Sunday Morning Book Thread - 06-16-2024 ["Perfessor" Squirrel]

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY!

Welcome to the prestigious, internationally acclaimed, stately, and illustrious Sunday Morning Book Thread! The place where all readers are welcome, regardless of whatever guilty pleasure we feel like reading. Here is where we can discuss, argue, bicker, quibble, consider, debate, confabulate, converse, and jaw about our latest fancy in reading material. As always, pants are required, unless you are wearing these pants...

So relax, find yourself a warm kitty (or warm puppy--I won't judge) to curl up in your lap, and dive into a new book. What are YOU reading this fine morning?

PIC NOTE

I don't have any memories of my father reading to me. I'm not saying it didn't happen--I just don't have any memories of it. Perhaps I was too young. However, I do recall my father taking us to the library on a weekly basis as a family outing. He's an avid reader, just like the rest of us in the family. Like a lot of Morons, his interests tend to be in military history. When I was in high school in Germany, I'd spend time at the post library after school sometimes, if I need to wait for him to get a ride home.

BOOK STUDY WEEK 1

We were supposed to have a book study this past Tuesday, but it's been postponed until next week. However, I thought I'd go ahead and share some thoughts on the book we are reading, Teaching with AI: A Practical Guide to a New Era of Human Learning by José Antonio Bowen and C. Edward Watson.

The book is divided into three sections: "Thinking with AI," "Teaching with AI," and "Learning with AI." Our first book study will be over the first part, "Thinking with AI." Bowen and Watson's premise is that artificial intelligence (AI) systems are here to stay. You use dozens of them every day without even knowing they exist. For instance, a lot of reservation systems will use AI tools to keep you notified of updates and changes to any scheduled events. Doctors use them regularly to help keep track of patient information over time. Of course, calling them "intelligent" is a bit of a misnomer, because they are only behaving according to their programming.

AI platforms have been around a long time, but only in the last couple of years have they made significant strides in teaching AI how to do much more complex tasks, such as a lot of grunt work at law firms that used to be done by low-level clerks, paralegals, and junior lawyers. Much of that can be automated and research studies quoted by Bowen and Watson demonstrate that the AI systems can perform at least as well as most humans on those tasks. In fact, they equate AI systems to performing "C" level work on classroom assignments for most tasks. Thus, if you want students to do better than an AI, you have to teach the students to leverage AI to generate "A" and "B" level work.

Much of the first section of the book is taken up with just defining terminology and providing examples of how AI systems are already revolutionizing industries. In science, for example, an AI tool has identified the structures of over 200 million proteins based on their predicted geometry. Normally, about 10,000 or so of these proteins can be identified in any given year by traditional human methods (with some computer assistance, of course). In the creative arts, we can already see how AI is influencing art, music, movies, etc. Again, a lot of repetitive tasks or pattern-oriented tasks can be turned over to AI, as it doesn't get tired or bored.

The rest of the book will be taken up with the idea of using AI platforms in teaching and how students can use AI in their learning process. The students we are teaching today *will* be using AI-powered systems in their careers in the future. That's a given at this point, as many businesses already rely on such tools for their operations. How can we embrace AI as educators and make students into better thinkers?

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(Any resemblance to my trip to the library book sale this week is purely coincidental)

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BOOKS BY MORONS

You were kind enough to include my book First in the Book Thread last October when it came out, and on Tuesday my second professionally published book, Next Time, was released. It's already made the list of Must-Read Books in 2024 from Independent Book Review! I'd be grateful if you'd include Next Time in one of your Sunday Book Threads.
Amazon link: Next Time
My website with additional ordering options (B&N, Kobo, Apple, etc.): https://www.seerandywrite.com
Fans of time-travel love stories as well as SF will enjoy Next Time, where a chance encounter with Miriam leaves William doubting her claims of randomly jumping forward in time. He is deeply skeptical when she tells him she's been doing it for a thousand years.
As Miriam randomly reappears over the next several months and years, they fall in love. Rumors of Miriam's condition raise the attention of government agents and the couple scrambles to avoid people who view Miriam as a chance for experimentation.
William and Miriam explore their past, live for the brief interludes they have together, and hope for their future, all amidst living life in scattered moments. Building a life together takes time.
Many thanks!
Randy Brown

MORON RECOMMENDATIONS

Booken morgen horden!
I went spelunking with KTE for books at a used bookstore and found a treasure.
On a small shelf of angel books was a softcover Fulton J. Sheen Sunday Missal pub 1961. White softcover, gold edged pages, excellent condition, no price. Latin on left pages, English on the right. Pre Vatican II.
When I took it up to check out, the bookseller disappeared behind his wall of books for a bit to price it, then popped back up and said, apologetically, "$39, do you still want it?"
Crestfallen I replied, "I guess not"
"I can give it to you for $30"
KTE, seeing my struggle of stinginess vs booklust, handed me a $20. I gave her $10 back and took the missal, feeling very happy.
It's more than I've ever spent on a used book, but I feel like my guardian angel led me to it.
Posted by: vmom stabby stabby stabby stabby stabamillion at June 09, 2024 09:02 AM (Ka3bZ)

Comment: You just never know what you will find at a used bookstore (or library sale!). It's up to each person to decide what their threshold is for how much they are willing to spend on a book. Mine is around $50 maximum, depending on how badly I want the book. In a few rare cases, I've spent more than that, but that was usually for a fancy omnibus edition of an author's works (e.g., the hardcover special edition of The Complete Chronicles of Conan by Robert E. Howard cost me $95). My take on it is that YOU decide what each book is worth to YOU. How much enjoyment will you get out of your discovery? If you spend $30 on a book and it takes you to 6 hours to read it, then the entertainment value is about $5/hour. Not a bad deal. And if the book is worth re-reading, then you've doubled your value!

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I felt like laughing, so off the shelf came Fresh Lies, a collection of columns in the late '80 and early '90s by James Lileks, later known for his complaints about fruit and vegetables in Jell-O. (Mom put shredded carrots in orange Jell-O; I liked it.)
Some of what I've read is now outdated, although I still laughed at Lileks' mention of a cabbie playing a tape of his favorite band, Smite the Infidel.
And I credit him with coining the phrase "flavor mining" -- digging only one flavor out of swirled ice cream.
Posted by: Weak Geek at June 09, 2024 09:10 AM (p/isN)

Comment: I have a couple of books by James Lileks: The Gallery of Regrettable Food and Gastroanomalies, both of which examine some of the most appalling culinary creations ever belched forth by demented chefs. Lileks pokes fun at these because, as he says, they are accompanied by a doleful cheery attitude by the publishers of these horrific recipes. You can find much of this on Lileks' website, The Institute of Official Cheer.

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I just finished reading a timely read: The Jewish World of Alexander Hamilton.
Yep, there's a possibility that Hamilton was born Jewish. He seems to have definitely attended as a child a Jewish school in Nevis in the Virgin Islands. The book pieces together other minute details alluding to Hamilton's mother likely being a Jewish convert.
But most of the book is not about Hamilton's being a Jew but rather his encounters, relationships and references to other Jews he came in contact with during his lifetime. So one should stress the book title words "The Jewish World" more than "of Alexander Hamilton" in order not to be mistaken that this book is mainly concerned with proving Hamilton's origins. That actually is secondary, though very much related to the history brought up throughout most of the book.
And interesting read. In any case, whether you're a Hamiltonian or a Jeffersonian, the founding fathers would be united in revolting against today's rogue regime pulling the strings in Washington DC.
And now on to my next read, from 1964: The Life of Lenin, by Louis Fischer. This is a much longer read.
Posted by: Biden's Dog sniffs a whole lotta malarkey, at June 09, 2024 10:33 AM (i/5Rr)

Comment: I never much thought about it, but I suppose there are lots of people today who have Jewish blood and don't know it. Not that it makes any difference to me. I'm mostly Scottish, but I also have Irish, German, and probably some remnant of Native American in me as well. Like a lot of Americans, I'm just a "mutt." Still, people do want to make a big deal out of genetic "purity" for some strange reason, even though such a thing doesn't technically exist.

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I finished the second volume of Roald Dahl's autobiography, Going Solo. It starts with his sailing out on a steamer to his new employment with Shell oil as a district representative in Tanzania, with his first experience with the breed of English who operated the overseas empire, who were to a man and woman "dotty", some high points of being a district representative, and the drama on England's entering WWII of helping rounding up the German settlers who were trying to escape to Portuguese Mozambique.
He then talks about volunteering for the RAF, learning to fly Tigermoth Trainers in Iraq (hence the title), and then his crash, period in hospital in Alexandria and then the transfer to the fruitless defense of Greece and Crete where he was given a Hurricane to fly in combat without any training. After Greece he was transferred to Syria to fight the Vichy French in Lebanon, meeting some Jewish Refugees, and invalidated out and returned to England due to his injuries.
This is a children's' book, but Dahl is a very good writer, and says much with few words, and is full of the delight of the world even with what was going on. He reminds me of a similar English writer, Gerald Durrell
Posted by: Kindltot at June 09, 2024 11:01 AM (D7oie)

Comment: Roald Dahl was an interesting character in real life. Nowadays he's also known as a high-profile target for cancellation because of the "problematic content" in his works.

More Moron-recommended reading material can be found HERE! (1000+ Moron-recommended books!)

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WHAT I'VE ACQUIRED THIS PAST WEEK:

The public library held their summer book sale and as usual I made out like a bandit...31 books for the low, low price of $57.50.

Queen of Angels by Greg Bear

Next by Michael Crichton

State of Fear by Michael Crichton -- This has been recommended more than once around here and it was available...so why not?

Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames -- It gets pretty positive reviews by booktubers, so again...why not? Can't beat the price ($2).

Pip and Flinx Adventure 12 - Trouble Magnet by Alan Dean Foster

World of Warcraft - Arthas: Rise of the Lich King by Christie Golden

Everyday Life in Old Testament Times by E. W. Heaton
Sandman Slim 1 - Sandman Slim: A Novel by Richard Kadrey -- I read the fourth book in the series and liked it. Now I have the entire collection for around $30.

Sandman Slim 2 - Kill the Dead by Richard Kadrey

Sandman Slim 3 - Aloha from Hell by Richard Kadrey

Sandman Slim 4 - Devil Said Bang by Richard Kadrey

Sandman Slim 5 - Kill City Blues by Richard Kadrey

Sandman Slim 6 - The Getaway God by Richard Kadrey

Sandman Slim 7 - Killing Pretty by Richard Kadrey

Sandman Slim 8 - The Perdition Score by Richard Kadrey

77 Shadow Street by Dean Koontz

The Bad Place by Dean Koontz

The Darkest Evening of the Year by Dean Koontz

Dean Koontz's Frankenstein 1 - Prodigal Son by Dean Koontz & Kevin J. Anderson

Dean Koontz's Frankenstein 2 - City of Night by Dean Koontz & Ed Gorman

Dean Koontz's Frankenstein 3 - Dead and Alive by Dean Koontz

The Taking by Dean Koontz

Tick Tock by Dean Koontz

The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle - This was a rather popular book. At least two other people at the book sale wanted to snatch it up if I hadn't got there first.

Star Wars - X-Wing 1 - Rogue Squadron by Michael A. Stackpole

Star Wars - X-Wing 2 - Wedge's Gamble by Michael A. Stackpole

Star Wars - X-Wing 3 - The Krytos Trap by Michael A. Stackpole

Star Wars - X-Wing 7 - Solo Command by Aaron Allston

Star Wars - X-Wing 9 - Starfighters of Adumar by Aaron Allston

The Testament by Eric Van Lustbader

WHAT I'VE BEEN READING THIS PAST WEEK:

After reviewing some of OregonMuse's old Book Threads, I thought I'd try something a bit different. Instead of just listing WHAT I'm reading, I'll include commentary as well. Unless otherwise specified, you can interpret this as an implied recommendation, though as always your mileage may vary.

Star Wars - The Bounty Hunter Wars Book 3 - Hard Merchandise by K. W. Jeter

The last book in this series explains all of the "mystery boxes" that Jeter set up in the first two books. We find out who has really been pulling the strings on Fett and the other bounty hunters (it's pretty obvious) and we find out how Neelah lost her memory and where she came from. As with the first two books, it's difficult to really understand the overall plot. Much of it is just Fett going from event to event looking badass the entire time. Not great literature, but engaging enough.

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Prey by Michael Crichton

Since I enjoyed the last Crichton novel I read--Micro (200--I decided to read another. Prey (2002) involves a rogue nanotechnology that has evolved to the point where it considers the human species its prey (hence the name). This isn't a spoiler because it's printed right there on the back cover in the blurb. The tension comes from how it starts and then how do we humans stop it? I'll say this for Crichton--he's very good about the first act of his novel in setting up what's going on. An unemployed software engineer-turned-house-husband notices some odd coincidences that may involve his wife, a mid-level executive for the company developing nano-tech microscope devices. Both of them are in a position to realize the truth of the matter, but they are caught up in domestic squabbles that keep them blinded to the threat that the human race will face.

The Terminal Man by Michael Crichton

This is a very early Michael Crichton novel from 1972. A man suffering from psychomotor epilepsy is given an experimental treatment to help control his epileptic seizures, which have caused him to go into violent rages against other people. His brain is connected to a computer embedded in his flesh that administers electric pulses to his brain when the seizures begin, thus restoring his brain's normal equilibrium. At least, in theory. He also suffers from delusions that machines are taking over the world. The fact that he is now "part machine" doesn't sit well with him. The "terminal" in this case refers to Benson being a "terminal" for the computer that has been implanted into his body.

Because this was written in the early 1970s, everyone smokes like chimneys. Patients in a hospital are allowed to smoke in their rooms. It's surprising that the surgical team didn't light up right after surgery...while still in the OR.

77 Shadow Street by Dean Koontz

At first I thought this was going to be a haunted house story with a relatively slow buildup and a Dean Koontz-style twist in the middle and at the end. Nope. Koontz throws you into the weirdness from the beginning and it just gets stranger and stranger from there. The inhabitants of the majestic apartment complex will be enmeshed in a very bizarre story with ancient evil powers that are striving to take over the world...It actually feels like an F. Paul Wilson story in many ways.

PREVIOUS SUNDAY MORNING BOOK THREAD - 06-09-24 (NOTE: Do NOT comment on old threads!)

Disclaimer: No Morons were harmed in the making of this Sunday Morning Book Thread. Rumors of bookshelf-related injuries as a result of the library book sale should be discounted as FALSE.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 09:00 AM

Comments

(Jump to bottom of comments)

1 I did not read this week

Posted by: Rhennigantx at June 16, 2024 09:00 AM (ENQN6)

2 Tolle Lege

Posted by: Skip at June 16, 2024 09:00 AM (fwDg9)

3 My kids are old enough to read on their own.

Posted by: OrangeEnt at June 16, 2024 09:00 AM (0eaVi)

4 Good morning fellow Book Threadists (and dads). I hope everyone had a great week of reading or reading to others.

Posted by: JTB at June 16, 2024 09:01 AM (zudum)

5 It's becoming the norm on the Book Thread that 1st comment is someone who didn't read this week

I on the other hand can't get enough of The Guns At Last Light by Rick Atkinson, it's his 3rd book on WWII covering D-Day to end of the war.

Posted by: Skip at June 16, 2024 09:02 AM (fwDg9)

6 Still reading the Oppenheimer book

I'm up to the part where they've built the lab at Los Alamos, and everyone is there with their tubes and wires and careful notes, but it's all in the theoretical stage so far

Posted by: Don Black at June 16, 2024 09:03 AM (/7KEl)

7 Pants.

They're not just a suggestion, they're a guideline.

Posted by: Bob from NSA at June 16, 2024 09:03 AM (a3Q+t)

8 Good morning Hordemates and a Happy Father's Day to all of you for whom that applies. And of course behind every father is a good mother.
Have an awesome day!

Posted by: Diogenes at June 16, 2024 09:04 AM (W/lyH)

9 Nice haul, Perf. I've enjoyed the Flix books I've read.

Those library sales are a good way to find old SF, art books, and history books.

Posted by: All Hail Eris at June 16, 2024 09:04 AM (FkUwd)

10 Thanks for the Book Thread, Perfessor! Always a good Sunday morning treat!

And Happy Father's Day! Dads make the world go round! And what would we do without dad jokes?

Posted by: Legally Sufficient at June 16, 2024 09:06 AM (U3L4U)

11 Yay book thread!

My father read to me extensively, always choosing Mark Twain. He did this well beyond the normal age because my parents divorced when I was four, and so we had limited time together.

I also think it was because he was a War Baby (born in 1942), and grew up before the dominance of television. People read to each other a lot before radio and later TV came along.

As I got older, he moved into the wittier Twain books, and I remember with fondness the travel books and some of his shorter works like "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses." My father is not the most approachable or demonstrative man (his reserve is legendary), but he helped give me a solid respect for literature, and I am deeply grateful for that. Looking forward to calling him later today.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at June 16, 2024 09:06 AM (llXky)

12 Booken Morgen Horden and Happy Father's Day!

Posted by: vmom stabby stabby stabby stabby stabamillion at June 16, 2024 09:06 AM (Ka3bZ)

13 "...everyone is there with their tubes and wires and careful notes..."

And antiquated notions!

Posted by: All Hail Eris at June 16, 2024 09:06 AM (FkUwd)

14 Morning, book people! I shall have to try some more Dean Koontz, I guess.

This week Im reading A.J. Cronin's The Citadel, focusing on a young English or Scots doctor in his first jobs in Welsh mining country, his meeting and marrying a lovely schoolteacher, and his Arrowsmith-like battle with his ideals and attempts to make a real mark in medicine. Fascinating as usual with AJC. His The Keys of the Kingdom is also in that volume.

