I’ve revised my “Topics” list (sidebar) to better
reflect the subjects you’ll find on this blog and the way they are organized.
If you find any broken links that may have resulted from this change, or any
other broken links, please comment on the page on which you found the link and
identify it in the comment. I’ll fix links wherever I can. Thanks.
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query 2015. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query 2015. Sort by date Show all posts
Sunday, December 13, 2015
Saturday, October 31, 2015
Sunday, February 15, 2015
Saturday, November 28, 2015
Sunday, November 8, 2015
Sunday, September 20, 2015
Sunday, April 17, 2016
New & Interesting Stuff Apr. 17, 2015
By the way, if you haven't filed your 2015 U.S. tax return, it is due tomorrow, April 18, 2016.
Sunday, February 21, 2016
Sunday, July 10, 2016
I Am Spock by Leonard Nimoy
Leonard
Nimoy is well known for his portrayal of Spock on Star Trek television
series and films.
As a Vulcan,
Spock is of a long-lived species, and his appearance in the 2009
reboot film and its 2013
sequel (Into Darkness) makes him a link
between the new adventures and their predecessors. The actor passed away last
year (2015).
I Am Spock is Nimoy’s memoir relating
to his career as an actor
and a director.
Of course, Spock and Star Trek play
an important role in that career, though Nimoy does not limit his reminiscence
to the franchise.
Throughout the book, Nimoy imagines conversations with Spock. As an
actor in a series where writers and directors change, he saw himself as a
protector of the character (and suggested that other actors take similar
attitudes to such characters). This made him passionate about a character known
for being dispassionate. At the same time, he had the reasonable fear of being
type casted and being unable to get other parts.
Fortunately, Nimoy was able to move on to other things after the three
seasons of the original Star Trek
series. On series television, he played Paris on Mission Impossible. He also had
guest roles on a number of other shows. He also worked on the stage. One gets
the impression for the book that Nimoy had relatively few interruptions in his
career after bringing Spock to life, though not always with the steady paycheck
that comes from being on a series.
Nimoy became interested in directing and tried his hand directing a few
episodes of television shows. He got his chance to direct a feature film with Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.
This was a success and he was offered the helm of the next film, The Voyage Home. He also had a great
success as director of Three Men and a Baby.
As a Trek fan, I’m obviously
interested in that part of his career. Even so, I found it almost a relief to
break from that and read about Nimoy’s other projects. Though he does not
present himself as religious, he seemed particularly to relish projects that
provided a connection to his Jewish heritage.
Even the distinctive Vulcan salute was taken by Nimoy from a temple ceremony he
observed as a child.
The book was published in 1995,
so it covers the period up to the sixth Star
Trek film, The Undiscovered Country, and his
appearance on two episodes of The Next Generation. He gave no hint
of imagining that he would reprise the role of Spock 14 years later.
If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
Sunday, March 27, 2016
Amazing Fantastic Incredible by Stan Lee, Peter David & Colleen Doran
When a book is entitled Amazing
Fantastic Incredible, Stan Lee must
be involved. That is the title of Lee’s graphic
novel memoir,
co-written with Peter David
with art
by Colleen
Doran, about his long career in comic
books.
Lee has a career in comic books going back the Golden Age.
He started working in comics soon after they became a popular medium. Few
people have had a career in comic books as long as Lee’s, partly because he is
still working. No one has been the public face of comic books, or a spokesman
and promotor for the medium, as much as Lee.
Because Lee’s career in comics is well known, at least among fans, some
of the more interesting parts of the memoir deal with other aspects of his
life. He depicts himself as being crazy in love with his wife, Joan, even after
decades of marriage.
He recalls himself as a lonely kid during the Great Depression,
who took refuge in books and the world of his own imagination. He retelling of
his army service during World War II,
mostly serving as a writer stateside, is mostly humorous.
I suspect Lee’s humor has a lot to do with his popularity. He comes
across as self-aggrandizing with a self-deprecating wink.
