Review - The Drafting Table

Mini-Reviews 2023

This post is to provide some notes from books I read (and a couple of movies that I watched) that aren't going to feature in dedicated posts. See here and here for similar posts from prior years. In 2023, I had set a goal to read five books

Review

Mini-Reviews 2022

Last year is well in the rearview mirror by now, but I wanted to compile some of my notes from books I read (and a movie) in 2022 while they're still somewhat in my mind. I did a similar post last year and thought it worked pretty well.

World Issues

Prospects for a Multi-Polar World

Contrasting and synthesizing the perspectives of Balaji Srinivasan and Peter Zeihan. Skim down to the section on "Contrasting Geopolitical Outlooks" if you want to get to the main part of this post more quickly. Introduction The present moment certainly feels like we can't take anything for

Book

Seven Games in Silica

The topic of AI/ML (machine learning) is getting a lot of buzz right now. That makes this book review pretty timely. I. Seven Games: A Human History by Oliver Roeder is a book that came out this year. It is about board and card games, the seven alluded to

Water

Two Rivers in Asia

Travel, geopolitics, and water—this post is a review of two books that sit at the convergence of several of my interests. It can also be seen as the inland accompaniment to this post [https://danbscott.ghost.io/monsoon-prospect/] covering coastal areas in the same general region. The River at

Review

Mini-Reviews 2021

Last year [https://danbscott.ghost.io/2021-year-in-review/] was a busy year on the personal front (due to a growing family) so I didn't have as much time to write reviews of things I read compared to previous years. Still, I wanted to have some highlights and notes to

History

The Left Bank of the Rhine

This post contains a review of Lotharingia: A Personal History of Europe's Lost Country by Simon Winder, along with a bit of programming practice I did recently. Lotharingia is a history/travel book about the swath of Europe where French and Germanic cultural regions come into contact—and

Book

Monsoon Prospect

Here's the promised forward-looking Part 2 to the historical book reviews from Part 1 [https://danbscott.ghost.io/monsoon-legacy/]. In the previous part of this series, I wrote about some of the history of the Indian Ocean. In this part, I'll be looking at the geopolitical

History

Monsoon Legacy

This post is the first part of a two-part series I have planned. It is about the history of trade on the western Indian Ocean and is based on reviews of a couple of books I read this year. Part two [https://danbscott.ghost.io/monsoon-prospect/] will look forward at

environment

Harvesting Algae and Other Parts of the Biosphere

This post is a rambling review of a couple of books and a technical paper that are all around a common theme of obtaining renewable resources from photosynthesis. The books I'll be covering in this post are Harvesting the Biosphere by Vaclav Smil [http://vaclavsmil.com/2012/12/

Book

10 Books Before '20

At the start of September, a friend on Facebook issued a challenge to read 10 books before the end of the year. I decided to share the brief reviews I wrote here. The rules allowed for books you were in the middle of when the challenge was issued, so the

Book

Polynesian Pacific

Sorry about having such a long gap between posting. I've been on a couple of business trips, and when I've been home my social calendar and the hot weather haven't left many good opportunities to sit down at my computer and write. Sea People:

Book

Centuries of Rice and Salt

I usually only write reviews of non-fiction books that I read but a novel I read recently was different enough from typical fiction that I thought I'd make an exception. The Years of Rice and Salt, by Kim Stanley Robinson, is an alternate history novel. It starts with

Movies & TV

Recently Watched: 3 Foreign-Language Films

This post is just a few quick reviews of some movies I've watched recently. Incendies is a French-Canadian movie from 2010 [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1255953/?ref_=nm_knf_t3]. It was nominated for an Oscar for best foreign-language film. It is directed by Denis Villeneuve [https:

Book

Sand and Soil

This post contains reviews of a couple of books I've read recently. They relate to a similar theme as the previous post [https://danbscott.ghost.io/images-of-the-anthropocene/]—how people are reshaping the earth. About the Books Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations [https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520272903/dirt]

Art

Images of the Anthropocene

When I went to the AGO back in the fall [https://danbscott.ghost.io/aga-and-ago/] I mentioned that there was an upcoming exhibit I wanted to see called "Anthropocene". I didn't make it back to the gallery while it was on, so I watched the accompanying

Book

The Basics of Complexity

This fall I read a couple of books about complexity: A Crude Look at the Whole by John H. Miller [https://www.santafe.edu/people/profile/john-h-miller] and Complexity: A Guided Tour by Melanie Mitchell [https://www.santafe.edu/people/profile/melanie-mitchell]. For my final post of the year (except

Book

Facts, Forecasts, & Figures

If you're looking for a break from the doom-and-gloom in the news, this post is for you (I'll also suggest this one [https://danbscott.ghost.io/rational-optimism-about-the-environment/] from last year). Below, I share reviews of two books—so it won't be a short read

Travel

fietspaden en droge voeten

This is my final post based off of my trip to the Netherlands. It focuses on reviewing a book about land reclamation and flood control infrastructure in the Netherlands and sharing a couple of bike trips I took out into the countryside around Amsterdam [https://danbscott.ghost.io/noord-holland/] and

Book

Pirates and Vikings

This post contains 2.1 book reviews. The two books are The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates by Peter T. Leeson and The Sea Wolves: A History of the Vikings by Lars Brownworth. The extra 10 percent is two chapters from David Friedman's book Legal Systems

History

Steppe Cycle

This post is a review of Water on Sand: Environmental Histories of the Middle East and North Africa. The chapters have different authors and mostly stand on their own; the editor of the whole volume is Alan Mikhail [https://global.oup.com/academic/product/water-on-sand-9780199768660?cc=ca&lang=en&

Math

Circles and Triangles

This post is about a book on geometry that I read last year (finishing up over the holidays). Beautiful Geometry [https://press.princeton.edu/titles/10065.html] was written by Eli Maor and Eugen Jost. Each of its 51 chapters explains a topic in geometry and presents an artistic plate

Movies & TV

Documentary Notes

Over the holidays I watched some documentaries on Netflix. I thought I'd share some of the things I found interesting for my first post of 2018. To start with, here are a couple of great clips from some BBC nature documentaries: Human Planet showed a traditional narwhal hunt

Book

There Really Is a Tree

This is my final post for the year (not counting a year in review summary planned for a week from now) and it is a book review I've been saving for Christmas. The book is Every Good Endeavor: Connecting your work to God's work by Tim

Book

Salt makes you Thirst

This post contains reviews of a couple of history books that I read this fall: Salt and Thirst. The former is about salt as an ingredient, preservative, and commodity; the latter is about approaches to water management in various ancient societies. Salt Salt: A World History [https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/