Today's happy (Tufte) moment

Today's happy moment for me came during a visit to edwardtufte.com. Regarding his new book, Beautiful Evidence (a beautiful title):

"I have completed Beautiful Evidence, except for the index and a few loose ends. We are currently proofing some difficult images on press, negotiating with printers, planning the order for paper and binding, and working through other production issues. Probably the major threats to breaking the schedule will be in color-correcting images and in importing some paper used in one section of the book. We should have books in mid-April."

I shook Mr. Tufte's hand while attending one his seminars (worth every penny and more), and acted like I was meeting a movie star. I would like to borrow his brain for the rest of my life.

If, by some chance, you are unfamiliar with Edward Tufte, he is a Yale professor who is widely regarded as the Michael Jordan of the information design world (or the Jakob Nielsen of the information design world, if you like). He is the author of Visual Explanations, Envisioning Information and The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. For intellectual books, they manage to never be plodding or boring -- if you've never read them, they get my "two thumbs way up" rating.