Book Meme Blog As I mentioned previously, Ken tagged me with the book meme. So, without further ado:How Many Books I OwnI'm sure I can't estimate this properly. Not nearly as many as I would like. I've probably lost/lent/sold as many books as I currently have, at least. I've been slowly filling my computer room walls with bookshelves, and a quick count and estimate reveals about 700 books in here. There may be half again as many still in boxes and hidden away.Five Books That Have Influenced MeWhat, only 5? The Dispossessed, Ursula K. LeGuin.Strangely, this is the only fiction entry on my list. I read a lot of fiction, and my choosing only one is not an indication that I don't find it as worthy. It's just that I only get 5 books (yes, I'm going to keep complaining about that). So anyway, The Dispossessed makes the list because it fundementally changed my understanding of people. It's a story of an ambiguous utopia - an anarchy that only barely works. In spite of unanswerable questions about whether the described society could ever really exist, it makes an absolutely convincing argument that human beings inherently like to work. Not just for money, not just for gain, but for its own reward. And when one reflects on our current society and why it is that the opposite seems to be so thoroughly true, one can't help but wonder if the way things are now isn't horribly wrong for us.Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches : The Riddles of Culture, Marvin HarrisA populist anthropology book that is absolutely fascinating. Sometimes I wonder about things that just don't seem to make sense. Things we're all taught as true, but that we simply know can't possibly be true, but we're not experts, so we don't fight it. For instance, dogs will choke and die if they eat chicken bones (I feed my dogs raw chicken all the time). A moment of thought, of course, reveals that dogs would have failed long ago were that true.Marvin Harris tackles questions about human history, culture, and our beliefs about them. Why don't Jewish and Muslim people's eat pork? Because it's a dirty, diseased animal? How do you explain the Chinese then? Why don't Hindu's eat cows? Why do some cultures engage in cannibalism and other's not? Why don't Americans eat dogs and horses like so many others? Combine this one with Marvin's book, Our Kind, and see if you're not enthralled like me.It's better than Guns, Germs, and Steel :-). In Search of the Miraculous, P. D. OuspenskyI have to include this one, though it's not a book I recommend. Whereas the previous two books changed my understanding of people in general, this book changed my understanding of me. But reading this book occurred along with an experience with a Gurdjieff work group here in Rochester, which was a large part of the package. From this book and from that experience, I learned meditation in a way that I could understand and value, and I learned that all is not as it seems in my inner psychic life.Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code, Martin FowlerWell, I am a programmer, and this book finally captured (for me) what code design and management is all about. Fowler is the epitomy of concision and always packs his punch into the first few chapters of his books - the remainder existing to flesh out the details. This book was a revelation for me as a programmer.Underground History of American Education, John Taylor GattoI wasn't going to include this on my list, wanting to add more fiction (I wanted to put Lois McMaster Bujold in here as a whole for clarifying for me what story-telling should be about and why so many authors fail to be story-tellers, preferring to be show-offs instead. Hmm, I guess I got her in anyway :-). But, I can't deny the influence of this book on me - the author's writings helping to convince me that I would home-school my own children. I'd say that's a big influence!Last Book I BoughtThe Tyranny of the Night : Book One of the Instrumentalities of the Night, Glen Cook Well, I've been making my way through Glen Cook's books lately - just good fun.Last Book I read for the first timeBeasts, Joyce Carol OatsI got a whim to read an Oats novel, and this one seemed to get interesting reviews. Can't say that I really *got* it, though. I think it was supposed to shock me, but I didn't feel much shock. Kind of ho-hum, and a lot of money to pay for what is essentially a short story that should have just been in a magazine. Last book you read for the second timeHey, I'm adding a category to this book meme thing. After all, I wanna know what people read again. Anyway, a while back I re-read A Separate Peace by John Knowles because I remembered it from school as one of the few books I liked, and I recently saw the movie. It's still good :-) Not sure why I don't find it boring, but I just don't.Five other bloggers to tagHell, not sure I know 5 bloggers well enough to tag. Let's see:ViviWoolfelThat's all the bloggers I know - sorry!

