I have a book upstairs by El Subcommandante which I haven't read yet.

I'm currently reading:

In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz, by Michela Wrong.  I'm also reading (with my ears and eyes) Earth Story, narrated by Aubrey Manning, which I can't recommend enough--I'm about to watch it for the third time.  I think of Nomad when I think of that series--and it connects to Congo because, for the first time, I begin to understand about the "mineral wealth" aspect of the country.

I've also started re-reading Bats Out of Hell, by Barry Hannah.  A lot of books these days, I get half way through and give up.  Very few get re-read.  This one--the language!  For anyone who enjoys writing and enjoys the possibilities of the freedom of the written word--it's excellent!

I've just finished Sweet Land Stories, by E.L. Doctorow.  Really great writing, very few commas and no " " quotes to be found.  Excellent sentence construction, Bach to Barry Hannah's ...er...more wildly romantic approach.

I also have just started Ragtime, again by E.L. Doctorow--intriguing.

All american writers, I note (not sure about Michela Wrong.)  

I've started Signor Marconi's Magic Box, by Gavin Weightman (who may be English), though I'm still getting caught up in...ya know...what is a wave?  What is an electromagnetic wave?  A three dimensional wave is a bubble expanding...

I need an equivalent of Aubrey Manning who can lay it out for me, piece by piece.

I have to say, though, that in the book Marconi has no idea how his device is functioning, so I'm hoping there'll be some step-by-steps in the book at a certain point.

And I watched (but there is a book) and enjoyed, and a friend thoroughly recommends Barbarians by Terry Jones.

Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.

Social Limits to Growth- Fred Hirsch

Lazy cut and past from Amazon review

Social Limits to Growth sets forth a new view of the nature and the limitations of economic growth. The author's central argument is that there are indeed limits to growth currently exist and are essentially social rather than physical. As societies have become richer, an increasing proportion of the extra goods, services, and facilities sought by consumers cannot be acquired or used by all, without spoiling them for each other. So frustration is heightened by material affluence, which is why affluence does not make a satisfied society.

This book offers important insight on apparently disconnected aspects of the current malaise...such as alienation at work, the rat-race element in education, deterioration in city living, consumerist relationships with neighbors, friends, and sex partners, as well as accelerating rates of inflation and unemployment.

Key Concept

Positional goods: the idea that once a society has escaped the state of scarcity where the provision of the absolute neccesities of human life (Food, shelter, clothing, etc) the further creation of wealth in a society serves primarily to create social distinction rather than provide for human existence. Thus, once a society escapes scarcity the social impact of further economic growth is essentially fixed and zero sum.  I'm trying to figure a way to integrate this into measures for a research paper I'm working on about the relationship between economics and democracy.

I come from a red state, 'nuff said.

The Gift-Marcell Mauss

Linca led me to it.  The assumption that market as defined by the exchange of goods and services primarily defined by subjective utility of the individual as the operative mechanism rather than an intersubjective social significance not reducible formal value has always existed is utterly inaccurate.  Before greed was made good by the normative doctrine of economics, the primary purpose of wealth in a society was to convey social distinction.  Redistribution and reciprocation rule.  The wealthy have an obligation to care for the poor, and this in turn creates social obligation from the poor to those wealthy who provide for them.

And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg

An Introduction to Algebraic Structures by Landin.  Basic intro into Sets, Groups, Iso/Homo-morphism, and ... Rings! Just to keep the 'little grey cells' active.

Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea by Seife.  A fun little book on nothing (zero) and everything (infinity.)

A Mind So Rare: The Evolution of Human Consciousness by Donald.  Book in favor of the proposition: Consciousness exists.

Science Teaching and Development of Thinking by Lawson.  How and Why to teach science and the problems encountered while so doing.

Ode to Charles Fourier" by Breton.  Surrealist on a the life and thoughts of one Real Weird Dude.  

_The Praise Singer by Renault.  My dark secret revealed: I like schlocky historical page-turners.  

