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What are you reading?

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  Quote morticia Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: What are you reading?
    Posted: 28-Sep-2005 at 17:03
Look who's talking about reading quite a bit     Seems to me you do quite a bit of reading yourself, Decebel!

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Morty
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  Quote Decebal Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 29-Sep-2005 at 11:03
Well, I find that watching most TV programs is quite a waste of time. Reading is my main form of entertainment. I usually read a book every 3-5 days (sometimes less or more depending on the book).
What is history but a fable agreed upon?
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  Quote morticia Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 29-Sep-2005 at 12:33
Good Day Decebal:

Same with me. I would much rather read a book than watch any of those silly "survivor/reality" mindless TV shows.

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  Quote Decebal Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 29-Sep-2005 at 15:18

Good Day to you too, morticia.

What about those sitcoms that recycle the same jokes since the 70's?

Some TV can be good, especially the educational channels. But reading does a lot more for your mind that TV ever will. Did you know that brain activity when watching TV is less intense than when you're sleeping?

What is history but a fable agreed upon?
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  Quote morticia Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 30-Sep-2005 at 10:42

Very true, Decebal. I just read a study done at the University of Washington of 1,300 children, which was entitled "The Bully Box". Said study showed that the more TV 4-year old children watch, the more likely they are to become bullies later on in school. Doesn't matter if it's an educational show: Researchers say the lack of social interaction may lead to aggressive behavior. Pretty interesting, eh?


Morty




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  Quote Decebal Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 30-Sep-2005 at 12:03

I recently heard a theory that in a couple of generations, a lot of people are going to be a lot more agressive and have serious psychological problems. The root of the problem lies, accroding to this theory, in the lack of touch, especially during childhood. Children nowadays spend more and more time in front of the TV or the computer, and less and less playing with their peers and doing family activities. Those are the 2 areas in a child's life, where he/she is most likely to have physical contact with other human beings. Apparently, physical contact through touch (ie hugging, kissing, holding hands, even games which involve touching each other), of course not in a sexual way, is vital to a child's development. A lack of it may lead to agressive behavior later in life. An extreme example of children who lack touch are the children in the orphanages of communist Romania, who exhibited stunted growth, both physical and emotional, as well as repetitive obsesive-compulsive behavior such as rocking back and forth.

The other day, I was thinking about the impact that cultural values prohibiting or allowing touch for children, may have on the overall development of a society. For example, were the early Americans more agressive because of Puritan values limiting the physical contact for children?

Do you think I should open a topic on this subject?

What is history but a fable agreed upon?
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Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth.- Mohandas Gandhi

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  Quote morticia Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 30-Sep-2005 at 12:31
Decebal wrote: "Do you think I should open a topic on this subject?"

Absolutely! I'd be interested to read other observations and opinions regarding this issue.


Morty



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  Quote morticia Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03-Oct-2005 at 15:15
Just finished reading Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear. Very thrilling!!!!! Winner of the Nebula Award!


I had already read Bear's other book, Darwin's Children...also thrilling and again dealing with evolution, anthropology, etc. A little of everything...good, brisk reading...well-written.

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  Quote Decebal Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03-Oct-2005 at 15:34

Nebula award... That would be Sci-Fi. Didn't think Darwin was sci-fi

Anyway, what is it about, when is it set? No spoilers, just a brief overview please...

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Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth.- Mohandas Gandhi

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  Quote vulkan02 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03-Oct-2005 at 15:57
This is gonna make all my dreams come true!


The beginning of a revolution is in reality the end of a belief - Le Bon
Destroy first and construction will look after itself - Mao
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  Quote morticia Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03-Oct-2005 at 16:48
Good Day Decebal:

Correctamundo!!!! It is a sci-fi (Nebula). Here's a review by Aaron Renn, which should answer all of your questions! The book's copyright is 1999 and the story is set in 2001 (the near future back then). I very much agree with Mr. Renn's review. I, too, had problems with some of the scientific premises, but that's what makes it an interesting sci-fi story!

Conclusion: Worth Reading

I thought some of the prose and dialog was clunky, and I had a problem with a couple of the scientific premises of the story, but I still managed to find this a quick and entertaining read. The story's premise was spectacular, and Bear does a great job of making it seem credible and even possible. This is a work of true hard science fiction, a subgenre that Bear is a master of.

The plot is pretty straightforward. Endogenous retroviruses (bits of leftover viruses that we incorporated into our own DNA) have started becoming active, and what's more infectious. The viruses cause a disease nicknamed "Herod's flu" because it causes miscarriages. Kaye Lang is a biologist who predicted that infectious endogenous retroviruses were possible, and she gets swept up into the battle to understand and contain this new infection. But is it really a disease? The more Lang learns, the less sure she is. And what she suspects is really going on could change humanity forever.

