Books

[Diogo Ribeiro]

Excuse me, I seem to have entered the backup server of Wikipedia. I was looking for the 'Books' topic on the Obsidian forums...

 

In any case, I've begun reading Lovecraft stories. I believe I've stumbled on all of them, free of charge, in a large text file at Project Guttenberg while looking for his Cthulhu stories. I've broken them all down into individual Wordpad files and am having some fun.

[metadigital]

I haven't got around to updating the wiki (yet ), as I just wrote all that summary out for the first time.

[Pidesco]

But, don't forget, there was a lot 'suddenly' happening around 600BC: Confucius; Buddha; Lao-tze and Daoism; Zoroaster and dualism; the Babylonians indentured the Jews, as well as the Greek change from the Mycenean matrilineal to Olympian patrilineal civilization ... so I don't think any localized theories (fish, temperatures, etc) can be applied with any confidence. Certainly one of the most unwanted intellectual inheritances from the Greeks was racism.

 

What do you mean by intellectual inheritance? Western culture didn't get racism from the Greeks, even as an idea.

[metadigital]

Meaning the Greeks were particularly inured with the racist idea that Greeks were above all the other 'Barbarians'.

[Calax]

Feast of Crows... Song of Ice and of fire.

[Xard]

A History of God: The 4000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam

 

That's what I was about to get. Then I realised I really couldn't afford it. Libraries, don't fail me now!

 

Also, I've been reading a lot of Le Guin lately

[metadigital]

A History of God: The 4000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam

 

That's what I was about to get. Then I realised I really couldn't afford it. Libraries, don't fail me now!

 

Also, I've been reading a lot of Le Guin lately

I've got that book, if it's the one written by Karen Armstrong. I started it about ten years ago, though I will probably get around to reading it (properly) in the next month or so (given my current rate), if I can fit it around my studies, of course.

[Xard]

A History of God: The 4000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam

 

That's what I was about to get. Then I realised I really couldn't afford it. Libraries, don't fail me now!

 

Also, I've been reading a lot of Le Guin lately

I've got that book, if it's the one written by Karen Armstrong. I started it about ten years ago, though I will probably get around to reading it (properly) in the next month or so (given my current rate), if I can fit it around my studies, of course.

 

Yeah, that one

[Lord Mayyn]

star trek Q-squared. its a damn good book

[Guest The Architect]

Foyster and Carr

Edited April 25, 2007 by The Architect

[metadigital]

1421: The Year China Discovered the World (Gavin Menzies)

 

The main criticisms, as far as I have read, are from (seemingly) disgruntled academics who are more envious of a "non-historian" making such a seismic revelation about world history, and are restricted to sniping details ... from the (comprehensive) list of evidence in the appendices it is evident to me that there is something to these claims.

[LadyCrimson]

star trek Q-squared. its a damn good book

Ah! A title I recognize in this thread!

That's an entertaining read - kind of spins your head around a bit; always loved Q.

[Krookie]

I'm just about through with Perks of Being a Wallflower. It's kind of depressing. I don't recommend it unless you're writing a research paper on teenage suicide, or teens dealing with their sexuality. Cause that's why I'm reading it. It's really good anyway.

 

And it was published in like 1992 or something, so I'm good.

[metadigital]

Imagining Imaginary Numbers (Especially the Square Root of Minus Fifteen) (Barry Mazur)

 

I don't know about you, but I always harboured a nagging irritation with the arbitrariness of imaginary numbers and the geometry of the complex plane. I think Mr Mazur's concluding chapter contains a succinct summary, so I have collected it here, below.

The number i = √-1 is identified with the point whose coordinates are (0,1); that is, with the point 1 unit north of the origin. Recall that we chose to view "multiplication by √-1" as a rotation by 90 degrees counterclockwise about the origin.

 

A good test of whether we have understood this passage from complex numbers to points on the plane is to ask ourselves what would be different if we had identified "multiplication by √-1" as a rotation of the plane 90 degrees clockwise; or, what would be the same, 270 degrees counterclockwise?

