The Shvoong: recommended reading

Showing posts with label recommended reading. Show all posts

Friday, June 14, 2019

Reference Shelves of a Synagogue, Mapped.

A reference shelf of the Pinto Synagogue, mapped
Akiva Eiger, Harosh, Tzitz Eliezer, Badei Hashulchan, Shaagas Aryeh, Hasam Sofer, Nodeh BiYehuda, Avnei Nezer:

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Incredible Books from '40-'50's, part 3 of 3

Innocent, professionally written, non-globalist and classic reading from the cozy 1950's SCIENCE IN OUR LIVES Ritchie Calder. An exciting, factual story of the beginning and development of modern science, the relationship between its special fields -astronomy, chemistry, physics, biology -and its impact upon our daily lives. THE HANDY BOOK OF GARDENING Albert Ii. Wilkinson and Victor A. Tiedjens. New edition of the famous book on how to grow flowers and vegetables, fruits and house plants, care for lawns, and do landscaping. Comprehensive, illustrated. FLOWER ARRANGEMENTS Anyone Can Do Anywhere Matilda Rogers. Enjoy a fascinating new hobby which develops your creative talents and beautifies your home. A practical course in flower arranging, with 100 illustrations. LIVES OF DESTINY As Told For The Reader's Digest Donald Culross Peattie. Inspiring life stories of 24 men who overcame enormous obstacles to achieve a place among the world's great figures: Franklin, Voltaire, Marco Polo, Mozart,da Vinci, Darwin, and other patriots, naturalists, explorers, and artists. THE LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN: Stefan Lorant. A unique text and picture biography which unfolds the dramatic life history of a great and beloved American President, with hundreds of illustrations and a lively, illuminating text by a celebrated Lincoln scholar. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN: The First Mr. American Roger Burlingame. A brilliant biography of the most human of leaders, who achieved fame and wealth as an editor, scientist, diplomat and statesman during the founding days of the U. S. GANDHI: His Life and Message for the World Louis Fischer. The life story of one of the greatest inspirational and political leaders of our time gives insight into India's pivotal place in world affairs. HOW THE GREAT RELIGIONS BEGAN Joseph Gaer. An always timely, easy-to-read guide to man's unending quest for the spiritual, vividly told through the lives of the world's religious leaders: Jesus, Mohammed, Moses, Buddha, Lao-Tse and others. THE UNITED NATIONS and How It Works David Cushman Coyle. A stimulating, thoughtful and objective analysis of how the United Nations, related agencies and commissions, came into being; how they operate, and what they are doing to achieve lasting peace and better living conditions all over the world.

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Incredible Books from '40-'50's, part 2

The continuation of the Incredible Books from 1940-1950's reading list: PATTERNS OF CULTURE Ruth Benedict. A famous anthropologist analyzes our social structure in relation to primitive cultures. SEX AND TEMPERAMENT in Three Primitive Societies Margaret Mead. Are personality differences, between men and women linked to their sex? A noted anthropologist explores this fascinating question. THE NATURE OF THE UNIVERSE Fred Hoyle. Can an atomic blast change the earth into an exploding star? Will our earth eventually die? The latest facts and theories about the universe are explained with clarity and liveliness by a modern astronomer. Illustrated. NEW HANDBOOK OF THE HEAVENS Hubert J. Bernhard, Dorothy A. Bennett and Hugh S. Rice. A practical, fascinating guide to the stars, planets and comets.. Profusely illustrated. ON UNDERSTANDING SCIENCE James B. Conant. A noted educator, diplomat and atomic physicist explains the scope of science in our modern world, and gives an historical view of its growth. MAN IN THE MODERN WORLD Julian Huxley. Thirteen stimulating essays on the vital issues of today, selected from his "Man Stands Alone" and "On Living in a Revolution."

Friday, February 20, 2009

Incredible Books from '40-'50's, part 1

I came across this reading list on the back of a Signet book from 1955 - excellent reading, not polluted by political correctness: HOW TO KNOW THE BIRDS Roger Tory Peterson. Line drawings and silhouettes of over 200 common species, selected from the cloth-bound edition, illustrate this basic handbook by 'a noted ornithologist. HOW TO KNOW THE WILD FLOWERS Alfred Stefferud. The habitats and habits of wild flowers, their distinguishing family marks, and how to grow them. Illustrated by Sidney Horn. HOW TO KNOW THE AMERICAN MAMMALS Ivan T. Sanderson. What mammals are - how to identify them, where they live-written and illustrated by - a distinguished naturalist. 200 pictures. THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION (revised and abridged) George Gaylord Simpson. The principles and meaning of evolution, tracing the entire span of life on earth and its ethical implications for mankind. MAN MAKES HIMSELF V. Gordon Childe. Man's social and technical evolution through 340,000 years of progress-the first American edition of a brilliant classic. LIFE ON OTHER WORLDS . H. Spencer Jones. Does life exist on other worlds? A lucid discussion of this intriguing question.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Friday, January 16, 2009

