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An Inconvenient TruthBook

1 person

Cosma Rohilla Shalizi
Statistics professor at Carnegie Mellon University who writes the long-running blog Three-Toed Sloth and the Bactra Review of books.
liked

I may loose some friends by saying this, but having finally watched it I really liked it, and approve. It's true that Gore's occupying a familiar social role, that of the prophet, but so what? (How consciously he's doing this, I couldn't guess.) As Scott Aaronson says in a different context, this is a familiar role because it is is something that works, given human psychology and social organization.

His monthly "Books to Read While the Algae Grow in Your Fur" post for January 2008 — the books he read that month and feels he can recommend.

bactra.org ↗·2008-01-31

Every entry is a verbatim quote and a link to the public post it came from. Nothing is paraphrased. If it is not on record somewhere public, it is not here.

The verdict is what they actually said: loved and liked are explicit; recommended means they told others to get it; uses means they only say they use it; read is a book on their public shelf with no verdict; mixed and disliked are kept too.

A dashed affiliate link, sponsored or their own label means the post disclosed a relationship. It is shown, never hidden.

The small bar beside a date shows how dated a recommendation is for its kind of thing.

The bar shows how dated a recommendation is, for its kind of thing. Full and green is recent. It drains, and turns amber and then grey, as the post gets older.

What counts as old depends on the thing. A laptop praised four years ago has been replaced twice; a book loved twenty years ago is probably still loved. The bar is empty after about:

A striped bar means the post carries no date and the date shown is an estimate. No date at all, no bar.