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Posts tagged ‘Physics’

Nov 30

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My 41 Books for 2010

I just realized that I’ve gone an entire year without posting my reading list. Obviously I didn’t do a lot of writing this year but I did do a lot of reading. Here is the list in chronological order with the ones I’m still reading on top.

  1. The Adventure of English: The Biography of a Language by Melvyn Bragg
  2. The Spiritual Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Case for the Existence of the Soul by Mario Beauregard and Denyse O’Leary
  3. The New King James Version of the Bible
  4. Buy-In: Saving Your Good Idea from Getting Shot Down by John P. Kotter, Lorne A. Whitehead
  5. Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose by Tony Hsieh
  6. The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi
  7. The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us by Christopher Chabris, Daniel Simons
  8. The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements by Sam Kean
  9. The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe by Theodore Gray
  10. The Lords of Strategy: The Secret Intellectual History of the New Corporate World by Walter Kiechel
  11. Super Sad True Love Story: A Novel by Gary Shteyngart
  12. The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature by Steven Pinker
  13. How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like by Paul Bloom
  14. Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years by Diarmaid MacCulloch
  15. Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution by Richard Beeman
  16. Landmark: The Inside Story of America’s New Health Care Law and What It Means for Us All by The Washington Post
  17. God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World – and Why Their Differences Matter by Stephen Prothero
  18. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams
  19. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
  20. The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan
  21. The Edge of Physics: A Journey to Earth’s Extremes to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe by Anil Ananthaswamy
  22. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
  23. Anticancer, A New Way of Life by David Servan-Schreiber
  24. Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science by Atul Gawande
  25. From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time by Sean Carroll
  26. The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
  27. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
  28. Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin
  29. The Complete Infidel’s Guide to the Koran by Robert Spencer
  30. Why Evolution Is True by Jerry A. Coyne
  31. What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures by Malcolm Gladwell
  32. The ESP Enigma: The Scientific Case for Psychic Phenomena by Diane Hennacy Powell
  33. The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution by Richard Dawkins
  34. The Age of Entanglement: When Quantum Physics Was Reborn by Louisa Gilder
  35. Parallel Worlds: A Journey Through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos by Michio Kaku
  36. The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown
  37. Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun by Wess Roberts
  38. The Death of Conservatism: A Movement and Its Consequences by Sam Tanenhaus
  39. Tao Te Ching: A New English Version by Stephen Mitchell
  40. Taj Mahal: Passion and Genius at the Heart of the Moghul Empire by Diana Preston and Michael Preston
  41. In the Line of Fire: How to Handle Tough Questions…When It Counts by Jerry Weissman

Nov 3

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Fall ’08 Reading List

I’ve compiled quite a list for the rest of this year. I’ve actually finished a few of these but I wanted to write them down so that I can keep the list up to date. Not that anyone really cares what I’m reading, but I go back to these lists to find conscious and unconscious themes in my interests. I’m still tackling a lot of religious themes and also took a detour last month to read a few books by Barack Obama.

I also decided to read Mahabharata from beginning to end. I’ve read a greatly abridged version but the full version will probably take 2 years to finish. The unabridged translation of the Mahabharata contains 74,000 verses, long prose passages, and about 1.8 million words in total. Put another way, it is roughly ten times the size of the Iliad and Odyssey combined. It’s going to take me a while. I’ve also being pulled back into physics and I have picked up a few new interesting books. Of course, I’m still making an unsuccessful effort to learn Hindi – and, as always, I am re-reading some old favorites like Catcher and Pale Blue Dot. Anyway, this is the list.

I’m also going to try to get through a few Teaching Company courses by the end of the year:

Apr 14

Inconvenient Facts in Physics

There is an interesting article on Suppressed Science about the bizarre belief that science has just about gotten it all wrapped up. Many scientists believe that they are somehow on the verge of knowing everything. I know that sounds laughable but this is a real position taken by many within the scientific community. Here is an excerpt from the article:

Science is in a state of crisis. Where free inquiry, natural curiosity and open-minded discussion and consideration of new ideas should reign, a new orthodoxy has emerged. This ‘new inquisition’, as it has been called by Robert Anton Wilson consists not of cardinals and popes, but of the editors and reviewers of scientific journals, of leading authorities and self-appointed “skeptics”, and last but not least of corporations and governments that have a vested interest in preserving the status quo, and it is just as effective in suppressing unorthodox ideas as the original.

Continue reading…

Jul 27

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The Physics of Extraterrestrial Civilizations

The late Carl Sagan once asked this question, “What does it mean for a civilization to be a million years old? We have had radio telescopes and spaceships for a few decades; our technical civilization is a few hundred years old… an advanced civilization millions of years old is as much beyond us as we are beyond a bush baby or a macaque.”

read more | digg story

Mar 7

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String Theory for Dummies

I make reference to M Theory (or String Theory) here quite often – unless you’re really up on the latest in theoretical physics you might not understand these concepts. Last year PBS produced an awesome introduction to this topic called The Elegant Universe. The program is based on the best-seller of the same name by physicist, Brian Greene. Greene is also the show’s host and does an excellent job of bringing us up to speed on the past 100 years of physics. Most of what we learned in the classroom is hopelessly out of date. Though the old stuff is still true in many senses – it’s not half as exciting or interesting as many of the new developments in physics today. Watch a preview video clip here.

All of the programs are available to watch online for free. So, take some time to catch up on 100 years of science. You’ll learn big, new words that will impress all of your friends. To start the trip go here: