I stumbled across two very interesting books this summer (both available for free online):

David MacKay, Information Theory, Inference and Learning Algorithms (available here)
James P. Sethna, Entropy, Order Parameters and Complexity (here)

They remind me of the program that Graham postulated in How To Do Philosophy: start with the useful and crank up the generality.  For what [...]

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Two pieces that grabbed my attention recently:

Why Not Hang Them All: The Virtues of Inefficient Punishment, by David Friedman, son of Milton. (JSTOR, or Google Scholar.) Have you ever wondered why criminal justice systems around the world rely so heavily on imprisonment, despite the existence of more efficient alternatives such as fines [...]

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