Reading

Sometimes life throws you a curve ball. The past week I have been scrambling to help my parents respond to their landlords reasonable, yet highly inconvenient, desire to sell their house vacant possession. Consequently my blog has been neglected of late.

I enjoy reading essays, and I have definately enjoyed reading some of Malcolm Gladwell's contributions to the New Yorker (Gladwell also wrote The Tipping Point, a book I am going to have to read that discusses the effects of non-linearity in social systems). I particularly enjoyed Blowing Up, a look at non-linearity applied to the stock-market; The Mosquito Killer, a facinating look at the anti-malaria campaigns of the 20th century, and DDT in particular; The Dead Zone, the hunt for the Spanish Flu; The Coolhunt, a curious look into the 'cool hunters', a profession I never realised existed. Finally The Tipping Point, an article written four years before the publication of Gladwell's book, a reminder that non-linearity is a fact of life, and humans are particularly bad at anticipating the ramifications.