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Recommended reading in this blog

I've been adding entries to my blog for quite a few years now, and nobody's apt to ever read the whole thing. It's pretty eclectic, with entries ranging from stories about my childhood, to entries so technical that nobody is likely to be interested except another engineer (and for that matter, only a specific type of engineer).

But I do find myself recommending pages to people interested in specific topics. Hence I decided to add this page to allow me to permanently record some of these recommendations. If you're interested in reading some of my writing, this can be a good way to get started.

Recommended reading

The categories (these jump down to the lists of entries below)

  About this blog:  Introductory entries to read at some point.
Childhood stories:  Stories from my youth.
MIT:  The Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Animals:  Stories about interesting animals.
Krakauer:  Our family name and history.
Kronos:  A company where I worked 24.5 years.
Darwin:  My granddaughter, named 'Darwin'.
France and the French:  Our most frequent travel destination.
The French language:  My best foreign language.
The Italians, and the Italian language:  Our next most frequent vacation spot.
Spain and the Spanish language:  The most useful foreign language in the US

Of course, entries relating to certain topics can also be found starting from the Keyword list. But the entries listed above are more limited, a selection of what I think of as the best of the entries in a particular area, entries that I'd recommend to a friend.

If you click on a link below, that entry will open in a separate window or tab (depending on your browser). When done, you can close that window or tab to return here. All pages opened from the links below use the same window (or tab), so opening a new page will overwrite the old one.

About this blog

If you're just getting started here, at some point you ought to read the following four introductory entries (but you don't have to do it right away).

Introduction: What are these pages?   On immortality, and why this blog is being written.

Who am I?   A quick once-over on my life story, broken down roughly by decade.

Why write using the HTML and JPG file formats?   Keeping things forever: the ability of digital technology to make exact copies.

How I write   My writing style, and the technology that supports my writing (past and present).

Childhood stories

The poison apple   A minor childhood trauma.

My brain on Ovaltine   Learning to think; radio days.

Sturbridge fields forever   On the playing fields of Camp Robinson Crusoe.

Sex in the woods   A summer camp story that says a lot about what I was like as a kid.

Vocabulary   My vocabulary cards from the sixth grade.

Mr. Canfield   Studying French with Mr. Canfield.

Mr. Lusch   My high school physics course.

Dan and the moon   Using the moon, my father teaches me how to think.

Ask Larry   A guest entry by my sister Alice.

MIT

MIT people   Some people I encountered at MIT, which I attended for 11 years.

MIT scenes   Seen on the MIT campus.

Nerd pride   Early computer geeks.

The Lecture Series Committee   Silkscreened posters advertising films shown at MIT in 1962.

Wrestling for Baker House   My brief athletic career at MIT.

The gambler   My MIT course on Statistical Decision Theory

In loco parentis   Dating in the sixties.

Hackers   The Artificial Intelligence Lab in the sixties.

Amateur subway riding   Competitive subway riding in New York City.

MIT hacks   My MIT hacks, then and now.

Animals  Stories about interesting animals

Harold   Harold, my sister Alice's blue and gold macaw.

Chester   Our first family dog (part 1 of 3).

Chester (bis)   Our first family dog (part 2 of 3)

Chester (ter)   Our first family dog (part 3 of 3)

The cat who came in from the cold   How Alice came by her pet cats.

The English sparrow   A few stories about birds.

Krakauer

Krakauer   The origin of my family name.

Philip   Philip Krakauer and his descendents.

Abe   My paternal grandfather Abraham Krakauer.

Kronos

Coming to Kronos   The story of how I came to work at Kronos in April, 1979.
#0005   January 11, 2010   *CAREER   *KRONOS

Due diligence   A "Due Diligence" meeting held when I invested in Kronos in July of 1979.

History of Kronos, part 1   An annotated humorous 1997 speech on the history of Kronos, presented to an audience of about 800 people in Chicago. Part 1 of 2.

History of Kronos, part 2   An annotated humorous 1997 speech on the history of Kronos. Part 2 of 2.

The house of turkey death   A couple of turkey-related stories for Thanksgiving

Y2K   The year 2000, start of the new millennium.

Y2K (bis)   The year 2000, part 2.

Y2K speech, part 1   Part 1 of a 1999 speech about the upcoming year 2000.

Y2K speech, part 2   The conclusion of a 1999 speech about the upcoming year 2000.

Darwin

Darwin   My first grandchild.

Solid food   Darwin enlarges her diet.

Milestones   Baby Darwin changes.

Applause!   Darwin's development continues.

Nine months   Darwin's nine-month birthday.

First Thanksgiving   Darwin celebrates her first family Thanksgiving

Hair   The many hairstyles of Darwin.

One year   Darwin's first birthday.

First year   Darwin's first year.

The world according to Darwin   Darwin builds vocabulary, and makes sense of the world.

France and the French

The French   A recent trip to France.

Driving in France   Some tips for tourists on driving in France.

Classrooms Abroad   My first trip to France.

Monsieur L'Oiseau   A story about French formality, on my first trip to France in 1961.

The French language

L'Accent tonique   Thoughts about listening to and speaking French (probably only of interest to those who speak or are studying French).

Le Cercle Français   How I found Le Cercle Français, including an interesting event that occurred in Mme. Brynjolfsson's conversational French course.

Véronique   About my first trip to France, and learning to speak French.

The Italians, and the Italian language

The Italians   Some observations from our travels in Italy.

Biscotti   Some word origins, and connections between languages.

Biscotti (bis)   How Americans misuse and mispronounce Italian words.

Pastafarianism   Cosmic secrets in Italian pasta (an April first entry).

Spain and the Spanish language

Tyranny of the clock   The pain in Spain is mainly in the brain. Eating in Spain, and how our modern dependence on the clock limits our thinking.

Spanish   Learning Spanish.

Linguistic lunacy   Some quirks of English and Spanish.
 

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© 2014 Lawrence J. Krakauer   Click here to send me e-mail.
This page was originally posted August 14, 2014

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