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Where Australia's electricity comes from
Been reading any fun books lately?
I'm not much into works of fiction, I'd much rather spend my time learning about people, place and this fantastic planet I was born into. I also don't have that much down time for sitting around and reading books, besides when I do have that sort of down time, I'd rather focus on trying to write. My salvation has been Books on Tape, well that's how it started, Audiobooks nowadays.
Among my favorite authors Simon Winchester, who also seems to narrate all his own books, he's got the voice and delivery that does his epic topics justice.
http://www.simonwinchester.com/adult-books/
The Map that changed the World - the amazing, frustrating and tough story of the unsung hero of the birth of geology William Smith, the canal digger who from his first discoveries in 1793 spent the next two decades creating the first geologic map.
The Professor and the Madman - the equally amazing and even more bizarre story of the two decade relationship between Professor James Murray (editor of the original Oxford English Dictionary began in 1857), and the "lunatic" Dr. William Chester Minor (who became one of his most proficient contributors while being justifiably confined in an asylum.). Besides an amazing human drama, it's also the story of the inception and creation of the seminal Oxford English Dictionary.
Krakatoa - a spell binding full spectrum story of the cataclysmic disaster - encompassing the geology and human history and unfolding of event, including aftermath and "rebirth" of the island.
Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms, and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories - that about sums it up. The eye open in this telling was learning about the Cod fisheries and how influential it was to the Africa-American slave trade. Not quite as riveting a listen as some of his others that I've listened to, but plenty informative and interesting just the same.
A Crack in the Edge of the World - Here Winchester retells the story of the San Francisco Earthquake with his typical excellent mix of the geologic history and human history of California.
This one hit a soft spot but I find retelling it takes too much telling - suffice it to say, listening to his excellent description and anecdotes of the central California landmark, (that provides the most far seeing vista of any US mountain, according to the author), - Mt.Diablo, as I coincidently found myself in its neighborhood for the first time in nearly three decades. Back four and a half decades ago that sentinel of a mountain used to be a beacon for this high schooler who dreamt only of getting through school, then escaping the mega city and running to Yosemite Nat'l Park and a life of adventure.
Wow, reflecting on those stats, I'm again amazed at how the years have raced by and I've been paying attention to every day, so I can't whine: where did it all go. Still, it's true, in the end it's like the wink of an eye. (Incidentally it was the relistening to this book while working today, that inspired me to share my love of this author.)
For the record Simon Winchester has authored many more books than this meager reading list.
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What have you enjoyed reading lately?
Comments
I read a great little book over the summer called
Currently I am reading The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World by David Deutsch, a follow on of his book The Fabric of Reality. The main theme of the book is that knowledge is gained in a Popperian way, conjecture (creativity) -> criticism -> explanation. That the best theories are not predictions (see problems of induction), the best are good explanations. He believes that with the scientific style of gaining knowledge our future progress and knowledge is unbounded (the beginnings of infinity) and he takes time criticising other ideas he thinks are wrong.
I really like the book even though I probably disagree with 40% but that is true of any book on ideas/philosophy I have read. If a book makes you think and you agreed with all of it then you wouldn't be thinking hard enough
Back in 1992 I read Bill McKibben's "End of Nature" - It was like water in a hot desert, since I'd been fretting about what we were doing to our planet for a couple decades already and receiving nothing but but grief when I tried sharing those concerns. It literally felt like glory be I'm not the crazy one after all.
They have some YouTube talks too
Carlo Rovelli @ 5x15 - Seven brief lessons on physics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aGHG0Jahzc
Carlo Rovelli: "Why Physics needs Philosophy"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJ0uPkG-pr4
The Unity Of The Universe - David Deutsch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WMo5UvWvLg
( What can I say, my free reading time is limited and I've gotten to love listening to YouTube lectures by smart people describing their books or science efforts, beats the ball game pretty near everytime
Thanks...I ordered both of these.
Maybe the same, maybe related: Predictions are overrated, explanations are underrated.
The Copernican model with the sun in the middle predicted the movement of the planets less good than the highly tuned older model with the Earth in the middle. What made Copernicus convincing was the observation of moons around other planets. The explanation was better, not the prediction (initially).
My book recommendation would be: Complexity. Also fits to the climate system and the atmosphere, which are complex systems. Complex in the sense of consisting of many interacting parts.
http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/13/2/reviews/3.html
Cool talk.
I can second that - I read it a few summers ago, and it really grabbed me and gave me a new found interest in science
I particularly liked his opening thought, the initial thought that gave him the premise to write the book
he simply asked himself the question "how do we know what we know?" - and the answer is unsurprisingly through science
I also found it fascinating that it was only just over a century ago that the age of the earth was simply not known - and even heavyweights like Lord Kelvin had little idea
from memory it was E=MC2 that was the key needed to finally unlocked the mystery of the age of the sun, and by extension the earth
another lovely story was the inability of Darwin's theory of evolution to explain the similarity of fossils in South American and Africa
Plate Tectonics was the beautifully simple answer