Reading Guns, Germs and Steel, but decided to pickup a few new books… some I haven’t even had recommended to me. I’ll write up the whole list later, but I did start digging into Way of the Weasel by Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame)… pretty freakin funny book. A bit scary though, because for the first time I found what looked like a Microsoft quote in the book. We need to evaluate the company a little bit when “Schedule Chicken” is quoted as a great Pointed-Haired-Boss tactic, and something that happens frequently at the ‘soft.

On the subject of complete ignorance, I had a debate with some coworkers about why seasons change. I was (it turns out) on the loosing side of the debate – it doesn’t have to do with the earth’s elliptical orbit. Sometimes I am completely shocked at my lack of intelligence. The debate was going something like “the tilt of the earth causes the seasons because part of the earth is farther away than the other” and I respond with “no, the earth has an elliptical orbit which causes a much greater distance change that the angle of the tilt”. We were both right and both wrong. Nasa has a great site that explains (for a 4 year old) how the seasons work, and that it is due to the angle of the light rays hitting the earth. Oh well, at least I learned something new today.