The Half-life of Facts: Why Everything We Know Has an Expiration Date, by Samuel Arbesman
Two websites to take home : devnothink and mendeley
This book has some historian and sociology hues, but first and foremost it is very analytical. Simply so. The parts I particularly like are phase transition and the discussion of 'nice people do tend to win more Nobel".
The book is fairly interdisciplinary. Synthesis seems to be the trend now
Sunday, March 17, 2013
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
"The Lady in Gold: The Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt's Masterpiece, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer"
The Lady in Gold: The Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt's Masterpiece, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer
The first ~100 pages are classic. Then the rest goes down as the Second World War entered the book. Vienna around the turn of the century was historical. Mark Twain's activity during the period carried a perspective never seen before. Everybody else seemed a bit psycho or neurotic in certain ways.
I thought more lay-in of philosophy, therefore allowing the book to transcend the gold milieu of the chapters a bit, should make the book more lasting and intellectually adorable.
The first ~100 pages are classic. Then the rest goes down as the Second World War entered the book. Vienna around the turn of the century was historical. Mark Twain's activity during the period carried a perspective never seen before. Everybody else seemed a bit psycho or neurotic in certain ways.
I thought more lay-in of philosophy, therefore allowing the book to transcend the gold milieu of the chapters a bit, should make the book more lasting and intellectually adorable.
Sunday, February 17, 2013
"The Physics of Wall Street"
"The Physics of Wall Street: A Brief History of Predicting the Unpredictable", by James Owen Weatherall
The title says physics. The coverage is multidisciplinary. I don't recall seeing anybook that has managed, in lucid and coherent fashion as this book does, to elaborate through complex and intriguing history of prediction sciences.
The story of Mandelbrot picking rejected trash from his uncle and developed it into his own theories is the best. This is very informative how Zipf, Pareto and the prediction science are stringed together in this book. The best intellectual and information value, to me, lies in pages before page 75.
Pages after 75, though, overlap much with common knowledge. Lack of computation converage is understandable given the writer's lineage in philosophy. The book does not smell much of arrogance, as some claim it does. If somebody has reached certain height, it is not avoidable part of what he sets sights on is under him, not above. If that sounds disrespectful to you, then raise youself or just be it.
The title says physics. The coverage is multidisciplinary. I don't recall seeing anybook that has managed, in lucid and coherent fashion as this book does, to elaborate through complex and intriguing history of prediction sciences.
The story of Mandelbrot picking rejected trash from his uncle and developed it into his own theories is the best. This is very informative how Zipf, Pareto and the prediction science are stringed together in this book. The best intellectual and information value, to me, lies in pages before page 75.
Pages after 75, though, overlap much with common knowledge. Lack of computation converage is understandable given the writer's lineage in philosophy. The book does not smell much of arrogance, as some claim it does. If somebody has reached certain height, it is not avoidable part of what he sets sights on is under him, not above. If that sounds disrespectful to you, then raise youself or just be it.
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Getting Started
I once had a list of >200 books listed at my linkedin.com profile. But linkedin decided to kill everybody's book list. I had 21 followers then. After the removal, I received emails from about 50 people saying they actually had been watching my list as well. So with 70 + fans I thought perhaps restarting the reading list and short-blogging a bit makes sense.
Why the name? My Chinese name is the same as one of Qin Dynasty emperor's name. My best friends have been calling me that for over 3 decades. So here it goes.
Why the name? My Chinese name is the same as one of Qin Dynasty emperor's name. My best friends have been calling me that for over 3 decades. So here it goes.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)