Category: Books

Being a casual student of cosmology, I was excited for the opportunity to read The Manga Guide to Relativity by Hideo Nitta, Masafumi Yamamoto and Keita Takatsu. I have read several works explaining relativity and therefore the thought of relativity explained through comic book characters seemed a little far-fetched. My thinking was that the concepts were too complex to show with a few pictures. That said, it is much easier to understand relativity with a few pictures sprinkled throughout the text as opposed to text only.

The writers did a great job in explaining the concepts of relativity. Both the special theory and general theory of relativity are explained in the book. They are both important concepts and apply in real-world situations today. Without an understanding of Einstein’s theories, we would not have the accurate GPS abilities that we have today. In fact, the book ends with an explanation as to how these two theories are used in the GPS system.

I have not been a fan of manga because of the often lewd clothing and sexual innuendos often found within their pages. Unfortunately, this book does nothing to change my mind. Halfway through the book, chapter three opens with the shapely teacher in a bikini (which is way too small) having her teenage student fanning her like a slave. Then when he asks why they are having their one-on-one class at the pool she says that he should just be happy to “to look at your beautiful teacher in her bathing suit.” Completely inappropriate and exactly why I generally don’t like manga. For this reason, I won’t recommend the book to my teenage son who would probably otherwise enjoy the content. The next 22 pages are filled with pictures of the teacher in various provocative poses while teaching her one-person class about relativity.

As far as teaching the concepts of relativity in an understandable way, I would say this title delivers fine on that. Would I recommend it as a book? No. And I am much less interested in reading other books in the series, even though the books about physics and electricity are appealing.

If your are interested in understanding relativity, the best book I have read (that did not morally offend me) was Stephen Hawking’s Illustrated Brief History of Time, although I believe he approaches cosmology from a flawed faith in the Big Bang theory.

[Disclosure: I received a free review copy of this book.]

This video series by Howard Rheingold helps the viewer try to determine what is junk and what is valid information on the web. There are 12 different video segments that let you jump to just the information you are looking for, or you can watch them all at one time. The program is set up in an interview format so that it is not just a talking head video. The interviewer is asking Mr. Rheingold various questions to keep the video on topic and moving forward.

I love the information given, though I think it is a little basic. This is the kind of information that is helpful for someone new to the Internet or that friend who forwards every email hoax to you. Mr. Rheingold really targets this information for children; however, I think kids who have parents on the Internet probably know most of this information. If you are concerned about your kids getting duped into believing bad information online, then this would be a good video series for you.

One section of the video includes tips on how to use search engines. It does not go into detailed search strings you can use to refine your search, rather it gives tips on how to use search to find out if the information you are being told is legitimate. There is also a section on tracking down the truth of what you think might be an urban legend. I wished more people would learn that instead of posting to Facebook and their entire email list a bunch of false information.

Most of the sections are 10 minutes or less. It is something that can easily be watched in chunks of time. The whole program is 1 hour and 42 minutes long.

I don’t like the title of the videos, though I understand it is probably not offensive to most people. However, I always think a publishing company limits their ability to sell books  when they use a questionable word in the title or an inappropriate picture.

Crap Detection 101: How to Distinguish Good and Bad Information Online can be found at O’Reilly. Because it is a video series you can only buy it directly from the publisher. It is available for download or streaming off their website.

[Disclaimer: I was given a free review copy of the video series]

This is the first book in the Head First series by O’Reilly Media that I have read. I was pleased with how well written and entertaining it was. Head First WordPress by Jeff Siarto came out in July 2010. With WordPress’ move to the 3.0 release, this was good timing to help new users know exactly what they would experience when installing the latest version of the software. I was hoping that it would also be a good insight to those of us who have been using WordPress for a while to know what are some of the fundamental differences we would expect with the new version of the software. However, this book is completely written for the first time installer.

The book is a good overview of WordPress and getting it installed. There is no attempt to explain the details of WordPress themes, even though there is a whole chapter devoted to it. There just is not enough time spent on any one subject to get a deep understanding. While there are exercises that help the reader work through modifying a theme, it would be a rare reader who could take what little they learned and apply it to a theme on their own.

There are other areas where the book seems to pretend to give detail, but the reality is that it is still just an overview. As a podcaster I was excited to see that there was a chapter on podcasting. Yet there are too many details that are missing to make it complete.

The best chapter in the book was the one about securing WordPress. While it still did not go into the greatest detail of security, there was enough to feel like you can protect yourself from most hacking situations.

I could recommend the book to someone who is interested in installing WordPress, but is intimidated by the actual process. The book was also well illustrated and entertaining. However, this book is not appropriate for anyone who has installed WordPress more than a couple of times. They won’t find much new information in the pages of the book.

Head First WordPress, 368 pages, Jeff Siarto, O’Reilly Media, 2010.

[I wrote a more detailed summary of Head First WordPress]