The Explorer King by Robert Wilson

Clarence King was probably the most well-known American scientist of his time. It doesn’t hurt that his scientific reputation was built on exploration of the then still wild west of the United States of that he could spin a tale. Robert Wilson recounts the life of the accomplished geologist in The Explorer King.

King was born in 1842. He was raised in Newport, Massachusetts. He was educated at Yale’s Sheffield Scientific School.

As a young man, King was enamored of art critic John Ruskin. Ruskin thought the rugged Alps of Europe to be the best subject of art for their beauty, colorfulness, ruggedness and variety. When he met western geologists and mountaineers through mentors at Sheffield, he wanted to be part of it.

He headed out for California in 1863 and became part of the state’s geologic survey. He would spend the next decade studying the geology and geography of the American west, especially its mountains. He showed great physical prowess and courage as a mountaineer.

After working on the California survey, he went on to lead surveys. In 1864, he was chosen to lead a survey of Yosemite.

He built on his reputation from the Yosemite survey to lobby Congress to fund a survey of the 40^th Parallel, roughly the route the transcontinental railroads would follow. Though it was under the auspices of the Army Corp of Engineers, it was the first federally-funded scientific endeavor that was completely staffed by civilians. While working on this survey, he was the first to discover active glaciers in the U.S. His team published new methods of silver smelting to make the mines for productive (the survey’s first report dealt with mining in order to show the commercial value of their research to money-conscious Congressmen).

The 40^th Parallel survey made King famous, though not because of the many contributions to science that came from it. King’s team heard rumors of a diamond discovery in Colorado. It would have been very embarrassing for them to have walked over such a valuable mineral resource without observing it. They tracked down the site of the discovery and determined it was a hoax; the site had been planted with rough diamonds and other uncut gemstones that the con men had bought mostly with money from their marks. Stories of massive fraud sells newspapers, especially when the names of big money men in San Francisco and New York are attached to it. King was the hero of the story.

When the U.S. Geological Survey was created, King was appointed to be its first director. His career as a scientist was already on the decline. He would turn his attention to making money in mining, but he would not be successful. He would have no money when he died.

This leads to an interesting point about King, though it is not the focus of Wilson’s biography. King had nothing to leave for his secret family. He was married to a black woman. This was a very unusual thing at the time. To protect his reputation, he kept the marriage a secret. He did not even reveal to his wife his real identity until shortly before he died (she knew him as James Todd). His friend John Hay provided for Ada Copeland Todd (and the five children she had with King) after King died in 1901.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

A Professor, a President, and a Meteor by Cathryn J. Prince

The Fifth Heart by Dan Simmons

Sea of Glory by Nathaniel Philbrick

Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose

Wilson, Robert. The Explorer King: Adventure, Science, and the Great Diamond Hoax—Clarence King in the Old West. New York: Scribner, 2006.

Move Ahead with Possibility Thinking by Robert H. Schuller

In many ways Robert H. Schuller was the model of the modern megachurch pastor. He can be seen as a successor to Norman Vincent Peale in his blend of religion and self-help. They both preached that what you think matters.

Schuller wrote about what he called possibility thinking. He put it in the title of his book Move Ahead with Possibility Thinking.

Possibility thinking is a focus on how valuable ideas can be implemented and worthy goas achieved. Schuller contrasts this with impossibility thinking, a focus on why something won’t work or can’t be done. He believed a lot of great ideas were killed at conception in a rush to find problems, but it doesn’t have to be that way.

Move Ahead has the feel of a how-to book. Each chapter looks at some aspect of practicing possibility thinking. He breaks them down into a list of steps; he even numbers each step. He elaborates on the steps, usually including an illustrative story. Many of these stories draw on his experience founding a new church in California or on the experiences of members of his congregation. Other come from famous people, many of whom he had met.

Schuller speaks often of Christ and his religious faith. However, if you removed these references from Move Ahead, it would still be a self-help book—just a little shorter.

