Software I use - part of a new computer decision process

Trying to decide whether to update (by buying a new one) my MacBook Pro, get a new MacBook Air, or switch platforms to Linux or even Windows. So I listed the software I use, and the first observation is that unless I'm willing to spend a lot of money on new programs, I'm hard-locked to the Mac platform...

TexShop. I write mostly in LaTeX. In the past I used LaTeX only for research but now I make almost all my handouts and discussion documents in LaTeX. (When I don't, they are almost always InDesign one- or two-page documents.) I know that there are WYSIWYG environments for people who want to write in a Word-like environment, but being a long-time programmer I prefer to edit LaTeX source code.

R. This is my main programming environment, having replaced Stata and MATLAB. I considered using Octave or Python, but in the end R is the best combination for my needs.

Mathematica. Every so often I need to do some tedious calculus, so I trust Mathematica for that. (When I do more than a few pages of calculus by hand, there's usually a missing sign or a transposed fraction somewhere.)

TextWrangler. Heir to the venerable BBEditLite, it's my mainstay text editor. I use it for all text that is not LaTeX, including programming, web posts, drafts of long emails, and outliner for talks. (I don't use a specialized outliner program for the reasons I gave in this post.)

Keynote. I used it as mostly a projector management system, with all content created on other tools, but now I use it for about one-quarter to one-third of all slides. Integration with iTouch and iPad allows for good control (which, I'm told, has existed in the Windoze ecosystem for several years now…).

Numbers. Not as good as Excel for most tasks that a manager would use a spreadsheet, but it's a simple way to mock-up quick models for class demonstrations. Anyone doing serious spreadsheet work must use Excel, though, since Apple seems intent on leaving the professionals behind. Really.

Pages. Although I don't use  Microsoft Word as a text editor, I occasionally work with people who do. It's hard to believe that a word processor in 2015 doesn't allow facing pages (odd/even pages); were I to use a word processor rather than LaTeX, this would mean Word, not Pages. Apparently Apple is intent on leaving even school reports to Microsoft...

Adobe Illustrator. My main drawing program, for diagrams and illustrations. Even though there are now some minimally acceptable drawing tools in Keynote, they are still very weak compared to Illustrator.

Adobe InDesign. When I need to make diagrams that include a lot of text and not a lot of drawing, I prefer InDesign to Illustrator. InDesign is also my program of choice for making compact handouts, of the type I send for remote discussions or distribute at speaking events. (In the old days, I used to make my teaching handouts with InDesign, but once I went for long handouts, I switched to LaTeX.)

Adobe Photoshop. I use it for final production on many slides, though a little less now as I move towards a simpler aesthetic. It also serves as my photo editor, not that I edit photos that often.

Magical number machine. A good calculator for quick arithmetic, which I used to do with an HP calculator, but gave that away in my last physical decluttering. I also use it to do arithmetic on the projection screen while using boards or flip charts.

LaTexIt. Quick LaTeX rendering for inclusion in diagrams or slides.

Voila. Page capture on steroids; can capture entire web pages as well. It has some minor editing affordances, but I do all image editing in Photoshop.

Screenflow. Captures screen, mic, and camera, for webinar-style videos. I use it for all sorts of video editing as well. Haven't opened iMovie since I got Screenflow.

VLC. Because Apple's video players are terrible.

NetNewsWire. My RSS feed reader. I could move to the cloud, and have considered that, but for now I'm happy with this. I only open it once a day, in the morning, to get a sense of what's going on.

Google Chrome. It's less of a background hog than Safari, which isn't saying much, really.

Skype. To communicate with people. Despite Microsoft's best efforts to make it unusable, the network I have on Skype is still strong enough for me to use it.

Kindle app. I have lots of Kindle books, so this is a no-brainer. (I replaced a lot of paper books with Kindle books in the 2013 declutter, using the rule that if I was likely to reread a book and its Kindle price was low, I'd rather have the electronic copy and the free physical space.)

iBooks. I also have a lot of ePubs and even some Apple iBooks, so this is again a no-brainer. I think iBooks manages multimedia content better than the Kindle.

iBooks Author. Maybe. I'm considering using this to release an interactive version of some of my teaching materials, but the limited platform (Apple only ecosystem) and the volatility of the eLearning technologies are a concern.

