{"id":1832,"date":"2004-09-18T21:20:26","date_gmt":"2004-09-19T02:20:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.quirkspace.com\/quirkblog\/?p=577"},"modified":"2004-09-18T21:20:26","modified_gmt":"2004-09-19T02:20:26","slug":"perception-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.quirkspace.com\/quirkblog\/?p=1832","title":{"rendered":"Perception change"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every so often, you find a book that changes how you look at the world. I’m not talking about religious conversion or huge philosophical changes, I just mean more subtle things. It could be a great physics textbook that gives you an unexpected insight into the Leidenfrost effect<\/a>, so that you can never look at a pancake the same way. Or a software manual<\/a> that suddenly and unexpectedly clarifies absolutely everything about PHP and CSS, giving you a deep appreciation of a well done database-driven website.<\/p>\n

Or it could be a book about zombies<\/a>.
\n
\nI guarantee that if you go and get a copy of The Zombie Survival Guide and read it cover-to-cover, you’ll never look at any building quite the same way ever again. It could be a masterpiece of modern architecture, a miraculous blending of curves and lines. After you’ve recovered from the overwhelming shock of your first sight, you’ll think to yourself, “That’s beautiful! But how would it stand up to a prolonged attack by zombies?”<\/p>\n

My wife finds it kind of annoying, and I can understand that… But still! It’s not a bad question…<\/p>\n

Our house would be pretty good. There’s just a single staircase to the second floor, and that could be converted to a zombie-resistant ramp pretty quickly by taking the door off the bathroom and nailing it over the stairs. With my wife’s collection of martial arts staves we could shove any attackers down the ramp without getting within reach. We’d have a source of fresh water if we filled the tub, and there are candles and such for light. With a couple minutes of warning we could grab food from the kitchen, so we could hold out for quite a while…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every so often, you find a book that changes how you look at the world. I’m not talking about religious conversion or huge philosophical changes, I just mean more subtle things. It could be a great physics textbook that gives … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[25],"class_list":["post-1832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.quirkspace.com\/quirkblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.quirkspace.com\/quirkblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.quirkspace.com\/quirkblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.quirkspace.com\/quirkblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.quirkspace.com\/quirkblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.quirkspace.com\/quirkblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1832\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.quirkspace.com\/quirkblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.quirkspace.com\/quirkblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.quirkspace.com\/quirkblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}