I've read more books this year than the previous three combined. Not sure why. Maybe my reading rate and comprehension has spiked for some reason? Maybe I was exposed to radiation and this is a nice side effect? I know it's not that I have more free time. Regardless of why, I'm enjoying it immensely.

My new favorite genre is what I think of as "meta-thinking". That is, books containing thoughts about thinking. Ya dig?

• Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell. Rapid cognition. A truly beautiful book. (His other book, The Tipping Point, probably fits in the same genre.)


• Freakonomics, by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. If you name your kid "Loser" and your other kid "Winner", how will they turn out later in life? Does legalizing abortion mean a drop in crime? Can you bust corrupt sumo wrestlers by looking at the numbers?


• Super Crunchers. Have you considering using a gargantuan database to make your decisions for you lately? If you're a corporate CEO, the answer is probably yes. Also tells you how to pick great wine without the swishing-and-spitting thing.

I loved these. I want more. Need input!

Please comment if you've got suggestions of titles in a similar vein.

You've searched me. You know me.

You know when I'm sleeping. You know when I wake up.

You watch me when I go out. You know my routine.

Before I speak, you know what I'll say.

You've enveloped me. You're a part of my being.

Your knowledge is beyond my own.

Is there any place I could go where I'm out of your reach?

Lead me in the way everlasting.

I had not heard of this Heidi Montag person before, but evidently she'd rather die in surgery than "suffer" throughout life with small boobs.

If I was with a guy and there was a girl next to me with big boobs, I would be like, Oh, my God, he’s looking at her! On the beach, if I was standing next to a girl with big boobs, I’d be like, I hate her!

Right. Now, post-surgery, she's clearly a more beautiful human being. Like, totally.

Naturally, there's more to hate about one's self than just boobs:

I hated my nose too. I have my dad’s nose, which is huge. It took up so much of my face, when I looked down, I could see my nose. I couldn’t get away from it!

I just looked down. I can see my nose, too. Perhaps I should I be considering surgery too? Uh, no.

I have some advice for women contemplating "breast augmentation". You will attract more attention from the opposite sex, sure. But it will be the worst kind of attention. People with self-respect and confidence are attracted to people with self-respect and confidence. Putting alien-looking sacks beneath your skin will not give you true confidence; it will only mark you as a person who is fundamentally without it. You might as well wear a sign around your neck: I'm insecure; an easy mark. I live for superficial approval. Use me.

Some of you claim that you're "doing it for yourselves". Whether you're aware of it or not, ladies, that is total horse-squeeze.

Here's a fun scenario:

Sally and Julie are young women, 19 years old. A-cups. Itty-bitty titty committee. You get the picture.

They both have $5,000 saved up (unrealistic in America, I know, but just for the sake of argument just bear with me.)

Sally decides to use her $5,000 for fake boobs. She's tired of not having enough "self confidence", tired of "clothes not fitting her", and really when she gets down to it, "it's more for her than anybody else, anyway".

Julie, in contrast, never really gave a crap what some asshole thought about her chest. She likes who she is. Guys ask her out regularly, because she has that natural glow of self-confidence. Incidentally, she invests her $5,000 in an investment fund.

Life goes on. Sally and Julie both found spouses, had daughters, and have now turned 38. It'll come quicker than you think, people.

Sally's daughter inherited a healthy dose of insecurity issues and superficiality. Sally's daughter dances at the Pussycat Lounge. Sally's daughter also inherited "inferior genetics", so Sally's daughter wants fake boobs. Bigger boobs get bigger tips, after all.

Sally, regardless of her own original justification for getting fake boobs, has no ethical--or even logical--basis to argue the point and convince her daughter otherwise. It will fall on deaf ears. (actions > words)

Julie's daughter, on the other hand, has learned from her mom's example. She doesn't need some creep staring at her chest to make her feel better about herself. She has a boyfriend who thinks that self-confidence and A-cups can be a wickedly sexy combination (for the record, they are.)

Julie's $5,000 investment 18 years ago is now worth about $65,000 (that's not a fairy tale. It's called compound interest, folks.) Julie can afford to send her beautiful, self-confident daughter to the best university in the area. Life is good.

I can hear what you're thinking, some of you. "Don't judge me, you didactic preachy prick."

