Books Read in 2005

I read (and completed) the following books in 2005. I've reviewed most of them at Amazon.com (where the links point):

• Richard Abanes, One Nation Under Gods: A History of the Mormon Church
  
• Pascal Boyer, Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought
• Rachel DeWoskin, Foreign Babes in Beijing: Behind the Scenes of a New China
  
• Cory Doctorow, Eastern Standard Tribe
• Mark Haddon, the curious incident of the dog in the night-time
• Michael A. Hiltzik, Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age
  
• Peter W. Huber and Mark P. Mills, The Bottomless Well: The Twilight of Fuel, the Virtue of Waste, and Why We Will Never Run Out of Energy
  
• Penn Jillette, Sock
  
• David Cay Johnston, Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich--and Cheat Everybody Else
  
• Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
  
• Joel Levy, The Scam Handbook: The Secrets of the Con Artist
  
• Richard Marcus, American Roulette: How I Turned the Odds Upside-Down--My Wild Twenty-Five-Year Ride Ripping Off the World's Casinos
  
• John Markoff, What the Dormouse Said: How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry
  
• Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron
  
• Ben Mezrich, Ugly Americans: The True Story of the Ivy League Cowboys Who Raided the Asian Markets for Millions
  
• Kevin D. Mitnick and William L. Simon, The Art of Intrusion: The Real Stories Behind the Exploits of Hackers, Intruders & Deceivers
  
• Matthew Modine, Full Metal Jacket Diary
  
• John Allen Paulos, A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market
  
• V.S. Ramachandran, A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness
  
• Jon Ronson, The Men Who Stare At Goats
  
• Paul Scharbach and John H. Akers, Phoenix: Then and Now
  
• Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko, The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America's Wealthy
  
• Jim Steinmeyer, Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear
  
• Anthony Storr, Feet of Clay: Saints, Sinners, and Madmen: A Study of Gurus
  
• Teller, "When I'm Dead, All This Will Be Yours!"--Joe Teller, a portrait by his kid, Teller
  
• Vicki Lewis Thompson, Nerd Gone Wild
• Ira Winkler, Spies Among Us: How to Stop the Spies, Terrorists, Hackers, and Criminals You Don't Even Know You Encounter Every Day
  
• Richard Yancey, Confessions of a Tax Collector: One Man's Tour of Duty Inside the IRS
  

I began, but haven't yet finished:

• James Bovard, The Bush Betrayal
• Antonio Damasio, Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain
• Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia: The Business of Private Protection
  
• Jennifer Michael Hecht, Doubt: A History
  
• Olivia Judson, Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation
• V.S. Ramachandran and Sandra Blakeslee, Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind
  
• Spammer-X, Inside the Spam Cartel: Trade Secrets from the Dark Side
• Thomas J. Stanley, The Millionaire Mind
• Robert H. Tillman and Michael L. Indergaard, Pump & Dump: The Rancid Rules of the New Economy
• John Viega and Gary McGraw, Building Secure Software: How to Avoid Security Problems the Right Way
• Andrew Vladimirov, Konstantin V. Gavrilenko, Andrei A. Mikhailovsky, WI-FOO: The Secrets of Wireless Hacking

Bush can bypass torture ban

The Boston Globe reports that the "signing statement" issued by George W. Bush after signing the bill outlawing the torture of detainees contains caveats that indicate that the restrictions in the law can be bypassed in situations where he sees fit.

Bush seems to be under the impression that executive powers granted to him as president allow him to violate any law he deems inconvenient.

It's high time for this corrupt, dishonest president to be impeached.

Alito Senate confirmation room anointed with holy oil

Rev. Rob Schenk of the National Clergy Council in D.C., Rev. Patrick Mahoney of the Christian Defense Coalition, and Grace Nwachukwu, general manager of Faith and Action were barred on Thursday from entering the hearing room where the Senate Judiciary Committee will be holding a confirmation hearing for Samuel Alito's nomination to the Supreme Court on Monday. They were permitted to bless the doors--reading three Psalms, kneeling to say the Lord's Prayer in front of the doors, and marking a cross in oil on a door.

They also said that they had actually entered the hearing room a day earlier to anoint the seats with oil. "We did adequately apply oil to all the seats," said Schenk.

