Cleaning up the geek bookshelf, part 1: “What was I thinking?”
In preparation for a move of house that isn’t actually likely to happen until 2007, Shannon and I have been going through some of our bookshelves. Our (admittedly unattainable) goal is to get rid of...
View ArticleHow to stop feeling sorry for oneself
Not too long ago, I decided to start tracking the books I read more closely. Though I had no particular goal in mind when I started this, I had been entertaining, for a while, the notion that I am not...
View ArticleBook review: Doug Macdougall, “Frozen Earth”
Some time ago, I read a Nature review (subscription required) of Doug Macdougall’s “Frozen Earth“. As is the way of such things, after I ordered my copy, the book suffered several months of neglect...
View ArticleThe obsessionally perfect news story
Local scientists, ancient reptiles, volcanic eruptions, and Antarctica! All in one story! Really, this article was written precisely and exactly for me. In brief, a paleontologist from Berkeley (across...
View ArticleA foray into philosophical silliness
Inspired by a discussion on a mailing list, I dug up a copy of Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen’s Figments of Reality, to find the definition of the zombike. [...] We begin with a topic that has greatly...
View ArticleAttention, the Soviet herring fleet!
From the department of microscopic obsessions of the bourgeoisie: I’ve subscribed to The New Yorker since I first came to the US, over a decade ago. On a mailing list, a correspondent alerts readers to...
View ArticleBLDGBLOG interviews Kim Stanley Robinson
Here is an absolute treat: a long, lively interview with Kim Stanley Robinson, conducted on one of my favourite blogs, BLDGBLOG. At its best (the Three Californias trilogy, Antarctica), Robinson’s...
View ArticleHoisted from someone else’s comments
Marc Ambinder comments on the peculiar cadence of the jacket blurbs for Douglas Feith’s new book, to which some wag responds with a suggestion for a similar endorsement. Feith’s book is perfectly...
View ArticleWouldn’t it be nice…
…if the world of blogging about software had by now developed some kind of a tradition of critical analysis? Over at Inside Higher Ed, Scott McLemee writes a careful and thoughtful review of Cornel...
View ArticleBook review: Parallel and Concurrent Programming in Haskell
It's time someone finally wrote a proper review of Simon Marlow's amazing book, Parallel and Concurrent Programming in Haskell. I am really not the right person to tackle this job objectively, because...
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