Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts

Monday, January 01, 2024

Books read in 2023

 Not much blogging going on here still, but here's my annual list of books read for 2023.

  • Angel Au-Yeung and David Jeans, Wonder Boy: Tony Hsieh, Zappos, and the Myth of Happiness in Silicon Valley
  • Isaac Butler, The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act (2022)
  • Cory Doctorow, Red Team Blues (fiction)
  • David Edmonds, Parfit: A Philosopher and His Mission to Save Morality
  • Zeke Faux, Number Go Up: Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall
  • Kevin Fedarko, The Emerald Mile: The Epic Story of the Fastest Ride in History Through the Heart of the Grand Canyon (2013)
  • Roger Friedland and Harold Zellman, The Fellowship: The Untold Story of Frank Lloyd Wright & The Taliesin Fellowship (2006)
  • James Gleick, The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood (2011)
  • Penn Jillette, Random (2022) (fiction)
  • Mark Holloway, Utopian Communities in America, 1680-1880 (1966, 2nd edition, 1st edition was titled Heavens on Earth)
  • Claire Hughes Johnson, Scaling People: Tactics for Management and Company Building (2022)
  • R.A. Lafferty, The Best of R.A. Lafferty (2019) (fiction)
  • Kevin M. Levin, Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War's Most Persistent Myth (2019)
  • Michael Lewis, Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon
  • Shane Murphy, John Hance: The Life, Lies, and Legend of Grand Canyon's Greatest Storyteller (2020)
  • Erik Reece, Utopia Drive: A Road Trip Through America's Most Radical Idea (2016)
  • Rudy Rucker and Bruce Sterling, Transreal Cyberpunk (2016) (fiction)
  • Chris A. Rutkowski, Canada's UFOs Declassified (2022)
  • Christa Sadler, editor, There's This River... Grand Canyon Boatman Stories (2nd ed., 2006)
  • Bruce Schneier, A Hacker's Mind: How the Powerful Bend Society's Rules, and How to Bend them Back
  • Will Sommer, Trust the Plan: The Rise of QAnon and the Conspiracy That Unhinged America
  • Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism (2019)
  • Leonie Swann, Three Bags Full: A Sheep Detective Story (2005) (fiction)
  • Stephen Vladeck, The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic
  • Simon Winchester, Knowing What We Know: The Transmission of Knowledge: From Ancient Wisdom to Modern Magic
  • Tom Zoellner, Rim to River: Looking into the Heart of Arizona
  • Final Report of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol
    Top for 2023 published in 2023: Edmonds, Zoellner, Sommer, Vladeck, Faux; other top reads for the year: Swann, Stewart, Friedland & Zellman, Edmonds, Lafferty, Holloway

    A few planned reads for 2024 (already in progress):

    G.A. Cohen, Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality (1995)
    John Ferris, Behind the Enigma: The Authorised History of GCHQ, Britain's Secret Cyber-Intelligence Agency (2020)
    Chris Rodda, Liars for Jesus: The Religious Right's Alternate Version of American History, vol. 2 (2016)
    Peter H. Wilson, The Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europe's History (2017)

    The Economist posted this chart of number of books read this year from a YouGov/Economist survey:



    (Previously: 202220212020201920182017201620152014201320122011201020092008200720062005.) 

    Saturday, January 01, 2022

    Books read in 2021

    Not much blogging going on here still, but here's my annual list of books read for 2021.
    • Elizabeth Anderson, Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don't Talk About It) (2017)
    • Scott Anderson, The Quiet Americans: Four CIA Spies at the Dawn of the Cold War (2020)
    • J. M. Berger, Optimal
    • William Dalrymple, The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire (2019)
    • Philip L. Fradkin, Stagecoach: Wells Fargo and the American West (2002)
    • Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (2012)
    • Daniel Immerwahr, How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States (2019)
    • David Cay Johnston, The Big Cheat: How Donald Trump Fleeced America and Enriched Himself and His Family
    • Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, and Cass R. Sunstein, Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment
    • Walter LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America (2nd edition, 1993)
    • Peter Lamont and Jim Steinmeyer, The Secret History of Magic: The True Story of the Deceptive Art (2018)
    • Thomas Levenson, Newton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Detective Career of the World's Greatest Scientist (2009)
    • Norm MacDonald, Based on a True Story: Not a Memoir (2016)
    • Geoff Manaugh and Nicola Twilley, Until Proven Safe: The History and Future of Quarantine
    • Casey Michel, American Kleptocracy: How the U.S. Created the World's Greatest Money Laundering Scheme in History
    • Cheryl Misak, Frank Ramsey: A Sheer Excess of Powers (2020)
    • Anne Nelson, Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right
    • Nicole Perlroth, This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapon Arms Race
    • Ethan Persoff and Scott Marshall, Complete Series, John Wilcock, New York Years, 1954-1971 (limited edition via Kickstarter, #52/250)
    • Kevin Poulsen, Kingpin: How One Hacker Took Over the Billion-Dollar Cybercrime Underground (2011, re-read)
    • Eric Rauchway, Why the New Deal Matters
    • Mary Roach, Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law
    • Scott J. Roberts and Rebekah Brown, Intelligence-Driven Incident Response: Outwitting the Adversary (2017)
    • Mike Rothschild, The Storm is Upon Us: How QAnon Became a Movement, Cult, and Conspiracy Theory of Everything
    • P.W. Singer and August Cole, Ghost Fleet (2016)
    • David Skarbek, The Puzzle of Prison Order: Why Life Behind Bars Varies Around the World (2020)
    • Jon Talton, A Brief History of Phoenix (2015)
      Top for 2021: Anderson; Dalrymple; Immerwahr; Kahneman, Sibony, and Sunstein; Levenson; Manaugh and Twilley; Michel; Misak; Perlroth.

      A few planned reads for 2022 (mostly already started):

      Heather Adkins, Betsy Beyer, Paul Blankinship, Piotr Lewandowski, Ana Oprea, and Adam Stubblefield, Building Secure and Reliable Systems: Best Practices for Designing, Implementing, and Maintaining Systems (2020)
      G.A. Cohen, Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality (1995)
      John Ferris, Behind the Enigma: The Authorised History of GCHQ, Britain's Secret Cyber-Intelligence Agency (2020)
      Paul Fisher, House of Wits: An Intimate Portrait of the James Family (2008)
      Terry Teachout, The Skeptic: A Life of H.L. Mencken (2002)
      Peter H. Wilson, The Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europe's History (2017)

      (Previously: 2020201920182017201620152014201320122011201020092008200720062005.) 

