This book is a collection of interviews by
Ray Bradbury
Ray Douglas Bradbury (US: BRAD-berr-ee; August 22, 1920 – June 5, 2012) was an American author and screenwriter. One of the most celebrated 20th-century American writers, he worked in a variety of genres, including fantasy, science fiction, horror, mystery, and realistic fiction.
's biographer, Sam
Weller.
Sam presents a glimpse into the final years of Ray Bradbury's life, which in
itself is moving. It took a moment for me to realize the depravity of life
during the old age, even as we constantly associate Ray Bradbury with his work
on
Fahrenheit 451
Fahrenheit 451 is a 1953 dystopian novel by American writer Ray Bradbury. It presents a future American society where books have been outlawed and "firemen" burn any that are found. The novel follows in the viewpoint of Guy Montag, a fireman who becomes disillusioned with his role of censoring literature and destroying knowledge, eventually quitting his job and committing himself to the preservation of literary and cultural writings.
, which he had written multiple years ago. This was the
poignant part of the entire book for me, and it shook me a bit.
But despite this, the book is hip and is full of love. It is about the love
that Ray Bradbury shared for books, authors and his craft. He encouraged
everyone to follow their path of love and to true to themselves.
I got a glimpse into why Ray Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451, and how did he
shape his characters. I haven't read Fahrenheit 451, but I had watched the
movie and listened to the short version called blink of that book. It seems
funny in retrospect that I had approached Fahrenheit 451 in these media, and not
read it. But I will certainly read it and appreciate it even more now.
This medical journal paper Prevention of perioperative stroke in patients
undergoing non-cardiac surgery states that stroke is preventable.
I was motivated to read this as the topic is close to my heart. I approached
and understood this paper using tools like Fermat's Library, histre for annotation and
ChatGPT to understand medical terms.
Stroke was attributed to hypertension and psychological stress when patients
with hypertension were subjected to hospital care for the first time. Prevention
is possible by improving blood viscosity and addressing factors contributing to
hypertension.
Bram is the creator of vim software used by developers throughout the world.
He ":wq" from this world on August 3rd, 2023 in his inimitable, quiet way.
Bram influenced me. The splash screen that encouraged donation to a charity
caught my attention like nothing else. Inspired by that splash screen, I started
volunteering my time and donated money to many causes that I cared about.
I once had a brief interaction with Bram. He clearly said, he didn't need any
money and encouraged all donations to causes he cared about. In one case, I had
a brief email interaction with him to facilitate a donation, and he directed it
to the Kilbale Children's Center, he volunteered with.
Thank you, Bram. Your influence will live on through the software you created
and the people you inspired.
This book is about Amazon. I read this quickly to see the phrases used
like "working backwards" and press release ahead of the design which are
used even now.
This book is about American Farming. I couldn't complete reading it as
it is a lengthy one, but the premise was America needs to take care of
farming as a personal profession which people can care about. The
mechanization has led to "unsettling of America" is the point of the book. I
took this upon recommendation from Mr.Sridhar Venbu in a tweet.
A beginners book on investing and finance. It is an easy read, and
enlists why one should participate and invest in stock markets. It
was recommended to me by friend, Krishnaram.
A philosophy book. It is about keeping an open mind.
I liked reading examples of talented people mentioned in this book.
Book to read after reading Learn to Earn. Easy and accessible.
Recommends everyone create a personal portfolio and keep evaluating it.
I was captured by the narrative in the early chapters. A meta book about
learning.
I got influenced, and started having a budget after listening to this
audio book. It is a wonderful book, and YNAB app is a great tool. It
shaped my life a bit with my approach to money and planning.
I revisit Albert Ellis every now and then. I read this to reinforce the
principles of Rational Emotive Behavior taught by Albert Ellis and
practioners. I find these helpful.
A fun book about kitchen science.
Listened only to the first Chapter of Ada Lovelace. The depth and
details were amazing.
This is a science fiction book that helped me understand racism in
america. It gave me bone chills. It is a very powerful book.
Illustration and story telling captures the reader.
A very serious book on world economics, and presented graphically as a
comic. What else do you need? An excellent book to understand how
Economy works and plays a part in our every day life.
Measuring something for measurement's sake, a pointless activity as we
don't know or define why, is the tyranny of metric. The premise of this
book is how obssession with quantitive metrics is misleading.
A very good book about Bitcoin, and users of bitcoin in a social
context.
“Understanding what chimpanzees are like has made me realize that we humans are
not so different from other animals as we used to think. What makes us most
different is that we are far more clever than even the cleverest chimp, and we
have words. We have a spoken language. We can tell stories about what happened a
week or a year or a decade ago. We can plan for the future, and we can discuss
things - one person's idea can grow and change as other people contribute their
ideas. Great ideas become greater, problems are solved.”
- Jane Goodall, My Life with the Chimpanzees
Jane Goodall shares her story for the rest of us. Her love for animals and nature
comes out through every word of this book. I was absolutely thrilled to read
this book. It is a wonderful book by a wonderful person.
The Computer From Pascal to Von Neumann is a computer history book by Herman
H. Goldstine. It surveys the history from the laws of thought by inventors
across ages. It goes from earliest philosophers like Pascal, to
mathematicians like George Boole, to implementors like Von Neumann.
The author reveals how these inventors built their theories on top of others.
Almost everyone involved in this exercise had a shared objective for
computers.
These inventors wanted to "free" mankind from the repetitive but mundane
tasks.
And these inventors lived in different eras like Leibniz lived in 1600s,
Charles Babbage in 1800s and Dijskstra (1930-2002).
When introducing Charles Babbage, author directly goes the motivation that
drove the inventor.
The theme of Leibniz— to free men from slavery by the automation of dull but simple - tasks was next taken up by one of the most unusual figures in modern intellectual history, Charles Babbage
And here is how Dijskstra explains how and why Computers will exceed human
reasoning.
In the long run I expect computing science to transcend its parent
disciplines, mathematics and logic, by effectively realizing a significant
part of Leibniz’s Dream of providing symbolic calculation as an alternative
to human reasoning. - Dijskstra
(Please note the difference between "mimicking" and "providing an alternative
to": alternatives are allowed to be better.)
Author also associated United States Military and Government to various
advancements in Computers. The final chapters gave references to when other
parts of the world got their first computer. I noted that India's first
computers were in 1960s with Tata Institute of Fundamental Research.
Here are some interesting historical photos from this book.
There we Einstein's thoughts on various topics. He desired a World-Government,
powerful and in control of Nuclear Weapons. Had a balanced view of both
Socialism and Capitalism. Readily allowed his critics to address their rebuttal
and answered that.
He writes In memoriam for fellow scientists and many other great leaders
of the world. He feels guilty for being associated with development of Atom Bomb
and urges Nations to work towards peace.
He shares ample stories about the difficulties Jews have through, supports the
Uprising of Warsaw ghetto.
The books reveals social and personal side of Albert Einstein.
A Crack in Creation: Gene Editing and Unthinkable power to control evolution
by Jennifer Doudna and Samuel Steinberg is a book on gene-editing and a
technology called CRISPR.
The book is a personal narration of Jennifer Doudna as she explains the
development of CRISPR and it's discovery for use in gene editing. Rather than a
review, this are notes while reading this book. CRISPR is molecular structure
found in Bacteria, but now more popular term, commonly associated with a gene
editing technique.
Given the technical nature of this article, I must have used the text from the
sources only with slight modification for explanation. References should give
the materials I consulted to write this post. In you notice technical
inaccuracy, I aplogize, please point out, and I will correct it.
Terms
As I reader, I found reviewing biological terms helped me understand the
material better.
DNA, the language of life. Figure from A Crack in Creation book.
Human Body is made of cells, in-fact trillions of cells. Each of these cells
contain something called DNA. DNA is like recipe, just like a food recipe,
but for building and maintaining living organisms.
Cells use DNA to make proteins. Proteins are the workhorses of the body, they do
all the stuff we need to do to survive, from digesting food to making other
proteins. Proteins are molecules made up of cells.
DNA is made up of a long combination of some very basic organic components
called Adenine, Thymine, Guanine and Cytosine. Human DNA consists of about 3
billion of these. The sequence of these determines the information available for
building and maintaining an organism, similar to the way in which letters of the
alphabet appear in a certain order to form words and sentences.
In the nucleus of each cell, the DNA molecule is packaged into thread-like
structure called chromosomes. A Chromosome is a DNA containing structure.
RNA are like cousins of DNA, which has an oxygen atom with it. One type called
messager RNA, mRNA, act as carrier of information to different cells, carrying
information from DNA to those cells to produce proteins.
So far, in above definitions, we didn't emphasize on heredity , that is,
sending information from parent to child yet. As soon as we start talking about
heredity, we use the term, Genes.
A gene is the basic physical and functional unit of heredity. Each chromosome of
human body has many genes.
If we take a single cell from human body, and find out the entire set of
genetic information in the chromosomes of that cell, we call that a
Genome. A Genome, from Gen e and Chromos ome, is the entire set of
genetic instructions found inside a cell.
CRISPR in bacteria
Single celled organisms like Bacteria were using a technique to fight off some
diseases. The term CRISPR was given to an identified characteristic in
Bacterial DNA sequence, which was used to produce a protein called CAS-9, which
in turn, helped to kill the enemy virus.
CRISPR stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats and
is a family of DNA Sequences found in genomes of bacteria. CAS9 stands for
CRISPR associated protein 9.
