Reviews and Comments

Anyone who has faced the challenges of having to write a paper for college knows exactly how troublesome this task can be. There’s this constant anxiety that keeps growing as the term for the paper gets closer and closer; there’s all the things we do to try to avoid having to face the actual writing; and there’s the fear of not being able to do the task at all, of not finding the right way to write the whole thing down. We get stuck and leave the bulk of the writing for the last minute.

Well, we all have been there. And so common are these problems that Howard S. Becker tries to tackle them all on 10 essays dealing with different difficulties writers face when preparing their papers (or whatever they have to write).

The book is a must read for those who want to overcome the anxieties, fears, and all sort of troubles that accompany the act of writing for institutional settings such as college. Becker shares with us a lot of ideas that may help in different situations; and, most of all, he does a great job in showing that all we go through is not a particular problem of our lack of gifts for writing, but very common stumbling blocks that affects most who are obliged to produce meaningful pieces of writing.

If you are in college and are trying to make the leap forward in how you put your work into writing, don’t miss this book. It will definitely help you improve your skills and confidence.

Birds are interesting creatures. But for many of us they are so far removed from our day to day experience, at least in terms of having any meaningful contact with their lives, that we do know know, or understand, much of what happens to them. And for many of us, there is also the unfortunate prejudice of taking birds for being creatures that lack that feature we so highly value—intelligence.

So this book tries to tackle this two difficulties by providing lots of meaningful facts and also factoids about birds that gives us a glimpse both of their colorful lives as well as their prowess in regards to their smartness. Since their world is so rife in challenges, be it from the many dangers they face as well as from the competition from their peers, birds have developed many tricks that make them unique creatures, endowed with a particular kind of intelligence that, in their own way, deserves our respect.

So, for those of us that know little of birds and would like to know a little bit more; that are culturally prejudiced against their many qualities, thus not giving them the proper respect they deserve; this book is sure worth of your time and attention.

It’s the end of the world and we’re already experiencing it. However, since the end of the world is an object that far transcends our ability to grasp it, it is a hyperobject.

Every object is a hyperobject in a sense. And since hyperobjects are so difficult to make sense, this book try, in a hyperobjective way, to hyperobjectify our understanding of hyperobjects, making it a bit hard to grasp its message. However, that is not the author’s fault. This is the nature of hyperobjects and reading this book, with all its faults, still makes you aware of these hyperdimensions where we inhabit and rarely give a thought about it.

This is not an easy book; but it is not an easy subject. Notwithstanding that, the author does a great job in giving you a sense of what he’s aiming at.

Would I recommend this book? Yes, if you’re interested in philosophy; moreso if you want to learn about a cutting edge approach to ontology. If you’re not into this, don’t waste your time. The message is: we are already there, but it is too big and too complex for us to understand its workings and implications.

In some sense, this is a difficult book. Its main theme is interesting in itself, but as the title points out, it’s a Galaxy, or a myriad of connections that are simply to great to properly grasp it fully. If we take the analogy of the galaxy even further, it becomes obvious that even McLuhan’s analysis of the Gutenberg influence in Western culture is somewhat doomed to failure: we are simply too close to its effects, too deep inside it, to understand it clearly — just like trying to understand the Milky Way from inside is also a baffling task.

Being a difficult subject is a kind of excuse for the somewhat opaqueness of this work. McLuhan, in the essay that ends the book, states that “[t]he present volume has employed a mosaic pattern of perception and observation up till now” (MCLUHAN, 1962). This mosaic pattern is an attempt to cover the vast subject with meaningful quotes from different areas of study, using the quotes to provide examples of how typography changed humankind’s perception of things, altering the relation with understanding and the world at large — making of the whole of humanity a uniform entity. However, even though we can understand the approach McLuhan chose to cover this subject, this mosaic technique is also very confusing at times and can often mislead from the author’s original intention.