      Friday, January 01, 2021

      Books read in 2020

      Not much blogging going on here still, but here's my annual list of books read for 2020.
      • Nicholson Baker, Baseless: My Search for Secrets in the Ruins of the Freedom of Information Act
      • John Bolton, The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir
      • Ben Buchanan, The Hacker and the State: Cyber Attacks and the New Normal of Geopolitics
      • Susannah Cahalan, The Great Pretender: The Undercover Mission That Changed Our Understanding of Madness
      • Michael Cohen, Disloyal: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump
      • Myke Cole, Legion versus Phalanx: The Epic Struggle for Infantry Supremacy in the Ancient World
      • Libby Copeland, The Lost Family: How DNA Testing Is Upending Who We Are
      • Barton Gellman, Dark Mirror: Edward Snowden and the Surveillance State
      • Fiona Hill and Clifford G. Gaddy, Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin (2012)
      • James W. Johnson, Arizona Politicians: The Noble and the Notorious (2002)
      • Gene Kim, The Unicorn Project: A Novel about Developers, Digital Disruption, and Thriving in the Age of Data
      • Maria Konnikova, The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win
      • Talia Lavin, Culture Warlords: My Journey Into the Dark Web of White Supremacy
      • Carol D. Leonnig and Philip Rucker, A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump's Testing of America
      • Ben Macintyre, The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War (2018)
      • Nancy MacLean, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America (2017)
      • H. Keith Melton and Robert Wallace, with Henry R. Schlesinger, Spy Sites of New York City: A Guide to the Region's Secret History (2020)
      • Jefferson Morley, Morley v. CIA: My Unfinished JFK Investigation
      • Bastian Obermayer and Frederik Obermaier, The Panama Papers: Breaking the Story of How the Rich & Powerful Hide Their Money
      • Thomas RidActive Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare
      • Brad Smith and Carol Anne Browne, Tools and Weapons: The Promise and Peril of the Digital Age
      • Mary Trump, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man
      • Robert Wallace and H. Keith Melton with Henry R. Schesinger, Spy Sites of Washington, DC: A Guide to the Capital Region's Secret History (2017)
      • Anna Wiener, Uncanny Valley: A Memoir
      • Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
        Top for 2020: Copeland, Macintyre, Cahalan, Smith and Browne, Buchanan, Obermayer and Obermaier, Gellman, Rid.

        I started the following books I expect to finish in 2021 (yes, I also said that about LeFeber and Wilson last year--I'm well in to LaFeber's book and thought I might finish before the end of the year, but had only read Wilson's intro so it's barely started):

        William Dalrymple, The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire
        Walter LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America (2nd edition)
        Peter H. Wilson, The Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europe's History

        I've also pre-ordered and am looking forward to reading:

        Nicole Perlroth, This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapon Arms Race (due to be published on February 9)

        (Previously: 201920182017201620152014201320122011201020092008200720062005.)

        Wednesday, January 01, 2020

        Books read in 2019

        Not much blogging going on here still, but here's my annual list of books read for 2019.
        • Graham T. Allison, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap?
        • Ross Anderson, Security Engineering (3rd edition, draft chapters)
        • Herbert Asbury, The Barbary Coast: An Informal History of the San Francisco Underworld
        • Heidi Blake, From Russia with Blood: The Kremlin's Ruthless Assassination Program and Vladimir Putin's Secret War on the West
        • Rutger Bregman, Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World
        • Oliver Bullough, Moneyland: The Inside Story of the Crooks and Kleptocrats Who Rule the World
        • Bryan Caplan and Zach Weinersmith, Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration
        • C.J. Chivers, The Fighters: Americans in Combat
        • Sefton Delmer, Black Boomerang
        • Nina J. Easton, Gang of Five: Leaders at the Center of the Conservative Crusade (bio of Bill Kristol, Ralph Reed, Clint Bolick, Grover Norquist, and David McIntosh)
        • Ronan Farrow, Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators
        • Ronan Farrow, War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence
        • Ian Frisch, Magic is Dead: My Journey into the World's Most Secretive Society of Magicians
        • Anand Giridharadas, Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World
        • Reba Wells Grandrud, Sunnyslope (Images of America series)
        • Andy Greenberg, Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin's Most Dangerous Hackers
        • Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement
        • Stephen Kinzer, Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change From Hawaii to Iraq
        • Michael Lewis, Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt
        • Jonathan Lusthaus, Industry of Anonymity: Inside the Business of Cybercrime
        • Ben MacIntyre, A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal
        • Joseph Menn, Cult of the Dead Cow: How the Original Hacking Supergroup Might Just Save the World
        • Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies: American Conspiracy Theorists and Their Surprising Rise to Power
        • Jefferson Morley, Our Man in Mexico: Winston Scott and the Hidden History of the CIA
        • Sarah T. Roberts, Behind the Screen: Content Moderation in the Shadows of Social Media
        • Hans Rosling, with Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Rönnlund, Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World--and Why Things Are Better Than You Think
        • Russell Shorto, Amsterdam: A History of the World's Most Liberal City
        • Alexander Stille, The Sack of Rome: Media + Money + Celebrity = Power = Silvio Berlusconi
        • Jamie Susskind, Future Politics: Living Together in a World Transformed by Tech
        • Erik Van De Sandt, Deviant Security: The Technical Computer Security Practices of Cyber Criminals (Ph.D. thesis)
        • Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff
        • Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads
        Top for 2019: Bullough, Farrow (Catch and Kill), Wu, Chivers, Rosling, Greenberg, Blake, Allison, Caplan and Weinersmith, Kinzer, Delmer.

        I started the following books I expect to finish in early 2020:

        Myke Cole, Legion versus Phalanx: The Epic Struggle for Infantry Supremacy in the Ancient World
        Walter LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America (2nd edition)
        Brad Smith and Carol Anne Browne, Tools and Weapons: The Promise and Peril of the Digital Age
        Peter H. Wilson, The Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europe's History

        Two books I preordered and look forward to reading in 2020:

        Anna Wiener, Uncanny Valley: A Memoir (due out January 14)
        Thomas Rid, Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare (due out April 21)

        (Previously: 20182017201620152014201320122011201020092008200720062005.)

