Showing posts with label Super Crunchers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Super Crunchers. Show all posts

Thursday, July 3, 2014

transitioning

I wanted to write a book once titled: The Secret to Knowing Everything. Curious, I typed it into a library catalog and Freakonomics popped up. I had never heard of it. I was a lousy librarian in that I didn't care for books, but rather answering queries. I never worked in public library, so I was pop culturally sheltered.
AW I eventually won a copy of Freakonomics as a door prize at a librarian conference held on October 30, 2009 in Wilmington. My old boss who laid me off was in charge of door prizes, but I left before my name was drawn. Naturally, a librarian from Stow Campus got it for me and mailed it to me. My campus is a few miles from my old job and I was on good terms with my old boss, so I found it very bizarre.
(I remember the date because was a Friday and a dude that presented dressed as a historically accurate pirate for Halloween)
Very weird how I came across the book, for I hadn't read it though I wanted to read it upon my first seeing pop up in random book about knowing everything search.
I liked the book. I don't agree with much of it but it was interesting. Jon Lott Jr. has a book that was a retort called Freedomnomics that I saw at Half Price Books and eventually read. I enjoyed it. I like seeing different sides of stuff. No one seems to share my opinions completely, so I just laugh at the bogus reasoning some conjure to meet their memes of progress is good because we are smarter than you so don't question authority.
So I'm reading Super Crunchers because it w in the area that game theory would reside if J had such books at her work. The book is old considering it has Cingular and Circuit City cited as companies utilizing super data mining to yield massive profits off ignorant customers being bilked by smoothly individualized marketing via the Internet. Manipulating people to think stuff as though they have free will to do
 so is just plain evil. Totally explains how people act irrational with confidence.

I'm in a plateau phase of my life. I've a baby who needs me until she's ready for school, so I plan to be mentally challenged by having a balanced information diet to prepare for my reemergence from semi retirement. The blog will serve as a pondering tool, if I blog at all.