"Not all opinions are created equal. Some are a great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others." Douglas Adams
Every once and a while I read a book because I’m supposed to, whether because it won the Pulitzer or Nobel or Booker, or some other prestigious prize, or it’s just old enough to have been granted “classic” status.
Usually, the book turns out to be just as good, or at least just as notable, as it is supposed to be.
I wish I had read this in the early years after 9/11. While the characters in Joseph Conrad’s “The Secret Agent” are not superficially the same as the characters that would figure into the terrorist attacks on 9/11 and the subsequent events, the themes are eerily similar.
Isaacson’s biography is fascinating, covering warts and and moles along with his contributions and genius. With direct access to Jobs, his associates, rivals, and family, it is an incomparable work that will be the defining biography for decades to come.
I suppose there are a lot of ways to look at Steve Jobs. However you view him, though, it’s hard to dispute his success in technology, design, and animation. Not quite an inventor or engineer, Jobs thought himself more an artist, and perhaps he was. He had an attention to detail and a vision of minimalism that allowed him to build great products that changed how we compute, listen to music, and make purchases, to say nothing of his contributions to the digital animation industry with Pixar. [cont…]
There is a divide growing in America, argues Charles Murray in his book “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960 – 2010” but it isn’t necessarily over money. In fact, the divide may be greater because it is cultural, not just economic.
Displaying a dizzying array of statistics, studies, and research, Murray shows an America that is watching the rise of what seems, to me, to be a new ruling class, a group of elites that are well educated (“overeducated elitist snobs”), well connected, and with a set of values and interests different from much of modern America. [cont…]
While I would never call myself a Trekkie–I much prefer Star Wars, and I have never been able to buy into Roddenberry’s vision of a utopian future where mankind has solved it’s scarcity problems and given up money, but I digress–I’ve watched enough to know that the guys who die are almost always–always–the guys in the red shirts. They’re unnamed extras, low level members of Star Fleet that die to provide some level of tension to the episode. And this book is through their eyes, through the eyes of the red shirted members of “away teams” that die at the first sign of danger. [cont…]
With that flippant, matter of fact, almost “devil may care” attitude then, Ferguson determines to take the reader through a grand narrative of the last five hundred years, identifying six “killer apps” that Western civilization adopted to rise to a dominance unmatched in breadth and duration in human history. It is this broad overview, as told in Ferguson’s urgent and quick witted voice, that makes the extended argument so interesting and in an age of multicultural relativism, refreshing.
Citing the US as a culprit in the quagmire, a significant amount of responsibility is placed on the actions of the Pakistani intelligence services. Controlled by religious ideologues, the Pakistani intelligence services operated nearly autonomously from other Pakistani government branches, and often in opposition to stated policy. [cont…]
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