Sunday, September 20, 2009

The Man's Book

I am reading The Man's Book: The Essential Guide for the Modern Man. It is written by a European physicist. It is very retro and and most of it reads as if it could have been written a century ago. Much of it is archaic or trivial, but there is also some old-fashioned common sense.

Here is some of its best advice:
It is a good rule in life never to apologize. The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them. [P. G. Wodehouse in The Man Upstairs]
He has a point. The book also has this quote:
People who wish to analyze nature without using mathematics must settle for a reduced understanding. [Richard Feynman]
That is correct. Some things cannot be explained to an innumerate.

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