Stefansson's “Cancer: disease of civilization?”

Long out of print, here's an OCR'ed version, both downloadable (epub) and online.

Looking forward to finally reading it!

Review: Alastair Reynolds' "Poseidon's Wake"

tl;dr: I need to find a book that I like.

I've read a number of Alastair Reynolds' books in the past, and have enjoyed them all, although I noticed a flaw in a number of them that was particularly notable in this book.  So when I took Poseidon's Wake out of the library, I was quite excited.

The premise of the book is a good one: ship thought destroyed turns out to instead have been cast light years across space; a message from it is received.

The bulk of the book is then the response to this message, I don't think it's too much of a spoiler to say that a mission to the ship is dispatched.

The world building is pretty good, although there are a number of elements that cause it to creak, some of which are the fault of the author, and some of the publisher.  In many parts it's reminiscent of the world-building of Arthur C. Clarke, with a cast that would be today described as "minority", although since apparently all the Europeans have gone  missing, that term is really an anachronism. Labels are in Swahili and Chinese, it's mentioned several times.

Ultimately though, I found this book to be supremely dissatisfying, so much so that it was a struggle to finish.  I distinctly recall page 488, as that was the page at which I looked at the page number and said to myself, "How much longer?"  Over one hundred pages, was the unfortunate answer.

So the problems: let's start with the publisher. When I finished the book, I turned to the acknowledgements page, to discover that his was the third of three books. Huh?

Nowhere on the outside of the book is this fact mentioned, the inside flap mentions "in the conclusion of his epic saga", but one shouldn't have to hunt for this information! No doubt the publishers, noting that each version of a series sells fewer copies, decided to elide this information in order to sell a few more.

So, much of my initial reaction, that much of the world-building is absent, is likely because it was in the two prior installments.  No fault of the author.

What is the fault of the author is the bad elements of world building, the plot, and the characters.

There are a number of major world building problems, however. It won't take anything away to observe that a major plot point involves elephants in space.  As you might imagine, elephants aren't well suited to space, or space suits. Elephants, you see, are prolific creators of dung. Elephant dung is mentioned a number of times, in particular when the villian anounces that she must clear her bowels before getting into a space suit. I'd already begun wondering how this problem was handled, as the dung in spaceships issue had been mentioned as a problem earlier. The solution to how elephants evacuate themselves in spacesuits is never resolved, however. Given that elephants in space suits desperately trying to get inside becomes a issue at one point, one was left wondering if they were desperate to evacuate their bowels. This is an issue which was not resolved in the novel, however.

That's just one example of a deus ex machina approach to story-telling.  Reconfigure an entire spaceship to make it suitable for elephants?  Sure, no problem!  Couple days' work.  Fix a hole in the hull? Sorry, that's a year or more. It just makes no sense.

I enjoyed a few of the characters, including the captain of the ship dispatched to find this missing ship, and the artificial intelligence robot Swift, who plays a crucial role and is an enjoyable character. The protagonist, who appears to be an interesting, likable man at the beginning of the story, turns out to be an idiot. I can't recall a single instance where the opportunity to make a mistake arose and he failed to take that opportunity. He gets treason out of the way early on, so most of the remaining mistakes are more minor, until later, but they grate. I thought this was just ill-considered storytelling on the part of Mr. Reynolds, until he has the character recount his entire history of idiotic mistakes at the end of the book, and realize it must have been intentional. It may well have been, but it didn't make for an enjoyable read.

One additional major mistake appears just before what would have been, in a better-crafted book, the climax.  I recall an episode of an old TV series (it may have been The Dukes of Hazzard), where in order to prevent the progress of a villian, our heroes affixed a chain from the engine of his car to a tree.  What happened to that car as the villian attempted to speed away from the tree is roughly what happens to this book when the fool of a protagonist makes this crucial mistake.  The engine is ripped out, although the vehicle continues to move.

The thrust of the plot up until that point seems to be forgotten, the crucial danger that our protagonist was willing to commit suicide to prevent just disappears.  The entire story falls apart at that point. Mind you, at the very end of a trilogy!

