Reporting in

A chance to post! Finally! First off a number of new things to report.

1) I've started learning French! I've started off with using Rosetta Stone tutorials; its Immersion environment is impressive and I seem to be starting to get the hang of things. French will be my fourth language. I already speak and am fluent in English, Urdu/Hindi and Punjabi. I can also read Arabic, Urdu and English fluently. While learning a new language is difficult progress is usually made in slow strides, it is my hope that within 16 months I will possess broken conversational French :). Speaking French is sure to give me a leg up, especially when applying at the CSA.

2) It shames me to admit that I don't know how to swim. I've had lessons from friends before but never learned anything beyond floating. I've signed up for swimming lessons at a nearby community center and lessons begin from this Wednesday! By the end of this year I should have the ability, according to the program outline, to swim up to 20-30 meters with no problem. While this is a far cry from my goal of getting a few scuba certifications, its a start.

3) I added some new material to the blog. The "links" section and the new workout log trainer from Buckeye Outdoors.

4) In order to make further improvements to to the design and layout of the website I've started learning Adobe Photoshop via tutorials from Total Training. Iwant to significantly improve the design and looks of the blog and add some eye candy here and there before the end of this year.

That's about it as far as astronaut progress is concerned. I also finished some more books.

Finished
[1] Foundation by Isaac Asimov; 320 Pages
[2] Foundation and Empire by Isaac Asimov; 272 Pages
[3] Second Foundation by Isaac Asimov; 272 Pages
[4] Foundations Edge by Isaac Asimov; 480 Pages
[5] Foundation and Earth by Isaac Asimov; 528 Pages
[6] Surely You're joking, Mr. Feynman by Richard P. Feynman; 352 Pages
[7] A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson; 624 Pages
[8] A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah; 240 Pages
[9] Physics of the Impossible by Michio Kaku 352 Pages
[10] Green Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson; 640 Pages
[11] Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson; 784 Pages
[12] The Success Principles by Jack Canfield; 512 Pages
[13] The End of Food by Paul Roberts; 416 Pages
[14] AstroFit by William J. Evans; 320 Pages
[15] Mining The Sky by John S. Lewis; 274 Pages
[16] Contact by Carl Sagan; 448 Pages
[17] Anti-cancer: A New Way of Life by Servan-Schreiber David; ~250 Pages
[18] Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal by Eric Schlosser; 416 Pages
[19] Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons; 416 Pages
[20] The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari by Robin S. Sharma; 216 Pages
[21] Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert; 336 Pages
[22] The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan; 464 Pages

Some reviews/thoughts about the books from me.


A few weeks ago I watched "Contact", the movie, again. Whilst discussing the movie with a friend
I was made aware of the fact that the encounter between the aliens and the human race went down differently in the book. Intrigued I read the book. Boy! Was I in for a surprise. Carl Sagan is a personal hero of mine; He was a great astronomer, a PR person for science and authored many papers and books in his lifetime. Sagan's writing style is amazing! I'm more or less clueless when it comes to English literature, but this book was something else; it was written extremely well. The entire premise of the story is as follows: a radio astronomer detects an extraterrestrial signal coming from the direction of Vega. The signal contains information on how to build a machine, however no one knows what the machine does. The more pessimistic among the human race argue that it is a Trojan horse and are against the notion of building it, while the optimists argue that it is a transporter of sorts. The reactions and social implications of the the existence of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe were portrayed extremely well in the book. I wont spoil the story for you. Read the book! Its awesome, and then watch the movie because Jodie Foster rocks!


