Finished 2 books by David Brin : Heart of the Comet -- essence is how easy it is for humans to form factions. Glory Season -- essence is how completely society would change if we had different sex drives and associated reproductive patterns. Both very good, "Glory Season" is easiest / best for my teenager, IMHO.

Finished 2 books by Orson Scott Card. I didn't realize how many different kinds of books he has written. "Empire" is a political / military thriller. He does a very good job of presenting the POVs of military people/culture. "Lovelock", with Kathryn H. Kidd, is told from the POV of a genetically- and surgically-enhanced capuchin monkey, mute, but of extraordinary intelligence, who comes to realize that he is a slave.

Currently reading Card's 'Sarah, Women of Genesis'. Historical novel, I don't know enough history / archaeology of that era to judge, but it seems plausible. Engaging, I am 150 pages into it, certainly want to keep reading.

Both "Lovelock" and "Sarah" detail the ways people manipulate others, small-scale social interactions making for social influence, popularity, etc. Sarah is 1990, Lovelock is 1994, so this is something Card was doing on his own, although Lovelock is much sharper in its insights about people. It will be interesting to see if this is interesting to my son, and at what age.

I watched 2 movies this week. "The Fifth Element" -- SciFi and "Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern are dead". Element was a much better script than Hollywood usually gives SciFi movies. Rosenkrantz is a movie about a play pretending to be a movie about Shakespeare's Hamlet. Read some more about the question of who wrote Shakespeare.

Read a lot of stuff on the net in the last week. Lind's essays on 4th generation warfare, lots of articles off of Lew Rockwell's site. Some older articles by his authors. A bunch of economic info, e.g. The Automatic Earth. Also listened to a lot of new music, some from YouTube. Celtic, Klezmer. Klezmer bands need Uillieann pipes, IMHO. Maybe a digeridoo also. They aren't keeping up with the times. Lots of Nordic bands have digeridoos. 8).

Got onto some thread involving religion, found a great quote by Maimonides: "One should see the world, and see himself as a scale with an equal balance of good and evil. When he does one good deed the scale is tipped to the good - he and the world is saved. When he does one evil deed the scale is tipped to the bad - he and the world is destroyed. "

Very high standards for dealing with others. "Do unto others" with eternity at stake. Also found Karen Armstrong and her "Charter for Compassion".