Books of the Month! I am SO excited about these […]

Books of the Month! I am SO excited about these arrivals; gotta decide how to prioritize them. 📚

I just finished Swift’s 𝘈𝘪𝘳𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘞𝘪𝘭𝘥𝘴 (2021), the new release on the development of the Lunar Rover,:“the crowning accomplishment of America’s manned space program.” And that segues to the pre-release of Chris Hadfield’s 𝘈𝘱𝘰𝘭𝘭𝘰 𝘔𝘶𝘳𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘴 (Oct 2021), woven with his first-hand perspective and polymathic heroics. I have already read about a number of my work artifacts in the opening pages, from the F-4 Phantom ejection seat to LLTV thruster, and spy periscope from the Soviet Almaz, their military space station.

I am looking forward to Hager’s 𝘈𝘭𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘮𝘺 𝘰𝘧 𝘈𝘪𝘳 (2008), the story of “the most important discovery ever made. See if you can think of another that ranks with it in terms of life-and-death importance for the largest number of people. Put simply, this discovery is keeping alive half the people on earth.” We need fixed nitrogen, available to our organic chemistries. It is the limiting factor for the growth of all food. While nitrogen gas is about 80% of our atmosphere, not one atom of it is available for our use when tightly bound by the triple bond of N2 gas. It is sequestered all around us. In nature, N2 is liberated to atomic nitrogen in small amounts by lightning strikes and nitrogen-fixing bacteria. Hager argues that if we reverted to relying on just those natural sources, billions of people would die of starvation in short order. He tells the story of the Haber-Bosch process to catalyze the production of ammonia (NH3) from N2 and H2 gas. It is the stuff we’re made of. From CO2, O2, H2 and N2 — “you could say we are air made solid.”

I have been a closet fan of Cal Tech’s Carver Mead and his seminal book on 𝘈𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘰𝘨 𝘝𝘓𝘚𝘐 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘕𝘦𝘶𝘳𝘢𝘭 𝘚𝘺𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘮𝘴 (1989). The circuit diagrams remind me of my VLSI texts from the mid 80’s. But Mead was a fan of analog computing, a closer mimic of the brain and the deep learning AI of today. So, I am curious to see how much of this he foretold. I started a PhD in neural nets in 1989, but left in 1990, so this would have been essential reading. He opens with “the viewpoint described in this book is the result of my conviction that the nervous system of even a very simple animal contains computing paradigms that are orders of magnitude more effective than are those found in systems made by humans. After many years of study, I have become confident that the powerful organizing principles found in the nervous system can be realized in our most commonly available technology — silicon integrated circuits. It is clear to me that we will develop silicon neural systems, and that learning how to design them is one of the great intellectual quests of all time. We are witnessing the birth of a new discipline.” Indeed! “We are not limited by the constraints in our fabrication technology; we are limited by the paucity of our understanding. The efficient mapping of a system onto its implementation medium is the essence of the design problem.” Ah yes, the medium is the message. This approach is experiencing a revival in the latest analog ML chips from Mythic and the future roadmap from IBM: https://flic.kr/p/RUnRZ7.

And for fun, Andy Weir’s latest astro-abandonment adventure, 𝘏𝘢𝘪𝘭 𝘔𝘢𝘳𝘺 (2021). I did an interview with him about 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘔𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘪𝘢𝘯 and handed him his first touch of Martian rock: https://flic.kr/p/pMJeth

And the D&D Foil Covers Edition (2018)… because Dungeon Master nostalgia!
From when I was 14: https://flic.kr/p/2mhRM2T