Merle's Door - Kerasote

 A few things are not clear when you begin to read “Merle’s Door – Lessons from a Freethinking Dog”, by Ted Kerasote.  First of all it is not clear how to pronounce his (the dog’s) name correctly.  And second it is not clear until the end that you are reading the biography of a dog.  It’s a very clever method that just creeps up on you.  I doubt I would have read a book labeled, “a dog’s biography” so they drew me in with, “Lessons from a Free Thinking Dog”.   

There have been other attempts to do similar things – “Marley and Me” jumps out, but Kerasote, Merle’s chosen biographer,  has succeeded magnificently with this book.  Partly because Kerasote is no ordinary writer, he writes prolifically about the outdoors, and partly because Merle’s was no ordinary life, this dog’s story is captured as effortlessly as the freethinking life that he led.  

Kerasote was chosen by Merle as his biographer just as sure a Merle chose Kerasote to be his human on the banks of the San Juan River where they chanced upon one another and stayed together for the next 14 years.  With keen insight into Merle’s amazing behavior, sometimes canine and sometimes of an intellect and sophistication beyond that which we call human, Kerasote captures forever the life of this special animal.  In so doing the “Door” that Merle was free to enter and exit on his own free will, becomes representative of something far greater, it’s the window into the soul of intelligent life.

Sometimes repetitive and sometimes a bit “fictitious” as Kerasote attempts to translate Merle’s language into ours, the story and the life of this dog are real.  I’ve had several dogs in my life but after experiencing Merle’s life through his door, I feel like Merle was my dog as well.

Are Your Lights On? - Gause

 

Are Your Light’s On?  How to Figure Out What the Problem Really Is.  By Donald C. Gause and Gerald M. Weinberg has been a favorite of mine since I first ripped through a copy I found on my father’s book shelf in early 80’s.  I subsequently reattached it late one evening in the early 90’s.  Over the past 20 years I have returned to it over and over again and have provided many copies along with its powerful yet exceedingly simple message to the members of many analytic teams I have I have had to privileged to assemble and lead.  The message Are your light’s on?  Are you awake?  Are you able to use your brain before you engage your gears? Or as Tom Watson the founder of IBM has beckoned us to do, THINK!   

There are six chapters in this book.  Each chapter takes about between 15 and 20 minutes to read.  An average reader should be finished in less than two hours.  For the cost of a movie, perhaps $8 bucks, and a similar time commitment I suggest that the lessons within this book are more powerful per dollar than anything I have ever read.  For me the revelations of this book are almost spiritual in nature.   I’ve had mixed reactions from team members to whom I have shared its message.  Some think it’s cute-- it is.  Some believe it’s a book about problem solving-- it’s not.  Some are insulted by the implication--they should be, and alas some have never found the time to read it--that’s a crying shame.  Those who have seen the light share in a new found wealth.  Those who have not will remain in the dark.  ARE your lights on?  Are your LIGHTS on?  Are your lights ON?  Are YOUR lights on? 

Checklist Manifesto - Gawande

 

Use a checklist.  This is the major takeaway from Atul Gawande’s latest, “The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right”.  Although it’s a short book, just less than 200 pages, but for me it was a difficult book to get through.  I don’t know if that is because I’ve spent my entire career in and around checklists and believe in their value already (I don’t have to be convinced) or because Gawande is reaching too far with his message.  Doing a complex job correctly demands following a checklist.  He suggests that better team cooperation, communication, and discipline are the components of getting things right that emerge from the use of a checklist.  No kidding ?  He uses as his fundamental example the growth and now ubiquitous use of checklists in aviation.  And for sure checklists designed to operate something as complex as a large multi-engine aircraft demand such instructions…they also require team skills, communication, disciple, and a lot of experience…which he points out.  He applies his analogy to surgery and how a checklist used during a surgical procedures could help eliminate the most common mistakes made in the operating room…introducing infection, unexpected blood loss, operating on the wrong side of the body, etc.

