Don Turnbull

By now you’ve heard the saying “Keep Austin Weird”. What you might not have known is who coined the phrase and how it just might actually relate to Austin, Texas.

All those questions (and more) can now be (mostly) answered by the man himself, Red Wassenich, who did in fact come up with the saying as an offhand remark when he called in to a local radio station.

Now Red has a book chock full of Austin and Weirdness: Keep Austin Weird: A Guide to the Odd Side of Town, by Schiffer Publishing.

Some friends had a signing party for Red’s book and I got to attend. Here’s a picture of Red in action:

I am now faced with a serious reading dilemma:

Do they cancel each other out?

Technorati Tags: photos

This looks like an interesting book from the Harvard Press: The Power to Predict.

What I hope to find upon reading it is that a business can be more competitive by being more data driven than their competitors, be it from extending Knowledge Management ideas to fully forming a company around leveraging knowledge or from using data to help establish a conversation with customers about expectations and higher levels of service.

Oddly enough, the ultimate CS classic – Donald Knuth’s The Art of Computer Programming, Volume 1 (or any of the other volumes) aren’t available via Amazon’s “Look inside this Book” feature.

I thought it would be a quick way to look up just one thing when I don’t have the book at hand, but amazon.com has missed scanning and OCR-ing this one. Even more strangeness – a google search reveals a product search result (i.e. an ad) for the book at Wal-mart.com.

Am I the only person who cares about this book any longer?

Shelby Foote, novelist, narrative historian, PBS personality (and perceived Foghorn Leghorn inspiration) died this monday, June 27, 2005. The New York Times has a fine obit, with at least one good quip by the author, which we are want to expect and enjoy. NPR also just re-ran an interview with him made in 1994.

I can make the claim that I’m one of many who have read all 1.5 million words of his Civil War, a Narrative three volume set. Not only are they essential to getting an understanding of how the South and North (note the capitalization) are similar and different from each other even today, it’s also a great read into the management styles of the various military leaders as well as one of the best (threaded throughout the set) Lincoln biographies in context of this series of battles.

I also enjoyed a series of letters between Foote and his friend Walker Percy (author of most famously The Moviegoer).

I remember savoring an interview with Mr. Foote in September 2001 where we got to hear him talk about his work and life, as well as tour his home office and get a look at his favorite books. Memorably, he was a devotee of Proust and had read his Remembrance of Things Past many times, from the same set and each time and wrote the dates of his readings in the back of one volume. That is something we all might want to do with our favorites. Perhaps I’ll do that with my own editions of Mr. Foote’s works.

Note: the phrase “Let us cross over the river, and rest under the shade of the trees” is said to be Civil War general Stonewall Jackson’s final words before dying in 1863, which some say was a major turning point in the Civil War.

What a nice surprise, someone was looking up a book I co-authored a couple of years ago and found it on Google’s new Google Print feature: Google Print Search: Web Work: Information Seeking and Knowledge Work on the World Wide Web

Over at Futurismic: Blog, there is a claim that Google is trying to become the “modern equivalent” to the The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

This brings two thoughts to mind:

• The use of the word “modern” to describe Google now, when HHGG is (as far as I can tell) isn’t set in the past, but perhaps grounded in its original publication date. Either way, Google is better than when the book(s) were written, but certainly not as great as the Guide described in the books.
• I don’t know if that’s Google’s goal, but I think that Wikipedia is more in the spirit of the Guide.
  
  See:
  • Austin, Texas
  • H2G2
  • Project Galactic Guide

Of course, tomorrow is the beginning of the Texas Book Festival, if anything else – to prove that some of us here in Texas do in fact read.

Here’s what events look good to me:

• Saturday
  1. 11:45 – 12:30: H.W. Brands, Lone Star Nation
     Reading and Q&A introduced by Greg Curtis
     Location: Auditorium

  2. 12:30 – 1:30:
     James Ellroy: Destination: Morgue!
     Jessee Sublett: Never the Same Again
     Reading and Q&A introduced by Kip Stratton
     Location: Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum Main Hall

  3. 12:45 – 1:30: Dayton Duncan, Lewis and Clark
     Reading and Q&A introduced by Regan Gammon
     Location: Capitol Extension Room E2.028

  4. 2:00 – 3:00: What’s So Funny About Politics?
     Jim Hightower, Let’s Stop Beating Around the Bush
     Andy Borowitz, The Borowitz Report
     Panel discussion by Evan Smith
     Location: House Chamber

  5. 2:15 – 3:00: Men Behaving Badly:
     Adam Johnson, Parasites Like Us
     Kyle Smith, Love Monkey
     Jonathan Ames, Wake Up, Sir
     Reading and panel discussion moderated by Neal Pollack
     Location: Capitol Extension Room E2.010

  6. 7:00 – 9:45: Texas Book Festival After Hours: Movies
     Location: Alamo Drafthouse–Downtown -
     Oscar-winner Peter Bogdanovich will introduce two of his favorite films: 7 p.m.: Targets & 9:45 p.m.: Saint Jack.
• Sunday
  1. What’s Cooking in Texas
     John DeMers, Houston: Culinary Capital
     Fernando Saralegui, Our Latin Table
     Linda Bauer, Historic Recipes from Texas and American Sampler Cookbook
     Panel discussion moderated by Virginia Wood
     Location: Capitol Extension Room E2.014

  2. 12:30 – 1:15: Meghan Daum, The Quality of Life Report
     Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Queen of Dreams
     Reading and Q&A introduced by Mary Margaret Farabee
     Location: Senate Chamber

  3. 2:00 – 2:45: Mind of a Killer
     Michael McGarrity, Slow Kill
     David Lindsey, The Face of the Assassin
     Reading and panel discussion moderated by Gary Lavergne
     Location: House Chamber

Magician, Actor, Sleight-of-Hand artist and David Mamet regular has his own radio show: KCRW Arts & Culture: Jay’s Journal

Learn, be amazed, and tell your friends. RealAudio format.