Small Things Considered by Henry Petroski

Design is a characteristic of all "things." According to Petroski, there is no "perfect" design. Interestingly written with wonderful examples of grocery bags, stairs, potato peelers. And a sad paragraph about the Museum of Science and Industry's new basement entrance. Toothbrushes, pizza box supports, light switches, ease or complicate our lives.

Defining the Wind by Scott Huber

Beaufort was a seaman and nautical chart hydrologist. Among his many accomplishments was the development by borrowing and enhancing and the later adjustments by others of an observational scale of wind velocity. The author highlights the importance of observation in a world of meters and gauges. The scale is also useful, practical. The descriptions are perfect in economy and evoke helpful images. They are science and poetry at their best.

Godless by Ann Coulter

Taking no prisoners, Coulter skewers the left with wit, precision and force. All the chapters are interesting but the treatment of Darwinism (Darwiniacs) is really good. She sketches out the issues well and dissects their rhetoric and lack of argument. She ends with a moral flourish that ties the argument of the book together. The first paragraph summarizes the argument, the last shows what is at stake.

10-26-2006 Mediterranean cruise

The Mystery of Capital - Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else by Hernando DeSoto

DeSoto claims that easy access of everyone, rich and poor, to the national system of legal property ownership makes the adding of value and business formation and accumulation of assets possible. He says in Peru, Haiti, and other places he has investigated, it is virtually impossible to acquire legal status for property and businesses unless you are in the "bell jar" (elite). Those in the bell jar can't see the dilemma of those outside and don't want to make it easy for them. Most developing and former communist countries want to impose legal ownership from top down. DeSoto has analyzed the rather recent success of Western countries who recognized local "non-legal" titles and agreements and went bottom-up. This is the only way to succeed, he says. "Protestant ethic" explanations are spurious.

The Man who Changed Everything by Basil Mahon

A book about James Clerk Maxwell, one of the most brilliant physicists of all time. Maxwell unified electricity and magnetism and mathematically proved the electromagnetic spectrum, making radio and broadcasting possible and predicting radiation of all types. He applied field equations, was an early topologist, proved that light was an electromagnetic phenomenon. Quantitatively measured colors. Measured the color vision of the eye. Took the first color picture. Started the Cavendish lab. His equations were the basis for relativity and quantum mechanics. He introduced statistical methods to physics. He was a devout Christian and a kind and humor-loving man. Married, he had no children.

Cover her Face by P.D. James

An interesting murder mystery we read to each other during dishes. Interesting English setting and the usual misdirection and surprises. The detective is very good but enjoyably lacks any super powers.

Darwin (a Norton Critical Edition) edited by Philip Appleman

This is a good collection of primary sources of Darwin himself, his contemporaries, his critics and defenders, and more recent critical encounters. It is interesting and instructive that many current criticisms of Darwinism are unchanged from his early critics and many were anticipated by Darwin himself. The discussion of Darwinism requires an idea about what science is and how it works. Teilhard is interesting and introduces "complexification." His evolution is directional it seems. The book includes essays on evolutionary philosophy, psychology, theology. Spencer applied Darwinism to society and this is fraught with danger. Ethics in a Darwinian world is trapped in the hypothalamic-limbic system, which once invoked seems to make the pen and paper irrelevant. And when the talk turns to Darwinian anthropology and man modifying selection pressures it seems the pace of geological time is forgotten and our short span is overvalued. But if they were consistent and gave the trilobite its just evolutionary weight according to its lifespan as a species, we could stop writing about evolution present and future since we are too close and short-lived to have anything to say.