From 81d1a39b0861455e81d5750bdd2dc0b4492a5edb Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Bryan Newbold Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2018 17:42:07 +0800 Subject: expand on recent reading --- books/2018.page | 108 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 108 insertions(+) (limited to 'books/2018.page') diff --git a/books/2018.page b/books/2018.page index 3497fd6..5039334 100644 --- a/books/2018.page +++ b/books/2018.page @@ -26,5 +26,113 @@ how to destroy a city." (p252) A Vast Machine ----------------- +Didn't entirely finish this book (it's laid out in sections like a textbook); +was mostily interested in the earlier history bits. + +There's a great annecdote about an early computational weather prediction +researcher who had a vision for a giant spherical building full of human +computers calculating away and passing messages to their neighbors. A central +panopticon-like tower would shine red and blue lights at different section to +emphasize whether they were falling behind or getting ahead of the group. + Shadow Libraries ------------------- + +Read the libgen history chapter, which was very interesting, but only skimmed +the rest. An academic book, so really just a bunch of case study papers +published in the same volume. Any sort of comparison or cohesion between parts +would be really valuable + +The libgen chapter complements John Backus' 2018 essays about the history of +P2P file sharing techniques well. + +100 Years of Solitude +---------------------- + +Maybe should have read ages ago, but particularly loved it now. I remember not +liking mystical realism when reading in school, but there's a dark ambiguity +here that worked for me, particularly in the later chapters about the +government massacre. + +Control of Nature +------------------- + +John McPhee always delivers! It was great fun to travel to LA (and specifically +Pasadena) just after reading the slide-control section. + +The Mississipi river part paired well with both "The Wizard and the Prophet" +and "Cadillac Desert" (see below). Haven't finished the Iceland section. + +The Wizard and the Prophet +---------------------------- + +This book takes a too-large question (whether humans can master nature using +science and technology) and oversimplifies down to two historical figures: +Borlaug (a techno-wizard) and Voght (an ecologic Cassandra). The structure is +largely in two parts: the first half tells the unlikely backstories of the two, +and the second half documents their decline in face of political reality. + +The human stories in the first part stood up best for me; I don't have too much +patience for dichotomy, but the author lets their contemporaneous life stories +do most of the heavy lifting. There's no specific vision to be inspired by or +new deep insight proposed here, but that's fine as long as you aren't expecting +one. + +The Perfect Machine +---------------------- + +The long story of construction of the 200" Palomar telescope between 1928 and +1948 or so. + +Some choice bits: + +- In the late stage of "figuring" (polishing to a parabola) the primary mirror, + opticians would use just a swipe or two of their thumbs (with + abrasive/resistive material) to "grind" the mirror. Similarly, touching the + mirror with a finger for a few seconds is enough to locally heat and distort + the glass. +- The original control system for the dome shutters used a tiny model of the + whole telescope inside the control panel, with limit switches that would + control dome movement. +- famously, when originally balanced and gears disengaged, a bottle of milk + could be placed on the mount and that was sufficient torque that the whole + thing would move. The fine adjustment equitorial drive was a fraction of a + horsepower. +- the lead optician who ground the disk, "Brownie", work on grinding for more + than 11 years (with a gap for WWII), and when complete "signed" by scratching + his name into the central gap +- a crazy fat solution was used to clean the mirror before aluminizing; + burning/boiling this solution off removed any other (eg, human skin) oil or + grease). I'm curious how they got the aluminum surface off without damaging + the mirror, and also how the aluminization worked to get an even deposition + layer; were there multiple heated points? + +There are archival videos online from construction. + +Kitchen Confidential +--------------------- + +Gulped this down in a single Keflavik-SFO return flight; a friend was on the +same flight and apparently I was so engrossed I didn't even notice him. Boudain +has become an almost universally beloved international food figure, which +somehow made me suspicious and distrustful at first. And indeed, this book left +me with the impression that he is, or at least was, not a fundamentally good +person (and not just as an assumed persona), but in the end I buy his frank +self-reflection act hook, line, and sinker. + +I certainly came away with the impression that I now know more about +restauranteering and what industrial cooking is like, though maybe I just had +smoke blown up my ass. + +The verison I read was some kind of special aniversery edition, which had +sharpie-style commends scrawled in the margins, which was a gimick I liked +better than the name-dropping appologetic epilog. + +Cadillac Desert +----------------- + +*Loved* listening to the first chapters of this while driving back and forth +across the Central Valley to hike in the Sierras; hat-tip to Logan. Replayed +that experience with Lucy, including down Owens Valley via Mammoth Lakes, but +by the time we got to I-5 the going was too dry for her. + -- cgit v1.2.3