Icosian Reflections

…a tendency to systematize and a keen sense

that we live in a broken world.

IN  WHICH Ross Rheingans-Yoo—a sometime economist, trader, artist, expat, poet, EA, and programmer—writes on things of int­erest.

A Bag Full of Books, a Cache Full of Blogs

I'm leaving on a cruise for spring break, and so will effectively be without Internet until Sunday, March 23. I don't plan to update Faults in that time, though I do hope to get some writing done and have some things to post when I get back. (This is a minor lie; I've got one more post to push out the door later today.)

But, the prospect of being a week without things to read being approximately as appealing as vacationing in the Third Circle of Hades, I'm bringing substantial reading material along. And, because I have a blog and an itch for publicy, here's my reading list (or at least, my carrying-along-like-a-comfort-blanket list):


Fiction

  • A Wizard Alone, Diane Duane (Young Wizards: VI)
  • A Wizard's Holiday, Diane Duane (Young Wizards: VII)
  • Wizards at War, Diane Duane (Young Wizards: VIII)
  • The Eternal Flame, Greg Egan (Orthoganal: II)
  • The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
  • Snow Crash, Neil Stephenson

Poetry

  • The Oldest Word for Dawn, Brad Leithauser
  • destruction myth, Mathias Svalina
  • Selected Poems
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Impressions: Freakonomics

On my flight Boston-Keflavik, I picked up Freakonomics, by Levitt and Dubner. It was a fun read that I highly recommend. But a few things struck me about it, so I figured I'd write them down rapid-fire.

There's also a much longer about-Christmas post in the works, but it might not be out until tomorrow.

(1) "Despite [his] elite credentials, his approach is notably unorthodox."

I'm not sure what bothers me more: the widespread stereotype that eliteness is inextricable from orthodoxy, or my sinking suspicion that it's not entirely false.

(2) "He is ... an intuitionist."

In mathematics, "intuitionism" is a bit of a dirty word. In layman's term's, an intuitionist rejects the idea that a double negative is a positive, and so considers as invalid the logic:

1) Either A or B is true.
2) A is false.
3) Therefore, B is true.

It's appealing, because disallowing proofs by contradiction of the negation (i.e. the above form) means that every proof of "

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