Does Your Computer Have a Hand Loom in Its Past? Jacquard's Web and Other Books

At the beginning of the 19th century, in France and in particular in Lyons, silk making was a big industry, but it was incredibly labor intensive to weave designs into silk, because silk is so fine. Then Jacquard figured out a way to use punched cards to (essentially) program looms to make patterns. This led to a 24-fold increase in speed - roughly the difference between car travel and air travel.

This is everything a book like this should be. If you are interested in the history of computing, you should read this. For me, the end of this book was less compelling than the first 3/4, but that's more about my tastes than the quality of the book. It covers the rise of the big companies that got into computers in the 20th century. First, I knew a little about that before reading; Second, I am less interested in business and related topics than in invention and ideas.

Sixkill by the late, great Robert Parker. This is (I am pretty sure) the last Spenser novel. It's not top of the line Parker, but it's still pretty darn good. One interesting thing: Hawk is not in this novel (he's living in Asia), and Spenser takes on Zebulon Sixkill, a huge Cree Indian who he finds working as a bodyguard for "Jumbo" Nelson, an offensive jackass who happens to be a Hollywood star and also may (or may not) be guilty of murder. Fun stuff.

Now reading

Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases ed. by Kahneman, Slovic and Tversky. A collection of now classic works on how people reason under uncertainty.

Washington: A life which I am reading on my new Kindle 2 (my old Kindle broke). So far, it's living up to the hugely favorable reviews, although the beginning was a bit repetitive about some aspects of Washington's personality. I've now been reading this again, and am impressed. It's still a bit repetitive (how many times do we need to read how big, tall, erect and strong Washington was?) but good. Chernow doesn't skip over the negative stuff, in particular how Washington dealt with slavery.

Charming Proofs. A book of beautiful (or charming) proofs in mathematics, nearly all of which require no advanced math.

Daybreak Zero by John Barnes. It's 2025. About 9 months ago, there was an apocalyptic event, involving both nanowar and electomagnetic pulse, wiping out pretty much everything that had been invented in the 20th century. The country formerly known as the United States is struggling to recover. Very well written; the worst of the apocalypse is over, so we don't read of horrors but recovery. But recovery is slow.

Just started
The War Lovers: Roosevelt, Lodge, Hearst and the rush to empire, 1898 by Evan Thomas.

Very well written history covering the end of the 19th century in America and the Spanish-American war, which has parallels with the Iraq invasion (based on lies, led to torture, jingoistic .....). It also portrays two opponents of the war: House Speaker Tom Reed and philosopher/psychologist William James.