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Category Archives: Reviews

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini

21-Jan-10

No wonder this book as been a best-seller for a long time. The book has a very good combination of academic and personal essay styles. Very easy to read and very convincing.
Dr. Robert Cialdini explains, out of curiosity from his personal experiences and his academic research, what makes people agree to the “compliance [...]

Honest Signals: How They Shape Our World by Alex (Sandy) Pentland

20-Nov-09

Reading this book was more like reading a Ph.D paper. Besides, the idea seems interesting, but the arguments and evidence weren’t there to me. Quite disappointing.

The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite by David Kessler

22-Oct-09

Dr. Kessler talks about a subject that I have been struggling with for my entire life. While some of the biological research results he talked about were interesting and enlightening, I am not sure if his proposed solutions are anything new (and they are quite generic). I doubt we’ll see “The End of [...]

The Numerati by Stephen Baker

21-Sep-09

I thought the organization of the chapters were interesting. Some stories were interesting. However, ultimately, this book by Stephen Baker felt too light on details for me.

The Parents We Mean To Be: How Well-Intentioned Adults Undermine Children’s Moral and Emotional Development by Richard Weissbourd

26-Aug-09

I liked the fact that the book by Richard Weissbourd had a strong emphasis on the morality (as compared to the happiness). It’s something that I also feel that is lacking in the fast-paced, low-birth-rate world of today.
The book had an interesting section on the affects of the “Americanization” of the immigrant children on [...]

acer Aspire Easystore H340

14-Jul-09

A Bit of Background
I have been looking for a backup solution for home. Ever since I took up a digital camera in 2001, I have been accumulating quite a bit of slices of my life in the form of digital photos. That collection grew with the arrival of my daughter.
I never liked the [...]

Inventing the Movies: Hollywood’s Epic Battle Between Innovation and the Status Quo, from Thomas Edison to Steve Jobs by Scott Kirsner

13-Jul-09

As a person who enjoys movie and technologies in audio-video entertainment, I really enjoyed this historical overview by Scott Kirsner.
The main thread of his storytelling is the struggles between the innovators and the “preservationists” (or “status quo”), and mostly focused on the triumphs on the innovators’ part. And I think that was the only [...]

Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely

01-Jul-09

Another pickup from Fresh Air and TED. Also, Dan Ariely sometimes does guest appearance on Marketplace.
This book has some similarities to Freakonomics, but it was more about the social experiments that he and his colleagues have done.
They are showing that we are irrational often times and the irrational behaviors are predictable (or statistically consistent). [...]

The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature by Steven Pinker

01-Jul-09

I get a lot of book references from Fresh Air and TED and I heard about Steven Pinker on both.
This book is about the recent developments in social science on human nature (“nature” vs. “nurture” is a very controversial subject). According to Mr. Pinker, the prevalent assumptions in the 20th century about human nature [...]

Marvelsby Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross

01-Jul-09

I heard it mentioned in The Totally Rad Show, one of many Podcasts that I follow. It was described as one of the classic American graphic novels and I have been interested in the basics of the American graphic novel histories, so I decided to give it a try.
Well, the problems for me were [...]