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What I'm Reading Now
Strange Son: Two Mothers, Two Sons, and the Quest to Unlock the Hidden World of Autism by Portia Iversen |
Portia Iversen, formerly an art director, started her exploration of autism when her son Dov was diagnosed with autism. She and her husband started Cure Autism Now (CAN) http://cureautismnow.org, which provides funding for autism research. When Iversen heard about Tito, an Indian boy who is autistic but thanks to his mother's work with him was communicating, Iversen just had to talk to learn more. Through her communication with Somo, Tito's mother, she learned Tito was very intelligent and a poet. Eventually, Somo and Tito came to the states and began working with Dov and other people with autism. |
The book provides insight to people with autism who learn best through hearing. Previously, folks thought people with autism mostly learned through pictures. The process and research Iversen shares is fascinating. Web sites of interest: Strange Son web site -- Iversen's web site about the book Halo-Soma (http://www.halo-soma.org) -- Somo's web site -- Helping Autism through Learning and Outreach (HALO). You can purchase Tito's books through this site. Information on Somo's Rapid Prompting Method™. More resources -- list of resources from Austim Speaks PubMed A free archive of life sciences journals The Descartes Insitite Web Site -- as of March 2007, site isn't active yet. Autism Coach -- not mentioned in this book.
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Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams |
I like to flag interesting web sites or concepts in books I'm reading so I can write them down somewhere to look at more completely. When I look that all of the flags in this book, I'm impressed. |
Web sites I learned about in this book include: News by the people Current TV -- viewer created videos, ads, news, satire. Slashdot -- "News for nerds. Stuff that matters." Courses MIT's OpenCourseWare -- free online courses Open Courseware Consortium -- "The OpenCourseWare Consortium is a collaboration of more than 100 higher education institutions and associated organizations from around the world creating a broad and deep body of open educational content using a shared model. The mission of the OpenCourseWare Consortium is to advance education and empower people worldwide through opencourseware." Consumers Skype -- inexpensive IP phone service FreeConference -- IP conference call service Gas Buddy -- find the cheapest gas by location Scorecard
-- "Get an in-depth pollution report for your county, covering
air, water, chemicals, and more." Search Engines Alexa -- "Founded in April 1996, Alexa Internet grew out of a vision of Web navigation that is intelligent and constantly improving with the participation of its users."
Blog search engines -- Technorati.com and Ice Rocket Collaberation Software
Researchers InnoCentive -- a site that attempts to put people with problems together with people with solutions (scientists -- R&D). Possible $$ to people who solve R&D challenges. YourEncore -- similar site to InnoCentive except that it focuses on retired people solving the challenges. Medical/Scientific arXiv -- "Open access to 411,019 e-prints in Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science and Quantitative Biology" OpenWetWare -- "OpenWetWare is an effort to promote the sharing of information, know-how, and wisdom among researchers and groups who are working in biology & biological engineering. " Bioinformatics.org -- "The Bioinformatics Organization, Inc. serves the scientific and educational needs of bioinformatic practitioners and the general public. We develop and maintain computational resources to facilitate world-wide communications and collaborations between people of all educational and professional levels. We provide and promote open access to the materials and methods required for, and derived from, research, development and education. " Medical Research (BLAST) -- National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) -- "Established in 1988 as a national resource for molecular biology information, NCBI creates public databases, conducts research in computational biology, develops software tools for analyzing genome data, and disseminates biomedical information - all for the better understanding of molecular processes affecting human health and disease."
The Arts Creative Commons -- Protect your works (copyright) while sharing your works. Flickr -- store and share digital photos -- free basic accounts
Open Source Software SpikeSource -- Business ready software, lower cost, enterprise software. Open Source Software Providers Google Software - not mentioned in book but interesting link. Free Software Foundation -- not mentioned in book but interesting link. Free Software for Windows -- GNU - not mentioned in book but interesting link. |
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Something Rotten by Jasper Fforde Science fiction, mystery, literature, and fun combined between one cover. This is the fourth book in the series. A quick read. |
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What I've Just Read
Fat Politics: The Real Story Behind America's Obesity Epidemic, by J. Eric Oliver |
"The primary reason why more than 60 percent of Americans are 'overweight' has nothing to do with fast-food, cars, or television; it is not because Americans are eating too much and exercises too little; nor is it because of any 'fat' gene within us. |
The reason why a majority of Americans are overweight is because a nineteenth astronomer, a twentieth-century insurance actuary, and a handful of contemporary scientists concocted some ideas about what a normal weight should be. These definitions have little to do with scientific evidence about weight and health and a lot to do with simple mathematics, insurance premiums, and the pecuniary interests of the pharmaceutical industry. If Michael Jordan is 'overweight' or Arnold Scwarzenegger is 'obese,' (which they are according to our current standards), it is not because of their poor fitness or their precarious heath; it is because a handful of people are defining these terms in ridiculous ways. " (page 16 of Fat Politics) According to Fat Politics, our infamous weight chart was based on average weights of French and Scottish army conscripts, young men in their prime. Quetelet calculated the "healthy" heights and weights using a bell curve of this information. The claim that obesity is a major killer appeared in a 2004 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). In 2005, anther study, also published by JAMA, provided conflicting results. This report said "that moderately 'overweight' people live longer than those at a 'normal' weight." And actually more people died from being underweight than being overweight. "Based on our current evidence, blaming obesity for heart disease, cancer, or many other ailments is like blaming smelly clothes, yellow teeth, or bad breath for lung cancer instead of cigarettes; it conflates an associated trait with its underlying cause." |
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See Emoto and Moore on Spiritual Book Pages.
| Life
of Pi by Yann Martel |
A friend told me this was really a good read. The local high schools have selected this book for their One Book, One School program. I can see how it would give high school students a way to talk about cultural and religious differences. |
At the end of the book, there are some discussion questions for book clubs or classes. Some questions that I thought might be interesting to discuss with high school/college students include:
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| The
Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead by David Callahan |
After my experiences in the corporate world and with start-up firms, this book was attractive to me. When I talk to the younger folks, I'm interested in their notion of ethics. |
| ; | But, when I look at the business section of the paper, perhaps I shouldn't be puzzled. This book takes a look at our ethics and the pressures people feel they are under to justify them. Starting with the pressures of the rich, who will often do whatever it takes to get their children into the right schools -- to their children, who think little of cheating to get the grades to get into the top schools -- to the regular folks who work for the rich, who often believe a lottery ticket or cheating is their only chance at a decent life -- this heavily documented book looks at our greed culture -- the haves and the have nots. |
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7) (Hardcover) by J. K. Rowling (Author), Mary GrandPré (Illustrator) |
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Books On My To Be Read List