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

The 10 Books That Treach Freakonomics

1. Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior Why is it so difficult to sell a plummeting stock or end a doomed relationship? Why do we listen to advice just because it came from someone “important”? Why are we more likely to fall in love when there’s danger involved? In Sway, renowned organizational thinker Ori Brafman and his brother, psychologist Rom Brafman, answer all these questions and more. Sway introduces us to the Harvard Business School professor who got his students to pay $204 for a $20 bill, the head of airline safety whose disregard for his years of training led to the transformation of an entire industry, and the football coach who turned conventional strategy on its head to lead his team to victory. We also learn the curse of the NBA draft, discover why interviews are a terrible way to gauge future job performance, and go inside a session with the Supreme Court to see how the world’s most powerful justices avoid the dangers of group dynamics. 2. Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions What Ariely has done here is shift a lot of the thinking developed by such pioneers as Kahneman & Tversky who worked in behavioral economics, and moved it into the everyday sphere. And he’s done a great, insightful job. Where the behavioral economists are focused on financial decisions (why we buy high and sell low - and confound the assumptions of the classic economists who assume ‘the rational man,) Ariely eschews the technical language and walks us through everyday examples of our often fuzzy and quite irrational decision-making. 3. The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less I think “Paradox of Choice” does bring insight into shopping, but its range is actually much wider than that. Schwartz discusses people making difficult decisions about jobs, families, where to live, whether to have children, how to spend recreational time, choosing colleges, etc. He talks about why making these decisions today is much harder than it was 30 years ago, and he offers many practical suggestions for how to address decision-making so that it creates less stress and more happiness. He even discusses how so much additional choice affects children, and how parents can help make childhood (particularly young childhood) less stressful. 4. Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness “Buy on apples, sell on cheese” is an old proverb among wine merchants. Taking a bite of an apple before tasting wine makes it easier to detect flaws in the wine, and the buyer who does so will not as easily make the mistake of paying more than the wine is worth. Cheese, on the other hand, pairs well with wine and enhances its flavor, so a seller who offers cheese may command a higher price for the wine (and may even deserve it, if the wine is intended to be drunk with cheese). The proverb captures important psychological nuances of choice. The same product - a bottle of wine or a risky medical procedure - may be perceived differently depending on its context, and it is often possible to arrange the context to influence a choice while still maintaining the decision maker’s autonomy. 5. Quirkology: How We Discover the Big Truths in Small Things Richard Wiseman is an experimental psychologist and professor of “public understanding of psychology.” In this book, he discusses dozens of experiments performed by himself and other psychologists around the world over the course of the last hundred years. All these experiments have in common is unusual research methodology or amusing results. Topics include studies of personal ads and pickup lines, determining which are most effective, how to detect liars, manifestations of prejudice and hypocrisy (are religious people or priests more honest or generous than others? it has been tested). Wiseman even ran tests to see which experiments in the book are the most interesting, to help the reader know what would be the best conversation starters at parties. 6. Blind Spots: Why Smart People Do Dumb Things Clinical psychologist Van Hecke has compiled a list of 10 mental glitches that have infiltrated contemporary society, afflicting even the smartest among us, limiting thought, success and relationships. Van Hecke devotes a chapter to each blind spot, including “Not stopping to think,” “Not noticing,” “Jumping to conclusions” and “Missing the big picture.” Examining each in detail, Van Hecke details the root causes of these unconscious habits (”information overload,” “our tendency to habituate”) and tactics for overcoming them, using humorous anecdotes and other real-life examples to drive her points; the key is remaining open to new ideas and taking a step back from our busy lives in order to process information, situations and people. Filling in “the big picture” herself, Van Hecke demonstrates how embracing and understanding our weaknesses can not only improve personal and professional relationships, but also entire communities; this self-help is a welcome, highly readable first step. 7. Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind In “Kluge,” psychologist Gary Marcus looks to the many and varied foibles, inconsistencies, and inaccuracies of the human mind and concludes that our brains are not, in fact, models of brilliance and efficiency, but are rather cobbled-together systems, designed for one purpose and pressed into action for another - the classic definition of a kluge. The most famous kluge is probably the case of the carbon scrubbers on the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission. Crunched for time, engineers managed to create a system out of duct tape and socks (seriously) that worked adequately enough to clean the air on the space module- even though none of the materials they used were designed for, or optimal for, the job at hand. The result was ugly and inefficient - but it kept the astronauts alive. Likewise, Marcus argues, evolution has endowed humans with a hodgepodge of genetic material - the DNA equivalent of duct tape - with which to build all the sophisticated systems that supposedly set us apart from other creatures, like language, memory, and reason. The result is, for example in the case of language, “a vocal apparatus more byzantine than a bagpipe made up entirely of pipe cleaners and cardboard dowels.” 8. The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives The author writes to the layman, making the language of statistics, probability, randomness a fascinating read. It’s clear that he’s well aware of the fallacies and delusions (and consequent harm) to which most of us are easy prey. But he leaves it to the reader to draw any philosophical-theological inferences about the need for greater humility. His immediate goal is to help the reader understand the distinction between 1. the “common-sense” logic employed by self-serving finite beings coping with problems in the material world and 2. a “scientific method” that takes nothing for granted in a universe of perpetual flux. More miraculous than either the accomplishments of the romantic hero or the intercessions of a supreme being (everyday stuff for most of us) is the rare discovery that two things (or “events” in the spatial-temporal order) suspected of being connected (a hypothesis) in fact cannot be shown “not” to have such a relationship (the proof). 9. Guesstimation: Solving the World’s Problems on the Back of a Cocktail Napkin Somehow, guessing at numbers is unsettling, even though I’ve done it all my life. John Adam is a professor of applied mathematics, with a degree in physics. Larry Weinstein is a nuclear physicist. Their book is devoted to proving that intelligent guessing is useful and fun. The book lays out some general principles but its great strength lies in the interesting problems, a series of hints to help you solve each problem, and an interesting discussion of the pitfalls and triumphs involved. 10. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion Cialdini believes that influence is a science. This idea attracted me. As a rhetorician, I have always thought of persuasion as more of an art. Cialdini, however, makes a first-rate case for the science point of view. But maybe most importantly, he makes his case in a well-written, intelligent, and entertaining manner. Not only is this an important book to read, it is a fun book to read too. He introduces you to six principles of ethical persuasion: reciprocity, scarcity, liking, authority, social proof, and commitment/consistency. A chapter is devoted to each and you quickly see why Cialdini looks at influence as a science. Each principle is backed by social scientific testing and retesting. Each chapter is also filled with interesting examples that help you see how each principle can be applied. By the end of the book, I had little doubt that these are six important dimensions of human interaction.