I've had this book on my reading list since before it came out. A close member of my extended family passed away recently due to a relapsed brain tumor. The author starts out with describing his initial reaction to the news that he has cancer. Aside from having modern treatments he also works on his "terrain"; applying non-traditional methods some of them supported and backed by facts and studies. These habits were basically what I would call preventative approaches; some of these methods included changing his eating habits, exercising and making peace with his inner mind. One important thing I learned from this book was that tumors thrive on inflammation. Inflammation causes the creation of new blood vessels which provide nourishment to the tumor. The author then points out some of the causes of inflammation: tension, stress and anxiety which trigger the release of hormones from the brain which in turn cause inflammation and the imbalance of Omega 3's and Omega 6. Omega 6, in the absence of Omega 3 fatty acids, promotes inflammation. Modern day "farmed" meat which includes, beef, chickens and pork are fed a diet of corn, soybean and various other varieties of grain. These grains contain an imbalance of Omega 3 to Omega 6 ratios. This imbalance is in turn magnified and is filtered up to us. The author recommends eating "grass" fed and free range farmed meat; natural grasses contain healthy amounts of Omega 3 fatty acids. At the end of the book, there is a list of foods that fight inflammation and other "cancer" promoters. In addition the author talks about toxic substances in our environment. I won't go further into detail but I'd recommend this book to anyone interesting in finding out how our food and lifestyle choices have an effect on cancer.


I want to start out by saying that I love the cover of this book (can't find the cover for the version of the book I have but its more or less the the same as the movie poster). The book starts out by quickly going over the history of the fast food industry. In a post WWII America with population on the rise and the economy booming, Americans had no time for cooking. Enter the fast food industry; Working? No problem, you could buy fries and burgers from the cart down the street. Overtime these hot dog and burger stands evolved into restaurants which eventually branched out and grew bigger and bigger. The fast food restaurant is run like an assembly line with each unskilled worker doing part of the job. This makes sure that the fast food industry does not have to hire expensive cooks and that their food tastes exactly the same in every single restaurant. The workers in the fast food industry are made up of unskilled, underpaid and non unionized workers (mostly high school students). The turn over rate for the fast food industry is something like 3-6 months, varying on the chain in question. Subsidies are provided for the training of these workers, which essentially is on-the-job, fast food chains actually profit from these subsidies!

The book then takes us behind the scenes of the meat packing industry. The meat packing industry thrives on illegal immigrant workers. Cheap wages, chronic and life threatening injuries are all part of this wonderful package. We are then taken to what actually goes into the meat itself. To put it into the words of the author "There is shit in the meat", alongside with antibiotics and growth hormones. We are also given an overview of the emergence of diseases such as Salmonella, E. Coli H7 and BSE (Mad Cow Disease).

The book is well researched and it fit in perfectly with "The End of Food". I think that I am starting to get a better overall view of our current modern day food system.


I only heard about the graphic novel once the trailer for the movie came out. I saw the movie on release day with a bunch of friends and it was great. In retro-respect I think I did the right thing in watching the movie first because reading the graphic novel first would have surely set me up for disappointment. The main story line of the movie corresponds very well for a "movie adaptation" (whatever the hell that means), except for the ending. In my opinion they should have gone with the whole genetically engineered supposed "alien" killing half of NYC.

As expected the graphic novel really had a lot more in depth character development. Rorschachs personality shone through and he was my favorite character by far. The little story in the comic book within the graphic novel had some lessons to offer as well. All in all I was glad that I decided to read the graphic novel even after watching the movie.



I've been meaning to read this book for the past three years or so. It came highly recommended from my high school biology teacher. The book is basically the transcript of a conversation a former lawyer turned monk has with an old associate about his journey from the courts of the city to living the life of a monk.

After a heart attack brought on by his high stress lifestyle Mr. BigShotLawyer sells all his possessions and travels to India looking for a group of fabled monks. There he is taken under their wing and learns all sorts of techniques to bring peace, calm and joy to his life. Some of the techniques in the book sound like pure mumbo jumbo but others make sense. Visualizations, meditation and affirmation techniques are also mentioned in some detail and these particular techniques merit a second look because I've seen them in other more popular books written by some extremely successful people.



This book was one of the rare ones that are both entertaining and informative. There is a great deal of knowledge packed into this book. The gist of the book is that we have problems being happy in life because we often make bad decisions. These bad decisions feel right at the time we make them but they might not be right mainly due to the following three shortcomings of perception and cognitive biases:

Realism:

Dr. Gilbert argue that While the brain is a remarkable biological machine it has its own shortcomings. Did you know that your memory is very unreliable: instead of remembering things as they happened, your brain just takes in a few key details and when you recall the event in question your brain just fills in the rest! There is also supposed to be a "black hole" or a "black spot" in your vision in each eye at the spot where the optic nerve attaches to your eye, but its not there because your brain just fills in that hole with the patterns around it! That is why you have a visual blind spot.

