Links for 2011-05-18

"Smith and Trowbridge describe the flavor of their five-book space opera Exordium as a cross between Star Wars and Dangerous Liaisons with a touch of the Three Stooges. With its fast-moving blend of humor and horror, of high-tech skiffy and the deep places of the human heart, The Phoenix in Flight launches the reader into a complex, multi-layered universe as Brandon nyr-Arkad, dissolute youngest son of the ruler of the Thousand Suns, abandons the life of Service planned for him and flees into the lawless Rift. Only slowly does he discover that the world he rejected now lies in smoking ruins as the ritual vengeance of Jerrode Eusabian against Brandon's father, twenty years in preparation, culminates in an explosion of interstellar violence. With both his brothers dead and his father the Panarch imprisoned, Brandon becomes the Panarchy's last hope."

"A new book, Loving and Hating Mathematics: Challenging the Myths of Mathematical Life (Princeton University Press) takes a look at some of the most common (mis)conceptions about mathematics and mathematicians, addressing their origins and assessing their truth value in a somewhat unexpected fashion. Rather than amassing data on PISA and SAT scores, analyzing the race and gender breakdowns of degrees awarded or tenure and promotion rates, or perhaps administering Enneagram tests to math majors, authors Reuben Hersh and Vera John-Steiner focus on the lives and experiences of mathematicians, past and present. At times, the book reads almost like an encyclopedia of prominent scholars, grouped by category: collaborating mathematicians, women mathematicians, African American mathematicians, crazy mathematicians...."

"Perhaps the problem is that I think of serendipity as a sub-class of distraction: Serendipity occurs when something that hijacks our attention (= a distraction) is worthwhile in some sense. We now have social networks that are superb at sharing serendipitous findings. So, why don't we pass around more stuff that would make us more cosmopolitan? Fundamentally, I think it's because interest is a peculiar beast. We generally don't find something interesting unless it helps us understand what we already care about. But the Other -- the foreign -- is pretty much defined as that to which we see no connection. It is Other because it does not matter to us. Or, more exactly, we cannot see why or how it matters."

"Setting aside their somewhat dated production, Purple Rain and Born In The U.S.A. still sound like highly commercial blockbusters that would have attracted big audiences no matter when they were released. But an album like Sports selling 7 million copies and spinning off four Top 10 singles (and another Top 20 single) is a phenomenon that seems unique to the mid-'80s; for this brief period of time, Lewis' critically derided "yuppie rock" connected with the public's idea of what pop escapism should be. For more than a decade before that, Huey Lewis toiled in obscurity as a journeyman, and by the end of the '80s, he'd be well on his way to returning to that status. But in the space between, a beer-drinking, football-watching, 33-year-old everyman with an unironic love for doo-wop, saxophone solos, and brightly colored suit coats was elevated to the heights of pop culture. "