Robert H. Schuller also wrote

Life's Not Fair, but God is Good

Self Love

You Can Become the Person You Want to Be

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Be All You Can Be! by John C. Maxwell

I Declare by Joel Osteen

Positive Imaging by Norman Vincent Peale

The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale

Reposition Yourself by T. D. Jakes

You Can if You Think You Can by Norman Vincent Peale

You Can, You Will by Joel Osteen

Schuller, Robert H. Move Ahead with Possibility Thinking. 1967. Old Tappan, NJ: Spire Books, 1978.

The Hunter adapted by Darwyn Cook

Cook, Darwyn. Richard Stark’s The Hunter. San Diego: IDW, 2009.
ISBN: 978-1-60010-493-0

Donald Westlake (writing as Richard Stark) introduced hardboiled thief Parker in a series of novels in the 1960s. The novels have been adapted to film, but Darwyn Cook’s comic book adaption is the first authorized to use the name Parker.



Parker is not a gentleman thief, which is an oxymoron anyway. He is probably a sociopath. At the least, he has no regard for human life, property, law or much of anything else. He is as heartless and hardboiled as they come.

In The Hunter, Parker is on a cross-country mission of revenge. He narrowly escaped being killed, at the hand of his beautiful but week-willed wife, in a double-cross after a job to rob gunrunners. He cut was to e $90,000. He walked from California to Chicago and killed his way through a gaggle of gangsters to claims his cut and drive away with a price on his head.

Parker is horrible, but he is interesting and The Hunter is full of action. It’s understandable how the character became popular.

In this adaption, one can enjoy both a classic hardboiled story and the art of Cook. Cook is one of the greatest hardboiled illustrators in comics. His drawing conveys the sensibility of this type of story. In this book, he makes the bold choice of using just two colors, which conveys a sense of the graphic design of the ‘60s. The style is both simplified like a cartoon and complex, carefully designed, even painterly.

Many comic adaptations are not very good, just abridgements with colored drawings, but this book delivers. Cook tells the story with art and words. His drawings don’t just illustrate events; they convey the action information about the characters. There is a long sequence at the beginning of the book that that tells the reader a lot about Parker without words or even showing his face until the end, like a shot from a movie. Even the opening page, with just a few words and a composition reminiscent of Will Eisner, shows a lot about what kind of man is Parker.

Darwyn Cook also wrote Will Eisner’s The Spirit.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril by Paul Malmont
Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett

Making the American Body by Jonathan Black

In Making the American Body, journalist Jonathan Black explores the history of health and fitness from aerobics to Zumba. Promotion of physical fitness goes back to the founding of the United States; Black notes that Benjamin Franklin praised the use of dumbbells. Franklin was known to be a fan of swimming, too. It began to gain some momentum in the middle 1800s when German immigrants brought the gymnasium (they called it a Turnverein) to the U.S.

I was draw to the book because it has a touch of Missouriana in the person of Bernarr Macfadden, self-proclaimed “Father of Physical Culture.” Macfadden had a classic story of the early bodybuilder. He was a sick, weak kid from the Ozarks who was transformed into a paragon of masculine pulchritude by his commitment to weight training, healthy eating and clean living. Unlike some of his contemporaries, Macfadden believed clean living included an active sex life and he campaigned against prudery. His magazines, headed by Physical Culture, featured photographs of nearly naked men and women in swimsuits.

Fitness promotion is a small world, and many of its leading figures are connected. Macfadden organized a contest (probably fixed) that crowned Charles Atlas the “World’s Most Beautiful Man.” Atlas’ ads in pulp magazines and comic books are probably some of the most well-known ever, especially the bully of the beach ad. The story of this ad, told in comics form, is based on a real event in Atlas’ life when he was shamed by a muscular life guard for his scrawny form and weakness while on a date at the beach.

Macfadden and many others were inspired by Prussian strongman Sandow. They saw him at the Chicago Columbian Exposition, where his show was produced by Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr.