        Tuesday, January 01, 2019

        Books read in 2018

        Not much blogging going on here still, but here's my annual list of books read for 2018.
        • Charles Arthur, Cyber Wars: Hacks that Shocked the Business World
        • Radley Balko and Tucker Carrington, The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist: A True Story of Injustice in the American South
        • Mary Beard, SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome
        • Yochai Benkler, Robert Faris, and Hal Roberts, Network Propaganda: Manipulation, Disinformation, and Radicalization in American Politics
        • Ronen Bergman, Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations
        • Rebecca Burns and David Dayen, Fat Cat: The Steve Mnuchin Story
        • John Carreyrou, Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
        • Graydon Carter, George Kalogerakis, and Kurt Andersen, Spy: The Funny Years
        • Stephen Ellis, This Present Darkness: A History of Nigerian Organized Crime
        • Jason Fagone, The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine Who Outwitted America's Enemies
        • Paul French, City of Devils: The Two Men Who Ruled the Underworld of Old Shanghai
        • Diego Gambetta, Codes of the Underworld: How Criminals Communicate
        • Robert M. Gates, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War
        • Atul Gawande, Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
        • David Golumbia, The Politics of Bitcoin: Software as Right-Wing Extremism
        • Richards J. Heuer Jr. and Randolph H. Pherson, Structured Analytic Techniques for Intelligence Analysis
        • Michael Isikoff and David Corn, Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin's War on America and the Election of Donald Trump
        • Sarah Jeong, The Internet of Garbage
        • Steven Johnson, Farsighted: How We Make the Decisions That Matter the Most
        • Louise M. Kaiser and Randolph H. Pherson, Analytic Writing Guide
        • Chuck Klosterman, But What If We're Wrong?: Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past
        • Susan Landau, Listening In: Cybersecurity in an Insecure Age
        • Peter T. Leeson, WTF?! An Economic Tour of the Weird
        • Jeffrey Lewis, The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States
        • Michael Lewis, The Fifth Risk
        • Liliana Mason, Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity
        • Nick Mason, Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd (new updated 2017 edition)
        • Tim Maurer, Cyber Mercenaries: The State, Hackers, and Power
        • Jefferson Morley, The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton
        • Roger Naylor, The Amazing Kolb Brothers of Grand Canyon
        • Helen Nissenbaum, Privacy in Context: Technology, Policy, and the Integrity of Social Life
        • Ellen Pao, Reset: My Fight for Inclusion and Lasting Change
        • Dana Richards, editor, Dear Martin/Dear Marcello: Gardner and Truzzi on Skepticism
        • Louis Rossetto, Change Is Good: A Story of the Heroic Era of the Internet (1st edition, #1453, Kickstarter)
        • David E. Sanger, The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage, and Fear in the Cyber Age
        • Eli Saslow, Rising Out of Hatred: The Awakening of a Former White Nationalist
        • Harold Schechter, The Pirate (Amazon Prime Reading "Bloodlands Collection")
        • Harold Schechter, Little Slaughterhouse on the Prairie (Amazon Prime Reading "Bloodlands Collection")
        • Harold Schechter, The Brick Slayer (Amazon Prime Reading "Bloodlands Collection")
        • Harold Schechter, Panic (Amazon Prime Reading "Bloodlands Collection")
        • Harold Schechter, Rampage (Amazon Prime Reading "Bloodlands Collection")
        • Harold Schechter, The Pied Piper (Amazon Prime Reading "Bloodlands Collection")
        • Natasha Dow Schüll, Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas
        • Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson, The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life
        • P.W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking, LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media
        • Ali Soufan, Anatomy of Terror: From the Death of Bin Laden to the Rise of the Islamic State
        • Robert Timberg, The Nightingale's Song (bio of John McCain, James Webb, Oliver North, Robert McFarlane, and John Poindexter)
        • Mick West, Escaping the Rabbit Hole: How to Debunk Conspiracy Theories Using Facts, Logic, and Respect
        • Rick Wilson, Everything Trump Touches Dies: A Republican Strategist Gets Real About the Worst President Ever
        • Michael Wolff, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House
        • Bob Woodward, Fear: Trump in the White House
        • Tim Wu, The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age
        I made some progress on a few other books:
        • Herbert Asbury, The Barbary Coast: An Informal History of the San Francisco Underworld (will probably finish today)
        • Andrew Jaquith, Security Metrics: Replacing Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt
        • Douglas Hofstadter and Emmanuel Sander, Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking
        Top for 2018:  Singer and Brooking, Bergman, Balko and Carrington, Gawande, Carreyrou, Sanger, Simler and Hanson, Soufan, Isikoff and Corn, Fagone, French, Schüll, Michael Lewis, Mason, Benkler et al., West, Wu, Saslow, Naylor. I didn't care for the Klosterman book at all--quick read, but a waste of time.

        (Previously: 2017201620152014201320122011201020092008200720062005.)

        Monday, January 01, 2018

        Books read in 2017

        Not much blogging going on here still, but here's my annual list of books read for 2017. Items with hyperlinks are linked directly to the item online (usually PDF, some of these are reports rather than books, though I've made no attempt to collect all papers, blog posts, and reports I read here), with no paywall or fee.
        • Lilian Ablon, Andy Bogart, Zero Days, Thousands of Nights: The Life and Times of Zero-Day Vulnerabilities and Their Exploits
        • Ben Buchanan, The Cybersecurity Dilemma: Hacking, Trust and Fear Between Nations
        • J.D. Chandler, Hidden History of Portland, Oregon
        • Ted Conover, Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing
        • Richard A. Clarke and R.P. Eddy, Warnings: Finding Cassandras to Stop Catastrophes
        • Thomas H. Davenport and Julia Kirby, Only Humans Need Apply: Winners & Losers in the Age of Smart Machines
        • Mike Edison, Dirty, Dirty, Dirty: Of Playboys, Pigs, and Penthouse Paupers--An American Tale of Sex and Wonder
        • FINRA, Distributed Ledger Technology: Implications of Blockchain for the Securities Industry
        • Al Franken, Al Franken, Giant of the Senate
        • David Gerard, Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain: Bitcoin, Blockchain, Ethereum & Smart Contracts
        • Joscelyn Godwin, Upstate Cauldron: Eccentric Spiritual Movements in Early New York State
        • Jonathan Goldsmith, Stay Interesting: I Don't Always Tell Stories About My Life, But When I Do They're True and Amazing
        • Heidi Grant Halvorson, No One Understands You: And What To Do About It
        • Jon Lindsay, Tai Ming Cheung, and Derek S. Reveron, editors, China and Cybersecurity: Espionage, Strategy, and Politics in the Digital Domain
        • William MacAskill, Doing Good Better: Effective Altruism and How You Can Make a Difference
        • Jane Mayer, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right
        • Nick Middleton, An Atlas of Countries That Don't Exist: A Compendium of Fifty Unrecognized and Largely Unnoticed States
        • Kevin Mitnick, The Art of Invisibility: The World's Most Famous Hacker Teaches You How to Be Safe in the Age of Big Brother and Big Data
        • Andrew Monaghan, "The New Russian Foreign Policy Concept: Evolving Continuity," Chatham House, 2013 (PDF)
        • Milton Mueller, Will the Internet Fragment? Sovereignty, Globalization and Cyberspace
        • Tom Nichols, The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters
        • David Ronfeldt, Beware the Hubris-Nemesis Complex: A Concept for Leadership Analysis
        • Thomas Rid, Rise of the Machines: A Cybernetic History
        • Gabriel Sherman, The Loudest Voice in the Room: How the Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News--and Divided a Country
        • Doug Stanhope, Digging Up Mother: A Love Story
        • Doug Stanhope, This Is Not Fame: A "From What I Re-Memoir"
        • Charles Stross, Halting State
        • Charles Stross, Rule 34
        • Sarah Vowell, Unfamiliar Fishes
        • Timothy Walton, Challenges in Intelligence Analysis: Lessons from 1300 BCE to the Present
        • Kristan J. Wheaton and Melonie K. Richey, Strawman
        • Ilya Zaslavskiy, How Non-State Actors Export Kleptocratic Norms to the West (PDF)
        I may or may not have made progress on a few other books (first four from 2017, next two from 2016, one from 2015,  next three from 2014, next three from 2013, last two still not finished from 2012--I have trouble with e-books, especially very long nonfiction e-books):
        • Helen Nissenbaum, Privacy in Context: Technology, Policy, and the Integrity of Social Life
        • Dana Richards, editor, Dear Martin/Dear Marcello: Gardner and Truzzi on Skepticism
        • Richards J. Heuer, Jr., Structured Analytics Techniques for Intelligence Analysis
        • Louis M. Kaiser, Analytic Writing Guide
        • Andreas Antonopoulos, Mastering Bitcoin: Unlocking Digital Cryptocurrencies (now 2nd ed)
        • Robert M. Gates, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War
        • John Searle, Making the Social World
        • Andrew Jaquith, Security Metrics: Replacing Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt
        • Massimo Pigliucci and Maarten Boudry, Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem
        • Steven Pinker, The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century
        • Richard Bejtlich, The Practice of Network Security Monitoring
        • James Grimmelmann, Internet Law: Cases & Problems (v2; v3 is out now)
        • Douglas Hofstadter and Emmanuel Sander, Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking
        • Mark Dowd, John McDonald, and Justin Schuh, The Art of Software Security Assessment: Identifying and Avoiding Software Vulnerabilities
        • Michal Zalewski, The Tangled Web: A Guide to Securing Modern Web Applications
        Top for 2017:  Rid, Buchanan, Sherman, Mayer, Clarke and Eddy, Conover, Middleton.

