1-2-3 Magic - Thomas W. Phelan

My favorite discipline book for kids. Just awesome. It says at the beginning that you don't have to be a saint or a psychologist to use it effectively, and thank goodness for that. Some other discipline books require you to think quickly on your feet and come up with a plan, and I just can't do it under emotional pressure. But this technique works great for my kids. It has worked when my 2-year-old used to hit us, and it works now with my 4-year-old provoking the 2-year-old or just whining. It makes me a better parent.

1-2-3 Magic: Effective Discipline for Children 2-12

Thomas W. Phelan

2004

Available from Amazon

The Magician's Book - Laura Miller

This book made me want to read more literary criticism. Or more literature in general. I wish I were half as smart as the author, or could speak so thoughtfully on a subject.

I read and re-read the Chronicles of Narnia as a child. At some point, someone clued me in to the religious symbolism, and while it didn’t relate to me, I still loved the books. I even kept reading them as a kind of comfort food as an adult. Then a couple of years ago, I read comments about them by Philip Pullman (author of the His Dark Materials trilogy), and he talked about the sexism, racism, and elitism in the books. Also about the disturbing view of religion and God (how God functions to punish people in the books, how death is presented as better than life). And I thought Pullman was so on the nose that I couldn’t read them anymore in good conscience. So I was really excited to read a book about Narnia from someone who had also loved them, and also was a skeptic. I was not disappointed.

Laura Miller divides the book into three sections. In the first, she talks about why the Chronicles of Narnia work for children. She talks about the magical writing and the way children approach the books. I thought her observations were dead-on. Then she talks about the problems with the books – the sexism, racism, and elitism that Philip Pullman identifies. She doesn’t pull any punches, but she also observes that if we judge writers by contemporary standards of conduct, we can’t read much great literature. In the third section, she talks about how Lewis’s life influenced his writing of the Chronicles, his friendship with Tolkien, and the context in which the books were written.

One of the unexpected pleasures in this book is reading about what other famous writers think of the Chronicles of Narnia, like Neil Gaiman (Stardust, among much else) and Susanna Clarke (Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, which is also a wonderful book).

I feel so much better educated for having read this discussion of the Chronicles of Narnia. I’m planning to re-read it (and them).

The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia
Laura Miller
2008

Available from Amazon

Why Evolution Is True - Jerry Coyne

A compelling discussion of the evidence for evolution, from geology, genetics, morphology, archeology, and more. He talks about interesting issues I hadn’t even realized were problems. Like, if evolution is incremental, how do different species arise out of the same parent species? The answer is that one group of individuals become isolated from the rest, and then the two groups can evolve separately. This makes a prediction: a species should be most closely related to another species that is separated from them by some kind of geographical barrier. And in fact, this is true. There are seven species of snapping shrimp on the west side of the Isthmus of Panama, and seven species of snapping shrimp on the east side. And the closest relative of each species of snapping shrimp on the west side is one of the seven species on the east side of the Isthmus of Panama. Which is just what you would expect if, 3 million years ago, there were seven species of snapping shrimp near Panama, then the Isthmus of Panama rose out of the water, separating each species into two groups, which then evolved independently of each other.

I know that people who believe evolution is false are not really influenced by the evidence, but I loved learning about the evidence. It made me feel so much smarter and more connected to the natural world.

Why Evolutions Is True
Jerry Coyne
2009

Available from Amazon

Infrastructure - Brian Hayes

Sorry for the long delay. We moved to Maryland in mid-June, and things have been crazy. But hopefully now I'll get back to regular posting.

This is a guide to industrial structures, written in the style of nature guides by a long-time science writer. It’s totally fascinating. He explains all sorts of things I’d never thought to wonder about before. Why do high-tension power lines sometimes have three lines running side-by-side in a triangle formation? (It’s to reduce coronal discharge because the electricity acts as if it is traveling in a single line with the diameter that of the triangle.) What is the difference between open-pit mining and strip-mining? (Open pit digs down in an inverted cone, while strip mining digs up huge swaths of land to get at ore that is widely dispersed but not very deep.) The pictures are awesome, and the author is excellent at explaining complicated things.

