perfidy

Never one to run from free and easy content, allow me to piggyback on Buckethead and Thoughts, Ideas and Wildfires spiffy little book thingum. Oh, don't worry about Buckethead; he has the grit, gristle, and shoulders to heave even my girthy girthness about freely.

There are several books near to hand as I type, all of which seem generally the same distance from me. Well ok the dictionary is closest, but it's a little lean on complete sentences (in case anyone really needs to know though, the 5th entry on page 123 is "bachelorette"). There are 3 or 4 books that are also arguably closest, but they are either reference-y or very specific to my job, so I'm declaring them out of bounds.

So let's take the first and last books from this small row, a row that exists about 30" off the back of my seat:

Shah claimed that Sufism was a form of universal wisdom and not Islamic, since it existed from before the historical development of Islam. It was not static in nature and could not be understood by studying past manifestations and methods of old masters. It needed to be constantly redefined for new circumstances and new environments.

That's from that cozy old fireside favorite, Islamic Thought in the Twentieth Century, edited by Suha Taji-Farouki and Basheer M. Nafi.

At the other end of the row comes:

Almost everyone who cared about privacy had been focusing on federal surveillance initiatives. John Poindexter's Total Information Awareness program was target number one. But even Poindexter, who had seen a demonstration of the Matrix, condemned the project, in part because of Asher's involvement.

That's from No Place to Hide by Robert O'Harrow Jr.

I've not read either of them, by the way, beyond the introduction or early chapters. That's why they're on my shelf, and not resting comfortably back in the library.