I was leafing through this book and Chapter 5, "Why Poor Schools Can't Win at Standardized Tests", caught my eye. I thought, "This looks interesting!" and, after reading a few pages, I discovered it was. I then started back at the beginning of the book and began encountering some rough patches ...

Find the microprocessor chips: ...

Keeping in mind that the book was written in 2017, there's a good chance that you can't find the microprocessor chip(s) — it's probably hidden by the heat sink and fan.

[The computer is connected to the monitor by a] flexible, plasticky ribbon.

Since as far back as I can remember (the late 1970s), monitors for both dumb terminals and graphics terminals, to my knowledge, have always used cables of one sort or another. The author may be misremembering the wide ribbon connectors for IDE hard and optical disk drives.

I'm not going to lie: programming is math. If anyone tries to convince you that it isn't, or that you can really learn programming without doing math, they're probably trying to sell you something.

I'm not trying to sell you anything, but you're welcome to send me money if you're so inclined!

To get beyond introductory programming to intermediate programming requires knowing linear algebra, some geometry, and some calculus.

[E]verything a computer can do comes down to math.

My response:

• When I got interested in programming back in the late 1970s, I came across a quote from a computer science luminary (I forget who) that said, in my words here, "Computer programming is essentially moving data from one place to another."

• Disclaimer: I have been fascinated by math since I was a child. I took calculus in college before I dropped out; i.e., I didn't absorb a whole lot! When I returned to college, I took discrete mathematics, linear algebra, and statistics — and got an A in each class. However, an A in class is not indicative of fully grasping a subject. I love math, but I'm not really good at it. So, over the ensuing years, I've read many math-for-laypeople books and continue to be fascinated by math.

• Arithmetic and basic logic are really the only requirements for learning computer programming. If you can write prose or poetry that presents a coherent argument or narrative, you might be a good programmer. If you can improvise (or like) music that goes off on tangents and then returns elegantly to where it began (or whatever), you might be a good programmer. And so on ...

• I worked on satellite ground systems for most of my career. Other than very basic statistics, math was not a factor in my "rocket science" career (except for my own personal interest). The heavy lifting in math on the projects was done by engineers and scientists intimately familiar with the satellites and their missions. Thermal engineers know the equations needed for the thermal properties of satellite components they design. The complicated math of geometric correction and map projection of image data is done by people who know spherical geometry and orbital mechanics. And the same goes for other mathematical aspects of spacecraft data processing.

• Yes, if you work in a field that requires math of a particular kind, then you need to know that math. Ms. Broussard is a data scientist and, as such, knows a great deal about the math techniques used in her field.

• Introductory programming is introductory programming. Beyond that, a programmer's level of programming is a matter of experience, not math. A matter of time. The luck of the draw in the projects and systems you work on. Etc., etc.

• "[E]verything a computer can do comes down to" ... basic logic, specifically the 3 operations in Boolean algebra, which you can learn in 15 minutes. (See my own quick summary.) An electronic, digital computer is constructed from logic gates, which effectively take one or two input values and combine them using one or more of the 3 operations to produce an output value. Higher-level functional units can be composed from these simple logic gates; e.g., the arithmetic logic unit (ALU) of a computer processor.

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The most egregious error, to my mind, comes in Chapter 6:

The next milestone toward the development of the modern computer happened when English mathematician and philosopher George Boole proposed Boolean algebra in 1854. Based on work by Leibniz, Boolean algebra is a logic-based system in which there are only two numbers, 0 and 1. Calculations are achieved via two operators: AND or OR.

There are three operators — AND, OR, and NOT — and all three operators are required. That the author didn't catch this nor anybody reading the drafts is mind-boggling.

Technical mistakes such as the ones mentioned above and the general tenor of the book are off-putting. As an example of the latter, I'll take a look at Chapter 6.

As I said, Chapter 5 is good. Chapter 6 starts off with the story of a privacy-invading drone being shot out of the sky by a neighbor a bit of a distance away from the drone's home "airport". The following section goes into great detail listing everyone it seems who was within six degrees of Kevin Bacon with Marvin Minsky and who were therefore likely to have been infected by his "devil may care" attitude in the midst of his excitement over the new promises of computers and technology. Somehow — not even an indirect link was drawn — Minsky was responsible for the former CEO of Uber cultivating an atmosphere of lawlessness and sexual harassment in his company.

But, wait! Let's step back a little bit in time and take a look at the "slovenly" Alan Turing who was "unpleasant or unbearable", but whose "awfulness" was overlooked because of his genius. He must have been the cause of all the world's ills. The willingness to "pardon a whole host of antisocial behaviors" is especially rampant in "math, engineering, and computer science". I'm willing to bet that antisocial behaviors can be found in every other field and are just as prevalent. Uber-like behavior is unacceptable in any field. Regarding Turing, the author quotes Jack Copeland:

"[Turing] never seemed to quite fit in anywhere. He was bothered by his own social strangeness ..."

Rather than painting Turing as some kind of giant antisocial monster, perhaps some empathy is in order.

Despite my misgivings above, I was glad I read the book. The kind of sloppy knowledge of the technical side of computers is disappointing, but, when the author talks about her various data science projects, the book really shines.

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Also see Zimmer's science blog, Matter.

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Other titles: The Black Indies and The Underground City.

