The New York Times Opinion: “Roosevelt Montás came to the United States from the Dominican Republic as a child, got his bachelor’s, master’s and Ph.D. from Columbia and ultimately came to run its Core Curriculum program. This is a slate of courses required of all Columbia undergraduates that includes a major component on what is… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: Recommended Books
This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends
Bloomsbury – The Cyberweapons Arms Race – Nicole Perlroth (Author): “Zero day: a software bug that allows a hacker to break into your devices and move around undetected. One of the most coveted tools in a spy’s arsenal, a zero day has the power to silently spy on your iPhone, dismantle the safety controls at… Continue Reading
Guns in America: Foundations and Key Concepts
JSTOR Daily: “This non-exhaustive list of readings on the role of guns in US history and society introduces the field as a subject of scholarly inquiry.” Continue Reading
Fake news, misinformation, and disinformation: journalism today?
Oxford University Press Blog: “Fake, false, inaccurate, misleading, and deceptive. This rhetoric is all too familiar to the news consuming public today. But what is fake news and how does it differ from misinformation and disinformation? Referring to falsified or inaccurate information, “fake news” can be defined as “false information that is broadcast or published… Continue Reading
Library of Misremembered Books
Kottke.org: “In her new book Library of Misremembered Books, Marina Luz creates new book covers from the vague and hilarious ways in which people can’t recall the exact names of books. Anyone who has worked in a bookstore knows only too well that moment when a customer approaches by saying, “So I don’t remember the… Continue Reading
Review – ‘The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity’
The Atlantic – Human History Gets a Rewrite A brilliant new account upends bedrock assumptions about 30,000 years of change. By William Deresiewicz. “…The Dawn of Everything is written against the conventional account of human social history as first developed by Hobbes and Rousseau; elaborated by subsequent thinkers; popularized today by the likes of Jared… Continue Reading
Exponential, book review: Technology acceleration and its impact on society
ZDNet: “An “exponential gap” is opening up between our understanding of our world, which updates slowly, and new technologies, which change faster than we can cope with, argues Azeem Azhar… The exponential growth of computer power led the inventor Ray Kurzweil to propose the Law of Accelerating Returns and predict that by 2045 machine intelligence will pass that of… Continue Reading
125th anniversary of The New York Times Book Review
As part of marking the 125th anniversary of The New York Times Book Review (debuted as a standalone section on Oct. 10, 1896), The Times looks back at the rocky reception for some of today’s best-loved books: “Catch-22,” by Joseph Heller: “[G]asps for want of craft and sensibility.” —Reviewed by Richard G. Stern, Oct. 22,… Continue Reading
This book explains actually helpful actions you can take to fight climate change
Fast Company: “In a new book, Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation, and a website called Regeneration, Paul Hawken lays out solutions. The book is a sequel to Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming, which looked at how existing technologies and approaches could be used to achieve “drawdown,”… Continue Reading
BOOK TALK: If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future
Virtual Book Talk – Wednesday, October 6, 2021 – 7:00pm to 8:00pm – Registration Requested: “The Simulmatics Corporation, launched during the Cold War, mined data, targeted voters, manipulated consumers, destabilized politics, and disordered knowledge―decades before Facebook, Google, and Cambridge Analytica. Jill Lepore, best-selling author of These Truths, came across the company’s papers in MIT’s archives… Continue Reading
They Knew: How the U.S. Government Helped Cause the Climate Crisis
Yale Environment 360 – “James Gustave Speth has been calling for action on climate since serving in the White House in the 1970s. In an e360 interview, he talks about his new book, which chronicles how successive U.S. administrations repeatedly failed to act in response to scientists’ increasingly dire warnings. Few people have followed the… Continue Reading
Overdevelopment, Overpopulation, Overshoot
“Overdevelopment, Overpopulation, Overshoot (OVER) is an impressive piece of art crystallizing the ecological and social tragedies of humanity’s ballooning numbers and consumption. Filled with powerful and evocative images, OVER addresses the many challenges caused by human population size (7.3 billion) and growth (1.5 million people every week). OVER was created as the centerpiece of the… Continue Reading
