The Borderlands of Science: Where Sense Meets Nonsense by Michael
Shermer

I was kind of nonplussed by this book. He sets off to try and define the
difference between solid science, pseudoscience, and the gray area in
between. And near as I can tell, he doesn’t really come to any firm
conclusion.

Sure, he can rule out some pseudoscience fairly easily (Creationism is not
falsifiable, and therefore decidedly not science), but in the borderlands
(like SETI) he just says “Gray area, whatareyagonnado?”.

Plus, there was a lot of rehashing (or perhaps prehashing… I’m not sure
of the order) of the other books I’ve read by him.

Paypal Hacks: 100 Industrial-Strength Tips & Tools by Shannon
Sofield, Dave Nielson & Dave Burchell.

Everything from how to set up a basic personal account to advanced web API
techniques. It’s an acceptable overview with tips, and I’m surprised by
how simple it is to implement Paypal for various things. I guess I should
have guessed, considering it’s popularity.

Historically, I’ve found Paypal hard to work with for various reasons (I
don’t use it often enough to keep an account funded or remember
passwords… things like that), but the example of using Paypal to pay a
coworker for your share of lunch has inspired me to revisit the service.

Now, I’m ready to take over the world.

BULL! A History of the Boom, 1982-1999 by Maggie Mahar

This was a great book, at least for an investing geek like me. Charlie
Munger (2nd in command at Berkshire Hathaway) emphatically recommended
this book back when it came out in 2003. A real in-depth look at the
insanity.

For instance, consider the position of mutual fund managers in 1998. They
are judged by their returns, relative to an index like the S&P 500.
They’re looking at the prices the market is giving companies like Cisco
and Amazon and saying to themselves “this doesn’t make sense.” But they
can’t not buy them. Because even though the rise of the prices is
insane, if they don’t meet or beat that insane rise, they’ll get canned.
If they buy into sensibly priced stocks, which are few and far between,
and they “only” get something like 15% annual return while the Ciscos and
Amazons return 100%, they’ll get canned. On the flip side, if they buy
the stocks that everyone else is buying, like Amazon and Cisco, and then
the whole market tanks, especially Amazon and Cisco, they won’t get
canned, because the index tanked, and hey, everybody was fooled anyway,
right?

So, the ramp up to the 1998-2001 crash slowly weeded out fund managers who
kept their integrity and bought what made sense for their clients instead
of their career. The dark side of Natural Selection: the remaining herd
were well adapted for the environment that selected them (the bull
market), but when that environment changed… extinction of their client’s
dollars.

A very informative read.

Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog!) by Jerome K. Jerome

Compare and contrast Three Men in a Boat (published in 1889) and
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (published in 1885).

Finn is the story of a lower class american boy and a fugitive
slave escaping oppression by traveling down the Mississippi River on a
homemade raft. On the way, they encounter danger and adventure. This
book is often considered the Great American Novel.

Boat is the story of three well-to-do English gentlemen (to say
nothing of their dog) escaping the drudgery of work by traveling up the
Thames on a rented sailboat. On the way, they encounter insignificant
obstacles, and make a big deal out of it. This book was originally
intended to be a travel guide, but just got out of hand and became a
novel. For some reason, they also tacked on some ghost stories at the
end, perhaps to fluff up the page count.

Quote from Finn:
“It’s lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky up there, all speckled with
stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss
about whether they was made or only just happened.”

Quote from Boat:
“I like work. It fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.”

All in all, I enjoyed the writing (likened to that of P.G. Wodehouse, but
I think that’s overstating it a bit), but was left with a “so what?”
feeling

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon

An enjoyable, though short, read. I’m only mildy worried that I was right
there with the narrator when he went off on his tangents. There is a
section in the book where the (autistic) narrator wants to a mathematical
proof into the book, but his teacher advises him that people don’t want to
read mathematical proofs and I thought “Well, I do.” Thankfully,
he put it in the appendix.

Reading this made me think that a cool novel would be where an autistic or
otherwise unreliable narrator is solving a crime and gets it wrong, yet
the reader perceives the real solution. There is some of this in this
book, but I think it could be interesting as a full concept. Somewhat
like watching Memento, in a way.

Enough of this fiction nonsense. I’ve got to go finish learning some Perl.

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke

I quite agree with the description “Harry Potter for adults” that I’d heard about this book.

I’d avoided reading this book because I had been given a recommendation by a bookstore person once… “If you like Harry Potter, you’ll love The Thief Lord“, which turned out to be an appallingly bad book. I feared Strange was just another poorly written, pale subsititute hyped to try and catch a little of the Potter sales magic.

But it’s not. It’s very well written, and has a smart humor to it reminiscent of Jane Austen. Set in the early 1800s, it creates an interesting alternate-history where English Magic had died out 200 years prior and chronicles the efforts of two new magicians to bring it back.

I should be surprised if a movie doesn’t come along eventually.

The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2005 Edited by Dave Eggers,
Introduction by Beck

I continue to enjoy this series which is aimed at a demographic 10 years
younger than I.

It’s got a nice variety of essays, comics and stories, including one by Al
Franken about his USO tour in Iraq.

Very enjoyable.

What No One Ever Tells You About Starting Your Own Business, Second Edition: Real Life Startup Advice from 101 Successful Entrepreneurs by Jan Norman.

A fairly interesting, general advice book on starting your own business. The author interviewed a bunch of business owners and asked what they wish they’d known. There’s plenty of good little stories about that sort of thing.

But a lot of it I had been told or witnessed myself, coming from a family of entrepreneurs and marrying into another family of entrepreneurs.

Still, not a bad read and gives me things to think about.