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Raul Saavedra's Profile
Customer Reviews: 36
New Reviewer Rank: 10,818
Classic Reviewer Rank: 12,171
Helpful Votes:
732
Views:
9099
Helpful Votes:
21
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Helpful Votes:
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Guidelines: Learn more about the ins and outs of Your Profile.
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Reviews Written by
Raul Saavedra (Caracas, Venezuela)
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Highly recommended for anyone who cares about sound reasoning and critical thinking, March 22, 2008
This book excels in showing how and why people adopt questionable beliefs, and how/why people cling tenaciously to demonstrably erroneous beliefs, even when confronted to contrary evidence. The reasons are not simple narrow mindedness or gullibility, but several cognitive biases and circumstances that make us process information in certain ways. Processing our everyday experience without certain healthy habits of mind and sound reasoning can only too easily lead to the formation of those beliefs.
The first two thirds of the book survey some of the cognitive issues involved in the formation of questionable beliefs, while at the same time describing associated psychological literature and research. Numerous references are included pointing to studies supporting all the findings and facts presented.
The last third of the book goes over some typical questionable beliefs: the belief in ineffective "alterative" health practices, in ESP, and in the effectiveness of questionable interpersonal strategies.
At some points the book might feel in fact a bit too "academic." Thomas Gilovich, the author, is a social psychologist and researcher from Cornell University after all. Yet, this academic slant or style, in my opinion, just gives more precision and strength to all the information so well presented and explained in the book.
Gilovich closes the book stating that the healthy habits of mind required to avoid the formation of dubious beliefs actually are not as common as we might think; not even among people trained in the hard sciences! Apparently, the "soft" sciences have an advantage in more effectively teaching the kind of methodological skills most suitable for the sound evaluation of our own everyday experiences.
In summary, this book encourages us readers to question our assumptions; it challenges what we think we know, and also gives us some recommendations for building the right habits of mind to better learn how not to deceive ourselves and stay clear of dubious beliefs.
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0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Best mouse I've ever used!, January 23, 2008
This mouse is perfect in so many ways. First thing, just put your hand on it, the surface feels incredibly soft to the touch it has this ultra soft type of micro-velvety feeling surface, unbelievably pleasant to the touch. Scrolling wheel is awesome too, large enough and silent and with a smooth movement. Size of the mouse is great even for long hands like mine, and shape of the button area feels so comfortable. Tracking is wonderful. Teflon feet move absolutely seemlessly and silently on anything. The mouse is very quiet, and the clicks on the buttons are just right. Icing on the cake, Looks! This mouse really looks incredible! And the very slowly pulsating blue light on its loins, such a cool touch. I'm using it right now here in my main home pc. I'm not even a pc gamer, but I'm so glad I came across the recommendations of pc gamers for this mouse.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Terrible adaptación de las fábulas de Esopo, July 2, 2007
Búsquese otro libro si le interesan en particular las fábulas de Esopo. Este libro en mi opinión es un insulto a la obra de Esopo. Cero estrellas si pudiera seleccionar cero.
Más de la mitad de este libro está ocupado por lo que supuestamente deberían ser algunas de las fábulas de Esopo. La "traducción/adaptación" de Esopo aquí presentada es ridículamente sobrecargada y melodramática, terrible y de muy mal gusto. Curiosamente, el libro no indica quién hizo esa traducción/adaptación al español. Busque cualquier página web con las fábulas de Esopo y encontrará versiones que al menos son aceptables y mucho más cercanas al original.
Adicionalmente, en mi opinión las ilustraciones dentro del libro dejan mucho que desear, estéticamente hablando.
Las fábulas de Iriarte y Samaniego al menos sí son transcripciones literales de los originales, pero representan menos de la mitad del número total de páginas. Este libro se va para la basura, a reciclar papel.
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31 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
Awesome clarity and legibility, excellent ergonomics, July 2, 2007
Just coming from the bookstore I felt like writing a positive review about this book. In particular, I'd like to comment on how impressed I was at the clarity and legibility of the typography in this particular dictionary.
I own the "DRAE" (Diccionario de la Real Academia) in two volumes, small edition, also published by the "Real Academia Española". The small and narrow printing in that edition of the DRAE is truly aweful, making it really uncomfortable and uninviting -even painful- to use. This dictionary, on the other hand, and in my humble opinion, is a showcase of typographical clarity.
The paper used in this book is extremely smooth to the touch and very slightly smoked clear white. Letters are precisely imprinted over that smooth canvas using truly sharp black ink, providing excellent contrast. Absolutely no fuzzy/faint/smeared letters. Moreover, the letters are printed using a really nice type, and what is more, in a size particularly comfortable to read. This is such a fortunate combination of typographical variables, in my opinion not that common to find in dictionaries nowadays, regardless of language and publishing company.
The layout is not perfect though. The inner margins of pages could be wider. A narrow inner margin leaves text quite too close to the center of the book. So if the book is bulky enough like this one, it's not so easy to read the entries closer to the center of the book. You need to open it up further, enough to get the inner half of the page flatter in front of you to read it more comfortably. Not a huge deal here, but wider inner margins would have made this dictionary even better.
