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MURDER MYSTERY

Audio-book Review
By Chet Yarbrough

(Blog:awalkingdelight)
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Dissolution

dissolution

By C.J. Sansom

Narrated by Steven Crossley

: C.J. SANSOM (ENGLISH AUTHOR)

“Dissolution” is a good murder mystery.

This is the first of a series of historical novels about a physically impaired Royal Commissioner/attorney that investigates crimes in the time of Henry the VIII. The listener is introduced to Matthew Shardlake.

Shardlake is commissioned by Oliver Cromwell to investigate the murder of a fellow Commissioner. Sansom creates the feel and smell of early 16^th century life in a Sussex monastery, 50 miles from London. More interestingly, he reveals a version of Oliver Cromwell and the great upheaval of Roman Catholics at the time of Anne Boleyn’s beheading and King Henry the VIII’s rapacious hunger for Papist wealth. Sansom writes about social change in the 1530s. He reveals how that change muddies truth and justice, and exposes good and evil.

“Dissolution” is about Oliver Cromwell’s execution of King Henry’s orders to dissolve the Roman Catholic archdiocese and replace them with an Anglican Catholic hierarchy, responsible to the King of England rather than to the Pope of Rome. Henry the VIII’s purported goal is to reform the Catholic region in England but the underlying objective is to confiscate Roman Catholic assets to increase the Royal treasury.

King Henry capitalizes on the general population’s disgust with wealth and corruption in the local Archdiocese. The King commands Cromwell to send investigators (Royal Commissioners) to surrounding monasteries to search for legal means to dissolve their existence. One of these investigators is murdered; i.e. his head is lopped off in a monastery’ kitchen. Possible motives for the murder are fear of monastery dissolution, religious difference, sexual exploitation, and/or financial greed.

Leadership of the monastery suggests the perpetrator came from outside but evidence mounts to suggest that the likely villain or villains are within the monastery rather than without. That is the context in which C.J. Sansom places Commissioner Shardlake.

Shardlake’s character is more 21^st century than 16^th. Though he believes in God, he suspects religion as a dissembler of truth; i.e. he believes in the word of God but sees that God’s word is distorted by man. Shardlake, believes in the King’s plan to reform the church but becomes aware of Cromwell’s lies and deceit and begins to question Royal motive.

Shardlake shows himself to be a humanist that abhors physical punishment and abjures unfair treatment of women. His hunchbacked description and reported relationship with Oliver Cromwell reminds one of a conflicted human choosing to overcome adversity by educating himself, rationalizing human frailty, and believing that ends sometimes justify means. In the course of Shardlake’s investigation, the truths of his internal conflicts are revealed as he solves the murder.

What makes Sansom’s book more than a murder mystery is historical integrity and its larger human context. The story reveals the Machiavellian reasons for dissolution of the Roman Catholic Church in England. The Roman Catholic Church was not then, nor is it now, entirely good or entirely evil. As in all social change, dissolution of any human system of government, any kind of organization, throws both good and evil into the street; what remains is still a balance of good and evil but in a different human organizational form. Only the future and history reveal whether social change is better or worse. Evil does not disappear because it is a part of human nature, regardless of social change.

Listeners may be satisfied with “Dissolution” as a mystery, historical novel, or social commentary.

TRUTH TO POWER

Audio-book Review
By Chet Yarbrough

(Blog:awalkingdelight)
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

The Feminine Mystique

By: Betty Friedan

Narration by: Parker Posey

By writing–women are human beings first–, Betty Friedan speaks truth to power. Friedan’s theme in The Feminine Mystique attempts to enlighten thick-headed males and doubting women about the equality of human beings. It is sad to realize that such a banal and obvious statement as “women are human beings first” so perfectly exposes the ignorance of prejudice.

Every rational human being has a brain that neurologically functions in the same way; i.e. through chemical and neural interconnection. This is not to suggest that brains are exactly alike; that interconnection is exactly the same, or that genetics do not matter. It is not to suggest that environment does not matter. What Friedan shows is that sexuality, color of one’s skin, and culture are influences that create prejudice while the brain is an infinitely malleable organ that carries the potential for genius as well as stupidity.

Conference — What Friedan shows is that sexuality, color of one’s skin, and culture are influences that create prejudice while the brain is an infinitely malleable organ that carries the potential for genius as well as stupidity.

SIGMUND FREUD (1856-1939) Friedan suggests the Oedipus complex and penis envy are male delusions about female sexuality, perpetrated by Sigmund Freud and endorsed by most intellectuals and academicians in the early 20^th century.

Friedan suggests the Oedipus complex and penis envy are male delusions about female sexuality, perpetrated by Sigmund Freud and endorsed by most intellectuals and academicians in the early 20^th century. The Feminine Mystique, published in 1963, acknowledges Freud’s great insight to the psychology of human beings but derides diagnosis of female hysteria as a valid mental disorder.

Female hysteria disappears from professional psychology schools in the mid-20^th century. Friedan suggests female hysteria has little to do with sexuality, women’s menstruation, or change-of-life diagnosis. Her argument is that conversion disorder; hypochondria-sis, depression and anxiety in women are more likely caused by The Feminine Mystique, a false notion of a woman’s “role” in society; i.e. the idea that a woman can only be a spinster, wife, or mother.

Those roles limit the productive capability of half the human race. If a spinster chooses not to have a husband, there is more time to make productive contribution to the world. If a single woman chooses to be a wife, sharing the costs and burdens of domesticity, it leaves ample opportunity for other life interests; the same applies to motherhood. Being denied constructive opportunity drives women to the neuroses of the modern age.

WOMEN AND THE LADDER TO SUCCESS — If a single woman chooses to be a wife, sharing the costs and burdens of domesticity, it leaves ample opportunity for other life interests; the same applies to motherhood.

