T1B

Due to my role at my job every four weeks, I have a lot of down time (about three-four hours a day, actually) and have been using it to get caught up on my reading. Pounded out the following:

1. Ivanhoe
2. A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
3. Howard's End
4. Much Ado About Nothing (play)
5. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (play)

I'm now into the autobiography of Ben Franklin. I think that the Alice's Adventures duo will be next.

On a related note, I ended up hitting the going out of business sale at a local bookstore a few months ago. Got about 50 books that I've always wanted to read for about .25 a piece. Was stoked and will be busy.

So far this summer:

"The Devil's Doctor" by Philip Ball (bio of Paracelsus)
"The Hot Zone" by Richard Preston
"Viruses, Plagues, and History" by M.A. Oldstone
"1314: Bannockburn" by Aryeh Nusbacher
"Guns, Germs, and Steel" by Jared Diamond
"The Great Influenza" by John Barry
"Vindicating the Founders" by Thomas West
"Plagues and Peoples" by William McNeill
"The Freemasons" by Jasper Ridley
"The Book of the Subgenius" by "Bob" Dobbs
"Endless Forms Most Beautiful" by Sean Carroll (about evolutionary developmental bio)

Mike the Lab Rat wrote:
"The Hot Zone" by Richard Preston
"The Great Influenza" by John Barry
"The Freemasons" by Jasper Ridley

Would like your opinion on these, if you wouldn't mind.

Killian wrote:

Mike the Lab Rat wrote:
"The Hot Zone" by Richard Preston
"The Great Influenza" by John Barry
"The Freemasons" by Jasper Ridley

Would like your opinion on these, if you wouldn't mind.

"Hot Zone" - it was just OK for me, but it'd be good for non-science background folks. It was a pretty fast read, and the details of hemorrhagic fever would be pretty shocking for anyone not already familiar with it (the flick "Outbreak" gives a pretty good view of it). It gives a nice window into how the government reacted to a disease like Ebola, but it wasn't as informative to me as I had hoped. I guess my background made me jaded or something...I think it's an excellent book for anyone wanting to get into the topic. I plan on offering as an extra credit read for my students. I hear his other book "Demon in the Freezer" is even better.

"The Great Influenza" - great book, not just because it goes into an (until recently) overlooked global epidemic, but also because it goes into the history of U.S. medicine prior to the epidemic. Very informative and compelling. If you want to see a GREAT video on the subject, check out the "American Experience" PBS episode (Influenza 1918). The scene in which they interviewed a nine-something old lady who describes her little baby brother dying and saying her name with his dying breath...when she began crying, remembering and describing a painful event from over 80 years ago, my wife and mom-in-law just lost it. I plan to show the DVD to my students to show the human side of these epidemics.

"The Freemasons." - I could see how someone would find this book dull and disappointing, since it thoroughly debunks all the conspiracies linked to the Masons. It explains the origins of the secrecy and how they evolved from a true guild into a social organization. It shows the Masons as a maligned, sometimes self-deluding and self-important, but usually well-meaning social group.

Thanks, I appreciate it. I've wanted to pick up "Hot Zone" for awhile but haven't done it. I don't have a science background so it should be interesting.

In "The Freemasons", did they touch on the theory that the Templars evolved into the Freemasons?

My recreational reading goes all over the map, mostly I like humor (anything by Merrill Markoe cracks me up) and mysteries, but last week on a whim I went for a halfway serious rec read and picked up 'Blink', and would recommend it to anyone that likes anything dealing with social behavior. It's fun book.

Here's a link from the author...link for the blink

One link from the book is a test on how your subconscious mind is sometimes different from your conscious social attitude. You can find that at...project implicit

The cool thing about the whole idea of the book is that sometimes you need less information than more when trying to make any kind of impression or decision, but the quality of the information matters. The author is very good in setting out various scenarios, from the idea of dating to making life and death decisions, where a small amount of quality information is all you need, and how such things affect our lives.

It's very well done, and I would never buy the book based on my description and never heard of it before I bought it, but it's one of the select books that I have read that I will keep to read again...and my re-read books include anything from Cynthia Heimel to Richard Feynman, so take that for what it's worth :).

mvscal wrote:

Killian wrote:In "The Freemasons", did they touch on the theory that the Templars evolved into the Freemasons?

Don't know if the book did or not, but that theory is patently false.

The two organizations would seem opposed to one another.

The Freemasons were inspired by the Templars, at least to the extent that they began using Templar symbols and rituals in the 1700s.

From the Ridley book (p.28):

"Is is not impossible that some Templars escaped to Scotland in the years after 1314, that their descendants found their way to Aberdeen and then to Edinburgh, and that they joined the Freemasons' lodges; but they played no part in the development of speculative Freemasonry in Scotland and England."

As mvs points out (as does Ridley in his book), the Templars were neither deists nor "Protestant heretics." They did share a hatred of the Papacy (the Templars' treatment by the RCC was abominable), and many Freemasons love to pretend a link between the two, but contrary to them and John Robinson ("Born in Blood"), the Masons are not descended from the Templars.