LifeHacker: Books that Changed Your Lives

Over at LifeHacker (a really cool site, btw, that promotes improving personal productivity and "getting things done"), they did a poll: Books that Changed Your Lives. The results are in, and first place not surprising goes to the Bible, with 25 votes. But also not surprisingly -- at least not to me -- is Ayn Rand novels coming in second with a total of 23 votes (The Fountainhead 11, Atlas Shrugged 8, and Anthem 4).

This is not surprising for a few reasons. For one, her works are very influential and are often discovered by people in the late teens or during college, when many people are looking for things to "change their life". Also, this kind of poll result is quite common in America: The Bible comes in first place, and Rand's works come in second or in the top five somewhere. This famously happened in the early 1990s for instance, in a Library of Congress survey.

Those that really know me know that Rand's works would get my vote for such a poll question, so I'm pleased whenever I see her books rank highly like this.

All-Time Favorite Television Series

I've now posted to my website a page listing and briefly describing my all-time favorite television series. There is quite a range here, covering my childhood and also current favorites.

Baseball Movies

The USA Weekend insert for the weekend of March 23-25 had a one-page piece "Best Baseball Movies Ever: Our Exclusive Panel Takes Its Turn At Bat". With the baseball season underway this past week, I thought I'd chime in on this fun topic as well.

The usual suspects are rated highly by this panel of course: Bull Durham, Major League, The Natural, Field of Dreams, Bad News Bears, and Pride of the Yankees amongst others. I definitely liked all of those, to be sure. But a few others that are rarely mentioned in such discussions deserve attention.

I have always liked Angels in the Outfield, not the 1994 or 2000 remakes mind you, but the original 1951 film that starred Paul Douglas and Janet Leigh. If you've never seen this one, then add it to your Netflix or Blockbuster queue and enjoy its charming story!

Another less-well known baseball movie is A Winner Never Quits (1986). This is a fact-based story of a young boy who lost his right arm in a childhood accident, but went on to fulfill his dreams of playing major-league baseball.

Although it often gets included in lists of great baseball movies, sometimes Eight Men Out is forgotten. This is easily one of my favorites, and is one of those movies that I have a hard time turning off the TV if I happen upon it (like another baseball film, The Natural, or a few films in other genres, such as The Princess Bride).

And I recently watched The Sandlot (1993) for the first time, and enjoyed it. This one is good for both kids and adults.

In Googling "best baseball movies", I discovered this great site: www.baseballmovies.com. Great info there, including the creator's own list of the top-25 baseball movies ever -- and I was delighted to see The Natural top the list. Another list is this one from epinions, posted in 2004. Also see this list of top 20 from ESPN's Page 2. To dig even deeper, I was amazed at this list of 20+ older films (1930-1969). And then there is also this annotated list of 100 baseball and baseball-related movies!

I plan to start a project to watch all the baseball movies I can over time... should be fun. If you know of any other good lists of them, please let me know.

As of now, my ranking of favorite baseball films (not including documentaries, like the Burns Baseball series), would be:

1. The Natural
2. Field of Dreams
3. Eight Men Out
4. Angels in the Outfield (1951 version)
5. A League of their Own
6. Pride of the Yankees
7. Bull Durham
8. Major League
9. The Sandlot
10. 61

The last few spots are tough ones, so I could easily change my mind in the future. There is the Babe Ruth Story, Cobb, Bad News Bears, A Winner Never Quits, and many others that are in contention for this top-10 listing.

Favorite Soothing Music from Rock Artists

I've added a third page to the "Favorites" section at my website. This one details a music playlist that I have compiled over the years, that I listen to pretty regularly. This collection of 23 songs are what I consider "soothing" music, but they are all from artists who are not known for this kind of thing at all. Included are songs from Black Sabbath; Crosby, Still, and Nash; The Doors; Jethro Tull; Led Zeppelin; Neil Young; Robert Plant; Queensryche; Simon and Garfunkel; Smashing Pumpkins; Steve Miller Band. Can you guess the songs?

The only group or artist excluded from the list is Pink Floyd -- because there are so many good songs from them that fit this category, I have a separate, similar playlist for those... which I'll get up on the site someday as well.

The Wonder that is iTunes, plus Three More Favorites

Since MSN Music closed shop recently, I've switched to iTunes. Like with MSN Music, I have so far just used iTunes to download single songs for 99 cents each -- songs that are favorites but that I don't want to buy the entire album CD to get. So I've been filling in the gaps in my music collection over the past week, and at this point I can think of very few songs that I know I really like and that I don't have on CD or computer. The iTunes collection is not perfect -- like competitors, it is missing some key bands like Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Jethro Tull, and others. But it is VERY extensive nonetheless -- and not just for music of course, as you can download thousands of TV episodes from a wide range of series for just $1.99 each. And the user interface is very easy to get used to. For many readers the above was no doubt quite boring, as I know I'm just getting caught up with the wonder that is iTunes -- I'm in that "kid in the candy store" phase. It'll pass soon...

