steve.clarke.weblog

Every time I visit Chapters I'm tempted to leave with YANB (Yet Another New Book). What am I saying?! I usually leave with YANB. Well, I've decided to finish reading the books that are queued up on my bookshelf before I buy another. That's difficult to do because my interest streams are constantly in flux, but I'm going to do my best to stick to my guns. For my reference, here's a list of the current queue.

A Deepness in the Sky, Vernor Vinge
Dr. Deming: The American Who Taught the Japanese about Quality, Rafael Aguayo
Cosmic Trilogy, C. S. Lewis
Prelude to Foundation, Isaac Asimov
IBM and the Holocaust, Edwin Black
The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, Samuel Huntington
Three Roads to Quantum Gravity, Lee Smolin
Flatland / Sphereland, Abbott, Burger
Master Handbook of Acoustics, F. Alton Everest
Consilience - The Unity of Knowledge, Edward O. Wilson
The Complete Far Side - Volume Two, Gary Larson
Secrets and Lies - Digital Security in a Networked World, Bruce Schneier
The Reformation, Owen Chadwick

Thankfully the list isn't too long, although I have a few business books on the office bookshelf that I'll have to add to this list. I should be able to start purchasing new books again pretty soon!

I've started on the list by reading "Secrets and Lies" first.

Posted by Steve at 10:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Pete Laing sent me an interesting URL last summer that got me started on a journey to improve my knowledge of history.

That article did a lot to change my attitude towards America's role in the world. After reading that article, I continued to read this and this - and of course I bookmarked Policy Review Online.

I realized at this point that my knowledge of World War II history (and history in general) was abyssmal - primarily due to the fact that the education system that I came through didn't want to teach me history. (Of course, I also take responsibility for not having taken enough initiative to understand history since finishing school.) I started by reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and went from there.

Having been on this journey for the last year has really helped me put the current war into perspective much better. I have a lot of thoughts about war, history, morality, democracy, the future, culture, and more that I hope to be able to share as I move forward with this weblog.

Keep watching this space.

Posted by Steve at 11:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm going to look for a clean way to implement a link on the main page to the book(s) I'm currently reading - maybe with a link to Amazon.

For now though, I'll just post an entry describing what I'm currently reading:

Isaac Asimov - Foundation's Edge.

This is the fourth in an excellent book series that I've been reading for the last few months.

I'm also still working my way through the following books as I get time:

Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan Cults and Their Influences on Nazi Ideology
The Civilization of the Middle Ages

I'm reading these as a follow up to The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich in an attempt to understand more deeply this historical context of factors that contributed to WWII.

Maybe I'll comment more fully on this in a later post.

Recently read:
Kiln People
Second Foundation
Seduced by Hitler: The Choices of a Nation and the Ethics of Survival

Next in queue:
A Deepness in the Sky
Cubase SX Power!
The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order

Posted by Steve at 01:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)