A woman can be a spinster, wife, or mother but she can also be a scientist, a President, a business mogul, or a bum. The Feminine Mystique exposes the false premise that women are primarily breeders and caregivers rather than equals in humanities’ race for money, power, and prestige. What Friedan reveals in The Feminine Mystique is that women can bear children and be equally interested in and capable of excelling in the world of money, power, and prestige. However, women are frustrated by inequality of opportunity caused by The Feminine Mystique which identifies women in a role that should be shared by all members of the human race.

FAMOUS WOMEN IN HISTORY A woman can be a spinster, wife, or mother but she can also be a scientist, a President, a business mogul, or a bum.

SEXUAL PREDATION (WOMEN AS OBJECTS TO FULFILL MALE FANTASIES)

Birthing children is unique to women just as sperm production is unique to men. Beyond these unique capabilities, a world of opportunity is open to both men and women, but men have a culturally and historically defined advantage. Friedan defines men’s advantages by noting false barriers produced by psychologists like Freud that fail to understand they are discounting productive potential of half the human race.

Worse than the existence of barriers to equal opportunity for women, Friedan explains the unconscious conspiracy that pervades American culture. Freidan acknowledges it is not a cabal of men but that it is a pervasive misunderstanding of what a human being is.

women in man's world — Worse than the existence of barriers to equal opportunity for women, Friedan explains the unconscious conspiracy that pervades American culture.

The tragedy is that this misunderstanding becomes self-perpetuating. Advertising trades on sexual innuendo that perpetuates objectification of women; studies like the Kinsey report falsely infer natural sexuality is inhibited in women that have higher education; blame is placed on women for children that become delinquents because they are not always present as homemakers and caregivers.

ELENA FERRANTE (AN ANOYMOUS AUTHOR--PRESUMED TO BE A WOMAN) — Advertising trades on sexual innuendo that perpetuates objectification of women.

Rationally, most people realize women are not sex objects. Advertising based on sexual innuendo is unlikely to change. The more ominous concerns raised by Friedan are false correlations suggesting higher education diminishes natural sexuality and that women (mothers) are primarily responsible for what children become as adults. Higher education is the primary hope for breaking the cycle of unequal treatment of women. Children become adults as a result of many things—not only from parenting but from genetics, health, and environment. Mothers are no more to blame than fathers who fail to share the responsibilities of home making and parenting.

parents and children — Mothers are no more to blame than fathers who fail to share the responsibilities of home making and parenting.

INSTITUTIONAL DISCRIMINATION–Women doing the same job as men in 2010 receive $.81 for every $1 paid to men, a 19% difference.

Freidan’s concern is that women are not treated as equals even though women are approximately equal-in-number to men. Things have changed since 1963 but equality remains a work-in-process. Of the fortune 500 companies in the United States, only 25 have female CEOs. Women doing the same job as men in 2010 receive $.81 for every $1 paid to men, a 19% difference. Though house work is shared more now than in the 1960s, women work 18 hours a week homemaking while men work 10 hours a week (according to a PEW Research Study in 2011); i.e. the greatest burden remains with women. Without meaning to argue that the glass is half empty rather than half full, the revolution exemplified by Friedan’s book is incomplete. Many people continue to fight for equality of all human beings but many men and women continue to resist; to the detriment of society.

The Feminine Mystique should be required reading in high schools. It is as relevant today as it was in 1963.

NATIONALIZED MEDICINE

Audio-book Review
By Chet Yarbrough

(Blog:awalkingdelight)
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death, and Brain Surgery

Written by: Henry Marsh

Narration by: Jim Barclay

HENRY MARSH (BRITISH NEUROSURGEON AND AUTHOR)

An interesting insight offered by Henry Marsh’s memoir, “Do No Harm”, is a contrast between American and British Medicine. Marsh’s candor about his life and profession surprise his audience and endear his curmudgeonly personality. The surprise is in Marsh’s profound empathy and personal conflicts over neurosurgical decisions.

Marsh’s endearment comes from explicit “f-word” rants about incompetence, technology, and bureaucracy. In addition to his rants, Marsh endears himself to an audience by explaining the distinction between a physician’s self-confidence and hubris. Marsh suggests physicians need understanding and competence; not undue preciousness, and pride-full medical knowledge. Jim Barclay’s narration perfectly suits the tone of Marsh’s memoir.

Marsh is able to enter into medicine with little pre-medical education in the sciences.

Either by dint of a formidable intellect or a quirk of the British education system (maybe both), Marsh takes all his science courses after deciding to become a doctor. One doubts an American medical school would have considered his application in the 1960 s.

Marsh graduates and begins his career in medicine under the guidance of experienced physicians. As he acquires experience, he chooses to specialize in neurosurgical medicine under the supervision of a Consulting Neurological Physician. The Consultant (a neurology physician trainee’s guide) works within the English national health care system as a qualified physician who supervises aspiring neurological physicians. This consultant chooses cases for trainees; under varying levels of supervision.

Though a neurological procedure may be done by a trainee, the consulting physician is responsible. This appears to be similar to internships in the United States. However, an interesting difference is in the insurance for interns.

MEDICAL INTERNSHIPS- English hospitals carry a trust to protect physicians from mistakes made in treating patients.

The UK’s physician-group self-insurance may be a distinction without a difference but, as in all medical insurance systems, mistakes do occur, and patients are harmed. The difference between physician-group self-insurance and American physician’ private insurance raises the specter of limited settlement for egregious mistakes. On the other hand, it suggests British physicians are more likely to be more forthcoming on mistakes that are made.

Marsh completes his trainee experience and decides to become a Consulting Neurological Physician in the national health care system. Marsh interestingly reveals several mistakes he and his trainees make during his years of consultancy. In revealing those mistakes, a listener pauses to think about risks of patients who depend on English’ or American’ medical services. Marsh’s stories of mistakes reflect on medical training, family apologies, and personal anguish over patient’ quality-of-life and death issues.

MEDICAL MALPRACTICE IN THE UNITED STATES

Marsh explains, at best a Consultant Surgeon expects to learn from surgical mistakes to avoid repetition.

