Todd R Fredricks

Self indulgent without resolution.

Revisado: 11-15-22

What did Eric learn? That’s what you’re left with. Self indulgent writing that never gets to the root of the authors problem. He’s religious without really understanding faith. He’s dismissive of his wife’s incredible devotion. He fails to understand that the sooner he starts focusing on others and service the sooner he’ll find redemption.

I was left with the hope that he someday understands this, finds someone who explains what grace without works really means and that he finds peace in his soul. Saul of Tarsus sent Christian’s to their death and became the greatest apologist for the Christian faith in history. Eric’s church apparently failed to teach him about that mystery. Until he learns that he will remain as confused as his Jewish rabbi friend about what salvation really is.

Listen to this. It’s worth hearing how narcissistic tendencies can damage the soul. Eric if you read this, I’m an Iraq vet. I truly wish you and your family well and a lifetime of peace and restful sleep. Truly.

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Outstanding overview with operational details

Revisado: 11-09-21

The only gripe I have is that the narration can be a bit stilted and monotonous. There is an issue with cadence that makes it just slightly awkward.

Aside from that it’s a tremendous resource for understanding the conditions of the Pelopennesian War. A must have for any strategist or historian.

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A Tough Review to Write

Revisado: 03-27-21

There is a saying; Not everyone gets to be an astronaut.

Terry Virts seems like a very nice fellow. I suspect he is very genuine and approachable. But this book is an example of how celebrity gives access to levels of notoriety that must be earned through hard work by all others.

Virts is an author. But he’s not a front table at Barnes and Noble author. In fact he might not actually be a Barnes and noble author, period.

This book is a chore. It’s not enjoyable and through the listening experience I found myself trying to like it simply because Virts seems very likeable. But I know a lot of USAF pilots I like and most can’t write. Virts writes with the worst of active voice and operational experience combined.

And this was hard to balance against his narration. I wish he had chosen an actual voice actor, experienced audio book reader. Virts inflections actually work against him because he cannot capture the patterns of emphasis in his sentences. This makes capturing the emotions that drove his writing very difficult. Where’s the emphasis?

I’m not sure how to fix this.

I suppose a different reader would be a start. A reader that understands how to read the written word to translate mental emphasis into words would help and that might make this book better.

The next thing I would do is find an unsympathetic editor who isn’t captivated by celebrity or what I assume is Virts genuine and compelling personality. If Virts is serious about being an author he needs to go find an editor that hates or is indifferent to space. That individual will be invaluable in making this book work for the audience for whom it’s intended.

That’s tough because as a celebrity he’ll have no lack of willing and eager people who want to associate themselves with his work. So I’d find some latter career, jaded small, private Midwestern creative writing professor to review all future works.

Mr Virts if you read this please understand I truly think you must be a very nice person, but I lost money on your book. As one military guy to another, work harder. I wish you well and truly hope you find literary success based upon value given to your readers.

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A Tough Review to Write

Revisado: 03-27-21

There is a saying; Not everyone gets to be an astronaut.

Terry Virts seems like a very nice fellow. I suspect he is very genuine and approachable. But this book is an example of how celebrity gives access to levels of notoriety that must be earned through hard work by all others.

Virts is an author. But he’s not a front table at Barnes and Noble author. In fact he might not actually be a Barnes and noble author, period.

This book is a chore. It’s not enjoyable and through the listening experience I found myself trying to like it simply because Virts seems very likeable. But I know a lot of USAF pilots I like and most can’t write. Virts writes with the worst of active voice and operational experience combined.

And this was hard to balance against his narration. I wish he had chosen an actual voice actor, experienced audio book reader. Virts inflections actually work against him because he cannot capture the patterns of emphasis in his sentences. This makes capturing the emotions that drove his writing very difficult. Where’s the emphasis?

I’m not sure how to fix this.

I suppose a different reader would be a start. A reader that understands how to read the written word to translate mental emphasis into words would help and that might make this book better.

The next thing I would do is find an unsympathetic editor who isn’t captivated by celebrity or what I assume is Virts genuine and compelling personality. If Virts is serious about being an author he needs to go find an editor that hates or is indifferent to space. That individual will be invaluable in making this book work for the audience for whom it’s intended.

That’s tough because as a celebrity he’ll have no lack of willing and eager people who want to associate themselves with his work. So I’d find some latter career, jaded small, private Midwestern creative writing professor to review all future works.

Mr Virts if you read this please understand I truly think you must be a very nice person, but I lost money on your book. As one military guy to another, work harder. I wish you well and truly hope you find literary success based upon value given to your readers.

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Basically a compilation of science and tech news stories

Revisado: 07-15-18

There are a lot of interesting trivialities in this book. The authors are sadly beholden to confirmation bias in their words and their humor will appeal to the more nerdish of the scientific community. Is it worth an audible point? Depends. They do a nice overview and summary of technology across a breadth of disciplines and for broadening your scope of polite conversation among interdisciplinary colleagues it served nicely. I don’t feel ripped off, just not wowed. More like the happy side of, meh!

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Not Weirs best work.

