Positively Fifth Street

A great story about murder, poker, and the WSOP tournament.

The Paypal Wars

A great novel for the entrepreneur. Eric Jackson's down-to-earth biography of Paypal's history from founding to consumption by eBay is a great documentation of the trials and tribulations of a 'successful' startup. Perhaps a bit dry at times for the casual reader but for a small businessman like myself, another entrepreneurial story of experiences to complement my own.

Highlights for me is how the 'right' business model can survive all the mistakes of owners and management.

Red Planet - Robert Heinlein

Since I recently reread Stranger in a Strange Land, I thought I'll try one of Heinlein's earlier works that I've never read before. There is so much interesting trivia about Heinlein's books. Even for this juvenile scifi there is this article that talks about all the editing done in the original 1949 edition.

Red Planet was one of Heinlein's earlier works and a nice quick read. The text is at a 'juvenile' level yet in the plot, there is already Heinlein's trademark commentary on societal issues, group dynamics, and abuse of corporate power.

Gödel's Proof

Gödel's Proof is short 118 page essay that explains and introduces in as near layman's terms as possible, Godel's Incompeteness Theorem. The short of it is that Gödel's therem shows that there is a fundamental limit to any formal axiomatic system; like those that try to formalize mathematics.

This is a profound statement in philosophy, logic, and mathematics since it means that no absolute proof of consistency for a deductive system (like mathematics) is possible by that system. Thus there is an endless number of true statements that cannot be formally deduced from any given set of axioms by a closed set of rules of inference. It does not mean however that there cannot be a possible finitistic proof outside of the system, but even today, no one appears to have an idea of what that proof would be like.

The description of Gödel numbering which is the mapping of all meta-mathematical statements within the calculus of mathematics is very elegantly and clearly explained. And I will never forget that 243,000,000 in Gödel numbering is 0=0.

Stranger in a Strange Land

I haven't read this since high school! This novel beget Grok and thus Groklaw.

I just found out from this essay that this 1961 First edition version of Stanger in a Strange Land is a massively edited version of 160,000 words. An unedited version of 220,000 words was released by the Heinlein estate in 1991. Of course at The Heinlein Society where I found this essay, there is a treasure trove of material!

Some memorable quotes that struck me as I read (for more quotes check out wikiquote):

"[planets] were infected with that oddity of distorted entropy called life"

"Ben is not a winchell! He's a lippmann!"

"don't invent debt that does not exist, or next you will be trying to feel gratitude... 'Gratitude' is a euphemism for resentment... The Japanese have five ways to say 'thank you' - and every one translates as resentment, in various degrees."

"Religion is a solace to many people and it is even conceivable that some religion, somewhere, really is Ultimate Truth. But in many cases, being religious is merely a form of conceit. The Bible Belt faith in which I was brought up encouraged me to think that I was better than the rest of the world; I was 'saved' and they were 'damned' —we were in a state of grace and the rest of the world were 'heathens' and by 'heathen' they meant such people as our brother Mahmoud. It meant that an ignorant, stupid lout who seldom bathed and planted his corn by the phase of the Moon could claim to know the final answers of the Universe. That entitled him to look down his nose at everybody else. Our hymn book was loaded with such arrogance —mindless, conceited, self-congratulation on how cozy we were with the Almighty and what a high opinion he had of us and us alone, and what hell everybody else was going to catch come Judgment Day." - this from the uncut edition, much more lyrical I think.