Also from the library, Waiting for Winter, a collection short stories by John O'Hara; and H. Allen Smith's first three bestselling collections of his comic journalism pieces from the Forties onward.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 16, 2024 09:06 AM (omVj0)

15 I read Lileks' Bleat, but never read any of his books. For some reason, I'm just not interested. Maybe I'd like them, and maybe not. Perhaps I should see if the local library has one or get one through ILL.

Posted by: OrangeEnt at June 16, 2024 09:07 AM (0eaVi)

16 Good morning horde and thanks Perfessor! No fiction this week - taking young family to Gettysburg today for the first time, so been brushing up on history by reading related material.

Posted by: TRex at June 16, 2024 09:07 AM (IQ6Gq)

17 So I mailed in the card requesting a catalog to Inner Traditions (publisher of that Forgotten Civilizations book I reviewed in a previous thread) and WOW, what a cornucopia of weirdness. Extraterrestrial origins of humanity, secrets of antigravity propulsion, "Giza: the Tesla Connection", Bavarian Illuminati, "Microdosing with Amanita Muscaria" (for my next berserker party), and my favorite, "Alien World Order" -- exposing Eisenhower's treaty with the Grey Aliens to give the Reptilians permission to abduct humans for "research". How COULD you, Ike? Did Mamie put you up to it? I never trusted that pink princess!

Posted by: All Hail Eris at June 16, 2024 09:08 AM (FkUwd)

18 As I do with history books, start side tracking looking into what I am reading. Two mysteries I thing I saved on D-Day landing tables. 1 the book finally explained why 2 boats are listed on the table, for instance, x unit will land on 8:20 on boat 732 / 325. The Navy had one number and tje Army another, but the same boat.

Posted by: Skip at June 16, 2024 09:08 AM (fwDg9)

19 Rumors of bookshelf-related injuries as a result of the library book sale should be discounted as FALSE.

So you say. We're too young to sag this much.

Posted by: Perfessor' bookshelves at June 16, 2024 09:08 AM (a3Q+t)

20 Aw, thanks Perfesser for including my used bookstore find report!

Posted by: vmom stabby stabby stabby stabby stabamillion at June 16, 2024 09:08 AM (Ka3bZ)

21 Well done, Miss Akimoto

Posted by: Don Black at June 16, 2024 09:08 AM (/7KEl)

22 I'm hoping my friend Rosemary, whose first three Christian/SF novels were highlighted by the Perfessor last week, can join us before she has to dash off to church. She's working on the fourth in the series now.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 16, 2024 09:08 AM (omVj0)

23 A few years back, I stumbled upon a pristine set of A History of the English Speaking Peoples by Winston Churchill, hardback. Twenty dollars for all four volumes.

Posted by: Thomas Paine at June 16, 2024 09:09 AM (ZLyhX)

24 alright, that's all I have

Posted by: Don Black at June 16, 2024 09:09 AM (/7KEl)

25 After one of the last week's commenters recommended Avram Davidson's "The Boss in the Wall" I checked that out and re-read some of Davidson's other short works. Recommendation seconded, enthusiastically.

Then instead of diving back into Simenon or other books on the Amazing Colossal To-Be-Read Pile, started a re-read of Stephen King's Bag of Bones. He may have gone a tad coo-coo with politics in recent years, but when he was cookin', man, he cooked.

Posted by: Just Some Guy at June 16, 2024 09:10 AM (q3u5l)

26 I was the youngest of 4 and don't remember any adult reading to me.
But my oldest sister says she learned to read by sitting on our dad's lap while he read the newspaper..

Posted by: vmom stabby stabby stabby stabby stabamillion at June 16, 2024 09:10 AM (Ka3bZ)

27 As for current reading, this week I went through Gabriele Esposito's Armies fo the First Sino-Japanese War 1894-95. I saw the pre-publication notice for this during the closing stages of writing Walls of Men, and decided that I needed to finish the project rather than waiting.

It is a useful book, lots of illustrations in the classic Osprey Publishing style, and as I contemplate a "popular history" of the 2nd Sino-Japanese War, it is a useful primer on the Japanese side of the conflict.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at June 16, 2024 09:10 AM (llXky)

28 Happy Father's Day to all the dads today! I hope you have a wonderful day with great food and loving family!

Love your selections, Perfessor! Taking notes for my next thriftbooks order! State of Fear is one of my favorite Crichton books, after Airframe.

Posted by: Moki at June 16, 2024 09:10 AM (wLjpr)

29 Reading "Void Drifter" by JN Chaney and Jason Anspach. Very good, if standard "Earthling stuck on what turns out to be a spacecraft, encounters yugely populated universe that's at war, hijinks ensue" story, which is am enjoying quite a lot.

I've read a lot of Chaney, and Anspach is one the authors, with Nick Cole, of the Galaxy's Edge series of 43 (!!!!!) novels. And, of course, Anspach is also co-author with Ryan Williamson of Doomsday Recon, Death or Glory and the upcoming Born in Battle, which is also a fantastic trilogy.

Posted by: Sharkman at June 16, 2024 09:11 AM (/RHNq)

30 The pants are cool.
Should be a Vader one too though.

Posted by: vmom stabby stabby stabby stabby stabamillion at June 16, 2024 09:11 AM (Ka3bZ)

31 Orange Ent, I'd recommend "Interior Desecrations" just for the 70's print-on-print-on-print design overload and Barbarellaesque shag overload.

Posted by: All Hail Eris at June 16, 2024 09:11 AM (FkUwd)

32 Because this was written in the early 1970s, everyone smokes like chimneys. Patients in a hospital are allowed to smoke in their rooms. It's surprising that the surgical team didn't light up right after surgery...while still in the OR.
===
You can see it in movies and TV of that era

Posted by: San Franpsycho at June 16, 2024 09:11 AM (RIvkX)

33 Speaking of warn kitties, we found a home for the two Siamese tabby mix kittens. Still looking for a home for the tuxedo and bobtail kitten.

Posted by: Victor Tango Kilo at June 16, 2024 09:11 AM (e5L5R)

34 Big multi-dealer book sale in the next town over yesterday, so I went out to see what I could find. I saw a lot of books I already had -- I don't know if that means something.

Got five books for about $25, which shows that even used paperbacks cost more than they used to. I got a collection of SF short stories by Eric Frank Russell, a guide to lesser-known monuments of Britain (which sounds like a parody but isn't), a collection of Lovecraft pastiches called Shadows Over Innsmouth, one of George Barr McKutcheon's Graustark novels, and a book of the original Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio scripts.

Not a bad haul. I swung by the wine store and got six bottles for about $100 -- interesting to see that wine is actually holding about steady in price.

Posted by: Trimegistus at June 16, 2024 09:11 AM (78a2H)

35 Dad frequently read newspaper comics to my sister and me when we were small. He used different voices for each character. After each strip, he would either chuckle or say, "Well, that wasn't very funny."

I don't recall him reading many books, just his farm magazines, but our house was full of books, as befits a teacher.

One exception: He had to read James Michener's "Hawaii" for a summer course that included a trip to Hawaii. Might have been the first vacation that he and Mom took by themselves. He loved the Big Island -- it had farms.

Happy Father’s Day to Morons who qualify. And if your dad is still around, let him know you love him.

Posted by: Weak Geek at June 16, 2024 09:11 AM (p/isN)

36 I wrapped up "Fresh Lies" by James Lileks. Few other things age as poorly as contemporary humor, such as his rants about the Taster's Choice coffee soap opera ads or the slim pickings at the video shop. But he did craft some great lines that I will steal:

"Satan always returns his calls promptly."

"Shampoo is just gooey soap with perfume and an ad campaign."

"The CD tray was a record player that put out."

*****

I'm also reading "Captain Britain and M.I. 13," an aborted Marvel Comics series (15 issues plus an annual) that I bought online in a lot pretty cheaply because it was missing issue No. 1. I think I have No. 1 somewhere.

I don't know why I didn't buy this when it was new; the art is good and I like the characters. I think my reason was that it began as a spinoff from "Secret Invasion," a 2008 miniseries that I dropped halfway through because I found it dull. Dull this isn't.

Posted by: Weak Geek at June 16, 2024 09:12 AM (p/isN)

37 16, I always liked Stephen Sears’ Gettysburg. There, there is a great line at the beginning of the chapter after day one where Sears describes how angry Lee was that he was let down by all three of his core commanders. The way Sears makes that statement has always run true, You can never understand Gettysburg fully without realizing it was literally the worst army of Northern Virginia Confederate commanders ever acted and all three chose to do it at the exact same time.

Posted by: Quint at June 16, 2024 09:12 AM (RAUB3)

38 I read Morning After The Revolution: Dispatches From The Wrong Side Of History by Nellie Bowles. Bowles was a correspondent for The New York Times and lived in San Francisco before moving to the Echo Park area of Los Angeles. I thought she would be another far-left progressive on the road to being red-pilled. However, she turned out to be only a few steps down that road. In each chapter one must read a lot of progressive claptrap in order to get to a paragraph or two at the end which mildly rebukes the most extreme ideas espoused. I hope Bowles continues down the road. I wish she would have waited to be further down the road before she wrote a critique of the far left.

Posted by: Zoltan at June 16, 2024 09:12 AM (w/izg)

39 Corps

Posted by: Quint at June 16, 2024 09:13 AM (RAUB3)

40 The last Plantagenet king of England died on Bosworth Field in 1485. His body was stripped and carried through town by the usurper Henry and discarded. For 500 years, a caricature was presented to the world of this missing king, until a group dedicated to restoring his name decided to investigate. In The King's Grave by Philippa Langley and Michael Jones, the 2011 quest to find Richard is documented from the initial request to the final confirmation. By overlaying ancient and modern maps, a site dig in a parking lot was planned and authorized, and in nearly the first place that they looked, a skeleton with evidence of scoliosis was recovered by the team. Using DNA technology and family tree information, two living descendents were located and proved a perfect match. Richard III had been found and a royal burial in Leicester was planned. This story is not only an archeological quest, but a revisiting of the tale long believed of an evil king whose reign has been disparaged since shortly after his death. This is an intriguing book that retraces the war of the roses, challenges long held perceptions, and recounts an amazing discovery.

Posted by: Thomas Paine at June 16, 2024 09:14 AM (3yy8E)

41 Dad didn't read to me mom did. But dad was a storyteller and loved to make up horror stories.

He made up a character he called Cropsie who haunted the abandoned bungalow colony down the empty lane.

Posted by: San Franpsycho at June 16, 2024 09:15 AM (RIvkX)

42 I read Lileks' Bleat, but never read any of his books. For some reason, I'm just not interested. Maybe I'd like them, and maybe not. Perhaps I should see if the local library has one or get one through ILL.
Posted by: OrangeEnt at June 16, 2024 09:07 AM (0eaVi)
---
Same. He was amusing to a point, and reminded me of some of the semi-daily newspaper columnists (which of course he was).

I don't recall when I stopped visiting his site, it was just a gradual thing. I was never interested in his books.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at June 16, 2024 09:16 AM (llXky)

43 I assume in planning long before D-Day the Amy puts its units on X boat but not know what was available until close to the launch date when Navy finally named Y boat.
Another mystery solved was the Combat Engineers were heavy accompanied with the invasion force and very early landed bulldozers, dump trucks, dump trailers ( the mystery Athey trailers) a crane truck to clear the beaches before subsequent waves to come.

Posted by: Skip at June 16, 2024 09:16 AM (fwDg9)

44 I own Lileks Regrettable Food and Interior Desecrations which is a ROFL collection of 1970 s home decor

Posted by: Victor Tango Kilo at June 16, 2024 09:18 AM (e5L5R)

45 "Read" (listened to the audiobooks of Jessica Day George's 12 dancing princesses trilogy. In order, they are:
Princess of the Midnight Ball
Princess of Glass
Princess of the Silver Woods
I highly recommend to any teen or YA reader. Not the least but woke and a lot of fun. Stakes are high. Heroes snd heroines are brave and clever and good. Villains defeated.

Posted by: vmom stabby stabby stabby stabby stabamillion at June 16, 2024 09:18 AM (Ka3bZ)

46 I watched my 1.5 YO granddaughter last week, and much of the time was spent reading the same dozen or so books. You'd be sitting peacefully, and she would toddle over and point at the stack of books. She even got to the point (hah!) of telling you that no, she didn't want that book, she wanted the other book.

She can't really read yet, of course, and is just starting to speak words, so most of the time was spent with me asking her where the X was, and her pointing at it. I won't say I didn't get tired of some of them, but OTOH, there isn't much better in life than sitting with a GChild on your knee, and imparting a love of books to them.

Posted by: Archimedes at June 16, 2024 09:19 AM (xCA6C)

47 I read Morning After The Revolution: Dispatches From The Wrong Side Of History by Nellie Bowles. Bowles was a correspondent for The New York Times and lived in San Francisco before moving to the Echo Park area of Los Angeles. I thought she would be another far-left progressive on the road to being red-pilled. However, she turned out to be only a few steps down that road. In each chapter one must read a lot of progressive claptrap in order to get to a paragraph or two at the end which mildly rebukes the most extreme ideas espoused. I hope Bowles continues down the road. I wish she would have waited to be further down the road before she wrote a critique of the far left.
Posted by: Zoltan at June 16, 2024 09:12 AM (w/izg)
====
Her wife is Bari Weiss, who allowed Sheryl Sandberg in her recent interview to get away with the same limp rationalizations and half-hearted criticisms.

Posted by: San Franpsycho at June 16, 2024 09:19 AM (RIvkX)

48 Also browsed through a few books on WWII trying to piece together a chronology of my father's airborne company movements -- he listed the places he'd been, but not dates. Can't call him because he's been gone for 20+ years; I miss him, but I have to say I'm glad he didn't live to see Obama's first term or all the lunacy that's followed.

Posted by: Just Some Guy at June 16, 2024 09:19 AM (q3u5l)

49 My dad I never knew to read books, was a newspaper reader though, my mom is the bookworm I take after.
Going to go get a pizza from pizzeria that was across their street before they moved and take it for supper later.

Posted by: Skip at June 16, 2024 09:20 AM (fwDg9)

50 Roald Dahl was an interesting character in real life. Nowadays he's also known as a high-profile target for cancellation because of the "problematic content" in his works.

Presentism

Making yesterdays information tainted or troubled when viewed in todays vernacular or social standards.

Posted by: rhennigantx at June 16, 2024 09:20 AM (ENQN6)

51 I'm in the middle of Dean Koontz' "77 Shadow Street." It's the weirdest book of his I've read so far and even one of the strangest I've ever read (which is saying something).

A few of the inhabitants who live at 77 Shadow Street are as nutty as what's happening to them, which isn't helping their already-frayed sanity.

Posted by: "Perfessor" Squirrel at June 16, 2024 09:21 AM (BpYfr)

52 I finished Wodehouse's The Mating Season and am now reading Leavery's Wooden Ship Building.
I forgot I have Kindle on the iPad.

Posted by: Jamaica at June 16, 2024 09:21 AM (IG7T0)

53 Happy Father's Day. I do remember my Dad telling me he read Playboy for the articles. I was much older before I got the joke.

Halfway thru Fire Upon the Deep by Vinge. Starting to get good. He's definitely out there with this one.

Posted by: Oooohm at June 16, 2024 09:21 AM (C7Yya)

54 Trimegistus

"Minor Ingredient" by Eric Frank Russell is one of the all time top 5 short stories that resonate with me. Not so much SF, as an appealing way to teach.

Posted by: NaCly Dog at June 16, 2024 09:21 AM (u82oZ)

55 The last Plantagenet king of England died on Bosworth Field in 1485.
Posted by: Thomas Paine at June 16, 2024 09:14 AM
---
The thing about the Wars of the Roses is that all the claimants were to some extent usurpers. It's interesting to contrast with the French and Habsburg lines, which were a lot less complicated.

The true King of England is the Duke of Bavaria, btw.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at June 16, 2024 09:21 AM (llXky)

56 Liane Moriarty's novels never disappoint. "Apples Never Fall" really captures how family members can love each other fiercely yet drive each other crazy. As with her other stories, you make snap decisions about characters initially but many layers are revealed and situations are recalled from different perspectives.

Posted by: All Hail Eris at June 16, 2024 09:22 AM (FkUwd)

57 James Lileks also riffed Spiderman 4 with Mike Nelson of MST3K.

Posted by: Victor Tango Kilo at June 16, 2024 09:22 AM (e5L5R)

58 Good Sunday morning, horde!

I finally got to the top of the wait list for The Running Grave, by Robert Galbraith (latest Cormoran Strike book) on audio. So I've been listening to that.

I've been fascinated by cults since the Jonestown Massacre, when I was in high school. In The Running Grave, Strike and Robin are investigating a cult that appears to be something like Scientologists, but worse.

Interesting so far.

Posted by: Dash my lace wigs! at June 16, 2024 09:22 AM (OX9vb)

59 Orange Ent, I'd recommend "Interior Desecrations" just for the 70's print-on-print-on-print design overload and Barbarellaesque shag overload.
Posted by: All Hail Eris at June 16, 2024 09:11 AM (FkUwd)

Most likely one. The regrettable food he covers every Friday anyway, so I'm sure it'd be repeats of what I've already seen in the Bleat.

Posted by: OrangeEnt at June 16, 2024 09:23 AM (0eaVi)

60 On the Kindle I read Windrush: Jayanti's Pawns by Malcolm Archibald. This is the fifth book in the series. Captain Windrush is still in India with the 113th foot regiment fighting to suppress the Sepoy Mutiny. He is ordered to take a detachment and hunt down Jayanti, the woman leader of a band of women fighters who have committed atrocities on British soldiers. After finally killing her, Windrush decides to marry his Eurasian girlfriend, Mary, which necessitates his resignation from the 113th Foot to join the command of General Neville Chamberlain in India's North West Frontier to work behind enemy lines.

