So I've been asked to elaborate on my rather dim view of Big Scientific Metanarratives in lit-crit circles. Fair 'nuf, but be forewarned that I'm working against my instincts here. Right now, my instincts are telling me to keep snarking about beer.
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So my curiosity and I were piqued by mention of a lit-crit/humanities project requiring in-depth knowledge of general relativity, chez All Day Permanent Red. Unless it is a discussion of historical physics research papers qua literature and the broader cultural narratives constructed therein ("science studies"), I have no idea what it is. And it could be anything:

Theorists of the �postmodern crisis,� (if you will excuse that drippy generalization), think that Kant�s attempt to separate [aesthetic and ethical] judgment failed. Ultimately, it was an attempt to maintain Christian ethics, replacing the religious justification with justification grounded in Reason itself.

With the collapse of this distinction, literature ceases to mean anything. Literature is everything and nothing.

Literature! Horning in on everyone else's grant monies, eh?

There are more ways in which I remain confused about the long-term goals of those who "borrow" bits of science for nefarious humanistic ends, but it's too insistently bedtime to enumerate them.

This post is meant to lay the groundwork for an argument, to be presented in summary on a portion of my GRE, that the popular "in bed" fortune cookie game can be usefully applied to any generic pronouncement on the subject of wisdom, success, or human nature. Therefore, essays which respond to a prompt by justifying and applying the "in bed" heuristic should not be given null points - off topic, but rather should be taken as a serious effort to unite pop culture with the philosophical tradition of silly gedankenexperiments.

I know some of you pretend to be philosophers, historians, and sundry liberal artists on a regular basis, and a few of you aren't even pretending. So if all y'all would help me out with some possible examples or analogies, and idiot-check what I've got already, I'd be much obliged.
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Is there anyone on the Internet who has not yet grasped the nearest book in their grubby little carpal tunnel afflicted paws, opened it to page 23, and typed the fifth sentence into their blogs? No? It's just me then.

You know why I held off so long on this? It's not because I'm above the replication of such uninspiring exercises (though of course I have been above such things in the past, and will likely resume my policy of firm disdain in the future), it's because I couldn't figure out which book was closest, because there aren't any on my desk. How shameful is that? Rather than lazily stretching out my hand to have my fingertips brush against Gravity's Rainbow or Wallace Stevens or even a smartly utilitarian programming manual, I bash my knuckles on two empty glasses of milk before finally reaching an old utility bill:

Any amount over $25 will be assessed a delinquency penalty of 3%.

Page 2, page 23, close enough. But-- do I really keep books at such great remove from my everyday life that I have a more intimate relationship with Pasadena Water and Power than with the imaginative splendor of the English language? How can I remain in this modern company of letters, purporting to correspond as an equal with those who would never allow Lord Byron to drift more than 10 feet from their sides? I am a traitor to the global nation of the mind!

But wait! The stack of bank statements and pay stubs and hair scrunchies and tape also includes my sewing machine manual! Page 23 is in Spanish:

Si no lo hace, puede da�ar el gancho pase por el ojo de la aguja y enganche el hilo.

And so you see I am a sophisticated intellectual after all, and my life is full of books. Some of them are even properly bound and not just stapled. That is why I maintain a blog, to indulge, express, and display my reified intellectual whimsy and thereby deepen my relationship with sophistication!

You may express admiration amongst yourselves now, for I am going to bed. Good night.

So I'm not at all chuffed with the concept of "working for a living". And it seems that the best way to avoid working for a living is to be independently wealthy, which one accomplishes through some combination of living below one's means and witchcraft. Or marrying rich. As plans for marrying rich have stalled while I work through my classist antipathy towards the upper crust, I've decided to practice witchcraft, aided by an occasional series of book reviews.

Investing With Your Values was written with a nervous reader in mind. Nervous about sacrificing financial interests on the altar of social responsibility, nervous about whether or not socially responsible investment can actually make a difference, nervous about investing and personal finance generally. I was evidently not the intended audience.
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Dr. Seuss meets Ole and Lena jokes:

I would not eat them on a raid,
I would not eat them with a maid,
I would not eat them on a trip,
I would not eat them on my ship.
I do not like lutefisk and yams.
I do not like them, Sven I am.

