Author: geoff

Book notes

On Saturday I went out and bought three new hardbacks:
» Ron Suskind’s “The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O’Neill”
» Paul Krugman’s “The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century”
» David Grossman’s “Death as a Way of Life: Israel Ten Years After Oslo”
This was rather silly of me, as I was just getting started on the monumental “Wars Against Saddam- The Hard Road to Baghdad” by John Simpson, and I’m still working through “J2EE Platform Web Services” by Ray Lai. But just as I picked up “The Price of Loyalty” this morning, my wife dropped a slim volume in front of me. “Weren’t you asking about this?” she said. It was the Whitbread prize-winning “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” by Mark Haddon. The next thing I knew, I’d finished it in one sitting (pausing only for coffee). Brilliant. Essential.

Rejoice, part deux

According to the News section of Laurence Juber’s home page, he’s starting production on a new album for Al Stewart. This is consistent with the pattern noted by Fred on the Al Stewart mailing list:

I did predict an ALbum for 2004, based on a long-ago statement by Al that he releases one every US election year.
1972 O
1976 YOTC
1980 24P/C
1984 R&A
1988 LDOTC
1992 RinR
1996 SLAGIATT
2000 DitC
Of course, Al has also released albums in non-election years….
(To decode the abbreviations, please consult the discography.)

Bone-chilling weather

Since it’s all over the news today, I hardly thought it was worthwhile pointing out that it’s really, really cold here. It got up to about 6°F today; right now it’s -5°F in Boston, heading for around -9°F overnight. (Up in New Hampshire, the intrepid weathermen atop Mount Washington are anticipating temperatures of -50°F which will break the record set back in 1934.) All of this is accompanied by blustery winds giving us a wind chill of -30°F.
As always, I turn to the One True Source for all this stuff: the home page for the Boston area office of the National Weather Service. One bit that I particularly enjoy is the discussions page, where the meteorologists discuss the forecast, the relative merits of the various computer models, and whatever else strikes them as important, all in uncompromising meterorological jargon. If you read this (and other offices have similar pages), you’ll understand much of of how that deceptively simple forecast comes to be made, and why and how things go wrong. Just remember: the “weatherman” on your local TV station is really just an entertainer: these guys are the professionals – geeks all.

The kinder, gentler lawyer

Lawyers are everyone’s favourite group to hate, and it seems that many lawyers feel much the same way. There was a really good piece in today’s Boston Globe Magazine about lawyers who are sick of what they do and how they do it – sometimes physically sick, as in the case of one lawyer: “Every time she was due for court, she would vomit and have diarrhea.” The article discusses a variety of groups that are looking for an alternative to “toxic law” – a modus operandi that’s better for them and better for their clients. Encouragingly, they seem to be having some success. Recommended.