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"Do whatever it takes to avoid fooling yourself into believing that something is true when it is false, or that something is false when it is true."

You know those books you try to read as slowly as possible because you don't want them to ever end? This book was one of those for me. I started it and then started and read two others while reading it, in order to make it last longer.

My brain needed the rational thoughts of Neil deGrasse Tyson, and his many thought experiments, especially at the moment. It was the best book I could have been reading the last two weeks.

The book is Mr. Tyson's thoughts on a variety of topics, mainly how we humans categorize others - often to justify hating them.

He included myriad thought experiments to show the absurdity in stereotyping people (according to skin color, sexuality, political leanings, etc), and how lazy it is to simply plop a label on someone we don't even know, and decide we know everything about them.

My brain thrills at thought experiments. I could read them all day. It is so exciting to see things in a new way, to flip around the way one thinks about something, to rationalize instead of accepting things emotionally.

And then there were lots of cool scientific facts in this book too. More dopamine for my brain!

Here are a few:

�� "The Moon is spiraling away from Earth at a rate of about 1.5 inches per year."

�� "If you lower the air pressure well below the level where you’d suffocate and die, there exists a pressure and temperature for which water boils as it freezes."

�� "More bacteria live and work in every centimeter of our lower colon than the sum of all humans who have ever lived."

�� "On average, the human brain is 2.5 percent of our body weight, yet for some ant species, their brains are closer to 15 percent of their body weight.��"��

There is a chapter on vegans/vegetarians which I loved and realize much of it was tongue-in-cheek. However, I want to point out though that some of us vegans do worry about the plant life we kill and consume, wondering if one day we will learn that plants have consciousness and the ability to feel pain. That worries me a lot, perhaps more than it should.

I figure though, that we know for sure other mammals and fish experience pain and are conscious and we don't yet know that about plants, therefore it's better to go with the latter. Also, if you eat meat, you're killing both the animal and the plants it eats, so it's less suffering caused by only eating plants. (Whether or not it still makes me a hypocrite, I'm not sure.)

That said, I do not demonize those of you who eat meat because I recognize that it's the "circle of life" and I do not believe in imposing my morals and beliefs on others. Whether or not to eat meat and dairy is not for me to decide for anyone but myself.

If you enjoy learning scientific facts and thinking rationally and challenging your beliefs, this is the book for you. It's not very long, though even if it was it still wouldn't have been long enough for me.

Oh, and I would love to be a citizen of Rationalia!