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Latest Read: The Premonition

The Premonition: A Pandemic Story by Michael Lewis. A tough, certainly insightful look at men and women who understood and directly confronted the pandemic at the beginning. At the same time, they ran into bureaucratic roadblocks. Their efforts to save the country is the story of this book.

the premonition a pandemic story

For instance, as early as January 2020, Dr. Charity Dean, the assistant director of the California Department of Public Health in 2020. She certainly understood the coming pandemic and began warning California State officials. Surprisingly, Charity Dean was even prohibited from publishing the word “pandemic” in her research reports. Furthermore, as stunning as it may seem, her boss and the state locker her out of planning meetings.

Dr. Carter Mecher, senior medical advisor to the Veterans Administration initially helped craft the Bush Administration’s pandemic response plan. As a result, at the very beginning stages in January 2020, he observed similarities to the 1918 Influenza flu. Indeed, Carter was the early advocate to shut down schools to reduce spread. Tragically, he lost his own mother to COVID.

At the same time, Joe DeRisi PhD, a biochemist at UC San Francisco was involved in the development of the ViroChip. This is used to rapidly identify viruses in bodily fluids. He led a team to develop a very early COVID-19 testing facility at the outbreak of pandemic.

Dr. Richard Hatchett an epidemiologist was another who warned early on about the coming pandemic. He also contributed to the Bush era pandemic response plan. This book is a sobering reality of what could have been. These medical professionals were stopped by the same system they were trying to save. Michael certainly makes it very clear the US does not have a healthcare system.

Tipping point ignored

Surprisingly, President George W. Bush read The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History. As a result, he triggered a plan to confront the next pandemic with Rajeev Venkayya, Richard Hatchett and Carter Mecher. This plan continued through the Obama Administration, but stopped under Trump.

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Education Innovation Reading

Latest Read: Noise

Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment by noted authors Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, and Cass Sunstein. Noise is simply random, unpredictable decision making that cannot be explained. At the same time, is not accountable. This is very perplexing today.

Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment by Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, Cass R. Sunstein

At the same time, this is not easy to fully understand. Here is a good outline provided by the book:

Imagine that two doctors in the same city give different diagnoses to identical patients — or that two judges in the same courthouse give different sentences to people who have committed the same crime.
Suppose that different food inspectors give different ratings to indistinguishable restaurants — or that when a company is handling customer complaints, the resolution depends on who happens to be handling the particular complaint.
Now imagine that the same doctor, the same judge, the same inspector, or the same company official makes different decisions, depending on whether it is morning or afternoon, or Monday rather than Wednesday. These are examples of noise: variability in judgments that should be identical.

As a result, it is amazing to understand how and why people from all walks of life make really bad judgements. The fact that it can be quantified and even controlled offers us hope. However, based upon our crazy world today it only offers hope.

How many times have you found yourself impacted by Noise?

Sections that certainly stick most with organizations is within their hiring process. The authors really hit a home run here. Based upon their research and insights, this is worth the price of admission alone. Issues like prejudice are actually bias. When assessing decisions that go wrong, noise is the standard deviation of errors, while bias is the mean itself.

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Education Reading

Latest Read: Humble Pi

Humble Pi: A Comedy of Maths Errors by Matt Parker. Matt has written another great book addressing how our world revolves around math. My son and I are still working our way through Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension.

Humble Pi by Matt Parker

Above all, I have found his books certainly offer impactful stories that you will laugh out loud. At the same time, you will question at times, question how we as a species survive on this planet with such low expectations of understanding math in the real world.

The topics Matt addresses are very wide-ranging. What is also appealing is learning that many objects that we use daily in life are based around math. But do not worry if you were bad at math in grade school like me. You will really enjoy this book.

Matt is certainly upfront across all of Chapter 2 Engineering Mistakes. Matt documents many math errors when bridges across England and America was designed with mathematical flaws.

At first glance bridges certainly can appear structurally sound. However, the slightest mathematical engineering oversight results in tragedy.

In 1940 the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse was attributed to the flat metal sides of the bridge’s design. The bridge’s design was sleek and inexpensive. Yet it was lacking mesh metal and was perfect for “catching the wind” as they say.

Are we blinded by math?

Matt also teaches that we often believe we have “smart people in the room” developing products, however we somehow miss the easy stuff. An important lesson to grasp throughout his book. I am reminded of Ozan Varol’s excellent book Think Like a Rocket Scientist regarding those oversights.

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Education Innovation Reading

Latest Read: The Bomber Mafia

The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War by Malcolm Gladwell. His famous 2004 TED Talk about pasta sauce placed Malcolm onto the world’s new internet stage.

the bomber mafia

I also enjoy his podcast series Revisionist History. As a matter of fact The Bomber Mafia is an outcome of podcast Season 5, Episode 4. So Malcolm has delivered a rather unique book.

This is not a feel good story. Malcolm reveals the horror of war and the understanding that precision bombing dealt a harsh blow to Germany, while firebombing Japanese cities caused the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians.

The story begins with a short history of aerial bombing in World War I. Then Malcolm introduces Major General Haywood S. Hansell.

So Hansell and the mafia of Air Force leaders developed America’s high-altitude precision bombing strategy in World War II. His strategy was to limit civilian casualties as the pacific campaign was beginning to ramp up.

However, Hansell was replaced by Major General Curtis LeMay. Instead, LeMay altered the US Air Force tactic to a low altitude, fire bombing campaigns across Japan.

Did LeMay sell his soul?

Malcolm certainly structures this powerful storyline around Luke 4:2, the temptation of Christ by the devil:

And the devil took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, and said to him, “To you I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.
Luke 4:2

LeMay led a devastating bombing campaign, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians. In fact, after a single firebombing of Tokyo, between 100,00 to 130,000 civilians burned to death. Yet all the firebombing did not impact Japan’s industrial capacity to wage war.

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Cyberinfrastructure Education Reading Technology

Latest Read: Click Here to Kill Everybody

Click Here to Kill Everybody, Security and Survival in a Hyper-connected World by Bruce Schneier. He is a fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, and board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, AccessNow, and the Tor Project. He is also an Advisory Board Member of the Electronic Privacy Information Center and VerifiedVoting.org.

Click Here to Kill Everybody Security and Survival in a Hyper-connected World by Bruce Schneier

Consequently, Bruce details many key issues in computer security that require the leadership and legislative pen of Congress. I certainly could not have picked a better time to read this book. My review is certainly just scratching the surface of his book. Bruce has communicated a much needed story for every consumer.

Above all, consider the 2021 Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack, the 2016 attacks upon our voting infrastructure, or even China’s digital espionage stealing almost every aspect of American innovation.

Do you think the internet is still growing in size? It is not the number of people, but rather the millions of new devices that pose increased risks. Therefore Bruce is calling for policies to protect these devices, knows as the Internet of Things (IoT). Examples of cyber attacks upon automobiles, electric and nuclear plants, medical devices and even airplanes is certainly proof that we are at greater risk.

A different era of industrial controls

Above all, cyber risk originates from different time in history. Besides, in the 1950s did consumers in South America have access to the internet? Any talented programmer in South America had no means to hack conventional hydroelectric dam controllers. However, today this is a reality. So then, the programmatic controls for any damn in American could not have envisioned this threat:

former National Cybersecurity Center director Rod Beckstrom summarized it this way: (1) anything connected to the Internet can be hacked; (2) everything is being connected to the Internet; (3) as a result, everything is becoming vulnerable.
p. 27

At the same time, we really don’t have to look forward, but rather back at the innovations created in the 1950s and 1960s that launched the connected internet.

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