Books I’ve been reading most recently.

Am still half way through “20,000 leagues under the sea”. This contains summaries of all the marine sciences as they were known in 1869.

“Catspaw” by Joan de Vinge – A future dystopia where humans are persecuting psions. Have read this three times, it’s still my favourite Joan de Vinge although “Snow Queen” is actually a better science fiction.

“Grass” by Sherri S Tepper – on a planet where “Hippae” and “Foxen” are the otherworldly equivalent of horses and foxes, but these are both far from harmless species. Have read this twice.

“Don’t arm wrestle a pirate – 101 really bad ideas”. A small fun book with sketches. Contains some practical ideas.

“Fossils – a photographic field guide” by Chris & Helen Pellant. A small book, but actually much better than most books on fossils. Ideal for taking on field trips. For instance, you can instantly see the difference between the sponges raphidonema, siphonia, seliscothon and ventriculites, each gets a separate descriptive paragraph together with size and occurrence data.

“Doctor in Love” by Richard Gordon. Not enjoying this as much as his previous “Doctor at Sea” whose introduction had me in stitches. Contains interesting an humorous insights into human nature in general and the medical profession in particular. The ideal book for reading in hospital.

“www:wake” by Robert J. Sawyer. Science fiction that is light and enjoyable, the main character is a blind teenager. Written by someone with a knowledge of science, or has at least read non-fiction such as “The origin of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind” by Julian Jaynes. I enjoyed the refresher course on the Zipf plot and Shannon entropy. The plot is as naive as that of Sagan’s “Cosmos”.

“Gulliver’s Travels”. Never forget that this has four parts – Lilliput, Brobdingnag, Laputa and Houyhnhnms. These are satirical comments on humanity. The Lilliputions are petty, Brobdingnag is a utopia, those of Laputa have their heads in the clouds, and the Houyhnhnms introduce us to the Yahoos.

Denise Swanson books “Murder of the cat’s meow” and “Murder of a real bad boy”. Although in the stock standard format of a murder mystery, these are more like cosy chats. The personalities are well enough developed that I find I want to know more about what happened to the people next. Will read more of this series.

Books on my reading list but not yet started are: “The Malay Archipelago” by Alfred Russel Wallace, “The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency” by Alexander McCall Smith, and “The Mathematical Century – The 30 Greatest Problems of the Last 100 Years” by Freeman Dyson.

“We will destroy your planet – an alien’s guide to conquering the Earth”. Really enjoying this, it’s light non-fiction and humour. Useful as a desk reference. Relatively comprehensive (eg. considers all types of invasions – from open space, wormhole, transmat, from parallel worlds and from past and future times) and contains some original thought but misses some options, possibly because these options have never appeared in science fiction. It misses, for example, the possibilities of destroying the Earth by dropping a small black hole by dropping a small black hole on it, the possibility of using the ocean’s hydrogen to power a thermonuclear weapon, the possibility of making the atmosphere unbreathable by polluting or heating it, the elimination of humans by inducing volcanism, the advantages of cooking food, doesn’t mention the unique ability of humans to throw objects. It also tends to be anglocentric, but then so does “invading the earth” type science fiction. The following is a quote that illustrates why it is useful as a desk reference:

“To be sure you have the right system, you can compare distances to other star systems. The Sun is 4.24 light years from Proxima Centauri (and almost directly above it at that distance), 5.93 light years from Barnard’s Star, 8.58 light years from the binary star system Sirius, and 10.92 light years from Ross 128, which is pretty much on the same equatorial plane as the Solar system. The Earth itself is the third planet out from the Sun. The planet travels in an elliptical orbit at 67,000 miles per hour that takes it from a closest approach of 91.94 million miles to a maximum distance of 95 million miles. The mean distance is generally considered to be 93 million miles, or about eight light minutes. In other words it takes the light from the Sun eight minutes to reach the Earth. The Earth’s orbit is tilted, compared to the Sun’s equator, by 7.11 degrees. The Earth should be simple enough to distinguish from the other solid (i.e. not gas giants, of which there are four) planets in the system, as it is the largest, densest, and fastest rotating of the rocky planets. It also has the highest gravity and strongest magnetic field of the solid planets.