My feeling is that at some point even McLuhan himself was confused as to where he was trying to go with the text he had produced thus far. However, I’m not trying to diminish his work or to state that it could be done in some other, more competent way. As stated before, the subject matter, being a galaxy of consequences, it’s simply too overwhelming to be completely grasped.

But, in the end, this book can provide some light to those who want to understand history’s movements and changes in a different light, one that focus on the technological changes of information sharing, thus showing a different perspective that takes away history from the hands of some enlightened individuals and places it in the domain of the accidents that simple inventions with huge penetration have had in society at large. This book is also good to direct your attention the work of Harold Innis that provides much more insight into this theme of information technology, media shaping and history making. As McLuhan himself states, “Harold Innis was the first person to hit upon the process of change as implicit in the forms of media technology. The present book is a footnote of explanation to his work.” (MCLUHAN, 1962).

So is it worth reading? As always, it depends. If you’re studying media, media development, media implications, and so on, probably yes; if you’re just want to gloss over some of the ideas herein contained, probably not — you’ll be better served if you read a summary or a thorough review of this work.

What do I think about such an epic, Iliad and Odyssey combined, in a 19th century leviathanic novel of such proportions? Would I dare to add something of my own to such a renowned work?

This is not the kind of book you would grasp at first reading; and this was my first. There’s simply too much content for a fly-by reading such as mine to take it fully. There is simply too much, way too much to even venture a justifiable review.

With all that out of the way, the only thing I can add is the personal remark about if reading a book of such a magnitude is worthy of the time and patience to delve into this almost unknown world of the past. Is it? Is this time well spent? I believe it is; that if you don’t mind coming up to the same conclusion as I did that one reading is not enough and one reading just gives you a glimpse of what’s underneath this mythical tale of man against nature.

When all else is considered; when you understand that only by taking it whole you can at least gain some reverence for the work and the genius behind it, you may come to the same conclusion that I did: it was worthy of my time; it was time well spent. Now I have to lay it dormant and hope the seeds I now planted may grow into something more insightful in the future. “There she blows!” (MELVILLE, 1851): maybe next time I'll give this whale a proper hunt.

A Odisseia do ilíaco Eneias

Não é a história de um homem. Não é o mesmo poema do passado. Na Eneida aquilo que vemos é o nascer de todas a maior das nações.

Eneias é o troiano herói par de Heitor, príamaco herdeiro dos nobilíssimos troianos guerreiros, Eneias o filho de Vénus deusa. Ele, derrotado pelas manhas de Odisseu, viu-se a braços com o ter de transladar o seu restante povo às latinas terras da Hespéria.

Eneias, sem o saber, vai ter de se tornar o fundador da imperial Roma. Incumbido pelos seus numes, Eneias parte então em direção à Lácio, terra onde, por fim, após múltiplas oceânicas tragédias e façanhas, se arroja; onde, prometido a Lavínia, a terra conquista através da força das armas que ele mesmo empunhava.

Não é possível fazer justiça a este texto. Não há palavras que se aproximem daquilo que dentro da lírica do homérico Virgílio se relata. Para compreendê-lo, só lendo. Não é a toa que é Virgílio que Dante guia quando a comédia é divina.

Vale a pena ler o poema? Se tudo nele está datado, o que dele retiramos se não o próprio estilo da linguagem, o depuramento das formas líricas do próprio falar, numa retórica pungente que realmente nos proporciona um quase que entendimento daquilo que se almeja. Se do que dito fica um sumo faço, o extracto é este: ao ler Virgílio quase que se sente. Ao contrário de ver um filme, onde toda a narrativa procede das imagens, no seu texto é pelas palavras que pelas palavras vamos, e pelas palavras sentimos. Vale ou não a pena: canta-o. Depois conversamos.

If you are familiar with the works of the likes of Frans de Waal, Edward O. Wilson, Jane Goodall, [insert name of reputed ethologist/biologist], the subject matter of this book will not come to you as a surprise. In a way, its premisse, that of animals having a sense of justice, morality, fairness, all being evolved traits, is just a given. However, when you start to read the book, you know you are not the primary target audience of its message.