California became a focus of health and fitness trend that would spread across the country. Santa Monica’s Muscle Beach was a place for weight lifters and gymnasts to have fun and show off. Steve Reeves, known for playing Hercules in several films, was a product of Muscle Beach. Jack LaLanne, another wimpy kid transformed, opened gyms, brought workouts to television, and encouraged women to exercise and do strength training.

Other trends gained popularity, especially fitness focused on cardiovascular health. This brought into popular culture Dr. Kenneth Cooper, a physician to astronauts whose 1968 book Aerobics launched an industry. That industry provided a career for Richard Simmons and a second career for Jane Fonda, who was the first to emphasize exercise as a way for women to lose weight (though this was an unspoken appeal long before the 1970s). Bodybuilding made a comeback, though, especially fueled by the popularity of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

I’m not especially interested in the health and fitness industry, but I found this book to be very interesting. It provides a historical context for many of the health and fitness trends that are still part of American culture.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

American Nerd by Benjamin Nugent

Empires of Light by Jill Jonnes

The Fifth Heart by Dan Simmons

The Power Makers by Maury Klein

The Relaxation Response by Herbert Benson with Miriam Z. Klipper

The Ten-Cent Plague by David Hajdu

Black, Jonathan. Making the American Body: The Remarkable Saga of the Men and Women Whose Feats, Feuds, and Passions Shaped Fitness History. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2013.

Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett

Hammett, Dashiell. Red Harvest. 1929. New York: Vintage, 1992.

“I first heard Personville called Poisonville by a red-haired mucker named Hickey Dewey in the Big Ship in Butte. He also called his shirt a shoit.” These opening lines of Red Harvest are the first time the Continental Op will make a joke of Personville, and it’s the only funny one. The city is poison, run by criminals in every sector. They were brought in by the mining company to break the union, and now the head of the company is ready to be rid of them. The Continental Op is the man for the job.

He does it by turning the leaders of the various gangs, including the corrupt police department, against each other. Cozy relationships give way to war. Even the Continental Op becomes infected. He’s not above bending the rules, but he finds himself taking a bloodthirsty joy from the vengeful mayhem.



The lead character doesn’t have a name, but he is a prototypical hardboiled detective, written by an author who made the mold many others have used. He is tough, smart, aggressive, willing to do what it takes. He has a sense of justice, but doesn’t think it is always found in the justice system. In the Continental Op’s world of 1920’s California, police and court corruption are rampant. That goes double for Personville.

Violence and corruption are the theme of the book. It’s a story with roots deep in selfishness and pride. No one is above breaking the law to serve his or her own interests. The sins of one man beget a host of others. The sad conclusion is that a violence and deception is needed to break a violent and corrupt system, pushing into collapsing on itself.

Of course, no one picks up this book expecting a sweet romance of good overcoming evil. When, in closing, the Continental Op says Personville “was developing into a sweet-smelling thornless bed of roses,” one suspects he is speaking with the same dark, ironic humor with which he started the tale.

Six Easy Pieces by Richard Feynman

Richard Feynman is possibly the most famous physicist and popularizer of physics of the 20^th Century. He was involved in the Manhattan Project, won a Nobel Prize, served on the Rogers Commission, which investigated the disaster of the space shuttle Challenger, and wrote several popular books on physics in addition to his scientific contributions.

One of those popular books was Six Easy Pieces. It is a collection of lectures prepared by Feynman for freshman and sophomore classes at California Institute of Technology (part of the larger collection Lectures on Physics).

It is also one of Feynman’s most popular books, possibly because of its breadth and simplicity. The book covers a wide range of physics from basic ideas about the structure of matter to physics in relation to other sciences, classical mechanics (Newton’s physics) and quantum mechanics.

It is easy in the sense that Feynman assumes his audience has a background in math and science typical of a high school graduate in 1962. There is very little math. Instead, Feynman takes an approach that focuses on commonly known facts, observation and reasoning. Readers won’t need a semester of calculus to follow this book.

