Chris Orwa
A good book about a good man and a bad man whom fate brought together to build the most authoritative and historical book on the English Language - the Oxford English Dictionary. The book is a recollection of events and digs through the history of both men and their relations, a good means to provide context. Though good in context, the book has a thinner coverage on the making of the Oxford English Dictionary.
Poetic wisdom. Kahlil reminds the reader on the duality of everything on earth. In few words, more has been said in short Q & A style of writing.
I quite enjoyed the storyline—an engaging work of fiction, especially if you're familiar with the Salem witch trials in Massachusetts from 1692 to 1693. Onto the second ook.
The savagery of Waffen's most notorious division Das Reich is revisited in the book. Tales of hanged men burned women and mutilated children fill the book as the 2nd SS Panzer Dvision moved from southern France to reinforce the Wehrmacht units overwhelmed by the Allied landing in Normandy.
This is also the story of the resistance in France and the role play by the maquis in delaying the advance of the 2nd SS Panzer Division to Normandy. The story of British and American troops dropped in France to train the resistants in order to mount a challenge to the Germans.
The book lacks depth in the stories of the characters but aims to tackle the question of whether the resistance movements played a crucial role in delaying the 2nd SS Panzer Division through sabotage of railways lines and bridges. In the end, it seems they played a role but not significant enough to be considered a worthy contributor to the liberation of France.
The book reads like a continuation of Ted Kaczynski's manifesto ‘The Industrial Society and Its Future'. This time focusing on machine learning and its use in coercing behavior change as well as discriminating the poor and disadvantaged. From the examples provided in the book, there are three categories of Weapons of Math Destructions (WMD).
First one is poor statistics. These are incorrectly calculated stats which are used to infer human behavior and performance. In them are lack of understanding of how certain statistics are interpreted or validated. A good example are proxy variables such as geography used to infer purchase power, reoffending propensity et cetera.
The second WMD are correct statistics that are misused. These seem to be the majority of the cases. It is more of an ethical issue rather than machine taking over of lives. When a company utilizes zip code to steer customers to high interest loans, that qualifies us an ethical use of machine leaning output and no necessarily anything wrong with the machine leaning process.
The last WMDs are dataset. From the book, certain attributes within data should never be used for prediction purposes, e.g race, gender, income, and zip code since they likely to correlate with outputs connected with discrimination.
In the end, machine learning is hailed as tool that can be used for social good - with several examples provided.
A reiteration on love being the uttermost virtue in the world. The multiple stories in the book bring forth the concept that true love is worth dying for - it is only honorable to face death that to be in a loveless marriage.
Finally I got down to reading the overquoted book. I read it in a day and I wasn't disappointed. The best summary of the book is to always be ruthless. Ruthless leaders succeed while benevolent ones struggle to maintain control of their territories.
One man account of his interaction with the murders of the American high society. It is amazing how the author Dominick Dunne doesn't seem to have bitten by the Haute Société culture despite dining and writing about them. Most of the book covers the trial of Orenthal James (OJ) Simpson. However, the saddest part of the story is in the opening chapter where Dominick Dunne writes about the murder of his daughter Dominique Dunne.
You will also be fascinated by the second story titled ‘The Woman Who Knew Too Little', detailing the life and murder of Vicki Morgan, a socialite who was killed by Marvin Pancoast in order to rid the world of her dumbness. Equally, “Nightmare on Elm Drive” grips the nerves on how to brother killed both of their parents in order to inherit a fortune. But, nothing gets more gruesome than the savage murder of Pati Margello.
Much has been written about this book and perhaps enough has been said. So nothing to add here.
In the book “The Prophet”, the scene is set on the port town of Orphalese where Kahlil Gibran's protagonist Almustafa the chosen is about to depart for his hometown and gets mobbed by followers to give his last wise words to them.
In this book, it captures the arrival of Almustafa in his hometown and hot reception to his people whom he has been separated for 12 years. He continues administering his wise words upon his people and fellow mariners upon his garden where his mother and father are laid to rest.
