I’m glad to read that my old pal Stan Kelly-Bootle is back from serious (heart?) surgery, as told in his latest Son of Devil’s Advocate column. Stan’s apparently back in form, at least verbally:

With the first major break in my monthly Devil’s Advocate (DA) columns and the Son Of DA (SODA) progeny since May 1984, it seems logical to call this new sequence ROSODA (Return of SODA)? I rather like the Japanese resonance. Losoda is the wife of the head warrior but has the other six on the side. Just a brief Samurai of the plot.

In the linked-to column, Stan also has a very long and learned, but extremely entertaining, review of Clifford Pickover‘s book Keys to Infinity – I have several of Pickover’s books, but not that one. I’ll certainly put it onto my wish list.

I’ll also seize the occasion to plug Stan’s seminal work, The Computer Contradictionary, a copy of which he kindly signed for me when I visited him at his former home north of San Francisco in September 1999. No programmer should be without a copy.