The bacteria were found to capture snippets of DNA from invading viruses and use
them to create DNA segments known as CRISPR arrays. The CRISPR arrays allow the
bacteria to "remember" the viruses. If the viruses attack again, the bacteria
produce RNA segments from the CRISPR arrays to target the viruses' DNA. The
bacteria then use Cas9 to cut the DNA apart and kill the virus.
CRISPR in Bacteria. Figure from Crack in the Creation.
CRISPR Shaping Human Genome
The CRISPR-Cas9 system works similarly in the lab. Researchers create a small
piece of RNA with a short "guide" sequence that attaches (binds) to a specific
target sequence of DNA in a genome. The RNA also binds to the Cas9 enzyme. As in
bacteria, the modified RNA is used to recognize the DNA sequence, and the Cas9
enzyme cuts the DNA at the targeted location. Although Cas9 is the enzyme that
is used most often, other enzymes (for example Cpf1) can also be used. Once the
DNA is cut, researchers use the cell's own DNA repair machinery to add or delete
pieces of genetic material, or to make changes to the DNA by replacing an
existing segment with a customized DNA sequence
When CRISPR was determind that it could be used in lab on living organisms, the
potential for shaping the genome unfolded.
First time ever, in over 100,000 years, we have ability to shape the Homo
Sapien evolution by mechanisms other than random mutation and natural
selection.
In humans, CRISPR can be used to do a precise repair and produce a normal
protein from a non-functional gene.
CRISPR enables scientists to edit and fix single incorrect letters of DNA from
3.2 billion letters that comprise the human genome. It can also be used to
perform even more complicated edits to Human DNA.
A relatively straightforward DNA editing has transformed every genetic disease,
at-least the diseases for which we know the underlying mutation(s) into a
potentially treatable disease.
CRISPR on Animals
CRISPR has been used to create gene edited mouse wherein the genome of the
embroyo was edited and introduced back into womb to have an offspring with
the desirable characteristics embedded at time of birth.
Gene Edited Mouse. Figure from A Crack in Creation.
And we have used gene editing to create animals desirable characteristics
Gene edited animals. Figure from A crack in creation.
This is currently used in practice. Like Recombinetics uses gene editing for
dehorning cattle, a safer method than physical dehorning using hot iron-rods.
Pigs as Bio Reactors
An important field of bio technology is regenerative medicine, desired by human
society who are fighting of some disease eithe naturally or have lost some
ability due an accident.
Many scientists see the pig itself as a source of medicine. It is seen
that we might be using pigs as bioreactors to produce valuable drugs like
therapeutic human proteins, which are too complex to synthesize from scratch and
can only be produced in living cells.
Scientists have already been looking to
other transgenic animals to produce these biopharmaceutical drugs, or
farmaceuticals, as they’re colloquially called.
Revivicor is a company that is using CRISPR to produce regenerative medicine,
following the process exactly outlined above. A workflow from their website
gives the details on how Pigs are used as Bio Reactors for regenerative
medicine.
Malaria Resistant Mosquitos
The deadliest animal on earth, Mosquito can also be killed using CRISPR. The
idea seems to create malaria resistant mosquitoes using gene editing so that
the entire family is disabled from being a carriers of malaria.
CRISPR for Therapeutics
CRISPR can be utilized to edit the germ cells outside the body.
The edited germ cells can be planted inside for beneficiary aspects.
Ex-vivo CRISPR therapy. A Crack In The Creation.
For targeted drug delivery, like fixing the lung or particular muscle instead
of injecting the drug into blood stream.
In-vivo CRISPR therapy. A Crack In the Creation.
Adult Homo sapiens are among the last animals to be treated with CRISPR, human
cell: have been subjected to more CRISPR gene editing than those of any other
organism.
Scientists have applied CRISPR in lung cells to correct the genetic mutation
that causes cystic fibrosis, in blood cells to correct the mutations that cause
sickle cell disease and beta-thalassemia, and in muscle cells to correct the
mutations that cause Duchenne muscular dystrophy.
Scientists have used CRISPR to edit and repair mutations in stem cells, which
can then be coaxed to transform into virtually any cell or tissue type in the
body.
Even as CRISPR continues to be useful, it's power as a technology and it's
potential misuse is a concern for everyone.
Whether we'll ever have the intellectual and moral capacity to
guide our own genetic destiny is an open question - one that has been in my
mind since I began to realize what CRISPR is capable of.
- Jennifer Doudna
And Jennifer Doudna shares her stance as she says, that the nature will still be
our supreme master.
Any mutations that CRISPR might make—intentional or not—would almost certainly
pale in comparison to the genetic storm that rages inside each of us from
birth to death. As one writer put it, “Genetic editing would be a droplet in
the maelstrom of naturally churning genomes.” If CRISPR could eliminate a
disease-causing mutation in the embryo with high certainty and only a slight
risk of introducing a second off-target mutation elsewhere, the potential
payoffs might well outweigh the dangers.
- Jennifer Doudna
References
Doudna, Jennifer A.,, and Samuel H. Sternberg. A Crack in Creation: Gene
Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution. Boston: Houghton
Mifflin Harcourt, 2017.
We might have heard about Einstein’s Famous quote on Gandhi. Few years ago, I
discovered that the quote is from a book by Albert Einstein with Title “Essays
in Humanism”
Mahatma Gandhi
A LEADER OF his people, unsupported by any outward authority: a politician
whose success rests not upon craft nor the mastery of technical devices, but
simply on the convincing power of his personality; a victorious fighter who
has always scorned the use of force; a man of wisdom and humility, armed
with resolve and inflexible consistency, who has devoted all his strength to
the up lifting of his people and the betterment of their lot; a man who has
confronted the brutality of Europe with the dignity of the simple human
being, and thus at all times risen superior.
Generations to come, it may be, will scarce believe that such a one as this
ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth.
Surfaces don’t seem to matter as much as originally thought.
SARS-CoV-2 does not spread through surfaces.
No need to disinfect food, parcels, etc.
Close range droplets are the new leading theory and Aerosol transmission has gradually gained acceptance
Coronavirus Spreads from infected person exhaling and non-infected inhaling.
A tiny droplets of virus spread in air in trajectory less than 6 feet.
Best way to prevent this - "Wear Mask".
Six months in, "Wearing Masks" is the most effective way to protect ourselves. Both to avoid the spread and also to
protect ourselves from getting infected. That's it.
Incidentally, the first strong support for wearing mask as reducing infections came via statistical analysis by
Jeremy Howard in the article from May 15 - Masks help stop the spread of coronavirus
Best way for us to fight the virus - "Wearing Mask".
If your child, between age kindergarten to 3rd grade is interested in Learning
Minecraft, we have a new club called "Occamy Minecraft Club". The classes are
taught by my Son, Siddhartha, and kids learning from other kids usually well. I
am there to make sure all children learn well from each other during the class.
It is USD 5/- per class, limited to only 5 students per class. Age range kindergarten to 3rd grade.
I found this book totally captivating. I have followed Indian history
through books, and have been witnessed incidents taking shape, like Babri
Masjid Demolition, Killing of Rajiv Gandhi, Curfew, Coalition Government,
Gujarat Violence and burning of the train, the rise of Cyberabad, etc.
The details provided in this book still captured my attention. The
authors do a wonderful job of providing a "concise history of modern
India", and trying to present the facts as they are.
If we come
across any review that either accuses the book of having some prejudice by
labeling it with terms like "British authors", "leftist" or "does not
capture greatness" or "congress" etc, we can safely assume that the
review-writer was standing in front of the mirror rather than in front of
text and words.
Reading history, I often realize that reality
can be stranger than Fiction. This book share ample anecdotes along those
fronts.
The first thing I realized was - British East India
Company had a much difficult time establishing trade relations in the
subcontinent than French or Portuguese who had arrived earlier because
India under Mughal had some resistance going on. They established pure
trade relations, incurring a loss, buying cows from India, and facing
criticism from Britain. The company did not want to give up on the business
opportunity with India and incurred losses for decades.
Then we
notice how Britain captured the whole of India. Robert Clive and Mir Jafir,
a name that has become eponymous with a traitor start the conquer from
South to Nawabs of Bengal. The loot and wealth of India were too tempting
for the British to give up or lose control to locals.
I came to
know through this book that for administering India, British setup "Indian
Civil Services", the highest administrative body in India, which trains
qualified candidates in both Britain and India through rigorous exams. The
motivation was for that administrative body to report directly to the
British state. The "Indian Civil Services" served the system very well,
continued after Independence, and reporting structure replaced to the
democratically elected official instead of the British state.
The book is a whirlwind, each capture captures multiple events in a
century or decades.
I came to know that Mohammed Ali Jinnah, had
requested Pakistan to be consisting of multiple divergent states in India
which had Muslim Majority (like Hyderabad, Kashmir, parts of Punjab,
Bengal, etc). He very well knew that having a separate country with
interspersed states was never going to be practical, he wanted to use that
demand as negotiation tactic. However, Nehru and congress never gave into
it. They receded two states of Pakistan on religious identity. Nehru
declared during Independence that India was not built on religious identity
and is not a religious state, thus keeping the plan for India with all the
states in order.
It seems like India had decided that after
independence they will have some money for nation-building purposes. Since
India got partition, I came to know that, it was Gandhi who, in his just
tendencies, requested for 40 million pounds to be given to Pakistan as it's
share.
I had known about the factors leading to Independence a
little, but I didn't realize that the British were spending roughly 1000
million pounds per year on India after the war (like supporting Indian
soldiers, infrastructure), which had proven economically very costly to
hold on.
