brainstorms

Monday June 12, 2006

recently noted books

richard dawkins, the god delusion
goetz et al. java concurrency in practice
gerald m. weinberg, weinberg on writing: the fieldstone method [he has a related blogspot] [reviews]
sam harris, letter to a christian nation
edward tufte, beautiful evidence
james morrow, the last witchfinder
charles stross, glasshouse

[i consider dawkins, tufte, and harris essential additions to my library. i was very pleased to stumble across weinberg's considerable insights on writing. goetz book appears to be the kind of book no serious programmer [with or without java] should do without. morrow and stross need no elaboration.]

Monday May 29, 2006

comics, strange loops... [two books]

scott mccloud's much anticipated making comics including a 50 state tour...
[he visits toronto and vancouver as well]

douglas r. hofstadter's i am a strange loop. [brief review]

recommended listening: fripp and eno, the equatorial stars

Sunday May 14, 2006

brave new ballot

i pre-ordered a copy of avi rubin's brave new ballot: the battle to safeguard democracy in the age of electronic voting coming out in september. [have you ordered yours?] it may well be the most important book on security and democracy i will read this year. [i worry that some of the more delusional canadian politicians may be tempted to replace our simple paper ballots with some badly programmed, touchscreen driven bag of silicon...]

current: ed felten's blog entry about harri hursti's report. to quote:

2001: Doug Jones produces a report highlighting design flaws in the machines that became the Diebold touchscreen voting machines.
July 24, 2003: Hopkins/Rice study finds many security flaws in Diebold machines, including ones that were pointed out by Doug Jones.
September 24, 2003: SAIC study finds serious flaws in Diebold voting machines. 2/3 of the report is redacted by the state of Maryland.
November 21, 2003: Ohio’s Compuware and InfoSentry reports find critical flaws in Diebold touchscreen voting machines
January 20, 2004: RABA study finds serious security vulnerabilities in Diebold touchscreen voting machines.
November, 2004: 37 states use Diebold touchscreen voting machines in general election.
March, 2006: Harri Hursti reports the most serious vulnerabilities to date discovered.

[recommended listening: tbd]

Tuesday April 25, 2006

a dozen good books

a dozen good books from the current never-ending pile.

popper, the logic of scientific discovery
damien broderick, godplayers
yochai benkler, the weath of networks: how social production transforms markets and freedom
peter swirski, from lowbrow to nobrow
mark kingwell, nearest thing to heaven: the empire state building and american dream
sam harris, the end of faith
stylefile blackbook sessions
hugh laurie, the gun seller
lowitz, aoyama, tomioka, a long rainy season: haiku and tanka (contemporary japanese women's poetry, vol 1)
david miller, critical rationalism: a restatement and defence
ian rankin, the complete short stories
owen flanagan, the problem of the soul: two visions of mind and how to reconcile them

[musical selection: brian eno + david byrne, my life in the bush of ghosts, remastered edition with previously unreleased tracks, 2006]

Tuesday March 21, 2006

just the logos...

very pleased with the new compact logolounge. of the two books published for logolounge, the first volume was by far the more valuable and deserving of this pocket edition. bells and whistles stripped away, 2000 haikus of good identity design, grid numbered. it is a must-have inspirational pocket reference for logo designers of all levels.

oblink: logolounge

[amazon shows logolounge 3 is on its way. i hope it contains better designs than the forgettable #2.]

Friday February 17, 2006

no two alike

hmm, i have no idea what happened to my copy of judith harris's no two alike. still waiting. here is a good review. [encouraging to see reviews by reviewers who actually read harris's book; i recall that her sharp nurture assumption had received a couple of vitriolic reviews where the reviewers admitted to not actually bothering to read it...]

Thursday December 15, 2005

interesting reviews

recent valuable book reviews. [i have the first two; wolfram book is a large but curious mess, so i am keeping it for now. mayo's book is important, but not easy going for a neophyte in philosophy of science, so i am taking it slowly.]

cozma shalizi's review of a new kind of science by stephen wolfram.

As the saying goes, there is much here that is new and true, but what is true is not new, and what is new is not true; and some of it is even old and false, or at least utterly unsupported.

review of Error and the Growth of Experimental Knowledge by deborah g. mayo.

