The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Apocalypse: Expert Advice for Doomsday Situations

The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Apocalypse: Expert Advice for Doomsday Situations by David Borgenicht amd Joshua Piven

How would you handle the collapse of civilization. At first, the book purports to offer "survivalist" advice on gathering supplies. It gets more extreme as it discusses hoarding gold and building a hidden bunker. Then it goes off the deep end and turns pure comical. There are discussions of surviving widespread destruction from zombies, dinosaurs and aliens among others. This was probably more fun to write than it is to read.

The Council of Mirrors

The Council of Mirrors, Sisters Grimm #9 by Michael Buckley

The Sister's Grimm series ends with a marriage, so that makes it a Shakespearean comedy, right?  It starts with a prophecy that the sisters are the ones to defeat the Scarlet Hand. At first, they try to rely on others, but then they realize that they must be the ones to lead. They make some plans, and seem to have some success, but there are various spies involved. They realize that somebody has put them in the story, which is the true path to success. Since the Grimms are now in the fairy tales, their brother's body will not allow mirror to escape fairy land. They end up defeating the bad guys with love and all live happily ever after - with a marriage as a coda. It feels an appropriate ending to a fairy tale book.

The Inside Story: The Sisters Grimm, Book 8

The Inside Story: The Sisters Grimm, Book 8 by Michael Buckley

The Grimm sisters are now in a book of fairy tales to try to find their baby brother and hunt down Pinocchio. At first, they see themselves in the Wizard of Oz. One is Dorothy, while the other is Toto. They are expected to recite the lines in the story and follow the plot. The other characters want this to happen, for otherwise, the editor will get mad and the revisors will be after them. They also see other characters who are eager to escape out of their roles in stories. The Grimm sisters, however, are keen on continuing their quest, and don't want to follow the rules. This gets them in trouble. They get taken to see the editor who wants the to help find Pinocchio, who is causing mayhem in his quest for change. The girls are glad to help out. Their parents and granny do show up, but things still get worse. Their is a first kiss and the book ends on a cliffhanger.  The multiple levels of stories works well hear and makes it a fun book. 

The Everafter War: The Sisters Grimm, Book 7

The Everafter War: The Sisters Grimm, Book 7 by Michael Buckley

This book is aptly title. A war breaks out in the Everafter land. The Grimm Sisters parents are back. They also discover that their mother was pregnant. However, the baby continued growing while their parents were asleep. Some everafters use magic to birth the baby without mother knowing. They have kidnapped the baby to use for their means. They also find out that the Mirror is the leader of the Scarlet Hand. The Mirror wants to use the body of the baby to escape fairy tale land. This ties into the "book of all books" that has all tales. They can go in and change some of the outcomes. This seems like something that will be used in future books. This book feels more plot-heavy than previous ones.

Sisters Grimm: Once Upon a Crime

Sisters Grimm: Once Upon a Crime by Michael Buckley

In this book, the sisters spend time in New York City to help solve a crime. Their adventures include finding dwarves that hang out in the abandoned  City Hall subway station, They find out more about their parents while also helping Puck and battling the Scarlet Hand.

Tales from the Hood: The Sisters Grimm

Tales from the Hood: The Sisters Grimm #6 by Michael Buckley

This Sister's Grimm book deals with a lot of court activity in the case of the Big Bad Wolfe (Mr Canis). They investigate the case and find what really happened. It can be challenging due to the current insanity of Little Red Riding Hood. The story is more a wrapper for all sorts of fairy tale zanniness.

Magic and Other Misdemeanors: Sister's Grimm 5

The Sisters Grimm 5: Magic and Other Misdemeanors by Michael Buckley

Things get a bit weird with time portals causing people from different time strains to interact. The Grimm sisters see their future selves (though they do not believe it at first.) They find that one of them marries Puck, and that Ferryport landing remains bad in the future. It turns out the case they are working on (of missing magical items) is part of a plan for the bad guys to accumulate power. The new mayor of the land also has a plot to get all regular humans out by charging high property taxes. The Grimm's shock the new officials by paying the tax - only to have them ask for more. The book starts out straightforward, before getting more bizarre at the end. There are changes in alliances as well as many fairy tale tie ins.

