Idea Lawyer Blog

Quarterly taxes will soon be due. Again. A few days ago I posted the fun comparative approach to animal courtship, mating and reproduction (Headless Males Make Great Lovers. Read it and see why the geeky male bower bird steals toothbrushes along with baubles, bangles and bright shiny things). Switching to intellectual fecundity, and to get an appreciation of the many species of mathemeticians, try reading David Belinski's Infinite Ascent. His prose rolls trippingly on the (retinal) tongue, and he puts personality behind his short history of mathematics. It is short, it is mainly history, and yes the players are mathematicians.

Voting time means the usual circulation of emails recounting American suffragettes suffering to change a prohibition on the right to vote. Often jail and hunger strikes are mentioned. I read and send along various useful historical reminders, each calculated to revive appreciation for a right fought for by others. A real sock in the jaw- or stomach- is this book- which not only goes into detail on so-called "force feeding" of hunger strikers (later legally categorized as torture), but also recounts the calculus of human starvation ( the 1944 Minnesota Experiment : WWII conscientious objectors voluntarily participated in a being starved to prepare- scientifically- for dealing with the long starved masses of Europe). And take away tidbits, such as the fact that, except in extraordinary circumstances, the brain, retina and gonads run exclusively on glucose.

Palo Alto real estate foreclosures triggered a feeding frenzy in August. Now, in light of the looming demise of Fannie Mae et al, how ought one handle the stress of primal concerns?
Reading infiltrates the wet-ware in ways films or the cartoon world of Second Life cannot.
So here and in several entries I'll note books to keep the mind busy - remember our own inspiring leader who quipped: a mind is a terrible thing to lose.
First, a great title to make heads turn like the deli scene in "When Harry Met Sally" (a la "I'll have what she's having")