Which book are you reading now? Volume XI

[SS-18 ICBM]

Finished: Handbook of Laboratory Animal Science, vol. 1, edited by Jann Hau and Steven Jay Schapiro. Comprehensive introduction to the stated material. Modern animal research is governed by the 3 Rs: Reduction (use of less animals while maintaining resolving power), Replacement (use of alternative models), and Refinement (use of practices that cause less suffering).

Reading: Ireland's History by Kenneth L. Campbell, since it's about time for the humanities again. Maybe I can find reasons to visit Ireland. The Irish postdoc in my lab was somewhat upset when I failed to mention Ireland when I rattled off nations in Western Europe I wanted to visit (could have gotten away with referring to continental Europe, but I just had to mention the UK). Anyway, so far a concise and even-handed introduction to the matter. Bit short though, 300-something pages with only a few large paragraphs per page.

 

[Paul in Saudi]

Faithful Lightening; A New History of the Civil War

 

[tony_]

One Stranger to Another by Edwin E. Smith

Very Good!!!

A small review:
Edwin Smith talks about revision, false starts, what poems will last and why it is important to write not just for contemporary publications but for the audiences of Frost, Whitman, and even Keats and Shakespeare. He discusses the value of finding your own voice. And he tells very movingly, how he “often left my warehouse job after a fourteen-hour shift and wrote a sonnet the same way another man might drink a beer or watch a ball game.” Since I felt so connected with the poet, I was surprised that I had trouble getting into his poems. One that Smith considers his best, “Springtime Come,” contains this verse about a seven-year old in a school yard: “…tired from the recess and tarrying there, / giving no thought or fancy to the day / long years later when heavy with days / solitude would be in itself complete,” which to me seems lifeless and excessive. The images of the first poems are good enough, but the poems seem over-written and reaching for meaning and importance they don’t earn. Then in “Aquarium” we are treated to a rich vision of the moon as “some big fish / swimming blunt, / slow and deliberate” and we are suddenly through the doorway of words into a world of surreal beauty. “Dark of the Moon” speculates about what would have happened if they had left Buzz Aldrin stranded on the moon, “separated by more than time and space / from even the rain and the wind.” The moon seems to be a touchstone again revisited in “Café Satellites” “Other planets have many moons, / is ours a spoiled brat only child / twisted insane by loneliness / bound to us not by love but desperation?” Wow!

One of my personal favorites is “Never the Jailer” though I wish Smith would have inverted the two final words “like something worn upon the brow / that isn’t a crown quite.” There is such a nice thing going with the “worn” ”brow” “crown” sounds that the vowels and consonants of “quite” sidetrack. Besides the inverted word order strives too much to be poetic. Getting published in small literary journals may be of questionable benefit, but reciting poems before an open mike helps iron out things the eye may not see, but the ear hears. The people who write poetry and those of us who read it are not “One Stranger to Another.” In fact, we may feel we know each other more intimately than we know our spouses or children. We share an experience, and more significantly, the challenge of grasping that experience in words.

 

[Smellincoffee]

A Short History of Byzantium, John Julius Norwich

 

[Smote]

Earth Awakens, Orson Scott Card

 

[Mouthwash]

Earth Awakens, Orson Scott Card

Is it decent? I've heard some rather negative reviews. Does it finally deal with the events of Eros?

 

[JohannaK]

The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, by Jürgen Habermas.

One fifth into the book, over sixty pages of crawling through the dense conceptual mud that is this first part. Thankfully it seems to be getting more easily digestible.

 

[Borachio]

The Art of Thinking Clearly Rolf Dobelli

This actually isn't bad. A bit of a light read, tbh.

I don't think I can hold all 99 ways of thinking clearly in my head at once, though. So I may have to read the book again.

 

[Takhisis]

Re-reading The Catcher in the Rye for litchratchyour exam.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

Linguistics: An Introduction by Radford, Atkinson, Britain, Clahsen, and Spencer. As the title says. It'll take a while to sort out the fricatives from the plosives and all the other sounds. This book makes me want to interrogate other language speakers around me (Serbian and Chinese in my lab regarding contour tones, the Persian from the other lab regarding vowel assimilation).

