Category: Book Review
Bill Gates offers direction, not solutions
Bill Gates has solved many problems in his (professional) life, and in recent decades, he’s been dedicated to the plight of the world’s poor and particularly their health. Through his foundation work and charitable giving, he’s roamed the world solving problems from malaria and neglected tropical diseases to maternal health,…
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Can the world really just fall apart?
Books on climate change, as diverse as the library is, tend to fall into a couple of categories. There are the field guides and observational accounts that chronicle the destruction of our world and make it legible for readers worldwide. There are the policy and tech analyses that splay out…
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Now that summer is forever, here are 6 books on climate change to sharpen your intuitions and models
The climate is finally hitting a climax. Decades of discussions and reports by scientists have yielded pathbreaking works by writers like Elizabeth Kolbert, and today, climate fiction and non-fiction are even becoming global bestselling works. Everyone wants to read about collapse, dystopia, the aftermath — it’s in the very air…
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Can speculative fiction teach us anything in a world this crazy?
There’s an old saw from Mark Twain about how truth is stranger than fiction, and I think it’s fair to say we’ve lived through a very strange reality this past year. With all the chaos and change, we’re led to a foundational question: what’s the purpose of speculative fiction and…
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If we could see alternate realities, would we want to take a look?
Well, here we are. After many weeks (and a somewhat inconsistent publishing schedule), we have arrived at the final story of Ted Chiang’s Exhalation collection, number nine of nine. It has been a fun journey reading each of these speculative science fiction stories, and I do think they have much…
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What is the purpose of belief in a world of innovation?
We are reading the penultimate short story in Ted Chiang’s collection Exhalation. Omphalos questions what it means to believe: in our world, in alternative worlds, and in ourselves. Given that beliefs are crucial to everything we do in innovation and science, I thought the theme deeply dovetailed with a lot…
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