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

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

One More Reason to Envy the French

Remember those ads for contraptions that train your pet to do it in the toilet? And then flush?

It's so like the French to take a different, less capital-intensive, approach. If you believe this street poster in Aix-en-Provence, the dogs of that village clean up after themselves. These savvy Gallic canines take it upon themselves to execute a "swipe of the paw for a cleaner city."

(Photo by the author)

So I'd say if this result is any indication, perhaps Mr. Sarkozy's advice on the banking crisis s

How I Approach Book Reviews

What should I do if I agree to write a review but I think the book, ah, lacking in merit?

In a public review, I either emphasize some aspect I found interesting or use some topic in the book to spin off into a related discussion on something that genuinely interests me.

Then, if there are obvious flaws the writer needs to know about, I send him/her a private email and I'll be frank. But even then it's usually along the lines of, I'm sure your second novel will be stronger now that you've gotten th

Dog Coaches Man to Write Funny Books

(Santa Monica, CA - March 21, 2009) In an unexpected confession today that stunned the publishing world, comic novelist Gerald Everett Jones admitted that he is not the author of the books that bear his name.

When confronted by an investigative reporter for the Daily Bloodhound who'd picked up a whiff of scandal, Jones claimed that he has established an exceptional and highly collaborative telepathic bond with Zucchero (aka Zookie), a ten-pound broken-coat Jack Russell terrier.

(Photo by Georja