Way to go, Mama

A while back, I talked about the book 'The Disappearing Spoon' which tells the story of the periodic table of elements.

I'd put the book down for a while and returned to it yesterday. Here's a section that tells the story of Dmitri Mendeleev, the guy generally acclaimed for creating the first periodic table.

"Born in Siberia, the youngest of fourteen children, Mendeleev lost his father in 1847, when the boy was thirteen. Boldly for the time, his mother took over a local glass factory to support the family and managed the male craftsmen working there. Then the factory burned down.

Pinning her hopes on her sharp-minded son, she bundled him up on horseback and rode twelve hundred miles across the steppes and steep, snowy Ural Mountains to an elite university in Moscow - which rejected Dmitri because he wasn't local stock. Undaunted, Mama Mendeleev bundled him back up and rode four hundred miles further, to his dead father's alma mater in St. Petersburg. Just after seeming him enrolled, she died."

But what happened to the other 13 kids?

Gearing up for NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo starts on November 1st. I've got the outline for my book about halfway done. This means I have the main plot down and a few minor threads established, along with most of the characters.

Seven days until November 1st.

There's still a lot up in the air, and as usual I have realized that there is a lot more to the subject matter than I thought, meaning I could spend months just researching the thing. I guess that's why books can take years to write, right?

Good luck to my fellow NaNo's!

Wandering the stacks

We walked around the local bookstore quite bit last night. I already have a stack of books at home waiting to be read, so I successfully resisted the urge to pick up any more.

But I came across some fun covers and thought I would share them. I do not know if they are good books or worth reading, but I do know I liked the covers.


I'm enjoying the whimsy on the bird's face. I like to imagine the artist had fun working on this. What do you mean, that's not whimsy, that's fear? No no no.


This time the bird seems a bit guilty. And it makes me think of Finding Nemo with the MINE? MINE? MINE!


The male brain is made of duct tape, chuckle.



...And the female brain is made of phone cords. Hah!

There is no spoon.

I don't think I could come up with a longer title of a book that I will still want to read - this is the actual title: 'The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements' by Sam Kean.


It's no surprise that the title says it all. If you like science and enjoy finding out little tidbits of back-story about how everything in your life came to be, check out this book. The problem is, he references so many other books that I'll be on a science history reading kick for months.

One thing I learned is that it's really sad how often managers of scientific teams end up wedging themselves in once a project has finally shown some promise, even winning a joint Nobel Prize for not much contribution. It's a good book that I wish was twice as long - there's just enough detail to tantalize.

The main part of the title 'The Disappearing Spoon' is explained on the front flap of the book: "Though solid at room temperature, gallium is a moldable metal with a unique property: it melts at 84 degrees Fahrenheit. So a classic prank for scientists is to fashion gallium spoons, serve them with tea, and watch as guests recoil when the Earl Grey makes their utensil disappear."

So I wondered what would happen if the person being pranked laughed it off and chugged their tea. Is gallium poisonous?

According to Wikipedia: "While not considered toxic, the data about gallium are inconclusive. Some sources suggest that it may cause dermatitis from prolonged exposure; other tests have not caused a positive reaction. Like most metals, finely divided gallium loses its luster and powdered gallium appears gray. Thus, when gallium is handled with bare hands, the extremely fine dispersion of liquid gallium droplets, which results from wetting skin with the metal, may appear as a gray skin stain."

What's your 're-enjoy' level?

I've seen a lot of references recently on Twitter to "rewatch" - where you view from start to finish a great classic tv series - such as Farscape, Firefly, Star Trek: TOS, and so on.

I'm conflicted about rewatching. I've probably seen every episode of the first ten years of The Simpsons at least ten or twenty times. At a certain point, I decided that I was 'done' with The Simpsons, and watch it very rarely now. I'd rather move on to something new, something that might have a different perspective, teach me something different or at the very least doesn't contain dialogue I can quote verbatim throughout an episode.

There's a certain safe-at-homeness to rewatching. We're in our comfort zone, and we know we're not going to be disappointed. There can be a certain nostalgia to rewatching as well - I can appreciate that.

During a rewatch, we know what's going to happen, and we don't really need to pay much attention to what's going on. We can miss five or ten minutes and we still understand the plot - at this point, whatever you're watching has become background noise and part of me wonders what's the point?

Wouldn't music be better background noise? At least I could do some writing or something else creative to music. If I have a TV show playing, it's so I can watch it. I was not one of those teenagers who could do homework with MTV running in the background - I'm sure many people can be very productive while they watch TV, but I'm not one of them.

The same thing goes for re-reads of books. I love the Harry Potter books, and have read them all, but the idea of re-reading the whole series doesn't really appeal. It's a huge time commitment, and while yes the books are great... I could be reading something new.

That's not to say I don't re-read books, I do. Waiting a year and re-reading a book I really enjoyed is fun on multiple levels - I've forgotten just enough to enjoy the little details, and maybe I'll discover something new I missed the first time.

It feels as if we gain very little from re-enjoying the same book/TV show/movie over and over - a smart balance seems to be 80% new 20% re-enjoy. Currently, my level is probably 20% new, 80% old, which is depressing - most of what I'm watching isn't necessarily good, it's just a re-run or re-watch. And with Hulu and Netflix streaming, free books from the library - there's really no excuse.