The book also deals with more recent events, and
particularly things that struck me was
a. Keezhaldi massacre and
how no one was ever brought to justice. b. No one was brought to
justice for the Gujarath train massacre. The chief minister, Modi was let
go by the then government in power, BJP under Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
It is often that case that being in political majority determined
the outcome of the punishable act, and humanitarian qualities like justice
didn't have a say against power.
As an aside, I could relate to
the above statement even in the 2020 Delhi Riots. BJP government did not
bring anyone to justice. The same argument holds worldwide too wherein, in
the USA, cronyism is so prevalent in republican led administration, and
bringing someone to justice for the wrongdoing seems also non-applicable if
the person has power.
Bill Gates has an article on What you need to know about the COVID-19 vaccine
The entire article is impressive in terms of the approach to solve this problem. The particular highlight for me was
Bill Gate's emphasis on making sure everyone in this world, yes 7 billion people in this world get the vaccine as
soon as it is available.
This is an impressive thinking for a individual. Considering the solution for the entire humanrace, because no human
is different and is equally susceptible to this virus.
This was a lengthy book. The interviewers did a fantastic job with their questions and covered a range of expert programmers and language designers across the spectrum. The important thing I gained from reading this book was my "enthusiasm" again for different programming languages and styles. Each different language creator had some "opinions" about the state of affairs and went about in a personal way to do something about it, create a language, create a community, solve the problem, and usually building on top of what the person had learned from others. The language creation is both a scientific process (standing upon the shoulders of giants), as well as the unique taste that each language designer brought to the table. I was excited to learn more about AWK, Haskell, Perl, and Eiffel as languages after reading this book.
I came across this article on Brian Lewy, who was once the CEO of RadioShack, but after 30+ years in business,
decided to pursue his interest in Medicine, and became a clinician and helping with fight against COVID-19.
At the moment it is available for Georgia and Rhode Island, but I certainly see this sprouting in all other states of
US.
Tesla has a ventilator in making using the car parts. Even if this only a technical demo, I appreciate it, and the
language used in the demo was appropriate and careful for the purpose.
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is funding the therapeutics accelerator to find the vaccine for covid-19. They are
funding almost 8 companies working in parallel and joined by other life sciences companies too.
Companies participating in the collaboration include
Bayer
BD
bioMérieux
Boehringer Ingelheim
Bristol-Myers Squibb
Eisai
Eli Lilly
Gilead
GSK
Johnson & Johnson,
Merck (known as MSD outside the U.S. and Canada)
Merck KGaA
Novartis
Pfizer
Sanofi.
Salesforce CEO, Marc Benioff took a 8 step pledge, and with few pledges being, No significant layoff for next 90
days and encouraging employees to keep their own hourly workers like gardeners, home cleaners employed with pay.
I really appreciate the social responsiblity shown by Marc.
The essence of this book is about sympathy. The story is presented through the eyes of a few friends as they witness the plague in the city of Oran. The author, Abert Camus's writing, and the philosophy of the principal character, Dr. Rieux stands out in this Novel. It will probably etch in the mind of the reader forever. It is about sympathy, the qualities of truth, understanding, and comprehension are at the core of it.
It is the year 2021, and I logged into one of my servers using IPv6 address. So far I had struggled with using IPv6
address for anything useful. Today, I was able login to a server directly from my home using an IPv6 address.
vultr.com provides servers for USD 2.5 per month, with a restriction that it will only have IPv6 address.
But if you can ssh to it, why not get those cheap boxes?
$ ssh -6 root@2001:19f0:5401:129f:5400:02ff:fea8:1fde
The authenticity of host '2001:19f0:5401:129f:5400:2ff:fea8:1fde (2001:19f0:5401:129f:5400:2ff:fea8:1fde)' can't be established.
ECDSA key fingerprint is SHA256:gcWbxG6LHOBJSssYRJdTfCt9IaRznHqn8iuD2bw3uDo.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no/[fingerprint])? yes
Warning: Permanently added '2001:19f0:5401:129f:5400:2ff:fea8:1fde' (ECDSA) to the list of known hosts.
Welcome to Ubuntu 19.10 (GNU/Linux 5.3.0-40-generic x86_64)
* Documentation: https://help.ubuntu.com
* Management: https://landscape.canonical.com
* Support: https://ubuntu.com/advantage
System information as of Fri 03 Apr 2020 01:28:02 AM UTC
System load: 0.08 Processes: 96
Usage of /: 25.8% of 9.78GB Users logged in: 0
Memory usage: 31% IP address for ens3: 100.68.103.207
Swap usage: 0%
0 updates can be installed immediately.
0 of these updates are security updates.
The list of available updates is more than a week old.
To check for new updates run: sudo apt update
root@meet:~#
I setup Folding@Home and started contributing computing resources to Covid-19 project.
For Covid-19, the Folding@Home project is trying to find out the structure of covid-19 virus as it comes in contact
with human bodies through ACE2 receptor, and how an understanding of this can help build therapeutic antibiotics
or molecules that might disrupt the viral interaction.
Bill Gates followed up with a Live Question and Answer session with TED's Chris
Anderson.
Testing is the still "key part". We need a way to find to detect who
has-virus and who does not. This is done using swabs. All of us, will have
to be tested before we resume social interaction.
He is still very much concerned about developing countries, like India,
Pakistan, and countries in the southern hemisphere, as he perceives, will
have more difficulty than developed countries like the US to get this
through.
Economic Impact can be reversed, but if a life is lost, it cannot be
brought back.
The idea of building herd-immunity against this virus, in reality, doesn't
look like a choice. The numbers don't add up.
3Blue1Brown did an excellent video explaining exponential growth. He took the
opportunity to explain Covid-19, growth, trajectory and more importantly
pressing question on when this growth will stop using mathematical equations.
I was highly impressed. It helped to make sense of the situation, and help with
dealing with the situation.
Please watch this video
The video deals with the questions explained in the slide.
Exponential growth means as you go from one day to the next, it involves
multiplying by a constant.
In terms of an Equation the exponential growth is represented mathematically
like this.
3Blue1Brown says that this data fits in a linear regression model.
Linear regression calculates an equation that minimizes the distance between
the fitted line and all of the data points. And if want to find the equation
that minimizes the distance between a line and the data point, the most common
way is to find "least square regression" .
We will notice that the least square regression ends up with an equation of
line \(y = m \dot x + b\) Where m is same as the multiplying factor the
exponential growth.
So he uses the data point to track the growth for linear regression.
And finds out \(R^2\) which is a coefficient of determination, a
statistical measure of how close the data are to the fitted regression line.
We notice that \(R^2\) is close to 1.0 which is a straight line, increasing
by a factor, \(m\) each day.
He is making a point with logistic regression that, when a country has 100
times lower cases than another country, the country is not 100 times better,
but just 30 days behind!
And following the numbers, if we extrapolate, we will hit a 1 billion cases in
81 days. But that's hardly desirable, and everyone wants to know when we do
stop growing linearly and hit a plateau. He notes that "Linear Growth" is a
theoretical phenomenon, not a realistic one. Just like, if you were not married
last year, and you got married this yea, it does not mean, will you marry every
year from now. (Explain XKCD)
But unlike marriage, we are seeing an exponential growth here. We will have
to find out the factors that reduce the exponential growth.
So, in reality what we are expecting is a logistic curve where the
exponential growth includes damping factor contributed by people who are not
infected.
Our whole idea, then becomes to increase this damping factor, that is not
get infected by this virus.
What makes the growth factor go down other than maxing out at the total population?
Decrease the number of people getting exposed - aka social distancing
Decrease the probability of exposure - aka wash your hands completely, maintain hygiene amongst other things.
And important point to remember in this damping factor is, the output decreases exponentially too
For instance with the growth factor of 1.15, we have the first number and
reduces significantly, only by 10% decrease in the damping factor.
3Blue1Brown has tried to quantify our worry factor, and give us hope that by
social distancing, good hygiene we can reduce the damping factor and control
the growth. However, "If we are not worried, that's only thing to worry about".
Bits are Bit. Even if they are transmitted through electrons in copper wires or light in fiber optical cables or via modulation in radio waves. All of these carry bits and run the world. This book covers the intersection between technology, society, the justice system, policies, and politics. It is highly approachable and helps you appreciate technology, not just from a technical standpoint but from a societal standpoint. I really appreciate the concern for fellow human beings put forefront in this book. It opens the reader's mind to care a lot about the political process and be aware that any technology we design is going to have a wide societal impact.
I took 3 attempts to clear this exam. In my first attemp, I had forgotten the concepts.
I was not very confident during 2nd, and prepared well for the 3rd attempt to clear it.
I read "Kubernetes from Ground Up" again. Practised and "understood" the concepts better.
With all these, the tests were actually very enjoyable.
I had setup a raspberry pi cluster, and suddenly the master became
non-operational. The cluster was able to see itself, but if I login to master
node, I noticed it was not able communicate externally.
The DNS Resolution for any site from master was failing.
Then I figured that Ubuntu had made some changes to resolve.conf protocol
Ubuntu requested users not to edit /etc/resolv.conf, and it's content on my
cluster was not something that I wanted.
I had setup pihole, and my devices had started to see the internet through
this. I noticed that Ubuntu since 18.04 had not set my router as the first
nameserver and thus after pi-hole experiment, my master node lost its
resolution capability
I setup a kubernetes cluster using Raspberry pi. It was much easier than I had imagined.
I used a Raspberry 4 for the master, and an agent. And I used two Raspberry B for two agents.
I setup using mhausenblas tutorial, which uses k3s for setting up of kubernetes on raspberry pis.
