Book Reviews

Skin Deep isn’t always Bad Bill Bryson is like a series lectures from the world’s ultimate science teacher. Like his previous science tome ‘A Short History of Nearly Everything’ he meanders through interesting facts telling facts about the body, dispelling common myths, and throwing in enough science history anecdotes to keep things interesting. It’s not that I learned very much from the book, but it is eminently snackable, and a reasonable second vantage for some of the topics covered in less skin deep treatments of specific parts of our biological hardware. One myth I do appreciate dispelling is that about cranial size and birth canal – it’s not about our big brains. ...

**Build an Empire, Were it So Easy ** The Warrior’s apprentice takes a cocky 17 year old Miles as he machinates his way through warring factions to build a mercenary empire. From Miles’ initial failed leap of faith, I felt myself losing connection to both the characters and the world-building as every improbable and sub-optimal move led to spectacularly successful results. Would you jump off a wall too high to safely land knowing that you might break both your legs, just to make a point to a competitor that might not be paying attention? Do you want to read a full novel about somebody dumb enough to make that choice? ...

Placeholder. Great book.

End of the World was Boring The fall of man was multidimensional. Ancestral primates fell out of the trees, then they fell from plant eating to meat eating then they fell from instinct into reason and thus into technology… Then they fell from a joyous life in the moment to an anxious contemplation of the vanished past and the distant future. Dystopia is the easiest form of societal criticism for mediocre writing. Take the flaws of a society, dial them up and add societal repercussions, and voila! You’ve created a dystopian world. Unfortunately this is like trying to build an airplane by scaling up a dragonfly 100x, without a nuanced understanding or at least thesis on the underlying causes of current societal ills it’s easy for a dystopia to feel cardboard. ...

** Overly Entangled ** The chemists of the natural world get short shrift. The paucity of research about fungi belies the fact that there are somewhere between 2.2m and 3.4m fungi species, compared to the 6-10m known plant species, even in the non-motile biology world, plant-centrism abounds. Entangled Life aims to remediate that imbalance, with overly entangled results. Like any discussion of fungi I’ve ever read, the author starts with truffles, a fungi that solves the biological problem of signaling for animals while underground with pungent odors now valued in markets across the globe. ...

Enjoyed this much more than Hail Mary…. I guess if I want science better to go straight for the opinionated source.

politics by a non politician who becomes a politician fed up with politics. good read

** Space Sucks, Science is Fun ** Every science nerd dreams that someday their years of learning esoteric knowledge will pay off. So for many, the real world, void of advanced math and driven by relationships and perception, is a disappointment. Andy Weir’s niche is science-fantasy to fill this gap, a high budget MacGyver where the protagonist can ‘science the shit’ out of any situation. While Hail Mary makes no reference to the Martian, it is a continuation of the same premise. Wise-cracking science geek Ted Lasso finds himself alone in space with enough tools to try hypotheses and find creative solutions. In a separate substory, a competent bureaucracy races against the clock in order to make a last ditch effort to provide assistance from the safe confines of earth. This setup plays to Weir’s strengths: no worldbuilding, no relationships or character development, only science, plot, and wisecracks. ...

Immersion reporting is much better than the regular sort, and it shows in this book. I’ve spent about 4 years houseless, and much of what the author wrote about rings true. more to come

** Privilege Wins ** Why yes, I too would like to found a billion dollar company. So what does the data reveal about the best way to a billion dollar valuation? ** Be privileged. ** First, come from a top tier university: *On average, founder of billion dollar startups came from higher ranking schools than average startups. median ranking of startup founder’s universities was 27, compared to 74 for the random group. * Second, work at a top tier company: * Among founders that had worked for another company before, 60% came from top tier companies. * Finally, get funding from a top tier VC firm: * Around 60% of billion dollar startups had raised their venture capital from tier 1 brand names like Sequoia. * In hindsight, none of this should have been surprising, but it was sad to find few other elements of proactive advice for would-be startup founders. ...