Just think about all the great stuff you could be first-enjoying during your ninth rewatch of something. Maybe something you love even more than Harry Potter.

Wavery dissolve into dream sequence...

I'm reading Sarah Vowell's 'The Wordy Shipmates' about the Puritans of the early 1600's Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Unsurprisingly, life for the Puritans is harsh and strict. Reading this has made me wish rules were more strictly enforced in our day and age.

If only I could be Ye Olde Mayor - those guys knew how to punish...

Dear Diary - Our most fair and just Lord Mayor MC of Etcher was forced to punish me this day, with thirty righteous lashes of the whip, when I neglected to wring out and properly store the scrubby-sponge on the scrubby-sponge drying tray. Instead, I left the scrubby-sponge in the sink, wet, soapy, and with bits of last night's spaghetti still clinging to it.

I have learned well the error of my ways, that a dank scrubby-sponge with bits of spaghetti still clinging to it is without doubt Satan's playground, and the cavorting demons of bacterial plague within the scrubby-sponge is like unto a teeny Gomorrah.

Amen.

She's also Violet in 'The Incredibles'

I've been enjoying 'Assassination Vacation', where Sarah Vowell makes pilgrimages to sites relevant to the assassinations of Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield and William McKinley.

She is knowledgeable with her subject matter, delivers just enough detail and has a good sense of humor about these trips. She is well grounded by the friends she 'drags along' (though I would happily volunteer for this sort of historical tourism).

It's a fun and interesting read - I already have another Vowell book, 'The Wordy Shipmates' (about the early U.S. colonists) requested from the library. I'm looking forward to it!

Alan Bradley

If you told me a year ago that I'd enjoy reading a story set in 1950 about a chemistry-obsessed 11 year old girl growing up in an English mansion with her sisters and absent-minded father, I would not have believed you.

Alan Bradley was a 70 year old first time novelist when the first 'Flavia de Luce' mystery was released in 2009, and he did an amazing job. I hope he has the longevity to release a long series of Flavia books - they're really good fun.

First was 'The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie' (with the dubious distinction of also being a stamp-collecting mystery - which doesn't sound interesting, but it is!) where Flavia shows great restraint in not poisoning her irksome sisters while saving her entire family.

I enjoyed the first book most, possibly because Flavia was in actual peril for a good part of the story, and I didn't get to spend as much time with some of my favorite secondary characters in book two (such as Inspector Hewitt). But it's not the author's job to provide me superfluous face time with characters x, y and z but to tell the story that needs telling.

The second book was 'The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag' which is an admittedly awkward title, but a book that somehow manages to combine puppetry, WWII refugees, murder, a pigeon-poop poison remedy and nefarious chocolate in a realistic story.

DAMN

This makes all my problems seem stupid.

Is he a drummer?
Are those drum sticks?
Some sort of chopsticks?
Steve Erwin?

Real Life Conversation #52

If you want this yard sale to be a success, you need to work on your pitch.

My pitch is great. Fast and low, right across home plate.

Uh-huh. How about that last girl? She's like twelve. She would have loved the Louise Rennison books you're selling.

Nah, she was with her grandma - did you notice that woman? Rennison titles would not fly.

Such as?

'Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging'.

Ok, sure, but-

Would 'I'm Now the Girlfriend of a Sex God' be better?

Well...

How would granny feel about 'Knocked Out by my Nunga-Nungas'?

When you put it that way...

'Dancing in my Nuddy-Pants'?
'Startled by His Furry Shorts'?
'Love is a Many Trousered Thing'?

Stop! Okay! You made your point.

Thank you.

All Bookstores Should Have Cats!

Truly Escapist Entertainment

Have you guys read any of Jasper Fford's books?

Great, fun stuff - it's set in a world where literary crimes (in the 'real' world as well as within books themselves) have their own police divisions, skilled people can pop into a the pages of a story, interact with its characters, solve crimes, correct errors, barter and trade (AA batteries and nylons are prime items), and even help bored characters exchange into other novels - for the - er, novelty of it.

It's all silly and quippy and fun, especially if you're up on your classics and your history, and can spot what's awry. I highly recommend these books, if you're in the mood for a change of pace. Start withThe Eyre Affair. Go!

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Too easily contented

Why is it, when I have a good book to read, my bills are paid and my belly full, all other ambition seems to melt away?

I mean, how will I do anything Wikipedia-worthy at this rate?

Surprisingly, she's not a Lilian J. Braun fan

It seems the kitty has been working her way through the bookshelf (and I thought she was just napping there).

I wonder what she could do with a bigger canvas?

Gosh, Neato

My company just went through a merger, and the name is in the process of changing...

Yesterday I received a package from the corporate office with a 5 page hardback book inside describing (in a truly pamphlet style) the history of the company going back to 1876.

But here's the odd part - the book was only there as the backing for a pin with the new company logo. How much did these books cost? A layer of bubble wrap would have done just as well. So wasteful!

Also, who is actually going to wear these pins?

35 years old and still no convictions! (felony, that is...)

Kitty likes bookshelf!

Still trying to teleport...
At least I haven't yet forgotten how to be silly.