Posted by: Zoltan at June 16, 2024 09:23 AM (w/izg)

61 ' I never much thought about it, but I suppose there are lots of people today who have Jewish blood and don't know it. '

I used to be one of those people. I was adopted from birth by a NYC-area Jewish family, and for years I felt that I never fit in: didn't look like them, didn't sound like them, etc. I went to Hebrew school, did well, but it never clicked for me (religion in general never did, actually). Then my sister (also adopted) gave me a 23 & Me test kit, and I found out I was in fact Jewish, by a sizeable percentage, although not from the same groups as my adopting parents. I have always held an affinity for Judaism and Israel, so no big changes to how I think about it, other than that it removes some of the uncertainty about my heritage; I'm not co-opting all of someone else's story when I describe mine.

Posted by: ragnarokpaperscissors at June 16, 2024 09:23 AM (sBGiW)

62 The Terminal Man sounds like a Meshuggah song come to life.

Posted by: Catch Thirty-Thr33 at June 16, 2024 09:23 AM (8sMut)

63 I own Lileks Regrettable Food and Interior Desecrations which is a ROFL collection of 1970 s home decor
Posted by: Victor Tango Kilo at June 16, 2024 09:18 AM (e5L5R)
---
Having lived through it I have no desire to revisit it. I can just go through the family photo albums. Heck, my father still has a bunch of that furniture in storage, including a Naugahyde couch.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at June 16, 2024 09:24 AM (llXky)

64 I don't recall being read to -- must have been, though, because I could read when I entered kindergarten. Go figure.

The offspring and grandtots liked Sandra Boynton's board books quite a bit, and I'm pretty sure I can still quote "But Not the Hippopotamus" in its entirety.

Posted by: Just Some Guy at June 16, 2024 09:24 AM (q3u5l)

65 I've been fascinated by cults since the Jonestown Massacre, when I was in high school. In The Running Grave, Strike and Robin are investigating a cult that appears to be something like Scientologists, but worse.

Interesting so far.
Posted by: Dash my lace wigs! at June 16, 2024 09:22 AM (OX9vb)
----
The "Church of Happyology" (as TV Tropes calls it) is frequently portrayed in literature as a rather sinister organization...F. Paul Wilson has one in his Repairman Jack series dedicated to bringing the Otherness to Earth.

Posted by: "Perfessor" Squirrel at June 16, 2024 09:25 AM (BpYfr)

66 The Terminal Man sounds like a Meshuggah song come to life.
Posted by: Catch Thirty-Thr33 at June 16, 2024

***
I remember it appearing as a serial (yes! three parts!) in Playboy in the early Seventies. And I think it also appeared in Reader's Digest Condensed Books -- a rare example of SF in that group. The only other SF story I can recall there was Clarke's exciting disaster-on-the-Moon novel, A Fall of Moondust.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 16, 2024 09:26 AM (omVj0)

67 It's interesting that you've been reading a book about AI and teaching. This is exactly what my 4th daughter trained to do, although she's not working in exactly that field at the moment.

Fairfax Co., here in deep blue NoVa, was supposed to be one of the leaders in online learning - at least it was until Covid showed that they were utterly unprepared for it, and that in any case, it wasn't all that. That doesn't mean AI won't be useful, but it's probably not the slam dunk some think it is.

However, I'm reminded of an article I read last week that said many of the businesses that jumped early onto the AI bandwagon have cooled on its applicability to business and turning a profit. I've been through lots of tech cycles in my career, so it's no surprise that it was oversold, but the amount of money still being put into it is colossal.

I guess we'll know in 5-10 years whether it was all smoke and mirrors or a legitimate breakthrough for humanity. In any case, your book sounds like one I should read.

Posted by: Archimedes at June 16, 2024 09:26 AM (xCA6C)

68 As I continue to dip into Plato, Aristotle, and St. Thomas Aquinas the rabbit holes to follow are multiplying exponentially. It started with a detour to "Meditations", time spent listening to echoes of Aquinas (some loud, some soft) in CS Lewis and Tolkien writings, investigating aspects of the Middle Ages, and a lot more. This led to re-reading some favorite passages from LOTR: farmer Maggot and his household, the ride of Rohan to battle in Gondor, etc.

One way or another I've touched on some of this material over the years but I think I appreciate and understand it better with age and experience.

BTW, "12 Life Lessons from St. Thomas Aquinas: Timeless Spiritual Wisdom for Our Turbulent Times" is proving to be a good introduction to Aquinas.

Posted by: JTB at June 16, 2024 09:27 AM (zudum)

69 ragnarokpaperscissor is an excellent nic.

Posted by: Archimedes at June 16, 2024 09:28 AM (xCA6C)

70 Pretty sure my dad never finished a book in his life. I think the closest he ever got was when I went over weekly and read Triumph Forsaken to him as he had gone blind. It always wound up being BS sessions most of the time and we didn't finish. It's on my TBF pile right now. I can't bring myself to open it yet.
I miss that man. Wish I could have just one more conversation.
Which brings me to my #2 grandson.... nevermind.

This weeks reading was the manual for my new wood chipper. I read but like me being me, I ignored.

No permanent damage but I can honestly say I personally reccomend NOT putting your hand into either end of a wood chipper when it is running.

Posted by: Reforger at June 16, 2024 09:29 AM (xcIvR)

71 I don't recall being read to -- must have been, though, because I could read when I entered kindergarten. Go figure. . . .

Posted by: Just Some Guy at June 16, 2024

***
I know I was read to, because Mom often told me in later years how we'd read comics together -- I'd pick out the easy words, she said, and she'd ead the rest. Gradually, I gather, I found all the words easy, and moved on to kids' books.

When I entered first grade, already a reader, the accepted wisdom was that school was supposed to teach us to read. I could not understand why a lot of my classmates had trouble with simple stuff like "Dick & Jane."

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 16, 2024 09:29 AM (omVj0)

72 15 I read Lileks' Bleat, but never read any of his books.
Posted by: OrangeEnt at June 16, 2024 09:07 AM (0eaVi)

It helps if you have a sister who has a similar sense of humor, and you read it together and laugh until you're crying. Years later, we still look at each other and declare, "The vegetables are strictly ornamental. DO NOT eat the vegetables!"

Posted by: Dash my lace wigs! at June 16, 2024 09:30 AM (OX9vb)

73 The Duke of Bavaria, incidentally, has a male "life companion" and no kids.

What is it about material success and status that makes people self-sterilize?

Posted by: Trimegistus at June 16, 2024 09:30 AM (78a2H)

74 However, I'm reminded of an article I read last week that said many of the businesses that jumped early onto the AI bandwagon have cooled on its applicability to business and turning a profit. I've been through lots of tech cycles in my career, so it's no surprise that it was oversold, but the amount of money still being put into it is colossal.

Posted by: Archimedes

I've been reading about how AI is learning to lie and be malicious. I have a feeling that this trend is more fad than transformation, and the darling stocks are headed towards a larger version of the last tech bust.

Posted by: Thomas Paine at June 16, 2024 09:31 AM (yqtL6)

75 I don’t remember my father reading to me, either. But literacy for all the kids was a family project. In my case I ran away with it more than the others. He mostly read newspapers and mags, but had a few books around. I claimed his old copy of The Peter Principle last year, so old is the copy, it has no bar codes.

My father’s #1 impact on my entertainment choices is my James Bond fandom. But even then he saw the movies. I don’t think he read the books.

Now that I think on it, when we were in Germany he would bring home, on occasion, various defense journals and publications and I would read those…probably why I was reading at a HS senior level in sixth grade.

RIP Dad.

Posted by: Catch Thirty-Thr33 at June 16, 2024 09:31 AM (8sMut)

76 Wow, the book Teaching with AI: A Practical Guide to a New Era of Human Learning costs $25 in Kindle format. That's ridiculous.

Posted by: Archimedes at June 16, 2024 09:31 AM (xCA6C)

77 In the stay far away pile you have greg iles latest southern man an heir to the grisham and james lee burke tradition its a thousand page msnbc screed

Posted by: Miguel cervantes at June 16, 2024 09:31 AM (PXvVL)

78 Her wife is Bari Weiss, who allowed Sheryl Sandberg in her recent interview to get away with the same limp rationalizations and half-hearted criticisms.
Posted by: San Franpsycho at June 16, 2024 09:19 AM (RIvkX)

A lot of the aging-out Left intellectuals are like this. It's become increasingly clear that their movement was always bad, and has now taken the turn into the heart of darkness. It's not something that people with a shred of decency can really countenance any longer.

But they've spent their entire careers assured by the knowledge that their luxury beliefs make them Good People, not Garbage People, so it's very hard to break out of that syllogism. Instead they just seek to (lol) moderate and roll back the movement rather than reject it, and a add a heaping teaspoon of "both sides" sugar to every grain of bitter medicine they swallow.

They're basically like those useless former gang members who hold those silly "Increase the Peace" type events in their inner-city channel house neighborhoods.

Posted by: Yudhishthira's Dice at June 16, 2024 09:32 AM (0FoWg)

79 I have encountered AI doing Internet, searches for information and also doing language learning. I think it is pretty fair with language learning because students learn and make the same mistakes. As for searching for information on the Internet, it is pretty so so because it doesn’t matter the subject you can always tell when the answer is AI based.

I don’t want to get into intellectual or technological argument and I won’t lol, But so far as a non-techie consumer is massively oversold because it is not artificial intelligence, but just more random computer responses to things the computer literally has no idea about.

Posted by: Quint at June 16, 2024 09:32 AM (RAUB3)

80 *charnel house

Posted by: Yudhishthira's Dice at June 16, 2024 09:33 AM (0FoWg)

81 While on travel to the NoVaMoMeet, I went into a used book store. Only got two books, which proves I have slightly more impulse control than Hunter Biden in a cocaine dealership.

One was a long book, that I had to finish, it was so well written. Ender in Exile by Orson Scott Card chronicles the lost years between Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead.

Ender gets his first kiss, victory over an ambitious ISF officer commanding the colony spaceship, and finds the last living Hive Queen.

The main theme is family and the importance of fathers and both parents. So apropos for Father's Day.

I aver that liking intact families and disliking homosexuality is the real reason Orson Scott Card is unpopular with editors and other SF writers. His stories are not anthologized nearly as much as his sound writing would infer.

Posted by: NaCly Dog at June 16, 2024 09:33 AM (u82oZ)

82 When I entered first grade, already a reader, the accepted wisdom was that school was supposed to teach us to read. I could not understand why a lot of my classmates had trouble with simple stuff like "Dick & Jane."
Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 16, 2024 09:29 AM (omVj0)

You too?

In second grade they added me to an advanced reading class. I remember thinking in reading classes “why are they struggling? This is easy!”

Posted by: Catch Thirty-Thr33 at June 16, 2024 09:33 AM (8sMut)

83 re Just Some Guy @25, glad you enjoyed "The Boss In the Wall". I have read that Avram Davidson left a manuscript version of that story that ran some 600 pages. The much shorter version that was printed was put into publishable form by Grania Davis his ex-wife.

Those two must have an interesting relationship. They were married for a few years in the 1960s, got divorced but continued to work together on writing projects for the rest of his life.

Posted by: John F. MacMichael at June 16, 2024 09:34 AM (jjfDF)

84 Reforger: I don't mean to sounds superior, but . . . I don't think I need to read a manual to know not to stick my hand in a wood chipper. Glad you got through the experience intact.

Posted by: Trimegistus at June 16, 2024 09:34 AM (78a2H)

85 I have always held an affinity for Judaism and Israel, so no big changes to how I think about it, other than that it removes some of the uncertainty about my heritage; I'm not co-opting all of someone else's story when I describe mine.
Posted by: ragnarokpaperscissors at June 16, 2024 09:23 AM (sBGiW)
---
My mother's family has Jewish lineage and it's well mapped out and confirmed by DNA. My grandmother regarded herself as a German-Irish Catholic, but half the "German" was actually Jewish and seemed to have a stronger identification with the German heritage, eventually becoming Catholic.

It's an interesting contrast to David Horowitz's family experience, and I highly recommend Radical Son, which gave me insight on my distant cousins still running around New York.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at June 16, 2024 09:34 AM (llXky)

86 Wow, the book Teaching with AI: A Practical Guide to a New Era of Human Learning costs $25 in Kindle format. That's ridiculous.
Posted by: Archimedes at June 16, 2024 09:31 AM (xCA6C)
----
Yeah, it's one of those books that's targeted for members of a certain industry (higher education, primarily).

Although it's written for a layperson, it's not really a "general audience" book.

My copy was paid for by my department.

Posted by: "Perfessor" Squirrel at June 16, 2024 09:34 AM (BpYfr)

87 I actually read a novel this week. A kids novel, or I suppose the current term is young adult novel, but, still, a novel. "Snow Dog" by Jim Kjelgaard. I read a lot of this author as a kid, and I just bought a stack of used books, to relive my childhood, and to gift to my nieces, one of whom is a voracious reader, and another who really likes dogs.

"Snow Dog" is very much in the genre of "White Fang." It features a puppy who is born in the wild, but to semi-domestic parents. He grows up to be a master hunter, and awesome in just about every way. Eventually, he comes into contact with the civilized world, a fur trapper in this case, and struggles through re-domestication. Oh, and along the way he fights a blood feud with a particularly evil leader of a wolf pack.

Intellectually, I knew these books were violent. After all, every meal in the wild comes from our hero-dog killing another creature. And, naturally, there are literal dog-fights in books like this. But in this case, the violence was especially in-your-face. On literal page 1 we are introduced to an angry wolf, who enjoys killing people and dogs, and will seek them out specifically to kill them. Grizzly...

Posted by: Castle Guy at June 16, 2024 09:35 AM (Lhaco)

88 Wolfus,

I remember being surprised that anybody had trouble with the school readers. I was less and less surprised as I got older and saw how many houses just didn't seem to have books in them.

Even these days -- I've been in some teacher's homes that seemed awfully light on printed matter, and I've known at least one librarian who claimed that she just didn't have time to read. Again: go figure.

Posted by: Just Some Guy at June 16, 2024 09:35 AM (q3u5l)

89 I don't feel tardy.

Posted by: Hot For AI Teacher at June 16, 2024 09:35 AM (vFG9F)

90 No permanent damage but I can honestly say I personally reccomend NOT putting your hand into either end of a wood chipper when it is running.
Posted by: Reforger

Wood chippers and jointers are two machines I have a healthy respect for. Both can remove body parts in less than a second.

Posted by: Thomas Paine at June 16, 2024 09:35 AM (yqtL6)

91 My Dad set me on a lifetime of reading with rationed doses of Edgar Rice Burroughs and Richard Halliburton at 9 years old. RIP, Dad.

Posted by: NaCly Dog at June 16, 2024 09:35 AM (u82oZ)

92 I will spend inordinate time and money in my travels just to hit a library book sale and spend fifty cents to two dollars for a handful of books. But that’s one of the reasons: finding unique books I would never have even thought about looking for.

That’s how I got The Shattered Silents that I mentioned last week, at the Kirkwood United Church of Christ whose sale happened to be on the day I was driving past St. Louis on the way to Michigan. I also bough Desmond and Ramona Morris’s Men and Apes there that I’m currently reading l It is a very idiosyncratic overview of the relationship between humans and various primates throughout history. Nothing to do with evolution l just what did people think of and do with “apes” in the past?

It’s apparently a follow up to their earlier Men and Snakes which I probably now have to read.

Posted by: Stephen Price Blair at June 16, 2024 09:35 AM (EXyHK)

93 When I entered first grade, already a reader, the accepted wisdom was that school was supposed to teach us to read. I could not understand why a lot of my classmates had trouble with simple stuff like "Dick & Jane."
Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 16, 2024 09:29 AM (omVj0)

You too?

In second grade they added me to an advanced reading class. I remember thinking in reading classes “why are they struggling? This is easy!”
Posted by: Catch Thirty-Thr33 at June 16, 2024 09:33 AM (8sMut)
---
Yep. Same here. I was reading at a sixth-grade level (at least) while in second grade. By the time I was a senior in high school, I was into post-graduate reading levels...Though highly technical material baffles me, of course.

Posted by: "Perfessor" Squirrel at June 16, 2024 09:36 AM (BpYfr)

94 I know Snow Dog from the song. And I was impressed that he defeated By-Tor.

Posted by: Thomas Paine at June 16, 2024 09:37 AM (MIg38)

95 Same. He was amusing to a point, and reminded me of some of the semi-daily newspaper columnists (which of course he was).

I don't recall when I stopped visiting his site, it was just a gradual thing. I was never interested in his books.
Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at June 16, 2024 09:16 AM (llXky)

I'm not sure why, but he's a big NR guy, so "Trump is icky" seemed to be his position. That might have turned some people away. I used to comment there, but he went to Disgust, so I stopped. Schnorflepuppy posts there on occasion. He says he sees everything, but he can't seem to put together why Minny is overrun with crime. Blinded by the big city lights, I guess. (He's from Fargo)

Great columnist, though. I'll keep reading M-F, but a lot of his other stuff doesn't interest me: The Diner, and the Peg Lynch stuff.

Posted by: OrangeEnt at June 16, 2024 09:38 AM (0eaVi)

96 It's my Dad's bday...passed in 2015...would've been 95 today...I'll toast his memory today....maybe right now.

Posted by: BignJames at June 16, 2024 09:39 AM (AwYPR)

97 In second grade they added me to an advanced reading class. I remember thinking in reading classes “why are they struggling? This is easy!”
Posted by: Catch Thirty-Thr33 at June 16, 2024 09:33 AM (8sMut)
---
One of my earliest memories is sitting in front seat of my father's Toyota Landcruiser and spelling out a stop sign. 'S T O P. Stop!" This must have been when I was 3.