The Fairy-Tale Detectives: The Sisters Grimm book 1

The Fairy-Tale Detectives: The Sisters Grimm by Michael Buckley

This book seemed very familiar. Then I realized I had read it a year ago. Two girls are orphaned and end up in very cruel fost families. Then they end up in a fairy tale land. The fairy tale characters are all there, but have different identities. Sometimes they come out - as the police may switch to their big form when they see food opportunities. The girls are thrown in to a detective case to try to find their grandma. There are a number of twists and turns connected to the involvement of Jack, Giants and Prince Charming. They use bits of fairy tale magic at times (including infiltration of a fairy tale ball.) The story has echos of Roald Dahl and feels like it must have been as fun to write as it is to read.

The Problem Child: The Sisters Grimm

The Problem Child: The Sisters Grimm by Michael Buckley

The third Sisters Grimm book continues with fairy tale zaniness. The sisters are trying to find uncover what happened to their parents. They uncover "insane" fairy tale characters and all sorts of other weirdness. 

The Sisters Grimm: The Unusual Suspects

The Sisters Grimm: The Unusual Suspects by Michael Buckley

The sisters are going to school in Ferryport Landing Elementary. School is not exactly their thing. However, here it is extra weird. There teacher gets killed and the next day nobody seems to notice or even remember they had an old teacher. The dusting of forgetfulness seems to wipe out everyone's memories. A new kid appears and ends up causing terror on the dodgeball court. The kids end up in detention. However, when they get there, they find it is under attack. They investigate further and discover some mischief that has been going on with Rumplestiltskin. They are unsure if the pied piper's son is helping or not. Nothing is ever simple in this area where Fairy-tale characters are "trapped" in the land. 

The Fairy-Tale Detectives: The Sisters Grimm

The Fairy-Tale Detectives: The Sisters Grimm by Michael Buckley

This reminded me a lot of the Nursery Crimes series, but set for a younger audience. The two sisters struggle to find a foster family that sticks. Then they end up with a grandmother they did not know about. Things get even weirder from there. Prince Charming manipulates. A police officer may turn into a big. There are giants that want to cause ruckus. It turns out that most nursery tales are actually real (well, except for some pure fabrication.) They work to help prevent some badness. It is quick and funny.

Warnings: Finding Cassandras to Stop Catastrophes

Warnings: Finding Cassandras to Stop Catastrophes by Richard A. Clarke and R.P. Eddy

After a catastrophe, it is almost always possible to find the  ignored "Cassandra" that warned of the impending disaster. Alas, we can also find many that warned of imminent disasters that never have occurred. How do we find the true Cassandra's while not being fixated on the fakes. This book provides some analysis in identifying the signs of "valid warnings". It then spends covers a bunch of potential catastrophes. 

Sometimes, there may be valid concerns, but they are just not worth the effort. The earth will likely crash into the sun. However, this won't occur until billions of years from now. A meteor like the one that killed the dinosaurs is more likely, but still rare. However, one that causes significant damage is more likely. Once a couple Hollywood movies were made about it, there has been greater attention played to the possibility. New work has been able to better predict impacts. Responding would take more work.

Catastrophes can also be identified via extrapolation. The Iran's uranium enrichment operations were damaged by hacking devices. Russia was able to turn off Ukraine's power.  Damage has occurred at power plants due to bad settings and configuration. Combine these and a potential hacker could cause widescale physical damage via hacking Internet of Things devices. These devices need to be better secured. Things are improving, but there is still a long way to go, especially with medical devices.

How do we identify Cassandra's? Often they are people with significant expertise in the field, but without a significant social platform. There views may challenge common views and pose some difficulty. Engineers had alerted to dangers of the space shuttle's o-ring. However, there was pressure to launch at the time after previous delays. Cultural problems were identified as root cause.

There are many technological, political and natural catastrophes that could occur. Effectively prioritize efforts to prevent them is an ongoing challenge.

Talent: How to Identify Energizers, Creatives, and Winners Around the World

The typical interview process is great at finding "least offensive" employees. It helps filter out those that will absolutely fail, but does a poor job of identifying great talent. This book was written by an economist and a tech entrepreneur to identify sources of  transcendental talent. 

For an interview, it is useful to delve into an area that the candidate has not prepared. One question today is to ask "what are your current open browser tabs?" This helps identify what they are interested in. Personality is often defined more with a what a person does on the weekend than while at work. Another question is "What do you believe that everybody else finds irrational?" The goal is to find things that really make the person unique.

