rebecca's pocket

» Why can't a woman write the Great American Novel? I thought Harper Lee already had.  [ 02.24.09 ]

» I'm back, or at least I think I am, depending on how my arm holds out. Since I started my site in 1999, this is the longest I've gone - 7 months - without updating. I've missed you. :) Update: Thanks for all the wonderful emails, and apologies to those of you who tried to leave a comment and were unable to do so. The system is FUBAR at the moment, and so I've just turned comments off. / (1) Comments / [ 02.24.09 ]

» The Crisis of Credit Visualized is an easy education on the current economic crisis. When you're through with that, read Recipe for Disaster to understand how a brilliant math formula allowed captains of industry to effortlessly model risk - and bring on our current financial meltdown. (via Real Time Economics)  [ 02.25.09 ]

» If, like me, you enjoy the recent spate of books that examine the history of a singular object or subject, then you'll want to examine Shelf Talk's list of "mono-histories". Here's another: Script & Scribble: The Rise and Fall of Handwriting by Kitty Burns Florey [NPR's review and excerpt].  [ 02.26.09 ]

» What's cooking? The evolutionary role of cookery.

Cooking is a human universal. No society is without it. [T]he consumption of a cooked meal in the evening, usually in the company of family and friends, is normal in every known society. Moreover, without cooking, the human brain (which consumes 20-25% of the body's energy) could not keep running. [...]

In fact, as he outlined to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), in Chicago, he thinks that cooking and other forms of preparing food are humanity's "killer app": the evolutionary change that underpins all of the other--and subsequent--changes that have made people such unusual animals.

[via mamr]