"If you're good at sightreading four-hands piano music, I have hundreds of pieces I'd like to try playing with you; please drop me a note and we can hopefully get together for a jam session."
Playing four-hands piano with Knuth would be an unbelievably cool experience, and definitely a great conversation starter when among other hackers. It's almost enough incentive to start learning.
"Being a retired professor is a lot like being an ordinary professor, except that you don't have to write research proposals, administer grants, or sit in committee meetings. Also, you don't get paid."
New one for my list of favourite quotes. Great! ;)
Most "popular" books that are recognized as literary classics are good. A few may be crap, but I don't feel competent to judge them. A good rule is that any book that people are still reading several decades after it was published is worth your time. Please note that the inverse is not necessarily true.
I read Life A Users Manual by Georges Perec thanks to his recommendation (I read this page about two years ago, I guess). It was a real eye opener. I never actually finished it, but instead read a 600 page biography of Georges Perec.. a crazy but amazing man.
I'm surprised he liked The Haj; the book is basically a Rand-style propaganda piece about Arab society where all the characters are either stereotypes or their 'lives' are an obvious attempt to demonstrate some point.
Subtlety is an artistic choice, not a necessity. People that complain about the lack of realism in certain authors' works are probably the same people that hated the movie "300" because the characters weren't wearing proper period clothing.
Playing four-hands piano with Knuth would be an unbelievably cool experience, and definitely a great conversation starter when among other hackers. It's almost enough incentive to start learning.