Experimental inquiry, for Mayo, consist of breaking down the question at hand into a series of small bits, each of which is relatively easily subjected to severe tests for error, or (depending on how you look at it) is itself a severe probe for a certain error.

[note: First Symposium on Philosophy, History, and Methodology of E.R.R.O.R [Experimental Reasoning, Reliability, Objectivity & Rationality: Induction, Statistics, & Modeling], Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia, June 1-5, 2006]

[chronological index of shalizi reviews. good stuff there.]

chris mooney's review of the politically incorrect guide to science

Indeed, in some sense Bethell's book provides a useful service. It offers, in one place, a nice catalogue of all the discredited arguments that are ritualistically used to undermine evolution, global warming, and much else that's well established in modern science.

[i did save a copy of the original cover image as appears in amazon, with its inadvertent claim/admission statement that is so revealing: liberals have hijacked science for long enough. now it's our turn]

Tuesday December 13, 2005

on technical writing

found this good online reference while skimming for something else: NASA Technical Memorandum 105419: technical report writing.

[as an example of computer science technical writing par excellence, i always pull out gerard's Design and Validation of Computer Protocols. i hope dtrace team can publish a book like DVCP; they have all the right ingredients: solid computer science, open source, and mind-altering results.]

Tuesday October 11, 2005

a gift for generations: calvin and hobbes

my early xmas gift, beautifully printed and bound, The Complete Calvin and Hobbes has arrived.

there are many books in my library that i hope will travel through the generational timeline; this is the only one that weighs 10 kilos [a kilo per year of syndication], and means more to me than most other books i own. this is the one that i would wish my grand-grand children [should they exist] to read again and again and enjoy as much as i have.

thank you bill, for calvin & hobbes. [thank you ulya, for giving me the collection]

childhood is short and maturity is forever.

Friday October 07, 2005

two online books: mentoring, polyhedral dissections

two unrelated books: one found while searching for references for mentoring junior colleagues, and another through my interest in berrocal's works which led to john rausch's incredible puzzle world.

national academy of sciences, national academy of engineering, institute of medicine, adviser, teacher, role model, friend: on being a mentor to students in science and engineering, national academy press, 1997.

stewart t. coffin, The Puzzling World of Polyhedral Dissections, oxford university press, 1991.

[image of a six-piece burr from coffin's chapter 5, six-piece burr general discussion. i am quite sure i saw the original printed edition of this book, and neglected to pick it up at the time. fixed now.]

Friday September 23, 2005

in support of google print...

i strongly support the google print project. i think the authors guild's legal attack against google is deeply misguided and intellectually bankrupt, and i root for its swift demise.

So too should common sense revolt at the claims of this law suit. -- larry lessig

links: google's excellent response and UM statement

Monday August 29, 2005

must have books for 2005/2006...

bill watterson, the complete calvin and hobbes
scott mccloud, making comics [see scott's blog]
frank miller's sin city library I
al aho, et al. 21st Century Compilers
charles stross, clan corporate [third book of The Merchant Princes trilogy]
daniel p. friedman, et al. reasoned schemer [oh well, once a schemer, always a schemer...]
grune and jacobs, parsing techniques (second edition)
meggs and purvis, meggs' history of graphic design, 4th edition
ellen lupton, diy - design it yourself
loeb and lee, batman absolute hush

[odds and ends: richard gabriel was promising to publish a collection of the early MIT lambda papers by steele and others, but i have no idea of its status; if rpg or anyone who knows about that project is reading this, please let me know what is happening.]

Tuesday August 23, 2005

the mathemagician and pied puzzler

while looking up gardner, i found that the berlekamp/rodgers tribute volume is now available online. [the original hardcover is still available. an initial search for "mathemagician" had 91,864 hits, thanks to unwanted spelling correction.]

authors whose work i would buy sight unseen

here are the fifty authors whose [new] books i would order sight unseen. i saw geoff's (short) list recently and thought it was a good idea. [tum de dum. copy, paste, delete, delete, delete... lowcase. done. da dum. connie willis! sure. i had the pleasure to meet her at ad astra. one of the smartest people i have ever met. unbelievable.] so, this one is for geoff. [alas, i do not have my desert island list yet. it better be a big island.]

