Zach Weinersmith's Blog, page 328
January 5, 2017
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Bad Parents
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When Telepathic Social Media happens, I'm becoming a Morlock.
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Wednesday Book Reviews (on Thursday, because I'm dumb):
Two Cheers for Anarchism (Arthur)[image error] This was a fun little introduction to ideas of anarchism. It’s a short book, and I don’t have too much to say about it, other than that I’m sympathetic to the idea of having as much as possible accomplished by free association between voluntary actors. Whether it’d work for a large of people, I haven’t got a clue.
Calvin and Hobbes (Watterson)[image error] You may have noticed my artwork’s gotten a little more… painterly? I’m not sure the right word. But, I wasn’t sent this book and decided to read every page. It’s interesting to see Watterson’s early style - he’s still finding his way, and doesn’t yet have that calligraphic style he eventually mastered. Of course, it’s still ten times better than me, but you can see where he’s still figuring out how to do things.
We Can Build You (Dick)[image error] This book is all over the place, and it is very hard to follow. If I were more concerned about the appearance of intelligence, I would call it “post-modern.” As it is, I just found it confusing. What *is* interesting, is that it has a lot of the motifs that’d later appear in Dick’s magnum opus, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, including the concern over whether oneself is in-human, and the emotional tests used to detect machines. It even has the motif of the spider that’s so crucial in that later work. But, as a book alone, it’s not solid gold. It’s almost like a dream about that later book - a sort of creative fluid that needs to congeal into something more graspable.
Genius at Play (Roberts)[image error] I just absolutely adored this biography of John Conway, the great mathematician. It’s been a while since I read a great memoir of a scientists. They’re typically written without much love or understanding of the work. The other of this book had many many interviews with Conway, in addition to doing an immense amount of research. It’s just delightful, and I recommend it.
Feynman (Ottaviani and Mirick)[image error] This comic book is a sort of dreamy stringing together of some of the famous Feynman stories and lectures. I definitely enjoyed reading it, though I found it hard to tell if the comic book format added to that. It also (necessarily, but…) ends up painting a picture of Feynman as he saw himself, and mythologized himself, for better and worse. I did really enjoy it, though.
Call the Midwife: Farewell to the East End (Worth)[image error] Well, the first book in this series was great, the second was solid, and this one ends up somewhere in between. It’s really a return to more stories of midwifery, and this is facilitated by using stories from other people alive at the time. I don’t know to what extent they are fictionalized, and I frankly don’t care. They’re great little stories. Worth also takes a strong stance for legal abortion, which is bolstered by horrifically detailed tales of what abortions were like in her time, when performed in secret by women with little to no medical background, using literally medieval methods.
January 4, 2017
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Tag
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The latest management books say gamification makes employees happy. So, since you're not happy, I take it you're not an employee.
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January 3, 2017
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Hiring Metrics
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Extending the logic a bit, Cartooning is the most scientific discipline of all.
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January 2, 2017
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Monty Hall Problems
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Actually, pretty much everything beyond intro calculus is run by goblins.
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January 1, 2017
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Scrooging
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I'm just saying, the marginal utility of a dollar would be way higher if Scrooge sent that goose to Bengal.
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December 31, 2016
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - YOU HAVE TO LOVE ME
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I think that one panel is the prettiest thing I've ever drawn about wearing someone else's skin.
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December 30, 2016
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - A Gift from God
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99% of gifts from God are gag gifts.
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December 29, 2016
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Coffee and Theorems
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WANNA GO WITH ME AND CLEAN MY HOUSE?
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December 28, 2016
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - The Harvest
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Death - if you're reading this, I'm prepared to do what you need.
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Wednesday Book Reviews:
Life (Ed. Brockman)[image error] Egads, why do I keep reading these Edge.org books? I mean, they’re not bad, and occasionally they’re quite interesting. But, it’s basically TED Talks in book form? That is to say, it’s largely interesting people saying uninteresting things in interesting-sounding ways. The transcriptions of conversations between smart and weird people are sometimes fun, but mostly in a voyeuristic way. I suppose I do take a little pleasure in just hearing smart people talk, but I wouldn’t mind a little more effort put into construction.
Vulcan (Levenson)[image error] A great little history of the idea of the supposed planet Vulcan, whose purported existence was obliterated by general relativity’s better explanation of gravity. As a guide to how pathological science can work, even on smart people, it is very interesting.
The Cartoon History of the Universe (book 3) (Gonick)[image error] Another enjoyable Gonick history in cartoon form. It has the same flaws as the others, of sometimes relying (I think knowingly) on questionable source material. I also have to say that these books get less enjoyable over time, through no fault of the author. As the world complexifies, there are simply too many stories with too many details for it to have the same smooth and easy-to-follow narrative structure. And, I will confess, with names in languages I don’t know (e.g. Chinese or Latin) I find it very hard to keep up with stories. This is especially hard in a book like this where you don’t have a single narrative, but rather countless snippets from different time periods. Still, a fun read, and the art is quite beautiful.
Shadows of the Workhouse (Worth)[image error] Well, you know I have a guilty pleasure for women’s memoirs from the early 20th and late 19th century. Having enjoyed Worth’s previous book, I felt I should indulge in a second. Like James Herriot’s books, Worth seems to have thrown the best stuff into the first book, having had no knowledge that a second one would be desired. That’s not to say it’s a bad book, but it’s nowhere near as fun as the first. The stories have less to do with medical practice and more to do with the author’s views on the old British workhouse system. That’s certainly interesting ground, but as the author leaves her element, the little nuances that make the stories great tend to go away. Still, if you liked the first, you should read the second. Especially because the third (and final) volume is something of a return to form.
December 27, 2016
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Wanna Evolve
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Now that we have big dongs, let us return to Mother Ocean.
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