Simple comic. It reads comic book formats, of course, but also some other formats such as 7z which can be useful under certain circumstances. Also, I have a number of old comics in .cbr format, for nostalgia sake.

iTunes. For now my music player; it's acceptable when fed through a quality DAC. Its strong point is organization, thought that's just relative to competitors: as far as art music is concerned, no program works well, just passably.

iPhoto, soon to be replaced with Photos. To organize photos, not really a serious competitor to Photoshop when it comes to edit them.

That's it. No Handbrake for a new laptop since they no longer have optical drives (though I might install it for video file conversion, which it does very well); no email program, since I use web interfaces to keep email checking to a minimum; and no games, since I have the three I play on my phone, iTouch, and iPad (falling tiles, mahjong, and solitaire).

Science popularization has an identity problem

Some influential science popularizers are doing a disservice to public understanding of science and possibly even to science education.

Yes, it's a strong statement. Alas, it's a demonstrable one.

With the caveats that I enjoy the Mythbusters show, especially the recent series with their back-to-origins style, and that this post is not specifically about them, the recent episode about The A-Team presented an almost-perfect example of the problem.

"Stoichiometry."

Midway through the episode Adam uses this word. It's an expensive way of saying "mass balancing of chemical equations" (not how it was described in the show). And then, well... and then Jamie proceeded to not use stoichiometry.

To be concrete: they were exploding propane. Jamie tried mixing it with pure oxygen and got a big explosion. Then they mention stoichiometry. At this point, what they should have done was to introduce some basic chemistry.

The propane molecule has 3 carbon and 8 hydrogen atoms, $\mathrm{C}_{3} \mathrm{H}_{8}$. It burns with molecular oxygen, $\mathrm{O}_{2}$, yielding carbon dioxide, $\mathrm{C} \mathrm{O}_{2}$, and water vapor, $\mathrm{H}_{2} \mathrm{O}$.

Chemists represent reactions with equations, like this:

$\mathrm{C}_{3} \mathrm{H}_{8} + \mathrm{O}_{2} \rightarrow \mathrm{C} \mathrm{O}_{2} + \mathrm{H}_{2} \mathrm{O}$

This equation is unbalanced: for example, there are three carbons on the left-hand side, but only one on the right-hand side. By changing the proportions of reagents, we can get both sides to match:

$\mathrm{C}_{3} \mathrm{H}_{8} + \mathbf{5} \, \mathrm{O}_{2} \rightarrow \mathbf{3} \, \mathrm{C} \mathrm{O}_{2} + \mathbf{4} \, \mathrm{H}_{2} \mathrm{O}$

Once we have this balance, we can determine that we need 160 grams of oxygen for each 44 grams of propane. For this we need to look up the atomic masses (to compute molar masses) of carbon (12 g/mol), hydrogen (1 g/mol) and oxygen (16 g/mol). (*)

Back on the Mythbusters, after mentioning stoichiometry, Jamie starts trying out different proportions of propane to oxygen. If he had actually used stoichiometry he'd already have the proportions calculated, as I did above, about four times more oxygen than propane by mass; no need to experiment with different proportions.

(Yes, there'a a lot of experimentation in engineering, but no engineer ignores the basic scientific foundations of her field. Chemical engineers don't figure out mass balances by trial and error; they use trial and error after exhausting the established science.)

This illustrates a major problem in the way science is being popularized: to a segment of the educated and interested audience, science is an identity product. Like a Prada bag or a sports franchise logo on a t-shirt, they see science as something that can signal membership in a desired group and exclusion from undesirable groups.

Hence the word "stoichiometry" inserted in a show that doesn't actually use stoichiometry.

"Stoichiometry" here is, like the sports franchise logo, purely a symbol. The audience learns the word, in the sense that they can repeat it, but not the concept, let alone the principles and the tools of stoichiometry. The audience gains a way to signal that they "like" science, but no actual knowledge. Like a sedentary person who wears "team colors" to watch televised games.

