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 […]
A talk by Peter Schwartz
After missing the talk by Brian Eno last month, I really wanted to see the next talk in the Long Now series. The December talk was by Peter Schwartz, a well-known futurist and business strategist. Schwartz was a co-founder of Global Business Network, a consulting company that uses scenario planning, a strategy of exploring possible […]
Buying media
As sort of a semi-pre-Christmas present to myself, I went a little bit nuts in buying media for myself this weekend. Here’s the sum total for y’all’s entertainment. I ordered some stuff from Amazon: Crossing the Chasm, by Geoffrey A. Moore (because all of our marketing people at work are talking about the chasm, so […]
Bloglet
If you’re interested in the content of this blog, but don’t want to deal with checking the web page sporadically, I’d recommend using the service at Bloglet. Create a new account with your email address, click on “your subscriptions” on the right side” and enter https://www.nehrlich.com/blog/index.rss in the box labelled “To subscribe to an RSS […]
The Semantic Web
The Semantic Web was recently brought to my attention after reading an article by Clay Shirky, previously mentioned in this blog. As usual, I agree with much of what Shirky has to say. But apparently, he ignited quite a discussion, including this rebuttal and the further discussion here. In the terms that Shirky originally states, […]
Language in Thought and Action, by S.I. Hayakawa
Amazon link (originally posted on 8/17/03, link fixed on 11/17/03) I found this book in a roundabout way. In Conscientious Objections, Neal Postman reviewed the book Science and Sanity, by Alfred Korzybski, calling it one of the most important books of the last century. Korzybski developed the field of general semantics, a system of thinking […]
LookinGlass Architecture and Design
My friend, Emil Mertzel, and his business partner Nick were recently published in a Taiwanese design journal. The article is available from their website, at this link (down at the moment that I am posting, but I’m sure it will be back up eventually). I sent Emil the following e-mail after reading the article: So, […]
