Book Reviews
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Tuesday, November 12, 2002
Henry Raddick reviews on Amazon --
Here is Google pointer to Henry Raddick reviews on Amazon.com. Apparently the identity of this reviewer has generated a lot of speculation because of his "personal" views on certain books. Here are a couple of examples:
This is a lavish guide to the practically indistructable mother of the British Sovereign. She was Elizabeth Bowes-Lyons to her fellow debs in 1919, she was Queen as George VI's wife, but to all of us she is just the Queen Mum, bless her; the plucky lady with the common touch, who shrugged off gunshot wounds after a quarrel about gambling debts in an East End boozer, the massive-armed matriarchal powerhouse who has no time for nonces or liberty-takers. A marvelous book.
...
Smith and Stybbard have written a gem in this book. It's certainly helped me to take control of my dog's idiosyncratic toilet habits. My pug Grendel now dances to my tune, be it on walks, in the garden or merely impressing friends and family. A word of caution - take care when choosing your "command words" and "smart phrases" to avoid words your dog is likely to hear on the television. It took 4 episodes of Ali McBeal before I realised that my "full evacuation" command was in the theme song.
...
A fascinating eye-opener and a book which has transformed the way I view lovemaking. Quite frankly something needed to be done to resurrect the physical side of my marriage which has been blighted in the main by my PE, and Caprio's guide seemed the perfect start. As the author makes clear, lovemaking is an art - an art whose media are the body AND the mind, with the lover as artist. I have every confidence that reading this guide will lead to a happier love life for my wife me, and will help me move on from my frustratingly Pollockesque form of abstract expressionism.
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Metafilter writes about Carl Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit based on the book The Demon Haunted World: Science as a candle in the dark:
The following are suggested as tools for testing arguments
and detecting fallacious or fraudulent arguments:
- Wherever possible there must be independent confirmation of
the facts
- Encourage substantive debate on the evidence by
knowledgeable proponents of all points of view.
- Arguments from authority carry little weight (in science
there are no "authorities").
- Spin more than one hypothesis - don't simply run with the
first idea that caught your fancy.
- Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because
it's yours.
- Quantify, wherever possible.
- If there is a chain of argument every link in the chain must
work.
- "Occam's razor" - if there are two hypothesis that explain
the data equally well choose the simpler.
- Ask whether the hypothesis can, at least in principle, be
falsified (shown to be false by some unambiguous test). In other
words, it is testable? Can others duplicate the experiment and
get the same result?
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A friend told about his experiences of digital cameras. He currently has an old Olympus, but would right now buy the new Olympus C-730 UZ. In his opinion the 10x optical zoom is the best feature of this camera. The zoom makes it easy to take good photos in all kinds of events, for example in sports. I have been looking carefully at Canon S45, which is a bit smaller, and has more features. But so far I have been not convinced to invest in a new camera. If the new Canon (or Olympus) gets really good reviews, I might make the plunge into digital photography.
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