A place for the discussion of all things not closely related to the sport and its competitive side. (Locked down several times a year during the major championships)
Speaking of which, has anyone else tried to read the Autobiography of Mark Twain that just got published last year? Samuel Clemens was an AWESOME writer, humorist, and social philosopher, but Holy Mackerel, his autobio is absolutely unreadable. It's just random remembrances and misanthropic rants. I will not be getting the next volume of it.
I'd been warned about that by early reviewers and passed.
How The Cows Turned Mad by Maxime Schwartz of the Pasteur Institute. Not sure I'd recommend it to anybody without a decent grounding in bio-sci (or the desire to pick up some elevated knowledge along the way), but was a great "detective mystery" spanning centuries of development.
gh wrote:How The Cows Turned Mad by Maxime Schwartz of the Pasteur Institute. Not sure I'd recommend it to anybody without a decent grounding in bio-sci (or the desire to pick up some elevated knowledge along the way), but was a great "detective mystery" spanning centuries of development.
Interesting to me in that the fear of CJD transmission is why I cannot donate blood, according to those who make such decisions.
gh wrote:How The Cows Turned Mad by Maxime Schwartz of the Pasteur Institute. Not sure I'd recommend it to anybody without a decent grounding in bio-sci (or the desire to pick up some elevated knowledge along the way), but was a great "detective mystery" spanning centuries of development.
Interesting to me in that the fear of CJD transmission is why I cannot donate blood, according to those who make such decisions.
What is their listed reason for you being high risk? Living in UK?
The book will give me a much better handle on the issues and the facts. However, the subsequent distribution of cases has made the more dire set of possibilities less likely.
In Wisconsin we have the idiocy that 'hunting farms' helped cause and worsen the spread of related disease (CWD) in deer. Daisy probably knows more about this than I do.
26mi235 wrote:The book will give me a much better handle on the issues and the facts. However, the subsequent distribution of cases has made the more dire set of possibilities less likely.....
Thanks for reminding me: I did fail to mention that the book is now almost a decade old, and there have certainly been other developments (like possibilities playing out), so my sourcing certainly not perfect. But I did do some surfing after finishing the book, and I see nothing to dissuade me from thinking that there could still be nasty surprises waiting in the blood supply.
26mi235 wrote:The book will give me a much better handle on the issues and the facts. However, the subsequent distribution of cases has made the more dire set of possibilities less likely.....
Thanks for reminding me: I did fail to mention that the book is now almost a decade old, and there have certainly been other developments (like possibilities playing out), so my sourcing certainly not perfect. But I did do some surfing after finishing the book, and I see nothing to dissuade me from thinking that there could still be nasty surprises waiting in the blood supply.
Boy, am I glad to see your response because I was afraid I would have to significantly revise my assessment of the level of risk. I seem to recall that they had models of the expected number of cases given certain assumptions. The number has been so much at the low end that there has been little additional 'news' on this front that I have seen. I pay some attention because my wife is in Risk Analysis/Bayesian Statistics and some of her colleagues know some of this stuff etc.
Pego wrote:What is their listed reason for you being high risk? Living in UK?
Living in the UK when the 'tainted' meat was in general circulation. For the same reason I cannot give blood here either.
Spot on. The last time I tried to donate, the lady looked at me like Satan incarnate when she read that I had lived in the UK during the height of the issue. And I ate more beef, probably, than any 20 normal people in Britain.
Pego wrote:What is their listed reason for you being high risk? Living in UK?
Living in the UK when the 'tainted' meat was in general circulation. For the same reason I cannot give blood here either.
Spot on. The last time I tried to donate, the lady looked at me like Satan incarnate when she read that I had lived in the UK during the height of the issue. And I ate more beef, probably, than any 20 normal people in Britain.
oh crap! you and I ate dinner together once... we didn't kiss goodnight did we?!
Pego wrote:What is their listed reason for you being high risk? Living in UK?
Living in the UK when the 'tainted' meat was in general circulation. For the same reason I cannot give blood here either.
Spot on. The last time I tried to donate, the lady looked at me like Satan incarnate when she read that I had lived in the UK during the height of the issue. And I ate more beef, probably, than any 20 normal people in Britain.
oh crap! you and I ate dinner together once... we didn't kiss goodnight did we?!
No, but IIRC you did ask me to demonstrate the feeding protocol for peregrine falcons and their young. That could be problematic?
Just finished Banana ("The Fate Of The Fruit That Changed The World").
I hasten to add that I wouldn't normally pick up a book with a title like that, but my voracious-reading brother-in-law recommended it highly, and he was right. I was hooked on the first page with factoids like this:
if you're a 40-year-old American you've probably eaten 10,000 bananas.
Probably the first fruit you ate as a kid, and may be the last in old age.
This was a stunner: Americans eat more bananas a year than apples & oranges combined.
And the real kicker: there's a disease for which there is no cure killing off the entire world crop of the banana that North Americans think of as the banana.
(And we later find that this happened not so many years ago, and that the banana we eat today—the Cavendish—doesn't have the same taste/texture that bananas of the '50s—the Gros Michel—did, because that variety is now extinct.)
<<Inferno The World at War, 1939-1945 By Max Hastings (Alfred A. Knopf; 729 pages; $35)
If there is a contemporary British historian who is the chronicler of World War II, it would be Max Hastings. In book after book, he has zoomed in on individual theaters and arenas in the global conflict, which continues to fascinate historians and readers more than 65 years after it finally came to an end.
