Matt Luce » books http://mattluce.com/blog Established 1975 Sat, 31 Jul 2010 22:13:25 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.2 en hourly 1 Overblown http://mattluce.com/blog/2006/12/31/overblown/ http://mattluce.com/blog/2006/12/31/overblown/#comments Sun, 31 Dec 2006 16:30:19 +0000 Matt Luce http://mattluce.com/blog/2006/12/31/overblown/ The subtitle of the book sums it up pretty well: “How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats, and Why We Believe Them”. A decent book. It really pointed out how ridiculous the fear of terrorism is. The chances of dying in a terrorist attack are microscopic. For example, you are much more likely to die in automobile crash, so why don’t we have a “war on auto accidents”?. The book also goes through similar historical examples, such as the communist scare during the cold war. One point the author makes, which I completely agree with, is that you can never get rid of terrorism. Just like you can never completely get rid of crime. Terror is simply a tactic. The best thing you can do is to fight “terror” itself, which means stop the overreactions and unjustified fears resulting from terrorism.

A pretty quick read and quite interesting. Puts a lot of things in perspective.


Overblown

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]]> http://mattluce.com/blog/2006/12/31/overblown/feed/ 0 The God Delusion http://mattluce.com/blog/2006/12/22/the-god-delusion/ http://mattluce.com/blog/2006/12/22/the-god-delusion/#comments Sat, 23 Dec 2006 02:21:40 +0000 Matt Luce http://mattluce.com/blog/2006/12/22/the-god-delusion/ This is the second book that I’ve read by Richard Dawkins, and I have to say, I’m becoming a big fan. Admittedly, most of the book was “preaching to the choir”, so I was a bit reluctant to read it. Despite this fact, I still enjoyed it immensely.

I had always considers myself an agnostic rather than an atheist, as I felt I could never disprove that God exists (of course, I can’t disprove the existence of the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy either). After finishing this book, my mind has been changed, I would classify myself as an atheist (or the new euphemism: “bright“). Just because we don’t have the answers for existence, doesn’t mean we should simply give up and say, “well, there must be a higher power responsible”. That is quite lazy. There is an answer to be found.

Intelligent Design is another issue I was somewhat ambivalent about as well. While I do “believe” in evolution, I never considered the two to be mutually exclusive. The main argument behind ID is that the natural world is too complex to for it not to have been designed. But, based on the line of reasoning that complex things need to be designed, then the designer itself must also be complex (more complex than what it designed), and therefore it would need to have been “designed” as well. Then who designed the designer? This creates an infinite regress.

One of the chapters also covers material in the bible. It doesn’t take much to debunk the bible, but it is always entertaining to read some of the things in the old testament. Some of it is quite appalling as well. I really wish more Christians would actually read the bible. The ones I know, seem to know very little about the contents. They only know what has been cherry-picked for them by their respective church. I highly recommend “The Age of Reason” by Thomas Paine for the most thorough debunking of the bible. It’s the book that “saved” me from my religious upbringing.

The book covers many more topics about religion, but I won’t go over them all.

I would challenge anyone of faith to read this book.

Merry Winter Solstice!


The Selfish Gene

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]]> http://mattluce.com/blog/2006/12/22/the-god-delusion/feed/ 0 The Selfish Gene http://mattluce.com/blog/2006/12/08/the-selfish-gene/ http://mattluce.com/blog/2006/12/08/the-selfish-gene/#comments Sat, 09 Dec 2006 01:19:20 +0000 Matt Luce http://mattluce.com/blog/2006/12/08/the-selfish-gene/ It will be hard to do this book justice. The selfish gene is Richard Dawkins’ theory that people, plants and animals are nothing more than “survival machines” for genes. Genes use us as a vessel. Definitely made me think about human existence, and that it is really, in the end, somewhat meaningless. We (humans, animals and plants) are essentially just a collection of living cells working together to propagate our genes.

If you are interested in evolution, biology or genetics, this is a great book. It has really piqued my interest in the fields of genetics and natural selection. It’s something that I will be doing more research on for sure.


The Selfish Gene

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]]> http://mattluce.com/blog/2006/12/08/the-selfish-gene/feed/ 0 The Prince of the Marshes http://mattluce.com/blog/2006/11/19/the-prince-of-the-marshes/ http://mattluce.com/blog/2006/11/19/the-prince-of-the-marshes/#comments Mon, 20 Nov 2006 00:23:50 +0000 Matt Luce http://mattluce.com/blog/2006/11/19/the-prince-of-the-marshes/ The Prince of the Marshes tells the story of Rory Stewart’s year working for the Coalition Provisional Authority after the invasion of Iraq. He worked in two provinces in the south of Iraq: Maysan and Dhi Qar. His job was to work with the civilian team to start the development process while the new Iraqi government was being formed. Despite what you might think, this is not an anti-war book. It simply details of the struggles the author had trying to help form a democracy in post invasion Iraq – he doesn’t reflect on whether he thought the invasion was right or wrong. The author must work with all of the different factions and political parties to achieve the objectives. Maintaining security without turning it into a Saddam police state is the most difficult task. Eventually, as time passes, it starts the descent into the chaos we have now. I think the book really gave a good insight into what it is like in post invasion Iraq.


The Prince of the Marshes

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]]> http://mattluce.com/blog/2006/11/19/the-prince-of-the-marshes/feed/ 0 The Places In Between http://mattluce.com/blog/2006/10/29/the-places-in-between/ http://mattluce.com/blog/2006/10/29/the-places-in-between/#comments Sun, 29 Oct 2006 23:16:03 +0000 Matt Luce http://mattluce.com/blog/2006/10/29/the-places-in-between/ Yet another book finished. Won’t say too much about this one other than it was really good. It’s about the authors travel on foot through Afghanistan just after the fall of the Taliban.


