Post books and authors gogo!

Currently reading Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt, it's an older book written to give a simple explanation of economics with straight-forward examples and logic. The basic premise is that good economics looks for long term effects and effects on more than one group, rather than the immediate effects and the group most obviously directly affected.

Listening to Broken Angels by Richard K. Morgan. It's the second book in a trilogy and I just finished the first one. None of the places I usually buy books at had the other two, so I ended up downloading them as audiobooks instead.

50 Shades of Grey.

Spoiler: it is just as terrible as you guys think.

I recently finished reading Different: Escaping the Competitive Herd by Youngme Moon. One of the central ideas is that when everyone tries to be different, you have to differentiate yourself in a unique way in order to stand out. The other main idea requires a more lengthy explanation:

Cars are rated in several categories: performance, safety, comfort, efficiency, and the like. Let's say Ferrari builds a car that excels in performance. Now, other companies think they need to design cars that are high performance, even if their niche is creating very safe cars. Moon says that this is not necessarily the best thing to do, since every company will try to be like Ferrari. This causes consumers to not percieve a difference between Ferrari and other brands. (Think of bottled water, Hyatt-like hotels, and gas stations--they all have the same qualities, and few brands distinguish themselves. Do most people care all that much whether they visit a Chevron station or a RaceTrac?). Instead of trying to catch up with the competition, Moon suggests that brands can focus on what they do best and ignore the competition in order to differentiate themselves. In this example, a car company that focuses on safety can disregard improving the performance of their vehicles and become the "ultra-safe" car company.

I'm currently reading the readout from an instrument in the lab I work in.

But last week I finished a book titled The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean (I believe, book is at home). It's a "history" of the discovery of the elements and the development of the periodic table. Not nearly as dry as it could be, the author did a lot of research and tells many stories that focus as much on the politics and people that discovered the elements as the elements themselves.

Finished Daemon and Darknet from Daniel Suarez a while ago. Highly recommended for anyone into IT - basically everyone on SEN.

The Daemon is a computer virus that manifests itself invisibly on zombie computers around the Internet and is doing everything we IT guys are afraid of. Gathers personal information about people, breaks company firewalls and infiltrate governments and gains way too much power while essentially being undeleteable after a while because it replicates itself. It's hard to explain what makes this plot so fascinating without spoiling, but believe me it's an exciting and believable and thus scary story.

The standards guide for the new SDS System that comes out next year.

SDS system?

The Material Safety Data Sheet format is being changed next year and is supposed to be more international or some BS like that.

Ah. Yeah that's been happening (already in my lab, but not in the entire building...let alone the entire complex). Didn't know if you meant some other "SDS" (seriously, google "sds system"). For all intents and purposes, it doesn't change anything here in the lab for me. What's dangerous is still dangerous, just the numbers are inverted. Hydrofluoric acid is still hydrofluoric acid, whether you give it a 0 or a 4.

I'm reading the text on this site. I dig it, it's really readable.

Why, just why would you waste your time?

Currently reading Abduction by Robin Cook, Casually re-reading Isaac Asimov's short stories (Currently reading The dead past) and reading, as a hobby, a book on C++ (Since I am learning as a hobby)

I've been doing a lot of reading lately.

First, I read a short story that was supposed to be a horror slasher. It fell way short of the mark. Way short. It was terrible written - a lot of very awkward wording, inconsistency, and overuse of some phrases. It also had a magical negro, which if that sounds offensive GOOD. It is a terrible trope from early Americana and for the life of me I don't know why this author thought it would be appropriate to bring it back. It was a free book on kindle, so I don't want to harp too much I guess. I don't understand how it got 4 stars though, with over 300 ratings, unless the guy was paying people to rate it.

After that, I read a much longer story (but still easy to finish in two nights) about a man who travels across the country a year after the death of his wife. While you'd think this would be very depressing, it was a pretty good read, gave you the warm fuzzies. I felt some of the end dialogue was forced, and I felt like the first chapter (and some areas later on) definitely could've been cut down or used some more polish, but overall I enjoyed it.

Next I read a "political thriller"/gay erotica short novella. Really the author should have abandoned the political part altogether, because it was clear she didn't understand a thing about politics. The premise is that a prince is forced into exile after he kills his grandfather who killed his father. Okay, actually what put him into exile is the first thing he does when he gains command is defunds a clearly corrupt army, and causes a fucking junta. This is set in 1979 but you wouldn't notice it. They are met with a little bit of firepower leaving the castle but there no checkpoints while they ride in a Bentley down one of the busiest streets in their kingdom. They consider such locales as Germany, which any quick google search would tell you is not a fucking proper answer for a god damn leader, because at that point the country was split into East and West, and they had some pretty different ideologies. Anyways, I guess the sex scenes were okay, but not my cup of tea. As far as relationship development goes it was actually pretty good, and the characters while a little cliche developed in a way that is pretty impressive for erotica. but there never should've been that first plot. I'm not even sure why there was. Halfway through the second part, we kinda stop focusing on the political stuff altogether. So I guess the leader left his country to die (which he was all mopey about when they left the country in the first place) so that he could go have a lot of sex. Ugh.

Finally, I read a series of cautionary tales based on Indian superstitions, and thank God I ended the night on that because they were fantastic. They were written by a guy from India so the cultural descriptions had a very real feel to them. I bought another one of his books I was so impressed, also set in India (I think this one is in Mumbai).

So that, or the first book of the Dresden Files, is next on my list.

I'm currently reading Market Forces by Richard K. Morgan, mostly while eating breakfast.
Fun fact: There's a segment early on in the book where it says that the characters involved switch to speaking Norwegian and I unconsciously began translating the dialogue into Norwegian as I read it

I'm currently reading some guidance notes on The Consumer Rights Act 2015.

I started reading Game of Thrones. I see the appeal of it, with so many characters in vatied settings you're bound to hit many key demographics. But it reads very slow.

Most recently read through some of the affordable health care act, namely limitations on how the IRS can collect the fine if you don't have healthcare. Suffice it to say, they're pretty powerless on this issue.