Tuesday, June 26, 2018

Hype by Nina Shapiro, M.D.



Let me ask you a question. When you need to have information about your health do you first go to your primary doctor or do you go to the Internet? Who do you trust? Your doctor of the article you Googled?

The answer is obvious. But how many of us are guilty of putting our health in the hands of someone or something that offers us bad advice?

Or how many of us believe the ads we see as being 100% accurate? Too many of us.

Misinformation is all around us. Fortified foods, enhancement drinks, supplements, the list goes on.

Dr. Shapiro offers us a guide to help us venture through the jungle of exaggerated claims and bad advice. She will show you how to discern what’s real and what is not.

For me this is an interesting and informative book. Shapiro doesn’t speak down to you but starts to make you think just how much of what you are accepting as tested claims are really backed by facts. For example, organic being better is a claim you hear. There is no foundation of truth to that. The claim helps the industry justify the bigger price in most instances. It is hype. Another hype is about water. No improvement over tap water.

The problem seems to be around medicine there is no black or white but rather lots of sound data to allow you to make the best decision. The internet offers a smorgasbord of information especially when it comes to medical information. Most of what you find in your search will be ads. This helps the hype. They are your snake oil companies, so to speak. You need to find the information that is out there.

You need help and this book I do recommend. The notes are helpful.

It is published by St Martin’s Press.

Monday, June 18, 2018

The Dark Before Dawn by Laurie Stevens



Recently in a Sisters in Crime presentation held in a local library, I chanced upon Laurie Stevens who authors the Gabriel McRay series of psychological mysteries. “Dark before Dawn” is the first in the series. Her main character is male and broken by past events in his life. This story is told in multiple viewpoints.

This is done in the suspense genre, a sub-genre of the mystery/crime family. A suspense story has a strong and logical structure. This is so to be able to hold an inner and outer story. The outer is the series of events presented to the reader with the secondary inner story showing the conflict within.

Stevens has chosen to use the male viewpoint. She does a fair job. She must have spent time observing and trying to figure out what maleness is. Femaleness and maleness are not interchangeable in my opinion.

It is a bit choppy on transitions in places.

Stevens is writing in the genre of psychological suspense. Her characters are flawed not super heroes. That fact makes for an interesting story. You will get emotionally involved and start to root for the characters.

Every suspense story should have a crisis. The crisis here is enhanced by the psychological state of the main character as I have mentioned above. We are fighting the  monster within and the monster without.  It grips you and is hard to read just one chapter. You must find out wat happens next.

As required for suspense writing she starts with a crisis and intensifies the pressure on the main character. Her secondary characters: the psychiatrist, the girl friend, the boss, are well developed.  The viewpoints of the protagonist and the antagonist are given, heightening the suspense. This makes it a can’t put down type of a story.

 Stevens seems to have control.

As this is the first in a series it may seem to be heavy on the background of the situation, but most if not all first books in a series must provide the foundation on which the rest of the books will grow. I feel Stevens does a good job in this area.

I would recommend this series based on this one book. I plan to read through the series, so I am looking for a good long period of enjoyment.

Still she has done three in this series, so someone must be doing okay. And somehow, they are finding their way into libraries.

She used CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform to handle this book. I advise against self-publishing, As I see it, it is done by people who lack confidence in their skills. That may explain the gaps in transition and the flashbacks in strange places.

The copyright is 2011.

Friday, June 15, 2018

Broad Band by Claire L. Evans



We need to be reminded from time to time that inventions are a group effort. By this I mean there is no gender wall. Both male and female had a part in what we have today.

It seems when we as a group look at technology, which is the area covered in this book, we put on blinders when it comes to those who had a part in creating things. In this case, the computer.

Evans wants us to remember females also played a part in what we have today. In fact, we could look back to Byron, not him, his daughter, Ada Lovelace. She had a sharp analytic mind. She was unfortunately living in a time where females were not allowed a university education. So, she was home schooled. In the nineteenth century she read and absorbed. She had something to do with the differential engine of that day, a mathematical machine.

At the turn of the twentieth century computers—this is what people who worked upon the coding of the machines were called—were needed and females who were mathematically inclined answered the need.

Just part of the history involving females in the cyber history. It is almost as if they have become ghosts. The evidence Evans presents in this book will help put the women back in the spotlight where they belong along side the male partners. It may have been the tendency of the male prejudice to see women as only secretaries even those who were coding and maintaining the discipline.

Even our internet as we know it today had females n the background. Their stories get told here.

Women were there at the very beginning of every important wave in technology. God did not only give brains to men. Women also were blessed in that area.

It was a woman named Grace Hooper who gave us a look at machine independent programing languages after World War two, for one example.

Pioneers all. It is time we acknowledge the women. Claire L. Evans does a good job.

 I recommend this book. It is put out by Portfolio/Penguin. It is copyrighted 2018 and costs retail $27.00.

Tuesday, June 12, 2018

A Necessay Evil by Garry Wills



Even though this book has a copy right of 1999, it is still worthy of being read and considered even in the twenty first century. We still have government and that is what Wills refers to as a necessary evil.

It was Henry David Thoreau who said, “that government is best which governs least.” That is because the more power we allow the government to have the less personal liberties we, the people, retain. We can see that in our loss of a liberty when it comes to health care. If we allow the government to provide our health care as to what we can or cannot receive, we lose.. If we hand the power to have in our possession our guns, all our liberties are gone.  As the states cede power to the central government, tyranny impends.

You see, the size of government inevitably decreases freedom, is something Wills contends.

On the other hand, we the people, must know the facts before we react. Become knowledgeable, not reactionary. This book can be a starting point for researching. You don’t have to agree with all things presented. But ignorance is not acceptable. You may not like the author. Tough. Grow up. Read both sides and form your own conclusions. Garry Wills is a good teacher  and presents the facts in an easy to digest way.

But we do need government to provide the protection for the common defense. Wills Talks about some myths we have grown up with. He exposes some of our early leaders from Washington to Martin Luther King Junior, to the SDS. He talks about the insurrectionists and the vigilantes, to name a few areas handled in this book.

Facts. Become knowledgeable. Know what you stand for and the ground you stand upon.

This is a good sound history of the American Distrust of Government. Read it.

It is published by Simon & Schuster.