In June of 2005, I finished reading "The Professor and the Madman" by Simon Winchester, which is an intriguing story of two significant contributors to the Oxford English Dictionary, or OED. I first heard this book mentioned in an interview on the Charlie Rose show, and it sounded interesting, so I bought a paperback copy, and it was indeed an interesting read.

I wrote these thoughts down then, but neglected to post them until now. That was likely in part because others beat me to the punch. In particular, I think I remember listening to a presentation by Nat Friedman on the topic at around that time. In any case, I stumbled today over the text I wrote back then, and thought the words were still worth sharing.

The most interesting thing I learned in reading this book wasn't actually about the principal characters, but instead involves a speech given by Richard Chenevix Trench to the Philological Society, entitled "On Some Deficiencies in Our English Dictionaries." This is the talk that eventually led to the creation of the OED, and the intriguing bit to me is an idea Trench proposed that was new at the time, but absolutely fundamental to the Open Source & Linux world today. Trench well understood that an undertaking of such magnitude as compilation of an exhaustive dictionary of the English language, detailing the history and lifetime of each word illustrated with many example of usage from existing literature, could never be accomplished by one individual. Instead, he proposed explicitly involving a large group of unpaid volunteer contributors. Winchester claims that while this may sound obvious today, that this idea had never been put forward before for such an undertaking.

Absolutely brilliant.

As an up-close observer of the evolution of the community approach to software development and maintenance, I couldn't help but draw connections. We are today engaged in an equally grand effort that may well have an enduring impact, that fundamentally would not be possible to accomplish without the contributions of an astoundingly diverse array of unpaid volunteer contributors...

In June of 2006, I finished reading Tim Russert's book "Big Russ & Me". It's not the sort of thing I usually read, but I did find it it generally interesting and at times even thought provoking. I wrote these thoughts down then, but never got around to posting them until now.

Russert used a particularly striking phrase when he described what he learned from his long association with Daniel Patrick Moynihan... "to respect true intelligence, ask good questions, and disagree agreeably."

I don't think I've ever heard the words "disagree agreeably" put together like that, but I instantly knew what he meant. It seems to me that the world would be a more pleasant and productive place all around if more of us would commit to disagreeing agreeably, instead of tending towards assuming the worst, over-reacting, and flaming each other when working through contentious issues.

I'm not typically prone to raving about books that I've read, but I picked up Jeffery Deaver's "The Vanished Man" in an airport to read on flights last week, and it was one of the better escapist fiction books I've read in quite a while. Sort of a multiple-murder-mystery thing where the perp is a serious magician, employing all sorts of misdirections and "sleight of mind" tricks.

Highly recommended if you're trying to decide what to grab off the airport bookshelf in a hurry sometime soon...