Sadly, the book still has a ways to go.  Much of the rest involves the other characters congratulating our protagonist for his idiocy, which turns out to have been entirely pointless, as the danger never materializes, and his "moral victory" turns out to be almost entirely Pyhrric.

While I was initially annoyed that the publisher mislead me into reading the third book of a trilogy first, something I prefer not to do, I now realize that they did me a favor.

The intense dismay and annoyance that I experienced as what should have been an enjoyable read fell apart in my hands would have been far worse had I read the prior two books first.

Review: "This Naked Mind: Control Alcohol..." by Annie Grace

tl;dr: If you've ever thought about your drinking, you should probably read This Naked Mind. It's that fundamental—it's the owner's manual for alcohol.

"Can I still drink alcohol?" — Everyone's First Question About Fixing Diet

Alcohol consumption is one of the first questions that comes up after I start discussing the topic of a healthy diet with people. I always laugh, and say, "Well, alcohol's a poison, of course, so you don't want to overdo it..."

And, like most who try to eat well, I make alcohol a part of my "healthy" diet.

We also hear in the media that "moderate" consumption of alcohol is healthier than consuming none. I've never believed this, first because it's based on epidemiology, and second because I think it's a bit silly. Alcohol is a poison, and I don't think that consuming "moderate" amounts of a poison is ever really going to improve health, unless it's counter-acting some other poison. In which case the logical course is to stop consuming the first poison, not to add the second.

I was discussing the topic of booze with a friend one day recently, and she recommended this book. Despite this blog basically being a self-help blog, inspired by a self-help book (McDougall's Born to Run), I hate self-help books. Most of them I find tedious, repetitions of obvious things that we all know and know we should do.

Those that I've found valuable and compelling enough to actually alter my behavior, like BtR or Stephan Guyenet's Whole Health Source blog, contained a combination of some truths that I was aware of, and had acted upon; some validation or proof of another truth that I had considered, but had not acted upon; and then, having been pulled to that point, some other truths that I would soon be acting upon. It has been a powerful combination.

Grace's book is that kind of self-help book.

This is not a hellfire-and-brimstone anti-drinking book. I had those classes in high school, and they're a bit ridiculous. My reaction upon reading the definition of an alcoholic in that class was, "That's everybody!" Defining a disease so broadly as to include everyone is silly.

Grace does not make that mistake. She observes how widespread drinking and abuse of drinking is, as a book like this must, but she doesn't harp on it, and there are no stupid generalizations. As she explains:

"I have not given you definitive direction to stop drinking altogether. I have a hard time with rules. If there is a rule I must follow, my every instinct is to break it. A definitive statement to answer this question is difficult. I don’t want to write a rule and have the rebels, like myself, feel that they are bound. I would much rather present you with all the facts, allowing you to come to the decision that is best for you."

And, compellingly, she focuses on the subtle effects that alcohol has on the individual, the moderate drinker. She states her goal early:

"As you uncover the truth, your perception will begin to change, both consciously and unconsciously, and with this knowledge you will no longer desire alcohol. You will be free."

Then she begins to go through the facts:

"As John A. Bargh, a professor of psychology at Yale, put it, “Unconscious systems are continually furnishing suggestions about what to do next and the brain is acting on those, all before conscious awareness. Sometimes those goals are in line with our conscious intentions and purposes and sometimes they’re not. ”

I've often thought that our conscious mind is really nothing more than a passenger in our body, driving to some extent, but often just carried along, so this really hit a note.

"While scientists used to believe dopamine was linked to feeling good, they now believe that dopamine is linked to learning, and learning includes wanting, expecting, and craving."

So essentially what is happening is that by activating your dopamine system, alcohol is training you, like a rat in a cage, to subconsciously crave more alcohol.

Grace goes through the consequences of that, and notes that while we can use our willpower to moderate that craving, "willpower is a finite and exhaustible resource, much like a muscle, that can be fatigued." So when you wake up in the morning and find out that you had "a little too much to drink last night", you're responding to a powerful chemical stimulus with a muscle that probably fatigued. It's no surprise that all find themselves over-indulging occasionally. The surprise would be if none did.

