8 ms·
Seven books I keep close because I love them
- richtersand 2mo agoHe lost me at Thesaurus
- m463 2mo agobut he explained his reasoning and roped me back in.
- mjd 2mo agoAnd I bet you won't guess what any of them are.
- rzzzt 2mo agoNumber #8 will surprise you! I keep a computer graphics book that I'm reading over and over again, just one chapter that is concerned with physically-based rendering. By now the theory is getting so ingrained I could write a path tracer in my sleep! But then again, I don't want to.
- mjd 2mo agoThe current front-runner is “The Crazy Ape” by Albert Szent-Györgyi, who won the Nobel Prize for discovering ascorbic acid. It's about how war is perpetrated by the old against the young. I've carried it next to my heart since I was fourteen. Also, it's quite short and will definitely fit in the space. A bit more about it: https://mathstodon.xyz/@mjd/116411220100252049 https://mathstodon.xyz/@mjd/116411220100252049
- euthymiclabs 2mo agoPleased to see Roget's thesaurus here. It's a fantastic resource without a great digital equivalent. I've found LLMs helpful in a pinch (and it's certainly better than a standard thesaurus), but Roget's is still the book I turn to for tricky word-picking problems.
- criddell 2mo agoI never knew Roget's was organized like that and I have had several different editions over the years. I'm one of those people who always used it as a compendium of synonyms.
- baruz 2mo agoA lot of books that call themselves Roget’s have abandoned the dual structure (classification-index) in favor of a single index structure built like a dictionary, basically constructed for people who want a different word than what they would normally use, as mjd writes, rather than people who are interested in the store-house (thesaurus) of the English language.
- leobg 2mo agoI was looking for it after reading the post, but there seem to be so many different versions and edtions. Harper, Penguin. College. The New. The Concise. The International. Some say they’re organized alphabetically. How do I know which one is the kind that the article talks about, if I buy used online and cant look into it?
- mjd 2mo agoThe one in TFA is Harper and Row, and the later 8th Edition, published by Harper Collins, is also organized the correct way. I think you'll be safe if you can get a Harper version.
- euthymiclabs 2mo agoThat's the one I have. I've had an older version in the past but misplaced it years ago. This one does the trick, but like the article author says: it is a weighty book. (I like that.)
- darreninthenet 2mo agoAre you in the USA? It's because Roget as a title isn't trademarked there so it's accepted as a name for any thesaurus. If you want the latest edition of the "real" Roget's, it's the one published by Longman.
- Razengan 2mo agoI just need The Wind in the Willows :)
- stiiv 2mo agoWhen is the best time of year to read it?
- Razengan 2mo agoWhen you're trying to fall asleep but there is too much noise in your head, I suppose :) Actually, Redwall and other slightly-mature anthropomorphic stories are also surprisingly good for that. But if I had to pick a time of year, then I'd say winter, under the blankets or by a fire.
- Razengan 2mo agoOh I forgot to say "as an audiobook" for the falling asleep to part
- embeng4096 2mo agoRedwall mentioned! Brian Jacques' other series Castaways of the Flying Dutchman is also very good.
- _whiteCaps_ 2mo agoI bought Redwall for my kids a few years ago, and was stopped by three different people while walking from the back of the store to the checkout who commented on how good the books are!
- Razengan 2mo agoThe audiobooks are narrated by the author himself! Along with a full other cast and some music. Great for all ages to doze off to
- whitten 2mo agoI’ve been told the Legacy Standard Bible is one where the translators tried to not use the same English word when the original Greek or Hebrew words are different. FYI: https://m.youtube.com/c/legacystandardbible https://m.youtube.com/c/legacystandardbible
- leetrout 2mo agoI use the New Living Translation (NLT) for casual reading and was unaware of the LSB. I'll have to get a copy, thanks. Here's a brief comparison (Titus 1) LSB: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Titus%201&version=LSB https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Titus%201&versi... NLT: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=titus%201&version=NLT https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=titus%201&versi...
- reedf1 2mo agowas expecting umberto eco after the first few - I'm sure you've either read him or desperately should!