        I completed three Coursera courses in 2017, two of which I recommend:


        (Previously: 201620152014201320122011201020092008200720062005.)

        Sunday, January 01, 2017

        Books read in 2016

        Not much blogging going on here still, but here's my annual list of books read for 2016. Items with hyperlinks are linked directly to the item online (usually PDF, some of these are reports rather than books), with no paywall or fee.
        • Andreas Antonopoulos, The Internet of Money
        • Herbert Asbury, The Gangs of New York: An Informal History of the Underworld
        • Rob Brotherton, Suspicious Minds: Why We Believe Conspiracy Theories
        • Center for Cyber & Homeland Security, Into the Gray Zone: The Private Sector and Active Defense Against Cyber Threats
        • Michael D'Antonio, Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success
        • Henning Diedrich, Ethereum: Blockchains, Digital Assets, Smart Contracts, Decentralized Autonomous Organizations
        • Martin Ford, Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future
        • Emma A. Jane and Chris Fleming, Modern Conspiracy: The Importance of Being Paranoid
        • Roger Z. George and James B. Bruce, editors, Analyzing Intelligence: Origins, Obstacles, and Innovations
        • Peter Gutmann, Engineering Security
        • House Homeland Security Committee, Going Dark, Going Forward: A Primer on the Encryption Debate
        • Dr. Rob Johnston, Analytic Culture in the U.S. Intelligence Community: An Ethnographic Study
        • R.V. Jones, Most Secret War
        • Fred Kaplan, Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War
        • Maria Konnikova, The Confidence Game: Why We Fall for It...Every Time
        • Adam Lee, hilarious blog commentary on Atlas Shrugged
        • Deborah Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory
        • Dan Lyons, Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Startup Bubble
        • Geoff Manaugh, A Burglar's Guide to the City
        • Felix Martin, Money: The Unauthorized Biography--From Coinage to Cryptocurrencies
        • Nathaniel Popper, Digital Gold: Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money
        • John Allen Paulos, A Numerate Life: A Mathematician Explores the Vagaries of Life, His Own and Probably Yours
        • Mary Roach, Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War
        • Jon Ronson, The Elephant in the Room: A Journey into the Trump Campaign and the "Alt-Right"
        • Oliver Sacks, On the Move: A Life
        • Luc Sante, Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York
        • Adam Segal, The Hacked World Order: How Nations Fight, Trade, Maneuver, and Manipulate in the Digital Age
        • Steve Silberman, NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity
        • Richard Stiennon, There Will Be Cyberwar: How the Move to Network-Centric War Fighting Has Set the Stage for Cyberwar
        • Russell G. Swenson, editor, Bringing Intelligence About: Practitioners Reflect on Best Practices
        • U.S. Army Special Operations Command, "Little Green Men": A Primer on Modern Russian Unconventional Warfare, Ukraine, 2013-2014
        • Joseph E. Uscinski and Joseph M. Parent, American Conspiracy Theories
        • Paul Vigna and Michael J. Casey, The Age of Crypto Currency: How Bitcoin and the Blockchain Are Challenging the Global Economic Order
        I made progress on a few other books (first four from 2016, one from 2015,  next three from 2014, next three from 2013, last two still not finished from 2012--I have trouble with e-books, especially very long nonfiction e-books):
        • Andreas Antonopoulos, Mastering Bitcoin: Unlocking Digital Cryptocurrencies
        • Robert M. Gates, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War
        • Jocelyn Godwin, Upstate Cauldron: Eccentric Spiritual Movements in Early New York State
        • Thomas Rid, Rise of the Machines: A Cybernetic History
        • John Searle, Making the Social World
        • Andrew Jaquith, Security Metrics: Replacing Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt
        • Massimo Pigliucci and Maarten Boudry, Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem
        • Steven Pinker, The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century
        • Richard Bejtlich, The Practice of Network Security Monitoring
        • James Grimmelmann, Internet Law: Cases & Problems (v2; v3 is out now)
        • Douglas Hofstadter and Emmanuel Sander, Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking
        • Mark Dowd, John McDonald, and Justin Schuh, The Art of Software Security Assessment: Identifying and Avoiding Software Vulnerabilities
        • Michal Zalewski, The Tangled Web: A Guide to Securing Modern Web Applications
        Top ten for 2016:  Sacks, Silberman, Jane & Fleming, Konnikova, Manaugh, Lyons, Popper, Uscinski & Parent, Jones, Lipstadt.

        (Previously: 20152014201320122011201020092008200720062005.)

        Friday, January 01, 2016

        Books read in 2015

        Not much blogging going on here lately, but here's my annual list of books read for 2015:
        • George A. Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller, Phishing for Phools: The Economics of Manipulation & Deception
        • Jeffrey S Bardin, The Illusion of Due Diligence: Notes from the CISO Underground
        • Bill Browder, Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice
        • Ron Chernow, Alexander Hamilton
        • Gabriella Coleman, Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous
        • Karen Dawisha, Putin's Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia?
        • Laura DeNardis, The Global War for Internet Governance
        • Daniel C. Dennett and Linda LaScola, Caught in the Pulpit: Leaving Belief Behind
        • Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky, Risk and Culture: An Essay on the Selection of Technological and Environmental Dangers
        • William J. Drake and Monroe Price, editors, Internet Governance: The NETmundial Roadmap
        • Jon Friedman and Mark Bouchard, Definitive Guide to Cyber Threat Intelligence
        • Marc Goodman, Future Crimes: Everything is Connected, Everyone is Vulnerable, and What We Can Do About It
        • Marc Hallet, A Critical Appraisal of George Adamski: The Man Who Spoke to the Space Brothers
        • Shane Harris, @War: The Rise of the Military-Internet Complex
        • Peter T. Leeson, The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates
        • Reed Massengill, Becoming American Express: 150 Years of Reinvention and Customer Service
        • James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales, Live From New York: The Complete, Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live, as Told By Its Stars, Writers, and Guests (two new chapters)
        • David T. Moore, Critical Thinking and Intelligence Analysis
        • Richard E. Nisbett, Mindware: Tools for Smart Thinking
        • Tony Ortega, The Unbreakable Miss Lovely: How the Church of Scientology Tried to Destroy Paulette Cooper
        • Whitney Phillips, This is Why We Can't Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship Between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture
        • Joseph M. Reagle, Jr., Reading the Comments: Likers, Haters, and Manipulators at the Bottom of the Web
        • Jon Ronson, Lost at Sea: The Jon Ronson Mysteries
        • Jon Ronson, So You've Been Publicly Shamed
        • Bruce Schneier, Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World
        • P.W. Singer and Allan Friedman, Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know
        • David Skarbek, The Social Order of the Underworld: How Prison Gangs Govern the American Penal System
        • Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, The Red Web: The Struggle Between Russia's Digital Dictators and the New Online Revolutionaries
        • Philip E. Tetlock and Dan Gardner, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction
        • Richard H. Thaler, Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics
        I made progress on a few other books (first two last year,  next four from 2014, next three from 2013, last two still not finished from 2012--I have trouble with very long nonfiction e-books):
        • Roger Z. George and James B. Bruce, editors, Analyzing Intelligence: Origins, Obstacles, and Innovations
        • John Searle, Making the Social World
        • Peter Gutmann, Engineering Security
        • Andrew Jaquith, Security Metrics: Replacing Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt
        • Massimo Pigliucci and Maarten Boudry, Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem
        • Steven Pinker, The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century
        • Richard Bejtlich, The Practice of Network Security Monitoring
        • James Grimmelmann, Internet Law: Cases & Problems (v2; v3 is out now)
        • Douglas Hofstadter and Emmanuel Sander, Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking
        • Mark Dowd, John McDonald, and Justin Schuh, The Art of Software Security Assessment: Identifying and Avoiding Software Vulnerabilities
        • Michal Zalewski, The Tangled Web: A Guide to Securing Modern Web Applications
        Top ten for 2015:  Browder, Chernow, Coleman, Ronson (Shamed), Schneier, Phillips, Nisbett, Ortega, Miller and Shales, Thaler. I bought and read Bardin's book because Richard Bejtlich identified it as a "train wreck," and it was.

