Time for another miscellaneous entry in ye olde blog. Today I thought I'd focus on a few quicks hits on personal cultural exploration. Later this week: posts on upcoming travel, meeting with bright young minds of the future, and the "joys" of airline travel and the brilliant minds of airport security. Anywho...
First up, if you haven't checked out Last.fm or Lulu.com, then I highly encourage it. Last.fm is a music socialization site where you download a plugin for your mainstream media player and it "scrobbles" what you're listening to, sending the notes back to your profile and - the really interesting/cool part - it compares you profile to other profiles and defines your "neighborhood" based on listening preferences. The more you listen, the better the profile match. Kind of nifty.
Lulu.com is something that's apparently been around for a while. If you've ever thought about writing and self-publishing a book, this is the site for you. Apparently known well to writers already. Check it out!
Now onto the random entries... today's topic: books that I'm currently reading and that I have queued for reading.
(I didn't build links for this reading -- if you want to learn more, go to Amazon.)
Current Reading:
* Fiction
- The Risk Pool, Richard Russo (author of Empire Falls)
* Non-Fiction
- The Long Tail, Chris Anderson
- The Future of an Illusion, Sigmund Freud (translated)
- The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, Thomas L. Friedman
Pending Reading:
* Fiction
- Mr. Muo's Travelling Couch, Dai Sijie
* Non-Fiction
- Climbing: From Gym to Crag, S. Peter Lewis and Dan Cauthorn
- The Rock Warrior's Way: Mental Training for Climbers, Arno Ilgner
- The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream, Barack Obama
- Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Jared Diamond
- The Supreme Court, William H. Rehnquist
- The Myth of Homeland Security, Marcus J. Ranum
- Civilization and Its Discontents, Sigmund Freud (translated)
- The Psychology of Influence and Persuasion, Robert B. Cialdini, Ph.D.
- Risk: A Practical Guide for Deciding What's Really Safe and What's Really Dangerous in the World Around You, David Ropeik and George Gray
- Mind Wide Open: Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life, Steven Johnson
- The Culture of Fear: What Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things, Barry Glassner
A large number of the non-fiction books listed above are on my list in order to tackle the topic of the psychology of security. I've posted about this topic previously and continue to do research in the topic.
