Musings from the Peanut Gallery

Started working my way through Cocoa Programming for the Mac OS X by Aaron Hillegass includes a challenge exercise in almost every chapter (sometimes more than one) which requires you to put what you learned to use without the hand-holding the chapter provides.
I’d appreciate that effort in this book. But I’m enjoying the learning. And [...]

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In recent issues, Analog editor Stanley Schmidt has been on a witch-hunt over overpopulation. Not sure what touched this off in his mind, but it seems that he’s bought into the Malthusian view that we are in immanent danger of exceeding the “carrying capacity” of the planet. Of course, Thomas Malthus was wrong. And so [...]

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This book is well worth reading if you like fantasy and/or dragons.
From the Amazon.com review(1435 customer reviews average 3.5 stars):
Surpassing its popular prequel Eragon, this second volume in the Inheritance trilogy shows growing maturity and skill on the part of its very young author, who was only seventeen when the first volume was published in [...]

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The first book Anne McCaffrey wrote in the Dragonriders of Pern series, although not the first book in historical sequence. This is a series that I am going to really enjoy. This first book was written in 1968, and the series is still ongoing in 2007.
From the back of the book:
To the nobles who live [...]

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TCS Daily had an article the other day by Josh Hendrickson, concerning those economists who insist that there is something fundamentally wrong with a society where there are some who are richer than others.
Never mind that there has never been a society with economic inequality. And never mind that these economists are using their argument [...]

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Eragon is the story of a boy about to turn a man who becomes a dragon rider, without any desire to do so. In the process, he discovers much about himself, and the kingdom that he lives in.

The story is true fantasy, set in a make-believe world of dragons and elves and dwarves, along with [...]

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