Saturday, January 3, 2009

Another great book on Nature:

the best book on natural science and biology

The Nature of Living Things, by C. Brooke Worth and Robert K Enders There has never been anything this good after this book has been out, since 1955. These questions sound staid and trite nowadays: ~ What is life? How did it begin? ~ How does one species evolve from another? ~ How did man develop from a one-celled animal? ~ How do cells grow and reproduce? ~ How has Darwin's theory of evolution influenced further scientific investigation? The book provides authoritative, easy-to-understand answers to these and many more questions about plants and animals and their relation to the universe which will give you a vivid picture of how life began and progressed through hundreds of millions of years. This book, back in 1955, provides the answers in the most innocent, non-political, objective style. The book is illustrated in the typical black and white, line-drawing or etching style drawings of the decade. I have read it and found it more satisfying than something that could be found on a glitzy DVD, coffe-table album or web site.

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Saturday, December 13, 2008

Friday, October 10, 2008

Einstein's Mistakes Were The Human Failings of Genius

Norton has published a new book by Hans Ohanian titled "Einstein's Mistakes - The Human Failings of Genius". A Wall Street Journal book review had an interesting sentence: "Mr. Ohanian finds that four out of five of the seminal papers that Einstein produced in the so-called 'miracle-year' of 1905, when we was working as a patent inspector in Zurich, were 'infested with flaws'". Question: if important these important scientific works of Einstein were written sloppily, how about his Office Actions during this period? And if Einstein can't examine a patent application, can anyone? But as Ohanian points out, Einstein is a classic, if not general, example of learning from your mistakes. Something PTO management is utterly incapable of in any frame of reference.

