Teach Yourself SQL in 10 Minutes

I know what you’re thinking – SAMs: Teach Yourself [blank] in 10 minutes… how can that be good in any way shape or form? This must be the single good book in their line up, because this book is fabulous for learning SQL. I had a job where I had to learn SQL in a few days (at least the basics, enough to do some basic web development) and this book was recommended to me. It ended up working out great. Each of the chapters is devoted to a particular concept in SQL, be it basic joins, inner and outer joins the select statement, etc. There are plenty of good examples given for each statement and in general a lot of good, high quality explanation. This is not a good all-in-one book – it is really only suitable for learning the basics of vanilla SQL. That being said, I now feel confident that I could pick up any book about a particular flavor of SQL, or about optimizing SQL on a particular platform, and understand it well.

Additionally, this book is so short and so well organized it functions very well as a reference book. It is very easy to look up various operations and see how they function, complete with a variety of examples.

Teach Yourself SQL in 10 Minutes

This Time It’s Different (Or Is It?)

The President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, Thomas M. Hoenig presents several anecdotes about the run up to and the aftermath of the 1980’s energy markets crash. He then draws several parallels between the actions of many of the institutions before and after the crash and the actions of many of the banks recent actions in relation to the current Housing market bubble. He concludes:

My purpose in reviewing these stories with you today is not that I think a return to a 1980s-style crisis is imminent. Certainly, banking conditions today are good: strong earnings, good asset quality, no bank failures in more than two years. However, those who, in the early 1980s, predicted an endless rise in energy markets and real estate values were as confident in their outlook as we are today. And, certainly, the same rules and lessons continue to apply in banking and finance.
Although the world has changed during the last quarter of a century, at least one thing has not – human nature. As I mentioned earlier, greed, pride, arrogance and other human frailties are often at the root of bad banking decisions, and those qualities remain with us today. They still motivate behavior as they have in the past, and, in many cases, these frailties keep us from acting on the lessons we should have learned from previous generations. In addition, no matter how sophisticated we think current analytical tools, management information systems and financial instruments are, the most critical element in banking is still individual experience and judgment. In the end, bank employees, and, I would stress to this audience, bank directors, are still making the important decisions. The quality of those decisions will always depend on human characteristics and our ability to learn from the past.

Sound words. This (short) paper is highly recommended.
This Time It’s Different (Or Is It?)[pdf]

Dealers of Lightning

If you have ever wondered how the many of the basic technologies that people deal with every day – computers, networks, the internet – were invented, and who the people behind those inventions were, this is the book for you. I found it particularly interesting how well the people and companies who created the internet succumbed to creative destruction. In almost every circumstance, it was a band of rebels who came out of nowhere to establish the now dominant technology. The parent company or the current front-runners were almost always enamored with their current technology and couldn’t bear to look around for something better or more efficient, or even something that just worked.

Dealers of Lightning

Making the Most of Your Money

This was the very first financial book that I ever read. I remember, I wanted to learn something about money, because I knew nothing. I asked my dad what I should read, and he gave me a copy of this book.

Let me tell you, that was a really, really, really good choice. This book talks about everything. EVERYTHING. If there is anything you want to know about that is even remotely connected to finance, this book will have a reasonably intelligent opinion about it. Insurance? Check. Investment? Check. Debt? Check. I’m not saying this is the end all and be all of personal finance books. There are plenty of other books out there that give better advice about specific topics than this one. What this book will do, though, is give lots of good advice about everything so you can get a good overview – a map – of personal finance. It will lay everything out at one time so you can see how everything fits together. Additionally, because it is so comprehensive, it works well as a sort of personal finance encyclopedia. Whenever I run across anything that I want to know more about, I can just look it up in this book and find an answer quickly that I know I can trust. Well worth it.

Making the Most of Your Money

Crossing the Chasm

I had a hard time with this book. On the one hand it is an excellent book about high tech marketing, or really, any marketing that is done to a niche product that has the potential to go mainstream with enough momentum. In that context, it is a pretty good book. I have to confess that I don’t really have much hands on experience with marketing, but it generally passes most of my BS filters. On the other hand, most of the examples that the book presents as marketing problems had significant technology problems, so they didn’t function effectively. That being said, the book does do one thing very effectively – it provides a great set of vocabulary with which to talk about marketing concepts and a roadmap for marketing a product from a niche product to one that enters the mainstream.

Crossing the Chasm

The Death of Environmentalism

Coming from the opposite political spectrum as the authors, I was quite skeptical reading this piece; it took me quite a while before I understood what this paper is actually about.

