April 2009
10 posts
Another great 2009 TEDTalk from Nate Silver →
One more talk that I really enjoyed, even though he was remote in Palm Springs. Nate Silver, of fivethirtyeight.com fame (most recently).
Consider Phlebas, by Iain M. Banks →
Loved this book — it’s just a great, fun, creative SF story, of the capture-the-flag variant, set in Banks’ Culture universe. I recently finished Use of Weapons, also by Banks, and very…
Glass House Conversation: Transparency →
Next week I’m traveling to New York to participate in a conversation at the Philip Johnson Glass House — it’s a sort of design+culture+art salon where a number of leaders talk about various…
Moving to Higher Ground, by Wynton Marsalis →
I think this book will be of limited interest to most people — but Marsalis has always been a bit of a hero of mine, ever since I started playing trumpet in middle school. I learned to love…
The Wordy Shipmates, by Sarah Vowell →
[This is a long post, with lots of longish excerpts from the book — these excerpts really resonated strongly with me, so quoting at length.]
I’ll be honest, I didn’t love this book —…
Great Ted Talk: Bonnie Bassler →
Another of my top 5 TED talks, this time profound science from Bonnie Bassler, a microbiologist, who discovered how bacteria communicate with each other. Blew me away.
Walking in the footsteps of giants →
Mike Beltzner and I had a neat experience today — we got to give a talk at Stanford’s CS547 class on how we do design at scale at Mozilla, with Firefox in particular. It was a nostalgic and…
The Ascent of Money, by Niall Ferguson →
Niall Ferguson is an undeniably smart guy — he’s written about a broad range of global topics quite convincingly (Colossus, for example, on the American empire). So I was happy to pick this…
The Return of Depression Economics, by Paul... →
Like everyone, I’m learning a lot about our global finance system lately. While Krugman has his critics (someone at dinner the other night said “Krugman is awesome — he’s predicted 27 out of…
The Ayatollah Begs to Differ, by Hooman Majd →
Great look at modern Iran life, culture & politics by an insider. A bit of cultural exposition, memoir, and travelog — but interesting to read, and reminded me of how much more time we need to…
