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PaperclipPerfector  23d ago (text post)   3368 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for May 24, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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People really like Sherlock Holmes stories, to the point that they're probably the best candidate for the progenitor of the entire Mystery genre. To those here who enjoy these stories, would you mind putting on your over-analysis caps and explaining what it is about the stories that you enjoy?

I was never too fond of the genre, though I did enjoy the mystery/thriller Agent Pendergast series a bit too much despite it being slightly Reddit.

But it had a character clearly inspired by the despicable Communist Gould turn into a sewer mutant cult leader. You love to see that.

Bit of a guilty pleasure.

Ha! Relic and Reliquary were the only two of the series that I read, back in the day, and I loved 'em. Were the rest of the books good? And which Gould was this, now?

Were the rest of the books good?

If there was a fall-off in quality it to me seemed only like a slight one. There's a slight bit of 'woo' in there and of course the 'science' aspects are very, very soft but it's still good stories. Last book I read was 'Cemetery Dance' published in '13. Shit, now I remember I read 'Still Life with Crows' which is a bit of a doorstopper on a 320x240 Nokia phone. There was an app for converting e-books into standalone java(iirc) apps the Nokia could run.

Still wonder to this day whether reading with one eye leads to you to process the information in a different way than when you're reading with both.

I enjoyed all of them about equally. Maybe the couple of the last ones that I haven't read aren't as good.

And which Gould was this, now?

Stephen Jay Gould, obviously. Who can forget him committing scientific fraud and fabricating data to show a 19th century anatomist mismeasured brain volumes because of unconscious bias [1], his crusade against sociobiology, his treatment of his colleagues like E.O.Wilson.

spoilers for the novels:

(not here, I can't get the fricking tag to work )

[1]: in a somewhat funny development, several sets of scienists are still engaged in what's basically an academic flamewar. The Morton skull saga (started 1988) is still going on.

thanks for the recommendation!

Stephen Jay Gould, obviously.

...For some reason, my mental picture of Gould was always of a youngish guy, and pictured the guy in the books as old. It's weird how those things get cached in the brain.

He was described as older. Gould died in his early sixties.

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