Poisoned Profits

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Poisoned Profits is the newest combined work from authors Philipe and Alice Shabecoff which comes with the sub title, The Toxic Assault on Our Children which sums up this book perfectly.

The couple works to show the deteriorating environmental picture for children in the United States with a focus on the problems that these environmental factors can cause.

As a father to be myself this was truly a disturbing read, I hadn't thought that since our children are so much closer to the floor and ground that they ingest at least three times as many pollutants as adults. This is exacerbated even more by the fact that children drink and eat infinitely more fruits and vegetables than the average adult. Additionally they lay out the ways that both chemical companies and large corporations work to craft scientific studies which are anything but scientific and show results which are more conducive to their aims. This is much the same route that tobacco companies fought against the dangers of second hand smoke for almost forty years before public opinion finally turned against them in the last few decades.

Of course, any parent fears that their child will be negatively affected by their environment either in terms of their mental development or development before being born.

If you're generally interested in the environment, or have ever bough a piece of organic produce, a Prius or even a cleaner without bleach out of concern for your children (and yourself!) this is an interesting read which will take your understanding of environmental issues to the next level. Most importantly the book ends with a specific action plan including both other resources as well as environmentally friendly companies which deserve our support.

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Super Freakonomics by Steven B Levitt and Stephen J Dubner

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This is billed as the "explosive" follow-up to Freakonomics," and is subtitled: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance.

Apparently the world can't get enough of this team who keep questioning our assumptions about how the world works, and how we should be evaluating the statistics the media bombards us with.

They open with something that's not intuitively obvious -- according to the statistics (and if you accept their assumption that people walk as much drunk as they drive), it's far safer for the drunk person to drive drunk than to walk drunk.

It's far safer for other drivers for drunks to walk, but for the drunk, it's safer to drive -- so they don't lie down in the middle of the street and pass out, fall in front of a car, cross a street without looking, or the other dangerous things drunk pedestrians do. They didn't even include the real possibility (in some neighborhoods) of being robbed.

It ends with descriptions of how a research scientist taught monkeys to value coins -- they even discovered prostitution.

Along the way, they take a close look at the economics of (human) prostitute, comparing what it was many years ago to today.

Even more potentially controversial is the chapter on global warming, which highlights a company headed by a former Microsoft employee who is leading other geniuses to find cost-effective ways to make money by solving the world's problems.

These scientists seem to generally believe the world is gradually warming, but are well-aware that the current models are not sophisticated enough, putting them outside the rabid environmental camp.

The authors touch on how the current environmental movement seems much like a religion that is attempting to limit carbon dioxide not just as a method to reduce global warming, but to deliberately destroy civilization as we know of. They allude to this, and seem aware of the threat, but don't go deeply into the motivations of the fanatical environmentalists or explore what are their true goals.

Rather they take "reducing global warming" as the goal, and then let the scientists discuss how it could be accomplished at little cost.

As someone who doesn't pretend to be a climate scientist, I'm an agnostic on global warming.

But as someone who sees the proposed "solutions" for the alleged threat of global warming as a threat to humanity's freedom and economic development, I wish they'd gone further in exposing the radical environmentalists who are using climate change as a means, not an end.

They even re-open the infamous Kitty Genovese case, though apparently have not read Robert Cialdini's explanation that the neighbors who did witness the attack or her murder believed someone else had called the police. They discovered that someone did call the police, who apparently were slow to react, since nobody knew how seriously she was wounded.

I personally enjoy this form of using facts to debunk myths. Lord knows we need a lot more facts and context and a lot fewer media lies and distortions.

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The Unthinkable - Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - And Why by Amanda Ripley

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I picked this up thinking it was probably a knockoff of The Survivor's Club by Ben Sherwood. However, I quickly realized The Unthinkable by Amanda Ripley is an excellent, well-researched book in its own right. There's is some overlap between them, but she focuses on disasters -- by definition involving many people at once -- whereas he focuses on survival of individuals, sometimes in disastrous circumstances and sometimes by themselves.

