LastName, FirstName (Handle). “TweetContents.” DatePublished, TimePublished. Tweet. (How do I cite a tweet?)

_{“How do I cite a tweet?” Modern Language Association. Modern Language Association, 02 Mar. 2012, Web. 06 Mar. 2012.}

Dr Strauss says I shoud rite down what I think and re-membir and evrey thing that happins to me from now on. I dont no why but he says its importint so they will see if they can use me. I hope they use me becaus Miss Kinnian says mabye they can make me smart. I want to be smart. My name is Charles I werk in Donners bakery where Mr Donner gives me 11 dollers a week and bred or cake if I want. I am 32 yeres old and next munth is my brithday. I tolld dr Strauss and perfesser Nemur I cant rite good but he says it dont matter he says I shud rite just like I talk and like I rite compushishens in Miss Kinnians class at the beekmin collidge center for retarted adults where I go to lern 3 times a week on my time off. Dr. Strauss says to rite a lot evrything I think and evrything that happins to me but I cant think anymor because I have nothing to rite so I will close for today … yrs truly Charles.

The biologist Garrett Hardin once pointed to a disarmingly simple lesson of systems analysis that has powerful implications: “We can never do merely one thing.” His point was that good intentions are virtually irrelevant in determining the result of altering a large, complex system. With the feedback relationships inherent in such a system, one can almost never anticipate the full consequences of any alteration…. I do not wish to suggest that leadership is immaterial, only that it is of much less importance than many believe. Complex societies do not evolve on the whims of individuals. Circumstance-induced perception is likely to be of greater consequence: rulers look good when the marginal return on investment in complexity is rising, for in such a situation almost anything a leader does is overshadowed by the large payoff to society-wide investment. Conversely, when marginal returns are declining there is usually very little that leadership can do in the short-term to arrest this trend, and so anything that is tried is bound to appear incompetent.

I’m always grateful for clearer pictures of politics, which isn’t always best delivered by politicians. But now the fun is over, the book is closed.
     This leaves me with the difficult task of picking another book. So far, I have it whittled down to:

• The Nicomachean Ethics, by Aristotle
• Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad
• Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman, by Richard Feynman
• Neuromancer, by William Gibson
• Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein
• Mein Kampf, by Adolf Hitler
• The Book on Adler, by Søren Kierkegaard
• Fear and Trembling, by Kierkegaard again
• Beyond Good and Evil, by Friedrich Nietzsche
• and Thus Spake Zarathustra, Nietzsche

Already Mein Kampf has a bit of intrigue. I took a brief look through the introduction, and it reads:

The first volume of Mein Kampf was written while the author was imprisoned in a Bavarian fortress. How did he get there and why? The answer to that question is important, because the book deals with the events which brought the author into this plight and because he wrote under the emotional stress caused by the historical happenings of the time….
     In the beginning of 1923 the French invaded Germany, occupied the Ruhr district and seized several German towns in the Rhineland. This was a flagrant breach of international law and was protested against by every section of British political opinion at that time. The Germans could not effectively defend themselves, as they had been already disarmed under the provisions of the Versailles Treaty. To make the situation more fraught with disaster for Germany, and therefore more appalling in its prospect, the French carried on an intensive propaganda for the separation of the Rhineland from the German Republic and the establishment of an independent Rhenania. Money was poured out lavishly to bribe agitators to carry on this work, and some of the most insidious elements of the German population became active in the pay of the invader.

     We’ll see.

I speak of cats, I speak of dogs, I sing of lobsters and of flounders and of mackerel. I gently and suspiciously approach a plan of activity, a design of action. My electrons war with my neutrons, this war will allow more fantasies and dreams of living things within my form and structure. [...] In me are appearances of meat and cucumbers, of steak and spinach, of lamb and lettuce. These also are the reflections and images of my electrons and neutrons. This is my dreaming, my thinking, my fantasizing. [...] Nevertheless these images and reflections are understood by you, persons, men and women. You have electrons and neutrons like me. [...]
     I began by speaking of cats and dogs. At all events a cat could be an electron and a dog could be a neutron. Their reflections are images like my dreams. But the mirror, the glass, is broken and splintered and shattered.