She does go through the many negative consequences of alcohol. It's a known carcinogen, with no non-carcinogenic dose, other than zero. We all know it alters behavior, but not how pervasive those alterations can be, and there were a few moments where I found myself thinking, "Oh...", with a bit of chagrin. None of us likes to discover we're an unwitting puppet to a chemical.

"Now that you know the naked truth about alcohol and what it has been doing to you, your body, and your mind, you’ll be able to act."

One particularly amusing little anecdote struck me, as it describes me and, probably, everyone who will read this review on this blog:

"Everyone at the table was intelligent and seemed very in control of their drinking, yet there they were, drinking a known poison in massive quantities and speculating about the possibility of plastic leaching into their drinking water."

Yes, put like that, it seems downright stupid.

The book is also well-written, and enjoyable. She has a terrific voice, is clearly intelligent, and includes some great quotes:

“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.” – Rumi

So yes, the book is a mind-bomb.

If you've ever reflected on drinking and it's role in your life, this is a terrific book to read. It's a great book if you've wondered about the health consequences of drinking, and more important, may enlighten you to some behavioral consequences of drinking of which you had not been aware.

Her intent, if you choose to let her by reading the whole thing, is to alter how you think about and look at alcohol forever. It certainly had that effect on me. Much like first reading BtR, that niggling doubt, that nascent thought, has been validated, brought to the fore, and now demands action.

You couldn't ask for more from a book.

Highly Recommended.

Grace, Annie. This Naked Mind: Control Alcohol: Find Freedom, Discover Happiness & Change Your Life (p. 187). ASPN Publications. Kindle Edition. 

Review: "The Way of Chuang Tzu" by Thomas Merton

tl;dr: The Way of Chuang Tzu is a fascinating look at Eastern philosophy from a Western, Catholic perspective, many of Tzu's writings as presented here are almost poetic, and do not require being read in sequence. Well worth reading to understand the commonalities in philosophy between two great religions and civilizations.

It may seem odd to read a book about Eastern philosophy written by, of all people, a Catholic monk, but I became interested in the intersection after being dragooned into watching Japanese anime such as Noragami and Kamisama Kiss and being surprised by what I initially thought were strong Catholic elements to the stories and morality.

But as I quickly learned, the Catholic influence on Japan was rather minute, as the Japanese government was not receptive to Catholic missionaries, and in fact banned them from the country, and killed those they found along with their converts.

The influence instead stems both from Japan's native Shinto, and from Zen Buddhism, the two dominant religions in the country. And Zen derives largely from Chinese Taoist philosophy, hence my interest in this book.

Chuang Tzu was a Taoist writer who lived and wrote during the third and fourth centuries B.C., and is regarded as one of the greatest such writers, although he is not the most well-known. Tao (道) is a Chinese word meaning "way" (the Way of the title of this book), and while it has roots in the Hinduism from which sprung Buddhism, is more of a philosophy of living than a religion, although it clearly has religious aspects. It is the foundation of much of Chinese culture.

Thomas Merton was a Catholic monk who became quite famous in the middle of the 20th Century, and had a fascination with Eastern religious practices and philosophies.

As Merton states in his Introduction:

"The rather special nature of this book calls for some explanation. The texts from Chuang Tzu assembled here are the result of five years of reading, study, annotation, and meditation. The notes have in time acquired a shape of their own and have become, as it were, "imitations" of Chuang Tzu, or rather, free interpretative readings of characteristic passages which appeal especially to me. These "readings" of my own grew out of a comparison of four of the best translations of Chuang Tzu into western languages, two English, one French, and one German. In reading these translations I found very notable differences, and soon realized that all who have translated Chuang Tzu have had to do a great deal of guessing."

So far from being a primary source, it's is a translation twice removed, once from the Chinese, and once through Father Merton's unique lens.

Lest you think this makes this work less important, Amazon lists it as their #1 Best Seller in Asian Literature, and the it features an introduction by the Dalai Lama, who was a friend of Merton during his life, and a fan of this work.

Merton has a short discussion of Tzu and his work and influence at the beginning, but most of the text are from Tzu, or from his disciples.

