Gift to libraries establishes the Nancy H. Hall Curatorship of Rare Books and Manuscripts (congrats Earle!) http:/
U.S. Supreme Court seen as unlikely to take up Google Books fair use case https:/
I know that some of our local city-sponsored LFL's in my area have issues, particularly with the homeless/poor taking books (cleaning out entire libraries) to resell at one or two of the local used bookstores. Speaking with the store owners (who were very happy to help) and putting bookplates/stamps into the fronts of books seems to have helped cut down on the "theft" situation. Local booksellers have told the one or two offenders that they simply won't purchase books taken from LFL's anymore. This seems to have helped a bit in this particular situation, and is crucial as some of the LFL's serve a very low-income neighborhoods that are virtual book deserts.
@kevinmarks @kylewmahan I also imagine that status updates for @goodreads also have two different and mutually exclusive data indicators for progress: one by page (for physical/printed books) and one by percentage (%) for ebooks which don't have 1 to 1 mappings for pages. The final field is likely a text one with a max of 420 characters. I also image that they have fields for indicating crossposting the status update to Facebook/Twitter which are done separately in their backend settings. Twitter is done in the back end settings as a default if permission is given while they actually have a checkbox for crossposting to Facebook. (I'm not sure why they have this odd difference in the UI)
In a private record of sins written in shorthand, Isaac Newton lists "Making a mousetrap on Thy day." #Newtonmas https:/
@TJ_Kelleher Does that mean that 60% of the other books are the ones simply not being submitted to you on the front end?
It's not the same as dinner with @simonwwriter, but it might cover the salad course. Simon Winchester: By the Book http:/
Boarding Passes Make Great Bookmarks or Using #LittleFreeLibrary During the Holidays http:/
100 Notable Books of 2015 - The New York Times
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Notable Children’s Books of 2015 - The New York Times
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Review of Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth https:/
Over the past four years I've read several books, similar in concept to this one, including many by Bart Ehrman who possibly has the largest number of texts in the area including: [book:Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth|11543839], [book:Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible & Why We Don't Know About Them|6101996], [book:From Jesus to Constantine: A History of Early Christianity|2397133][book:The New Testament|260609], and a good portion of [book:The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption & Restoration|240196].
Of the group, which has a lot of overlap in general thesis and examples, this is by far the best in terms of presentation of a story and all the details. Aslan's writing is interesting, evocative, well-researched, and intrinsically entertaining. As a product, in part, of the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars, I'm loathe to acknowledge a graduate of Iowa's wriiting program, but Aslan certainly does great credit to his alma mater. He does a relatively good job of describing his own background for those interested in his viewpoint from a historical perspective. He also does an excellent job of pointing out what his own opinions are as well as highlighting where his though differs from that of other scholars in the field and where theirs differs from each other.
While this is most assuredly a popular-press title and aimed at a far broader audience (like many of Ehrman's works) than the more specialized scholarly treatises he references, I have to take Aslan (or far more likely his editors) to task for the poor presentation/layout of the notes provided in the back. The book would appear to be relatively well footnoted with exception to the fact that the footnotes don't appear within the text, nor do they appear even at the bottom of the pages. Even worse, the 50+ pages of excellent (and actually read-worthy) notes in the end are sorted by chapter and have no indicators to the portions of the main text to which they directly relate, which make them terrifically painful for other scholars to contemplate using in any functional way. Hopefully future editions will at least include numbered indicators in the main text that tie to the notes in the back. While this is aimed toward the masses, it's really a shame that the presentation of the notes within the book wasn't handled a bit better. At least the biblical references were included within the primary text - and these in themselves do a great job of indicating the synoptic nature of the New Testament gospels.
One thing that Aslan includes that I haven't seen thus far in much of my reading is a fantastic overview of first century Palestine from a sociological and political perspective to help put the balance of the story into context. All of the major players seem to be well represented and given reasonable weight. If only more histories could be written in this way, perhaps the world would read non-fiction for entertainment rather than the litany of romance, thrillers, sci-fi/fantasy, and general fiction that dominates the best-seller lists. His overview is not only interesting in and of itself, it takes up almost the first third of the text and continues on as necessary through the remainder of the text to provide continued context.
In summation, the book was well-researched, entertainingly presented and phenomenally interesting, even to someone who's read the majority of the details in the recent past. I would highly recommend this to anyone and everyone (regardless of their religious leanings), particularly as the subject concerns two of the most influential figures in all of western history/philosophy. Aslan presents some excellent facts, ideas, and thoughts that are assuredly not known by a majority of people, who really should be aware of them.
<i>Manny wrote: "I see Jacobson was an expert on Lie algebras... yes, that might certainly be useful! Thanks..."</i>
Many/most graduate math texts on Lie Groups/Algebras utilize manifold theory as their basis, which can make the field more daunting for physicists. As a result, I recommend looking at books that take a more linear algebraic bent to the subject, which can make some of the quantum mechanics related areas more transparent. I've used [book:Lie Groups, Lie Algebras, and Representations: An Elementary Introduction|1051566], [book:Matrix Groups for Undergraduates.|1162374], and [book:Lie Groups, Lie Algebras, and Some of Their Applications|424103] for these types of applications and viewpoints.
About a year ago, I took a two quarter sequence at UCLA on Lie Groups from an ("easier") matrix group perspective which I imagine you may find somewhat useful in your reading on quantum mechanics. Several engineers, programmers, amateur mathematicians, physicists, and quantum mechanics enthusiasts had spent several years coaxing the professor into teaching it from this perspective. It was geared toward the advanced undergraduate level, and based on your comments here and your reading of Shankar, should be relatively easily followable.
We loosely followed Hall's textbook and portions of [book:Matrix Analysis|647523], which will give you some of the advanced linear algebra you could possibly be missing depending on your background. If it helps, here's a link to a downloadable pdf copy of the notes for the first class with the audio of the lecture embedded (using Livescribe.com digital pen technology which should let you click on the notes and jump to the audio portion related to where you've clicked): http:/
Having this background may make Weyl and Woit's developing textbook more easily manageable. My guess is that Woit is doing a more thorough job of developing the math than typical physics-oriented texts like [book:Geometry, Topology and Physics|439357] which do a lot of hand-waving at the math in an effort to get to the physics more quickly, but at the detriment of understanding what is happening mathematically.
I've dipped into some of Weyl's work in the past, but also keep in mind that some of his notation and definitions can be dated in relation to more modern presentations.