Even so, Lee’s status as a comics celebrity has sparked criticism in
some circles. He was the face of Marvel Comics,
and so has taken the heat for the way the publisher treated the artist who
worked for him (comics publishers treated artists shabbily for decades). Maybe
he could have done more for the artists who worked for him, and maybe he would
have been unemployed if he tried. Lee doesn’t get into this matter much, but
when he does he shifts the blame to publisher Martin
Goodman.
Lee addresses some of his most famous characters and the artists who
co-created them. Some might see his recognition of co-creators as a defense
against detractors who say he has claimed too much credit. I think the book
presents the situation the way Lee would like to remember, and the way he would
like others to remember it. I think he genuinely liked and admired many of the
people he worked with. Throughout the book, Jack Kirby is
depicted as handsome, powerful and dynamic, almost like a superhero, even when
there was a rift if their personal and professional relationship.
This is a memoir, not an autobiography.
Lee and his collaborators do not attempt to independently confirm memories,
though they straightforward about some memories being fuzzy. A few scenes a
clearly constructed to present information in a manner more interesting than
direct exposition, though they may have had some root in an actual event. Lee’s
conversations with his boyhood self are plainly fictional; I thought they
tended to be the weakest parts of the book, though they were functional.
Fans of Lee will probably enjoy the book. Someone who wants a brief and
easy history
of comics, and isn’t too concerned about the lopsidedness that would naturally
come with Lee’s perspective, might also like it. Lee would know, he was there.
Stan Lee also wrote Spider-Man with Steve Ditko. Peter
David also wrote Writing for Comics with Peter David.
If you’re interested in this
book, you may also be interested in
Lee, Stan, Peter David & Colleen Doran. Amazing Fantastic Incredible: A Marvelous Memoir. New York: Touchstone, 2015.
Saturday, December 10, 2016
The Powerhouse by Steve Levine
The technology
that has the potential for a breakthrough that could revolutionize life in the
next few decades is not one many might think of. It’s the battery. The
next generation of battery could make affordable, long-range electric vehicles
available to the masses. They could make variable energy sources
like wind
and solar
more viable competitors to traditional, fuel-burning energy.
Though it is not widely publicized, major companies, start-ups and even
government
agencies are involved in a race to bring the next generation battery to the
market. The company that creates it and the nation that can establish the
manufacturing base for it will be in a position to make a lot of money. It’s a
dramatic story, which Steve Levine
relates in The Powerhouse.
Levine provides some background on the development of the lithium ion
battery and improvements to it. His focus, however, is Argonne National Laboratory.
Argonne, located near Chicago, started
as a lab to research nuclear energy
and weaponry. It traces its history
back to the Manhattan
Project and the University
of Chicago lab where Enrico Fermi
started a manmade, self-sustained nuclear chain reaction. At the close of the
book, Argonne was taking the lead of a hub of battery technology development
aimed particularly at creating the battery that will put electric cars in
millions of garages.
Argonne is not the only player in the field. Levine also reports on
some of the companies, large and small, and countries that are staking out
their places in the field. Automakers, particularly General
Motors, are particularly interested in these devices that might radically
change their industry.
The chemistry
of these batteries, particularly the cathodes, is discussed in the book, but
not deeply. It is not a textbook on electrochemistry. It is instead a book on
the business
and politics
of an uncertain technological development that has the potential to alter the economic and environmental
condition of the world.
If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
Saturday, May 7, 2016
Reckless by Chrissie Hynde
As I get older, I start noticing some strange connections. If Peter Parker
aged naturally, he’d be the same age as my father. I also learned that Chrissie
Hynde, lead singer of the Pretenders
(one of my favorite bands), is only three years younger than my parents. I can
hardly believe it, though there is an unreliable part of my mind that seems
convinced that I’m still in my early 20s.
This bit about Hynde’s age is hardly the most interesting thing in her autobiography,
Reckless. You find many things you
normally find in autobiographies. For instance, her early childhood in Ohio was
surprisingly and pleasantly normal.
