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Book Log
9 Months Ago | Posted to: Book Log
No better book on the discipline of running exists. What I appreciate about Noakes it that he presents all the scientific perspectives fairly and then presents his own view. It sounds like a simple task but most authors demonstrate clear bias, often wrenching data from other views to support their own. Such is not the case with Noakes. He presents summaries of all the best research on fitness and running, starting at the cellular level, moving up to the muscular level, including the systemic hormone/nutrition levels and finishing with training programs. The book is huge. I've read it cover to cover twice and often refer to it as I reach certain issues in training. The lessons of the book apply to all disciplines of triathlon. A huge resource if you want to get scientific about your fitness.
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9 Months Ago | Posted to: Book Log
Last night I picked up Robert Caro's Master of the Senate for the first time in years. A massive tome covering Lyndon Johnson's years in the Senate, I had previously read the first third or so. Caro's work is incredible. He has a terribly high degree of tedious detail. There isn't much plot movement. There are a billion characters. And yet Caro manages to dramatically illuminate the workings of power at the national level, frequently pointing out the personal motivations and skills that make the exercise of such power possible. While I can't go back and take notes on the entire book, one thing from last night's reading does stick out. Often success is simply a matter of tending to the details. Johnson took over the tedious tasks of running the senate, often thought to be a useless job. In doing so he turned himself into a resource... an inforesource. From there he makes incredible plays at power that nobody else thought to make. This book is classic. It took Caro more time to research and write this book than the time that the book covers. It's part of a series of books about Johnson's life. Someday I'll certainly get to all of them.
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9 Months Ago | Posted to: Book Log
Just trying to get caught up with some book logging. I read (well, listened to the unabridged version while riding and running) John Grisham's The Innocent Man. It's a non-fiction story about a man who's incorrectly put on death row for a murder he didn't commit. Although he's eventually exonerated, it's rather scary to see how many judges, juries, lawyers and experts the case went in front of before somebody said "hey, wait, there's no evidence here." And there really wasn't. Corruption on the part of the police. Bad lawyering by the indigent defense system. Bad reporting by the local and national news outlets. It left me rather stunned. However, another book I've been reading for a long time about psychology would certainly provide the scientific underpinnings for such obedience and lack of analysis on the part of the justice system. I enjoyed this book because I knew it was true. Even if I hadn't known it was true it would have been an interesting read.
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1 Year Ago | Posted to: Book Log
Starting a new book right now... Ed Viesturs No Shortcuts to the Top. About his adventures climbing the world's 14 peaks that are over 8,000 meters without supplemental oxygen. Should be a great read. Saw him on Jon Stewart a few weeks ago but didn't get around to downloading it and putting it on to the iPod until today when Rich Schick recommended it on the Ultra mailing list.
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2 Years Ago | Posted to: Book Log
Great book and one that has already had an impact on my life. It explores the the actions and mindsets of people who survive extreme conditions/emergencies and those who don't.
This book helped me see my current financial and business situation as one of survival. In survival you focus your resources and do everything you have to in order to survive.
Deep Survival outlines two big forces in a survival situation. Logic and emotion. They need to be kept in balance. Emotion can exact immense action. Logic can thwart it or temper it. They need to work in harmony. I've always experienced elements of both in my life but have always favored the logical side. The view that Deep Survival proposes allows me to incorporate more of my emotional gut feelings.
Great book. Can't possibly outline it here. Just a quick note about it.
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3 Years Ago | Posted to: Book Log
A good question: with all of the missing persons out there, why is this one on the front page of cnn.com?
My answer is along the lines of the Tipping Point. Small things that add up. The Power of Context rule.
The fact that she was to be wed this weekend. The fact that she was running, a common activity. The fact that she's an attractive woman. The fact that she dissappeared with absolutely no evidence... nothing.
Put them all together and you have one news writer that says "let's put this on the air." And the next writer does the same. And so on. Then you find empathy from the public. The story hits a nerve... the finality of marriage. The terror of kidnapping. So it tips and takes off.
I'd guess that most missing persons stories hit the news at some point. But not all of them tip.
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3 Years Ago | Posted to: Book Log
Only about ten or twenty pages tonight, but good pages. The author has completed outlining the people who make epidemics happen (salespeople, mavens and connectors). Now he's spent some time defining what it is that they must achieve in their communications: stickiness.
Stickiness is the effectiveness of a message. How well do people act on it? Not how well do they understand the message. How well do they act on it, tell friends, change their behavior based on it?