This, of course is rather frightening because I’ve always viewed the modern operating room as a place where they have already reduced the procedure to its simplicities thereby allowing the surgeon to concentrate on the task at hand.  Perhaps I’ve been watching too much television where the doctors and nurses are so familiar with their scripts they work as a team.  The truth according to Gawande is a bit different.    It is normal in a large modern hospital for a surgeon to show up for an operation with a team he has never worked with before…this is particularly troublesome when we now realize they don’t have a script or the most rudimentary of  checklists to follow.  How could that be?  No wonder mal-practice insurance is so high!  It’s incredibly ironic that we pay more for a medical procedure so the highly skilled doctor can afford mal-practice insurance so when he is in the operating room he can wing it with a team of stand-ins.  For the love of God…..other expletives deleted.

Don’t we all use checklists several times a day?  Checklists are everywhere.  ”Read this First” stickers, warning labels, recipes, instructions, trouble-shooting guides, home improvement tips, and even Google maps.  And we have all not used checklists.  We bake bad cookies, we break things, and we get lost.  Those of us with complex jobs undoubtedly have checklists, standard operating procedures and directions at work which we don’t tend to ignore like the ones we do at home.  I am dumbfounded by the lack of checklists as reported by Gawande in the medical industry.  Dumbfound isn’t the correct word… appall is closer to my true feelings.

Because of this disconnect I’ve got a considerable amount of criticism for this book and I’ve been struggling between giving it one star because there is not a single original thought when it comes to large scale, complex program management and the utility of checklists…but then Gawande isn’t a program manager and is therefore way out of his element.  And this book is not like his other books where he is an undisputed master of the domain within which he writes.  On the other hand, five stars definitely seem appropriate since he points out this magnificent oversight of the medical community.  And if the medical community is his audience then he has done a decent enough introduction to the subject.

I’m going to settle on four stars simply based on the potential value this book could have within the medical community.  I will highly recommend it to medical professionals.  But anyone else, particularly those with a lick of common sense can avoid reading this book and just read the warning labels first.

Shoot an Iraqi - Bilal

 In November, 2010 I read about the artistic exploits of Wafaa Bilal and was intrigued.  So intrigued I blogged about his latest project and posted it in several online forums.  I also ordered his book, “Shoot an Iraqi; Art, Life, and Resistance Under the Gun” co-written with Kari Lydersen.  I read it in one sitting.  Astonishing in content and brilliantly written, Bilal and Lydersen have taken, by my first estimate, an ill-conceived, albeit somewhat artistic, publicity stunt and turned it into a MUST READ commentary on the cost of war…now my second and more accurate estimate.  

In a nutshell Wafaa writes about his confinement to an exhibit room at the Flat File Gallery in Chicago.  He called the exhibit “Domestic Tension” and lived within its confines for one month.  That’s the domestic part.  The tension comes from the added twist.   If you visited him, either on-line or in person, he gave you the option to fire a yellow paint ball at him at 300 feet per second, all day, every day.  Approximately 65,000 balls of yellow paint were fired during his ordeal.  He was forced to live under the fear of being whacked at anytime.  There was a field of fire available to the paint ball gun which he could escape be remaining close to the ground…inducing the stress of literally living “Under the Gun”.  When online visitors stopped in they could chat with him directly, setting up a tension between those who could reach out to the humanity of the situation observing and bearing witness to the ongoing persecution, and those who wanted to have sadistic fun at the expense of another human being. (NOTE: Although sadistic fun unfortunately occurs in warfare it is rarely its primary driver and becomes yet another ugly cost of war).  

As he writes about his ordeal during his month in captivity he wraps in the story of his early life growing up in Iraq under the brutal dictatorship of Saddam Hussein.  He describes what life like for the Iraqi people, their hopes and dreams for education and prosperity, their day to day family life, with both their good humor and sanity evaporating during what has now amounted to almost three decades of constant war.   Wafaa escaped as a refugee to the United States but carries the scars of many haunting years of fear and persecution in its countless forms.  That is what he was trying to recreate in a cathartic response to the guilt he has felt by leaving Iraq and thus surviving to tell his tale.

“Shoot an Iraqi” is not a war protest, though many who read it might consider it so… I might also add that some associated with his project seem to convey a clear anti-war vibe…yet Wafaa resisted the invite to preach rather he simply wants us to think about the cost of war in human terms rather than ethical or moral implications.  This book is also not an indictment on the use of remotely piloted vehicles to execute war, which have gained so much favor and criticism during the wars in the Middle East…yet remain highly misunderstood.  Again, Wafaa resists the temptation to draw too many parallels between what he was doing and this new brand of warfare.  Early on he exhibits a desire to make the parallel, primarily when he attributes a tragic event which cost the life of many innocent civilians to reconnaissance conducted by an unmanned aircraft.  Only in the sense that violence is being executed at a distance can the two be compared.  No other parallels to this brand of warfare exist.   But this is not a debate to have in this book review.  The other parallels to the stress of those caught in the war zone and living minute by minute “Under the Gun” and threat of death are quite real.

