This is cool, and unexpected: the University of Chicago has an annual feature where they ask what their faculty what was the last good book they read. Guess what book faculty member (and Holy Haleakala, Chief Judge for the Seventh Circuit United States Court of Appeals) Frank Easterbrook chose?
The bookstores and blogs are full of junk science, much of it predicting doom. So I enjoyed reading Death from the Skies! by a real scientist (Philip Plait), who also runs the Bad Astronomy blog, that mixes science news with exposing scientific bunkum. Plait evaluates the doomsayers' predictions and assesses their likelihoods. He provides a convenient table of giant stars in the celestial neighborhood, just in case worries about supernovas and gamma ray bursts have kept you awake at night. A well-written book about science is always a good break from the law reports.
[I added the link, it's not in the original quote.] That's so excellent! I'm not sure I have the heart to tell him I went to the University of Chicago for a year... and dropped out. Long story, but eventually I went back to school (Michigan), got my degree, got my PhD, worked on Hubble for ten years, and now I sit in my office at home blogging while wearing flannel PJ bottoms! If there's a cautionary tale in there, I'm not seeing it.