Great summary of Sesame Street and its approach to children's television. Truly visionary for its time, their main breakthrough was to track what help a child's attention. They found it was rather simple to do. They lined kids up in front of an episode of Sesame Street and recorded the amount of time each child was actually looking at the screen. Pretty simple, but with massive effects. They were able to tell what parts of the show were interesting. So they studied those parts and figured out what it was that kids were responding to and then did more of it. Their whole vision was that you could use television to educate kids as long as you could keep their attention. This was in direct conflict with the general thinking of the day which said that when people watch television they turn their brains off and don't learn... they're passive. (In fact, most adults are passive, but kids learn like crazy... as long as they're paying attention.) Sesame Street created a television product that was sticky to children. It took off.
Then along came Nickelodeon, many years later. They wanted to do better than Sesame Street. They created Blues Clues. The main breakthrough for the producers of Blues Clues was that kids take things literally. They don't respond to confusion. Their brains are trying to make sense of the world, not be entertained by it. The makers of Blues Clues felt that some of the techniques used in Sesame Street were distracting to children. Sesame Street is built on about 40 short segments per show. They are not interconnected. Blues Clues decided to make their entire episode be one story. Experts said kids would lose attention. So the makers worked to involve the kids. First, they slowed down the dialog. Actors were told to take what were by adult standard embarrasingly long breaks between sentences. While the talk sounded stunted to adults, it fit kids perfectly. They had some time to accept and analyze what they had just heard. Next, the creators worked to ask kids questions. They'd have the actor ask "where's the blue dog?" when the blue dog was clearly right behind him. Kids all across the globe started yelling and pointing "he's back there." Boom, sticky. Much more sticky than Sesame Street. Kids were addicted to it like crack.
For me, the most exciting part of this section of the book was the realization that kids are trying to make sense of the world, not be entertained by it. They like repetition. They like things slow. They like things predictable. I'm oversimplifying it. The author does a much better job and as soon as my daughter is born I need to re-read this section of the book.
The author's point with these two and one other example of stickiness is that the difference between sticky and not is small. A subtle change in inflection in the way that information is presented can make all the difference. You can study or you can just try things out, but you have to be aware that sometimes you are sticky and sometimes you are not. You want to be sticky.
Which got me thinking a lot about reger.com technology. I have a number of things that need to be "polished." Portions of the technology that I know aren't sticky, but should be. Little things that I know I need to do to head in the direction of stickiness. I certainly won't claim that I know what little thing will tip it to stickiness, but I know some smart places to start.
Good section of the book.
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3 Years Ago | Posted to: Book Log
With Dave Winer linking to the site I got to remembering past conferences and the like. Which got me thinking about Cluetrain. Which I reference all the time but haven't read in a while. So I'm working on the online version again tonight. Great stuff.
My first takeaway is that I'm not doing enough conversing with the reger.com users. I need to get more conversations happening.
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3 Years Ago | Posted to: Book Log
More progress on a book called The Tipping Point. He's discussing three types of people that make epidemics spread:
1) Connectors: People who have vast social networks spanning many areas of interest or groups of people. Naturally gregarious.
2) Mavens: People with tons of information and an unselfish desire to share that information. Generally these are the price trackers. They read Consumer Reports. They spread information about a market.
3) Salespeople: These people are able to sell a concept. To push the right buttons. They have a certain charisma that makes this selling of concepts possible.
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3 Years Ago | Posted to: Book Log
Father read it and is big on it. The concepts sound clear to me. Dominic read it and posted about it. So I've picked it up and will read. Only gotten a few pages into it thus far. Blogs have clearly tipped a number of times. First withing the geek community. And earlier this week with all of the CNN coverage may be tipping into pop culture.
I'm a little miffed that the author doesn't reference Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. It's one of the most cited works in all of science and it outlines the way that revolutions take place quickly after periods of slow progress. Kuhn also argues that progress generally comes from outside the field where the progress happens (as it did when meteorologists started nosing around the math department... boomps... chaos theory... no, it wasn't that simple, but is a reasonable demonstration).
These are some critical pieces to The Tipping Point and he doesn't reference them.
Interesting first chapter. Outlines the three principles of tipping points. Uses a lot of real-world examples.
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3 Years Ago | Posted to: Book Log
More reading on Caro's masterpiece Master of the Senate... a biography of Lyndon Johnson't terms in the Senate. Fascinating work.
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3 Years Ago | Posted to: Book Log
Audio book of recorded lectures on psychology. So far listening to a lot of the history of science and philosophy leading up to the foundation of psychology. Interesting. Reminds be a lot of my college classes. I have a minor in philosophy.
