Book review: Presentation Zen Design

By none other than Garr Reynolds, of course.

This follow-up to the brilliant Presentation Zen (if you haven't bought it by now - what the hell are ya waiting for?) deals more with the practical aspect of making presentations, and so touches on a bit of design principles such as effective use of white space. The book is a veritable treasure trove of helpful sections, including effective use of fonts (brilliant), which I personally found to be very enlightening. Any version of Office is going to be loaded with 4.5 gajillion fonts, so a primer and a set of matching fonts for different occasions sure helps out a lot. Mucho props.

There's also a section of working with colors and selecting color schemes. While Nancy Duarte's Slide:ology contains more material on the nuts and bolts of color schemes, Garr's book more than makes up for it by detailing how you can extract color schemes from photographs, thereby taking advantage of the master colorist - Mother Nature. This is followed up by describing how to incorporate pictures - and video - in your presentation in order to more effectively communicate your story - including some photography tips by Scott Kelby.

Towards the end of the book, there are also some sample slides from various designers (Duarte Design being strongly represented) to show the reader how this can be incorporated in real life. This even includes some slides from a field not too distant from what I'm doing.

Overall, this is a great book and a worthy follow-up to Presentation Zen. I've only got two minor complaints; one being that the book appears at times to be somewhat on the heavy side with respect to Zen lessons. The other complaint is that it would've been great with an expanded section on how to use animation. Then again - that's where Nancy Duarte's book really shines.

Buy two copies - one for the office and one to keep around the house.

Slidescapes and slideoramas

So I attempted some of the animation techniques I found in Slide:ology by Nancy Duarte. Specifically, I experimented with animating slide transitions to create the illusion of the slides being part of a panoramic view, or what Duarte calls slidescapes or slideoramas. I battle-tested it in my "sales pitch", first lecture of the semester, to show some connections and big-picture things, and let me tell you; I thought it was really cool. It beat the ever-loving crap of my old way of presenting timelines and connections.

Yes; Slide:ology is worth the samoleans you have to plunk down to get your grubby hands on the book.

Book review: Slide:ology by Nancy Duarte

This book comes with recommendations from such luminaries as Garr Reynolds and Jerry Weissman, and I've considered buying it for quite a while now. In teh very likely case that the name Nancy Duarte doesn't ring a bell, Duarte design - headed by the very same Nancy Duarte - is the design company that can be credited for Al Gore's recent success and even (arguably) him now being a Nobel laureate. Gore has been talking about global warming and environmental issues for years and years, but it wasn't before he hired Duarte Design to make "An Inconvenient truth" as well as some actual presentation technique coaches that he went from a mumbling black hole of charisma to one of the highest paid and most sought after on the international lecture circuit.

It should be mentioned that this book was published AFTER Presentation Zen, so be warned: The first six chapters mostly deal with regurgitating Reynolds' book, as well as numerous references to Tufte and Weissman. At several points during these chapters I seriously found myself thinking that if there really was a market for a cliff notes version of already condensed books on presentation technique, I'd like a piece of that action. The references are many, the puns and clever catchphrases are abundant, and the amount of new information is scarce. Moreover, the accompanying slide examples look pedestrian and - dare I say it - cheap considering the credentials of the author.

However, the book really picks up after the sixth chapter. The sections on how to select color schemes (consciously rather than by happy accident), typesetting and animation alone make the book well worth buying. Really cool, and I'm gonna get right to applying those lessons. There's also a chapter on making templates which is really informative. Still, seeing as how I've just made the plunge from six years of lab-specific templates (one of which was of my own design) to wide open slides, I'm not yet ready to creep back into the template cage again. The amount of info you can fit on each slide really dwindles when templates are applied. While I admit that this can sometimes (or even often) be a good thing, I often find that building schematics or figures that span the entire slide really works within hard science - often the alternative is repeating the same image with slightly different areas highlighted over lots of slides.

If you're looking for efficient ways to implement animation and color schemes, then this book is definitely worth buying. If you're after a book on designing and delivering good presentations, look elsewhere.

Book review: Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds

Since reading Anders' review of this book last month, I was sufficiently interested to actually purchase it myself. I'm always on the lookout for ways to improve my presentations, talks and lectures, and the information available on Amazon reinforced the massive kudos Anders laid down. Like Anders said, this ain't a "how-to" book about making presentations, but rather a holistic approach to delivering the message as efficiently as possible without any visual clutter. In short, it's all about avoiding "death by PowerPoint".

Truth be told, I almost gave up on the book early on, due to a side-bar by some Moby-looking wannabe-guru by the name of Seth Godin. While the beginning of the book outlines how presentation zen does not provide any strict guidelines for how to present material, this no doubt Mac-using loser laid down the law with absolutes like "No more than six words per slide - ever." I also have to admit that I was kind of turned off by the fact that Reynolds kept giving written blowjobs to Steve Jobs and Apple in general all throughout the book. Sure - it's his book and all, but he could've kept this particular bromance on the DL as it does nothing to promote the content of the book. In my opinion, that is.

I also share Anders' opinion that this minimalist approach is probably easier to implement in marketing/business or for speaking to crowds that are not specialists. The example cited about using this approach to teach aromatic chemistry appears somewhat suspect to me. In my experience of teaching hard science as well as communicating scientific data to peers, it is absolutely necessary to use a bilingual approach - math and English. Consequently, while much of the material in English can be presented orally, the symbols and relationships need to be defined - and need to be easily accessible throughout the presentation. If you use some 15 different symbols and relations - some of which are universal and some of which are unique for this study - you are quite the optimist if you expect the audience to remember a definition from 12 slides back.

