Scott J. Pearson

Little Wonder: The Fabulous Story of Lottie Dod, the World’s First Female Sports Superstar

By Scott J. Pearson | May 15, 2020August 13, 2023 by Scott J. Pearson

Despite watching tennis religiously throughout my life, I did not know the name of Charlotte “Lottie” Dod. She was a five-time winner of Wimbledon in the late 1800s. But she was more than a mere tennis player. She was an ice skater, a tobogganist, a mountain climber, an endurance bicyclist, a hockey player on the English national team, a championship golfer, and an Olympic silver medalist in archery. Quite the resume. After her sporting days…

Spiritual Quests: The Art and Craft of Religious Writing

By Scott J. Pearson | May 12, 2020 by Scott J. Pearson

This book is the manicured transcript of an event in New York City in the 1980s. This seminar featured six prominent writers influenced by different faith traditions. They spoke on how their religious beliefs/practices changed the way they wrote. By commenting on a practice as timeless as writing, this account captures much of religious writers’ sentiments towards their craft. All of these six speeches were interesting. They covered faith traditions as disparate as Roman Catholicism,…

Kids

Dog Man: For Whom the Ball Rolls

By Scott J. Pearson | May 10, 2020 by Scott J. Pearson

A release from Dog Man series is one of the most anticipated events in the genre of graphic novels. Filled with humor, this book tells of the tale of an evil mad scientist who sought to wreck the city with his powerful robot. It also tells the tale of Petey the cat and what happens when his son invites Petey’s father to visit. Finally, it tells of a hero in love with cupcakes who inadvertently…

Biography-Memoir

In the Shadow of the Valley: A Memoir

By Scott J. Pearson | May 10, 2020 by Scott J. Pearson

Appalachia has long been an economically depressed region, and its social conditions are just as harsh. Bobi Conn’s story fully evokes these sentiments in readers’ hearts. She was raised in extremely oppressive circumstances (drugs; physical, sexual, and verbal abuse; limited opportunities). However, she learned to pour herself into reading and writing, and these activities allowed her to build a semblance of a good life. Nonetheless, she still grieves over the people – family, relationships, and…

Healthcare Society

Stuck: How Vaccine Rumors Start – And Why They Don’t Go Away

By Scott J. Pearson | May 9, 2020 by Scott J. Pearson

A casual perusal of social media will demonstrate an active debate about vaccines in contemporary society. Many cite (relatively rare) side effects and disregard abundant scientific studies about vaccines’ effectiveness; these people argue that they should have a “choice” over whether to admit a vaccine in their bodies. They do not heed arguments that herd immunity protects the herd better – that eschewing vaccines hurt us all. In this sociological work, Larson addresses how these…

Biostatistics Indie Software-Technology

Ultimate Step by Step Guide to Machine Learning Using Python

By Scott J. Pearson | May 4, 2020June 26, 2021 by Scott J. Pearson

The conscientious reader should carefully heed the words of this title. The book functions as an introduction to Python that leads, step by step, to using it with Machine Learning. It takes the shortest and easiest path to get there. As such, it provides fairly immediate gratification for the reader. With such low-hanging fruit, its intended audience is beginners without a lot of knowledge in computer science. For that audience, Anis effectively communicates his message.…

Biography-Memoir Writing-Communication

Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

By Scott J. Pearson | May 4, 2020 by Scott J. Pearson

Anne Lamott is a brilliant mentor to writers and to creative people in general. She spins her yarn with a conversational, west-coast style. In this book, she writes about redeeming our experiences to produce literature. She has learned many lessons in her life, and she shares their fruit in vivid detail here. She is most brilliant, in my opinion, not in her quality novels but when she functions as a memoir-writer-turned-spiritual-advisor. What she says is…

Healthcare

BLS (Basic Life Support) by the American Heart Association

By Scott J. Pearson | May 2, 2020 by Scott J. Pearson

This manual, based off of recommendations from the American Heart Association (AHA), teaches the basics of life support when/if one encounters someone in a life emergency. It intends to reach an audience of healthcare providers. It covers CPR, defibrillator (AED) use, rescue breathing, choking-rescue techniques, and naloxone administration for opioid-associated events. The AHA and Red Cross administer trainings with this material. This is the standard for life-supporting rescue and first aid. They also have a…

Management-Business Psychology

StrengthsFinder 2.0: Discover Your CliftonStrengths

By Scott J. Pearson | April 30, 2020May 1, 2020 by Scott J. Pearson

I picked up this book because a group at work was discussing their strengths, and I wanted to take the survey to devote some thought to how I might work with them better. Don Clifton, a workplace psychologist, identified these 34 atomized strengths and developed a questionnaire to help individuals find their personal preferred strengths. Among the 34 are themes like Belief, Communication, Significance, Responsibility, Woo, and Context. First, some important financial advice. If you…

Indie Software-Technology

The Vue Handbook

By Scott J. Pearson | April 29, 2020April 29, 2020 by Scott J. Pearson

Vue is a popular software programming package based off of JavaScript. It is an add-on that makes a client’s web browser to all sorts of fun and useful things. Through using templating and a centralized API, it can help create fast user interfaces on the web. It’s more-or-less a competitor with other JavaScript libraries like React. Vue functions as a templating engine in JavaScript. That means that it is a client-side templating engine (in your…