My parents were reporters who met on the job, so reading was very heavily encouraged. Another early memory is sitting on my father's lap while he was reading a magazine feature on this new space movie, "Star Wars." Would I like to see it! Oh yes!

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at June 16, 2024 09:39 AM (llXky)

98 . . . reader, the accepted wisdom was that school was supposed to teach us to read. I could not understand why a lot of my classmates had trouble with simple stuff like "Dick & Jane."
Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 16, 2024
*
You too?

In second grade they added me to an advanced reading class. I remember thinking in reading classes “why are they struggling? This is easy!”
Posted by: Catch Thirty-Thr33 at June 16, 2024

***
My first grade teacher moved me into Grade Two when she found I could read. (She taught both in the same big classroom.) The next summer I had to be tested to make sure I could be promoted to Three, which I could.

My fifth-grade teacher used to tell us not to take our reading textbook home with us. Of course I'd sneak it out in my bookbag and read the whole thing in a weekend, and then be bored the rest of the school year.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 16, 2024 09:40 AM (omVj0)

99 I don't remember my dad reading to me, but he did get us a set of encyclopedias that I read cover to cover.

I read to my boys when they were little. I wonder if they remember that.

Posted by: fd at June 16, 2024 09:41 AM (vFG9F)

100 Yep. Same here. I was reading at a sixth-grade level (at least) while in second grade. By the time I was a senior in high school, I was into post-graduate reading levels...Though highly technical material baffles me, of course.
Posted by: "Perfessor" Squirrel

I was also moved up a grade for reading class from kindergarten through primary school. Teachers actually tried to stop me from getting too far ahead of my peers

Posted by: Thomas Paine at June 16, 2024 09:41 AM (OoM0v)

101 77 In the stay far away pile you have greg iles latest southern man an heir to the grisham and james lee burke tradition its a thousand page msnbc screed
Posted by: Miguel cervantes at June 16, 2024 09:31 AM (PXvVL)

I started reading this book this week. I did what I almost never do and gave up on it by page 10. As the main character was calling Trump and Maga people Nazis and Fascists, I figured the whole book would be rife with those sentiments.

Posted by: Zoltan at June 16, 2024 09:41 AM (w/izg)

102 Intellectually, I knew these books were violent. After all, every meal in the wild comes from our hero-dog killing another creature. And, naturally, there are literal dog-fights in books like this. But in this case, the violence was especially in-your-face. On literal page 1 we are introduced to an angry wolf, who enjoys killing people and dogs, and will seek them out specifically to kill them. Grizzly...
Posted by: Castle Guy at June 16, 2024

***
I'd have liked that as a kid, and now.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 16, 2024 09:42 AM (omVj0)

103 I haz a BOOK QUESTION
Can someone direct me to a good translation of St Augustine's Confessions?

Posted by: vmom stabby stabby stabby stabby stabamillion at June 16, 2024 09:43 AM (Ka3bZ)

104 While everyone else was reading Judy Blume in 4th Grade, I was reading John Toland's The Flying Tigers, which I got through the weekly reader book order.

Ah for the days when you got war books in school!

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at June 16, 2024 09:43 AM (llXky)

105 Good morning Book People and Happy Father's Day. And thank you Perfessor for the Book Thread.

Still working my way through That Hideous Strength, which I'm finding hard to put down.

I'm off to the Father's Day Car Show but wanted to pop in for a minute and say hello. Wishing you all a great week!

Posted by: KatieFloyd at June 16, 2024 09:43 AM (bpapH)

106 73 The Duke of Bavaria, incidentally, has a male "life companion" and no kids.

What is it about material success and status that makes people self-sterilize?
Posted by: Trimegistus at June 16, 2024 09:30 AM (78a2H)

Having heirs implies dying. These poor fools think they can live forever, enjoying their status and wealth. They also fear judgment at the hands of an angry God.

Posted by: Moki at June 16, 2024 09:43 AM (wLjpr)

107 Last weekend I finished an issue of the e-zine "Savage Realms. (Issue 5, maybe? Too lazy to check.) It featured the undisputed worst story in the magazine, and almost the very best. Back to back. Talk about a weird juxtaposition....

Worst story was a 'racism is bad' story, and it wasn't even much of a story. Just a sermon, obviously written during the 'summer of love.' It's sad, because it was written by the main contributor to the magazine, and it caused me to loose a lot of respect for the author. I really need to hurry on to the next issue to wash the taste from my mouth...

(continued)

Posted by: Castle Guy at June 16, 2024 09:44 AM (Lhaco)

108 And some still insist global warming isn't real.

Henny Penny Alert: UK to Be 'Blasted' By Heatwave of Up to...79°

Forecast maps for the UK indicate when the current cold spell could possibly end, promising a 48-hour blast of sun with temperatures reaching up to 26C. A heatwave is predicted to encase the UK at the month's end, as June finally warms up. The mercury, which currently lays low, is expected to at last climb towards the 30C mark by the end of June.

https://tinyurl.com/4hf7hhsh

Posted by: Archimedes at June 16, 2024 09:44 AM (xCA6C)

109 The only one of my book sale raid trophies I've looked into so far is "Shadows Over Innsmouth" and once again I think I've suckered myself.

It's the standard problem with HPL pastiches: the ones that are Lovecraftian are not good, and the ones that are good are not Lovecraftian.

The most extreme example of the latter is a story by Nicholas Royle set in Romania around the time of the fall of Ceaucescu. It's a pretty intense story, since it can draw on the real-life horror of Communist totalitarians, but other than one line about "the Deep Ones" I don't know what the hell it's doing in this volume.

Posted by: Trimegistus at June 16, 2024 09:44 AM (78a2H)

110 Teachers actually tried to stop me from getting too far ahead of my peers

Posted by: Thomas Paine at June 16, 2024 09:41 AM (OoM0v)

A good teacher would've encouraged you and made sure you had material.....a good teacher.

Posted by: BignJames at June 16, 2024 09:45 AM (AwYPR)

111 . . . Ah for the days when you got war books in school!
Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at June 16, 2024

***
Or when Scholastic offered one of the Man From U.N.C.L.E tie-in novels. I already had it and had read it, so I didn't order.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 16, 2024 09:45 AM (omVj0)

112 My oldest sister taught me to read before I went into Kinder.

Posted by: vmom stabby stabby stabby stabby stabamillion at June 16, 2024 09:45 AM (Ka3bZ)

113 Mornin', all!

I read 77 Shadow Street a few years back. Excellently creepy.

Just proofreading happenin' 'round here this week. Full-time work really cuts into the reading time. Hmph.

Posted by: Catherine at June 16, 2024 09:45 AM (ZSsrh)

114 My ultimate reading pleasure is when my grandsons (8&4) climb into my lap with a couple of books and we spend time reading. The eight year old will then pick a book and read to me and his brother. Pure Heaven.

Posted by: RetSgtRN at June 16, 2024 09:46 AM (eTkTC)

115 Anybody know if blue light reading glasses are effective at all?

Posted by: dantesed at June 16, 2024 09:46 AM (Oy/m2)

116 I haz a BOOK QUESTION
Can someone direct me to a good translation of St Augustine's Confessions?
Posted by: vmom stabby stabby stabby stabby stabamillion at June 16, 2024 09:43 AM (Ka3bZ)
---
The one I have is the Oxford Classic version, translated by Henry Chadwick. I liked it a lot. Chadwick is a huge fan of St. Augustine's use of language, and includes footnotes that the particular passage in Latin is heat-breakingly good and impossible to render in English.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at June 16, 2024 09:46 AM (llXky)

117 As a general rule I avoid books where the author's name is in a larger font than the title.

The degree of avoidance is proportional to the size of the discrepancy.

Posted by: Muldoon at June 16, 2024 09:46 AM (uCfKO)

118 Thank you A.H.Lloyd!

Posted by: vmom stabby stabby stabby stabby stabamillion at June 16, 2024 09:47 AM (Ka3bZ)

119 Following up myself, there is one very pleasing feature of the Innsmouth book: none of the stories are trying to peddle the awful "the monsters are just misunderstood and the real horror is racism" bullshit so beloved of writers like Ruthanna Emrys.

Posted by: Trimegistus at June 16, 2024 09:48 AM (78a2H)

120 I jumped 2 grade levels with reading in third grade, and that was when the teachers actually had to tell my parents about this. Later, I was in a strange situation where I took two English classes in high school that was when I realized even in the regular English classes, the school system placed different levels of people in each of the classes, even if they weren’t given a fancy name, such as gifted. Even in regular English classes, you were assigned to your level.

Posted by: Quint at June 16, 2024 09:49 AM (RAUB3)

121 And now the almost-best story in the early issues of the "Savage Realms' e-zine. I can't call it the best because the narrative fell apart into gibberish at the end. Not enough space (the limitations of short stories) too much switching-of-perspective and trying to make things feel confused and hectic.

Anyways, it started off as a standard sword-and-sorcery tale; a modern-day framing devise, and then a story about ancient Native American braves trying to banish some spooky/evil cult. And then, out of nowhere, a winged elephant-headed demon/angel appears to help our heroes! The story was an un-announced spin-off of Robert E Howard's "Tower of the Elephant!" I almost squealed in delight. The concept was just so...neat! But, like I described above, the author really fumbled the ending....

Just goes to show the kind of fun you can have with anthologies.

Posted by: Castle Guy at June 16, 2024 09:49 AM (Lhaco)

122 I was also moved up a grade for reading class from kindergarten through primary school. Teachers actually tried to stop me from getting too far ahead of my peers
Posted by: Thomas Paine at June 16, 2024 09:41 AM (OoM0v)
---
By fourth grade it was known that I had some attention issues, and I probably would have been drugged into submission if I was born later. As it was, I was moved to the back of the class and told to keep quiet. I rotated war books out of the school library and read those when I got bored, which was tolerated. I drew a lot of pictures as well. Always the carrier battles.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at June 16, 2024 09:49 AM (llXky)

123 It helps if you have a sister who has a similar sense of humor, and you read it together and laugh until you're crying. Years later, we still look at each other and declare, "The vegetables are strictly ornamental. DO NOT eat the vegetables!"
Posted by: Dash my lace wigs! at June 16, 2024 09:30 AM (OX9vb)

My brother and I don't. I don't even know what he finds funny. Lileks is funny to me in small doses, but his icky Trumpiness sort of keeps me from spending money on his stuff.

Sorry, James. If you lurk here.

Posted by: OrangeEnt at June 16, 2024 09:50 AM (0eaVi)

124 I read "The Hobbit" to my sons when they were young, every night at bedtime. they loved it, so I said what the heck, and read them all of "The Lord of the Rings." They were a little young to understand some of it, but they were very engaged in the whole thing. Like most of us, they thought Bombadil was an odd character.

My Dad didn't read to us much, but he was always reading something. He had scant interest in TV, so would read while Mom was watching shows like the Love Boat and Murder She Wrote. Not to disparage Mom, though ,she reads a lot as well. These days mostly the Bible and Christian books.

Posted by: Pug Mahon, with a drawer full of pieces of flair at June 16, 2024 09:50 AM (hZc6Q)

125 Modern educators seem to be unable to distinguish between "kids who are bored and fidgety because they already know and understand what's being taught and are bored out of their minds" and "kids who are bored and fidgety because they cannot understand what's being taught at all."

Posted by: Trimegistus at June 16, 2024 09:52 AM (78a2H)

126 I don't have too many memories connected with my Dad and reading....But I was a voracious reader as a kid, and my parents always made sure I had something cool. Starting with the Richard Scary city-of-animal-people picture books, to atlases, to Zoo Books magazines, to actual novels.... I gotta assume my Dad has some hand in picking those out for me. So, thanks Dad! (Not that he's reading this thread, but I'll call him later in the day....)

Posted by: Castle Guy at June 16, 2024 09:53 AM (Lhaco)

127 My younger son's concern about AI is not that it's getting ahead of our ability to handle it, but instead that it's getting ahead of attempts to regulate it.

Sigh.

Posted by: Weak Geek at June 16, 2024 09:53 AM (p/isN)

128 I was a science nut as a kid, and was given a C in science in 7th grade because I was well ahead of my classmates and any references I made in class tended to go right by said classmates (the teacher too, I suspect). My parents were told that this tended to be disruptive. I sat there and thought, "Oh, so THAT'S how the game works." Kept my non-assigned-text examples to myself, got my A, and kept on with my actual education outside the classroom. The teacher may have been just another drone, but I found the incident quite instructive.

Posted by: Just Some Guy at June 16, 2024 09:53 AM (q3u5l)

129 The Duke of Bavaria, incidentally, has a male "life companion" and no kids.

What is it about material success and status that makes people self-sterilize?
Posted by: Trimegistus at June 16, 2024 09:30 AM (78a2H)
---
Part of it is that the line is secure. If you're a "spare" or one is available, no worries. The Wittlesbachs have married into the House of Liechtenstein, so it's all good.

The point being that because royalty intermarries, there's usually an heir somewhere, and the Lancaster/York feud didn't really have a clear lawful claimant.

And whatever one wants to say about Richard III, how hard is it to keep your nephews alive in a fortress?

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at June 16, 2024 09:54 AM (llXky)

130 Reading takes us where we want to go, sometimes. Or just interesting sightseeing.

Yesterday, somebody posted a Dali print - the melting timepieces. I got to wondering what time frame he was operating under, and whether he was getting dosed with some genuine government issue acid or something. No, 1931 - way prior to that. So what's his story I wonder.

Well Wiki was helpful, and noted that George Orwell (yes that George Orwell) wrote a paper called "Benefit of Clergy" critiquing Dali's autobiography. I figured this ought to be good, and I wasn't disappointed. Orwell was a smart guy, and he illustrated something really strange about the West.

Part of his critique was noting the schizophrenic attitude towards "Art" and artists. Dali was crazy as a shithouse rat, absolutely the kind of person the authorities ought to check their crawlspace out. I think that's what Orwell was getting at. People don't start putting out "Art" with necrophilia and dead animals and maggots without some sort of disturbance in their thinking, at best.

But he was a really good painter. People are willing to ignore (brain dead "intellectuals") all the bad stuff - "He's really good!".

Posted by: Common Tater at June 16, 2024 09:55 AM (9vhhG)

131 Thank you A.H.Lloyd!
Posted by: vmom stabby stabby stabby stabby stabamillion at June 16, 2024 09:47 AM (Ka3bZ)
---
That's just another service we provide. You're welcome!

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at June 16, 2024 09:55 AM (llXky)

132 Modern educators seem to be unable to distinguish between "kids who are bored and fidgety because they already know and understand what's being taught and are bored out of their minds" and "kids who are bored and fidgety because they cannot understand what's being taught at all."

I think they DO know, it's just that they've bought into (possibly for career reasons) the school board's stance that "all children are gifted". Well, sorry to break it to them, but no, no they aren't.

However, rather than admit the blindingly obvious, they insist on doing their level best to destroy differentiated learning. It's the triumph of ideology over common sense.

Posted by: Archimedes at June 16, 2024 09:56 AM (xCA6C)

133 Got five books for about $25, which shows that even used paperbacks cost more than they used to.
Posted by: Trimegistus at June 16, 2024 09:11 AM (78a2H)

Looking at the cover price of old books is just depressing. Inflation has ruined so much....

Posted by: Castle Guy at June 16, 2024 10:00 AM (Lhaco)

134 However, rather than admit the blindingly obvious, they insist on doing their level best to destroy differentiated learning. It's the triumph of ideology over common sense.
Posted by: Archimedes

I have to give credit to my high school, which had a dedicated gifted program. We were allowed out of class to attend seminars on various technical subjects. I doubt that still exists, however.

Posted by: Thomas Paine at June 16, 2024 10:00 AM (UWcG8)

135 Modern educators seem to be unable to distinguish between "kids who are bored and fidgety because they already know and understand what's being taught and are bored out of their minds" and "kids who are bored and fidgety because they cannot understand what's being taught at all."

Both my sons are very intelligent, but they were very different as students. Older son was a great student, did all his homework without complaint, graduated with honors from his charter school.

younger son was a terrible student, bored, distracted, seldom did his homework, but aced every test he took no matter the subject. They tried to convince us to put him on aderol or whatever. We said, hell no. He graduated high school with a C average, which was good enough. He is a very successful IT guy now.

Posted by: Pug Mahon, with a drawer full of pieces of flair at June 16, 2024 10:01 AM (hZc6Q)

136 There is a huge amount of arrant nonsense being spouted about AI.

I am familiar with a big corporation's efforts, and they are being very careful, because they discovered that not only does AI have "hallucinations," they discovered that if you ask the same question separated by a few weeks, you will sometimes get a radically different answer.

So those protein structures? Do we really know that they are correct?

Posted by: CharlieBrown'sDildo at June 16, 2024 10:01 AM (d9fT1)

137 Orwell suggests, I think, that the error here is in thinking that the only other choice is to reject Dali's artwork as well as his disgusting persona or whatever.

I think a modern parallel might be Mike Jackson, from the Jackson 5 family. He was popular and talented, but widely rumored to be a kiddie diddler. Almost certainly abused himself, the thinking goes, he continued the cycle of abuse. Anyway I thought it was an interesting perspective from almost 100 years ago, same problems.

Nobody should get a "get out of jail free" card simply because they play the piano well or can recite lines on a screen, or whatever.

Posted by: Common Tater at June 16, 2024 10:01 AM (9vhhG)

138 He is a very successful IT guy now.

Posted by: Pug Mahon, with a drawer full of pieces of flair at June 16, 2024 10:01 AM (hZc6Q)

Yes, but think of how much easier it would have been for his teachers!