One thing I really took to heart from this book was the assertion that PowerPoint slides should not be used as handouts, because they're not meant as stand-alone documents, and consequently any middle-of-the-road approach to add written content for meaningful post-presentation retrieval is doomed to fail. Rather, Reynolds says, one should provide more detailed documents as handouts, which also adds degrees of feedom to what's on the slides. This hit quite close to home for me, because at the institution where I teach, the students expect that the slides are available on the course web page. Consequently, I try to add enough information on the slides to make them useful (hopefully) without my narrative. After reading this book, I'm even more unsure than before as to whether I'm doing the students a favor or a disservice by perpetuating this behavior. Reynolds' logic cannot be disputed; if the slides are meaningful without my narrative, then I'm superfluous. And if I only design the slides to complement my narrative, then they would be quite useless as handouts. Moreover, the written documentation for the material presented in the slides already exists - the textbook(s). So does my making slides available mean that some students won't read the curriculum? 'Cause my slides are not meant to be a substitute for reading the textbook - they're merely a supplement. I'd be fiercely interested in any input on this - especially as I'm about to revamp my slides for this semester's teaching as well as make new ones for the Spring semester.

Another topic that I found interesting and potentially liberating is the - also quite compelling - argument Reynolds makes in favor of deep-sixing templates where the logo of the company - or in my case lab - is featured on every page. Rather, Reynolds says, the logo should be present on the first and last page of the presentation, which helps to free up some much-needed real-estate on the slides. This makes sense to me, as even though I've tried to minimalize the logo in the template, it still poses some restrictions on the slides - both geometric and with respect to colors I can use. So maybe I'll try to deep-six the logo - save for the first and last slides - and see how it turns out.

..so imagine my surprise when Reynolds some pages later pretty much reintroduced the need for logos via the principle of repetition, wherein a red thread throughout the presentation is established via a common theme on the slides. Which pretty much is a strong advocacy for using small, rather unintrucive company logos, no?

Overall, I really liked the book. It provides some good approaches to the creative process, as well as some general principles and useful examples.

Buy the book, dammit.

Triple book review...

Since I've been on holiday, I've had the time to read some books. Some geeky stuff this time, not much fine litterature here. Sort of a red thread with regards to the topic of these books. Anyway, here we go.


Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery
by Garr Reynolds

I've been following mr. Reynolds fine blog with the same name for three years now, and have probably read about 90-100% of his posts. My first impression is how much of this book Garr has given away for free on his blog. That's not important for people who hasn't read his blog, but people like me might feel cheated for paying for something we've already have gotten. Not me, I think it's great have all this collected in a book, and presented in a complete manner.

This book explains Garr Reynolds idea of presentation, where simplicity in design and delivery is sentral. This is not a "Powerpoint primer" or similar, in fact, it hardly mentions how things is done in Powerpoint, Keynote or similar. It focus on the content and style, rather then the technical details. And mr. Reynolds have compiled a pretty good argument for his style. It's backed up with a lot of real life and fixtional examples that showcases his points. And as he closes the book with, this is not a final conclusion about presentation, but a first step on a long way of making better presentations.

As for me, I really have learned a lot about slide layout and design in general from this book, and I really like it. However, I do feel that the approch does not really apply to my needs. It's more suitable for buisness and sharing ideas and visions (but not exclusivly that). In a lecture situation, you can't cut your presentation down to the three most important points. You gotta cover the curricilum. And sometimes, you need to put in formulas and complex data (which mr. Reynolds at least partially aknowledge). At the end, there are sample slides of some other people using the presentation zen approch, among them a University lecture on aromatic chemisty. I really would love to see that lecture, because I still believe that you can't apply this approch "unmodified" to such a complex topic. But I sure like to be convinced, cause this is a book everybody who present or lecure could learn from. Recommended.

The back of the napkin

by Dan Roam

This book is about visual thinking using simple (hand-drawn) pictures to stimulate creative thinking in problem solving and present and sell ideas. I'm a sucker for icons, and I've browsed through mr. Roam's blog a couple of times, and I liked the icon-like quality of some of his drawings and his simple and effective way of picture different things (I even think I made a post about it before the US election last year). Loved the examples I found on the blog.

The book? Well, first of all, it's really buisness oriented. And I've heard mr. Roam state that buisness people us pictures and graphs far less then, say, science people. I don't know about that, but what struck me when I start reading the book, is that I actually use pictures to communicate, solve problems and illustrate a point. Many of those hand drawn, but I can't remember the last time I went into a meeting with a hand-drawn picuture or graph. Then I have them electronically in Excel/ powerpoint or similar. I also think that people with basic knowledge in statistics or chemometrics have a lot of powerful, and sometimes better, charts we can make. That's especially true for the elaborated multi-variable charts.

Apart from the point above, I did enjoy reading this book even though it is really a buisness book; a world pretty unknown to me. I did enjoy his ture stories of how he has used his pictures and graphs in selling ideas and solving problems as a buisness consultant. Some of the tools where you stimulate both the "right and left side" of the brain is also interesting and something I might consider trying out. But what I really found inspiring about this book, is the way to focus an idea and deliever it in a way that people can follow quickly. Even though the examples are buisness, it's something everybody can learn from. Another recommandation from me.

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information

by Edward Tufte

Now this is something different. Edward Tufte is an American statistician and Professor of statistics and whatnot, and this book is in a different league then the two above. While they emphasize simplicity and crystalizing out the essential message to present or sell, Tufte with his background is a strong defender of the other use of charts: To plot a lot of data to make data-dence charts that allows researcher and normal people to explore data, rather then just being sold an idea. In fact, Tufte argues that simple data/ small data sets are better represented in a table. Though I do see the use of both kinds, I am geeky enough to really enjoy Tuftes' argument and examples, going all the way back to Leonard and the first pie and bar charts ever made, up to current issues of newspapers and scientific journals. The only drawback is that this book is a reprint from 1980 or so, and a few of his arguments are obsolete. For example, one of his charts he states that he had reduced the number of lines needed to draw the chart from 80 to 10, thus saving the scientist time that should be spent better doing research. In this time of Excel and computers, I don't know of any scientist that still makes charts by hand. Furthermore, some of the changes, that improves the chart, does take longer to make then just pulling up the standard Excel-graph. And sometimes that is enough.

