Jan 31 2008
When I first set my blog up, years ago, I installed it to a subdirectory called “/blog” with the vague intention that the canonical “http://heliologue.com” URI could be a landing page pointing to whatever else I wanted to put on my server. Eventually, I learned that I could get to…
Jan 30 2008
Thomas Paine’s ‘The Rights of Man’: A Biography by Christopher HitchensI continue my torrid literary affair with Christopher Hitchens with his latest short biography. He’s previously done a slim tome about Thomas Jefferson; now, he turns to famed…
Jan 29 2008
The Big Con: The True Story of How Washington Got Hoodwinked and Hijacked by Crackpot Economics by Jonathan ChaitEconomics books are notoriously difficult reading. It seems like even economists often don’t understand the economy. I thoroughly enjoyed Tim…
Jan 27 2008
Dave Barry’s History of the Millenium (So Far) by Dave BarryI’ve noticed that Dave Barry has been waning in recent years. Maybe it’s just me, or maybe that’s why he decided in 2005 that it was time to…
Jan 25 2008
The “Midwestern Weather” edition.
Jan 23 2008
The First Word by Christine KenneallyAlthough I’ve never pursued the subject seriously, I’ve always been a casual fan of linguistics; coming as I do from a background of reading and writing, I’ve developed a love, if nothing else,…
Jan 21 2008
The Daily Show and Philosophy ed. Jason HoltI think it’s fair to say that The Daily Show has fairly well entered the cultural zeitgeist. For some reason, ever since John Stewart took over the reigns in 1999, it’s continued…
Jan 19 2008
Every so often, I dink around with benchmarking common lossless compressors. One of the best sites for it is, I think, Werner Bergman’s Maximum Compression, which is a rather comprehensive running benchmark of just about every lossless compression benchmark under the sun. Really, there’s a lot. What you have to…
Jan 18 2008
The Amber Spyglass by Phillip PullmanIt may interest you to read the my review of the preceeding book in this series, The Subtle Knife
And so ends the (in)famous trilogy by Phillip Pullman. I admit to being rather drawn…