Fire and Knowledge

It ends up Sherlock Holmes never actually said “Elementary, my dear Watson.” Here’s what Chip & Dan Heath say about it in Made to Stick:

One of the most famous misquotations of all time is attributed to the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. Holmes never said, “Elementary, my dear Watson.” This seems hard to believe—the quote is perfectly suited to our schema of Holmes. In fact, if you asked someone to name one Sherlock Holmes quote, this would be it. His most famous quote is the one he never said.

Why did this nonexistent quote stick? It’s not hard to imagine what must of happened. Holmes frequently said, “My dear Watson,” and he often said, “Elementary.” A natural mistake, for someone inclined to quote from a Holmes mystery, would be to combine the two. And, like an adaptive biological mutation, the newly combined quote was such an improvement that it couldn’t help but spread. This four-word quotation, after all, contains the essence of Holmes: the brilliant detective never too busy to condescend to his faithful sidekick. (p. 239)

(Wikipedia has some other famous misquotations.)

Finally, a use for some of those large tombs I never should have bought: DIY invisible floating bookshelves.

Part of The Reading Interviews series.

Could you tell us a little about yourself?

By day, I’m a high school math teacher completing my first full year on the job.

By night, I’m a blogger at Friendly Atheist, chair of the Board of Directors of the Secular Student Alliance, author of I Sold My Soul on eBay, soon-to-be calendar model (!), and someone who will crush you in Scrabble.

What are your favorite books? What do you like about them and how have they influenced you?

I don’t read many classics, but I love The Count of Monte Cristo. As for current books, I tend to read popular math and science books. I’m currently in the middle of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Death By Black Hole. There’s a stack of “atheist literature” I can’t wait to get to. My Amazon wishlist includes more of those kind of books (and some teaching supplies). :)

I love when the books teach me a little bit more about the subjects I am so passionate about. They make me want to work harder to educate people so they know about this material. Every now and then, a book will come along and completely revamp everything I knew about a topic. Richard Dawkins’ The Ancestor’s Tale did that in terms of evolution, and it got me reading his other books (The God Delusion is good, but it’s not at the top of my Dawkins list).

Who are your favorite writers?

A few need no explanation: J.K. Rowling, Richard Dawkins, Malcolm Gladwell.

I love any writer who can take a subject that’s both interesting and complicated (Astronomy, Biology, Number Theory, etc.) and write about it in a way that makes sense to me so that I get a rudimentary understanding of it. Brian Greene is one example. Jared Diamond, another. Carl Sagan was incredible.

What is the best non-fiction and fiction book you have read recently?

Non-fiction: The Big Bang by Simon Singh (loved it!)
Fiction: The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

Why do you think reading is important? What has led you to make it a priority in your life?

There’s no better way to get a thorough understanding of complicated subjects. With the right tone, helpful visuals, and a conversational explanation, I’m willing to sit through just about any subject.

Personally, I became an atheist on my own, but it was through reading essays and stories by other atheists online that my newfound beliefs were validated and strengthened. (If only the New Atheist books were out back then!)

I took several Biology classes in high school and college, but it was through reading Richard Dawkins’ books that I gained a fuller understanding of evolution.

And I have yet to form an interest in any girl who isn’t well read. :)

Are there any other books you would like to recommend?

Besides the ones I’ve already mentioned (all of which you should read), All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren is fantastic. So is Jon Stewart’s America (the Book). And (cough) I Sold My Soul on eBay.

How many books do you normally read at a time?

I’d like to say one… but if it doesn’t capture my interest completely, it’ll get to two. I can’t do more than that at once!

Do you mark and take notes while you read? If so, how?

Sometimes. I feel like I’m doing something wrong if I write in a book, but a friend of mine persuaded me to do it. My own notes just consist of underlines and bracketing (for passages I like) or smiley faces. :) If I’m reading a book by a Christian apologist, I tend to write little notes to myself as to why they’re wrong.

When you finish a book, how do you decide what to read next?

If it’s a writer I really like, I’ll pick up more books by the author. If that’s not an option, I try to switch it up completely. If I just read a fiction book, I need to follow it up with something math or science-y.

Do you have any advice about reading that others might find helpful?

Do it. A lot. Read everything. Blogs, magazines, cereal boxes, etc. Especially blogs; they’re much more current and relevant than many books and most allow for a dialogue to take place about the topic.

The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett, 188 pages.

The other night I started The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin. I read for a few pages and struggled to pay attention. My thoughts wandered. There was nothing there to hook me. It was boring. I put it down.

The next day I started The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett. I was hooked by the second page. I stayed up late to finish it.

The book is about Sam Spade, a detective agent in San Francisco. Spade is hired by multiple people to find a statue falcon and results in murder, double-crossing, and betrayal. You know, all that good stuff. It is said to be one of the best detective mysteries written, but I don’t read enough of them to know. I do know it was very good.