Bear buttresses his story with tons of scientific details. Perhaps a bit too many. There are several times in the book where I thought I was listening to a university lecture on biology instead of reading a novel. You can learn some things this way, nice buzzwords if nothing else, but I thought it interfered with the story. Also, a lot of the characters didn't work for me. Particularly a few of the CDC/HIH bureaucrats seemed like characatures of government workers. Their dialog about hyping up different health threats seemed a bit overdone. But then the more I thought about it, the more I realized how probably true it was. After all, the Waco Massacre started out as a publicity stunt by the ATF to help it secure more federal funding.

In a work of hard SF like this, scientific plausibility is a must. As I said, this book largely delivers, but there were a couple of things I had a problem with. First, Bear claims many times that the likeliest cause of the spontaneous expression of these viruses is environmental stress from modern living. This Malthusian belief could have come straight out of the Environmental Defense Fund Newsletter. By many standards, humans are living in an environment much less stressful than in times past. Even the third world has made dramatic strides in reducing mortality and increasing quality of life. Food is more abundant than ever. Modern medicine has cured many diseases that formerly scourged the planet. When I think back on things like the Black Plague, I can't really believe that we live in some uniquely stressful time for humanity. Quite the opposite in fact.

The other bothersome thing was how Bear pointed to gaps in the fossil record to provide evidence for his claim that current notions of evolution are wrong. Creationists have pointed at this for years as evidence of the Divine origins of life, and have been roundly lambasted for it. Now someone who embraces evolution (at least in this book, and I presume in real life) points to this as a "problem" and wouldn't you know it just happens to have a "solution" that preserves an evolutionary basis for the origins of life. You can't play it both ways boys. If there's a problem with the fossil record, then it's a problem right now, not just when you have a solution for it, even a fictional one.

I'm not bringing this up in order to argue that the world is 6,000 years old. It was just something that bugged me.

But despite its problems, I thought this was a good, solid book. It's an excellent pick for anyone who likes their SF diamond hard, but is good enough as a story to appeal to those who don't. Also, I think this could have good mainstream crossover success. Books about viruses -- for example, The Hot Zone -- have done well with the general public, and I think this novel could too.

Morty
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  Quote Cywr Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05-Oct-2005 at 01:52
Greg Bear has some intresting books, i've read both the Darwin ones, good read.
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  Quote Emperor Barbarossa Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05-Oct-2005 at 19:47
Anybody ever read the Silmarillion by Tolkien?

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  Quote kotumeyil Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 06-Oct-2005 at 04:09
Yeah, I read it last year. It was a very detailed middle earth history since the beginning. One interesting thing I think is the transformation of the world into a sphere at the end, which also forms a secret linear way out of globe for the land of Eldar (I'm not sure about the name though)
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  Quote morticia Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 06-Oct-2005 at 11:29
For those of you who love the Battle of Trafalgar (as I do), or just want to read up on it, I highly recommend Nelson's Trafalgar by Roy Adkins.

IMHO, this book is not for the academic historian...but the layperson will find it easy to read. Extremely detailed, including how Napoleonic-era sailors went to the bathroom (did you ever wonder about that?) , as well as weight of the masts, rigging, and sails of a 74-gun ship, etc. The author, Roy Adkins, is a historian and archaeologist. He is also a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in London.

I've just commenced reading Birds Without Wings by Louis de Bernieres to learn a bit more about the Turkish, Greeks and Armenians...and the waning days of the Ottoman Empire. Has anyone here read this book yet?



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  Quote Emperor Barbarossa Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 06-Oct-2005 at 19:32
Originally posted by kotumeyil

Yeah, I read it last year. It was a very detailed middle earth history since the beginning. One interesting thing I think is the transformation of the world into a sphere at the end, which also forms a secret linear way out of globe for the land of Eldar (I'm not sure about the name though)
So far it seems pretty good. I like how Melkor makes the Balrogs .

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  Quote lTAPEVl Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 07-Oct-2005 at 16:46

A Question of AA Question of Honor: The Forgotten Polish Heroes

One of the lesser-known tales of the Second World War concerns the young Polish pilots who managed to escape their ravaged country after Hitler's invasion. Some had been in the outclassed Polish air force, others were civilians, but all were determined to fight against the Nazis, anytime and anywhere. Most of them ended up in England, where the British initially were slow to recognize their fighting ability. However, none doubted their zealbordering on hatredto punish Germany for what it did to their families and their nation. Fortunately, the skeptical Brits gave a few of them permission to show their skill in slow training planes.

 

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  Quote Emperor Barbarossa Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 07-Oct-2005 at 19:41
Please, somebody ban this guy already.

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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08-Oct-2005 at 16:12
I am also reading two books (one history book, one completly unrelatedas always): Oxford history of Greece and "The trip to Mars" written by Eric Idle (from the Monthy Python Flying Circus). I highly recomed  both of them!!!
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  Quote Emperor Barbarossa Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 10-Oct-2005 at 20:39
I am actually reading three books at one time. The Silmarillion, a King Arthur fantasy book, and Silas Marner(forced to read for school). So far, Silas Marner seems like an idiot. "God will clear me of my crimes". What a fool.

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