The mode of conversation continues in the question answer format similar to The Prophet with expanded line of questions. In the end, his followers find Almustafa to be cryptic in his answers and abadon him for that sea that is boundless and formless. Almustafa resigns to his aloness and solitude consumes him.
The book provides great framework for thinking like an above average forecaster. Focus is on probabilistic prediction on geopolitical events and how a keen mind of an ordinary person may beat the forecast of well trained intelligence analysts. An outstanding part of the book are the examples provided to solidify what makes a good superforecaster.
It is worth noting that the Good Judgement project on which this book is predicated upon got the Trump election wrong. The superforecasters gave Hillary Clinton a 97% probability of winning the presidency. In addition, the forecasters gave a 70% probability that the winner of the electoral vote will also win the popular vote.
The book covers a great deal on why some forecasts go wrong and how to avoid these pitfalls that may skew a superforecaster predictions. My greatest takeaway from the book is the ‘Brier Score', a means of evaluating how consistently a forecaster is good.
The immaculate story of Kenyan born English Aviator Bery Markham. She lived a life of adventure, broke all the rules of life and above all had a penchant for writing. Her autobiography covers the wild life of colonial Kenya to the building up of the country as a game hunters paradise.
I am enthralled by the practical guide to becoming an effective leader from the 5th-century Barbarian leader. Converting many savage tribes into a civilized and formidable force required a transformation of the tribal leadership. Attila developed a set of guidance on different aspects of leadership that lead to the dominance of the brief Hunnic Empire.
The Ancient Greek philosopher Zeno postulated that happiness is not a proper goal for humans - when subjected to happiness, man does not strive for prosperity - he becomes complacent. Nassim Taleb takes this idea further with the birth of the term ‘Antifragile' - a middle ground between fragile and rigid. Fragile people break under pressure, rigid people don't learn from mistakes, but antifragile people benefit from stress by learning from the experience. Nassim advocates for constant subjection of stress to political, economical, and social systems in order to make the antifragile. A sort of balance providing adequate problems to challenge life and enough enthusiasm to tackle them.
It affirms the Darwinian mantra “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.”
Another banger volume. I laughed more in this volume, I am convinced the writer belongs to the asylum.
Huh! If you've seen the TV series The Last Ship, you'll notice its plot closely mirrors that of this graphic novel. It's fitting that their titles are so similar—The Last Ship and The Last Man.
I picked up this book anticipating a detailed, minute-by-minute account of the Opium War. Instead, it turned out to be an overview of the war and its lasting impact on modern Chinese attitudes towards the West. A chronological narration of events would have been more effective than the current approach of jumping between dates and outcomes.
Charles Ponzi, perhaps a man best fitted in PR that got his hands into finance and launched the greatest money swindling scheme of his time. Hats off to his confidence, demeanor and candor. His pitfall was such that he couldn't find a business model fast enough to turn into a legitimate businessman.
A journey into the minds of people who undertook the task to understand and define risk. Seldom does a narrative get put together to link the influence of gambling methods on investments, but the story gets a home in this book. Well written!
An extraordinary story of the journey taken by a lock of Beethoven's hair snipped by a young musician at the death of the maestro.
An extraordinary book about an extraordinary person who took it up to himself to study the forms of clouds. The book is about about the solo adventure of Luke Howard to understand why clouds change form and what drives their formation. The result is a stellar classification of clouds that inspired the setup of the modern meteorology.
The book carries the essence of a sequel to Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto. Within its pages, Ted Kaczynski explores the bourgeoisie's relentless attachment to technology and the resulting erosion of human relationships and freedoms. His hypothesis contends that a society driven by industrialization becomes one of domestication, where genuine freedom can only thrive within a semi-primitive framework. Much like manifestos typically do, the writing serves to ignite revolutionary passion among the populace rather than offering tangible solutions to the challenges of society.
The disdain of Catholics by Protestants gave us the pop figure of Guy Fawkes as he joined a group of Papist (Catholics) to blow up King James I together with Member of Parliament on 5th November 1605.