David Blatner

This book DOES have A Lot about the holidays, but now I’ll always remember that Purim is the Esther story and that Jewish children celebrate it every year in delightful little masque parties, you know.

I mean, the first time I wrote this review…. I don’t know. I wrote a lot about anti-Semitism, and I guess, I don’t know. I mean, you could say a lot about anti-Semitism, not least among us Christians, even today, liberal and conservative: different guises and disguises, different ways of passing the buck and playing denialism, you know. It’s a lot. But then also, Jews are not just the gas chamber victim people. I mean, Holocaust Remembrance Day is a real thing, and it should be a real thing, but it’s not like…. Like in “Labyrinth of Lies”, where the guy is going around in a daze almost and he says, “We Germans should wear black forever.” That’s not what Judaism is, obviously. Jews are not just there to collect or be receptacles for my goyish guilt, even if it takes some regard for Jews to truly realize this honestly. I guess sometimes we all just feel intense dysphoria around being part of some group or another that causes pain, you know. (But especially if it’s white Gentiles.)

That being said, I don’t know…. Like I said at first maybe I thought that the book had been bad too, since it was maybe a little bland and holiday-y; God I hate holidays—I don’t want to hear about there being others. But I guess holidays could be part of “making Jewish choices”, as another book has it, which could certainly matter for Jews, and it is part of one way to see the life-affirming aspects of Judaism, as being a particular way that particular people choose to live their lives, and not just seeing them as the Christmas crushers, the Israel lobby, the weird and irrelevant folk, the bad childhood memories, the guilt-inducers that Hitler crushed, or however people think about Jews when they have little engagement with the ideas of Judaism, or esteem for Jews.… (mehr)

David Blatner è fondamentalmente un grafico, e autore di vari libri su Photoshop e InDesign. Ma è anche riuscito a essere coautore di un libro intitolato Judaism for Dummies e questo libretto sul pi greco che è davvero particolare, a cominciare dalla grafica (immagino i moccoloni tirati dalla Nexus snc che ha dovuto mantenerla nella versione italiana...) Si trovano più o meno ovunque cifre scritte in corpo 4 che immagino siano quelle dello sviluppo decimale di π: le cifre sono un milione, e la milionesima per la cronaca è un 1. Oltre ad esse, ci sono tutte le notizie storiche e culturali sul numero che ci si può immaginare. La lettura è davvero godibile, anche per l'ineccepibile traduzione di Libero Sosio. Purtroppo il libro non è più in commercio da anni - io ho letto una copia presa in prestito in biblioteca, prima di comprarmi una copia usata della versione inglese - e non avrebbe nemmeno senso una versione in epub, vista la struttura del libro.… (mehr)

Hoe is het mogelijk dat een kolossale Airbus van 250 ton van de grond komt? Wat is turbulentie en is dat gevaarlijk? Kan een vliegtuig landen zonder landingsgestel?
Hoe meer je over vliegreizen en vliegtuigen weet, des te minder angst en meer plezier je aan de vlucht zult beleven. Dit boek legt uit waarom turbulentie helemaal niet zo erg is als het lijkt. Dat het fenomeen luchtzak niet bestaat. Hoe botsingen in de lucht worden voorkomen. Dat het niet uitmaakt waar je zit in een vliegtuig, omdat alle plaatsen even veilig zijn.
Dit boek neemt de lezer mee van de verkeerstoren naar de cockpit, van de bagageafhandelingsruimte naar de gates, van de platforms naar de start- en landingsbanen. En ten slotte op excursie naar de Boeingvliegtuigfabrieken en op een korte vlucht door 100 jaar luchtvaart.
Het vliegboek geeft antwoord op al die vragen die je hebt als je in het vliegtuig stapt. Bedoeld voor wie vliegen leuk vindt of juist niet! En heerlijk om op zak te hebben bij lange wachttijden en tijdens de vlucht.… (mehr)

Definitely an interesting book that is still more or less accurate and gives mostly correct information about what it's like to fly. I use all of these qualitative adjectives because the book was published 15 years ago, and since then we've had a huge recession and jet fuel price fluctuations that have created a lot of changes in the commercial aviation industry. We have fewer commercial airlines, no longer get served meals on airplanes, have to pay to check bags, and can't bring liquids in our carry-on items. (For the most part.) However, things such as jet safety, turbulence, and many other points addressed in this book have maintained relatively constant.

One thing I really didn't like about this book was the format. Be a coffee table book with cutesy quotes and informational columns, or be a chapter book about flying. This book tries to be both and sort of fails at both accounts. I found myself completely ignoring all of the cutesy quotes, and most of the pictures in this book are not captioned, which makes them almost useless. At times, the text is placed over images of airplanes that makes the text nearly unreadable.

Otherwise... I would give this book a solid "borrow from your library if you're interested in the nuts and bolts of flying on an airplane" recommendation. But I certainly wouldn't spend money on it.… (mehr)