 

[Smellincoffee]

Master of Rome, John Stack. Punic War naval historic fiction, fun stuff.

 

[Smote]

Is it decent? I've heard some rather negative reviews. Does it finally deal with the events of Eros?

It's entertaining. It did not deal with the events of Eros. That's likely upcoming.

I didn't like how it portrayed Earth's response. I thought it was unrealistic. Do you want more details and potentially spoilers?

 

[Mouthwash]

It's entertaining. It did not deal with the events of Eros. That's likely upcoming.

I didn't like how it portrayed Earth's response. I thought it was unrealistic. Do you want more details and potentially spoilers?

Nah, I'll read it. I liked the first two.

 

[Takhisis]

Linguistics: An Introduction by Radford, Atkinson, Britain, Clahsen, and Spencer. As the title says. It'll take a while to sort out the fricatives from the plosives and all the other sounds. This book makes me want to interrogate other language speakers around me (Serbian and Chinese in my lab regarding contour tones, the Persian from the other lab regarding vowel assimilation).

Oooh, need a hand?
<--- Send me a PM

Master of Rome, John Stack. Punic War naval historic fiction, fun stuff.

Are there any strappin' young fellas sweatily pulling at oars and showing off their bronzed muscles?

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

Oooh, need a hand?
<--- Send me a PM

Thanks for the offer. It's confusing with some things like [j], which is the sound in you. There's a lot of memorization, unfortunately.

 

[Takhisis]

It's quite easy if you speak other languages and can read their alphabets. It's a question of mental aperture. Drop me a line, anytime!

 

[Mouthwash]

It's quite easy if you speak other languages and can read their alphabets. It's a question of mental aperture. Drop me a line, anytime!

What the heck is linguistics even about? I'm afraid I don't know much beyond nouns, verbs, and adjectives.

 

[Takhisis]

I'll quote the book by H.G. Widdowson which I mentioned one or two pages ago:
'Linguistics is the name given to the discipline which studies human language.'

 

[sophie]

It's quite easy if you speak other languages and can read their alphabets. It's a question of mental aperture. Drop me a line, anytime!

Understanding the linguistic alphabet is actually really easy if you have a knowledge or general awareness of:

Greek or the Greek Alphabet
Latin and Church Latin shorthand
Old English or the Old English alphabet (and maybe a teensy bit of Danish/Norwegian).

That's all IPA is, for the most part.

As to Mouthwash: there are a TON of components of Linguistics, but generally, yes, it is the study of language. Specifically that can mean:

How they develop (historical linguistics), how languages are learned/interpreted on a mental level (Psychological linguistics), how they change/how they impact everyday life (sociological/cultural linguistics), how they are structured (syntax), how they sound (phonology/phonotactics), how they change (morphological linguistics), there are other subsets dealing specifically with the written word such as Epigraphy and Paleaology and pretty much any other discipline under the sky you can come up with. It's a diverse and rather exciting field right now.

 

[Mouthwash]

Understanding the linguistic alphabet is actually really easy if you have a knowledge or general awareness of:

Greek or the Greek Alphabet
Latin and Church Latin shorthand
Old English or the Old English alphabet (and maybe a teensy bit of Danish/Norwegian).

That's all IPA is, for the most part.

As to Mouthwash: there are a TON of components of Linguistics, but generally, yes, it is the study of language. Specifically that can mean:

How they develop (historical linguistics), how languages are learned/interpreted on a mental level (Psychological linguistics), how they change/how they impact everyday life (sociological/cultural linguistics), how they are structured (syntax), how they sound (phonology/phonotactics), how they change (morphological linguistics), there are other subsets dealing specifically with the written word such as Epigraphy and Paleaology and pretty much any other discipline under the sky you can come up with. It's a diverse and rather exciting field right now.

My question was just to make absolutely sure it isn't like grammar in school. There's nothing more insane than making seven-year olds identify the precise structure of the predicate and subject in a sentence.