I used k3sup tool for installation of packages, which worked well.
My overall goal ran into some challenges.
I was not able to setup the kubernetes dashboard via helm package, and I had to use instructions from github.
Givem all these, I still have the my local kubernetes cluster up and running and I am excited about the possiblities
of using kubernetes on raspberry pis.
I tried to pick up some high-level intuition on the basics of calculus with this book, but I failed. Unlike, other Manga guides on electricity, and linear algebra, I found this book not very strong on the plot and I felt it did not present the story in a cohesive manner.
The concepts were introduced randomly, and I could not see how one built upon the previously introduced concept.
On the positive note, it did introduce very basics of calculus well, and I am eager to pick up other books on calculus with that foundation.
This is a science-fiction adventure book. If you are a science-fiction fan like
me, then you are in for a treat reading this book.
I really loved this book and the narration. It started as a simple story but
quickly turned into an adventure plot, and before I realized it, excellent
science was mixed into every element of this fictitious story. It has references
to Fourier and Poisson, calculations for measuring distances based on sound lag,
adventures of an Icelandic hiker, a cave explorer, a climber, and even
biologists encountering a trilobite! Yes, a trilobite! You will also find all
the pre-historic animals and references to famous explorers, biologists, and
taxonomists—all present in a single story.
When I chose the book and read the plot, I wondered, "How is this possible?" But
when I read it, I was taken on a real adventure by the author.
I read this book in the "Kindle-In-Motion" format, and the illustrator, Killian
Eng, is in a class of his own. He did excellent work and did justice to Jules
Verne's timeless work.
Here are some of my notes and highlights from this book:
Here is something about Fourier:
Was it not always believed until Fourier that the temperature of the
interplanetary spaces decreased perpetually?
About Poisson:
“Well, I will tell you that true savants, among them Poisson, have
demonstrated that if a heat of 360,000 degrees existed in the interior of
the globe.”
“Very well,” said he quietly, “it is the shell of a crustacean, of an
extinct species called a trilobite. Nothing more.”
All these pre-historic animals:
leptotheria, mericotheria, lophiodia, anoplotheria, megatheria, mastodons,
protopitheci, pterodactyls, and all sorts of extinct monsters here assembled
together for his special satisfaction.
And the adventurers:
“Mr. Milne-Edwards! Ah! Mr. de Quatrefages, how I wish you were standing
here at the side of Otto Liedenbrock!”
This book was a thorough adventure, with so many references to explore further!
I really enjoyed reading Samhita Arni's take on Ramayana, Sita's Ramayana, the story of Ramayana entirely narrated by Sita. It gives a new perspective to the entire story, while not-at-all deviating from the plot and details of the story.
As a reader who is familiar with the story, I picked up this book with a notion of what I can expect. However, I was still surprised and thoroughly enjoyed reading this story presented by an excellent writer (Samhita) and a fantastic illustration (Moyna Chitrakar).
Following this book, I became eager to check out other works of this author, and I found that her writings bring a freshness to the Indian mythology genre, and I am highly eager to read her next work "The Prince".
Enjoyed reading Paul Graham's essays. It is quite dated, for example, with lots
of references to the Web in the 1990s and 2000s, a time when Yahoo was a
prominent .com company. Some of his opinions on wealth creation are still
applicable in 2020. However, we have to read his essays with plenty of
skepticism. He sings praise for Lisp and instills some desire in the reader to
study Lisp and start a startup.
This book is one of it's kind. I had never come across a topic like this one. It reads like a monologue but dwells a lot into History and societal norms. It dwells in Native American history because the author is a native American, and explains his life story and story of his friends in a compelling manner. The incidents take place in Oakland, ca, and the reader familiar with the region can relate to many incidents narrated in the story. The story is an eye-opener for many to perceive the native American culture a little broadly and in a practical manner.
I came across a translated work of Rabindranath Tagore's Poem: Dialogue Between Karna and Kunti
The poem, even the translation captures the emotions between Karna and Kunti very well. We all know about this
episode of Mahabharata. In every critical interaction, Karna comes out as a highly ethical character.
I graduated from OMSCS, the Online Master's in Computer Science Program at Georgia
Tech. I achieved my personal goal of earning a Master's degree in Computer Science
from a prestigious university. I was admitted to this program in 2014 and continued
to take one class per 15-week term. I decided to go beyond the requirements by taking
three additional classes and graduated with specializations in "Computational
Perception and Robotics" and "Software Systems."
My Journey
Pursuing a master's degree in computer science has been one of my long-standing
aspirations.
I completed my schooling and college in India but missed the opportunity to attend
a prestigious institution. Determined to pursue a Master's in Computer Science, I
made my first attempt in 2002 but failed. I started working and earning money while
continuing to take courses. I tried again in 2003 and failed, and once more in 2004
with the same result. Despite these setbacks, my passion for learning Computer Science
kept me motivated to continue taking courses and improving my understanding of the
subjects.
I enrolled in Continuing Education Proficiency Courses at IISc, which were offered
on Wednesday evenings. These courses eventually paved the way for me to contribute
to CPython development through the Google Summer of Code program.
However, I still had not achieved my ultimate goal. In 2007, I decided to try again.
With work experience, four patents from my job, and part-time courses under my belt,
I applied to US universities in 2007. I applied to 10 universities but was rejected
by all of them.
In 2008, I applied to 5 universities and faced rejection again. I repeated the process
in 2009, applying to another 5 universities, but was unsuccessful.
In 2010, I received one admission offer through a referral, but I decided not to pursue
it as it was not a good fit for me.
In 2012, I almost enrolled in a part-time master's program, but I chose not to continue
because it was not in Computer Science.
In 2014, the OMSCS program was launched, and it looked very promising. I applied
and was admitted in its second offering. I started my classes in January 2015,
and after taking 13 courses, I completed the program in December 2019 with a GPA
of 3.21.
One of my most important lessons during this course was my failure, getting
grade C, in Computational Photography due to a mistake I made. I could have been
removed from the program, but I became more careful, corrected myself, and
retook the course to earn a B grade.
The experience has shaped me well as a person. The journey was fun and eventful.
My family, especially my wife, Shalini, supported me a lot. She would regularly
check in with my plans and adjust our social outings accordingly.
We celebrated our first child, Siddhartha's first birthday, when I started this
program. We had our second child, Saharsha, while I was taking the courses.
Keeping them entertained while pursuing a master's degree was challenging. I
used to put them to sleep and then return to my computer to complete
assignments.
In terms of work, I lost a job, got a new one, and then changed jobs again
during this timeframe. I struggled a bit to balance work and study but managed
to focus on work without letting one interfere with the other. I also got
promoted twice in the same organization during this period. Overcoming this
long-pending desire and mental block was a significant achievement for me.
Finally, we celebrated my graduation with a family trip to Atlanta, and my wife
Shalini organized a party with our friends. She also requested me to give a
short speech. Here is the speech that I shared with my friends.
We can celebrate anything. My wife, Shalini, is organizing this party as she
wanted to celebrate my graduation.
I feel a little awkward and embarrassed to be honest, but I am supporting her
just as she helped me throughout this journey. And I want to thank my friends
for coming.
For sharing things that I have learned, I want to talk about the quality of
honesty because I think about it a lot.
It is challenging to keep up with the changes; it is challenging when our
desires fail; it becomes challenging to lose opportunities every day.
Given all these, I still think that our time and the journey is enjoyable, if
on any task we dedicate our time to, we do so with honesty. There is a lot of
value in doing things with our bent of mind. Learning, understanding, and then
doing things that we like to do. Failing is okay, and the number of attempts
overtime does not matter. The result might be enjoyable, just as I realized
that with my graduation.
A simple book gives an overview of many scientists and explains their achievements within a page. The book is divided into categories such as Astronomy, Physics, Biology, Environment, etc, and goes from the earliest changemaker in this field to the latest. It is very easy to see how each of the scientists stood on top of the research done by the previous one, sometimes in a different field. The personal characteristics and the challenges faced by these scientists in their respective eras were entertaining to read.
In terms of personal characteristics, Roentgen, after discovering X-rays, had refused to benefit financially from his discovery believing that it should be freely available to all.
I wanted to note down Rudolf Virchow's view, wherein he believes: "Medicine is a social science, and politics is nothing else but medicine on a large scale".
https://www.deeplearningillustrated.com/ - This book helped me get into Deep
Learning. This is a high-level overview that any software engineer will desire
as we try to understand “this new world” (even as of 2019). The terms in
new-world are used in multiple Medium articles, and github.io pages and
github.com READMEs, and we wonder what any of these have to do with solving the
problem, how does it fit in, etc. This book took a top-down approach to explain
it all and help me made sense of every article that I read about Deep Learning,
Convolutional Neural Networks, and Artificial Intelligence as of 2019. I like to
thank the Authors for their invaluable and accessible contribution to this field
of AI and Neural Networks.
I picked this book to gain some structured knowledge of docker. I had done a costly mistake with docker, and I realized, it was because my knowledge of docker was mostly by trial and error, reading the docs and trying it out.
The book focusses on operational aspects of docker. This is perhaps aimed at the beginners of docker who want to pick and learn the commands. Experienced users might find that this book goes more into breadth than depth.
I am a CNCF certified Kubernetes administrator now.
I did not clear the exam in the first attempt, came close to clearing in the second attempt, did a horrible docker mistake in my third attempt.
In my third attempt I ran a sleep 3600 when with -it flag flag on for docker run, and I could not exit or kill the shell.
