After writing my post about the perils of extremism a few weeks ago, I just have to link to John Perry Barlow’s thoughts on the subject. Despite being the author of the much ballyhooed Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Barlow only recently started a weblog of his own. After one of his posts evangelizing […]
7 Fingers circus
Every year, the Circus Center of San Francisco puts on a circus show around the holidays. I always read about it, and then never end up going. Usually, it’s a production of the New Pickle Circus, their in-house performing troupe, but this year, they invited a group called les 7 voigts de la main, or […]
Small Things Considered, by Henry Petroski
Amazon link Subtitled Why There Is No Perfect Design, this book by an engineer describes the compromises necessary in any design. This was recommended as a book-of-the-month by Joel Spolsky – scroll down for his snippet on this book. I was intrigued enough to toss it into my latest Amazon order, and read it while […]
The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown
Amazon link This was recommended to me by a couple co-workers. When they were describing it to me, with its plot referencing the Knights Templar and other secret societies, I said it sounded a lot like Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum, dumbed down into a thriller format for an American audience. So when I was at […]
Crossing the Chasm, by Geoffrey Moore
Amazon link This is one of those standard high-tech marketing books that everybody refers to in the technology business sector. I had never gotten around to reading it, but after our marketing folks started mentioning the chasm in every presentation recently, I figured it was time to skim through it, just to find out what […]
Dean Can’t Win
In light of my speculation as to Dean’s chances in the presidential election, I thought I should put up a link to the political cartoon, This Modern World, which published a cartoon this week, ridiculing the idea that Dean can’t win. I’m still torn on Dean. I like his position on several of the issues. […]
Letters to a Young Contrarian, by Christopher Hitchens
Amazon link I read a brief excerpt from this book several months ago in NewsScan, and was intrigued enough by the concept of a “contrarian” to add it to my Amazon wish list, but never got around to buying it. A few weeks ago, I was at a friend’s house for dinner, and noticed that […]
Height study redux
In the latest Science News, I read a blurb that partially supports the theory I posited in my rant about the height study a month ago. In particular, my assertion that “if one is undernourished as a kid, the body gets most of the nutritive value and the brain is starved.” The article, entitled “Ketones […]
Power’s out
San Francisco had a major power outage this evening. I was initially unaware of it, because I was riding BART on my way to tonight’s performance of the Messiah with the chorus. The first I heard of it was when we stopped at the Montgomery BART station and the operator said “We’re not stopping at […]
Extremism
Last month, I was chatting with somebody who, upon finding out that I went to MIT, asked me if I had ever taken a class with Noam Chomsky. I said that I hadn’t, but I’d read a couple of his books, so he asked me what I thought of them. I said something like “I […]
