New Years Resolutions

My New Years Resolution this year is to read 52 books in a year. Some have asked me to blog about the experience, so expect to see some, or perhaps, a bunch of book reviews over the coming year.

So far, I've finished Super Freakonomics and started Malcolm Gladwell's What the Dog Saw. I enjoyed Freakonomics a lot, the unlikely correlation between things and underlying circumstances that drive human interactions fascinates me. Super Freakonomics book continues in the same direction. The final chapter about how we're looking at global warming all wrong and how what we're currently trying to do could actually be making things worse was immensely fascinating to me.

Strangely though, it didn't really settle into my consciousness like Freakonomics did. Here it is about four days out from finishing it, and I can barely even remember any of the major points in the book. For a "dense" book, it's also a very fast read and seems a little thin. At the end of the day, it seems like the authors had a lot to talk about in the first book, and this is all the stuff that either didn't make the cut or they didn't have time to research. Some of it has also been covered already in a book I read last year -- Malcolm Gladwell's The Outliers. That doesn't mean it isn't immensely fascinating, but if you haven't read either book, start with Freakonomics. It's stronger and more cohesive.

All that said, the chapter on global warming is incredibly fascinating, and it touches on a think tank founded by some ex-Microsoft guys who might actually have solutions that work. Of course, getting environmentalists to try them out is difficult, as some of the conventional wisdom on what might solve the problem turns out to be wrong, and some of it (such as eating organic fruits and vegetables) actually might be making the problem worse. There's also some interesting ideas on building cheap devices that might break down the feedback loop that causes hurricanes. There's also some talk on fighting terrorism that highlights a lot of talking points I've been making over the years -- you can't harden every target, and there are too many possible plots to defend against them all. However, freaking out over an attack not only costs money, it costs lives as well -- for instance, in the three months following 9/11, there were over a thousand extra traffic deaths. Caused, of course, by the people who were afraid to drive or didn't want to be hassled by the TSA and took to the road instead. Which, of course, isn't nearly as safe.

I think I'll find myself rereading this book a year or so from now, as I'll likely reread Freakonomics and want to do some extra reading on the same topic. I think I'd also like to see how the books read as a whole unit rather than the disjointed set. Either way, this one stays on the "good" bookshelf.