Category Archives: Books

Potpourri for $200

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Lots of great stuff on kottke recently

Dan Baum: The Following Account of My Short Career at The New Yorker Ran as a Series of Tweets on May 8, 11, and 12, 2009

Three tweets: (Thufferin’ Thuccotath!)

of arms. Tom Wolfe is right, I think, when admonishes young writers to ignore the old advice about “writing what

you know,” and instead write about what you don’t know. If you have to learn about something from scratch, he

argues, you don’t bring any lazy preconceptions. John said I was welcome to give it a try. “Think about trying a

Advice from Rat Traders

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Only-slightly-3-d art: Simon Schubert (small folds in paper) and Marco Maggi (slides 06-9 through 06-12 are “pencil on aluminum foil”)

Analyzing Dr. Seuss

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Physicists can geek anything up. Analyzing the sizes of the cats in The Cat in the Hat Comes Back

The Cat in the Hat comes back and gets small

Ok, so Cat A is a little different (I will assume that is close before – or close enough). Cat B, however, doesn’t fit the pattern I used before. So maybe each successive Cat is not just 0.37 times smaller than the previous. I could explore this further if only I had more data. I do! Here is the next picture from the book.

The conclusion:

Don’t trust the Cat in the Hat.

Spicing it Up

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Green Eggs and Toast

Changing standard storytelling as an exercise in challenging kids. Plus, it’s fun. I’ve done these and similar things with my nieces. The fill-in-the-last-word is something I learned from someone with a background in child development, and the replace-a-word I do just because I love kids’ sense of the absurd (and finding the line where pretending becomes just silly). Changing the story has its dangers, though — it can be upsetting if you aren’t doing it right and the child isn’t in the mood for it.

Uncle’s tip: Always negotiate how many time you’re expected to read the book before you start. They’re minors and contracts aren’t legally binding, but it’s some leverage, at least. You get tired of reading the book long before they tire of hearing it … again.

via

I Swear I Did It

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Guilty Secrets Survey results revealed!

George Orwell’s 1984 tops the list of books that people pretend they have read, in a survey carried out for World Book Day 2009 to uncover the nation’s guilty reading secrets. Of the 65% who claimed to have read a book which in truth they haven’t 42% admit to having said they had read modern classic 1984.

Those who lied have claimed to have read:

1. 1984 by George Orwell (42%)
2. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (31%)
3. Ulysses by James Joyce (25%)
4. The Bible (24%)
5. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (16%)
6. A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking (15%)
7. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie (14%)
8. In Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust (9%)
9. Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama (6%)
10. The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins (6%)

1984 was a school assignment. We’ve always been reading it, just as we’ve always been at war with Eastasia. I also read #6, which was probably the last pop-sci physics book I ever read in its entirety — even before starting grad school, I didn’t need to read the spoon-fed version of quantum mechanics or relativity, so there isn’t much point. (I’ve read bits of other books in order to clear up misconceptions of what the author was talking about). I’ve read parts of #4. Haven’t read any of the others, nor have I claimed to.

Public Domain

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Walden, and 99 other Free Online Books Every Student of Humanity Should Read

The beauty of the public domain is that after an author’s death, his or her works eventually become freely available to the public. This allows websites like Project Guttenberg to index countless classic texts for people to read online or download.

This is an opportunity no enterprising mind can neglect. To help you find the best of the best, we’ve compiled a list of books that seek to uncover the nature of humanity. Happy reading!

I have not cross-referenced exactly how many are on the Big Read list, but there are several.

She's Not The Big, Bad Wolf

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Stephanie reviews Who’s afraid of Marie Curie? by Linley Erin Hall.

Many interesting topics are highlighted, including

There is also a very good summary chapter on the research on gender differences in scientific ability. As you might have guessed, males and females are more similar than they are different on most (but not all) aspects of mind. She reviews the questionable ability of standardized tests (like the SAT) to demonstrate gender differences that are real (boys tend to score higher on the SAT than girls, but girls’ SAT scores tend to underpredict their grades in college math classes).

One thing I have complained about in discussions on gender equity is that many arguments simply assume that males and females are identical, and focus discussion elsewhere. Nice to see someone investigating the matter as part of their discourse.

Dressing Up as Real Science

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A book review of Trick or Treatment

While no reasonable person can believe in Stairways subliminal lyrics, far too many people do believe in equally implausible things in the realm of alternative medicine. In the book, the authors tackle four main areas: acupuncture, homeopathy, chiropractic and herbal medicine. The books conclusion is that acupuncture, homeopathy, chiropractic are essentially worthless, while herbal medicine has limited value.