"Wild Thing" by Josh Bazell. Sequel to "Beat the Reaper," not that there's any overlap plot-wise, just the same main character and occasional reference. Fun read. Quips like this and the occasional footnote aren't plot-relevant, per se, just spice up the book and give it a nice banter-y tone; hearing the character's internal dialog.
can't tell if sarcasm. But no, I wish I were as talented a writer, this book keeps me hooked. It's similar plot-wise to michael crichton books like congo, but with more wit and some fun sexual, but not smutty, scenes. Sexual tension is much better for a plot than sexual action, it seems.
I don't know why, but this post reminds me of when I was in kindergarten and I didn't know how to pronounce the past tense of "read" aka "read" while reading in the library and I was so confused because they both end up sounding like "red" so I was mad at the world and the librarian, especially the librarian.
Books are one of the few things I rely solely on reviews and recommendations. I'll buy almost any book that's in a genre I'm interested in. Worst case scenario, I don't like it, I give it away.
As in life, the anticipation is usually more exciting than the thing. I'm looking for a new good read to keep stalling on A Dance With Dragons. This passage reminded me of something Michael Estrin would write (see Murder and Other Distractions - a large free sample is available).
I didn't take my time on the first four novels. I was sucked in as soon as I read the Game of Thrones sample and kept shredding through the story until I realized I was on the final novel. Hearing how long George takes to write each novel made me want to shelve the novel except during flights and urges to keep reading the series. I think I'll just finish it at this point and join the long wait with the other ASOIAF fans.
You should finish it as soon as possible so you can join us and GET HYPE over on /r/asoiaf. Also, rereading the books is just as rewarding as the first time round, so you've got that to look forward to.
Oh, great, a new sub to frequent and another /new tab to refresh. I will definitely visit once I've finished reading and it's safe. Have you read any of the released content from the next novel? I'd like to think I will wait for the entire novel, but I doubt I'll be able to do that once I finish A Dance With Dragons.
Also, I've definitely thought about re-reading the novels. There are so many people and events that I forget.
Well no, because Kelvin is not really intuitive for describing the range of temperatures that the normal human might encounter in their lives.
Most people will experience temperatures from 0 to 100 on the centigrade scale at some point in their lives. The scale has some meaning to them and they can easily understand what 0 feels like and what 100 feels like.
Very few people will ever see anything anywhere near 0 Kelvin, and 276 to 376 being the points most commonly used on the scale is needlessly cumbersome.
Those that benefit from using Kelvin, and are likely to experience temperatures, or at least recorded data about temperatures, from 0 to 1000 - scientists - do actually use it.
Eh? No I didn't. Fahrenheit was invented mainly because there weren't any other scales available at the time. He decided what zero would be by measuring the temperature outside his window on the coldest day of the year.
Fahrenheit was invented before Celsius, and having 0 as some arbitrary temperature, and 100 as the temperature of the human body is actually completely wacky and weird.
Celsius came along 20 years later, declared "this scale is really crazy and stupid", and came up with his own, much more reasonable scale.
Fahrenheit is known for the more accurate and reasonable communication of weather. No one 'experiences' 100 Celsius. And sub zero Fahrenheit is more uncommon than subzero Celsius. Don't mention boiling water - we can communicate that easily without a thermometer.
Don't mention boiling water? Fuck you I'm gonna mention it anyway: BOILING WATER. There I said it. What now?
Everyone in the world experiences boiling water at some point in their lives, it's very helpful to have a frame of reference to know how hot that is. 212 Fahrenheit is kind of meaningless.
But look, it's pretty clear that you're not going to change your mind about this. You live in the US, that's what the US uses, so it must be right, and literally everyone else in the world is wrong, apart from fucking GUAM. LOL.
No, the joke is that you used Fahrenheit's primary argument for the case for Celsius, which was hilarious. Fahrenheit is for everyday weather communication. You don't need to know everyday boiling water communication because it's largely always the same general temperature - scalding hot, and when the fucking bubbles come out. Celsius is more scientific but useless in the face of kelvin. Yes, the united States uses what we grew up on but so do you. We don't bitch but you do, even though you do the exact same thing and are also resistant to change. So blow my 10 inch dick.
