ted chiang explores parallel universes and time travel in this series of shorts. there are some great twists in these stories and exploration of parallel topics that suck you in. the amount of thought and detail that goes into these shorts stories is amazing. it’s been a while since i’ve been so sucked in to short fiction.

not quite what i expected. given that this is a collection of newspaper articles, op-eds, magazine pieces, blog posts, etc.

this doesn’t build to a thesis. interesting nuggets to be sure, but all over the map in terms of content.

sometimes i suspect all we really want is someone to retweeble our stupid jokes and text us with cat memes.

this is not a warm, fuzzy memoir replete with sculpted vignettes of a politician’s brilliance. this is a remarkably candid perspective on things that went well, things that really didn’t and a surprisingly frank level of introspection from a mayor who waded through some tough times. we’re still grappling with the SWLRT, the US Bank stadium just opened, the bike scene’s better than ever and north minneapolis still, unfortunately, grapples with violence and poverty. if you’re a citizen of minneapolis you owe it to yourself to give this a read and get a flavor of what was going on behind the scenes at city hall.

pour yourself one of those local brews that we love so much, kick back and read this and ponder why there are so many motivational quotes in mayor hodges twitter feed. what else are you going to do, move to st. paul? right.

personally, this didn’t reinforce any perspective of gandhi other than to maybe wonder if he wasn’t at some level more naive than we give him credit for. non-violence seems to have its greatest utility when used in an environment where there is some common basis for rational discussion. some of the quotes in here re: fascism made me wonder if he was really aware of the evil that was being perpetrated and if he would still share that perspective if he knew what was going on.

an interesting journey across the world and catalog of impacts though.

it leaves folks with plenty of latitude to impose their own world view in the state of things.

fun, realistic stitching together of the elements required to assemble a mars mission and just enough plausibility to keep you totally sucked in. grab it. read it. it’s the best 4 hours you’ll waste in a while.

as always an engaging read and worth the time spent.

this is a quick read and hockney take the show don’t tell approach to walking you through the process. it’s not as detailed as the process and conclusions reached in the movie, but it’s a compelling overview of the theory.

taking care of ones self isn’t rocket science, but developing habits, and applying the reminders in the book will likely pay significant dividends.

kahneman nicely breaks things down into his 2 systems approach. system 1 thinking is immediate, intuitive and close enough for many things, but easily glosses over things to come to the wrong conclusions. system 2 thinking (the slower, more deliberative) requires that you stop and actually burn some serious glucose to get to the “right” conclusions. a significant hunk of the book is dedicated to these systems and their impacts on our behavior and conclusions. each chapter concludes with snippets/examples highlighting when you might be seeing interactions or behaviors which exhibit the modality described in the previous chapter.

i’ll be honest, this book started out strong and engaging, but about 2/3s of the way through i was really having to motivate myself to complete it. it was a bit of a slog and it felt like there was a lot of repetition. there was some very interesting discussion in that slog around management and perceptions of risk and economics. so it is ultimately worth the slog, but it doesn’t necessarily feel like it at the time.

totally worth the read and the effort expended.

while not every corporation is as bad as the 3 companies profiled in this book, do remember that these are the corporations that allowed him to do the research. (the process of how he was able to engage these organizations is interesting all on its own.) you’ll walk away from more of those inscrutable meetings at least attempting to parse out the fealty behaviors/arrangements you’ve just observed; enabling you to plan accordingly.

if you’ve been looking for a simple overview of how we got to the great recession, this is a highly recommended read. if you’re concerned that it will lean one way or another politically, fear not, ritholtz delivers ample skewering on both sides of the aisle.

dark, at times funny and clever, but i don’t think i’ll give it another run.

the book’s worth a serious gander for the references to all sorts of cool projects that people are working on and additional sources for parts. :)

it’s hardly an exhaustive or in depth treatise on the topic, but a fun, quick read that will likely have you googling up a number of things while your’re reading it.

this is the (more or less) practical follow up to the black swan. NNT provides some practical guidance as to how at a personal level and at a social level we should be proactively seeking to keep risks and exposure small. he cogently argues that we need to be aligning objectives and behaviors for regulators and institutions for the greater social good. be highly distrustful of those who won’t put their personal money where their mouths are and drive our governmental institutions to eliminate the tacit complicity that exists between civil servants looking for a private sector payoff and industries.

