culture but in the Near- and Middle-East, according to Jaynes it would have been several centuries or a millennium or so BC).  And he believed that the pre-conscious state was characterized by auditory hallucinations that were generally interpreted as the voices of the gods.

Jaynes's central theory about the origin of consciousness is probably beyond proof (exactly what is consciousness is a slippery concept, but Jaynes does NOT equate it self-awareness), but he does supply a great deal of evidence about how ancient humans did believe they regularly "heard" the voices of gods, and that at some point (again, it was not the same for all cultures), that ability went away, often with devastating consequences for a culture suddenly left without seeming divine guidance.

Daniel B. Smith's "Muses, Madmen, and Prophets: Rethinking the History, Science, and Meaning of Auditory Hallucination" addresses the survival of the phenomenon of "hearing voices" generated unconsciously by one's own mind.  Popularly, hearing such voices is viewed as evidence of mental illness (indeed, schizophrenia has become in recent decades almost defined by the phenomenon), but Smith's book demonstrates that auditory hallucination is fairly common in people who are otherwise viewed as mentally normal.  Surveys have supplied varying figures for the phenomenon (understandably, many people are reluctant to admit to a circumstance which might earn them a careless label of "crazy"; I suspect that the frequency of positive responses to the survey questions depend a great deal upon just how the questions were phrased), but it appears that at least a few percent up to maybe the majority of people at some time in their lives experience auditory hallucination, perhaps only a single time, although in some cases the phenomenon can be almost continual (Smith's own father and grandfather "heard voices" much of their lives).  The condition is sometimes connected with stress (participants in combat and victims of rape appear to especially prone to it) and it sometimes is associated with bursts of great creativity.  Smith discusses quite a number of famous people who regularly experienced what in today's rational world would be termed auditory hallucination: Socrates, Joan of Arc, and William Blake included.

Smith's book is not a dense, statistic-laden study, but rather a fast-flowing, somewhat ancecdotal introduction to a fascinating phenomenon which at one time may have played a decisive role in human culture and continues even today to shape some people's lives.