Posted by: CharlieBrown'sDildo at June 16, 2024 10:01 AM (d9fT1)

139 The destruction of differentiated learning is perhaps the single most suicidal feature of modern education. The elimination of gifted programs should be grounds for prosecuting and imprisoning the school boards involved.

They wouldn't think of throwing away athletic potential the way they gleefully discard academic potential.

Posted by: Just Some Guy at June 16, 2024 10:01 AM (q3u5l)

140 @108 --

Mom came home from a trip to the Netherlands and brought me some British newspapers. Lead story: "90 DEGREES: Hottest day in decades."

Yes, London is farther north than Kansas, so that's hot to them, but I still got a laugh out of that.

Posted by: Weak Geek at June 16, 2024 10:02 AM (p/isN)

141 Yep, I was bored by the pace of the simple, easy reading used to 'teach' reading in early grade school. That pace felt slightly insulting to a six year old. Instead of driving me away from reading, that approach made me want to read more and seek out more complex books beyond the 'See Spot run' crap.

A big turning point came when I discovered the dictionary. Meanings, synonyms, derivations, varied usages, and etymologies! I loved seeing how modern words derived from earlier forms. It was a first glimpse into how knowledge can form a complex web of connections from the past to the present. I still enjoy that information. Yes, I still sometimes just read through the OED for fun.

Posted by: JTB at June 16, 2024 10:02 AM (zudum)

142 Teachers are great. They perform an indispensable service to society. My distrust, resentment and hatred of institutional authority might not be so bone-deep, absent their careful tutelage.

Posted by: Yudhishthira's Dice at June 16, 2024 10:03 AM (0FoWg)

143 am familiar with a big corporation's efforts, and they are being very careful, because they discovered that not only does AI have "hallucinations," they discovered that if you ask the same question separated by a few weeks, you will sometimes get a radically different answer.

So those protein structures? Do we really know that they are correct?
Posted by: CharlieBrown'sDildo

There is a reason that every SF story about sentient technology goes in the same direction.

Posted by: Thomas Paine at June 16, 2024 10:04 AM (UWcG8)

144 My younger son's concern about AI is not that it's getting ahead of our ability to handle it, but instead that it's getting ahead of attempts to regulate it.

Sigh.
Posted by: Weak Geek at June 16, 2024 09:53 AM (p/isN)
---
The supposed risk of AI is not that it will outsmart humanity. There is no danger of this, because AI can never become greater than the sum of its parts - especially when the people programming it are manifest idiots who believe men can give birth.

The real risk is that people will credit it as being a source of all wisdom and then seek to carry out its dictates as being "scientific."

It is yet another false god, an idol of the technophiles.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at June 16, 2024 10:04 AM (llXky)

145 I'm listening, on Audible, to Titan, a biography of John D. Rockefeller by Ron Chernow.
It's a 35-hour listen. Sadly I'm not sure I have 35 hours of interest in Rockefeller.

Posted by: Northernlurker at June 16, 2024 10:04 AM (JLq/1)

146 I'm also reading "Captain Britain and M.I. 13," an aborted Marvel Comics series (15 issues plus an annual) that I bought online in a lot pretty cheaply because it was missing issue No. 1. I think I have No. 1 somewhere.

I don't know why I didn't buy this when it was new; the art is good and I like the characters. I think my reason was that it began as a spinoff from "Secret Invasion," a 2008 miniseries that I dropped halfway through because I found it dull. Dull this isn't.
Posted by: Weak Geek at June 16, 2024 09:12 AM (p/isN)

Wait, the comic ran for 15 issues, and you're calling that an 'aborted run'? C'mon, that's longer than most series Marvel puts out these days! Including half of the volumes of their 'flagship' Captain Marvel series....

I've got some fond memories of ol' Brian Braddock Captain Brittain. Excalibur (101-125, plus some back-issues) was the first comic book I collected, and he was a big part of that book.

Posted by: Castle Guy at June 16, 2024 10:06 AM (Lhaco)

147 The supposed risk of AI is not that it will outsmart humanity. There is no danger of this, because AI can never become greater than the sum of its parts - especially when the people programming it are manifest idiots who believe men can give birth.

The real risk is that people will credit it as being a source of all wisdom and then seek to carry out its dictates as being "scientific."

It is yet another false god, an idol of the technophiles.
Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at June 16, 2024 10:04 AM (llXky)
---
Michael Crichton was concerned about this as far back as 1972.

Posted by: "Perfessor" Squirrel at June 16, 2024 10:06 AM (BpYfr)

148 I don't remember my parents reading to me or my sisters. Neither was college educated. My father never finished High School having to drive the Bakery truck and make deliveries.
Yet it seems I always knew how to read. There was always money to buy books. There were magazines and newspapers. I read my father's Sgt Rock comics.
Funny the things that make memories....

Posted by: Sharon(willow's apprentice) at June 16, 2024 10:07 AM (t/2Uw)

149 Yes, but think of how much easier it would have been for his teachers!
Posted by: CharlieBrown'sDildo at June 16, 2024 10:01 AM (d9fT1)

Yup. I am so glad we fought so hard to prevent it. Reminds me of the saddest Calvin and Hobbes parody ever, done by a fan of the strip.

Calvin sitting at his desk with combed hair, doing his homework, a bottle of Ritalin nearby. Behind him is Hobbes in stuffed toy form, sitting forlornly on a chair.

Posted by: Pug Mahon, with a drawer full of pieces of flair at June 16, 2024 10:07 AM (hZc6Q)

150 "Hallucinations" is the euphemism the industry uses to wave off all the lies and outright fabrications from AI. They also like to blame the "hallucinations" on the user by saying they happen the AI is just trying to please the stupid humans.

Posted by: Yudhishthira's Dice at June 16, 2024 10:07 AM (0FoWg)

151 OrangeEnt, I was going to offer to send the Lileks book to you. Offer's still open.

Reply here, and I'll shoot an email to you.

Posted by: Weak Geek at June 16, 2024 10:08 AM (p/isN)

152 The Austin name comes from St Augistine via Austin Friars London.
As in the founders of Texas.
I personally believe that Richard Li Austin (b 1350) was the true first born son of Prince Edward and Joan of Kent. Pope said nope.
Problem was she was married, to two knights at the same time. Neither of which were Edward but both under his command. They married years later and produced King Richard II.
This scandal was essentially burried finally by the disolution of the manestaries. As a final finger in the eye Cromwell destroyed and then built his palace on the grounds of Austin Friars, London.
Richard Austin, the Colonist left England on The Bevis soon afterwards.

Posted by: Reforger at June 16, 2024 10:09 AM (xcIvR)

153 As a practical matter, my spidey sense started tingling way back in the 1980s when they started gushing that they don't teach anything about "names dates places" or what they disparagingly called "rote learning". This also 'splained why they seemed to think memorizing multiplication tables wasn't necessary.

Recall and memorization are crucial skills, especially in technical fields and under pressure. The ability to notice patterns or analogues to situations. I can't tell you how many times some strange bit of trivia I picked up somewhere along the way has been extremely helpful, not just to myself but to others and getting things done.

My cynicism led me to believe "they" just want as many stupid people as possible. It's easier that way, or something. Dependent, compliant, ignorant. If that wasn't the goal, what would they be doing different? Show your work.

Posted by: Common Tater at June 16, 2024 10:11 AM (9vhhG)

154 "Hallucinations" is the euphemism the industry uses to wave off all the lies and outright fabrications from AI. They also like to blame the "hallucinations" on the user by saying they happen the AI is just trying to please the stupid humans.
Posted by: Yudhishthira's Dice at June 16, 2024 10:07 AM (0FoWg)
---
I saw an essay last week that addressed this. "Computers Can't Do Math" was the title, I think. It went into the fact that computers can't actually do math, they just mimic the way humans do it, and lack the ability to make shortcuts that we do. Yes, they can process huge calculations but we have to walk them through it.

It's just one example of how important GIGO is and that when you leave simple, cut and dry formulations, AI is basically lost.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at June 16, 2024 10:11 AM (llXky)

155 Yep, I was bored by the pace of the simple, easy reading used to 'teach' reading in early grade school. That pace felt slightly insulting to a six year old. Instead of driving me away from reading, that approach made me want to read more and seek out more complex books beyond the 'See Spot run' crap.

Posted by: JTB

I was in the same boat. I would read four or five extra books per week beyond the assignments. I had one teacher furious that I did not write a book report on every one, and made sure to inform my parents. This, despite the fact that I had done the reports on every assigned book. I learned then about linear thinkers.

Posted by: Thomas Paine at June 16, 2024 10:11 AM (adnws)

156 Haven't read comics in eons. Before I discovered Heinlein and SF paperbacks, I read comics. The folks downstairs let me read their DC issues (Superman & Batman were okay, but I always kinda preferred Challengers of the Unknown). The Marvels I bought from the drug store; those were the days for Marvel. This kid had first issues of The Avengers, X-Men, Spiderman, Hulk, Sgt Fury, and pretty early issues of Fantastic Four. Couple of years' worth on all of 'em. When I started buying paperbacks, I gave them all to a kid down the street. I like to think that HIS mother threw 'em away later.

Posted by: Just Some Guy at June 16, 2024 10:12 AM (q3u5l)

157 Thanks, Professor, for posting my Hamilton review. I wasn't expecting that.

Happy Father's Day.

https://youtu.be/usk4QXt2no4

Posted by: Biden's Dog sniffs a whole lotta malarkey, at June 16, 2024 10:13 AM (6Xyqy)

158 his icky Trumpiness sort of keeps me from spending money on his stuff.

Sorry, James. If you lurk here.
Posted by: OrangeEnt at June 16, 2024 09:50 AM (0eaVi)

For sure. Fortunately, those were written long before 2016.

Posted by: Dash my lace wigs! at June 16, 2024 10:14 AM (OX9vb)

159 This Father's Day, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttgigitty is on CBS with his husband as Jane Paulie gushes over what a great dad he is and his high speed rail are going to be great!!!

Posted by: Anonosaurus Wrecks, Free the Trump 45! at June 16, 2024 10:14 AM (L/fGl)

160 So back to books?

I read Stardust, number 17 in Parker's Spenser series. Spenser is hired by a TV production company to track down who is harassing their world famous star. She is a true diva and seemingly an empty headed drunk who refuses to give Spenser any information to go on. All my favorite characters including Susan, Hawk, Belson and Quirk are here but this one is totally Spenser doing his job, solving the mystery and saving a life.

Posted by: Sharon(willow's apprentice) at June 16, 2024 10:15 AM (t/2Uw)

161 My dad liked to read encyclopedias and wore out at least three sets. He used to ask us questions at supper from whatever he was reading. This led me to a lifelong love of trivia. He also loved doing crosswords which is related.

Posted by: huerfano at June 16, 2024 10:17 AM (VGOMa)

162 I'm also still working my way through _Yankee Republic_, the boys' radio alternate history fantasy trilogy by Fenton Wood (who sounds like a pseudonym). It's fun, like a cross between the Mad Scientists' Club and American Gods.

Posted by: Trimegistus at June 16, 2024 10:18 AM (78a2H)

163 Modern educators seem to be unable to distinguish between "kids who are bored and fidgety because they already know and understand what's being taught and are bored out of their minds" and "kids who are bored and fidgety because they cannot understand what's being taught at all."
-------
I think they DO know, it's just that they've bought into (possibly for career reasons) the school board's stance that "all children are gifted". Well, sorry to break it to them, but no, no they aren't.

However, rather than admit the blindingly obvious, they insist on doing their level best to destroy differentiated learning. It's the triumph of ideology over common sense.
Posted by: Archimedes
++++
Even the smallest school should be able to have three brackets for math and language (reading & writing) through most of elementary school - the lowest 20%, the bulk in the middle, and the upper 20%. Use 1st (and maybe 2nd grade) to place the kids in their quintile.
Kids can move up/down groups through the school years as their capabilities demonstrate.

Posted by: Itinerant Alley Butcher at June 16, 2024 10:19 AM (cOq4q)

164 My cynicism led me to believe "they" just want as many stupid people as possible. It's easier that way, or something. Dependent, compliant, ignorant. If that wasn't the goal, what would they be doing different? Show your work.
Posted by: Common Tater at June 16, 2024 10:11 AM (9vhhG)
---
My father's theory is that when less women were in the work force, the ones that went into teaching were a cut above and took the job seriously. As more women became "empowered," more lazy idiots entered the field and the profession of teaching became degraded to the point where it's primary purpose was amusing the teachers, which is why they now prey on children.

It's funny how "Hot for Teacher" was assumed to be a male adolescent fantasy, absurd on its face, and now it's apparently commonplace.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at June 16, 2024 10:19 AM (llXky)

165 Her wife is Bari Weiss, who allowed Sheryl Sandberg in her recent interview to get away with the same limp rationalizations and half-hearted criticisms.
Posted by: San Franpsycho at June 16, 2024 09:19 AM (RIvkX)

I think I see the problem there.

Posted by: Alberta Oil Peon at June 16, 2024 10:19 AM (6RYcT)

166 younger son was a terrible student, bored, distracted, seldom did his homework, but aced every test he took no matter the subject.
Posted by: Pug Mahon, with a drawer full of pieces of flair at June 16, 2024 10:01 AM (hZc6Q)

Mine, too. Dropped out of high school in his junior year (it was six months before the school told me he wasn't attending, even though I dropped him at the door every morning). I made him get a GED a year later, and he scored 98% on it.

Posted by: Dash my lace wigs! at June 16, 2024 10:19 AM (OX9vb)

167 I also found a short story by Brandon Sanderson while searching for something else, titled Firstborn.
It is an early story and more sci fi than fantasy. It is only 67 pages yet tells a complete story.
This got me to thinking about short stories. Most seem to be vignettes about a character from one of the author's books. But this one told a complete story introducing characters and a story line with lots of action, a big reveal and a satisfactory ending.
It is no wonder Sanderson is sought after.
This one is worth the effort to find.

.
Really worth checking out.

Posted by: Sharon(willow's apprentice) at June 16, 2024 10:23 AM (t/2Uw)

168 I always liked Stephen Sears’ Gettysburg. There, there is a great line at the beginning of the chapter after day one where Sears describes how angry Lee was that he was let down by all three of his core commanders. The way Sears makes that statement has always run true, You can never understand Gettysburg fully without realizing it was literally the worst army of Northern Virginia Confederate commanders ever acted and all three chose to do it at the exact same time.
Posted by: Quint

Speaking of bad actors, I also love Sears' Landscape Turned Red about Antietam.

Posted by: Anonosaurus Wrecks, Free the Trump 45! at June 16, 2024 10:23 AM (L/fGl)

169 Getting ready to go on vacay >>> fly into S F (ugh) and there for 1.5 days, hopefully I don't get shat upon >> Carmel/Pacific Grove/Monterey for a couple days >> Yosemite (staying in Coarsegold) for 5-6 days, that's where the real relaxation happens.

I'll be taking Vol. 1 of The Gulag Archipelago with me, I put it down mid-way a while back and will start up again. I used to consider reading it as a warning, now I consider it "prepping". I'd like to maybe pick up a nice bit of fiction to do some parallel reading

Posted by: ghost of hallelujah at June 16, 2024 10:25 AM (sJHOI)

170 Well, if we're talking about Confederate screwups at Gettysburg, let's not forget Lee himself. When the moment came for a brilliant stroke to win the battle, apparently the best he could come up with was "charge up the middle and hope they break." Napoleon could get away with that kind of thing because he had enormous manpower to waste; Lee couldn't, and didn't.

Posted by: Trimegistus at June 16, 2024 10:26 AM (78a2H)

171 So much of the 'benefits' of AI to business seems to come down to an automated tickler file. (Anyone remember those?) Need to remind a patient about an appointment or renew a prescription? The computer will do it. Need to use the same type of information in many documents? We had folders with boilerplate to pick from and adapt. And there was value in assembling those boilerplate files since they required an understanding of the subject and business needs.

I have no confidence in the people 'creating' AI for their abilities or intentions. Equating AI with actual science (not the fuzzy pronouncements) is going to bite us all. And the people touting its 'wonders' are both selling something and see it as a path to control others.

I can't eliminate AI from my life completely but I can try to keep it to a minimum. It really brings out my innate curmudgeon.

Posted by: JTB at June 16, 2024 10:27 AM (zudum)

172 The book bag in the leaving the library book sale pic reminds me of my granddaughter's book bag. I marvel at the size of it. I don't know how she hauls that thing around all day.

Posted by: Tuna at June 16, 2024 10:27 AM (oaGWv)

173 I always liked Stephen Sears’ Gettysburg. There, there is a great line at the beginning of the chapter after day one where Sears describes how angry Lee was that he was let down by all three of his core commanders. The way Sears makes that statement has always run true, You can never understand Gettysburg fully without realizing it was literally the worst army of Northern Virginia Confederate commanders ever acted and all three chose to do it at the exact same time.
Posted by: Quint

Speaking of bad actors, I also love Sears' Landscape Turned Red about Antietam.
Posted by: Anonosaurus Wrecks, Free the Trump 45! at June 16, 2024 10:23 AM (L/fGl)
---
I think that one of the most telling criticisms against Lee is that both of his offensives were not only failures, they risked the total destruction of his forces. Indeed, had his opponents been just slightly more energetic, he himself would likely have been captured. It's actually difficult to wargame Antietam or Gettysburg without special rules making the Union stupid.

Grant suffered setbacks, but almost always while in enemy territory and carrying the burden of the attack.

Posted by: Ace-Endorsed Author A.H. Lloyd at June 16, 2024 10:27 AM (llXky)

174 Even prior to home computers, cell phones - there was a firehose of conflicting information blasted on American kids in school and everywhere else. Note well this situation hasn't improved, at all. "Home schooling" doesn't really encompass the necessary steps parents would have to take to have even a chance at stopping the rot deployed at them.

