Brain Bugs (Dean Buonomano)

An interesting look at some of the consistent biases and mistakes we make because of how our brains work. The author looks at familiar things like change blindness, framing, and the influence of advertising, as well as some not pointed out as often, such s religion. I study this area, so I can't say I learned anything new. I also had problems with a few of the author's beliefs. For example, his theory as to why humans evolved religion is interesting, but flawed. He claims that one factor distinguishing humans from other animals is our tendency to ask questions, so we can try to make things better. True enough. But, he says, for early humans there was a need to distinguish things we could actually influence (such as how to hunt more effectively) from those we couldn't (such as the weather). Religion evolved, he says, to keep us from wasting too much time and energy on things out of our control. They became the purview of the gods. I disagree with this analysis. It seems that religion exists because we wanted to understand and explain everything. The gods are the explanation we came up with for the things we couldn't otherwise explain. So the book was all right, but didn't increase my understanding or change my thinking.

Blackout (Connie Willis)

This is half a story, set in the same universe as Willis's Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog (the second half is in the volume called All Clear, which I'll be reading soon). It is a time-travel novel, but it's really more about WWII, the time period visited by the historians from Oxford in 2060. These intrepid explorers get to their various assignments (observing children evacuated to the countryside, ordinary heroes of Dunkirk, and Londoners during the Blitz) and settle in, before things start to go wrong. The book is much too long - there is no need for devoting quite so much time to the paperwork snafus and scheduling headaches at Oxford, or the logistical problems with trying to take a train in wartime England. Willis makes the places and the people seem real, though, so I never quite lost patience with the Keystone Cops feel of things. I look forward to reading the rest of the story soon.