Der Kinder/Stream of Consciousness

I spent a bit of time in Germany last summer:

and I want to convince myself that I remember that "Der Kinder" in German is something like: "the children"...

I'm not totally sure why "Der Kinder" popped into my head when I received a semi-spam related email from Amazon today about their "Kindle" product - but I'll pull no punches and admit that "Der Kinder" did.

Cool slowmo of a Kindle being dropped from two and a half feet (oooh, that sounds so much lower than 30 whole inches!!!! ;-) ) :

The concept of reading intrigues me - I'm a conceptual kind of guy - and don't get me wrong - I absolutely love the written word, especially when there is thought behind it! Drivel like this blog (which isn't a great example of the written word!) serves multiple purposes for me, personally - in all honesty, I started doing this thing in order to force me to write. I need all the practice I can get!

Anyway, I like the concept of reading, and unfortunately, I have this 25 mile commute to where I work. So, I've found a way to add some "reading" into my day: I listen to audiobooks on the drive into work. I typically listen to non-fiction, but this past week, I purchased and listened to "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy (a recommendation from my Coach - not the one you're probaby thinking of - is that a bad thing, having multiple "coaches"??). This is the same author that wrote "No Country for Old Men" - saw that movie BTW, and thought it was pretty brutal, but totally dug it.

Having listened to the unabridged reading of "The Road", I can't wait to listen to the reading of his original prose in "No Country...". This guy has an unbelievable way with the written word.

I can't really describe it - it's just unreal. Seriously, I can remember driving into work and listening to his sensory laden descriptions of the post-apocalyptic American landscape and asking myself "did I just hear what I thought I heard" - unreal. And I learned some new words along the way - well, maybe didn't learn, but "heard" and became curious about some words. I even worked one or two into a conversation at work - amazing how I was able to work "sepulcher" in a business meeting at a golf company! ;-)

Anyway, great stuff by Mr. McCarthy - interesting plot, too - a real thinker/contemplater. If you are into superficial entertainment, though, this one might not be so good for you. At face value, it's a story about a father and a son who go for a walk to the ocean. Nothing more.

Anyway, the Kindle is intriguing to me, in that it solves a book storage problem for me. I've got a lot of books around here, and I'm running out of space in my double-wide:

;-)

peace,

kraig

Tragedy in Solana Beach

I was making the rounds at work today... We have a pretty good crop of avid lunch hour surfer regulars where I work in the golf biz, and the talk of the day was this tragic incident:

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/northcounty/20080425-1658-bn25shark7.html

As an occassional surfer (I'm not very good, BTW...), and since many of my friends and colleagues are surfers it really made me think a bit...

The crazy thing about the whole deal, was that I was listening to the book "Made to Stick"

http://www.madetostick.com/ on the drive in today.

The section I was listening to on the drive into work, "Credible", included a discussion of using statistics to help make your idea "stick". One example they used was in the form of a question:

"what causes more deaths per year - sharks or deer?"










Since all of you out there are way smarter than a caveman like me -> I'm sure you guessed correctly that it is actually deer that cause more fatalities per year.

As they said in the book - crazy to think that bambi kills more people every year than Jaws.

This example is a great example (discussed in the same section)- of the availability bias/error.

Nonetheless, my thoughts go out to the family of the swimmer who was lost today here in socal - it really was a terrible tragedy that put a damper on the folks here at work.