Books

The Martian

Author: Andy Weir
Rating: ★★★★☆

Mark Watney is left on Mars by himself due to a dust storm. For the next 550 sols, he has to find ways to survive, solving problems, beating the odds, being healthy and positive. Luckily, Watney is a resourceful and creative man, and he has whole world at his back.

Mark Watney is a Crusoe of the future, and the book is a science fiction of the future too. Lavish in meticulous technical details without losing the pace of story narrative, even for me, as a mostly non-fiction reader, find the book intriguing and inspiring.

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June 1, 2014
Books

The Last Place on Earth

Author: Roland Huntford
Rating: ★★★★½

I saw this book in the library on our cruise ship to Antarctica. I bought the book after we came back from the trip and have been reading it on and off for the next one and half years.

Although Amundsen was the first to reach the south pole, his seemingly uneventful journey was less talked about and largely forgotten by the public; instead, the one who lost the race, Scott, earned more long lasting status. On one hand, Scott was a British, England has much stronger culture influence than Norway, where Amundsen came from. On the other hand, it seems it’s a typical phenomena that the only way to beat a winner is being a tragic hero. (The author implies that this was indeed what Scott intended to do.)

Mr. Huntford is set to correct this thought in most people’s mind by telling what really happened in the heroic age of Antarctic exploration and who these two persons truly are. Amundsen was an open-minded, passionate and prudent leader, his trip was well prepared in every detail; on the contrary, Scott was depicted as an insecure, inapproachable and unprepared person who ultimately unqualified to carry out the task.

I can’t say if the author’s view is too much biased, but the fact is, it’s not just one but a series of failures in Scott’s plan that not only lead to loss of the race but also costed lives of his whole team. It’s more than just weather and unluckiness should be blamed.

Amundsen’s own words best summarize his success.

I may say that this is the greatest factor—the way in which the expedition is equipped—the way in which every difficulty is foreseen, and precautions taken for meeting or avoiding it. Victory awaits him who has everything in order — luck, people call it. Defeat is certain for him who has neglected to take the necessary precautions in time; this is called bad luck.
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June 2, 2013
Books

More Sex Is Safer Sex

Author: Steven E. Landsburg
Rating: ★★★★½

Landsburg sets out to challenge reader’s views on many “common senses” through economical cost-benefit analysis. Many of topics touch hot-buttons of social, environment and economic issues, and the solution are often counterintuitive. Some of the ideas seem crazy, but the reader should keep in mind that the purpose of the book is not to offer real-world resolutions. If that’s the case, many ideas are indeed either naïve or absurd. The book should be considered as an exercise of brain or training of logics. Once you accept that, you will find the reasonings are mind-bending and thought-provoking.

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March 21, 2011
Books

Crash Course

Author: Paul Ingrassia
Rating: ★★★★☆

Paul Ingrassia has been covering American Automobile industry for more than 20 years. He and his colleague won Pulitzer Prize for their coverage on GM’s management turmoil in 1993. The book starts from the beginning of the 20th century, the excitement of the new era, the pioneering entrepreneurs whose names have became legend and popular brands today. Then the book briefly covers the unbelievable growth of the industry from earlier years to 60’s, GM, Ford and Chrysler are the high-tech companies of their days. They shaped the America in many aspects and brought countless innovations in terms of technology, design and business. With the importing cars from German and Japan, the Big Three have observed more challenging competitions, but more importantly different business and management cultures.

With all the up and downs in the past 100 years, the book spends almost half of its length to focus on the recent 10 years, blow-by-blow mis-steps and scene-by-scene story of the disappearance of Chrysler, bankruptcy of GM and survival of Ford. Besides a serial of mis-judgement and lack of focus, the author blames the relationship between management and Union as the main reason that leads to the crash – the Union has the monopoly power to negotiate sometimes ridiculous benefits undermined the bottom line of the company and force the management to move the job abroad.

Overall, it is very thorough book about the history of American auto industry. But one thing I don’t like very much is, although in retrospect many events in history do seem to be ironical, author’s foretelling style when describing these events is overly heave handed.

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October 3, 2010
Books

Supersense

Author: Bruce M. Hood
Rating: ★★★★☆

Supernatural beliefs are often associated with religions or superstitious. Does it mean that an atheist or a scientifically-trained highly-rational person is immune from super natural thinking?

We try to avoid touching things that criminals have touched or living in the room that people have died, but eager to shake hands with celebrities. We invite FengShui master exam the house before buying in. We enjoy ghost stories and often get frightened by them. We believe certain naturally-produced weird-looking food has healing power although there is not scientific proof of it. We treasure family album and it is the first thing that most people would save if their house got on fire. Every culture has certain colors, numbers and activities that are considered fortunate or unfortunate. In fact, it is often easier to accept the supernatural beliefs than to reject them.

You may shrug them off by thinking that we only do these things to comply with social norms. However, precisely the reason that they become social norms, instead of just individual beliefs, is worth more studies. The studies are often conducted on children, from new-born baby to teenagers, because they have relatively short time to be influenced by the cultures they lived in. It turns out that the supernatural beliefs can often be rooted to our human nature of recognizing the world around us. We have a tendency to look for human’s image from the cloud, the smoke and the foliage of the forest. This is not surprising because the studies show that babies are very sensitive to human faces. We also tend to classify objects and try to group them into some familiar things. This is an important way to expand our knowledge into unknown world. The same behavior can also be seen in children in early ages. In fact, if something is too different and cannot be organized, we often ignore them or even disgust them.

Throughout the book, the author shows us supernatural beliefs are unavoidable no matter how rational or educated we become; at the end, the author tries to conclude that they are maybe a good thing. We learnt them through millions years of evolution and they are programmed in our brain. They are the surviving skills to bring us here and they will continue evolving with us.

This is a fun book to read with good balance of intriguing anecdotes and scientific evidence. I can see myself through the book as I share many supernatural thoughts that I wasn’t aware of, and I find satisfactory explanation that make me “Eureka!”. It is the beauty of science.

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September 24, 2009