        (Previously: 2014201320122011201020092008200720062005.)

        Monday, July 20, 2015

        Al Seckel exposed

        "I believe that we are rapidly transitioning from an Age of Information to an Age of Misinformation, and in many cases, outright disinformation." -- Al Seckel, in an interview published on Jeffrey Epstein's website, "Jeffrey Epstein Talks Perception with Al Seckel"

        Mark Oppenheimer's long-awaited exposé on Al Seckel, "The Illusionist," has now been published and I urge all skeptics to read it. Seckel, the former head of the Southern California Skeptics and a CSICOP Scientific and Technical Consultant who was listed as a "physicist" in every issue of the Skeptical Inquirer from vol. 11, no. 2 (Winter 1987-88) to vol. 15, no. 2 (Winter 1991) despite having no degree in physics, has long been known among skeptical insiders as a person who was misrepresenting himself and taking advantage of others. Most have remained silent over fear of litigation, which Seckel has engaged in successfully in the past.

        An example of a legal threat from Seckel is this email he sent to me on May 27, 2014:
        Dear Jim,
        News has once again reached me that you are acting as Tom McIver's proxy in
        spreading misinformation and disinformation about me. Please be aware that
        I sued McIver in a Court of Law for Defamation and Slander, and after a
        very lengthy discovery process, which involved showing that he fabricated
        letters from my old professors (who provided notarized statements that they
        did not ever state nor write the letters that McIver circulated, and the
        various treasures who were in control of the financial books of the
        skeptics, also came forth and testified that no money was taken, and McIver
        was unable to prove any of his allegations. The presiding Judge stated that
        this was the "worst case of slander and defamation" that he had ever seen.
        Nevertheless, even with such a Court Order he is persisting, and using (and
        I mean the term "using") you to further propagate erroneous misinformation.
        Lately, he has been making his defamatory comments again various people,
        and posting links to a news release article by the Courthouse News (a press
        release service) that reports the allegations set forth in complaints. Just
        because something is "alleged" does not mean it is True. It has to be
        proven in a Court of Law. In this case, after a lengthy discovery process
        (and I keep excellent records) the opposite of what was alleged was
        discovered, and the opposing counsel "amicably" dismissed their charges
        against me. The case was officially dismissed. In fact, the opposing
        counsel has been active in trying to get the Courthouse News to actively
        remove the entire article, and not just add a footnote at the end.
        I note that you have been trying to add this link to my wikipedia page. I
        have never met you, and am not interested in fighting with you. I am
        attaching the official Court document that this case was filed for
        dismissal by the opposing counsel. You can verify yourself that this is an
        accurate document with the Court. So, once again, McIver has used you.
        My attorneys are now preparing a Criminal Complaint against McIver for so
        openly violating the Court Order (it is now a criminal offense), and will
        once again open the floodgates of a slander and defamation lawsuit against
        him and his family, and anyone else, who aids him willing in this process.
        This time he will not have his insurance company cover his defense. This
        time that axe will come down hard on him.
        For now, I will just think you are victim, but please remove any and all
        references to me on any of your websites, and that will be the end of it.
        You don't want to be caught in the crossfire.
        Yours sincerely,
        Al Seckel
        --
        Al Seckel
        Cognitive neuroscientist, author, speaker
        Contrary to what Seckel writes, we have, in fact, met--I believe it was during the CSICOP conference, April 3-4, 1987, in Pasadena, California.  I am not an agent of Tom McIver, the anthropologist, librarian, and author of the wonderful reference book cataloging anti-evolution materials, Anti-Evolution, who Seckel sued for defamation in 2007, in a case that was settled out of court (see Oppenheimer's article). I have never met Tom McIver, though I hope I will be able to do so someday--he seems to me to be a man of good character, integrity, and honesty.

        The news release Seckel mentions is regarding a lawsuit filed by Ensign Consulting Ltd. in 2011 against Seckel charging him with fraud, which is summarized online on the Courthouse News Service website. I wrote a brief account of the case based on that news article on Seckel's Wikipedia page in an edit on March 13, 2011, but it was deleted by another editor in less than an hour.  Seckel is correct that just because something is alleged does not mean that it is true; my summary was clear that these were accusations made in a legal filing.

        Seckel and his wife, Isabel Maxwell (daughter of the deceased British-Czech media mogul, Robert Maxwell), rather than fighting the suit or showing up for depositions, filed for bankruptcy.  Ensign filed a motion in their bankruptcy case on December 2, 2011, repeating the fraud allegations.  But as Seckel notes, Ensign did dismiss their case in 2014 prior to his sending me the above email.

        So why should anyone care?  Who is Al Seckel, and what was he worried that I might be saying about him? This is mostly answered by the Oppenheimer article, but there is quite a bit more that could be said, and more than what I will say here to complement "The Illusionist."

        Al Seckel was the founder and executive director of the Southern California Skeptics, a Los Angeles area skeptics group that met at Caltech.  This was one of the earliest local skeptical groups, with a large membership and prominent scientists on its advisory board.  Seckel has published numerous works including editing two collections of Bertrand Russell's writings for Prometheus Books (both reviewed negatively in the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies, see here and here).  He has given a TED talk on optical illusions and authored a book with the interesting title, Masters of Deception, which has a forward by Douglas R. Hofstadter.  Seckel was an undergraduate at Cornell University, and developed an association with a couple of cognitive psychology labs at Caltech--in 1998 the New York Times referred to him as a "research associate at the Shimojo Psychophysics Laboratory." His author bios have described him as author of the monthly Neuroquest column at Discover magazine ("About the Author" on Masters of Deception; Seckel has never written that column), as "a physicist and molecular biologist" (first page of Seckel's contribution, "A New Age of Obfuscation and Manipulation" in Robert Basil, editor, Not Necessarily the New Age, 1988, Prometheus Books, pp. 386-395; Seckel is neither a physicist nor a molecular biologist), and, in his TED talk bio, as having left Caltech to continue his work "in spatial imagery with psychology researchers as Harvard" (see Oppenheimer's exchanges with Kosslyn, who has never met or spoken with him and Ganis, who says he has exchanged email with him but not worked with him).

        At Cornell, Seckel associated with L. Pearce Williams, a professor of history of science, who had interesting things to say when McIver asked him about their relationship. While in at least one conference bio, Seckel is listed as having been Carl Sagan's teaching assistant, I do not believe that was the case. The Cornell registrar reported in 1991 in response to a query from Pat Linse that Seckel only attended for two semesters and a summer session, though a few places on the web list him as a Cornell alumnus.

