5 Star – Page 39 – Public Intelligence Blog

Yan Zhang (Editor), Jijun Luo (Editor), Honglin Hu (Editor)

Untangling Mesh Networks, March 10, 2009

This review is from: Wireless Mesh Networking: Architectures, Protocols and Standards (Wireless Networks and Mobile Communications) (Hardcover)

Wireless networking has been around for more than a decade, but mesh is a relatively recent revolution. This book edits together extensive research from about 50 global experts into an easy-to-read, fluid and authoritative account of this emerging technology and market.

The release of the 802.11 IEEE standard in 1997 set off a chain of developments including 802.11 a / b / g / and n that have revolutionized the lives of computer users – to a point where laptop/notebooks/netbooks tend to be a primary and fully capable method for network access today.

A similar effort, 802.11s, has been under development since at least 2003 – with the objective of establishing a mesh networking standard. This book does an excellent job raising many of the considerations behind that standard, at the same time it addresses other protocol and standards.

Continue reading “Review (Guest): Wireless Mesh Networking: Architectures, Protocols and Standards”

2013/06/082013/06/08

Worth a Look: The Good Life Lab: Radical Experiments in Hands-On Living

5 Star, Complexity & Resilience, Consciousness & Social IQ, Worth A Look

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,871 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

#2 in Books > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > Home Improvement & Design > How-to & Home Improvements > Do-It-Yourself
#12 in Books > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > Sustainable Living
#34 in Books > History > Americas > United States > State & Local

This is the inspirational story of how one couple ditched their careers and high-pressure life in New York City to move to rural New Mexico, where they made, built, invented, foraged, and grew all they needed to live self-sufficiently, discovering a new sense of value and abundance in the process. Alongside their personal story are tips and tutorials to guide readers in the discovery of a fulfilling new lifestyle that relies less on money. Tremayne wholeheartedly believes that everyone has the skill, imagination and creativity to make it work.

Tremayne not only teaches the art of making biofuel, appliances, structures, gardens, food, and medicine but also presents reasons for makers to share their innovations and ideas through open source and creative commons licenses. She shares the joys of creating out of waste, home manufacture, and reconnecting with nature, and she teaches readers how to live off the grid. Practical, contemplative, and action-oriented, The Good Life Lab is the manual for life in a post-consumer age.

In addition, The Good Life Lab is filled with illustrations contributed by a community of artists — Alethea Morrison, Allegra Lockstadt, Andrew Saeger, Bert van Wijk, Christopher Silas Neal, Gina Triplett, Grady McFerrin, Joel Holland, Josh Cochran, Julia Rothman, Kate Bingaman Burt, Katie Scott, Kristian Olson, Mattias Adolfsson, Meg Hunt, Melinda Beck, Miyuki Sakai, Rachel Salomon, and Sasha Prood — making the book itself a work of art.

2013/06/012013/06/01

Review: Christianity, Evolution and the Breath of Life

5 Star, Religion & Politics of Religion

Ralph H. Armstrong

5.0 out of 5 stars Bargain Price, Fast Read Worthy of Re-Reading, a Real Delight, June 1, 2013

I was given this book free in part because I have reviewed a number of books on science versus religion/faith, and I was very surprised to find it a very fast read (worthy of being reread), with a very good style of presentation, and a number of excellent artistic reproductions to make points, as well as graphics. There is also an excellent short annotated bibliography at the end of the book that is alone worth the $5 price — this is a bargain financially and philosophically.

The author and the book focus on the explicatory gap between science and religion that the author settled on calling the “breath of life” or soul. While the soul remains an unverifiable hidden matter, I fully expect that one day there will be a deeper practical understanding of that which is now spiritual, intangible, and despite being invisible, never-the-less a very powerful force. The “breath of life” is that which *animates,” animation is life and interaction in an endless universe of both possibilities, and choices.

Continue reading “Review: Christianity, Evolution and the Breath of Life”

2013/05/292013/05/29

Review (Guest): Lessons Not Learned – The U.S. Navy’s Status Quo Culture

5 Star, Congress (Failure, Reform), Crime (Government), Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Impeachment & Treason, Leadership, Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization)

Roger Thompson

5.0 out of 5 stars Engaging and Shocking December 11, 2010

By moreconcernedthanbefore

First off, let me preface this my saying that my knowledge of the American military was practically nil before reading this book so I found it all the more engaging and eye-opening especially because the American Navy is generally thought of as the best in the world, I know that was the impression I was under until I read Lessons Not Learned. The American Navy is the largest sea power in the world and the most expensive and depictions of it in movies all lead us to believe that we can rest easy knowing that there would never be any chance of the Americans losing in a conflict against any other nation in the world. Unfortunately, that simply seems to not be the case, Lessons Not Learned points out a number of flaws in many, if not all, aspects of the American Navy. More frustratingly, it seems that many of these flaws could actually be fixed but are not. The system of hierarchy and promotion, along with a stubborn way of thinking and far too much pride not only limits the capabilities of the Navy but also puts those nations that rely or expect support and candidacy from it in danger.

