eReadings - 7

History of Science

This is a series of 4 volumes starting in prehistoric times (yes, I said prehistoric times), and carefully covering the advances of science. I think there were 2 eras in which the accomplishments were quite amazing. Keep in mind that I'm reading out-of-copyright books, and this series was written in the late 19th century.

First, the Greeks. Their powers of reasoning and investigation are astounding, and there was very little to match them for centuries after the Greek decline. The Romans added very little to what the Greeks had already discerned. In spite of their limited knowledge about the extent of the world, the Greeks had determined that the Earth was a sphere, even though they had no idea as to where land was, where sea was on this sphere. There was the first notion of heliocentricity of our solar system, forgotten and discarded for many centuries. And of course we have people like Pythagoras and Euclid, who came up with important principles we still learn today. But we also get a sense of the attitude of some of these Greeks, a fair amount of hubris and jealousy, so this series is more than a recitation of dry facts.

In the 19th century, abetted by some very clever people in the 17th and 18th centuries, we see the beginnings of modern science as we know it, with careful experimentation, the discovery of new elements, the early development of the atomic theory, and again the various rivalries, co-discoveries, and they way that some became famous quite deservedly, some who did so less deservedly, and some who should have been famous but were overlooked.

It takes a while to go through these volumes, but for those interested in science and science history, it's well worth your while.

eReadings - 6

The First Men in the Moon

by H G Wells

The title's "in" seems like a typo, but eventually you realize that it's very much intended by the author. We live now with the reality of space travel and men having actually gone to the moon, so keep in mind this book comes from the 19th century, when the moon remained a source of great speculation.

There are some inklings of the scientific knowledge at the time, as far as the lower gravity on the moon, the "thinness" of the atmosphere, but there are plenty of suppositions that are way off base, and if you can't separate yourself from what we now know about the moon, then you may find the book just silly.

There is the expected eccentric scientist, who comes upon some form of alchemy involving helium to create a substance which blocks gravity, much as an opaque object blocks light. Thus, we have a means of leaving the earth to arrive at the moon, with some curious, primitive means of survival on the way, yet Wells does manage a decent description of the implications of being in a state of zero gravity.

But there is an idea that the moon has a breathable atmosphere, and that at least as long as the sun is shining on it the temperature is such that one can walk on the moon without protection, and we might say the second surprise after that is that there grows a profusion of plants on the surface of the moon, at least while the sun shines. Somehow Wells had the idea the the sun shines on the moon continuously for many of our earth days, which figures in the events as the adventures on and in the moon unravel. Surprises continue as you read about the goings on beneath the moon's surface.

Of course, now science fiction and fantasy have to travel to distant planets and galaxies to give us believable stories of life outside of Earth, but if you cast away your prejudices about what it's really like on the moon, the story is nonetheless interesting to read.

eReadings - 5  
Hard Times

by Charles Dickens

It doesn't take long into this book to really feel the grime, grit, and bleakness of a small English manufacturing town, covered with coal dust and soot, where most people's lives belong to the factories and owners.

This is really the backdrop, though, for what is going on with the main protagonists, Thomas Gradgrind, and his friend, Josiah Bounderby, both wealthy, both in control of their lives and those around them. Mr. Gradgrind raises his children at home, filling them with facts, so much so that there is no allowance for dreaming, wishing, reading novels, anything not based on facts.

Mr. Bounderby is a self-made man, and reminds those around him incessantly of that fact -- abandoned by his mother, scraping out an existence, to finally make himself what he is today, a wealthy manufacturer and banker.

By the end of the book, each man receives his comeuppance in his own way, and at least Mr. Gradgrind is the better for it. Meanwhile, the story details the inequities of the rich and poor, part of which rests in the way the rich think of and treat the poor, yet at least some of the poor have qualities the rich will never attain.

Dickens is quite the creator of interesting characters, one of whom, Mr. Sleary, provides the challenge of reading through the depiction of his lisp, "Well, Thquire", he returned... "Ith it your intenthion to do anything for the poor girl, Thquire?" Some of Mr. Sleary's long-winded moments are a bit mind-numbing to read, seeming like a poor trick Dickens plays on his readers.

It may be a bit syrupy and sappy in the end, but overall very satisfying.

eReadings - 4

David Copperfield -- Charles Dickens

Dickens writes in his preface that, at least of the time of the writing, this was his favorite book, since he really enjoyed the character.

My sense after reading it is that, interestingly enough, even though the story centers around David Copperfield and the things that happen to him as narrator of the story, it's not really about him. It's about all the strange and interesting characters in his life. There is much tragedy, various moments of happiness, sorrow as he tries to make his way through life, and the strange ways that people keep coming back into his life.

One of the most interesting families are the McCawbers, a family always on the verge of yet another financial calamity, going from one ruinous debt to the next, yet happy the whole while.