Posted by: Common Tater at June 16, 2024 10:27 AM (9vhhG)

175 Been a while since I read it, but Michael Crichton's 1983 book ELECTRONIC LIFE: HOW TO THINK ABOUT COMPUTERS is probably still well worth a look. Within a few years after publication, his comments re: operating systems and hardware were already showing signs of senility, but his attitude toward the machines struck me as sensible, realistic, and healthy. I'd bet that if I fished out a copy and read it again, I'd still see it that way.

Posted by: Just Some Guy at June 16, 2024 10:29 AM (q3u5l)

176 I re-read my late mother's last manuscript, a late-18th century historical novel centered on the growing bond between the shamed young daughter of a Virginia planter and her black body slave. I would call it epic, following the young woman's forced marriage and the many ordeals shared with her slave who becomes like a sister. My mother had been a successful mystery novelist (Doubleday Crime Club) who got sidelined for many years raising her grandson. She spent 15 years researching and writing this last work. I think it's magnificent, harsh, true, unexpected, richly detailed, and both tragic and redemptive. Problem is, I'm told, finding a publisher for a deceased writer. I'm looking into self-publishing. It deserves an audience.

Posted by: Ordinary American at June 16, 2024 10:30 AM (hNi4N)

177 167 KTE found a Brandon Sanderson kid's book - Rithmatist- and has assigned it to me to read

Posted by: vmom stabby stabby stabby stabby stabamillion at June 16, 2024 10:30 AM (Ka3bZ)

178
"I'm mostly Scottish, but I also have Irish, German, and probably some remnant of Native American"

I'm Welsh on my father's side and Hungarian on my mother's side.
I just tell folks that I'm well-hung.

Posted by: Speller at June 16, 2024 10:31 AM (pSotA)

179 I read my first chapter book the summer between 1st and 2nd grade and immediately said, "So that's what I've been doing!" And started writing down my own stories.

Well, printing, since we didn't start cursive till 3d grade. I used to pass them up and down the aisles in class.

Posted by: Wenda at June 16, 2024 10:33 AM (4GhzG)

180 good morning Perfessor, Horde

Is Father's Day more or less fake than Mother's Day? Was it cooked up by the Tie Cartel?

Posted by: callsign claymore at June 16, 2024 10:34 AM (JcnCJ)

181 Both of my boys were in a Montessori school until 6th grade. It made a huge difference in their ability to think for themselves and their ability to read at a very young age. The system allowed smart kids to advance at their own pace. I switched them to public school at Junior High because I felt they needed to social aspect but by sophomore year in HS, they were taking AP courses.
I don't know why public schools stopped teaching phonics.

Posted by: Sharon(willow's apprentice) at June 16, 2024 10:34 AM (t/2Uw)

182 I'm still of the opinion that what tech-industry hype calls "artificial intelligence" is far from genuine intelligence.

If you ask it a question about physics -- say, heat flows in a refrigeration system -- the "AI" will parrot back any text it finds with those keywords in it, perhaps looking for the most common strings of words to use in its response. It may come across mathematical formulas and plug numbers into those.

But at no point does the "AI" actually understand what heat is, how heat flows work as physical processes, or what those numbers mean. Every HVAC or refrigerator tech probably has a better understanding of heat flow than the most powerful "AI" in existence.

And that's true of every topic!

The only thing that "AI" demonstrates about intelligence is that it's really easy to fool humans into thinking a machine is intelligent. Apparently Turing's test is a failure.

Posted by: Trimegistus at June 16, 2024 10:35 AM (78a2H)

183 The Duke of Bavaria, incidentally, has a male "life companion"

-
I have a male life companion. Of course, he's four footed, black and white, and likes to play fetch. Does sleep on my bed, though.

Posted by: Anonosaurus Wrecks, Free the Trump 45! at June 16, 2024 10:35 AM (L/fGl)

184 The very idea of how 'valuable' AI is or can be brings two phrases to mind:

"Don't piss down my back and tell me it's raining."

"Get off my lawn!"

Being inevitable doesn't make a thing good, just pervasive.

Posted by: JTB at June 16, 2024 10:35 AM (zudum)

185 "Hallucinations" is the euphemism the industry uses to wave off all the lies and outright fabrications from AI. They also like to blame the "hallucinations" on the user by saying they happen the AI is just trying to please the stupid humans.
Posted by: Yudhishthira's Dice at June 16, 2024 10:07 AM (0FoWg)

I rather like how Our Betters are building Insane/Chronic Lying Machines to run our world and control the basic boring work of everyday life.

This seems of a piece with "electing" a Senile Corrupt Kid-Sniffing Scumbag as Preezy and teaching children that men can be women and women men and to cut off their junk and mutilate themselves so that they can no longer have children and live in misery.

Whoever's writing this Dystopian Novel we're living in is doing a bang-up job!

Posted by: naturalfake at June 16, 2024 10:36 AM (eDfFs)

186 The widespread adoption and use of AI in everything from science to law to art to music is going to stunt our capabilities as individuals and take away from us much of what it means to be human. We are on a very bad trajectory.

Posted by: Second look at Butlerian jihad? at June 16, 2024 10:36 AM (Xlk7u)

187 Roald Dahl had no problem using Jews to make money; but he totally ignored the attacks on Israeli civilians. Dahl slandered Israel for trying to defend themselves (as have many since 194

.

He wrote interesting stories; but his statements were execrable.

Posted by: setnaffa at June 16, 2024 10:37 AM (nOVGb)

188
"I don't know why public schools stopped teaching phonics."

Phonics gave white children an advantage over vismins who didn't elocute properly. Therefore, phonics had to be eliminated.

Posted by: Speller at June 16, 2024 10:38 AM (pSotA)

189 OrangeEnt, I was going to offer to send the Lileks book to you. Offer's still open.

Reply here, and I'll shoot an email to you.
Posted by: Weak Geek at June 16, 2024 10:08 AM (p/isN)

Sorry, stepped away for a bit. Sure, Interior Desecrations.

Posted by: OrangeEnt at June 16, 2024 10:38 AM (0eaVi)

190 180 good morning Perfessor, Horde

Is Father's Day more or less fake than Mother's Day? Was it cooked up by the Tie Cartel?
Posted by: callsign claymore at June 16, 2024 10:34 AM (JcnCJ)

Less fake because dads usually get far less expense and thought incurred on them for the holiday. The florist-confectioner-greeting card - restaurant government industrial complex doesn't benefit anywhere near as much.

Posted by: Dads tend to be afterthoughts at June 16, 2024 10:40 AM (Xlk7u)

191 John Daniel Davidson (who used to go to the same church as me before he wisely fled Austin for Alaska) has written a book called Pagan America: the decline of Christianity and the Dark Age to Come. I haven't read it yet but listened to his 2 hour interview on Pints with Aquinas and the book sounds great. His thesis is that America is fully enmeshed in a post -Christian era, and with the passing of our Judeo-Christian-based society, so goes ethics, liberty, and human dignity. As in all previous pagan cultures, which value and reward only power rather than individual rights, he sees the elites of our time already have become quite blatant about their willingness (probably desire) to extinguish humanity (at least us lower forms) in the name of Gaia (or whatever). His message is not uplifting but is fascinating and unfortunately, IMO, true. I don’t think he has any actual solution other than buckle up, take care of your family, resist when and where you can (eg. vote, taking back city councils and school boards) and remain faithful to God.

Happy Fathers Day!

Posted by: LASue at June 16, 2024 10:40 AM (cUvIv)

192 I don’t think he has any actual solution other than buckle up, take care of your family, resist when and where you can (eg. vote, taking back city councils and school boards) and remain faithful to God.

Posted by: LASue at June 16, 2024 10:40 AM (cUvIv)

Thanks for the suggestion. Too bad he doesn't offer a solution. There is always a solution.

Posted by: Ordinary American at June 16, 2024 10:43 AM (hNi4N)

193 181 ... "I don't know why public schools stopped teaching phonics."

Sharon,
I believe they stopped teaching phonics and introduced 'new math' because self-styled elites in positions of power thought they knew better than the methods that had worked successfully for centuries. Their arrogance is mirrored in many of the school board members and decisions these days.

When reading about phonetics and new math, I keep coming back to Kipling's "Gods of the Copybook Headings".

Posted by: JTB at June 16, 2024 10:44 AM (zudum)

194 Happy Father’s Day!

Many thanks to the Moron who recommended “A Hobbit, A Wardrobe, And A Great War” by Joseph Loconte. He examines how WWI influenced the writings of JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis. Mr. Loconte also discusses their friendship, how Tolkien brought Lewis to Christianity, and their love of the classic hero’s journey influenced their writings.

It’s been a looong time since I read “The Hobbit” and LOTR, and I never did finish the Narnia series. Guess my reading list for the summer and fall is set.

Posted by: March Hare at June 16, 2024 10:45 AM (jfX+U)

195 Thanks for the suggestion. Too bad he doesn't offer a solution. There is always a solution.
Posted by: Ordinary American at June 16, 2024 10:43 AM (hNi4N)

Eh, theoretically, there are a whole raft of solutions to everything that's going on here.

But realistically, there is only one. Wait. The regime will go more and insane until people are sufficiently miserable to sweep it away.

Posted by: Yudhishthira's Dice at June 16, 2024 10:46 AM (0FoWg)

196 I don't know why public schools stopped teaching phonics.
Posted by: Sharon(willow's apprentice) at June 16, 2024 10:34 AM (t/2Uw)

Because the educational system isn't there to educate, it's there to process, homogenize, stupefy, and produce unthinking, unquestioning cogs in the machine.

Posted by: Critically thinking citizens threaten TPTB at June 16, 2024 10:47 AM (Xlk7u)

197 Yep, I was bored by the pace of the simple, easy reading used to 'teach' reading in early grade school. That pace felt slightly insulting to a six year old. Instead of driving me away from reading, that approach made me want to read more and seek out more complex books beyond the 'See Spot run' crap Posted by: JTB

I was in the same boat. I would read four or five extra books per week beyond the assignments. I had one teacher furious that I did not write a book report on every one, and made sure to inform my parents. This, despite the fact that I had done the reports on every assigned book. I learned then about linear thinkers.
Posted by: Thomas Paine at June 16, 2024 10:11 AM (adnws)

From my earliest times reading, I was fascinated by science/nature, mythology, archeology/paleontology, so that's what I read.

I kinda blame dinosaurs for a lot of that, because once I understood that the world had been very different in the past , I wanted to know all about it.

Anywho, I read that stuff to the exclusion of all else(besides comic books), so much so that my 5th grade teacher told my parents that I had to start reading fiction, or I would grow up stunted or
(con't)

Posted by: naturalfake at June 16, 2024 10:48 AM (eDfFs)

198 Greetings! I too am reading about Lenin.
Did you know that his birthname wasn't Lenin. It was Ulanov or something like.
Lenin is a one of more than a hundred phony identities he gave himself.

Posted by: gourmand du jour at June 16, 2024 10:48 AM (MeG8a)

199 If I were in charge of the federal dept of education, I would mandate that every school would require Kipling's "Gods of the Copybook Headings" be assigned and discussed every year in every school from grades 4-12. Post-secondary too, for that matter.

Posted by: Just Some Guy at June 16, 2024 10:49 AM (q3u5l)

200 (con't)

warped or some such thing.

So, I started reading fiction. It was fine and i enjoyed it. And eventually came to wanting to write it.

Building stories was not unlike building scientific theory.

Posted by: naturalfake at June 16, 2024 10:50 AM (eDfFs)

201 103 ... "Can someone direct me to a good translation of St Augustine's Confessions?"

Another vote for the Oxford World Classics edition of the the Confessions. I found that translation and the contextual material to be very helpful.

Posted by: JTB at June 16, 2024 10:52 AM (zudum)

202 How dare you people bad mouth the south or the heroic and very perfect generalship of the slave staters!

How dare you, you pathetic blue bellies!!!!

Posted by: Outside of Life at June 16, 2024 10:52 AM (89Sog)

203 Sharon,
I believe they stopped teaching phonics and introduced 'new math' because self-styled elites in positions of power thought they knew better than the methods that had worked successfully for centuries. Their arrogance is mirrored in many of the school board members and decisions these days.

Many "educators" fancy themselves part of the intellectual elite, but there is a cognitive disconnect between this conceit and the everyday practice of education, much of which involves repetition of simple concepts (simple to a functional adult). Therefore, they have to push something new and novel, because otherwise, what they do, while important, just isn't that intellectually impressive.

The same problem obtains for university "professors" in soft "studies" fields. Hence, the plague of plagiarism and fake scholasticism.

Posted by: Archimedes at June 16, 2024 10:53 AM (xCA6C)

204 I don't know why public schools stopped teaching phonics.
Posted by: Sharon(willow's apprentice) at June 16, 2024 10:34 AM (t/2Uw)

Too hard for the teachers to understand?

Posted by: OrangeEnt at June 16, 2024 10:53 AM (0eaVi)

205 If I were in charge of the federal dept of education, I would mandate that every one of my employees throw themselves into that flaming earthen maw in Turkmenistan, on pain of being knouted to death. They can pick.

Posted by: Yudhishthira's Dice at June 16, 2024 10:53 AM (0FoWg)

206 Just a little OT post here. I've noticed a few ALH members posting. Haven't seen many on the site lately, is it not giving you what you want?

Posted by: OrangeEnt at June 16, 2024 10:54 AM (0eaVi)

207 Anywho, I read that stuff to the exclusion of all else(besides comic books), so much so that my 5th grade teacher told my parents that I had to start reading fiction, or I would grow up stunted or warped or some such thing.

Didn't take, huh?

Posted by: I keed I keed at June 16, 2024 10:55 AM (Xlk7u)

208 Yeah, today is pretty much a go-through-the-motions exercise. Not much profit in it.

Posted by: The florist-confectioner-greeting card - restaurant government industrial complex at June 16, 2024 10:56 AM (dg+HA)

209 Anywho, I read that stuff to the exclusion of all else(besides comic books), so much so that my 5th grade teacher told my parents that I had to start reading fiction, or I would grow up stunted or warped or some such thing.

Didn't take, huh?
Posted by: I keed I keed at June 16, 2024 10:55 AM (Xlk7u)

Nope. Mission: Failed[/i}.

They should've used the IMF to make my new reading list.
🤪

Posted by: naturalfake at June 16, 2024 10:57 AM (eDfFs)

210 205 --

Hmm. Mandate a regular reading of "Gods of the Copybook Headings" or employees suffer flaming maw/death by the knout...

Gotta admit, it's a tough call.

Posted by: Just Some Guy at June 16, 2024 10:57 AM (q3u5l)

211 I've noticed a few ALH members posting.

ALH?

Posted by: Archimedes at June 16, 2024 10:58 AM (xCA6C)

212 every meal in the wild comes from our hero-dog killing another creature.

-
I have begun to read Prehistoria: A Raptor's Tail (note the spelling) by Jack Blackburn. It is a short novel about relatively unknown dinosaur, the Adasaurus, as she survives and attempts to raise her brood of chicks. A smaller dinosaur, wolf sized, of the late cretaceous. It reminds me of Robert Bakker 's Raptor Red.

Bakker was the technical consultant on the first Jurrasic Park and was parodied or homaged in the second as he rather resembles the long haired cowboy hippy dinosaur expert. I had read and liked his Dinosaur Heresies, a genuine scientific and influential book, so when he came to town to give a lecture on how to draw dinosaurs I went even though I can barely scratch my name in the dirt with a stick. OK, so I was the only one there older than 12 but still . . .

Posted by: Anonosaurus Wrecks, Free the Trump 45! at June 16, 2024 10:58 AM (L/fGl)

213 As a general rule I avoid books where the author's name is in a larger font than the title.

The degree of avoidance is proportional to the size of the discrepancy.
Posted by: Muldoon at June 16, 2024

***
Generally, I do the same. But the Signet paperback editions of the James Bond books (early Sixties) had IAN FLEMING in giant type above the book title -- and those worked out real fine.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 16, 2024 10:58 AM (omVj0)

214 OrangeEnt --

Just haven't been writing enough the last couple of months, so haven't had much to contribute. Site's okay by me.

Posted by: Just Some Guy at June 16, 2024 10:59 AM (q3u5l)

215 190 I meant it's origins, not the outputs. But good point about who profits.

As for your nic ... yeah. American popular culture, the law, and many, many churches despise men. Especially fathers.

I told an old school Catholic priest friend that many American men avoid church because they rightly suspect that once they give their hearts to Jesus, they're gonna have to give their gonads to the ladies' altar guild.

He agreed.

[gonads substituted for original word. Mixed company and all]

Posted by: callsign claymore at June 16, 2024 11:00 AM (JcnCJ)

216 Australian Light Horse (Australia)
Atypical Lobular Hyperplasia
Advanced Light Helicopter
American Legend Homes (Lewisville, TX)
Automated Liquid Handling
Australian Leisure and Hospitality Group (Victoria, Australia)
Amplitude of Lateral Head (Displacement)

Posted by: Lots of ALHs out there at June 16, 2024 11:01 AM (Xlk7u)

217 What's 'ALH'?

Posted by: ghost of hallelujah at June 16, 2024 11:01 AM (sJHOI)

218 Angry Little Hore

Posted by: ghost of hallelujah at June 16, 2024 11:01 AM (sJHOI)

219 205 --

Hmm. Mandate a regular reading of "Gods of the Copybook Headings" or employees suffer flaming maw/death by the knout...

Gotta admit, it's a tough call.

