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Oct. 1st, 2011 07:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
proximoception55. The Magic of Reality
Not sure how to count pages for illustrated books, if I do finally go back and count pages. And anyway this was the iPad version.
I liked it. Editing fell off for the second half, for some reason, at least on the app, and the detail level understandably varied with his expertise (he admits to be being pretty hazy on relativity and totally at sea regarding quantum). I should have known most of it already, and maybe I did in an "oh, right, yeah" kind of way, but my mind is a sieve for most kinds of science, so it was fun to learn or relearn. His atheizing was amusingly sly here: each chapter answers some basic question about the universe first with various myths or debunked theories, then the science and how it was arrived at. The editorializing's mostly in the juxtaposition, till the final pages where he and Hume tag team miracles to death.
The illustrations were on average fine but one blew me away: an unlabeled version of the periodic table consisting of clear plastic boxes each containing a chunk or puff of the element in question. Must have been thought up by someone before but I'd never seen it - just beautiful. I hope McKean makes it available as a poster.
Not sure how to count pages for illustrated books, if I do finally go back and count pages. And anyway this was the iPad version.
I liked it. Editing fell off for the second half, for some reason, at least on the app, and the detail level understandably varied with his expertise (he admits to be being pretty hazy on relativity and totally at sea regarding quantum). I should have known most of it already, and maybe I did in an "oh, right, yeah" kind of way, but my mind is a sieve for most kinds of science, so it was fun to learn or relearn. His atheizing was amusingly sly here: each chapter answers some basic question about the universe first with various myths or debunked theories, then the science and how it was arrived at. The editorializing's mostly in the juxtaposition, till the final pages where he and Hume tag team miracles to death.
The illustrations were on average fine but one blew me away: an unlabeled version of the periodic table consisting of clear plastic boxes each containing a chunk or puff of the element in question. Must have been thought up by someone before but I'd never seen it - just beautiful. I hope McKean makes it available as a poster.