“Before arriving, it would be wise to familiarize yourself with the basic data on the planet, as well as making the requisite military intelligence and assessment surveys. Like all rotating bodies formed under their own gravity, the Earth is not a true sphere. Rather it is an oblate spheroid with an equatorial diameter of 7,972.6 miles, a pole-to-pole diameter of 7,932 miles, and an equatorial circumference of 25,046.88 miles. Its mass is currently around 5,877,681,383,000,000,000,000 Imperial tons. There is one primary natural moon, generally referred to by the Earth’s inhabitants simply as the Moon, or, sometimes, Luna. Of all the natural moons in the Solar system, this moon is the largest in relation to its parent body, and is the fifth largest moon in the system overall. It is also the second densest moon in the system, after Io, a moon of the system’s largest gas giant planet, Jupiter. The Moon’s diameter is 27% of the radius of the Earth, and it has 60% of the density. It has no atmosphere, but has a stable surface, which can be landed and built upon. Curiously, due to their relative sizes and positions, the Sun and Moon appear the same size when viewed from Earth. This will not last forever, though, as the Moon’s orbit is in fact retreating from the Earth very gradually, at a rate of about an inch and a half per year, according to laser rangefinding using mirrors left on the Lunar surface by visiting astronauts. The Moon’s orbit around the Earth is synchronous with the Earth’s rotation period, and so always presents the same hemisphere to the parent planet. The hemisphere facing away from the planet is more heavily cratered from ancient comet and asteroid impacts, but may also harbour water ice.”

mollwollfumble said:

Books I’ve been reading most recently.

Am still half way through “20,000 leagues under the sea”. This contains summaries of all the marine sciences as they were known in 1869.

“Catspaw” by Joan de Vinge – A future dystopia where humans are persecuting psions. Have read this three times, it’s still my favourite Joan de Vinge although “Snow Queen” is actually a better science fiction.

“Grass” by Sherri S Tepper – on a planet where “Hippae” and “Foxen” are the otherworldly equivalent of horses and foxes, but these are both far from harmless species. Have read this twice.

“Don’t arm wrestle a pirate – 101 really bad ideas”. A small fun book with sketches. Contains some practical ideas.

“Fossils – a photographic field guide” by Chris & Helen Pellant. A small book, but actually much better than most books on fossils. Ideal for taking on field trips. For instance, you can instantly see the difference between the sponges raphidonema, siphonia, seliscothon and ventriculites, each gets a separate descriptive paragraph together with size and occurrence data.

“Doctor in Love” by Richard Gordon. Not enjoying this as much as his previous “Doctor at Sea” whose introduction had me in stitches. Contains interesting an humorous insights into human nature in general and the medical profession in particular. The ideal book for reading in hospital.

“www:wake” by Robert J. Sawyer. Science fiction that is light and enjoyable, the main character is a blind teenager. Written by someone with a knowledge of science, or has at least read non-fiction such as “The origin of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind” by Julian Jaynes. I enjoyed the refresher course on the Zipf plot and Shannon entropy. The plot is as naive as that of Sagan’s “Cosmos”.

“Gulliver’s Travels”. Never forget that this has four parts – Lilliput, Brobdingnag, Laputa and Houyhnhnms. These are satirical comments on humanity. The Lilliputions are petty, Brobdingnag is a utopia, those of Laputa have their heads in the clouds, and the Houyhnhnms introduce us to the Yahoos.

Denise Swanson books “Murder of the cat’s meow” and “Murder of a real bad boy”. Although in the stock standard format of a murder mystery, these are more like cosy chats. The personalities are well enough developed that I find I want to know more about what happened to the people next. Will read more of this series.