A person can't learn charisma from book and list of traits. It is much better to find examples of people that have the desired traits and try to emulate them.

Interviewing is very different in the world of Zoom than it is in person. A video call leaves off many of the cues that we would have in a face to face conversation. An audio call can in some ways be better since it does not provide "false clues". The skills to make a good video call appearance are different than those for an in-person conversation. 

Finding the best talent often involves seeking out diversity. Those from different cultures may appear to be very polite or quiet. This could be just a reflection of being in an unfamiliar surrounding rather than their true personality. Sometimes the best talent will have a different outward appearance, be that gender, race, age, language, or other characteristic. Great talent can be uncovered by being willing to work with people with different neurologies. (One of the author's even states that there is a need to have a degree of neuroticism.) Those on the autism spectrum are an especially overlooked source of talent. (The author's even mention that a number of actors may be on the spectrum. They need to "act" to function in the world, so emulating different characters is a natural extension.) Work needs to be done to accommodate those that are different, but it will often pay off.

Mama's Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us About Ourselves

The primary message from Mama's Last Hug is that animals have emotions. The author spent many years studying primates and observed the many examples of emotions. He also provided a multitude of examples in other species. Bonobos and Chimpanzees are considered to be nothing like humans. Yet, our difference from them is similar to the difference between animals that we lump together (such as African and Asian elephants.) We should expect them to have many characteristics similar to us. Mama is this book is a chimpanzee matriarch who had developed a bond with her human observer. The animals had a distinct social order and various ways of interacting that showed emotional responses and delayed gratification. A desire for fairness is often very important. Animals often expect a similar award for similar effort. If they expend the effort but get the same reward as another animal that didn't, they will be upset. The author laments that psychologists have separated human from non-human and have not spent time studying the range of animal psychology and comparisons among different species.

The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves

Humans have come to dominate the world through innovation. People can build upon knowledge and others' work to create new things. Even something simple like a pencil is behind the scope of any single person to easily create on their own. They would need to cut down trees, mine metal, and do all the work to shape and form it. It would be a daunting task. Today it is easy to buy a pencil at the local store. Many people have been involved in the process to make the pencil, yet they  don't have the knowledge and skills outside their realm.

The author has great faith in the ability of humans to innovate their way out of problems. However, he has little faith in us being able to predict what innovations will take place. He sees government intervention as often a fools errand. Subsidizing big companies that were previous innovators merely delays their eventual fall. The smaller, newer, more nimble organizations are the ones that provide most of the advantage to society. These small companies then become big ones and often ossify. Governments tend to favor them because they are big, yet that is a mistake. Governments also attempt to regulate activities based on what is currently known. This can interfere with truly useful innovations. Many of the problems in poor countries can be traced to rent-seeking leaders. The institutions are corrupt making it difficult for anything to get done. Even with foreign aid, the poor often remain poor, while the leaders are getting rich.

The author has little respect for pessimist alarmists. Negative fear-mongering does get a lot of coverage. He catalogs big fears such as "overpopulation", "acid rain" and "global cooling" that have all fallen by the wayside. Today, "global warming" is the boogeyman. He acknowledges that the earth is warming, but objects to many of the actions that are taken. Climate change will cause changes. However, humans have always dealt with climatic changes, and could continue to deal with it. Even in some of the worse case scenarios, the total risk is not worth significant societal changes. 

The "fixes" can be worse than the problem. Some of the "renewable" resources such as biofuels require great amounts of land and can be a net negative for climate change. Even "green energy" like wind is very inefficient. Legislation often greatly subsidizes forms of "green" energy production we know about, which my stall some of the needed innovation. Fossil fuels are amazingly efficient and have replaced previous forms of energy (such as slaves and animals). They have also long outlasted their predicted depletion thanks to increases in extraction and usage efficiency. We likely have a solution to our energy problems waiting to be created. The solution probably is not something that we think of (electric or self-driving cars), but instead something totally new.

Is there a limit to how we can innovate out of our problems? Yes. This has been seen in previous cultures. In the middle ages, both China and the Muslim chose stability over innovation. Government policies have often forced innovation down the wrong track. Perhaps we will run into something that we just can't make better. However, if we do, government will not be able to help us.