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4 Years Ago | Posted to: Book Log
My, let's see, fifth book by Dan Brown. Heather's second. We listened to The DaVinci Code. Now we're listening to Angels and Daemons. We listened a little on the drive down. Today we're listening on the beach in the sand storm. We bought a headphone splitter and another pair of headphones so that we could listen together on the MiniMoon. It's fun. We look over the ocean, get blasted with sand and listen to the book.
Another good book. So far it's revived memories of the SSC. The SSC is the Superconducting SuperCollider. I went into physics because of the SSC project. My goal was to work at the SSC. I was enamoured by it. I loved it. But then congress cancelled funding. I still remember the day that I heard about it. Crushing.
The story of Angels and Daemons takes place at CERN, a collider in Switzerland. I love the physics references.
(I may be spelling Daemon incorrectly, preferring the spelling of a computer program that runs constantly in the background. Correct me if I'm wrong.)
More listening after our lunch. Later!
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4 Years Ago | Posted to: Book Log
My third book by Dan Brown. They're well-written. I think of Brown like Robert-Mitchum-light. He seems to do all of the same research but instead of going into details forever, he lightly salts his plot with details to keep it interesting and real.
DaVinci Code is about a museum curator who's murdered and the ensuing mystery. It's filled with religious symbolism and a new interpretation of religion.
Heather and I are listening to it together... books on tape. Enjoying it. A little each night.
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4 Years Ago | Posted to: Book Log
Oh, crap... I'm a media bitch now.
Yes, after watching Chris hawk his book every morning for three weeks during the Tour de Lance I broke down and bought the damn thing.
A little heavy on the make-up for the cover shoot, eh Chris?
Cover shot notwithstanding, this is a good book for me. Chris is right in saying that there aren't many nutrition books targeted to endurance athletes.
Oh, crap, there I go again being a media bitch. I didn't check my facts. I have no idea whether or not there are other books out there talking about nutrition for endurance athletes. I do know that there are three freaking aisles at Border's Books about eating, food, dieting and cooking. And another three aisles on sporting stuff. But Chris spends a good portion of the opening telling me that there aren't any, so... alright... there are none.
And whether or not there are others doesn't matter. The important point is that this is a concept I need to adopt... nutrition. I've been making guesses for a while. I've read fairly well on the chemistry of endurance and every endurance magazine out there likes to tell you something about nutrition. But you end up getting bits and pieces. I wanted to get a bigger picture.
So I started reading it tonight. So far I've basically gotten a written handjob for being an active adult... as compared to the mass American market that is fat and lazy. Go me! I rule! Tissue please.
Chris is slowly laying the foundation of his approach so far. His approach is one of nutritional periodicity. Your diet needs to change throughout your training cycle. Build phase requires more of X... race phase requires more of Y. Sounds good to me. Sign me up. Of course, I'd better get some periodicity into my training schedule.
At this point I need to start to analyze my diet more completely. I need to start a log and keep track of a week or so. Everything that crosses my lips.
My hope is that the book offers some good recipes. I'd love to start cooking every night with Heather. The couple that cooks together cooks together.
With the whole Ironman thing coming up I need to make sure that I'm fueling myself properly. I'm going into a potentially treacherous training period where I extend my endurance and then (hopefully) add some speed on top of it once the base is set. This is taxing on my body so I need to fuel it properly.
Ah, that's another of his themes... food is fuel. Which makes me a machine. Like Frank the Tank except with the name Joe and something that rhymes with Joe. Like Joe the BackHoe. No, that sucks. Anyhow...
I didn't realize that Chris was a competitive bike racer. He's got a nice cheesy shot of himself from the early eighties racing for 7-Eleven. Not that I'm one to criticize for publishing cheesy pictures. He looks fast.
Looking forward to this book. Looking forward to raising the nutritional bar.
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4 Years Ago | Posted to: Book Log
By Al Franken. Funny ass book. Franken has an expert way of presenting issues. He's basically on a fact-checking mission here. The premise of his book is to catch politicians in lies. He gives a good setup, tries to assume they weren't lying, shows how he researched, concludes that they were lying and then makes some really funny jokes about it. Heather and I have been listening to it on long drives. We always get a good chuckle out of it. He's got Team Franken, a bunch of Harvard students who he's convinced to do his research. Adds credibility to his fact checking. I guess.
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4 Years Ago | Posted to: Book Log
Going Long... ah, so many comic directions to go with that title... I'll contain myself... for now.