Some successful science popularizers pander to this "like, not learn, science" audience, instead of trying to use that audience's interest in science to educate them.

So what, most people will ask. It's the market working: you give the audience what they want. And there's no question that selling science as identity is good business. Shows like House MD, Bones, The Big Bang Theory, all take advantage of this trend. Gift shops at science museums cater to the identity much more than the education: a look at their sales typically finds much more logo-ed merchandize than chemistry sets or microscopes.

(Personal anecdote: despite having three science museums nearby, I had to use the web to get a real periodic table poster. A printable simple table from Los Alamos National Lab.)

"Liking" science without learning it is bad for society:

1. Crowds out opportunities for education. People have limited time (and money) for their hobbies and activities. If they spend their "science budget" on identity, they won't have any left for actual science learning. Many more people read Feynman's two autobiographies than his Lectures On Physics or his popular physics books.

2. Devalues the work of scientists and engineers, by presenting a view of science that excludes the hard work of learning and the value of the knowledge base (trial-and-error in lieu of mass balance calculations, for example). Some people end up thinking that science is just another type of institution credential (or celebrity worship) instead of being validated by physical reality.

3. Weakens science education. Some people who go into science expect it to be easy and entertaining (in the purely ludic sense), instead of hard but rewarding (deriving satisfaction from really understanding something), as that's what the popularization depicts. They then want schools to match those expectations. While colleges may not want to simplify science and engineering classes, they put pressure on faculty for more "engaging" teaching: less technical, more show. (**)

4. As science becomes more of an identity product to some people, and increasingly perceived as identity-only by others, it becomes more vulnerable to non-scientific identity threats, such as derailing a major scientific and technical achievement in space exploration by talking about sartorial choices and sociological forces in academia.


So, what can we do?

First, we should recognize that an interest in science, even if currently trending towards identity, can be channeled into support for science and science education. As societal trends go, a generalized liking for science is better than most alternatives.

Second, there are plenty of sources of information and education that can be used to learn science. There's a broad variety of online resources for science education at different levels of knowledge, free and accessible to anyone with an internet connection (or indeed a library card; books were the original MOOCs).

Third, current "science as identity" popularizers may be open to educating their audiences. Contacting them, offering feedback, and using social media to otherwise proselytize for science (as in scientific knowledge and thinking like a scientist) might induce them to change their approach.

The most important thing anyone can do, though, is to try to get people who "like" science to understand that they should really learn some.

(Final note on the A-Team episode: Adam should have played Murdock, not Hannibal.)

- - - -
(*) I learned to do this on my own as a kid, but the material was covered in ninth grade chemistry. (A long time ago in a country far away, in ninth grade you chose a technical or artistic area in school; mine was 'chemical technology' because my school didn't have electronics.) A side-effect of my early interest in chemistry is that I have quasi-Brezhnevian eyebrows: you burn them off five or six hundred times, they grow back with a vengeance.

(**) Some schools protect their main reputation-building degrees by creating non-technical versions of the technical courses and bundling them into subsidiary degrees. So, for example, they have information technology courses, which sound like computer science courses but are in fact nothing like them.
          Another approach is the encroachment of humanities, arts, and social sciences "breadth" requirements into science and engineering degrees. When I studied EECS in Europe, we had five years of math, physics, chemistry, and engineering courses. A similar degree in the US has four years and usually a minimum of one-year-equivalent of those "breadth" requirements, though some people can have more than two-year-equivalent by choosing "soft engineering" courses like "social impact of computers."

Three lessons from teaching MBAs in 2014

Use longer, content-heavier handouts; integrate local and up-to-date content; and show numbers and math.

Change 1: Longer and content-heavier handouts

The only significant complaint from previous cohorts was regarding the lack of a textbook. I post a selection of materials to the course support intranet (consultancy reports, managerial articles, academic papers, book chapters), but a few students always remark on the lack of a unifying text for the class.

