Book Review: THE RESILIENCE ROADMAP

THE RESILIENCE ROADMAP - The 7 Guideposts for Charting Your Course in a Chaotic World, by Mark Blac, is a detailed action plan for facing challenges in life. Resilience is most critical, the book says, a skill that make us not only survive life’s challenges, but also thrive through them. Like, how, the trials of infancy and childhood served to prepare the author well for what would happen in adolescence and adulthood. 

This is also a guide to becoming more resilient. Seven simple, though not easy steps hide the principles and strategies that will help one thrive in the face of whatever adversity, one may meet. Attributes that leads to resilience, like adaptation, acceptance, and commitment are examined. So also, the ones that can make resilience stay, like focus, action, patience, and perseverance.

I enjoyed the book. This is almost a mathematical analysis of resilience and its factors, while helping us build our capacity to handle whatever may come our way. This book has all the tools, one will need to handle everything that may ever happen. Practical and insightful suggestions and subtly placed anecdotes make this book a treasure to have and a pleasure to read.

Book Review: The Future of the Impossible

The Future of the Impossible: the Physics and Ethics of Time Travel by Dannelle Shugart examines time travel, in dimensions of travel (physics), time, and ethics. In chapter 1, we are given a good insight into the physics of it, special and general theories of relativity, black holes, worm holes, and other esoteric objects of science, paving the way. Next comes, what can be called a better depiction of reality, by quantum physics. Like how, many versions of the same time traveler can exist, with no catastrophic violation of the laws of physics. The discussion now moves to other boundaries, where we meet questions that test the ethics of time travel. Like, is it ethical to traverse a black hole into another universe?

The book then concludes with a firm reply that most forms of time travel are no more detrimental than other methods of travel.

This is an enjoyable read, it poured light on many paradoxes of philosophy and physics.

Book Review - The Speed of Air

The Speed of Air-The Story of Willard Custer and His Channel Wing Aircraft, by Joel C. Custer and Robert J. Englar, tells the story of mechanic/inventor Willard R. Custer. How, one who was neither an 'aerodynamicist' nor an aircraft designer, developed and successfully flew a new and very novel aircraft concept. That is, force an airflow over a stationary wing to create lift, and it can takeoff or land vertically. Once airborne, it can fly like any other plane. But, there was no commercial success, government scientists, evaluators, and commercial aircraft builders/operators declaring it too unconventional to succeed. What follows is the history of these obstacles.
The initial chapters tells about first aircraft he built, which looked like, and was named, bumblebee. How he lost out when the patent application was examined side by side the one from Sikrosky. And his prolonged struggles with different patent offices and judges.
The book chronicles a large number of demonstrations of a full-size aircraft, lifted by air pressure from a complete standstill, and achieve the slowest speed ever flown by a fixed-wing airplane. Of course, at least a few suspecting some sort of subterfuge.
The narration is thrilling, I used to have a peek at the next page, well before I could complete the current one. It is also factual, the book gives a chronological review of all that took place. Also with sympathy, and Custer comes out as one with unyielding perseverance. There is also hope for further research. Possible drawbacks or shortcomings of the present design are analyzed in this book. I would have enjoyed thoroughly, if a few diagrams or engineering drawings were there to illustrate this revolutionary idea.