Finally, cleared the exam in my fourth attempt. It is fun a exam for someone interested in Kubernetes to take.
This book is from the pioneers of the Kubernetes world. The authors explain the design elements of Kubernetes pretty well. It was enjoyable to read this book.
This is a useful book, aimed towards the beginners of Kubernetes. The cookbook recipes could help reinforce the concepts that we learn in Kubernetes in a practical manner.
This book explained the concepts behind Kubernetes well. It just did keep itself at the level of a book for an operator of Kubernetes and went into explaining what is happening underneath quite well.
This book is a straightforward narration by Georgia Takei of a Japanese Internment by the US Government during World War II. George and his family had suffered this cruelty. He highlights how opportunistic senators took chances to rise to power by promoting racial discrimination.
I had not known about this part of US history. I also did not know how ACLU helped the Japenese in the US then. US had detained 250,000 Japanese families living in the US, many of them US citizens, into camps during WWII.
Having lived through this horror, a lot of these Japanese families restarted and rebuilt their lives again. George Takei turned to activism to share his story with the masses, and I think he has been very effective.
This book has come the right time when similar mistreatment is being carried out by certain opportunistic politicians.
The Mahabharata is one of the most complex stories I have ever read. I read this book following The Ramayana by R.K.Narayan. The ethical dilemmas presented in this story is at a whole different level than Ramayana. While in Ramayana, there are good guys and bad guys in Mahabharata there is nothing like that.
No one is entirely good or no one is entirely bad. The Pandavas and Kauravas are brothers, just competing against each other, but their quarrel reaches to a level for war.
Coming to the war, which is an important topic of this story, the book has 3 chapters dedicated to the avoidance of war and only one chapter for the war.
In spite of suffering all the atrocities presented by Duryodhana, Pandavas realize that war is not good for anyone, and try for multiple attempts to prevent the war. Duryodhana plays politics and chooses to listen, and highlight points only which could give a chance for war.
And when it comes to war, Pandavas understands that a deterministic outcome is achieved by eliminating everyone in the enemy camp, even babies. So, after trying to avoid war, when the war becomes inevitable, Krisha proposes and leads a _genocide_ against the Kaurava clan.
To me, the most complex characters in this story were that of Karna and Krishna. Karna has chances to prevent war, he understands his background well but still chooses to side with Duryodhana. Krishna is one who leads the Pandavas to war and gives guidance "on duties" in ambiguous times.
There is no good or a bad person in this entire story.
I ordered Pizza using terraform today. I was learning about terraform and how provider can be anything,
even Software as a Service, which is basically an API.
So, it made possible to develop software like terraform-provider-dominos using which you can order Pizza.
I tried it. The terraform apply crashed for me, but I knew that terraform might have attempted the purchase operation
and had probably crashed due to slow response from the API. It was the case. I saw my credit card charged in my account, an order confirmation email, and in 30 minutes, I got my pizza.
I tried this codeforces problem contest/1189/problem/A. Trying a contest problem after many years and I thought,
it was a problem either with Dynamic Programming or with Recursion.
Turned out be a much much simpler one, that if a person reads the problem carefully and understands the scope of the solution,
the solution can be written in < 2 minutes.
I spent 30 minutes unsuccessfully. Lack of experience shows up if you don't practice.
This was a very good book. It made me rethink about the pleasures of life in terms of chemicals, and its properties on the human brain. Everything we 'enjoy' is like a positive signal to a particular area in the brain called VTA where Neuron's release dopamine to make us feel the pleasure.
Various experiments that humans have done, such as chemicals we eat (the taste factor in food), drink, inhale, and physiological activities such as running, exercise, sex, and brain activities like deep-thinking, understanding, associative thinking, are all related and trigger those VTA neurons to give pleasure.
The process of pleasures are understandable, and once we understand this, we have better control over things around it, like society norms, and optimizing for our desired outcome.
The book also touched upon the topic of addiction, which is commonly associated with pleasure, but in reality, it is not. The perspective shared in the book about addiction, was it should be treated as a disease, like having a fever/cold/cough, and instead of feeling sorry or ashamed, actions should involve just as we take actions to come out of fever/cold and cough.
After watching Infinity War at a friends home, I became immensely curious and interested
in watching all the related movies. Thor taking the power of the dying star etched in my mind
from the Infinity War. I looked up the order to watch the entire series and before
watching the Avengers: End Game, my family and I decided to watch the entire 21 movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
We finished our MCU movie watching adventure finally watching with EndGame on 21st May, 2019.
It was a treat to imagination, and a pleasure follow this saga along!
Here is a Marvel Cinematic Universe theme shared in a reddit comment.
If you end up watching the entire series try out this MCU Quiz (The answer key is here)
This is a highly accessible account to the Origin of Human Civilization, from BigBang, the birth of stars, universe, dinosaurs, humans, governments, the current social system to the possibilities of what lies ahead.
Reducing the origin of the universe from 13.6 billion years to 13-day scale was very interesting to get a sense of the scale. Discussion of the progress of human societies and adding adequate details as supported facts was a good approach too. The author takes us to the origin of governments, international bodies, and touches about the topics of origin of democracy supported by nationalism.
I like to dwell on the topics of Big History / Origin Story, and this was a worthy book.
A central theme of this book is humans are engaged in some sort of a "collective-learning", and that forms the central theme "our origin history".
This is a shared origin history for everyone in the universe, and there is course https://www.bighistoryproject.com based on this book.
These are some important highlights I had noted in this book.
Newton's View:
Isaac Newton saw God as the “first cause” of everything and argued that He was present in all of space.
About Goldilocks Condition:
We don’t know what Goldilocks conditions allowed a universe to emerge, and we still can’t explain it any better than novelist Terry Pratchett did when he wrote, “The current state of knowledge can be summarized thus: In the beginning, there was nothing, which exploded.”
Indian Veda's view on creation of universe:
Like the “neither non-existence nor existence” of the Indian Vedas, this tension seems to have bootstrapped our universe.
Attempt to recreate the conditions of origin of universe:
Remarkably, we humans have managed to re-create such energies briefly, in the Large Hadron Collider outside Geneva. And, yes, particles do start popping out of that boiling ocean of energy.
Charles Darwin's recognition of Emotions:
Charles Darwin understood that the emotions are decision-makers that have evolved through natural selection to help organisms survive.
At sites such as the caves of Skhul and Qafzeh in modern Israel, they may have encountered and occasionally interbred with Neanderthals. (We know this because today, most humans who live outside Africa have some Neanderthal genes.)
On genetic changes as a result of choice of vocation.
Humans have changed genetically as a result of farming. For example, if you’re descended from people who once herded cattle and consumed cow’s or mare’s milk, you will probably be able to digest their milk even as an adult because you can keep producing lactase, the enzyme that digests lactose (milk sugar). Hunter-gatherers consumed only breast milk till about four years of age, and after childhood, they no longer needed to produce lactase. But where cow’s or mare’s milk became a major food source, humans began to produce lactase into adulthood—a genetic mutation had occurred.
Rise of a new religion, Islam, in 8th century
Perhaps most astonishing of all was the rise of new political systems associated with a new world religion, Islam, in the eighth century CE.
On wealth distribution in early 1900s
The French economist Thomas Piketty has estimated that in most European countries as late as 1900, 1 percent of the population owned about 50 percent of national wealth, and 10 percent of the population accounted for 90 percent of national wealth. The other 90 percent of the population made do with just 10 percent of national wealth.
On Capitalism
Like the appearance of the first oxygen atmosphere or the sudden death of the dinosaurs, this was an example of what the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter termed creative destruction—the constant, often violent replacement of the old by the new, which Schumpeter saw as the very heart of modern capitalism.
First Global Currency
Mule trains carried silver to the Mexican port of Acapulco, where it was minted into silver pesos, the world’s first global currency.
Relation between Government and Commerce
Rulers protected and supported commerce, and in return they got the right to tax and profit from commercial wealth. This was the earliest and crudest form of capitalism, a system admired by European economists from Adam Smith to Karl Marx.
New way to think about "wealth"
Many early economists understood perfectly well that the wealth traded by and generated by capitalists really represented control over compressed sunlight, over energy flows through the biosphere.
Cheap energy encouraged experimentation and investment in many new technologies. One of the most important was electricity. In the 1820s, Michael Faraday realized that you could generate an electric current by moving a metal coil inside an electric field.
Conquest on Silk Road
The Nemesis, the first iron-hulled steam-powered gunship, with its seventeen cannons and its ability to sail fast in shallow waters, helped England win control of China
Indian Railroads
Even the building of India’s major railroads benefited Britain more than India.
Most of the track and rolling stock was manufactured in Britain, and the huge Indian rail network was designed primarily to move British troops quickly and cheaply, to export cheap Indian raw materials, and to import English manufactured goods
Europe view on civilizing the rest of the world
Europe’s economic, political, and military conquests encouraged a sense of European or Western superiority, and many Europeans began to see their conquests as part of a European or Western mission to civilize and modernize the rest of the world.
Increasing Productivity
Prokaryotes had solved the problem billions of years ago, but Haber and Bosch were the first multicellular organisms to successfully fix atmospheric nitrogen. The Haber-Bosch process uses huge amounts of energy to overcome nitrogen’s reluctance to combine chemically, so it was viable only in a world of fossil fuels. But artificial nitrogen-based fertilizers transformed agriculture, raised the productivity of arable land throughout the world, and made it possible to feed several billion more humans. It turned fossil-fuel energy into food.
