The Secret

The world may be suffering from over-indulgence when it come to The Secret.  Part from those critical and those who consider a new bible.  It's hard to not take notice of a book being heavily promoted by Oprah.  She gave The Secret two episodes within one week of each other.  With that, plus the usual Oprah-effect, the book ends up on everybody's lips.  I had the opportunity to actually read the book, so now I can criticize it.  The Secret creates an over-reliance on positive thinking, establishes the blame the victim attitude, and is a severe rip-off.

The Secret is based on the concept known as "The Laws of Attraction".  In short, you are ultimately responsible for what happens to you.  It's not just issues where you start taking drugs and you become a suicidal junkie.  If you don't have the job you want, it's your fault.  If you don't have enough money, it's your fault.  If you get hit by a car while sitting in your living room, it's your fault.  Why?  You have been sending out mystical "orders"to the universe, and you don't even know it.  The universe is merely acting as your personal genie granting you your every "wish" (and you aren't even limited to just three).  With The Secret you can harness this power to get the things you really want.

What's the problem with getting what you want?  Probably nothing.  Unfortunately, The Secret can't deliver.  It amounts to little more than New Age mumbo jumbo that promises great things with nothing to it.  I won't argue that having a positive outlook and being generally optimistic will make life better for you.  With those traits you are more likely to be around other people who are positive and more willing to support you.  You are also more likely to try more things and take advantages of opportunities that present themselves.  The Secret makes bigger claims than this and that's where it fails.  Your thoughts don't send out orders to the universe, they only affect how you act in life.  I can think about having $1M and it will not fall into my lap.  I need to find a way to earn that $1M.  This example may seem silly, but there are examples on the official website like this one.  You can find the story table of contents here.

The most common complaint I have heard about The Secret is how it blames the victim.  As I stated above, the bad things that happen to you are based on the orders you send out to the universe.  I wish I had the book in front of me so I could cite the page.  In one part of the book, the author basically blames the holocaust on the Jews.  It's not state plainly as in the previous sentence, but the description seemed rather clear to me in the book.  Again, I don't have the quote in front of me, but the book states in essence 'even the most horrible atrocities are caused by the thought of those affected'.  There are instances, many I suspect, where we bring bad things upon ourselves.  Many are likely inadvertent, but we can learn from these experiences and do better in the future.  It's not that revolutionary.

My biggest complaint is really about how the book is a rip-off.  First it gives the reader cheap New Age advice that offers little real benefit.  Second it's way over-priced for what you get.  The hard-cover book runs around $25 for a 198 page book.  That doesn't sound so bad at first.  Realize the font for the book is large and the pages small.  If the book were condensed to normal font size and printed on pages typical to most hard-cover books, The Secret would likely run 75-90 pages (my guess).  That should cut the price to $15 at the most.  On top of that, the book is more repetitive than Groundhog Day.  If the repetition were removed, the book would be reduced to roughly 10 pages for a normal hard-cover formatted book.  That's a pamphlet that should only cost $2.  Ultimately, The Secret is really like those novelty books they have in the little spinners located randomly around your local book store.  The advice is about as good and the format is perfect.  I can't wait until the 'condensed' version of The Secret comes out.

It's Dangerous Being Mayor

I'm sure some have seen the news about the mayor of Berwyn Heights, Maryland.  If not, I'll give you a brief run-down (or click here).  Basically, a package sent from California was delivered to his house.  While in transit, the marijuana (aka ganja, weed, pot, grass, etc...) was detected.  The package was then intercepted by the authorities and delivered to the mayor's house by members of the county police, acting as a delivery person.  The package was left on the front porch, even thought the mother-in-law was present (I don't actually get that part; I've accepted packages for my in-laws at their house and I don't leave them on the porch).  The mayor picks up the package and takes it inside when he gets home and is almost immediately assaulted by officers in masks and plain-clothes.  In the end, his two labs were shot dead and the mayor appears to be innocent of any wrong doing.

According to Dan Carlin in his most recent podcast, this is likely part of a scam.  Drug dealers will send a package to a wrong address, and the delivery person will leave the package on the door step.  Another person will then pick up the package.  This way, it's harder to trace the sender and the receiver.  Carlin seems to think that the mayor may have been a victim of this scam, and may have been OK had the authorities not gotten involved.

