Stats for nerds
3recommend
5mentions
5people
2014–2026years
60% recommend40% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Explorabook and Earthsearch loom hugely in my childhood memories; I can't think of another book that has stuck with me so much. Reminiscing with my mother now (I'm 30) about times spent eating biscotti in the Barnes & Noble cafe. Was recently trying to source a couple copies in Germany for a friend's kid. Now I'm reminded of the other titles, I'll probably get a set for myself as well :) Truly, thanks a million for bringing these into the world.
- That was Earthsearch. Definitely my favorite childhood book.
- I was recently home and found a classic Klutz book we read growing up called Earthsearch. It has an aluminum cover and talked about tons of worldly topics.
Recycling, race, population growth, poverty. All done at an elementary school appropriate level.
I thumbed through the book and read some excerpts and was surprised at how good it still is. So many times books from 20-30 years ago cover things wildly differently than we would today, but nothing was that way.
I'm thoroughly impressed with Klutz and will definitely make sure some of those books end up with my nieces and nephews.
- Oh goody, an expert in a question I've always wanted to ask.
Once upon a time, I encountered a sort of interactive museum book called "Earthsearch". One of its "exhibits" was a color wheel, made of two spinnable pieces of tinted acetate, that purported to be able to generate any skin tone. I suppose this is three degrees of freedom, since for any position of the two wheels you could access a range of colors around the edge - but the printed page underneath was simply a grayscale gradient, so one degree of freedom was simply luminance.
The book was released in 1994, and was very confident. It even went as far as to encourage the reader to see a doctor, should their skin tone not be achievable! What color model were they using?
- From Earthsearch[1]:
> The Japanese might make the best cars, the Germans the best beers, the French the best perfumes, the Italians the best pizza, but Americans make the best dreams.
> American TV, film, and music dominate the world's mass markets. While American-made computers, cars, steel and tools struggle against foreign competition, Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, and Mickey Mouse are cleaning up. American pop culture is just about the biggest export the U.S. produces. For better or worse, it's literally everywhere. Every backroads world traveler has a favorite story about being lost, hungry, and hundreds of miles off the edge of any map when a friendly native suddenly appears to lead him to a hut. Crawling inside, the traveler finds himself staring at a rerun of Dynasty on the generator-powered TV and a poster of Michael Jordan on the wall.
> It's scary.
The passage is dated, incorrect (even when it was written), and oddly chauvinistic to our ears. But it contains a nugget of truth: practically all of humanity has consumed at least some American media.
1. http://www.amazon.com/Earthsearch-John-Cassidy/dp/1878257749 by John Cassidy, author of Explorabook.