Topic covered include "The Importance of Being Toothless", "The Need to Win", and the surprising "Flight From Benevolence":

"When justice and benevolence are in the air, a few people are really concerned with the good of others, but the majority are aware that this is a good thing, ripe for exploitation. They take advantage of the situation. For them, benevolence and justice are traps to catch birds. Thus benevolence and justice rapidly come to be associated with fraud and hypocrisy. Then everybody doubts. And that is when trouble really begins.  

"King Yao knows how dutiful and upright officers benefit the nation, but he does not know what harm comes from their uprightness: they are a front behind which crooks operate more securely. But you have to see this situation objectively to realize it. 

"There are three classes of people to be taken into account: yes-men, blood-suckers, and operators..."

A rather astute observation from 2,300 years ago!

Much of the book, however, revolves more around what it means to be a man of Tao, or a man of the way.

"For Chuang Tzu, the truly great man is therefore not the man who has, by a lifetime of study and practice, accumulated a great fund of virtue and merit, but the man in whom 'Tao acts without impediment,' the 'man of Tao.' Several of the texts in this present book describe the 'man of Tao.'"

Much of what is presented here will not prove at odds with Christianity, in fact the many commonalities are what drew Merton to his study of Eastern philosophy and religion.

It's a terrific introduction to a wide area of study and understanding, and for those not steeped in Chinese philosophy, Merton serves as an excellent guide.

Highly recommended.

Review: "Dune: The Butlerian Jihad"

Dune, if you're not familiar with it, is the most popular and well-regarded science fiction novel ever written.  It's one of my personal favorites, I've read the entire six-book series many times over.

Meh.

Dune: The Butlerian Jihad, is not one of the original six books, however, and is not written by the same author.  It's the fourth pre-quel book written by the original author's son and his co-writer.

I've avoided the Dune prequels for the same reason I avoid most other attempts to capitalize on successful stories by other authors.  They usually disappoint.

In this case I skipped the first three pre-quels and started with the fourth, as it's largely an independent story, and I hoped they'd gotten their writing and story-telling sorted out, as I'd heard not-good things about their earlier efforts.

Luckily, I took it out of the library.

I won't go into great detail about this book, other than to say the low-star reviews at Amazon or Goodreads reflect my views.  The writing is poor, the story-telling implausible, character motivation is often questionable, and large swathes of what this book was supposed to be about were discarded. The authors do away with the religious motivation for the jihad, for instance, which guts the story. Happily that's not made clear until the very end. Dune was notable for its intelligence,  they did away with that, too.

So if you're looking for an extension of your experience with Dune as I was, skip it.

I did find the story some what entertaining, however, as some of the attempts to fill in the story from the original novels was interesting (it was supposedly based on the original authors notes), but it was soured by the poor and in-your-face story-telling.  So I'm not entirely unhappy that I read the thing.

But I am very happy to have taken it out of the library.  I'll skip the rest.

Dune and the other five books in the original series are magnificent, however.  I cannot recommend them highly enough.

"Kabloona: Among The Inuit"

Sounds fascinating:

"He’s also amazed by the endurance of the Eskimos. The nutritionists who parrot their textbook knowledge that 'you need carbohydrates for energy!' should read this book. Poncins recounts running along trails with Eskimos for hours – he was fatigued and panting, while they barely seemed to notice the effort. After a year in the Arctic, Poncins finds he is beginning to prefer their diet, even though he had supplies of 'white man' food on the sled carrying his belongings. As he explains in one passage, boiled rice could warm him up temporarily, but then he’d feel colder an hour or two later. By contrast, raw meat or raw fish was cold going down, but then he felt warmer for the rest of the day."

Sean Reads Too Much...

Here's his review of The Omnivore's Dilemma.

"Take Off Your Shoes And Walk"

Take Off Your Shoes And Walk: Steps To Better Foot Health is the book all podiatrists ought to be reading.  Simon Wikler, DSC* was the rare doctor who wasn't willing to stick to the status quo when told by an older colleague:

"'Foot troubles are chronic conditions people have had for a long time,' he advised.  'You'll waste your time trying to find their cause and cure.  Be content just to give people all the relief you possibly can'"

Dr. Wikler noted during his practice and travels that barefooted people had none of the problems that plagued his shod patients.  Using this knowledge, he began to treat his patients by advising them to strengthen their feet.  He prescribed exercises, walking, properly fitted shoes, and, especially in the case of children, barefoot activity.  His cure for fallen arches in children was quite simple.  Take off their shoes.