Books on my reading list but not yet started are: “The Malay Archipelago” by Alfred Russel Wallace, “The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency” by Alexander McCall Smith, and “The Mathematical Century – The 30 Greatest Problems of the Last 100 Years” by Freeman Dyson.

“We will destroy your planet – an alien’s guide to conquering the Earth”. Really enjoying this, it’s light non-fiction and humour. Useful as a desk reference. Relatively comprehensive (eg. considers all types of invasions – from open space, wormhole, transmat, from parallel worlds and from past and future times) and contains some original thought but misses some options, possibly because these options have never appeared in science fiction. It misses, for example, the possibilities of destroying the Earth by dropping a small black hole by dropping a small black hole on it, the possibility of using the ocean’s hydrogen to power a thermonuclear weapon, the possibility of making the atmosphere unbreathable by polluting or heating it, the elimination of humans by inducing volcanism, the advantages of cooking food, doesn’t mention the unique ability of humans to throw objects. It also tends to be anglocentric, but then so does “invading the earth” type science fiction. The following is a quote that illustrates why it is useful as a desk reference:

“To be sure you have the right system, you can compare distances to other star systems. The Sun is 4.24 light years from Proxima Centauri (and almost directly above it at that distance), 5.93 light years from Barnard’s Star, 8.58 light years from the binary star system Sirius, and 10.92 light years from Ross 128, which is pretty much on the same equatorial plane as the Solar system. The Earth itself is the third planet out from the Sun. The planet travels in an elliptical orbit at 67,000 miles per hour that takes it from a closest approach of 91.94 million miles to a maximum distance of 95 million miles. The mean distance is generally considered to be 93 million miles, or about eight light minutes. In other words it takes the light from the Sun eight minutes to reach the Earth. The Earth’s orbit is tilted, compared to the Sun’s equator, by 7.11 degrees. The Earth should be simple enough to distinguish from the other solid (i.e. not gas giants, of which there are four) planets in the system, as it is the largest, densest, and fastest rotating of the rocky planets. It also has the highest gravity and strongest magnetic field of the solid planets.

“Before arriving, it would be wise to familiarize yourself with the basic data on the planet, as well as making the requisite military intelligence and assessment surveys. Like all rotating bodies formed under their own gravity, the Earth is not a true sphere. Rather it is an oblate spheroid with an equatorial diameter of 7,972.6 miles, a pole-to-pole diameter of 7,932 miles, and an equatorial circumference of 25,046.88 miles. Its mass is currently around 5,877,681,383,000,000,000,000 Imperial tons. There is one primary natural moon, generally referred to by the Earth’s inhabitants simply as the Moon, or, sometimes, Luna. Of all the natural moons in the Solar system, this moon is the largest in relation to its parent body, and is the fifth largest moon in the system overall. It is also the second densest moon in the system, after Io, a moon of the system’s largest gas giant planet, Jupiter. The Moon’s diameter is 27% of the radius of the Earth, and it has 60% of the density. It has no atmosphere, but has a stable surface, which can be landed and built upon. Curiously, due to their relative sizes and positions, the Sun and Moon appear the same size when viewed from Earth. This will not last forever, though, as the Moon’s orbit is in fact retreating from the Earth very gradually, at a rate of about an inch and a half per year, according to laser rangefinding using mirrors left on the Lunar surface by visiting astronauts. The Moon’s orbit around the Earth is synchronous with the Earth’s rotation period, and so always presents the same hemisphere to the parent planet. The hemisphere facing away from the planet is more heavily cratered from ancient comet and asteroid impacts, but may also harbour water ice.”

