What are you reading?

Applying for ACLU membership?

finally finised "blood's a rover".......i hope his next book doesn't take quite as long to come out.

read "the way home" by george pellecanos in a day......alright book....

starting "the given day" by dennis lehane.

Originally Posted by StephenHero

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Applying for ACLU membership?

Originally Posted by StephenHero

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Applying for ACLU membership?

Hahahaha, no, doing a paper on the relative importance of political and spiritual motivations in the animosity between Jews and Blacks in America.

Probability Theory: The Logic of Science by E. T. Jaynes.

100 pages in and I am absolutely floored!
There has always been something in me that preferred to believe in a subjective Bayesian over frequentist ideas, and this work is filling in the gaps in my thinking, and pretty much destroying the competing ideas. For the uninitiated- pure Bayesian probability is epistemological, the uncertainty rests only in our minds, not in objective reality, and so probability is a 'degree of belief.' This compared to the view you were taught in college of ontological probability, probability that actually model unpredictable but objective reality.

The book falls somewhere between philosophy and statistics. E.g. Jaynes derives basic theorems of probability theory as an extension of deductive logic, from which you can infer the entirety of probability theory. In doing so he necessarily takes on figures like Hume in maintaining the usefulness of inductive inference.

Jaynes is just belligerent, but in a good way. You get the feeling reading his arguments that the man possessed a singular intellect.

Highly recommended for anyone with even a passing interest in statistics, data analysis, finance, philosophy, whatever. This may actually be one of the great unappreciated philosophical tomes of the 20th century.

May write more when I finish...

and

Debating whether to start reading No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy or The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut.

Never wrong with Vonnegut...though having just been through a recent McCarthy kick...hmm, interesting problem there. When I have those decisions to make I usually start reading both and see which one holds my interest more.

Reading "The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire" - touchy feely Chopra book (an assigned reading) next up is Shantaram (another assigned reading).

Just finished up "Cats Cradle" which has so far been my least favorite Vonnegut

The Divine Comedy

Originally Posted by Unbreakable

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The Divine Comedy

Which translation? Are you reading all three books?

^^^^

I just picked up the only copy my ****** bookstore had. Its Inferno (they didnt have the other 2 nor a compilation of all 3) its translated by Allen Mandelbaum.

Will go to a bigger bookstore later and grab the others.

I recently picked up a nice hardcover copy of "The Picture of Dorian Gray" from Strand in the city and recently finished it. I think it would have been better as a play, but I guess Wilde figured that out, seeing as it was his only novel.

I got, but haven't started, "The Art of Deception" by Kevin Mitnick, a former computer hacker and scammer. I heard about it from the "buyers and sellers feedback" thread, ha.

Originally Posted by tor

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I recently picked up a nice hardcover copy of "The Picture of Dorian Gray" from Strand in the city and recently finished it. I think it would have been better as a play, but I guess Wilde figured that out, seeing as it was his only novel. I got, but haven't started, "The Art of Deception" by Kevin Mitnick, a former computer hacker and scammer. I heard about it from the "buyers and sellers feedback" thread, ha.
Yup, thats what I'm going to pick up next.

Originally Posted by Unbreakable

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Yup, thats what I'm going to pick up next. I'm also excited about the upcoming movie.

I wasn't aware that there was a movie coming out. The whole time I was reading the book I was envisioning how they would do it in a movie. Honestly though, I just don't think it lends itself to modern cinema that well. A large part of the book, and of Wilde's work, is the witty dialogue. Modern audiences just don't have the patience for a scene composed entirely of dialogue. If you look at old movies that couldn't rely on special effects and ADD-accommodating action sequences, you realize that they relied on good dialogue. It seems to have been lost in modern movies.

That being said, I'll probably go see it anyway.