Reading

Keep meaning to post some book reviews, but it doesn't seem to be happening. So here is the quicky version.

Recently Read:

The Stone Canal by Ken MacLeod
Good stuff, made me realize how little I've kept up with science fiction over the past few years. Lots of hardcore fringe politics mixed in with the space age. Lots of interesting speculative economics in the mix. Certainly will be reading more of his work.

Recently Reread:

War in the Age of Intelligent Machines by Manuel DeLanda
Not quite on the level of Thousand Years of Nonlinear History but excellent none the less. DeLanda's big trick is to take the theories of Deleuze and Guattari and very lucidly graft them into concrete real world history. Its far more impressive then it sounds at first. I reread this book mainly to get some insight into the Iraq war. And its scary. There is loads of background on the divide between the RAND corp theories exposed by Rumsfeld and dirty "intelligence" of the CIA. It sure doesn't make me feel anymore confident in the Rumsfeld doctrine that's currently hard at work losing the Iraq "peace". Be warned though, this is a somewhat dangerous book. In the end its really a critique of the military, but at time it makes the world of strategy quite seductive.

Btw DeLanda has a new book that I've yet to read. Soon.

Currently reading
Barcelona by Robert Hughes

Pop Internationalism by Paul Krugman

and if you are wondering (and they work) those neat little rollover things are the work of Brad Choate and his MTMacros plug-in. Brad's actually using the excellent overLIB javascript to create the rollover, very nice, makes you realize how much more info webpages can carry in a subtle way.