Zach Weinersmith's Blog, page 337
October 6, 2016
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - The Fox and the Hedgehog
Hovertext:
This result only holds for Euclidean fablespace.
New comic!
Today's News:
3 weeks to go, and we've sold 40% of BAHFest tickets. Buy soon or feel shame!
October 5, 2016
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Exegesis
Hovertext:
Dude, have You actually read this thing?
New comic!
Today's News:
Wednesday Book Reviews! Yong and Stiglitz were particularly good.
Sept 16 - I Contain Multitudes (Yong)[image error] Ed literally wrote the book on Microbes. If you’re curious about the microbes that live in your (or the bodies of other creatures) and how they affect behavior, disease, evolution, and cognition… this is it.
Sept 16 - A Brief History of Misogyny (Holland)[image error] Not a bad book, but a better title would be more like “Particularly interesting incidents of misogyny through mostly Western history.
Sept 19 - The Euro (Stiglitz)[image error] Stiglitz is always fun. This book is an argument either to eliminate the Euro or fundamentally change it. Part of what makes it interesting is that I usually associate an anti-Euro perspective with right wing economists, but Stiglitz is (by the standards of economists anyway) decidedly on the left.
Sept 20 - But What If We’re Wrong? (Klosterman)[image error]
This book didn’t really do it for me. The idea is basically that we are probably wrong about lots of things, even some of which we are certain of now. After that, it’s a few stories and anecdotes relentlessly restating the premise.
October 4, 2016
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Unary
Hovertext:
We can sell off all of the zeroes to China, then rebrand ourselves as a company specializing in the use of ones.
New comic!
Today's News:
October 3, 2016
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - P-Humans
Hovertext:
But it's so lifelike. Except its hair wish is clearly made of wax.
New comic!
Today's News:
Religion books are in stock now!
October 2, 2016
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - The Secret Ingredient
Hovertext:
The other secret ingredient is nicotine!
New comic!
Today's News:
October 1, 2016
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - One Wish
Hovertext:
Slowly but without faltering, SMBC became entirely comics about misbegotten wishes.
New comic!
Today's News:
September 30, 2016
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Getting High
Hovertext:
To generalize, I am high on eukaryotes.
New comic!
Today's News:
Just a reminder that BAH West tickets are going fast! As of last night we'd already sold 1/4th of tickets, so we're now expecting to sell out a bit early. Buy soon to lock in a spot! It's going to be a great night!
September 29, 2016
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Invasive Species
Hovertext:
I knew I should've gotten hamsters instead.
New comic!
Today's News:
My geeks tell me we've already sold 20% of BAHFest tickets in just a few days. These are definitely going to sell out. So, if you want tickets, please book soon!
September 28, 2016
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - A New Debate Format
Hovertext:
Networks: I am prepared to direct this pilot at a moment's notice.
New comic!
Today's News:
BOOK REVIEWS!
I had to stop the experiment for a bit because I wasn't getting much reading done while finishing up a project. But, I'm back on track, and I'm going to try to run weekly book reviews from here on out.
For transparency: If you click the links below, for the next 24 hours, if you buy something on amazon, SMBC gets a small payment. So, basically, if one of the books below looks tempting, we'd appreciate if you clicked the link before buying.
This is a new thing we're doing, so if you have any thoughts on how it can be improved, please let us know.
A quick bit of history and science on the topic of bringing humans back from the brink of death. It’s a quick read, with a lot of dorky humor injected. It’s not bad, and there are a lot of neat stories and weird science, but it kind of felt like it was Not Quite Mary Roach. Still, fun if you’re interested in the topic.
Verdict: 3/5
An INSANE memoir about Browder’s life in high finance, going on adventures making crazy deals as the Soviet Union collapses and breaks apart. Making deals required him to go to strange places and repeatedly risk being assassinated. He sounds like he’s totally nuts, but it’s a hell of a story.
Verdict: 4/5
An interesting book. It starts with the economic observation that efficiency (which theoretically is good for the environment) often leads to increased consumption (which is probably bad for the environment). Owen suggests that if efficiency tends to lead us to consume more, the only way to save the environment is to reduce our lifestyles.
I don’t buy everything he’s saying, but I think it’s a very interesting argument that’s worth confronting.
Verdict: 3.5/5
Aug 27 - Woe to Live On (Woodrell)
A great novel about a group of Confederate soldiers, written with a lot of realism and depth. An interesting feature of this book is that it’s stylistically very 19th century, but it yet contains the violence and sex that tend to be elided in actual books from that period.
Verdict: 5/5
Sept 1 - How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything (Brooks)
This was a pretty excellent book. It’s a sort of combination of a memoir of Rosa Brooks’ time in the Pentagon, along with the history and psychology of how (according to her) our relationship to war has changed for the worse in recent times.
Verdict: 3.5/5
Sept 3 - White Trash (Isenberg)
A good historiography of poor whites in the history of the United States, and how they tend to be viewed by cultural elites. I felt like it got a bit less compelling as we got to modern times, but maybe that’s just because I’m more familiar with life now than life 300 years ago.
Verdict: 3/5
Sept 5 - Eye in the Sky (Dick)
Like a lot of these early Philip K Dick novels, I feel like it’s a cool idea and a well-developed world, but the execution is really hokey.
The plot is about a bunch of people who get zapped by a high energy beam, who then somehow start serially inhabiting each other’s consciousnesses. Each such universe contains the strange biases of its consciousness. It’s fun, but it’s really just 1950s pulp stuff, despite the clever premise.
Verdict: 2/5
A fun little book on how interesting ideas often come from what Harford refers to as “messy” situations, in the broad sense of (supposedly) non-ideal creative environments. It contains a lot of fun stories ranging from musicians to scientists.
Verdict: This book is written by an author I have met personally, and I’ve decided my policy on such reviews is that I won’t list a number verdict.
Sept 7 - The Man Who Japed (Dick)
A dystopia story about a sort of puritanical world, only the puritanical culture stems from something like suburban American cultural norms circa 1950. It’s all right. Dick has so many stories about controlling prudish middle-aged women that I’m starting to wonder if the character isn’t based on someone real.
Verdict: 2.5
Sept 9 - The Broken Bubble (Dick)
Now this is something interesting! It’s Philip K Dick, but not science fiction, and it wasn’t published until after his death. Early on in his career, Dick wrote literary fiction, and I would say this is the best one I’ve read so far. It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty good. It’s a story about two couples - one very young and accidentally pregnant, and one divorced because they were unable to conceive. The dynamics are really interesting, but it lacks the subtlety and depth that Dick would later develop. I found myself wishing he had come back to this novel later in life.
Verdict: 3/5
Sept 14 - The End of the Cold War (Service)
A very enjoyable and in depth history of the last six years of the USSR. The only part that was slightly odd was that now and then he seemed to really fanboy over Ronald Reagan. I certainly don’t mind reading history books from people with political views (because the alternative doesn’t exist), but it felt out of place in such a long meticulous work of history. Still, quite good!
3.5/5
September 27, 2016
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Motivation
Hovertext:
Terribly sorry. The fourth wall is being reconstructed tonight and should be ready to go tomorrow morning.
New comic!
Today's News:
Tickets are on sale for BAHFest West! This is our third year doing this, and tickets have sold out the previous two times. To guarantee a spot, please buy soon!
