Scott J. Pearson

The Silent Patient

By Scott J. Pearson | April 26, 2020 by Scott J. Pearson

In its opening, this book appeared to be a statement about psychotherapy. Then it evolved into a murder-mystery. Then it flipped its foundations and resolved in stunning fashion. Clearly, the scope of the plot demonstrates Michaelides’ innate genius. In doing so, however, he educates us about human nature and those professions which are in charge of humanity’s most needy members. The main character (professionally, a psychotherapist) is unorthodox in his style and functions as a…

Fallible: A Memoir of a Young Physician’s Struggle with Mental Illness

By Scott J. Pearson | April 24, 2020 by Scott J. Pearson

As with most memoirs, this saga spans many sectors of life: religious faith (Mormon), an arduous journey (years of medical training), loneliness and solitude (missionary work in the Ukraine), deep, abiding love (a wife and kids), and obstacles (relentless anxiety). Jones relates his struggle with generalized anxiety disorder and in attaining a stable life. This difficulty is amplified by the fact that he undertakes psychologically stressful education to become a physician. The hardships never really…

Research-Education Society

Research Universities and the Public Good: Discovery for an Uncertain Future

By Scott J. Pearson | April 22, 2020April 23, 2020 by Scott J. Pearson

Recent years have witnessed funding cuts for universities, both at the state and federal levels. Due to economic factors beyond its control (like the Great Recession), research dollars from governmental sources have shrunk, and research budgets from industry have not risen. Industry’s and government’s interests differ in more immediate monetary applications versus long-term social gains. Someone must pay for university work, and oftentimes, that someone is the individual student and her/his family. Owen-Smith, a professor…

Indie Software-Technology

The React Handbook by Flavio Copes

By Scott J. Pearson | April 19, 2020April 22, 2020 by Scott J. Pearson

Flavio Copes, an expert on JavaScript, maintains a blog and manages courses that introduce folks to the myriad uses of this long-time staple of a computer language. React is a technology by which JS is used to create more responsive websites for users. These websites operate more quickly and do not wait as often for servers to respond. In this book, Copes first covers the advances in JavaScript over the past few years. Those who…

Books Personal Essays

Solitude Under Quarantine (An Essay)

By Scott J. Pearson | April 19, 2020April 19, 2020 by Scott J. Pearson

What do you do with your life now that you don’t have to travel to and from work? Do you exercise more? Do you read more? What do you do with the time vacated by your commute? I suggest that we can use this time to lay down our plows of effort, to nourish ourselves, and to become better people. Under our new circumstances, many of the things that have driven us towards market spending…

Management-Business

Crisis Management: Planning for the Inevitable

By Scott J. Pearson | April 16, 2020April 16, 2020 by Scott J. Pearson

This book, almost 35 years old, still distills how to manage a crisis better than any other book known to me. It covers basics like damage control and crisis communication. More importantly, by providing plentiful examples from American government and business, it covers how to identify, isolate, and then manage crisis-level events that threaten one’s professional or personal life. In a prior life, Fink served as an advisor to a United States governor. That wide-open,…

Fiction-Stories History Poetry Religion-Philosophy

The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri

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

Dante’s famous The Divine Comedy lies at the intersection of art and theology. I love artful renditions of theology. Further, it is known as the best work of poetry ever to grace the language of Italian. Therefore, I decided to look for a good translation. I’ve enjoyed Longfellow’s poetry in the past, and when I saw that he undertook an adaptation, I chose to give it a go. Unfortunately, Longfellow seemed to stick a little…

Fiction-Stories

The Plague by Albert Camus

By Scott J. Pearson | April 7, 2020 by Scott J. Pearson

The Plague seems like an appropriate title of a book for a coronavirus-stricken world. Set in modern (1940s?) North Africa, this book reimagines a world where the plague mysteriously makes a recurrence. The work is told from the point of view of a doctor. As with COVID-19 paralyzing the world, the disease paralyzes an entire town for several seasons. Many die over many months. This work provides moving portrayals of individual death and of massive…

Biography-Memoir History Software-Technology

UNIX: A History and a Memoir

By Scott J. Pearson | April 5, 2020 by Scott J. Pearson

Brian Kernighan is most known for writing the definitive work on the C computer language. He worked for most of his career at famous Bell Labs from AT&T and worked among those who developed the UNIX operating system. UNIX powers much of the Internet and served as the basis for computer operating systems like Linux and MacOS. These all have influenced technological history, and he enlightens us as to how. He writes in a light,…

Books

What I’m Reading in April, 2020

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

Pandemics, Research, Writing, Visualizations, and Mental Illness The Plague by Albert Camus Given our current COVID-19 pandemic, this classic by a Nobel Prizewinner seems appropriate to re-read. This work explores the meaning of life amongst an fictionalized new outbreak of the plague in North Africa. Camus is one of my favorite writers and thinkers of all time, so I should immensely enjoy my time in this tale. Managing the Research University by Dean O. Smith…