The system of hierarchy in the Navy and the promotion system enforces and ensures that the officers put in charge are ones that care more for their careers than for the candidacy and for the state of the American Navy. The Navy itself encourages an “up or out” system which ensures that only officers who are willing to regurgitate prepared statistics, facts and speeches are ever able to ascend in rank. This is particularly disconcerting because we are taught, shown, and the military takes every opportunity to depict a strict and rigid code of conduct and honor. Yet, in the very institution itself, an officer cannot hope to achieve a rank or status if he was to actually adhere to that code and image the American Navy works so hard to sell. Knowing this, is it really any wonder that the Navy is as poorly trained and prepared for war at sea as is illustrated in the book? Most officers of any distinguishing rank have already been lying, falsifying, and putting all of their effort into convincing the world at large that the American Navy is the best in the world instead of actually endeavoring to make it so.

Continue reading “Review (Guest): Lessons Not Learned – The U.S. Navy's Status Quo Culture”

2013/05/212013/05/21

Review: Ten Types of Innovation – The Discipline of Building Breakthroughs

5 Star, Change & Innovation

Larry Keeley, Ryan Pikkl, Brian Quinn, Helen Walters

5.0 out of 5 stars Deep, Broad, Structured, Fundamental Reference for Adult Students and Professionals, May 21, 2013

Another reviewer has laid out the book's structure. This review builds on that one.

I've been a fan of several innovation books, such as The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail and The Innovator's Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth, while also respecting earlier pioneers such as Peter Drucker, Innovation and Entrepreneurship. When I got this book my first impression was “too much design” (at first glance it looks like an advanced comic book) but after several passes I now consider this volume perfect — the authors have put an EXTRAORDINARY amount of thinking into going beyond the ten types of innovation (each discussed in its own chapter) to the nuts and bolts of spotting trends, making innovation happen, and keeping innovation alive (often the hardest).

Certainly this book is superb for students in any sector — government, private, non-profit, I'd even suggest the declining labor unions and churches study this book. It has universal value and applicability. It is also a book that is easily sufficient to warrant being in a CEO's handful of books worth returning to over and over again. At one level this is a textbook, at another level this book, as it is designed, is perfect for recurring reflection.

Continue reading “Review: Ten Types of Innovation – The Discipline of Building Breakthroughs”

2013/05/152013/05/15

Review (Guest): Imperial Contagions: Medicine, Hygiene, and Cultures of Planning in Asia

5 Star, Culture, Research, Economics, Environment (Problems), Health, Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design

Robert Peckham

Book Description

April 2, 2013

Imperial Contagions argues that there was no straightforward shift from older, enclavist models of colonial medicine to a newer emphasis on prevention and treatment of disease among indigenous populations as well as European residents. It shows that colonial medicine was not at all homogeneous “on the ground” but was riven with tensions and contradictions. Indigenous elites contested and appropriated Western medical knowledge and practices for their own purposes. Colonial policies contained contradictory and cross-cutting impulses. This book challenges assumptions that colonial regimes were uniformly able to regulate indigenous bodies and that colonial medicine served as a “tool of empire.”

Review

Europeans in Asia developed powerful anxieties about contagion and made many plans to keep it at a safe distance. Commercial ventures depended on mobility of people and goods, yet for the personal safety of their members, the Europeans in Asia wished to stabilize and control the spaces they inhabited and the behaviors of those around them. By exploring the tensions and contradictions that arose from these efforts to stay safe, the authors — among the best authorities now writing — offer not only fascinating accounts of historical events but fresh views of the processes often termed colonial or imperial.

(Harold J. Cook, author of Matters of Exchange: Commerce, Medicine, and Science in the Dutch Golden Age )
This substantial collection greatly enriches our understanding of medicine, disease, and policy in colonial Asia. The contributors, from a range of disciplines, grapple fruitfully with questions surrounding medical space and the shift from enclavism to public health. In doing so, they make important theoretical and empirical contributions to medical and imperial history.

(David Arnold, author of Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in Nineteenth-Century India )

About the Author

Robert Peckham is codirector of the Centre for the Humanities and Medicine and an assistant professor in the Department of History at the University of Hong Kong.

David M. Pomfret is an associate professor in the Department of History at the University of Hong Kong.

2013/05/132013/11/01

Review (Fiction): Hell or Richmond

5 Star, Fiction, War & Face of Battle

PRINTABLE DOC: (2 Pages) Review Peters Hell or Richmond

Ralph Peters

5.0 out of 5 stars Equal to Cain at Gettysburg, Takes Fact-Based Fiction to New Level, May 13, 2013

I started this book, having given a rave review to Cain at Gettysburg convinced that the sequel would disappoint, as most sequels do. Although I counted only five goosebump moments in this new book (Cain had six, The Killer Angels: The Classic Novel of the Civil War By Michael Shaara only had one), I have to rate it the equal of the earlier book, and also the linch pin book in what should be a series of at least four books, each – as the first two have been – a detailed study of men at war at all four levels (strategic, operational, tactical, technical). The concluding sentence in this book is brilliant, and it left me with precisely the sense of angst and anticipation for the next campaign as the author no doubt intended. If Cain was the thunderclap of divine providence, then Hell is the tough hard slog through mud during which the North adapts and learns lessons while Lee's health worsens substantially, his weakness all the more grave because Longstreet is wounded and Stuart killed, leaving Lee with no bench, less Gordon as a late bloomer too easily ignored by his elders.

There is little doubt that with this book Ralph Peters has established a nearly impregnable position as the leading practitioner of historical fiction, taking it to a new level of accuracy and relevance to the military and political professionals who wage war, setting the gold standard for factual historical fiction that reveals the soul of those making history.

If I were to sum up the book in three words it would be leadership, logistics, and learning.

Continue reading “Review (Fiction): Hell or Richmond”