        Seckel used to hang out at Caltech with Richard Feynman. As the late Helen Tuck, Feyman's administrative assistant, wrote in 1991, Seckel "latched on to Feynman like a leach [sic]." Tuck wrote that she became suspicious of Seckel, and contacted Cornell to find that he did not have a degree from that institution. You can see her full letter, written in response to a query from Tom McIver, here.

        As the head of the Southern California Skeptics, Seckel managed to get a column in the Los Angeles Times, titled "Skeptical Eye." Most of his columns were at least partially plagiarized from the work of others, including his column on Sunny the counting dalmation (plagiarized from Robert Sheaffer), his column on tabloid psychics' predictions for 1987 (also plagiarized from Sheaffer), and his column about Martin Reiser's tests of psychic detectives (plagiarized directly from Reiser's work). When Seckel plagiarized Sheaffer, it was brought to the attention of Kent Harker, editor of the Bay Area Skeptics Information Sheet (BASIS), who contacted Seckel about it. Seckel apparently told Harker that Sheaffer had given his permission to allow publication of his work under Seckel's name, which Sheaffer denied when Harker asked. This led to Harker writing to Seckel in 1988 to tell him about Sheaffer's denial, and inform him that he, Seckel, was no longer welcome to reprint any material from BASIS in LASER, the Southern California Skeptics' newsletter. While most skeptical groups gave each other blanket permission to reprint each others' material with attribution, Harker explicitly retracted this permission for Seckel.

        This is, I think, a good case study in how the problem of "affiliate fraud"--being taken in by deception by a member of a group you self-identify with--can be possible for skeptics, scientists, and other educated people, just as it is for the more commonly publicized cases of affiliate fraud within religious organizations.

        This just scratches the surface of the Seckel story. I hope that those who have been fearful of litigation from Seckel will realize that, given the Oppenheimer story, now is an opportune time for multiple people to come forward and offer each other mutual support that was unhappily unavailable for Tom McIver eight years ago.

        (BTW, one apparent error in the Oppenheimer piece--I am unaware of Richard Feynman lending his name for use by a skeptical group. He was never, for example, a CSICOP Fellow, though I'm sure they asked him just as they asked Murray Gell-Mann, who has been listed as a CSICOP Fellow since Skeptical Inquirer vol. 9, no. 3, Spring 1985.)

        "Oh, like everyone else, I used to parrot, and on occasion, still do." -- Al Seckel (interview with Jeffrey Epstein)

        Corrected 22 July 2015--original mistakenly said Maxwell was Australian.

        Update 22 September 2015--an obituary has been published for Al Seckel, stating that he died in France on an unspecified date earlier this year, but there are as yet no online French death records nor French news stories reporting his death. The obituary largely mirrors content put up on alseckel.net, a domain that was registered on September 18 by a user using Perfect Privacy LLC (domaindiscreet.com) to hide their information. (That in itself is not suspicious, it is generally a good practice for individuals who own domain names to protect their privacy with such mechanisms and I do it myself.)

        Update 24 September 2015: French police, via the U.S. consulate, confirmed the death of Al Seckel on July 1, 2015. His body was found at the bottom of a cliff in the village of Saint-Cirq-Lapopie.

        Update 21 December 2015: A timeline of Al Seckel's activities may be found here.

        Update 14 April 2022: Al Seckel's death has been declared a suicide.

        Thursday, January 01, 2015

        Books read in 2014

        Not much blogging going on here lately, but here's my annual list of books read for 2014:
        • James Altucher, The Choose Yourself Stories
        • Nate Anderson, The Internet Police: How Crime Went Online, and the Cops Followed
        • David V. Barrett, A Brief History of Secret Societies: An Unbiased History of Our Desire for Secret Knowledge
        • Peter Burke, A Social History of Knowledge, vol. 2, From the Encyclopedie to Wikipedia
        • Danielle Keats Citron, Hate Crimes in Cyberspace
        • Harry Collins, Are We All Scientific Experts Now?
        • Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22
        • Christopher Hitchens, Mortality
        • Bruce E. Hunsberger and Bob Altemeyer, Atheists: A Groundbreaking Study of America's Nonbelievers
        • Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs
        • Brian Krebs, Spam Nation: The Inside Story of Organized Cybercrime--From Global Epidemic to Your Front Door
        • Kembrew McLeod, Pranksters: Making Mischief in the Modern World
        • China Miéville, The City and the City
        • Roger Pielke, Jr., The Climate Fix: What Scientists and Politicians Won't Tell You About Global Warming
        • Michael Sacasas, The Tourist and the Pilgrim: Essays on Life and Technology in the Digital Age
        • Oliver Sacks, Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood
        • James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed
        • Karen Stollznow, God Bless America: Strange and Unusual Religious Beliefs and Practices in the United States
        • Daniel Suarez, Daemon
        • Daniel Suarez, Freedom
        • Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile
        • Sabrina Verney, XTUL: An Experience of The Process
        • Timothy Wyllie, Love Sex Fear Death: The Inside Story of the Process Church of the Final Judgment
        • Kim Zetter, Countdown to Zero Day: Stuxnet and the Launch of the World's First Digital Weapon
        I made progress on a few other books (first five this year, next four from last year, last two still not finished from two years ago):
        • Gabriella Coleman, Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous
        • Peter Gutmann, Engineering Security
        • Andrew Jaquith, Security Metrics: Replacing Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt
        • Massimo Pigliucci and Maarten Boudry, Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem
        • Steven Pinker, The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century
        • Richard Bejtlich, The Practice of Network Security Monitoring
        • Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky, Risk and Culture: An Essay on the Selection of Technological and Environmental Dangers
        • James Grimmelmann, Internet Law: Cases & Problems (v2; v3 is out now)
        • Douglas Hofstadter and Emmanuel Sander, Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking
        • Mark Dowd, John McDonald, and Justin Schuh, The Art of Software Security Assessment: Identifying and Avoiding Software Vulnerabilities
        • Michal Zalewski, The Tangled Web: A Guide to Securing Modern Web Applications
        Top ten for 2014:  Sacks, Miéville, Isaacson, Hitchens (both), Wyllie, Zetter, Collins, Pielke Jr., Pigliucci and Boudry.

        (Previously: 201320122011201020092008200720062005.)

