I took the quality down a bit to get the file smaller, let me know how it sounds.

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Question: What is your list of books that you keep re-reading every once in a while?

This is a follow up from a post by eddie k set to music. I find it to be tremendously depressing and quite fitting for this fine Tuesday afternoon.

About four or five years ago I had this excellent/bogus idea that it would be really funny to have a pair of shoes that had feet painted on them, so that when I was skateboarding around town it would seem as if I was barefoot.  I guess other people thought it would be a good idea also and have gone one step further with zombie feet.

I bought it from Amazon and I can now save you the trouble.  It’s like every Radiolab segment of the past two years summarized and then remixed with Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink.

The point of the book is that the human brain is advanced but it’s a tool that wasn’t developed for a lot of what we use it for now.  Cavemen didn’t have to decide between living in a small house with a shorter commute or a big house with a longer commute for example.

Our brain makes us do things like hold onto stocks that are doing poorly in hopes they turn around and sell stocks that are going up because we want to get out while the getting is good even though that rarely works.

So the book just doesn’t really do anything for me, it’s informative enough but and I learned some things about the human brain but they were things I for the most part already knew from radiolab and I still have to talk to my dad about it now that I’ve read it.  The worst part is that he’s been doing this to me since he taught me how to read and he still never reads any book that I recommend to him (even the Outlaw Sea which I mailed him and is right up his alley).

I give this book 2 out of 5 stars.  If you don’t listen to Radiolab or have a more balanced relationship with your father you’ll like it more than I did.  I especially didn’t like the entire chapter about how great Tom Brady’s brain is.  I agree he’s a smart guy who makes decisions quickly but the Boston based M.I.T./Harvard mafia of popular science writers use him and Belichick as examples too often.  How can I get my dad to read the books that I want him to read?

A friend of mine is looking for a place in the Bay Area that serves live octopus cause her friend wants to try it.  If you know of someplace like that let me know.  These are squirming not quite dead tentacles on a plate in Korea, I’m warning you.