NNT does get pointed in his personal attacks/critiques of several prominent folks for exploiting the loopholes in the regulatory environment and their complicity in the erosion of practical protections.

a fun run through the application of statistics in novel and non-novel applications. also a good reminder to continuously reduce your biases. makes you wonder how many folks accept hedgehog-ism as a default setting.

on the whole, I found this to be an interesting and relevant discussion on the topic. it got a little tedious and repetitive at times but gets the point across. it could be shorter by a good 30-40% and still have conveyed the concepts.

even if you’re not in management and have retained the use of your frontal lobes. the coverage is beneficial.

this installment of the series focuses on the protagonist, harry potter and his participation (unwillingly at first) in a multi-phased puzzle/magic contest.

shit happens. people get hurt (some die) and are magically cured, there’s some teenage love tensions. harry saves the day/month/year.

more interesting than the plot of this story is the universe that this story is set. within this universe various parties seem enamored with the technologies of the muggles (humans) and throughout the book one wonders whether there is any advantage in having access to “magic”. their universe of magic seems to be quite pathetic in the face of the horrors of ours replete with technologies such as nuclear power (and weapons), genetic engineering and global warming. these people are still utilizing slave labor on a massive scale. they’re reliant upon carrier owls for long distance communications (though potentially not subject to NSA interception). they have no clear food production infrastructure. frankly, it’s not clear whether food is magically transported (apparated?) from where it’s been prepared to the place of consumption or whether it can simply be conjured on demand. the energy requirements in order to make either of these options possible are undoubtedly massive and yet there is no consideration given to the manner in which this is produced, transmitted or controlled.

the essential conflict in this series between voldemort (who pathetically must exploit various feeble minded assistants in order to work his way back up some convoluted reptilian, lamprey, rebirth process) and the rest of the “world” makes no sense whatsoever. there doesn’t appear to much commerce in this universe but there are clearly class divides (ref, weaseley’s and malfoy’s respective ends of the economic spectrum.). if there were something worth fighting over one would think that it would be control over this mysterious and unexplored (or unexplained) power source. but no, there are simply these vague references to control/power and dark arts.

re: dark arts, there are special classes at hogwarts in which students are taught various defenses against. now, why isn’t the population at large being given instruction in these techniques? this speaks to an abject failure on the part of the governance structures within the parallel universe to be able to provide for the basic safeties of its population. further, there is rampant corruption within the government with key members of the administration complicit in activities with the practitioners of “dark magic/arts”. instead of some magical wonderland, j.k. rowling has really outlined some form of hellacious parallel universe with less determinism than reality.

finally, this contest which the plot of the book revolves around, is being hosted at hogwarts school of witchcraft and wizardry. hogwarts has to be one of the worst academic institutions in recorded literature. the level of neglect exhibited by the staff in administrating contest for which the plot of this book revolves is truly breathtaking. not only are they unable to provide for the reasonable safety of the contestant’s (one of them dies), they can’t even insure which qualified participants are to be admitted or excluded. the headmaster of the school is fundamentally an impotent administrator subject to the whims of a “ministry of magic” who seems comically incompetent in preventing terrorist attacks at sporting events. (did i mention that the book opens up with the strafing of attendees at a quidditch match?) further, students are routinely poisoned, overfed and live in dormitories filled with lecherous ghosts and ever shifting architecture. (i.e.: movable stair cases which are decidedly un-handicapped friendly - no ADA compliance here.)

far from being a wonderful place of whimsy this is a world that would make terry gilliam quake with fear. brazil is paradise by contrast.

i honestly didn’t know what to expect from this book. but i think as far as pointing out the physicality of the internet and how things get plumbed you could do a lot worse. to be fair, it’s not very easy to describe the internet or provide clear mappings to physical infrastructure. a noble attempt nonetheless.