(There's no unifying text because -- in my never humble opinion -- most Consumer Behavior textbooks are written from a consumer psychology point of view, while I prefer a more marketing engineering point of view.)

Taking that into consideration, I made longer, denser handouts, each like a book chapter rather than just support for in-class activities. The class is participant-centered, with minimal lecturing, so these longer handouts help students feel that they have a coherent framework to fall back on.

Handouts changed from a median size of four pages of mostly diagrams, in 2012, to a median size of eighteen pages of text, diagrams, and numbers, in 2014. (Just a reminder, since there's some confusion about it, that handouts and slides serve different purposes.)

Change 2: More local content

I used local content in most class sessions: local products, merchandizing from local retailers, and examples from local advertising. In particular, using outdoors from around the campus allowed students to recognize their location, for a little a-ha moment that improves mood.

The main advantage of local content is student familiarity with it. Examples are more effective when students don't have to learn new brands, new product categories, and other regional differences. A disadvantage is additional preparation work, but that work also signals to the students the instructor's commitment to the class.

A secondary advantage of local content is as evidence of instructor competence. Local content, and up-to-date content, requires confidence, ability, and practice. For this reason alone, it's worth the additional work, even if old or foreign examples would be equally good for teaching.

Change 3: More numerical content

The rise of analytics is a highly visible trend in marketing; marketing courses are therefore increasingly quantitative. Still, most Consumer Behavior courses shy away from math.

Our course was different: there were plenty of numbers and models. I did most of the work, not the students, since the objective was not to teach them analytics; but I did do the work, so the students were shown modern marketing techniques rather than a lot of hand-waving.

For example, to illustrate the effects of memory on different types of advertising timing, I used a computer simulation of a learning model: instead of rules-of-thumb for media planning, students saw how learning and forgetting rates change the effectiveness of blitz versus pulsing media timing.

(References to technical materials were provided for students wishing to learn more, of course.)

Results

Despite objectively covering more material than before and using harder assessment measures, student grades were higher. In other words, these changes achieved their primary objective: students learned more material and learned it better.

Class dynamics were better than before, though they were pretty good in previous years. When I pick up my teaching evals in 2016 (they're on paper), I'll know whether I kept my top-5 ranking from 2012.

Addendum:  In short events since the MBA class, I replicated these three changes, yielding performance improvements along all dimensions: participant learning (as measured by in-event exercises), participant experience (as measured by client-run event evaluations), follow up contact with the participants, and word-of-mouth.

On hiatus again

(Gee, really?)

Blogging to resume when I can figure out the balance between the enjoyment of sharing valuable knowledge and my MBA drive to monetize anything of value I do.

Also, work.

How to succeed as a popularizer of technical material without knowing anything

The problem with financial journalism: journalists

[T]his is the formula for selling middlebrow “popular science” books. Flatter the reader that he is a smart monkey privy to the secrets of the universe; so much smarter and better informed than those people who actually work in the field. Popular science writers don’t sell actual popularizations of science like they did when Asimov used to write them; modern popular science writers now sell smugness. Modern upper middle class over-educated people love smugness, and use it as a sort of barter currency in social interactions with the fellow enlightened.

A perfect description of the genre and its audience. Applies equally to all technical material: science, technology, engineering, economics, business, management.

I continue to ask my kinetic energy question to people who want to "talk science" to me, and still find that most of them can't answer it. And don't get me started on "analytics" or "big data" advocates (as opposed to practitioners) who don't understand -- sometimes know -- Bayes's formula.

Six rules for my financial bliss

Really there's only one rule: make more money than you spend. Much more, if possible.

These rules work for me and are not to be construed as investment advice. They based on three components: basic knowledge of finance, good understanding of economics, and expertise in marketing (in other words, the art of making others spend money – knowing it is like being inoculated against it). Some people might get ideas for their own rules from these, so without guarantees of any kind, here they are:

1. Investment assets should produce income (yes, they could produce a capital gain instead, but I'm not a fan of counting on capital gains as a life strategy); an "asset" that produces a need for income (for example, a house bought with a mortgage) is more correctly defined as a liability. The best investment asset I can acquire is expanding my skill set, and the interwebs have made that almost free. (I'm weary of leverage, even for income-producing assets.)

