50/50 Challenge update
I made progress on both fronts this week.
I finished The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. I found it to be a fairly light read for non-fiction about science and race, but worthwhile and entertaining. The historical perspective on the importance of cell cultures in research was new to me, and contrasting the perspectives of the high-info scientists with how it came across to Henrietta's minimally educated family was thought-provoking. And it's not often that some of the most emotionally touching parts of a book happen in a laboratory.
My next non-fiction is Red Families v. Blue Families. I've just finished the introduction and it's showing lots of signs of giving me lots of things to think about.
While browsing around Netflix streaming, I discovered a documentary called Darkon, about a LARP wargaming club out of Baltimore which is obviously a sort of fellow traveller organization to the SCA. Initially I wasn't sure if it was intending to be pro-game or neutral, but on reflection the revelation at the end is clearly positive. I enjoyed it, but mostly I watched it thinking about the parallels to the SCA and the occasional filmmakers who try to explain us to the world at large. A lot of the people could very, very easily be SCA folk, and it was pretty easy to see parallels between their combat system and ours, up to and including the lecture about how everybody is responsible for their own honor in terms of taking blows. I found it interesting, but since I had a very different reaction than the average viewer now I'm curious what non-geek audiences thought.
I finished The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. I found it to be a fairly light read for non-fiction about science and race, but worthwhile and entertaining. The historical perspective on the importance of cell cultures in research was new to me, and contrasting the perspectives of the high-info scientists with how it came across to Henrietta's minimally educated family was thought-provoking. And it's not often that some of the most emotionally touching parts of a book happen in a laboratory.
My next non-fiction is Red Families v. Blue Families. I've just finished the introduction and it's showing lots of signs of giving me lots of things to think about.
While browsing around Netflix streaming, I discovered a documentary called Darkon, about a LARP wargaming club out of Baltimore which is obviously a sort of fellow traveller organization to the SCA. Initially I wasn't sure if it was intending to be pro-game or neutral, but on reflection the revelation at the end is clearly positive. I enjoyed it, but mostly I watched it thinking about the parallels to the SCA and the occasional filmmakers who try to explain us to the world at large. A lot of the people could very, very easily be SCA folk, and it was pretty easy to see parallels between their combat system and ours, up to and including the lecture about how everybody is responsible for their own honor in terms of taking blows. I found it interesting, but since I had a very different reaction than the average viewer now I'm curious what non-geek audiences thought.