- waffletower 2mo agoA sequel that diverges from and dwarfs its predecessor -- Deleuze & Guattari's A Thousand Plateaus (translated into English) https://www.upress.umn.edu/9780816614028/a-thousand-plateaus/ https://www.upress.umn.edu/9780816614028/a-thousand-plateaus...
- hnnbxu2nwi 2mo ago[dead]
- throw7 2mo agoNIV is what I grew up with and I kind of tired of it because of that... I have a soft spot for the KJV/NKJV.
- i_am_a_peasant 2mo agoSame, not a believer, I appreciate KJV for its artistic value and it being referenced in so much literature and cinema.
- bananamogul 2mo agoAm a believer, and appreciate the KJV for its language. However, it can be tricky, because words change over 400 years. So while there are many wonderfully translated passages that use very expressive language, you also have passages that are full of words that seem similar but actually are easy to confuse. For example: - "Prevent" in 1611 meant "go before, precede". Now it means "stop from happening". - "Suffer" in 1611 meant "allow to happen". Now it means "experience pain". - "Quick" in 1611 could mean "alive" (hence "the quick and the dead"). Now it exclusively means "fast". And there are words that are completely archaic now - "anon", "bissam", etc. Or words that are just very rare - e.g., peradventure. It's a wonderful read in many places if you want to revel in language, but modern translations are often better for understanding meaning. Not because they're "dumbed down" (as some claim) but rather because they reflect modern meanings and usage.
- i_am_a_peasant 2mo agoI respect your beliefs. I once tried to stick to Green’s Literal Translation but it got dry fast. I actually enjoyed reading the preface and made me appreciate the work Jay Green Sr put in.
- frollogaston 2mo agoI get that, but KJV is referenced so much that I find it's worth just dealing with it and learning the 1600s differences along the way. Plus those differences are interesting in of themselves.
- Joker_vD 2mo ago> After several repetitions of this, Samson decides that being shaved, blinded and crushed will be less exasperating than listening to any more of Delilah's nagging. A very off-tangent note, but I recently learned that Samson's last words, "ἀποθανέτω ἡ ψυχή μου μετὰ τῶν ἀλλοφύλων"/"moriatur anima mea cum Philisthiim", pretty much have never been translated into English literally; it's always "Let me die with the Philistines" for some reason.
- ivrit-tirvi 2mo agoI always look it up in the original Hebrew if I really want to understand, and the difference is sometimes really HUGE (or simply wrong in modern translations). It's also worth noting that some books of the Hebrew Bible are poetry (Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Song of Songs), which doesn't show at all after translation. Hebrew poetry is unique! As they say, reading the Bible in translation is like "kissing your spouse through a veil".
- 1123581321 2mo agoThrough a glass darkly, if you will. :)
- agaj-nimm 2mo agoHave you read Patton's poem by that title? It's not great but it's a fascinating window into the beliefs of a major historical figure. In my experience there's a lot of support for reincarnation in judeo-christian scripture, when you read it open to that interpretation.
- 1123581321 2mo agoI hadn't read it until now. Interesting find! I wonder why he chose that title as the teleology of I Cor 13:12 seems straightforward.
- agaj-nimm 2mo ago
- jabl 2mo agoWe read some passages from Decameron back in high school. Lovely book really, I should take the time to really read it cover to cover.
- pavel_lishin 2mo agoThere's apparently a pretty amusing adaptation on Netflix as well.
- swagmoose 2mo agoI loved the Netflix adaptation. I ignorantly missed the part about it being a book and am so excited to dive into it.
- mjd 2mo agoThe Netflix series is an "inspired by", not an adaptation. It does not have much in common with the original book other than the setting and the names of some of the characters. I enjoyed it, and I absolutely loved Tanya Reynolds, who is hilarious. But Bocaccio's Decameron it is not.
- MrJohz 2mo agoIt's very good, although it focuses mainly on the framing device and not on the stories themselves. I can imagine if you're a fan of the original book, it might feel quite shallow in comparison, but as someone who never read the book, I really enjoyed it as a black comedy about bad people in bad times.