His advice for children was a little more radical than his advice for adults, who could also have benefitted from going about in their bare feet.  In this, I suppose, he was a victim of his profession, which seems to believe that at some point we become unsuited for walking in our bare feet.  Or maybe he was just bowing to the practicalities of America in 1961.

The one criticism I do have is that he didn't seem to realize that bunions could be cured simply by going barefoot or at least wearing properly-fitted shoes.  My sister-in-law, who took her sister's advice for alleviating her back pain and bought a pair of VivoBarefoot shoes, reported to me the other day that her bunions had nearly healed since she'd been wearing her new shoes every day.

In a touching anecdote, he reports on his attempts to bring to market a non-deforming shoe for America's children.  He found a man with feet deformed from improper shoes who might help him manufacture these shoes.  The man told Wikler he was crazy.

Wikler was forced to abandon the enterprise as losses mounted, observing:

"The difficulty was, it seemed, that nine out of ten mothers were more interested in style and appearance than in the non-deforming character of their babies' shoes."

I can only hope that the customers of the modern minimalist shoe companies prove that our mothers have learned something since Wikler's day.

Wikler also notes that shoes made on the fabled Munson last, the only shoes made in the last 100 years which were designed to allow your foot to work naturally, were going out of style as "old man's shoes."

Take Off Your Shoes and Walk is unfortunately long out of print.  Amazon lists two used copies available, and that's where I got mine.  Luckily Unshod.org has made a good portion of this book available online.

Read the introduction, and the excellent history of foot problems, and, especially if you have kids, the sections on foot health.  It's well worth your time, and will probably save you quite a bit in podiatrist bills, especially if you're a runner.

Interestingly, the one ailment that Wikler never mentions is that favorite of the runner in sneakers: plantar fasciitis.  I guess folks didn't get it prior to the sneaker.  But we know what the solution is: Take Off Your Shoes and Walk!

*Doctor of Surgical Chiropody (Chiropody is now known as podiatry.)

"Paleo Solution" Hits NYT Bestseller List.

Really cool.  I guess I'm going to have to read it. ;)

"I Did What I Believe Anyone Would Have Done."

"'I didn't run through fire to save a buddy,' Giunta told Junger. 'I ran through fire to see what was going on with him and maybe we could hide behind the same rock and shoot together. I didn't run through fire to do anything heroic or brave. I did what I believe anyone would have done.'"

I can think of no better way to remember 9/11 than to honor the heros of that day and this.  Sgt. Giunta is the first living recipient of the Medal of Honor since the Vietman War.

If you'd like to read more about the goings on in the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan, I highly recommend Lone Survivor by Marcus Luttrell, or what is effectively its sequel, War by Sebastian Junger.  Both are excellent reads, although Lone Survivor, as Luttrell's first-hand report, is one of the most remarkable books I have ever read.

Luttrell is donating his profits from his book to the families of deceased soldiers.

Moonbat No Longer?

Poor George Monbiot.  He's having a rough year.  First Global Warming is exposed as fraud, and now it appears he's realized the case for veganism isn't as strong as he thought it was.

This is the link that brought this to my attention, and this is the underlying link to Mr. Monbiot's review.

"This will not be an easy column to write. I am about to put down 1,200 words in support of a book that starts by attacking me and often returns to this sport. But it has persuaded me that I was wrong. More to the point, it has opened my eyes to some fascinating complexities in what seemed to be a black and white case."

Bravo to Monbiot.  It's not easy to have to make an admission like this.  (Just ask my wife about when I renounced wheat this spring.  Admitting you've been misled is no easy thing.)

Monbiat's review makes Meat, a Benign Extravagance sound like a very interesting book; although I can imagine some better titles.  Meat is no extravagance when you're dependent on it.

Thanks to Scott for the link.

