h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Read 'Freakonomics' yesterday, and found it interesting and enjoyable, if not particularly meaty. Economic research being interesting is a thought for me to hold dear (being an economics student), although I hate statistics. Good summer reading for a student, anyway.

But...it's complete and utter CRAP!!!!!!

Most of it is, I would say, statistical analysis of social science data. I'm not sure why they call it 'economics'. But I'm afraid I don't trust any economist who doesn't understand the basics of statistics. They get a lot of the methodology utterly, utterly WRONG!

Take the chapter on educational/employment outcomes for black and white children. Firstly, they don't mention that in multivariate statistics, the more variables you try to control, the more variance you add and the lower the power of the test becomes (plus they've forgotten that they are almost certainly dealing with heteroscedacious dependent variables...etc. etc. etc.). Hence their conclusions are as likely wrong as they are right.

Then...when they come to interpreting the data...well...they claim to be apolitical, but to my mind they put a sly political slant on it by being highly selective in the way they select what information to report. Correct me if I'm misreading them...but don't they try and use the figures to discount race as a factor in outcomes? ie they show that if you were to take a black child and a white child from equally poor backgrounds and in equally bad school areas, they would be likely to attain similar educational standards and levels of wealth. What they don't mention is that, in the United States, far, far more black children *start off* with a disadvantage than their white counterparts. I know they don't suggest this as such - but if if anyone were to use their conclusions as the basis for an educational policy, they would continue the same self-perpetuating system that we already find.

And don't even get me started on their complete misrepresentation of criminological theory (with accompanying sly digs) that had my wife spitting every other paragraph (she has am MSc in Criminal Justice).

Oh...and the chapter on the crack dealers. So African-American dealers are subject to the same economic laws and adopt business practices analagous to the mainstream, huh? Big ing wow! Only a particularly sheltered white American could possibly find this surprising. Jaysus, those guys were *so* up their own arses with their cleverness and originality.

As you may have gathered...I didn't like it.
'This is not a book that should be tossed aside lightly. It must be thrown with great force!' (Dorothy Parker)




Myself...I've just discovered the wonderful 'Voltaire and Rousseau' off Glasgow's Otago St - surely the best bookshop in the world! Since so many have recommended it I'm reading 'Guns, Germ's and Steel' - fascinating and stunningly clearly written.

Well, I'm crap at stats so I'll take your word for it. Re the race thingy, I thought that they went out of their way to point out that there's no inherent difference between blacks and whites again and again, presumably because that argument is still current in the US? That was my take on it anyway. I didn't occur to me that most people would dispute that blacks *are* poor, on average.

Might head to Otago St while I'm at work, cheers for that!

And 'Guns, Germs and Steel' is definitely one of the best books I've ever read. *Really* superb.

>>I thought that they went out of their way to point out that there's no inherent difference between blacks and whites again and again

That's true. But they very much ignored the danferous issue of the very obvious environmental differences. Americans don't 'do' Marx!

The other book I'm dipping into is 'Race' by the great Studs Terkel. Interestingly, its subtitle is 'The American Obsession'. Very, very good! http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1565849892/203-2574204-3296719?v=glance&n=266239

I think I bought that one at the Byres Rd Oxfam.

May I butt in - or is that not possible here?

Hi - I haven't been here for ages and will have to pay penance and read the backlog some day, but for the moment I must tell someone about the book I finished this morning - it had a very profound effect on me.

"The Last Time They Met" by Anita Shreve.

If anyone else has read it, I'd like to know if they reacted the same as me. Can't spoil the ending for you, but, well ... I finished it over breakfast and cried all the way to work.

Perhaps I should get a life. Or another Shreve book.

just finished reading "the truth" by terry pratchett. I thought it was pretty good, but the ending just seemed to tail off a bit. Just read "Brokeback Mountain" online, i'm pleased to say that the film stays close to the story, which is nice.Although I have deep sympathies with the previous entry, I cried at the end of the film and the short story.God i'm such a girl. Now going to start reading "1984" (i must be the only person on earth not to have read that book- damn english teachers)or "the handmaids tale" by Margeret Atwood, or perhaps "Jarhead" by Anthony Swofford. Which one shall i go for, people? stuck now. Would be grateful for other recommendations.

