Cal continues to dive into the deep end of fixing how we approach career, education, and leisure. In this one, he spends 3 chapters detailing what email has done to the typical workflow in many knowledge work fields, then 4 chapters offering up basic principles to offset a lot of the nonsense. I've already bought copies of this for our dean, associate dean, IT manager, and section manager. The Attention Capital Principle: The productivity of the knowledge sector can be significantly increased if we identify workflows that better optimize the human brain's ability to sustainably add value to information. The Process Principle: Introducing smart production processes to knowledge work can dramatically increase performance and make the work much less draining. The Protocol Principle: Designing rules that optimize when and how coordination occurs in the workplace is a pain in the short term but can result in significantly more productive operation in the long term. The Specialization Principle: In the knowledge sector, working on fewer things, but doing each thing with more quality and accountability, can be the foundation for significantly more productivity.
Terminal Boredom: Stories ~ Izumi Suzuki A really great collection of dark, sci-fi short stories published for the first time in English 35 years after the author's death. Despite being written in the '80s, these don't feel at all dated.
About 400 pages in My grandmother in law was born and raised on Lanai (her parents were born in the Phillippines), sadly she passed a few years ago and my father in law is planning on taking us all to Hawaii once travel is ok. If you looked at my wife and I told you she was a quarter Filipino you'd call me a liar.
Awesome, I've been to Lanai dozens of times (mostly by boat). I lived on Molokai for almost 6 years and that little trip across the channel was one of my favorites. And yes, the Filipino culture is strong on the outer islands.
I really hope we get to go! While it is never good when someone passes, she was not the nicest person. Pretty much torched her relationships with her 5 children, but my FIL stepped up and took care of her when his Dad passed in the 90s. I never really got a chance to chat with her about much, she had already started a slow descent into Alzheimer's when I met her. She kinda torched her relationships with all of her grandchildren except two (she was big into doting on her "favorites" and screwing everyone else). I would've loved to just chat with her about her life. My wife's Aunt shares a story every Dec 7th about her Mom in school as a child the day after Pearl Harbor and how the Japanese/Asian descent kids huddled on one side and the Mainlanders huddled on the other side until one of the Mainlanders went to the other side because her best friend was over there and all was normal.
Read A Man In Full by Tom Wolfe. Bonfire of the Vanities was better. Just started reading The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon. One of his early novels.
The partner book to the earlier one I listed, this walks through 4-8 week weight loss before entering full training cycles for cycling, running, and triathlon. Easy calculations for estimated target weight, current body fat %, and target caloric deficit to get the ball rolling. It's a really simple system with no real food restrictions. I'll be doing this in June/July before getting back to the half marathon distance this fall.
This book was compared to "Gone Girl". I saw the "Gone Girl" movie, but I did not want to read the book after I already know the ending. So I read this book. I enjoyed most of the book, while reading it but I looked back at the story, some of the characters don't make sense.
Six Armies in Normandy: From D-Day to the Liberation of Paris, which is a pretty good description as well,as a title, by English military historian John Keegan, who revolutionized the discipline by focusing on the actual soldiers as human beings in extreme circumstances rather than as pawns of generals.
The Hardest Place: The American Military Adrift in Afghanistan's Pech Valley, a book which is pretty difficult to read on any number of levels, but especially after reading Keegan on the Normandy invasion.... I mean, A LOT went wrong on June 6th, 1944, and afterwards, but at least there was an objective and it was achieved... but this shit in Afghanistan as chronicled by Wesley Morgan . . . it's been going on for almost 20 years, and the consequences thereof will be with us into the foreseeable future. And this book covers just one region with a couple of outposts. . . so it's only a partial view (though seriously in-depth) of what can only be described as a cluster******** of epic proportions.
Once you get past the dismissiveness of people liking their careers and wanting to keep working at them, and the arrogance and selfishness that the author exudes in how he presents the content, it's actually a good read. His recommended tools, approach to budgeting, and understanding of retirement accounts is a bit antiquated, but everything about real estate investing and cash on hand savings is excellent. I knew a pretty big chunk of it, but it was nice to see some of the principles fleshed out and in 2-3 years when the car is paid off and I've got enough for the first down payment on a rental property, I'll start running these principles with the goal of 1 new property every few years and probably holding 5-6 at a time.
Just read De Administrando Imperio by Constantine VII Porphyrogenius. Good work on the 10th century by a Byzantine Emperor. Also reading The Old Gringo by Carlos Fuentes.
The Fall of America Journals: 1965-1971 an account of the life and times of the American counter culture from the inside, with many first drafts of many poems by Allen Ginsberg. Interesting, but it doesn't really change my impression that he was a much better poet before he seemed to be trying really hard to be a prophet. These are Ginsberg's journals, not the book of poems called The Fall of America. And I wish the University of Minnesota Press could figure out how to publish these books for less than $40.
Atom Bombs: The Top Secret Inside Story of Little Boy and Fat Man - John Coster-Mullen There are better books about the Manhattan Project (e.g., Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb). But this one has the (sometimes overwhelming) technical details of how the bombs were built and how they worked. "I was very much impressed." -- Paul W. Tibbets, Brig. General, USAF, Retired "What you have now written is the best, I am sure, of any discussion on the subject I have seen." -- Frederick L. Ashworth, Vice Admiral, USN, Retired
Saul Bellow -- Mr. Sammler's Planet Can't believe I haven't read any Bellow since 2015 given how much I enjoyed the 5 short, late novels in a different LOA volume I read in '14-'15. I'm quite enjoying this one, too.
I am super excited to have an appointment to browse at the local public library on Monday afternoon. I've appreciated the opportunity to still borrow over the lockdown, but browsing the catalog is not the same as browsing the shelves. I get half an hour to peruse. Can't wait!
Vanished Cities: London's Lost Neighbourhoods, which has a few neighborhoods I've come across in readings or movie-viewings, like Limehouse, St. Pancras, or White City, (Thank you, writers like Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde, Sax Rohmer, etc.) and some that were new to me (Cripplegate), many of which were done in, obviously, by Nazi bombing campaigns, by Tom Bolton, who, should I ever visit London, I'll seek out for one of his epic walking tours.
Finished Hawaii, loved it. And I should an edit to my post, my wife's grandmother was born in the Philippines, then moved to Lanai when she was 6 (thought she was born in Hawaii). Lived on Lanai, Molokai, and Oahu before heading to medical school in Chicago. Now onto Abaddon's Gate, book 3 of The Expanse!