Possibly the best thing about Six Easy Pieces is that it offers a view into the way a physicist thinks that is accessible to many people, even people with minimal scientific education. It is easy to think of science as an overwhelming pile of facts. Feynman’s book illustrates that science is also, and more importantly, a method of applying reason and experimentation to learn about the world we live in. The scientific understanding we have now was built on centuries of consideration, study, experimentation and evaluation that is often iterative, challenging, reconsidering and modifying scientific knowledge that was once widely accepted.

The book holds up well after more than 50 years. I might recommended it to a high schooler who is considering a career in science, especially physics, or anyone who is looking for an introduction or re-introduction to physics from someone who knew the subject well enough to not overcomplicate it.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Einstein’s Clocks, Poincare’s Maps: Empires of Time by Peter Galison 

Newton and the Counterfeiter by Thomas Levenson

The Physics of Superheroes by James Kakalios

Planck by Brandon R. Brown

A fictional version of Feynman appears in The Astounding, the Amazing, and the Unknown by Paul Malmont (235).

Feynman, Richard P. Six Easy Pieces. New York: Basic Books, 1963.

Glossary

One of the most important books in a reader’s library is the dictionary. Here are a few words I’ve had to look up in my reading or that I thought were noteworthy.

Amended March 7, 2011

A

Acheron – a river from Greek mythology over which the dead were ferried by Charon

adamantine – hard, unyielding (the last syllable may be pronounced like teen, tin or tine, which could come in handy for rhyming)

aerolith, n. – a meteor (such as on might see in the empyrean)

aliquot – an adjective that describes something that is an exact divisor, or factor
Dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster, OneLook

For example, when you factor a number, such as 60, you find its aliquot parts, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20 and 30.

angstrom, n. – unit of length equal to one ten-millionth of a millimeter (10-7 mm), mainly used to express electromagnetic wavelengths (named for Swedish astronomer Andes Johann Ångström)
Dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster, OneLook

aprioristic, adj. – preconceived, or considered valid independent of observation or evidence

“The grid for historical interpretation is more than something that facilitates the selection and interpretation of evidence: it offers an all-encompassing aprioristic view of reality into which the phenomena of history must be made to fit, whether by fair means or foul.”

-Carl R. Trueman, Histories and Fallacies

Argus – a giant with 100 eyes from Greek mythology

C

cagoule – a hooded, weatherproof jacket
Cambridge Dictionary, TheFreeDictionary

canescent – downy, as in the whitish or grayish down on some plants
Dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster Online

caul – part of the amnion sometimes covering the head of a child at birth
Dictionary.com, OneLook

celebutante – a young woman who is famous for no discernable reason (from celebrity + debutante)

cicerone – a guide for sightseers (pronounced with a long e at the end)

cloaca – a sewer
Dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster Online

concertina – noun musical instrument resembling an accordion with hexagonal bellow and button-keys – verb to fold or collapse like a concertina
Dictionary.com, OneLook

crepuscular – resembling or active at twilight
Dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster Online

cuprous – containing univalent copper
Dictionary.com, OneLook

curlew, n. – a shorebird with a long beak that curves down, of the genus Numenius

D

dalton, n. – unit of mass used to express the mass of atomic and subatomic particles equal to 1/12 the mass of the carbon-12 atom; another name for an atomic mass unit (named for English chemist John Dalton)
TheFreeDictionary, Encarta, YourDictionary

disembogue – pour out
Dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster Online

demimonde, n. – women with wealthy lovers who have lost standing in society because of indiscretions or promiscuity; courtesans or prostitutes (an individual woman of this class is a demimondaine)
Dictionary.com

“Humiliation no longer threatens the individual who hasn’t read a book, but the one who has; reading is seen as a degrading task that may be left to a woman of the demimonde.”
-Pierre Bayard, How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read

doyenne – a woman with seniority in her profession or organization (feminine form of doyen)