The worst, for Marsh, is the apologies to families for the mistakes that are made. In contrast to Marsh’s way of addressing mistakes, American physicians seem more likely to avoid family apologies; while hiding behind legal and insurance company shields.

MEDICAL TREATMENT-WAITING FOR TREATMENT IN ENGLAND

A more subtle message in Marsh’s book is the failure of the English National Health Service to provide adequate care for the general population; e.g. its long lines of patients who wait for attention when rapidly growing tumors are destroying a patient’s neurological system.

Doctor/patient ratios in 2016 were 2.6/1,000 people in America. In 2018, the doctor/patient ratio was 2.8/1,000 in the United Kingdom. This raises the question of how long would Americans have to wait in line with a national health care system? Some argue physician assistants could be trained to take care of less serious medical issues. That would spread the burden of patient treatment.

Marsh complains of inadequate bed availability for patients that need operations. Financing for the National Health Service is inadequate for the number of patients that need help. This seems a likely consequence of an American national health care system.

Marsh notes that he carries private health insurance to supplement his family’s medical needs. At the same time, he infers private hospital services tend to gouge patients for their medical service; in part, from charges for unnecessary tests and superfluous operations.

Marsh attacks the bureaucratic nature of the National Health Service that hires hospital administrators who are directed to reduce costs; regardless of patient’ load or patient’ need. Technological improvements for England’s National Health Service are delayed because of lack of financing, poor administration, and inadequate training. These are maladies that will plague a national health care system in the United States.

Marsh leavens his criticism of England’s national health care by writing of his experience in the former U.S.S.R. (specifically Ukraine) where problems are monumentally greater.

In the end, America’s effort to improve national health care is tallied in one’s mind against the current English picture painted by Marsh. For medical patients, the English system seems riskier than the American system. Doctors in England seem more insulated from medical mistakes. If doctors are more insulated, they may take more risks; i.e. risks that can lead to patient’ disablement or death. The American system, if one can afford the service, seems more conservative and less likely to take risks.

It seems England’s national health care offers a level of societal comfort because there is hope for affordable treatment. On the other hand, Marsh clearly shows how government bollixes National Health Care with inadequate funding and a bumbling administrative system. Some would say this is why the U. S. should not nationalize health care.

Marsh notes England’s private system has not met the needs of citizens who can afford additional service. The private system suffers from human nature’s folly; i.e. the lure of wealth at the expense of fairly priced or truly needed medical treatment.

Marsh suggests the private system suffers from human nature’s folly; i.e. the lure of wealth at the expense of fairly priced or truly needed medical treatment.

Is medical health service a human right or privilege? One draws their own conclusion about British and American Medicine. Marsh shows the monumental problems of affordable health care in England.

A listener of “Do No Harm” infers problems of the British system for medical care will challenge America’s desire for universal health care. Dr. Marsh’s answer seems to revolve around empathy for all human beings; i.e. regardless of whether a country has a nationalized or private health care system.

MASOCHIST’S GUIDE TO AFRICA

Audio-book Review
By Chet Yarbrough
(Blog:awalkingdelight)
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

A Primate’s Memoir: A Neuroscientist’s Unconventional Life Among the Baboons

A PRIMATE'S MEMOIR

Written by: Robert M. Sapolsky

Narration by: Mike Chamberlain

ROBERT SAPOLSKY (AMERICAN NEUROENDOCRINOLGIST, PROFESSOR OF BIOLOGY, NEUROSCIENCE, AND NEUROSURGERY AT STANFORD UNIVERSITY) — ROBERT SAPOLSKY (AMERICAN NEURO-ENDOCRINOLGIST, PROFESSOR OF BIOLOGY, NEUROSCIENCE, AND NEUROSURGERY AT STANFORD UNIVERSITY)

Robert Sapolsky’s “A Primates Memoir” is a masochist’s guide to Africa. (Our 2017 trip to Africa was luxurious in comparison.) Sapolsky’s trip is what you would expect from a biological anthropologist who sojourns to Africa in the early 80s. Sapolsky lives in a tent while studying baboons.

AFRICA JULY 2017_7695.JPG — Our stay in Africa is luxurious in comparison to Sapolsky’s in the 1980s.

At the age of 12, Sapolsky appears to know what he wants from life. In his middle-school years, he begins studying Swahili, the primary language of Southeast Africa.

Sapolsky’s career is aimed at understanding Southeast Africa. Sapolsky’s 1984 PhD. thesis is titled “The Neuro-endocrinology of Stress and Aging”. Presumably, his trip to Africa became the basis for his academic thesis. Sapolsky’s experience in Africa is recounted in “A Primate’s Memoir”.

AFRICA JULY 2017_8101.JPG — Animal preserve in Southeast Africa

While studying Baboons, Sapolsky is exposed to the worst of African society. His memoir of those years touches on the aftermath of Africa’s colonization, Africa’s ubiquitous diseases, its governments’ instability, and its abundant and frequently poached wildlife.

Robert Mugabe (President of Zimbabwe) — Robert Mugabe (Former President of Zimbabwe)

JACOB ZUMA (FORMER PRESIDENT OF SOUTH AFRICA)

Though some of what Sapolsky writes has changed, today’s news shows characters like Robert Mugabe, and Jacob Zuma, who are accused of victimizing the poor to enrich themselves.

Some African, and other nation-state leaders around the world, are corrupt. Many Southeastern African bureaucrats, foreign business moguls, indigenous apartheid promoters, and wildlife exploiters still walk, drive, and bump down streets and dirt trails of this spectacular continent.

Self-interest often conflicts with general economic growth and stability. Today’s Southeast Africa is great for tourism (one of the three biggest industries) but the poor remain poor, the rich richer, and the middle class nearly non-existent.

AFRICA JULY 2017_7219.JPG — Today’s Southeast Africa is great for tourism (one of the three biggest industries) but the poor remain poor, the rich richer, and the middle class nearly non-existent.

Sapolsky returns to Africa after marrying. He squires his science and marriage partner to revisit a baboon troop he was studying in the 1980s. At the same time, he touches on the cultural norms of a society that seems little changed from his early years in Africa.