Things get more interesting in her teen years. She became a teenager in the
1960s and she
was swept up into the youth culture
of the time. She had two loves, music
and drugs.
Hynde did a lot of drugs. She doesn’t dwell on the term addiction, but
she doesn’t hide that she clearly was addicted. She subjected to herself to may
dangers and abuses for the sake of getting high. A person would not do that if
she was thinking straight, but addicts don’t think straight.
Unfortunately, drugs got in the way of the music. Drugs took the lives
of many innovative musicians of the 1960s and 1970s, and Hynde
mentions many of them that she knew. Two members of the Pretenders, Jimmy Scott
and Pete
Farndon, died of drug-related causes. It seems that there are several
occasions in her story, before the Pretenders, when her dream of being in a
band was interrupted by drugs, either her own pursuit of them or her potential
bandmates’.
Hynde was adventurous. She traveled far from her childhood home in Akron to Canada, Mexico and France before
settling in London.
London became her home, largely because of the music scene. There she finally
put together a band, though an unusual British band with an American lead. She
met an amazing number of other musicians, famous then or later, who were there.
It may seem like name dropping to discuss the Clash or the Sex Pistols,
but these were people she knew and she lived their ups and downs with them.
The final section of the book, covering the career of the Pretenders,
is surprisingly short. Admittedly, the original line-up did not last long due
to the deaths of Scott and Farndon.
Hynde’s tone is not nostalgic. She has nostalgia for a Midwestern
urbanism that was almost dead by the time she came along. She speaks frankly
about her own days. She expresses a strong sense of agency and does not blame
anyone for the way they treated her or depict herself as a victim. She seems to
regret that the drugs people thought would set them free did not, and that as
addicts they kept using drugs long after they knew it was a trap.
If you’re interested in rock and roll
(and rhythm
and blues and punk),
you’ll likely enjoy this book. Hynde clearly loves this music and was around
when it was undergoing much innovation. She was friends with some of the first
stars of punk. He story is also an interesting section of the 1960s and 1970s.
For instance, she was a student at Kent
State University and witnessed the protests and other events that led to
the National
Guard firing on students.
If you’r interested in this book, you may also be interested in
Saturday, September 5, 2015
Saturday, July 29, 2017
Move by Rosabeth Moss Canter
The major elements of America’s transportation
infrastructure
and policy
frameworks are six decades old (or older in the case rail). We
haven’t even kept up with the maintenance since then. In addition to taking
care of what we have, we need to adapt to the changes in technology,
culture and
the economy
that have occurred. Our policies haven’t been keeping up.
In Move, Harvard business
professor Rosabeth
Moss Kanter explores how we got here and how we can move forward. We got
here by adopting a defense-oriented policy that emphasized cars (especially interstate
highways) and air
travel, largely ignoring rail, public transit and intermodal development.
The path forward has several elements. First is a focus on mobility.
Transportation infrastructure is a technical, bureaucratic realm of deep silos.
Mobility changes the focus to moving people and products around communities and
the nation in whatever ways make sense. Physical mobility and economic mobility
are tied, and if we want to strengthen our economic leadership on the world
stage, we need to break down internal policy barriers to advancing the way
people move.
That means developing a national strategy. Of course, a rigid approach
won’t work because we have varied nation. However, national priorities and
frameworks can make room for regional priorities, adaption and leadership.
Money is always in issue. There are potentials in public-private
partnership (PPP), and that can be arranged in many ways. America has a
world-leading freight rail system that has very limited public investment.
Airports are generally owned by governments, and attempts to privatize them
have meet a cool response from possible investors. However, there are examples
of successful PPPs in which there is something for everybody.
I already mentioned that technology has come a long way in the past
several decades, especially in the realm of communication
and data analysis. Some transportation industries, such as airlines, are taking
advantage of the opportunities in new technology, while other are lagging. There
are many ways our transportation system can be smarter, and we need sensible
ways of incorporating technology in ways that are safe without losing out on
the benefits through unnecessary delays.