2. There are many things I'd like to own that I don't really need. Using a total cost of ownership model, including the space and time cost, rather than simply looking at the price, and comparing with alternative uses for money and alternative sources of happiness, I generally stop myself from buying anything but consumables. For example: books, once one of my largest like-driven expenditures, I have all but stopped buying. I rely on libraries for most and have set a rule not to buy more than five books a month, avoiding paper books when possible.*

3. Exceptions to rule 2 are: small luxuries and a monthly "slush fund" of $100 for impulse purchases, with the proviso that they have to be physically small, require no maintenance, and enrich my life in the long term.

4. Proper maintenance and care, coupled with high-quality purchases to begin with, are key to asset longevity. Bespoke suits physically last longer and look stylish much longer than designer suits, so their yearly-amortized cost is much lower. (Is it noticeable that I aced all MBA accounting and finance classes, despite being in a marketing and strategy concentration?) I avoid any assets with planned obsolescence paths if I can and never buy anything for identity reasons. (I do buy some experience products; there's no real defense against those except no-exceptions thrift.)

5. When earnings increase, I feel no obligation to increase spending in fact fight the temptation to do so. (Note that I live a very comfortable life, with no privations; this rule would not apply to someone just muddling through.)

6. Long-term forecasts of economic variables are about as reliable as long-term weather forecasts. I trust estimates of growth and inflation for 2030 about as much as I trust today's rain and temperature forecast for San Francisco on Jan 3, 2030.

Yes, these rules are like the way to lose weight: control what you eat and exercise diligently. There's one extra rule, though, for people who are disappointed by the lack of a magic solution to financial problems:

7. If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Money-wise and otherwise.


-- -- -- --
* During three separate decluttering events in the last 8 years, the hardest part was getting rid of books: in the first one, I only got rid of outdated textbooks; in the second one I didn't touch the books at all; in the third – radical – one, I went from a little under 2000 books to just below 500, but took weeks doing that, while the selection of around three cubic meters of designer clothing for donation took but a couple of hours. Electronic and library books will spare me further trauma.

The books of January

The unusually cold Bay Area weather colluded with the short January days to give me a lot of time to read; here's the result. Books listed in order of acquisition; reading was interleaved and out of order, as usual.

1. Henry Petroski: To forgive design. (I'm a fan of Petroski's work, and have all his books.) In this book Petroski extends the study of engineering failure to include systemic components and human decision-making, getting into Donald Norman territory. For anyone interested in technology, engineering, and understanding the way things work and fail, this is a must-read.

2. Matthew Jackson: Social and economic networks. This is technically a work book, but I already know its contents, so I read it for pleasure. It's reasonable as a set of class notes for Jackson's course and MOOC, fairly technical for the general educated public.

3. Charles Gasparino: The sellout. Reads like a novel about the crash of 2008. Gasparino,  a journalist, writes better than former trader Michael Lewis, with better information and broader vision (because Lewis was in "the trenches" where vision is necessarily limited), and without a chip on his shoulder against the financial system. Read in two sittings in two consecutive evenings. Take that, tell-lies-vision.

4. Duff McDonald: The firm: the story of McKinsey. I won't comment on this book, other than to say I highlighted a large number of passages.

5. Richard Hammond: Or is that just me? (Library book; doing my part to slow down economic growth.) The self-described short bloke from Top Gear writes about the making of some of his shows and some personal stories. It's not bad per se, but it's not funny or insightful, like the books by the louder, bigger Top Gear co-host Jeremy Clarkson. I started skimming, then skipping ahead, and eventually gave up in the middle. Sorry, Hamster.

6. Charles Gasparino: Circle of friends. (Library book.) Again reads like a novel, and I read it in one sitting on the weekend. If you like financial and governmental shenanigans, read it: it describes the witch hunt criminal investigation of insider trading in the late 2000s. As one of those involved points out, it's funny how insider trading is touted as a heinous crime, and people serve time for it, but it doesn't make people poor, like bubbles, which have produced zero arrests.