The main argument for realism is that memory and perception are very unreliable when recalling the past, but are even more so when trying to imagine the future. When we imagine the future we tend or add or remove details and these details that we do not account for may be key factors in us being happy in the future.

Presentism:

The basic premise of this idea is that we look at the future with the lens of today. When we try and imagine the future we tend to think that we will be the same person we are today and that our views and opinions about the world will remain the same. But this is not necessarily true! Case in point when we are young we imagine (or at least I did) that we would be happy eating ice cream and playing video games all day long! But this was not so, because I failed to account how my views about what would make me happy would change as I grew up. Dr. Gilbert cites many studies which clearly prove this shortcoming of our imagination.

Rationalization:

This is probably the highlight of the failures of our imagination. How would you feel if a family member passed away or something horrible happened to you? Probably not as bad as you imagine because your psychological immune system will kick in and rationalize a lot of the negative feelings away! When we imagine the future we fail to take into account our psychological immune system which actively rationalizes shortcomings and unfortunate events. The end result being that we are unable to accurately predict our feelings in the future!

These three factors combined mean that imagining the future has its shortcomings and a lot of us aren't happy because we fail to account for these shortcomings of our imaginations. So what do we do? Dr. Gilbert proposes a simple solution, go as someone who is currently experiencing what you hope to experience in the future, and ask them how happy they are.

In the conclusion of the book he argues why this is the most accurate way to gauge our future "happiness" level and why most people will not take his advice.

This was one of the most interesting books I've recently read and I guarantee that you will continue to laugh through out this apricot.


This book makes for a perfect sequel to "The End of Food" and "Fast Food Nation". The author takes a critical look into the various methods of farming and herding. Industrial, Organic, Local and Personal (Growing, foraging and hunting).

The book starts off with taking a good hard look at the lifeblood of the industrial monoculture; Zea Mays, more commonly known as corn. The author takes a good hard look at why corn was the most suitable and efficient choice for a monoculture. Corn is used everywhere in the industrial food chain from being processed into high corn fructose syrup, flavors, glucose and ethanol to being fed to livestock. The author elaborates on the hidden cost of our present day industrial mono-crop culture. The role of petroleum and political shortcomings of the government are also discussed.

The author then takes a critical look at the organic sector. The organic sector, now out of its infancy, mirrors the large scale industrial farming sector. Whilst no "chemicals" and "pesticides" are used in the organic sector, the method of farming in itself is unsustainable. Hundreds of tons of manure is transported to organic farms each day from far away, while migrant workers uproot weeds by hand. After harvest, crops are stored in giant refrigerated housing units which gobble up huge amounts of electricity. The crops are then transported all over the world expending large amounts of fuel before finally getting to the consumer. While orders of magnitude better than industrial farming the organic farming sector has lost sight of its origins and its anti-industrial roots.

Local eating is then discussed at length. Pollan travels to Polyface farms where sustainable farming is practiced. No chemical or imported inputs are used, the farm is a closed system. Nothing is wasted and everything is recycled. The quality of life for farm animals is also discussed in detail. This I believe should be the future of farming. But sustainable farming requires a lot of thinking along with creative ideas and goes hand in hand with back breaking work. According to Polyface's owner Joel Salatin "thinking" is hard for a lot of farmers these days. He says that all the "A" students leave the farms to work in the city and the "Johnny Macdonald's" are left behind making it easy for large seed and pesticide companies to swindle them.

In the conclusion the author takes a look at the various ethical dilemmas associated with eating animals, I really liked this part of the book because it addressed some of the issues that I've been having in a reasonable and logical manner. Foraging and hunting might not be sustainable, but the author recommends that people should at least once in their lifetimes prepare a meal from scratch with ingredients that they themselves have been hunted, grown or foraged to renew the primal connection we should have with our food which has been long forgotten in today's industrialized world.

This book was a pure joy to read and I highly recommend it.

Well folks that it for now.

- Space Out!