"Best of" book lists are always popular, but they are answering the wrong question.
I have read thousands of books over my life. And written a few.
I started with science fiction such as Wasp, Foundation, Dune, Avram Davidson, City, Slan, the science fiction books club collections (Galaxy Readers), you name it.
That was pretty much it until I reached college. I branched a little ways out to Herman Hesse and Kurt Vonnegut, but really, stayed right in my comfort zone of SF.
The breakout for me was when I read Gravity's Rainbow. I kept mumbling to myself: "can a writer do that?" I struggled with the characters and the subplots.
When I finished, my mind had been stretched. And it stayed stretched. I resolved to read outside of SF no matter how hard or how boring. I compiled best of lists of all kinds of literature. I collected university course lists in literature from places like Cal Tech, Berkeley, Yale, Harvard, MIT. BBC, Times Literary Supplement lists.
I worked through them all. It didn't take too many years. I filled notebooks with thoughts that arose as I read. Then I was ready to start writing.
I still enjoy my SF even though I understand its limitations; now I can enjoy comparing that experience to the experience of reading Maya Angelou or Mary Gaitskill. I can enjoy the quality writing in the New Yorker. I enjoy the reviews I used to find opaque in the Times Literary Supplement. And I can participate in looking at life around me and figuring out how to express it, even though never expressed before. And I know when an expression is likely fresh and because I have never read it before.
So my advice is--rather than looking for the magic set of books that is like a literary vitamin supplement, instead constantly choose books outside of your comfort zone. Yes, don't forget to reread your favorites lest you begin to fear difficulty, but try to understand why other educated people consider books great that you do not understand now. My current reading list is Wolf Hall, Marquez, The Hydrogen Sonata, Ian Fleming, Gone Girl, Churchill's History, Redwall, Murakami, Eco, incest porn, Nabokov, Joyce... in other words, the gamut of human literature in English.
As Tom Wolfe said "Let's not mince words: literary lists are basically an obscenity. Literature is the realm of the ineffable and the unquantifiable; lists are the realm of menus and laundry and rotisserie baseball. There's something unseemly and promiscuous about all those letters and numbers jumbled together. Take it from me, a critic who has committed this particular sin many times over."
So, the best book to read next s the one just an epsilon out of your current reach. One that takes a little struggle to release all its pleasure.
Who says rich people don't like to drive slowly? They enjoy driving that way because they can. No appointments. No worry. Just tool along enjoying the drive. They chuckle to think of all of you aspirants rushing to get to the investor's meeting, get to the office, rush home since you don't have a nanny or house manager or work assistant.
Instead of blaming apple for respecting property rights, why not request a limited license from the alleged patent holders for permission for this app in this instance?
Things that grow on me that long are tumors.
But seriously, things that have breadth greater than some small number or depth greater than log of another small number are not well designed for human use. emacs is a shrine to RMS and his faithful apostles, but otherwise, I think I'll stick to notepad++ with a side of python and Mathematica
I respectfully disagree. When you give the opposition hope that resistance might prevail, you simply discourage their elements that counsel diplomacy or other political engagement over armed response. That is why you don't send a single officer to quell a riot.
I am not a hawk by any means, but having a broad spectrum of tools for any task, including war, means that response can be calibrated more exactly with the underlying political and diplomatic passion. I would rather not have a tech who had only her bare hands and a mallet work on my pc.
The sales ranking of books at Amazon follows a roughly inverse power-law exponent of 1.1 [http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.physa.2010.02.021]. With about 2 million hard plus kindle books for sale, you can do the math: many books have zero sales or on the order of one or two per year. No matter how brilliantly executed, this is simply not enough exposure to reach the critical number needed to launch it so that a possible audience even becomes aware of its existence. Sort of like the critical initial viral or bacterial load to cause subsequent infection.
And even a successful book may only measure sales in thousands, thereby not justifying traditional mass advertising, as for a soap product that everyone might use. If it weren't for the possibility of a small trigger for tipping, then many, many high quality works would be utterly wasted: a fresh catastrophic fire at the virtual library of Alexandria.
Well, it's not as if it's the first time that a nouveau riche culture has copied from its respected betters who have fallen upon hard times. Guess where all the columns and plinths come from in our "classical" buildings?
then black holes can be too. We have observed almost a score of so of stars with the 2 million MPH velocity required to escape from a galaxy, which they probably got from proximity to a black hole. There is no reason not to think that a black hole could have the same close orbit. Just much much, rarer.
