Sunday!

Maribou

Maribou is a voracious reader who also likes to watch, stare at, and listen to stuff. Occasionally he makes stuff, too. They work in a small liberal arts college library, and share a house in Colorado with their husband Jaybird, three cats, and what looms ever closer to ten thousand books. She is identifiable as genderfluid, trans, farm-raised, citified, and bisexual, among a plethora of other adjectives.

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8 Responses

  1. Maribou says:

    As for this week, I’ve mostly been catching up on various series, and mostly comics series at that. Buffy, Ms. Marvel, Sex Criminals, Saga, Ex Machina… The standalone graphic memoir Honor Girl is one of the best graphic stories I’ve read all year. Funny and particular and universal, as such things should be.

    I watched a marvelous movie (free if you have Amazon Prime), Felix and Meira. Set in Montreal, mostly, and in 4 different languages, 3 of which have equal weight throughout the movie (English, French, and Yiddish). So much of this story is conveyed visually that I only recommend it if you have time to watch it while NOT doing other things…. I loved it a whole lot.

    And I’m still watching the Muppet Show, and thinking about how much weirder, more sexual, and more violent it is than most modern children’s programming. It’s really good, y’all. Highlight of this week was the introduction of Bunsen Honeydew and Beaker.Report

    • Glyph in reply to Maribou says:

      I really want to get around to an Ex Machina re-read one of these days. Have you finished it yet?Report

      • Maribou in reply to Glyph says:

        No, I’m in the early middle. It’s already awfully good.Report

        • Glyph in reply to Maribou says:

          Ah, glad I asked, I thought “catching up” might have meant finished and I was getting ready to write some spoilerrific stuff.

          Saga (which *I* need to catch up on) and Y: The Last Man get all the love, but Ex Machina seems much lesser-known for some reason. I thought it was FANTASTIC, better than Y: TLM.Report

          • Maribou in reply to Glyph says:

            So far it is right up there for me with my all-time favorites like Preacher and Transmetropolitan. I have found in the past that Vaughan lures me in and then slides from AMAZING to pretty damn good near the end, so I am a bit wary, but also pretty damn good is not so bad either, you know?

            I will definitely mention when I finish, look forward to your spoilerriffic thoughts.Report

  2. KatherineMW says:

    Currently reading HG Well’s The Outline of History, which is an attempt at a complete history of the world (meaning, “80% Europe and 20% other places”). So far, I’m just up to the earliest ancient civilizations, since the book starts with the formation of Earth. So far, two things are striking:

    1) The basic geological and biological concepts are, for something written 100 years ago, impressively close to what we have today. The general understanding of the origins and development of life, the archaeological periods, the mechanisms of evolution, largely tally with current knowledge; and some of the relatively minor errors that stand out were things believed up until fairly recently (e.g., we now know dinosaurs did not need to live in swamps in order to support their weight). Even most of the animals mentioned in connection with the different eras match the ones described in recent BBC series on prehistoric life. I’d say it’s about 90% similar to current knowledge.

    2) The paleoanthropological concepts, in contrast are heavily outdated, racist, and draw erroneous conclusions as the result of racism; many of them were overturned within 20-40 years of the book being written.

    The barriers to scientific knowledge are not primarily technological; we understand things that we don’t have a vested interest in misunderstanding. (Granted, there were people with vested interests in misunderstanding evolution and the age of the earth, but Wells wasn’t one of them.) And we misunderstand things when understanding them requires us to go against our default cultural assumptions.

    Hardly a mind-blowing conclusion, but the contrast between the understanding of the two topics throws it into sharp relief.Report

    • Maribou in reply to KatherineMW says:

      @katherinemw I’ve meant to read that for a long time, and I appreciate hearing your thoughts on it. I really struggle with reading books that are full of racist bullhockey (*side eye Ernest Thompson Seton, who broke my heart once I started reading his nonfiction*), and yet I don’t want to just ignore all of them…Report

  3. Miss Mary says:

    I’m addicted to watching Dr. Who right now. I can not believe I’ve waited this long.Report