some books

[nibot]

I checked out a couple books from the library:

* Gravity's Shadow (amazon) by Harry Collins

This book is too big! A "sociological study" of the scientists searching for gravitational waves, I expected this book to be a slim volume. Instead it is three inches thick, on slim paper with a small font—there is no excuse for this! Most "sociologists" who purport to "study the way science is done" bother me. However, it looks like it might be informative.

* Acoustical Holography by some guys

Saw this on the shelf nearby and the title was too tantalizing to put down. Some old conference proceedings. But acoustic holography? Sounds neat.

* Wrinkles in Time (amazon) by George Smoot

I read this years ago when I worked for him. Now I want to re-read it to remember his path through grad school.

* Gravity's Lens by Cohen

Found on a nearby shelf, the coincidence of the title is, well, purely coincidental. Looks like a good pop-science introduction to some handy astronomical topics. If I'm looking for pulsars I might as well know what they are!

Comments

[kaolinfire.livejournal.com]

re: acoustical holography--I heard recently there's speakers that bounce sound around just so, so that you get "true 5.1 surround sound" with just a pair. I didn't look into the details whatsoever, so it could just be a semantic argument, or a hoax, or... but I suspect this is the sort of thing acoustical holography is referring to?

[easwaran.livejournal.com]

No Gravity's Rainbow? I suppose rainbows are actually circular arcs, and V-2 rockets actually follow roughly parabolic ones, but that's what the book's about. That and weird sexual perversions.

Why does it bother you to have sociologists studying how science is done?

[nibot.livejournal.com]

Why does it bother you to have sociologists studying how science is done?

It's not that it bothers me that sociologists study how science is done—that seems like a good thing! But the few (~three) people I've met who have been doing that, I've found very irritating.