Thomas Education

This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race by Nicole Perlroth My rating: 5 of 5 stars And the hits just keep on coming! This excellent book details an unrelenting onslaught of cyberattacks, and outlines the author's own gradual realization of the dangers of internet warfare. It is a lengthy but worthwhile read -- actually, I lost the book for a while because I did not want to read it at bedtime, for fear of nightmares or disrupted sleep! Indeed the book is changing my stance toward online security -- multi-factor authentication, definitely! As with most of us, the author first downplayed the fear tactics promoted by sellers of security packages; but after years of research she has come to wonder that more disaster has not happened yet. She briefly but baldly calls out the recent presidentical administration for wreaking havoc on US defense, by eliminating a cybersecurity department, incensing the Iranian and Chinese gover...

A Very Easy Death by Simone de Beauvoir My rating: 4 of 5 stars An insightful memoir about human responses to dying. I should read this in the original, to perhaps catch more nuances; though I expect it will be equally confusing sometimes, as the author faithfully represents the confusing conflicting feelings we have towards family -- in this case, a daughter for her mother. It was striking how universal it seemed: though it was written in 1964, the descriptions could well parallel that of the recent deaths we witnessed in our family. Even the medical treatments and descriptions sound current (I imagine the most significant difference would be the incessant electronic beeping around today's hospital beds). The emotional responses are indeed universal, though deBeauvoir's main point, reflected in the title, is that this was a -- as we say nowadays -- a First World problem. The great majority of humankind throughout history ...