Peter's Blog

I was checking a book I would like to buy on Amazon – How Risky Is It, Really?: Why Our Fears Don’t Always Match the Facts. As delivery from US takes long and is expensive I’ve wanted to check price for Kindle version. It’s easy as Amazon is providing you with such table:

As you can see Kindle (electronic) edition is almost 3$ more than hardcover. Yes, let me say it again, hardcover. Not even a paperback. I don’t see great future for the forests as paper is so cheap that even bits are pricey in comparison. I don’t get it, really. But it was probably some big marketing head who devised this “clever” pricing plan, so I’m for sure not seeing some great idea behind it. Or maybe Amazon decided to support post office. Don’t know. It would remain complete mystery to me I’m afraid.

From the article on TechCrunch I’ve learned about new book “The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World” by David Kirckpatrick. They’ve posted two excerpts there and in one of them you can read:
“In the first week of his sophomore year at Harvard, Mark Zuckerberg cobbled together an internet software program he called Course Match. The idea was to help students pick classes based on who else was taking them. If a cute girl sat next to you in Topology, you could look up next semester’s Differential Geometry course to see if she had enrolled in that as well. Hundreds of students immediately started using it.”

Yeah, it’s always good to make choices in such field like education basing on such critical factor as other attendants. I know that perspective of sitting in the lecture hall next to hot chick is tempting, but common. I wonder if such people are really concerned about education and I believe answer is clear. But actually I was witness of same choices. When I was studying at university I was working in Dean’s Office and one of my responsibilities was assignment students to groups. I’ve often spoken with young people (mainly girls, guys seemed to care less about such things) whose main concern was to be in same group just because they were sitting on the same bench in high school. It even was going so far that some of them were changing their course of study (for instance from Management to Administration), just to be in same group. It was always making me laugh and now I can see that it wasn’t only my Alma Mater, and even not only Poland, but it’s happening everywhere. World is about to end I’m telling you.

Anyway, I’ve read these excerpts and I’ve enjoyed them so much that I’ve pre-ordered this book:) It’s coming on June 15th, so there is a little wait, but looks like it’s totally worth it.

From now on I’m adding second name to my list of favorite writers. First is of course Stephen King. And now second is Kurt Vonnegut. I’ve read Slaughterhouse-Five and I was amazed. Now I’m reading Cat’s Cradle and I know that this is it. This guy is talking to me. My language. My type of thinking. Wow! Unfortunately Mr. Vonnegut died in 2007 so he would not give me new masterpieces. But there are still so many books and short stories he written and I need to read, that I feel safe. For now. But I know that after I’ll read the last, I would miss something. Like a family member. Unbelievable feeling.