Recent readings

A few remarks concerning some books I read since my last post:

• Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries presents a board study of democratic governments and classifies them into 'majoritarian' (e.g. UK) and 'consensus' (e.g. Switzerland) systems. He finds 10 items in 2 dimensions (or: the 10 items can be factored in 2 factors which good correlations) which are useful for classification. 36 countries are analysed with respect to this 10 items and the classical prejudices (majoritarian governments can act quicker and thus are better and more decisive, etc) are examined. His conclusion is that most of these turn out to be false; for some, rather the opposite seems to be true.
  
• Qed: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter (Princeton Science Library) is a very good popular science book - in my opinion even better for those who have studied the matter beforehand. It does not contain any formulae - something I would complain about a lot if I didn't already know many of them. Otherwise, if you haven't had contact with quantum mechanics at all, it might be too less to be useful.
• The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory is one of the very few books on string theory I got my hands on yet. For a math/science orientated person, it gives a very rough but imprecise picture on the possible solutions string theory /might/ offer/s. On the other hand, it skips quite some of the problems string theory actually has (like the validity of the use of pertubation theory) and mostly due to the nature of string theory itself, doesn't offer any formulae. The recapitulation of relativity and quantum mechanics in the beginning of the book is ok, but not the best I read.
• The other one seems to be available in German only: a collection of papers on the topics of globalization and nongovernment organizations: Die Privatisierung der Weltpolitik. It sheds light on the increasing influence of non-governmental organizations in world politics - not necessarily lobbyists from economy and industry, but also public interest organizations like environmental or animal rights activists. Very enjoyable is the neutral attitude, more analyzing than taking any side.

I ordered a bunch of new books on epigenetics and neurosciences.

The Rise of the Creative Class

I purchased a new book, The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life by Richard Florida.

According to this book, the creative class consists of those people who primarily create, combine, modify and extend ideas. This includes artists and musicians, but also ranges to scientists and engineers even some managers are included. Taking a look at the class and its composition, Florida argues how companies and countries can react to the growing importance and influence of creative workers. It turns out that there is a strong correlation between places with many gays, artists, cultural/ethic mixture and a strong creative industry/economy.
Furthermore he argues that people tend to cluster at places they like rather than to prefer places the industry chooses to build their factories. Consequently cities and counties should take measures to ensure those people will cluster.

Reading it (and not having finished it yet) I get the feeling that all that needs to be done is to follow the arguments M. Friedman made: let the free market decide. Deregulation should allow people to cluster whereever they like to and due to democratic systems form their environment according to their likings. The creative class contains up to one third of all employees - being not a minority at all, special rules, laws and regulations can be supported by the class itself if necessary. With respect to the backward, conservative US laws, the abolishment of quite some laws seems to be the better alternative.

Cognitive Sciences and unfinished readings

I got the recommendation to read some chapters titled Structures, Learning and Ergosystems (available here) due to its heavy use of mathematical examples and outlined processes of thinking in mathematics. I got kind of upset with reading during the first 40 pages because of some imcomprehensible claims - at least I cannot see the validity of those, maybe it is just my limited and inadequate knowledge of cognitives sciences. It's a collection of facts without stating clear connections between them.
I found a cognitive scientist to whom I can relay questions, so I might post some questions with his answers later.

Meanwhile, I'm not done with the ealier mentioned book about Quantum Non-Locality and Relativity. I was slowed down by a Greman book about philosophy of science and Peter Singer's Practical Ethics.

I will write a short book review for the Quantum Non-Locality book as soon as I finish reading it.