She also uses a lot of case studies, though dividing them up and spreading them out to make her points, which is sometimes confusing. She explores many areas without making a concentrated attempt to make a point.

One thing she does say, repeatedly though not as much as I would have liked, is how most people respond as constructively as possible to disasters, and they could respond even better if given the proper training and instruction.

According to her, and she makes a lot of sense, in too many cases the government and other relevant authorities fail to trust the ability of people to learn.

She brings out the lessons of September 11 from several angles. The first is a woman whose reaction and that of her co-workers was typical. They dithered. They wasted time talking about what to do and in gathering up their belongings. When they finally got started going down the stairwell, they went too slowly.

Despite the usual assumptions, they didn't panic. Almost the reverse. They were polite and helpful to each other. The woman was in denial and suffered some sensory shock -- blindness at the street level -- and had to be helped outside.

She examines a situation where Columbian guerrillas attacked a diplomatic party and took the U.S. ambassador hostage. She gets interesting material both from the ambassador and the leader of the guerrillas who is now a politician in Columbia. Both of them report changes in their perceptions. Time slowed down for the ambassador. Commandante Uno shot at his own reflection in a mirror, mistaking it for an armed opponent, not recognizing himself.

She references some airline crashes. She doesn't go into the detail Sherwood did -- one chapter of his book is practically a textbook on how to survive them -- but does repeat the same basic advice. Read the instruction cards, listen to the safety demonstrations and make note of where the nearest exits are. She mentions a crash where the only people who survived were those who had paid attention to the preflight demonstration and read those little cards.

She also interviewed a lot of scientists who study things such as the fear paralysis animals demonstrate, and panic, and how we learn how to respond. She also goes into depth on the physics of being in dense crowds, and the times when people are killed in Saudi Arabia, crushed by other Muslims while on haj. It has to do with the extraordinary density and size of the processions, not religious behavior.

I highly recommend both books. This one makes a better case for authorities educating and empowering ordinary people to help themselves. But in the end, it's all up to us. The Unthinkable contains some of the tools and concepts we can use to better prepare ourselves for emergencies.

Richard Stooker is a writer with a long time interest in fitness, health, anti-aging and nutrition. He also recommends keeping freeze dried foods stored in your home and car in case of emergencies, and have an emergency preparedness plan.

The World Without Us

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The World Without Us is the most recent work by famed environmentalist and futurist Alan Weisman. Set in what amounts to a fairly familiar situation now, the world after humanity is wiped out (he makes no guess what causes it, just assumes that it has happened) Weisman goes through a number of different aspects of civilization and how they will change without human intervention.

One aspect of Weisman's writing and conclusions which I enjoyed was that he didn't take the easy answers. He didn't simply say that nature would improve and that everything would go smoothly once humans stopped existing. Far from it, in fact. He talks at some length about what happens to plastic when it is does not end up in landfills. We've all seen plastic bags floating on the water at the beach, or blowing in the wind, but what happens when that plastic is broken down by ocean currents over many years? Weisman estimates (no one can know for sure, plastic hasn't been around long enough for anyone to know, even in a laboratory setting) that the plastic simply is literally pounded into microscopic parts and those parts are going to be digested by small, incredibly small organisms. Will they be able to use them for food, or will this additional plastic reek havoc with the entire ecosystem? Again, no one knows but Wesiman isn't all doom and gloom on the subject, even suggesting that he feels an animal will eventually evolve with the ability to digest these plastic particles as food.

Any novel on this topic wouldn't be complete without a chapter on our current domesticated animals, Weisman's work is no different here. Clearly, as many of us would expect animals like cows and even the family dog are so adapted to humans taking care of them that they don't have much hope in a world without humans. The family cat is another story though as it has never totally surrendered to human control, as evidenced by the fact that the average house cat will still hunt even when well fed.

If you're looking for a novel about the future, even one without us, The World Without Us makes for an enjoyable read and I believe finds a nice middle ground between favoring human intervention and natural selection in the wider world around us.