A short bit ago, maybe last summer, I bought Bob a book that he was considering for PALAC. He was going to read the book first, as the leader for any book group should do, and was a bit frustrated that it wasn't available at the library for a while. So, I bought the book for him. He didn't end up using the book for the book group, as it was considered too technical. The group, however, ended up using this book for their science book discussion that quarter.

So, I picked it up and read it, too.

Unthinkable tells the reader about eight different head / brain injuries, then discusses what we have learned as a result of those injuries. As a bonus for many of the brain injuries and lessons learned, Thomson includes parts of "how you, too, can experience this weird brain phenomenon!" which I found entertaining. The book isn't a difficult read, and covers a few stories that are common in other books on thinking and brain injuries (hello, Phineas Gage, the most talked about brain injury ever in American culture).

Most amusing to me was the story of The Jumping Frenchmen of Maine, as they were also mentioned in Wanders as a neuropsychiatric disorder possibly bacteria and viral in origin. Turns out, no, more likely it was a conditioned response, which makes the brain both our friend and our "enemy." Also, people are jerks.

It was a fun read, not technical, but a good introduction to brains on the outside of "normal," and the inside of "fascinating." Recommended.

For the majority of us, our most vivid memories are those that have some kind of emotional content.

...

They essentially tell the rest of the brain, “these events are important, remember them.” This in turn makes the memory of that event more easily recalled at a later date.
Location: 460

THROUGHOUT SCHOOL, SHARON CONTINUED to hide her problem from her friends and family. The seeds of condemnation planted by her mother at such a young age had clearly taken hold. I feel a wave of sympathy. Sharon is so likable—so friendly, funny and intelligent. I’m amazed she kept this to herself for so long. Sharon was almost thirty before her secret came out in the open.
Location: 880

“I’ve always been silly and funny because it misdirected people away from the things I was hiding. Everyone always said, ‘You’re always in such a good mood.’ They didn’t know that I would go home at night and cry.
Location: 994

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN COLOR and emotion is well established in the animal kingdom. Female animals often use the color red to signal hormonal changes in their body associated with fertility, for example. Certain male primates show red following a surge of testosterone in their bloodstream, due to aggression or as a show of dominance. Testosterone suppresses the immune system, so the flush of red tells any females that the male must be in good health to cope with such deficits.
Location: 1,189

... asked several men to have a conversation with a woman who was wearing either a red or green shirt. Men who spoke to the woman while she was wearing a red shirt asked her more intimate questions than those who spoke to her while she was wearing green. In another experiment, men sat closer to a woman and classed her as more attractive when she was wearing a red shirt than when she was wearing an identical shirt in other colors.
Location: 1,195

Evolutionary anthropologists at Durham University and the University of Plymouth wondered whether wearing a red shirt might exploit our innate response to the color red and so influence the outcomes of sporting contests. They studied fifty-five years’ worth of English football league results, and found that teams whose home colors were red won 2 percent more often than teams who wore blue or white, and 3 percent more often than those who wore yellow or orange.
Location: 1,202

In fact, across a range of sports, wearing red is consistently associated with a higher probability of winning.
Location: 1,206

Winners wear read.

Why Mischief's colors are red and whatever. Thanks, Doyle!

Dopamine is used all over the brain and is important for motivation and producing a drive toward things that make you happy. If you have too much dopamine, though, it can lead to disinhibited behavior.
Location: 1,723

As you might expect, when the roles were suited to their brains the teams performed best. But here’s the rub: this occurred only when the task was completed in silence.

...

When the researchers watched back the trials, they discovered that each person quickly took over the other’s role, helping them to achieve their assignment. In other words, complete strangers had spontaneously discovered their strengths and weaknesses and modified their behavior to get a job done.
Location: 1,789

For instance, if you come across a problem that you can’t solve, try thinking about it using the kind of strategy that doesn’t come easily to you. “It takes more effort to think in a different mode,” says Kosslyn, “but anyone can drop into any mode if you really try.”
Location: 1,796

It’s a dangerous misperception among reporters, the public and policymakers that mental illness is at the root of violence.
Location: 2,236

“Most people with mental illness are not violent toward others and most violence is not caused by mental illness,” says McGinty.
Location: 2,239

