Technical Writing
I was recently surprised by a piece of writing that was, yes, technical without a doubt, but also really good -“good” being, for me, some combination of absorbing, accessible, illuminating, funny, and memorable. Why...
Category: language
Speaking of Matter: Review of Q.E.D.
Feynman, Richard P, Q.E.D.: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter, Princeton, 1985 I loved many things about this book, but above all the moments when Feynman let own joy, unabashed wonder at the...
Borges on Writing [book review]
Like many other Anglophone readers, I assumed for a long time that Borges wrote primarily fiction, which meant that I had been overlooking roughly half of his writing. This book of essays (Jorge Luis Borges...
What is Real? The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics: Book Review
Adam Becker, What is Real? The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics, London: John Murray, 2018. This book is, at heart, a history of one literally earth-shaking event in the history of...
Books and Islands: Book Review
I was born and raised in Minnesota, much of which lies in Ojibwe country. For years, however, I assumed that I should study my own heritage, namely German, and so I grew up in...
Why Art Does Not Exist
This title is adapted from Why Fish Don’t Exist [1] which in turn draws on Carol Kaesuk Yoon’s taxonomy study Naming Nature[2] to support its startling contention. Everyone knows what fish are. But today,...