Best non-fiction books

Figments of Reality, Ian Stewart & Jack Cohen

Gödel Escher Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, Douglas Hofstadter

The Ancestor's Tale, Richard Dawkins

Random evolution stuff, engagingly related

Fermat's Enigma, Simon Singh

A history of mathematics related to Fermat's Last Theorem, engagingly related

Best fiction books/stories

The Dispossessed, Ursula K. LeGuin

Breathmoss, Ian R. MacLeod

The Year's Best Science Fiction Twentieth Annual Collection, Gardner Dozois editor

Stories for Men, John Kessel

The Year's Best Science Fiction Twentieth Annual Collection, Gardner Dozois editor

Antibodies, Charles Stross

The Year's Best Science Fiction Eighteen Annual Collection, Gardner Dozois editor. Microsoft is a plot to save the world from AIs.

The Potter of Bones, Eleanor Arnason

The Year's Best Science Fiction Twentieth Annual Collection, Gardner Dozois editor.

The Tear, Ian McDonald

The Year's Best Science Fiction Twenty-Sixth Annual Collection, Gardner Dozois editor.

Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card

Best TED talks

• Anupam Mishra, The ancient ingenuity of water harvesting
• Devdutt Pattanaik: East vs. West -- the myths that mystify
• Marcus du Sautoy: Symmetry, reality's riddle
• Carolyn Steel: How food shapes our cities
• Ueli Gegenschatz soars in a wingsuit
• Jacqueline Novogratz invests in ending poverty
• Jacqueline Novogratz on patient capitalism
• Peter Eigen on exposing corruption
• Lawrence Lessig on the need for Creative Commons licenses
• Larry Lessig says the law is strangling creativity
• Chip Conley measuring what makes life worthwhile

Scary TED talks

Bjorn Lomborg sets global priorities

Scary because people might believe this is good stuff. I totally disagree with his conclusion on climate change; an exellent example of cloaking a personal agenda in psuedo-science. If you spend five minutes chasing down the actual reports on his website, you see that the "expert" economists simply ignored the IPCC findings!

Other good talk sites

• The Really Big Questions

Best Movies

• It's Complicated
• Invictus
• August Rush
• The Sting
• Shrek -->

Best Music

• It Don't Bring You Mary Chapin Carpenter
• The Köln Concert Keith Jarrett
• The Glass Horse Magical Strings On the Burren
• anything by Joni Mitchell
• anything by Cheryl Wheeler
• Blood and Fire Indigo Girls
• Home is Where the Heart Is Sally Fingerett
• From a Distance Julie Gold
• Still Life Lucy Kaplansky
• Land Of The Living Lucy Kaplansky
• I'm Fine Patty Larkin
• You are the New Day King's Singers
• Let Me Fall in Love Before the Spring Comes Hugh Blumenfeld
• Eye Of The Hurricane David Wilcox. Live Songs & Stories version is best; it has a great violin part. Anything else by David Wilcox, as well.
• You Are the New Day King's Singers
• Alice's Restaurant Massacree Arlo Guthrie
• Jogging the Memory Malcolm Dalglish
• Day Of Radiance Laraaji
• anything by William Ackerman
• lots of stuff by David Wilcox
  • All My Life
  • East Asheville Hardware
  • Fearless Love
  • Johnny's Camero
  • You Should See The Way It Feels
  • Farther to Fall
  • Top of the Roller Coaster
  • Eye Of The Hurricane
  • Leave It Like It Is
  • Rusty Old American Dream
  • Appreciating The Differences / Good Together
  • Shiny Ride / Spin
  • All My Life
  • Down Here
  • Slipping Through My Fist
• anything by Al Petteway
• Fire in the Glen Andy Stewart
• The Heart of the Appaloosa Fred Small
• This Island Earth, Sticks and Stones Jonathan Edwards
• The Best Of The Modern Jazz Quartet The Modern Jazz Quartet
• A Decade Of Steely Dan Steely Dan
• Catching the Sun Spyro Gyra
• Canyon Trilogy R. Carlos Nakai

Best xkcd

• Network
• Mistranslations
• Real Programmers
• Alone
• The Difference
• Useless
• Christmas Plans
• Wings
• Pep Rally
• Compiling
• Blanket Fort
• Chess on a roller coaster
• Kepler
• Fourier
• Devotion to Duty
• Escher Bracelet
• Beliefs
• Prudence
• Computer Problems
• Desert Island
• dPain over dt
• Content Protection
• Dreams
• Beliefs
• Nihilism
• String Theory
• Matrix Transform
• Infrastructures
• campfire
• Battle Room
• The Difference
• Certainty
• Organic Fuel
• workaround

Author : Stephen Leake Last modified: Tue Jul 13 20:47:28 EDT 2010