Bukowski's poetry

"... and opening the door to my room

a fat damsel scrambles my vision

bottles fall

and a voice says

why are all your poems

personal?"

"...the trumpets bring on gallows

as small men rant at things

they cannot do."

"...if death is so fearful

then life must be

good?"

The World Without us

I have just finished reading this amazing book. What happens to the earth when human beings disappear? Alan Weisman answer this question with this Time 2007 Nonfiction Book of the Year.

“...with pumps not working, the New York City subways would fill with water within days, while weeds and then trees would retake the buckled streets and wild predators would ravage the domesticated dogs. Texas’s unattended petrochemical complexes might ignite, scattering hydrogen cyanide to the winds—a "mini chemical nuclear winter." - The New Yorker.

It's not a fiction book with stories on the apocalypse but more like a detailed scientific publication. Sometimes the author got lost in details that didn't really interested me but still, you can expect to learn a lot from this very vivid reportage. Fascinating.

More Details

Some random personal notes from the book:

“The problem is, by tapping the Carboniferous Formation and spewing it up into the sky, we've become a volcano that hasn't stopped erupting since the 1700s.
Eventually, the geologic cycle will take CO2 back to the prehuman levels. That will take about 100,000 years or longer.”

“...African fauna have learned that massing in large flocks makes it harder for predators to isolate and catch a single animal, and assures that some are available to scout for danger while others feed. A zebra stripes help it befuddle lions by getting lost in a crowded optical illusion.”

“Nearly 12 percent of the planet's landmass is cultivated, compared to about 3 percent occupied by towns and cities. When grazing land is included, the amount of Earthly terrain dedicated to human food is production is more than one-third of the world's land surface.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derinkuyu_Underground_City

Freakonomics

Je viens de terminer ce livre et c'est excellent. Je suis un grand fan des livres de Malcom Gladwell (Blink, Outliers, Tipping Point) et j'ai enfin trouvé un livre qui est du même genre et du même niveau. L'auteur utilise des outils d'économie pour examiner notre société et découvre des connections surprenantes. Saviez-vous que le niveau de crime n'a jamais été aussi bas au États-Unis et d'après Steven D. Levitt, ce serait dû a la légalisation de l'avortement? A lire.

Plus de details

...
This is different quotes or notes from the book that I find interesting.


"A long line of studies, including research into twins who were separated at birth, concluded that genes alone are responsible for perhaps 50% of a child's personality and abilities. "

Parenting:
(...)She argued that parents are wrong to think they contribute so mightily to their child's personality. This is a cultural myth. Actually, top-down influence of parents is overwhelmed by the grassroot effect of peer pressure, the blunt force applied each day by friends and schoolmates.

Education:
A child whose parents are highly educated typically does well in school. A family with a lot of schooling tends to value schooling. Parents with higher IQs tend to get more education, and IQ is strongly hereditary.

On School performance:
Moving to a better neighborhood doesn't improve a child's chance in school.

"...Students from rural areas tend to do worse than average (...) while urban children tend to score higher than average."