On the Shelf: Week 2

READING: 
I have to be honest, there was not a lot of time to read this week. From late night pasteups to  copious assignments from my other classes, reading for Etymology unfortunately fell by the wayside. I still read, albeit from the same book as last week, Superfreakonomics. I realized something: I was not as interested in it as last week. There was a twenty page passage about how to stop hurricanes, which should have been interesting given events of late. I zoned out until I got to the passage:

Myhrvold recalls watching the British science-fiction TV show Dr. Who when he was young: "The Doctor introduces himself to someone, who says, 'Doctor? Are you some kind of scientist?' And he says, 'Sir, I am every kind of scientist.' And I was like, Yes! Yes! That is what I want to be: every kind of scientist!"

First of all, it's Doctor Who, not Dr. Who. This British cult-classic is a show about the last of the Time Lords who travels through time and space in a police box called the TARDIS (Time and Relative Dimensions in Space). It is NOT a medical show. Ignoring this glaring error, I started to think about the character of The Doctor. He's so unbelievably passionate about everything he does and is completely dedicated to the good of others. He's a genius who uses his expertise in, well, everything, to defeat evil aliens and save humans or the extraterrestrial-of-the-week. And, in a way, that's what Dubner and Levitt, the authors of Superfreakonomics, are trying to accomplish. While they only have a small sliver of expertise, they are trying to enlighten the world around them and inspire the American populace to think and notice, which I think is pretty noble. 

WATCHING:
Continuing on with my Doctor Who-obsession, I've been counting down the days until the next series begins on September 1. Each day this week BBC and BBCamerica have been releasing mini-episodes collectively called Pond Life, chronicling companions Amy Pond and Rory Williams' married life, attempting to live normally with the Doctor popping in and out. The clips are disappointingly short but are still fun and fast paced. Their whimsical nature contrasts some of the show's darker plotlines. 

FOLLOWING:
There's this great Tumblr called I Love Charts, which is just a collection of funny, culturally-relevant charts. They track amount of milkshakes brought to the yard by one's milkshake, the spread of Walmarts across the country, and word clouds of usage-frequency at the Republican National Convention. Updated constantly throughout the day, this blog makes statistics fun and depicts ways to use numbers and figures to tell a story, kind of like the Feltron report.