The Big Bang Theory: Part Two

I've been reading Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything, in which he clearly and concisely explains what scientists have learned about the universe in the last six hundred years. It's quite a feat to describe how our understanding of the universe developed through discoveries in physics, chemistry and geology, and I'm especially enchanted by all the eccentric geniuses who contributed to their various fields through research, travel, and perseverance.

I was also browsing through the latest Newsweek and came across an interesting review:

In this book, the director of the British Museum, Neil MacGregor, presents the history of the world through the description of one hundred artifacts -- their design, use, and impact on society. The artifacts are large and small, unique and ubiquitous, and all worth a moment of your time. Read about the objects or see all the objects here.

Finally, while we are still on the topic of science and innovation, I wanted to share the first paragraph of Robert Musil's The Man without Qualities:

"There was a depression over the Atlantic. It was traveling eastwards, towards an area of high pressure over Russia, and still showed no tendency to move northwards around it. The isotherms and isotheres were fulfilling their functions. The atmospheric temperature was in proper relation to the average annual temperature, the temperature of the coldest as well as of the hottest month, and the a-periodic monthly variation in temperature. The rising and setting of the sun and of the moon, the phases of the moon, Venus and Saturn's rings, and many other important phenomena, were in accordance with the forecasts in the astronomical yearbooks. The vapour in the air was at its highest tension, and the moisture in the air was at its lowest. In short, to use an expression that describes the facts pretty satisfactorily, even though it is somewhat old-fashioned: it was a fine August day in the year of 1913."

Pretty awesome, right?