Thursday, October 2, 2008

Bacardi: the battles of the family

Viking Press has released a new book titled "Bacardi and the long fight for Cuba", by Tom Gjelten, which chronicles the Bacardi rum dynasty and its relationship with Cuba. Part of the book covers Bacardi's trademark battles with the Cuban government and Pernod Ricard (when Castro seized power, one thing his government did was nationalize the company's Havana Club brand, which Castro then directed by marketed in partnership with the French company Pernod Ricard). The battles involved a fair amount of dirty IP battles in Washington. Fun reading over a few shots of rum, or your favorite liquor.

Sunday, September 28, 2008

A book sounds an alarm: the US lacks technical innovation to sustain economic growth

Anyone following the stock markets lately will easily agree with the need for new business models in the markets, given the financial incompetence and corruption that is currently destroying everything in its path. We need new business models, and now. Just as importantly, such new business models should have the profits of such innovation go to only one group of people - the innovators, and not the parasites and dinosaurs who can buy off Congress, the PTO and the courts to try and prevent business method patents. I hope the CAFC realizes the importance of new business models to help restore the U.S. economy, and that the CAFC realizes the need to fully protect such innovative models with patents, so that the innovators benefit from what the dinosaurs can't do. It is an opportunity for the CAFC to show some financial leadership in a town lacking the such in massive quantities. In parallel, former Cisco CTO Judy Estrin has published a new book titled "Closing the Innovation Gap", reviewed in the New York Times, 9/1/8, page C4. "We have a national innovation deficit." The article summarizes: "Yet she is deeply worried that Silicon Valley - and the United States as a whole - no longer foster the kind of innovation necessary to develop groundbreaking technologies and sustain economic growth." All the more reason we need to eradicate the corruption and incompetence in the PTO, so that the investing marketplace can use higher quality issuing patents as signals as to where the real innovation is. Right now, the PTO is betraying the markets, which sadly seems to be the rule of the day in Washington.

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

How chemical giants and their patents helped Nazi Germany

A new book Hell's Cartel: IG Farben and the Making of Hitler's War Machine by Diarmuid Jeffreys (Metropolitan Books)has been published, incurring the first sentence of the review describing correctly the tone of the book: In February 1941, a top manager of German chemical group IG Farben thought he had found the perfect location for a new synthetic-rubber factory. The site was out of range of Allied bombers, easily reached by rail, and had plenty of water and coal. Most important, there was a ready supply of cheap labor. The site was near a town in occupied Poland called Oswiencim, better known to history as Auschwitz. The author writes at one point about how important IG Farben's role was: "Had IG Farben been even marginally less compliant, Hitler would have struggled to get his war machine moving." IG Farben was a consortium/cartel formed by big German companies Bayer, BASF, Hoechst and with many smaller companies in 1925, which were and still are big patentees in the chemical world. That these companies are such big patentees relates to an interesting lament in the review: "Probably never in history has a major corporation been twisted to such evil ends. Yet what is most disturbing is that, for most of its past, the conglomerate and its predecessor companies embodied many of the qualities we admire in business today. Its managers were inventive and diligent, and its scientists discovered vital medicines, with quite a few earning Nobel prizes." And even more were earning patents. Interestingly, a book based on a PhD thesis: "Divide and Prosper: The Heirs of I.G. Farben Under Allied Authority, 1945-1951", by Raymond G. Stokes (University of California Press, 1988) discusses, among other things, how the Allies temporarily "seized" the patents of the I.G. Farben component companies as part of their post-war control of Germany. If anyone buys/reads the book, I'd appreciate any comments on it, especially in comparison to a controversial book written a few years ago about another well managed, innovative company with many patents whose products were used by the Nazis to evil ends - IBM. That book was titled "IBM and the Holocaust" by Edwin Black. I quote from the Wikipedia entry on "History of IBM": Although IBM actively worked with the Hitler regime from its inception in 1933 to its demise in 1945, IBM has asserted that since their German subsidiary came under temporary receivership by the Nazi authorities from 1941 to 1945, the main company was not responsible for its role in the latter years of the holocaust. Shortly after the war, the company worked aggressively to recover the profits made from the many Hollerith departments in the concentration camps, the printing of millions of punch cards used to keep track of the prisoners, the custom-built punch card systems, and its servicing of the Extermination through labor program. The company also paid its employees special bonuses based on high sales volume to the Nazis and collaborator regimes. As in many corporate cases, when the US entered the war, the Third Reich left in place the original IBM managers who continued their contacts via Geneva, thus company activities continued without interruption. IBM can always be blamed for the "monstrously bad" logic, bad science and worse engineering of Benson, a decision lawyers should be disbarred for citing, the decision being such a travesty of justice, a decision that quotes three paragraphs from a U.S. presidential commission on software dominated and controlled by... IBM, the first and biggest troll ever. Making their stock usually a good buy.

