So, What Are You Reading?

I'm still waiting for Future Shock to hit. The book was persuasive enough but wrong.

 

I'm glad I read Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail etc. by Dan Gardner. I bought it a couple of years ago in a Dollar Store that has a huge collection of new hardbacks! Gardner believes it's useless to predict the future because you'll be wrong. Backed up with many, many examples. So far, he has saved me from buying or reading a bunch of books like these two. $1 well-spent!

 

Coincidence - I just bought a book at the Thrift Store on formatting files to be read on Kindle - text, illustrations etc. I'm not dismayed, but rather surprised by just how much geek-stuff you have to know, to do it effectively. I was also thinking of getting one of the colour Kindles to use for more than reading, but the thing is just too proprietary for me. I'd be wanting all kinds of software to work that wouldn't . . . staring wistfully in the window of the Google Play store . . .

 

This is the book I bought - for 90 cents. A little less than Amazon - not all that much, Their price: $17.97 (Cdn.) new $3.49 used.
Joshua Tallent: Kindle Formatting: The Complete Guide To Formatting Books For The Amazon Kindle

 

Read John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion (Great Books edition).

 

I think my next up is going to be St. Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theoligica.

 

Not my favourite philosopher, Ted. I understand he supported killing of all heretics - and particularly favoured the killing of "Albigensians" (Cathars). The Albigensian Crusade is known as "the first Ideological Genocide." It involved the death of approximately a million people - not only Cathars, but a good portion of the general population of Southern France. http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Albigensian_Crusade

However, not all non-Catholics should be killed, according to Aquinas. He did make an exception for "Jews, (who) could be ... tolerated." All considered, not a very nice guy, in my book. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albigensian_Crusade

Also, he was yet another philosopher who couldn't solve his own, dire personal problems. For one thing, he remained hugely obese, (around 330 pounds) which either exacerbated or was possibly the direct cause of his perennial outbreaks of ill health, contributing to his death at 48. He was famous for managing to re-state most of Aristotle in a way that made his (Aristotle's) work compatible with Catholic doctrine. Arabs had rediscovered Aristotle's work, but their interpretation didn't suit the Church's or Aquinas' points of view and he was influential in having the Bishop of Paris excommunicate those teaching the propositions of the Arab-sourced interpretation (Averroism.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Averroism

So what am I reading? Lots, since I turned off my TV for good and all a few weeks back. Don't even miss it! Right now, I've finished about 6 volumes of a historical encyclopedia - 10 left to go. I'm up to the Renaissance. I've also read some supplementary stuff on my main ancestors - the Anglo-Saxons and a novel, set in the days of Norse settlement in Iceland. I'm spending quality time with a brand-new laptop. The first new-out-of-the-box computer I've had since 1989! I'm making it a dual-boot thingy - it came with Windows 10 and I'm adding Ubuntu Linux. Part of the reason is for virus-free living on the Internet -something that Windows has historically found difficult or impossible to achieve. Linux does a lot of things well! Plus, it's free.

 

Bertrand Russell was very critical of St. Thomas Aquinas as a philosopher. According to Russell, St. Thomas didn't look for answers to questions - he already had the answers in the beliefs of the Church. I like Russell's view, cited below:

According to Russell, Thomas advocates the indissolubility of marriage "on the ground that the father is useful in the education of the children, (a) because he is more rational than the mother, (b) because, being stronger, he is better able to inflict physical punishment."

Wow - that's all I can say... more marriage and family advice from a man (St. Thomas Aquinas) who was never married, never raised a family. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Aquinas

 

Well, at least that's better than some early Protestant views on Jews. Cf. Martin Luther's absolutely horrible "On the Jews and Their Lies." Key passage: "we are at fault in not slaying them."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Jews_and_Their_Lies

 

Support? OK. Here's a suggestion. STOP SPAMMING US WITH E-CIGS!

I quit smoking 40 years ago, 'way before e-cigs were invented. Didn't get a foreign trip either - but my reward is being 75, running for a bus (easily) when I need to and having adult grandchildren! Can't say much for "vapists" myself. They're just smokers with no sense of guilt or shame.

Motivation:

(1) Quitting is not that hard - not hard at all, for very long. Some of the rewards show up VERY quickly. They're very encouraging.
(2) You'll likely see your grandkids grow up - IF you quit. Otherwise, who knows? You might not see them at all! Smoking kills half the people who have the habit.
(3) Once you quit, put your smoke-money aside religiously. You might have $100,000 you can do something else with. You could buy a catamaran.

 

Well, I put Aquinas aside.

 

Currently reading Thomas Cahill's Mysteries of the Middle Ages.

 

Finished reading Thomas Cahill's Mysteries of the Middle Ages.

 

Read C. Warren Hollister's The Twelfth Century Renaissance.

 

I just brought a copy of Completely Free Colleges by Jennifer Cook De Rosa!

 

It's designed to display text and it does that very well.

The thing I like about Kindles (at least the older ones like the one I have) is that you can easily sideload pdf files into them. Just plug them into the usb port on your computer and they show up as another usb drive. Transfer files into them and they display fine. I had a Kobo that I used daily until it finally died on me a few weeks ago that worked the same way and was filled with my peculiar pdf sideloads.

That means that you can download all sorts of papers, encyclopedia articles and even e-books that you find for free on the internet, and avoid buying anything from the Kindle or Kobo stores.

I still don't have a clue how to sideload pdf files into an android tablet or phone, so they are useless to me for one of the main uses that I have for them. So I read my e-books on my laptop at home, and on my black and white e-ink e-reader (my old Kindle, now that my Kobo is dead) when I want portable. I've currently got about 300 e-books (some literally e-books, others things like book length doctoral dissertations) and hundreds of journal articles on my Kindle. I figure that's enough to keep me going for years, a university that fits in a pocket.