Books we are reading.

[Highlander]

After reading a lot of heavy stuff like "The Arabs" (a history of the Arab people) because I was going to the Middle East a lot, and Anthony Beevor's Stalingrad,  I have escaped to "The Lord of the Rings" for the first time since college.  Enjoying it immensely but the movies kind of wrecked my imagination's ability to conjur up unique images.  

[NDTeve]

Just started "Cry the Beloved Country." Already love it - much like all the Oprah Book Club books.

[ignatius]

On the road this week in Tampa, reading Stephen Hawking's 'Grand Design' but also snuck in the last two chapters, getting to his 'something from nothing' proposal as an explanation to creating the universe.  There are boat loads of curious perspesctives worth considering but many are fairly weak at this point.  One is 'model-dependent reality', which sounds attractive and has some substance.  It is applied it to m-theory, which doesn't quite have much substance yet according to most reports - haven't gotten to all m-theory components yet but can see where it's going (and am familiar a bit via other sources).  The theory of everything can supposedly be defined by about 10 dimensions or so of reality each having different models - sort of like how Newtonian physics and quantum physics both work within their respective realities.

As far as something from nothing, I'm not sure what he's saying as his points specifically rely on existing intense gravity, which is not only not a nothing, it's a big something that we don't know much about.  M-theory will supposedly answer that when completed.  If it ends up being reasonably valid, theists will of course call it god.

One really interesting observation is suggesting our eyes may have adapted to the light spectrum that the sun mostly puts out.  In other solar systems, some stars mostly put out other spectrum, say forms of x-rays and perhaps lifeforms in those systems have eyes that are more adapted to that spectrum, so wouldn't work in ours without converter devices like we use to see x-rays and other spectrum.  Very speculative but makes a lot of sense.  He makes a lot of reasonable educated suggestions in the book that really don't have anything to back it up, but are fascinating scenarios that will need to be challenged and/or find other independent sources to support it.  

The book really should be called 'Grand Exit' as Hawking seems to be trying to make some bold statements to stir things up as he steps down from Cambridge.  A good read on ideas that are at the forefront of science, even though some of this isn't really science and is more like educated guesses (unless he just failed to elaborate on the scientific method that supports some of the points).  Lots of reasonable ideas but don't expect to come out of it with some answers.

[ignatius]

Artificial Ape - Timothy Taylor

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/se ... thy-taylor

Just started it.  Fascinating perspective about human dependency on technology and that 'defining human' is integrated with the technology we develop, all the way back to tools such as women creating a baby sling, etc. He proposes that human progression became interdependent on technology, even shelter which other generally apes don't depend on.  A plausible idea might be all it is but it really gets you to think about how dependent we have become on things we create.  

At the point we are now, if power goes away our society simply could not continue to function in this manner.   IE, corporations couldn't grow to the size they have become if they didn't have computers managing a few hundred million accounts.  Take away the computers/internet and manual filing/snail mail wouldn't be able to manage that many customers.  Take away agriculture and you likely can't have a society larger than 100 people in one area.

Available on Kindle readers.

[ComandanteCero]

Enjoying it immensely but the movies kind of wrecked my imagination's ability to conjur up unique images.  

yeh, this is why i tend to hate books with shoehorned illustrations.  I got a really nice edition of Moby Dick as a gift, but sadly it has illustrations peppered throughout which are absolutely annoying... and it's like once i see someone else's visual representation of the text it can be tough to put it out of mind (at least for me).  I want my OWN mental picture of Queequeg thank you very much, i think Melville knew what he was doing when he wrote the thing in the first place so as to allow his readers to conjure up a vivid representation without the need for an illustration.

The worst is when an illustration shows something you haven't quite gotten to in the text but you can kind of see it through the pages...hehe...

Currently reading "Man in the High Castle" by Philip K Dick, which you might find pretty interesting since it's set in an alternate reality where the Axis powers won WW II.

[grovester]

Doonesbury 40 put out by Andrews-McMeel.  It is the heaviest book I've ever owned.  I bought my first Doonesbury books with my paper route money.  I am f&*king old.

[Highlander]

Doonesbury 40 put out by Andrews-McMeel.  It is the heaviest book I've ever owned.  I bought my first Doonesbury books with my paper route money.  I am f&*king old.

Never got into Doonesbury but really loved Bloom County, espcially Opus. 

[chrizow]

just finished a great novel - "the thousand autumns of jacob de zoet" by david mitchell.  it was a bit of a slog at first, but it was just amazing.

[splash]

I'm in the middle of reading "Fire in the Hole" by Elmore Leonard.  It's a short story that's the basis of the tv show Justified.  This is my first encounter with him and I'm really enjoying his writing style. 

I'm also reading An Innocent, A Broad by Ann Leary (Denis Leary's wife).  While they were on a weekend trip to London, she has difficulties with her pregnancy and is put on immediate bed rest.  It's not normally they type of book I usually read, but she's entertaining.