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

These Must Read Books Teach How to Profit From Human Irrationality

1. Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior Why is it so difficult to sell a plummeting stock or end a doomed relationship? Why do we listen to advice just because it came from someone “important”? Why are we more likely to fall in love when there’s danger involved? In Sway, renowned organizational thinker Ori Brafman and his brother, psychologist Rom Brafman, answer all these questions and more. Sway introduces us to the Harvard Business School professor who got his students to pay $204 for a $20 bill, the head of airline safety whose disregard for his years of training led to the transformation of an entire industry, and the football coach who turned conventional strategy on its head to lead his team to victory. We also learn the curse of the NBA draft, discover why interviews are a terrible way to gauge future job performance, and go inside a session with the Supreme Court to see how the world’s most powerful justices avoid the dangers of group dynamics. 2. Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions What Ariely has done here is shift a lot of the thinking developed by such pioneers as Kahneman & Tversky who worked in behavioural economics, and moved it into the everyday sphere. And he's done a great, insightful job. Where the behavioural economists are focused on financial decisions (why we buy high and sell low - and confound the assumptions of the classic economists who assume 'the rational man,) Ariely eschews the technical language and walks us through everyday examples of our often fuzzy and quite irrational decision-making. 3. The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less I think "Paradox of Choice" does bring insight into shopping, but its range is actually much wider than that. Schwartz discusses people making difficult decisions about jobs, families, where to live, whether to have children, how to spend recreational time, choosing colleges, etc. He talks about why making these decisions today is much harder than it was 30 years ago, and he offers many practical suggestions for how to address decision-making so that it creates less stress and more happiness. He even discusses how so much additional choice affects children, and how parents can help make childhood (particularly young childhood) less stressful. 4. Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness "Buy on apples, sell on cheese" is an old proverb among wine merchants. Taking a bite of an apple before tasting wine makes it easier to detect flaws in the wine, and the buyer who does so will not as easily make the mistake of paying more than the wine is worth. Cheese, on the other hand, pairs well with wine and enhances its flavor, so a seller who offers cheese may command a higher price for the wine (and may even deserve it, if the wine is intended to be drunk with cheese). The proverb captures important psychological nuances of choice. The same product - a bottle of wine or a risky medical procedure - may be perceived differently depending on its context, and it is often possible to arrange the context to influence a choice while still maintaining the decision maker's autonomy. 5. Quirkology: How We Discover the Big Truths in Small Things Richard Wiseman is an experimental psychologist and professor of "public understanding of psychology." In this book, he discusses dozens of experiments performed by himself and other psychologists around the world over the course of the last hundred years. All these experiments have in common is unusual research methodology or amusing results. Topics include studies of personal ads and pickup lines, determining which are most effective, how to detect liars, manifestations of prejudice and hypocrisy (are religious people or priests more honest or generous than others? it has been tested). Wiseman even ran tests to see which experiments in the book are the most interesting, to help the reader know what would be the best conversation starters at parties. 6. Blind Spots: Why Smart People Do Dumb Things Clinical psychologist Van Hecke has compiled a list of 10 mental glitches that have infiltrated contemporary society, afflicting even the smartest among us, limiting thought, success and relationships. Van Hecke devotes a chapter to each blind spot, including "Not stopping to think," "Not noticing," "Jumping to conclusions" and "Missing the big picture." Examining each in detail, Van Hecke details the root causes of these unconscious habits ("information overload," "our tendency to habituate") and tactics for overcoming them, using humorous anecdotes and other real-life examples to drive her points; the key is remaining open to new ideas and taking a step back from our busy lives in order to process information, situations and people. Filling in "the big picture" herself, Van Hecke demonstrates how embracing and understanding our weaknesses can not only improve personal and professional relationships, but also entire communities; this self-help is a welcome, highly readable first step. 7. Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind In "Kluge," psychologist Gary Marcus looks to the many and varied foibles, inconsistencies, and inaccuracies of the human mind and concludes that our brains are not, in fact, models of brilliance and efficiency, but are rather cobbled-together systems, designed for one purpose and pressed into action for another - the classic definition of a kluge. The most famous kluge is probably the case of the carbon scrubbers on the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission. Crunched for time, engineers managed to create a system out of duct tape and socks (seriously) that worked adequately enough to clean the air on the space module- even though none of the materials they used were designed for, or optimal for, the job at hand. The result was ugly and inefficient - but it kept the astronauts alive. Likewise, Marcus argues, evolution has endowed humans with a hodgepodge of genetic material - the DNA equivalent of duct tape - with which to build all the sophisticated systems that supposedly set us apart from other creatures, like language, memory, and reason. The result is, for example in the case of language, "a vocal apparatus more byzantine than a bagpipe made up entirely of pipe cleaners and cardboard dowels." 8. The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives The author writes to the layman, making the language of statistics, probability, randomness a fascinating read. It's clear that he's well aware of the fallacies and delusions (and consequent harm) to which most of us are easy prey. But he leaves it to the reader to draw any philosophical-theological inferences about the need for greater humility. His immediate goal is to help the reader understand the distinction between 1. the "common-sense" logic employed by self-serving finite beings coping with problems in the material world and 2. a "scientific method" that takes nothing for granted in a universe of perpetual flux. More miraculous than either the accomplishments of the romantic hero or the intercessions of a supreme being (everyday stuff for most of us) is the rare discovery that two things (or "events" in the spatial-temporal order) suspected of being connected (a hypothesis) in fact cannot be shown "not" to have such a relationship (the proof). 9. Guesstimation: Solving the World's Problems on the Back of a Cocktail Napkin Somehow, guessing at numbers is unsettling, even though I've done it all my life. John Adam is a professor of applied mathematics, with a degree in physics. Larry Weinstein is a nuclear physicist. Their book is devoted to proving that intelligent guessing is useful and fun. The book lays out some general principles but its great strength lies in the interesting problems, a series of hints to help you solve each problem, and an interesting discussion of the pitfalls and triumphs involved. 10. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion Cialdini believes that influence is a science. This idea attracted me. As a rhetorician, I have always thought of persuasion as more of an art. Cialdini, however, makes a first-rate case for the science point of view. But maybe most importantly, he makes his case in a well-written, intelligent, and entertaining manner. Not only is this an important book to read, it is a fun book to read too. He introduces you to six principles of ethical persuasion: reciprocity, scarcity, liking, authority, social proof, and commitment/consistency. A chapter is devoted to each and you quickly see why Cialdini looks at influence as a science. Each principle is backed by social scientific testing and restesting. Each chapter is also filled with interesting examples that help you see how each principle can be applied. By the end of the book, I had little doubt that these are six important dimensions of human interaction.