It’s not a profound book. It doesn’t deal with many “great ideas.” It’s not going to change your life, but it will be a great experience.

The Telegraph lists their 110 favorite books. While I prefer my own list for obvious reasons, I’ve added some of these books to my library list and look forward to reading them. Any other great book recommendations?

Steve Hargadon argues that Web 2.0 is the future of education. I disagree. Of course it will influence and change education to some extent, but will it be the future of education? Unlikely.

Steve says Web 2.0 will help move education “from formal schooling to lifelong learning.” People have been devoted to lifelong learning long before the Internet. The Internet does make some information easier to retrieve, but many people do not take advantage of this, just as many people didn’t take advantage of books on their shelves. I’m not convinced the Internet is going to change this too much. Hopefully I’m wrong here, though, because it would be great if more people were interested in lifelong learning.

I took a quick look at Classroom 2.0, which Steve recommended for learning about education and Web 2.0. On the homepage was a teacher asking this question:

I’m looking for a new project for my (online) students in an Ancient Civilizations class to deomostrate their knowledge of the material we’ve been learning. They’ve written numerous blogs, they’ve created PowerPoints, and I’ve offered podcasting or videos( but haven’t had too many students intersested in in these). I was thinking of a comic strip project to where the students show how the geography of the area has played a very important role in determining how the society developed and what technologies evolved. I’m having trouble finding a comic strip generator that students can use their own clip art or has appropriate pictures for this assignment. Anyone have a suggestion? or other ideas for web 2.0 projects for this class.

Now it would be hard for me to find a better demonstration for my skepticism. This is a teacher for “gifted” students. She misspells demonstrate and interested. She’s having her students write “numerous blogs,” which I assume she means blog posts, which I assume must be something like very short, undemanding essays. And a comic strip generator? Good God. Has it really come to this?

This is, in essence, a teacher asking how to do the basics of teaching. How can your students demonstrate their knowledge of a subject? You have them write papers and debate with other students. You ask them questions. Yes, there are creative ways to have them learn. But if you want them to create a comic strip, you can have them draw it on paper. But, alas, that doesn’t have very much to do with Web 2.0 and flashy websites and cool technology.

Can Web 2.0 help education? Possibly. But it can also hinder it, as we see with the teacher’s question above. I suppose teachers really exist who are having their students mess around with comic strip generators and powerpoint and podcasts instead of writing and reading and debating. And I thought I got a lousy education.

So I don’t think the future of education is Web 2.0. I don’t think nifty websites can replace the classroom, reading classics, writing essays, memorizing, debating ideas, doing painstaking research, or running experiments.

The Sparrow (1996) by Mary Doria Russell, 408 pages.

Summary: After intercepting alien radio waves, Jesuit scientists are sent to the planet Rakhat on an anthropological mission of contact. They travel on an outfitted asteroid and arrive many years later. While learning about the sentient species and their cultures, things go terribly wrong. Emilio Sandoz is the only survivor of the mission, and he doesn’t want to explain why.

It’s an interesting, easy, disturbing read. The friendships that are formed by the main characters make the reader long for similar companionship in life. The priests are shown as real people with real struggles (though perhaps a little too much so).

The most weighty questions addressed are the existence, goodness, and plan of an omnipotent and compassionate God. Is everything that happens the plan of God? Fr. Sandoz, after much doubt and wrestling, comes to believes this. And as he comes into the culmination of God’s plan, he is spiritually broken when it turns out to be his worst possible nightmare.

Anne, the doctor, also struggles with the age-old question of theodicy. For example, after a teammate dies, she says:

“Why is it that God gets all the credit for all the good stuff, but it’s the doctor’s fault when [death] happens? When the patient comes through, it’s always ‘Thank God,’ and when the patient dies, it’s always blaming the doctor. Just once in my life, just for the sheer … novelty of it, it would be nice if somebody blamed God when the patient dies, instead of me.” (198)

I’d cautiously recommend this book. The vulgarity can get annoying and feel forced, but the book is challenging and perspective changing. It made me wrestle through theodicy along with the characters. If there is a loving God, why is there so much suffering? “Perhaps we can’t understand the answers,” says Fr. Marc Robichaus in his eulogy for Alan Pace,

“because we are incapable of knowing God’s ways and God’s thoughts. We are, after all, only very clever tailless primates, doing the best we can, but limited. Perhaps we must all own up to being agnostic, unable to know the unknowable.” (201)

And yet, we press on.

The Intellectual Devotional seems like a great way to learn something new each day from a different discipline. Here’s the blurb:

Millions of Americans keep bedside books of prayer and meditative reflection—collections of daily passages to stimulate spiritual thought and advancement. The Intellectual Devotional is a secular version of the same—a collection of 365 lessons that will inspire and invigorate the reader every day of the year. Each nugget of wisdom is drawn from one of seven fields of knowledge: History, Literature, Philosophy, Mathematics & Science, Religion, Visual Arts, and Music.