Revisado: 05-03-18

Story is entertaining. Profanity and sexual references are gratuitous and lots of politically correct pandering. It pales in comparison to The Martian. Hopefully book 3 will rise to Weir’s demonstrated capabilities.

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Pure Democracy Advocates Who are On Track Til the End

Revisado: 02-09-18

Great book but in the end the authors naively dismiss the essential protections that true republics offer the minority against the mob.

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A Good History Book

Revisado: 06-07-16

What did you love best about Delta Force?

Its history told by its founder

What did you like best about this story?

Beckwith's persistence

What about Alan Sklar’s performance did you like?

It was fine

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

The sadness of Desert One, Delta's first serious operational mission and it was a collosal failure due to a failure of vision at the highest levels of government.

Any additional comments?

Beckwith gave us an American SAS capable of coming to get lost Americans and doing it with quiet professionalism. Unlike the SEALS who the media seems to be obsessed with, 1 SOD-D (Delta) is never in the news. They do their job the way that they should without asking for anything other than a soldier's fair compensation. I know a Delta Operator and were I in a serious bind the knowledge that he was coming for me would give me the strength to endure.

There are great men and women and Beckwith got them stood up when nobody wanted to listen to him about the need for them in our forces.

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Another Book on Basic Common Sense

Revisado: 06-07-16

What did you love best about A Passion for Leadership?

Sec Gates tells it like it is to an audience that seems to have difficulty finding common sense.

What other book might you compare A Passion for Leadership to and why?

Duty, his last book. Gates is what American leaders should be.

Which character – as performed by George Newbern – was your favorite?

N/A

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

No, I just love Sec Gates and because he was willing to man up, exercise authority and do the right thing regardless of politics he saved American soldiers' lives with MRAPS. I witnessed it personally in Iraq.

Any additional comments?

Sec Gates is one of very few people that I would like to meet personally. He is a quiet professional and what every American leader should aspire to be like. I have some issues with some of his policies but the respect he garners because of his composure and capacity make those things matters of mild disagreement and surely things that are insignificant in the greater scheme of things.

The fact that Sec Gates is no longer in government is a great loss to America. There are very few like him and anyone interested in understanding what real leadership entails needs to read this book.

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A nice engineering overview with terrible science

Revisado: 06-07-16

Would you consider the audio edition of Mars Rover Curiosity to be better than the print version?

Don't know didn't read the print.

Who was your favorite character and why?

The Curiosity of course

Have you listened to any of Bronson Pinchot’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

Have not listened to other performances

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Perhaps

Any additional comments?

This book is a nice overview of the engineering challenges that were faced by the team that developed the Mars Science Laboratory and the Curiosity rover. The author was the chief engineer for the project and has a wealth of experience in Mars missions. That is worth the price of the book.

Going to space is incredibly hard. Space is a very difficult environment to operate any mechanical system and going 35 million miles into space for months on end is even harder. Now try and land on a planet and then have a functional system that had to pull 15 gs of deceleration and show up ready to work for a year or more and do that successfully... ...well, you have achieved something.

The MSL and Curiosity were worth the price spent on them just to prove that we could do that successfully, where this book goes off the rails is when the author tells us that the purpose of the mission was to find proof of life on Mars. That was a real let down. Falling prey once again to the cult of evolutionary biology, the author, who is not a biologist, but an engineer, waxes ecstatic over the fact that MSL was able to identify materials on Mars that may have once been used as metabolic substrate for xtremophiles long since gone, if there ever were any in the first place. That is the expressed purpose of this whole mission.

Not proving the engineering necessary to land a mini-van sized machine on another planet and have the systems work reliably for years, not EDL (Entry Decent and Landing), not geological exploration for its own sake. Nope, we sent this whole cost overrun time delayed mess up there to see if possibly life could have existed on Mars.

To the lay person that might seem valid enough but to a scientist of any serious credibility it does nothing but spend money for the sake of patronizing a bunch of stamp collecting biologists who spend a lot of time pontificating and speculating and calling it fact. That deeply saddens me. The fact of the matter is that going out searching for life anywhere is a expensive fools errand. We are a very long time from ever being able to seriously consider a trip to anywhere with liquid water. That Mars once had it is only useful if there is enough available in the rock that landers could use it to produce fuel for a return to earth and provide drinking water necessary to sustain human explorers once they get there.

Our journeys in to space need to be focused on what is manageable with our technology, namely very low sublight speed travel, human endurance, geological analysis and experiments in sustainable agriculture and power production and perhaps construction methods to support exploration colonies on planets that we can travel to and land on safely. Fiddling around with searching for life as a priority is a very high cost low yield process that may reveal some kind of life and that life might in fact not be interesting but lethal to human beings. We live on planet earth. Biologists and the engineers that build spaceships to fuel their fantasies need to understand that finding some sulphur dioxide on Mars is not exciting nor reason to get ecstatic, it is just information that tells us that Mars has sulphur dioxide. To buffalo the lay public about its significance is not only disingenuous but really bad science.

Read the book with a critical eye and be proud of the crew at JPL who made something really complex, work elegantly.

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