If you want to know all about the Battle of Britain or the United Kingdom's Bomber Command or Winston Churchill's pivotal role in the war, Hastings' studies are the ones to go for. If you want a detailed account of the Normandy Invasion, there's his definitive "Overlord." How did the Allies finally conquer Germany and Japan? "Armageddon: The Battle for Germany, 1944-1945" and "Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45" will each give you a detailed account of how these monumental feats were accomplished.
The great virtue of this culminating volume "Inferno" is that it provides the whole six years as only someone as knowledgeable as Hastings can do....>>
It seems that many people justify purchasing a reading machine because it can hold numerous books at one time. I always read one book at a time- does everyone else read numeous ones depending on what they feel like reading just them when the opporunity strikes?
Helen S wrote:I always read one book at a time- does everyone else read numeous ones depending on what they feel like reading
I've had three books on the go at one time before. Usually reading along with my kids, like Harry Potter. On top of that possibly a fiction and a non-fiction book. Finally, many science papers for work, and those can add up to a big pile.
gh wrote:I already know whta my Xmas present book will be:
<<Inferno The World at War, 1939-1945 By Max Hastings (Alfred A. Knopf; 729 pages; $35)
If there is a contemporary British historian who is the chronicler of World War II, it would be Max Hastings. In book after book, he has zoomed in on individual theaters and arenas in the global conflict, which continues to fascinate historians and readers more than 65 years after it finally came to an end.
If you want to know all about the Battle of Britain or the United Kingdom's Bomber Command or Winston Churchill's pivotal role in the war, Hastings' studies are the ones to go for. If you want a detailed account of the Normandy Invasion, there's his definitive "Overlord." How did the Allies finally conquer Germany and Japan? "Armageddon: The Battle for Germany, 1944-1945" and "Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45" will each give you a detailed account of how these monumental feats were accomplished.
The great virtue of this culminating volume "Inferno" is that it provides the whole six years as only someone as knowledgeable as Hastings can do....>>
I regularly juggle two books, but it's always a hardback and a paperback (reflecting the general content of each: one for edification the other for mindless entertainment).
I typically am reading several books at once. Often something scientific or two (usually different areas), sometimes history (e.g., Marshall, mentioned above and am reading the beginning of 'Chaos', but it might be too dated).
I find gh's suggestion/introduction to Hastings quite tempting and put it as item on on my Christmas list.
I have to cop to committing a cardinal sin as I've always understood the rules of bibliophiling. It's worse than walking out of a movie: I put a book down without finishing it!
Very (very-very) well written: The Black Swan ("The Impact Of The Highly Improbable") by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
At this point in my life my brain just can't stay wrapped around deep philosophical concepts. I wanna be a sponge and swim around in hard facts, not have to actually analyze every sentence.
gh wrote:I have to cop to committing a cardinal sin as I've always understood the rules of bibliophiling. It's worse than walking out of a movie: I put a book down without finishing it!
Very (very-very) well written: The Black Swan ("The Impact Of The Highly Improbable") by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
At this point in my life my brain just can't stay wrapped around deep philosophical concepts. I wanna be a sponge and swim around in hard facts, not have to actually analyze every sentence.
I agree - I finished it but did not like it very much either.
I hope you're right about World at War 1939-45 because I got it for my iPad 2 days ago
gh wrote:I have to cop to committing a cardinal sin as I've always understood the rules of bibliophiling. It's worse than walking out of a movie: I put a book down without finishing it!
Very (very-very) well written: The Black Swan ("The Impact Of The Highly Improbable") by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
At this point in my life my brain just can't stay wrapped around deep philosophical concepts. I wanna be a sponge and swim around in hard facts, not have to actually analyze every sentence.
I agree - I finished it but did not like it very much either.
Interesting. I also read it; thought it was worthwhile, but that the author made the same (valid) point repeatedly...
gh wrote:I have to cop to committing a cardinal sin as I've always understood the rules of bibliophiling. It's worse than walking out of a movie: I put a book down without finishing it!
Very (very-very) well written: The Black Swan ("The Impact Of The Highly Improbable") by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
At this point in my life my brain just can't stay wrapped around deep philosophical concepts. I wanna be a sponge and swim around in hard facts, not have to actually analyze every sentence.
I agree - I finished it but did not like it very much either.
I hope you're right about World at War 1939-45 because I got it for my iPad 2 days ago
I also got the book based on the rather substantial recommendation. I have to finish FDR first, though, only 500 more pages to go (some in small type).
gh wrote:I have to cop to committing a cardinal sin as I've always understood the rules of bibliophiling. It's worse than walking out of a movie: I put a book down without finishing it!
Very (very-very) well written: The Black Swan ("The Impact Of The Highly Improbable") by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
At this point in my life my brain just can't stay wrapped around deep philosophical concepts. I wanna be a sponge and swim around in hard facts, not have to actually analyze every sentence.
I agree - I finished it but did not like it very much either.
I hope you're right about World at War 1939-45 because I got it for my iPad 2 days ago
Just to be clear, gh has no position on Hastings! I said that based on the review, it sounded eminently readable.
OK, now that I've clarified that, I have started it (and the eagerness to do so may well be part of the reason I bailed on The Swan). And I'm loving it. He notes that on purpose his is not one of those doctoral-thesis-level pieces that is so chock-full of foot notes that it makes reading almost impossible (Schirer comes close at times).
Some early numbers (which although he doesn't cite sources, I'm compelled to believe): from 9/39 through 8/45 the average loss of life per day due to WWII was... wait for it... 27,000! That's 9 World Trade Centers a day every day for 6 years. And Americans who escaped the two big global conflicts being on their soil wonder why other nations may have a different view of carnage.
Here's another: during the war, 17,000 American soldiers went through battlefield-related amputations: during the same period, 100,000 workers back at home suffered industrially-related choppings.
