Review: You Are Here: A Portable History of the Universe

You Are Here: A Portable History of the Universe by Christopher Potter

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I swear that I wrote the bulk of this review prior to completing the book. I read most of this book while traveling and wrote my initial thoughts on a sheet of paper from a notepad printed with the name of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino where I was staying in Las Vegas. I state this because I wrote the part about Wikipedia before I got to the end of book where in a note at the end of the bibliography, the author states that he, in fact, frequently consulted Wikipedia as part of his research while writing the book. Perhaps that is why the book reads like several Wikipedia articles strung together.

I am somewhat biased I am afraid because I have read several book of the popular-science type and particularly ones covering the beginning of the universe and the development of life. I have read A Short History of Nearly Everything, The Science Class You Wish You Had, Coming of Age in the Milky Way, and of course, Carl Sagan's Cosmos and Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time. I feel that any of those authors could have written this book in just a few days using nothing but Wikipedia as a reference.

The universe is immense. The universe is old. The universe is complex. That is all. Carry on. So goes the first meaningful chapter which is a straightforward comparison of size starting at one meter and proceeding ever larger until arriving at the size of the visible universe. In similar fashion, subsequent chapters cover the history of science including the development of the scientific method and measuring devices. A chapter midway through the book mirrors the earlier chapter by starting at 100 centimeters and going down to subatomic particles. Other chapters start at the Big Bang and the birth of the universe and proceed through the development of galaxies including our own Milky Way, then the Solar System and our home planet, and then the development of life on Earth and eventually arriving at the evolution of our own species. The information presented is easily gathered from Wikipedia and is arranged in a basically straightforward manner.

I would like to think that I can appreciate a well-written popular science book. I just do not think this is an example of one.

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Review: The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence

The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence by Carl Sagan

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Being 30-some odd years behind the times, I recently finished reading The Dragons of Eden which was written by the famous author and scientist, Carl Sagan, and was originally published in 1977. As the full title attests, the topic is the evolutionary development of the human brain. As is to be expected, the technological references in the book are hopelessly dated, and I can safely assume that the scientific information is dated as well. I would have been very interested in a new edition with updated information, but unfortunately, Sagan died in 1996. Perhaps I will find a newer book on the topic of human intelligence.

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A Little Bit of This and That

Forewarning, this post has no particular rhyme or reason.

Today, I went to the local $1.50 movie theater and saw Tron: Legacy. While it was a decent movie, it seemed like a great movie to see in 3-D, particularity IMAX 3D. Speaking of IMAX 3D, I have a guy date (is that the proper term or it is man date or bro date?) with one of my coworkers to see Hubble 3D at the local IMAX theater. He said he bought one of those two-for-one deals from Groupon or LivingSocial, but his wife balked at going to the Hubble movie with him. He has not mentioned when he wants to go, but perhaps that will be something to do next week.

Speaking of next week, this Friday marks the return of the friendly neighborhood social gathering. It was previously held every other Friday night, but recently, it has disappeared from the schedule. The last gathering was back in November for the birthday of one of the guys. That event was actually on a Saturday. The last one that I attended prior to that was at the end of July. Now, I have even volunteered to help. I have been managing the invite list, and perhaps in a few weeks, I will even host an event at my place.

Back to today, I stopped by my favorite used bookstore, The Reader's Corner, over on Hillsborough Street. As usual, I picked up a handful of books. This time, my book purchases were in three pairs plus a single. There was a whole stack of Ian Fleming's James Bond paperbacks that were printed in the mid-60s. While I am a big fan of the Bond movies, I have never read any of the books. I was able to control myself and only purchase the first two in the series, Casino Royale and Live and Let Die. Interestingly, those are not the first two that are turned into movies. The first Bond movie was Dr. No which was released in 1962 and was based on the sixth book in the series. The second movie was 1963's From Russia with Love which was the fifth book.

In addition to the two Bond novels, I picked up two books by Gore Vidal, Julian from 1964, and Myra Breckinridge from 1968. I also bought two books on science. One was The Dragons of Eden by Carl Sagan (of "billions and billions" fame). I bought the other science-related book purely for the title, In Search of Schrödinger's Cat by John R. Gribbin. If you do not know about Erwin Schrödinger and his infamous cat, then you should ask somebody (like a physicist) or just look it up on Wikipedia. You might also want to read up on Werner Heisenberg and his uncertainty principle. Moving right along, my final unrelated purchase was The Fourth K by Mario Puzo which is not part of Puzo's Mafia series.

I think that is enough randomness for today.

Living in the Past

On Saturday, El and I stopped by our local used book store where I picked up some new-to-me reading material. Included among my purchases was the book that I'm currently reading, Empire, which is the part of Gore Vidal's Narratives of Empire series (or American Chronicles as the publishers preferred). I have been reading the novels in the series in chronological order by history as opposed to the order in which the books were originally published. Thus, I have previously read Burr, Lincoln, and 1876. I liked Burr and Lincoln, but I think those books were helped by the built-in drama from the time periods they covered. Particularly, each novel included a significant country-shaping war. I thought 1876 was a bit drier and harder to get through since the plot revolved around that year's bitter drawn-out election (not to be confused with other bitter, drawn-out elections).

