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Gumbywan

Randolph "Dilda" Carter

A rant about books, horror, and the weird.  I sometimes take on my love/hate relationship with goodreads and Amazon.

Currently reading

Perchance to Dream: Selected Stories
Ray Bradbury, Charles Beaumont, William Shatner
Progress: 140/336 pages
Pavane
Keith Roberts

Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (With a new section: "On Robustness and Fragility")

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable - Nassim Nicholas Taleb Should be subtitled: How Not to Be a Sucker.I'm not sure why all the negativity about this book, maybe it's a backlash to all the hype it received. It's not a great piece of literature per se but I don't think that was the author's intention. The ideas are well conceived and presented in a manner that is going to get your attention. I personally enjoyed the casual manner of the text in what could be otherwise a pretty soporific subject.The global economic collapse that happened after this book was published makes it's subject all that more profound and certainly Taleb's cheap shots against Wall Street, economists, and politicians in general seem almost prescient. It turns out the majority of the industrial world, including most of us, were suckers when the Black Swan arrived.To be fair, it did take me a couple of shots to stick with the book, but in the end it was worth it.