By Dan Falk/Undark

If you’ve been reading popular physics books for a while, then you know the name Brian Greene. The Columbia University professor is known for a series of popular science books, beginning with 1999’s The Elegant Universe, that have brought string theory, the nature of space and time, and the question of parallel universes to a wide audience. With his new book, he casts a much wider net, seemingly positioning himself in the territory claimed by the likes of Steven Pinker and Yuval Noah Harari.
With Until the End of Time, Greene is asking Pinker and Harari to hold his beer. The book covers a stunning array of human thought: There’s still plenty of physics, but we find that Greene also has a great deal to say about evolution; the origins of human culture; the dawn of art and music and storytelling and religion; the puzzle of consciousness; the paradox of free will. It’s an ambitious undertaking, to say the least.

Read More

Posted on April 18, 2020

By Cory Doctorow/Boing Boing

Wendy Liu grew up deeply enmeshed in technology, writing code for free/open source projects and devouring books by tech luminaries extolling the virtues of running tech startups; after turning down a job offer from Google, Liu helped found an ad-tech company and moved from Montreal to New York City to take her startup to an incubator.
As she worked herself into exhaustion to build her product, she had a conversion experience, realizing that she was devoting her life to using tech to extract wealth and agency from others, rather than empowering them. This kicked off a journey that Liu documents in her new book, Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology from Capitalism, a memoir manifesto that’s not just charming – it’s inspiring.

Read More

Posted on April 15, 2020

By Kelsey D. Atherton via New America

Where is the president in Blade Runner?
Beneath the 1982 neo-noir’s trappings of genetically engineered human automatons is a story about corporate power over and indifference to life, and alienation in the face of wealthy apathy to the plight of workers.
Replace the Tyrell Corporation with Amazon and reframe the replicants as “essential service employees,” and suddenly you have a world of workers terrified that their jobs are inherently a death sentence – moving straight from fiction to reality.

Read More

Posted on April 10, 2020

By History in Five

“Bart Ehrman unveils the history of the afterlife, and what most people don’t realize about where our beliefs about eternal torment and reward originated.”

Read More

Posted on April 7, 2020

‘A Real Page-Burner‘

“Most people sit down to write the best book ever written. Tillock has somehow managed to write the worst.”

Read More

Posted on April 6, 2020

By Michael Schulson/Undark

Each year, governments around the world pour vast sums of public money into scientific research – as much as $156 billion in the United States alone. Scientists then use that funding to further human understanding of the world, and occasionally to make compelling discoveries about everything from whale brains to dwarf stars to the genetic underpinnings of deadly cancers.
But often, this research – despite being subsidized with taxpayer money – ends up being published in exclusive journals that sit behind steep paywalls with three- and four-figure subscription fees, accessible to only a tiny fraction of the public.
The power of these scientific publishers – with names even lay readers might recognize: Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis, Elsevier, among a handful of others – is substantial. According to one estimate, just four corporations now publish close to 50 percent of scientific papers. Together, they control the copyright to much of the world’s scientific literature, charging billions of dollars each year for access to that body of knowledge – and securing hefty profits in the process.

Read More

Posted on April 4, 2020

Uh-oh | Reality check: Several claims from former Chief David Brown’s new book don’t pass muster https://t.co/c4XVL3iXdC

— Beachwood Reporter (@BeachwoodReport) April 3, 2020

spielman, trib deep dive … nah
NYT: Brown retired in 2016, after he noticed an uptick in the crime rate, which he attributes to budget cuts that led to staffing shortages.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/26/books/review/called-to-rise-david-brown-policing-the-black-man-paul-butler.html
Although Brown offers us one of the most impressive models for community policing, his view begins to look idealized in light of the racist practices described by Paul Butler in “Chokehold.”
–
Brown says he didn’t always trust the police, having developed a worldview from his parents and grandparents, who grew up in the Jim Crow South, “that the police are not your friend.”
Called to Rise charts how, over his thirty-three-year career, Chief David O. Brown evolved from a “throw ’em in jail and let God sort ’em out” beat cop into a passionate advocate for community-oriented law enforcement, rising from crime scene investigator to S.W.A.T. team leader to the head of a municipal police department widely regarded as one of America’s finest. Now retired, “America’s chief” wants to bring his hard-earned knowledge of Dallas-emphasizing outreach, accountability, and inclusion-to help encourage unity in the nation’s hurting communities. https://www.christianbook.com/called-faithful-service-community-that-made/david-brown/9781524796549/pd/796550#CBD-PD-Description
–
https://theundefeated.com/features/ex-police-chief-dave-brown-recalls-shootings-of-dallas-police-officers-following-black-live-matters-event-in-his-new-book-called-to-rise/
“It’s only controversial to people that weren’t getting shot at,” Brown said. “It’s not controversial to the people who lost their husband, lost their son or lost their father. It’s not controversial to those folks.
“But I understand people obviously concerned with weaponizing an armed robot, because it had never been done in American policing history. But this person was negotiated with for over 3 1/2 hours before we came to that conclusion, and during the negotiations he expressed that he wanted to kill more officers and expressed throughout negotiations that he was really excited about having already killed officers.”
Besides the five police officers killed, nine more were wounded, and two civilians were also injured.
dwain price

Posted on April 3, 2020

By Bart Beaty/The Conversation

Last week, the producers behind a number of comic book-derived movies and TV shows announced delays for their franchises: release dates for Wonder Woman and Black Widow were postponed, while The Walking Dead announced that COVID-19 had made it impossible for the show to complete work on the current season and that the finale was being delayed.
But what of the comic books that spawned these blockbuster franchises?

Read More

Posted on March 31, 2020

By SIU Press

“Illinois boasts one of the most visible concentrations of Poles in the United States,” SIU Press notes. “Chicago is home to one of the largest Polish ethnic communities outside Poland itself.
“Yet no one has told the full story of our state’s large and varied Polish community – until now. Poles in Illinois is the first comprehensive history to trace the abundance and diversity of this ethnic group throughout the state from the 1800s to the present.”

Read More

Posted on March 21, 2020

By Jane Roberts/Undark

As panicked consumers buy up hand sanitizer, masks and other supplies in the hopes of staving off the new, fast-spreading coronavirus, a shadowy array of grifters and opportunists are flocking to Amazon.com and other online booksellers to capitalize on public fear, producing a steady stream of books and manuals that claim to hold the secret to surviving the outbreak.
Since late January, hundreds of titles related to COVID-19 – as the disease caused by the virus is known – have come up for sale online, many of which appear to be written under false or misleading names. One series of books, which includes Coronavirus 101: Everything You Should Know to Avoid Illness and Protect Yourself from the Wuhan 2020 Outbreak and Coronavirus and Face Masks: The Truth, claim to be co-authored by a Dr. Zoe Gottlieb.

Read More

Posted on March 6, 2020