Matthew Royal > Recent Status Updates

After a great summary of the Greek and German philosophers who came before Marx, it's getting into the meat: 1) Philosophy of Marx, 2) Economic Doctrine of Marx, and 3) his Historical Materialism.

This is a fun book! It's an illustrated, comic-style biography of Marx, the man and his ideas. It's just getting to his philosophical heritage as a Left Hegelian (as opposed to a Right Hegelian) and how he was banished from each European country until he ended up in London. Ironic that England was the only country free enough to allow him to formulate his totalitarian ideals.

Making progress. Time to schedule our book club meeting!

started the next book for programming book club.

I want to make a graph of the relationships in this book and their various dysfunctions.

Started the reading for my fancy American Novels since 1945 wine^^^^^ book club. I feel so smart and culturey.

It's fun reading these short stories by Bester again. They're not as mind bending as I remember their being when I was a teenager... but maybe that means my mind now is more bent?

Reading this for a friend's book club of American novels. Should be interesting.

Great intro so far. Interesting definition of permutation as a mapping. We're reading this for the 2nd book in our Programming Book Club at work, and it looks like a pithy choice.

The story of how marketer Robert Mondavi got San Franciscans to drink wine. It included driving so slowly along Route 29 that by the time the line of cars behind him arrived at his father's winery, they needed a drink.

Interesting account of Thomas Jefferson's tour of French wine country when he was there with Benjamin Franklin to represent the new United States.

Into Chapter 5 on Functions now. Prototype inheritance is spiffy!

Just finished the Functions chapter. There are some Good Things presented here, like Memoization and Closures, but not everything function is explicitly a JavaScript language feature. Already, reading the first 4 chapters of this book have helped me be a better JS programmer at work. Can't recommend this book enough.

If the Swiss were more interesting, might [Einstein] never have developed the Special Theory of Relativity? In other words, is there something to be said for boredom? The British philosopher Bertrand Russell thought so. "A certain amount of boredom is...essential to a happy life," he wrote.

"In general, people can be trusted." Studies have found that people who agree with this are happier than those who do not.

Our driver was a Tanzanian named Good Luck. We thought this was fortuitous. Only later did we learn that his name represented a wish and not a point of fact.

"There was a story that traveled around the islands about a woman named Mama Weeds. A swamp witch. But now Kiwi saw that there were witches everywhere in the world. Witches lining up for free grocery bags of battered tuna cans and half-rotted carrots at the downtown Loomis Army of Mercy. At the bus station, witches telling spells to walls. Only the luckiest ones got to live inside stories. The rest were homeless..."

"Money appeared to be the one species that couldn't take root in the swamp -- and this blight was a killer of dreams, the Chief said, more potent than the red cotton borer."

"Faith was a power that arose from inside you, I thought, and doubt was exogenous, a speck in your eye. A black mote from the sad world of adults."

Something about their ease with one another and all the happy, feckless ugliness in that car made him think of sisters. They were singing along to the radio, acting much younger than their ages. It was clear that these girls didn't care who was watching them through the clear panes. Kiwi wondered if they would step out of the car and shrivel into individuals, grow self-conscious again.

"Hopes were wallflowers. Hopes hugged the perimeter of a dance floor in your brain, tugging at their party lace, all perfume and hems and doomed expectation. They fanned their dance cards, these guests that pressed against the walls of your heart. Our mom had become agitated as the movie credits rolled: There had never been a chance for them! What stupid women."