Finished reading: If you want a very detailed resource on how to do CBAs, especially for public sector projects, Cost-benefit analysis of investment decisions by Glenn Jenkins, Chun-Yan Kuo, and Arnold Harberger is the book for you. That said, you really need to want details – you’ve been warned 📚
Microposts
📷 Day 04
Foliage
📷 Day 03
A well targeted card from my children
🏃♂️ New running shoe day
📷 Day 02
Flowers
📷 Day 1: Toy
Finished reading: I can’t decide if I liked Nona the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir. The first book of the series, Gideon the Ninth, was one of my favourite books of 2021. The second, Harrow the Ninth, was frustratingly confusing. Nona was similarly challenging: lots of names, hints of conversations, and plot twists. Felt more like work than entertainment 📚
🏃♂️ Part of today’s trail run was mostly made of broken bricks
🏃♂️ Today’s run burned off the last of the March Break cervezas. Back on the program tomorrow
🎵 Right Back To It - Waxahatchee is a stand out song on a great album
Such nerdy fun
Finished reading: Shadows of Self by Brandon Sanderson continues this entertaining series. A nice break from the “heavier” fantasy books 📚
Finished reading: I enjoyed Red Moon by Kim Stanley Robinson. Some of his usual attention to detail without getting too dry and a nice emphasis on Chinese culture and history📚
Finished reading: Although difficult to describe, I enjoyed The Factory by Hiroko Oyamada. A strange, slightly creepy story about modern work life 📚
Finished reading: The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik is a great sequel to A Deadly Education 📚
Finished reading: Empire of the Sum: The Rise and Reign of the Pocket Calculator by Keith Houston is more fun than you might expect📚
Finished reading: My Murder by Katie Williams has an intriguing premise, good twists, and is well written. A great book📚
My plan for the week
Finished reading: The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older is a fun, short murder mystery on a gas giant planet 📚
Finished reading: I enjoyed My Effin' Life by Geddy Lee more than I expected. A great testament to hard working, talented friends. Also a great excuse to revisit Rush’s music. I’d missed their last few albums and it was a pleasant surprise to discover them📚
A toasted old fashioned kind of night
🏃♂️ Misty run today
🔗 How to Talk to Whales - The Atlantic
This would be a first-contact scenario involving two species that have lived side by side for ages. I wanted to imagine how it could unfold. I reached out to marine biologists, field scientists who specialize in whales, paleontologists, professors of animal-rights law, linguists, and philosophers. Assume that Project CETI works, I told them. Assume that we are able to communicate something of substance to the sperm whale civilization. What should we say?
Fascinating to think what this would be like and what we might learn
I’m enjoying their new sound
🔗 “In Your Eyes” by Peter Gabriel | Strong Songs: A Podcast About Music
Strong Songs Season Six kicks off with a widely requested classic: Peter Gabriel’s 1986 yearner “In Your Eyes.” Because why hire one rhythm section when you can hire two for twice the price?
🎧 A favourite song on a favourite podcast
Finished reading: Although I’m far from having a crisis, I’m well into midlife. So, Midlife by Kieran Setiya was a powerful book.
I could relate, when Setiya describes what he expects to feel after he finishes writing the book:
If experience is anything to go by, the hole will be filled soon enough. There will be another project: a class to teach, a book to read, an article to write. I will move on. But the movement is like running on a treadmill. Life is a succession of projects, each one left behind, their numbers slowly adding up. What the future holds is only more of the achievements, and the failures, that make up my past. It will differ only in quantity from the life I have already lived, a mere accumulation of deeds.
I won’t spoil the outcome. Suffice it to say that this book has lots of good advice, written clearly and with humour.
Setiya also has a good session on Waking Up.
📚
🏃♂️ Back to cold, snow, and ice on today’s run
🔗 The strange and turbulent global world of ant geopolitics
What is surprising is how poorly we still understand global ant societies: there is a science-fiction epic going on under our feet, an alien geopolitics being negotiated by the 20 quadrillion ants living on Earth today. It might seem like a familiar story, but the more time I spend with it, the less familiar it seems, and the more I want to resist relying on human analogies. Its characters are strange; its scales hard to conceive. Can we tell the story of global ant societies without simply retelling our own story?
Fascinating
Finished reading: I enjoyed Making It So by Patrick Stewart. Although not as much Captain Picard as some Trekkies might want, I appreciated the broader view of his career 📚
Great video from Casey Neistat. I too, somehow, continue to get older and am trying to hold on to some goals.