This requires leadership
and vision, especially in government.
Politicians are often motivated by short-term wins, but mobility is a long-term
investment. We need leaders who can see passed the next election and the
boundaries of party.
Finally, citizen engagement is important. Plans can quickly fail if the
people who are going to use, pay for and otherwise feel the ultimate effects of
new transportation policies and infrastructure are not informed, involved and
empowered to take action that works for them.
If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
Kanter, Rosabeth Moss. Move:
Putting America’s Infrastructure Back in the Lead. New York: W. W. Norton &
Company, 2015.
Sunday, March 27, 2016
The Wright Brothers by David McCollough
Brothers Orville
and Wilbur
Wright rose to fame at the beginning of the 20th
Century by building the first successful manned, powered flying machine. In
popular culture, they tend to be presented as geniuses who went out to Kitty Hawk
and started flying one day. In his biography
of these men, The Wright Brothers, David
McCollough does not dispel the notion of genius, but he focuses on their
courage, determination, careful study, methodical approach, and persistence in
the pursuit of something they believed could be.
As boys, the brothers were inspired by a toy to consider the
possibility of flight. As grown men, they made a careful study of it. Before
beginning their experiments, they gathered the available information, including
contacts with earlier experimenters in flight such as Octave
Chanute and Samuel
Pierpont Langley (the director of the Smithsonian
Institute who’s “aerodrome” was a failed early flyer). When they began
conducting their own experiments with kites (and later using a small wind
tunnel they made), they found the published data to be lacking in useful or
correct information.
Therefore, it was mainly on their own that the brothers invented their
flyers and the means of piloting them. They had the practical view that
inventing a flying machine included inventing the method for controlling it in
flight.
An interesting note is that the Wrights funded their experiments and
first airplanes with their own money. Their bicycle shop must have produced a
decent income, but they lived modestly. They lived in a modest home together
with their father and sister until after they completed built three working
airplanes, the third model being the one they demonstrated publicly. Even after
they began to make money making airplanes and decided to build a new, larger
house, they shared it. Wilbur’s only request for the new house was that he have
his own bedroom and bathroom.
McCollough emphasizes how much the success of Wilbur and Orville was a
family affair. They were close to their widowed father, who survived Wilbur by
two years. Once they began to demonstrate their airplane and make a build a
business on it, their sister Katherine
became a social manager for them, and she share a house with Orville until she
married at the age of 52 (she passed away three year later). Orville had a long
life and saw many improvements in aviation after he sold the company, including
Charles
Lindbergh’s trans-Atlantic flight
and the use of bombers in World War II.
The book is fairly brief. McCollough concentrates on the period when
the Wrights were most involved in experimenting with, building, and ultimately
demonstrating their invention. Even so, one gets a sense of what the brothers
and their immediate family and friends were like.
David McCollough also wrote The
Great Bridge.
If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
Saturday, February 18, 2017
Rust by Jonathan Waldman
It can be tough to be an engineer.
You live in a world in which everything falls apart in spite of your best
efforts. Constraints abound, not the least of which is that even the most
enduring materials last only so long. If economics
is the dismal science,
engineering is the dismal art.
If the technical aspects of rust, more broadly corrosion, do
not impress most readers, the economic aspects of it might. The U.S. Department
of Defense (DOD) estimated in 2011
that it spent $21 billion annually dealing with corrosion. One might guess that
corrosion is costing us at least as much in our civil infrastructure,
private businesses
and homes.
Of course, corrosion isn’t a sexy subject. To make its awareness videos
on corrosion more appealing, the DOD recruited LeVar Burton,
known for his roles in Roots and Star Trek: The Next Generation, to
host. Journalist
Jonathan
Waldman attempts to hook his readers by starting his book, Rust, with a story of an American icon,
the Statue of Liberty.
