Uh, maybe this book isn't for you, if all you're interested in is more theorems. The theory of information doesn't boil down to signal/noise equations. If you don't even get the Borges reference (which, honestly, no book on information can do without), that's a pretty good sign.

Geoff Nunberg's NYT review of this book from March summarizes the problems of Gleick's rah-rah information romance nicely, not the least of which is the separation of information from any and all social context.

A mid-level civil service worker in China gets paid about $500 a month in a well-developed city. He lives comfortably on this salary, bought his own 1-bedroom place, goes out to eat in restaurants on weekends, and has a decent PC computer and Internet connection. This is an educated knowledge worker with an M.S. degree.

You can't apply a Western minimum wage to a place where you can rent an apartment for less than the price of my California utility bills.

Definitions, my dear AC. Natural monopolies describe the structural elements of a market -- that is, there exists economies of scale such that it is more efficient for one firm to serve everyone than for multiple firms to each serve a segment. For the sake of this efficiency, one firm will be usually be allowed to exist (a so-called statutory monopoly or government monopoly) and competitors excluded, in exchange for government regulation to prevent exploitative business practices as a result of the natural monopoly. In this case, the use of state power ensures the optimal out in terms of social cost and value. You might not buy that theory, but it does prevent five different companies to try to lay identical power lines and/or plumbing to your house.

What you're actually describing is coercive vs non-coercive monopolies. The coercive monopolist attempts to exclude competitors from the market, either via predatory practices or state power. The absence of antitrust regulation implicitly encourages private coercive behavior, as there are very few natural incentives for a monopolist firm to -not- engage in such practices. While in theory a monopolist firm in a normal market can be non-coercive and efficient, lots of things can be in theory possible and yet in practice rare due to these various incentives.

The pseudo-libertarian rant is amusing, though.

Well, I dunno, I think it's not so much proof of his eccentric version of heliocentrism, but the presentation of any version of heliocentrism as truth rather than hypothesis. Cardinal Bellarmine, the Church's presumed expert in the matter, was simply unconvinced by assertions made and evidence presented, when put against the accepted doctrine, as written fairly explicitly in the Scriptures. As you said, Galileo didn't have much solid proof. The Tychonic theory of geocentrism with a mobile sun also explained the phases of Venus, for example. Without having observed stellar parallax, there's not much else you can say - and even if you have a parallax, there are ways to explain around that without having to invoke 'God did it'. In context of a pre-Newtonian era, it's not too difficult to think of alternate explanations.

Galileo had a number of admirers and defenders, up to Urban VIII. The Dialogues, unfortunately, basically attacked everyone else who held different theories, without holding up much else. Most importantly, by using the Pope's own theory (that the universe is in fact geocentric, but made by God to appear heliocentric to human observation) with 'Simplicio' and then striking it down, the Dialogues became a challenge to papal supremacy and had to be put down. It seems Galileo apparently didn't have the social skills to keep his allies and avoid alienating potential supporters.