My current favourite is “The Bad Dogs Diary” “ A Year in the Life of Blake: Lover . . . Fighter . . . Dog”

Also: Terence Dickson: “Hubble’s Universe – Greatest Discoveries and Latest Images.”
This lavishly illustrated hardcover coffee table book is square in shape to best display Hubble’s images. As a follower of APOD I didn’t expect to learn anything new here, but I did, this book is written by an astronomer not just by person who wanted to make a quick buck. I particularly like that the Hubble ultra-deep field is split over five pages. For me, the highlight of the text was chapter 2, twenty eight pages of “Hubble’s top science accomplishments”. I found both the choice of images and layout excellent, about 80% of the three hundred images are from and of Hubble, most of the rest are illustrations of astronomical principles, but there also are a few great images from the ground and from Cassini.

The following is a sample of text from Chapter 2.

… When astronomers compare galaxies at different distances, it’s like watching individual frames of a motion picture. The Hubble deep surveys reveal the emergence of structure in the infant universe and the subsequent dynamic stages of galaxy evolution, largely through mergers. Before Hubble, nearby colliding galaxies were simply a curiosity. But deep views show that in the early days, galaxy smashups were more the rule than the exception. This provides compelling, direct visual evidence that the universe is truly changing as it ages.

2. SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLES ARE COMMON IN GALAXIES
One of the eeriest and most attention-getting concepts in modern astronomy is the black hole. In fact, the idea goes back to 1786, when scientists applying Newton’s laws of gravity hypothesized
…
While there are six viable theories at the present time, no one is absolutely sure what the black hole-galaxy connection is.

3. DARK ENERGY EXISTS
A key project for Hubble astronomers was to measure the amount of deceleration the universe is undergoing. In the late 1920s, Edwin Hubble first discovered that the universe is expanding in all directions, like an inflating balloon. Cosmologists used this evidence to build the big bang theory, which predicts that the universe was once dense and hot and has been expanding ever since. The confirming evidence came in 1990, when NASNs Cosmic Background Explorer precisely measured the cooling afterglow of the big bang and found that it fit the predictions perfectly.
…
Hubble Space Telescope observations so far show that dark energy has been stable for the lifetime of the universe. If it were unstable, the universe might literally blow apart or go into reverse gear and implode. Several approaches have been proposed for next-generation telescopes, including surveys to find more supernovas and measuring acoustic oscillations imprinted on the sky that were triggered by gravitational attraction and gas pressure in the primordial plasma of the big bang.

4. THE UNIVERSE’S EXPANSION RATE NAILED DOWN
Scientists of the late 1800s suspected that Earth must be much older than previously thought. Geologic evidence and Darwin’s emerging concept of biological evolution required over one billion years for the slow changes in the Earth’s geologic activity as well as the emergence of different animal species to take place—a far cry from the biblical 10,000 years or Lord Kelvin’s simple thermal calculations that predicted an age of 400 million years. Einstein concluded that the universe must be static and perhaps, therefore, eternal. Otherwise, according to his theory of gravity, it would have blown apart or collapsed.
In 1929, Edwin Hubble provided the first observational evidence for the universe having a finite age. His Hubble Constant showed that the farther a galaxy is, the faster it appears to be racing away from us, which indicates that space is expanding uniformly in all directions.
In 1994, Wendy L. Freedman of the Hubble Space Telescope Key Project on the Extragalactic Distance Scale announced a value of 80 kilometers per second per megaparsec, suggesting a universe about 10 billion years old. The results were perplexing, because they, too, indicated a universe that is younger than the oldest stars. It looked as if stellar-evolution models were inaccurate.
By the late 1990s, the refined value of the Hubble Constant was reduced to an error of only about 10 percent. Adam Riess and collaborators continued to streamline and strengthen the construction of a cosmic “distance ladder” by calibrating ever more Cepheids in far-flung space. This allowed the expansion rate to be precisely measured as 74.3 kilometers per second per megaparsec, narrowing it to a value with an uncertainty of no more than 3 percent. Factoring in dark energy, this yields an age of 13.7 billion years for the universe—old enough for the measured ages of the oldest stars. In hindsight, it was almost predictable that astronomers might end up splitting the difference between the 50 and 100 kilometers per second per megaparsec values.