7. Charles Gasparino: Blood on the street. (Library book.) Unsurprisingly, it reads like a novel and I read it in one sitting on the weekend. The same weekend. (Bad weather weekend.) If you like financial and governmental shenanigans, read it: it's the story of the late-90s stock boom and bust, with an emphasis on the conflicts of interest between analysts and investment bankers in the same firms, while the various regulators looked away, then political opportunism in finding a few scapegoats. (This is my interpretation of the book, not how it's presented.)

8. Peter Mayle: Acquired tastes. Got it after reading this post at A Suitable Wardrobe. A fun description of some luxuries by a member of the upper middle class — which looks sober and thrifty compared to the lifestyles of the rich and shameless of the third Millenium. Also a infomercial in text for Provence (not that it needs one). Two examples. Laugh-out-loud, especially for anyone who has spent time in France outside Paris, ski resorts, and beaches.


During January indoor rowing, elliptical walking, commuting, shopping, cleaning and other dead times, I also heard a few audiobooks (fewer than usual, but I listen to a few interesting podcasts and they compete for the same aural time):

9. Clayton Christensen: How will you measure your life? Reflections on what is important in life; a little more philosophical than one would expect from a Hahvahd B.S. professor. Made me think hard about some of my life choices, which is all that can be asked of a book like this.

10. Oscar Wilde: The importance of being earnest (performance). Obviously a reread, and I've also watched a few live performances and movies based on it before. Wilde's writing is magnificent and the actors (not readers) do a great job. The play is available free on the interwebs.

11. David Weinberger: Too big to know. Only heard part of it, still about two-thirds to go, but it's not grabbing my attention, to say the least. Perhaps a harsh assessment, since I have a professional interest in the issues of the book. But in general I tend to like popular books on my area of technical expertise, so the problem is mostly with the book, not any professional elitism on my part.


As is my habit, I reread bits and pieces (sometimes large fractions of the book) of P.G. Wodehouse, Evelyn Waugh, Mark Twain, H.L. Mencken, Ian Fleming [James Bond], and Agatha Christie [Poirot] here and there. Even some Umberto Eco essays! I haven't read any new fiction, since I find most of what's on offer formulaic and preachy, often poorly written and scarcely researched as well.

(Someone pointed out that in my "Books of 2013" post I missed quite a few, like the haul from the SFPL shown in this photo or this one. That's because I didn't log them; the system isn't perfect.)




IN THE QUEUE:

In the reading queue for February (not counting work-related materials, which take about half of my "leisure" reading time), meaning books I already acquired but had no time to read in January:

a. Niall Ferguson: High financier: the lives and time of Siegmund Warburg. (SFPL book.) Got the library copy to reread - I had read a library copy in 2010. (Slowing down economic growth even then.) Returning books to the library recently, I saw it and checked it out on impulse. That a person would choose to reread the biography of a mid-century banker on impulse is review enough for the book (or the person!), but to be fair to Ferguson: unlike most narrative writers now, who pepper their prose with irrelevant distracting details, NF picks the interesting parts of the story and paints a picture of a sober, vaguely obsessive, cunning banker who lived an interesting life.

b. Burkholder, Grout, and Palisca: A history of Western music, 8th edition. (SFPL book.) I own the portuguese translation of the third edition and I'm considering buying the upcoming tenth edition. Since it's a textbook and therefore costs its weight in DeBeers diamonds, I decided to check this intermediate edition to get an idea of the changes. (Textbook publishers use unnecessary proliferation of editions to undermine the used book market, and the parts of Western music that I care the most about happened too long ago for their history to have changed much from edition to edition.)

c. Lawrence Freedman Strategy: a history. Books that take a very broad view of strategy tend to be either good (rarely great) or very bad. I saw his talk at Google and since the book was only $10 on Kindle I bought it on impulse. (Publishers: cheap books mean a lot more impulse sales; do your math.) The sample was not too bad, so it might not be one of those very bad books.