When the Statue of Liberty was built, her makers unintentionally created
something like a giant battery. While
this current worked well to preserve the copper shell of the statue, atoms of
the iron framework began to shuffle away, leading to serious corrosion. By the 1980s,
the problem was serious enough to inspire a major renovation effort.
Waldman approaches the problem of corrosion through stories. In the
Statue of Liberty we see that is something historically overlooked by engineers
and actively ignored by administrators who can pass the problem on to a
successor. Similarly, the military resisted Congress’ push
to make it more responsive to the issues. Since then, the DOD has integrated
corrosion concern into the way it does business, but civilian agencies are
mostly dragging their heels.
Only a few of the stories come from government.
Waldman also looks at the issue from the perspective of the aluminum can
industry and the Trans-Alaska Pipeline—his recounting of a pigging of the pipeline
surprisingly conveys some of the sense of drama that the people who undertake
the effort must feel. He also dips into the early history of corrosion
prevention in the work of chemist Sir Humphrey
Davy for the British Navy and Harry
Brearley, a discoverer and popularizer of stainless steel.
Waldman’s book is not a textbook on corrosion by any means; it is
written for a popular audience. He does try to present how serious an issue it
is—especially how costly it is. Fortunately, reasonable solutions to some of
our most pressing rust problems are within reach if we have the will to do
something about it.
If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
Sunday, February 25, 2018
Sunday, October 28, 2018
Sunday, February 15, 2015
Saturday, April 7, 2018
Rewire Your Anxious Brain by Catherine M. Pittman & Elizabeth M. Karle
We can face all kinds of situations that cause anxiety. For
some of us, that anxiety can be overwhelming and get in the way of living the
life we want. Feelings of anxiety are produced in the brain as a response to
triggering circumstances, and we can retrain our brains to lessen our anxious
responses. Psychologist
Catherine
M. Pittman and her co-author Elizabeth
M. Karle explain this in Rewire Your
Anxious Brain.
The authors devote quite a bit of the book to describing the workings
of those parts of the brain most involved in our sense of fear and anxiety.
These are the amygdala and the cortex.
The amygdala has a lot of control over our fight, flight or freeze
response. It is centrally located and well connected in the brain, so it can
produce a powerful response before our thinking mind—the cortex—can figure out
what is going on. In addition, the amygdala has its own emotional memories,
independent of the cortex, so you may have an anxious response to a stimulus
you have little conscious awareness of.
A big part of dealing with anxiety is retraining the amygdala. This can
be difficult because it involves exposure to situations that produce anxiety.
When you face those situations and see that there is no negative impact, or
that they were less than you expected and you can handle it (you didn’t die),
your amygdala learns that these situation aren’t so threatening and it will
stop producing anxious responses. The authors show how you can take this in
steps, starting will less anxiety-inducing stimulus and working your way up,
but it may be faster to dive into the deep end.
Retraining the amygdala can be aided by relaxation.
The book describes several relaxation practices.
Though the amygdala is always involved in producing anxiety, the cortex
can be the source of it or can perpetuate it. Retraining the cortex is mainly a
matter of changing your thinking. When you recognize anxiety-producing
thoughts, you can change what you are thinking. You might use countering
thoughts that you prepared for the situation or you might distract yourself by
thinking of something altogether different. Mindfulness is a helpful practice
in that it helps you to recognize that your thoughts are not necessarily the
reality and you can remain peaceful while the thoughts come and go.
The book is a mix of science
and how-to
aimed and helping anxious people find relief. The authors strongly suggest that
you get help, and I think this is a reasonable suggestion. If anxiety is
interfering with your life, you will probably benefit from the aid of a professional.
This book can help you understand what is happening and what can be done about
it, but you may need some help to actually adapt them your own needs and put
them into practice.
If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
Pittman, Catherine M., & Elizabeth M. Karle. Rewire Your Anxious Brain: How to Use the Neuroscience of Fear to End
Anxiety, Panic & Worry. Oakland, CA:
New
Harbinger, 2015.
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