I think you are misusing "hard." For an example, one of my books has a very minor incident in which a Glock 30 is used. I know an influential writer and reviewer is an enthusiastic 2nd Amendment champion. I send her a crafted blurb mentioning the Glock. bingo. We exchange friendly messages about pistols, she buys the book and is now reviewing it for her multi thousand followers.
It wasn't hard to influence her; just took a second of reflection and doing what people do socially all the time without thinking. The overall point is that even authors with extremely limited advertising funds can make up for it with luck and savvy. On the other hand I am unlikely to win a chess tournament no matter how clever or lucky I am.
Trying to be noticed among a million other offerings, this is good news. After doing my best job writing, I can then try to figure out how to reach my own 1% to tip them toward my work, rather than trying to brute-force popularity.
Even Albert Einstein got a divorce. I think whatever gifts this young man has will be dogged and encumbered by being labeled a sideshow freak--even in the best possible way. Look at the biography of William Sidis. Even taking into account the myth-making of genius/madness, I see little benefit of being a prodigy, but I see a lot of attention addiction and other maladies that may choke out a fulfilled and happy life.
My eye doctor of several decades recently moved all his scheduling, billing, and insurance to a web site.
Guess what the first thing that pops up when you access it?
A EULA.
Just a matter of time before all services from pet grooming to parking lots will require EULAs to forego lawsuits, responsibility for privacy, permission to sell information to 3rd party aggregators, responsibility for due care, automatic updating of contract terms and irrevocability..
When you are dying in an emergency room, I doubt you will carefully read the two hundred page document required before treatment, essentially affirming that you are a serf to the establishment forever: it could forbid discharge of medical debt in bankruptcy, automatic lien on all personal and real property, repudiation of your states exemption from execution of judgment, agreement to a particular venue, agreement that you are already deemed to be personally served in a future lawsuit for fees, automatic 50% per annum penalty added to the principal--you name it.
These stories about overwhelming acts of personal genius, especially stories that lack the details of the alleged act, are, without memorable exception, false. But we all like a good story about an under-caste upsetting gray hairs and the established order of things.
Think about that for a moment. A story supposedly lionizing science lacking the most basic facts that would permit substantial verification, or falsification, of that science. This is just flash journalism at work.
Aren't all text queries to, for example, Google, stored for all time on Google servers?
Further to the point, isn't all "private" Gmail stored for all time on Google servers, just waiting for a casual switch to shunt them to FBI analysis rooms for a quick laugh?
In fact, who is to say that all traffic over the net isn't at least abstracted and kept for all time?
Maybe this is why NSA requires a declassification of any machine "touching" the Internet in any matter?
Self-time setting in Europe, USA, Japan. Solar so never needs batteries. G-shock so it can stand submersion and getting beaten up. And doesn't cost too much. It also is very light. A man's watch.
"Casio's Multi-Band Atomic watch for men is a high-tech timepiece designed for superior performance under a variety of conditions. Featuring a gray, brushed stainless steel case with gray dial, sporty, black plastic resin band, and a combination of analog timekeeping and digital stopwatch functions, this solar and battery-powered watch also offers accurate timekeeping for 28 time zones, water resistance to 660 feet, an LED backlight, a daily alarm function, a calendar function, and a power-saving option with battery power indicator."
Severla models available.
I got the pure digital 1980's retro rectangular lcd model. Just put it on and do your shit. It's set for the rest of your life, basically.
Bitcoins are the tender of the future. The FUTURE.
As far as FBI's worry about their use for criminal activity--too late!
The things I've seen on an Onion router off the shoulder of Orion.
Hell, people earn real goods and services for grinding in a game.
Some of those goods and services may well be ILLEGAL.
Maybe we should ban grinding to prevent this nefarious use of virtual technology?
Some people collect bottles at the roadside for money.
Some of this money buys meth and pot.
Should be now ban.... and so on.
Twenty seconds of clock time is not the same as twenty seconds of human time.
Imagine disturbing a heart surgeon for twenty random seconds in the middle of heart surgery.
Imagine disturbing for twenty seconds a poet reading a poem to a thousand people.
Imagine disturbing for five seconds making love to your SO.
The twenty seconds is not the thing, it's the destruction of the movie watching mindset and the hatred that colors thinking for far more than twenty seconds after.the "pick up that can!" message.
Moreover, since investors rely upon material representations to decide whether to invest in a stock, this kind of falsehood may have legal--both civil and criminal--repercussions.
