the original spider-man comics: awesome (review)

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I recently got these from the library.  I read some to my 3-year-old, but then I couldn’t wait.  A rollicking good time.

first-class entertainment

This collection of the original 22 magazine appearances of Spider-Man* is awesome. I’m not an experienced Spider-Man fan; I mostly know him from the recent Tobey Maguire films (good, better, bad). Spider-Man is a great character: trying to do the right thing and beat criminals while struggling to make financial ends meet (at one point he tries to convince a sports card manufacturer to make Spider-Man trading cards – to no avail), trying not to lose his temper with kids at school (remember he’s just a teenager), and seeking to maintain a relationship while constantly disappearing (to turn into Spider-Man). His adolescent arrogance often gets the better of him and his luck turns sour as often as sweet (except in a fight, in which it turns sour less often 🙂 ).

The dialogue in these comics is hilarious, often because of its clunky exposition. I’d say “unintentionally,” but Stan Lee – the writer – seems savvy enough to see the joke. Here are a couple of lines I loved:

Dr Doom, in a thought bubble: “When one is a master of science, as I am, there is nothing which cannot be accomplished!”

Mysterio, in the midst of a battle with Spider-man: “I might as well tell you the whole story – for I shall see to it that you never tell anyone else!” [followed by the whole story**]

The book is full of visits from other superheroes: the Fantastic Four appear most prominently, but we also see the Hulk, and have cameos from the X-Men, Giant-Men, the Wasp, Dr Strange, Iron Man, and many more. The villains are endless and creative: my favorite is the oh-so-dated leopard skin pants-wearing Kraven the Hunter. And there isn’t a period in the whole book: all exclamation points and question marks.

This is first-class entertainment.

* Includes Amazing Fantasy #15, The Amazing Spider-Man #1 – 20, and The Amazing Spider-Man Annual #1.

** Reminiscent of that scene in The Great Muppet Caper when Miss Piggy asks her new employer why she just told her all about her personal life, to which the employer responds, Exposition!

book review: To Draw Closer To God, by Henry Eyring

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My mother-in-law gave me this sweet book for my birthday.  I must have marked up two-thirds of the pages.  Highly recommended.  My thoughts:

exceptional collection of thought and counsel

In this selective collection of discourses, Brother Eyring teaches us how to hear the Lord, how to heed, and how to help others. In almost every chapter, I found myself making abundant marginal notes, sometimes to remind myself to implement a piece of counsel in my life, sometimes to emphasize how true a point felt, and other times to make sure that I remember a point for when the opportunity to apply to arises. The counsel I read in this book has affected how I read the scriptures, how I pray, how I listen to lessons and talks in church, and how I will approach friends struggling with their faith. These aren’t changes because of what seem like good ideas (although they are) but rather because the teachings feel true.

Perhaps this book is better than the average “Teachings” volume because of its selectiveness. With only 15 talks, each talk in this slim volume exhibits insights and inspiration.

I recommend this book highly, as one of the two most spiritual (non-scriptural) volumes I have ever read; the other is Yearning for the Living God: Reflections from the Life of F. Enzio Busche. I intend to gift this book liberally.

Many of the talks are also available on-line. I list the talks and where they were given, with an asterisk by those I found particularly helpful during this reading. I’m sure that next time I will be inspired by different passages. 
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my little prediction experiment

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Every day after work I walk to a designated location and wait in a long line of people while cars drive by and pick us up so they can use the carpool lane: it’s called the Slug Line.

 

A couple of months ago I was curious as to when was the optimal time to arrive at the slug line.  Inspired by the exhortation at the end of Atul Gawande’s excellent Better and the enthusiasm throughout Ian Ayer’s, well, extremely enthusiastic Super Crunchers, I started collecting data.

 

I still don’t have enough data to give me an optimal arrival time.  BUT if a run a simple regression of the time it takes to get a car on the number of people in front of me in line, I get a highly significant prediction: each extra person adds about 30 seconds to my wait.  For the last week, this has predicted my wait time almost exactly.

It’s refreshing to see a pattern in something – like so many – that appears completely unpredictable at the outset.  And now I can tell my wife when I’ll be home.

Europe, by Mazisi Kunene

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Europe, your foundations

Are laid on a rough stone.

Your heart is like cobwebs

That are dry in the desert.

 

Your children fill us with fear:

They are like the young of a puff adder

Who devour the flesh of their parent.

 

Once I believe the tales.

Once I believed you had breats

Over-flowing with milk.

 

I saw you rushing with books

From which the oracles derive their prophecies.

I heard you in the forest

Crying like wolves,

Breaking the bones of your clans.

 

Continue reading “Europe, by Mazisi Kunene” →

my secret

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I always keep a book to read at the office when I need a break.  Right now it’s Robert Bates’ new book, When Things Fell Apart: State Failure in Late-Century Africa.

 

BUT hidden under a pile of papers is the other book: Marvel Comics’ Essential Amazing Spider-Man, Volume 1.  The first Spider-Man comics ever, filled with nuclear radiation and sprinkled with Cold War terror.  Best line ever, from The Vulture:

 

Your flippancy is wasted on me, spider-man! you’re just whistling in the dark! i know an icy fear must be gripping your heart right now!

book review: Mr. Chickee’s Funny Money, by Christopher Paul Curtis (read by Joe Holt)

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My wife has read most of Curtis’s other young adult fiction and enjoyed it, so we listened to this together. Quite a ride. My thoughts:totally absurd, totally funny

How can I not love a book with a sassy magical dictionary and a cuadrillion-dollar bill with the hardest working man in show business on the front?

In this wonderfully zany tale, nine-year-old Steven – living in Flint, Michigan – receives a strange piece of currency from an elderly neighbor. Steven, his friend Russell, and Russell’s giant dog (commonly mistaken for a bear) try to figure out whether the bill is real and end up eluding secret agents (you can tell because of the “Secret Agent” sign on the car), sparring with an ancient dictionary with customized rude messages written on the copyright page every time Steven opens it, and Much, Much More.

This is wacky fun; my wife and I had great time listening to it on a road trip. (We listened to the audiobook read by Joe Holt: just 3 discs long.)

There is a sequel (Mr Chickee’s Messy Mission) which I will definitely listen to (although not immediately: I don’t want the fun to wear off).

Note on content: There is at least one interjection which will strike most people as unexceptional but may offend those sensitive to use of God’s name. Not prevalent.

make your own pdfs for free

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I have recently been frustrated because I don’t have Adobe Acrobate professional on my computer and so have not been able to make PDF files.So a friend sent me to download Cute PDF, a free application which lets you make your own PDFs. Once you install it, Cute PDF is listed as one of your printers: just print to it, and it then asks you for a file name and location for your new PDF file.

My life has become easier.

the chief value of print libraries? poor indexing!

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One of my favorite sociologists, University of Chicago professor James Evans, had an article in last week’s Science.  Here’s the main finding:

As more journal issues came online, the articles referenced tended to be more recent, fewer journals and articles were cited, and more of those citations were to fewer journals and articles.

The full abstract is here.  But here’s my favorite line from the article:

This research ironically intimates that one of the chief values of print library research is poor indexing.

The idea is that “by drawing researchers through unrelated articles, print browsing and perusal may have facilitated broader comparisons and led researchers into the past.”