A Method For Madness

I've been waiting for this book to come out for most of my life.  The first book in the series came out 1983.  Every time I went to the book store I would check to see if the next book was out. When I finished book 4 of the "War Against the Chtorr", I started checking for the next book in the series.  Religiously.  For years and years, every time I went in to a book store, I would walk over to the sci-fi section and look.

I've even corresponded with David Gerrold, the author, via email 10 or more years ago.

And now Amazon has sent me an email telling me it's going to be available soon.  I immediately pre-ordered.  If the editors are reading, I'll pre-order all of the books in the series the instant they become available in whatever format they're released.  Gold-plated hardcover?  Sold.  (I don't have the original paperback editions, and they've been out of print for, oh, ever.)

I really hope this isn't a mistake.

Update: Mr. Gerrold confirms on Facebook that the book should be available next Christmas, not next summer as Amazon has it.  Which means it's finished, and coming our way.  YEEHAW!

Congratulations on finishing it!

Running & Rambling's Book List

Interesting.  I bet Bannister's book is a great read.

"Are E-Books Worth The Money?"

Great article.

"If you walk out of the cinema this week with a burning desire to read Elizabeth Gilbert's "Eat, Pray, Love," you can download it onto your Amazon Kindle electronic book reader–if you have one–for $12.99.

"Then again you could just walk into your local Borders bookstore with a coupon and get the paperback for $10."

Too funny.

I like paper books. Compared to digital media they're far superior. The format stays the same for thousands of years, the battery never runs out, and if you get a new book you don't have to worry about how you'll read your old books should you choose to do so. They'll even survive (mostly) getting wet.

Of course they do get eaten by silverfish, but nothing's perfect.

E-books are basically book rental, IMHO.

Review: "Empire of the Summer Moon"

Subtitled: "Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History."*

I'll start off by saying that I'm not familiar enough with the history of the American Indians to judge this book by its relative merits.  It may well be the worst history of the Indians ever published.  Ignorance is bliss, sometimes.

Nevertheless, I quite liked it. 

I picked up this book in Denver International Airport.  One of the things I like about flying is picking books out of the airport book stores.  I'll confess, I'm pretty cloistered from popular culture.  I mostly ignore it, and the notion of following the NYT bestseller list to find things to read fills me with ennui.

But the book stores at airports present you with the creme de la creme of pop culture, as it were.  And there's always something really good.

The Comanche are an interesting intersection of the two primary topics of this blog: barefoot running, and the paleo diet.  Barefoot running because the Comanche rose to prominence by abandoning it, and adopting the horse wholesale, and mastering bareback riding.  The paleo diet because the Comanche lived on buffalo, and rioted when they finally were consigned to the reservation, and were unable to get enough buffalo to live on.  Maggoty white flour:  Ick.  Who can blame them? 

From page 48:

"Buffalo was the food the Comanches loved more than any other.  They ate steaks cooked over open fires or boiled in copper kettles.  They cut the meat thin, dried it, and stored it for the winter and took it on long trips.  They ate the kidneys and the paunch.  Children would rush up to a freshly killed animal, begging for its liver and gallbladder.  They would then squirt the salty bile from the gallbladder onto the liver and eat it on the spot, warm and dripping blood.  If a slain female was giving milk, Comanches would cut into the udder bag and drink the milk mixed with warm blood.  One of the greatest delicacies was the warm curdled milk from the stomach of a suckling calf.  If warriors were on the trail and short of water, they might drink the warm blood of the buffalo straight from its veins.  Entrails were sometimes eaten, stripped of their contents by using two fingers. (If fleeing pursuers, a Comanche would ride his horse till it dropped, cut it open, removed [sic] wrap them around his neck, and take off on a fresh horse, eating their contents later.)  In the absence of buffalo, Comanches would eat whatever was at hand: dry-land terrapins, thrown live into the fire, eaten from the shell with a horned spoon; all manner of small game, even horses if they hand to though they did not, like the Apaches, prefer them.  They did not eat fish or birds unless they were starving.  They never ate the heart of the buffalo."

Some paragraph, huh?  Welcome to the Stone Age.