Thursday, May 29, 2008

an intelligent protest against copyrights and patents on yoga

This is definitely a great book - for invention enthusiasts as well as for the alternative, new age and yoga world:

Can you patent wisdom? By Suketu Mehta Published: May 7, 2007; International Herald Tribune

I grew up watching my father stand on his head every morning. He was doing sirsasana, a yoga pose that accounts for his youthful looks well into his 60s. Now he might have to pay a royalty to an American patent holder if he teaches the secrets of his good health to others. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has issued 150 yoga-related copyrights, 134 patents on yoga accessories, and 2,315 yoga trademarks. There's big money in those pretzel twists and contortions - $3 billion a year in America alone. It's a mystery to most Indians that anybody can make that much money from the teaching of a knowledge that is not supposed to be bought or sold like sausages. The Indian government is not laughing. It has set up a task force that is cataloging traditional knowledge, including ayurvedic remedies and hundreds of yoga poses, to protect them from being pirated and copyrighted by foreign hucksters. The data will be translated from ancient Sanskrit and Tamil texts, stored digitally, and available in five international languages, so that patent offices in other countries can see that yoga didn't originate in a San Francisco commune. It is worth noting that the people in the forefront of the patenting of traditional Indian wisdom are Indians, mostly overseas. We know a business opportunity when we see one and have exported generations of gurus skilled in peddling enlightenment for a buck. But as Indians, they ought to know that the very idea of patenting knowledge is a gross violation of the tradition of yoga. In Sanskrit, "yoga" means "union". Indians believe in a universal mind - brahman - of which we are all a part, and which ponders eternally. Everyone has access to this knowledge. Knowledge in ancient India was protected by caste lines, not legal or economic ones. The term "intellectual property" was an oxymoron: the intellect could not be anybody's property. Perhaps it is for this reason that Indians do not feel obligated to pay for knowledge. Pirated copies of my book are openly sold on the Bombay streets, for a fourth of its official price. Many of the plots and the music in Bollywood movies are lifted wholesale from Hollywood. Still, Indians get upset every time they hear reports - often overblown - of Westerners' stealing their age-old wisdom through the mechanism of copyright law. The fears may be exaggerated, but they are widespread and reflect India's mixed experience with globalization. Western pharmaceutical companies make billions on drugs that are often first discovered in developing countries. But herbal remedies like bitter gourd or turmeric, which are known to be effective against everything from diabetes to piles, earn nothing for the country whose sages first isolated their virtues. The Indian government estimates that worldwide, 2,000 patents are issued a year based on traditional Indian medicines. Drugs and hatha yoga have the same aim: to help us lead healthier lives. India has given the world yoga for free. No wonder so many in the country feel that the world should return the favor by making lifesaving drugs available at reduced prices, or at least letting Indian companies make cheap generics. If the lotus position belongs to all mankind, so should the formula for Gleevec, the leukemia drug over whose patent a Swiss pharmaceuticals company is suing the Indian government. For decades, Indian law allowed its pharmaceutical companies to replicate Western-patented drugs and sell them at a lower price to countries too poor to afford them otherwise. In this way, India supplied half of the drugs used by HIV-positive people in the developing world. But in March 2005, the Indian Parliament, under pressure to bring the country into compliance with the World Trade Organization's rules on intellectual property, passed a bill declaring it illegal to make generic copies of patented drugs. This has put life-saving antiretroviral medications out of reach of many of the nearly 6 million Indians who have AIDS. Yet the very international drug companies that so fiercely protect their patents oppose India's attempts to amend World Trade Organization rules to protect its traditional remedies. There's more at stake than just the money. There is also the perception that the world trading system is unfair, that the deck is stacked against developing countries. If the copying of Western drugs is illegal, so should be the patenting of yoga. It is also intellectual piracy, stood on its head. Suketu Mehta is the author of "Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found."