What fascinates me most about this case is the fact that the cops just busted in, when the only thing the mayor did was to pick up the package and take it inside.  I didn't know that was a crime.  You would expect that the cops would have been better served to see what he did with the package in a day or a week or something, not one minute.  What else do you do with a package that's sitting on your porch, leave it.  If it appears to be something that is sent to me in error, I would still bring the package inside.  Not every package I've received has been something I was expecting, so that shouldn't seem like something out of the ordinary.  That's what made the unabomber so successful, was people accepted packages that they probably weren't expecting and then opened them.  Even if the mayor was guilty, how do you prove that by the fact that he brought the package inside, unless the package is bugged and they have him on tape saying "My pot finally arrived, I better go smoke some."

The other issue with this whole thing is the whole police state nature of this.  From what I've heard, the county did not inform the city about the "raid".  Dan Carlin asked a pretty good question.  What if the people in the house had called the city cops?  The county cops were not in uniform, so you can imagine the potential for a deadly shoot-out in this kind of situation, especially when it involves the mayor.  That's a great point.

This whole story points to some of the problems that exist when it comes to the drug war.  One of the excuses for the drug war is that it is to protect the American way of life.  I just don't understand how we're protecting the American way of life by violating rights and allowing police-state tactics to be used on citizens.  Events like the one in Maryland are unconscionable, even if the guy is guilty, because it puts innocents in danger and it assumes too much on too little verifiable evidence.  I'm sure there are some lawyers out there who can find legal justification for the raid, but where's the moral justification?  What if the mayor had been shot and killed trying to protect his family from masked intruders?  What if another family member, a child perhaps, had been shot.  I think it's fortunate that only the dogs were shot, not that I consider that a good thing.  The county could only muster a weak apology.  They should be bending over backwards and re-evaluating their policies after an incident like that.  They need the mother of all Kaizen events.  They've arrested two suspects so far.  I'm sure they'll get blame for the incident and the police will just shake off their mistake.

Ultimately this just points to the problems with the drug policy in this country.  It's not that I think people should be taking drugs, but the methods being employed to protect the people seem to leave far more collateral damage then the drugs themselves.  The Cato institute has written about the drug war and done some writing on legalizing drugs.  We may see an increase in use, but we will also be able to actually handle the problem better.  The drugs can be regulated ad prices can drop.  They can be taxed to bring in revenue, ideally for rehab.  Milton Friedman even had some interesting things to say on the subject as well:

Milton - 1

Milton - 2

Milton - 3

Blink

I finally got around to reading Blink by Malcolm Gladwell.  My first exposure to Malcolm Gladwell came from the few remaining moments of Jane Pauly's short lived day-time talk show.  He was on with fellow New Yorker write James Surowiecki, author of The Wisdom of Crowds.  At that point I pretty much blew off both of their books.  After seeing a positive review of The Wisdom of Crowds, I gave that book a try and decided that at some point I would read Blink, it only took 3 years or more.

Now that I've had the chance to read Blink, Im glad I did.  I found it to be an enjoyable read and insightful book.  The purpose of the book is to show how our minds process a lot of information in a short period of time.  We are able to do so unconsciously, which is why we're able to do it to fast.  Gladwell starts with a story about a statue the Getty was purchasing.  The museum utilized sophisticated scientific techniques to confirm the authenticity of the statue.  All the analysis came back corroborating the story.  Two art experts, without any scientific instruments, were able to instantly tell the statue was a fake.  At first they could not describe why, they just knew.

The book centers on this kind of split-second thinking (processing) for good and bad.  When I saw Gladwell on Jane Pauly, I initially thought the book centered on the idea that split second thinking was the best way to process information.  After reading the book, I see that's not the case.  The example of the statue stated above is successful because of the honed expertise of the individuals and they're ability to apply that expertise without thinking about it.  Gladwell routinely cites examples of people are able to make accurate predictions on limited data.

The most fascinating chapter dealt with the research of John Gottman on marriage.  With only fifteen minutes of video footage, Gottman is able to predict with near perfection which couples will be divorced within 15 years.  Gottman's key is being able to thin-slice the footage and remove the noise.  He is able to analyze the various human expressions and even identify very subtle expressions.  It's with that data that he is able to make his prediction.  While this may not necessarily be split-second decision-making, it does challenge the idea that you need mountains of data to accurately analyze data.

In another fascinating chapter, Gladwell takes on violent police interactions, namely Amadou Diallo and Rodney King.  Like many people, I was appalled that the NYC officers emptied 41 rounds with their assault on Diallo.  Gladwell takes the time to show how their inexperience led to their quick and deadly reaction.  While it is horrifying to think that this event occurred, there are reasons that can explain why it happened and allow for training to prevent future occurrences like this.  Gladwell contrasts this interaction with another event that could have easily had a similar outcome.  In this case, the officer had some years under his belt and was cool in a potentially stressful situation.  He even allowed the suspect to reach into his pants and retrieve a gun, but the suspect dropped the gun without threatening the officer.  This is a situation where it could have been easy to whip out a gun and fire, and even claim self-defense.  The officer was looking for every opportunity to allow the kid to live, which in-turn provided the officer the patience necessary.

