Launch Pad Day 1

After a short astronomy quiz to gauge our pre-class baseline, Mike Brotherton started Launch Pad with a discussion about the scale of the universe. For instance, a single astronomical unit (AU) is the distance between the Earth and the sun, and a light year is 63,240 AUs. But Proxima Centauri — the star nearest our […]

Continue reading

Fingerprints of God

I’m about halfway through Barbara Bradley Hagerty’s “Fingerprints of God.” This NPR correspondent has written about “the search for the science of spirituality,” in this engaging and moving book. Just now, in a chapter on “Spiritual Virtuosos” — mapping the brains of people as they meditate and pray — I’ve come across the following text: […]

Continue reading

NEXT (Michael Crichton)

NEXT Michael Crichton HarperCollins, 2006 ISBN: 978-0-06-087298-4 I’ve been reading plenty of books in the 18 months or so since I last posted a “book blog” entry. I’ve been a lazy blogger. I admit it. After waiting for my number to come up for this book on loan from the library, I began reading “NEXT” […]

Continue reading