- IncreasePosts 2mo agoA great feature of The Decameron is that it's easy to read and the chapters are short and largely self contained. It's not one of those books that you need to be in the right head space for, and have a big chunk of time where you can sit down and dig in. I read The Decameron over 6 months or so in random little moments, a chapter sitting on the subway, a chapter during lunch, while laying in bed, etc.
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- PeterStuer 2mo agoSlightly off topic: The title hits home. When I was young, books were a luxury item. Less rich people just used the library. But the library had a strict 7 books rental policy. Not enough for the avid reader that also needed a small programming reference library. So I had 3 steady, occasionally 4th, library card pool from family members to keep my bookshelf operational.
- eliben 2mo agoI also remember libraries having a very small limit back in the day, so I was surprised to find out that in the Bay Area libraries typically allow up to 100 books per card!
- PeterStuer 2mo agoMind blown. How can that work? I assume book rentals follow the usual Poisson distribution?
- stevenwoo 2mo agoIn addition to printed books, my library has audiobooks, dedicated audio players for single books, DVD movies, video games, audio books on CD that count in your rentals. For new digital releases when they see the queue get overly long, they license more copies.
- m463 2mo agoMaybe it's a way for the libraries to have more overall books/deal with crowding, if a fixed % are out.
- hnfvovpje4 2mo agoAh the classic
- xerox13ster 2mo agoGet the data off those drives now, rather than later. The longer you hope to get the data, the more hopeless it will be.
- bbkane 2mo ago> For example, Moses is easy to recognize at lower right, because of the glowing horns I'm sorry, what? Why is Moses depicted with glowing horns?
- pavel_lishin 2mo agoYeah, I thought he was easily recognizable because he's holding stone tablets. But apparently it is a thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horns_of_Moses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horns_of_Moses > The Horns of Moses are an iconographic convention common in Latin Christianity whereby Moses was presented as having two horns on his head, later replaced by rays of light.[1] The idea comes from a translation, or mistranslation, of a Hebrew term in Jerome's Latin Vulgate Bible, and many later vernacular translations dependent on that. Moses is said to be "horned", or radiant, or glorified, after he sees God who presents him with the tablets of the law in the Book of Exodus.
- madcaptenor 2mo agoHe didn't carry the stone tablets around all the time.
- pavel_lishin 2mo agoNo, but it's likely the event he's most associated with. If you asked random strangers in the street what Moses is most well known for, I'd wager bringing the stone tablets down would be #1.
- mjd 2mo agoYou don't think it would be parting the Red Sea?
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- bdr 2mo agoSpeaking of “witty, and learned, and wise, and humane”, this post is all of the above. The kind of writing that, before you’re even done reading, makes you eager to look up everything else the author has written.
- cvoss 2mo ago> knowing full well that [Delilah] will betray [Samson] It is not clear from the text that Samson is aware of the presence of Philistines the first three times. We are told they are lying in ambush in an inner chamber. We are not told that they make themselves known, attempt to subdue Samson, or interact with him in any way. Instead, we are told that Delilah announces their imminent presence, with no follow-through. (And why, after all, would they dare come in until Delilah has established that he is weak and harmless, given his reputation for strength and bloodthirst?) I don't believe Samson understands Delilah is betraying him. Not until the end when he's told her the real secret. Until that point, he may only receive her behavior as, at worst, a taunt and, at best, an attempt to pursue a kind of relational intimacy in which he makes himself vulnerable to her. And indeed, that's exactly where the story goes. He eventually makes himself vulnerable to her, both emotionally and physically. A shallow reading that concludes the characters must be dumb and naive to explain the ridiculousness of the plot is rarely the most appropriate reading. Frequently, the characters and nuances run much deeper, and a more careful and thoughtful reading is required. Ancient literature is stylistically terse compared to modern literature. Space on the manuscript is precious and not given over to things that the reader is meant to infer by reflection. And whenever a phrase or pattern is repeated, that means it is very, very significant. In this case, Samson's interaction with Delilah is not a one-off inexplicable behavior. It is one episode in a series of episodes, both preceding and following, where consistent patterns of behavior develop and escalate (e.g., his vengefulness, his vulnerability to women).
