Steven Pinker has a new op-ed in the New York Times where, ever the gallant hero of relativism in the way that most linguists and social scientists are, he defends new forms of mass and social media from their loudest detractors. His two salient examples are Powerpoint and Twitter. While the former has been a [...]
In what has become an unofficial theme for my reading selections this year, I’ve chosen yet another classic or important piece of science fiction; Asimov himself is considered, if not the father of science fiction (that title is usually reserved for Verne), then at least one of its major players during the genre’s ascension in [...]
Hot on the heels of a book about a monster comes a new about monsters generally, though I honestly did not plan it that way. Though I’m not an avid fan of old (or new, for that matter) monster movies, I am generally interested in the engines of culture which generate monsters. This is one [...]
I don’t recall at what point I became aware of John Perkin’s tell-all exposé on the seedy underworld of global politics, but while the idea was intriguing, it sounded a bit too exaggerated for my tastes, and I left it well enough alone. Finally, I could not resist the temptation to read this tome by [...]
I became a fan of A.J. Jacobs when I read his debut book, The Know-It-All. The idea of reading the entire encyclopedia was a bit preposterous, but overshadowed by the sheer joy of trivia; I never really thought of it as an experiment per se. Things changed a bit with The Year of Living Biblically, [...]
I hadn’t predicted, when I picked up Daniel Gardner’s The Science of Fear and Richard Mullen’s Physics For Future Presidents, that there would be so much overlap between the two. I suppose, ultimately, it was inevitably: Mullen’s book, by title and design, covered those areas of science which are the most politically and socially relevant. [...]
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