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 […]
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 […]
