auntiemeesh | (no subject)

Went to the bookstore today. So much fun! I made a swift tour through the scifi section, just long enough to pick up Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. I'm about three or four pages in and already loving it muchly.

My other two purchases were prompted by the fear that my brain has suffered permanent damage from lack of use the past ten years working in child care and not stimulating it with anything even vaguely intellectual. So I headed for the non-fiction department and had a lovely browse through the anthropology section (one shelf, approx. six books - it's a smallish bookstore). I was very, very tempted to buy Popol Vuh, but decided to hold off for the moment. It's definitely on my 'want it lots' list, though. Next I found a book called Mapping Human History: Genes, Race, and our Common Origins, by Steve Olson. It looks quite fascinating; he uses not only archeological and linguistic but genetic evidence to trace human evolution and migration for the past 150,000 years. I've always been fascinated by the study of human evolution (both cultural and physical) but this is the first time I've encountered someone using genetics to tell us where and when humans lived, how they interacted, etc.

The last book I picked up is Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the 10th Dimension, by Michio Kaku, a theoretical physicist. Physics is one of those things that made my brain hurt in high school, but that has a beauty about it that appeals to me when it's presented as ideas without the equations and math that I can't do to save my life.

So now I have the dual benefits of several good books to read and the opportunity to stretch my mental muscles a little bit.

I also ordered Buffy season one because, well, just because. *grins*

Threaded | Flat

Have you read Guns, Germs, and Steel?

Hyperspace is a very cool book :) I love the part where he talks about building a betatron as a high school science project. Another fun math-y book is "The Fourth Dimension" by Rudy Rucker, which I liked a lot.

Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Good Omens!!!

If you start heading down the evil path of Aziraphale/Crowley, I have art and fanfic recs for you.

:D

Sounds like you're feeling better...Cool!

So did you finish the new Jasper Fford yet? I'm dying to read it, and might even have time to--haha!

Enjoy the sunshine!
=D

PBS recently had a special on the mapping the human race via DNA. I't's been established that we all came from the San bushmen people, the ones with the tounge-click lauguage. There is this thing where you can (for a fee) send this project a sample of your DNA (cheek swab) and the will tell you what part of the world they can trace you back too. Nifty!

So glad to hear that you did make it to Littleton and got some exciting new stuff to read. Did you drive by yourself or did LP (and/or Mr P) accompany you?

I can sympathize with the "small bookstore" woes. I'm coming to think that I like the idea of Square Books a lot more than I like the actuality.

Physics is one of those things that made my brain hurt in high school, but that has a beauty about it that appeals to me when it's presented as ideas without the equations and math that I can't do to save my life.

Can't agree with you more! When I read articles in Discover that relate to physics, I want to be a physicist and get to find out about all the stuff that is still sci-fi today, but could be real; then I pick up my old physics textbook and my brain immediately begins to hurt! lol.

Happy reading to you. :-D)

On Good Omens: I read Good Omens a couple of years ago on a business trip. It was hysterically funny, but I was also just a wee bit scared by parts of it while reading it alone in a darkened cabin near Colonial Williamsburg in January...whoosh, hear those end-of-the-world winds howl.
(Yes, I am a wimp.)

On anthropology: PBS has this show that they run occasionally, “Secrets of the Dead,” and in one episode they tracked down the modern-day descendants of the Amazon women warriors. It seems that they married into/merged with today’s Mongolians, so every so often you will get a little blond-haired kid born to a family in one of the Mongolian yurts. They confirmed this by using DNA from a bone from an Amazon’s grave near Rome, and comparing it to the DNA of one of those blond-haired Mongolian girls, who was about 11 and very pigtailed and cute. They had to find a girl to do the test because the matrilineal DNA matches are so much stronger -- in part because every little girl is born with all the eggs she will ever have already inside her when she comes out of her mama. I find all this fascinating.

On science-y stuff: I have admiration for science (I am married to a chemist), but I find my best understanding of it has actually come from science fiction. (I got a H.S. question right because I had seen the answer on “Star Trek,” LOL).