One other thing I really like a lot about iTunes are the dozens of so-called Essentials collections. These are listings of the best songs from particular artists and groups -- across all genres. This is a great way to fill in the gaps in your music collection! And they also have Genre-based collections, with some top songs from various artists in each category. Also very useful, and good way to sample a new musical genre that you might or might not enjoy. As always, you can listen to 20-30 second clips of each song in each list.

Lastly on the topic of favorite music... I've added three more songs to my "Other Favorite Rock/Pop Music" page. This is an odd grouping, but here they are:

• The Gambler, by Kenny Rogers (1978)
• One Night in Bangkok, by Murray Head (1984)
• Call Me When You're Sober, by Evanescence (2006)

The first two here get a 3 rating out of 10, while the Evanescence tune gets the higher 2 rating. And it is the only post-2000 song in my list at this time.

Favorites List: Led Zeppelin songs

In June I posted my first list of "favorites": a sortable list of a few dozen of my favorite pop/rock songs from all artists except Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, Led Zeppelin, and Enya.

I've now created a second "favorites" list... this one is for my favorite Led Zeppelin songs.

I find these to be fun projects, so more such favorites lists for music, movies, art, and so on will be created in the future.

Some of My Favorite Rock/Pop Songs

Over time I'll be compiling and posting to my personal website various lists of my "favorites": music, movies, art, and so on. The first I posted tonight, a sortable list of a few dozen of my favorite pop/rock songs from all artists except a few that will later have separate listings (my top favorites which are Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, Led Zeppelin, Enya). The table is sortable by song, artist, or year. The songs are rating on a 1-10 scale, with 1 being best. Only those that I consider a 1, 2, or 3 are included so far. There is a good mix here: 1960s-1990s, from Harry Chapin and Simon and Garfunkel to Metallica and Ozzy.

I also included Wikipedia links to those songs that have their own entries (most already do!). And for four songs, I included some comments of my own below the listing.

Recommended: The Teaching Company

Many people like to listen to novels or other books on tape/CD: while walking, at the gym, in the car, and so on. I do too, but what I really like to do -- while driving to and from work -- is listen to lectures on CD from The Teaching Company. This company provides an immense library of top-notch material on a wide range of subjects. Quoting from their "About Us" page:

The Teaching Company brings engaging professors into your home or car through courses on DVD, audio CD, and other formats. Since 1990, great teachers from the Ivy League, Stanford, Georgetown, and other leading colleges and universities have crafted over 200 courses for lifelong learners. We provide the adventure of learning, without the homework or exams.

I've been pretty consistently impressed with the courses that I have listened to thus far. Each lecture is about 30 minutes in length, and the courses have all been 12-36 lectures each (some they offer are longer). Some of the professors are better speakers than others, in terms of clarity or how engaging they are. In general, they seem to do a good job of presenting objective information in an unbiased manner (to the extent that I can determine this -- there might be more subtle and hard to detect bias in the topics they choose to cover, or not cover, in their courses.) The few times I have heard a professor allow his opinions to enter into the presentation, they have been upfront about it.

If you browse their catalog, you might suffer from sticker shock -- their products seem quite expensive. However, what is vital to know is that every course they offer goes on a significant sale at least once a year. Usually this is around 70% off regular prices, so if you find one you might like to try, wait for it to go on sale if it isn't on sale now!

I thought I'd list the ones I have listened to so far (in no particular order):

• The Story of Human Language (18 hours), by John McWhorter (Manhattan Institute)
• History of the English Language (18 hours), by Seth Lerer (Stanford University)
• Churchill (6 hours), by J. Rufus Fears (Univ. of Oklahoma)
• Mr. Lincoln (6 hours), by Allen Guelzo (Gettysburg College)
• History of the Supreme Court (18 hours), by Peter Irons (UCSD)
• American Ideals: Founding a Republic of Virtue (6 hours), by Daniel N. Robinson (Oxford University)
• Doctors: The History of Scientific Medicine Revealed through Biography (6 hours), by Sherwin Nuland (Yale School of Medicine)
• The Philosophy of Mind (6 hours), by John Searle (UC Berkeley) -- no longer available
• From Yao to Mao: 5000 Years of Chinese History (18 hours), by Kenneth Hammond (New Mexico State University)

I am just now finishing up the Chinese history course. Favorites? Hard to choose. The McWhorter course on the History of Language is really good -- he speaks quickly but is nonetheless easy to understand (I have seen him on TV many times, and always find him to be insightful and articulate, no matter the subject he is commenting on). The Doctors course was very interesting, but I could really say that about all of them. Peter Irons admits at the outset that he is on the political left, but I didn't find that this biased his presentation on the Supreme Court very much. And the Philosophy of Mind course by Searle is outstanding (as I would have expected, given the lecturer), which is a shame because it doesn't seem to be available any longer.

In the future, I'll blog about these courses as I listen to them -- there are many others I hope to get to soon.

Check out their website!