books?

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loafergirl
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books?

Post by loafergirl »

favorite most recently read books?

I recently read The Institute by Stephen King, a lot of similar material to other books like Sleeping Beauties which he co-authored with his son. Still good, but... starting to reuse research material in ways that are similar but not in that cool interconnected "other worlds than these" kind of way.
1, 2, 5!
3 sir...
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Jizaboz
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Re: books?

Post by Jizaboz »

The Scarlet Gospels by Clive Barker
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Re: books?

Post by pinback »

Image

It's unbelievable, and telling, that there's a 238-page book about a videogame titled "Getting Started With..."
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AArdvark
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Re: books?

Post by AArdvark »

The Big Sleep and The Little Sister by Raymond Chandler. Love those hard boiled private eye novels. The ones with Thirties and Forties slang terms.

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The Happiness Engine
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Re: books?

Post by The Happiness Engine »

Robert Caro's Lyndon Johnson biography. I figured I'd take a break after book 1 and instead I can NOT put it down, which considering each book weighs over 5lbs, is an achievement. I'm 2,2330 pages in, and have 370 to go until I'm caught up.

Really hope dude doesn't die before he finishes book 5.

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Ice Cream Jonsey
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Re: books?

Post by Ice Cream Jonsey »

Max Barry is a novelist. He is coming to Denver from Australia when I won't be in Denver, unfortunately. He's written a few books and I have liked all of them. Milker referenced "Company" last night in fact.

https://maxbarry.com

His new book comes out shortly!

Image

(Linking to things on Amazon is more difficult than it should be.)

I haven't read his last book. I bought it the day it came out. Both he and another author I like, Chris Orcutt, wrote books and I bought them day one over Kindle and have yet to read them. I am "saving" them for when I need them the most because I know when I read their books that's it, there's nothing new of theirs I can read. It is a weird psychological thing. I guess I don't want it to be over? But since Max Barry is releasing a new novel I think it's OK for me to read his previous one, Lexicon. I am insane in the bad way about this, I know.
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RealNC
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Re: books?

Post by RealNC »

James Gleick - Chaos

This is the book to get if you wanna know what chaos theory is actually about.

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AArdvark
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Re: books?

Post by AArdvark »

It's all about dinosaurs getting loose and trying to eat people, isn't it?

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Tdarcos
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Re: books?

Post by Tdarcos »

AArdvark wrote: Sat Mar 07, 2020 5:54 pm It's all about dinosaurs getting loose and trying to eat people, isn't it?
Not likely and I know this, and I'm not even that familiar with history. Homo Sapiens, at best, has existed about 250,000 years and more likely 100,000. Dinosaurs, on the other hand, died out when a huge asteroid smashed into the Gulf of Mexico near (what is now) Chixalub, Mexico, about 65,000,000 years ago. Dinosaurs died out (other than as birds) more than 64 million years before humans existed.
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AArdvark
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Re: books?

Post by AArdvark »

Hmmm, you never saw Jurassic Park, did you.

There's this island that this guy owns. And this guy drilled into a bunch of mosquitoes and took their blood out and mixed it in a blender with a bunch of frogs. And he created new old stock dinosaurs. And then he invited a helicopter full of people to his island and all the dinosaurs got loose and tried to eat the helicopter people.

Actually I was poking fun at Ian Malcolm being a Chaos Theory kind of guy after Real NC posted the title of the book he had been reading.

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RealNC
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Re: books?

Post by RealNC »

Nope. It's about a little girl watching a UNIX system render fractals.

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Re: books?

Post by Ice Cream Jonsey »

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote: Sat Mar 07, 2020 1:12 pm Max Barry is a novelist. He is coming to Denver from Australia when I won't be in Denver, unfortunately. He's written a few books and I have liked all of them. Milker referenced "Company" last night in fact.

https://maxbarry.com

His new book comes out shortly!

Image

(Linking to things on Amazon is more difficult than it should be.)

I haven't read his last book. I bought it the day it came out. Both he and another author I like, Chris Orcutt, wrote books and I bought them day one over Kindle and have yet to read them. I am "saving" them for when I need them the most because I know when I read their books that's it, there's nothing new of theirs I can read. It is a weird psychological thing. I guess I don't want it to be over? But since Max Barry is releasing a new novel I think it's OK for me to read his previous one, Lexicon. I am insane in the bad way about this, I know.
Providence is out, I started reading it last night as soon as Amazon released it to the world, and it's fucking great. I am a quarter of the way through - not counting words, the Kindle app tells me how far I am. I bet it would do it for you guys as well. Anyway, go get it.
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gsdgsd
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Re: books?

Post by gsdgsd »

I'm reading the last book of Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall trilogy, and it's fantastic. I put off reading WH for a long time just because eh, British royalty, but Mantel is an amazing writer.

Another good one: Mariam Petrosyan's "The Gray House," which I can't really describe but it's the most engrossing book I've read in the last several years.

Seconded on Max Barry, I'm going to finally read "Lexicon" once I'm done with the Mantel book.

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AArdvark
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Re: books?

Post by AArdvark »

Burning Chrome by Will Gibson. It's 1986 but it's fun to see the future as now-retro.

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Re: books?