In 2006, Laureys and his colleague Adrian Owen developed a test to check whether someone in an apparent vegetative state could in fact follow orders, by inviting them to think about moving around their house or playing tennis. These two thoughts produce very different patterns of activity in the brain, which the team could identify using brain scans. Their first patient—a twenty-three-year-old woman who had fulfilled all the criteria for vegetative state after a road traffic accident—was able to produce the two patterns of brain activity on request. Later they discovered she was very much aware of her surroundings, despite not being able to move, because she was able to answer their questions by attributing the two different thoughts (thinking about moving around her house or playing tennis) to the words “yes” and “no.”
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It was the first sign that tactile stimulation isn’t always necessary for us to perceive the sensation of touch—in some conditions vision alone is sufficient.
Location: 3,074

So how do we empathize without burning out? A series of studies, many by Tania Singer at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, in Leipzig, Germany, suggests we should transform empathy into compassion.9 We often use these words interchangeably, but they mean different things. “Compassion” can be described as having caring thoughts for another person—for instance, when a mother reaches out to a screaming child. “Empathy” is putting yourself in another person’s shoes and vicariously experiencing their emotions.
Location: 3,280

Our inability to understand our own minds is the price we pay for the ability to question them in the first place. Back in that first lesson with Clive, I was told by my professor that “if the brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn’t.”
Location: 3,526

Oh, I enjoyed this book so much. Again, I need to keep notes on why I pick up books, this one may have been on some Book Riot recommendation list, I don't know. It was, however, a zombie book (sorta, but not quite), and we know how much I enjoy a good zombie book.

And no, this one wasn't quite a zombie book in the "brains... braaaaaaaaaaaains" sort of zombie book, but it was sort, in that the Wanderers are a group of people who leave their house with no apparent reason, and start walking. From the East Coast to the West Coast, gathering up more individuals as they walk, their loved ones fluttering around them like insects, trying to help even as the zombies with their single focus on no-one knows what keep walking.

This book gets a lot of things right: AI progress, outbreaks and epidemics, society's breakdown, power manipulation, and human deception. It introduces a number of technologies in a non Hollywood-OMG-we-are-all-going-to-die sort of way, but rather in a here's-how-it-is-let's-deal-with-it sort of way, which I can appreciate.

The only downside to the book is that a number of cultural fuckeries (black men in America and racial discrimination, women in science and tech and gender discrimination, dominance and cultural manipulation) are described in passing, as a gnat buzzing around, rather than the Good Ole Boy network f'ing shutting down the black man, regardless of his doctorate, degree, experience, and ability to save them. I can't say that one could actually incorporate the topics in any more meaningful way, though, and I appreciate their being mentioned at least.

For the most part, the book is engaging and fast-paced. Literally one short section of a chapter made me think, "UGH," the rest was "wheeeee!" Strongly recommended!

“Way it works is this: You go in, and you can talk to it, ask it questions. It won’t answer in words, but rather, with green pulses or red pulses to indicate yes or no, respectively. It can also answer with images and data, but it won’t communicate with you the same way you communicate with it.” “That does not seem like an exact science.” “Benji, even an exact science is not an exact science—surely you know that above others.”
Location: 816

Seriously, who designs an interface where you can ask only yes / no questions? Yes, there are nuances to the language, but you can work through those with a limited vocabulary. Honestly, this is one of the very few WTF parts of this book, where I was pulled out and thought, "That doesn't make sense."

That, she said with almost zero confidence. She made that prediction only out of hope, and hope she knew had like, zero basis in reality.
Location: 1,117

“That’s not—no, that’s not what happened to him. We don’t know what happened to him.” “That instills us with little confidence,” French snapped. Benji offered both hands in a placating gesture. “That is how science and medicine are practiced best, though—we are best when we admit our ignorance up front, and then attempt to fill the darkness of not-knowing with the light of information and knowledge.”
Location: 1,266

He relied on his faith in the numbers. Numbers did not lie. Oh, you could lie using numbers (to which Benji could personally attest), but the numbers themselves were inert, unbiased, and pure.
Location: 1,867

The future wasn’t Newsweek. It was fucking YouTube. And that sucked. Because YouTube—the whole damn internet—was the antithesis of Garlin Gardens. It wasn’t fun and whimsical. Dreams were not made on the internet; they were killed there. By mean, nasty little shits who were all looking to one-up each other. Like crayfish in a bucket, all trying to climb over one another to get to the top.
Location: 2,109

Politics, despite what some believed, was not morality, nor reflective of it.
Location: 2,446

“It looks like the end of the world out there. I don’t think you can dodge the end of the world.”
Location: 2,537

“Hola, chica,” Shana said, going for a fist-bump and blowing it up after, then moving in for the hug.
Location: 2,591

Love this. Totally how I fistbump, too.

“I try not to worry about anything until I need to. Because honestly, what’s the point.”

“Screw that. I worry about everything constantly.”

“That sounds awful.”

“It sounds smart, is what it is.”