Slashdot Mirror
"Best of" book lists are always popular, but they are answering the wrong question. I have read thousands of books over my life. And written a few. I started with science fiction such as Wasp, Foundation, Dune, Avram Davidson, City, Slan, the science fiction books club collections (Galaxy Readers), you name it. That was pretty much it until I reached college. I branched a little ways out to Herman Hesse and Kurt Vonnegut, but really, stayed right in my comfort zone of SF. The breakout for me was when I read Gravity's Rainbow. I kept mumbling to myself: "can a writer do that?" I struggled with the characters and the subplots. When I finished, my mind had been stretched. And it stayed stretched. I resolved to read outside of SF no matter how hard or how boring. I compiled best of lists of all kinds of literature. I collected university course lists in literature from places like Cal Tech, Berkeley, Yale, Harvard, MIT. BBC, Times Literary Supplement lists. I worked through them all. It didn't take too many years. I filled notebooks with thoughts that arose as I read. Then I was ready to start writing. I still enjoy my SF even though I understand its limitations; now I can enjoy comparing that experience to the experience of reading Maya Angelou or Mary Gaitskill. I can enjoy the quality writing in the New Yorker. I enjoy the reviews I used to find opaque in the Times Literary Supplement. And I can participate in looking at life around me and figuring out how to express it, even though never expressed before. And I know when an expression is likely fresh and because I have never read it before. So my advice is--rather than looking for the magic set of books that is like a literary vitamin supplement, instead constantly choose books outside of your comfort zone. Yes, don't forget to reread your favorites lest you begin to fear difficulty, but try to understand why other educated people consider books great that you do not understand now. My current reading list is Wolf Hall, Marquez, The Hydrogen Sonata, Ian Fleming, Gone Girl, Churchill's History, Redwall, Murakami, Eco, incest porn, Nabokov, Joyce... in other words, the gamut of human literature in English. As Tom Wolfe said "Let's not mince words: literary lists are basically an obscenity. Literature is the realm of the ineffable and the unquantifiable; lists are the realm of menus and laundry and rotisserie baseball. There's something unseemly and promiscuous about all those letters and numbers jumbled together. Take it from me, a critic who has committed this particular sin many times over." So, the best book to read next s the one just an epsilon out of your current reach. One that takes a little struggle to release all its pleasure.
Who says rich people don't like to drive slowly? They enjoy driving that way because they can. No appointments. No worry. Just tool along enjoying the drive. They chuckle to think of all of you aspirants rushing to get to the investor's meeting, get to the office, rush home since you don't have a nanny or house manager or work assistant.
This Slashdot article might be construed as incitement to incite.
Instead of blaming apple for respecting property rights, why not request a limited license from the alleged patent holders for permission for this app in this instance?
Things that grow on me that long are tumors. But seriously, things that have breadth greater than some small number or depth greater than log of another small number are not well designed for human use. emacs is a shrine to RMS and his faithful apostles, but otherwise, I think I'll stick to notepad++ with a side of python and Mathematica
I respectfully disagree. When you give the opposition hope that resistance might prevail, you simply discourage their elements that counsel diplomacy or other political engagement over armed response. That is why you don't send a single officer to quell a riot.
I am not a hawk by any means, but having a broad spectrum of tools for any task, including war, means that response can be calibrated more exactly with the underlying political and diplomatic passion. I would rather not have a tech who had only her bare hands and a mallet work on my pc.
that buys fewest subscriptions to Lumos Lab's viral Nostrum & Snake Oil Remedy for Feeble Cognition.
The sales ranking of books at Amazon follows a roughly inverse power-law exponent of 1.1 [http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.physa.2010.02.021]. With about 2 million hard plus kindle books for sale, you can do the math: many books have zero sales or on the order of one or two per year. No matter how brilliantly executed, this is simply not enough exposure to reach the critical number needed to launch it so that a possible audience even becomes aware of its existence. Sort of like the critical initial viral or bacterial load to cause subsequent infection.
And even a successful book may only measure sales in thousands, thereby not justifying traditional mass advertising, as for a soap product that everyone might use. If it weren't for the possibility of a small trigger for tipping, then many, many high quality works would be utterly wasted: a fresh catastrophic fire at the virtual library of Alexandria.
Well, it's not as if it's the first time that a nouveau riche culture has copied from its respected betters who have fallen upon hard times. Guess where all the columns and plinths come from in our "classical" buildings?
then black holes can be too. We have observed almost a score of so of stars with the 2 million MPH velocity required to escape from a galaxy, which they probably got from proximity to a black hole. There is no reason not to think that a black hole could have the same close orbit. Just much much, rarer.
