Posts filed under “Books”
What irritates a scientist?
From An Introduction to Ecological Genomics by Van Straalen and Roelofs: Despite the importance of allocations and trade-offs in life-history theory, reliable empirical measurements are difficult. This is especially annoying because often the outcome of an optimization procedure depends critically on the shape of a trade-off function… [emphasis mine] This had my roommate and I […]
Cryptonomicon
I finished reading Cryptonomicon a few weeks ago. I really love Neal Stephenson, and I stayed up late far too many nights reading Cryptonomicon. As much as I enjoyed the book, I was again disappointed by Stephenson’s female characters. The comments here do a good job of laying out some of the issues. My biggest […]
The terror of feminism
From Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy: He began to think of her, of what she was thinking and feeling. For the first time he pictured vividly to himself her personal life, her ideas, her desires, and the idea that she could and should have a separate life of her own seemed to him so alarming that […]
Homeopathy & a quack in Anna Karenina
From Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy: And the celebrated doctor expounded his plan of treatment with Soden waters, a remedy obviously prescribed primarily on the ground that they could do no harm.
Fem(me)inity
From Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy: Although her dress, her coiffure, and all the preparations for the ball had cost Kitty great trouble and consideration, at this moment she walked into the ballroom in her elaborate tulle dress over a pink slip as easily and simply as though all the rosettes and lace, all the minute […]
Light and Shadow
From Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy: “It’s this, don’t you see,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, “you’re very much all of a piece. That’s your strong point and your failing. You have a character that’s all of a piece, and you want the whole of life to be of a piece too – but that’s not how it […]
Out of my league
From Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy: An ugly, good-natured man, as he considered himself, might, he supposed, be liked as a friend; but to be loved with such a love as that with which he loved Kitty, one would need to be a handsome and, still more, a distinguished man. He had heard that women […]