Posted by: Just Some Guy at June 16, 2024 10:57 AM (q3u5l)

A real Gordian knout situation

Posted by: Who's Gordy? at June 16, 2024 11:02 AM (Xlk7u)

220 There is this whole series by chloe gong which in the semblance of romeo and juliet does a chinese lovecraft tale which vilifieds chiangs side of thr ledger lets dwell on 1927 and the mukden incident exclusively

One family is white russian the other chinese

Posted by: Miguel cervantes at June 16, 2024 11:02 AM (PXvVL)

221 205 How much to subscribe to your newsletter?

Posted by: callsign claymore at June 16, 2024 11:03 AM (JcnCJ)

222 phonics is still taught

Posted by: ghost of hallelujah at June 16, 2024 11:04 AM (sJHOI)

223 205, 210 --

Hmm. Mandate a regular reading of "Gods of the Copybook Headings" or employees suffer flaming maw/death by the knout...

Gotta admit, it's a tough call.

-----

Just to show how slow I am this morning: Nothing wrong with requiring both of the above, is there, really?

Posted by: Just Some Guy at June 16, 2024 11:04 AM (q3u5l)

224 I don't know why public schools stopped teaching phonics.
Posted by: Sharon(willow's apprentice)

Well, for one thing it's spelled funny. Incidentally, an embarrassingly short time ago, I learned the difference between a consonant and a vowel. A vowel is a letter which you can pronounce like singing. You can say aaaaaaaaa or eeeeeeeee but you can't say rrrrrrrrr (unless you want to sound like a machine gun).

Posted by: Anonosaurus Wrecks, Free the Trump 45! at June 16, 2024 11:05 AM (L/fGl)

225 Ii'm happy to report that Ive made it to page 465 of Lord of the Rings Only another 3,000 or so pages to go!

Posted by: LASue at June 16, 2024 11:06 AM (gHjhb)

226 Thinking of reading a Lenin biography soon, looked at possibly before I picked up this WWII history.

Posted by: Skip at June 16, 2024 11:06 AM (fwDg9)

227 I don't know why public schools stopped teaching phonics.
=====
Same reason they stopped teaching arithmetic -- too practical and easily assessed. Back in the day, a grammar school education guaranteed basic competence in reading, writing, and arithmetic. I am angrier about arithmetic than anything else, and I'm a BritLitTwit. Let's estimate our bridges. /s

Posted by: mustbequantum at June 16, 2024 11:07 AM (MIKMs)

228 Even the smallest school should be able to have three brackets for math and language (reading & writing) through most of elementary school - the lowest 20%, the bulk in the middle, and the upper 20%. Use 1st (and maybe 2nd grade) to place the kids in their quintile.
Kids can move up/down groups through the school years as their capabilities demonstrate.
Posted by: Itinerant Alley Butcher at June 16, 2024

***
Oh, if they'd only had that for me! I'd have been in the slow group for arithmetic and math, and the upper group for the other things. I was good on the times tables, and could manipulate numbers okay, but as we moved into algebra it was taught so poorly -- and I would make nervous arithmetic errors on tests and so get a lower grade -- that it was my poorest academic subject.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 16, 2024 11:08 AM (omVj0)

229 If any book should be mandated for every student, it's Gulag Archipelago.

But if kids understood what the government had in store for them, then the plan couldn't work, so that won't be happening in government schools.

Posted by: Yudhishthira's Dice at June 16, 2024 11:09 AM (0FoWg)

230 >>> 176 I re-read my late mother's last manuscript, a late-18th century historical novel centered on the growing bond between the shamed young daughter of a Virginia planter and her black body slave. I would call it epic, following the young woman's forced marriage and the many ordeals shared with her slave who becomes like a sister. My mother had been a successful mystery novelist (Doubleday Crime Club) who got sidelined for many years raising her grandson. She spent 15 years researching and writing this last work. I think it's magnificent, harsh, true, unexpected, richly detailed, and both tragic and redemptive. Problem is, I'm told, finding a publisher for a deceased writer. I'm looking into self-publishing. It deserves an audience.
Posted by: Ordinary American at June 16, 2024 10:30 AM (hNi4N)

*points to sidebar with info on the Horde writers' group*

...and clearly you have not ventured over to Sarah Hoyt's blog, where she has written at length about how jacked up the publishing industry is, and why she's been independent for years. ;P

Posted by: Helena Handbasket at June 16, 2024 11:09 AM (llON8)

231 Greetings! I too am reading about Lenin.
Did you know that his birthname wasn't Lenin. It was Ulanov or something like.
Lenin is a one of more than a hundred phony identities he gave himself.
Posted by: gourmand du jour at June 16, 2024 10:48 AM (MeG8a)

Tom woods had a "100 year retrospective of V.I.Lenin" with vladimir Brovkin a few weeks back. If it is interesting. (rumble link)

https://tinyurl.com/6rptek8c

Posted by: Kindltot at June 16, 2024 11:10 AM (D7oie)

232 phonics is still taught
Posted by: ghost of hallelujah at June 16, 2024

***
"Sound it out" was how my mother taught me to read, and I still use it with unfamiliar or foreign words. By the time I started school, though, the "See It and Say It" method was all the rage in edumakation collidges.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 16, 2024 11:10 AM (omVj0)

233 It was Lenin's idea to massacre the Romanovs.
He didn't want any counter revolutions.

Posted by: gourmand du jour at June 16, 2024 11:11 AM (MeG8a)

234 Playboy ran parts of '2010' back in the day. At some point, I had a paperback anthology of SF that they had published titled 'The Dead Astronaut' but it is long lost.

My Dad was a reader, but I don't really remember him reading to me. I was reading before I was 5, and like so many, was crushingly bored by school. As I grew, Dad and I read many of the same books, then had occasion to discuss them together. In time, I was introduced to his informal Reading Group, made up of various retired vets from the Country Club. This was extremely interesting, in that one of the books published during this time was Hackworth's 'About Face.' The WWII vets who read that had a lot of strong opinions.

Happy Father's Day, Dad.

Posted by: Brewingfrog at June 16, 2024 11:12 AM (OwNwQ)

235 The True Believer is another. But again, if kids understood how they were being manipulated by movement politicians, the manipulation couldn't work, so that's a no go.

Posted by: Yudhishthira's Dice at June 16, 2024 11:15 AM (0FoWg)

236 Greetings! I too am reading about Lenin.
Did you know that his birthname wasn't Lenin. It was Ulanov or something like.
Lenin is a one of more than a hundred phony identities he gave himself.
Posted by: gourmand du jour at June 16, 2024 10:48 AM (MeG8a)

That's one thing marxist commies and entertainers have in common.

We change our names to fool the public we are someone we are not so they buy our song and dance.

Posted by: Zombie Bobby Darin at June 16, 2024 11:15 AM (R/m4+)

237 I've noticed a few ALH members posting.

ALH?
Posted by: Archimedes at June 16, 2024 10:58 AM (xCA6C)

The fantastic, highly intelligent writer's group. See sidebar on main page....

Posted by: OrangeEnt at June 16, 2024 11:16 AM (0eaVi)

238 Anyone read anything for fun this week?

Posted by: Sharon(willow's apprentice) at June 16, 2024 11:16 AM (t/2Uw)

239 Anyone read anything for fun this week?
Posted by: Sharon(willow's apprentice) at June 16, 2024

***
Most of my reading outside work (and that's mostly on a computer) is "for fun," even if it's non-fiction.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 16, 2024 11:17 AM (omVj0)

240 My grandfather never made it through high school, dropping out to work and learn a trade. This was pre-WW I. He taught himself higher math including calculus. (A skill I did not inherit.) When I showed him my new math book he said the moral equivalent of WTF and showed me much faster and easier ways to solve the problems. And they made sense. I demonstrated his methods in class, getting the answers right each time. The teacher was not amused.

I've had some wonderful teachers over the years but that (4th grade) was my first inkling that all teachers weren't saints. She was more interested in the 'correct' method than results.

Posted by: JTB at June 16, 2024 11:21 AM (zudum)

241 ...and clearly you have not ventured over to Sarah Hoyt's blog, where she has written at length about how jacked up the publishing industry is, and why she's been independent for years. ;P
Posted by: Helena Handbasket at June 16, 2024 11:09 AM (llON

She's also expressed interest in helping others in the complete journey from idea to publish.

Posted by: OrangeEnt at June 16, 2024 11:22 AM (0eaVi)

242 238 Anyone read anything for fun this week?
Posted by: Sharon(willow's apprentice) at June 16, 2024 11:16 AM (t/2Uw)

Started The Running Grave, at last. On audio. Another of my library holds came in--First Frost by Craig Johnson, which is the most recent Longmire installment. Longmire is always fun. That will be my porch reading this afternoon.

Posted by: Dash my lace wigs! at June 16, 2024 11:23 AM (OX9vb)

243 240 -
"More interested in the 'correct' method than results"

Books like THE TRACHTENBERG SPEED SYSTEM OF BASIC MATH

Posted by: Just Some Guy at June 16, 2024 11:24 AM (q3u5l)

244 JTB, my father apparently never went beyond eighth grade in school. That was when a high school diploma was about like a college sheepskin today. Getting through eighth meant you were competent for lower- and middle-level jobs. He went through an accounting course -- mind you, this was long before calculators -- and became a bookkeeper for a fertilizer company. That kept him out of WWII.

I presume he used an adding machine in later years. Still, calculating a lot of things by hand and pencil --!

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 16, 2024 11:25 AM (omVj0)

245 In the stay far away pile you have greg iles latest southern man an heir to the grisham and james lee burke tradition its a thousand page msnbc screed
Posted by: Miguel cervantes

I have also begun to read James Holland's Burma '44. Although I like him, I have criticized him for being a tad verbose. This book weighs in at a much more reasonable 350 pages. The brevity is caused in part by the subject matter. The book concerns the sexily named Battle of the Administrative Box, a rather small scale battle, so far only two British divisions are involved. This concerns the opening moves of the Japanese Operation Go and the British Rourke's Drift like defense,

Posted by: Anonosaurus Wrecks, Free the Trump 45! at June 16, 2024 11:25 AM (L/fGl)

246 During a 20-year public library career, I generously volunteered to take charge of the donation bin. To this day I don't know why no one else wanted the task; half of my personal library came straight out of it! Now that I'm the volunteer library director of my 55+ community, the magic continues ....

Posted by: werewife, princess of Delray Beach at June 16, 2024 11:25 AM (SPNTN)

247 240 -
"More interested in the 'correct' method than results"

Books like THE TRACHTENBERG SPEED SYSTEM OF BASIC MATH or Asimov's QUICK AND EASY MATH were easily available during my school years, but things like that never seemed to be assigned, recommended, or even mentioned in classes as far as I remember.

Wonder why...

Posted by: Just Some Guy at June 16, 2024 11:26 AM (q3u5l)

248 The Running Grave is my favorite of the series. It should be made into a movie. It is the most tension filled. It is the riskiest undercover role for Robin and you get a sense for what it must be like when someone takes on an undercover role and how it affects their personal life.
It never ceases to amaze me that the same author wrote these books and Harry Potter.

Posted by: Sharon(willow's apprentice) at June 16, 2024 11:28 AM (t/2Uw)

249 If instructors could have explained *why* we were doing the things we did in both lower and higher math, I'd probably have taken to it. Instead it seemed like groping in the dark to me, and I was lucky to hit on the right answer enough times to pass.

Years later, when I took prob & stats in college, I could see *why* we used a particular formula, and did well in the two classes I had to take. (We also had calculators, lifting the grunt work of arithmetic off our backs.)

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 16, 2024 11:30 AM (omVj0)

250 248 The Running Grave is ... the most tension filled. It is the riskiest undercover role for Robin and you get a sense for what it must be like when someone takes on an undercover role and how it affects their personal life.
It never ceases to amaze me that the same author wrote these books and Harry Potter.
Posted by: Sharon(willow's apprentice) at June 16, 2024 11:28 AM (t/2Uw)

Yes, it is very tense, and I'm about a third in. She really prepared herself, but I get the feeling she's going to have some difficulty resisting the conditioning.

Posted by: Dash my lace wigs! at June 16, 2024 11:31 AM (OX9vb)

251 The real world is scarier than that of voldemot and hogwarts

Yes ulyanov was his fsmily name he was a chuvash i remember that from rutherford some of his maneuvering were recorded by soltzeitnyn lenin in zurich

Thats when sheepdog dulles fell down on the job

Posted by: Miguel cervantes at June 16, 2024 11:32 AM (PXvVL)

252 I think I heard someone talking about that AI book earlier this week, don't recall exactly what was said, other than the gist of the message being, it's going to distort reality even more.

Bottom line, when your textbooks are telling you lies (and they are), AI is going to distort it even more, so that things like George Washington being black, and Abe Lincoln being a slaveholder, are going to be basic "facts" future generations will "know."

Posted by: BurtTC at June 16, 2024 11:34 AM (BG33+)

253 251 The real world is scarier than that of voldemot and hogwarts
Posted by: Miguel cervantes at June 16, 2024 11:32 AM (PXvVL)

Truth.

Posted by: Dash my lace wigs! at June 16, 2024 11:38 AM (OX9vb)

254 Years later, when I took prob & stats in college, I could see *why* we used a particular formula, and did well in the two classes I had to take. (We also had calculators, lifting the grunt work of arithmetic off our backs.)
Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 16, 2024 11:30 AM (omVj0)

I had basically the same experience, and I like that phrase "groping in the dark."

It was a cliche for kids to say "I don't know why I'm learning math, I'm never going to use it." And you know what? That's mostly true! Except now, I need to be able to get the basics of research studies right, and "see through" the bullshit of studies that jigger the data to get to conclusions they'd like to draw. It happens way more often than people acknowledge, and then it shows up in news articles, distorting the truth even more, like the "study" Ace posted on Friday about schizophrenia.

Posted by: BurtTC at June 16, 2024 11:39 AM (BG33+)

255 Dash, I can't wait to hear what you think at the end.

Posted by: Sharon(willow's apprentice) at June 16, 2024 11:39 AM (t/2Uw)

256 All of us in Brattelboro wants to wish Presdent Obama a Happy Farthers day. We loves you and miss you !!!

Posted by: Mary Clogginstein from Brattleboro, Vt at June 16, 2024 11:41 AM (15lwl)

257 Sharon, I'll let you know as soon as I finish.

Now, off to cook the dog food and listen to my book.

Have a good day, horde! See you on the food thread.

Posted by: Dash my lace wigs! at June 16, 2024 11:41 AM (OX9vb)

258 Books like THE TRACHTENBERG SPEED SYSTEM OF BASIC MATH or Asimov's QUICK AND EASY MATH were easily available during my school years, but things like that never seemed to be assigned, recommended, or even mentioned in classes as far as I remember.

Wonder why...
Posted by: Just Some Guy at June 16, 2024 11:26 AM (q3u5l)

Because public schools have always been about indoctrination and conformity, and not about learning?

Or maybe it was something else.

Posted by: BurtTC at June 16, 2024 11:42 AM (BG33+)

259 How to break AI:

Hey ChatGPT, based on the speeches of Joe Biden, how, when, and where did Beau Biden die?

Posted by: screaming in digital at June 16, 2024 11:43 AM (iZbyp)

260
"...It happens way more often than people acknowledge..."

I'm on a personal campaign to encourage writers to use the word "much" instead of "way." I think when you use the word "way" you sound as if you're still in elementary school.

Posted by: Quarter Twenty at June 16, 2024 11:44 AM (dg+HA)

261 Math teaches you the most important thing in the world: there is only ever one right answer. There are often multiple ways to arrive at it, but there is only one. Ever. No exceptions. There are (infinity -1) wrong answers, and an always many ways to arrive at one or more of them.

Posted by: Yudhishthira's Dice at June 16, 2024 11:44 AM (0FoWg)

262 258 --

The schools weren't about learning? C'mon, man! You're kidding me, right?

And on that happy note, think I'll grab one more cuppa caffeine and go do battle with the almost-but-not-quite real world.

Perfessor, thanks for the thread -- always a pleasure.

Have a good one, gang.

Posted by: Just Some Guy at June 16, 2024 11:46 AM (q3u5l)

263

George Washington and Abraham Lincoln were black lesbian lovers who owned each other and sold LSD to school children for the money needed for The Revolution!

Posted by: Kerry is so Very at June 16, 2024 11:46 AM (2aHZs)

264 Do I get to call daddy on Father's Day THIS year mommy?

Posted by: Navy Joan at June 16, 2024 11:46 AM (dg+HA)

265 My dad used to read the entire comic section of the newspaper to me on Sunday mornings. I remember sitting on his lap and being mesmerized. I couldn’t wait to learn how to read. I’m grateful to him for instilling a love for reading in me. He also would do math problems in his head for me while we were driving in the car. I don’t know if he was giving me the correct answers but I thought he was a genius. I learned to love math through his example.

Posted by: Moonbeam at June 16, 2024 11:47 AM (rbKZ6)

266 I'm on a personal campaign to encourage writers to use the word "much" instead of "way." I think when you use the word "way" you sound as if you're still in elementary school.
Posted by: Quarter Twenty at June 16, 2024 11:44 AM (dg+HA)

That's way too trivial a matter for me to concern myself with.

(Same as fussing over dangling participles)

Posted by: BurtTC at June 16, 2024 11:47 AM (BG33+)

267 Little Miss Muffet sat on her tuffet eating her curds and much.

Posted by: Anonosaurus Wrecks, Free the Trump 45! at June 16, 2024 11:47 AM (L/fGl)

268 . . . It was a cliche for kids to say "I don't know why I'm learning math, I'm never going to use it." And you know what? That's mostly true! Except now, I need to be able to get the basics of research studies right, and "see through" the bullshit of studies that jigger the data to get to conclusions they'd like to draw. . . .
Posted by: BurtTC at June 16, 2024

***
I did have to use my prob & stats knowledge once. The graduate dean had me putting together some data, including standard deviations of various data groups. Excel, in which I was working, even then had the formulae for those. But! I had to know which one to use, sample or population. Since my data was the complete population, I used that one. Then I tried the other, got a slightly different answer (as I should), and just for giggles ran the numbers through my calculator as we had done in class. My box gave me the same two different results.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 16, 2024 11:49 AM (omVj0)

269 Ending sentences with prepositions?

Holy split infinitives Batman!

