Feldsparia: Personifications of Websites.

Feldsparia: Personifications of Websites.

This link takes you to Jon Kirchmeir's Blog. Jon died on March 19 of this year. Find out more on the page titled Jon.

Matt Ridley. Nature Via Nurture (2003)

     Matt Ridley. Nature Via Nurture (2003) Ridley’s densely argued thesis that the genes cannot work without input from the environment is a pleasure to read. Much of his research is first-hand: he has read the papers he cites or alludes to, and/or has spoken with the people who wrote them (including his own wife.) Unfortunately most of his older research is third or fourth hand; his comments on Skinner show a thorough (and very common) misunderstanding of behaviourism. (1) But that’s a minor flaw in a well-done book, one that unlike many of its kind reflects current research.
     A book that anyone who wishes to understand where biology is going should read. Some of its inferences will no doubt soon prove wrong, but that’s because the field is expanding so quickly. Something like a coherent vision of how organisms become what they are is emerging. The central message: we, like all other organisms, are the product of an exquisite interplay between what we are born with and what our environment foists upon us. **** (2006)

 See also https://kirkwood40.blogspot.com/2013/05/matt-ridley-nature-via-nurture-2004.html for an extended review.

Footnote (1): The common misconception of behaviourism is that conditioning can produce new behaviours. It can't. It can only re-direct and combine existing behaviours. Skinner called it "shaping". No amount of conditioning will make a pig fly, but conditioning could make a pig operate a car shaped like an airplane. Pigs poke at things with their snouts, and that behaviour could be redirected to push on various buttons and levers. Etc.

Chris Ellis. The Airfix Magazine Annual (1971)

     Chris Ellis. The Airfix Magazine Annual (1971) It seems Airfix produced a magazine to promote its plastic kits. This book appears to be a compilation of articles from the magazine. It’s useful even to today’s modeller, both as a source of prototype information and for simple but effective techniques for adding detail to the kits. The emphasis is heavily in military and aircraft modelling. ** (2006)

O. S. Nock. The Triang-Hornby Book of Trains. (Ca. 1966)

     O. S. Nock. The Triang-Hornby Book of Trains. (Ca. 1966) Another of Nock’s potboilers, and apart from a cursory but interesting enough survey of railways in the mid-60s, merely a listing of Triang’s stuff - which was pretty awful. Nock, obviously well-paid to be a shill, overstates the quality of the terrible products produced by Triang, which in fact cheapened the Hornby material they absorbed with that company. Thus, the book turns out to be an unwittingly instructive example of all that was wrong with British manufacture after the war. The owners understood neither the rapidly rising quality of their competition’s products, nor the even faster increase in consumer awareness of that quality, which resulted in a more or less disdainful rejection of inferior goods. * (2006)

Cyril J. Freezer. Model Railways on a Budget (1987)

     Cyril J. Freezer. Model Railways on a Budget (1987) A cursory look at how to scrounge, with enough details to encourage the beginning model railroader to continue. Some sound advice of where to trade cash for commercial quality, and where scrounging pays off , mostly in trackwork and scratch building of structures, vehicles, and locomotives. Good enough for its time, but not the best of Freezer’s work, Some of the tips are still useful, and may become more so as our economy dwindles. ** (2006)

Ralph Davis. A Commercial Revolution (1967)

     Ralph Davis. A Commercial Revolution (1967) Davis summarises the case that a revolution in import-export trade from the late 1500s to the late 1700s preceded and prepared for the Industrial Revolution. One has to trust his generalisations, since he has very few numbers to illustrate his argument. He describes how English trade shifted from exporting woollens to Europe to exporting manufactures to America, and importing and re-exporting raw materials from there and from Asia (mostly India.) The most interesting point is that the rapid expansion of capital to finance the increasingly long transport routes put in place the capital markets that financed the Industrial Revolution. Also, the increasing wealth of the American colonies stimulated the production of the manufactured goods they needed, which prepared for the Industrial Revolution. A complicated tale; Davis’s summary is clear enough. ** (2006)

Al Franken. The Truth with Jokes (2006)

     Al Franken. The Truth with Jokes (2006) Paperback edition with added chapters. Franken is a proud liberal Democrat, and he’s mad. The book discusses how Bush won in 2000 and 2004, and goes on to describe his record of corruption, deceit, and most of all incompetence. The leaders of his Republican administration are very clever, but they apply their cleverness to fantasy problems. That’s stoopid. The cost of their fantasies and stoopidity has been hundreds of thousands of lives, in Iraq, Israel and adjoining territories, and without doubt in the USA also, because of the Libertarian neglect of their duties as governors. Franken tries to lighten the tone with humour and irony, but succeeds for only a few seconds at a time. Overall, this is a depressing book. Franken did predict the swing against the Bush regime in the 2006 vote, although it wasn’t the rout he hoped for. Let’s hope the Democrats produce a vision that attracts the political middle, the people who distrust both the extreme right and the extreme left. In the meantime, we have our own version of Bush. His substance is the same, and his style is more thoughtful. But the Harper Conservatives are as fantasy ridden as the Bush Republicans. *** (2006)