With these two stories, Gladwell is showing that proper training  and experience in stressful situations will provide officers the tools to handle dangerous situations more calmly.  The science here centers on how our heart-rate affects us in certain situations.  Once our heart-rate reaches a certain point, we are beyond reason.  That's likely what the officers experience in the Diallo and King cases.  When people are experience situations that push their heart-rate up into that zone they develop tunnel-vision.  As they go through similar experiences, they're heart-rate tends to drop to and remain at lower levels.  Then they are better able to act like the calm officer.

I really enjoyed this book.  Some of the ideas he discussed in the book I'd had some exposure to, but it was interesting to see his approach and how he applied the ideas in the real world.  Michael LeGault publish a book entitled Think!, which is meant to contrast Gladwell, at least that is how it appears (I have yet to read it).  Since reading Blink, I can see that these two books likely don't discuss the same thing.  Blink is really just Gladwell's word for intuition.  Nowhere in the book does he suggest not having the right information.  He merely shows that we don't need to overwhelm ourselves with data just to have data.  We really need to be able to find the best and most relevant data.  The book Think! appears to be about the situations where more contemplation is necessary.  In all the cases that Gladwell presents as support for the Blink premise, they have acquired experience as the key ingredient.  He also never states that even with the honed intuition that mistakes won't be made.  The probability is merely decreased.

Media Unlimited

I read Media Unlimited in just a few days, although I wouldn't consider it an easy read.  The wording is simple enough, but the concepts that Todd Gitlin bring to the book take a lot of thought.  The book was revised in 2007, but I read the original edition.  The link above takes you to the revised edition.

The book is only four chapters, but the first three are rather lengthy.  Each chapter is broken up into several headings, which makes putting it down mid-chapter easier to do without getting lost.  The basic premise centers on the torrent of media that surrounds us.  Gitlin presents this idea as a contrast to McLuhan's popular metaphor of the Global Village.  Gitlin makes a good case.  He has the advantage of seeing the way computers and multimedia devices have become part of the culture.  He re-emphasizes one of Postman's points that a medium changes the culture as opposed to the old culture just with the addition of TV, for example.  According to Gitlin, the torrent surrounds us and is found in everything we do today.  I do think his metaphor works, but not necessarily in contrast to McLuhan's.  Because I have a hard time with metaphors being much more that a caricature or or partial explanation, I believe multiple metaphors are needed to explain various aspects of the same thing.  We do live in a torrent of images and we do live in an interconnected global village.  To me they are different expressions of the same thing.  Each has strengths and weaknesses.

The purpose of the book appears to be less about criticizing American culture, but demonstrating what the media forces do and the affect they have on our culture and the world.  Near the end of the book Gitlin talks about how the american culture has spread throughout the world.  From reading a lot of criticism of american culture, I come to expect chapters like this to take shots at the downsides of the US.  Gitlin does a great job of showing that the success of american culture is spread by not only the economic success of the US, but the willingness of people in other nations to adopt out media (especially Music, Movies, and TV).  

In short, Giltin sees the adopters as willing participants, rather than hapless victims, an image that other critics often use.  According to Gitlin, one reason american culture spreads is because it is comprised of some many other cultures.  The multi-cultural make up of the US makes for many forms and expressions of creativity.  The economic success of the US after the world wars also made exporting entertainment throughout the world very easy.  Where other nations saw their professional entertainment put on pause for the wars.  Ultimately the book almost lauds the free market nature of the US as one of the reasons for it's success in the world, not just in entertainment.

I enjoyed the book overall.  My main issue really has little to do with the book itself.  I've read a lot of media commentary books by Neil Postman, Ben Bagdikian, Eric Alterman and others.  Because I've read so many other books, I found it easy for me to pay less attention to the book.  I think If this were one of the first media books I'd read, then I would have gotten more out of it.

I still think it's a worthwhile read.  It's certainly a book I would like to see in a film course.  The topics of the book really hit home for that kind of a course.  If I had one criticism of the book it's that Gitlin provided the incorrect title to one of Marshall McLuhan's books.  He referred to The Medium is the Massage as The Media is the Massage.  Minor, but still shouldn't have happened.  Unless there's some secret McLuhan book I don't know about.

