What Are You Reading?

[TheEconomist]

http://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love...emale-orgasms/

... there are no words ....

Can I sue Samsung for invading the safe space of my Tablet when this came into my newsfeed without my consent. Pretty sure I've been sexually assaulted.

[Nissa]

Oh cool, something trolly. Can't use that in my project, though. Sexual stuff would probably be too inappropriate.

...but I really want to, because my teacher is a male feminist.

Seriously, why would the analytics put a cosmopolitan article on your tablet? Been checkin' out those women's magazines?

[TheEconomist]

There's no analytics involved. It's Flipboard. It shows the most popular feeds. I don't even read news, much less on my tablet, which might as well be a Camera only since that's all I use it for.

[Nissa]

You could also use it for Dungeons and Dragons PDFs. Super handy for that kind of thing.

[TheEconomist]

I'm waaaay too lazy (busy? no lazy) for D&D

[Nissa]

I just read Boys and Girls Learn Differently by Michael Gurian. It's pretty good. Granted, I kinda wish it had been more academic, but apparently it's supposed to be a guide for teachers. Anyway, it basically talks about the differences between boys and girls. Stuff like how girls are better at language, and guys at spacial relation. Probably the most interesting part was how apparently guys' "resting brain" is a lower part, meaning that guys are more impulsive, but also more able to make quick decisions in minimal time. Hence all those internet gifs of dads saving children from falling from things.

[Nissa]

I'm reading the Shape of Inner Space, which is about Calabi-Yau manifolds and the possible geometry of a ten/eleven dimensional universe. It's a bit (ha, bit) beyond me, but it's always good to try things beyond what we know, so we can try to know them. I'm reading it to get ideas for a sci fi story, but the problem is it's written by a math guy, which automatically makes it harder to draw inspiration from.

[Nissa]

With pardon to Econ for his moved romance stuff, I wish someone would post here besides me. But for now, I insist on using this thread to air my reading-related grievances.

So I tried to read Man of the Century, a book on John Paul II. It sucked, and for really stupid reasons. If any of you out there want to write nonfiction, remember that it's always a good idea to avoid unnecessary brackets in quotations. Nothing ruins a good quote like you inserting your own spin on someone's statement. For example, bad grammar in a quote should not be corrected unless the sentence is otherwise not understandable. Otherwise you're destroying the personality of the person quoted. Likewise, don't replace major words with words of your own. The author of this book, Jonathan Kwitney, inserted "[dispute]" into someone's quote, replacing the word that the speaker originally used. Um, why bother quoting someone if you're basically going to change the meaning of the statement? Likewise.....excessive ellipses...also...destroy...the meaning of a quotation. That's not even going into his rampant biases, his constant changing of settings and topics, and a lack of narrative flow.

The moment that really kicked me out of this book is when Kwitney was talking about Descartes, and then, when someone said "Post-Cartesian", he added [after Descartes]. Um, really? Anyone who has taken a math class in the past ten years knows what "Cartesian" is, and for those who didn't remember would certainly get it from context. Otherwise they probably wouldn't be reading a two-inch thick book.

All my whining is to say that nonfiction needs technique.

*sigh*

I'm also reading an anthology of Albert Einstein's writings. Dude was a total socialist, and I'm not making that up. He advocated the unification of all the world's militaries, to the point where a military would not represent the interest of the country where it is located. He was very anti-nationalist, and didn't seem to realize that a unified military would make it real easy for a tyrant to have a unified army. To be fair, I'm only a little ways in, and the stuff so far predates the communistic things that would have disproved such sentiments.

[Visions of Khas]

With respect to Einstein, I think he had some pretty good motivation to be opposed to nationalism.

[Nissa]

True. It didn't come out of nowhere. It's just such an unbalanced, unresearched opinion, that it becomes troublesome to anyone who thinks his scientific intelligence means he has political intelligence.

Though to be fair, Einstein does repeatedly mention that his intelligence is primarily in science. He doesn't claim that he knows everything.