But his data-ink ratio (how much of the ink on a graph is used to represent data, and how much is "chart junk") and data density are really interesting. And he makes a compelling argument that the newspapers use advanced language, but simple charts. I wonder how the situation is today. This is a great book that everybody that draws charts or deal with large data sets should read. Even if it is old. Highly recommended, I will buy more of his books.

Ric Flair - To Be The Man

To Be The Man by Ric Flair with Keith Elliot Greenberg is the autobiography of - you guessed it - Nature Boy Ric Flair, who became a pro wrestler in the early 70's and retired in March this year. Dude has been a pro wrestler for longer than I've been alive, which is a testament to his staying power and ability to avoid and work around injuries.

This autobiography - to the extent an autobiography can be written by someone other than the subject - is supposedly brutally honest regarding Naitch's alcohol abuse and womanizing, and to a certain extent I guess it is. He somehow tries to pawn his excessive lifestyle off as the follies of youth, despite him continuing this lifestyle up until he was approximately fifty years old, at which point he can hardly claim to pull off any form of bambi-esque naïvete of youth.

I have to admit that I never really was a fan of Flair. That being said, it was obvious even way back when that he was an excellent worker and heel, who always managed to put his opponents over and draw heat on himself. Which is cool. However, his schtick always looked like it was damn close to a 70's Liberace act mixed in with some good ol' redneckin'. Frankly, his "Four Horsemen" storyline, of which he is immensely proud, comes off as some kind of Billy Jack trailer park saga. Predictably, Flair compares himself to Hogan and comes off smelling like roses AND the better wrestler, and of course thinks it's completely unfair that Hogan is so much richer than him. What Flair sort of neglects to mention, is that while Naitch was famous for spending more money than he made on limousines, chartering jetplanes, gold Rolex watches and tailor made clothes (mostly outfits that would have made Liberace cringe), Hogan saved and invested the money he made. That might have something to do with Hogan being better off now, in addition to Hogan being the bigger draw throughout his career.....

To illustrate how out of touch Flair is with his drawing power compared to that of Hogan during the 80's, here's how he describes the difference between himself and the Hulkster:

Here's the fundamental difference between Hulk Hogan and myself: Hogan told his fans, "Train, say your prayers and take your vitamins." My motto was "Drink, party all night and love all the ladies."

The thing is though; what really made Vinnie Mac rule the world of sports entertainment in the 80's was that he transformed wrestling matches into family entertainment. The logic was quite simple; instead of catering to some curmudgeonly kooks and rednecks who cared about the "autenticity" of wrestling and maybe bought one beer during the house shows, Vinnie Mac could replace this dude by a family - which means moving t-shirts, action figures and what have you in adddition to food and drink, if wrestling was made out to be family-friendly. This entailed that the faces (good guys) had to be role models the kids could look up to without too many red flags being obvious to the parents, hence the red-and-yellow Hulkster, Ricky the Dragon Steamboat, etc. If the good guys always won at the end of the day, and the good guys appeared to be decent, it was safe to bring the family to the shows. Flair's image of hard drinking and womanizing didn't really fit. Simple as that. In the 90's the overall climate favored the bad-ass anti-hero, and so the companies changed to accomodate that. Even Hogan turned heel (bad guy) in the 90's, and remained a bigger draw than once-a-heel-always-a-heel Naitch. So much for the rose-rinted vista of hindsight, Ric.

One thing which really is consistent in all the wrestling autobiographies I've read (admittedly not that many), is that everybody hated Eric Bischoff. Pro Hogan, anti-Hogan - everybody hates Bischoff. To add fuel to the flames, this book also reveals that Eric Bischoff was heavily involved in the "Girls Gone Wild" videos and PPVs, which consisted of taping college girls who were on Spring Break or Mardi Gras and were drunk or stupid enough to flash their tits (and more) for the camera. That's the kind of guy Bischoff is.

Ok book - get it if you were into WCW story lines and characters.

The Death of WCW

The Death of WCW by R.D. Reynolds and Bryan Alvarez is the story of the rise and fall of the wrestling promotion (or franchise if you will) known in it's latter years as World Championship Wrestling (WCW). During WCW's heyday, this was THE wrestling promotion, and with complete backing from media mogul Ted Turner, they had almost unlimited access to prime time TV spots and a budget for poaching talent from other promotions, like Vince McMahon's World Wrestling Federation (now WWE). WCW had everything going for it, and for a period of time following the hiring of maverick Eric Bischoff as the booker (dude who decides storylines and which characters are to be involved), WCW rose from relative obscurity to completely outclass Vinny Mac's outfit.

And then everything went south, by which I don't mean that WCW returned to it's south-of-Mason-Dixie line roots, but rather that the company began it's steady decline until Vince McMahon himself was able to buy WCW complete with talent and storylines for a song (or at least insanely cheap).

If you've followed any pro wrestling from the 90's or so, including Sting, Goldberg, the Steiner Brothers, the heel turn of Hollywood Hulk Hogan and NWO, then you'll probably enjoy this book just for the anecdotes which are strewn liberally throughout the 300+ pages. What makes the book even more enjoyable is the sometimes very detailed descriptions (with color commentary, as befits an account of pro wrestling) of the (many) bad decisions that eventually led to the demise of WCW - past the point where even uncle Ted Turner was able to save the promotion. Examples include:

• A year or so before WCW went under, they figured out a brilliant cost-cutting strategy for reducing their immense travel budget. Instead of flying the entire roster (~160 wrestlers) to each and every house show, they only flew in the talent scheduled to actually make an appearance in the house shows (approximately a tenth of the roster). No kiddin'
• Poaching high-profile talent from other wrestling promotions, giving the newly acquired talent long-time contracts and ridiculously high salaries, only to use them in minor storylines, never giving them any push at all.
• Hiring bookers (such as Dusty Rhodes and Kevin Nash) who insisted on being headliners themselves, and booking all the story lines so that either themselves or their old pals won the titles, thus holding back new talent.
• Including a "creative control" clause in the contracts of major stars like Hogan who - surprise, surprise - didn't really want to lose and thus made it hard to follow through with long-term storylines involving title changes

In summary, it's a fun read. Epic ending of a book review.