Look, I feel almost as strongly about this as I do about nuclear power. Somebody's got to give some equal time here; Hollywood and tabloids sure as hell aren't giving the whole picture.

Besides, people are going to judge you every time you walk into a room with those bags of self-loathing you elected to surgically replace your sense of self-worth.

You've probably seen this already. But they're not the only ones driving around and taking pictures!

From Windows Live ...

This was parked in the lot of a hotel near my place about a month ago.

Clearly, Microsoft is one-upping Google with a killer twist: RACECAR VIEW.

This is quite possibly even more ground-breaking than the big ass table.

This weekend, I finished Bill Gibson's latest book, Spook Country. If you haven't read anything by Gibson lately, you may be surprised to learn he's stopped writing about the future. Plenty of future-stuff happening in the present for him, it would seem. No more Ono Sendai decks, Betaphenethylamine, or Russian EMP gliders. This has all been replaced by Google and Wikipedia, Ativan, and WEP cracking. It came off as a little egregious to me at first, but I suppose that's because I always cringe a little when I see "current" computer references in fiction or movies. It wasn't so bad, though.

At some point after Virtual Light, I think I fell out of love with William Gibson. I still think he's one of the most amazing visionaries of our time, but his delivery doesn't immediately suck me in like it used to. I remember being hooked within ten pages of Virtual Light. Now, it feels like the first third of the novel is devoted to disjointed character development and an endless string of names to remember that don't quite gel into an interesting plot until you're well into the story.

This is something he's very consciously aware of. In an amazing documentary, he confessed that readers often complain his more recent books are nothing like Neuromancer. He says this is because Neuromancer was a very young man's book, written by a young man, and that is a cognitive place he doesn't have access to anymore. Futher, he says this is probably a very good thing for his work. I can sympathize with that point, and he's probably right. To draw a parallel, William S. Burroughs was a different man in the 1950s than he was in the 1980s, and his works reflect that progression. I suppose that all writers must embrace that sort of evolution. That said, I personally prefer Naked Lunch to Cities of The Red Night; as writers mature, I don't suppose it's a given that their readers will mature with a similar progression. This applies equally to Gibson as it did to Burroughs.

Spook Country gains momentum quickly in the final chapters. All men love spy stories, and this is one infused with some unique technical and cultural elements. It seems Gibson is just getting comfortable with this new direction of writing, and I look forward to reading more of it. If he's able to harness his born talent as a technical visionary and apply it to the world we currently live in, his new work will become more captivating than Neuromancer ever was.

The Freakonomics guys have indicated The United States may finally be coming around to the idea of nuclear power. In 1979, the Three Mile Island accident (and the poorly handled public communication thereafter) sent us into a panic over nuclear power. That event, along with other contributing factors, has left us with domestic energy production that heavily relies on fossil fuels. We haven't broken ground on a nuclear power plant since 1974.

So what's changing now? Well, love him or hate him, Al Gore's crusade to make carbon emissions a dinner-table topic may be tipping point for a shift in energy policy. The doomsday specter of global warming may be just the antidote we need to overcome our fear of nuclear power.

Many skeptics of nuclear safety remain, and their concerns are not unwarranted. Our existing nuclear infrastructure leaves a lot to be desired. However, my hope is that Dr. Robert Bussard's work on iec fusion enjoys a larger media spotlight in the near future. Says Bussard, "Thus, we have the ability to do away with oil (and other fossil fuels) but it will take 4-6 years and ca. 100-200 M$ to build the full-scale plant and demonstrate it. Anyone care?" (link)

Imagine a 2017 where we've begun heavily investing in a clean, widely available grid of power that completely changes the world as we currently experience it. Oil revenues are no longer a source of political destabilization. Energy-hungry water desalination plants are constructed in third-world nations, bringing clean water and an end to maleria epidemics. We'll drive great big cars without people bitching at us about "carbon credits". Your Atlanta house will be frosty-cold all summer long, because you'll run your AC constantly without the power company sticking it in you. Big fat Google datacenters will crop up freakin' everywhere. Sexy.

So, all you filthy-rich philanthropists out there, here's your big chance to cement your legacy. Look up that Bussard guy, and give him a pile of cash to get this work done. If you're not a filthy-rich philanthropist, you can still help by learning more about this.