d & e. Peter Mayle: A year in Provence and Toujours Provence. (Two eBooks, plus an abridged audiobook version of the two.) Given how funny Acquired Tastes was, I decided to try a couple more; added the audiobook so I can enjoy it on assorted torture repetitive exercise machines.

f. Peter Mayle: French lessons: adventures with knife, fork, and corkscrew. (Audiobook; considering the companion Kindle book to try Amazon whispersync.) Another Mayle book for exercise occasions. I expect that these books will put some stress on the Paleo, but then again – to paraphrase my PhD advisor, a very wise man – life is too short to eat bad food.

g. Lucius Beebe: The provocative pen of Lucius Beebe, Esq. (SFPL book.) Beebe is a chronicler of San Francisco in the old days, and I like the history of this city. People who protest ongoing changes in the city seem to not understand its history. San Francisco has changed its character more often than any city I've ever known, and that's one of the exciting things about it.

h. Herb Caen: Only in San Francisco. (Berkeley Public Library book.) Another chronicler of San Francisco's past. I like the city, I really do. I just don't want to live in it; the suburbs are much nicer than the city, now. Caen calls San Francisco Baghdad-by-the-bay in an eponymous book; Beebe's description, older, is more like Paris in the West Coast, with Boston being London on the East Coast.

i. Burt Folsom: The myth of the robber barons. On the recommendation of Free The Animal, I watched the author's video, so I'll read the book to balance out all the Aaron Sorkin series (The West Wing, The Newsroom) and movies I have watched.

j. Steven Kotler and Peter Diamandis: Abundance. (Audiobook.) Strangely enough, I find listening to popular books about my areas of expertise a good way to relax after work (on top of a elliptical machine, an indoor rower, or a treadmill – that's an essential part; never during resistance training, all 11 minutes per week of it).

k. Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee: The second machine age. Ok, this one is close to a work book, but it isn't technical (at least from the quick browse), so I'll count it as leisure reading. (My work books have phrases like "compact space," "support vector machine," and "Markov perfect equilibrium." Also, they cost their weight in Beluga caviar.)

(That's eleven books – plus one abridged audiobook and an art book, Architecture Now 9, which should arrive tomorrow (it did) – in the queue and February hasn't even started yet. I already pre-ordered a couple of books coming out in March. It never ends.)




HOW THIS IS POSSIBLE:

The secret to reading all these books is very little television. (Also, being a vaguely misanthropic bachelor with no children.) For example, arriving home at 6PM I brew a pot of tea, sit in a comfortable chair, and read until dinner at the civilized European hour of 10PM; many people I know vegetate in front of the tell-lies-vision for the same period. (Or have families.) Reading four hours a day, eight or more per day on weekends, even if half of it is work-related, means two or three books per week.

Here are a few recommendations for improving the reading experience:

A comfortable chair is of paramount importance. Not an ergonomic office chair; a club chair. A tall overstuffed leather chair invites the relaxed feeling necessary to enjoy a book; ergonomic office chairs demand efficiency, measurable return on time invested, results Now! An ottoman is a better foot rest than a La-z-boy-type contraption designed for bovine ingestion of tell-lies-vision.  Fireplace and labrador retriever are optional.

If I'm reading on an electronic device, an increasingly common situation, I put it in airplane mode, blocking out the World Wide Wasteland. For the same reason I never read with the television on, even if muted.

Soft warm light is very important, especially at night; there's the matter of intensity (too bright you'll feel like you're being interrogated, too dim and your eyes will soon be tired) and of warmth, or hue. Most fluorescent lights (and cheap LED lights) have too much blue and violet in them; get a "warmer" lightbulb, one with more yellow and red, especially if you read a lot at night. Or bounce a "cold" light off a warm-colored reflector.

I like to have soft background music, usually something from between mid-16th and early 18th centuries; the mathematical precision of Buxtehude or his pupils J.S. Bach and Handel can serve as a mental rest area when I pause to parse a thought. Friends tell me they use jazz, but I find it distracting.



Reading: it's a cheap hobby, an invaluable habit.