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The Reading List:
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Currently Reading:
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Edwin Hubble: Mariner of the Nebilae, by Gale E. Christianson
ISBN# 0374146608
Hello, I must Be Going: Groucho and His Friends, by Charlotte Chandler
ISBN# 0140052224
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Just Finished:
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The Advent of the Algorithm: The Idea that Rules the World by David Berlinski
ISBN# 0151003386
The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
ISBN# 0375725601
I have landed: The End of the Beginning in Natural History by Stephen Jay Gould
ISBN# 10609601431
How NASA Learned To Fly In Space: An exciting account of the Gemini missions by David M. Harland
ISBN# 1894959078
Ron Kittle's Tales from the White Sox Dugout by Ron Kittle with Bob Logan
ISBN# 1582615438
James Madison: A Biography by Ralph Ketcham
ISBN# 0813912652
His Excellency: George Washington by Joseph J. Ellis
ISBN# 1400040310
America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction by Jon Stewart, Ben Karlin and David Javerbaum
ISBN# 0446532681
Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy by Jane Leavy
ISBN# 0060195339
The Long Season by Jim Brosnan
ISBN# 1566634180
The Business and Economics of Linux and Open Source by Martin Fink
ISBN# 0130476773
The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien
ISBN# 0395193958
The Lying Stones of Marrakech by Stephen Jay Gould
ISBN# 0609601423
The Cathedral & The Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary by Eric S. Raymond
ISBN# 0596001088
Moral Man and Immoral Society, by Reinhold Niebuhr
ISBN# 068471857X
The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America, by Louis Menand
ISBN# 0465069592
TR: The Last Romantic, by H. W. Brands
ISBN# 0465069592
The Ginger Kid: The Buck Weaver Story, by Irving M. Stein
ISBN# 0697162761
Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes, by Stephen Jay Gould
ISBN# 0393311031
Neuromancer, by William Gibson
ISBN# 0441007465
The Great Chicago Fire and the Myth of Mrs. O'Leary's Cow, by Richard F. Bales
ISBN# 0786414243
Sputnik: The Shock of the Century, by Paul Dickson
ISBN# 0802713653
Greetings, Carbon-Based Bipeds! Collected Essays 1934-1998, by Arthur C. Clarke
ISBN# 0312198930
Truman, by David McCullough
ISBN# 0671869205
Hercule Poirot's Casebook by Agatha Chrisite
ISBN# 0399150218
Even Since Darwin, by Stephen Jay Gould
ISBN# 0393308189
Interface, by Stephen Bury (a.k.a. Neal Stephenson)
ISBN# 0553572407
Korolev: How One Man Masterminded the Soviet Drive to Beat America to the Moon, by James Hartford
ISBN# 0471327212
The Hobbit, by J. R. R. Tolkien
ISBN# 0345332075
American Pharaoh, by Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor
ISBN# 0316834890
Tyrannosaurus SUE, by Steve Fiffer
ISBN# 0716794624
Veeck as in Wreck; The Autobiography of Bill Veeck, by Bill Veeck and Ed Linn
ISBN# 0226852180
Failure is not an Option, by Gene Kranz
ISBN# 0743200799
All the President's Men, by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward
ISBN# 0671894412
The Flamingo's Smile, by Stephen Jay Gould
ISBN# 0393303756
The Amistad: A Novel, by David Pesci
ISBN# 156924748x
A People's History of the Supreme Court, Peter Irons
ISBN# 0140292012
Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation, Josph J. Ellis
ISBN# 0375405445
I, Robot, Isaac Asimov
ISBN# 0553294385
Under the Radar, Robert Young and Wendy Goldman Rohm
ISBN# 1576105067
Conversations About the End of Time, with Stephen Jay Gould, Umberto Eco, Jean-Claude Carriere, and Jean Delumeau
ISBN# 0880642173
The Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson
ISBN# 0553380966
High Fidelity, by Nick Hornby
ISBN# 1573228214
The Panda's Thumb, by Stephen Jay Gould
ISBN# 0393908197
On the Road, by Jack Kerouac
ISBN# 0140185216
The Essential Groucho: Writings by, for and about Groucho Marx, Selected and Editied by Stefan Kanfer
ISBN# 037570213X
The World of Jeeves, by P.G. Woodhouse
ISBN# 0060972440
In the Beginning was the Command Line, by Neal Stephenson
ISBN# 0380815931
Bully for Brontosaurus, by Stephen Jay Gould
ISBN# 039330857X
Children of Dune, by Frank Herbert
Cosmos, by Carl Sagan
ISBN# 0345331354
Animal Farm, by George Orwell
ISBN# 0451522303
Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson
ISBN# 0553562614
Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams, by Joseph J. Ellis
ISBN# 039311333
A Man on the Moon, by Andrew Chaikin
ISBN# 0140272011
The Code Book, by Simon Singh
