clock — watching time, the only true currency

Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl jumped onto my list from the wife’s bookgroup. And I’m grateful. I didn’t love the book, yet it was a different read. I needed some fiction.
The ending startled me, but also disappointed me. I didn’t see it coming…which is fine. Yet the twist didn’t feel true to [...]

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Reporting Vietnam: American Journalism 1969-1975 is a book I own for one reason: my cousin’s picture is on the cover. He wrote one of the articles, and he provided the picture because one of the editors asked if he had any photos from that period. Turns out he did, and it fit what they wanted.
Last [...]

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Neal Stephenson’s website doesn’t even list The Cobweb as one of his works. The reason? It was originally published, in 1996, under his pseudonym Stephen Bury. But, after Quicksilver made him a NYTimes bestselling author, it was a no-brainer to re-publish under his real name. No mention of what Stephenson might be working on now…
I [...]

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Over the weekend, I pulled the boy’s loose tooth out. He asked me, and after watching him worry over this rotating incisor (top left) for days, I was glad to end the suspense. (And it didn’t hurt him.)
The hard part? Remembering to play the part of the tooth fairy. Fortunately, my better half delivered, and [...]

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I email myself things I want to look at later, and maybe blog. (I use del.icio.us more for work, and I’ve never spliced my feed for that reason.)
Problem is, my blog trails other interests, so the tasty tidbits pile up. Here’s a quick scoop from the 60 (!) possible links waiting in my personal inbox.

In [...]

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Game Theory at Work: How to use game theory to outthink and outmanuever your competition by James Miller isn’t my usual brain candy. I asked for this book last Christmas, on a semi-whim, and got it as a gift. I read it last month.
Though written by economics professor James Miller, this book reads well. [...]

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Amazon delivered my pre-ordered Spook Country by William Gibson some weeks ago, and I made time for it a few weeks ago. For Gibson, this book felt entirely too much in the present. Rather than a recognizable, but just slightly altered view of how the near future might present itself, Spook Country felt like right [...]

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