Wafaa has a unique vision in his art form that continue to elicit strong criticism, censorship, and even persecution, whether intentionally by his own hand or by the hand the ignorant.  He grows and we grow as a result of what he has experienced and has now shared.  This book goes a long way to reducing the hand of the ignorant.

Norwegian Wood - Murakami

I will not be able to do this book justice in a short review on Amazon.  I will study this book for the rest of my life and place it among the greatest novels I have read.   Norwegian Wood is simply magnificent.  Strip away the awkward young love and the experimental erotica and what’s left is a deep examination of the human heart.   Haruki Murakami, although not an educated psychologist, is an extremely talented novelist.  We are all amateur observers of the human condition and have experienced the love and pain created in our own relationships, Murakami merely writes it down for us to examine more closely.  Not all of us have experienced the darker side of emotional behavior when loss, leads to depression, which can lead to suicidal gestures, and which might ultimately lead to a terminal act.  Here is a spoiler.  There are four suicides in this book--one by carbon monoxide asphyxiation, one through wrist laceration, and two by hanging.  There are other deaths described as well.  But this is not a morbid book.  On the contrary Murakami goes to great measure to capture the beauty of life both in natural and physical state and in its more mystical shape of brotherly love and of course erotic love.  He captures the beauty of human friendship and what happens when selfishness overrules better judgment, but ultimately that selflessness can prevail, in some cases it can save.  Murakami ‘s philosophy, that death is the inevitable outcome of life, permeates this book, but also that lives and experiences, even those that have been lost can continue to live.  “Norwegian Wood”, the Beatle’s song not the novel, evokes the memories of lives and loves worth remembering for the characters in this novel.  We all have similar songs that remind us of those other experiences we have long since forgotten.  Murakami is simply reminding us that not only is it OK to remember, it is a fundamental requirement of the well lived and considered life.

The Swerve - Greenbaltt

Stephen Greenblatt, with the publication of his latest history lesson, "The Swerve, How the World Became Modern", has awakened one dormant desire in me...to learn Latin. I grow tired of not being able to read the original Latin text and am forced to depend on the interpretations of others.

Greenblatt has written a necessary and rich interpretation of how humanist book hunters, not our first bibliophiles, existed during the dark ages and struggled to uncover that which lay dormant after the collapse of the Roman empire. He would assert it was the discovery of these ancient texts that led to the world becoming modern...although he doesn't directly assert it...only in the sub-title and perhaps jacket text are the specifics of the assertion which mention a presumed influence on Galileo, Darwin, Freud, Einstein, and of course Thomas Jefferson. He only devotes a few pages in the last chapter to discuss the role of Lucretius in the thinking of these paradigm shifting individuals. The final proof is left unfortunately to the student.

Greenblatt takes us on a tore of Italy during the 15th Century through the life of Poggio Bracciolini. A well educated, seemingly middle class (if there were such a thing) scribe who rose through the ranks, with the help of a few mentors, to become a career bureaucrat on the Pope's staff in Rome. During his career he was a learned humanist who cared deeply about ancient works and dedicated most of his life to their preservation. Among other things his most celebrated discovery was that of the lost work of Lucretius, "On the Nature of Things" which he discovered while searching monasteries in Central Europe. As he unveils some of the philosophy contained with this lost work he tries hard to depict the politics and the dangerous balance for a humanist standing on the toes of the Inquisition while trying to enlighten.

Among other very astute observations pertaining to the "Nature of Things" Lucretius made the observation that all matter is composed of very small indivisible particles called atoms. Atoms cannot be destroyed and are the building blocks of all matter. "The Swerve" as it is called, is the continuous acting and reacting of these atoms to cause the destruction and creation of everything we perceive and interact with inside the tangible universe. Quite a weighty thought today let alone 2000 years ago. And the reason these weighty thoughts didn't drive a Renaissance of sorts at the time was because the growth of Christianity and specifically the Catholic Church systematically buried these notions.