richard dawkins
daniel dennett
douglas hofstadter
susan haack
larry lessig
steven pinker
robert kirk
john allen paulos
jacques barzun
edward tufte

aaron elkins
allen steele
bruce sterling
charles stross
connie willis
david brin
greg egan
gregory benford
ian rankin
j. k. rowlings
jack mcdevitt
james lee burke
ken mcleod
lee child
lois mcmaster bujold
michael connelly
nancy kress
neal stephenson
paul j. mcauley
peter robinson
stanislav lem
stephen baxter
terry pratchett
vernor vinge
wil mccarthy
william gibson

freeman patterson
john shaw
ellen lupton
alex w. white

brian kernighan
rob pike
donald knuth
steve mcconnell
robert l. glass
jon bentley
marvin minsky
richard p. gabriel

mark bittman
jamie oliver

[note on lem: his 2003 dilemmas is yet to be translated. some translations of his earlier work have been criticised; it would be good to have better translations.]

[note on knuth: i do not really care for any of his religious output, so i guess in his case sight-unseen needs a qualifier: -in-math-or-computer-science.]

[others: i would have included john kenneth galbraith on the list as well, though i am not sure if he is working on any new books since turning 97. same for martin gardner. christopher alexander should be added too, but i do not have some of the earlier works published along with a pattern language. i have his later works. i was going to add alan musgrave to the list, but discovered i could not order his new book [essays on realism and rationalism] sight unseen, because i could not efford it. [if anyone knows of an effordable copy, please let me know] some philosophy books are very expensive alas. smullyan is out; last time i ordered one of his books sight unseen i ended up with a very strange little book about religious consciousness.]

[sight unseen: not quite literally. publishers try to re-sell old books in various innovative ways. for example, bittman's exceptional how to cook everything is now being sold as several softcover cookbooks, eg. basics, quick cooking etc. i usually detect this and avoid buying an old book in a new cover. i have pre-ordered his new international cookbook.]

[fifty: this list can easily be three times as long, but i trimmed it down, and kept it to essentials.]

music: brian eno, another day on earth, opal music. various, chess blues (1947-1967) [box set] chess/mca.

Friday June 24, 2005

time travel notes [cont]

[continuing to read and reflect on langford's white dwarf reviews collected in the complete critical assembly.]

nov 84 review mentions larry niven's the integral trees as "much more fun than the weary ringworld engineers". i have read most of niven's output (including some of the lesser bits with pournelle) but i do not think i have ever read the integral trees. how disappointing.

the really important part of the nov 84 piece is a short review of gibson's neuromancer:

Gibson crackles with creative energy, hammering your forebrain with ideas, colour, future slang and (the time-tested ian fleming technique) brand names. [...] I spent the whole time on the edge of my seat and got cramp as a result.

beautifully put. langford already knew gibson from his short stories like burning chrome but i did not; [the collection named after that story came out later] i was just lucky to receive a gollancz hardcover (second printing alas, shown here, now acid-worn, and worse for the wear after two decades) early in 85. i read it twice the week i received it. hard to describe what it did: hammering is a good word, but when i think about it, the word exhilarating keeps coming up. [the image i have is a long dive to cool clear blue ocean somewhere down south in a hot july afternoon]

jan 85 piece opens with a brief review of heinlein's job: a comedy of justice. I agree with langford; after the NOTB disaster, job shines. looking back, i am sure i missed some of the more subtle jabs of that book for not growing up as a christian. i did appreciate [more so now] one thing: at the time he did not have to worry about assorted religious nutbars trying to unplug him for his blasphemy. [these days i worry about james morrow's well being.]

it looks like brunner's the sheep look up was re-issued that year. langford calls it one massive downer, perhaps accurate for mid-eighties but a re-read today may assess that novel differently for its predictive power; we just know much more about the environmental damage caused by our carelessness and ignorance. referring to the ending, langford suggests the word Schadenfreude and i looked it up: german, from Schaden damage + Freude, joy. joy from suffering of others. i am not so sure. i should re-read it, but so should langford.

a reasonably detailed review by davin heckman is here.

The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed,
But swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw,
Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread,
Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw
Daily devours apace, and nothing said.
-- Milton (Lycidas)

[the image on the right is the actual cover of the 1984 release of the sheep look up; it is poor but the only one i could locate on the web.]

[to be continued]

[this entry was prepared with markdown.]