And to show him the same dignity as his beloved pet, when dies I think he ought to be stuffed and made into the first literal batman.
I think you are misusing "hard." For an example, one of my books has a very minor incident in which a Glock 30 is used. I know an influential writer and reviewer is an enthusiastic 2nd Amendment champion. I send her a crafted blurb mentioning the Glock. bingo. We exchange friendly messages about pistols, she buys the book and is now reviewing it for her multi thousand followers.
It wasn't hard to influence her; just took a second of reflection and doing what people do socially all the time without thinking. The overall point is that even authors with extremely limited advertising funds can make up for it with luck and savvy. On the other hand I am unlikely to win a chess tournament no matter how clever or lucky I am.
Trying to be noticed among a million other offerings, this is good news. After doing my best job writing, I can then try to figure out how to reach my own 1% to tip them toward my work, rather than trying to brute-force popularity.
Even Albert Einstein got a divorce. I think whatever gifts this young man has will be dogged and encumbered by being labeled a sideshow freak--even in the best possible way. Look at the biography of William Sidis. Even taking into account the myth-making of genius/madness, I see little benefit of being a prodigy, but I see a lot of attention addiction and other maladies that may choke out a fulfilled and happy life.
My eye doctor of several decades recently moved all his scheduling, billing, and insurance to a web site. Guess what the first thing that pops up when you access it?
A EULA.
Just a matter of time before all services from pet grooming to parking lots will require EULAs to forego lawsuits, responsibility for privacy, permission to sell information to 3rd party aggregators, responsibility for due care, automatic updating of contract terms and irrevocability..
When you are dying in an emergency room, I doubt you will carefully read the two hundred page document required before treatment, essentially affirming that you are a serf to the establishment forever: it could forbid discharge of medical debt in bankruptcy, automatic lien on all personal and real property, repudiation of your states exemption from execution of judgment, agreement to a particular venue, agreement that you are already deemed to be personally served in a future lawsuit for fees, automatic 50% per annum penalty added to the principal--you name it.
"Just click 'I agree' there."
These stories about overwhelming acts of personal genius, especially stories that lack the details of the alleged act, are, without memorable exception, false. But we all like a good story about an under-caste upsetting gray hairs and the established order of things.
Think about that for a moment. A story supposedly lionizing science lacking the most basic facts that would permit substantial verification, or falsification, of that science. This is just flash journalism at work.
They may want to reconsider their IPO.
When the singularity happens, no one will mistake the new entitiy as human.
Aren't all text queries to, for example, Google, stored for all time on Google servers? Further to the point, isn't all "private" Gmail stored for all time on Google servers, just waiting for a casual switch to shunt them to FBI analysis rooms for a quick laugh? In fact, who is to say that all traffic over the net isn't at least abstracted and kept for all time? Maybe this is why NSA requires a declassification of any machine "touching" the Internet in any matter?
"Casio's Multi-Band Atomic watch for men is a high-tech timepiece designed for superior performance under a variety of conditions. Featuring a gray, brushed stainless steel case with gray dial, sporty, black plastic resin band, and a combination of analog timekeeping and digital stopwatch functions, this solar and battery-powered watch also offers accurate timekeeping for 28 time zones, water resistance to 660 feet, an LED backlight, a daily alarm function, a calendar function, and a power-saving option with battery power indicator."
Severla models available.
I got the pure digital 1980's retro rectangular lcd model. Just put it on and do your shit. It's set for the rest of your life, basically.
Bitcoins are the tender of the future. The FUTURE. As far as FBI's worry about their use for criminal activity--too late! The things I've seen on an Onion router off the shoulder of Orion. Hell, people earn real goods and services for grinding in a game. Some of those goods and services may well be ILLEGAL. Maybe we should ban grinding to prevent this nefarious use of virtual technology? Some people collect bottles at the roadside for money. Some of this money buys meth and pot. Should be now ban.... and so on.
Twenty seconds of clock time is not the same as twenty seconds of human time.
Imagine disturbing a heart surgeon for twenty random seconds in the middle of heart surgery.
Imagine disturbing for twenty seconds a poet reading a poem to a thousand people.
Imagine disturbing for five seconds making love to your SO.
The twenty seconds is not the thing, it's the destruction of the movie watching mindset and the hatred that colors thinking for far more than twenty seconds after.the "pick up that can!" message.
Moreover, since investors rely upon material representations to decide whether to invest in a stock, this kind of falsehood may have legal--both civil and criminal--repercussions.
Sounds as if they are perfect for each other.