As I mentioned previously, Ken tagged me with the book meme. So, without further ado:

How Many Books I Own

I'm sure I can't estimate this properly. Not nearly as many as I would like. I've probably lost/lent/sold as many books as I currently have, at least. I've been slowly filling my computer room walls with bookshelves, and a quick count and estimate reveals about 700 books in here. There may be half again as many still in boxes and hidden away.

Five Books That Have Influenced Me

What, only 5?

The Dispossessed, Ursula K. LeGuin.

Strangely, this is the only fiction entry on my list. I read a lot of fiction, and my choosing only one is not an indication that I don't find it as worthy. It's just that I only get 5 books (yes, I'm going to keep complaining about that).

So anyway, The Dispossessed makes the list because it fundementally changed my understanding of people. It's a story of an ambiguous utopia - an anarchy that only barely works. In spite of unanswerable questions about whether the described society could ever really exist, it makes an absolutely convincing argument that human beings inherently like to work. Not just for money, not just for gain, but for its own reward. And when one reflects on our current society and why it is that the opposite seems to be so thoroughly true, one can't help but wonder if the way things are now isn't horribly wrong for us.

Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches : The Riddles of Culture, Marvin Harris

A populist anthropology book that is absolutely fascinating. Sometimes I wonder about things that just don't seem to make sense. Things we're all taught as true, but that we simply know can't possibly be true, but we're not experts, so we don't fight it. For instance, dogs will choke and die if they eat chicken bones (I feed my dogs raw chicken all the time). A moment of thought, of course, reveals that dogs would have failed long ago were that true.

Marvin Harris tackles questions about human history, culture, and our beliefs about them. Why don't Jewish and Muslim people's eat pork? Because it's a dirty, diseased animal? How do you explain the Chinese then? Why don't Hindu's eat cows? Why do some cultures engage in cannibalism and other's not? Why don't Americans eat dogs and horses like so many others? Combine this one with Marvin's book, Our Kind, and see if you're not enthralled like me.

It's better than Guns, Germs, and Steel :-).

In Search of the Miraculous, P. D. Ouspensky

I have to include this one, though it's not a book I recommend. Whereas the previous two books changed my understanding of people in general, this book changed my understanding of me. But reading this book occurred along with an experience with a Gurdjieff work group here in Rochester, which was a large part of the package. From this book and from that experience, I learned meditation in a way that I could understand and value, and I learned that all is not as it seems in my inner psychic life.

Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code, Martin Fowler

Well, I am a programmer, and this book finally captured (for me) what code design and management is all about. Fowler is the epitomy of concision and always packs his punch into the first few chapters of his books - the remainder existing to flesh out the details. This book was a revelation for me as a programmer.

Underground History of American Education, John Taylor Gatto

I wasn't going to include this on my list, wanting to add more fiction (I wanted to put Lois McMaster Bujold in here as a whole for clarifying for me what story-telling should be about and why so many authors fail to be story-tellers, preferring to be show-offs instead. Hmm, I guess I got her in anyway :-). But, I can't deny the influence of this book on me - the author's writings helping to convince me that I would home-school my own children. I'd say that's a big influence!

Last Book I Bought

The Tyranny of the Night : Book One of the Instrumentalities of the Night, Glen Cook

Well, I've been making my way through Glen Cook's books lately - just good fun.

Last Book I read for the first time

Beasts, Joyce Carol Oats

I got a whim to read an Oats novel, and this one seemed to get interesting reviews. Can't say that I really *got* it, though. I think it was supposed to shock me, but I didn't feel much shock. Kind of ho-hum, and a lot of money to pay for what is essentially a short story that should have just been in a magazine.

Last book you read for the second time

Hey, I'm adding a category to this book meme thing. After all, I wanna know what people read again. Anyway, a while back I re-read A Separate Peace by John Knowles because I remembered it from school as one of the few books I liked, and I recently saw the movie. It's still good :-) Not sure why I don't find it boring, but I just don't.

Five other bloggers to tag

Hell, not sure I know 5 bloggers well enough to tag. Let's see:

1. Vivi
   
2. Woolfel
   

That's all the bloggers I know - sorry!

