ChapterZero

First, what does it mean to say Animal X eats half its body weight in food daily? How can you claim to measure ‘the weight’ of an animal when it is likely to poop off a third of its weight within 12 hours?

Second, I just want to observe that the world of programming books is a strange one, completely unlike the more traditional and sensible world of academic books, where the authors follow a straightforward plan: do research, summarize research in a book, do more related research, write another book, and so on. Instead, programming books are usually written in one of two ways, with the ocassional rare and treasurable exception: the author has already had years of experience with the topic of the book, and decides to make some easy bucks by dumping core, or the author has no experience with the topic before-hand, yet figures that after doing a little research, they will be qualified to write a book on it.

Possibly relevant posts:

• Losing Weight (3/11/2004)
• Sci-Fi as the last bastion of philosophical writing? (2/18/2008)
• Mission Accomplished (8/7/2003)