        Wednesday, January 01, 2014

        Books read in 2013

        Not much blogging going on here lately, but here's my annual list of books read for 2013:
        • Ross Anderson, Security Engineering: A Guide to Building Dependable Distributed Systems (2nd ed)
        • Deborah Blum, Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death
        • Peter Burke, A Social History of Knowledge: From Gutenberg to Diderot
        • J.C. Carleson, Work Like a Spy: Business Tips from a Former CIA Officer
        • Ronald J. Deibert, Black Code: Inside the Battle for Cyberspace
        • Daniel Dennett, Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking
        • Cory Doctorow, Homeland
        • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Sherlock Holmes (re-read, thanks to free Kindle edition)
        • Roger Ebert, Life Itself: A Memoir
        • John Forester, Novelist & Storyteller: The Life of C.S. Forester, vol. 1 & vol. 2
        • Martin Gardner, Undiluted Hocus-Pocus: The Autobiography of Martin Gardner
        • Adam Gorightly, The Prankster and the Conspiracy: The Story of Kerry Thornley and How He Met Oswald and Inspired the Counterculture
        • Jason Healey, editor, A Fierce Domain: Conflict in Cyberspace, 1986 to 2012
        • Jenna Miscavige Hill: Beyond Belief: My Secret Life Inside Scientology and My Harrowing Escape
        • Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow
        • Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, and George Spafford, The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win
        • Dani Kollin and Eytan Kollin, The Unincorporated Man
        • Jon Krakauer, Three Cups of Deceit: How Greg Mortenson, Humanitarian Hero, Lost His Way
        • Phil Lapsley, Exploding the Phone: The Untold Story of the Teenagers and Outlaws Who Hacked Ma Bell
        • Daniel Loxton and Donald R. Prothero, Abominable Science! Origins of the Yeti, Nessie, and Other Famous Cryptids
        • David W. Maurer, The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Men
        • Philip Metcalfe, Whispering Wires: The Tragic Tale of an American Bootlegger
        • Torin Monahan, editor, Surveillance and Security: Technological Politics and Power in Everyday Life
        • Dale K. Myers, With Malice: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Murder of Officer J.D. Tippit
        • Adam Penenberg, Virtually True
        • Lewis Pinault, Consulting Demons: Inside the Unscrupulous World of Corporate Consulting
        • Stephen Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
        • Ann Rowe Seaman, America's Most Hated Woman: The Life and Gruesome Death of Madalyn Murray O'Hair
        • Karl Sabbagh, Shooting Star: The Brief and Brilliant Life of Frank Ramsey
        • Oliver Sacks, Hallucinations
        • Jim Schnabel, Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies
        • Tom Standage, Writing on the Wall: Social Media, The First 2,000 Years
        • Will Storr, Heretics: Adventures with the Enemies of Science
        • John Sweeney, The Church of Fear: Inside the Weird World of Scientology
        • Jesse Walker, The United States of Paranoia: A Conspiracy Theory
        • Lawrence Wright, Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, & the Prison of Belief
        I made progress on a few other books (first three still not finished from last year):
        • Mark Dowd, John McDonald, and Justin Schuh, The Art of Software Security Assessment: Identifying and Avoiding Software Vulnerabilities
        • James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed
        • Michal Zalewski, The Tangled Web: A Guide to Securing Modern Web Applications
        • Richard Bejtlich, The Practice of Network Security Monitoring
        • Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky, Risk and Culture: An Essay on the Selection of Technological and Environmental Dangers
        • James Grimmelmann, Internet Law: Cases & Problems (v2; v3 is out now)
        • Douglas Hofstadter and Emmanuel Sander, Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking
        Top ten for 2013:  Ebert, Kahneman, Wright, Anderson, Pinker, Seaman, Walker, Sacks, Deibert, Dennett.  Runners Up: Blum, Kim, Miscavige Hill.

        (Previously: 2012, 2011201020092008200720062005.)

        Tuesday, January 01, 2013

        Books read in 2012


        Books read in 2012:
        • Scott Atran, In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion
        • Andrew Blum, Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet
        • Henry A. Crumpton, The Art of Intelligence: Lessons from a Life in the CIA's Clandestine Service
        • Robin Dreeke, It's Not All About "Me": The Top Ten Techniques for Building Quick Rapport with Anyone
        • David Edmonds and John Eidinow, Rousseau's Dog: Two Great Thinkers at War in the Age of Enlightenment
        • Bart D. Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth
        • Misha Glenny, DarkMarket: How Hackers Became the New Mafia
        • Grant Foster, Noise: Lies, Damned Lies, and Denial of Global Warming
        • Torkel Franzén, Gödel's Theorem: An Incomplete Guide to Its Use and Abuse
        • Andy Greenberg, This Machine Kills Secrets: How WikiLeakers, Cypherpunks, and Hacktivists Aim to Free the World's Information
        • James Hannam, God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science
        • Sam Harris, Lying
        • Joseph Heath, Economics Without Illusions: Debunking the Myths of Modern Capitalism
        • Edward Humes: Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion, and the Battle for America's Soul
        • Ronald Kessler, The Secrets of the FBI
        • Susan Landau, Surveillance or Security? The Risks Posed by New Wiretapping Technologies
        • Declan McHugh, Bloody London: A Shocking Guide to London's Gruesome Past and Present
        • Robert A. Melikian, Vanishing Phoenix
        • Mike McRae, Tribal Science: Brains, Beliefs, and Bad Ideas
        • P.T. Mistlberger, The Three Dangerous Magi: Osho, Gurdjieff, Crowley
        • Evgeny Morozov, The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom
        • Eduardo Obregón Pagán, Historic Photos of Phoenix
        • Parmy Olson, We Are Anonymous: Inside the Hacker World of LulzSec, Anonymous, and the Global Cyber Insurgency
        • Bruce Schneier, Liars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust that Society Needs to Thrive
        • Ali H. Soufan, with Daniel Freedman, The Black Banners: The Inside Story of 9/11 and the War Against Al-Qaeda
        • Neal Stephenson, REAMDE
        • Cole Stryker, Epic Win for Anonymous: How 4chan's Army Conquered the Web
        • Tim Weiner: Enemies: A History of the FBI
        • Jon Winokur (compiler & editor), The Big Curmudgeon
        • Tim Wu, The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires
        I made substantial progress on a few large books:
        • Ross Anderson, Security Engineering: A Guide to Building Dependable Distributed Systems (2nd ed)
        • Mark Dowd, John McDonald, and Justin Schuh, The Art of Software Security Assessment: Identifying and Avoiding Software Vulnerabilities
        • Stephen Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
        • James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed
        • Michal Zalewski, The Tangled Web: A Guide to Securing Modern Web Applications

        (Previously: 2011201020092008200720062005.)

        Saturday, September 22, 2012

        Capitalist vs. socialist bombs

        While reading Ross Anderson's massive tome, Security Engineering: A Guide to Building Dependable Systems (second edition), I came across this paragraph in section 19.7 on "Directed Energy Weapons" (p. 584):
        Western concern about EMP grew after the Soviet Union started a research program on non-nuclear EMP weapons in the mid-80s.  At the time, the United States was deploying 'neutron bombs' in Europe--enhanced radiation weapons that could kill people without demolishing buildings.  The Soviets portrayed this as a 'capitalist bomb' which would destroy people while leaving property intact, and responded by threatening a 'socialist bomb' to destroy property (in the form of electronics) while leaving the surrounding people intact.
        This reminded me of a science fiction story I read in Omni magazine at about the time in question, which Google reveals was "Returning Home" by Ian Watson in the December 1982 issue.  In the story, the Americans and the Soviets attacked each other, the Americans using neutron bombs which killed all of the Soviets, and the Soviets using some kind of bomb which destroyed essentially everything except the people.  The ending twist was that the surviving Americans ended up migrating to the Soviet Union and adopting the Soviet culture.

        Saturday, December 31, 2011

        Books Read in 2011

        I picked up the pace a bit in 2011, with a little help from acquiring a Kindle in July...

