Sunday 1 July 2018

What I've Been Reading, June 2018

This note used to say that the links below appear in the order I read them and was meant imply that they were more or less random in their subject matter, other than being of interest to me. Recently I started a few new sections at the bottom of the links on subjects that are of particular interest to me. But I can see that as time passes I am moving to a greater degree of "curation", which the dictionary tells me is about organizing and maintaining a collection. Applied to this collection of links and books I guess this will mean selecting links less randomly and trying to make them relevant in the context of this blog and whatever is going on in the world during the month.

But my originally statement still applies to the first section of links—they are pretty much random and just in the order I read them.

Links

Intelligence

Refugees and Migration

  • Five myths about the refugee crisis, by Daniel Trilling, The Guardian
    "...how likely is it that states which treat migrants with such callousness will behave similarly towards their own citizens?"

Poverty, Homelessness, Minimum Wage

Books

Fiction

Non-Fiction

I'm still wading slowly through The Bell Curve, in order to be able to criticize it with some degree of credibility. Almost half way through at this point. This has also lead to reading some scholarly articles about IQ on the web, further slowing down my other reading. I did read a couple of short non-fiction works this month, though.

  • This is Water, by David Foster Wallace
    "Some thoughts, delivered on a significant occasion, about living a compassionate life."
    As a committed atheist, I don't agree with the author's thoughts on the impossibility of not worshipping. I do agree that many people do worship things other than God, that are a bad or worse than God. But the important part is what the author has to say about the importance of seeing things from the other guy's viewpoint.
  • Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, by David Graeber
    An excellent little book about anarchism.

2 comments:

Bill H said...

In my view, feminism is possible only in the oil age, like longevity. Patriarchy will return as the economy shrinks and the qualities of men are respected again. Sadly, for now and for a long time, it's pussy hats and child support payments.

Irv Mills said...

@ William Lee Hornstein (Unknonwn)
Thanks, William, for getting in touch with me via Facebook to let me know your name. Blogger's comment interface can be difficult at times.
As it happens, I don't agree about feminism or (to a lesser extent) longevity. Patriarchy is not a good thing and certainly not a good way to face the challenges of collapse. We need to work together using everyone's strengths, women as well as men.
But I am definitely not interested in a lengthy and heated debate about the props and cons of feminism.