109. ‘The Disappearing Spoon,’ Sam Kean…

‘The Disappearing Spoon: and other true tales from the periodic table,’ Sam Kean

More non-fiction fun and games with this highly readable book on the history of the periodic table, the elements, science, and stuff! Science never having been my strong point, I need well-written, interesting stories to get me interested in chemistry, physics and biology, and this book sure delivered!

Having battery problems?

“In 1911 a Dutch-German scientist was cooling mercury with liquid -452ºF when the system lost all electrical resistance and became an ideal conductor. This would be sort of like cooling an iPod down to hundreds of degrees below zero and finding that the battery remained fully charged no matter how long or loud you played music, until infinity…”

Now that’s the kind of analogy I can understand!

Ever wondered where the periodic table actually came from? The stories of the personalities behind the scientific discoveries are often as interesting as the science itself:

“Like his Russian contemporary Dostoevsky – who wrote his entire novel The Gambler in three weeks to pay off desperate gambling debts – [Dmitri] Mendelev threw together his first table to meet a textbook publisher’s deadline…”

I had first learned about Nobel Prize winner Fritz Haber, in Michael Pollan’s highly influential ‘The Omnivore’s Dilemma.’ Haber had revolutionised farming by discovering how to produce fertiliser, and Wikipedia credits his discoveries as being  directly responsible for “the food production for half the world’s current population.” And yet only here do I learn:

“Humiliated at the huge reparations Germany had to pay the Allies, Haber spent six futile years trying to extract dissolved gold from the oceans, so that he could pay the reparations himself…”

There’s gold in them thar…seas?…

Not all of the trivia and knowledge is science based: it is a wonderfully scattered trove of information, for example:

“Until well past 1900 Russia used a misaligned calendar that Julius Caesar’s astrologers had invented, leaving it weeks behind Europe and its modern Gregorian calendar. That lag explains why the ‘October Revolution’ that brought Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks to power in 1917 actually occurred in November…”

Who knew!

Also, Dorothy apparently “…wore silver, not ruby, slipper” in the original novel of ‘The Wizard of Oz.’

On the changes in customs and tastes, (not to mention prices) over the years:

“…the minor Emperor Napoleon III reserved a prize set of aluminium cutlery for special guests at banquets. (Less favoured guests used gold knives and forks…)”

But ultimately, it was science which I learned from this highly readable, extremely educational book – this paragraph, taken from the start of the final chapter, sums up what kind of wonders I took away with me:

“As we know, 90 percent of particles in the universe are hydrogen, and the other 10 percent are helium. Everything else, including six million billion billion kilos of earth, is a cosmic rounding error…”

“Hurricane Season 2010″ by Maximilian Reuter, distributed by EGU under a Creative Commons licence.

 

78. ‘Previous Convictions,’ A.A.Gill…

‘Previous Convictions,’ A.A.Gill

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OK, so I have already blogged on A.A.Gill.

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Twice.

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But when  writing is this good, this enjoyable, this damn quotable, how am I meant to resist? This latest offering was read during my stay in Guatemala, (which may have led to little squeals of excitement when I came across the chapter ‘Guatemala’), and I’m going to leave the man to speak for himself with a selection of witty, biting and/or informative quotes.

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On Golf:

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“The first time you try to hit a golf ball, lifting the stick higher than your elbow, you’ll miss. Not only will you miss the ball, I confidently predict you will miss the entire Earth. The world is a pretty big potato. It’s a planet, and to miss a planet with a stick while actually standing on it might give you some indication of the difficulty in getting on feel-good terms with the rudiments of golf…”

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“So far, in purely golfing terms, I have half a swing. Having half a swing is like having half a breaststroke. In functional terms, you’re still drowning. You’re just drowning with intent…”

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Casual (and hilarious) racism:

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“…being Italian – and therefore more superstitious than a convention of clairvoyants in a ladder factory…”

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A theory of dogs which is echoed by Michael Pollan in his book on plant adaptation:

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“The first dogs realised that, alone in the natural world, humans crave variety. Everything else wants continuity and certainty; people want novelty. And dogs provide it. What they came up with is the cleverest thing in all of nature: reverse-Darwinism – not the survival of the fittest but the survival of the least fit, the most needy…”

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On journalists in Haiti:

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“Over dinner on the veranda, the photographers commiserate with Gigi over her lost film. They compare tear-gas vintages: not as peppery as Israel 2000, but with a stronger choking aftertaste than Serbia ’98…”

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On why Guatemala is better than Mexico:

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“Where the Aztecs are all threats and instructions, the Maya are all observations and questions…”

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The shortest version of four decades of brutal Guatemalan history you will ever read:

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“Guatemala suffered an intractable civil war that started in 1960, instigated by the CIA on behalf of American fruit companies. Thirty years later, nobody could remember what it was they were fighting about, so they decided to give elections a go…”

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On Antigua, Guatemala, where I spent some of my favourite days in the country:

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“…there are no road signs, in any language, and indeed often not much road either…”

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“Outside in the courtyard, a drunk with rheumy eyes and an idiot’s grin tries to sell us good luck: he doesn’t look as if he has much stock…”

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On Vietnam:

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“The president’s palace is now a half-hearted museum, kept as it was left – a perfect example not just of the banality of despotism but of the political law that military dictators have taste in inverse proportion to their power…”

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On Oman:

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“Travel  should question, not confirm. It should excite, not relax…”

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On Africa:

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“Africans have buckets of sympathy but thimbles of empathy…”

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On the absurdities of icy Greenland:

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“Greenland has four time zones – two of them don’t even contain a clock…”

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And finally, on Brazil, my probably destination for 2014 in time for the World Cup:

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“But the favelas are also the engine of culture, which means music and dance. The best parties, the best clubs are up here. There was a dance called the ‘Little Train’; popular with nubile youth, it was a sort of lap-dancing conga. There were reports that teenage girls were getting pregnant not after the dance but during. Now that’s a party…”

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Could be an interesting trip!…

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Come join me in Rio, 2014?…

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