        Books read in 2011:
        • David Allen, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
        • Dan Ariely, The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic
        • Kevin Behr, Gene Kim, and George Spafford, The Visible Ops Handbook: Implementing ITIL in 4 Practical and Auditable Steps
        • John W. Creswell, Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches, Third Edition
        • Gordon R. Dickson, The Alien Way 
        • Daniel Domscheit-Berg, Inside Wikileaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World's Most Dangerous Website
        • John Duignan with Nicola Tallant, The Complex: An Insider Exposes the Covert World of the Church of Scientology
        • Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piatelli-Palmarini, What Darwin Got Wrong, Updated Edition 
        •  Floyd J. Fowler, Jr., Survey Research Methods, 4th Edition
        • Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin 
        • Jefferson Hawkins, Counterfeit Dreams: One Man's Journey into and out of the World of Scientology
        • Alan Haworth, Anti-Libertarianism: Markets, Philosophy and Myth
        • Marc Headley, Blown for Good: Behind Scientology's Iron Curtain
        • Gene Kim, Paul Love, and George Spafford, Visible Ops Security: Achieving Common Security and IT Operations in 4 Practical Steps
        • Jon Krakauer, Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith
        • Peter D. Kramer, Should You Leave?
        • Lawrence M. Krauss, Quantum Man: Richard Feynman's Life in Science
        • Patrick Lencioni, The Three Signs of a Miserable Job: A Fable for Managers (and their employees) 
        • Stephen L. Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde, Sleights of Mind: What the Neuroscience of Magic Reveals About Our Everyday Deceptions
        • Nancy Many, My Billion Year Contract: Memoir of a Former Scientologist 
        • Robert McLuhan, Randi's Prize: What Sceptics Say About the Paranormal, Why They Are Wrong and Why It Matters
        • Ben Mezrich, The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal
        • Delbert C. Miller and Neil J. Salkind, Handbook of Research Design & Social Measurement, 6th Edition
        • Kevin Mitnick with William L. Simon, Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World's Most Wanted Hacker 
        • Harry Markopolos, No One Would Listen: A True Financial Thriller
        • Milton L. Mueller, Networks and States: The Global Politics of Internet Governance
        • Ronald L. Numbers, Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths About Science and Religion
        • Judith Pintar and Steven Jay Lynn, Hypnosis: A Brief History
        • Kevin Poulsen, Kingpin: How One Hacker Took Over the Billion-Dollar Cybercrime Underground 
        • Janet Reitman, Inside Scientology: The Story of America's Most Secretive Religion
        • Mary Roach, Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void
        • Jon Ronson, The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry 
        • Benjamin Rosenbaum and Cory Doctorow, True Names
        • Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
        • David Schmidtz and Robert E. Goodin, Social Welfare and Individual Responsibility: For and Against 
        • Amy Scobee, Scientology: Abuse at the Top
        • Robert Sellers, Hellraisers: The Life and Inebriated Times of Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Peter O'Toole, and Oliver Reed
        • Tom Standage, The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's On-Line Pioneers
        • John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley in Search of America 
        • Jim Steinmeyer, The Last Greatest Magician in the World: Howard Thurston versus Houdini & the Battles of the American Wizards
        • Donald Sturrock, Storyteller: The Authorized Biography of Roald Dahl
        • Nassim Nicolas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (Second Edition)
        • Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 
        • Hugh B. Urban, The Church of Scientology: A History of a New Religion
        (Previously: 2010, 20092008200720062005.)

        Saturday, September 03, 2011

        The origins of Screaming Trees?

        Here's a famous photograph of pulp fiction author and Scientology creator L. Ron Hubbard holding a tomato plant connected to an E-Meter.  Hubbard claimed in 1968 that tomatoes would "scream when sliced," as detected by the E-Meter. [UPDATE: The photo appeared in "30 Dumb Inventions" on Life magazine's website, attributed to the Evening Standard of January 1, 1968, but the claims and the photo appear to be from 1959, see below.]

        Hubbard was likely inspired by Cleve Backster, who had made similar claims based on connecting plants to a polygraph starting in 1966.  Backster published his claims in the Journal of Parapsychology in 1968, and his work was subsequently popularized in the 1973 book, The Secret Life of Plants.

        I wonder, however, whether the inspiration for both of these crackpots came from a piece of fiction in the September 17, 1949 issue of The New Yorker--Roald Dahl's "The Sound Machine," which is reprinted in numerous short story collections, including his volume Someone Like You (1973). In this tale, a man named Klausner, obsessed with sounds beyond the ability of human beings to hear, builds a machine to convert higher pitches into human-audible sounds.  He discovers, to his horror, that plants and trees shriek with pain when cut.

        Does anyone know of any documented references from Hubbard or Backster to Dahl?  Or is there another common ancestor I've missed?

        My title includes a reference to the Seattle-area grunge band, Screaming Trees, whose Wikipedia entry doesn't comment on the origin of their name--but Dahl's story seems a likely inspiration there, too.

        UPDATE (6 February 2013): It looks like the Hubbard photo pre-dates Backster, and was likely taken in 1959 or 1960!  It prompted a feature titled "PLANTS DO WORRY AND FEEL PAIN." in the December 18, 1959 Garden News.

        UPDATE (10 February 2013): David Hambling's "The Secret Life of Plants" in the December 2012 issue of Fortean Times (p. 18) points out that Charles Darwin's 1880 The Power of Movement in Plants suggested that plants have something like a nervous system, and that Jagadish Chandra Bose published a 1907 paper on the electrophysiology of plants.  He puts Backster before Hubbard, making the same mistake of dating Hubbard's claims by the Life magazine photo caption.

        Backster, by the way, was inspired by Bose's work.  He says that he started his work with plants on February 2, 1966, as reported in the introduction of his "Evidence of a Primary Perception in Plant Life," International Journal of Parapsychology, Vol. X, No. 4, Winter 1968, pp. 329-348.

        UPDATE (21 October 2021): On a 1966 episode of the Joe Pyne Show, in discussion with Lewis Marvin, Pyne asserted that it has been scientifically proven that tomatoes scream when cut, likely referencing Backster.

        UPDATE (5 December 2022): Not sure how I missed including the Jack Handy "Deep Thoughts" that goes: "If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason."



        Monday, August 22, 2011

        Counterfeit Dreams

        Jeff Hawkins was a Scientologist and member of the Sea Org from 1967 to 2005.  He was responsible for 1980s marketing campaigns that brought L. Ron Hubbard's book Dianetics back to the New York Times bestseller lists.  Beginning in 2008, he wrote a book-length series of blog posts about his experiences which has led to many further defections from the Church of Scientology. The blog posts have been edited into a hardback book, one of several by long-time high-ranking recent defectors (others include Nancy Many's My Billion-Year Contract, Marc Headley's Blown For Good, and Amy Scobee's Abuse at the Top).

        I've read the first few chapters at his blog--it's quite well-written and the comments from others who have shared some of his experiences are fascinating.

        Sunday, May 08, 2011

        Chris Rodda's Liars for Jesus available free online

        After witnessing the despicable pseudo-historian David Barton on "The Daily Show," inadequately rebutted by Jon Stewart, author Chris Rodda decided to take action.  She's giving away her book, Liars for Jesus, which carefully documents the historical revisionism of Barton and others, online as a PDF.

        You can download Rodda's book here.  You can also purchase a paper or Kindle copy of the book from Amazon.com.

        Rodda depends on income from her book, but felt it was important enough to give it away.  I suspect she'll see an increase in sales along with the free distribution.

        UPDATE:
        Rodda's book seems to be selling well:

        Paperback:

        Kindle:

        Friday, December 31, 2010

        Books Read in 2010

        This was a good year for getting a lot of reading done, including a number of fairly lengthy books, thanks to going back to school full-time for the fall of 2009 and spring of 2010.

        Books read in 2010:
        (Previously: 20092008, 2007, 2006, 2005.)