Keeping the Top Ten Ball Aloft

Tyler Cowen started this a couple weeks ago, listing the 10 books that influenced him the most. And he asked other bloggers to join in. So here goes (not necessarily in any order):
1. Ain't Nobody's Business if You Do: The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in a Free Society by Peter McWilliams.
This book changed everything for me after I read it in my early twenties. I'm not going into much detail because the title speaks for itself, I think. I am the cranky libertarian I am today thanks to McWilliams's book.
2. Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball by George F. Will.
This book made me a baseball fan.Before reading this, I had never thought of sport as being a cerebral endeavor. I started to see baseball as something I can think about. And I never stopped thanks to....
3. The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract by Bill James.
I became a sabermetrian after reading this and I never looked back.Thinking critically about baseball has made it so much more fun for me, that I pity those who just don't get that. It's a version of the rainbow problem; some believe that knowing that they're 'just' refracted light a couple feet in front of you makes it impossible to appreciate the beauty of a rainbow. Not me. Knowing more about something allows me to enjoy it more. And Bill James's great writing helped show me that.
4. The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
This is the first classic I ever read that I actually liked. (Full disclosure: I have since gone back and reread many books I was forced to read in school and enjoyed many of them.) Thanks to Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes, I learned to appreciate classic literature.
5. Atheism: The Case Against God by George H. Smith.
I grew up in a Catholic household and was never encouraged to think about my religion, but that didn't stop me. When I was 18 I stopped going to church, and then 2 years later, I realized that I did not believe in the supernatural and let it all go.This book didn't make me an atheist, but this make me feel a little less alone about being an atheist by helping me realize that I could use reason to fill the hole that was once filled with superstition.
6. Kingdom Come by Mark Waid, Alex Ross and Todd Klein.
I was a big ol' comic book nerd in my youth and I quit sometime around 1987 because they stopped being fun and I was getting too old (or so I thought). About 10 years later a buddy of mine lent me his copy of Kingdom Come and I realized how fun and cool and grown-up comics could be. And I'm back to being a big ol' comics nerd.
7. Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare by Isaac Asimov.
I'd read Shakespeare before (for school), but was never a huge fan. I was, however, a huge fan of Isaac Asimov (see below) and the completist in me jumped at the chance to buy this book. And I have never read the bard the same way again. Every Shakespeare play or film I've seen since is informed by Asimov's analysis.
8. On Writing Well by William Zinsser.
This was the first great book I ever read about the craft of writing. (Don't blame Zinsser for any missteps I've made in this post.) Since then, I keep the lessons from this book in mind every time I sit down to write. I've read many other books on writing since, and some, like Strunk and White may do a better job. But Zinsser was first.
9. Labyrinths of Reason: Paradox, Puzzles, and the Frailty of Knowledge by William Poundstone.
I read this in college, when I was, basically, still learning how to think. Poundstone introduced me to many intellectual concepts--the use of paradox, induction vs. deduction, what it means to know something etc.--that are still in my toolbox. And it's a great read.
10. Isaac Asimov's Essay Collections.
Not a single book, but a series of sorts. I read a ton of these essays as a kid and from these I learned to love reason and logic (Hello? The name of the blog?). I learned to love science. I learned to love great writing. These are mostly science essays, but their subjects are all over the place, history, literature, etymology, politics.... Much of the science is dated by now, but I don't care; the writing is as crisp and lively as ever and Asimov manages to explain tricky concepts without being condescending or going over the reader's head. But more important, he infuses his topics with such humanity that it made me want to learn as much as I could. And I've never stopped. Thanks, Isaac.

Birthday Boy

 Happy Birthday, James Madison! Or as the kids call him, J-Mad.*

*This isn't true.

 I guess I like Madison so much because I'm a big fan of the unjustly forgotten. In baseball we have guys like Tris Speaker, Eddie Collins and maybe Honus Wagner. Players that casual fans may not be familiar with, but who were among the best of their time. In science we have Robert Hooke, James Clark Maxwell and Ignaz Semmelweiss, all of whom changed the way we live.
 Madison falls into that category, as well. One of the most important founders, he was the principal architect of the Constitution, the driving force behind the Bill of Rights and (as evidenced by his contribution to the Federalist) one of the most astute political theorists of his time. Yet, he has zero cachet in the popular consciousness, which is too bad because he had as much influence as, say, Jefferson or Adams.
Anyway, Little Jemmy, this one goes out to you. Happy 249th. And many more.

James Madison's Memorial is Weeping*

 This week Iowan Christopher Handley was sentenced to 6 months in prison for owning manga. Well, that wasn't what he was charged with, but that's what he's going down for. He was jailed for "possessing drawings [DRAWINGS!] of children being sexually abused." In the United States we have this thing called a First Amendment which states that "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech or of the press...." (recalled that from memory; just saying). Not for this guy. Handley pleaded guilty under "Title 18, United States Code, Section 1466A(b)(1), which prohibits the possession of any type of visual depiction, including a drawing, cartoon, sculpture, or painting, that depicts a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct that is obscene." DRAWINGS!
 For a history of the case go here.
 For a way more eloquent defense of smut and "icky speech" go here.

