I rearranged my tiny office a bit this morning, and now I’m facing a slightly different spot on the library roof. Part of the roof is actually planted, and there’s a tiny evergreen tree in my view. But what I noticed was a spot where crud (leaves, needles, dirt) has accumulated in a spot, and the crud has a lush layer of moss growing over it, and grass is growing up through the moss.
The Invention of Air
author: Steven Johnson
name: Elaine
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2008
rating: 5
read at: 2009/04/07
date added: 2013/01/29
shelves: biography, history, environmentalism, science, politics, favorites
review:
A lovely review of the life of a (relatively) obscure scientist/philosopher, and the times when science, politics, and religion were much more intercommunicative spheres than they are now. IOW, this guy invented soda water, founded Unitarianism, and corresponded with Franklin, Adams, and Jefferson. Plus interesting digressions into the geohistory of coal!
Johnson makes a fascinating argument for an ecosystem metaphor of human history & civilization throughout, as well, and I think it serves in moving through the different scales of change addressed in the book. At what point is history influenced by individual quirks, broad social movements, accidents of geology, etc., etc., and this allows for all those levels to be in operation at once.
Plus the thing that I find I like about all of Johnson’s work is his (innate?) sense of optimism. Something of the Enlightenment spirit seems to motivate him, and perhaps a belief in the better angels of our nature. (I saw him at SXSWi ’09 and was struck by his optimism in an area where most others are pretty damn gloomy.) In any case, for me it makes his writing a genuine pleasure to read. This book was no exception.
The Invention of Air
author: Steven Johnson
name: Elaine
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2008
rating: 5
read at: 2009/04/07
date added: 2013/01/29
shelves: biography, history, environmentalism, science, politics, favorites
review:
A lovely review of the life of a (relatively) obscure scientist/philosopher, and the times when science, politics, and religion were much more intercommunicative spheres than they are now. IOW, this guy invented soda water, founded Unitarianism, and corresponded with Franklin, Adams, and Jefferson. Plus interesting digressions into the geohistory of coal!
Johnson makes a fascinating argument for an ecosystem metaphor of human history & civilization throughout, as well, and I think it serves in moving through the different scales of change addressed in the book. At what point is history influenced by individual quirks, broad social movements, accidents of geology, etc., etc., and this allows for all those levels to be in operation at once.
Plus the thing that I find I like about all of Johnson’s work is his (innate?) sense of optimism. Something of the Enlightenment spirit seems to motivate him, and perhaps a belief in the better angels of our nature. (I saw him at SXSWi ’09 and was struck by his optimism in an area where most others are pretty damn gloomy.) In any case, for me it makes his writing a genuine pleasure to read. This book was no exception.
The Invention of Air
author: Steven Johnson
name: Elaine
average rating: 0.0
book published: 2008
rating: 5
read at: 2009/04/07
date added: 2013/01/29
shelves: biography, history, environmentalism, science, politics, favorites
review:
A lovely review of the life of a (relatively) obscure scientist/philosopher, and the times when science, politics, and religion were much more intercommunicative spheres than they are now. IOW, this guy invented soda water, founded Unitarianism, and corresponded with Franklin, Adams, and Jefferson. Plus interesting digressions into the geohistory of coal!
Johnson makes a fascinating argument for an ecosystem metaphor of human history & civilization throughout, as well, and I think it serves in moving through the different scales of change addressed in the book. At what point is history influenced by individual quirks, broad social movements, accidents of geology, etc., etc., and this allows for all those levels to be in operation at once.
Plus the thing that I find I like about all of Johnson’s work is his (innate?) sense of optimism. Something of the Enlightenment spirit seems to motivate him, and perhaps a belief in the better angels of our nature. (I saw him at SXSWi ’09 and was struck by his optimism in an area where most others are pretty damn gloomy.) In any case, for me it makes his writing a genuine pleasure to read. This book was no exception.
The Invention of Air
author: Steven Johnson
name: Elaine
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2008
rating: 5
read at: 2009/04/07
date added: 2013/01/29
shelves: biography, history, environmentalism, science, politics, favorites
review:
A lovely review of the life of a (relatively) obscure scientist/philosopher, and the times when science, politics, and religion were much more intercommunicative spheres than they are now. IOW, this guy invented soda water, founded Unitarianism, and corresponded with Franklin, Adams, and Jefferson. Plus interesting digressions into the geohistory of coal!
Johnson makes a fascinating argument for an ecosystem metaphor of human history & civilization throughout, as well, and I think it serves in moving through the different scales of change addressed in the book. At what point is history influenced by individual quirks, broad social movements, accidents of geology, etc., etc., and this allows for all those levels to be in operation at once.