It's a book about doing long distance triathlons. Since the concept of an Ironman triathlon is rather F'ing terrifying I thought I'd study up a bit.
Good book from the general perspective but I was hoping for more details. There seem to be a lot of workout plans but most of them don't fit me for some reason.
As with any tri book I learned a lot. The early chapters deal with training at a macro level. One concept is to have three key long workouts per week... one long bike... one long swim... and one long run. It's important to space them out and then sharpen fitness with high intensity workouts and recovery workouts between. I've been trying to do this lately. Weekend is long. Early part of the week is high intensity. Later part of the week is lower intensity.
Another recommendation is to avoid hard runs after hard bike rides. Doh! That's the one that probably F'd my left quad. Let's see... race on Saturday... Gaps on Sunday... eight mile run on Monday where my injury first exhibits symptoms of pain. Yeah, that'd do it.
Good book.
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4 Years Ago | Posted to: Book Log
Good techno-thriller. Listened to most of this on the bike. This thing will be made into a big hollywood movie. Matt Damon and Ben Affleck will probably take starring roles. The thing's just written like a hollywood movie. The dramatic build ups. The plot twists. I could see the whole thing unfolding on screen. I wonder if Dan Brown was a screenwriter at one point in his career. Probably wouldn't be hard to find out.
I enjoyed the book. It's about encryption technology and the NSA. What happens if somebody makes a code that the NSA can't crack? The premise is that the NSA can crack everything out there today so they can read emails and stop crime. They're always one step ahead of the next technology until this one comes along that can't be broken.
There's a little love story in there too. And here's where I know it's made for Hollywood: just the perfect Boobie Factor (BF). Nothing gratuitious. Nothing that would take too long on screen. But there's a hooker who looks into the mirror for a few moments at her boobies. The scene wouldn't take long but the director could get somebody hot and put them into the commercial trailers.
Even the murders are presented in a way that's detailed but not too detailed.
There are points where Dan Brown almost seems to be telling the director what to put on screen. Like at the end where he describes what's on the NSA screens. A very clear description of the graphics involved. He ties them to the plot.
I'm sure that somebody has an option on this book. If not, I'd buy it tomorrow. It'll be a good movie.
Spoiler: They all die in the end and nobody shot J.R.
Kidding.
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4 Years Ago | Posted to: Book Log
I heard this book was critical of the Bush administration. After the first few chapters it seems fairly objective. Good behind-the-scenes look at the Bush administration. Gets to the meeting level and incorporates many quotes. Bob seems to have done his homework but since every action by the administration makes sense so far I'm guessing that this is some sort of elaborate setup. We'll see.
What's interesting is that it's written from a historical perspective. Woodward expects people to read this 50 years from now. But all of the people in it are not only alive but active in the news daily. Makes it that much more interesting to read.
Update: 6/26: Listened to a few more chapters on the way to and from the triathlon today. We're starting to get into some of the biting commentary. War is unfolding. Most of the criticism thus far deals with Bush's apparent lack of understanding of the consequences of taking over Iraq. Woodward's not yet making a compelling case though. He's reading between the lines with Bush's answers and is blaming Bush for not saying what he expected. Waiting for some more factual issues. Also looking forward to seeing Farenheit 9/11 by Michael Moore which is getting big buzz. I want to finish this book and maybe a right wing take on it first.
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4 Years Ago | Posted to: Book Log
Finished listening to Rendezvous with Rama, by Arthus C. Clarke tonight. Good book. I listened to it twice when I was in high school but didn't remember a single thing. Maybe I listened to another episode in the Rama series. I like the book because it has a massive sense of scale. It forces massive imagination. A cylinder 50 kilometers by 16 kilometers (essentially an interstellar Coke can) comes into the solar system. We send out a group to explore it and they find a whole world inside of it. Plains. Seas. Storms. Very detailed descriptions of the terrain, life forms and machinery. Slight divergences into science... which is nice. Fun to listen to.
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4 Years Ago | Posted to: Book Log
Just finished a great book. The autobiography of H. Norman Schwartzkopf. Found it at the beach house up in Canada, instantly got immersed in it while up there and then brought it back to Atlanta. I lived at West Point when I was younger. My father taught there. So many of the rituals and places were familiar. I particularly loved seeing Delafield Pond referenced. I used to spend countless hours there during the summer.
1) Translate a feeling, memory or observation to policy. This is a very tough thing to do and is critical to advanced management.
2) Rebound from bad news.
3) Manage people as individuals. Everybody is different.
4) Have good luck.
