One Supposes This Will Interest Someone….

Posted Jan 30, 2006 by Kevin Walker

Updated Jan 30, 2006 at 04:14 PM

...just not me. However, I feel compelled to mention that Southern Methodist University has released “Engineering The World: Stories From The First 75 Years of Texas Instruments.” Eseentially, it appears to be 75 stories about what it took to be on the cutting edge of the semiconductor technology business. I feel compelled to mention this because I can’t imagine anyone wanting to read 272 pages about this topic, other than my brother, but he’s an engineer. So I guess this book is intended for that heretofore unheralded sub-sub-sub genre, engineers.

Speaking of geeks (just kidding, bro!), St. Martin’s Press has released The Sports Encyclopedia Baseball 2006, which actually lives up to its claim of being “the all-time baseball argument settler.” True enough. This bad boy has every stat you can possible imagine. Want to know, for some insane reason, what the Tampa Bay Devil Rays hit as a team in 1999? .274, friends. And Miguel Cairo led the team that year with 22 steals. The oldest guy on the team was Wade Bogg, at age 41. I mean this thing is crazy full of stats.

By the way, I’m at the office writing this entry today, listening to the new record from Arctic Monkey. If you like British mod/punk, check it out.

OK, finally for today, we have At The Controls, which is from The Smithsonian. It’s features pictures from inside cockpits, which you’d think would be silly, and I certainly thought so, but after flipping through this thing, it is full of interesting pictures from the air and inside cool planes. It’s interesting even if, like me, you sort of feel that if man were meant to fly, he’d have come with wings.