What if this lake dries out completely? Piva lake is an artificial lake, but even this lake lost a lot of water last summer. It was that hot.

What if? visited Piva lake and even though the book doesn’t answer any questions about the lake, it answers many other unusual questions. Here’s the book’s photo session and review.

What if? is a masterpiece by Randall Munroe. As the book states on its cover, it contains “serious scientific answers to absurd hypothetical questions”.

I am quite far away from science. Apart from a wish to understand things, I possess no scientific inclinations. Yet I laughed my head off while reading this book. No other book ever made me laugh so much.

Randall Munroe is a unique author because he’s both a famous cartoonist and a scientist. The book is a collection of absurd questions the author had been receiving on his blog and his answers to them. Here are some examples of the questions:

• “If everyone on the planet stayed away from each other for a couple of weeks, wouldn’t the common cold be wiped out?”
• “What would happen if absolutely everyone jumped at the same time?”
• “If an asteroid was very small but supermassive, could you really live on it like the Little Prince?”
• “If you suddenly began rising steadily at 1 foot per second, how exactly would you die? Would you freeze or suffocate first? Or something else?”
• “What would happen to the Earth if the Sun suddenly switched off?”

The answers are accompanied by Munroe’s illustrations.

Some questions are so weird they received no answer but a cartoon.

Truth be told there are some rare moments when Randall goes deeper into formulas and explanations and I did skip those parts. I have formula intolerance. I don’t like numbers. Even phone numbers make me drowsy. Still I was able to enjoy this book very much.

Here’s a Wikipedia article about the book if you want to learn more. I think it’s better to order a paper copy of the book, not a digital one, because of all the illustrations.

I highly recommend this book. It’s an awesome read and a great present for anybody with a curious mind.

In a recent post I mentioned the wild places I go to. Today I took one of my books along. Some extra weight never hurt anybody, right? Here’s the photo shoot and the review of Bad Science by Ben Goldacre.

Since the time I read this book years ago I’ve been telling the same things to people. Things like:

• No, your facial cream doesn’t work. It’s a scam. At best it glues microscopic wrinkles straight for a few moments.
• Homeopathy is the hugest scam ever! It’s unbelievable that its promoters aren’t prosecuted. (That’s when I usually hear stories how homeopathy helped someone. In reality it was either placebo or the time just came to get better.)
• Omega 3 is a scam that started from the result of one single tiny biased research that doesn’t even qualify as a real research.

I could also tell you lots of hilarious stories behind those “detoxing treatments” but Ben Goldacre has a talent for entertaining audience with science so it’s better to hear those stories from him.

I’ve learned tons of useful information from the book. There are references to scientific work and research behind each finding. It means you can actually check why the facts from the book are true, unlike statements from advertisers or folklore. I haven’t managed to persuade any single person though. They continue to invest into things that at best won’t help them and at worst will hurt them. They refuse to read Bad Science or look for scientific information somewhere else. Maybe ignorance feels safer. If you can’t see you are wrong, you might believe you are always right and thus nothing bad will ever happen to you.

Maybe it will be different this time. Now I have the blog (). This post can reach someone who’s already suspecting some foul play in all the fashionable treatments, supplements and cosmetics. If you are the one looking for answers, read Bad Science. It was written for you.

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