Bare Werner, by Thor-Egil Danielsen

Norwegian singer and entertainer Jan Werner Danielsen passed away in September 2006. This biography, written by his father, gives a parent's point of view on the childhood, life and career of an extremely talented singer.

Alrighty then - I bought this book on a 60% sale, but odds are I would've bought it anyways. When we moved here from good ol' Wake County, NC, US of A, I became somewhat fascinated every time I heard him on the radio or saw him on television. At first, I just thought "the songs totally blow, but damn can he sing". This immediately transitioned into "That dude would be the perfect power metal singer. He'd be my first choice as a singer in a power metal band, seeing as how Roy Khan is sorta' busy with Kamelot". Of course, even if I had the time and inclination to get a power metal band going and had given him a call back in, say, 2005, there's no way he'd even have answered my call. In the unlikely event that he'd taken my call, he'd probably have dismissed the idea immediately, and on the infinitesimal chance that he'd accepted, I seriously doubt that any record label would've picked up an unknown metal band fronted by a musical/gospel/Eurovision/pop singer whose most famous works include covers of Celine Dion and Chess songs. Oh well. The idea of Jan Werner the power metal singer ain't that far fetched though; checketh him out doing "Holy Diver" by Dio:

Back to the biography. The part of the book dedicated to Jan Werner's childhood is perhaps a little bit too colored by parental pride, and so some of the stories appear to have grown for each time they're told, the end result being somewhat hard to believe at times. However, this turns into what appears to be brutal honesty regarding Jan Werner's adult life and career, like how he squandered his money, struggled with depression, low self-esteem and alcoholism. It's a good read.

Kevin Smith - My Boring-Ass Life

Or rather My Boring-Ass Life - The Uncomfortably Candid Diary of Kevin Smith.

I've got mixed emotions about this book. On one hand, it's very well written, Kevin Smith is - in my opinion - incredibly funny, and there's some really good stuff and anecdotes in here. Some of it's really touching even, like the sections on the aftermath of his dad's death and the story of how Jason Mewes (that's "Jay") kicked his heroin habit. These two stories alone make the book worth reading.

On the other hand, the book is pretty much a hardcopy of his "Silent Bob Speaks" blog, where it's like dude just pressed "Print entries from 200X to 200Y". Moreover, a lot of this is covered verbatim in his Q&A DVDs. So it almost looks like Smith is rivaling Gene Simmons himself when it comes to hawking products in as many versions as possible. Still, considering that his wife appears to contribute little other than organizing the odd event at their Malibu home, I can't begrudge Kevin Smith his desire to make some coin. Bi-weekly manicures and pedicures don't come free, and it totally looks like the former USA Today Lifestyle section "journalist" has found her meal ticket.

Absolutely worthwhile read if ya like "Clerks", "Mallrats" and other Smith creations.

The Heroin Diaries

Just finished reading The Heroin Diaries - A Year In The Life Of A Shattered Rock Star by Nikki Sixx.

This book is supposedly more or less a transcript of Nikki's diary from 1987, supplemented with commentaries by Nikki himself as well as other participants and/or bystanders. I use the modifier "supposedly" because it looks quite edited for a raw transcript of a diary. Also, there's something inherently iffy about a diary with a co-author, but whatever.

Whether or not the book is a legitimate diary, it's entertaining most of the time, and provides a peek into the mind of a seriously messed up individual throughout the entire work. Heroin is one helluva drug, and Sixx has a black belt with matching shoes in addiction. Moreover, all signs point to him being a bona fide, 100% grade A, guaran-damn-teed scumbag when intoxicated.

I would recommend that you read "The Dirt" before you read this, but "Heroin Diaries" is well worth the money. If you thought the debauchery was at top levels in "The Dirt", you ain't seen nuthin' yet.

Another thing which is quite obvious from this book, is that the hatred and contempt the Mötley boys and Guins'N Roses direct towards bands like Bon Jovi and Poison is completely ridiculous. Nikki Sixx accuses Poison of just being another hair band with make-up but no skills, while touting Crüe as a legendary band with kick-ass songs and musicians. I beg to differ. While I haven't heard anyone argue that Poison is made up of virtuosos, the same can definitely be said of Mötley Crüe. Breaking it down member by member and starting with Mr. Sixx, even Rick Nielsen from Cheap Trick, one of Nikki's heroes, states that Sixx has a lot in common with Gene Simmons as a bass player. It sounds better when he doesn't play. Not that Crüe bass lines are particularly complicated in the first place. Vince Neil is, or at least was, a blond prettyboy who pouted for the camera whilst fighting a losing battle to stay within a city block from the correct pitch. Dude ain't a particularly good singer, but he does have a distinct style. As for guitarist Mick Mars, I have never, ever read or heard about any guitarist in the known universe who has cited him as an influence. I read an interview in "Guitar World" once where the interviewee claimed that on one occasion he had perhaps overdone the intake of liquid courage prior to taking the stage, and thus sucked something fierce. As the band entered the dressing room post gig, his band members accused him of "sounding like Mick f*cking Mars, man". By far the best musician in Mötley Crüe is the drummer Tommy Lee, and that's saying something. But the lyrics, man.....Sixx really prides himself with being a great lyricist, unlike the aforementioned Bon Jovi and Poison. Would you hook a brother up - if you've listened to any Crüe songs you'd know how ridiculous this claim is. With profound lyrics like those found in "Girls, Girls, Girls", "She Goes Down", "Looks That Kill", "Sticky Sweet" and "Slice Of Your Pie", I'm surprised Nikki's name isn't mentioned in the same breath and context as Lord Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge and Keats. Epic delusionite.

Gene Simmons - KISS And Make Up

I never was a KISS fan, and the name of Gene Simmons has never given me a particularly warm and fuzzy feeling. Still; this book has given me a new-found respect for the man.