We just moved to Maryland, and the very last thing I did before leaving was take a load of trash to the dump. And with my new insight into all things industrial, I discovered the road to the dump is filled interesting things to look at. There was a gas pipeline station, a massive electrical substation, and, of course, the dump. My husband tells me that there’s a dump near our new house, and I can’t wait to go out and see what there is to see there.

I highly recommend this book – it’s going to be my Christmas present for all my geeky friends and relatives.

Infrastructure: A Field Guide to the Industrial Landscape
2008
Brian Hayes

Available from Amazon

Harry Potter Audio CDs

I just started listening to the Harry Potter audio CDs and they are enchanting. I've read all the books already, but I had heard that the reader for the audio version, Jim Dale, was amazing. Within 30 seconds I was totally hooked. He has a perfect voice and accent for the books, and does fantastic voices for all the different characters. (Apparently he develops a new voice, complete with accent and phrasing, for each new character then tape records it so he can go back and reconstruct it when the character appears again later.)

Harry Potter Audio CDs
J.K. Rowling, read by Jim Dale
1999 and later

Available from Amazon

Know Your Chances - Steve Woloshin, Lisa M. Schwartz, H. Gilbert Welch

At first I wasn't going to recommend this book, because I thought it was too simple. But I'm finding myself using the ideas they develop every time I read an article about health, and they are useful.

They point out that benefits of drugs are often talked about in terms of relative improvement: "Drug X reduces your risk of heart attack by 20%." But without knowing your absolute risk of having a heart attack, you can't tell if this is important or not. If your risk of having a heart attack is 1%, and the drug reduces it to 0.8%, this is obviously a different matter than if your risk is 50%, and the drug reduces it to 40%. And even the better case, do you care about at reduction from 50% to 40%? What are the side effects like?

I'm extrapolating a bit here, but I think the authors would like to see the FDA require drug companies to put a standard chart in ads and product literature that lists the effectiveness (and side effect percentages) of placebo and drug treatment. This would be a standard drug information label like the standard nutrition labels we have on all our foods. I was certainly startled to see how small the effects of many interventions are.

For instance, folic acid supplementation is recommended for all women of child-bearing age. The March of Dimes has run ads comparing not taking folic acid to letting your baby crawl out into traffic. And yet without folic acid supplements, you have a 2/1000 risk of neural tube defects, and with folic acid a 1/1000 risk. So it's worth taking folic acid because the cost and side effects are negligible, but it is making a very small risk even smaller.

The authors also cover risks and benefits of mammograms and PSA testing, which are now being better discussed by the media. I'd think very hard before having either one.

A deceptively easy read, because the ideas are so important and relevant.

Know Your Chances: Understanding Health Statistics
Steve Woloshin, Lisa M. Schwartz, H. Gilbert Welch
2008
Available from Amazon

Goo Gone

Every house should have Goo Gone. And now I have a new use for it.

I went to duplicate a DVD I had made a couple of years ago and discovered that my computer could not read it. It turns out when I had made the DVD, I had labeled it with an paper adhesive label by Avery, and that paper adhesive labels (all of them, not just AbverY) do something to the DVD (render it unbalanced? make it too heavy? warp the disk?) so that computer drives eventually can’t read them. The DVD worked fine in the DVD player attached to my TV, but not in my computer, perhaps because the computer drive spins the disk faster. Let me just say here that I am dumbfounded that anyone sells a label for DVDs that renders the DVD inoperable. Dumbfounded.

Through the wonder of the Internet, I learned that you can fix your DVD by removing the label, and that Goo Gone is the method of choice. So, with much trepidation (this was a DVD of my kids, so it mattered to me), I poured Goo Gone in a bread plate, put the DVD in label-side down, let it soak for 15 minutes, removed the label, and then washed and dried the disk. And voila! The DVD worked again. Of course, then I spent the next 3 hours with a little factory of bread plates soaking the labels off all my DVDs and labeling them with a Sharpie marker.

I love Goo Gone. It’s great for getting stick stuff off whatever. You can buy it at pretty much any hardware store or grocery store.

Goo Gone
Available from Lowe’s and a million other hardware/grocery/super stores