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olderthanIusedtobe
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PostSat Jul 21, 2018 10:15 pm 
Toni wrote:
get another book! Life is too short.
I usually stick it out w/ movies unless it's really bad (what's 1 1/2 or 2 hours?), but a book takes way too long to read if you're not into it. I've given up on plenty.

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neek
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PostThu Jul 26, 2018 7:39 am 
A couple of new releases I've particularly enjoyed: Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress by Stephen Pinker. Stop whining; by all measures of human flourishing, the world has been getting better. But let's not screw it up. How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence by Michael Pollan. Take drugs. Mostly 'shrooms. Not too much. Currently reading Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality by Max Tegmark. I like his childlike sense of wonder and simple explanations. Reminiscent of Feynman. This is not just an explanation of how the universe came to be, but also reasoned speculation on what may lie beyond. If you want to be depressed: The Death of Expertise: The Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters by Thomas Nichols. I am now uncomfortable saying basically anything in public, and hesitate to send my kid to college.

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MtnGoat
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PostThu Jul 26, 2018 9:08 am 
You have very good reasons for both.

Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggie' until you can find a rock. - Will Rogers
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Malachai Constant
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PostFri Jul 27, 2018 5:03 pm 
The Inca and their Ancestors Archeology of Peru, Michael E. Moseley. After hiking in Peru and visiting many ancient sites I became interested in seeing what happened. The Inca empire controlled most of Western South America extending from Columbia to Chile. The ancestral civilizations were nearly as old as those in the Middle East going back to 12,000 BC. The Inca themselves were only the last couple hundred years. The civilizations rose and fell largely on the basis of El Niņo occupancies and droughts. When rainfall was low maritime civilizations prevailed. Alpine civilizations were minor until the Inca arose and controlled the continent after another period of drought. I can think of no other area where an alpine civilization became the dominant civilization. Mostly mountain areas remain tribal and are subsumed into urban civilizations. Most of the civilizations ended when a drought came and the sacrifices no longer worked. The population burned down the polices of the elite when this occurred. The Inca empire the Spanish destroyed had already been decimated by smallpox and internal unrest from the gods that failed. A lesson for later civilizations.

"You do not laugh when you look at the mountains, or when you look at the sea." Lafcadio Hearn
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zephyr
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PostFri Jul 27, 2018 5:12 pm 
neek wrote:
How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence by Michael Pollan. Take drugs. Mostly 'shrooms. Not too much.
I heard this author in an interview (radio or online) and found that they had this book at the library. Got on the waiting list and it arrived this week. Curious to see his take on this approach. ~z

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olderthanIusedtobe
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PostSun Jul 29, 2018 12:57 pm 
olderthanIusedtobe wrote:
So instead I got totally sucked into another YA sci fi/fantasy series. Sabaa Tahir is up to #3 of an expected 4 book series, so I have some catching up to do. Plowed thru the first book, "An Ember in the Ashes." Very enjoyable. Will be moving on to the second book shortly.
Second book I'm not enjoying nearly as much as the first. "A Torch Against the Night." Hard to put my finger on it but it's been kind of a frustrating read. Finally getting better near the end. More than 3/4 of the way through it now. Will have to wait to finish it before I decide if I want to continue w/ this series or not. I've had a number of good starts to series that went downhill fast and I gave up on.

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olderthanIusedtobe
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PostFri Aug 03, 2018 11:14 am 
Picked up another Nevada Barr book featuring National Park Ranger Anna Pigeon. This one is set in Glacier NP and features an angry grizzly bear. And one or more human ne'er do wells. "Blood Lure."

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SMPaul
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PostFri Aug 10, 2018 12:50 pm 
Just finished "Wildfire - On the front lines with Station 8" A fascinating read on the people, science, philosophy, and effort, required to tackle wildfires. https://www.mountaineers.org/books/books/wildfire-on-the-front-lines-with-station-8 I highly recommend it!

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Kim Brown
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PostThu Aug 16, 2018 2:05 pm 
Spokane author Jack Nesbit's Ancient Places. I picked it up at the Verlot Ranger station last weekend. So far, I'm enjoying it. I have read other Nesbit work; this is great.

"..living on the east side of the Sierra world be ideal - except for harsher winters and the chance of apocalyptic fires burning the whole area." Bosterson, NWHiker's marketing expert
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MtnGoat
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PostThu Aug 16, 2018 9:43 pm 
Peter Hamilton's Dreaming Void scifi series. Damn can this guy write an epic saga.

Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggie' until you can find a rock. - Will Rogers
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zephyr
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PostFri Aug 17, 2018 8:41 pm 
This was mentioned upthread by neek, but I just finished it last night and wanted to chime in. wink.gif How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan, Penguin Press, New York, 2018. This is an excellent book, well-researched, thought out and produced. Pollan, a journalist and long-time contributor to the New York Times Magazine teaches writing at Harvard and the University of California, Berkeley. His previous books have been mostly about food. This is a history of psychedelic research and how these substances are used to “…provide relief to people suffering from difficult-to-treat conditions such as depression, addiction, and anxiety,...”. I enjoyed the neuroscience chapter and its description of how the brain works—i.e. the DMN or Default Mode Network. He describes the brain structure then goes on to say “As mentioned, the default mode network appears to play a role in the creation of mental constructs or projections, the most important of which is the construct we call the self, or ego. This is why some neuroscientists call it “the me network.” … The achievement of an individual self, a being with a unique past and a trajectory into the future, is one of the glories of human evolution, but it is not without its drawbacks and potential disorders. The price of the sense of an individual identity is a sense of separation from others and nature. Self-reflection can lead to great intellectual and artistic achievement but also to destructive forms of self-regard and many types of unhappiness. … But, accepting the good with the bad, most of us take this self as an unshakeable given, as real as anything we know, and as the foundation of our life as conscious human beings. Or at least I always took it that way, until my psychedelic experiences left me to wonder.” (pp 303-304) Here’s a link to his web page with many links to favorable reviews. There are a number of copies in the Seattle Public Library. ~z

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graywolf
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PostFri Aug 17, 2018 8:53 pm 
"Saving Tarboo Creek". Very local - I work with the author's neighbor. Next will be "The Smiling Country" by Sally Portman about the Methow valley. I've met the author and her husband, Don.

The only easy day was yesterday...
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GaliWalker
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PostWed Aug 22, 2018 1:35 pm 
MtnGoat wrote:
Peter Hamilton's Dreaming Void scif series. Damn can this guy write an epic saga.
Yup! up.gif

'Gali'Walker => 'Mountain-pass' walker bobbi: "...don't you ever forget your camera!" Photography: flickr.com/photos/shahiddurrani
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olderthanIusedtobe
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PostThu Aug 23, 2018 2:30 pm 
I've bogged down on several books lately. Got a new one that is promising so far. I wasn't familiar w/ Dan Fesperman but apparently he's written quite a few spy thriller novels. This one is called "Safe Houses." Starts with a flashback scene to Berlin and a low level CIA agent who oversees several safe houses in the city. She hears something she probably shouldn't have heard, even though she doesn't understand the meaning of it. 35 years later she is murdered in her home in Maryland by her developmentally delayed son. Her daughter is mystified by the murder and wants to try to understand what led up to, so is in the process of trying to hire a P.I. to take a look. That's where I'm at so far. I imagine it's going to jump back and forth between different time frames and go way down a rabbit hole.

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I'm Pysht
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PostMon Aug 27, 2018 9:08 am 
Pantsdrunk: Kalsarikanni: The Finnish Path to Relaxation Well, not yet anyway, but I'm going to...

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