Sapolsky recounts the melding of a tragi-comic story of an African who is mauled by a Hyena. In telling the story, he reveals the stoic acceptance of life as it is. However, each time the story of the mauling is told by different people, it changes. The change comes from a blend of truth and fiction that conforms to the tellers’ view of themselves. The essence of the story is that an African man sleeping in a tent is mauled by a Hyena looking for food.

CHANGING STORY — Re-telling of an African story changes with each narration–The change comes from a blend of truth and fiction that conforms to the tellers’ view of themselves..

When the story is told by Masai warriors hired by a company to protect its employees, the victim is saved when the Hyena is speared by the Masai warrior’s courage. When the story is told by the victim, it is a company cook who bashes the Hyena that runs away. When the story is told by a newspaper reporter, the Masai warriors were drunk and not doing their job; the cook bashed the Hyena, and the victim survived. When the story is told by the cook, the victim’s yell brings the cook to the tent; the cook grabs a rock, bashes the Hyena, and the Hyena flees. Finally, when the story is told by the company employer, the victim is not an employee, the Mesai warriors did spear the Hyena, and the employer had no responsibility for the victim.

A cultural interpretation is inferred by these many versions of the same story. Some humans indulge in alcohol to escape reality. Most humans wish to protect an idealized version of their existence. News coverage is sometimes a mix of truth and fiction to make stories more interesting than accurate.

Life is happenstance with each human dealing with its consequence as an end or beginning that either defines, or extends their understanding of life. Truth is in the eye of the beholder. Some people are willing to risk their lives for others. Private companies focus on maximizing profit and minimizing responsibility. Life is not an either/or proposition despite Kierkegaard’s philosophy. Humans are good and bad; no one is totally one or the other–not even America’s morally corrupt and ethically challenged leader.

BABOONS — Sapolsky shows that baboon families, like all families, are born, mature, and die within a framework of psychological and physical challenges imbued by culture. All lives face challenge but culture can ameliorate or magnify the intensity and consequence of the challenge.

The overlay of Sapolsky’s memoir is the research and reported evolution of a baboon family in Southeast Africa. He shows that baboon families, like all families, are born, mature, and die within a framework of psychological and physical challenges imbued by culture. All lives face challenge but culture can ameliorate or magnify the intensity and consequence of the challenge.

Sapolsky gives the example of Kenyan “crazy” people who are hospitalized, treated, and fed to deal with their life circumstance. In America, it seems “crazy” people are left to the street. The inference is that Kenyan “crazy” people live a less stressful life than American “crazy” people. This is a positive view of Kenyan culture but there are ample negative views in Sapolsky’s memoir. Rampant poverty, malnutrition, and abysmal medical treatment are Sapolsky’s recollected examples.

Sapolsky’s memoir shows he clearly lives an unconventional life, but it seems a life of purpose. What more is there?

American

Audio-book Review
By Chet Yarbrough

(Blog:awalkingdelight)
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

The True American: Murder and Mercy in Texas

Written by: Anand Giridharadas

Narration by: Anand Giridharadas

More mass shootings this weekend. Twenty innocents murdered in El Paso and nine in Toledo.

Who are we? What have we become? A deplorable habit of humans is to classify others as either one of us or one of them.

“The True American” is a news reporter’s story of two Texas murders and a wounding. The victims are people living and working in 21st century America. By birth, the three victims are Bangladeshi, Indian, and Pakistani. “The True American” is the story of murder and mayhem that tests Texas’s death penalty. The facts of the story expose human nature’s habit of “us and them” categorization.

The Texas’ murders could have been anywhere in America. Anand Giridharadas’ book is about “us and them” choices people make every day.

There is a causal link in America’s mass shootings that goes beyond the gun lobby and AK-47s. Many of these horrific events are motivated by the isolation from Covid19 and “us and them “categories” that make one person different from another.

There is a causal link in America’s mass shootings that goes beyond the gun lobby and AK-47s. The isolation caused by Covid19 raises social tension. Both guns and Covid19 link Americans to unnecessary death.

Yesterday’s examples of “us and them” in America are shootings in El Paso, Texas and Toledo, Ohio. Other examples of “us and them” mentality are our President’s categorization of illegal Mexican’ immigrants as murderers and rapists, a white man’s slaughter of nine Americans because they are Black, a Muslims’ murder of five soldiers because they are American, and the 2019 Poway synagogue shooting in Califorinia. Then there are this week’s murders of innocents at a parade in Waukasha, Wisconsin.

RAISUDDIN RAIS BHUIYAN (BANGLADESHI AMERICAN-TECHNOLOGY PROFESSIONAL IN DALLAS, TX.)

The focus of Giridharadas’ book is the maiming of Raisuddin “Rais” Bhuiyan. Bhuiyan is an aspiring American émigré from India, who is shot in the face by Mark Anthony Stroman.

Stroman murders two and maims Rais Bhuiyan, because he sees himself as a part of “us” (Americans) and his victims a part of “them” (Arab terrorists). Ironically, none of the three victims are Middle Eastern.

Like our President’s slander of Mexicans, a white man’s slaughter of Blacks, a Muslim’s murder of soldiers in 2015, and the 2019 murder in a Jewish synagogue, Stroman believes anyone that looks or acts like “them” is not worthy of “us”.

Bhuiyan’s life is worthless to Stroman because he is avenging destruction of the World Trade Center in New York. To Stroman, Bhuiyan and two un-related Asians are terrorists because of the color of their skin. Ironically, both Stroman and Bhuiyan, in the beginning of this true story, think in “us and them” terms. By the end of Giridharadas’ book, Stroman and Bhuiyan realize there is only “we”.

