Gerald Everett Jones's Blog: Gerald Everett Jones - Author, page 60

Book Review: Cutting for Stone

I have to start by clearing up the confusion I had with Abraham Verghese's title, Cutting for Stone . As the book mentions several times but never precisely explains, the reference is to the Hippocratic Oath, "I will not cut for stone." However I had to look it up in Wikipedia to find the meaning, which is probably apparent to medical professionals. It was a prohibition from operating on stones, or calcified deposits, in the kidney or bladder. The ancient Greeks apparently thought surgeons should

Book Review: Breathers - A Zombie's Lament

(Photo by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid" laughingsquid.com.)

Boychik lit and its nastier cousin genre fratire are both skewed takes on the romantic comedy, or rom com. So the blurb for Breathers hooked me, "... a romantic zombie comedy (rom-zom-com, for short) that will leave you laughing, squirming, and clamoring for more."

Now, despite their body temperature, zombies are hot these days. I figured I was a newbie to the genre, but then I realized that Michael Keaton played a zombie in Beetlejuice,

Book Review: The Poet and the Billionaire

There is nothing so compelling as a new idea that's stood the test of time. Philosopher-author Jared Matthew Kessler has reinvented at least two of them -- the Socratic dialogue and the Zen notion that the answer is to be found in the question.

In The Poet and the Billionaire: A Personal Journey of Conversation, Kessler (the poet) conducts an ongoing correspondence with an anonymous guru (the billionaire), who advises a daily Process of self-empowerment by setting goals and attending to every det

How to Lie with Charts (original intro)

My most popular nonfiction book has been How to Lie with Charts. The first edition appeared in 1995. The book is now in its robust second edition and has been adopted for coursework at schools such as Georgetown Public Policy Institute and Empire State College.



The second edition omits the original introduction, which was not only a "reason to read" piece but also presents my satiric take on the history of computer graphics for business:

Truth is the Best Revenge
If you feel a twinge of guilt as yo

Thoughts on Wolfram Alpha and Artificial Intelligence

I've been thinking about the announcement of the natural-language search engine Wolfram Alpha, which supposedly makes Google seem like a crude toy.

Humans have so many inherent limitations of perception. It is easily conceivable that within this century we will create a race of machines that are smarter (wiser?) than we are. (Sony is projecting 2011 for the year a computer can mimic human thought convincingly, the old Turing test.)

It all goes back to that famous saying of J.B.S. Haldane that the

Book Review: A Short History of Nearly Everything

I encountered Bill Bryson's work only recently (don't know how I missed him), but this is the third of his books I've read (you can read my reviews of his Shakespeare and The Thunderbolt Kid).

At 500-plus pages and with its compendious title, A Short History of Nearly Everything is the friendly bedside companion I expected it to be. Bryson is incurably curious, a trait all too rare in our entertainment-anesthetized society. What's more, he's obsessively curious about science, which elevates his g

Guest Post: Snobbery and Geekery

I've always thought of myself as a literary snob. I've got the credentials to prove it. Beyond those, I've stuck steadfastly to the notion of quality first and literary fiction only. But lately I'm not sure that my pomposity has served me well. Once I might have rejected everything even remotely smacking of genre out of hand. But even Boychik lit, and that's about as opposite to literary snobbery as you get, is providing pleasure for me. Add to that my growing stack of audio books which even

Snobbery and Geekery

I’ve always thought of myself as a literary snob. I’ve got the credentials to prove it. And beyond those, I’ve stuck steadfastly to the notion of quality first and literary fiction only. But lately I’m not sure that my pomposity has served me well. Once I might have rejected everything even remotely smacking of genre out of hand. But even Boychik lit, and that’s about as opposite to literary snobbery as you get, is providing pleasure for me. Add to that my growing stack of audio books which

LA Opera Review - All A-Twitter!

Walter Braunfels' The Birds

Your country has just been humiliated in a disastrous war, in which it was the aggressor. A weak coalition of progressives and moderates has taken over the government, but they are printing so much money to pay the huge war debt that hyperinflation is sure to follow. Right-wing fanatics are just waiting for the opportunity to take over. You and your countrymen are looking for a way to repair your lost ideals and establish a new national identity and recover a sense of

G&G Review Die Walküre at LA Opera

Last Saturday night, Georja and I did our habitual gig stringing for LASplash.com and took in almost five hours of Die Walküre, the second installment in Richard Wagner's "Ring Cycle."

When I mention these exercises in cultural appreciation in this blog, I try to find some linkage to the theme of sexual politics to justify taking up space here. In the case of this opera, the accompanying press photo says it all. Designer-director Achim Freyer has Sieglinde (Anya Kampe) and Siegmund (Plácido Domin