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authorbnewbold <bnewbold@robocracy.org>2017-02-05 12:07:13 -0800
committerbnewbold <bnewbold@robocracy.org>2017-02-05 12:07:13 -0800
commitb696f1911aab41fd73fce6207b9b5677b44d71b2 (patch)
tree455577f47ec66c2bc07eb987fac1d57066d238c7
parentcf67e8c65a0c5384da4413bd0f37ebcefd65c881 (diff)
downloadknowledge-b696f1911aab41fd73fce6207b9b5677b44d71b2.tar.gz
knowledge-b696f1911aab41fd73fce6207b9b5677b44d71b2.zip
(partial) reading from 2016, 2017
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+
+The Good Terrorist, by Doris Lessing (1985)
+
+Reinventing Discovery, by Michael Nielsen (2011)
+
+Collapse, Jared Diamond (2005)
+
+Whole Earth Discipline, Steward Brand (2010)
+
+The Human Experiment: Two Years and Twenty Minutes Inside Biosphere 2, by Jane Pynter (2006)
+
+ One of my favorite reads of the year!
+ History of the project is fascinating. Sounds like the habitat itself was
+ amazingly ambitious and well constructed, but the social organization fell
+ apart after that and there wasn't discipline in running the experiments.
+ Disapointed to learn how exogenous the habitat was regarding air
+ conditioning and electricity, really only focused on mass transfer. I don't
+ really consider the first run a "failure" due to air exchange; seems like a
+ lot was learned, especially regarding social cohesion, which I would
+ consider part of the experiment.
+ The first large chunk of the book is very autobiographical, and it's an
+ interesting life story. Sort of orthogonal to the experiment itself, though
+ it does give context for how the whole thing got off the ground as a hippie
+ collective, which I found pretty inspiring.
+ Crazy historical detail: Steve Bannon (Breitbart editor and Trump
+ presidential advisor) was involved in a repossesion of the Biosphere
+ facility!
+
+Death's End (Three Body Problem), Liu Cixin (刘慈欣).
+
+Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs
+
+Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, Dai Sijie (Rilke translation, 2002)
+
+On the Shortness of Life, by Seneca
+
+Not cover to cover:
+* Manufacturing Process for Design Professionals
+* Payment Systems in the US
+* Google SRE Book
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+
+Vineland, Thomas Pynchon
+
+Assembling California, by John McPhee (1993)
+
+ Part of a series on geology of the USA, covering the California section, as
+ well as some history of plate tectonics in the 20th century.
+ Good intro to the history and current geography of California on human
+ timescales as well: the 1989 earthquake, gold mining in the Sierras, Napa
+ valley wine country, the story of the Davis campus, etc.
+ The last chapter, about earthquakes in the SF bay area, was as powerful as
+ the July 2015 New Yorker article ("The Really Big One") about tsunamis in
+ the Pacific Northwest.
+
+Not cover to cover:
+* Engineering a Safer World