No, this is not a reference to the National Academy of Sciences report from a few years ago. This has to do with the newest Wheel of Time book, because while I’m a long distance removed from my Usenet days, some habits die hard. If you haven’t read the previous eleven books, none of what… Continue reading Obligatory Reaction to The Gathering Storm
Category: Books
Rule 1 of Writing: Try Not to Sound Like a Doofus
Via somebody on Twitter, Copyblogger has a post titled “7 Bad Writing Habits You Learned in School,” which is, as you might guess, dedicated to provocatively contrarian advice about how to write, boldly challenging the received wisdom of English faculty: What is good writing? Ask an English teacher, and they’ll tell you good writing is… Continue reading Rule 1 of Writing: Try Not to Sound Like a Doofus
Book Poll
There’s a new release today that everyone’s talking about. A perfect topic for a poll: New Jordan book by Sanderson! Your reaction?(survey) Your opinion is important to us, so please choose carefully.
Quasi Poll: Phone Call from the Future
I’m kind of in a fog today, which I’m choosing to attribute to airport lag (it can’t be jet lag, because I didn’t change time zones, but you get some of the same disorientation from spending too much time in airports and on planes), because the other option is incipient flu (half a dozen students… Continue reading Quasi Poll: Phone Call from the Future
Many Worlds, Many Comics
The Digital Cuttlefish looks at the Archie comics, and waxes poetic: Two paths play out in a comic book, When Archie walks down memory lane “The road not taken” is the hook; So now, the writers take a look And re-write Archie’s life again, This time with Betty as his bride; Veronica the woman spurned,… Continue reading Many Worlds, Many Comics
Mysticism and SF
Over at SciFi Wire, the house magazine of the Polish syphilis channel, Wil McCarthy has a piece with the eye-catching headline “Is Mysticism Overtaking Science in Sci-Fi?“ What really excites me right now–and not in a good way!–is the recent spate of superficially sci-fi movies that are not merely scientifically illiterate, not merely unscientific or… Continue reading Mysticism and SF
Don’t Be Such a Scientist by Randy Olson
This book is, in some ways, a complement to Unscientific America. Subtitled “Talking Substance in an Age of Style,” this is a book talking about what scientists need to do to improve the communication of science to the general public. This is not likely to make as big a splash in blogdom as Unscientific America,… Continue reading Don’t Be Such a Scientist by Randy Olson
The Strangest Man by Graham Farmelo
There has been a fair amount of discussion of Graham Farmelo’s The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom— Peter Woit reviewed it on his blog, the New York Times reviewed it a couple of Sundays ago, Barnes and Noble’s online review did a piece on it, etc.. Nearly all… Continue reading The Strangest Man by Graham Farmelo
Early Review of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog
One of the photo caption contest winners, Nick O’Neill, has finished his galley proof, and posted an early review of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: Casual physics intro books are quite possibly the hardest subgenre of physics books to write. Textbooks and further upper-level reading have expectations both of what you already know… Continue reading Early Review of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog
Robert Charles Wilson, Julian Comstock [Library of Babel]
Over at the Science and Entertainment Exchange, they have a nice post about the Darwin movie, which also appears in today’s Links Dump, with John Scalzi addressing the putative controversy about the movie’s distribution. John’s suggestion for how to attract major US distribution– Will Smith, explosions, and Jennifer Connelly’s breasts– reminded me of The Life… Continue reading Robert Charles Wilson, Julian Comstock [Library of Babel]