Books Spring 2012 books For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition) – Ayn Rand This is Ayn Rand’s challenge to the prevalent philosophical doctrines of our time and the “atmosphere of guilt, of panic, of despair, of boredom, and
Books Spring/Summer 2011 Books Marvin Minksy’s – The Emotion Machine: Commonsense Thinking, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of the Human Mind Minsky argues that emotions are different ways to think that our mind uses to increase our intelligence. He challenges the distinction between emotions and other
Books Winter 2009 reading Sonoluminescence: A Galaxy of Nanostars Created in a Beaker (NASA) The Idea Factory – Learning to Think at MIT, Pepper White : “This is a personal story of the educational process at one of the world’s great technological universities. Pepper White entered
Books Books for Spring 2009 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley : Re-reading but not from any paradise-engineering paranoia perspective. Simply insightful, focused and a great style. First covered this in high school decades ago. It’s ironic and deviously cool that this was actually course mandated at my
Books Some 2007 Reading / Listening Reading Robert Cialdini’s “Influence” – Plenty of social psychology observations that should be common sense if you’re paying attention to the world around you. Read it on recommendation thanks to Scott Adams. Neil Gaiman’s “American
Books Blackmore's "The Meme Machine" The book presents a fairly good intro to the topic of memetics. I agree with Dawkin’s indirect reference that the theory of memetics deserves a shot. I’d say that Blackmore’s theory on memetics deserves a shot too, at