Surely there must be a more authentic Scandinavian foodstuff that rhymes with "am"? I can't imagine that the Vikings would have had much access to yams, as most varieties don't do well in the cold. Dioscorea batatas is hardy to USDA Zone 5, though, and southern Sweden is Zone 7, which strikes me as utterly ridiculous but I guess a bit of Viking yam-cultivation would not have been entirely out of the climatological question. History is another matter; decent references on the history of yams are not forthcoming, but check out the completely unrelated sweet potato for kicks.

Scroll to the bottom for the Sonnet to Foraminifera:

In what deep chasm did your live form dwell;
And when you thought, what did you think of truth?

Three points for nerdy subject matter, no bonus for the occasionally strained iambic pentameter, and minus five for an inappropriate description of foram shapes as "trilobitic". "Sealed in glass" is also suspect.
Total score: -2.

1. Shirky: The Semantic Web, Syllogism, and Worldview - a vivid vituperation of something I would have been vituperating for years, if I hadn't been ignoring it entirely. On the other hand, it's probably better to just ignore the vituperating, too, as Computer Socialized Pretentiousness may be catching. I was bored halfway down the page.
2. The Art and Science of Feng Shui - it appears that decorating is a zero-sum game for Peter and I; we have exactly opposite sets of astrologically determined auspicious directions. Pictures of pine trees may or may not help with this (pine trees are wily Chi-eaters!) but is a picture of a joshua tree the same as a picture of a pine tree? Also, I can't figure out whether Mt. Wilson is shaped like a dragon, or a person putting on his clothes, or an upside-down boat.
3. Photographing Your Flowers, by John Patrick Roche - Billing his work as a "practical guide for indoor and outdoor use", M. Roche begins with reference to Aristotle and goes on to insist that amateur garden photographers must develop a firm handle on botany, as well as basic composition in black and white, before mucking about with toys. There follow a very many rules, nearly enough to build a photo-judging Roche-bot, which I think would be a fun project.

Neal Stephenson jumped the shark on page 277. Over the moon and into some stable orbit, where a group of hasty sketches in an imitation Baroque tin can go round and round with the Bludgeon of Science History Hindsight. One wonders how many revolutions they can handle before the main character (whose thoughts and feelings are told at a slowly-increasing remove) is completely squished, leaving only a Foil for Progress.

Stilted dialogue on the philosophical standing of computing-machines has its place, in the opening scenes of historical-crossover Alan Turing / Captain Kirk homoerotic fan fiction. If Isaac Newton and Mary Sue Daniel Waterhouse aren't having sex in 50 pages, though, I will attempt to hollow out the rest of the book for use as a very nerdy drug'n'gun cache.

Joe Jonah Euclid was (and possibly still is) an endearing type of delusional nutter, who posted his flyers around the Caltech campus my freshman and sophomore years. I haven't seen any fresh material in quite some time; but whilst cleaning out my file-box I came upon this one. Spelling is preserved, formatting is attempted. It seems to speak to important issues of our time, as well as the tail end of the dot-com boom when it was written.

Joe Jonah Euclid                  2020 2020
	
Please Consider the hypothetical possibality that
the Internet is better than the Cosmic Consciousness.
Both provide communications at a distance and
any number of people can join in at any time.
	
It does not matter IF we Debate this.
It does not matter IF people have the wrong opinion.
	
It ONLY matters IF it is TRUE.     Long Term.
	
The younger generation will mostly Learn the Internet.
When they Hear Of   the Cosmic Consciousness, it is not better.
Because the Internet Equally Well provides the Communications.
	
Thru some Years, there is a smaller and smaller number of people
Practicing the Cosmic Consciousness.
One Day   they let up a little bit, and then
Society has Fewer Bizarre Disastors & Senseless Crimes.
There are research programs to Monitor this fine grain.