“If you say so.”
Location: 2,603

Worry about everything, maybe not.

Consider bad outcomes, absolutely.

“Before anyone asks,” Vargas said, “I don’t have any new information for you about your friends and family members.” Anger ran through Shana. People were supposed to have answers. Experts were supposed to know shit. And they didn’t know anything.
Location: 2,804

Shana knew this angst over the fact life is super unfair, wah, was hyper-fucking-cliché of her, but it was what it was, and she felt what she felt. Things, she thought, were supposed to be better than they were.
Location: 2,809

The moment they made one slip-up, that would give Homeland Security an opening to take over the whole show. They were already itching for it. What if they considered these people a threat? Benji could not imagine he lived in a country that would up and execute these people. Still… History had too many cruel examples of this very thing happening. Worse was: Would people even flinch? Would Americans quietly look away? Or would they rise up in defense of the flock?
Location: 2,869

Well, giving ICE shit happening now, we know which way this one would go.

This, he decided, was a problem for Future Benji.
Location: 2,870

Love this.

Death was a tragedy. But death was also a data point.
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That marked her as either someone who had a lot of untapped courage—there was that word again, echoing the conversation with Arav—or someone who cared little for herself or her own life. (He wondered idly, How often do those two things intertwine?)
Location: 3,341

I bought this book a couple years ago at Powells, from the bargin bin. The version was a new translation, from around 1994, and had wordings and phrases that really worked for this "modern reader." As with One Hundred Years of Solitude, it was a book I needed to read. Much past that, I am unsure why I picked it up, or why I read it at this point.

As with One Hundred Years, one should not read the introductions. This book's introduction, "oh look at me, I am so learned about this book and this author, let me discuss the most essential plot point before you have even started the book," (YEARGH!) also gave away too much.

While I know this book is often assigned in high school, I'm completely certain that I understood more having read the book as an adult, than I could have possibly understood as a teenager. The main character is nineteen, twenty, so reading it without life experiences could possibly allow an emotional connection to Paul, the narrator, but not knowing the horrors of war (as most American high schoolers do not), nor having the larger world perspective, nor understanding of the cycles of history, leads me to believe that the book will read as just a story rather than a fictionalized telling of Remarque's WW1 experiences.

There's a part of the book where the main character's company is deployed to the front, and need to walk to the actual front. They are walking single file through a forest when the line is ambushed, and the soldiers scatter. The telling of the scene is so rich that one is taken to the French forest, one can feel the thumping of the artillery on the front, smell the decay of the forest floor, feel the night air and the darkness of a world before plentiful light and never night. The described sounds of the company and the gut reactions to the ping ping of the shots downing the guy in front of the narrator send chills and terror in a visceral way that I believe most people don't experience these days: how can they when they've grown up on first person shooter and infinite light and connectedness?

The book is incredibly powerful. I'd argue that Fives and Twenty Fives is a similar retelling of a different war with a different outcome, with the same shit situation: that the boots on the ground are experiencing the worst, and that none of the rest of us fully understand, or could understand. Those experiences break most, and destroy even those who bend.

Strongly recommend reading this book as an adult. I will buy you a copy, a nice copy even.

On the right-hand edge of the field they have built a huge latrine block, a good solid building with a roof. But that is only for new recruits, who haven't yet learned to get the best they can out of everything. We want something a bit better. And scattered all around are small individual thunderboxes with precisely the same function. They are square, clean, made of solid wood, closed in, and with a really comfortable seat. There are handles on the sides so that they can be carried about.
Page: 24

I can still remember how embarrassed we were at the beginning, when we were recruits in the barracks and had to use the communal latrines. There are no doors, so that twenty men had to sit side by side as if they were on a train. That way they could all be seen at a glance - soliders, of course, have to be under supervision at all times.
Page: 25

Out here in the open air the whole business is a real pleasure. I can't undertand why it was that we always used to skirt round these things so nervously - after all, it is just as natural as eating or drinking. And perhaps it wouldn't need to be mentioned at all if it didn't play such a signifcant part in our lives, and if it hadn't been new to us - the other man had long since got used to it.
Page: 25

For the others, for the older men, the war is an interruption, and they can think beyond the end of it. But we were caught up by the war, and we can't see how things will turn out.
Page: 37

We had an hour of saluting practice this afternoon because Tjaden gave a major a sloppy salute. Kat can't get over this. "Watch out, lads," he says, "we'll lose the war because we are too good at saluting."
Page: 55

For me, the front is as sinister as a whirlpool. Even when you are a long way away from its centre, out in the calm waters, you can still feel its suction pulling you towards it, slowly, inexorably, meeting little resistance.
Page: 68