Ever since I learnt about confirmation bias I've started seeing it everywhere

I'll just limit myself to those books that are within Arms reach at the moment.

Crimes of War What the Public Should Know Revised Edition: What the Public Should Know (Paperback)Gutman & Reiff I have the previous edition, and would like to upgrade to the new version. It's a handy handbook on the laws of war, with examples written by lawyers,and war corespondents looking at several recent wars and providing examples to illustrate how the Laws of war work.

A History of Greek Philosophy: Earlier Presocratics and the Pythagoreans Vol 1 (Paperback)W.K.C. Guthrie Volume 1 of a 7 volume history of Greek philosophy (I've got 3 volumes and really must get the other 4)

The Night Watch Sergei Lukyanenko  Vampires in Moscow, what more needs be said.

Englands Dreaming Jon Savage  a new updated version of the history of Punk

The final call Leo Hickman  the environmental, social and human costs of Tourism traveling the world and  asking questions of us as to the costs of our holidays on the planet and its people.

The Price of Power (The secret funding of the Tory party) Colin Challen how one of the UK political parties uses front organisations to hide who funds it.

The War on Truth Neil Makakay  The story of the lies, and cover ups behind the war in Iraq

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

(recent:)
Liaisons of Life (Wakeford)
What are People For? (Berry)
Slow Food Nation (Petrini)
(current:)
The Art of the Commonplace (Berry)
Thud! (Pratchett)
(next:)
Plenty Smith/MacKinnon
The Fate of Mice (Palwick)
Power, Sex, Suicide. Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life (Lane)
Good Omens (Pratchett/Gaiman)
Hungry for Profit (Shiva)

The difference between theory and practise in practise ...

by José Saramago

Sobring, even depressing, so far, but a page-turner.  Get the feeling that Saramago is conducting a thought experiment on human nature, and is not interested in romanticizations and idealizations of what we could be, but a clinical accounting of what we are.  Anxious to find out if this story ends in despair, or with hope.

(Ensaio sobre a cegueira is the original Portugese title.)

The key to culture is religion. Daniel Dennett @ TED (Feb 2006)

(Since this is a diary on reading, I'll repost a comment from last night's Open Thread:)

Has anyone read The Parable of the Tribes by Andrew Bard Schmookler?

(Have not read it, but am considering ordering it.)

The key to culture is religion. Daniel Dennett @ TED (Feb 2006)

I am currently reading Spot Sleeps Over and Spot's First Christmas both by Eric Hill; The Good Humor Man by Kathleen Daly; The Little Red Hen ; Good Night Little Bear by Richard Scarry and about 20 other children's books courtesy of my 22 month old grandson who we are caring for three  months while his mother recovers from surgery.

I would like to read Subcomandante Marcos' book once I finish with Spot and The Little Red Hen.

I can swear there ain't no heaven but I pray there ain't no hell. _ Blood Sweat & Tears

Recent:
La Fraga, Danielle Sallenave
All the King's Men, Robert Penn-Warren
Milenio, Manuel Vasquez-Montalban
Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie
The Mission Song, John Le Carré
La Misteriosa Fiamma della Regina Loana, Umberto Eco
Everyman, Philip Roth

Next:
Questa Storia, Alessandro Baricco
Introduction à la critique de la raison arabe, Mohamed Abed al-Jabri

"Dieu se rit des hommes qui se plaignent des conséquences alors qu'ils en chérissent les causes" Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet

Ther only books I've read lately are those that I buy at the bestseller stand in the airport or the train station. I don't even remember their titles.

Now I can also give you a list a very intellectual books that I've bought or thought about reading in recent times, but in either case not read...

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

(recent)
The Cave by Jose Saramago
Lost City Radio by Daniel Alarcon

Both are novels.  Both are highly recommended.  Highly.

