Consultingsmiths.com

To Amazon’s credit, I didn’t find anything to add to this category yesterday. That may have been from a lack of trying, but so be it.

This morning it was easy – paging backward through the 44 screens of recommendations, I immediately came upon “Indigenous South Americans of the Past and Present: An Ecological Perspective.”

How so? “Because you rated…” – are you ready – John Keegan’s “A History of Warfare.”

Your guess is as good as mine, since the product description is full of “ecological anthropology,” “adaptive systems” and dizzying phrases like “Utilizing ethnographic and archaeological data and an update paradigm derived from the best features of cultural ecology…”

One useful data point – it is paired in the “Frequently Bought Together” with Victor Davis Hanson’s “Carnage and Culture” – are these new paradigm cultural ecologists in fact closet warmongers? There has to be an interesting research project buried in there somewhere, if the right grant can be found.

This could turn into a regular feature…

Today’s entry begins with my having rated William James’ “The Varieties of Religious Experience” five stars.

The Amazonian responds with “Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity” by Jose Esteban Munoz.

Like yesterday’s jump from Iwo Jima to highly efficient potty training, the connection is fascinating. Or rather, that an algorithm made the connection teases the mind. Some sort of metadata adheres to each of these “ordered pairs” that ties them together, but what that might look like escapes me.

Stay tuned!

A little self-disclosure…

I love books. I write software. I struggle with a tendency to be critical.

These traits manifested together a few moments ago as I visited the Amazon site. With their knowledge of my tastes in books, they recommended that I buy “Potty Train Your Child in Just One Day: Proven Secrets of the Potty Pro.”

As a proud Grandfather and Great Grandfather I’ve bought gifts for expectant parents over the past few years, so I wondered what purchase(s) the recommendation was based upon. I like to do my part in refining the data that their algorithms consume so as to give them the best chance to tempt me. So, I clicked on the “Fix this recommendation” link.

It turns out that I was offered advice on potty training because I have read James Bradley’s “Flags of Our Fathers,” the story of the men who raised the flag on Mt. Suribachi.

I began today with a bemused smile, courtesy of Amazon.com – thanks!