w/CS: Alien Oceans: : The Search for Life in the Depths of Space, Kevin Peter Hand

25 October 2022 and on…

CS and I are reading Alien Oceans: The Search for Life in the Depths of Space, by Kevin Peter Hand. These are my chapter by chapter notes. We are now through chapter 7, and are enjoying it. It does not assume much science background, and thus spends a lot of time explaining things that we are familiar with (e.g. why water’s hydrogen bonds cause water ice to be lower density than liquid water). But it does a very good job of it, and those with background can skim; this would be a great book for a child or teen interested in science.

w/KC: Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures, Merlin Sheldrake

October – November 2022

These are chapter-by-chapter notes (with occasional quotes) on Entangled Life: How Fungi Make our Worlds, Change our Minds, and Shape our Futures, by M. Sheldrake. I’m reading this book with KC, a chapter or two at a time, and adding notes for each chapter as I go. Having now finished it, my one line review is that it has some fascinating stuff in it, but it is a lot more focused on cool stuff than on giving a detailed account of the science.

EP #4*: Five Essays by Chesterton

Thursday, 6 October 2022

* Part 4 of the Essays Project: A course of reading conducted with Charles Taliaferro. Note that these are my particular favorites and views, not CT’s, though no doubt some are influenced by him.

This entry contains thoughts on five essays by Chesterton:

A Defense of Rash Vows
A Piece of Chalk
On Lying in Bed
Dreams
On the Thrills of Boredom

What is this Rock, 3: Course Notes

What is this Rock, 3

I just returned from a weekend up on the North Shore. K and I went up and stayed at Cove Point Lodge, while I took a 3-day course on North Shore Geology, focusing on the Beaver Bay area. The course was taught by Jim Miller, a retired Minnesota Geological Survey person, and an emeritus professor from UMD: he was a great person to teach the course, both because he was a good and enthusiastic instructor, and because he has spent his career focused on the northern Minnesota in general, and the North Shore in particular. Many of the geological maps of the north shore include his name as cartographer.

This is a laundry list of what I learned — however, there are problems with the images which I have yet to fix.