Gene Simmons is very upfront about his considering music to only be a vehicle for Simmons' personal business vision, which reaches way beyond the realms of a simple rock band. For Simmons it was never about the music; he is very open about him getting involved in the music industry to make money and get laid, not necessarily in that order. Moreover, he is very honest about having tried to jump onto different bandwagons in order to capitalize on emerging music trends - examples including the disco flirt with "I Was Made For Lovin' You", the boarding of the hair metal bandwagon with "Crazy Nights" and the more modern metal approach of "Psycho Circus". In some cases it was wildly successful, and sometimes it tanked. In a refreshing turn of events, Simmons not only admits to bandwagonjumping in order to further his business, he also takes blame for decisions which went wrong. Quite the rare occurrence in the world of rock star biographies.

Something I find to be quite interesting is that Gene Simmons describes himself as a pragmatist. This is interesting because in my experience, those who label themselves as pragmatists are frequently labeled cynics by others. I have never in my life - neither in academia nor in other avenues of life - found an example of someone being in complete agreement with their surroundings on labeling themselves as pragmatist. Just an observation.

Another reason to give Gene Simmons his due is that he actually bothered to take an education while pursuing his rock star dreams, and get a load of this ladies and gentlemen: in the very beginning of his music career he always held down regular jobs - plural. As did Paul Stanley. He never was a drug dealer or mooched off of others, which makes him one of the most honorable rock stars around. Mad props.

Naturally, the subject of guitarist Ace Frehley, Peter Criss and their drug habits and subsequent dismissals comes up in this book. There is no question that both these gentlemen were abusing drugs to the degree that they could not perform their duties. There are plenty of other sources citing that this and that musician really had to step into the studio and do a guitar solo or a drum part because Frehley or Criss would be lying on the studio floor, stones out of their minds.

KISS and Make Up is a surprisingly good book from a very intelligent man. No doubt does Simmons have the wherewithal to spin the facts in such a way as to make himself look better than others might remember in certain situations, but all in all this is even better than "Crazy From The Heat". Strongly recommended.

Axl Rose biography

W.A.R - The Unauthorized Biography of W. Axl Rose by Mick Wall.

It's a simple story; 1) rock journalist hangs tight with Guns'N'Roses, 2) journalist gets to hang backstage with the band as well as at their houses, 3) journalist writes something about the band which is not to Axl's liking, 4) journalist is put on shit list and even named in the song "Get In The Ring", 5) journalist writes an "objective" biography about Axl Rose wherein, wonder over all wonders, Axl doesn't exactly come out smelling like a rose. Hell hath no fury like a mediocre rock journalist who got to experience fame by association only to be cast out of Paradise City.

Although this is hardly an objective biography written by a neutral third party, I'll concede that I don't think anyone could be capable of writing a favorable book about Axl Rose. The best parts of this book consist of transcripts from interviews (with others) and from things Axl has said during concerts (also from other media outlets than from the scorned memory of Mick Wall). With Axl Rose, it's always someone else's fault, and he is just an innocent bystander. Every time he ever threw a hissy fit on stage or didn't bother to show up, it's always some phenomenally unlikely occurrence which is to blame. Or it's someone else in the revolving pool of hapless individuals which is the Guns'N'Roses organization which is to blame. It's never Axl; all Axl wants is to go out there and put on the best show of the fans' lives or to put out the best rock'n roll record in the history of Mankind. Sadly, Axl Rose is trapped in a region of time and space where normal things don't happen very often, and where he is constantly experiencing bouts of extraordinarily bad luck.

By the way; the journalist Mick Wall is the same guy who wrote "Run To The Hills", the official biography of Iron Maiden, a book so overenthusiastic about the band that as I read it, I was constantly amazed at how Mr. Wall managed to type with Steve Harris' dick in his mouth. and his balls obscuring his view. In "W.A.R", Mr. Wall refers to the time around "Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son" - characterized by Iron Maiden as well as Mr. Wall as the time in which Iron Maiden were on top of the world and had no peers in hard rock - as well past Iron Maiden's prime. Considering how many rock star biographies Mr. Wall has penned, I wouldn't be surprised if Mr. Wall has contributed more to the spreading of STD among rock stars than Bebe Buell.

David Lee Roth - Crazy From The Heat

In my opinion, David Lee Roth is the ultimate frontman. If only he could sing, he'd be even better. After reading the Van Halen biography, this book seemed all the more appealing. The brothers Van Halen spend a lot of time putting all the blame on their lead singers, and especially on David Lee Roth. The funny thing is that most of the time, what they blame Roth for and which they claim broke up VH mark 1, is that he wanted to do a side project - his famous or infamous covers of "California Girls" and "Just A Gigolo/I Ain't Got Nobody". Problem is; by then Eddie Van Halen had already recorded "Beat It" with Michael Jackson, recorded some solos for a KISS album, done some movie soundtracks for his then wife's made for TV movies, and so on. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. This, combined with the fact that Diamond Dave is an extremely extrovert, eloquent and loquacious individual, makes for an interesting and entertaining autobiography.

Which leads me to another thing; it ain't ghost written - it's pure Roth. Choice of words, mannerisms - everything is exactly like an interview with Roth, so this is the real deal. So much the better. The book is not a chronological account of the life and times of Mr. Roth - which rules, 'cause being exposed to the excruciating minutia of what his mom made for dinner and what his second grade teachers were like is something I can do without. Neither is the book a detailed description of his backstage antics - also something I can do without. Besides which - you know he did all that stuff, so there's no mystery there - the rest is a description of kinesiology and pharmacology. What this book IS however, is an awesome collection of short stories and accumulated wisdom from none other than Diamond David Lee Roth, the man, the myth, the living legend himself. Moreover, while the Van Halen book would've been reduced by at least 30% if one was to remove all the Dave-bashing, there is very little Van Halen bashing to be found here. Much props for that.

I really, really enjoyed this book. Some of his stories of life on the road sort of come out of left field, yet are really funny. Like the description of how during the most active touring they'd leave a town as soon as possible after a gig to get to the next venue in time. Which means that beside the hotel and the venue, there was no time for anything (well; almost). So after a couple of days on the road, there's the onset of road amnesia, where everything becomes a blur. One particular problem described by Dave Roth emerges when every hotel room looks exactly the same yet the room you're in now has a different architecture than the one you had last night. This becomes a problem when you wake up in the middle of the night and head for the bathroom - which ain't where you remember it was, so you keep running into walls and whatnot, as you can't locate the light switch either.

