Posts Tagged ‘science’

My personal library’s science section is looking downright pathetic. Unlike other subjects—like modern fiction and history—for which new releases find their way to me effortlessly, my science books just keep staling and aging over there, sadly. And there are far too few of them in general.

Please vote on which recent science release I should read next! You’ll notice a cosmology-physics bent to these titles—that’s because the fields intrigue me, a lot.

At first, it doesn’t seem that September 3, 1859, was out of the ordinary in the northern United States. The New York Times’ “News of the Day” lists quotidian happenings: that the “depredations of the Apache Indians” in Arizona Territory have become “almost uncurable” [sic]; that the city’s churches, closed for the summer, were starting to reopen slowly; that an unfortunate situation with a boiler at a downtown machine shop had left one dead and several flung about.

Between paragraphs about the apprehension of a “mean rascal” who had been fleecing young maidens and a recap of the current attitudes of commodity markets (cotton, molasses, crude turpentine, lime: flat; dry cod-fish, hops and hides: an uptick in demand) was this mention:

“There was another brilliant display of auroral light last night.”

This beautiful photograph of an aurora was taken by ovaratli.

The first thing in my life that I both recall and can put a date to are two vignettes from May of 1980. One is scouring a closet with my mother for a red bandanna to tie around my face, the other is a dim, gray moment-memory of an ashen street scene.
So, I can say [...]

What does Neal Stepenson write about? Anything he damn well wants, and Anathem is his latest long-winded, exploratory romp. Why do I cut him so much slack? Because I see him as a sort of literary performance artist. It doesn’t seem as much like he writes novels as that he is doing something perverse, wonderful and occasionally downright obnoxious.

Dozens of short essays from prominent scientists about what they “know” but cannot, scientifically, “prove,” at least yet. What could have been an energizing look at possibilities by the sharpest minds in science more often comes off as individual posturing, pessimism and promotion of pet ideas, sadly.
There were patterns in the tones of the pieces:
One, [...]