Rise of Nationalism
The governments of revolutionary France and the United States began to mobilize the loyalty of their subjects through democratization, which brought more of the population into the work of government, and through nationalism, which appealed to people’s sense of a shared national community.
Some governments, such as the Communist regimes of the Soviet Union and China, attempted to micromanage the entire national economy.
What it might be like in future
Eventually, as economic growth ceases to become the primary goal of governments, individuals will begin to value quality of life and leisure over increased income.
Like most readers, I stumbled upon this book after taking Barbara Oakley's Learning How to Learn Course in Coursera.
This book reinforces the concepts taught in that course. The idea of relaxed learning, giving ourselves plenty of time while learning difficult concepts, avoiding procrastination, and tools that help us avoid the procrastination. The idea of repetition for remembering different concepts is presented and stressed well this book.
The importance of sleep for learning stayed with me and changed me when I took the course based on this book. I never discount sleep for important exams or deadlines now.
The crux of learning is expressed well by this quote from Santiago Ramón y Cajal introduced to us in this book
What a wonderful stimulant it would be for the beginner if his instructor, instead of amazing and dismaying him with the sublimity of great past achievements, would reveal instead the origin of each scientific discovery, the series of errors and missteps that preceded it - information that, from a human perspective, is essential to an accurate explanation of discovery. - Santiago Ramón y Cajal
This is Narayan's narration of the famous Indian Epic, Ramayana. It follows Valmiki's script, instead of the Kamban, that I thought, I would expect from the South Indian author.
The introduction gives the details of the Ramanand Sagar's Television series and how India stood still when Ramayan was telecast on weekends. The story is well know, but the best part of this book are in the details.
I liked the chapter on Vali and Sugreeva, wherein the author does not mince words and shares about the ethical lapse of Rama. That was a difficult chapter in Ramayana. Rama tries to help Sugreeva to fight against his brother Vali. He kills Vali by hiding. Rama being a warrior, is supposed to fight straight, and being righteous person, who is supposed to not harm anyone unnecessarily, forgoes both in this episode. Vali questions him about this. And Rama rationalizes that Vali is not a sub-human, Monkey, but a higher form since he possesses the judgement skills of Right vs Wrong, and since Vali choose the Wrong approaches, when knowing what was Right, he had to meet with this fate. Also, by having killed by Rama, Vali is elevated to higher form in his death.
Other mistakes of Rama are explained as a consequence of Rama forgetting his inherent divinity, making mistakes as a human, and needed constant reminders from gods.
This book is action packed, has good stories, morals, stories of ethical dilemmas and is entertaining. The author does a very good job of maintaining balance of religious piety and story telling in this book.
This is a checklist book for the various steps that a person can take to stay secure and manage their privacy online. This is written for general populace, and does a good work to highlights of perils of getting hacked online, problems associated with online privacy. Author provides references to tools and mechanisms that can help person stay safe online.
This book reminded me of "The Road Ahead" by Bill Gates. This is an impressive account on Self Driving Technology, that is about to come and consume us in the near future. The book is very well written. Initially, I had plenty of doubts on the author, Lawrence D Burn's style, thinking that he was one of the pure management type guys, looking at things in a disconnected way, trying to associate himself with changes brought about by others. I was proven wrong. I started appreciating his insights, his outlook towards this project, his commitments, and really understood where he was coming from when the author provided more context into his own up bringing and background. He provided the view from Detroit, that many following the self-driving space will miss, and it an important viewpoint to consider.
The book starts with the DARPA race, narrates the events, and stories of people who are shaping this story. GM, and Google play a very important role in the story. The book shines in presenting, well researching personal accounts from various actors like Red Whitaker, Chris Urmson, Sebastian Thrun, Larry Page, Antony Levandowski, Travis Kalanick, as well as many people from the top management in established car companies. It was good to get a first hand account on how people running established businesses think, and make decisions. It also shares the grit, and adventures of engineers who work to push the envelop of the possibilities. The book indirectly highlights the value/policy stances taken by companies such as Waymo, Tesla, and Uber pursuing self driving technology after giving the backround on the limitations of the technology, which were known to everyone developing it. It should be noted that as of 2019, Tesla and Uber have both been responsible for loss of lives with their pursuit of this adventure, and both have escaped consequences for their mistakes.
With all the events, book lays the solid ground for what is to come and expected in the next few years or decades for Autonomy. I will count this book as one of the good business books that I have read in recent years.
Most of us were attracted towards maths, science and programming because there was certain level of rigor,
factual information that can be verified by repeating the experiment, equality based on understanding of these facts,
and desire to elevate ourselves to the equal position of someone who had a better understanding of the facts that can
obtained by ourselves repeating the experiment, understanding the concepts and thereby understanding the greater sum.
Soon, as adults, we run into the opinion territory. What is considered an opinion vs fact is a topic in itself.
However, let us assume that opinion is different from mathematical fact.
When we run into opinion territory, the way the world works is, if a person has power over another, the person exercises
that power. We often find this irrational, argue in the opinion territory and try to find out if facts can be
established so that equality order can be restored.
Some scientist identify the opinion territory from science and choose to devote more of their energies to science,
aligned with what brought them to this interest in the first place.
I have known "by heart" that total number of the subsets of a set of n number is \(2^n\)
I was struggling to find an intuitive explanation, and two answers helped me to understand it.
For each element, you have two choices: either you put it in your subset, or you don't; and these choices are all
independent.
Stranger in a Strange Land
Stranger in a Strange Land is a 1961 science fiction novel by the American author Robert A. Heinlein. It tells the story of Valentine Michael Smith, a human who comes to Earth in early adulthood after being born on the planet Mars and raised by Martians, and explores his interaction with and eventual transformation of Terran culture.
. Wow, what a book. It
goes into multiple topics like being human, politics, religion, love, sex,
community, spirituality, entrepreneurship, money, influence, negotiation,
strategy and "understanding" of it all.
This gave a new word
Grok
Grok () is a neologism coined by the American writer Robert A. Heinlein for his 1961 science fiction novel Stranger in a Strange Land. While the Oxford English Dictionary summarizes the meaning of grok as "to understand intuitively or by empathy, to establish rapport with" and "to empathize or communicate sympathetically (with); also, to experience enjoyment", Heinlein's concept is far more nuanced, with critic Istvan Csicsery-Ronay Jr. observing that "the book's major theme can be seen as an extended definition of the term." The concept of grok garnered significant critical scrutiny in the years after the book's initial publication. The term and aspects of the underlying concept have become part of communities such as computer science.
to English speaking
people, which roughly means to "understand thoroughly" and becoming one with the
concept. I have used this phrase in Tamil "கரைச்சி குடிச்சிட்டான்" which means
someone thoroughly understood to subject at hand.
One interesting thing about this science fiction is, it combined the real world
concepts of business, stocks, politics, and ownership with an imaginary
situation where humans have already traveled to Mars and there is a human raised
by Martians among us. The details covering the rise of Mike to the status of a
godman, and formation of his communion was a fun read.
Just imagine how close is this quote "Thou art god, I am god. All that groks is
god.” by Valentine Michael Smith to the Sanskrit Verse
Tat Tvam Asi
The Mahāvākyas (sing.: mahāvākyam, महावाक्यम्; plural: mahāvākyāni, महावाक्यानि) are "The Great Sayings" of the Upanishads, with mahā meaning great and vākya, a sentence. The Mahāvākyas are traditionally considered to be four in number, though actually five are prominent in the post-Vedic literature:
.
The character Jubal Harshaw attributes that one can explain away everything by
holding on to
Solipsism
Solipsism ( SOLL-ip-siz-əm; from Latin solus 'alone' and ipse 'self') is the philosophical idea that only one's mind is sure to exist. As an epistemological position, solipsism holds that knowledge of anything outside one's own mind is unsure; the external world and other minds cannot be known and might not exist outside the mind.
and
Pantheism
Pantheism is the philosophical and religious belief that reality, the universe, and nature are identical to divinity or a supreme entity. The physical universe is thus understood as an immanent deity, still expanding and creating, which has existed since the beginning of time. The term pantheist designates one who holds both that everything constitutes a unity and that this unity is divine, consisting of an all-encompassing, manifested god or goddess. All astronomical objects are thence viewed as parts of a sole deity.
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I was impressed with
Robert Heinlein
Robert Anson Heinlein ( HYNE-lyne; July 7, 1907 – May 8, 1988) was an American science fiction author, aeronautical engineer, and naval officer. Sometimes called the "dean of science fiction writers", he was among the first to emphasize scientific accuracy in his fiction, and was thus a pioneer of the subgenre of hard science fiction. His published works, both fiction and non-fiction, express admiration for competence and emphasize the value of critical thinking. His plots often posed provocative situations which challenged conventional social mores. His work continues to have an influence on the science-fiction genre, and on modern culture more generally.
covering so many topics. I really enjoyed it.
This book covers a great deal on political leadership and helps the reader to understand the political landscape of multiple nations. The crux of this, it is not a strong leader that brings a net positive change, but a leader who is flexible, who understands the situation well, goes into the details, establishes that the processes, and follows it through that will bring the net positive change. The way, the different leaders have accomplished is quite varied, and depends on the situation and the time.
This book introduces some amazing real life characters like, Adolfo Suárez of spain who transformed the country to Democracy from the previously established monarchy in a peaceful manner. It also shares how Deng Xioping is the person behind the economic advancement of China from 1970 onward. It shares the perspective on how Fidel Castro overthrew the dictatorship in his country, and how lived by his principles, and did not accumulate any wealth for himself.