(current)
The Assault on Reason by Al Gore

(future = a long list, here's just one thing on it)
With All Our Might: A Progressive Strategy for Defeating Jihadism and Defending Liberty edited by Will Marshall.  

I recently read Stumbling on Happiness. I am still reading (or: living with) Against the Day.

Right now, O'Reilly's "Pratique de CSS et JavaScript" and "Pratique de Ruby on Rails".

Trying to learn Web technologies so that the next job will be a bit more interesting. Spending too much time doing it, so that being finally jobless hasn't let me read more interesting things, yet.

Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères

I've been reading mostly German books lately (or at least, those are the ones that have made an impression on me):

Der Baader-Meinhof Komplex by Stefan Aust - a very thorough account of the formation and development of the "Baader-Meinhof-Gang"/RAF in the 60's and 70's, up to Schleyer's murder and beyond.

Tannöd and Kalteis by Andrea Maria Schenkel - Two extremely tightly written thrillers set in a postwar farming community and pre-war Munich, respectively. The former is especially good: a story of the impact of a savage multiple murder of an isolated family on a narrow-minded, hardscrabble farming village. The stories are told primarily through first-person reports in the style of statements made to the police or some other outside interrogator.

Next up is Cormac McCarthy: The Road.

The fact is that what we're experiencing right now is a top-down disaster. -Paul Krugman

Almost done with A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Read most of it on the beach in Hawaii. heh.

Also read Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Murakami. Up next is Wind-up Bird Chronicle by the same guy.

you are the media you consume.

Just finished Philip Short's Pol Pot, some light bedtime reading about the history of the Khmer Rouge and its enigmatic founder. Not a lot of detail is known about his life or his thoughts, so the book is mostly about the origins of the Khmer Rouge and their rise to power. Unexpectedly, it was very strong on the 1950s and 1960s - which was good for me, since it was a part of Indochinese history I had been weak on...but the book very quickly moved through the years when the Khmer Rouge was in power, 1975-79.

Next up is Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City, which I'm reading both for pleasure and for my dissertation (which among other things examines San Francisco in the 1970s).

After that, dunno...

And the world will live as one

The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan

A book that explores what are our choices to eat. It attempts to trace our meals back to their sources. Just what are we eating? It also provides a historical comparison. The book is US centric, but probably far more relevant to other first world countries than should make us comfortable.

The author looks at 4 types of meals. The first is a Macdonald's meal. He studies what it is composed of (a rather surprising amount of corn), and then studies where the corn comes from.  He provides information on how US farm subsidies for corn work.  It is rather creative, providing direct subsidies to farmers, while maintaining a price per bushel that is a bit over half of the cost to grow the corn. The result is that almost anything that can be created from corn is, including the meat from feedlots and ethanol. He discusses what happens to cows that are corn fed. (Cows do not naturally eat corn.) He also indicates that the US is still feeding cow products to cows...

He also provides information on the energy input necessary to grow corn. The result is that for every calorie of corn energy in ethanol, probably more than a calorie of fossil fuel was used to create it.

After a rather depressing detailed look at corn, he looks at other types of meals, including organic, "post organic" and a hunter-gatherer meal.

I did not know that in the US you could buy a factory farmed organic chicken for example.

The last section on a hunter-gatherer meal was interesting, but seemed to me to be a bit self-indulgent.

Anyway, from the web site:

What should we have for dinner? The question has confronted us since man discovered fire, but according to Michael Pollan, the bestselling author of The Botany of Desire, how we answer it today, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, may well determine our very survival as a species.   Should we eat a fast-food hamburger?  Something organic?  Or perhaps something we hunt, gather, or grow ourselves? The omnivore's dilemma has returned with a vengeance, as the cornucopia of the modern American supermarket and fast-food outlet confronts us with a bewildering and treacherous food landscape. What's at stake in our eating choices is not only our own and our children's health, but the health of the environment that sustains life on earth

http://www.michaelpollan.com/omnivore.php

_{aspiring to genteel poverty}