my mind on books

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Absence of Mind: The Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of the Self (The Terry Lectures Series) by Marilynne Robinson (Yale University Press, 2010)

(link for UK)

Product description from the publisher:

In this ambitious book, acclaimed writer Marilynne Robinson applies her astute intellect to some of the most vexing topics in the history of human thought—science, religion, and consciousness. Crafted with the same care and insight as her award-winning novels, Absence of Mind challenges postmodern atheists who crusade against religion under the banner of science. In Robinson’s view, scientific reasoning does not denote a sense of logical infallibility, as thinkers like Richard Dawkins might suggest. Instead, in its purest form, science represents a search for answers. It engages the problem of knowledge, an aspect of the mystery of consciousness, rather than providing a simple and final model of reality.

By defending the importance of individual reflection, Robinson celebrates the power and variety of human consciousness in the tradition of William James. She explores the nature of subjectivity and considers the culture in which Sigmund Freud was situated and its influence on his model of self and civilization. Through keen interpretations of language, emotion, science, and poetry, Absence of Mind restores human consciousness to its central place in the religion-science debate.

This book is based on the 2009 Terry Lectures — videos available here.

I’ve just recently started using Twitter, so naturally turned to some books to help me get up to speed.

The Twitter Book by Tim O’Reilly and Sarah Milstein (link for UK) seems to have just the right amount of information & tips to help “Twitter novitiates,” as they say (p. 123), get started.

Here are links to the sites mentioned in the book –

authors on Twitter – @timoreilly, @SarahM
hashtag for the book – #TwitterBook

140 characters? – 140it

shorten urls – Bit.ly (tracks clickthroughs),Is.gd, Twi.bz

hashtags – Hashtags.org – popular hashtags & usage stats, Tagalus, What the Trend

tweetup – Twtvite

help – Twitter help pages, Get Satisfaction

trends – What the Trend, follow @TweetingTrends, TwitScoop, Twopular

Twitter’s advanced search , for older tweets try Google search with site:twitter.com

TweetGrid, Monitter – monitor several topics at once in real time

TweetBeep – email search results hourly or daily

BackTweets – search for links to domain or specific webpage

popular links – Twitt(url)y, TweetMeme, MicroPlaza

third-party Twitter clients – PeopleBrowsr, Twhirl, TweetDeck

mobile clients – Twitter mobile, iPhone: Twitterific, Tweetie, BlackBerry: TwitterBerry, TinyTwitter

who to follow – We Follow, Twellow, Mr Tweet, Who Should I Follow?

who’s influential –Twitterholic, Retweetist, Retweet Radar, TwitterCounter, Twitalyzer

Q & A – TweetBrain

group chat – TweetGrid, TweetChat

followers – Twimailer, DoesFollow, FriendOrFollow, Twittersheep tag cloud, TweepDiff

posting pictures – TwitPic

preschedule messages – TweetLater, RSS feed TwitterFeed

fundraising – Charity: water, TipJoy

#FollowFriday – find cool people to follow (or recommend)

background – TwitterGallery, TwitBacks

business use – TrackingTwitter, Twibs, ExecTweets

internal micromessaging – Yammer, Present.ly

track your tweet stats – TweetStats

track click-throughs with URL shorteners – Bit.ly, Tr.im, Cli.gs

TweetReach – shows how many people may have seen a post

key tools for business – Twist, TweepDiff, CoTweet

The Warcraft Civilization: Social Science in a Virtual World by William Sims Bainbridge (MIT Press, 2010).

(link for UK)

Product description from the publisher:

World of Warcraft is more than a game. There is no ultimate goal, no winning hand, no princess to be rescued. WoW contains more than 5,000 possible quests, games within the game, and encompasses hundreds of separate parallel realms (computer servers, each of which can handle 4,000 players simultaneously). WoW is an immersive virtual world in which characters must cope in a dangerous environment, assume identities, struggle to understand and communicate, learn to use technology, and compete for dwindling resources. Beyond the fantasy and science fiction details, as many have noted, it’s not entirely unlike today’s world. In The Warcraft Civilization, sociologist William Sims Bainbridge goes further, arguing that WoW can be seen not only as an allegory of today but also as a virtual prototype of tomorrow, of a real human future in which tribe-like groups will engage in combat over declining natural resources, build temporary alliances on the basis of mutual self-interest, and seek a set of values that transcend the need for war.

Bainbridge explored the complex Warcraft universe firsthand, spending more than 2,300 hours there, deploying twenty-two characters of all ten races, all ten classes, and numerous professions. Each chapter begins with one character’s narrative, then goes on to explore a major social issue—such as religion, learning, cooperation, economy, or identity—through the lens of that character’s experience.

What makes WoW an especially good place to look for insights about Western civilization, Bainbridge says, is that it bridges past and future. It is founded on Western cultural tradition, yet aimed toward the virtual worlds we could create in times to come.

See also: Author interview at Inside Higher Ed (found via @mitpress on twitter)

Starring Claire Danes, this HBO film is based on the books Emergence: Labeled Autistic and Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism. Oliver Sacks wrote about Grandin in An Anthropologist On Mars.

See also: Temple Grandin at Amazon.com & at Wikipedia

Huffington Post on the movie, including an interview with Ms Grandin

“Monsters and Critics” reportedly calls this “one of HBO’s finest films” but I wasn’t able to access their review at the time of writing this post…