Project Gutenberg eBook: The Underground City; Or, The Black Indies

Standard Ebooks: The Child of the Cavern

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Project Gutenberg eBook: All Along the River

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April 26, 2023. This is one of the most valuable books I've ever read. As you can tell by the date, I'll probably never get around to writing a "proper" review — I usually save those for the books I don't like! However, I do recommend the book every so often in comments on blogs, so I saved a recent one just for this case and my apology in advance for the inartful way it is written:

For those interested in the complexities of climate change and global warming (and thus solutions), I highly recommend David Beerling's The Emerald Planet: How Plants Changed Earth's History, published in 2007 but still relevant. Despite the title, this book and the author's extended scientific team took/take a multi-disciplinary approach to studying the earth's history with respect to climate change (both warming and cooling) as well as the other planetary boundaries besides carbon dioxide (Wikipedia — carbon dioxide is not the only thing we have to worry about, not even in just the global warming realm). Using everything from paleontology to botany to geology to biology to microbiology to oceanography to chemistry to physics to astronomy and beyond, many fields are brought to bear in figuring out the history of the earth. It is a sobering but very interesting read for the layperson.

To be clear, the point of the comments I post referencing this book is to emphasize how complex even the known mechanisms of climate change are. Throw in the known and unknown complexities of the intertwining/interaction of the planetary boundaries and we're hosed. Which is not to say that we should just throw up our hands, but is to say that we can't keep kicking the can down the road with some vague faith in human ingenuity: the complexities pretty much guarantee that human ingenuity will be of little help when a critical and unknown point of no return is reached.

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Project Gutenberg eBook: Ormond; Or, The Secret Witness, Volume 1 (of 3), Volume 2, and Volume 3

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Project Gutenberg eBook: The Card, a Story of Adventure in the Five Towns (although I actually read the differently titled American edition, Denry the Audacious)

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FadedPage eBook: Shoal Water

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FadedPage eBook: Sea Fog

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I've grouped Thomas W. Speight's novels together to save having to repeat the biographical information over and over. I didn't read them all in one batch; instead, I read A Secret of the Sea first and then irregularly interleaved the remaining novels among the books by other authors that follow.

Speight was a prolific writer and these mystery stories (the ones available at Project Gutenberg) are somewhat formulaic. Most of the stories revolve around crimes relating to inheritance — usually some worthy soul in various circumstances deprived or not even knowing of their inheritance — but Speight mixed them up enough with different plot twists that I found the books exciting!

Word of the book: discuss. Speight had a very broad vocabulary and I encountered a good assortment of new words. But I was especially interested in his use of old words with new (actually old!) meanings. My favorite was discuss, which meant to consume a food or beverage with gusto! The word was also used in its usual sense of talking something over. In Under Lock and Key:

But there was one little task that [Captain Ducie] had set himself to do before going out for the evening, and he proceeded to consider it over while discussing his cup of strong green tea and his strip of dry toast.

For some biographical information about Thomas Wilkinson Speight, see:

• Thomas Wilkinson Speight (Dickens Journals Online) and
• Two Victorian British Authors (Tellers of Weird Tales, blog).

Project Gutenberg eBooks (with publication date):

• (1876) A Secret of the Sea, Volume 1 (of 3), Volume 2, and Volume 3
• (1874) In the Dead of Night, Volume 1 (of 3), Volume 2, and Volume 3
• (1869) Under Lock and Key, Volume 1 (of 3), Volume 2, and Volume 3
• (1880) The Mysteries of Heron Dyke, Volume 1 (of 3), Volume 2, and Volume 3
• (1893) The Loudwater Tragedy
• (1894) The Grey Monk
• (1896) A Minion of the Moon: A Romance of the King's Highway
• (1893) Burgo's Romance
• (1896) The Heart of a Mystery
• (1885) A Barren Title

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Also see the book's website: A Brief History of Everything Wireless.

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A good biography of Charles T. Murray can be found at pages 187-192 of The Descendants of Jonathan Murray of East Guilford, Connecticut (PDF), compiled and edited by William Breed Murray (born in 1874). Regarding this book, the biography has this to say:

When the show had opened in London our literary nomad started for Paris. He went straight to the heart of the Latin quarter and established himself in a small flat en garcon. From this point of view he wrote syndicate letters on Parisian life, mastered the language and gathered material afterward to appear in Mlle. Fouchette, Lippencott's. He joined the student mobs in the Zola-Dreyfus riots, danced at the Bal Burllien and took his beer with the grisettes in front of the cafes of Boulevard St Michel. Keeping away from places where English is spoken, doing his own marketing, shopping, and housekeeping, he rapidly absorbed real every-day humble French life with the language of the country. His estimate of French character as set forth in his novel Mlle. Fouchette is formed from personal contact, not from library information.

Also see Wikipedia's Dreyfus affair article. A long read, but interesting, and it will help you understand the chaotic picture of Paris painted in Murray's book.

Project Gutenberg eBook: Mlle. Fouchette: A Novel of French Life

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Project Gutenberg eBook: The Tenants of Malory, Volume 1 (of 3), Volume 2, and Volume 3

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Project Gutenberg eBook: The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton

William Dawson was Coningsby's father. The book begins with a long introduction, "The Evolution of the Short-Story", written by one or the other (or both?). The introduction looks interesting, but I haven't read it and probably won't! The short stories are ordered by the authors' birth years and range from a story by Daniel Defoe (1661-1731) to a story by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894). The random stories I've read so far seem to have elements of the supernatural and/or mystery in them, but I'm not sure if those are a theme for the selection of the stories. (Maybe I should read the introduction?!)

Project Gutenberg eBook: The Great English Short-Story Writers, Volume 1

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