Jarhead - a decent enough book. Could have been edited down to a novella, though.

1984 - I guess it has to be done. It's never been my favourite Orwell.

...but of the three, I'd most recommend the Atwood.




What was the collection called which included Brokeback? There were many other fine stories in it. Like 'The Half-Skinned Steer'. I do like Ms Proulx...but of her novels I only really like The Shipping News. (Which I really love. Especially its unusual rhythm and sentence structure.)

Halfway through Vagabond by Bernard Cornwell.

War and Peace by Tolstoy

Cisco Certified Network Associate Study Guide, kill me. Kill me now.

MiniMy...is that the new translation? It's meant to be good.

I heard the translator on R4 a while back. He said that one thing he'd disliked in previous translations was the way the soldiers speak. He'd done National Service himself, and he'd hated such things as when someone gets his leg blown off in battle and says 'Gracious!' The original Russian used a far more earthy noun. It was feminine gender, so he settled on 'Bitch!'

(You may well be reading it in the original for all I know.)

Just finished two:

"Cause Celeb" by Helen Fielding (predating Bridget Jones, and a lot more meaty -- good read).

And "Eleven on Top" by Janet Evanovich, which moved along nicely and made me laugh, an important feature, these days.

Just starting, "Women Are Not Small Men: Life-saving Strategies for Preventing and Healing Heart Disease in Women" by Nieca Goldberg, MD.
(not a read for fun...)

SC

Nope. It is the Maude translation - an old one.

mini

I read 'War & Peace' a couple of years ago. My copy is the Rosemary Edmonds translation and I found it hard going. I should probably read it again, but I'm not in the mood at the moment.

Over the past month, I have been reading Harry Thompson's biography of Peter Cook. I really miss it now I have finished it.

Yesterday (almost all in one sitting too) I read 'Master Georgie' by Beryl Bainbridge. It was a bit light weight for my taste and I didn't think it was up to Ms Bainbridges usual standards.

And now I've got nothing to read until I can get to the library

I'm reading Ian MacLeod's "House of Storms", a follow up to "the Light Ages" and equally good.

Also dipping into "Strange Sounds" by Mark Brend, subtitled "offbeat instruments and sonic experiments in pop". With chapters on things like theremins and the BBC radiophonic workshop (and an accompanying sound clip CD) it goes along nicely with the music technology course I'm doing at the moment.

Tidying up my bookshelf to escape the football, I've got through two Maeve Binchys (OK that was enough!) and Billy Connolly's Biography and two or three others which are beginning to muddle themselves up in my mind now. (As well as the Anita Shreve mentioned above - stood out by miles)

Have just finished 'Ilium' by Dan Simmons. At first I thought it was about the 'real' Trojan war, but it's a sci-fi book including the 'real' Trojan war. Very imaginative, well written and very literary for SF, I'm glad I read it. Slight downside is that the ending is so crying out for a sequel it spoils it slightly. Not enough to not find out what the sequel's called, right enough, but still...


Think I'll try to find a copy of the Odyssey as well

The sequel to Ilium is out already. It's called 'Olympos'.

Dan Simmons tends to write his books in pairs. He did the same with Hyperion and Endymion (both pairs well worth the read, particular Hyperion).

Cheers Jim, I've actually just googled for it, and I just might take a trip to the library tomorrow.

I'm a couple of days away from a 5-6 day house sitting gig, and I bought some books today -- "Carpe Jugulum" by Terry Pratchett, "Santiago" by Mike Resnick (can you tell I'm looking for light entertainment here? ), and a new Australian author whose first book looked interesting in a female-protagonist-kicks-a**e kind of way -- "Nylon Angel", by Marianne De Pierres. And I'm bringing along "A Caress At Twilight" by Laurell K. Hamilton, for a re-read.

That load and my homework from Accounting should keep me occupied...

BTW, is there a site somewhere which has the Pratchett Discworld books sorted by character groups (i.e., the Witches, the Night Watch, Rincewind, DEATH, etc)?

SC