We think of progress as a monodirectional activity, always advancing. There is reason for this, and it is supported by much of our experience of the world, but it misses half of the progress puzzle, and it fails to account for progress's contradiction.
Effect and Cause
A recent Writing Excuses episode to which I listened discussed the ideas of disordered storytelling, and means of writing stories that are intended to be read in an order other than from the first page to the last page. Unfortunately, it didn't really dig into the topic the way I hoped it would engage with it.
The Nuclear Option
Whether or not it has anything to do with a certain fourteen year old and his garage-built fusion reactor, I’ve been long fascinated by nuclear energy, but not unlike space, it suffers from a massive communication problem. If you asked someone to name a job harder than the proverbial “rocket science,” you very well might be answered with “nuclear physics.” Like I try to explain concepts from astronautical engineering in ways that are approachable to the typical reader, I intend to use this post to explain nuclear energy in similarly approachable terms.
Einstein’s Fridge Review
This is as much a history book as it is a science book, so it strongly appealed to my polymath tendencies (I should really write a post about the polymath/Renaissance Man concept). In fact, if I were going to teach an introductory course on thermodynamics, or wanted to introduce someone to the topic, I would highly recommend this book, rather than using a more traditional textbook.
IGC Publishing 