ISBN# 0385495315
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, by John Berendt
ISBN# 0679751521
Who Wrote Shakespeare, by John Michell
ISBN# 0500281130
Dune Messiah, by Frank Herbert
Hackers, by Steven Levy
ISBN# 0385312105
American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson, by Joseph J. Ellis
ISBN# 0679764410
John Quincy Adams: A Public, A Private Life, by Paul C. Nagel
ISBN# 0674479408
Eight Little Piggies: Reflections in Natural History, by Stephen Jay Gould
ISBN# 3093311392
Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson
ISBN# 0380973464
The Edible Woman, by Margaret Atwood
ISBN# 0860681297
Sula, by Toni Morrison
ISBN# 0452263492
John Adams: A Life, by John Ferling
ISBN# 0805045767
Dinosaur in a Haystack, by Stephen Jay Gould
ISBN# 0517888246
The Third Rumple Omnibus, by John Mortimer
ISBN# 0140257411
Why Not Me?, by Al Franken
ISBN# 038531809X
Dune, by Frank Herbert
All Too Human, by Geroge Stephanopoulos
ISBN# 0316929190
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms, by Stephen Jay Gould
ISBN# 0609601415
Rock of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life, by Stephen Jay Gould
ISBN# 0345430093
The Second Rumple Omnibus, by John Mortimer
ISBN# 0140089586
The Martin Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury
ISBN# 0553278223
Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert A. Heinlein
ISBN# 0441790348
The Right Stuff, by Tom Wolfe
ISBN# 0553275569
First on the Moon, by Neil Armstrong, Mike Collins, Buzz Aldran
Beloved, by Toni Morrison
ISBN# 0452280621
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Always Reading (a.k.a. Collections of Essays, Poems, Stories, etc. Always Being Read.):
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United States Essays 1952-1992, by Gore Vidal
ISBN# 0679755721
Affirmative Acts: Political Essays, by June Jordan
ISBN# 0385492251
Applied Cryptography Second Edition by Bruce Schneier
ISBN# 0471117099
Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, by Marshall McLuhan
ISBN# 0262631598u
The Science Fiction Century Edited by David Hartwell
ISBN# 0965850137
The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
ISBN# 0192123114
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
ISBN# 0192123092
The Classic Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
ISBN# 0681418192
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To Be Read Next:
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Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges
ISBN# 0671492071
Galileo's Daughter by Dava Sobel
ISBN# 0802713432
Crypto by Steven Levy
ISBN# 0140244328
Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson
ISBN# 0380977427
I Have Landed by Stephen Jay Gould
ISBN# 060901431
The Adams-Jeffeson Leters: The Complete Correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adamns, Edited by Lester J. Cappon
ISBN# 0807842303
William Cooper's Town, by Alan Taylor
ISBN# 0679773002
Fermat's Enigma, by Simon Singh
ISBN# 0385493622
The Prince, by Niccolo Machiavelli - Translated and edited by Daniel Donno
ISBN# 0553212788
1984, by Gerorge Orwell
ISBN# 0451524934
Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, by Edward O. Wilson
ISBN# 0965058305
The Meaning of it All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist by Richard P. Feynman
ISBN# 0965058219
Only the Paranoid Survive, by Andrew S. Grove
ISBN# 0385482582
Brave New World & Brave New World Revisited, Aldous Huxley
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It is properly said that the Devil can "quote Scripture to
his purpose." The Bible is full of so many stories of
contradictory moral purpose that every generation can
find scriptural justification for nearly any action it
proposes - from incest, slavery, and mass murder to the
most refined love, courage, and self-sacrifice. And this
moral multiple personality disorder is hardly restricted to
Judaism and Christianity. You can find it deep within
Islam, the Hindu tradition, indeed nearly all the world's
religions. Perhaps then it is ... people who are morally
ambiguous.
Scripture is said to be divinely inspired - a phrase with
many meanings. But what if it's simply made up by
fallible humans? Miracles are attested, but what if they're
instead some mix of charlatanry, unfamiliar states of
consciousness, misapprehensions of natural phenomena,
and mental illness? The fact that so little of the finds of
modern science is prefigured in Scripture to my mind
casts further doubt on its divine inspiration.
But of course I might be wrong.
-Carl Sagan
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