Eyes and ears …

I’ve stumbled into some great tunes and reading material lately. The combination makes those long plane flights infinitely more bearable.

Gillian Welch, by far one of my favorite musicians these days, is now set up so you can download CDs and songs from her site. I used this opportunity to flesh out my Gillian collection, adding Soul Journey and Revival to my iTunes library, along with several singles, including a live song from a show in Minneapolis. All I can say is this is very cool. I’ll probably download everything she tosses up there … (And Soul Journey really is a stupendous piece of work. David Rawlings’ guitar work is so nice.)

On the reading front, I followed a recommendation from my bossman and picked up a copy of Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk. I’m still reading it, but it’s really fascinating. In essence, Peter Bernstein argues that it wasn’t until we developed a mathematical ability to calculate and manage risk that society as we know it could develop. Everything from gambling to insurance actuarial tables are based on this, and our ability to calculate these factors came relatively late in human history. He traces the history of the mathematical calculation of risk. And it’s not nearly as dry as it sounds. It’s well written, and at one point where he dives down into the weeds to explain complicated mathematical formulas, he provides a note saying readers who aren’t interested (or are overhwelmed) can skip to page xx without losing anything in the narrative thread. Nice.

Favorite quote so far:

“Who has placed me here? By whose order and warrant was this place and this time ordained for me? The eternal silence of these infinite spaces leaves me in terror.”

Sounds really existential, but it’s just Pascal going on about why he turned into a religious zealot.

Now playing: One Monkey from the album “Soul Journey” by Gillian Welch