Since last year I transferred that wobbly stack of books into a proper bookshelf. It's a good way to put a limit on the size of a library, but it's also a struggle to keep to that limit.
You have an enviable library! Two books I noticed: What did you think of Gleick's The Information? I started it but it didn't really draw me in much. Is it worth plowing through? Did you read The Skeptical Environmentalist? What do you think of it? I've heard no good about it.
Most of my books were purchased used, but I confidently bought this one new after enjoying Genius and Chaos and Faster. I still have the receipt, the back is full of notes. A quote from Galileo on p. 17, when someone tried to sell him a contraption with magnetized needles that could allegedly convey messages over thousands of miles. There is an explanation of talking drums, by which natives in sub-Saharan Africa could communicate messages over long distances leaving European explorers unaware. The secret was to increase the signal-to-noise ratio: they drummed the rhythms of spoken language, leaving out most of the sounds and tone, and increased the complexity and detail to compensate. To communicate the message "come back home," they would drumWhat did you think of Gleick's The Information?
It was so much better than Martin Amis's book. The hero is Claude Shannon, who "has a well-deserved reputation as the father of information theory, but he was also an avid unicyclist, juggler and tinkerer."I told him that I would gladly buy, but wanted to see by experiment and that it would be enough for me if he would stand in one room and I in another. He replied that its operation could not be detected at such a short distance. I sent him on his way, with the remark that I was not in the mood at that time to go to Cairo or Moscow for the experiment, but that if he wanted to go I would stay in Venice and take care of the other end.
I did not read much of The Skeptical Environmentalist. I am a fan of Julian Simon, author of The Ultimate Resource on the top shelf, because of his amazing thoroughness in backing up his conclusions with evidence, reams of data, typically from uncontested sources. That alone is respectable, but the fact that his conclusions are so optimistic and (unfortunately) therefore contrarian makes him quite engaging. Apparently Lomborg set out to discredit Simon and ended up being won over. He strikes me as being more willing to select the stories and data that support his narrative. The disciple is always more zealous than the prophet. Make your feet come back the way they went,
make your legs come back the way they went,
plant your feet and your legs below,
in the village which belongs to us.
Yes, The Professor and the Madman was quite rewarding. Sappy though it is, one of my favorite of his works appeared in Salon's Wanderlust (bottom shelf):
What's the title of the 2nd shelf from the top, third book from the left, to the left of I'm with Stupid? I can't quite make it out. It looks like The Republican's Guide to something Will look carefully, see what I want to borrow. Will there be a March on Washington courtesy of Al Sharpton? Will you be going?
That is The Hypochondriac's Guide to Life. And Death., also by Weingarten. Whenever there is a march on Washington, I try to get out of the way. I was going to add that I'm not a fan of Al Sharpton, but reading about him makes me think he is pretty cool for a television talking head. I didn't realize that he has lost more weight than he currently weighs.
Around 2006, my youngest daughter Ashley poked me in the stomach and said, 'Dad, why are you so fat?' That kind of hurt my feelings. I grew up in civil rights and politics, so I'm pretty thick-skinned, but when your daughter says it, I started being conscious.