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Netsurfer Recommendations

For Us, the Living: A Comedy of Customs
Robert A. Heinlein (Author), Robert James (Afterword), Spider Robinson (Introduction)
Scribner; ISBN: 074325998X

The publication of this book is somewhat of an event in SF publishing. This is Robert Heinlein's very first novel, which was not published in 1939 at least partly because it was a little risque for the time. Heinlein's subsequent towering career produced a body of science fiction that reflects many of the themes he first explored in this work. It's the story of Perry Nelson, who gets knocked out in a car accident and wakes up in the Utopian society of 2086. He's taken under the wing of the beautiful Diana and proceeds to work through his culture shock as he learns all about how that society works. You know, it kind of sounds like "Futurama". The plot conceit lets Heinlein explore social mores, economics, technology, and all the cultural baggage that goes with his imaginary future. The book is not perfect, sometimes reading like a cobbled collection of lectures loosely held together by a plot. It would be some years yet before Heinlein achieved his pinnacle in books like " Stranger in a Strange Land" and " Time Enough for Love". Despite its shortcomings, the horde of Heinlein fans will find this book a must read, and on the whole a satisfying and amusing one at that.

1,000 Places to See Before You Die
Patricia Schultz
Workman Publishing Company; ISBN: 0761104844

If there's a problem with this book, it's that there's just too much crammed into it. Sure, it lures you into the insidious web of adventurous travel to exotic places, but you'd be dead of exhaustion and bankrupt if you tried to see everything here. Still, it's a great resource, especially if you are going to some specific corner of the world anyway and want to catch the great locations therein. But should so many hotels have made the list? Can staying in some hotel, no matter how plush or historic, really be an experience to be grasped before one's dying breath? And do you want to do that in a crowd of people, all clutching this book to their bosom as they wander the corridors after a hard day touring the local ruins? Don't answer that. If you're into those "before you die" things you may also want to check out the somewhat more manageable and selective " 100 Things to Do Before You Die: Travel Events You Just Can't Miss".

Dating Design Patterns
Solveig Haugland
Solveig Haugland; ISBN: 0974312002

This soon-to-be classic work on complex social-system dynamics has been suppressed for many years for fear of its impact on the world economy. The prospect of swarms of geeks actually having girlfriends/boyfriends and social lives was thought to pose a grave danger to global technological productivity. However, the current state of the tech economy makes that danger moot. The originators of "Dating Design Patterns" (the somewhat mysterious Gang of Four, plus one) have created a set of repeatable, reproducible, stable, effective dating behavior patterns. Noting the proven effectiveness of patterns like Half Bad Boy Plus Protocol, the Decorated Visitor Honeypot, or the Trojan Proxy, one of the creators said, "We've got social lives and women love us. Do you have any idea how unusual that is, for guys who read Knuth for fun?" The 23 dating patterns explained and diagrammed in this work serve as an indispensable guide to the complex world of empirical heterogeneous interactions. The book's technical Web site has extensive background material that elucidates the history of "Dating Design Patterns", numerous reader reviews, and a catalogue of accessory components available for purchase. Note the long delivery lead times on this book, no doubt due to its extreme usefulness in real-world dating applications.

Exploring Black Holes: Introduction to General Relativity
Edwin F. Taylor, John Archibald Wheeler
Benjamin/Cummings; ISBN: 020138423X

The beauty of this book is that it enables you to grasp a large chunk of General Relativity with just a reasonable understanding of undergraduate calculus and algebra. Furthermore, the book does it using black holes - surely one of the coolest objects in nature - as examples. General Relativity is a deep theory usually presented either in an abstract fashion that requires sophisticated mathematical comprehension or in descriptive generalized books that rely heavily on everyday analogies. This book, on the other hand, uses intuitive concepts of length and time, leading you to a deep understanding of space-time metrics and how they change near massive bodies. What's more, all of this is made concrete with actual numeric calculations that show how General Relativity helps solve actual scientific problems (bending of light near the Sun, calculating orbits around black holes) and answers common questions ("What does it feel like to fall into a black hole?"). Make no mistake - there's a lot of math here, but it's not too hard to follow if you know some calculus. If you've ever wanted a really good grasp of General Relativity or black holes beyond the level of the old rubber-sheet analogy, then you'll find this book rewarding. For a comparable treatment of Special Relativity check out the authors' earlier and equally good " Spacetime Physics". It's something to learn during the holidays.