The Magic of Reality

The Magic of Reality is a new book by Richard Dawkins. I've read a few of his books before so when I saw this one I thought it might be a bit of a repeat of what he's already written. But, when I noticed Dave McKean did the illustrations I immediately bought it.
Dave McKean has illustrated many of Neil Gaiman's books and graphic novels and I love his work. He also directed MirrorMask, a film based on Gaiman's book. He uses everything - inks, paper, models, photographs. It's truly creative and amazing. And his work in The Magic of Reality  takes his art to a new level.

The book is about how wonderfully magical science truly is. Richard Dawkins has beautifully explained some of the more complex concepts arranged in chapters that each start with a question. Dawkins then looks at the more colourful myths around these questions and then turns to the science behind it.

I thoroughly enjoyed the book. It has one of the best explanations of natural selection, evolution and plate tectonics I've ever read. And McKean's illustrations are unique and bring the scientific concepts to life. This is the first page :-):

Wortel

One of the things I really like about the mine I'm working at is how many different cultures there are. Don't get me wrong, South Africa probably has the widest range of cultures in one country. At my new work, there are people from all over the world.

In my area, about half of the team are not Australians. There's South Africans, Indians and Indonesians. My geology supervisor us from Chile and the geology technician is an American. What I love is how everyone gets along and tries to understand each other even through some of the language barriers.

The workplace really has become global with many of my colleagues having worked in several countries. I think that more and more of your cv will be focused on how you can work in a team. How you get along with people who might have very different views and ways of doing their job.

We were about to go home for the day one afternoon when my colleague mentioned she'll be making wortel cake that evening. In Afrikaans, wortel means carrot and when I asked my friend, she replied that's what they call carrots in Indonesia too.

There's a good metaphor for life in that story about how some things may not be as different as you think even between cultures massive distances apart. We just started joking about who might have used the term first :-).