And now I see where the rock band Uriah Heep got its name, and quite a character he is.

Maybe the ending gets to be a bit of too much goodness, but this is a book full of enjoyable reading.

Occupy Wall Street

I try not to have many political/social comments, mostly because it's something of a cesspool of negative thoughts, but I find OWS interesting, in that it doesn't seem to have a coherent message, or maybe it only seems so to some.

This isn't to say that everyone involved in it has the same idea of what OWS should accomplish, what its message should be, but there is some intelligence in not forcing that to happen. It's a complex intelligence that even though I might have dissatisfactions with the high-living economic world, it's not flavored by going through a foreclosure, unemployment, or various other disasters others are going through.

It's interesting to compare OWS to the Tea Party, as many have done, but the TP was long ago abducted by the rich to serve their needs. A Libertarian approach to things is great when you talk about not paying taxes, allowing anyone to make as much money as they possibly can, but it seems that strictly speaking, a true Libertarian would say that there is no reason to save the financial system, no reason to save the auto industry, anymore than we want to save someone from not having health insurance.

The message I think that OWS has to offer that needs to last is that it's time to temper the greed. It's time to not measure success based on how much money one can accumulate in the shortest amount of time. It's time to believe that, when you manage to benefit from wealth creation, that there is some payback to society for having a system that allows that to happen.

Connectivity

There seems to be an increasing number of doctors carrying around iPads for various reasons, one being that they can connect to the hospital's system to get patient information. Our hospital has free wireless.

I carry around a laptop for the same reason, and while I have considered getting some sort of tablet, so far it doesn't make sense. There are a number of things I can do on the laptop that would not be feasible with a tablet. I have some custom software, like a database for example, that I would have to find some substitute for, and really don't want to bother.

The overriding issue, though, is that I have begun to see connectivity in the same way I saw TV some time ago: a great way to waste a lot of time, and realize hours later that you haven't seen anything worth remembering and have accomplished nothing.

This isn't some abstract mental exercise. It comes from having one or more computers running in my house so that I can as often as I want step up to and look up something, browse for random information on selected sites, check out blogs, or whatever. In the end it's not any more interesting, mostly less interesting than flipping through the hundreds of channels I could see on my cable TV, and I've already decided TV is mostly a waste of time. If I lived alone, I probably wouldn't have cable, and maybe not even a TV at all.

Here we are, in the 21st century, bombarded with uninteresting stuff, much of it propped up with advertising dollars to get us to go out and buy something we'll be unhappy with after purchase.

eReadings - 3

History of the Plague in London

The first thing to realize about this book is its chronology. This is a "first person" narrative of the plague in late 17th century London, and if you check out the vagueness of Daniel Defoe's lifespan you realize he was at most a few years old during that time. His father is alleged to have kept some notes, perhaps a diary of the plague, so some have proposed that may have been in part the basis for this book. Others have suggested that Defoe used some other literary sources regarding the plague in other parts of Europe for his material.

So what you have is at best a second-person memoir, and when you consider the leeway one might see with a first-person memoir, at the outset you realize that there may be any number of distortions or exaggerations.

For a medical person, this is nonetheless an interesting book, showing as it does the profound effects on the infrastructure and the psyche of a large city faced with some medical epidemic for which no cure is known, yet a number of superstitions existed as to how to manage it, prevent it, most bordering on voodoo from a modern perspective.

Aside from the dubiousness of the factual information, this certainly seems more plausible than various movies about contagion we have seen. Some of the quite believable features are the accounts of people who took great precautions to avoid the plague only to succumb, and some who took none yet survived. Of course, there is ample evidence that taking unnecessary chances was generally a bad and fatal idea.

Will we ever face something like this again? The doomsayers predict it with regularity. If you ever wanted to think about coping with a very real disaster, this book is worth reading, and offers the safety of the distance of a few centuries when there was great ignorance about the cause of infectious diseases.

eReadings - 2

Howard's End

I had not seen either of the movies made from this story, so I had no idea what it was about. For the most part, it focuses on two reasonably well-to-do young sisters living in London, due to an inheritance from their father, so neither they nor their younger brother would ever consider working. Nonetheless, the setting of the story is pre-WWI, at a time when at least some women are getting ideas about getting the vote, and speaking their minds even in the company of men.

Howard's End is a place which figures pretty early in the story, then manages to fade to the background until near the end. Meanwhile there is an interesting weaving in and out of various characters, with untoward if not disastrous consequences for some of them.

I found the story line the best part of the book. It's perhaps expected that one might have trouble connecting to the thoughts of young women about that time, but it seemed there was something missing in their characterizations. There certainly was a effort to show them as quite unsettling to the gentlemen of the time. I certainly would recommend the book as well worth the read.