A Nation of Immigrants by John F. Kennedy My rating: 5 of 5 stars I was interested in reading this because JFK was the grandson of Irish immigrants. The Irish (and Italians, Chinese, and others) at one point were the targets of the kinds of language we saw just recently during the 2016 presidential election.…
Given the closeness of the recent election, the inevitable complaint about how few people voted are swirling in the national conversation from the losing side. Part of the conversation is the winning party does not have a mandate. The more interesting claim is that if everyone had to vote, then Hillary could have won. The rationale is that…
So, out of the many books I read this prior year, here are the ones I gave five stars. To Explain the World: The Discovery of Modern Science by Weinberg, Steven Thinking: The New Science of Decision-Making, Problem-Solving, and Prediction in Life and Markets by Brockman, John The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Isaacson,…
( Original ; First Quarter ; Half ; Third-Quarter ; Final) Read 52 books. The 75 goal was ambitious even for me, so life made it way harder than I expected. Back to the normal goal. Hit 20,000 pages. Read politically. Pick at least ten books about political theory or events. Read on decision making and influence. Pick…
OK, the year is completely done, so here is where I am with each resolution. Read 75 books. Done. Hit 25,000 pages. Final count is 25,361. Done. Finish series already started. (25 of the 75 books.) Earthsea Cycle Read books #4-5. Apparently there were 6 books? Done with all 6. Ender’s Shadow Read book 5. Done. The Expanse Read book #2-6, 0.1, 0.2, 0.5, 2.5, 3.5. Done. The…
I ran across a friend’s Facebook post about parenting and related a description of a college psychology professor’s eugenics lecture. The reply was that eliminating the genes of less intelligent people seems like it could help improve society. This seeming promise is why it has been tried many times. Before the Holocaust shifted to genocide, it…
This post will date me, but people about my age have whined a lot this year about iconic people to our lives dying. A year is an arbitrary range of time for a solar revolution. It could could run from March 21st (the spring equinox) to March 20th just as easily as it currently runs…
Until recently I mostly eschewed podcasts. I only listen to the local NPR radio station as part of my morning alarm or driving somewhere.[1] Podcasts were often how I listened to the whole episode for something that was interesting. I did not really subscribe so much as list them and occasionally check for something. A…
The Georgia Institute of Technology has a tradition of stealing the letter T. I first ran across this in a local news media story where the letter T was stolen from signage. The main tradition is stealing the T from Tech Tower which has “TECH” on each of the four sides. (They return it during…