One thing that struck with me, when this book was written, Obama was the president of USA, and even then, the system in place in USA was such that, no one particular person was ultimately responsible everything in the government. It has been understood that answer for "who controls the whitehouse of USA", seems " no one knows". This is not a snarky comment, but a statement that workings of the government in USA is very complex, and there are multiple forces in effect at any time, including political parties, supporters, lobbyists, and corporations with interests, and it will be too much to give credit and put focus on a single person.
This book covers lot. It covers Britain, USA, Europe, South America, South Africa, China, Russia, touches upon New-Zealand, India and other nations. The author explores how various leaders in these countries have shaped the political landscapes of these places for better.
Memorable book. It covers the stories of teenagers various different parts of the world like Keren, Eritrea, San Salvador, Huehuetenango, and lots of places around the world, who are now studying in Oakland International High School, and share what they think, when they think of "Home". Book does a very good job of portraying the diversity that exists in OIHS.
This is a personal memoir of the author, Thi Bui, as she tries to recollect her own story of coming to the US as
a refugee from Vietnam on a boat.
Fast forward many years, the author is well educated, accomplished
in life, settled in society, and has a family of her own. When she has her first child, she tries to associate
herself with her mother and her times in Vietnam and their family migration to the US.
It covers the
political history of Vietnam well, and how the ordinary people suffered, without any exception, both at the hands
of external oppressors and from local oppressors alike. There was no way out, except to Run away. And, run they
did, in search for stabler societies so they and their children at-least can have a chance to live.
It is a heart-wrenching story as she understands the story of her own mother, father, and the reason they become the way they are, the hardships and life that they have seen in other parts of the world, the risks they took, and ultimately, the best they could do for their children.
It is a family story, and it helps us understand our own parents better.
Quotes that I liked from the book
“This - not any particular piece of Vietnamese culture - is my inheritance: the inexplicable need and
extraordinary ability to run when the shit hits the fan. My refugee reflex.”
― Thi Bui, The Best We Could Do
...
“To understand how my father became the way he was, I had to learn what happened to him as a little boy. It took a long time to learn the right questions to ask.”
This is a highly influential book in the subject of how Computers work from ground up. They author deals with the subject and introduces computers as if they were a natural evolution of inventions that had already taken effect and had proved useful to the society.
After introducing the various needs for communication, the author explains how it can achieved using bulbs, and then chips, and then how it is stored and done at the higher scale using Computers. He goes both in the Hardware as well as Software section of how computers work, and why we need operating systems and programming languages.
The section on float point arithmetic caught my attention and imagination completely. This was a lucid explanation on storing decimal valued numbers using binary digits.
I throughly enjoyed this, and is already helping me appreciate some of the basic concepts used in Computers and Computer Science.
This is the first health book that I could not put down. This is the book that is helping me to manage my weight and my health. So, it is a life-saving book for me.
I was worried about my weight gain, and my lack of time to do exercises. I have 2 kids now and have an hour commute to my work. Both of these leave me with very less time to do exercises regularly, and I was constantly feeling worried about weight gain.
This book helped to break the problem into two.
a) Managing Weight. b) Doing Exercises.
For a), I completely understood how this can be controlled by paying attention to the Calorie intake. That' it. I adjusted my calories and I went back to -3KG within 3 weeks. I have goal to go -13 kgs further so that I can maintain my weight at a desirable number. I am into managing of my weight now.
Once that is done, I know the need and utility value for exercises and I will able to make time for it to live for longer so that I could continue doing whatever I like.
Rarely, self-help books have proved valuable to me. This the 2nd self-help book that I can say that, it has proved valuable to me and the concepts taught will remain with me for the rest of my life.
I found a video series on Pointers in C, by mycodeschool that helped clarify a lot of concepts with Pointers in C.
It started making me feel comfortable again. It is amazing to have resources like these when we are learning
difficult concepts today.
Agatha Christie won the bet my with my reading of the book too. I could not figure out the murderer or figure out the plot. It may be hard or impossible for the reader to find the plot as the information that is shared with is limited and more information is revealed as the plot is disclosed.
It was an enjoyable book with the variety of characters and it took me a to mid-century England for the hours I was reading this book.
I loved this book. This is a very short book, to the point, and explains the universe in simple terms. What I didn't expect and was a surprise to me was the Author's humorous anecdotes, completely relevant to the present day reader inserted between the concepts in the pages.
For e.g. It was funny to know that behind US Govt which consumes Helium for military and research, the next second highest consumer of "Helium" was Macy's for it's Macy's day parade.
It was startling to know that life as we understand in any form, the single-celled organism has started in existence only the last 2% of the history of the universe. The universe is very very old, very very big.
Often there is a question on "Is there life elsewhere in the universe?" - The more I read these kinds of books, the more I realize that "There is life elsewhere in the universe. Highly likely. It is inevitable that either Earthians discover the other life forms, and they discover the Earthians. Also, the timeline of advancement, the calamities that are possible in next thousand years, humankind will, of course, take the ship, explore, and start settling in various other parts of the universe. Thinking like this doesn't sound like fiction to me.
It was a great book. I will start looking out for Neil DeGrasse Tyson from now.
Here are some excerpts that I noted from the book. This one is about Einstein, and the kind of impact he had in our
understanding of the universe.
And this one is about Spherical shape for any object that we may encounter in the universe.
In any decision making, being right, getting things right seems intimidating.
For human decisions, being right is debatable too. Being less wrong appears
desirable and achievable. If a person is committed to non-perfectionist
philosophy, then being less wrong falls right into his stride.
I stumbled upon the phrase Less Wrong from the blog lesswrong.com. In the FAQ
section I discovered some insight into what tries to achieve.
... even smart people can be completely wrong but that most people are not even wrong.
It teaches you to be careful in what you emit and to be skeptical of what you receive.
It doesn't tell you what is right, it teaches you how to think and to become less wrong.
And to do so is in your own self interest ...
This book is written by my parents, so my obvious bias there. It chooses many good Sourashtra Recipes and presents them. The presentation is good. The language, editing can be improved.
The book in various different formats is available here:
I had a random thought when observing a social conflict. I think, people who have self-control or exercise restraint
garner more respect than people who people argue, however logical, in social situations.
I have been involved with Spastics Society Of Karnataka for more than 10 years. Today, we launched a new website
for the organization. Please check this out http://spasticssocietyofkarnataka.org/
When I inherited this project, the website looked like this in 2004. I don't remember the technology, but it was
done by a volunteer by name Mr. Nagaraj. He transfered the hosting and domain from Net 4 India to us.
In 2008, we moved entirely to Google Apps for Education - this was a great move. It facilitated online
processing, official email ids, all our data in a single place. This was like migrating Spastics Society of Karnataka
to the "Cloud". The website changed its look to this in 2008 using google sites.
The google sites website was not very pleasant looking. This time in 2013, I updated website to wordpress, and
hosted on bluehost.com and our domains were migrated to Google Domains. The wordpress website also had
accessibility features on changing font, style etc.
There was problem, wordpress is not the most secure of the software that is present today. We got hacked by chinese hackers who put up malware in our site.
This wasn't good. I removed the phishing, and they could still get to us. This happened for 2 months and I felt a
lack of control with wordpress.
We decided to shutdown and delete the wordpress site, and decided to rebuild it. For stop-gap, we directed
people to Google Sites website
This stop gap solution lasted for more than a year because I did not want to rebuild it entirely with wordpress again.
In 2016, I decided to hand-code it using Bootstrap and Nikola and built this - This was hugely unappealing. It
was extremely secure and trustworthy, but felt very unappealing to everyone.
In 2018, we decided to make a appealing website, and this time I went with a hosted service, wix.com. The result is
what you see at http://spasticssocietyofkarnataka.org/
Features
This was a team effort. My friends Avinash and Nivedita got involved. We use Trello.com to track our tasks. From
school Preethi, and Priya Madam and Sobha Madam got involved too. The website does not have bus-factor of 1 and
this is an incredible feature.
The website was mostly done by Avinash. He cannot use his hands, and uses voice to operate his computer So this
website was created using voice.
Simple theme, accessible on mobile and our google apps (cloud) still remain for forms, email and everything as it
is convenient to manage.
I believe this change is going to help school further. Given what I have shared above, this project is a living
entity, and will evolve with times.
I set up a Little Free Library in front of my house. Excited to share the books with the San Ramon Community. I have
to see how it plays out when the schools reopen.
I got interested in reading this book after hearing about this from Robert Sapolsky in one of his lectures. He had a very high regard for this book and states it had a tremendous influence on him.
For me, I had to struggle reading this book. This introduces the field of Choas and presents the story and anecdotes of about 200 scientists who were involved with Choas. It's a challenge to present a cohesive story when someone is dealing with 200 investigators. I felt frequent disconnects between one paragraph after another. I could not follow the trail of the story, and in fact, I wondered if there is any story at all here.
The book tries to lay a case that even after understanding Classical physics, and Quantum physics, the scientists discovered new ways to reason about nature using non-linear equations which depended upon the initial conditions. The later part, the system of non-linear equations which depend upon the initial conditions is called as the Chaos Theory.
I noted down the following interesting quotes from this book.
“John Hubbard, exploring iterated functions and the infinite fractal wildness of the Mandelbrot set, considered chaos a poor name for his work, because it implied randomness. To him, the overriding message was that simple processes in nature could produce magnificent edifices of complexity without randomness. In nonlinearity and feedback lay all the necessary tools for encoding and then unfolding structures as rich as the human brain.”
