I recently read The Great Train Robbery by Michael Crichton. This books is a witty and somewhat accurate account of The Great Gold Robbery of 1855 in which �12,000 worth of gold bars were stolen from a moving train. The book details the motivation, planning, and difficulties of the robbery as well as the eventual arrest and escape of Edward Pierce, the mastermind behind it all. A quick and entertaining read, it was filled with clever schemes plus a healthy does of Victorian era factoids and slang. I’d recommend it to anyone looking to read something light, yet clever. Continue reading »
Sep 272008
Dec 262007
Two weeks ago I saw I Am Legend, the movie. Last week I read I Am Legend, the novella.
After reading the book, I was surprised my the dissimilarities between the stories. The movie is so different from the book that it may as well have had a different name. There are some common elements, but not many. In both stories, the main character is named Robert Neville, and in both stories Neville must hide from humans infected with a disease at night so that they don’t kill him. And that’s pretty much it. Continue reading »
In March 2006, I finished reading Seinfeld and Philosophy. This book is terrible. Don’t read it. There are a few interesting points and a few interesting insights, but none of the essays in this book add up to anything interesting. A few essays (most notably, the one on “The Costanza Maneuver”) get so caught up in semantics that any actual meaning gets lost along the way. It seems, however, that most of the reviewers on Amazon.com would disagree. These reviewers don’t know what they’re talking about.
Jul 082007
Dan Dennett talks about toxic memes and their virus-like ability to wipe out entire cultures. Dennett’s assertion that memes are, in some cases (communism, capitalism, Islam, Catholicism, and many more), essentially deadly parasites is an interesting perspective. Continue reading »
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