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Rebecca Jansen
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 February 2018
Location: Canada
Posts: 4635
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| Posted: 24 February 2018 at 12:43pm | IP Logged | 1
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Is that about the discovery of the concept of nothingness Robbie? Lots of ramifications to that but we take if for granted now.
I had some buddhist 'education' as kid and everything in the branch of that we were taught about seemed to eventually lead to nothing, and I'm still struggling with it.
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Robbie Parry
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 17 June 2007
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 12186
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| Posted: 24 February 2018 at 12:49pm | IP Logged | 2
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Hi, Rebecca, I think the Barnes & Noble synopsis can explain it better than I could:
The Babylonians invented it, the Greeks banned it, the Hindus worshipped it, and the Church used it to fend off heretics. Now it threatens the foundations of modern physics. For centuries the power of zero savored of the demonic; once harnessed, it became the most important tool in mathematics. For zero, infinity's twin, is not like other numbers. It is both nothing and everything.
In Zero, Science Journalist Charles Seife follows this innocent-looking number from its birth as an Eastern philosophical concept to its struggle for acceptance in Europe, its rise and transcendence in the West, and its ever-present threat to modern physics. Here are the legendary thinkers—from Pythagoras to Newton to Heisenberg, from the Kabalists to today's astrophysicists—who have tried to understand it and whose clashes shook the foundations of philosophy, science, mathematics, and religion. Zero has pitted East against West and faith against reason, and its intransigence persists in the dark core of a black hole and the brilliant flash of the Big Bang. Today, zero lies at the heart of one of the biggest scientific controversies of all time: the quest for a theory of everything.
Edited by Robbie Parry on 24 February 2018 at 12:53pm
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Steve Coates
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 17 November 2014
Location: Canada
Posts: 803
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| Posted: 24 February 2018 at 6:45pm | IP Logged | 3
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Just Finished Lee Child's newest Jack Reacher novel, "The Midnight Line". I wouldn't recommend it, at 368 pages, it is 258 pages too long.
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Shaun Barry
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 08 December 2008
Location: United States
Posts: 6917
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| Posted: 26 February 2018 at 9:35pm | IP Logged | 4
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Very light reading:
Rough Justice: The DC Comics Sketches of Alex Ross
and
STAR TREK: The Original TOPPS Trading Card Series
Colorful, breezy fun!
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Rebecca Jansen
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 February 2018
Location: Canada
Posts: 4635
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| Posted: 27 February 2018 at 3:18pm | IP Logged | 5
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I'm around half way through Trina Robbins' non-fiction biographical vignettes book Last Girl Standing (Fantagraphics). She was probably being generous or something when my asking her about The Byrds in '65 a few years ago sparked a desire to do a book like this. I only asked because she was quoted in a Byrds Day-By-Day (Jawbone) book I had gotten. In any case I'm very glad to see and read it; lots of great photos and vintage underground comics. Behind the scenes of L.A./NYC/San Francisco scenes touching on SF, Fashion, Renaissance Fairs, Folk-Rock, Undergrounds and papers, San Diego Con.
One of her best comics is The Silver Metal Lover, an adaption of the Tanith Lee book. If you see it around (I think there were two editions) at a good price grab it as I think it's one of the best adaptions from text fiction to comic story (graphic 'novel') I've ever seen. If you like stuff like Zot or the Wheatley-Hempel Mars comic I would think you'd like this too.
Also enjoying the heck out of X-Men v.2 #93-95 by Alan Davis. So glad to find it is almost all characters I know from when I did follow X comics. I'll probably look into getting some more from this turn of the millennium period to set alongside the 22 1/2 Hidden Years issues and Avengers #1 1/2.
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James Best
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 02 March 2014
Location: United States
Posts: 890
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| Posted: 27 February 2018 at 3:46pm | IP Logged | 6
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I have enjoyed reading the long running comic strip Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller but over the years I have only managed to read it only once in a while in my local newspaper. I decided it was time to sample some of Miller's collections, starting with this gem from 2005.
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Matthew Chartrand
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 17 June 2007
Location: United States
Posts: 1357
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| Posted: 27 February 2018 at 6:14pm | IP Logged | 7
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HIS MAJESTY'S DRAGON: Temeraire book 1 by Naomi Novik.
Stephen King declares it "terrifically entertaining", and I agree.
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James Best
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 02 March 2014
Location: United States
Posts: 890
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| Posted: 28 February 2018 at 9:32am | IP Logged | 8
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Now starting:
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Robert Cosgrove
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 January 2005
Location: United States
Posts: 1710
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| Posted: 28 February 2018 at 10:37pm | IP Logged | 9
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I've been falling behind on this thread, so I'll double up in my next few posts. Finished The Last Lion: Winston S. Churchill, Defender of the Realm, the final volume in the trilogy by William Manchester, this one largely finished by another author after Manchester's death. I'd read the first two years ago, but eleven years passed between volume two and volume three, and in the meantime, I lost momentum. Finally I picked this up and enjoyed it, although it took me a few months, with various intervening books, to work through it. Especially good, I think, on the relationship between the Americans and the British. Harry Hopkins comes off very well, FDR less so, in my opinion.
J. D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy, an interesting look at what's happened to a segment of America, told by means of autobiography by an author who in some ways is atypical of the people he represents. Picture L'il Abner succeeding in the Marines and at Yale Law School . . .
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Robbie Parry
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 17 June 2007
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 12186
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| Posted: 03 March 2018 at 8:59am | IP Logged | 10
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Got so many books on the go right now (I used to read one at a time), so I'll be starting FRANKENSTEIN IN BAGHDAD tonight:
Here's the synopsis:
From the rubble-strewn streets of U.S.-occupied Baghdad, Hadi—a scavenger and an oddball fixture at a local café—collects human body parts and stitches them together to create a corpse. His goal, he claims, is for the government to recognize the parts as people and to give them proper burial. But when the corpse goes missing, a wave of eerie murders sweeps the city, and reports stream in of a horrendous-looking criminal who, though shot, cannot be killed. Hadi soon realizes he’s created a monster, one that needs human flesh to survive—first from the guilty, and then from anyone in its path. A prizewinning novel by “Baghdad’s new literary star” (The New York Times), Frankenstein in Baghdad captures with white-knuckle horror and black humor the surreal reality of contemporary Iraq.
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James Best
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 02 March 2014
Location: United States
Posts: 890
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| Posted: 05 March 2018 at 8:46pm | IP Logged | 11
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Now continuing my review of the Non Sequitur comic strip collections...
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James Best
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 02 March 2014
Location: United States
Posts: 890
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| Posted: 06 March 2018 at 8:41pm | IP Logged | 12
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Now starting a collection of short stories in the Hap & Leonard series by Joe R. Lansdale...
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