Post by Tdarcos »

AArdvark wrote: Tue Mar 10, 2020 4:56 pm Hmmm, you never saw Jurassic Park, did you.
Yes, 'Vark, I did. I even read the book before I saw the movie, before they made it. And there's a big flaw in the premise.
AArdvark wrote: Tue Mar 10, 2020 4:56 pmThere's this island that this guy owns. And this guy drilled into a bunch of mosquitoes and took their blood out and mixed it in a blender with a bunch of frogs.
I presume you're being funny here, as you are making a bunch of errors.
1. He was not taking the blood of mosquitoes, he was collecting the DNA of dinosaurs in their blood that was captured by the mosquitoes.
2. They were not capturing the blood of frogs or "putting them in a blender," they were capturing their DNA. If I want to capture your DNA, all I need to do is scrape ther inside of your cheek with a Q-tip. You could probably get theirs from skin cells, frog eggs or other froggy material. Without even needing to injure or kill the frog if you didn't want to.
3. The work is a bit more complicated than "throwing stuff in a blender," it requires (presumably) multi-million dollar DNA re-sequencing and gene splicing equipment. Not something you can order from Amazon for $49.95.
4. The whole premise is wrong. Even were the blood of 65 million-year old dinosaurs captured from mosqitoes trapped in amber still had DNA in it, the DNA would have deteriorated to nothing usable after a few years or so. This is not necessarily the fault of the late Michael Chrichton, M.D., who wrote Jurassic Park, as I'm not sure if it was known when he wrote the book that DNA degrades rapidly even in such circumstances as being encapsulated in amber.
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Re: books?

Post by Tdarcos »

What books am I reading?

"Willis and Friends," "Marnie," and "Don't Break the Merger," all by Paul Robinson. Since I've left them for a while (both when I didn't have a computer and while I was having more severe blur than now and did not know how to compensate for it), I often have to re-read the stories over from the beginning in order to understand how the story is going so I can continue where I have left off.

Or to make improvements. In Willis, the title character has been summoned to his 2nd-level supervisor, i.e. his boss' boss, her name is Sherry, so he comes in singing. Originally, I use a part from a '50s song, then I added a more recent one:

Willis showed up in Sherry’s office. He started singing, “Sherry! Sherry baby! Sherry!”

“That song was old when I was still alive.”

“Okay, then, how about this?” He starts singing again. “'Oh Sherrie, our love, holds on, holds on.'”

“That, I like.”

“So what can I do you for?”
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AArdvark
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Re: books?

Post by AArdvark »

He was not taking the blood of mosquitoes, he was collecting the DNA of dinosaurs in their blood that was captured by the mosquitoes.
Well, if you look up the laws on mosquito blood (Mosquito Koste vs. the state of Tennessee; 421 P.5d 1175,1563. and Mosquito Annette vs. Mel Aria 322 P.1d 1125,1653.) you will see that once a mosquito draws the blood into it's body it now belongs to the mosquito. Possession is 9/10th of the law. So I win.
frog in a blender

DNA degrades rapidly
yeah, but it was a good movie

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Re: books?

Post by Tdarcos »

AArdvark wrote: Wed Apr 01, 2020 1:31 pm
Well, if you look up the laws on mosquito blood (Mosquito Koste vs. the state of Tennessee; 421 P.5d 1175,1563. and Mosquito Annette vs. Mel Aria 322 P.1d 1125,1653.)
'Vark, if you're going to fake something, you should try to understand what it means and try to make it look real. Otherwise those who know things will know you're stupid and uninformed. I could immediately spot those were fake citations, without even having to look them up.
  1. The letter "P" in a court case citation indicates the case is printed in the Pacific Reporter, a series of case reports.
  2. Pacific Reporter is a legal publisher that covers cases out west. It does not cover cases in Tennessee. A quick look at Wikipedia tells that the Pacific Reporter only covers cases in the states of Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming.
  3. I realized it was wrong because I knew Tennessee is covered by the South Western Reporter, which is abbreviated S.W. instead of P. I remembered because in the movie The Rainmaker a lawyer mentions a case handled in Tennesee that was appealed, and the cite was to the South Western Reporter.
  4. The Citation form was wrong for the first one was wrong. It would have been either Mosquito Koste v. State or Mosquito Koste v. Tennessee. (Also puns on Mosquito Coast, mosquito net, and malaria were cute.)
  5. The use of "vs." as an abbreviation for "versus" is used in boxing. Court cases always use "v."
  6. The series numbers - the number after P. - were malformed. First Series of Pacific Reporter is just "P." not P.1d, and if they were giving it an ordinal it would be probably be "P.1st". The reason they use "P.3d" is short for "Pacific Reporter 3rd Series".
  7. If there was a 5th Series of Pacific Reporter it would probably be "P.5th", "P.5t" or maybe "P.5h", not "P.5d".
  8. It immediately made me suspicious as I didn't think the Pacific Reporter was up to the 5th series. It isn't; Wikipedia also says it's only in its 3rd series.
  9. Your pinpoint cites were too long. A cite like 322 P. 1125,1653 indicates a case that started on page 1125 of volume 322 of the Pacific Reporter, and the point is made on page 1653. This is saying the decision ran 400 pages! Hell, even Roe v. Wade ran about 190. You'd have to get an extremely complicated case to run over 400 pages.
  10. The first series of Pacific Reporter only ran 300 volumes, there cannot have been a volume 322.
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Re: books?

Post by Tdarcos »

AArdvark wrote: Wed Apr 01, 2020 1:31 pm
DNA degrades rapidly
yeah, but it was a good movie
On that, we are in complete agreement. In fact, there were other big budget movies made years later, that use CGI effects that are not as good as the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park.
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Re: books?

Post by AArdvark »

those who know things will know you're stupid and uninformed
That was harsh.

I think anyone with a full functioning brain will realize there are no MOSQUITO BLOOD LAWS! They are insects. Insects have no laws concerning blood or anything else. You know this. It should never have gotten to No.8! There is no reason to delve further into the citation notes. I also know you just want to explain how the case files are labelled, I know that's what you're doing.

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