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Education Reading

Latest Read: Incognito

Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain by neuroscientist David Eagleman. One cannot help but ponder how interesting a class on neuroscience and cognitive behavior would be if taught by David Eagleman? He is an adjunct professor at Stanford University.

Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain by David Eagleman

There are certainly several instances throughout the book where I was catching myself laughing out loud. Yet, there are segments where the dark side of the brain’s human behavior is brought into light. Indeed, it is like experiencing a David Lynch movie.

Likewise, David provides deep insights to various parts of the brain and has selected a worthy collection of stories.

I found the fourth chapter, “The Brain Is a Team of Rivals” certainly the most fascinating of the book. In this chapter David is addressing the brain under duress. Subsequently multiple unique experiences resulting in the brain’s changing state of processing reactions. For this reason I find the book such a refereshing read.

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Education Reading

Latest Read: Breath

Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor. Did you ever consider you are breathing incorrectly? I never would have considered this myself. On the surface, most would certainly cast aside the notion that we breath incorrectly. Yet, this book could change your life.

Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor

For example, we take 670 million breaths over the span of our life. Breathing is certainly finite. Yet how you breath unquestionably impacts how many breaths you have left.

Do you consider yourself healthy? Then consider this book for your loved ones: parents, family, friends, and coworkers. Do you know anyone afflicted with ailments such as scoliosis, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, or type 1 diabetes? Those conditions certainly impact not only how well anyone can breath, but also impacts how they perform daily basic tasks.

Part One – The Experiment

James is effective in communicating how since the dawn of time tribes around the globe have been focusing on breathing to increase their life, cure ailments, and even keep straight teeth. On the other hand, in American today sleep apnea, diabetes, high blood pressure and more ailments may be slowed, reversed or greatly reduced by simply breathing correctly.

For this purpose, Swedish researcher Anders Olsson joined James for a fascinating breathing study. Jayakar V. Nayak, MD, PhD tested their breathing over two, ten-day experiments. In just ten days of incorrectly breathing directly impacts your health. At the same time, lingering health issues can further deteriorate.

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Education Innovation Reading

Latest Read: The Elephant in the Brain

The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life by Robin Hanson and Kevin Simler. It is very intriguing when any author indicates their book is about being selfish. Yet, The Elephant in the Brain explores deep insights to self-deception and hidden motives in human behavior.

The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life by Robin Hanson and Kevin Simler.

Indeed readers may reflect and find themselves acknowledging their own motives. Certainly we do not want others to know about them. Therefore we avoid talking or even thinking about our own selfishness. This is Robin’s theme within The Elephant in the Brain.

Yet, Robin’s discovery of stroke victims and split brain patients is completely fascinating. For example, some stroke victims suffer from a disability denial. This is a rare disorder. While it is common for a victim to have lost muscle control of an arm. Yet some patients actually deny anything is wrong with their arm, even though they cannot control any movement.

In addition, a type of hidden behavior demonstrated by patients of corpus callosotomy, patients who for medical reasons undergo the surgical severing of the nerves that connect the left and right hemispheres of their brain. The research of these patients points directly to our collective unconscious behavior.

Part 1: Why we hide our motives

Robin suggests rather accurately that human beings are primates and there is a link to primates being political animals. Fun example of chimps that share social grooming: direct and to the point. Subsequently, as the title then is suggesting, our brains do move beyond ‘hunter/gather’ and is driving us to succeed socially by using deception, knowingly or unknowingly.

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Education Innovation Reading Technology Vietnam War

Latest Read: The Imagineers of War

The Imagineers of War: The Untold Story of DARPA, the Pentagon Agency That Changed the World by Sharon Weinberger. Sharon has written for Wired, Slate, the Financial Times and the Washington Post Magazine. Furthermore, Sharon is the former editor-in-chief of Defense Technology International. Today Sharon is an executive editor at Foreign Policy.

The Imagineers of War: The Untold Story of DARPA, the Pentagon Agency That Changed the World by Sharon Weinberger

Obviously the simply amazing stories within The Pentagon’s Brain (my review) inspired me to read Sharon’s book. The Imagineers of War is a very worthy reading experience all by itself.

Unquestionably both books combine for an amazing one-two punch of DARPA history. The most astounding impact of DARPA technology? Many weapons developed for Vietnam are today a cornerstone of US troop technology in Afghanistan: precision weapons, drones, robots, and networked computing.

The first half of The Imagineers of War reveals the very large, looming role of William Godel. He certainly casts a long shadow across DARPA’s early history. However only Sharon can address Godel’s departure and later accusations that may have crippled DARPA.

For the most part, Sharon provides a deep dive into the lives of key players at DARPA. Godel is certainly no exception. Severely injured fighting as a Marine in World War II, he began working as a spy in 1949. Besides Godel’s assignment, he was recruiting former German scientists held in Soviet-controlled East Berlin. Godel is unquestionably acknowledged by American military leaders as an emerging key resource along with Edward Lansdale and William Colby.

Part One:

The opening chapters address the bombing of Nagasaki to post World War II goals. One focus was securing Germany’s key physicists including Wernher von Braun from the Soviets. The role of von Braun’s departure is quite amazing. His team was working at the Army Ballistic Missile Agency in Huntsville Alabama. This team would design Jupiter-C missiles. Then Sputnik changed everything.

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Education Innovation Network Reading Technology Vietnam War

Latest Read: The Pentagon’s Brain

The Pentagon’s Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America’s Top-Secret Military Research Agency by Annie Jacobsen. Her narrative is certainly compelling, describing the historical launch of ARPA. The name of the organization first changed from its founding name to DARPA in March 1972. Yet it was changing back to ARPA in 1993, only to be reverted back in March 1996.

The Pentagon’s Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America’s Top-Secret Military Research Agency by Annie Jacobsen

This book is addressing five categories of time: Cold War, Vietnam War, Operations other than war, War on Terror, and Future War. Researching newly de-classified materials make Annie’s book difficult to put down.

Cold war events beginning with Sputnik led to the formation of ARPA. Without over exaggerating, this group would be changing the world. There are so many brilliant physicists, scientists, and mathematicians, this book is literally a Who’s Who of brilliant minds called upon to drive the Pentagon’s mission.

Annie is a master storyteller. She clearly reveals Eisenhower’s administration was ill prepared for post war technology challenges.

Cold war hysteria in the State Department was certainly ripe after China fell to Mao in 1949. France would be defeated by an Asian guerrilla force in 1954. Certainly Sputnik only added to that hysteria in 1957.

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