This dictionary is an "Essential" version of the Spanish language. So while it naturally might not have all the entries in the DRAE, it should have the most important and most useful entries (and then some.) Keep in mind, quite a few entries in the DRAE are actually regarded as useless (obsolete) even by professional writers. So the fact that this dictionary contains just an "essential" selection of the language makes it in my opinion quite an authoritative-enough generic Spanish dictionary, even in front of the DRAE.
But the main point in my review, I wish some of my other many dictionaries (both in Spanish and English) had been printed as nicely as this one, or at least even with a fraction of the combination of printing and typographical choices used in this book.
Thanks and congratulations to the Real Academia for such an improvement over the DRAE 2 vol small edition. This is a much more ergonomic and nicely readable dictionary. (Please don't forget slightly wider inner margins next time :-)
PS. I take the opportunity to recommend an awesome Spanish Usage dictionary, which is also wonderfully printed, a pleasure to use: "Diccionario de Uso del Español Actual CLAVE", Ediciones SM, Madrid, 2003.
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28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
Some serious flaws for a Sudoku Book (for Dummies), November 24, 2006
Allow me to explain how messed up are the levels of difficulty of the puzzles in this book.
There are computer programs that let you enter any Sudoku puzzle and then can tell you how hard the puzzle is by classifying it into certain levels of difficulty. A friend of mine who is very good at Sudoku got one such software, and that one uses the following difficulty levels: 1) Very Easy, 2) Easy, 3) Medium, and 4) Hard. There is a separate special level of difficulty called "Very Hard - Unfair", but that's reserved for Sudoku puzzles that require guessing / trial and error.
Sudoku puzzle number 3 in this book, supposedly an "entry level" puzzle according to the book, is ranked as "Medium" by the software mentioned above. Who considers a level of difficulty 3 out of 4 an "entry level"? And I do think these kinds of software have extremely powerful solving engines, making them capable of accurate assessments on the levels of difficulty of any puzzle.
This messed up level of difficulty in such an early exercise can be extremely discouraging for newbies, and on the other hand, in my opinion it is a sympton of little care and very poor editing when putting this book together.
Page 35 of the book (Spanish version) talks about one of the alleged "Beyond the obvious" strategies, a so called "Rule of the three numbers in three cells", or in more standardized terminology found online, the "Hidden Triples" strategy. In my opinion the strategy is very poorly exemplified and explained in the book. Any webpage describing it is much more enlightening and clear. And there are numerous other strategies very carefully explained in several online sources, which are not even mentioned in this book (not even in the Sudoku for Dummies vol 2).
The book has no alphabetical index at the end by the way, so you can't search for strategy names directly, or for key words, and there is a good reason for that: the book has really very little textual information. An alphabetical index would be ridiculous with so few entries. There is only a few pages of text at the beginning, 37 out of 342 pages, Spanish version again. Those text pages basically describe the only rule of Sudoku with some diagrams, and them attempt to explain very few basic solving strategies plus the poorly explained hidden triples. From the 37 first pages remove the first 12 which are mostly contents, intro, etc. So basically, 25 pages of text, in a small format book (7x5 inches). The bulk of the book is just exercises, and their solutions.
This book in general does not match the typical comprehensiveness I've seen in many For Dummies books.
What other reviewer indicates is also true, the paper this book was made of is pretty bad, doesn't stand erasing too well.
Conclusion: NOT recommended. Try other Sudoku books with less faults. And in any case, check the numerous Sudoku resources and compilations of strategies available for free online. This book in my opinion is not worth it. I really regret having purchased it.
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The Taking
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by Dean Koontz
Edition: Mass Market Paperback |
| Price: $7.99 |
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| Availability: In Stock |
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
First half is really amazingly good,, April 17, 2006
The first half of this book truly was one of the most gripping and urgent readings I have had to go through to find out what in heavens (literally) was going on, it is so bizarre and at the same time everything is so creatively and cleverly put and described. That part of the book promised so much, made me think I was reading a doubtless masterpiece of creativity and suspense. The second half of the book, however, really didn't live up to what the first half had built up for me. But just because of that amazing first part I would still highly recommend it.
This has been my first and so far only reading of Koontz though, but planning to read some other books by him for sure.
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376 of 400 people found the following review helpful:
Not loud enough, sibilant, slightly bright, January 30, 2006
In summary this headphone has one general strength:
1) Decent sounding depending on your tastes and needs, given the price, and given the kind of sound you get from most other closed headphones of similar price.
However, the Sennheiser HD201 has 4 important weaknesses:
1) Has very low sensitivity: it takes a lot of volume/power to bring them to satisfactory or normal loudness levels.
2) It's a bit bright, bass is slightly lacking, making them sound slightly thin or "weak".
3) Has a tendency to be SSSSSSSibilant with some female vocals.
4) For a closed headphone, doesn't isolate that much.