Saturday, May 10, 2008

Sequence, by Lori Andrews

Last December, I saw an article in Science that badly attacked software patents, written by law professor Lori Andrews of Chicago-Kent. Her article was riddled with nonsense about math algorithms, making her anti-software patent conclusions just as nonsensical. She didn't ask

anyone knowledgable about such stuff for advice, and misinterpreted State Street. Sadly, the Science editors didn't retract her paper for the false science in it. The article is mostly fiction.

So it isn't surprising that she is a good fiction writer. I just finished reading a biotech fiction book she had published last year titled "Sequence". The book is set at the Armed Forces Institute of
Pathology, and involves government scientists using DNA analysis to track down killers, with the usual mix of love affairs, politically intrigue and biotech. It was a good read - I pretty much read in one reading. I am thinking that the main character, Alex Blake, a female biotech scientist, is Lori's alter ego :-) She has a new fiction work coming out, "The Silent Assassin". As long as it avoids software and mathematics, I suspect it will be good as well. But as a bit of advice to Lori, everything in her book is conventional. If you really understand the latest in genetics and ethics, you should be writing orders more intriguing books (my problem as will with Rifkin).

Such as a work coming out next year titled "Their Kisses Kill", a mix of biotech, religion, bioethics, government conspiracies, nuns and knights, and of course, the best setting for anything, the Bay Area.

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Books discussing Printed Matter Doctrine

POLICY LEVERS IN PATENT LAW by Dan Burk and Mark Lemley, Virginia Law Review, Nov. 2003, 1575 which cites In re Lowry, 32 F.3d 1579 In re Gulack, 703 F.2d 1381 Page 1672: "The Federal Circuit eliminated the long-standing rule against patenting business methods in 1998, and the related 'printed matter doctrine' is on uncertain footing as well."

FORMALISM AT THE FEDERAL CIRCUIT by John Thomas, American University Law Review, Apr. 2003, 771 which cites In re Gulack, 703 F.2d 1381 Page 788: "In keeping with this [State Street] approach, other exclusionary principles besides the business methods exception are approaching abrogation or have already met their demise. The printed matter doctrine stands on 'questionable legal and logical footing', the Federal Circuit has explained."

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY: THE LAW OF COPYRIGHTS, PATENTS, TRADEMARKS by Roger Schecter and John Thomas, Thomson West, 2003 which cites In re Gulack, 703 F.2d 1381 In re Miller, 418 F.2d 1392 In re Sterling, 70 F.2d 910 Page 306: "Under the printed matter doctrine, information inscribed upon a substrate for purposes of presentation was held outside the scope of section 101. ... Although the Federal Circuit has not expressly overturned the printed matter doctrine, its early decision in In re Gulack offered that the rule "stands on questionable legal and logical footing. Later, in In re Lowry, the Federal Circuit reversed a PTO rejection based upon the printed matter rule." Also mentioned is In re Sterling.

