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Thursday, September 2, 2010

Stephen Hawking Says Universe Not Created By God

Adam Gabbatt, The Guardian

In the new work, The Grand Design, Professor Stephen Hawking argues that the Big Bang, rather than occurring following the intervention of a divine being, was inevitable due to the law of gravity.

Of Two Minds About Books

Matt Richtel And Claire Cain Miller, New York Times

Auriane and Sebastien de Halleux are at sharp odds over “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” but not about the plot. The problem is that she prefers the book version, while he reads it on his iPad. And in this literary dispute, the couple says, it’s ne’er the twain shall meet.

At The Center Of The Storm, But Still A Mystery

Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

Mr. Blair’s decade in office would be marked by his momentous — and divisive — decision to go to war in Iraq alongside George W. Bush, and by his remaking of the Labour Party in a more centrist, Clintonian incarnation. Yet all these years and political miles later, the man — hailed by The Observer as “one of the most electorally successful and effective party leaders of all time” — remains a curiously opaque figure. And the self-portrait that emerges from his new memoir, “A Journey: My Political Life,” is very much that of a man without a shadow.

Book Review: 'Let's Take The Long Way Home' By Gail Caldwell

Julia M. Klein, Los Angeles Times

Decades past high school, Gail Caldwell had the luck to find a true best friend — a woman whose strengths and weaknesses perfectly complemented her own. Then she endured the tragedy of losing her, an ending that she shares at the beginning of her affecting new grief memoir, "Let's Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship."

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Are We Living In A Designer Universe?

John Gribbin, Telegraph

To create a new universe would require a machine only slightly more powerful than the LHC – and there is every chance that our own universe may have been manufactured in this way.

Roger Ebert: No Longer An Eater, Still A Cook

Kim Severson, New York Times

“Food for me is in the present tense,” he said. “Eating for me is now only in the past tense.” He says he has a “voluptuous food memory” that gets stronger all the time.

“I can remember the taste and smell of everything, even though I can no longer taste or smell,” he said.

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Through A Glass Darkly

Traci Brimhall, Slate Magazine

Unearthly Powers

Wendy Lesser, Three Penny Review

Part of the pleasure of reading old science fiction is precisely this: with the special powers vested in you by historical hindsight, you can compare the playfully visionary forecasts with what actually took place.