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Book Review: Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson
This book was fascinating. I always thought of Leonardo Da Vinci as an artist who did other things aside from painting. This book changed my mind. Leonardo saw himself as a philosopher/scientist/engineer (those were sort of one and the same back then) who also paints; and after reading this book, I have to agree. I…
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The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan
So far the tone of this book is disgustingly hippish. I think it presents some interesting data, but the way it presents it is so annoying: – everything modern is bad – everything mainstream is bad – the only good alternative is primitive farms – food and nature is a mystery that we cannot grasp…
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Book Review: American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird, Martin J. Sherwin
For this review I’m considering, without any fact checking or cross referencing, that this biography is factual and true to the events although clearly some of the statements in the book would be hard to evaluate as they describe the feelings of large groups of people. I knew a bit about The Manhattan Project and…
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Book Review: Life in the United Kingdom: A Guide for New Residents by Great Britain Home Office
The only real way to judge this book is whether it helps you pass the Life in the United Kingdom test or not and I don’t yet know that. I’ve read the book (it actually took me one full day to go through all of it) and I’m probably going to re-read at least once,…
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Book Review: The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living Since the Civil War by Robert J. Gordon
I read it as an audiobook and it doesn’t make a good one. It’s full of figures, numbers, charts, diagrams, etc which get lost in the audio version. This might cause a bias on my review. The book feels thoroughly researched. I caught a couple of small errors but most time when I thought “What…
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How I found one of the earliest browsers in history
Yesterday, the web celebrated its 25th birthday and to join in, I have a little story. A couple of years ago I found a NeXTcube. I’m not going to say where it is to avoid vandalism (the computer is publicly accessible under some circumstances without much oversight), but this is the story. Sir Tim Berners-Lee…