- judah 2mo agoHaving just finished the book of Judges last week, this is fresh on my mind. Finishing the story of Samson, my first reaction, like the author of the post, is that Samson is just stupid. Delilah is likely a Philistine, the nemesis of Samson and the Israelites. Her intention to betray and destroy Samson is hardly hidden in her questioning him. How can Samson be so dumb? But I thought about it deeper and how some men can be blinded by sex. In my own life, I've seen men stay with the wrong woman, tolerating all kinds of toxicity from their partner, even with all their friends telling them it's the wrong woman for him. Samson is blinded by sex. He's recorded multiple times going outside of his community, even to enemy territory, to seek out attractive women and prostitutes. Even though Delilah is seemingly open about her intentions to destroy him, he's blinded by sex. In that light, Samson isn't so dumb; he's just human.
- burnto 2mo agoWhat an inspiring post! So much surprise and depth in each selection.
- aghuang 2mo agoYeah, I just saved these books on my wish list to read later.
- alabhyajindal 2mo agoand the seven books I keep close: diary of a wimpy kid 1-7
- adolph 2mo agoHaving read these outloud to my kids many times, they have genuine insight into psychology and the condition of the child as a developing person.
- frollogaston 2mo agohttps://www.amazon.com/Diary-Wimpy-Kid-Arabic-Kene/dp/6140101638 https://www.amazon.com/Diary-Wimpy-Kid-Arabic-Kene/dp/614010...
- frollogaston 2mo agoapparently these books have been translated into many languages, even some more obscure ones (not Arabic)
- Alien1Being 2mo ago"I have trouble connecting with the thinkers of the Middle Ages. Their thinking seems to me to be frightened, so overcautious, so cramped and circumscribed, I can't read it without sadness" Completely misses the point of mediaeval philosophy. As an avowed atheist, I find the works of the Blessed Duns Scotus and St Thomas Aquinas intellectually fascinating.
- vehemenz 2mo ago> This of course is the cornerstone of Western culture and no well-educated person can be without a knowledge of what is in [the Bible]. Knowing what's in the Bible isn't sufficient. You need to understand the full genealogy of the Judeo-Christian tradition. You need to understand Canaanite cults, the broad influence of both Zoroastrianism (via the Achaemenid Empire) and Hellenism, and how these cultures converged to form proto-Judaistic clerical class (or at least something like it), which eventually crystallized into the synagogue tradition and "modern" Jewish practice during the Hasmonean Dynasty.
- dev_dan_2 2mo agoThat is quite a bold claim you make there! Since you seem to hold a strong conviction, could you please make more explicit what concretely one would not know / missinterprete regarding the Western culture, not knowing anything about those concepts you listed, but knowing the bible itself back and forth? And to what excent one would need to dive deep into those concepts? Or in other words: What fundamental concepts in Western culture will we understand if we take you on your word and spend time into understanding those concepts? Bullet points / pointers would be enough already!
- vehemenz 2mo agoMy convictions are pretty hollow because I'm demonstrating the pointlessness--or arbitrariness, if you like--of gatekeeping the ranks of the "well-educated," as the author tries to do here.