Bhuiyan and Stroman are polar opposites in many ways but the same in some ways. Bhuiyan is raised in a loving family in India. Stroman is raised by an uncaring mother and stepfather. Bhuiyan is strongly supported by his family to get a good education. Stroman is ignored or abused by his family and drops out of middle school. Bhuiyan excels in a private India’ school and becomes an elite citizen of Bangladesh’s government Air Force. Stroman is a “lost boy”; in and out of jail, and largely educated by government penal institutions. Bhuiyan decides to immigrate to America. Stroman knocks around Dallas, Texas, slipping in and out of jobs and jails.

However, Bhuiyan and Stroman are alike in their social isolation. Bhuiyan arrives in America without friends or family. Stroman breaks ties with family and makes few friends. Stroman isolates himself from society with drugs that make him belligerent. Stroman is prone to relationships with fellow societal misfits. Bhuiyan isolates himself from society by the circumstance of being a stranger in a strange land. Bhuiyan moves from New York to Dallas because a fellow Asian immigrant offers him a job. Stroman is a “…True American”. Bhuiyan is an aspiring “…True American”.

Bhuiyan’s early associations in America are with fellow Bangladeshis with the goal of finding employment. Stroman’s associations are with outliers of American society with the same goal of finding employment. Bhuiyan’s effort to find jobs is difficult because of his recent immigration and ethnic isolation. Stroman’s effort to find lawful jobs is difficult because of his prison record, drug use, and volatile temper.

Stroman is convicted for one of his two Dallas’ murders and sentenced to death. After ten years of appeal, Stroman’s execution is imminent. Bhuiyan, in that ten years, continues his journey to become a “…True American.” In the course of their troubled lives, Bhuiyan and Stroman grow to understand each other’s humanity.

Stroman re-imagined his life as his execution date approaches. On the face of Stroman’s written and video confessions, Stroman either manipulates the media or has truly recognized the error of his ways.

Stroman may have grown to understand, humanity is not a matter of “us and them” but a complicated mix of good and evil in every human being. Ironically, Stroman’s and Bhuiyan’s journey is through religious belief, one as a Muslim; the other as a Christian.

Stroman is executed by lethal injection on July 20, 2011.

EXTREME MEDICINE

Audio-book Review

By Chet Yarbrough

(Blog:awalkingdelight)

Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Extreme Medicine: How Exploration Transformed Medicine in the Twentieth Century

By: Kevin Fong

Narrated by Jonathan Cowley

KEVIN FONG (MD, SPECIALIZES IN SPACE MEDICINE IN THE UK)

Though not precisely on point, Doctor Kevin Fong addresses the principle of “right to try” drugs for treatment of terminal patients. In 2018 the House of Representatives of the United States voted a majority for “right to try”. The Senate rejected it.

Fong, a physician, believes exploration and extreme medicine are linked. He believes human survival depends on that linkage. Fong’s book, Extreme Medicine, links exploration and medical advance with real-life stories of adventure, discovery; failure and success. He argues that exploration of the unknown transforms medicine.

Jean Hilliard (Frozen for six hours in January 2018–heart stopped and was clinically dead but recovered with no brain damage.)

Fong begins with a story of frostbite in the early 20^th century. The two edges of subzero weather are revealed; one edge destroys while the other preserves life

Fong recounts the life of a mariner that dies from frostbite. Frostbite slowly saps life from his limbs, his brain, and finally his heart. Then Fong tells of a skier’s accident in freezing weather that leaves her clinically dead for three hours. The skier lives; even though more than 20 minutes passed without an operating autonomic system.

It took the ski patrol 20 minutes more to dig Kristin out as she was buried head first in the snow.
“She was completely unconscious,” McAllister said. “She was completely cyanotic, which means she was blue all over. When I got down there I just opened her airway and started to clear her chest of snow. Doing so she spontaneously started breathing on her own.

The mariner slowly succumbs to extreme cold and dies. The skier rapidly succumbs to extreme cold and lives. To Fong, this is a trans-formative discovery in medicine. The skier’s recovery demonstrated the value of rapidly reducing one’s body temperature to arrest deterioration from physical trauma. Doctors who treated the skier were using extreme medicine to preserve life when history suggests she would never recover. That extreme medicine became standard operating procedure for certain kinds of traumatic injury.

Fong offers several more stories of extreme medical practice. Extreme medicine may initially kill patients but become life lines to future patients once extreme practices prove successful. Big examples are heart surgery and organ transplants. In the beginning, physicians abhorred the idea of cracking a living person’s chest to operate on a human heart. Fong correlates humankind’s instinct for exploration with doctor’s exploration of medicine.

There seems some truth in that suggestion but there is an ethical difference. Doctors are taking someone else’s life in their hands. An explorer of the North or South Pole is choosing to risk his own life in exploration. As a patient, fear of death is a constant motivation. As an explorer, fear of death is situational rather than ever-present.

Ethics come into issue in the doctor’s sale of extreme medicine. Life is always, to quote a book and movie title, a matter of “me before you”. Doctors are human. Money, power, and prestige affect their decisions just as they affect all human decisions. The difference is that the patient has more to lose than the doctor.

A logical extension of “Extreme Medicine” is the Chinese scientist, He Jiankui, who chooses to be the first to edit the genome of a baby — allegedly to protect the baby from contracting AIDS.

Dr. He is criticized as irresponsible for using a gene-editing technology called CRISPR that is presently being tested around the world. The ramification of Dr. He’s genomic editing gives rise to concern over experiments like those conducted by the fictional scientist, Dr. Moreau.

The ethics issue is exemplified by Congress’s rejection of “right to try” legislation. A patient’s right to choose is a form of extreme medicine with ethical and, many would say, moral significance.

Living life is by nature an exploration. Human beings that choose to explore advance knowledge. Knowledge drawn from exploration does transform medicine. Knowledge transforms everything in life. Life on earth is finite; with exploration, life is potentially infinite. However, it is self-deluding to forget the moral and ethical questions raised by “Extreme Medicine”.

KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCE

Audio-book Review
By Chet Yarbrough

(Blog:awalkingdelight)
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Brain Myths Exploded-Lessons from Neuroscience

Recorded by THE GREAT COURSES
By Indre Viskontas

Lecture

(AUTHOR) Indre Viskontas is an Adjunct Professor of Psychology at the University of San Francisco. With a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience, Viskontas has done research on neuro-degenerative diseases.