The Places In Between

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]]> http://mattluce.com/blog/2006/10/29/the-places-in-between/feed/ 0 The Day of the Jackal http://mattluce.com/blog/2006/10/22/the-day-of-the-jackal/ http://mattluce.com/blog/2006/10/22/the-day-of-the-jackal/#comments Sun, 22 Oct 2006 18:20:12 +0000 Matt Luce http://mattluce.com/blog/2006/10/22/the-day-of-the-jackal/ The Day of the Jackal follows an assassin as he tries to kill the president of France, Charles De Gaulle, in 1963. The mysterious Jackal is the world’s top assassin, who is hired by a French revolutionary group. The book goes into great detail following the Jackal through his preparations for the assassination plot through every step of the execution. As he is carrying out his plans, the French police are furiously trying to find the Jackal and stop him before he can succeed. Of course, this is leads to all the suspense in the story. The story isn’t resolved until almost the very last page of the book.

I found the level of detail to be a bit tedious at times. However, I definitely enjoyed the book, and would recommend it.


The Day of the Jackal

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]]> http://mattluce.com/blog/2006/10/22/the-day-of-the-jackal/feed/ 0 Fast Food Nation http://mattluce.com/blog/2006/10/14/fast-food-nation/ http://mattluce.com/blog/2006/10/14/fast-food-nation/#comments Sun, 15 Oct 2006 02:23:33 +0000 Matt Luce http://mattluce.com/blog/2006/10/14/fast-food-nation/ What a great book! I knew this was supposed to be a good book, but never got around to reading it because I figured I wouldn’t really learn anything new, and that it would cover the same material as another book I just finished. I was wrong. Fast Food Nation covers quite a bit that I wasn’t aware of, specifically the business practices of the food industry. The working conditions in the slaughterhouses are like that of a sweatshop. Also, despite decrying that they are simply champions of the “free market”, the fast food industry receives huge dollars in government subsidies. One example is “worker training”, although the workers are never really trained. The fast food industry also preys upon the youth of America by focusing its marketing efforts on those who are too young to know better.

I could go on and on about this book, but I won’t. The book is incredible. I know this is cliche, but I wish everyone in America would read this.


Fast Food Nation

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]]> http://mattluce.com/blog/2006/10/14/fast-food-nation/feed/ 1 A Thousand Barrels A Second http://mattluce.com/blog/2006/09/24/a-thousand-barrels-a-second/ http://mattluce.com/blog/2006/09/24/a-thousand-barrels-a-second/#comments Sun, 24 Sep 2006 18:24:46 +0000 Matt Luce http://mattluce.com/blog/2006/09/24/a-thousand-barrels-a-second/ The title of the book comes from the fact that almost almost one thousand barrels of oil are consumed per second.

The author discusses the history of energy and the cycles that energy sources go through before being replaced by a new energy source.

One of the interesting points that the author makes is that the hydrogen fuel cell may not be the “silver bullet” that everyone is hoping it will be. One of the issues is procuring the hydrogen needed as a fuel source. I found this observation a bit disheartening.

Anyway, a really interesting book and a pretty easy read.


A Thousand Barrels A Second

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]]> http://mattluce.com/blog/2006/09/24/a-thousand-barrels-a-second/feed/ 1 Bowling Alone http://mattluce.com/blog/2006/09/14/bowling-alone/ http://mattluce.com/blog/2006/09/14/bowling-alone/#comments Thu, 14 Sep 2006 23:53:09 +0000 Matt Luce http://mattluce.com/blog/2006/09/14/bowling-alone/ No, this book isn’t about bowling. It’s about community, or rather the lack of it in America. The subtitle of the book is “The Collapse and Revival of American Community”, but, it is really more about the collapse of community (or as the author refers to it: “social capital”). The revival is just a small portion of recommendations at the end.

In the first section, the book details with a lot of statistics the overall decline of community in America over the last century. This was a bit tedious. I probably could have skipped this entire portion, as I didn’t need to be sold on these facts.

The second section covers the “why” of the decline of American community. The two largest culprits are television and urban sprawl – no kidding. It corroborates my thoughts on television – it’s evil. People spend so much time in their cars or watching TV it is really sickening.

Finally, the book lists why the decline in community is so detrimental to us. The lack of community hurts our participation in democracy and our overall health and happiness, among other things.

The book is pretty good, although the author was “preaching to the choir” with me. There were a few more charts, graphs, and stats then I care for. If this topic is not something you think much about, it will probably open your eyes to a few things. However, if you already already are cognizant of the impact things like commuting and excessive television veiwing, I don’t think you’ll find too many new insights.


Bowling Alone

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]]> http://mattluce.com/blog/2006/09/14/bowling-alone/feed/ 0 No god but God http://mattluce.com/blog/2006/08/29/no-god-but-god/ http://mattluce.com/blog/2006/08/29/no-god-but-god/#comments Wed, 30 Aug 2006 01:51:21 +0000 Matt Luce http://mattluce.com/blog/2006/08/29/no-god-but-god/ Very disappointing. I was hoping for a much more subjective history of Islam. The author narrates the book almost as if he is present for the events. I couldn’t stand it.

Obviously, Islam is very topical at the moment. I was really hoping to get some different insight into the religion, but no such luck.

Definitely don’t recommend this book.


No God But God

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