“Sue Carter of the University of California at Irvine is famous as the doyenne of research on this potent hormone of attachment [oxytocin], which she has studied extensively in the prairie vole.”
-Stephen Post & Jill Neimark, Why Good Things Happen to Good People

E

elegiac, adj. - expressing sorrow or mourning

empyrean – sky

“The very empyrean seemed to be a secret.”
-G. K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday

endogenous – internally originated
Dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster, TheFreeDictionary, Encarta

“Because the internally focused [performance assessment and evaluation] frameworks of the [community water system] sector are based on endogenous measures of performance, they narrowly asses performance in terms of core processes, which differ by [community water system].”
-Jeffrey W. Rogers & Garrick E. Louis. “A standard efficiency metric for evaluation performance of community water systems.” Journal AWWA 97.10 (2005): 79-80.

F

fissiparous, adj. – tending to split into factions

“Marxism has proved as fissiparous a philosophy as it has a political ideology.”

-Carl R. Truman, Histories and Fallacies

G

ghee – clarified butter
Dictionary.com, OneLook

glaucous - greenish blue or bluish green
Dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster Online

I

inanition, n. – exhaustion from lack of nourishment; lethargy

L

lacuna – missing part (the middle syllable is pronounced like queue)

Laocöon, n. – Trojan priest who warned against accepting the horse left by the Greeks (Trojan horse); he and his sons were killed by serpent bites

lido – a beach resort or open-air swimming pool
Dictionary.com, OneLook



M

mantic – related to or having the power of divination
Dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster Online

meretricious, adj. – having a flashy or vulgar allure, insincere or pretentious; characteristic of a prostitute

moue – a pout
Dictionary.com, OneLook

multitexting – the rude and dangerous activity of reading and writing text message on mobile communication devices, including e-mail message in the case of crackberry addicts, while engaged in other activities such as walking, driving, attending meetings and dining with others (from multitasking)

O

ouroborus, n. – a symbol of a snake or dragon eating its tail
Dictionary.com, OneLook

outré, adj. – unconventional or bizarre

P

patulous – spreading
Dictionary.com, TheFreeDictionary, Merriam-Webster Online, OneLook, YourDictionary

"Above the spire of St Paul’s, patulous white clouds deepened to a shade reminiscent of overwashed socks."
-Christopher Fowler, The Water Room

phenology – the study of the timing of recurring natural events
Websters, Dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster


plover, n. – a shorebird having a thick neck, compact body, and pigeon-like beak, of the family Charadriidae, or a similar bird

prolegomenon, n. – scholarly preface (you can tell it is scholarly by its length)

putsch, n. – a revolt or uprising
Merriam-Webster, Encarta

R

retrosexual, n. – a man who cares little for or minimally attends to his appearance (i.e., the opposite of a metrosexual), or a man who adopts an old-fashioned masculine style (especially the suit-and-hat style of the 1950s and 1960s)
Merriam-Webster

S

sesquipedalian, adj. – multisyllabic
Merrian-Webster.com

“Do not build monuments to obfuscatory sesquipedalian tergiversation.”
-Elizabeth Slatkin in How to Write a Manual

sibilant, adj. - hissing

soidisant – self-styled, so-called, pretended (from French and pronounced in something of that style, i.e. swa-dee-zahn’)


spoor, n. – track or trail, especially of a wild animal
Dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster.com

“The victory always lies in our hunger for the spiritual intimacy of our union with Christ. In some since it is more than a hunger, it is a stalking—pursuing God as a safari tracks the spoor of big game”
-Calvin Miller, Into the Depths of God

stoat – the European ermine, Mustela erminea
Dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster Online

suspire, v. – to utter with sighing breaths
Wordnik.com, Yahoo! Education

Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame:
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.
-T. S. Eliot, The Four Quartets

syncretistic, adj. – attempting the reconciliation of opposing principles, practices or parties

“Catholicism’s commitment to the developing cult of the saints was surly one of its great strengths during the church’s massive expansion during the fourth and fifth centuries, and the winning strategy of a somewhat syncretistic pattern of handling folk religion right down into the fifteenth century.”

