David R. MacIver's Blog: Weekly reading post #1

Weekly reading post #1

8 May 2016

I’m going to be posting one of these every Sunday. It’s a catalogue of what I’ve been reading recently, any new books I’ve acquired or been gifted, etc.

Recent Reading

A statistical estimate of what I’ve spent time reading this week (0.4 hours - i.e. 24 minutes - is the smallest unit of granularity for the estimator):

4.4 stochastic hours reading “Boyd, the fighter pilot who changed the art of war”
2.4 stochastic hours reading Utopia for Realists
0.4 stochastic hours reading Sainsbury’s builds its own power plants amid energy shortage fears
0.4 stochastic hours reading Myer’s Race Car Versus the General Fitness Factor
0.4 stochastic hours reading the Wikipedia page on Poor Economics
0.4 stochastic hours reading The 8000th Busy Beaver number eludes ZF set theory
0.4 stochastic hours reading Why you shouldn’t exercise to lose weight, explained with 60+ studies
0.4 stochastic hours reading A field guide to the North American utility pole

New books

I’ve had five(!) new books gifted to me from the wish list recently.

These are:

Militant Anti-Fascism - from Thomas Themel
Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War - also from Thomas Themel
So Good They Can’t Ignore You - also from Thomas Themel
Utopia for Realists - from Mathieu Clabaut
The Soul of a New Machine - from someone who would prefer to remain anonymous

Thanks hugely to all of you, and especially to Thomas for getting me three books at once!

I think I failed to mention this before, but I’m putting these on a goodreads shelf and reviewing them as I read them. Of the above I’ve given up on Militant Anti-Fascism (it’s not at all what I was expecting, and not in a good way), but I really enjoyed Utopia for Realists and the final quarter of Boyd would have to take a serious turn for the weird and worse for me to not also be able to recommend that. The others I’ve not yet started on.

Book Triaging

I’ve done a big sort out of my book collection into books I am likely to reread (or have too much sentimental attachment to even if I don’t) and books that realistically in the unlikely event that I want to reread them I can just buy them again. The latter are available for give away. In person delivery only for now, but if I’m likely to see you and you’d like me to bring you a book from the list, let me know.