This paper is not about Environmentalism, except peripherally. Indeed, if one takes out any mention of environmentalism and replaces it with inequality, poverty, famine, overpopulation, child mortality, racism, sexism or any of the other easily identifiable crises that currently plague humanity, the paper would make equal sense.

This paper is about politics. Specifically, the paper lays out suggestions for environmentalists to achieve policy objectives through a variety of means – alliances with other left wing political power brokers, reframing issues and other techniques. Essentially, the paper makes the the case that environmentalism shouldn’t be about caring about the environment, but about passing legislation that gets things done – that achieves the policy objectives of the environmentalists. It is not enough to be in favor of something – one must also pass laws to enforce those views.

The great thing about this paper is that the organizational changes and strategies that it advocates are open to anyone – to any group. If you care about politics at all and want to see how it really functions, this is a good place to start.

The Death of Environmentalism[pdf]

Basic Topics in Mathematics

I will admit, I have always done reasonably well in math. I like the subject – it seems intuitive to me for the most part. One of the things that stuck with me for the longest time, though, was quality of instruction I got from once teacher in Highschool – my Calculus teacher. During the first day of class, he explained all pre-calculus math to us in about 30 minutes, and it made sense. I had the same experience listening to Richard Feynman’s lectures on Physics.

That is why I was so astounded to find this gold mine in a used book store. John Riner, the author, walks through mathematics the way it should be done – starting with set theory and gradually progressing through algebra, geometry and matrix theory up to calculus. This is a small book – only 297 pages including the index, but it teaches math in the way it was meant to be taught. This is not to say that this book is easy – it moves fast and it has none of the “new math” garbage word problems in it that contemporary students are probably used to. Instead, it focuses with laser precision on the actual mathematical concepts. For the serious student of mathematics, I cannot recommend this book enough.

One last note, this book was published in 1963 and is out of print. As of this writing, there are only 4 used copies left on Amazon. I would not expect those copies to remain available forever.

Basic topics in mathematics

D.C.’S Handgun Ban and the Constitutional Right to Arms: One Hard Question?

Hat Tip: The Volokh Conspiracy

An interesting paper in light of the upcoming Supreme Court Case deciding the constitutionality of the District of Colombia’s ban on civilian handgun ownership. This paper engages in in depth textual analysis of the second amendment, and concludes:

Whatever a well regulated militia may
be, or even if no such thing exists, the right of the people to keep and
bear arms is not to be infringed. What’s more, whether or not such
a militia can actually contribute to the security of a free state, the
right of the people to keep and bear arms remains unaffected. Indeed,
even if it could be proved beyond all doubt that disarming the people
is necessary to the security of a free state, still the right of the people
to keep and bear arms would remain completely unchanged.

The paper also discusses some of the historical reasons why the perambulator clause, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State” was included in the amendment in the first place. A great read – highly recommended.

D.C.’S Handgun Ban and the Constitutional Right to Arms: One Hard Question?

Lisp: Good News, Bad News, How to Win Big

Written 7 years ago, this essay describes some of the challenges to Lisp and what the Lisp community should do in order to promote the use and acceptance of Lisp as a mainstream language. It is amazing how relevant the essay continues to be, what amounts to an eternity (in the tech world) later.

Lisp: Good News, Bad News, How to Win Big

The Way Of The Superior Man

I have wanted to read this book for quite some time, and I finally sat down and did.

Initially, this book was quite difficult for me to read. I am a very scientific minded person, so all the talk of polarity and energy and that sort of thing really put me off initially. That being said, once I was able to get past my surface distaste for the words that the author uses, I could really begin to understand what he was saying… and it made sense. A lot of sense. Deida doesn’t really give much proof that what he says is correct, he just kind of says it. That being so, the things that he says just make sense to me at an intuitive level – he provides a few simple, powerful ideas that simplify and explain a wide range of behavior and phenomenon.

The basic premise of the book is that most people are either masculine or feminine. Masculine people (mostly men) are goal driven. Central to their essence is integrity – not just keeping their word, although that is critical, but integrity to their self – being true to themselves no matter what. Feminine people, on the other hand are emotion driven – what they say is not written in stone like masculine peoples’ words are, but instead reflects their emotions. Both types of people want to feel the opposite pole in their lover.

Deida goes on to explore the implications of this idea. The book is definitely worth a read, unless you can’t get past the new-age-y-ness of the words Deida uses.

The Way of the Superior Man