Indre Viskontas covers a broad area of knowledge and experience. She offers many counter intuitive insights to human behavior and the brain in several recorded lectures. She explains neuronal and behavioral functions of the brain.

Viskontas explains how and why the brain, though highly complex, and insightful, can be judgmentally weak, misleading, and health adverse. A human brain can provide extraordinary insight to the nature of things and events while maintaining the body’s autonomic system. On the other hand, that same brain can create appalling misinformation about things and events, distort the truth, and cause autonomic failures.

From regions of the brain to basic parts of neurons, Viskontas dissects what is known and unknown about brain function. She ties brain anatomy to our limited knowledge of consciousness and human behavior.

Viskontas is one of many myth breakers. She notes, the brain has adapted to its environment, but some functions are inefficient, misdirected, and self-destructive. Brain evolution is a lucky draw informed by circumstances.

The brain is not perfect. She notes that the brain is a part of an evolutionary cycle. Every cycle of life has the chance of improving or destroying some aspect of the brain’s design. So far, the brain has adequately adapted to its environment, but some functions are inefficient, misdirected, and self-destructive. Brain evolution is a matter of luck and circumstance.

Giant dinosaurs adapted in their generation, but most dinosaur species died because their physical evolution could not keep pace with environmental change. Viskontas notes the human species follows the same evolutionary path.

Luck comes from adaptation to an evolutionary change. Circumstance comes from the environment that compels change. Only time will tell whether environmental change becomes too great for human adaptation.

Viskontas shows the perfect brain is a myth because evolution is an arbitrary and imperfect process. Evolution can produce human gene improvements or replicate destructive gene changes.

Viskontas notes current measurement of intelligence slightly correlates with brain size. But, size matters little.

She notes that Einstein’s brain is found to be average in size. However, it is noted to have some differences; i.e. like the number of glia cells (chemical “information transmission” cells) which were more numerous in Einstein than the average brain. Also, Einstein’s brain had more interconnection between brain segments than the average brain. Bigger is not necessarily better.

Viskontas suggests chemical imbalance as a singular explanation for psychosis is misleading.

The many connections between brain segments suggest chemical imbalance is an oversimplification of psychiatric dysfunction. Viskontas acknowledges the success of drugs to mitigate aberrant behavior but she notes that neurotransmitters affected by a chemical imbalance are only one part of a healthy functioning brain. Chemicals in the brain are always in flux. Drug therapy is a scatter shot solution rather than precise treatment for negative psychological symptoms.

Another often-believed myth is that people who are left-brained are logical; while people who are right-brained are creative.

Viskontas shows that both sides of the brain are activated when creativity or logic are drawn upon. The interconnections and malleability of brain hemispheres suggest logic and creativity come from both hemispheres and can (to a degree) come from one, if the other is damaged.

Viskontas notes that men’s and women’s brains are different.

However, Viskontas concludes similarities far outweigh differences. She notes double-blind experiments that show women have better memories than men when emotion is involved. The region of the brain called the amygdala is larger for men than women. Viskontas suggests the different sizes may account for differences in sexual behavior.

Parenthetically, she notes there is a medication bias in treatment for men and women because most experiments use men as the subject of investigation for drug trials. Women are underrepresented in clinical trials.

Viskontas and other writers have exploded myths of accurate human memory.

Human brains are not movie projectors. Human brains recall memories as stories; not discrete facts. Memories are recreations of what one has experienced (both in the distant past, near past, and present). Facts are often added, and stories are embellished when memories are recalled. The accuracy of memories is highly influenced by an individual’s past and present experience.

Viskontas goes on to explain that life experience creates conscious and sub-conscious bias. When past experience is added to the memory of an event, the brain recalls memory for continuity, more than truth; i.e., facts change, and incidents are misrepresented, or misunderstood. Recalled events are biased by experience.

We have five senses, but they focus on details that meld into a story that makes logical sense to the person recalling a memory.

Viskontas notes that our senses mislead us because we do not see everything. Like historians, we only report the facts we choose to include. There are always more facts about historical events than can be reported by the most diligent historians. Some facts are left out that change the accuracy of history. That is why Ulysses Grant is an incompetent President to some and a great President to others.

Viskontas sites experiments that show neurons continue to grow throughout one’s life if they stay engaged with society and work on learning new things. Those over 50 need to get out of their cars and walk to the store or the local coffee shop whenever possible or practical. Stand more; sit less.

Then there is the myth of old age and neuronal decay that begins after 50. Viskontas sites experiments that show neurons continue to grow throughout one’s life if they stay engaged with society and work on learning new things. An important caveat is that neuronal growth is improved with exercise. So those over 50 need to get out of their cars and walk to the store or the local coffee shop whenever possible or practical. Stand more; sit less.

There are more brain myths exploded by Viskontas, but a final example is the myth that we use only 10% of our brain. All parts of our brain are interconnected. Not all parts are necessarily engaged at once, but interconnections suggests 100% of our brain is used at one time or another.

Viskontas’s knowledge and experience suggest memory holds some truth but not all the truth.

Higgs-bosun

Audio-book Review
By Chet Yarbrough

(Blog:awalkingdelight)
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

The Particle at the End of the Universe

the particle at the end of the universe

By Sean Carroll

Narrated by Jonathan Hogan

Sean Carroll is a theoretical cosmologist and senior research associate in the Department of Physics at the California Institute of Technology. “The Particle at the End of the Universe”, published in 2012 is focused on the story of Higgs-boson, the widely and incorrectly termed “god particle”. Higgs-bosun is discovered at CERN with the Large Hadron Collider’ experiments done between 2011 and 2013.

