How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems

　　要處理一件事情，有正確的作法、錯誤的作法、大家都不推的超麻煩作法，已經有幾千百本關於前兩種作法的書或導覽，但卻沒什麼書為大家介紹不切實際的麻煩作法。

　　本書就要來開你的腦洞，教你怎麼麻煩地處理一件事，諸如：
　　•    分析臉書照片的像素來推論氣象（喂！看氣象報告就好啦！）
　　•    分析牙齒的放射性物質來判斷這是嬰兒潮的孩子還是90後的孩子（喂！直接問不是比較快！）
　　•    用望遠鏡自拍（喂！拿出口袋的手機不就得了！）
　　•    把河水煮沸好過河（喂！划船比較實際吧！）
　　•    破壞時空結構來產電（這…太難了吧！）

　　如果看膩這本書，除了把它丟在角落佔空間外，作者還提供了各種擺脫這本書的方法，譬如將書溶進海水、把書變成水蒸氣、藉由板塊運動把書埋進地幔裡、甚至把書丟到太陽系……

　　作者是要為大家找麻煩，才這些超麻煩作法嗎？不，作者是想帶領我們跳出框架，思索更多可能性，才不厭其煩地以生動的文字，各式圖表及插畫解釋藏在我們日常生活中的各種科學知識。（文/博客來編譯）

　　The world's most entertaining and useless self-help guide, from the brilliant mind behind the wildly popular webcomic xkcd and the #1 New York Times bestsellers What If? and Thing Explainer

　　For any task you might want to do, there's a right way, a wrong way, and a way so monumentally complex, excessive, and inadvisable that no one would ever try it. How To is a guide to the third kind of approach. It's full of highly impractical advice for everything from landing a plane to digging a hole.

　　Bestselling author and cartoonist Randall Munroe explains how to predict the weather by analyzing the pixels of your Facebook photos. He teaches you how to tell if you're a baby boomer or a 90's kid by measuring the radioactivity of your teeth. He offers tips for taking a selfie with a telescope, crossing a river by boiling it, and powering your house by destroying the fabric of space-time. And if you want to get rid of the book once you're done with it, he walks you through your options for proper disposal, including dissolving it in the ocean, converting it to a vapor, using tectonic plates to subduct it into the Earth's mantle, or launching it into the Sun.

　　By exploring the most complicated ways to do simple tasks, Munroe doesn't just make things difficult for himself and his readers. As he did so brilliantly in What If?, Munroe invites us to explore the most absurd reaches of the possible. Full of clever infographics and amusing illustrations, How To is a delightfully mind-bending way to better understand the science and technology underlying the things we do every day.

　　Review

　　Praise for How To:   

　　“A witty, educational examination of ‘unusual approaches to common tasks’ . . . generously laced with dry humor . . . Munroe’s comic stick-figure art is an added bonus. . . .  Apart from generating laughter, the book also manages to achieve his serious objective: to get his audience thinking.” --Publishers Weekly, starred review

　　“An enjoyable treat for fans of logic puzzles, brain hacking, kaizen, mad science, and other forms of mental stimulation.” --Kirkus Reviews

　　“Munroe (creator of the webcomic xkcd; What If?; Thing Explainer) creates another fun series of questions and answers that explore forces, properties, and natural phenomena through pop-culture scenarios . . . With illustrated formulas that humorously explain the science behind Munroe’s conjectures, this book is sure to entertain and educate thinkers from high school on up.” --Library Journal

　　Praise for What If?:

　　“To reinvigorate your sense of cosmic wonder...breeze through former NASA scientist Munroe's lively answers--peppered with line drawings--to some pretty bizarre questions about life, the universe, and everything else...Extreme astrophysics and indecipherable chemistry have rarely been this clearly explained or this consistently hilarious.” --Entertainment Weekly "10 Best Nonfiction Books of the Year"

　　“Consistently fascinating and entertaining...Munroe leavens the hard science with whimsical touches... An illuminating handbook of methods of reasoning.” --Wall Street Journal

　　“It's fun to watch as Munroe tackles each question and examines every possible complication with nerdy and methodical aplomb.... The delightfully demented What If? is the most fun you can have with math and science, short of becoming your own evil genius.” --Boston Globe  

　　Praise for Thing Explainer:

　　“Brilliant...a wonderful guide for curious minds.” --Bill Gates

　　“Required reading for the curious.” --Popular Science

　　“This book is a feast for the eyes and a party for your brain. I cannot more highly recommend that you get this for yourself, your favorite nerd, or someone who just loves beautiful drawings.” --Scientific American

作者簡介

　　Randall Munroe is the author of the #1 New York Times bestsellers What If? and Thing Explainer, the science question-and-answer blog What If, and the popular webcomic xkcd. A former NASA roboticist, he left the agency in 2006 to draw comics on the internet full-time. He lives in Massachusetts.