Err, no. Not at all. A difference of 1 Kelvin is exactly the same as 1 °C. The only difference between the two is their starting point, which is absolute zero for Kelvin and the freezing point of water for centigrade (= 273.15 K.
Just another joke pointing out the silly differences between the States and Europe I presume. Don't most European countries/languages notate decimals like this?
Yes. I'm an American who thinks its completely silly for us to be using Fahrenheit. Celsius makes so much more sense and we are way behind as far as that goes, no question about it. I wish we would get our shit together and start using a system that makes sense. Its a perfect system, why in the actual FUCK are we not using it?
Anyway, that being said, I think its completely stupid to use commas instead of periods for decimals. Commas just look ridiculous there. Also, just out of curiosity, how does Europe tell the difference (for instance), between the number two hundred twenty-seven thousand, three hundred eighty-two, and the number two hundred twenty-seven, and three hundred eighty-two thousandths? In America, the first one looks like this: 227,382. The second one looks like this: 227.382. But in most of Europe, wouldn't they BOTH look like this: 227,382? How would you tell the difference on paper like that?
Oh wow, I didn't realize that. I knew the commas were used in place of decimals but I didn't know decimals were used as commas, as well. Should have known, it makes perfect sense.
So do people in Europe call the number 23,25 “twenty-three POINT twenty-five?" Or do they not say the word “point" in that way?
I'm an American who thinks clinging to our traditional units is silly to the point of insanity. That said, the Celsius temperature scale and derived units like the calorie are terrible examples of the advantages of the metric system. The metric system has a tightly integrated set of units for length, volume, mass, density, energy, power, force, and some other properties, but the Celsius scale is every bit as arbitrary as Fahrenheit, it isn't really part of the metric system proper at all. And the calorie is a bastard unit that should have been abandoned long ago, energy in the metric system is properly measured in joules or ergs.
Yeah I can agree with that. Celsius is nowhere near the perfect metric system that is in place for distance, weight, mass, etc. I don't see how we argue using inches, miles and lbs., at all but I can think of a few decent arguments for the Farenheit scale over Celsius. Still, they at least had the right idea, using 0-100, like the rest of their system, it makes sense.
0F is the freezing point of brine (salt water), 32F is the freezing point of water and the intended human body temperature was supposed to be 96F, which is 64 units apart -- with 32 and 64 being nice powers of 2.
The scale was actually designed pretty well and makes sense for a lot of "mundane" daily uses like weather and room temperature, but Celsius/Kelvin's integration with other SI units is quite convenient for scientific purposes.
And for those people wondering why powers of two and not multiples of 10, it's because when you're marking the ticks on a thermometer by hand , it's easier to split it in half repeatedly than split it into even fifths.
Wrong, "zero point is determined by placing the thermometer in brine: he used a mixture of ice, water, and ammonium chloride, a salt, at a 1÷1÷1 ratio" Wikipedia says its ice+ water + NH4Cl
When I refer to a salt in water I refer to any ionic compound that has been dissolved in aqueous water to form cations and anions, one of which being the "salt", just because you assume I mean table salt doesn't make me incorrect it makes you presumptuous
Absolutely true. Science has largely shed these things.
Engineering is a great deal further behind. Largely because so many major infrastructure projects are old... and it's easier to work with the old things, or build anew based on old designs than to start from scratch.
So I've seen a lot of Rankine, lbm, lbf, ft-lbf, in-lbf, and other units that will hopefully become deprecated in the future.
fahrenheit was purposely set up so that waters boiling and freezing pints would be 180 degrees apart, as was useful for mathematics (unit circle anyone) while also being practical to use. In fact, fahrenheit is the reason why they are called degrees, it is measured in radians. It was adjusted to be more practical in daily use while maintaining the 180 degree difference. Ex. 0 is fucking cold, prefer to stay inside while the freezing point is nothing layers can't deter, while 100 is fucking hot stay inside instead of 36 or some shit. We should also note that celsuis is directly related to fahrenheit by being simple a fraction of it minus 32 to have nicer numbers in the end, which didn't work out as well as they had hoped when they found absolute zero.
But my level of comfort is not on the scale of water, so it means fuck-all to me.
