Archive for the 'Books' Category
Book reviews of the Unreal kind. Here, I discuss the books I have read, and share my impressions with my readers. I read mostly non-fiction or classics. And when I say read books, I mean listen to them in audiobook (always unabridged) form. Audiobooks have the ability to make your commute or gym workout something you look forward to, rather than dread. When reviewed, they present a disadvantage though, that they cannot be referred to. Thus quotes from them become paraphrasing, names get misspelled and so on. Please excuse such shortcomings…
Note that these are not real reviews. Most of these books are so well-known that they are really beyond reviews. So my Unreal reviews are more like my impressions and thoughts, often containing spoilers.
Friday, September 25th, 2009
What do we mean by rationality? Why do we think it is a good thing to be rational?
Read the rest of "On Rationality and Delusions"
Posted in Books, Philosophy, Physics, Science |
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Tags: dawkins, Philosophy, richard dawkins, the god delusion
Tuesday, September 15th, 2009
A review of my forthcoming book, “Principles of Quantitative Development,” to be published by John Wiley & Sons in Feb 2010. This review is written by Shayne Fletcher, Executive Director, Nomura, and author of “Financial Modelling in Python,” reproduced here with permission.
Read the rest of "Principles of Quantitative Development"
Posted in Books, Quantitative Finance |
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Tags: book reviews, Principles of Quantitative Development, quantitative development, quantitative finance
Saturday, August 22nd, 2009
Blind-sight is an interesting neurological syndrome, and a philosophical conundrum. It shows how we may have senses that we are not consciously aware of. If there are senses that we can be unaware of, how sure can we be of the “sensed”? Or of our “delusions”?
Read the rest of "Blind-Sight"
Posted in Books, Philosophy, Physics, Science |
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Tags: dawkins, Philosophy, physics and philosophy, richard dawkins, the god delusion
Monday, August 17th, 2009
Here is a concept of God that doesn’t violate the known principles of science, and should therefore be consistent with the so-called scientific worldview. Mind you, plausibility of the concept says nothing about its veracity; but it may say something about it being a delusion.
Read the rest of "A Plausible God"
Posted in Books, Philosophy, Physics, Science |
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Tags: dawkins, Philosophy, physics and philosophy, richard dawkins, the god delusion
Thursday, August 13th, 2009
An unreal review of the book The God Delusion. [...]The book gave me a strange feeling of dissatisfaction. You see, you may believe in God. Or you may not believe that there is a God. Or you may actively believe that there is no God. I fall in this the last category. But I still know that it is only my belief, and that thought fills me with a humility that I feel Dawkins lacks.[...]
Read the rest of "The God Delusion"
Posted in Books, Creative, Philosophy, Science |
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Tags: dawkins, Philosophy, richard dawkins, the god delusion
Sunday, August 9th, 2009
The story of Helen Keller is the story of the dark reality that traps you in the absence of your senses. It is also an illustration of the role of language in breaking out of that darkness.
Read the rest of "Helen Keller"
Posted in Books, Philosophy |
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Tags: philosophical inquiries, Philosophy, reality
Tuesday, January 27th, 2009
To say that Humboldt’s Gift is a masterpiece is like saying that sugar is sweet. It goes without saying. I will read this book many more times in the future because of its educational values (and because I love the reader in my audiobook edition). I would not necessarily recommend the book to others though. I think it takes a peculiar mind, one that finds sanity only in insane gibberish, and sees unreality in all the painted veils of reality, to appreciate this book. In short, you have to be a bit cuckoo to like it. (If you like the book and still maintain that you are not cuckoo, well, you just feel that way because you are!)
Read the rest of "Humboldt’s Gift by Saul Bellow"
Posted in Books, Creative, Life and Death |
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Tags: book reviews, classics, Humboldt's Gift, metaphysics, Saul Bellow
Monday, January 19th, 2009
This brief look at possibly the best book I have ever read is perhaps my last post in the book review series. At least for a short while, as I’m beginning to find it a bit hard to keep up with all the demands on my time now, what with my next book efforts and everything. Besides, the books have already said it all better, haven’t they?
Read the rest of "The Razor’s Edge by W Somerset Maugham"
Posted in Books, Creative, Life and Death, Philosophy |
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Tags: book reviews, maugham, Philosophy, razor's edge, Somerset Maugham
Monday, December 29th, 2008
I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I did not realize that Catch-22 was caricature, the first time I read it. I thought caricatures are visual. I was wrong, of course. Here is an unreal review of this masterpiece that needs to be more widely read.
Read the rest of "Catch-22 by Joseph Heller"
Posted in Books, Life and Death |
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Tags: book reviews, catch-22, Joseph Heller, Philosophy
Sunday, December 7th, 2008
This post is a collection of reviews of my first book The Unreal Universe. As I’m beginning to work on my second book (Principles of Quantitative Development, commissioned by Wiley-Finance), I felt that these thoughts on my first book might be of interest to some of you.
Read the rest of "The Unreal Universe – Reviewed"
Posted in Books, Creative |
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Tags: book reviews, metaphysics, Philosophy, philosophy of physics, Physics, special relativity
Wednesday, November 5th, 2008
The Age of Spiritual Machines, an insightful book, forces us to rethink what we mean by intelligence and consciousness, not merely at a technological level, but at a philosophical level.
Read the rest of "The Age of Spiritual Machines by Ray Kurzweil"
Posted in Books, Creative |
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Tags: automaton, computers, consciousness, machine intelligence, spiritual machines, Turing test
Saturday, October 18th, 2008
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, reviewed here more from a philosophical rather than a literary perspective.
Read the rest of "Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse"
Posted in Books, Philosophy |
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Tags: advaita, consciousness, Hermann Hesse, Philosophy, Siddhartha, way to salvation
Saturday, August 16th, 2008
This essay (perhaps not right to call it a review) is inspired by Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. A modern day classic that hardly needs any more endorsement, this book is bound to change the way you look at the world, and live your life.
Read the rest of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"
Posted in Articles and Essays, Books, Creative, Philosophy |
3 Comments »
Tags: hypothesis, insanity, logic, logos, sanity, selfhood, unreality, zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance
Friday, August 1st, 2008
In The Moon and Sixpence, Maugham chronicles the life and adventures of Paul Gauguin — an artistic genius who stepped outside the bounds of morality to fulfill the yearnings of his soul. This review of mine (which contains spoilers) is more of an account of my impressions of the book.
Read the rest of "The Moon and Sixpence"
Posted in Books, Creative |
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Tags: human bondage, maugham, Paul Gauguin, the moon and sixpence
Wednesday, July 16th, 2008
My impressions of George Orwell’s 1984.
[...]In 1984, the immediate story is of a completely totalitarian regime. Inwardly, 1984 is about ethics and politics. It doesn’t end there, but goes into nested philosophical inquiries about how everything is eventually connected to metaphysics. It naturally ends up in solipsism, not merely in the material, metaphysical sense, but also in a spiritual, socio-psychological sense where the only hope in life becomes death.[...]
Read the rest of "1984"
Posted in Books, Creative, Philosophy |
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Tags: 1984, dystopia, George Orwell, great books, metaphysics, philosophical inquiries, solipsism, totalitarianism