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
Book Monsoon Prospect Here's the promised forward-looking Part 2 to the historical book reviews from Part 1. 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 outlook of the
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 will look forward
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 and
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
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
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. It was nominated for an Oscar for best foreign-language film. It is directed by Denis Villeneuve (who's done a few other movies I
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—how people are reshaping the earth. About the Books Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations by Dr. David R. Montgomery is about the
Art Images of the Anthropocene When I went to the AGO back in the fall 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 film
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 and Complexity: A Guided Tour by Melanie Mitchell. For my final post of the year (except for an upcoming year in review post), I've
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 from last year). Below, I share reviews of two books—so it won't be a short read and I'd recommend grabbing a
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
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
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. One of the things I've read
Math Circles and Triangles This post is about a book on geometry that I read last year (finishing up over the holidays). Beautiful Geometry was written by Eli Maor and Eugen Jost. Each of its 51 chapters explains a topic in geometry and presents an artistic plate illustrating
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
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
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
Board Games Storytelling Outside the Box This post comprises a board game review and an interactive map I made, joined by the common theme of non-traditional storytelling. Rogues to Riches is a story-telling board game, created by Sam Fraser in Halifax. I backed it on Kickstarter a few years ago,
Book Putting Civilization in the Sea This post is a book review. The title is an allusion to another one I wrote earlier this year. Seasteading: How Floating Nations Will Restore the Environment, Enrich the Poor, Cure the Sick, and Liberate Humanity from Politicians was written by Joe Quirk with
Book Quantified Conservation This post is a review of the book Quantified: Redefining Conservation for the Next Economy, by Joe Whitworth. At the start of this year, I included a TEDx talk he did in a post I wrote and mentioned that this book was on my
Review Orbiting Kerbin A coworker recently recommended the game Kerbal Space Program (KSP) to me. I've been enjoying it. I don’t spend a lot of time gaming, but from time to time I like to get into one. I especially like open-ended games (where you choose
History Putting the "Sea" in Civilization This post is about a book I finished reading recently. Compared to many of the book reviews I've written, this one took longer to read but the review is maybe a bit shorter. The Sea & Civilization: A Maritime History of the World by
Board Games Get on Board in Catalina This post is a brief review of a board game I got recently. I backed the campaign for the board game Privateer, on Kickstarter, back in December 2013. After a 3 year wait, it finally arrived, and had some chances to play it over