Somewhat surprisingly, Diamond Dave really lashes out at sensationalist journalism. A lot of what he writes on this topic mirrors my own opinions. Just to digress - when we lived in NC, there was a horrible explosion at a chemical factory in Wake County, with plenty of casualties and horrific, stomach-churning injuries. At that time I was spending a lot of time commuting between NC State in Raleigh, and UNC Chapel Hill to do some flashy experiments on some tiny particles coated with something which makes them do whatever. On the way, we had to drive by the hospital in Chapel Hill, and every time Joe and me would drive past that place, for several weeks, there would be hordes of these supposed journalists stacked wide and deep outside the hospital entrance, waiting for someone with horrible disfigurements to emerge, or even better, for some grieving families to come out in tears. Whenever someone would come out - typically one or two adults huddling with some kids, these vultures would swarm on them with cameras and microphones. The images would be available at the 10 PM news, and in every news pitch before that. The public has a right to know what a crying widow looks like half an hour after her husband passed away from being too close to an explosion? F*cking vultures - have some compassion and basic human dignity! The most disheartening part was that the vultures were mostly from the major, so-called serious news agencies - the local schmoes from Channel WKGB-Douche were by far in the minority.

Back to Dave. If you've read more than two rock star biographies, you'll know that all of them have apparently had the same managers, who in turn screwed them over, leaving them in debt to their record companies while they rode happily into the sunset with the band's earnings. Dave has written a chapter called Business 101, wherein he outlines precisely how the manager, accountant and lawyers screw you over. Totally awesome - this book should be required reading for any professional musician. I'm not gonna provide any spoilers here, as I'm of the vehement opinion that you should read this book - at the very least this chapter.

Best rock biography this side of "The Dirt". Buy it today!

Slash's Autobiography

Slash - by Slash with Anthony Bozza

Yet another rock star autobiography, huge sections of which are probably ghost-written by some dude. In this case, the dude is Anthony Bozza, who also "helped" Tommy Lee write "Tommyland".

Slash is best known for being the lead guitar player of Guns'N'Roses, but also for having recorded with Michael Jackson ("Give In To Me" and "Black And White") and for his two post-GnR band incarnations - Slash's Snakepit and Velvet Revolver. The latter is basically Guns'N'Roses sans Axl, as it includes drummer Matt Sorum and bass player Duff McKagan. Whether or not that's a good thing depends entirely on whether you think the vocals are the strong point of GnR or not. At any rate, if you're a Guns fan, Velvet Revolver is pretty much where it's at for record releases though, because "Chinese Democracy" has been a long time coming, and there's no realistic release date in sight.

As can be expected, most of the book is about Saul Hudson's time in Guns'N Roses. Luckily for me, this entails more than just tales of drug use, groupies and overall debauchery, as songwriting, recording and even auditioning new members is dealt with extensively. The latter is what I really enjoy reading about, but I'm also a sucker for any description of the mythical Hollywood/Sunset Boulevard scene of the 80's.

Being the autobiography of a rock star with a sizeable ego, "Slash" contains plenty of sections dealing with how he's an awesome guitar player and how other guitarists suck, and how GnR was not at all like the glam scene back at Sunset, but rather not being caught up in all that hair metal nonsense. Quite early in the book, Slash describes how he used to play guitar in a band which at one point had featured shredder extraordinaire Paul Gilbert. According to Slash, he could also play fast like Yngwie and Paul Gilbert, but he didn't want to, 'cause it wasn't his thing. Right. This, buy the way, is written some two chapter prior to him describing how it took a really long time for him to be able to nail the lead riff in "Sweet Child O' Mine" without messing it up live. Axl also gets high praise as "by far the best singer in LA during the 80's". Moreover, the other LA bands (with the exception of Mötley Crüe) also played out of tune and generally sucked. This is quite funny considering that the two things which have always stood out to me whenever I hear a live recording of guns are i) guitars are out of tune, and ii) Axl rose sings off-key. Compare this to live recordings of, say, Poison - which are relentlessly belittled in this book - and you'll find that Bret Michaels doesn't sing off-key, and CC DeVille, although quite limited from a guitar-technical standpoint, stays in tune more often than Slash/Izzy. Funny how rose-tinted the vision of days gone by can appear. Slash's oft-repeated contempt for the hair spray and make-up of the general 80's hair metal band also appears somewhat hypocritical if you take a look at pretty much any band photo of Guns - especially Axl and Duff.

Overall I really enjoyed this book, despite the fact that it's obviously written by Anthony Bozza. I don't see high-school drop-out Saul Hudson using words like "sartorial" and "wherewithal" that often. I've certainly never seen him use them in any interviews.

What would be really interesting is an Axl Rose autobiography......

Book Fail: The Emperor's New Mind

I give up. I've been reading this book since June - which for me is almost a record for how long it's taken to read a book - and I've finally decided to throw in the towel. On paper, "The Emperor's New Mind" by mathematician and physicist Dr. Sir Roger Penrose (insert the rest of the letters in the alphabet here) is something I'm heavily susceptible to enjoying.

In practice, it's mindbogglingly boring. Even though I consider myself to be rather mathematically inclined, I found this book to be a struggle. Not wanting to leave any reader behind, the author has set the bar quite low with respect to prerequisite math knowledge, and instead opted to introduce what i suspect is a rather steep learning curve for his intended audience as the book progresses. Thus, the book is well-stocked with DIY Mandelbrot sets and other math puzzles, and concomitant pages filled with nothing but numbers corresponding to the answers to reader exercises.

Not what I signed up for. I read two-three pages, and have to switch to something else out of sheer boredom. I liked the section on entropy and the laws of thermodynamics, though.

