The trinity of science - Feynman, Sagan and Dawkins (or, CJ tries magnet links)

There are many good books out there, and generally prefer the non-fiction ones. When it comes to cool science books, many of you will have enjoyed Hawking, Bryson, Sacks and Hofstadter, but a while back I discovered these old heroes of science, like Richard Feynman, Carl Sagan and still alive, but relevant anyway, Richard Dawkins.

Amazing, amusing, fascinating, you mustn't miss these books, and they're all available as audio books for your lazy leisure!:

• "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" (magnet) by Richard Feynman
• "The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark" (magnet) by Carl Sagan
• "The God Delusion" (magnet) by Richard Dawkins

This may be a realization only for me, but my heroes are actually mortal... and Oliver Sacks is dreadfully old...

(image via I love charts)

See my other nerdy posts or posts regarding Carl Sagan

Pre-order Daniel Suarez' Daemon sequel Freedom™

I was concerned there for a while, when I didn't find a single bleep from Daniel Suarez online after his Google talk - hopefully no-one decided him too dangerous and silenced him, right?

Anyway, I have written a whole bunch of things about Suarez' revolutionary book "Daemon". Someone asked me what to read after being riveted to that book, and sure enough once a paradigm has been changed once, it doesn't change again with the sequel, but Freedom™ is looking promising anyhow. Maybe, just maybe it will do to privacy what Daemon did to IT security, I especially like the tagline "Everything is under control - everything".

If you haven't already heard the story of how Daemon went from self-published to Barnes & Nobles, read about it. Essentially Daniel is still kicking it and recently sent me an email about my wish to pre-order FreedomTM (seems he is still treating me well...). You can also pre-order it before the release on January 7, 2010. Before ordering, don't miss reading the preview chapter Suarez recently published on his homepage.

Finally, don't take my word for it, but check out what people are saying online about Daniel Suarez' books. (Update: I tried to do both twingly and twitter search widgets here, but the javascript just won't work, could someone tell me what's wrong with blogspot?)

Do check out my other posts about Daemon, and also see the awesome collection of bookmarks I have gathered.

PS. Don't buy anything by Dan Brown. Preferably also don't read it, but seriously don't buy it. He is evil™.

I always know where my towel is! Almost anyway...

 

Have you thought of, that if someone is able to maintain the lifestyle of an intergalactic hitchhiker, and still know where his towel is, it's logical to assume they are generally reliable so thus it should be safe to lend them either of the things they may be currently missing? Well, that's the thought of the late Douglas Adams in his legendary bestseller "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" anyway, and today on Monday the 25th of May 2009, we celebrate the (a tad late, but that's fine) 8th anniversary of the his death day. He passed away at age 49 from fatal cardiac arrhythmia while at his gym.

"The Hitchhiker", as it became generally abbreviated to, made a very very strong mark in my early youth. I was pretty much obsessed with it and read the five-part trilogy probably at least five times. I marked particularly funny passages in the book and shared quotes from the book ad nauseum, and it was it which taught me that sometimes bypasses just have to be built, that total perspective can be detrimental to your health and that for some, it can make perfect sense to resignate to a life of meticulous sandwich making.

Eventually I grew up and grew tired of the quotes and silliness, and loved other books, but none were probably ever quite as popular as Douglas Adams' master work. Anyway, I made a little interesting list in my head at some point - some norm for literary development in a nerd:

1. the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
   
2. the Principia Discordia
3. the Foundation series
   
4. the Illuminatus! trilogy
5. a recent addition, Daemon

What nerd books have you read and loved, or do you think either of my favourites do not qualify for the list? For some ideas, check out 32 Sci-Fi Novels You Should Read .

(PS. It's really heart-warming to see on twitter that I'm not alone to cherish his memory: #towelday)

The Book of the Year was just released! - "Daemon" by Daniel Suarez

Last week one of the coolest book in a very long time were released. I have already written some about Daemon, and the existing reviews as well as the praise it has gotten from some pretty prominent people (the two sheets of praise which came with the book were even cooler, read in Wired about how they achieved that) should be sufficient and tell you enough about the book, just read it!


After manically reading Daemon while sick over Christmas (why do cool things always come when I'm sleepless?), I have a few, simple comments:

• Laymen can (and should) read the book, since its style is a bit like a Dan Brown adventure, but with proper background research. Which makes it fundamentally unlike anything Dan Brown would ever write


• Suarez is a computer guy come author, and several ideas in the book are truly innovative, or taken straight out of research labs and polished very well. I have no idea how he could do that


• Several times I had to put the book down and ask myself "why hasn't anyone done this already?" as I will also mention in future posts about computer security. In places the book is very credible


• Even if not the particular events described in Daemon will take place, the scenario is the best, most terrifying and credible ideas about our near future I have ever read. It will definitely to some extent affect the way I think and act


• The book doesn't have the amazing narrative style of for example "The Illuminatus! trilogy", but we'll forgive him for that


• The pieces of the story which are shared with the reader, with some essential exceptions, are such that they leave a feeling that they were chosen at random from a much much greater process of events. That's a really cool feeling


• I'm waiting eagerly for the sequel "FreedomTM"

Go get it! It's released in Barnes and Nobles now, and I should get a bunch more as well...

See my other posts about Daemon or my virtual bookshelf.

Exchanging ideas in good old Sweden

I just had a great chat at Café Muggen (got to add that to wifikartan.se...) with Christian Rudolf and Peter Sandberg of disruptive.nu / websmurf, about education, career, entrepreneurship, innovation etc. Thank you so much guys for taking the time to see me!

And to clarify to Christian, I just recently started up this blog to have somewhere to put whatever I'm personally interested in, whereas I use utvandrarna.blogspot.com to write mostly about Sweden, Estonia and various types journeys in life. Maybe it's not motivated to split focus like that, but I it would only feel ok to litter a general blog with web2.0-stuff as much as I have done here, and I still felt like keeping my emigrant blog beside a general one, so that's what I have now. All normal people use a RSS-reader to keep track of their blogs anyway, so it doesn't matter either way, right?


Christian is by the way busy right now starting up mjukvara.se ("software.se"), currently with a mission and focus to bring great antivirus, firewalls and anti-spyware to the masses. Peter is feeding his screaming baby Moyoume attention to launch a a novel use-case of MMS picture messaging and nice way to share your life in pictures with friends and family.

(Update: How nice, I lended Peter my "Johnny Bunko - The last career guide you’ll ever need", but had no idea he'd write an elaborate blog entry (in Swedish though) about Johnny Bunko and it's career advice. In a way, it feels like some sort of very sincere gratitude if he goes through the trouble of writing a blog post about it, makes me happy I let him borrow it. Thanks Peter!)

(Update 2: I bought that book at the Helsinki Academic Bookstore, and now I've been there again! What a place...)