Google Books Project

Click the link to read Google co-founder Sergey Brin's op-ed on the value of Google's controversial proposed online book library for out of print books.

He claims over 10 million books are now out of print and are increasingly difficult to find even in the best stocked libraries. It really is an ambitious project to make knowledge more accessible to everyone - and to prevent some books from being lost forever.

(I've read recent articles that libraries now regularly have to cull the shelves due to space constraints and the increasing volume of new material. Sorry, I don't have a link on that, but read it in NYTimes maybe year or two ago if you're the investigative type. After reading the article I did a search of the local Nashville public library system also and found some of the so-called classics aren't available here either presumably due to similar culling processes over the year. Apparently the many of the classics weren't being requested very often and ended up on the cull piles due to their unpopularity.)

Brin on the agreement with the Author's Guild and Publishers:

This agreement aims to make millions of out-of-print but in-copyright books available either for a fee or for free with ad support, with the majority of the revenue flowing back to the rights holders, be they authors or publishers.

How We Decide - by Jonah Lehrer

"How We Decide" by Jonah Lehrer finally became available at the library (long-long hold list) and I read it over the past few days. I'd requested it so long ago that I forgot about it. I remember seeing the author on C-Span book-TV and must've requested the book and am very glad I did.

"How We Decide" is a popular science book that attempts to summarize many recent neurological experiments that highlight new findings about BRAIN function, coordination, strengths, weaknesses, limitations, and ultimately how we arrive at decisions incorporating input from all the different parts of our brain.

It's full of stories about poker (getting reads on other players), consumer decisions (like buying a car, buying a house, buying jam, using credit cards, how we're manipulated by marketers and retailers), military decisions, airline emergency scenarios, quarterback decisions, stock market bubbles and crashes, rationalization, creativity, autism, and many others.

Key concepts.
- The author and the studies presented attack the prevailing conventional wisdom that humans are primarily rational decision makers. If anything, the research utilizing real-time brain scans seems to indicate that our older emotional brains often make decisions before we're aware of it, and then our conscious mind tends to rationalize those decisions "after the fact".
- The author sees the subconscious and older emotional brain centers as a highly powerful computer that picks and considers alot of things that our conscious mind is unaware of. There's alot of power our "gut" feeling about things - and often if we try to rationalize our gut instinct we end up making more mistakes than just going with our initial impressions.
- There are significant limitations to our conscious rational mind (prefrontal cortex)- and it's far more limited than we realize. It's a small part of the brain's mass and it's really best at coordinating the work of the unconscious mind. (Some of the discussions/research reminds me of the futility of multitasking when we see how small stresses on our conscious mind degrade functionality and decision capacity).

Anyhow - this is an excellent book. The best read I've had in a long time. One of the few books I come across that isn't "padded" with fluff. When it was finished I was actually wishing there was more. There are lots of "Wow!" and "Aha" moments in reading through. I'm going to check out his other books.

Asimov - The Last Question

I'm not much of a fiction reader, but Isaac Asimov was one of my favorites when I was growing up. Apparently he felt this short story was his best. I read Asimov's The Last Question a few weeks ago and thought it was well worth passing on.

Library

The library called today letting us know that (use your best female voice): "A patron at this number has an item that is ready to be picked up. Please come to the library to pick up the item."

Wahoo. Another couple books to read. I've been running low on good reading material. The first one is called "The Black Swan: The impact of the highly improbable" and the second is "The Next Great Thing: The Sun, the Stirling Engine and the drive to change the world."

My writer-wife thinks these sound like snooze-fests and makes a snoring sound as she reads the titles off the library website. I can't imagine what she's thinking, but I've been looking forward to these.

What I've been reading

"Trend Following" by Michael Covel. Trend following is a trading philosophy designed to capture benefits of longer term trends. It details successes of many trend followers and along the way bashes about every other method of investing. I found it good to have read, although like most books it's padded with too much fluff. Could've gotten the same point across in 100 pages. Suggestion - read the first couple of chapters and turn to chapter 10 to get the gist of the trend following approach.

"Hot Commodities" by Jim Rogers. I'm reading this right now. Jim Rogers is a well respected investor (you probably see him on the financial news occassionaly) who advocates moving some of your asset exposure into what he sees as a long term commodities bull market. I've been learning about trading systems and many trading systems (including trend following) incorporate trading in commodities (like oil, natural gas, wheat, cocoa, corn, cotton, pork bellies, etc).

"Foreign Currency Trading" by Russell Wasendorf (Jr and Sr). I'm still reading this too, but is an introduction into foreign currency trading. Just trying to expand my options as I work on a trading system. Many traders trade currencies.

Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut

I saw reports of Kurt Vonnegut's death last month and realized I'd not read any of his books. I guess I felt any wanna-be semi-educated heathen like myself ought to read something by the man many consider to be the greatest American novelist of his time. So in the spirit of things I checked out a Vonnegut's "Cat's Cradle" from the library.

I'm generally not much of a fan of fiction, and I've been known to stop reading 30-50 pages in if a book doesn't catch my attention quickly - so completion of the book was not a given - but I made it through and actually enjoyed "the read."

First off: I couldn't summarize the meaning of the book if I tried so I won't other than to say it's a humorous story about how the bumbling humans bring about their own apocalypse.

Probably the highlight of the book for me was a poem of the Last Rites being given to the dying dictator of a tropical island. The verses from the island's Bokonism religion are read and are then repeated back by the dying person - sortof like wedding vows ;-). Anyhow this poem lept off the page.

God made mud.
God got lonesome.
So God said to some of the mud, "Sit up!"
"See all I've made," said God, "the hills, the sea, the sky, the stars."
And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around.
Lucky me, lucky mud.
I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job God had done.
Nice going, God.
Nobody but you could have done it, God! I certainly couldn't have.
I feel very unimportant compared to You.
The only way I can feel the least bit important is to think of all the mud that didn't even get to sit up and look around.
I got so much, and most mud got so little.
Thank you for the honor!
Now mud lies down again and goes to sleep.
What memories for mud to have!
What interesting other kinds of sitting-up mud I met!
I loved everything I saw!
Good night.
I will go to heaven now.
I can hardly wait...
- Kurt Vonnegut from Cat's Cradle

(Thanks to this website for archiving the text)

I (we?) tend to make things too complicated and miss the fun of just being here. Count me as glad to be "sitting-up mud."

Ice Nine: In the book Ice Nine is a molecular "seed" that causes water to freeze at temperatures far above 32F. I first heard of Ice Nine back in high school through my favorite guitarist of the time, Joe Satriani. One of Satch's instrumentals was named Ice Nine. Now 20 years later I understand the reference.

Maybe at some point I'll similarly name a song for a Vonnegut reference. Could you hum "Sitting-up Mud"?

John Naisbitt's "Mind Set"

I just read John Naisbitt's book "Mind Set"

Some takaways:
- He sees China as the real deal - a balanced long-term growth economy with lots going for it.
- India is no China - not even close. India does not have the economic breadth of China. (Right now India is all IT and not much else).
- He see's Europe as economically on the long slide down by refusing reforms to ease the socialist strains on it's economy.
- Despite many concerns, he sees the United States as a dominant world player throughout most of the current century.
- Aside: An interesting observation: consider the transition to the visual world and business implications. He sees books and newpapers in decline to be subsummed by video and visual presentation.