Tag Archives: Technology and Society

Hamlet’s Blackberry

Posted on December 28, 2012 by smellincoffee

Hamlet’s Blackberry: Building a Good Life in the Digital Age© 2011 William Powers288 pages Getting online used to require sitting in front of a computer terminal and waiting for it to dial in, oh so slowly. It was a choice … Continue reading →

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Riding Rockets

Posted on December 22, 2012 by smellincoffee

Riding Rockets: the Outrageous Tales of a Space Shuttle Astronaut© 2007 Mike Mullane400 pages Mike Mullane is a shuttle astronaut with a penis fixation. Although Riding Rockets is ostensibly about the opening decades of the space shuttle era in NASA, … Continue reading →

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Space Chronicles

Posted on November 19, 2012 by smellincoffee

Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier© 2012 Neil deGrasse Tyson; edited by Avis Lang384 pages On July 20th, 1969, America mesmerized the world by landing men on the Moon. For the first time in history, human feet stepped on the soil … Continue reading →

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Conundrum

Posted on September 29, 2012 by smellincoffee

Conundrum: How Scientific Innovation, Increased Efficiency, and Good Intentions Can Make Our Energy and Climate Problems Worse© 2012 David Owen272 pages If only all big problems could be tackled with product substitution. We’re consumers at heart, and our response to … Continue reading →

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This Week at the Library (25 September)

Posted on September 25, 2012 by smellincoffee

Germany’s national holiday, Der Tag der Deutschen Einheit, falls this next Wednesday, so this week my reading will be oriented toward ‘das Land der Dichter und Denker’,  just as in July I celebrated the American and French revolutions. On the … Continue reading →

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Moon Shot

Posted on September 17, 2012 by smellincoffee

Moon Shot: the Inside Story of America’s Race to the Moon© 1995 Alan Shepard, Deke Slayton. Introduction by Neil Armstrong383 pages The Apollo program has been in the news as of late given the death of Neil Armstrong, who with … Continue reading →

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This Week at the Library (12 September)

Posted on September 13, 2012 by smellincoffee

About a week ago, ten inches of rain were dumped on my hometown in 24 hours, leading to widespread flooding. Various services around town were disrupted, meaning the people who — inexplicably — journeyed to the library in the midst … Continue reading →

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A Man on the Moon

Posted on August 27, 2012 by smellincoffee

A Man on the Moon:  the Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts © 1994 Andrew Chaikin670 pages Yet a higher goal was calling, and we vowed to reach it soon So we gave ourselves a decade to put fire on the moon … Continue reading →

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Lost Moon

Posted on August 3, 2012 by smellincoffee

Lost Moon: the Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13© 1994 Jim Lovell, Jeffrey Kluger368 pages No one wants to hear ominous noises coming from their car in the middle of a road trip, especially if they’re in the middle of nowhere. … Continue reading →

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The Shallows

Posted on May 23, 2012 by smellincoffee

The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing To Our Brains© 2010 Nicholas Carr276 pages How many tabs do you have open right now? Neil Postman thought we were undoing ourselves with a distracting and busy fusion of information and entertainment … Continue reading →

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