5) Do what you feel is right even if it doesn't look like it'll help your career today. Even not counting the fact that your quality of life will be better, your career will eventually do better in the long run.
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4 Years Ago | Posted to: Book Log
Jeremy Zawodny's book href='http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/001855.html'>High Performance
MySQL arrived today. After a lunch meeting I ripped into it for a
couple of hours and learned a lot about MySQL. I think that I'll be able
to optimize my queries a bunch. And the performance tuning tips are
invaluable. Easy to read and good information.
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6 Years Ago | Posted to: Book Log
This continues my book theme of diamonds as
the fourth book that I've read on the
subject.
Fire Into Ice is the story of Chuck Fipke.
It chronicles his life as he searches the
world for diamonds. The last book I read,
Barren Lands, used Chuck Fipke as the
central character but focused on the 1990's
and his great discovery. Fire Into Ice did
an excellent job back-filling his history
for me. Only the last chapter dealt with
the 1990's.
The writing style was a little better than
Barren Lands... slightly less matter-of-
fact, but still not high quality writing.
It didn't grab you with plot. Luckily, I
was intrigued by the content. I love the
exploration involved and truly respect
Chuck Fipke. He ran his life like he
wanted to. He was incredibly competent at
what he did. He traveled the world and met
strange peoples.
In Barren Lands I heard of Fipke's rough
management style. He always demanded more
and often without explanation or
justification. In Fire Into Ice I learned
why. He tried the nice approach while
abroad in the jungle. It didn't work.
When he was understanding and fair the
native people didn't respect him. They
worked less even though he was making their
working condition better.
To the natives, Chuck didn't fit the mold.
He wasn’t a leader to instill fear. So
Chuck changed. He became harsh... and it
worked. Morale improved. Production
increased. I guess that sometimes the
reality fitting expectation is better than
something unexpected... even when the
unexpected something makes life better. I
don't buy it... but apparently many people
in the world do.
He carried much of this with him back to
the western world. Since reading the book
I've many times asked myself "What would
Chuck Fipke do?" Not from a management
perspective... from a life perspective. He
believed in his goals and wasn't afraid to
move around to make them happen.
And he was an explorer. He would drive in
to the outback for weeks. No money. No
plans. This has always been a goal of
mine... to wander without a plan. To
travel without resources. To find one's
way.
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6 Years Ago | Posted to: Book Log
I finished Barren Lands: An Epic Search for
Diamonds in the North American Arctic
tonight. This book continues my recently-
found interest in diamond mining. The last
book I read was a general overview of the
world of diamonds and diamond prospecting.
This book zeroed in on the discovery of
diamonds in Canada.
I loved the content, but hated the
writing. There was a lot of overlap
between the two books but where the first
author riveted me into my seat forcing me
to turn the page, this author was very
antiseptic. The book was almost a wrote
calendar of historical events, void of
analysis, emotion or insight.
Diamonds are hard to find. They are
brought to the surface of the earth in
kimberlite pipes, kimberlite being a type
of rock. With about 6000 identified pipes
in the world, something less than thirty
bear enough diamonds to make it worth the
digging. It's a high-stakes game, this
diamond business. It takes years just to
find the pipes... they're sometimes under
lakes or obscured by millions of years of
erosion. And once you find one you have to
spend about $100 million in mini digs to
determine whether a full scale mining
operation can be profitable. And once you
determine that it is you need to spend
about $600 million to set up the mine.
But if you do it rigth, like Charles Fipke
did, you stand to find $17 billion in
diamonds over the next 20 years... an
appreciable share of the world market.
Charles Fipke was the reason I read the
book. He's an obsessed, quirky man with a
single-minded desire to find diamonds.
Tramping through the freezing arctic
winters he never lost faith in himself or
his team.
Worth the read if you're interested in
diamonds and know the background. Not
worth it if you want a good adventure
book. There are a number of good books
about other explorers that will get you
more excited. For example, I hear that The
History of Salt is a good book... I'm not
kidding.
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6 Years Ago | Posted to: Book Log
The book is titled "Diamond: Journey Into
the Heart of an Obsession"
It's title couldn't be more relevant to me
lately. With Heather's engagement ring I
learned a lot about diamonds and really
started to enjoy the stones themselves.
This story is a collection of tales
throughout the history of the diamond
industry. What amazed me was the
connection between field geologists and
multinational business tycoons. They are
essentially conducting a high-stakes
worldwide search for hidden treasure. The
money is big and the deception rampant.
A great read and introduction to the
diamond industry.
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