Review of Sarah Hepola, Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget

I've been reading books of this genre for 20 years. The first one I read was Caroline Knapp's "Drinking: A Love Story" (1996). As it turns out, Sarah Hepola was reading Knapp, too: "I read Caroline Knapp's [book] three times, with tears dripping down my cheeks and a glass of white wine in my hand....and I would think, 'Yes, yes, she gets it'" (page 143).

It should come as no surprise, then, that despite the 15-year gap between their experiences (Knapp was born in 1959; Hepola in 1974), the shapes of their addictive spirals have a number of twists in common: Turning to alcohol to silence the "inner critic" and "pinwheel of anxiety" (pages 23, 93); The blackouts becoming increasingly common; watching life become one crisis after another; having friends share their concern, then distance themselves from the drama (pages 76-78, 156-160); Hitting bottom (pages 131-132) and then getting better (with a love/hate relationship with 12 Step Groups [pages 141-143]).

Hepola's memoir illustrates the truth of the old drinker's couplet: "Alcohol gave me wings to fly / And then it took away the sky." In gritty and vivid detail, Hepola shares alcohol's insidious Boomerang Effect: How she drank, at first, to bridge her anxious distance from people--but eventually found people, anxious over her drinking, distancing themselves from her (Chapter 8); How drinking, at first, gave her a carefree attitude--but eventually robbed her of the ability to practice daily self-caretaking (Chapter 9); How drinking, at first, helped her say "yes" to sex--but eventually robbed her of the presence of mind and integrity to say "no" when she needed to (Chapter 10); How drinking, at first, seemed to enable her creativity by stifling her "inner critic"-- but eventually robbed her of a writer's most necessary tools: observation, relflection, and memory (Chapter 11).

Hepola's book grips the heart and doesn't let go. Her gift as a writer carries us through the perils with her: we feel her anxiety, her pain, her confusion, but also, when she finds her way out of the chaos, we feel her strength, as well. I have no doubt that her book will be helpful to others facing similar problems--just as Caroline Knapp's book helped Hepola realize she wasn't alone in what she was feeling.
 https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1537720375

Timothy Chambers, Review of Science and the World, By Jeffrey E. Foss

Science and the World: Philosophical Approaches, edited by Jeffrey Foss [Book Review]

Timothy Chambers

Teaching Philosophy 38 (4):459-463 (2015)
 https://www.scribd.com/document/294239408/Timothy-Chambers-Review-of-Science-and-the-World-By-Jeffrey-E-Foss

Even a cursory review of the literature brings to light scores of articles treating the topic of “student relativism,” including several essays appearing in this journal.1 Not surprisingly, several commentators sense that student relativism finds a partial source in a thesis we might dub student positivism: the view, roughly, that “scientific knowledge . . . is the only valid knowledge.” (524) Stephen Satris, for instance, describes encountering a “typical student reaction . . . that while scientific facts (which can be proven) might be an exception, everything else—opinions, views, feelings, values, lifestyle, ideals, activities, religion, taste—is after all relative”; Richard Momeyer notes a similar student distinction between “those quantitative, ‘scientific’ areas of inquiry in which real knowledge is attainable (‘facts’), and those fields of inquiry not yet blessed by scientific method, such as philosophy, where all is a matter of (subjective) non-confirmable opinion.”2 If, as these authors suggest, a reflexive student relativism partially results from a simplistic view of the natural sciences, then this provides one strong motivation for texts which aim to provide, as does this anthology, “a philosophical introduction to science . . . ready-to-read by the average freshman straight out of high school.” (xiii) Foss has gone to great lengths in his effort to make this text so-“ready-to-read” by newcomers to academic philosophy.

Review of Virgin by Radhika Sanghani

Virgin (Virgin, #1) 
by 

Radhika Sanghani (Goodreads Author)

 

Tim's review 

Dec 03, 2015

it was amazing

Radhika Sanghani is a delighful writer--spritely, spirited and a spanking to conventional views.

As the title suggests, Sanghani's main character Ellie Kolstakis is 21 years old, a college senior, an aspiring writer, and--GASP!--a virgin. In Sanghani's novel (which is 85% Brit Chick Lit and 15% Fem Crit), Kolstakis traverses the bumpy road towards First Intimacy with honesty and humor. Along the way, she grapples with the burdens and challenges and double-standards women bear, from sexual judgmentalism to contraception to STDs to the Hollywood Brazilian (which Ellie re-names the "Hitler").

As can be guessed from the previous paragraph, Radhika Sanghani pulls no punches, bars no holds, and spares no detail. Sanghani's novel is like a hybrid between Judy Blume and Candace Bushnell. While, as a guy, I repeatedly blushed and "OhNoSheDi'int!"ed reading it, Sanghani's sensitive and forthright voice made it well-worth the read. Frankly, I wish I'd read this book when I was 21; I might have been a more understanding person.

I can't help but think that this book would be great to read side-by-side with feminist Jessica Valenti's book, "The Purity Myth," since Sanghani brings fictional life to a number of Valenti's philosophical points.