- ejtaal3 2mo agoWell played sir, well played :)
- dev_dan_2 2mo agoDoh! Fell for it, I guess ;) Hmm, while I agree that this particular book selection could come of as rather heady, and the author is obviously not doing an exercise in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_English either - but just gauging from the post itself, I find it plausible enough that the auther indeed just loves those books. My red flags: Putting others or other works down, pretending everyone is on the same level of knowledge ("everybody would agree that...", "It's pretty easy to see that...") and in putting the focus onto ones own (percieved or real) abilities. I see nothing wrong in engaging in complex, deep works, but I think some sense of humility should be at least subtly present; If that is not the case over and over again, I either assume that at least some form of signaling is going on, or that the author is genuinely that much out of my leage enough to make it hard for me to connect (I meet people like this in real life, they were often also nice people too, but I could simply not keep up - which is fine, not every crowd is for me and I am not for every crowd...) On the bible itself: if we are strictly talking about the culture of the western world, I do not think it is controversial claim the bible has been and still is a fundamental element, for better or worse, and often also due to critics and their thoughts. Trying to make sense of the western culture without the bible could be compared to trying to make sense of chinese culture without the writings of Confucius - or a maritine biologist trying to explain the oceanic ecosystem, while working on the hypothesis that geothermic energy cannot interact with oceanic life at all. There will simply be wide, gaping spots in knowledge, and plenty of hacks needed to fix them somewhat.
- UncleOxidant 2mo ago> It [The Bible] is full of great wisdom and great stories, and also cruelty, evil lies, and reminders that the world now is in many ways better than it was because people are better. Are people better? And if they are what made them better?
- WalterBright 2mo agoI discovered that when I want to find the translation of a German word, it is far quicker to open a dictionary and flip to the word than open google, select the language, and type in the word. Flipping pages in a book still has not been matched by computer text.
- frollogaston 2mo agoBinary search is strong
- schoen 2mo agoStrong as a log, one might say!
- WalterBright 2mo agoIf I was designing an E-reader, flipping pages would be a problem I'd work hard to solve.
- ntdef 2mo agoThe New International Version (NIV) translation of the Bible is by far the worst translation on almost any metric you can think of, except maybe understanding how evangelical Christians read the Bible in the 90s and 2000s. The NIV has so many inexcusable translations that reinforce a theological worldview that matched the conversation on atonement and justification that was happening in the 90s and 2000s. There's a great catalog out there of the most egregious translations in the NIV [1]. One such example: > Romans 7:18 — The NIV here translates σάρξ (sarx) as “sinful nature” even though this implies later Augustinian doctrine on original sin that is not intended by the original writer. In contrast, the NRSV correctly chooses to translate this tricky Pauline term more literally as “flesh”. Are you interested in a readable Bible that flows well to modern English ears? The New Living Translation (NLT) is fantastic and very underrated. I recommend reading the Psalms in the NLT since much of the language of the Psalms being in a higher register in the NIV and other translations doesn't land as well, but reading the Psalms in NLT makes it much more relatable and human. I find the way it reads refreshing, and it's based on more modern scholarship. Are you interested in latest scholarly understanding of the Bible? The NRSV is the consensus version (as much as there could be one). Are you interested in understanding the Bible as American Evangelical Christians read it today? That's currently the English Standard Version (ESV), which many churches have switched to as the NIV has lost favor in Reformed circles. [1]: https://isthatinthebible.wordpress.com/articles-and-resources/deliberate-mistranslation-in-the-new-international-version-niv/ https://isthatinthebible.wordpress.com/articles-and-resource...
- agaj-nimm 2mo agoIt's been eye opening to read books from the Old Testament in the word-by-word translation of ancient Hebrew. A lot of the semantic accretion over the millennia comes off and you get a more raw iron age tribal wisdom glowing through. One example is that often Exodus goes from narrative to descriptions of genealogy tree in modern translations. It happens that words interpreted as names of people are also abstract nouns and these passages can also be read as aphorisms. I haven't looked deep into that but it makes way more sense to me that narrative is punctuated by such reflections on "Wisdom unites with Patience and beget Lasting Wealth than breaking into describing marriages and lineages then going back to the story...
- apercu 2mo ago[dead]
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- ck2 2mo ago> The four em-dashes were organically cultivated and sustainably harvested
- jdkee 2mo agoSecond Frege to Gödel. It is a great introduction to a study of the foundations of mathematics.
- verelo 2mo agoIs no one going to comment on the goggly eyes or 8mm data tape? You people disappoint me.
