Book Reports

For me this was a sobering, eye-opening read. The book helps me imagine what might be the fate, either risk or opportunity, of my progeny with respect to AI. I don't know whether to be fearful for their future or awestruck at the potential for their lives being better in some way that I can't now understand. This was an essential book to set the stage for me for a better understanding of scientific progress and it's coming radically transformational effects on mankind. Meanwhile, buckle up!

This novel is not just a thriller. It contains great insights on the global political scene and posits a much-changed future world in international relations as AI, synthetic biology, and autonomous war fare emerge in the future. Recommend!

Double, double toil and trouble,
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

Ender's Game is not only a fast paced, page turner of a science fiction story, but also a thought-provoking exploration of complex moral and ethical issues.

There are ghosts in Pompeii. Robert Harris's "Pompeii" brings them to life.

Elon Musk is one of the leading positive influencers for continued human progress in a world where human advancement seems to have slowed. Elon Musk is one of today's few eminent humans having the capacity to lead a rebirth of optimism about humanity's future. Musk's vision focuses on a commitment to assure human liberty, on celebrating the expansion of human consciousness, and on increasing the odds of humanity's long-term survival. Isaacson's book may not be the only way to build an understanding of Elon Musk. But understand him you must if you want to better comprehend how an Elon led burst of human progress impacts you and your family and how you might get on the bandwagon yourself. Isaacson's book is a good start to building such understanding.

I enjoyed the novel as a riveting page turner, as a compelling study into the nature of invention, as a cogent review of the intricacies of patent law, as a comprehensible tutorial on electricity, for raising the question in my mind about the role of skullduggery and subterfuge in business, and for fostering vigorous reflection on the nature of technological progress.

In the book he declares that the government response to coronavirus was the worst failure of public policy since World War I.

I believe civilizational success and religion are intertwined, like a double helix, mutually dependent, one upon the other. Cultures which abandon religion fail. Russia learned that lesson under eighty years of failed Bolshevik rule. Ironically, as religious belief in the west atrophies, Russia, today, is reviving its Orthodox Christian traditions hoping to shore up Russian cultural vitality.

There is a colorable argument that the real culpability for this corporate tragedy lies with sophisticated investors who were beguiled by the hype of young geniuses who refused to embrace long accepted corporate governance practices. Where was the due diligence?

The book is a morality tale. Though Hoenig was roundly criticized as sort of a cranky, failed Old Testament prophet for the three or four years after he resigned from the Fed in 2011, virtually all of the predictions Hoenig made about quantitative easing, and 0 percent interest rates, would come true over the next decade. Income inequality had increased, the Fed's actions had stoked dangerous asset bubbles, social instability had worsened, and the big banks became enriched while the incomes of the poor and middle class had stagnated.

When Harold found himself inside a tesseract after having entered a cave, I was reminded of the film "Interstellar." "Interstellar's" Joseph Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) traveled millions of lightyears from an outlying star system, via tesseract, to the wall outside of his daughter Murphy's bedroom on earth.