His attack on the Catholic Church is well trodden territory and easy pickings. Yet he fails to properly credit the same Church, in fact he goes to great measure to distance his hero, Poggio Bracciolini from the Church, for providing him with the necessary means by which he could attend to his life long passion. Whereas Greenblatt is not short on judgment when it comes to reporting on the moral failings of presumably pious members of the Church, he does not equally judge the moral failings of those enlightened individuals whom are merely employed by the Church.

The astounding discovery here, is not so much that the writings of Lucretius (once rediscovered) had a direct influence on a world struggling to recover from the dark ages but rather it was the Roman empire itself that was becoming more enlightened and perhaps more so than anyone had previously imagined. If Lucretius was but one of many dozens of poets/scholars who filled the Roman Empire with the enlightened thoughts of atomic particles and the greater pursuit of happiness, whose thoughts and writings were never recovered, how did this early enlightenment fail to survive the growth of the Christian Church? Meaning, was it the deliberate work of the Church or the failings of this particular philosophy to catch-on. In order for an idea to catch-on there has to be something to it, something more. Christianity might just have been what society was searching for at the time. Just as the time was right for an enlightenment albeit 1,500 years later.

Although Greenblatt writes well I can't help feeling I was in an undergraduate history class and must remember the lecture as given, thus interpreted, rather than as a graduate student wherein I might discover and debate the meaning as would, it appears ironically, all the enlightened readers who gathered along the seashore, at the base of Mt Vesuvius, to debate modern philosophy 2000 years ago, were doing when they were frozen in time.

Sure enough Greenblatt takes us back to that time yet what he tells us does little more to aid our understanding since his own thoughts are still frozen with Lucretius and have not advanced beyond the atoms and the void.

Disturbing the Universe - Dyson

 

If you've ever wondered how the British firebombing of Germany in World War II, searching for extra terrestrial life, nuclear terrorism, and the existence of dark matter are related this book is for you.  "Disturbing the Universe" written in the early 1970's by the mathematician/physicist Freeman Dyson--the best scientist on tour never to have won the major--is an amazing philosophical journey through the author's life as a scientist and the deep questions of conscious through which he struggled to simply show up for work the next morning. 

Dyson is quite a character - a kind of scientific Forrest Gump...he seems to have been in on some of the most profound technology developments this side of sliced bread...but then standing just slightly left of the stage smiling.  He writes extremely well and is just enough a radical to be interesting, has just enough knowledge to be credible, and just enough humility to be tolerable above the obvious arrogance required to write such a profound book.  To me he has struck the perfect balance.

As I read this book for a second time, the first time was in 1988, I searched for information that would render some of what he had to say obsolete, OBS, as it were, overcome by science.  The fact is this book has survived the test of time.  What he says is as relevant today as it was 35 years ago.  His description of the potential for nuclear terrorism is the most powerful.  His appeal that science must be permitted the resources and flexibility to explore and discover and not be shut down prior to making important discoveries is perhaps the only thing that Kuhn missed, but the practical thing that can drive a scientific revolution (my words not his).  Then, only after the important discoveries are made, should the usefulness of the science be ethically weighed within our societies conscious.  Finally, his three reasons humanity must venture to the heavens should be required reading by anyone who consider themselves an earthling and highly relevant as we currently debate the chapter of space exploration.

Toward the end for the book Dyson throws in an argument for design.  It is important to note that the design he is referencing is not that of intelligent design as forward by Michael Bebe and his ilk.  His confronts the uncertainty of quantum physics vs the certainty of biological evolution.  His is specifically a brief introduction into the anthropic arguments, which, since they are scientific fact, have no place in the fabricated science of intelligent design.   Dyson finishes the book with what we knew must exist in 1975 and now still can't find but know by the name dark matter, and then closes with a shameless head nod to Stanley Kubrick's, "2001; A Space Odyssey", with whom he was on the set with and interviewed by Kubrick during its filming (see Forrest Gump above).

Recently Dyson has quoted and heralded by those who believe the science of global warming to be fraudulent, as if Dyson were on their side and he is their champion.  Since this is a mere book review I will not enter into that discussion.  I will say though, from what I've read about Dyson and from a glimpse at the way his brain functions, as revealed through this book,  his life, his quotes, and his deeds are being heavily misconstrued.