The LHC enables scientists to experiment with particle physics at the most minute level in the world; at least, presently possible. The LHC offers a mechanism for proving physics’ theories with experimentation formerly un-available to science. The wonder of the machine is its ability to identify the remains of particles never seen before. It offers the opportunity to see skeletal remains of the elemental particles of life. One presumes many physics theories will be experimentally proven true or false by the LHC. More consequentially, the identification of a Higgs-boson like particle opens a whole new area of science research and theory.

Carroll notes that the LHC is the largest machine in the world with a 17 mile circular tunnel built underground, below several Swiss towns. It was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research. The LHC is a super cooled vacuum in a tunnel–designed to accelerate protons at near the speed of light for collisions that will reveal the remains of sub-atomic particles. The acceleration is achieved by using giant magnets that accelerate protons trapped in the tunnel. The LHC is in pursuit of the minutest elemental particles of the universe. They are presumably undiscovered because the total energy of known particles does not match the calculated energy of a specific field.

LHC MAP SHOWING CERN SITE–When listeners finish “The Particle at the End of the Universe, they will understand why Higgs-boson is a magnificent discovery and the LHC is worth its nine-billion-dollar expenditure.

Carroll’s explanations of physics and the momentous importance of Higgs-boson are clear and understandable. Early on, one finds Carroll explaining that particle physics is a misleading category of scientific research. Carroll notes that Higgs-boson is not a particle. It is a field. Further, Carroll notes–all that humankind perceives in the world is made of fields, not particles.

With the advent of experimentally proven quantum mechanics, particle physics is transformed into field physics because of uncertainty. Every particle known to science is on the move. In order for one to view a particle—a proton, neutron, electron, etc., it must be frozen in time, which is not its natural state. Every particle exists within a field, a field in which particles are always in motion; always in one place or another.

Among many insights offered by Carroll, is the fundamental categorization of elemental particles. All particles are broken into two categories. One category is Fermion. The second is Boson. Fermions are elemental particles that are composed of matter.

Bosons are elemental particles that are force fields like magnetism.

Electrons, neutrinos, and quarks are fermions, the matter of the universe. Photons, gluons, W bosons, and Z bosons are forces acting on fermions within fields. These elemental particles are massless. All of these particles would remain massless without the Higgs-boson mechanism (field). The Higgs-boson field creates mass out of massless particles.

HIGGS-BOSON DISCOVERY A useful analogy reported by Carroll explains how a Higgs-boson field creates mass. Imagine two people walking through a room filled with equally dispersed people. The people-filled’ room is the Higgs-boson field. The two people walking through the room are added massless elemental particles. However, one of the two people is famous. The crowd congregates around the famous person to create a mass of people while the less famous person passes through the room (the field) unnoticed.

Carroll explains the experimental proofs of quantum mechanics are the reason Higgs-boson, or something like it, must exist. That is why its discovery was so important. Higgs-boson is the field in which known particles of the universe gain mass. Higgs-bosun is the famous person that walks into the people-filled’ room. Without Higgs-boson or something that works like Higgs-boson, life (matter and energy) would not exist.

Carroll offers other insights—about symmetry, super-symmetry, and breaking symmetry. He touches on dark matter and string theory. All subjects are interestingly presented.

In general, Carroll crystallizes the importance of theoretical and experimental science.

When listeners finish “The Particle at the End of the Universe, they will understand why Higgs-boson is a magnificent discovery and the LHC is worth its nine-billion-dollar expenditure.

INSTITUTIONAL FAILURE

Audio-book Review
By Chet Yarbrough

(Blog:awalkingdelight)
Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Fourth of July Creek: A Novel

By Smith Henderson

Narrated by MacLeod Andrews, Jenna Lamia

SMITH HENDERSON (Author, Screenwriter)

On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 the least trustworthy, a random audience survey marks trust in government as 1. Therein lies the fear of government intervention in the ideals of capitalism. It strikes at the heart of today’s public concern over economic stimulus, the environment, voting rights, equality of opportunity, police reform, and freedom.

Smith Henderson’s Fourth of July Creek is about broken lives and institutional failure. After two chapters, a listener wonders, “Is this America”? Henderson vivifies a part of America conditioned by high divorce rates, sexual exploitation, substance abuse, and institutional apathy.

In Henderson’s story Pete Snow is a divorced, alcoholic social worker. Snow works in child welfare services, covering a large area of Montana. Snow makes a point of saying he is not a cop whenever he is investigating a home with children that are suspected of being neglected.

Snow is a character that sees the worst side of human nature; i.e. like a cop, Snow is exposed to a world of human’ degradation that fills and empties his life.

Though Snow is careful to distance himself from police, he is mired in the same dark side of humanity.

Henderson’s point is human apathy grows in some social service jobs because government lacks oversight and public accountability. The public feels the job is getting done because there is an institution to serve the need. Henderson’s story implies the public is apathetic. The public becomes apathetic because government has a department to do the job. The public might trust but does not verify. (Even more likely, the public is consumed by their own needs and wants and ignores social services that do not directly affect them.)

DONALD TRUMP (REPUBLICAN NOMINEE FOR PRESIDENT OF THE U.S. 2016)

Fourth of July Creek infers that Presidents make no difference when it comes to broken lives of abandoned and abused children. However, Trump has shown (often in a negative light) that Presidents do make a difference.

Over 400 immigrant children remain separated from their families because of Trump’s enforcement of a flawed immigration policy.

Henderson’s story shows that child welfare services, like many public service jobs, attract employees with good intention who succumb to apathy and routine. The job becomes a paycheck rather than a calling. It is not that an employee is necessarily bad or incompetent but public service goals are often not humanly achievable within strict use of institutional rules. Institutional rules are made by people who often only preserve institutions. The institution survives whether or not it solves human problems.

The story begins with the case of a single mother, a teenage son, and a pre-school daughter. The mother and son are brawling with each other. A cop is at the scene when Snow arrives. Snow is a case worker for the family. The mother is a drug addict. She cannot manage her son for reasons greater than her drug habit. The solution is to remove the son from the family to live with a relative but the relative does not want the boy.

Snow finds a foster family that takes the boy but the boy ultimately runs away after the foster family decides he is too ungovernable.

