Weekday Update

In no particular order, an incomplete list of books I've read in the past months:

1) The Illuminatus Trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson et. al.
2) The Image and other stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer
3) The Magician of Lublin by Isaac Bashevis Singer
4) Love in the Time of Cholera by Marquez
5) Dune by Frank Herbert
6) Maps in a Mirror, by Orson Scott Card
7) The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
8) Winning Low-Limit Hold'em by Lee Jones
9) The Unbearable Lightness of Being my Milan Kundera

I recommend all of these, though most are appropriate only for specific audiences.

Some random thoughts on academia, from an aspiring (cough) academic:
1) Academics really don't work hard, unless they choose to, and even the ones that choose to work hard work much less than similarly skilled professionals in the field.
2) That's what's great about academia, and there's nothing wrong with that. Society likes smart people to have a second to think, and (some) smart people care more about that free time than they do about the higher pay in industry.
3) Academic jobs in fields which pay extraordinarily well in industry (law,business, medicine, and once upon a time CS) are really sweet jobs. I may want to do this one day. You get paid a fraction of what your colleagues in industry earn, but three times what your colleagues who teach sociology earn, and you don't really work much harder. The anecdotal evidence I've heard suggests it's easier getting these jobs than other jobs in academia (at least in business). The downside is, well, the money, and grad school.