Rudy Rucker writes and spins another great tale of mathematics, computing, and science fiction. He does a great job of capturing the blend of the love for the intellectual, carnal, romantic, and fantastic lives that we experience through our own lives. He takes it further than most of us go in terms of our own […]
I am really liking AJAX and PHP, by Cristian Daire, Filip Chereches-Tosa, Bogdan Brinzarea, and Mihai Bucica. I’ve only read the first chapter and browsed the book, and it seems very clear and well-written. I’ll be the instructor in a course titled Building Web Applications With AJAX this coming semester. I’ll be recommending this book […]
Hugh Hewitt a successful commentator and blogger put this book together in 2004-2005 to explain the relation of blogs to main steam media (MSM) and to advise readers about the need to create and manage blogs. The book is a quick read and informative regardless of whether the reader is familiar with the effect and […]
Oracle Night : A Novel (Auster, Paul) Paul Auster has the talent to wed ordinary, fantastic, impossible, and tragic events into the fabric of a story. He demonstrates this to varying degrees in a number of his books, some more fantastic and impossible than others. Oracle Night has fantastic elements but also contains, for me, […]
I’m not sure why I picked up the The Mapmaker’s Wife, by Robert Whitaker, at our local library (The Central Rappahannock Regional Library), but I’m glad I did. He spins a tale of adventure, scientific exploration, bad decisions, bad luck, atrocious conditions, and perseverance. The book is set in 17th Century Peru (what is now […]
A few stories are starting to appear about the new book “The Wild Braid: A Poet Reflects on a Century in the Garden” by Stanley Kunitz and, our friend Genine Lentine. In the NY Times: A Poet in Winter Relishes Spring in His Garden – New York Times Stanley Kunitz, Pulitzer Prize winner, poet laureate […]
I just finished reading “The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World” by Michael Pollan. What an enjoyable book! Pollan’s writing is intelligent, witty, and just a pleasure to read. We correctly have the notion that we effect the plants in our environment. Not doubting that or diminishing our role in our environment, […]
In his book “The Universal Computer The Road From Leibniz To Turing,” Martin Davis presents a history of the development of logic that focus on creating a system in which computation is purely symbolic . Starting with Leibniz’s ‘wonderful idea’ – a language based on an alphabet whose “elements represented not sounds, but concepts. A […]
We’re leaving for a two-week trip in a few days and so we’ve go to return our books to the Library, because they can only be checked out for two weeks. We love our library – The Central Rappahannock Regional Library. It has a great collection and a very good online presence. It has been […]
Claudia wins a Pulitzer!!
Our good friend Claudia Emerson won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in poetry for her book “Late Wife: Poem.†A quote from her in an article in the Washington Post accurately described the situation here among her friends: “We’re freaking out here,” said poetry winner Emerson, who teaches at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, […]