Casals and Bach’s Cello Suites About a week ago I got interested in Bach’s cello suites. I started with Rostropovich’s EMI 1995 recording. The sound was beautiful, but the music was bland, entirely not what I expected from Bach as interpreted by Glenn Gould on piano and Jascha Heifetz on violin. Then I listened to Yo Yo Ma, Pablo Casals, and Pierre Fournier. That’s when I discovered Casals for myself. […]
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“The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat” by Oliver Sacks
Understanding Mental Illness “Nothing is to be feared, but to be understood.” This is perhaps true especially in the cases of mental disorders. There are few things more devastating than losing one’s mind or the control of one’s body. If we can understand the cause of the disorder, however, we may be able to find a cure, or at least come to term with it. This books details some of […]
Read more“The Nature of Order: The Phenomenon of Life” by Christopher Alexander
Living Centers Centers arise in space and each center has life to a certain degree. It is not inherent in the center by itself, but is a function of the whole configuration in which the center occurs. The life of one center is increased or decreased according to the position and intensity of other nearby centers. The centers are the fundamental elements of the wholeness. Fundamental Properties of Life The […]
Read more“In Search of Memory” by Eric Kandel
A Good Mystery Novel Kandel tells the story of how fascination with memory has led him to a life-long search for the biological underpinning of memory and consciousness. It’s part autobiography and part textbook, but reads like a good mystery novel. I could hardly put it down until I finished it. His writing is very fluid and concise, and he inserts figures at just the right junctures to illustrate and […]
Read more“The Language Instinct” by Steven Pinker
This book makes easier reading than “The Stuff of Thought”, but it’s also less informative. There are many speculations, but not enough evidence. Pinker doesn’t demonstrate exactly “how the mind creates language”, which is what the subtitle suggests and what I’m mainly interested in, but instead he expounds the theory of “Universal Grammar”, which was initially developed by Noam Chomsky. In a nutshell, the argument is that there are so […]
Read more“Purple Cow” by Seth Godin
What I’ve Learned 1. Invest in developing remarkable products, not in mass advertising, as the potential customers are either too busy or too saturated to pay attention. 2. Target people with discriminating taste and enthusiasm to seek out and spread unique, extraordinary products. They are called “otaku” in Japanese. Not all customers are equal in this case. Otaku are the best, because they not only buy the product but also […]
Read more“No Ordinary Genius” by Richard Feynman and Christopher Sykes
This book complements Feynman’s autobiography “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman” and sequel “What Do you Care What Other People Think” very well. It includes interviews from Feynman’s colleagues, family and friends, as well as himself, and gives the reader a more complete picture of the man and a life fully lived. Genius “Feynman’s great secret in solving the problem of quantum electrodynamics was that he developed this way to do […]
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