This is an interesting story, since it puts the lie to one of the main paleo tales, that eating dairy is a product of the agricultural revolution.  Clearly it far predates that, since the Comanches had to be introduced to agriculture at the point of a gun.  One can pretty clearly understand how some bright Maasai finally figured out, "Hey, if we don't kill the cow, but milk it and bleed it, we can eat a lot more!"

The next pertinent bit (there was a lot of interest, actually) was on page 230:

"The agent of the betrayal was the Office of Indian Affairs, one of the most corrupt, venal, and incompetent government agencies in American history."

Wow.  That's some statement.  There's pretty tough competition.  The Office of Indian Affairs was so bad that the Feds finally decided to turn the Indians over to the Quakers, since they were at least honest.  No judge whined about "establishment of religion", since back then judges actually read the Constitution.  What one realizes on reading this is that the Feds haven't treated the white man any better than they've treated the red man.  But the white man has a bigger vote, so they hide their duplicity better.

I highly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in the history of the United States.  It casts a gimlet eye on the Indians, the Feds, and pretty much everything else that passes before it.

Any romantic notions that you have about the paleo age will be pretty quickly dashed as well.  I might appreciate the nutritional value of the diet, but I can't imagine how I'd get my daughters to eat raw liver seasoned with bile.  The mind reels.

But at the end it's a profoundly sad book.  No one comes off well, not the Indians, the Americans, or the Mexicans.  We're a sad lot, we humans, and often unspeakably cruel to each other.  However you nevertheless wind up respecting all of them.  I'd not want to be captured by the Comanches, but I finished the book with a profound respect for them.

Making that clear, it's an excellent work of History.

My biggest complaint about the book was that the author either did not read 1491, or did not draw a number of obvious conclusions that would have enriched this book.  Clearly one of the reasons that the Comanche, who were an inconsequential tribe for most of their history, were able to rise to prominence was because the more advanced agricultural tribes were wiped out by European diseases.  Having read 1491, the point jumped out at me, but the author never mentioned it.

*S. C. Gwynne, Scribners, 2010.

Playing Around with the Raw Diet

Richard Wrangham, Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human. This book has received a fair amount of attention lately. It’s a great read, and makes its central thesis persuasively: the essential transformation in getting to human is not fire or meat-eating, important as those are — it is our evolutionary adaptation to something that follows on fire, cooking. We are adapted to eating cooked food. Well. Family away the last ten days, I decided to try a basically raw diet, a little bit as Wrangham describes in his opening chapters. Not completely — I ate fish and buffalo in quantities, plus some (extraordinarily delicious — I made them with garlic and fresh lime juice and lime zest) black beans and some cooked quinoa-amaranth mush. But I ate a head of lettuce a day, a couple of massive tomatoes, avocados, bell pepper, cucumber, green onion and other vegetables, a lot of blueberries, peaches, strawberries, raw nuts, etc. I didn’t lack for calories, certainly not protein, given the meat and fish, some cooked carbs, and also my customary intake of olive oil and liquid fish oil. (I’m a foodie in three things: coffee, chocolate, and, increasingly, olive oil — and California olive oils are getting exceptionally yummy.)


Results? I was not doing this out of any dietary purity thing; no, just curious and partly interested in seeing if it would lead to weight loss. I wasn’t on it long enough or consistently enough to test the weight loss part. But just as Wrangham said about raw foodists, I was constantly hungry, even though I was plowing through a lot of food and my stomach was full, and fell full, even over full. After 7 days I was starting to crave hot cooked food very specifically — not just calories, and not sweets, but something starchy, hot, cooked. The other thing, though, was that my stomach found it hard dealing with all the crude leaves and plant material. Possibly I would adjust over time. I don’t mean intestinal problems, diarrhea, etc. — I mean specifically my stomach wrestling with all this raw stuff. I deliberately didn’t shred things up small, but forced myself to chew — but it felt as though my stomach was unused to processing all this. I tried eating corn raw off the cob, without any heating, and that caused immediate indigestion — again, in my stomach. Wrangham talks about the physics of food and calorie extraction, and I have a much better idea of what he meant. I also have a much better idea about what he meant about how long it takes to chew leaves, even delicate baby spinach.

Sounds pretty interesting.  The rest of this gentleman's summer reading list is here.