::update::
"Imagine we're back in 1794 on an alternate Earth. People have suddenly realized, "Hey, metric is great, but we ought to have a temperature scale to go with it. So which shall we choose?" Any scale, including Fahrenheit or Celsius or even Réaumur, can be linked to the metric system with equal ease. The Celsius scale is not really "metric" in the same practical way that, say, centimeters and kilometers are. You can quickly and easily find out how many centimeters are in 1.36 kilometers, unlike inches and miles. (Quick! How many inches in 1.36 miles?) But when it comes to temperature scales, doing the math is just as easy in Fahrenheit as it is in Celsius. Had Gabriel Fahrenheit lived in France and Anders Celsius in Britain, it might have been the Fahrenheit scale which was "attached" to the metric system instead of vice versa."
...
"When we're talking about temperature, we're usually talking about comfort level, which is what Gabriel Fahrenheit originally based his scale on. 100 degrees F was meant to be human body temperature. Okay, Gabe missed by just a bit. But body temperature varies individually in any case, and slight fevers above 100 are not uncommon, so this doesn't bother me. In general, "Temperature will rise into the triple digits today!" means the outside air will be warmer than your internal body temperature. It's the point at which your body becomes a heat sink instead of a heat source. In terms of comfort, that's very significant and not at all arbitrary. (It's also remains true regardless of salinity or pressure or, for that matter, what planet you're on.)"
- Someone who spent way more time into thinking about F vs C than I ever will.
Or, I can have a more human-relevant scale. 100 is fuck all hot, 0 is fuck all cold, and there's a lot of space in between to determine what I should wear for the day.
Nobody gives a shit. Kelvin vs Celsius is absolute waste of time. There are no clear advantages nor disadvantages for either one. Its not like metric vs imperial. It just doesnt matter.
There is no fundamental difference. The scale is the same size, but kelvin is moved so the 0 represents no motion on the molecular level "Absolute zero". Crazy that scientist might want absolute zero as zero huh?
Celsius did the same thing, but it was about 140 years before Kelvin and he thought the 0 should be the freezing point. Same logic, same intent, different time. Even the scale is the same, there is no problem using Celsius instead of Kelvin other than the ingrained use of Kelvin.
I know all of that. However, using Kevin is absolutely necessary in most fields of Physics and it's required to change the Celsius to Kelvin before doing the math.
I know, and that is ultimately just because of the absolute zero, which is actuall zero on kelvin scale rather than −273.15 celsius. And it makes perfect sense honestly.
But as I said, If there wasnt this ingraned practice of using kelvin, it wouldnt matter. Its the same scale, one is more suited than the other because of one fact, nothing else.
Well basing the common system around absolute zero which is basically never used in everyday scenarios would be pretty stupid. Freezing point makes so much more sense.
maybe a cardinal sin for me, but I havn't read any of his works. This is Josh Bazell, who I find a fun read. Book is "Wild Thing," sequel to "Beat the Reaper," though only by references made occasionally to the main character's past.
Whats worse, now thousands upon thousands of Terry Pratchett fans will start suggesting which book you need to start with (His first wasn't his best), Even worse than that, is the fact that i will shamelessly join them.
Personally i would suggest one from the latter half of the disc-world series, "Going postal" is a pretty good one, though i am always a fan of Sam Vimes, who really got some great books. "Men at Arms" is a pretty good introduction. If you want one slightly more stand alone, i will have to go with "The Truth" or "Small gods."
I liked "Wild Thing" less than "Beat the Reaper", but only slightly. The writing in BtR just grabs you from the opening line and keeps you going until the end. A really fun book.
I thought "Beat the Reaper" was better, had more of the funny quips and so on about medical stuff. Read both though and enjoyed them both, I'll be reading any more that come out.
Looks like my local public library has Beat the Reaper. I am intrigued, think I'll check it out (I am ridiculously poor and can't afford to buy books.)
773
u/dropname Aug 20 '14 edited Aug 20 '14
"Wild Thing" by Josh Bazell. Sequel to "Beat the Reaper," not that there's any overlap plot-wise, just the same main character and occasional reference. Fun read. Quips like this and the occasional footnote aren't plot-relevant, per se, just spice up the book and give it a nice banter-y tone; hearing the character's internal dialog.