*Oh, wait, Madison doesn't have a memorial. (Well, OK, he has a memorial building in Washington DC.)

Doomed I tells ya!

 The other day I was in a Borders bookstore among the biographies and a man and a teenage boy walked into the section. The kid was about 14 and I from his demeanor, I think the man was his divorced father. Anyway, we'll call them 'father' and 'son'. From the conversation, I gleaned that the son was doing a report on a famous person. (For the record, I wasn't trying to listen, but they were speaking loudly enough that if you were in the bios you could hear.) And the conversation went something like this:
 Dad: "Here's a book on Franklin Roosevelt."
 Son: "Who the hell is Franklin Roosevelt?"
 Repeat for the next minute or so, just with names like John Adams, Teddy Roosevelt, and Marie Curie. And the kid had this slow sing-song voice that gave me the impression that speaking was a mental strain.He knew celebrities like George Lopez, but Dad wasn't having any of that. Junior knew who Houdini was, but balked when Dad showed him a book that looked maybe 300 pages long. Junior said "Thass... way... too... big."
  All the while, I'm standing there in a corner where two bookshelves intersect looking at Ron Chernow's bio of Alexander Hamilton (Who... the... hell... is... Alexander... Hamilton?). I didn't want to leave because I was working like a crazy monkey to not smile or laugh at this poor imbecile and if I turned around they might see. After they left to look for the autobiographies (the kid misread "Audiobooks") I escaped.
 If Whitney Houston is right and children are our future, we're screwed.
 By the way, I didn't get the Chernow, because I remembered that I have an unread Hamilton biography by Richard Brookhiser sitting at home. Too bad, it looked pretty good.

Goddam phonies

Aw, man. J.D. Salinger died. No more new novels! Plus he left a party of five orphans behind.*

*I'm sorry.

Seriously, I wonder if we're in for a deluge of previously unpublished writings. After all, I hope he was doing something this whole time. I'm looking forward to all the articles and essays about Salinger's literary influence. I'm ashamed to admit that I haven't read any Salinger, which is funny because as Nick Hornby once pointed out you could go through his oeuvre in about a week. Sad, really. I'm working on Crowley's Little, Big right now, so maybe I'll try Nine Stories when I'm done.

Science!

 Just received Atomic Robo and the Shadow From Beyond Time, the 3rd volume in the Atomic Robo series. Verdict: Robo-tastic. Not as good as Vol. 1, which was Robo-riffic; but better than Vol. 2, which was merely Robo-licious.

  For the uninitiated, Atomic Robo is a comic written by Brian Clevinger and drawn by Scott Wegener. And it's fun and awesome. Try it, kids. It's the story of Atomic Robo--get it?--a sapient robot built by Nikola Tesla in the '20s who punches dinosaurs, feuds with Stephen Hawking, and blows up Nazis.

 Vol. 3 follows Robo in the 20's, 50's, 70's and 00's as he fights a nonlinear, non euclidean extradimensional cosmic horror that wants to eat the earth. Along the way, he gets help from Charles Fort, Carl Sagan and Robo's own Action Scientists. And, boy howdy, is it fun. Wegener's art makes a mouthless robot expressive using nothing but body language and eye-covers. Clevinger's writing is top notch, with a nice mix of slapstick, pulpy action, and dry wit. Highly recommended.

Senator make poopie! Yay!

 Sorry to start in on American politics. But after Senator Harry Reid's gaffe (basically using the word "Negro" about 4 decades after it lost acceptability) I think it's time U.S. Congresspeople should earn their jobs. They should have to take a test every election year and pass it to be eligible for reelection. Tests with questions like: How do you pronounce Kim Jong Il? This could have eliminated the late Jesse Helms (R-NC), who repeatedly pronounced the North Korean's name as "Kim Jong the Second". When staffers made cheat sheets that read "Kim Jong Ill" Helms started saying "Kim Jong the Third." Let's give him a break, after all, he was only the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

 What the hell? How about Ted Stevens (R-AK) describing the internet as a "series of tubes." Stevens was the author of the Communications, Consumer's Choice, and Broadband Deployment Act of 2006.

 Tired of me picking on Republicans? How 'bout Democrat Joe Biden's repeated brushes* with plagiarism.


 The point is, making these bozos take a competency test might either a) force them to learn something or b) force them out of office. I'm thinking about a test that covers current affairs, scientific literacy, societal norms, cultural literacy, etc. Think the SATs, but for the people who write the laws and policies for a major world power.