Kirsten Mortensen's blog

A University of Rochester emeritus professor of history, Perez Zagorin, has written a book on Thucydides titled Thucydides: An Introduction for the Common Reader.

Here’s a review, the author of which, James P. Holoka of Eastern Michigan University, says the book will “be most useful to an audience of undergraduates and other ‘intellectually curious people,’” and that Zagorin

is to be congratulated for his well-informed, evenhanded, readable, and eupeptic presentation of a formidable ancient historian.

“Eupeptic.” I had to look that one up to be sure. It means “having good digestion; cheerful, optimistic.”

Peter Stothard reviewed the same book last month for the Wall Street Journal (subscription required), writing

“Thucydides: An Introduction for the Common Reader” is a useful book. Yet as Mr. Zagorin himself recognizes, a great historian claimed by so many generals and politicians in so many struggles over so many years cannot always be understood through the minds of others. Mr. Zagorin calls for his own readers to become readers of Thucydides and to judge for themselves whether, for example, the Peloponnesian War was truly inevitable or might have been avoided by better diplomacy.

Oh, for a few more hours in the day . . .

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This Sunday Times article doesn’t say. But it does give an overview of a theory proposed by Canadian anthropologist Peter Frost about the provenance of blond hair itself. He figures women outnumbered men in northern Europe at the end of the Ice Age. Lighter hair helped women stand out in a crowded field. Get dates and stuff. And they didn’t have Clairol back then, apparently.

Technorati Tags: Peter Frost

No, not the gazebo in the back yard.

There are two writers suing Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code. Their names are Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, and they have a book, too: The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. It was published in 1982. I have a hunch it hasn’t sold as many copies as TDVC.

Whether they feel their sorry sales numbers are an outrage is hard to say (ha ha ha) but oh, are they pissed that Brown used their “architecture.” As explained by the New York Times (registration required), Baigent, Leigh and a third author (who declined to participate in the suit)

spent five years, from 1976 to 1981, researching the book . . . before arriving at what they call the “central architecture” of their argument. It is this architecture — the trajectory of the case they make in “The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail” — that they say Mr. Brown appropriated, rather than individual words or passages.

So. He hasn’t plagiarized — not in the way we usually think of plagiarizing. What he’s done is to re-use some elements of a story that they told in their book over two decades ago (adding, btw, a lot of his own invention in the retelling).

And he was either luckier, or cleverer, or a better story teller than they were, and consequently, his book was a blockbuster.

It will be interesting to see how this turns out . . .

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Well, the Permian extinction of yore. If you can’t recall it, that’s perhaps because it happened 250 million years ago, and you’re not a geologist, or both.

There’s a book on it out, now: Extinction, by Douglas H. Erwin, a Smithsonian paleobiologist. It’s been reviewed here in a Washington Post piece by Joshua Foer.

I just found about about this via Zinnian Democracy: according to Mark Hare at the Democrat and Chronicle, Kenichiro “Ken” Sato, 27, a museum art director from Sendai, Japan who has enrolled in a public administration program at Monroe Community College, has obtained a $15,000 grant from Rochester’s Arts and Cultural Council to turn downtown into an outdoor photography museum.

The plan is to hang 300 photos on tall and not-so-tall buildings. About 100 would be large, 100 feet by 50 feet and 15 by 15. The rest would be 5 by 8 feet, displayed at eye level. Some would depict local history, the rest would be selected from photos submitted internationally.

I must say, I have a very good feeling about this.

Technorati Tags: Rochester, New York, photography, Kenichiro Sato

Neglected wiring beneath city streets poses an electrocution threat to dogs, and sometimes people, as detailed in this LA Times article (registration required):

During the snowy months of late winter, when salt mixes with slush, electric current escaping through uninsulated wires can be conducted up to the street through manholes, streetlights, service boxes, grates or cracks in the sidewalk.

Because dogs’ pads make contact with the ground, they can feel shocks that people don’t. They might react by yelping or avoiding certain spots on the sidewalk. One veterinarian quoted in the article has seen dogs with burns on their pads.

Two years ago, a woman was killed while walking her dogs in the East Village. Many other people have received nasty shocks.

This blogger has re-published an AP story that gives more, including a bit about what municipalities and power companies are doing to address the so-called “stray voltage” issue. (NYC and Boston are the riskiest cities, btw.)

More info and links on Daily Slope and Feministe.

The LA Times piece mentions says there are blogs that post information about known hotspots, but I haven’t been able to find them . . .

Technorati Tags: dogs, stray voltage

Article by Thomas Stuttaford in the UK Times.

Stopped by Amazon this morning, and someone has posted a new review for Outwitting Dogs.

A week or so ago, the subject of Amazon reviews came up on a Yahoo list I’m on, and someone said that they generally ignore 5-star reviews. The reasoning is that no book is perfect, and if someone says so, they have to be a friend of the writer. A shill.

Well, I do not know this person. Maybe she knows Terry (the book is a collaboration; Terry Ryan, my co-writer, is a professional dog trainer) but the book’s been out for a year and as far as I know Terry hasn’t asked anybody to post an Amazon review for her. (I haven’t either. Call me a wimp but I’m descended from a long line of Methodist ministers. Somehow I just can’t get the words “would you fake a nice Amazon review for me?” out of my mouth. And my day job is PR. I should be cynical and conniving. Thanks a lot, Grandpa, wherever you are.)

So anyway, I’m reading the review, and maybe I’m a little short of sleep, but it made me teary. This person loved the book. Really really loved it. The writing, the organization, the content, the attitude . . .

It was a nice, warm, pat on the back and I am deeply grateful for it. So citywulf, wherever you are, thank you. Thank you so much.

I’m going to go write some more, now.

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Think about something else.

In a series of studies with shoppers and students, researchers found that people who face a decision with many considerations, such as what house to buy, often do not choose wisely if they spend a lot of time consciously weighing the pros and cons. Instead, the scientists conclude, the best strategy is to gather all of the relevant information — such as the price, the number of bathrooms, the age of the roof — and then put the decision out of mind for a while.

Then, when the time comes to decide, go with what feels right. ”It is much better to follow your gut,” said Ap Dijksterhuis, a professor of psychology at the University of Amsterdam, who led the research.

Lots more in the article, written by Gareth Cook for the Boston Globe, by following the link.

A quantum computer that can calculate . . . while it’s not running.

“It is very bizarre that you know your computer has not run but you also know what the answer is,” says [University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign research] team member Onur Hosten.

“Very bizarre.” Master of the understatement, Onur.

This scheme could have an advantage over straightforward quantum computing. “A non-running computer produces fewer errors,” says Hosten.

Let me guess: Microsoft operating system!

:-D

Technorati Tags: quantum computer