The book presents its case in defense of the notion of Wild Justice, a sense of justice, morality, fairness that some social animals have, thus blurring even more the lines that separate the human animal from all other non-human animals. The case is more philosophical, or theoretical, than practical; that is, the authors rely on the works of primatologists, ethologists, biologists, etc, to draw conclusions allowing them to question the long standing assumptions that morality is an exclusive human characteristic.

The text tends to be a bit repetitive, as if taking you through a revolving door with the same idea popping up again and again. Is it intentional? Or is this the outcome of having the text composed by two separate authors? Either way, it's not as bad as it sounds. If you're unfamiliar with its subject matter, the repetitions allow to give a second (or third, fourth, ...) thought about the issues at hand.


Now, does it deserve a reading? If you are familiar with the biology/ethology field, maybe not. But if you have a philosophical bent and like to explore the ethical dimensions open up by the current consensus on the animal behavior front, than this book is for you. For in it you’ll have a good summary of the observations, experiences, hypotheses and conclusions on animal behavior research.

I started reading this book thinking this was a historical exploration of the philosophical conceptions of time. Maybe I’m not the only one to fall for this, for, as the author himself acknowledges in the introduction, the title may be a bit of a misnomer. Even so, I was pleasantly surprised by the the content of this work. For this is a history of the ways people kept track of time. In this sense, yes, this is a history of time, but time in a weaker sense.

So what is this book actually about? This is an exploration of how the different calendars were divised, its lengths, its relations and justifications within a particular culture, and how some of these notions, ideas, calculations and, even, mistakes, are still influencing our own ways of keeping track of time.

So, what do I keep from this? Well, to be honest, just the loose impression that most peoples (if not all) in their need to keep track of time, end up being trapped within the cultural necessity of trying to make the universe conform to the calendar. I know, sounds weird. But we are still doing it. For we rise when the clock ticks, and not when the Sun rises. This, although not explicitly stated in the book, it’s something that permeates the whole message; at least when you start considering that all calendars are filled with incongruencies shaped by cultures offsetting the counting with the universal measure of Nature.

Maybe you’ll like to know why your days are called the way they are. Maybe you just like to know some random facts about calendars, Easter days, and why do we call it Summer. Maybe you’re just glad do know how cutely random these defining features of our civilization truly are. In any case, you’ll find something of interest worth of your time.

If you heard about Terence McKenna, you probably know how weird, and inspiring, his ideas were. If you know Terence McKenna well enough, you also know who Dennis McKenna is and how instrumental Dennis was in Terence’s life. If you know a bit about Terence’s self-proclaimed biography, his experiments at La Chorrera, his predictions and how incredibly weird the whole experience was to Terence and Dennis, you probably want to know a bit more about it from a different perspective.

So this is it. This is that new perspective onto Terence’s life and thought. Well written, engaging at times (for all lives have those meh moments that look like filling-ins to a major thrust of the whole story), and providing new insights onto how McKenna deal with his normal life, relations, and people around him.

If you’re a Terence McKenna’s buff, you won’t be disappointed to read this biography. If you don’t know who he is, you better start elsewhere — probably by Terence’s own works and, more importantly, by his talks (most of them available for free on youtube).

You probably know the author from his masterpiece Guns, Germs and Steel. If you do, you know what to expect from this book. The same thorough explanations, the vast array of interconnected factors, all grounded on scientific data.

This is not the book for those who truly want an optimistic view of what the future holds for us. The title says it all: collapse. So the author guides us through many paradigmatic collapses of civilizations that acted either greedy, naively, or simply recklessly.

11 years from its publication and the rate of global destruction has not halted — in fact, it is accelerating, as predicted by those who are often called pessimists. So, in a sense, Jared Diamond’s call to action to make the change happen has not come to fruition. However, if you happen to read this book, you’ll probably become one amongst many contributing to at least slow down the rate of destruction. And that, by itself, if anything else, makes reading this book something truly worthy of your time.