 

The brief answer here is that nothing whatsoever would change, except for the curious fact that i would be playing the role that -i plays in our identification, -i would be playing the role that i plays, and more generally, the complex number a - bi would be playing the role that a + bi plays. Behind this lies a surprise, and a curious mirror. There is no intrinsic (algebraic) way of distinguishing +√-1 from -√-1. Each of them, of course, is a square root of -1. The only distinction between them is given by their names, and our choosing to put +i north of the origin and -i south of it. We could have reversed our choice, provided we kept track of that, and worked consistently with this other choice. These entities, +i and -i, are twins, and the only breaking of their symmetry comes from the way in which we name them. Imagine the analogous moment when parents of newly born identical twins choose names for their two children, thereby making the first, and immensely important, distinction between them.

 

A reader of an early draft of this book asked why I called +i and -i twins, but did not, for example, call +1 and -1 twins. Here is why. The number +1 is distinguished from the number -1 by some purely algebraic property (for example, it is equal to its square), while there is no analogous property, described entirely in terms of addition and multiplication, that distinguishes +i from -i and yet does not, either directly or indirectly, make use of the names we gave to them.

 

The complex numbers a + bi and a - bi are called conjugates. And the act of "conjugation"—that is, passing from a complex number to its conjugate (or equivalently, reversing the sign of the imaginary part of a complex number)—is a basic symmetry of the complex number system. There are other number systems that admit a bewildering collection of symmetries, of internal mirrors. One of the great challenges to modern algebra is to understand, and use, these internal mirrors.

PS I know that there is no reason to associate the imaginary dimension with the y-axis (it could just as easily be the z-axis, or indeed any plane at right angles to the real plane ... )

[Walsingham]

I'm just about through with Perks of Being a Wallflower. It's kind of depressing. I don't recommend it unless you're writing a research paper on teenage suicide, or teens dealing with their sexuality. Cause that's why I'm reading it. It's really good anyway.

 

And it was published in like 1992 or something, so I'm good.

 

The film 'Sonatine' made in 1984 covers this subject really well. If you're interested.

[Hurlshort]

1421: The Year China Discovered the World (Gavin Menzies)

 

The main criticisms, as far as I have read, are from (seemingly) disgruntled academics who are more envious of a "non-historian" making such a seismic revelation about world history, and are restricted to sniping details ... from the (comprehensive) list of evidence in the appendices it is evident to me that there is something to these claims.

 

I've been teaching my students for years that the Chinese were way ahead of Europe when it came to nautical exploration. Zheng He led huge expeditions. But the Ming dynasty isolated China after his death. I'd say the real issue is that China had plenty of resources, whereas Europe was hungry.

[metadigital]

It's not clear whether the 1421 hypothesis is sound, though there does seem to be a lot of circumstantial evidence (including some DNA evidence).

 

Gavin Menzies is either a very amateur historian with no idea about scientific method, or a complete quack.

 

Certainly he has stirred up a hornet's nest of opposition, mainly from the snotty-nosed academics who don't appreciate being scooped by a civilian. The book is, though, just a huge list of evidence that he has collected, and his inductions. Even if you fault his logic, there is an enormous amount of evidence to be explained, and the best that academics seem to be able to do is nit-pick.

 

I found it humorous that the book was released in the US as 1421: The Year China Discovered America.

[metadigital]

So why do the French hate the English?

We are in the year 1415. It is the end of the Middle Ages. Nations don't exist, only fiefdoms of kings, princes and feudal overlords, with their inherited right to conduct private wars and coin money. The cathedral builders have lost their faith, plague has invaded the Continent, and the countryside is sick of war

[Pop]

Just finished The Watchmen. ****ed up, it is.

[metadigital]

The Hinge Factor (Erik Durschmied)

[kgonzalez164]

Stranger in a Strange Land (uncut version) - Robert Heinlein

[Qazplm]

I'm reading The mad ship by Robin Hobb and It by stephen king both of them are good.

[EUIX]

The Histories - Tacitus.

 

I just wrapped up The Annals. Great stuff.

[CoM_Solaufein]

The Sumerians: Their History, Culture and Character.

I am reading it because history is a subject I enjoy reading plus I need background information for a story I am writing.

[metadigital]

Hey, that looks pretty good.