I haven't read any of Vidal's other works, but in addition to the remaining books in this series (next on the list is Washington, D.C. which I also bought on Saturday), I plan on reading some of his other historical fiction novels, particularly Julian and Creation. Although I wouldn't say that I have read a ton of historical fiction, in general, I like the genre. For instance, I enjoyed Wilbur Smith's series of novels set in ancient Egypt, including River God and Warlock. I also have a book of Egyptian whodunnits but that might not actually qualify as historical fiction.

I recently finished Orson Scott Card's Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus. That book is also suppose to be a part of a series, but so far it is the only installment. As I eluded to in my short review on Goodreads, I didn't really care for the book. While the general idea was interesting and the book was well written, the Christian overtones (which are understandable as Card is a devout Mormon) were a bit much for me. The general idea of the book seems to be that the Native Americans would have fared much better if their religions were more like psuedo-Christianity.

Pastwatch would also probably not be considered historical fiction, but would be an alternate history. There is the element of time travel, so it could also be consider historical fantasy or science fantasy. To split hairs, stories that include time travel should not be considered science fiction, but rather science fantasy, since time travel is generally not considered to be scientifically possible. Faster-than-light travel is also not considered scientifically possible, so works that included FTL travel would also be science fantasy. Yes, both Star Wars and Star Trek are science fantasy and not science fiction. You wouldn't actually be able to hear those non-existent explosions anyway since there is no air in space to carry the sound or make the combustion possible. Laser guns and perhaps teleportation (but probably only inanimate objects) would be science fiction since they are theoretically possible. Of course, annoying Bluetooth devices are here today.

There are lots of other futuristic elements that are also theoretically possible and fall squarely in the realm of science fiction. Traveling to distant reaches of space while in suspended animation or in giant ships that contain whole civilizations are thought to be possible with more advanced technology. Conversely, staying right here on Earth while being connected to vast computer network is also fair game for science fiction. This was the basic element of the Matrix series of movies, although that series ventured into science fantasy with its more mystical elements.

Personally, I thought the whole plot of the Matrix series was silly. Being educated as an engineer, I know that even advanced machines are simply tools designed by humans for use by humans. I have to assume that even self-aware machines would follow their basic design and programming. I think Morpheus's explanation for how the world of the Matrix came to be quite is unreasonable. It would be much more likely that two or more groups of people went to war with each other and started the destruction of the planet. I would assume the intelligent machines were thus designed the save the human race, and they probably concluded that isolation was the only possible way to protect humans from each other and as well as from themselves. Considering our current plugged-in society, I doubt there would be too much resistance to this permanently jacked-in state, particularly after a generation or two. Every person's needs were adequately met which is quite a contrast to our current reality. Of course, it is quite possible that my preferred explanation was actually the final resolution for the whole series, and I just missed it.

The Page Nobody Will Read

This is my first post. The purpose of this site is for me to post thoughts on random subjects, so it might not really be for general consumption. For all of those out there that aren't reading this, I'm going to call this site a journal instead of the more popular term, blog, because I'm like that. Of course, I am a bit late this party. My girlfriend has been blogging for years now. She currently maintains two blogs, her personal site plus a separate site dedicated to her hobby, cranking out delicious cupcakes.

The first step after deciding to start one of these things is to pick one of the various options available to bloggers. I read reviews of WordPress, TypePad, and LiveJournal. I even considered trying a bliki. I read comparisons between the different options, and being a novice, I discovered options that I didn't even know I needed. After my thorough investigation, I went with Blogger. Why did I chose Blogger? Well, I have a Google account. I was already logged into Google, so it was only a few clicks to get started. So there you go.

The next step is to pick a title and URL extension. Again, being late to the party, my options were limited. After trying several things, I settled on "justjimsplace" for the URL extension and "Jim's Place" for the title. Based on the fact that this site is basically for my sole use, I also considered various versions of "Page Nobody Reads". However, most variations around that theme were already taken, and some of those pages were quite depressing.

The source for my passed-over idea was a book I read awhile back, The Book Nobody Read by Dr. Owen Gingerich. The book to which the title refers is Copernicus' De revolutionibus orbium coelestium. De revolutionibus is one of the most important works in the history of science, right up there with Newton's Principia Mathematica which established the mathematics of calculus, and Darwin's Origin of Species which presented the theory of evolution. Copernicus's book is considered revolutionary (OK, pun intended) since it established the Sun and not the Earth as the center of the universe. However, the book wasn't considered to be widely studied or even read. Dr. Gingerich, a professor of science history and astronomy, set out to inspect as many of the existing first and second editions of De revolutionibus as he could track down. His investigations took several decades, and he found that despite the reputation of the book, a number of the remaining editions were extensively annotated.

Back to this site, other than random thoughts, I really don't know where I'm going with this. I don't plan on visiting 100 places before I die or preparing all the recipes in a cookbook (although trying 300 different beers sounds like a great idea). Don't expect posts on celebrities, celebrities' kids, celebrities' pets, or reality TV. I also won't be discussing friends, family or work since I don't think that would be particularly interesting. I'm sure I'll have more posts on books and science plus sports, movies, and who knows what else. With the NFL playoffs starting next weekend, the next topic will be my proposals for changing the NFL.