Plus the thing that I find I like about all of Johnson’s work is his (innate?) sense of optimism. Something of the Enlightenment spirit seems to motivate him, and perhaps a belief in the better angels of our nature. (I saw him at SXSWi ’09 and was struck by his optimism in an area where most others are pretty damn gloomy.) In any case, for me it makes his writing a genuine pleasure to read. This book was no exception.
The Invention of Air
author: Steven Johnson
name: Elaine
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2008
rating: 5
read at: 2009/04/07
date added: 2013/01/29
shelves: biography, history, environmentalism, science, politics, favorites
review:
A lovely review of the life of a (relatively) obscure scientist/philosopher, and the times when science, politics, and religion were much more intercommunicative spheres than they are now. IOW, this guy invented soda water, founded Unitarianism, and corresponded with Franklin, Adams, and Jefferson. Plus interesting digressions into the geohistory of coal!
Johnson makes a fascinating argument for an ecosystem metaphor of human history & civilization throughout, as well, and I think it serves in moving through the different scales of change addressed in the book. At what point is history influenced by individual quirks, broad social movements, accidents of geology, etc., etc., and this allows for all those levels to be in operation at once.
Plus the thing that I find I like about all of Johnson’s work is his (innate?) sense of optimism. Something of the Enlightenment spirit seems to motivate him, and perhaps a belief in the better angels of our nature. (I saw him at SXSWi ’09 and was struck by his optimism in an area where most others are pretty damn gloomy.) In any case, for me it makes his writing a genuine pleasure to read. This book was no exception.
seasons: this time in metric!
An addendum to my previous writing about seasons….
I switched the weather app on my phone (Weatherbug, FWIW) from Fahrenheit to Celsius the other day. I expected to be surprised by the number: 8 degrees?! And that’s kinda mild? I don’t even. But expected.
But I hadn’t thought much about each degree being “bigger”, so that today’s forecast is 6C. That’s 6 for a high and 6 for a low. And I’m pretty sure it’ll be a bit warmer at 2pm than at 8am. Several of our mini-seasons feature very small variations between high and low temps, so that it’s pretty much exactly the same temperature, in Celsius, at any time of day or night.
Strange. Mostly, I just wish my weather app did decimal points, because I’m pretty sure I could feel the difference between 6.1C and 6.9C.
Flickr Updates for 2013-01-29
stuff
Oh the terror of the blank screen. I was doing so well with writing earlier, and now…
I think I’m getting stuck on anxiety about my “audience,” and when writing about personal stuff, wondering who’s reading.
I’ve probably exhausted the topic of the seasons for now. The fact that it was basically talking about the weather is not lost on me.
I’m still in full retreat from volunteering obligations, and I’m still not biking hardly at all. Probably not a good sign in either case. On the other hand, I did go lap swimming on Monday for the first time in probably a dozen years. (I used to belong to the downtown Tacoma YMCA, when I worked at United Way, and sometimes went swimming.) And I’m going to go again today…I hope. (Depending on meetings.) Normally on a Thursday I’d go to the “strength training” class that reminds me of step aerobics, but I’ve got this weird blister between my big toe & 2nd toe, so jumping around for 45 minutes seems like a very bad idea. I was sort of amazed at how much of a workout it was to swim laps for 20 minutes. I’m looking forward to doing again.
I was going to go yesterday, even…and I don’t know how it is that I can want to do something and know that it’s good for me, but still not actually do it.
O HAI WRITING. (Or something like that.)
Monday evening was Oly Book Club — we don’t all read the same book; whoever shows up just talks about whatever it is they’ve been reading lately. So I went through my Goodreads…and discovered I’d read maybe a dozen books in all of 2012, including books I didn’t finish. No five-stars, either, so I probably won’t write a “best reading of 2012” post. It seems a bad sign how little I read, altho I think some of that was switching my bus activity to Twitter and/or knitting. I’ve decided to give audiobooks another shot, since I’ve discovered I can sort of mostly listen well while knitting on the bus.
I’ll try this again tomorrow and see if I can come up with anything better….
Simple Knitting: A How-To-Knit Workshop with 20 Desirable Projects
author: Erika Knight
name: Elaine
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2012/03/21
date added: 2013/01/21
shelves: crafty, knitting, non-fiction
review:
I don’t remember much about patterns from this book…but as I noted in my reading progress, this was the book that helped me figure out that I’d been knitting wrong for 4-5 months. :\ (I’d been knitting into the back of the stitch, FWIW.) And I learned something about what sort of pictures I can actually learn knitting techniques from. That’s worth it, even if that’s all I got.