Delta-V by Daniel Suarez

Great adventure story with thrilling plot twists, interesting story line, fun characters, good celestial mechanics and science, a few too many contrived emergencies, bad treatment of AI system failures.  Engrossing, fun. 4/5 stars.

The Colonel by Peter Watts

I flew through this one in the flight from Seattle to San Jose. I wish the author would write more stories or books in this universe instead of his others. 4/5 stars.

Washington State takes top honors at the 2019 US News Ranking

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings

"Washington is a key exporter for the U.S., particularly for transportation equipment. Additionally, Washington is crucial to the nation's food and agriculture industry, generating 70 percent of the country's apples, and also leading in milk, potato and cattle production."

Microsoft, Amazon, Boeing, Starbucks, Nordstroms, sure.  Cattle?  Who knew?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) learns Origami

Those silly Harvard and Berkeley AI people have stumbled upon a cool method in AI. Augmenting extremely limited data sets with inexhaustible generated data from simple rules enables much better prediction.  This technique is broadly applicable to many areas of machine learning (ML) where we have insufficient labels.  Variations of this concept are applied in computer vision and robotics.  It's not clear if they will work with human behavior data but I shall endeavor to find out in my "day job."

Oil and Marble by Stephanie Storey

The relationship between Michelangelo, Leonardo and the other great people of their era in Firenze (Florence) is intrinsically awesome.  However the author is an inferior writer and her background historical research is terrible.  Nonetheless she brings to life a few poignant details of the creation of Leonardo's Mona Lisa and Michelangelo's David statue that make the book worth skimming.  3/5 Stars.  It's a shame no great English-language historical fiction writers are researching and publishing the art history of Florence during that time.

The Lost Starship 2, the lost Command by Vaughn Heppner

Yuck, the AI is so terrible I put this one down, 1/5 stars.

Tin Man Galaxy's edge by Nick Cole

Great prequel introduction to the series.  Good pacing & characters but a little contrived, 3/5 stars.

through fiery trials by david weber

Meh, I do not plan to finish this series, 2/5 stars.

By Heresies Distressed by David Weber

There was a little more action in this Safehold installment but I too much writing and politics for my taste, 3/5 stars.  I plan to skip to the last book in the series now instead of reading all of them.

Influencer by Joseph Grenny et. al.

Another great book by the authors of Crucial Conversations, 5/5 Stars. Highly recommended.  

Review

This book was recommended by a work colleague whom I respect enormously and it provides actionable advice for specific, prescriptive actions I should take to change the culture, behaviors, and outcomes of my own organization at work.   It explains our natural, intuitive, and frustratingly ineffective methods we normally use to change behaviors, then provides specific examples of why they fail and more specific examples of what does work.  In each example they illustrate some important subtlety that requires analysis and practice.

I was a little put off by the salesy, journalistic and sensational enticements in the first chapter and sped through it with mounting frustration and blood pressure.  And there were too many pages dedicated to attacking the "serenity trap" named for the serenity prayer (serenity to accept things I cannot change, courage to change what I can, wisdom to know difference).

However the organization, presentation, examples, and evidence compiled in the rest of the book made up for the weak beginning. I was especially thrilled by the repeated evidence, data, and subtleties into which the authors went, emphasizing how hard implementing the concepts really are.

Summary

• Clarity, shared meaning of results desired
• Enormous attention, iteration, scholarship to measurement definition and tracking the measures
• Laser focus on 3 or fewer vital behaviors
• over-determine change using six methods that nudge and enable vital behaviors
  
• enormous scholarship, careful observation, iteration, patience
• Six Methods:

1. change feelings about vital behaviors using direct, emotional consequences
2. over-invest in enabling new skills & emotions acquisition,  mastery
3. harness social influence
4. provide assistance (people, process, training)
5. Modestly and carefully reward early successes. Punish only when necessary. Use incentives third, dis-incentives last.
   
6. change physical surroundings to try to make desired behavior easier and undesired behavior harder (propinquity)

• patience, persistence: careful diagnosis, patient testing, and mindful application of principles and methods

Read the whole thing.