home

=-- Welcome to my SummerFun2010 Wiki=

I hope to use this site to share ideas with others on good books to read and good movies to watch. The last section below is an area for suggested readings that anybody can contribute to. Feel free to edit or add anything to this page.... try to be nice.

-- Non-Fiction Books I've Read Lately:toc

 * [|Fear of Physics: A Guide for the Perplexed - Lawrence M. Kraus]A great book but I don't know why he called it "Fear of Physics". I'm not sure it will eliminate a physics phobics phears, but it does clarify the way physicists think and how they have advanced from mysticism, through classical, relativistic, and quantum physics. Have you ever heard the phrase "Assume the cow is a sphere"?

Fermat's Last Theorem - Simon SinghThe story of a man's quest to prove the famous math problem he first heard of as a boy of 10 years. The problem is easy to understand and mostly useless. But it is the centuries old quest to find a proof, the great minds of those whose ideas wittingly or unwittingly contributed to the solution, and the new mathematics that grew out of this quest that is interesting. That, and the fact that a proof had already been claimed by a well-respected mathematician over 200 years ealier.... but after making this claim, he promptly died before recording it.

The Tao of Physics - Fritjof Capra I've only read a couple of chapters but this is a great book so far. So far I am not sure if the Truth that lays hidden in quantum world and the Truth sought by the Eastern Mystics is the same truth..... but both Truths seem to lay somewhere beyond the capabilities of our intellect and our senses. How then do we find it.... how then do we describe it when we do find it? I think I'll have a cookie.

A Walk in the Woods - Bill Bryson I'm glad Bryson bothered to do the hiking and then wrote about it so I don't have to. Sometimes it sounded more like a march but despite the constant threat of scary things that go bump in the dark woods, Bryson sees the funny side and makes you laugh reading about it.

On reflection (it's a while since reading it) this book seemed like a bit of a departure from the usual Bryson laugh-out-loud fest and had strong elements of sadness about it, especially relating to his grossly out of shape hiking buddy. It also had an air of Theroux melancholy about it, but i guess that is hardly any surprise as Bryson is always measuring his writing by the Theroux travel writing standard and maybe this was his attempt to be taken more seriously. It's interesting because the books that followed were more serious and it seemed like he had lost his funnybone.**

In a related note, the true identify of Bryson's hiking companion, Stephen Katz, was recently made public. His name is Matt Angerer and he still lives in Iowa.

**-- Fiction Books I've Read Lately:**
The relationships established between the housekeeper, her son, a latchkey kid, and the professor are inspiring. It is a great example of what it means to live in the present.**
 * I recently read __The Housekeeper and the Professor__ by Yoko Ogawa. It's about a Japanese math professor who as the result of a head trauma his short term memory that last only 80 minutes. So each day the housekeeper and professor meet again. The professor is still brilliant with math equations and number connections. It's interesting how he relates numbers to everything or everything to numbers.

-- Movies I've Seen Lately:

 * What the Bleep Do We Know (and the follow up Down the Rabbit Hole)**


 * This is what got me on the quantum physics kick. The movie has some similar ideas to the book "The Tao of Physics" mentioned above. One of the movies themes is that, by observing our world, or by paying attention to it, we create it. This idea is fundamental in quantum mechanics too. If you want to measure something, the act of measuring it changes its properties.... thereby making any measurments useless. This result happens, not because our measuring devices are inadequate, but because there is something fundamental about nature that occurs at the subatomic level. The movie suggests that conciousness is the "thing" that causes the change in the measured quantities. I think the bigger message of the movie is that by paying attention to the world around us, we can create our own reality.

I saw a great movie recently. i can't remember what it was called, but it had this guy in it who had a hairy back and a big hat and he went to this cool place, i can't remember the name of the place, but he met this other guy who had a guitar and a big stomach like a cinnamon roll, it was all really cool and stuff. Then they got a tea chest and went paddling using the guitar on a river and the river turned into a giant waterfall like Niagora and they went over it but were saved by the great big fat guy's cinnamon rolls which protected them from the force by cushioning the impact. It's the best movie ever.**

-- Suggestions for Books to Read:

 * 'Outliers' by Malcolm Gladwell**


 * A very interesting book which examines the argument between nature, nurture, genius and sheer hard work. He comes down on the side of success being the result of lucky or timely external circumstances such as when a person was born and absolute hard work and suggests that for genius or to be really good at what you do you have to put in the equivalent of 10,000 hours of work or practice if applied to a musician, which equates to 10 years of work. He describes how the Beatles had 10,000 hours of practice under their belts from gigging night and day in Hamburg before they got into the studio with George Martin in 1962 - and it shows because they were polished and and were really quite super.**


 * Better by Atul Gawande**

Gawande, author of "Complications", examines what makes one professional more competent than another. He largely focuses on the medical field (he's a surgeon by training) in which there are many excellent, competent doctors, but only a few true standouts. Gawande argues that small increments of excellence save the lives of hundreds of people every year who would otherwise have died.

I plan to go and see this in the future.
I watched an older movie recently starring William Hurt called **Doctor.** It should be manditory for all doctors to see it. The doctor becomes the patient. What a rude awakening that was. It was a good movie. Do you think I could get my doctor to see it?