LEGAL PROTECTION OF DIGITIAL INFORMATION by Lee Hollaar, BNA Press, 2002 which cites In re Gulack, 703 F.2d 1381 In re Miller, 418 F.2d 1392 Page 254: "Printed Matter. In re Miller and In re Gulack held that printed matter is not patentable because it is not a proper manufacture." Well, not really. For example, from In re Gulack, footnote 8: "In Royka, 490 F.2d at 985, the CCPA, notably weary of reiterating this point, clearly stated that printed matter may well constitute structural limitations upon which patentability can be predicated."

INTANGIBLE INVENTIONS: PATENTABLE SUBJECT MATTER FOR AN INFORMATION AGE by Richard Gruner, Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review, Jan. 2002, 355 which cites In re Rice, 132 F.2d 140 Boggs V. Robertson, 13 USPQ 214 In re Russell, 48 F.2d 668 Page 403: "Expressive content recorded in printed matter - and, by analogy, expressive content preserved in any other recording material - generally is not patentable. Printed matter that does no more than record text is not patentable because, although it may record new, useful information or otherwise convey useful or desirable contents, the printed matter does not serve a functional role except as an information recording medium." He doesn't define "functional".

SOFTWARE AND INTERNET LAW by Mark Lemley - Peter Menell - Robert Merges - Pamela Samuelson, Aspen Law and Business, 2000 which cites In re Rice, 132 F.2d 140 Boggs V. Robertson, 13 USPQ 214 In re Russell, 48 F.2d 668 Guthrie v. Curlett, 10 F.2d 725 Page 270: "For examples of the 'printed matter' rule referred to in the preceding example, see In re Rice; In re Russell; Guthrie v. Curlett. In Boggs v. Robertson, ..., the court regarded printed matter as unpatentable when it merely reduces an abstract idea to written form." Interesting bit of censorship, referring to the real old caselaw, but not citing any of the CAFC's later comments on the printed matter doctrine from In re Lowry, Royka and Gulack are cited. Most likely written by Pam Samuelson, given the Rice/Russell citations.

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

NEW BOOK: ALEX GRAHAM BELL STOLE IDEA FOR TELEPHONE

Newswires report that a new book has been published, "The Telephone Gambit: Chasing Alexander Graham Bell's Secret" by Seth Shulman, in which Shulman attempts to prove that Bell stole the key idea for his telephone. Shulman argues that up until the year 1876, Bell was unable to figure out how to transmit sound electromagnetically over a wire, as evidenced by reports of failure in his laboratory notebooks. Then, after a 12-day gap in 1876, when Bell went to Washington to discuss patent issues at the Patent Office - Bell began developing a new mechanism for voice transmission, which proved to be successful. Did Bell get a look at his competitor's patents, the patents of Elisha Gray? Shulman argues yes, by comparing the diagrams Bell made of his new transmitter to diagrams in Gray's earlier patent applications. Shulman argues the two sets of diagrams are substantially similar to conclude that Bell stole his key idea from Gray. Of course, nowadays, thanks to the security morons in USPTO management (no one in PTO management has any real experience with national security), all you have to do to steal some important new piece of technology is to find the name of the tele-working examiner who is handling the technology, easily break into his house one night when he is gone, and quickly make copies of technology nowhere else disclosed.

Friday, January 18, 2008

Windows Annoyances, Practical Solutions and Humor

Windows XP has been a considerable improvement over its older
Microsoft sister versions, but it is still plagued with quirks that
make its users pull out heir hair. Windows XP was meant to be
flexible and highly customizable, but the typical default options are
not what most users would want. This and other annoyances are
comprehensively addressed by Windows Annoyances For Geeks and its
companion web site, annoyances.org

One of the best parts of the book is 100-plus pages meticulously addressing the problems with
Service Pack 2, which was meant to get Windows XP working smoothly. The
Service Pack 2 succeeds in doing so, but it changes innumerable
settings so that, for example, some of the network-dependent
applications may afterwards refuse to work. Karp explains that the SP2,
having done its job, has also tightened the settings in Windows' own
firewall. He also provides tips and tweaks for getting the applications
back on-line again. The book is very structured and logical, and its
worth is in the actual applying of its simple, easy-to-follow advice.

www.Annoyances.org is similar to the books' logic, and is a relief for
anyone who is fed up with the insanely irritating Paperclip, which is
an animated assistant in MS Word, as well as with countless other bugs
and idiot messages in Windows applications.The site has a
wealth of resources, such as practical, working solutions, to bugs and
even little-known malfunctions which have been well-documented and are
available for all Microsoft products going back to Windows 95.
(From own article)