I recently prepared a series of book summaries for my human rights presentation for Leadership Calgary. I thought it might be good to put them on my website as well. These were intended to be "capsule reviews" and so are quite short.

The Rights Revolution
Michael Ignatieff
2000, House of Anansi Press
ISBN 0-88784-656-4

This book is based on the CBC Massey lectures where Ignatieff speaks of his views on rights. Despite the name, this isn’t a revolutionary book, but it does cover the bare bones of modern rights thinking rather well. I disagree with Ignatieff on some points, but that doesn’t reduce the book’s usefulness. I wouldn't recommend it as the first book to read, though. You would probably do better with The History of Human Rights instead.

I recently prepared a series of book summaries for my human rights presentation for Leadership Calgary. I thought it might be good to put them on my website as well. These were intended to be "capsule reviews" and so are quite short.

On Human Rights: The Oxford Amnesty Lectures 1993
Stephen Schute and Sesan Hurley, Ed.
1993, Basic Books
ISBN 0-465-05224-X

This book is based on the Oxford University/Amnesty International annual conference. It is a series of essays from a variety of writers on the theory of human rights. Many of these essays are quite thought provoking, though it should be noted that the target audience appreciates material a little on the heavier side.

I particularly liked the essay "Human Rights, Rationality, and Sentimentality" by Richard Rorty. It discusses the way groups of people infantalize or dehumanize others as a prerequisite for violating their human rights. That is, people need to see others as less than human so that, in effect, they are not violating the rights of humans. This essay gave me much to think about, especially with connections to "The Psychology of War".

I recently prepared a series of book summaries for my human rights presentation for Leadership Calgary. I thought it might be good to put them on my website as well. These were intended to be "capsule reviews" and so are quite short.

The History of Human Rights from Ancient Times to the Globalization Era
Micheline R. Ishay
2004, University of California Press
ISBN 978-0-520-23497-0

This is an excellent history book, and formed the major portion of my presentation to Leadership Calgary. It does a very good job of placing many of the influential human rights thinking in context, including such surprising observations as how Marxism had an unexpected influence on human rights. If you don’t like reading history books, you will probably find this a little dry, but it is filled with interesting information about rights and how thinking about rights evolved through times.

I recently prepared a series of book summaries for my human rights presentation for Leadership Calgary. I thought it might be good to put them on my website as well. These were intended to be "capsule reviews" and so are quite short.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Origins, Drafting, and Intent
Johannes Morsink
1999, University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0-8122-1747-0

I won’t beat around the bush on this one. This is a difficult book. It covers the entire history of the creation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. There are pages that cover an explanation why one nation didn’t like a single word in the text and wanted it changed. If you can stomach that kind of book, you will find lots of interesting tidbits about the extremely laborious time the authors had drafting this document. In doing so, you will learn a lot about the politics of rights and the making of massive international documents before such a thing was common place. The Universal Declaration, though not binding, is the single most influential piece of rights text in the world and the creation of it changed laws in ways no one could expect.

About a week ago I happened upon the Mythic gaming system at DriveThruRPG. I wasn't actually looking for it, but it came up on the "Others have also bought these products" page. (There's good marketing for you!)

It's an intriguing idea. The author, tired of not having people to play RPGs, or not having time to come up with scenarios, set about to create a gaming system that would allow on the fly gaming for Role Playing Games. This may be used with any game system so you can play D&D or Call of Cthulhu or even Illuminati, for that matter. The only thing that limits you is your imagination for spinning storylines.

I must admit that I was (and still am) a little dubious. I find it hard to believe that such a system would actually work very well. I was quite surprised at the number of positive reviews. Though, as we all know, all reviews need to be taken with a grain of salt.

That being said, the approach reminds me a bit of the Once Upon A Time card game, where players take their story in a variety of directions based on what kind of cards they have. It's a very enjoyable game, so why wouldn't something like this work just as well? In both cases you make heavy use of Lateral Thinking and can probably come up with surprising results. I know that you can for Once Upon a Time, at least.

So, I have picked up the PDFs and am going through the rules. So far it looks interesting enough to try. I'll have to do another post later to report my findings.

Mythic looks like it will be an extremely creative exercise. My hope is that it will be fun too.

I recently prepared a series of book summaries for my human rights presentation for Leadership Calgary. I thought it might be good to put them on my website as well. These were intended to be "capsule reviews" and so are quite short.

The Psychology of War
Comprehending Its Mystique and Its Madness
Lawrence LeShan
2002, Helios Press
ISBN 1-58115-238-8

This is an excellent concise (138 pages without notes) book about the human part of war; what makes us conceive of it and why we do it. I personally quite like the area on media and how messages sent to the media can change the minds of an anti-war populace and get them to go to war. Despite the topic, this is an anti-war book.

I recently prepared a series of book summaries for my human rights presentation for Leadership Calgary. I thought it might be good to put them on my website as well. These were intended to be "capsule reviews" and summaries of important parts of the book.

The Science of Good and Evil
Michael Shermer
2004, Henry Holt
ISBN 0-8050-7769-3

This book proposes an “evolutionary ethics” approach to attempt to combat the fear of relativism in rights. Once religions were no longer a common standard with which to compare rights to, most thinking devolved into relativistic rights. Harshly put, extreme relativism states that you can commit atrocities in your country as long as you make the practice legal and don’t do it in our country, where it is illegal. This book attempts to counter that argument by proposing an evolutionary basis to rights and rights thought. Since evolution can’t really be questioned the way religions can as “standards of reference”, Shermer argues that evolution is the correct standard to use for judging the merits of various rights.