“The Mandelbrot set obeys an extraordinarily precise scheme leaving nothing to chance whatsoever. I strongly suspect that the day somebody actually figures out how the brain is organized they will discover to their amazement that there is a coding scheme for building the brain which is of extraordinary precision. The idea of randomness in biology is just reflex.”
"Shallow ideas can be assimilated; ideas that require people to reorganize their picture of the world provoke hostility."
Interesting to watch this interview of 82 year old App Developer. She developed the app called Hinadan for people like her.
Here is her story.
Wakamiya asked software developers to step in to develop her app. Uninterested, they suggested she make a game
herself. She took them up on the suggestion. Wakamiya soon bought programming books and
learned Apple’s Swift programming language through lessons with a programmer, nearly 200
miles away from her home in Japan's Kanagawa Prefecture, via Facebook Messenger and Skype.
This wasn’t the first time that Wakamiya took on a challenge.
She’s been dabbling in the tech field since the age of 60.
Upon retiring from a 43-year career as a bank clerk (she began at age 18), Wakamiya spent long hours caregiving
for her then-90-year-old mother. Feeling isolated, and seeking connection with the outside world, Wakamiya
bought her first computer, then moved on to a Microsoft PC, and later a Mac and iPhones. In between learning
the piano, at age 75, Wakamiya eventually joined a computer club for seniors, Mellow Club, learning to
create Excel art along the way. Then, this past year came Wakamiya’s focus on creating the game Hinadan.
The app, based on the annual Japanese doll festival of Hina Matsuri, invites players to arrange
12 ornamental dolls — representing the country’s emperor, family and guests — in a specific
order. The game requires in-depth memorization of various arrangements, and has become especially
popular with older women, who enjoy playing it with their grandchildren, Wakamiya said.
It is hard for me write a review for as a great a book as "Guns, Germs and Steel". I had not read anything like that
before. It just opened me up to a whole new level of experience, and new set of expectations from books.
I think, I picked it up after reading Bill Gates review about this.
"Like a lot of people, I was blown away by Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel. I had never read anything that explained
so much about human history." - Bill Gates, On Guns, Germs and Steel
I made copious notes while reading this book, I wanted to preserve it for my future reference. I looked up many
different incidents in Wikipedia while reading this book. Every moment I spent was totally worth it. It will give a
reader a whole new understanding of the world. This book feels like a Magnum Opus, an experience provided to the reader.
The first captive thing presented to me in this book was The Battle of Cajamarca which lead to the fall of
the Inca Empire in South American Continent in 1500s.
Here is some data on this Battle. The left hand side is Spanish, and the right side is Inca Empire.
Isn't that startling? What happened? The reader is taken through the reasons for such decisive victory.
Then it steps back and goes the reason for why some developments took place at the places it took place. This
flow-chart from the book conveys the reason in a comprehensive way.
Then, a chapter on writing gives a whole history of human writing system. Which itself is fascinating, and the next
chapter was titled "Necessity's Mother".
This is an interesting twist on the commonly known proverb, "Necessity is the mother of all inventions". It just
asks, who was "Necessity's Mother". The answer is simple, it is the idle brain, curiosity. The chapter gives so many
details on the inventions that really took the world. I briefly wrote about it in this post Edison and his phonograph
when I was reading that chapter.
Then it deals with the idea of how the concept society and a religion must have formed. In the final chapters, it
goes into the fascinating story of China and Africa.
Here is one thing about China that amazed me.
Think about it, China sent huge ships with lots of people to expeditions way before Columbus set his foot on America!
And the chapter on Africa, tells about the diversity of Africa, mentions about 1500 languages that originated in Africa.
And shares something that is very interesting.
This just says two of modern religions of the world originated by the speakers of an African language.
This book is an answer from Jared Diamond to his friend from Papau New Guinea, on why westerners were more advanced
than his tribe. It does a great job of giving that answer to Mr. Yali and rest of us.
Edison had invented phonograph, a precursor to modern day music player and phone, but he not could get the proper
utility value of his invention immediately. I came across this paragraph in a book called, "Guns, Germs and Steel"
and felt compelled to note it down.
Manga Guide to Linear Algebra is a manga comic that teaches linear algebra concept. When I stumbled upon the terms Eigenvalues and Eigenvectors, I found those were greek to me, and I had no intuitive understanding of those terms. I decided to spend 4-hours to read about the basics of linear algebra from this book.
The book starts with the concept of sets, functions, and relations. Then introduces matrices, and then vectors. It gives a gentle introduction to various matrix operations. Gives visual clue on vector representations. Introduces the concept of linear dependence and linear independence in vectors.
Shows the examples of linear transformations which are practical applications of linear algebra and finally goes to introduce eigenvalues and eigenvectors. Finally, for Eigenvalues and Eigenvectors, these are the examples that are shown.
This is a example of 2x2 matrix for illustrating Eigenvectors given in the book.
The image of the expression using the linear transformation, expressed using the same original vectors, but with
coefficients, 7 and 2 now. Then gives the example of 3 dimentional vector, and finally explains the the concept of
Eigenvalue and Eigenvectors.
In the above example, 7 and 2 are eigenvalues, and (3, 1) and (1, 2) are the eigenvectors associated with those eigen
values.
The word eigen seems to have come from german which means proper or characteristic. It seems that we express the
original expression with the linear transformation properly using some values and vectors.
I read this paper titled Shelling Out. The Origins of Money by Nick Szabo
It starts with the origin of money in the european colony of the americas, how and
why a mass scale currency was introduced by colonists upon the native americans.
Based on this anecdote, it discusses some of the important properties of money.
It defines the role of money to a basic human need for co-operation. Money, it says is delayed exchange of altruism
on part by humans. And money sould have properties like non-stealable, non-reproducible in order to be valuable. The
human society devised multiple tools for this kind. When the problem was met with scale, they invented a "fiat
currency", started in China, was way to scale currency, and keep a ledger for supply and demand.
The coin system that was first invented in Lydia is the same coin system that we use today, and the fiat currency
is still in use. Except now that we have the technology to scale currency without trusting or depending on a
government to maintain a ledger.
When trying to understand the concept of radians, I came across the inventor of the concept Roger Coats
His name is not familiar to many. I understood, he is known for working closely with Isaac Newton by proofreading the
second edition of his famous book, the Principia, before publication.
Cotes died from a violent fever in Cambridge in 1716 at the early age of 33. Isaac Newton remarked, "If he had lived we would have known something."
A simple overview of Mesos. It enlists the commands and scripts that will be useful to operate a Mesos cluster. Gives an overview of Hadoop and Spark data frameworks and how they can launched on Mesos. It is aimed at operators and system engineers trying to operate Mesos.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Learnt some valuable computer science concepts too
since this was taught to a child, it was very easy to grasp. The concepts share are
foundational and it is presented in a neat, easy to understand manner. I internalized the
importance of "naming", the thing with jargons and principle of 5-whys. Very helpful book.
For most purposes, I think this could be considered a reference book. Giving quick tips about the
Linux/GNU utility and tools. Even as an experienced user, I managed to find useful tips in this book
about Bash Shell, quoting and testing conditionals in Bash. I appreciated the general notes about
the "Linux culture" sprinkled throughout the text.
This book might be a quick, due to
glancing and turning of pages, and worthy read beginner and experienced programmers alike.
I couldn't understand this book. It was a hard book to read. I liked the language used by the bartender
like addressing Case as "Artiste" and like the picturesque description of the settings in the book. But I
couldn't understand the plot, I couldn't understand or follow the motivation of the characters. I took help
from the Internet to follow what's the story about, but still I seemed to have missed much of the story in
this book. Given the number of awards this book has won, the experience was little unexpected one for me.
This book can be read in the time you'd read the wikipedia page about this book. This was the first
Kurt Vonnegut book for me, and it was a sampler for what to expect if I read more from the author.
It's a concise presentation of dystopian future when humanity has decided on population control in a
weird way. I was thinking that there is logical loop hole in the book, I can't say that as it would be
a spoiler, however, I think, author intended the reader to focus on the bigger picture than question
some of the assumptions.
The book might help you to appreciate the mess in this world!
This is a very high quality book that explains the concept of electricity to the reader. My personal story is I
had started ignoring the electricity terms as something confusing, to be taken for granted and "someone-else"
will know better. So the labels in the electronic appliances, my houses energy consumption, electric appliance
voltages like 120 V and 240 V etc, were household terms, but no intuitive meaning for them. This book changed
that for me. I can understand what those terms mean now. I look at the batteries and have sense of how this is
working. I am looking forward to my Solar setup to understand the energy usage. I appreciate how the Integrated
Circuits work with the underlying concept of diodes, flow of electricity, concepts of physics and chemistry
involved in what makes or creates electricity in the first place. This book opened up a universe for me.
This book belongs to the genre of Space-opera. Plenty of drama, plot twists, hero, heroine and plot twist. I think, I read it twice, and I enjoyed the book when I read it the second time.
The value of this book will be measured by how much I could utilize the tips giving in this book to improve my self-discipline. I will never give a 5-rating for a self-improvement book. The 4 rating is for excellent language and conversational style of this book. The book is well written, it is based on good research, solid principles and explained it's propositions well. Towards the end, it had some "selling" of stuff that author personally liked. But that's it, nothing negative about it.
Ray Douglas Bradbury (US: BRAD-berr-ee; August 22, 1920 – June 5, 2012) was an American author and screenwriter. One of the most celebrated 20th-century American writers, he worked in a variety of genres, including fantasy, science fiction, horror, mystery, and realistic fiction.
's biographer, Sam
Weller.
