Plastic is everywhere in our modern world. If you’d like to find ways to cut back on using it, then check out Plastic Purge: How to Use Less Plastic, Eat Better, Keep Toxins Out of Your Body, and Help Save the Sea Turtles! by Michael SanClements. He starts with a concise history of plastics (which... Continue Reading →
Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson
The ability to translate complex concepts into simple to understand ideas is frequently difficult, but to do it with humour requires a special gift. Almost forty years ago, the late astrophysicist Carl Sagan achieved a milestone in his epic and television series “Cosmos”, by presenting the then current thought on the wonders of the universe... Continue Reading →
Interview with Andy Weir
Andy Weir was first hired as a programmer for a national laboratory at age fifteen and has been working as a software engineer ever since. He is also a lifelong space nerd and a devoted hobbyist of subjects such as relativistic physics, orbital mechanics, and the history of manned spaceflight. The Martian is his first... Continue Reading →
The Martian by Andy Weir
There are lots of stories about being trapped and isolated on deserted islands or in the wilderness. These stories are often harrowing adventures of survival looking for food and shelter. But what if we took the story even further and added in the needs to find oxygen and heat as well? That’s exactly what Andy... Continue Reading →
The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet, by Reif Larsen
Question 1: What essential tool is required to bring a Union Pacific freight train, with a potential weight of 1.2 million pounds to an unplanned and unexplained, grinding halt? Answer: a single red Sharpie of course. Question 2: How do you convince the Under-Secretary of Illustration and Design at the Smithsonian Institute that you are... Continue Reading →
The Curiosity, by Stephen P. Kiernan
We all know the adage ‘curiosity killed the cat’, well in Kiernan’s debut novel, curiosity did a lot more than that: it killed the dead man. When an Arctic scientific expedition in search of single-cell life forms stumbles upon a lot more than it usually does – krill and sardines, a whole new world of... Continue Reading →
Benjamin Franklin’s Bastard, by Sally Cabot
When we think of Benjamin Franklin, we undoubtedly reflect on his unequivocal achievements. A noted polymath, Franklin is a famous scientist, inventor, congressman, printer, philosopher, musician and economist. What we most likely don’t consider about Franklin is the lesser-known turmoil of his personal life. In Benjamin Franklin’s Bastard, Cabot has pieced together a chronology of... Continue Reading →
The Salmon of Doubt – Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time, by Douglas Adams
Needless to say, Douglas Adams was not your average fellow. Towering over the majority of us, not only in stature, but in terms of intellect, wit and all-round likeability, he was rudely snatched away at the age of 49. Adams’ humour was one of a kind: Eoin Colfer did a decent enough job of writing... Continue Reading →
Ancient Mysteries Solved or Stonehenge Decoded by Gerald S. Hawkins
The fascination with the mysteries of the past has built careers and consumed lives; few puzzles have fired the imagination more than the great monoliths of Stonehenge. Around the questions of Stonehenge, have legends of sacrifice and pagan ritual developed, yet for hundreds of years few answers were found. Finally in 1963, using pen and... Continue Reading →
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