5. SAMPLING THE ATMOSPHERES OF EXTRA-SOLAR PLANETS
Although long a staple of science fiction stories, planets around other stars were not discovered until five years after Hubble’s launch. This was accomplished by ground-based telescopic observations measuring stellar wobbles (toward and away from Earth) caused by the gravitational pull of one or more unseen planets. Later, the dimming of a star due to a planet crossing directly in front of it (transiting) became a prolific method.
But direct imaging of exoplanets was elusive — even for Hubble. …

6. DARK MATTER MATTERS
In 1933, Swiss-American astronomer Fritz Zwicky encountered a mystery while studying the
motions of distant galaxies. Zwicky estimated the total mass of a group of galaxies by measuring
their brightness. But when he measured the effects of gravity on the galaxies’ velocities of motion,
he came up with an estimate that was several hundred times greater than his calculation based
on brightness. Zwicky had stumbled on what has become known as the “missing mass” problem.
The mystery lingered until scientists began to realize that only large amounts of hidden mass
could support theories attempting to explain the structure of the universe. Galaxy clusters might
be tied to an invisible scaffolding of so-called dark matter. …

You read a lot!

I’m reading “Black Swans” by name forgotten.

It’s provocative, thought provoking, and annoying (based on the first 10 pages or so).

Actually “The Black Swan” by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

Sounds interesting:

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable is a book by the essayist, scholar and statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb. It was released on April 17, 2007 by Random House. The book focuses on the extreme impact of certain kinds of rare and unpredictable events (outliers) and humans’ tendency to find simplistic explanations for these events retrospectively. This theory has since become known as the black swan theory.

The book also covers subjects relating to knowledge, aesthetics, and ways of life, and uses elements of fiction in making its points.

The first edition appeared in 2007 and was a commercial success. It spent 36 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list. The second, expanded edition appeared in 2010.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Swan_(2007_book)

Bubblecar said:

Sounds interesting:

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable is a book by the essayist, scholar and statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb. It was released on April 17, 2007 by Random House. The book focuses on the extreme impact of certain kinds of rare and unpredictable events (outliers) and humans’ tendency to find simplistic explanations for these events retrospectively. This theory has since become known as the black swan theory.

The book also covers subjects relating to knowledge, aesthetics, and ways of life, and uses elements of fiction in making its points.

The first edition appeared in 2007 and was a commercial success. It spent 36 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list. The second, expanded edition appeared in 2010.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Swan_(2007_book)

Does that discuss humans moving from simplicity to complexity?

The Rev Dodgson said:

You read a lot!

I’m reading “Black Swans” by name forgotten.

It’s provocative, thought provoking, and annoying (based on the first 10 pages or so).

Actually “The Black Swan” by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

Its very good.

Bubblecar said:

Sounds interesting:

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable is a book by the essayist, scholar and statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb. It was released on April 17, 2007 by Random House. The book focuses on the extreme impact of certain kinds of rare and unpredictable events (outliers) and humans’ tendency to find simplistic explanations for these events retrospectively. This theory has since become known as the black swan theory.

The book also covers subjects relating to knowledge, aesthetics, and ways of life, and uses elements of fiction in making its points.

The first edition appeared in 2007 and was a commercial success. It spent 36 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list. The second, expanded edition appeared in 2010.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Swan_(2007_book)

This is the Wild Swans book I read.

Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China is a family history that spans a century, recounting the lives of three female generations in China, by Chinese writer Jung Chang. First published in 1991, Wild Swans contains the biographies of her grandmother and her mother, then finally her own autobiography. The book won two awards: the 1992 NCR Book Award and the 1993 British Book of the Year. The book has been translated into 37 languages and sold over 13 million copies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Swans

Also reading “Electronics all-in-one for Dummies”. A massive book, 842 pages. Ranges from “how to solder” to “programming mechanical effects using a microcontroller”. I found it very informative but also very wordy, it sort of says the same thing five times or more in order to get the message across. Most projects run off 9 volt on breadboard, which suits me perfectly.