Dana's updates

Dana's updates http://www.goodreads.com/user/updates_rss/864716 en-US Tue, 08 Jul 2008 09:00:09 -0700 60 Dana's updates http://www.goodreads.com/ 200 41 http://www.goodreads.com/images/layout/gr_logo.gif 30530182 Tue, 08 Jul 2008 09:00:09 -0700 Review26639497 <![CDATA[Dana added 'La barca sin pescador--Siete gritos en el mar']]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/26639497

to: La barca sin pescador--Siete gritos en el mar (Paperback) by Alejandro Casona
Oh, boy these are great stories....especially the first one. I couldn't find them in English, so had to read with a Spanish dictionary in one hand, but it was worth it. They are written as plays. La barca sin pescador starts out as the usual devil offers success in exchange for your soul story......but he requires the big business man to have the will to murder someone.....without getting his hands dirty, or even meeting the person, simply signing his name. He does it, but his soul is transported to witness the death, and the scream of the dead man's wife haunts him................causing him to track her down and change his life around. He becomes a caring sensitive person in love with the woman, and when the devil returns for his soul, he must admit that the cruel business man is as good as dead, and in his place is a virtual saint......... This embarrasses the devil terribly, as he is responsible for the man's conversion. He agrees to cancel the contract in exchange for the man's silence in never telling anyone that it was the devil who turned him into such a nice person. ]]> 23174656 Thu, 24 Apr 2008 13:09:29 -0700 Review20907406 <![CDATA[Dana added 'American Shaolin: Flying Kicks, Buddhist Monks, and the Legend of Iron Crotch: An Odyssey in the New China']]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/20907406

to: American Shaolin: Flying Kicks, Buddhist Monks, and the Legend of Iron Crotch: An Odyssey in the New China (Hardcover) by Matthew Polly
]]> 17602724 Wed, 27 Feb 2008 08:13:13 -0800 Review14430802 <![CDATA[Dana added 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy']]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/14430802

to: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Mass Market Paperback) by Douglas Adams
bookshelves: humor
Very weird 70ish look at sci-fi, with a Saturday Night Live kind of approach. The best part for me was when Zaphod Beeblebrox I must use a seance to contact his great-grandfather, Zaphod Beeblebrox IV, for help. The explanation for the fact that Beeblebrox the fourth precedes Beeblebrox the third, the second, and our own protagonist, Beeblebrox the first is an unfortunate confluence of failed contraception and time travel. Very slapstick humor and dry British wit throughout. ]]> 17600693 Wed, 27 Feb 2008 08:04:03 -0800 Review16504982 <![CDATA[Dana added 'Innocent Traitor: A Novel of Lady Jane Grey']]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/16504982

to: Innocent Traitor: A Novel of Lady Jane Grey (Hardcover) by Alison Weir
bookshelves: historical-fiction
This was a riveting book.....left me longing to know what comes next! I learned so much history, and it was as full of plot and intrigue as any novel. Sereres has recently introduced me to a fun word game called freerice.com. I was amazed at how many of the upper level vocabulary words are used quite naturally in this book. ]]> 17601016 Wed, 27 Feb 2008 08:00:10 -0800 Review16505248 <![CDATA[Dana added 'Returning to Earth']]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/16505248

to: Returning to Earth (Hardcover) by Jim Harrison
bookshelves: mystical-fiction
Ojibwa and Micigan/Wisconsin/Candadian history mixed in with fascinating multigeneraltional tale. Interesting mythical elements too. ]]> 15429454 Wed, 06 Feb 2008 13:21:08 -0800 Review14297191 <![CDATA[Dana added 'The Character of Physical Law']]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/14297191

to: The Character of Physical Law (Modern Library) by Richard P. Feynman
bookshelves: nonfiction, science
This was Sereres's book, and it was pretty deep in parts, but logical to follow. There was a great quote I wanted to share with you......but she has in her office at school. I'll ask her to bring it home again so I can look at it again. Okay, I found the quotes, look at them in my quote section. ]]> 15429085 Wed, 06 Feb 2008 13:18:29 -0800 Rating128894 <![CDATA[Dana voted on a quote]]> http://www.goodreads.com/

Dana added a quote:
"We have a way of discussing the world, when we talk of it at various hierarchies, or levels. . . For example, at one end we have the fundamental laws of physics. . . For instance, 'heat'. Heat is supposed to be jiggling, and the word for a hot thing is just the word for a mass of atoms which are jiggling. But for a while, if we are talking about heat, we sometimes forget about the atoms jiggling. . . Now if we go higher up from this, in another level we have properties of substances - like . . . 'surface tension', the fact that water tends to pull itself together. . . I remind you that we have to go through several laws down to find out that it is the pull of the atoms, and so on. But we still say 'surface tension', and do not always worry, when discussing surface tension, about the inner workings. . . On, up in this hierarchy of complexity, we get to things like muscle twitch, or nerve impulse. . . Then come things like 'frog'. . . 'man', and 'history', or 'political expediency', and so forth. . . And going on, we come to things like evil, and beauty, and hope...

Which end is nearer to God; if I may use a religious metaphor. Beauty and hope, or the fundamental laws? I think that the right way, of course, is to say that what we have to look at is the whole structural interconnection of the thing; and that all the sciences, and not just the sciences but all the efforts of intellectual kinds, are an endeavor to see the connections of the hierarchies, to connect beauty to history, to connect history to man's psychology, man's psychology to the working of the brain, the brain to the neural impulse, the neural impulse to the chemistry, and so forth, up and down, both ways. And today we cannot, and it is no use making believe that we can, draw carefully a line all the way from one end of this thing to the other, because we have only just begun to see that there is this relative hierarchy. And I do not think either end is nearer to God.

To stand at either end, and to walk off that end of the pier only, hoping that out in that direction is the complete understanding, is a mistake. And to stand with evil and beauty and hope, or to stand with the fundamental laws, hoping that way to get a deep understanding of the whole world, with that aspect alone, is a mistake. It is not sensible for the ones who specialize at one end, and the ones who specialize at the other end, to have such disregard for each other. (They don't actually, but people say they do.) The great mass of workers in between, connecting one step to another, are improving all the time our understanding of the world, both from working at the ends and working in the middle, and in that way we are gradually understanding this tremendous world of interconnecting hierarchies." — Richard Feynmann

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]]> 15428676 Wed, 06 Feb 2008 13:15:23 -0800 Rating128883 <![CDATA[new update: Update]]> 15426571 Wed, 06 Feb 2008 12:58:59 -0800 Rating128846 <![CDATA[Dana voted on a quote]]> http://www.goodreads.com/

Dana added a quote:
"If science is to progress, what we need is the ability to experiment, honesty in reporting results...and the intelligence to interpret the results. An important point about this intelligence is that it should not be sure ahead of time what must be. It can be prejudiced... Prejudice is different from absolute certainty.... As long as you are only biased it does not make any difference, because if your bias is wrong a perpetual accumulation of experiments will perpetually annoy you until they cannot be disregarded any longer. They can only be disregarded if you are absolutely sure ahead of time of some precondition that science has to have. In fact it is necessary for the very existence of science that minds exist which do not allow that nature must satisfy some preconceived conditions." — Richard Feynmann

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]]> 15276109 Tue, 05 Feb 2008 10:07:01 -0800 Comment391189 <![CDATA[new comment from Dana]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/14609559 Dana's review of Plain Truth
by Jodi Picoult

Thanks for inviting me on here....it is fun. I miss you. ]]>