Finished (Audiobook) - "The 4% Universe" - Richard Panek

I liked the 4% universe, not that I have any great understanding of dark matter and energy, but for the history of a "pseudo-science" to "science" transition.  The field of Cosmology was, and could have stayed, about as scientific as astrology.

This book can form a necessary understanding of the scientific method, and how it can be used to understand difficult and distant problems (similar to social science and educational issues).  The core measures are interrelated (distance, time, brightness) so the "core" measures are subject to some debate, and constant reinforcement and checking of initial assumptions and hypotheses is crucial.

As concurrent evidence is the key ingredient, there is basically a 3-D ongoing interpretation of Science from first principals.  Could very easily have stayed in religious or "guess what" levels.

The politics and funding of science is also a continuing eye-opener - it's surprising anything gets done sometimes.

Finished (Audiobook) - "Perfectly Resonable Deviations from the Beaten Track" - Richard P. Feynman

"Perfectly Resonable Deviations from the Beaten Track" - Richard P. Feynman is the third Feynman book I've listened to ("Surely you're joking Mr. Feynman" and "What Do You Care What Other People Think" are the others).  This is a nice tie-in - it shows the source material for stories told in the other books, and reveals a nice side of Dr. Feynman - some letters are to significant figures in science, but many are to old students, members of the public, critics, etc.  


All correspondence was handled with a grace, humour and respect, even letters to those writers not displaying the same virtues.  The letters speak highly of Dr. Feynman as a thinker, scholar, and a man - no one was disparaged.


His rejection of societies that offer nothing more than exclusivity is refreshing, and his misgivings about the Nobel prize is nice to hear, and nice to see mentioned many times consistently over a long period.  It's nice to see someone who's invited to the exclusive events to have a little humility - to see the shallowness of some of the institutions, even while they are currying favour.

Finished (E-Reader & Paper Book) - "Water for Elephants" - Sara Gruen

"Water for Elephants" is a novel based partially in the present, where the narrator is an elderly man living in a nursing home.  He is thinking back on his younger days, mid-20's in age, early 1930's in time, where he left veterinary school and joined up with the circus during the depression.  Being a circus, the characters are interesting, and of course there are circus animals and freaks.

I found it interesting how the whole circus circuit worked - trains from town to town, setup and takedown in hours; how the animals were fed en route; the stratification of the circus folks (performers, managers, workers); the disposability of workers during the depression (e.g. being "red-lighted" - tossed off the train during the night).

The afterword talks of some historical resources from which some of the stories were derived - not a history lesson, but a story based in the reality of the times.  A very compelling read.

Finished (Audiobook) - "What Do You Care What Other People Think?" - Richard P. Feynman

I listened to the second of my Richard Feynman trilogy - "What Do You Care What Other People Think".  It has fewer stories than "Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman" but it discusses the presidential committee to investigate the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster in quite a bit of depth, which is definitely worth the read.  At the time of the writing, the commission was fairly recent, and Dr. Feynman refers to the "Iran Contra" investigations briefly as a point of comparison.

The only point of departure I have from Dr. Feynman is that he discusses education and social science as something other than "science".  I think that is a true interpretation of the present situation, as both are complex systems and both have great difficulty doing the baseline experiments (e.g. you can't surgery kids into control and experimental groups and see what parts of the brain learn math by rote - you need to infer from tests; attention and motivation are key factors, which don't typically exist in physics or chemistry).

However, that being said, Dr. Feynman shows exactly the tenacity and usage of science on the Presidential committee, which is a model for social science and educational research - do the basic science wherever possible, maintain both positive and negative experimental results, learn and loop back to examine predicates and assumptions, replicate, strive to understand in the full sense, not narrow sense. The Shuttle disaster did allow for the application of basic engineering and scientific processes (e.g. materials for the O-rings, application of best practices in engineering for the testing of equipment, use of research methodology practices to support and define knowledge and decision making).

Finished (Audiobook) - "Surely You Must Be Joking Mr. Feynman" - Richard P. Feynman

I was given this book my my Master's Advisor when I started graduate school as an example of keeping up the curiosity needed to do high level research.

The book is a series of auto-biographical stories from the life of Richard Feynman, the Nobel prize winning physicist, known as a youngster on the Manhattan project, and most recently known as one of the key investigators of the Challenger Space Shuttle investigation in the late '80's a short while before his death.

I enjoyed the stories, and the smattering of science and problem solving that defined Dr. Feynman's life.  I must say that I was quite disappointed in the real experience of graduate school, as it seems to be missing the drama, and the broad based research of earlier eras of graduate studies.

I'd recommend this book highly for folks in, or planning, graduate studies - let's work to make the process more like Feynman's experience - it should help define a lifetime, not pad a prof's resume.