- roughly 2mo agoThis is a solid collection, one that shows real intellectual curiosity. Something that would be interesting to add would be something that falls entirely out of the canon of Western philosophy - you have what is by all measures a diverse sampling of the various permutations of the intellectual procession of western thinking, but nothing reflecting traditions from outside that procession, eg Chinese, Islamic, Indian, or even Mayan or others from the Americas. It’d be interesting to pull from something entirely outside the intellectual tradition you’re well steeped in, to take a play horizontally instead of vertically. (Note this isn’t a knock on the author for staying within western tradition, which is both deep and interesting and also diverse in a way which provides a wide breadth of ways of thinking about the world; rather, getting outside the tradition entirely would provide yet another perspective on that tradition, eg its bounds and the lines it doesn’t realize its prescribing itself within even as it changes dramatically over different eras.)
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- mjd 2mo agoI do own more than these seven books.
- roughly 2mo agoI mean, yeah, I'd presume, but you also describe these books in a way that bespeaks a deep familiarity with the western canon. I'm curious what you've got that's off that track? (Genuinely, I'm not pushing this as a critique or thinking ill of you, your descriptions of those books get into some deep parts of the evolution of western thinking that most people don't approach or don't appreciate. I'm pushing the outsider angle because I think you see and appreciate the intellectual history there well enough that I'd be interested in what speaks to you from outside that tradition, or what you hear from works that are outside the tradition.)
- mjd 2mo agoSince you asked, I took a survey around the office. I have the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the one edited by Wallis Budge. I have a Chinese translating dictionary, a Chinese etymological dictionary, and a Hawai'ian dictionary. I have the Yasmine Seale translation of the Thousand and One Nights. I have the Travels of Ibn Battutah. I have Mahatma Gandhi's autobiography. I have a book by Ichisada Miyazaki about the history of the infamous civil service examinations in China. There's a book of poetry by Palestinian poet Ahmad Almallah and Weinberger's little book comparing 19 translations of the same poem by Wang Wei. I have "Erotic Art of the East" by Rawson, an illustrated edition of the Rubaiyat, and a history of Iran by someone named Axworthy. I have a couple of books about pedagogy by A. Ya. Khinchin, who was Soviet Russian; I don't know whether you'd consider that "Western". Of those, only the Thousand and One Nights and the Book of the Dead are anything like canonical. But of the seven I talked about in the article, only the Bible and the Decameron are canonical. I wouldn't have mentioned the dictionaries, except that one of the books in the original article was a thesaurus. But most of the books I keep in the office are technical (lots of mathematics) or are more or less contemporary Western fiction. I think some people might see my reading habits as those of a dilettante with a lack of serious focus, and I don't think I would care to dispute that. As I said, my brain is full of stuff, and and what's in it doesn't always make sense or go together with the other stuff.
- mandolingual 2mo agoThese are indeed seven of the kinds of books I would expect to see in this kind of post shared on HN.
- rsynnott 2mo ago> I have trouble connecting with the thinkers of the Middle Ages. Their thinking seems to me to be frightened, so overcautious, so cramped and circumscribed, I can't read it without sadness for the way that medieval Christianity strangled the human spirit for so long. As I understand it, particularly for the bizarre natural sciences stuff, a lot of this is actually _Aristotle's_ fault, not Christianity's. Adding the Pseudodoxia Epidemica to my list of things to read if I ever have infinite time.
- physicalecon 2mo ago[dead]
- mjd 2mo agoOne really nice thing about Pseudodoxia Epidemica is that you don't have to read it cover to cover. You can pick it up, read the bit about whether “a Diamond is made soft, or broke by the blood of a Goate”, or what he has to say about Pope Joan (a woman who supposedly tricked the college of cardinals into electing her pope) and put it down gain ten minutes later. It's great bathroom reading.
- themadturk 2mo agoIt's good to read Ada Palmer's Inventing The Renaissance, because understanding whatever the Renaissance is (and Palmer says it is many different things), you need to understand the Middle Ages, since the Renaissance started with the fallout of Middle-Ages Christianity's love of Aristotle and ended with the beginning of real science. Plus it's a fun book.