Posted by: Quarter Twenty at June 16, 2024 11:49 AM (dg+HA)

270 x2=1

x= 1
x= -1

Posted by: CharlieBrown'sDildo at June 16, 2024 11:49 AM (d9fT1)

271 Come to think of it, I had to use some geometry in a story once. I had an area that was x yards long, and for story purposes I needed to know the circumference of the ellipse to be drawn around it. Yes, I got the formula from the encyclopedia, but I had to know where to look and had to know how reasonable my answer was.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 16, 2024 11:49 AM (omVj0)

272 130

Yesterday, somebody posted a Dali print - the melting timepieces. I got to wondering what time frame he was operating under, and whether he was getting dosed with some genuine government issue acid or something. No, 1931 - way prior to that. So what's his story I wonder.

Part of his critique was noting the schizophrenic attitude towards "Art" and artists. Dali was crazy as a shithouse rat, ...People don't start putting out "Art" with necrophilia and dead animals and maggots without some sort of disturbance in their thinking, at best.

But he was a really good painter. People are willing to ignore (brain dead "intellectuals") all the bad stuff - "He's really good!".
Posted by: Common T
****
Near the end of his life, Dali produced what I, a religious Jew, think are the most impressive major Christian paintings of the late 20th century. Seek out "Corpus Hypercubus," "The Last Supper" from the National Gallery in DC (my all-time favorite version of said scene), and especially the mind-blower whose paragraph-length title is usually shortened to "... the Perpignan Railway Station,..." You will not regret it.

Posted by: werewife, princess of Delray Beach at June 16, 2024 11:50 AM (SPNTN)

273 Math teaches you the most important thing in the world: there is only ever one right answer. There are often multiple ways to arrive at it, but there is only one. Ever. No exceptions. There are (infinity -1) wrong answers, and an always many ways to arrive at one or more of them.
Posted by: Yudhishthira's Dice at June 16, 2024 11:44 AM (0FoWg)

Ah, but those who think it's the answer to everything, are broken on the contemplation of the human mind, which is infinitely more complex than any mathematician can calculate.

So sure. There's a "right" answer, but the combination of factors and variables cause that right answer to be impossible to formulate, for anyone other than the thinker of the thought that got them to the answer they arrived at.

Posted by: BurtTC at June 16, 2024 11:50 AM (BG33+)

274 I'm on a personal campaign to encourage writers to use the word "much" instead of "way." I think when you use the word "way" you sound as if you're still in elementary school.
Posted by: Quarter Twenty at June 16, 2024

***
No much!

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 16, 2024 11:50 AM (omVj0)

275 George Washington and Abraham Lincoln were black lesbian lovers who owned each other and sold LSD to school children for the money needed for The Revolution!
Posted by: Kerry is so Very at June 16, 2024 11:46 AM (2aHZs)

You almost make it sound like they're good guys, but you left out one simple fact: They knew cannabis was the answer to everything, and didn't tell anybody.

Cannabis and Karl Marx. Shame on them for not letting us know!

Posted by: BurtTC at June 16, 2024 11:52 AM (BG33+)

276 It was a cliche for kids to say "I don't know why I'm learning math, I'm never going to use it." And you know what? That's mostly true! Except now, I need to be able to get the basics of research studies right, and "see through" the bullshit of studies that jigger the data to get to conclusions they'd like to draw. . . .
=====

My son is a carpenter and called to thank me (out of the blue) for insisting on general math in HS (a very competitive district). Practical math and geometry made him a star for his journeyman and master testing.

Posted by: mustbequantum at June 16, 2024 11:54 AM (MIKMs)

277 I did have to use my prob & stats knowledge once. The graduate dean had me putting together some data, including standard deviations of various data groups. Excel, in which I was working, even then had the formulae for those. But! I had to know which one to use, sample or population. Since my data was the complete population, I used that one. Then I tried the other, got a slightly different answer (as I should), and just for giggles ran the numbers through my calculator as we had done in class. My box gave me the same two different results.
Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 16, 2024 11:49 AM (omVj0)

Even understanding that simple concept: sample v. poopulation, is extremely important.

It's part of the reason why I ignore all the breathless conclusions people are reaching about this upcoming election.

Posted by: BurtTC at June 16, 2024 11:54 AM (BG33+)

278

They did it on purpose, to punish you.

You know what you did.

Posted by: Kerry is so Very at June 16, 2024 11:55 AM (2aHZs)

279 My son is a carpenter and called to thank me (out of the blue) for insisting on general math in HS (a very competitive district). Practical math and geometry made him a star for his journeyman and master testing.
Posted by: mustbequantum at June 16, 2024 11:54 AM (MIKMs)

And that's why, if I need carpentry done, I'd hire him instead of trying to do it myself.

Posted by: BurtTC at June 16, 2024 11:55 AM (BG33+)

280 I have the Richard Kadrey "Sandman Slim" series on my Kindle. A good read, but in the last books the author drifts into "woke" territory.

Main issue for me was a main character with plural pronouns. I'm sorry, but trying to read a book set up like that is like chewing tinfoil for me. I finished the series, but only because I was invested in the story.

Posted by: MartynW at June 16, 2024 11:56 AM (qujPO)

281 My Father's Day will be complete when my step-daddy, The Big Coffeeowski, pimp-slaps Perfessor Squirrel into next week.

Posted by: Dr. Bone at June 16, 2024 11:56 AM (dmXQN)

282 They did it on purpose, to punish you.

You know what you did.
Posted by: Kerry is so Very at June 16, 2024 11:55 AM (2aHZs)

That's true. I once cared about me and my family, above the state.

Posted by: BurtTC at June 16, 2024 11:57 AM (BG33+)

283 FIRST!!!!!

Posted by: Sponge - F*ck Joe Biden at June 16, 2024 11:57 AM (Zz0t1)

284 Posted by: BurtTC at June 16, 2024 11:50 AM (BG33+)

Definitely. But knowing that there is only ever one right answer is the most important thing - even if you don't know what that answer is.

Then you can understand why every single person on earth can disagree with all the others about something and all be wrong at once, but only one of them can ever be right, and why that's so rare.

It peels back the covers and shows that there is a reality, and there's only the one of them.

Posted by: Yudhishthira's Dice at June 16, 2024 11:57 AM (0FoWg)

285 Gettin' cloudy out thar. Good to see. I've got some chores to do, a nap that won't take itself, and my book to enjoy this afternoon. Thanks again to the Perfessor and all of you for the highlight of the week!

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 16, 2024 11:58 AM (omVj0)

286 Happy Father's Day, bishes......

But only to the good dads out there. Hunter Biden can f*ck off.

Posted by: Sponge - F*ck Joe Biden at June 16, 2024 11:58 AM (Zz0t1)

287 "sample v. poopulation, is extremely important."

We've got both .

Posted by: The streets of San Francisco at June 16, 2024 11:58 AM (dg+HA)

288 Subtle.

Jack Poso
@JackPosobiec
In Netflix's new WW2 documentary, they refer to the Berghof as "Hitler's Mar-a-Lago"

Posted by: Anonosaurus Wrecks, Free the Trump 45! at June 16, 2024 11:58 AM (L/fGl)

289 The Orwell piece "Benefit of Clergy" makes me think George is pointing out a fatal flaw of the West. Why do disgusting people get a pass or get away with the shit they do, just because they show a high musical intelligence, or .... whatever.

He noticed there were two linear or binary choices - either you give Dali a pass on whatever, or, supposedly you're supposed to reject his artwork whilst denouncing him as a monster. The dichotomy is very stark, and we of course see this play out right today.

The insane school shooters, where the people churning out the crazy people from our schools and mills, or at least apologetic for their delusions must insist they aren't crazy, or something. They were "normal" right up until they weren't.

Posted by: Common Tater at June 16, 2024 11:58 AM (9vhhG)

290 No much!
Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 16, 2024 11:50 AM (omVj0)

How does one weigh whey? In muches?

Posted by: BurtTC at June 16, 2024 11:58 AM (BG33+)

291 Math teaches that solutions to problems must be proven. Projecting, theorizing, modeling, estimating and wishing.... are not proof.

Posted by: goatexchange at June 16, 2024 11:59 AM (/VSxT)

292 No much!
Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 16, 2024
*
How does one weigh whey? In muches?
Posted by: BurtTC at June 16, 2024

***
'Tis much of a muchness.

"Why is a raven like a writing desk? The higher the fewer, of course! Have some more tea!"

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius, Dreaming of Elsewhere at June 16, 2024 12:00 PM (omVj0)

293 Jack Poso
@JackPosobiec
In Netflix's new WW2 documentary, they refer to the Berghof as "Hitler's Mar-a-Lago"
Posted by: Anonosaurus Wrecks, Free the Trump 45! at June 16, 2024 11:58 AM (L/fGl)

What'd you expect when they put Owebama on the board......

Posted by: Sponge - F*ck Joe Biden at June 16, 2024 12:00 PM (Zz0t1)

294 Definitely. But knowing that there is only ever one right answer is the most important thing - even if you don't know what that answer is.

Then you can understand why every single person on earth can disagree with all the others about something and all be wrong at once, but only one of them can ever be right, and why that's so rare.

It peels back the covers and shows that there is a reality, and there's only the one of them.
Posted by: Yudhishthira's Dice at June 16, 2024 11:57 AM (0FoWg)

Agreed. I sometimes try to make that point with people who are struggling with their behaviors. If you are trying to change it, you better figure out why you are doing what you are doing in the first place, or you're never going to be able to change a behavior that is the "answer."

Posted by: BurtTC at June 16, 2024 12:01 PM (BG33+)

295

Math compels you to put purple cabbage in pineapple jello

Posted by: Kerry is so Very at June 16, 2024 12:01 PM (2aHZs)

296 Why Not: Michael Cohen Planning Run for Congress

-
Well, he’s already has a congressional temperament.

Posted by: Anonosaurus Wrecks, Free the Trump 45! at June 16, 2024 12:03 PM (L/fGl)

297 WE HAZ A NOOD

Posted by: Skip at June 16, 2024 12:03 PM (fwDg9)

298 I'm on a personal campaign to encourage writers to use the word "much" instead of "way." I think when you use the word "way" you sound as if you're still in elementary school.
Posted by: Quarter Twenty at June 16, 2024

***
No much!

Much.

Posted by: Archimedes at June 16, 2024 12:04 PM (xCA6C)

299 Thanks for the thread, Perfessor!

Posted by: OrangeEnt at June 16, 2024 12:09 PM (0eaVi)

300 My son is a carpenter and called to thank me (out of the blue) for insisting on general math in HS (a very competitive district). Practical math and geometry made him a star for his journeyman and master testing.
Posted by: mustbequantum

After using a small (framing) square years I finally figured out why one scale had the inches sudivided into 12ths.

Was making a small cricket for a chimney for a 4:12 slope roof. Did the calcs by hand and the exact solution came down to the 12th of an inch.

Posted by: Itinerant Alley Butcher at June 16, 2024 12:19 PM (cOq4q)

301 Those shoes are much cool

Posted by: ghost of hallelujah at June 16, 2024 12:25 PM (sJHOI)

302 Even the smallest school should be able to have three brackets for math and language…

My experience is that the limitations of being a smaller school helps. I went to a Catholic grade school with four rooms. Each room was literally two grades. One nun taught first and second, one third and fourth, etc. Some topics were taught to both sides of the room simultaneously. Subjects that required sequential teaching were taught to half the room, with the rest basically on their own to finish homework, read ahead or catch up, or whatever.

We all went into high school overprepared. I do blame my poor handwriting on that system, though. It was taught to second graders and I used to race to get any assigned work done so I could take part.

Sister Theresa never said, you can’t do that. To working ahead, anyway.

Posted by: Stephen Price Blair at June 16, 2024 12:29 PM (EXyHK)

303 me this week:

1) The End of Everything: How Wars Descend Into Annihilation, by VDH. Highly recommended, esp for readers interested in ancient Greece; Alexander; the late Roman Republic & the fall of Byzantium.

2) autobio of Judi Dench: Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent. Not a conventional autobio. It's structured by Ms. Dench commenting, on roles she's played, i.e., Lady Macbeth; Titania; others. Based on a series of interviews with her.

When she was young, she & her mother used to walk down the street & see Gielgud and Olivier perform live. For the inflation-adjusted equivalent of about $5 each.

Posted by: mnw at June 16, 2024 12:33 PM (NLIak)

304 I don't remember my dad reading to me but he was a newspaper guy, read the local Green Bay paper and the Chicago Tribune every day. I was always a voracious reader and I remember one day I wanted to check out a book from the adult section of the local branch library and they wouldn't let me (I was probably in 5th grade). Well, dad went down to have a talk with the librarian and let her know that I could check out any book I wanted (I'm sure he was impeccably polite about it, as he always was when handling important business).

Posted by: who knew at June 16, 2024 12:38 PM (4I7VG)

305 "Ending sentences with prepositions?"

The "rule" against it is merely a cherished superstition. .

Posted by: H.W. Fowler at June 16, 2024 02:07 PM (cYrkj)

306 This week I finished Lord of Emperors, book 2 of The Sarantine Mosaic duology by Guy Gavriel Kay. Loved these books! Also finished Rise of the Ranger by Philip Quaintrell which is book 1 of 9(?) of a series on Kindle Unlimited. It was entertaining enough, but my TBR is too long to know if or when I' might pick up the series again.

This week I started The Curse of Chalion by Lous McMaster Bujold, and I'm currently reading a sample of Perdido Street Station by China Mieville, trying to decide whether I want to pick up the full book, or read something else (probably The Palace Job by Patrick Weekes, another selection off Kindle Unlimited)

Posted by: tintex at June 16, 2024 02:31 PM (1dMpe)

307 My dad turned me on to the Flashman novels and Pogo, and Wm. F. Buckley, Jr. RIP, dad!

Posted by: Norrin Radd, sojourner of the spaceways at June 16, 2024 02:39 PM (dHMvw)

308 I never much thought about it, but I suppose there are lots of people today who have Jewish blood and don't know it. Not that it makes any difference to me. I'm mostly Scottish, but I also have Irish, German, and probably some remnant of Native American in me as well. Like a lot of Americans, I'm just a "mutt."
---
I recently decided my heritage is "diverse". My English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish heritage is mixed in with German, Dutch, French and Swedish. Now that may be all white European but sounds pretty dang diverse.

And there is that one line where I'm stuck in my research but everyone I find w/ that surname, Trau, seems to be Jewish. It makes one think of the Holocaust a bit different when one's grandfather probably had second cousins who were Jewish in Nazi Germany.

Posted by: Farmer at June 16, 2024 03:00 PM (55Qr6)

309 The King's Grave by Philippa Langley and Michael Jones...
Posted by: Thomas Paine at June 16, 2024 09:14

Thanks Thomas, I'll have to read that, I followed the search at the time.

Posted by: Farmer at June 16, 2024 03:09 PM (55Qr6)

310 Check out this link for an e-book that is a color scan of the Fulton Sheen missal.

https://tinyurl.com/2fxxka5c

I’m fast moving away from hard copies. Both eye problems, and ability to hold a heavy book.

Posted by: Linda S Fox at June 16, 2024 03:44 PM (7Rs+y)

311 Have read "The Kings of The Wild" not too long ago. Was a very good read and put it on my bookshelves. Then just not 2 weeks ago my son asked if I had it. Gave it to him as he also had read decent reviews. Makes me feel grateful that he has taken on reading like I did at his age and not staring at his phone.

Posted by: morigu at June 16, 2024 05:24 PM (u7Nsa)

312 morigu, do you mean The Kings of the Wyld by Eames?

Posted by: vmom stabby stabby stabby stabby stabamillion at June 16, 2024 05:38 PM (Ka3bZ)

313 307 My dad turned me on to the Flashman novels and Pogo, and Wm. F. Buckley, Jr. RIP, dad!
Posted by: Norrin Radd, sojourner of the spaceways at June 16, 2024 02:39 PM (dHMvw)

Who is W.M. F. Buckley, Jr?

Posted by: Catch Thirty-Thr33 at June 16, 2024 05:46 PM (8sMut)

314 Seriously?

Wm. is an accepted shorthand for William.

Now if you ask who is William F. Buckley Jr., you're on your own.

Posted by: Weak Geek at June 16, 2024 05:53 PM (p/isN)

315 186 The widespread adoption and use of AI in everything from science to law to art to music is going to stunt our capabilities as individuals and take away from us much of what it means to be human. We are on a very bad trajectory.
Posted by: Second look at Butlerian jihad? at June 16, 2024 10:36 AM (Xlk7u)

I see you are a fan of our music.

Posted by: Meshuggah at June 16, 2024 05:53 PM (8sMut)

316 All these comments and no acknowledgement of the fact that it fell on the 120th Bloomsday.

Posted by: Catch Thirty-Thr33 at June 16, 2024 06:48 PM (8sMut)

317 Kings of the Wyld was a pretty fun book. Hope you enjoy it.

Posted by: Greywolf at June 16, 2024 07:12 PM (3fY5e)

318 Wm. is an accepted shorthand for William.

Now if you ask who is William F. Buckley Jr., you're on your own.
Posted by: Weak Geek at June 16, 2024 05:53 PM (p/isN)

I know who William F. Buckley Jr is. But why is “William” abbreviated? I have never understood this. My name is long and it doesn’t get abbreviated.

There is a street in Austin that I like to call W. M. Cannon Road for that reason.

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