A few books for your enjoyment…
Like historic fiction with a twist? Interlocking mysteries? Close encounters with financial collapse? Read Stone’s Fall by Iain Pears Keeps you guessing pretty deeply into the novel and creates an enjoyable ride through England in the 1900s.
Fordlandia is a scary but true story about the sorts of things that Henry Ford did after he perfected the production line and kick-started the American Century. It details the history of Ford’s attempt to build an American town in the Brazilian rain forest along the shores of the Amazon. Scary, cautionary tale about ego gone wild. Example? His son Edsel builds a building to house accountants and process people since Ford at that time didn’t have much in the way of business tracking. Henry waits til it’s built, and has it destroyed. And learn about his roving band of thugs who would beat up employees, do spot checks in their homes to make sure that the employees weren’t drinking and were hanging their laundry properly (and the thugs would do much worse). Or find out why Henry Ford got a special iron cross award from Hitler! I bought it thinking I’d get a tale of “against all odds” success or at least glorious failure by a brilliant man. Instead it was more like “hey this guy was increasingly erratic and became more and more crazy as he got older, and rich people that turn that way are usually the ones that are featured in James Bond films (so beware of Sergey when he turns 65!).” Also includes a sad post script about what sorts of things are still happening down there.
Under Heaven by Guy Gavriel Kay is a rich, deep, quiet meditation on family, war, civilization, and political intrigue. All set in the times of the Tang dynasty in China. It begins with a man who is spending his year of mourning (for his father who was a great general) burying the bones of the dead along the silent shores of a high mountain lake, fighting off the ghosts of the warriors who died in battle. You don’t quite know where the story is going until suddenly you are in the middle of epic changes. Guy knows how to tell a story and uses historic details to deepen the tale. Read everything he writes and you won’t be disappointed. This is his newest edition and it is spellbinding.
From the shameless promotion department: – We’ve been named one of the top 20 small businesses to work for by Inc. Magazine and Winning Workplaces this month (yup, last year we made Fortune Small Business’s list as well)! – Fast Company has a nice article about us too! – Last one, we’ve been invited to speak at the Aspen Ideas Festival next month about the challenges of designing in a pervasive computing economy.
—————-Top Five——————
1. Slow motion disaster.
2. Slower motion disaster. Al Franken explains a bit about how the government has changed in the past 30 years from the standpoint of the courts. For a very chilling part of the speech go to around 28:45 minutes into the video. Then go back and watch the whole thing. Like him or not, Al is brilliant. My question in all this is simple… Where is this sort of discussion and discourse found on any of the 24 hour news channels? and maybe… Why are sneezing bear cubs so cute!
3. I won’t comment on this from a disaster standpoint, draw your own conclusions and then update your wall (I’m not sure what that actually means but thought I’d say it to sound like I was with the in-clowd.) MAYAn alum Matt KcKeon visualizes the last five years of Facebook privacy.
Unrelated but I couldn’t resist writing network causality cones…
4. What me worry? Yes Virginia, the world will soon be an even more delightful place. Ahh yes, I remember the time that kid in 3rd grade pwned all the teachers’ cars when they gave him a bad grade. It wouldn’t have been so bad if he had waited to turn off the brakes until after they parked their cars at the big football game. Gonna have to get me one of these soon (again)… though this time, I’m getting one with a floor.
————-The Rest————————
Even slower motion disaster. This is very sad.
Great news from E3… Every new Mario game comes with a Japanese violinist in a white tuxedo!
Can’t wait til this is an iPhone app…
Not to be outdone, NYTs does a data visualizer blog…
What if they were out in 77 (or what if Atari designed consumer products)?
Reader Comments
Not really sure what this is but I know that the former Viz had close ties with Maya so I suspect that is the link here. I dig it!
I especially like the review of the Henry Ford book. I was born and raised in Binghamton, NY which you may know is where IBM first started many years ago. There have been many true stories from back in the 40’s and 50’s how IBM’ers had to be so very careful to not be seen in a bar room or doing many other somewhat ‘normal’ things as Watson had his own police out and about looking for bad employees that would get the business if they failed to live up to his view of a IBM’er! Not sure if anyone ever wrote a book about what most people growing up (not me of course as I’m only 55) or knew people who did grow up in that time already knew!
Cheers….
———mikeD
on 21 June 2010 · #