Ponderings of a Scientist

If you haven’t already read them, I overwhelmingly suggest “A Thousand Splendid Suns” and “Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini. I finished “A Thousand Splendid Suns” last night, all 200 pages I had left! I couldn’t put it down. My heart was beating out of my chest with anxiety and sympathetic tears were in my eyes, as Hosseini painted such a vivid and heart-wrenching picture of life in Afghanistan. Both of these novels are poignant, not only are they great stories, but they also highlight the socio-political state of Afghanistan. I had to keep reminding myself that these novels were set in the present time and reflected the realities of present day Afghanistan, because the lives the characters lead are so different then my own.

New images of Addie are also up on Shutterfly!

Spend less money on books and more time engaged in your community! The Library Look-up Project.

“If your local library uses one of the online catalog systems listed here, you may be able to create a bookmarklet that will help you look up books in your library.

After you’ve “installed” your bookmarklet by dragging it to your browser’s link toolbar, you can use it to look up books at your local library. Let’s say you’re on a book-related site (Amazon, BN, isbn.nu) and your current page’s URL includes an ISBN. (Choose a hardcover edition for best results — see tips below.) You can click your bookmarklet to check if the book is available in your local library. The bookmarklet will invoke your library’s lookup service, feed it the ISBN, and pop up a new window with the result.” - Jon Udell

Just completed The Sea Around Us by Rachel Carson.  Written circa 1945 (second edition circa 1955), this is one of Rachel’s first (if not her first) full length book, previous to her famous Silent Spring.  If you’re interested in the Ocean you should check it out.  If I had to describe the book in one sentence:  Poetically written prose describing the oceans’ history, geology, geography, oceanography, bathymetry and marine biology.  Its interesting to read something so old and see how much (how little) our understandings have changed.  Rachel, even prior to getting DDT induced cancer, was an environmentailist and a forward thinker.  Many of her ideas and concerns are still relavent today.

I’d give this book a 6 (if you dig ocean science) on the 1-10 scale.  I think I would have appreciated it more with about 1/3 of each chapter cut.  I enjoyed the topics, but she was a bit long winded at parts.  I’m a facts sort of person, I don’t tend to enjoy books full of descriptors (thats why I like the fast paced mystery genre) and this was a bit to poetic for me in parts.

About a week ago I found time to finish reading a book titled Politics Lost: How American Democracy was Trivialized by People who Think You’re Stupid. I thought the book was a nice break from the whining, partisan blame game that is most politically minded books. Mr Klein makes his moderate position known and does a pretty good job of sticking by it; ridiculing equally the pollster, adviser, and speech-writer driven campaigns of both the democrats and the republicans. He rather blatantly points out the problems, with little regard for any solutions, which was fine by me since 1) that was his stated intention and 2) I don’t want to read about another journalist’s idea on how to fix the political system. I found the book to be brief, perhaps missing some key examples, yet well-written and amazingly non-partisan. I recommend it, however click here to see what other readers thought, amazing all the republican’s hated it and all the democrats liked it - perhaps honestly is a bipartisan trait!

I was just thinking about the public library. Dover has a great library that I use regularly. Really why would anyone buy fiction (something you will read once, maybe twice) when they could get it for free from the library. It amazes me how few people use this resource, the FREE resource. The whole library concept actually amazes me, in the world where nothing is free and everything can be found on the internet libraries have held tight to their niche and are doing well.

In thinking about public libraries I started to think about all the services I value in society and it seems all of them are grossly underfunded. Why is that? Don’t people want 1) free books, 2) quality educations for their children, 3) sufficiently manned and equipped police and fire departments? I think the problem is that our tax system is f**ked! I would certainly agree to tax increases for the above services if I was convinced the money would go to those services. However, it seems the more we pay the less we get back!!

Well at least the Majors, Governors and Senators of the country keep getting raises, because they are doing such a good job using my tax money and creating legislation I support (think of the close, but not quite banning of smoking in restaurants in NH - boy I’m sure glad that didn’t pass that would of seriously cut into my chances of lung cancer in the future). **Notice** the previous paragraph was all sarcasm for those of you that have a hard time noticing sarcasm.

In summary, the one thing I value that is actually funded at a more then meager level is broadcast sporting events. And as much as I like watching the Bs and the Sox, they are entertainers getting paid millions, yet our civil servants are lucky to make 40K!! What is wrong with people!!!