Review - Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer

In 2006 I read Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin.  The last part of the book detailed the assassination plot on Lincoln, Seward, and Johnson.  Up to that point I knew nothing about Lincoln's murder, other than the name John Wilkes Booth.  Goodwin's description of the event was very intriguing and I wanted to find a book that would tell the whole story.  It wasn't long after that, that I saw Manhunt by James L. Swanson.

From reading Team of Rivals, I had pretty high expectations and Swanson delivered.  Swanson takes the reader from the beginnings of the plan, which was actually hatched the same day of the murder.  It was really an adaptation of previous plans where the opportunities had been limited to actually perform.  For the 12-24 ours immediately after the assassination, Swanson maintains touch with the events surrounding Lincoln & his associates and Booth & Herold (an accomplice).  Telling the story this way keeps things moving and provides the reader with a strong sense of the events.

Swanson puts a lot of effort in detailing the remaining 11 days of Booth's run from the law and provides great detail, though some of it seems to accentuated from his personal assumptions rather than on actual data.  For the most part this is forgivable, because it keeps the story going and the emotions are generally easy to intuit to the situation.

The story telling is fabulous.  It did take me a week and half to complete the book; I think normally I could have it read within a week.  It was definitely a book I relished returning to read, but really disappointed I waited as long as I did before I read it.

I only have two main issues with the book.  First, a timeline of some sort should have been included in the book.  I know the assassination took place on Good Friday 4/14/1865, but I found it easy to get lost as far as how far into the chase some event were.  It wasn't horrible, but I would have like a timeline that I could refer to quickly.  Swanson did provide a map at the beginning of the book, which I referred to often to get my bearings.  A time line would have done the same.

My other issue is the title.  It's called Manhunt: The 12-day Chase for Lincoln's Killer.  In a lot of ways the book seemed like it should have been titled Escape: Booth's 12 days on the Run.  I know it's a bit nit-picky, but I prefer accurate titles.  I think considering the title, Swanson could have spent some more time with the manhunters.  The book was truly from Booth's perspective, which was still enjoyable.  I'd be interested in some of the other stories of people looking for Booth.

Ultimately, I think the book is still strong storytelling and I thoroughly enjoyed it.  It's definitely a book I would recommend to people interested in Lincoln, Civil War era history, or just history in general.

Wiki-Security?

What the (insert expletive)?  So I was working on a post for the site here and all of a sudden this webpage popped up called antispywaremaster.  I admit to being slightly confused at first; my initial thought was that my Mac wanted to run an anti-spyware program.  That thought last .5 seconds, because it was just weird.  I immediately tried closing all my windows, which wasn't.  My main goal was to make sure whatever I did didn't let this thing download anything to my computer.

I'm not sure if it worked.  Once I recovered, I started looking this spyware up online, just to see what was out there.  A webpage came up that seemed to have info on it.  The page was from a site called Wiki-Security.  It looks like a wikipedia for web security.  I'm very suspicious of the website.  They offered a free download for this anti-antispywaremaster program.  That immediately caught my attention.  I then did a Google search for Wiki-Security, and the site doesn't even come up until the second page of results.  Not only that, but the page I found was for some other virus called Antivirus 2008.  The wording for the entry is almost word for word the same for their anti-antispywaremaster program.  It's possible that this is a legit site, but right now I'm suspicious; I couldn't even get an entry for the site on wikipedia.

I still have some more research to do, but I thought I'd pass that on.  (I should finish the original post I was working on tomorrow.)

Neil deGrasse Tyson the Racist

Some of you have probably heard about the scuffle in the Dallas area.  A member or the city council made the mistake of referring to the traffic ticket collection office as a black hole.  Apparently a lot of paperwork was getting lost.  Two black officials took offense to the term, one even calling it a white hole.  Well, maybe these folks need to go back to 5th grade science.  A white hole is actually a scientific term for a theoretical object where objects are ejected, rather than sucked in at the event horizon.

Julia Gorin has a pretty good article on this topic in the Christian Science Monitor.  The article points out some of the uses of the word black in positive contexts vs. some uses of the word white in negative contexts.

What does this have to do with Neil deGrasse Tyson?  Apparently he is unaware of the racist-ness of the term black hole, because he named one of his books Death by Black Hole.  He was such a brilliant man with a great show on PBS.  As soon as the two Dallas Mensa applicants find out about good old Neil, he'll have to move see if he can salvage his reputation enough to cohost with Don Imus.  Maybe that will teach him a valuable lesson.

This was old news, but worth mentioning.  I actually started this post over a week ago, but circumstances made it so that I could not finish.  Pretty lame, since it turned out to be so short.

Good luck Neil.