User Profile

sdogood

sdogood@bookwyrm.social

Joined 1 year, 12 months ago

I write about the commercialization of life in the west and how it impairs the quest for a sustainable culture and how this can be overcome. A representative publication is "Sustainability: From Excess to Aesthetics", which is available here: link.springer.com/article/10.5210/bsi.v19i0.2789

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Loch Kelly: Way of Effortless Mindfulness (Paperback, 2019, Sounds True, Incorporated) 4 stars

Discover a refreshingly different form of mindfulness to access natural wisdom, compassion, and joy

“In …

Review of 'Way of Effortless Mindfulness' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

I had practiced conventional breath-based meditation, which the author calls "deliberate mindfulness meditation", for several years before reading this book. I had made progress using the deliberate method, but I was able to rapidly achieve much more using the effortless mindfulness method advocated here. Perhaps the conventional approach is adequate for many people, but in my case it was only partially effective and somewhat cumbersome, requiring very frequent reintervention of the witness part of oneself.

I seldom read a book more than once, but after the first reading and doing the "glimpses" I put it aside and came to realize that I carried with me a new spacious awareness much of the time and belatedly realized it was due to doing the glimpses. I went back and reread it twice to fine-tune my awareness, insuring that it was based on compassion too. The method is not difficult to follow and …

Review of 'The every other day diet' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Dr. Varady is a scientist who developed this diet and then systematically and patiently collected evidence regarding its effectiveness. I've been on the diet for six weeks and two days and have lost 18 pounds. I kept up a fairly demanding exercise program throughout, so this contributed to the success I've had. Admittedly, the first week required some resolve but after that I found my body adjusted to the every-other-day schedule. I found I had lots of energy on fasting days, which was a surprise. Another surprise was not waking up and over-consuming rampantly on feast days. I've read some disparaging comments about this diet that do not respect either the research findings or the personal stories of successful adherents. My guess is that this diet will eventually become the treatment of choice for weight loss.

Michael D. Swords: UFOs and Government (2012, Anomalist Books) 5 stars

"Governments around the world have had to deal with the UFO phenomenon for a good …

Review of 'UFOs and Government' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

These authors have written a fascinating and well documented history of UFOs. It informs the reader of the evidentiary basis for many of the important sightings and the cultural context that prevailed during critical eras. It examines the political and psychological factors that influenced the way UFO's are regarded and the way this has shaped government policy. One of the great misfortunes is that a science of UFO's has never developed. The authors document how we might have had such a science if slightly different outcomes had occurred at selected historical tipping points. Instead we have no evidence-based science, government policies that insist that UFO's are not a national security problem despite evidence consistent with aerial surveillance functions, and a public that is treated like children and intentionally deprived of information to arrive at informed conclusions. It's all documented here.

Leslie Kean: UFOs (2010, Harmony Books) 4 stars

Review of 'UFOs' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

There are many sensational books describing UFO experiences but this book differs from them because Leslie Kean generally limited her eyewitnesses to credible people including police and military officers, high-ranking government staff, and elected officials. What is almost as interesting as the eyewitness accounts is her treatment of the psychology of UFO reporting, which has been so thoroughly stigmatized and ridiculed that many sources withhold their testimony because they do not wish to be publicly tainted as strange, dubious, or even apart from the confines of prosaic daily life. She advocates skepticism and searching for parsimonious explanations of these phenomena, which often produce fascinating data regarding optical illusions. Yet she also favors open-minded empirical investigations of the phenomena, consistent with the way in which the natural sciences explore any subject matter. Consistent with this, she opposes the way in which the U.S. government, in sharp contrast to other nations, has …

Daniel Peris: The strategic dividend investor (2011, McGraw-Hill) 5 stars

Review of 'The strategic dividend investor' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Daniel Peris makes an impressive case for investing in companies that share their profits with stockholders in the form of dividends. He supports his arguments with facts, yet does not go into so much technical detail that the average investor will be alienated. (Readers are called upon to understand the discount rate method of valuing stocks, but Peris explains the mathematics of this clearly, likening it to income from a rental property.) The most compelling point is that historically dividends have dominated shareholder returns, yet the investing media machines ignore this fact and push people to be stock traders, in part because this maximizes corporate profits at the expense of investors. If there were one book I would give to my children about investing this would be it because it is well documented with data, well written, succinct, and does not require a degree in finance to understand and enjoy.

Patrick: Pope of Greenwich Village (Paperback, 1984, Pocket) 4 stars

Review of 'Pope of Greenwich Village' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

The plot is lively and unpredictable. The dialogue is entertaining, often funny and ironic. Several of the major characters are multidimensional and thrust by circumstance into crime and other risky courses of action. There are several supplementary stories told within the dialogue that are fascinating. The book almost reads itself, if that's possible.