- jeffbee 2mo agoI assume the first one is "High Performance HTTP Servers"
- MezzoDelCammin 2mo agoComenius! I'll be damned—this is the first time I've seen anyone actually reading his Orbis Pictus. There's a country whose educational system basically revolves around Comenius (the Czech Republic). And even there I don't personally know anyone who I'd be 100% sure has actually read the whole book!
- slowin 2mo ago> This of course is the cornerstone of Western culture and no well-educated person can be without a knowledge of what is in it. > I would like to understand the world I live in, and there is no way to understand 21st-century America without understanding the Bible. Hard disagree! Yes, many of the more odious directions society has taken have been backed by Christianity (Christian Zionism anyone?) but we're already over-exposed to this stuff as is. I'm an atheist and I hate that I've been subjected to Christian propaganda my whole life as someone born and raised in the US. It's been a constant parade of ignorance. Want to really understand the true nature of the US in the 21st century? Drop the bible and read Settlers instead: https://readsettlers.org/ https://readsettlers.org/
- mangodrunk 2mo agoHave you tried living somewhere else or would you like to? For what it’s worth, several societies who were and are predominantly Christian have done quite well, such that most people immigrate to them as opposed to other countries.
- slowin 2mo agoI’ve lived in other Christian countries and also don’t like it. I’m actually more interested in indigenous American culture and history.
- mangodrunk 2mo agoCan you live in a majority indigenous area? Would that be appropriate if you are not indigenous? I say this because I do think many are too critical of Christian countries without ever experiencing another country. They don’t know how good they have it.
- slowin 2mo agoI think you’re confusing geospatial happenstance with religion. No, I don’t like living in a culture that believes a guy came back from the dead. Especially when it’s enriched via colonization. I don’t “have it good”, I literally live in an intellectual wasteland. Have you ever been to the US? I’ve been to many countries and Christian culture is one of my least favorites. What makes you think I’m not indigenous? I never said that.
- navigate8310 2mo agoSince you liked Orbis Pictus, you'll definitely appreciate The Way Things Work
- mjd 2mo agoThanks! I'm a big fan of David Macaulay's other books, but I've never liked _The Way Things Work_. _Castle_ and _Umderground_, though I love.
- schoen 2mo agoThere are some impressive British children's picture dictionaries, especially the DK Children's Encyclopedia, but also some others that I can't quite put my finger on. A little closer to Comenius compared to that particular Macaulay: more direct and broader in scope and less jokey. What I most appreciated in The Way Things Work is that he gives a complete working description of the boolean half-adder built out of logic gates, and I think how to connect them to make larger adders. Remember, in our very recent past, it was actually hard for little kids to find explanations of how to do arithmetic with logic circuits? Macaulay did his bit (so to speak) to fix that amidst tons of weird mammoth jokes. By the way, I've been to one of Comenius's old schools (Herborn, Germany) and grave (Naarden, Netherlands).
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- rramadass 2mo ago> The Bible (New International Version, large print) > This of course is the cornerstone of Western culture and no well-educated person can be without a knowledge of what is in it. This is just dogma and factually wrong. The cornerstone of Western Culture is Greek Philosophies/Texts added-to/modified-with Indian/Chinese/Islamic/etc. philosophies/texts.
- magarnicle 2mo agoThe fact you used "cornerstone" like this somewhat undermines your point, since its figurative use originated from the Bible. You might not like it, but you can't deny it's influence.
- rramadass 2mo agoYou are reading things which were not said nor implied in my comment. I merely echoed the phrase used by the OP article (should have used quotes to make it clearer). When you have had great Greek (Classical and Hellenistic) schools of philosophy and later practiced/extended by the Romans which could justifiably be called "cornerstone of Western culture", to point to a single book like The Bible and attempt to place it on the same pedestal is silly. In fact the opposite may be true viz. when western civilization broke away from the shackles of biblical thinking is when the "Scientific Revolution" happened leading to the science/technology driven world that we live in today. Of course the bible had a lot of influence on western culture but one could argue whether it was not more detrimental than beneficial. There is more to be learnt from Lucretius' De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things) than from The Bible.