As a side note, I noticed one serious bug in the Turing test after reading this book. As far as I can tell, Alan Turing was kinda' vague on the criteria the human subject has to pass. Specifically, the test appears ill-suited to tackle particularly pedantic, inanimate and humourless individuals, resulting in under-shooting the intended criteria. To put it differently; if Martin Kolberg had been the human subject, our electronic bathroom scale could have found to be Turing compliant.

Scar Tissue and White Line Fever

These are two "autobiographies" from rather prominent rock stars - Anthony Kiedis of Red Hot Chili Peppers (Scar Tissue) and Lemmy of Motörhead (White Line Fever). The quotation marks are there because invariably, there's a name in much smaller font below that of the recognizable name, which in all likelihood belongs to the poor bastard who had to transcribe hours and hours of interviews from tape to text, and probably had to invent some context around some particularly rambling anecdotes as well. That being said, here's my opinion of the books, starting with:

Scar Tissue
Of all the rock star biographies I've read, I must admit that Anthony Kiedis gets my vote for "Most Likely to have been Legitimately Screwed Up by Parents". By about a country mile. Let's start by the fact that his dad was a particularly unsuccessful petty criminal and drug dealer, and his mom was a serial loser with a penchant for hooking up with convicts and marrying them in hopes of reforming the bad boy. Right; 'cause that's ever worked in the history of the universe. There's an interesting series of photos in the book as well, they depict young Anthony smoking his first pot at age 10 or so. The cameraman is his father. Also present is one of his dad's teenage girlfriends, and she's later to take her clothes off for young Anthony to take photographs of. Oh, and Anthony loses his virginity when he "borrows" one of his dad's teenage girlfriends, with his dad's consent as well as the consent from the probably drugged-out bimbo. Swell family.

In a twist which is as unsurprising as it is psych 101 textbook parental issues, young Anthony becomes a drug dealer and - surprise, surprise - addict. This book is as much, if not more, about drugs than about music and Kiedis' career with RHCP. Still, there's enough about the band, the music and the recording process to keep me interested interspersed among the tales of drug abuse and his constantly revolving door of girlfriends, each of which obviously is "the one" before he starts cheating on her. This is the funny part though; it's never his fault. Despite him being faithful to the girlfriend of the month only every second Tuesday of the week, it's always some supposedly innocent explanation to every time his girlfriend shows up at his apartment and finds him buck nekkid in bed with another girl. Tony just has the worst luck, 'cause surely nothing is ever HIS fault. Still; the saving grace of the book is that Mr. Kiedis doesn't take himself too seriously, and for the most part doesn't recall every messed up event through the rose-tinted lenses of hindsight. Also, he comes across as quite reflected and at times bright. This is absolutely one of the better rock star "autobiographies" I've read.




White Line Fever
It took me an extended afternoon to read this book, so it ain't that voluminous. It is kinda' funny, however, as it continues the trend described above of anything wrong that happens being someone else's fault. Lemmy comes across in this book much the same way he does in his interviews - bright, somewhat arrogant but not all there. Maybe the fact that his breakfast used to be cornflakes swimming in bourbon has something to do with that fact. Oh well. If ya like Motörhead and endless tales of record companies screwing the band over (despite said band having obviously signed the same contract for about seven different labels), all the other band members being losers who kept screwing with the band's direction and how all Lemmy wants to do immediately after a concert is get laid, then this is the book for you. As a side note, it's quite sad that a legend of metal like Lemmy, who's been in the business for thirty years or more, still was broke as f*ck after "Ace Of Spades" was released. And also that after they signed on with the US division of Sony in the 90's, Lemmy considered himself fortunate to have "befriended" one of the label secretaries, because otherwise they couldn't have afforded all those translatlantic phone calls to secure gigs etc. This is one of the major metal acts in the world. Quite sad.

Survival skills for scientists - review

is the title of a book I bought just last week, written by Federico Rosei and Tudor Johnston from Université de Quebéc, Canada, a.k.a. mexico North. From the blurb at World Scientific, "This book provides young scientists, from physicists through to sociologists, the counsel and tools that are needed to be their own agents and planners, to survive and succeed, hopefully even thrive in science. Making a good career based on peer-reviewed science means navigating many stressful phases from graduate school through to permanent employment. Performing artists pay agents to help them in this effort. In effect, this book is designed to allow you to act as your own agent. You are counseled to analyze yourself deeply to know clearly what you want and whether you can live with it, how to make career choices and what you should then keep in mind, when to fight and when to yield. The unwritten rules of the “science game” are explained, including how to become published and known, the pitfalls of peer review and how to evade them, papers and posters, job interviews and getting your science funded. Interspersed with this are illustrative anecdotes and a fair amount of humor."

Looked like a winner to me, as it held the potential to be both entertaining and to perhaps provide me with some guidance from scientists from not-that-distant fields who have traveled this road before me. There was humour involved alright. More specifically, the joke was on me for buying this book in the first place.

What was disappointing was the economy of content displayed in the book; there was VERY little new information presented here which was not clear to me in my first year of grad school, like how it is important to publish in journals with high impact factors so as to get a higher potential number of readers and thus increase the odds for citations, that going to conferences is more about networking than gaining knowledge, that it is important to get along with your advisor because he or she is going to write letters of reference, etc. Holy obvious, Batman.

Moreover, the book adopts what in my opinion is a fallacy, that it's all about puttin' in hours, and that the more you work, the better the odds of getting somewhere in academia. According to the book, you can overcome lots of limitations and work around scientific talent if you just put in those 60+ hour weeks all the time. I've got plenty beef with this assertion. Even though I'm not as experienced as the authors of this book, I've definitely put in the ultralong hours during my PhD and post doc, and I've gathered some experience with more moderate (but still long) hours. My conclusion is that there are some bottlenecks inherent to science which cannot be traversed more rapidly by putting in more hours. This might be true for labwork, where there is a direct correlation between the number of hours you put in and the amount of data you get in the other end, but it certainly does not hold for the more creative aspects of the job, like writing a paper, interpreting data and setting up ideas for new projects and grant proposals. If you're writing a paper and you're struggling with formulating a section, spending more time with it might not help at all - trust me: I've tried. Spending more hours writing is probably gonna get you more words in the document, but the wordcount is hardly correlated with quality when it comes to scientific articles. Neither is it necessarily of any use staring into code, reading the same lines of code over and over again in hopes of finding the reason why the damn thing doesn't compile. Ditto for poring over your graphs trying to find new physical interpretations for the new data set which doesn't follow the same trend as the previous.