Review of What Is Life?: Investigating the Nature of Life in the Age of Synthetic Biology by Ed Regis

What Is Life?: Investigating the Nature of Life in the Age of Synthetic Biology 
by 

Ed Regis

"Despite the enormous fund of information that [biologists] have provided," wrote Carl Sagan in 1970, "it is a remarkable fact that...there is no generally accepted definition of life." This book provides a gripping, (very) brief tour of the present "enormous fund of information" we now have on living functions: 

1) Replication (the discovery of DNA in 1954; the breaking of the nucleotide/amino-acid Genetic Code in the 1960s--on through the Recombinant DNA revolution of the 1970s through "synthetic" viruses composed from genetic scratch in the 1980s), 
2) Metabolism (the Krebs cycle; the universal role of ATP), 
3) Evolution (the Modern Synthesis uniting genetics and natural selection)

Regis also describes attempts in this century to devise novel lifelike systems in the form of artificial "protocells" and chemical "chells"

Despite this veritable avalanche of information of how living systems work, it remains a baffling fact that the simple question, "What is life?" remains as disputed as ever. One begins to wonder whether this question might be an empty philosopher's quixotic quest. In this spirit, there might be something to be said for Edouard Machery's dilemma-diagnosis in his essay (discussed by Regis), "Why I Stopped Worrying About the Definition of Life...and Why You Should as Well" (2006): "the project of defining life is either impossible or pointless," he writes, since either 'life' refers to "a traditional and ill-defined 'folk notion'" or else the definition of 'life' is to be fixed by "a precise, scientific theoretical concept." If the former, then defining 'life' slides into Socratic silliness; but, if the latter, then *every* scientific sub-discipline will have its own 'fixed' definition...and there's nothing to be said beyond that (pp. 158-159).

I can't help but think that anyone who gives Regis's primer a read will soon be inspired to follow up by exploring many of the scientific vistas Regis points out.

Review of Lady Q: The Rise and Fall of a Latin Queen by Reymundo Sánchez, Sonia Rodríguez

Lady Q: The Rise and Fall of a Latin Queen 
by 

Reymundo Sánchez,

Sonia Rodríguez

 

Tim's review 

Aug 27, 2015

it was amazing

If you peer into the heart of a Bad Girl, you'll often find a Sad Story. So it is with "Sonia Rodriguez," the pseudonym of the woman who became Lady Q: the Queen of the Chicago Latin Kings in the 1980s. Reymundo Sanchez (author of "My Bloody Life," a memoir of his own life in the Kings) has transcribed Sonia's story with sensitivity and a gritty, unflinching eye.

It would be very difficult to make Lady Q's life into a movie, because it doesn't fit the hopeful Hollywood formula. I read this book expecting the formula--expecting that, after enough drug-and-poverty-fueled purgatory, Lady Q would purge herself of the pain of her past, and step into a New Life as a Transformed Woman.

But Lady Q never turns that corner. She has plenty of (what we'd melodramatically dub) wake-up calls, but she never really wakes up. At the close of the book, the Iron Law of Lady Q's life still holds: "Just when she was convinced that the bullshit phase of her life was over," Sanchez writes, "Sonia was pushed back into its core" (page 255).

Even her otherwise patient scribe, Reymundo Sanchez, grows frustrated with his subject: "I scolded her on several occasions about her dependency on others, [but] she failed to understand that people...don't want to be dealing with a forty-year old woman who refuses to get her shit together" (pp. 267-268). Sanchez describes trying, repeatedly, to point out Sonia's damaging patterns of living to her--and the effects these patterns were having on her children. But the result was just word-service: "Sonia agreed and promised, promised and agreed, but did nothing" (p. 268).

And yet, I personally find it impossible to judge Lady Q too harshly. I see a girl who tried, over and over again, to live constructively, only to have her nascent hopes dashed by larger forces. Sonia tried to be a good girl--but abusive parents beat her for every imagined flaw (pp. 15-19). She tried to be an innocent girl--but her uncle and cousin abusively stole that innocence from her (pp. 7-14). She tried to be a talented girl, choreographing for the Richmond Street Dancers--but the gangs chased her off the scene (pp. 29-34). She tried to be a loving woman--but her men left her body battered and her heart abandoned. And on and on it goes. And over and over again, I found myself asking one question: "With all of Sonia's human gifts--her magnetic personality, her sparkling charisma, her honesty, her loyal heart--what could she have become if only Life had dealt her a few fair cards?" 

Review of The Hate Factory: A First-Hand Account of the 1980 Riot at the Penitentiary of New Mexico by Georgelle Hirliman, W.G. Stone (As Told by)

The Hate Factory: A First-Hand Account of the 1980 Riot at the Penitentiary of New Mexico

by 

Georgelle Hirliman,

 

W.G. Stone (As Told by)

The more I read about riots, the more I remember the old saying: "The players might change, but the game remains the same."

In 1953, former assistant San Quentin warden Douglas C. Rigg was tasked with investigating the causes of violence at the New Mexico State Penitentiary. He concluded that the system had "an inadequate system of classifying inmates for placement and security...idleness, lack of education and recreation, insufficient medical services, untrained and underpaid guards, and little dissemination of information to the press and public" (p. 81)

A quarter-century later, on February 2, 1980, a riot engulfed the prison; thirty-three inmates were left dead, all killed by fellow inmates during the riot. 

Anyone care to guess what the causes of the riot were? Georgelle Hirliman's book describes, in great detail, how Rigg's factors persisted at NM State Penitentiary--even after a new facility was built (at great expense) and opened (with great optimism) on April 20, 1956. In short, this book is a story of how the State "was willing to provide money for literally concrete ["brick and mortar"] changes, but not for the people inside the concrete, not in terms of rehabilitation programs or in raises for corrections officers" (page 82).

As Hirliman's passionate Foreward to the Revised Edition (written in 2005) points out, it's unclear that the State has learned any lasting lessons from one of the worst prison uprisings in U.S. history (pages ix-xxi).

Review of "Debating Christian Theism"

Timothy Chambers

Debating Christian Theism. J.P. Moreland, Chad Meister, and Khaldoun A. Sweis (eds.). New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2013, xv + 554 pp. $35.00 pbk. ISBN 978-0-19-975543-1.

Chambers, Timothy (2015) "Review of "Debating Christian Theism"," Essays in Philosophy: Vol. 16: Iss. 2, Article 9. http://dx.doi.org/10.7710/1526-0569.1537