The boy is caught. He is placed in something like a reform school. He is institutionalized. The boy is abandoned.

In the boy’s mind, Snow betrayed him. Snow is remorseful but has no realistic alternative. He cannot find the boy’s mother. She has moved on. Even if she had not moved on, Snow finds that the boy’s mother had sexualized her relationship with the son and could not be any part of the boy’s life. Divorce, sexuality, substance abuse, and institutionalized apathy swallow this American boy’s life.

This sexually abused son is only a small part of Henderson’s story. The main story revolves around family dysfunction in America. Child abuse is bred by single parent families, sexual exploitation, substance abuse, and ineffectual public service institutions. Several families, including Snow’s own family, are battered by divorce, sexual depredation, drug and alcohol abuse, and unavailable or ineffectual public services.

A deranged woman is married to a man who loves her deeply. The husband is unable to comprehend or deal with her psychosis. The husband enables his wife by isolating her and their family in the wilderness. The children are raised like animals in the forest. A myth about the family is created by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the FBI, and DEA. The ATF begins a covert operation to investigate the family. In the course of the investigation, the husband is betrayed by an undercover ATF agent and becomes a conspiracy-of-government’ believer.

RUBY RIDGE (RANDY WEAVER, SURVIVOR)

Snow comes across one of the husband’s sons and begins a case file on the family. Snow becomes a friend of the son and eventually the husband. This journey to friendship and understanding reveals a part of Henderson’s theme about American extremism and how it germinates and grows.

Henderson frames a story that captures American government failure. The book can be listened to as a cautionary tale, a call to action, or just a well written tale of travail. It is no wonder that government trust is at such a low ebb. The events of January 6, 2021 are a reflection of loss of trust in American government.

At the very least, one comes away with the feeling of how lucky they are to have NOT lived the life of one of Henderson’s characters. MacLeod Andrews’ and Jenna Lamia’s narration add to the drama of Henderson’s expertly written fiction.

In spite of Henderson’s heart breaking story, America remains among the best places in the world to live. In retrospect, only a small number of U.S. Presidents have managed to restore trust in government. In 2021, a new President has an opportunity to restore that trust.

WORLD RULE

Tech geeks are trending toward rule of the world but humans remain too complicated and diverse for this generation of code makers and breakers to dominate the world.

Audio-book Review

By Chet Yarbrough

(Blog:awalkingdelight)

Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Automate This: How Algorithms Came to Rule Our World

By Christopher Steiner

Narrated by Walter Dixon

: CHRISTOPHER STEINER (AUTHOR,NEWSPAPER-MAGAZINE WRITER)

With the subtitle—”How Algorithms Came to Rule Our World”, Christopher Steiner’s Automate This is hyperbolic. Tech geeks are trending toward rule of the world but humans remain too complicated and diverse for this generation of code makers and breakers to dominate the world.

Social and political science have not reached a state of measurement and predictable outcome that reaches Karl Popper’s criteria for science. Popper’s requirement for empirical falsification is not achievable with social and political algorithms because falsification has little relevance. Social and political analysis, even with the use of algorithms, is not science.

: Taking Steiner’s word that a Quant predicted some of the Middle East conflicts is not enough evidence to suggest algorithms rule the world.

(Steiner notes that Mubarak’s ouster and Arab Spring were predicted in advance by a Quant.) Steiner also explains how algorithms are used for personality qualification of astronauts. The idea is to profile astronauts to mitigate conflicts between humans in confined quarters during space travel. The profile is to predict potential conflicts and wash out any astronaut candidate that might mutiny during a long voyage.

: Profiling is not new. It is a technique used by branches of the military, and by many governments, and corporations. Certainly, it is more comprehensively done today with computers but a high degree of error remains.

Steiner’s anecdotes of chess players, astronaut conflicts, and poker game predictions using algorithms suggests promise, but algorithm use remains a far cry from ruling the world.

: Steiner’s history of algorithm growth is a cautionary tale. At one extreme, there is a vision of a brave new world where privacy is impossible and human manipulation inevitable. At the other extreme, is Ray Kurzweil’s singularity where genetically enhanced humans gain algorithmic capability through a meld of humans and robots.

Steiner offers examples of algorithms that have enhanced good and bad behavior in humans. Algorithms have improved customer service for aggrieved consumers by customizing responses for defective products and services. When an automated voice receives a customer’s complaint, an algorithm analyzes the nature (words and demeanor) of the customer’s aggravation and forwards a customer’s call to a person that can help resolve the complaint.

: QUANTS–COMPUTER TECHNICIANS WHO CREATED MORTGAGE BACKED DERIVATIVES. With the advent of computer technology, the added assets in derivative instruments became so complex that individual human judgement of value is clouded.

The 2007-2008 financial crash is caused by financial derivatives designed by Quants using algorithms that multiplied the effect of human greed; i.e. millions of people were financially destroyed by unregulated financial securities, created by financial analyst’ algorithms.

: Of particular interest is Steiner’s explanation of algorithm impact on jobs. Like the industrial revolution, the world’s work force will dramatically change with continued automation.

More product production will be automated through algorithms that manipulate machines to do the work formerly done by humans. Steiner believes primary growth industries will be ruled by technology. No jobs will be unaffected by algorithms.

Steiner notes that even medical services for common colds and routine visits will be served by algorithmic analysis and drug prescription services. Code hackers will be offered great job opportunities. Call centers will become bigger employers but even those jobs will be increasingly handled by algorithms that minimize employee involvement.

: MANUFACTURING JOBS WILL CHANGE

A conclusion one may draw from Steiner’s book is that middle managers of call centers, sales people for algorithmic products, teachers, personal service providers, and organization executives will be in demand but many traditional labor positions will disappear.

Steiner’s book is a recruitment tool for today’s and tomorrow’s code hackers. That is where new jobs will be created. Steiner suggests that young and future populations should plan to acquire basic math skills, learn code, and plan for a future of automation and exploration.

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