Thanissara – Time to Stand Up: An Engaged Buddhist Manifesto for Our Earth — The Buddha’s Life and Message through Feminine Eyes (To be published on August 18, 2015 – Pre-order at the Amazon link above for $7.47) About the Author Thanissara and her husband Kittisaro (Harry Randolph Weinberg) are the founders of Dharmagiri Hermitage … Read more
Here are some of the best books I have been exposed to this year. Obviously, I cannot read everything, so this is a partial list at best. They are listed in alphabetical order. Descriptive text is from the publisher’s blurb on Amazon. A few of these books warrant the RECOMMENDED READ classification. Adult Attachment Patterns … Read more
The video included here is of “Baroness” Susan Greenfield speaking at The RSA about her new book, Mind Change: How Digital Technologies Are Leaving Their Mark on Our Brains (to be released in the U.S. in January, 2015). Her talk was mired in controversy before she ever opened her mouth (see the details in the … Read more
Chris Guillebeau is the author of The Happiness of Pursuit: Finding the Quest That Will Bring Purpose to Your Life (2014) and he recently stopped by Google to talk about his new book. Here is the publisher’s ad copy for the book: A remarkable book that will both guide and inspire, The Happiness of Pursuit … Read more
Steve Fleming, whose blog is The Elusive Self, offers a review/overview of a new theory of consciousness, as outlined by Michael Graziano in his 2013 book, Consciousness and the Social Brain. I happen to have this book, but I have not gotten around to reading it. In the front matter of the book there is … Read more
From The Conversation, Matthew Nisbet discusses the opposing visions of climate change embodied by Naomi Klein and Bill McGibbon on one side, and Al Gore and Nicholas Stern (UK economist) on the other side. The real distinction is a grassroots, bottom-up approach that rejects capitalism as a part of the solution (Klein and McKibbon) vs. … Read more
Danny Dorling is the author of Inequality and the 1% (2014, Oct 7), and he recently spoke the The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (The RSA) about his new book. Even before birth, being born outside the 1% will have dramatic effect on the rest of your life: reducing life … Read more
In this article, Lee Billings riffs on Stanislaw Lem’s relatively unknown book of philosophical essays, Summa Technologiae (Electronic Mediations), written in 1964 but not fully translated into English until 2013. Lem is known primarily for his science fiction writing, especially the 1961 novel Solaris, adapted into a meditative film by Andrei Tarkovsky in 1972. In … Read more
From Bookforum‘s Omnivore blog, this is a new collection of links on philosophy and particularly on the state of analytic philosophy. Here are a couple of highlights: From PUP, the introduction to Analytic Philosophy in America: And Other Historical and Contemporary Essays by Scott Soames and the first chapter from The Analytic Tradition in Philosophy, … Read more
Carl Hart grew up in a rough neighborhood in Miami, selling drugs, doing petty crime, and carrying a gun. But he pulled himself out of the “hood” and became a neuroscientist and now teaches psychology and psychiatry at Columbia University. He is the author of High Price: A Neuroscientist’s Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything … Read more