I've been getting a bit of reading in lately which has been great. I've finished Richard Dawkins "The God Delusion", which I found fascinating. Sadly, the effectiveness of this book is probably nil in regards to convincing people that organised religions are a sham. I don't want to discuss it too much but it has been my experience that no amount of "evidence" from either side of this argument is sufficient to convince a significant amount of people to cross over. He makes good arguments and I do recommend it to anyone but really it didn't change much about the why I feel.
Before that I had read "E=MC2, The biography of the worlds greatest equation" by David Bodanis which is great. I love science books that can break things down into ways I can understand it without dumbing it down too much. The bits I liked were the stories of the people before Einstein that led to his equation like Emilie Du Chatelet, Micheal Faraday, Ernest Rutherford, Fred Hoyle etc etc.
I've almost finished "Bad Science" from Ben Goldacre which is about the way science is perverted to suit either "Big Pharma", the media or snake oil salesmen. It's good but only read it if your into it.
The other bit of reading that I've been getting is from the magazines but namely the big three when it comes to good articles and writers. The New Yorker, Vanity Fair and Esquire. I like it because it's usually great writing, I can cherry pick topics that interest me and it only takes me about half hour and when I finish I feel smarter!
Well some people over at kk.org have put together an unofficial in no particular order Top 100 list of the best magazine articles ever written. Good on them! I plan on working my way through them over the next few months. My plan is to print a few of them off at a time and get through them where I get most of my reading done these days. The toilet or as I like to call it "My panic room" whenever it gets too much.
While I'm on the subject. Some but not all of you will be familiar with the debacle that was Lebron James decision on his future team( Google "Lebron James The Decision") if you do want to get up to speed. His announcement culminated in the now famous line "I've decided to take my talents to South Beach". Apparently, in the states this is now the most popular way of saying you need to go to the toilet. That got me thinking of my own monikers for having to go and whether it gets into my top 5. My current top 5 is:
5. "Gotta see a man about a horse." (old favourite, everyone in the world knows what your talking about)
4. "Need to drop a deuce." (somewhat "urban" in a rapper sort of way. I use this one when I'm trying to appear hip with the young kids of today.)
3. "Going fishing for some brown trout." (doesn't actually make sense in any way and can be confusing but whatever)
2. "Need to pinch a loaf" (Downright rude. Good for the shock effect. Just too visual really)
1. "Going to drop the kids off at the pool" (not really funny now that I have kids but it was always my favourite and still makes me chuckle. I know, I know I'm a horrible person.
Where does "Taking my talents to South Beach" stand in this group. Personally, I love it. It's new and now and has a great flow to it. My only problem is that it's only funny in America. Here, no one would have a clue what I was talking about. I'll put it in at 3 and I'll try it out and see what sort of reaction I get. It could fall quite rapidly but I'll see if it gets any traction. You never know, I might start a new trend here.
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