Please, people, if you must recommend decent bits, please give us the
Amazon URL so more of us can buy books directly instead of having to
jump to
http://www.cs.caltech.edu/~adam/local/fork-books.html
Starving people are dying because the FoRK slush fund cannot support their
party habits.
For example of the Amazon-endorsed way to recommend books, we turn to
Dan Kohn's recent message:
> I cannot recommend highly enough the book A Random Walk Down Wall Street
> by Malkiel. He will give you a fascinating explanation of most of what
> you're curious about with financial markets. And, at the end of the
> book, he'll explain why you should put most of your money in indexed
> mutual funds (especially http:/www.vanguard.com, which rocks) and then
> maybe have a little fun with some individual stocks on the side (makes
> reading the WSJ interesting).
When with a small amount of effort he could have also given us
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0393315290/forkrecommendedrA/
Just like if I wanted to recommend the Motley Fool investment guide --
with the ever-popular "Dow Dogs" strategy of investing in only the Dow
blue chips with the best current price-to-earnings ratio -- I could
put forth
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0684827034/forkrecommendedrA/
I do agree with Dan that indexed mutual funds are the way to go,
and I also like Vanguard (as did Gordon, if I remember correctly).
Having taken a bath on the tech stocks I do own this season
("But I *am* diversified: I own both hardward AND software stocks..."),
I'm thinking bozos like me shouldn't be allowed to invest in individual
companies.
> Slight delay in my response here, as I got about 500 messages behind in
> my trips to Geneva and Tokyo (I'm flying back now, with the 1st class
> upgrade!).
Lightweight. I just hit 5000 messages behind. Time to scrap them all
and just start the whole process over again.
> Joe, I recommend this book so highly I'd be happy to purchase it for
> you.
That's enough incentive for me; I for one am marching right to Amazon
immediately and buy me a copy. Done!
We've only racked up like $30 for the FoRK slush fund from Amazon so far
--- not even enough for them to cut me a check for the amount! Think of
all the float we're missing out on because you people (and when I say
"you people", I mean everyone except joebar, who buys early AND buys
often) aren't ordering enough stuff from Amazon with the
forkrecommendedrA attached to the side.
Please, in this ongoing holiday season, let's not lose the spiritual
message that Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, and Mr. Hanky have given us:
CONSUMPTION IS GOOD! NOW GO OUT AND BUY, BUY, BUY!!!
We now return you to the droll, uninformative, bitsucking list you all
know and seem to love, already in progress...
----
adam@cs.caltech.edu
I go to a lot of movies. There's something about a big screen, a dark
room, sticky floors, and stale popcorn that's qualitatively better than
watching a movie at home, no matter how big your television is (or how
sticky your floors are). But, perhaps I'm just a dupe, programmed for
consumption.
-- Jamie Zawinski