Weakness #1 is critical if you are considering these headphones for listening to music from your laptop or portable players. If that's the case, it's very likely you won't be happy with the sound even at max volume. These headphones are REALLY hard to bring up to normal loudness levels. If you will use them with the headphone out of a receiver, or maybe with an electric piano (as I am), then you are probably ok.
Weakness #2 is very important if you are what's called a "bass-head". These headphones won't give you slamming rich bass. Bass is (slightly) on the weak side.
Weakness #3 is critical if you listen to a lot of female vocals, and you find it particularly annoying when your playback system enhances the letter "S" as in SSSSSSSay, SSSSSSilver, SSSSSSpoon, preCCCCCiSSSSSe, etc.
Weakness #4 is important if you are expecting these headphones to block all noises around you, you might be slightly dissapointed, it does block a bit but not too much.
If you don't care about isolation I would highly recommend the Koss KSC-75 instead of these Sennheisers. If you do want a closed headphone (either you want some isolation from outside noise, or you don't want to bother anyone around you with your music), and are willing to spend a little more, you should consider the Sennheiser HD280 or maybe the Audio Technica AT500.
The above sounds like a massive critique, and I'm giving it 3 stars because really for music these are not that great sounding headphones to me. However, these headphones sound relatively OK compared to how boomy or treble-happy are most other cheap headphones, whether open or closed. Compared to that trend, these are relatively decent. Yet, compared to other very inexpensive headphones known for surprisingly good sound (e.g. Koss KSC-75) these are not that great really.
PS. Another suggestion in general, if you are looking for any headphone related information you must check www.Head-fi.org, it's really the place online for anything headphone-related.
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Availability: This item is currently unavailable.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
Great watch, September 15, 2005
I have a sweet spot for watches with black dials, black leather bands, and large main digits, and this one is particularly gorgeous. Ultra comfortable leather band. Great price as well for a Tissot having a sapphire crystal, an excellent buy. Highly recommended.
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Availability: This item is currently unavailable.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Very good value, August 26, 2005
I have two very good watches (Swiss Army and Tissot), but was just browsing in a Target store and really couldn't resist this little watch. I think this is a great value for a casual watch. Same thing could be said for many other Timex and Casio watches I'm sure, but this one stole my attention.
First thing, it looks great, very simple and clear face, it is light beige (not white). Actually, it looks a lot better in person than what you see in this photo here.
Has a nice leather & polypropylene strap, all leather on the inner side by the way, it is remarkably comfortable and very light. (If you like heavy and bulky watches then this might not be your kind of watch.) Water resistant down to 50m, quick-date feature, and last but not least, it has the Timex trademark indiglo night-light.
The only minor drawbacks I could find in this watch are: 1) It doesn't have a mineral or sapphire crystal (but hey it's a $25 watch! you won't get those crystals anywhere near this price range anyway); and 2) The tic tac sound is louder than I would have liked. But those aren't real issues at this price. If you want tougher crystals, very quiet mechanics, or features like a perpetual calendar or chrono and whatnot etc., you simply have to pay a lot more.
What this unassuming great looking casual Timex watch offers is just good value.
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Very nice watch, but thumbs down for the rubber band, August 8, 2005
I have owned a non-chrono Maverick Swiss Army watch with rubber band for about 4 years now. The Maverick is a very nice watch but I have realized it has one important flaw that I wanted to comment on here: the rubber band.
When I purchased the watch a few years back it only had a 1 year warranty. Just a year and a half after I had purchased the watch the outer band of that rubber band cracked and broke, and this was with just normal daily use. I had to get a replacement over the web ($25). Then approximately another year and a half later the same thing happened again, the outer band cracked and just couple of days later completely broke and I needed another replacement. This time I didn't want to spend on another original Swiss Army rubber band that I knew wasn't going to last long.
But there is a big problem in trying to find a non-original wrist band that fits the Mavericks. The horn separation in the Maverick's case is quite narrow (just 1 cm), and the horns are quite thick themselves. So you can't go to any watch store and simply pick some band you like for this watch. It's almost certain no wristband will fit well. Still I didn't want the weak Swiss Army rubber band again...
After quite a long search that took a few weeks, the best I could do was to get a black Casio wrist band (RL-300L-2AVFC), stitched leather-like, and has endings somewhat similar to Swiss Army's original, but still the attachment ends had to be cut a bit so that they would fit between the Maverick's horns. This Casio band should last much longer than the Maverick's original rubber band I think. Thought of getting the original metal band for the Maverick, but I really didn't want the metal band, at least not now.
Yet another minus point to mention about this watch: might be a little uncomfortable depending on how close to your hand you wear it. The case is circular, and the crown of the watch sticks out a bit too far, so when you bend your hand backwards, you can easily (and in the long run a bit painfully) nail that crown into your hand, at the very same spot over and over again. With the Chrono version this might not be as big an issue, since there are three crowns that might spread the pressure.
Despite those issues mentioned above, the Maverick line is very nice. The case and horn designs do make the band replacement troublesome, but all the watches in the Maverick series are particularly good looking I think.
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(Caracas, Venezuela)