Schenk and Mahoney say they had done the same prior to the hearings for Chief Justice John Roberts and were pleased with the results.

Pastor Arrested for Trying to Have Fun

This story, which came to my attention via the No God Zone, has me incensed. When you first read it, you get the impression that the adamantly anti-gay Pastor offered money for homosexual sex (the word "soliciting" along with the word "prostitute", seen in some versions of the story, conveys exactly that, to me).

While you might agree with me that such an act is entirely harmless, it is clearly illegal, so the arrest of the Pastor comes as no surprise (and in spite of the ultimate injustice of such laws, in the case of this particular Pastor, I can't help but exclaim a rousing rendition of Nelson's "Ha-ha!" - especially if he's even half as out of his mind as this wacko). However, as the No God Zone points out, no such offering of money took place.

So, while the Pastor may be - nay, is - a hypocritical asshole, he apparently was arrested and had his car stolen (a.k.a., "civil forfeiture") for simply asking another guy if he wanted to have sex. The real assholes in this story are the cops, who, it seems, just wanted to harass gays out for a good time in Tulsa, while padding their department budget.

Four-year-old boy on "no-fly" terrorist watch list

A four-year-old had trouble getting on a plane in December:

"I don't want to be on the list. I want to fly and see my grandma," the 4-year-old boy said, according to his mother.

Sijollie Allen and her son had trouble boarding planes last month. "Is this a joke?" Allen recalled telling Continental Airlines agents Dec. 21 at Houston's Bush Intercontinental Airport. "You can tell he's not a terrorist!"

She said it took several minutes of pleading and a phone call by the ticket agent to get on the plane to New York.

Allen, a Jamaican immigrant, said workers at La Guardia Airport were even more hard-nosed before their Dec. 26 flight home. She said a ticket agent told her: "You're lucky that we're letting you through instead of putting you through the other process."

Baby Jesus Burning Party

"They were looking for things to do," Det. Ken Kelly said. "They told us, `We were going to have a baby Jesus burning party.'" One suspect told detectives, "We just wanted to see their heads burning," Kelly said.

The baby Jesus figures, now at the police station, were probably stolen from homes and churches around the Sayreville area within the past few weeks, officers said. "It looked like a maternity ward," Lt. Glenn Skarzynski said of the figurines. He added, "Anyone able to identify their particular baby Jesus will be able to be reunited."

(From Jamie Zawinski's blog.)

Mass computerized wiretapping

More on the implications of massive data-mining and computerized interception of voice calls, from FuturePundit and David Friedman.

FuturePundit asks the question, "Would you rather be watched by computers or people?" and suggests that the former is better--but fails to examine the question of whose computers are doing the monitoring and whether they can be trusted not to abuse it.

Miner Miracle: Religious asymmetry in the media

The Boston Herald's front page proclaimed "MINER MIRACLE! America's prayers answered, TWELVE FOUND ALIVE." The media regularly proclaims any glimmer of positive in a disaster as a miracle for which credit should be given to God, but never pins anything negative on him. But will the Herald issue a retraction?

More at Pharyngula.

George Bush hypocrisy on medical marijuana

He was in favor of states deciding the issue for themselves, until he was against it.

There are lots more examples of this kind of hypocrisy across a wide range of issues documented in James Bovard's The Bush Betrayal.

Above link is to Dispatches from the Culture Wars, where readers have offered additional examples in the comments.

Italian court to decide if Jesus existed

While it's not quite as spectacular as the story in James Morrow's Blameless in Abaddon, in which God is put on trial before the International Justice Court for crimes against humanity, an Italian court will be having a hearing to see if atheist Luigi Cascioli can proceed with a case against priest Enrico Righi. The charges are violations of "Abuso di Credulita Popolare" (abuse of popular belief, a law designed to protect against con artists) and "Sostituzione di Persona" (impersonation). Cascioli, who, like defendant Righi is a man in his seventies from the town of Bagnoregio, accuses the priest of fooling the people by teaching that Jesus was a historical figure and that he's his representative. Cascioli is the author of a book, "The Fable of Christ," which argues that Jesus never existed.

The view that Jesus didn't exist is a minority position even among atheists--advocates include G.A. Wells and Earl Doherty (whose book, The Jesus Puzzle, is critically reviewed here by Richard Carrier).