Sure; you've got to put in long hours and work hard, but you've also got to remember that you're in this for the long haul if you choose academia (or vice versa). Carving a legacy in science isn't a sprint, but a marathon, and few things are sadder than the professor who has no life outside of the lab.

If I run into the first author at a conference or something, I'm gonna get my money back, and I don't accept Canadian currency.

The sale that wouldn't end

Getting hosed twice in the same campus bookstore sale now.........90% off this time....man I must be an easy target. Maybe one of these books can remedy that, though

Brody's Human Pharmacology - Molecular to Clinical, 4th Edition (Elsevier Mosby) by Minneman, Wecker, Larner and Brody
It was relevant and it was cheap...and probably redundant.

Confessions of a Hypnotist by Jonathan Royle
It looked like an entertaining read, and Scott Adams rants on and on about it. Good enough for me. Plus, from the photograph of the author with his Jag on the back cover, dude must be doing something right. Perhaps he got that Jag by selling books like this to suckers like me...

Clinical Biochemistry, 7th Edition (Blackwell Publishing) by Beckett, Walker, Rae and Ashby
Looked interesting, and it's research relevant....yeah yeah; they got me good

Nanotechnology and the Environment (ACS Symposium Series 890) edited by Karn, Masciangioli, Zhang, Colvin and Alivisatos
Well well well - Paul Alivisatos; we meet again. In a freak coincident, I was recently roped into being an advisor for the committee on nanotech and (among other things) the environment for the nanotechnology study. Plus; this is one of them things that's brought up all the time, but there is very little information to be found, so this is cool.

Artificial Enzymes (Wiley-VCH) edited by Ronald Breslow
Relevant as all get-out.

Principles of Instrumental Analysis, 5th Edition by Skoog, Holler and Nieman
Awesome book to use as reference for various techniques in articles......

To edit or not to edit

..that is the question. Or rather; that WAS the question on two separate occasions. This year, I've had two separate offers from two different publishing houses of putting together and editing a book within my field of research. One of the offers was strictly regarding a state-of-the-art review, whereas the second one was also meant for use in PhD level courses. Talk about the bee's knees - not only would I get my name on the cover of, potentially, two books, but I'd also get to author several chapters, and if and when the book breaks even sales-wise, I might even get royalties. CV filler AND potential source of revenue - that's hard to beat. PhD students all over the world might even curse my name for including all those triple integrals and poorly hidden quantum mechanics, which would be a bonus.

Yet on both occasions, I politely declined. It was a close call, and it seems to make sense now, but maybe I'll kick myself down the road for turning down these opportunities. Let's see if my arguments make sense when they're summarized:

• Aside from the fact that editing a book like this is a truckload of work and initially a thankless job (constantly reminding contributors of deadlines - the literary version of "Are we there yet? How about now?"), this ain't typically what you do when you're as new to the game as I am. Editing science books is often regarded as a hobby for full professors with a long track record in the field, with already-built and functioning research groups, and a steady source of funding. I don't exactly fit that profile.
• With a few notable exceptions, all the people I'd ask to contribute would be older, more experienced and probably better suited for the job than me. I'd be the junior author, and thus prone to receiving all kinds of advice from my not-quite peers, which would lead to Monday-morning quarterbacking, followed by more hassle and cracking of whips for me. For no extra benefits, I might add.
• The books wouldn't show up in WOS, and consequently editing of these books would halt the development of my h-factor, which is hardly a good idea at this point in time. At present, I think my time is better spent publishing my research in good journals, thus building my reputation.
• Even though books like these are advertised as state-of-the-art, the sheer process of publishing one of these things entails that the content is at least on year - or more likely 18 months - behind the cutting edge. One might even argue that journal articles are six to twelve months behind the curve, but at least they're way closer to the cutting edge. Not to mention that they help build my h-factor.

.....the decision still makes sense to me. That being said; I'd love to edit a book like this at one point, but not right now.

Damn - another sale at the campus book store

...which means I got roped in and hosed good. At least I walked out of there with four books I certainly wasn't planning on buying when I rolled in, but the books were on sale, so how could I pass up the opportunity........

They sure saw me coming from a country mile away.... This time, I ended up with the following page-turners:

• Oxford Dictionary of Idioms - 'cause you can never have too many reference manuals for anything related to writing. At least that's what I tell myself.
• The Nanotech Pioneers - Where Are They Taking Us? (Wiley-VCH) by Steven A. Edwards. It's interesting, it's relevant, and it provides me with fodder I can put into my lectures in various topics. A bit of flava', if you like. For some inexplicable reason, the students enjoy some historical background between the triple integrals and differential equations. Kids today.....
• Medical Pharmacology and Therapeutics, 2nd Edition (Elsevier Saunders) by Waller, Renwick and Hillier. Another reference manual relevant to my research. And like pointy electric guitars with whammy bars, wide flat necks and high-output pickups, one should have a bunch of reference books lying around. I guess it's getting to be downright pedestrian to figure out what kind of research I'm doing.
• The Science of Harry Potter by Roger Highfield. Yeah; go right ahead and call me a geek. But I'm tellin' ya - we'll see who gets the last laugh when the Reptilians from Planet Niburu shares their broomstick and wand technology with us and I'm one of the technology have's, versus your have-not's. You never know how far away the mothership behind the comet is from invading Earth. And with my knowledge of their technology, I can hotwire one of their reptilian space crafts, sneak into their mothership and upload Windows Vista complete with Outlook to their mainframe. If that doesn't screw up their plans for planetary domination, I don't know what will. Ok; it was cheap, it looked like an amusing read - what do you want from me?