-Carl R. Trueman, Histories and Fallacies

T

tergiversation, n. – a constantly changing, unclear or misleading opinion or attitude
OneLook.com



threnody, n. – a song of lamentation
traduce, v.t. – to speak maliciously or falsely, to slander or defame

V

viridescent – greenish
Dictionary.com, OneLook

vulpine – fox-like
Dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster Online


W

whinge, v. – to cry, to complain, to whine
Dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster

X

xanthic – yellowish
Dictionary.com, Dict.org, The Free Dictionary, Webster’s Online, Your Dictionary

Stat-Spotting by Joel Best

We are confronted with statistics in the news wherever we turn: television, radio, newspapers, magazines and the internet. It can be hard to sort out what meaning to make of the numbers, especially when there are competing statistics or interpretations.

Sociology professor Joel Best provides advice on recognizing suspicious statistics in Stat-Spotting. This is by no means a technical or mathematical guide to statistics. It is aimed squarely at the layman who is confronted by statistics in the news and from the mouths of politicians or experts.

A good place to start is with a bit of advice that Best puts toward the end of the book (this isn’t inconvenient; it is a short book). If a number seems shocking, unbelievable or far outside of what your own experience might lead you to expect, it is probably worth digging into it some more.

Not every bad statistic is the result of bad faith. By the time a statistic reaches the public, it has been through several hands. It starts with some research, which may be undertaking by a fairly neutral party or by an advocate. In either case, they have a motivation to get attention for their work. Someone has to bring a study to the attention of the media, and they may add a layer of interpretation on the statistics. Finally, reporters, editors and producers are looking for stories that are sufficiently interesting or important to draw an audience.

This is a process that can introduce mistakes, even unintentionally, and bring sensational statistics to the fore. Many of these people don’t know any more about research methods or statistical analysis that you. The math and logic of statistics, especially when it relates to probability, can be counterintuitive, and even professional researchers sometimes don’t have a solid grasp on it. Of course, some of these people are producing statistics with the intent of supporting a particular point of view.

Best points out 32 ways in which the statistics you see may have a problem. These are easy to grasp and don’t involve much if any math. He presents them in simple terms, and in each case provides an example from the news.

There are a lot of demands for our attention and action, and statistics are often cited as part of these appeals. It is helpful to approach these numbers with some skepticism. Stat-Spotting provides accessible tools for testing the reasonableness of the statistics we come across day to day.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner

The Johnstown Flood by David McCollough

Best, Joel. Stat-Spotting: A Field Guide to Identifying Dubious Statistics. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2008.

New & Interesting Stuff Dec. 21, 2012

1939 by David Gelernter

Barge Traffic Threatened on Missouri & Mississippi Rivers

Book Review: #STEM Books for #DeSTEMber

Christ came that we might have life

-Christmas Featured Book

-Christmas Featured Category

-Christmas Links 2012

-Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Dead Sea Scrolls Online (Video)

Don’t Fear the Nexus

DOT Inspector General Gets Extension to Spend Stimulus Funds

First John

Fluoridation Comes to California City

Going Subterranean in Paris

Hobbits are Real, Sort of

I believe that God will make a way

If you don’t think your valuable, others won’t either

The last of human freedoms is to choose one's own way

The Lord can win a battle whether he has many warriors or few

The message of frustration is an exciting signal

New & Interesting Stuff on Ada Lovelace's Birthday 2012

Optimism facilitates willingness to take risks

Quiet by Susan Cain

Second & Third John

STEM Books

The Story of One Cave, and the Bats who Live There

Trusting the Lord means safety

Under Paris: Catacombs, Sewers & Hipsters?

What You Were Looking for In December 2012

Will the Missouri River be the Next Colorado River?