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Nice little review of the period, with a focus on the Mediterranean and the Near East.

I seem to be reading short stories these days. A nice collection here.

Part 15: Tested Poetry

This continues the introduction started in the first part. You can find an index to the entire series.

Introduction

We’ve written a lot of code in our exploration of Twisted, but so far we’ve neglected to write something important — tests. And you may be wondering how you can test asynchronous code using a synchronous framework like the unittest package that comes with Python. The short answer is you can’t. As we’ve discovered, synchronous and asynchronous code do not mix, at least not readily.

The mesmerizing autobiography of Jack Black, a professional burglar and highwayman who plied his trade at the end of the 19th century.

Even when you don’t agree with him, you have to marvel at his skill with those word-things. But I’d say I agreed more often than not.

Roszak takes aim at the some of the conceits of the Information Age, which principle crimes are confusing information with knowledge, and information processing with thought. He generally hits his mark, too. Though his attempts to circumscribe the limits of electronic computation for all time are just a confused jumble of metaphysics.

Packer’s account of his one-and-half years spent teaching English in a small village in Togo. By turns enlightening, moving, and depressing.

Although out of date in its technical details, the later chapters contain some excellent examples of distributed software construction in Erlang.

An engaging and readable history of the ideas and the people behind the statistical revolution in science.

If I had a second life to live, I think I’d be an entomologist.