"Books are good company, in sad times and happy times, for books are people - people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book." Both the letters described, and Robin's point, are beautiful.

"Something like: Trying to create a reading list that gives the best introduction to everything. This may change." Phil is trying to collect the Good Books in many fields. It's an interesting project, for sure; it'll also be interesting to see how it pans out.

"CKAN is the Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network, a registry of open knowledge packages and projects (and a few closed ones). CKAN is the place to search for open knowledge resources as well as register your own."

"When you find new information, you get an opioid hit, and we are junkies for those. You might call us 'infovores.'" ... We are programmed for scarcity and can't dial back when something is abundant." So that explains it.

"researchers found that information workers whose strong e-mail networks allow them to receive new information sooner than their peers...are likely to be more productive than their less well-connected counterparts"

"Toread represents the idea that we can be the sum of the knowledge of everyone who’s ever preceded us, that given enough time we can absorb the cumulative learnings of humanity."

David's on fire. Consilience is a wonderful word; one of my watchwords for 2007, too.