[ad_1] The phrase orbital mechanics—like nuclear particle physics or the theory of relativity—is something that makes many people’s eyes glaze over. The average person thinks that subjects like these are far too complex to understand. But if you strip away all the math and simply try to understand what is going on, they are actually […]
Category: hittingthebooks
Hitting the Books: What astronauts can learn from nuclear submariners
[ad_1] As hostile an environment as Antarctica is, the icy continent still has one thing that the Moon and Mars doesn’t, and that’s air. When we go into space, we need to bring along air, or otherwise make it—not only for breathing but also for pressurizing the space suits. That’s the added challenge of living […]
Hitting the Books: The media’s role in history’s most damaging data dump
[ad_1] Farrar, Straus and Giroux Excerpted from Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare by Thomas Rid Reprinted with permission from Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Copyright 2020. “What would active measures be without the journalist?” asked Rolf Wagenbreth in 1986. Three years later, the Berlin Wall came down. The Russian intelligence community […]
Hitting the Books: Can golf evolve and survive in the 21st century
[ad_1] Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster From GOLF’S HOLY WAR by Brett Cyrgalis. Reprinted by permission of Avid Reader Press, an Imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc. In the early 2000s, when Phillips was a renowned teacher working at a club in Maryland, he had a talented teenage student named Peter Uihlein. Peter […]
Hitting the Books: A fully-connected future means you’ll never be alone
[ad_1] Polity Press Extract taken from A History of Solitude by David Vincent, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2020 Growth has reset the polarities of solitude. At the beginning of this study, the meaning of the condition was seen in relation to its antithesis. Its salience at the end of the eighteenth century reflected the anxieties generated […]
Hitting the books: The ancient technology behind astronaut ice cream
[ad_1] Penguin Randomhouse From INGREDIENTS by George Zaidan, published by Dutton, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2020 by George Zaidan Eating clay (or other minerals) to detoxify potentially dangerous food is arguably the very first thing we did as a species that could be considered […]
Hitting the Books: The Englishman who figured out flight
[ad_1] Penguin Randomhouse From the book EMPIRES OF THE SKY: Zeppelins, Airplanes, and Two Men’s Epic Duel to Rule the World by Alexander Rose. Copyright © 2020 by Alexander Rose. Published by Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. By 1800, there was just one man left who […]
Hitting the Books: Do we really want our robots to have consciousness?
[ad_1] MIT Press Excerpted from How to Grow a Robot: Developing Human-Friendly, Social AI by Mark H. Lee © 2020 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Although I argue for self-awareness, I do not believe that we need to worry about consciousness. There seems to be an obsession with robot consciousness in the media, but why start […]
Hitting the Books: How to be active on social media and still keep your job
[ad_1] MIT Press Excerpted from Keep Calm and Log On: Your Handbook for Surviving the Digital Revolution by Gillian “Gus” Andrews. Reprinted with Permission from The MIT PRESS. Copyright 2020. Who’s in the Audience? Would Your Followers Get Mad? Broadcasting makes a lot of changes to how we communicate, especially when we’re suddenly speaking to […]
Hitting the Books: Without glass, we’d have never discovered the electron
[ad_1] MIT Press Excerpted from The Alchemy of Us – How Humans and Matter Transformed One Another by Ainissa Ramirez. Reprinted with permission from The MIT PRESS. Copyright 2020. Long before the Great War, in 1895, science and magic were hard to separate. That year, Wilhelm Roentgen took a ghostly picture of his wife’s hand using mysterious […]