Thanksgiving, 2016
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The Best Friend, by Shalini Boland
Very good psych thriller. Louisa’s husband is a mess and they’re on the financial rocks. But, she finds a new friend that promises to help them both, socially and financially. Unfortunately, slight cracks start to appear in the relationship, and soon develop into full fledged breaks. My wife and I listened to this book on the way to a mountain vacation a couple of weeks…
Quantum, by Manjit Kumar
A good history of the quantum theory, tracing the initial concept up through today’s attempts to unravel this seemingly self contradictory theory. Following are my notes. Kumar does an excellent job of piecing it all together. Notes: Plank theorized the quantum in his study of blackbody radiation. Scientists were trying to discover the relationship between peak frequency and temperature. The first theory, Wien’s law, worked…
TV Guide for cordcutters
I’ve been frustrated by normal TV guides when it comes to showing OTA channels. I’m sorry, but I just can’t remember what channels are represented by 8.2, 35.3, etc. And a normal channel guide shows programs by channel name, like MyTV, MeTV, or Comet–same problem–what number belongs to what channel? After much searching, I found a solution–in the Android store, search for “TV Listings &…
The Hunt for Vulcan, by Thomas Levenson
While the story of Vulcan is relatively short, the majority of this book is spent covering the science that led up to how this colossal mistake called Vulcan was made. It started with the triumph of mathematics and observational accuracy that led to the discovery of Neptune in 1846. It was almost exactly where the mathematician Urbain La Verrier predicted it would be, using the…
Black Hole, by Marcia Bartusiak
Black holes were a theoretical device before they were considered to be actual physical objects. This book shows how the idea was gradually accepted–and it took a long time. Even Albert Einstein found it too mind boggling to accept–he actually wrote a paper “proving” that they could not exist. This is a great quote from the book that summarizes the battle: “There is a curious…
Destiny of the Republic, by Candice Millard
This book can only be termed as a sleeper. I was flying back from the UK, suffering from jet lag and the onset of what I found out later to be an upper respiratory infection, but this story kept me turning the pages. And I thought it was going to put me to sleep.
Cancun 2013
We took three of the grandkids this year–Megan, Mason, and Jordan. And the biggest kid of all, Aunt Lala. Probably the most fun day (for the grandkids) was the one they spent zip lining–once through the jungle, and another over the waters of a cenote. Even grandma participated–although the trip to the first zip line on a bicycle did not end well. But, it was her…
We are Legion, by Dennis Taylor
Well, if I had to die, I guess I could settle for this. Bob lives in the future, and in that world, you can have your body frozen and preserved. I think we’ve heard this one before. But, in this version of that scenario, Bob gets to live forever–but not the way you would ordinarily think of it. He has no body. Just his brain. And…
The Girl with all the Gifts, movie review
This is the movie based on the book by the same name. And it does live up to the book. It suffers from the same malady that movies based on books typically suffer–too many shortcuts, and no ability to understand what the characters are thinking as the plot moves along. But this movie does a pretty decent job, and the main characters–Melanie and Dr. Caldwell, are…
Tucker and Dale vs Evil, movie review
A great comedy, using a slasher film as a basis. In fact, if you don’t watch the beginning of the movie long enough, you’ll turn it off, thinking it’s another of the same old same old. But, if you watch long enough to realize the gag, you’ll be rewarded with numerous laughs. Out loud laughs. It’s clever in the sense that it’s two movies–the one…