My Newest Creation No, not the baby - that's an old creation. And it's still baking anyway. I'm referring to Coinjema, a Dependency Injection (DI) framework I've been working on (and blogging about on occasion), and I've just made the first release. So, Ken tagged me with the book meme, but I'm not quite ready to do that blog. I made a list of candidate books that I have to choose from and about which to write something pithy. I'll do that next week, and decide who amongst y'all will then get tagged by me.This evening, Vivi and I are going to the Copacabana Brazilian Steakhouse Restaraunt - a Churrascaria. A Churrascaria is a steakhouse where they serve Rodizio, which is skewers of meat carried around by servers who stop by your table and slice of freshly cooked shavings from the meat. They then take these skewers back to the fires to cook the newly exposed uncooked surface. Back and forth like that all night. They are typically all-you-can-eat places.Huge salad bars are part of the experience, Brazilian style, of course, hopefully with lots of fishwada - a yummy bean dish filled with smoked meats. We are meeting a co-worker of mine and his family, and their Brazilian exchange student. It should be a great time!

No, not the baby - that's an old creation. And it's still baking anyway. I'm referring to Coinjema, a Dependency Injection (DI) framework I've been working on (and blogging about on occasion), and I've just made the first release.

So, Ken tagged me with the book meme, but I'm not quite ready to do that blog. I made a list of candidate books that I have to choose from and about which to write something pithy. I'll do that next week, and decide who amongst y'all will then get tagged by me.

This evening, Vivi and I are going to the Copacabana Brazilian Steakhouse Restaraunt - a Churrascaria. A Churrascaria is a steakhouse where they serve Rodizio, which is skewers of meat carried around by servers who stop by your table and slice of freshly cooked shavings from the meat. They then take these skewers back to the fires to cook the newly exposed uncooked surface. Back and forth like that all night. They are typically all-you-can-eat places.

Huge salad bars are part of the experience, Brazilian style, of course, hopefully with lots of fishwada - a yummy bean dish filled with smoked meats. We are meeting a co-worker of mine and his family, and their Brazilian exchange student. It should be a great time!

I am the Proud Papa of a Beautiful Blurry Blob The most beautiful blurry blob ever, in fact. Vivi and I went to her 20 week ultrasound last week, hoping to discover the sex of our baby. No such luck - it was lying face down and sleeping. There was little movement either, and not a hole lot was clearly visible to non-ultrasound-technicians like Vivi and I. We could see that the little guy was sucking his/her left thumb, which, according to Discover Magazine, is the best predictor of handedness we know of. Vivi will be getting more ultrasounds before giving birth, so there will be other opportunities to know the sex.On a different topic entirely, SourceForge has accepted my little Coinjema software project, and I had some fun with that last night and today. Even wrote up a little doc for developers. I don't know why it's so much fun to start a new software project, but it is. Plus SourceForge has so many bells and whistles, it can be very entertaining playing with all its fiddle-able bits. The software itself is just a tiny tool framework, and basically done and ready to go. But I feel strange releasing it since I don't yet use it myself at work or anywhere. What if someone actually tried to use it? Because it's an aspect-oriented framework, that'd be a little scary.Writing aspects is kind of like modifying the JVM itself, since the changes just automatically become an invisible part of the environment. Documentation of aspects would seem to be of the utmost importance as a result. I can't imagine how terrifying software development would be if virtually ever third-party library I use started using aspects in their code. Aspects could well be the worst thing to happen to software development since Perl.But it's so powerful, we won't be able to resist. The productivity increase that well-designed aspects generate will be enormous. But I don't know if it will balance the negative effects of poorly-designed aspects. And who can tell when two "well-designed" aspects interfere to create an unholy mess together?Nevertheless, I am diving in. Dangerous toys are more fun :-)

The most beautiful blurry blob ever, in fact. Vivi and I went to her 20 week ultrasound last week, hoping to discover the sex of our baby. No such luck - it was lying face down and sleeping. There was little movement either, and not a hole lot was clearly visible to non-ultrasound-technicians like Vivi and I. We could see that the little guy was sucking his/her left thumb, which, according to Discover Magazine, is the best predictor of handedness we know of. Vivi will be getting more ultrasounds before giving birth, so there will be other opportunities to know the sex.

