Mid Week Thrifting
I used to haunt thrift stores the way I currently haunt bookstores. In late high school and early college, its where I picked up all my clothes. There was nothing better than a 50 cent blouse and some $2 jeans. Unfortuneately with the recession, thrift store clothing prices have increased to an amount that (unless its the world’s most awesome thrift store find) I can often find similar cheapy items for less at Wally World (sacriledge, I know). In theory I hate WalMart, but sometimes a tight budget makes the decision for me. But when my best friend says she wants to check out the newly reopened Goodwill Select in the Heights, I’m game.
Of course, I found dozens of things I wanted (there were piles of amateur paintings done by the same unknown person), but only came away with a few of the most inexpensive but longest lasting items money can buy: books. I acquired a few nice copies of things off Ayla’s Classical Education list that I didn’t already have… Sophocles and such because I will need them eventually and haven’t seen copies in this nice a condition for this cheap. It looks like someone dropped off an entire school library in mint condition. And two things that aren’t as easy to find (not difficult, just not typically parading themselves around in large quanities):
Profiles in Science
Then, for me, I picked up The New Science of Strong Materials
For more on the exciting world of thrifting, follow Her Library Adventures, she too has a mid-week thrifting notice this week: http://herlibraryadventures.blogspot.com/2012/05/midweek-thrifting.html
Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson – A Review
Title: Einstein: His Life and Universe
Author: Walter Isaacson
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Genre: Non-fiction, Biography, Science
Length: 675 pgs.
Albert Einstein was a prick. Not the description you were expecting? Me neither. We always hear about how brilliant he was, how much he changed humanity and the world of science with his great theories. We always see images of his goofy, yet charmingly wild smile and hair. We don’t see him through the eyes of the family he abandoned.
Isaacson is thorough in his research and the language of his biography of Einstein is easy and accessible. He sheds a lot of light on physics formulas that I had a hard time grasping in my high school science classes. But he also sheds a lot of light on Einstein the not-so-family man.
Not only did he and his wife abandon their first child, a girl who history has nearly erased,
“[Hans Albert, Einstein’s son] had powerfully conflicted attitudes towards his father. That was no surprise. Einstein was intense and compelling and at times charismatic. He was also aloof and distracted and had distanced himself, physically and emotionally, from the boy, who was guarded by a doting mother who felt humiliated.”
Einstein eventually divorced his wife, but not before maintaining an emotional affair with his cousin Elsa. “Companionship without commitment suited him just fine,” Isaacson writes about how Einstein toyed with both women’s heartstrings by alternating his attentions between them. In the end Einstein and Elsa did marry, but not before a questionable letter was written by Elsa’s daughter to a friend that mentioned Einstein’s true love interest was the twenty year old daughter, not the mother.
Isaacson’s presentation of Einstein is a great book for high school science and history students. Anyone trying to understand the genius’s formulas should also understand the history surrounding their creation/discovery. His life is also one to discuss with your teen touchy topics of worldview and the importance of values; world changing discovery vs. the importance of family, political and religious affiliations and observations. Each family’s opinion of Einstein’s life will most likely be different, and its one that should be surveyed and critically analyzed.
Crack in the Edge of the World
A Book Review
Simon Winchester never fails to fascinate and inform. When I picked up Crack in the Edge of the World, I was surprised to discover that the author I dearly remember for writing The Professor and the Madman (a history of the making of the Oxford English Dictionary) was also a geologist and highly knowledgeable in both language AND the science of rocks – what a foundation! This particular history on the great earthquake of San Fransisco met high expectations of Winchester’s talent compared to his previous work and I recommend this to anyone who likes history, science, or just plain good storytelling.
Intelligent Design: More Than a Bandwagon
A Review of Michael J. Behe’s Darwin’s Black Box
I thoroughly enjoyed Behe’s well-crafted and easy-to-understand argument against Darwinian “science.” I found Biology fascinating when I was in school, and this has sparked some of that forgotten love for studying things under the microscope. I would like more Darwinist groups to actually give this book the time it deserves rather than casting it aside because they think its a soap-box for Creationists. Behe clearly states that he is NOT a Creationist at the beginning of the book – put your pride aside and see what he has to say about his research before you judge his viewpoint.
