escape_velocity

Nobody's mentioned the old classics I read in my youth: --Hans Zinsser's Rats, Lice & History, which I think Guns, Germs & Steel is trying to imitate without giving due credit, unless I'm mistaking it for some other one, --biologist René Dubos's The Mirage of Health, --Watson's The Double Helix (a funny history of the discovery of the structure of DNA by its co-discoverer), --1965 Nobel Prize winner Jacques Monod's Chance & Necessity, --playwright Rob't. Ardrey's The Territorial Imperative, --pioneering ethologist Konrad Lorenz's On Aggression, --paleontologist G.G. Simpson's The Meaning of Evolution (and I'd like to read his sci-fi novel The Dechronization of Sam Magruder), ...and another classic is How To Lie With Statistics, which I'd like to read before I die and become a part of the statistics. As I said elsewhere, I'm younger than "owl" but not terribly younger, but at least I'm still not as forgetful (that bane of ripe old age) as venerable "owl". Harlow Shapley's collection of essays titled Beyond the Observatory (1967) has been important for me because one of the essays inspired an int'l. space mission I've very recently suggested to the space agencies, but I don't think it deserves a discussion unless I get at least one reply, even if it's from the space agency of, for instance, humble Bangladesh, Malaysia, Vietnam, Peru or Algeria. The message was sent to 39 nat'l. space agencies or research organizations and seven int'l. organizations, including the U.N., in the course of a few days (Jan. 15-20).

I dutifully read the automatic welcoming message that arrives at one's e-inbox and I see that everybody's expected to introduce him/herself, so I'll say that I'm a Seventies college dropout who dropped out in his third semester of Biology and that's all the higher education I ever got, but I never lost my scientific curiosity. I've been an amateur astronomer for a quarter of a century now, ever since taking an introductory course imparted by an engineer who studied astronomy at the University of Paris. That was in 1985, when everybody was excited about the imminent arrival of the Halley Comet, which was a complete failure this time. Now we have to wait for another 76 years and I can't wait that long, unless the longevity pill is invented soon (some people actually believe this). I'm not as old as "owl", with whom I share this page 98, but I'm just six years younger. On page 1 someone makes some demeaning comments about this thread. He thinks it's all rubbish. As far as I'm concerned it's the other way around. There are many amusing remarks. People should say how they got here, too. I discovered the site yesterday when I did a search on the Branly effect, which is discussed here. This was because I was reading an article about it in the "Scientific American" mag. (enviado el 21/1/11 al tema de las presentaciones personales en Science Forums, p. 98)