My new(ish) boss gave me this book as a gift. I really like my boss because we are both innovative thinkers in the work environment, so essentially I get a lot of freedom with projects. I’m not sure how either of us came to be this way, but I will describe my boss a bit so you understand where he is coming from with this book. As far as I can tell he was a former hippie (although he may be a bit young for the full 60s movement). He was in the Peace Corp in Africa and then returned home to get his PhD. He had his own consulting business before working for the feds. He is all about personal growth and is constantly reading books on leadership and our role on Earth and recently completed the national leadership program put on by our federal employer. So he gave me this book, as best I can tell, as some sort of leadership technique combined with own joint interests in earthy like things.

To the book review… Well it was written by a woman who runs The Peace Company, a Vermont based company, now influential enough to be a good guy lobby group in D.C. The premise is “108 simple ways to create a more peaceful world”. Of the 108 ways I bought into maybe 70 and would consider performing (or already perform) 45 or so. The book swings from way too touchy feeling and philisophical, to very reasonable (but not necessarily practical) to damn smart.

I finished the book a few days ago and I’m still conflicted on 1) how I feel about the book and 2) how to describe it. So below I will layout the organization of the book, read over the chapter descriptions and decide for yourself whether you would be interest. A copy is on my bookshelve for anyone in the NH area who would like to borrow it or you can check out The Peace Company site.

Chapter 1: Inner Peace (a bit fruity for me.. but don’t stop reading it gets more practical)
Chapter 2: Peace with Family and Friends (good advice, habits I should learn and follow)
Chapter 3: Peace for the Children (not there yet with the kid thing.. but could be good in the future)
Chapter 4: Peace at Work (good advice, habits I should learn, but would have a hard time following given some of my coworkers)
Chapter 5: Peace and Public Affairs (sort of weak)
Chapter 6: Peace and Coexistence (things I know, but can never use thanks to NH’s lack of diversity)
Chapter 7: Peace and Reconciliation (…but I like holding a grudge)
Chapter 8: Peace and Social Change (Yes, but wishful thinking)
Chapter 9: Peace and Nonviolence (again, I agree, but not likely to happen)
Chapter 10: World Peace (only for the really devoteed i.e. volunteering everywhere for the rest of your life)
Chapter 11: Peace and the Environment (YES; this is my kinda peace)
Chapter 12: Peace and Spirit (I’m way too agnostic for this chapter)

Intro and Epilogue: The epilogue makes a better introduction, read it first.

Each Chapter discusses the topic in reference to “four principles of peace, community, cooperation, non-violence, and witness.” I didn’t so much get the “principles of peace”, but I did like how they were used as a bulleted review at the end of each chapter. The end of each chapter also listed resources relevent to that kind of peace and gave a few anecdotes from peace follows (I think the anecdotes were one of the books highlights, but that’s because I like reality better than philosophy.)

Dinner Time! You’re all smart decide for yourself if you want to read the book.

So I was at the library last weekend and stumbled upon the newest release from one of my favorite authors, Anita Shreve. A Wedding in December is about a wedding which leads to an intimate renunion of a group of high school friends. The plot is minimal (one weekend in an inn in the Berkshires, although +1 for the frostbite softball), while the novel focuses on character development. Personally, when I read modern fiction I’m looking for plot (think crime dramas and other mysteries easily converted into movies), when I want character development I read classic literature. I stuck this book out, but it was slow at the beginning and boring at points, and when I finally developed an interest in the characters the book ended! I was so caught off guard by the book ending, that I actually turned the page thinking (not hoping, really thinking) there was more. The main point as I see it goes something like this: “Man my live took a left turn after high school and although my life may look happy and wonderful, its really lacking something. If only I had married the high school sweetheart; if only I had told her/him how I felt, if only… Oh well its too late I will go back to my unfufilling life now that I have realized it sucks, sigh.”

My recommendation: If you have no other books on you list, check it out at the library (woot public libraries rock (expanded blog on this later)). I wouldn’t pay money for it. If you’ve never read Shreve before I suggest The Weight of Water or pretty much anything else she has written before you read this.

So Grue let me borrow this book titled Lab 257,
which is all about the Plum Island Exotic Animal Disease Laboratory, so
smartly located between Conn. and Long Island. The book, written
by a journalist, investigates the history and current condition of Plum
Island. While the author intends to just lay out the facts with
no bias, you definitely get the sense he doesn’t approve of the way
Plum Island is run. Which who can blame him, they have some
serious safety issues, issues that likely caused Lyme Disease and an
outbreak of West Nile. I’m not going to go into all the scary
details, but everyone should know that this lab is still in operation,
still working on exotic viruses and bacteria (think weapons grade
anthrax), has serious issues being honest to the public or Congress for
that matter, and is well known to radical islamic groups. But,
have no fear, the lab just recently switch juristication from the USDA
to where else, Homeland Security. And if the Homeland Security
Office can’t keep the island safe, who can?

If you like a good conspiracy theory I would recommend borrowing the book from Grue.