Pieces of My Heart - Robert Wagner

Robert Wagner (RJ) offers a very emotionally honest description of his life.  His loving relationship with Barbara Stanwyck changed him and made him a more complete person with a better perspective on life.  His two marriages to Natalie Wood both ended tragically but his second was the best part of his life.  David Niven Helped pull him out of his depression after his first divorce from Natalie and her tragic death from a boating accident.  It is unfortunate that David's second marriage was a poor fit with Roger Moore and RJ maintaining decorum after David's death.

Robert Wagner on his relationship with Barbara Stanwyck

After completing the biographies of Roger Moore and Tony Curtis this was an excellent third perspective on this era of film making.  The three men were friends although Tony and RJ had a brief falling out after Tony's public and messy divorce from Janet Leigh.  RJ turned down the part for James Bond when offered it by Mr. Broccoli and suggested that Roger Moore would be a good fit. 

RJ on his book

Jill St. John, Natalie Wood and Stephanie Powers were all in the same dance class together as children.  Jill's marriage to RJ is described very positively as she helps ground him and gives him excellent advice such as do not do Dancing with the Stars.  Stephanie and RJ had a good working relationship.  The TV series Hart to Hart was based on the relationship between Nick and Nora Charles in the Thin Man movies series.   RJ thought of it as an ideal marriage and wanted to portray that in the TV show.

The book, Pieces of My Heart: A Life is available at Amazon.com

The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins

The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins was written for two purposes.  The first was to provide evidence for the theory of evolution.  The second is to explore how creatures and the planet change during the long course of history and sometimes in only a lifetime. 

His writing on the evidence for plate tectonics provided the clearest explanation of the mechanism and the geologic evidence for the split of Africa and South America.  Igneous rock is created at roughly the midpoint between Africa and South America.  The youngest rock is at the middle and the oldest rock on the ocean floor is adjacent to the east coast of South America and the west coast of Africa.   Periodically over the course of the earth's history the north and south magnetic poles reverse.  The magnetic position is fixed when the rocks cool after being formed.  The bands of magnetic polarity form a mirror image of each other from the center point in the Atlantic as the ocean floor moves in opposite directions.

The ability for humans to force changes in the evolution of plants was fascinating.  I was unaware that a wild cabbage plant was the original source for  broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage.  Humans have been custom designing dog breeds for centuries starting from the wolf and then increasing the diversity to the wide number of breeds we have today.  An interesting Russian study started during the 1930's on grey foxes that selected for tameness transformed the foxes into very friendly animals that looked a lot more like dogs with their tails up instead of down.

Richard Dawkins reads from his book.  (17 minutes)

I appreciated his irreverence.  He directly quotes the Monty Python song All Things Dull and Ugly the parody of the British children's song All Things Bright and Beautiful.  The parody appeals to teenage boys everywhere for its comedic honesty and its unflinching willingness to not sugar coat the reality of our existence.  With this book Richard Dawkins largely succeeds in doing just that.  

All Things Dull and Ugly - Monty Python

The book, The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution is available from Amazon.com

Fooled by Randomness Nassim Taleb

Nassim Taleb's book pulls the curtain back on our brain's inability to sort out brilliant performance from random luck.  He points out that if you follow 5000 people who pick stocks for a living by pure chance 150 of them will outperform the stock market for 5 straight years.  They will be thought of as brilliant and they can write books on how they did it.  Next year when half of them fail to out perform the market people will say they became to comfortable with their success and lost their edge. 

Nassim does recognize that some talent like the learned ability to play a musical instrument is not random. 

He does point out that this randomness must also be applied to alternative medicine.  When we can get a placebo cure rate 30 to 40% above background the bar is set fairly high for alternative medicine.  He is even more blunt stating there is medicine and there are things that are not medicine.

Nassim Taleb - Fooled by Randomness - 7 min.

 

Nassim is independently wealthy from betting on some black swan events in the stock market.  This gives him the freedom to do what he loves which is talk to other brilliant people and write books about his experience.  It also gives him the freedom to be very blunt and step on toes.  I'll paraphrase him now but his impression the television analysts on the stock market is that they are pure entertainers with no skin in the game.  As a consequence their advice is of no consequence. 

I'll be reading more of his books in the future.  Of particular interest is his latest book Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder.

Nassim Taleb's book, Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets is available from Amazon.com.

Nassim Taleb - Criticizes Summers, Bernanke and Obama