On a different topic entirely, SourceForge has accepted my little Coinjema software project, and I had some fun with that last night and today. Even wrote up a little doc for developers. I don't know why it's so much fun to start a new software project, but it is. Plus SourceForge has so many bells and whistles, it can be very entertaining playing with all its fiddle-able bits. The software itself is just a tiny tool framework, and basically done and ready to go. But I feel strange releasing it since I don't yet use it myself at work or anywhere. What if someone actually tried to use it? Because it's an aspect-oriented framework, that'd be a little scary.

Writing aspects is kind of like modifying the JVM itself, since the changes just automatically become an invisible part of the environment. Documentation of aspects would seem to be of the utmost importance as a result. I can't imagine how terrifying software development would be if virtually ever third-party library I use started using aspects in their code. Aspects could well be the worst thing to happen to software development since Perl.

But it's so powerful, we won't be able to resist. The productivity increase that well-designed aspects generate will be enormous. But I don't know if it will balance the negative effects of poorly-designed aspects. And who can tell when two "well-designed" aspects interfere to create an unholy mess together?

Nevertheless, I am diving in. Dangerous toys are more fun :-)

An Epidemic of Sanity While there are certainly a lot of mentally disturbed people in theworld - maybe more than ever before - there is a disturbing tendencytoward unnecessary sanity in our culture. How often do we hear someoneexpress dislike for a public figure because they're "an asshole"? Howoften do people express the opinion that the only reason person X isdoing <some grand project> is because they're egomaniacs? How manypeople talk to a therapist rather than their friends either becausetheir "friends" told them "I'm not your therapist" or because theydidn't want to seem needy?To be human is to be needy. Repeat that. If you're not needy, ifyou're completely self-sufficient, don't need others, don't need humancontact, communication, affirmation, etc - then you are a sociopath. Doyou do vanity searches on the internet for your name? Congratulations,you're human. Do you dream of starting a grand project or business tomake money and be famous, or at least well-known by some? Also human.Do you want more children so you'll have a bigger family so you besurrounded by people you love and who love you? You get the idea.Somewhere along the line, needing others has become a disease to bestamped out. When no one needs anyone else, they'll be no more war andmurder, no stealing, no unhappiness. No more selfish people strivingfor more than their fair share. It sounds nice, doesn't it? Exceptthat's not how humans are. As we strive for the perfect centeredexistence, what we really create is loneliness and distance. It's fashionable to attack people who do things out of an obvious needto be noticed - at least in the online community. To which I sayphooey. For those who don't need, more than likely, their neediness isonly replaced by enough rage to keep the need in check. Embrace your inner need.

While there are certainly a lot of mentally disturbed people in the
world - maybe more than ever before - there is a disturbing tendency
toward unnecessary sanity in our culture. How often do we hear someone
express dislike for a public figure because they're "an asshole"? How
often do people express the opinion that the only reason person X is
doing <some grand project> is because they're egomaniacs? How many
people talk to a therapist rather than their friends either because
their "friends" told them "I'm not your therapist" or because they
didn't want to seem needy?

To be human is to be needy. Repeat that. If you're not needy, if
you're completely self-sufficient, don't need others, don't need human
contact, communication, affirmation, etc - then you are a sociopath. Do
you do vanity searches on the internet for your name? Congratulations,
you're human. Do you dream of starting a grand project or business to
make money and be famous, or at least well-known by some? Also human.

Do you want more children so you'll have a bigger family so you be
surrounded by people you love and who love you? You get the idea.

Somewhere along the line, needing others has become a disease to be
stamped out. When no one needs anyone else, they'll be no more war and
murder, no stealing, no unhappiness. No more selfish people striving
for more than their fair share. It sounds nice, doesn't it? Except
that's not how humans are. As we strive for the perfect centered
existence, what we really create is loneliness and distance.

It's fashionable to attack people who do things out of an obvious need
to be noticed - at least in the online community. To which I say
phooey. For those who don't need, more than likely, their neediness is
only replaced by enough rage to keep the need in check.

Embrace your inner need.