With the first rumble of shellfire, one part of our being hurls itself back a thousand years. An animal instinct awakens in us, and it directs and protects us. It is not conscious, it is far quicker, far more accurate and far more reliable than conscious thought. You can't explain it.
Page: 69

French rockets shoot up, the ones with silk parachutes that open in the air and let them drift down really slowly. They light up everything as clear as day, and their brightness even reaches across to us, so that we can see our shadows stark against the ground. The lights hang in the sky for minutes at a time before they burn out. New ones shoot up at once, everywhere, and there are still the green, red and blue stars.
Page: 71-72

Searchlights begin to sweep the black sky. They skim across it like huge blackboard pointers, tapering down at the bottom. One of them pauses, shaking a little. At once another is beside it, they cross and there is a black, winged insect trapped and trying to escape: an airman. He wavers, is dazzled, and falls.
Page: 72

He notices his helmet and puts it on his head. Slowly he comes to himself. Then suddenly he blushes scarlet and his face has a look of embarrassment. Cautiously he puts his hand to his rear end and gives me an agonized look. I understand at once: the barrage scared the shit out of him. That wasn't the precise reason that I put his helmet where I did - but all the same I comfort him. 'No shame in that, plenty of soldiers before you have filled their pants when they came under fire for the first time. Go behind that bush, chuck your underpants away, and that's that -"
Page: 75

The screaming goes on and on. It can't be men, they couldn't scream that horribly.

"Wounded horses," says Kat.

I have never heard a horse scream and I can hardly believe it There is a whole world of pain in that sound, creation itself under torture, a wild and horrifying agony.
Page: 75

"Albert, what would you do if all of a sudden it was peacetime?"

"There's no such thing as peacetime," replies Albert curtly.

Mulller persists. "yes, but if ... what would you do?"

"I'd bugger off out of it," grumbles Kropp.

"Course. And then what?"

"Get blind drunk," says Albert.

"Don't talk rubbish, I'm being serious - "

"Me, too," says Albert, "what else would there be to do?"

[...]

"Christ almightly," says Haie, and his expression softens, "the first thing I'd do is pick myself some strapping great bint, know what I mean, some big bouncy kitchen wench with plenty to get your hands around, then straight into bed and no messing! Think about it! Proper feather-beds with sprung mattresses. I tell you, lads, I wouldn't put my trousers back on for a week!"

Silence all around. The image is just too fantastic. It sends tremors right across the skin.
Page: 88

All at once everything seems to me to be pointless and desperate.

Kropp takes it further along the same line, "It will be just as difficult for all of us. I wonder whether the people back at home don't worry about it themselves occassionally? Two years of rifle fire and hand-grenades - you can't just take it all off like a pair of socks aftewards - "

...

Albert puts it into words. "The war has ruined us for everything."

He is right. We're no longer young men. We've lost any desire to conquer the world. We are refugees. We are fleeing from ourslves. From our lives. We were eighteen years old, and we had just begun to love the world and to love being in it, but we had to shoot at it. The first shell to land went straight for our hearts.
Page: 98

We are like children who have been abandoned and we are as experienced as old men, we are coarse, unhappy and superficial - I think that we are lost.
Page: 132

A few years ago we would really have despised ourselves. Now we are pretty well content. You can get used to anything - even being in the trenches.

This habit of getting used to things is the reason that we seem to forget so quickly.
Page: 147

Because one thing has become clear to me: you can cope with all the horror as long as you simply duck thinking about it - but it will kill you if you try to come to terms with it.

...

We want to go on living at any price, and therefore we can't burden ourselves with emotions that might be all very nice to have in peacetime, but out of place here.
Page: 147

We have never been a very demonstrative family - poor people who have to work hard and cope with problems very rarely are. They can't really understand that sort of thing either, and they don't like contsant going on about things that are perfectly obvious.
Page: 166

War is another cause of death, like cancer or tuberculosis or influenza or dysentery. The fatalities are just much more numerous, and more horrible.
Page: 266

But we are thin and starving. Our food is so bad and full of so much ersatz stuff that it makes us ill. The factory owners in Germany have grown rich, while dysentery racks our guts.
Page: 274

... they [the stories] are honest, and they call a spade a spade, because there really is a lot of fraud, injustice and petty nastiness in the army.
Page: 276

Leer groans and props himself on his arms, but he bleeds to death very quickly and no one can help him. After a few minutes he sinks down like a rubber tyre when the air escapes. What use is it to him now that he was so good at mathematics at school?
Page: 278