Very amusing and deep

On the Road to Baghdad-- Guneli Gun

Maybe it's just me, but I'm not that fond of Ian McEwan and Atonement was a bit...

A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers by Xiaolu Guo was really good.
And I'm reading Ten Bad Dates with De Niro - A Book of Alternative Movie Lists - a bit too much for me cause I'm not all that much of a movie goer, but ok... I like lists.

about half way through "Parallel Worlds" by Michio Kaku.  I wonder if someone who never studied any of this or maths would know what he´s talking about when he writes

SU(3)xSU(2)xU(1).

anyway, it´s a pretty fascinating topic although I´m getting the feeling he was foaming at the mouth with glee whilst writing about 3-brane universes hovering in 5-space.  I am getting a bit lost on comparing and contrasting String Theory and M Theory.

I´m also getting the feeling that just about anything´s up for speculation.  maybe the universe started as a black hole. maybe we´re just a bubble in a multiverse.  maybe it´s possible to escape to a parallel world through a wormhole.  maybe there´s other universes with strange new elements totally alien to our own.

let's see, just on page 45. the guy drag raced against planes on the runway at SFO on his bicycle, was a D student in high school, was a champion swimmer, became surfer dude in Newport Beach, was drafted, nailed a bunch of nurses, thought of going AWAL, shipped to VietNam, watched hundreds die in his bare hands as massaged their hearts in a Da Nang MASH unit, tried to kill himself, wrestled with poisonous sea snakes in snake and shark infested water, was shot at while running by Marines looking for fun, rescued some chick in 18 foot waves in Oz, backpacked around Europe...etc etc. got PhD in biology, became business man, mapped entire human genome, and was listed as one of the top 100 most influential human beings on earth last year.

well, the phd is for real. Celera is for real. human genome mapping is for real, although angry academics are pissed that he cut corners and is trying to make a buck out of it. Vietnam is real.  I think he inflated the stories about poisonous sea snakes, 18 foot waves, and nailing nurses a bit, but, I like his sort of story.  It's sort of along the lines of the Jim Clarke genre of stories and it's decidedly American in nature (counterexamples to it being American are slim but would include Ramanujan).  It's the D student/juvenile delinquent "makes good" and becomes scientist/entrepreneur/novelist/musician story.  It would pretty much be an extremely rare event in a country like, say, PHRANCE, where they figure out at the age of 10 whether you are fit for X or not.

but I like the guy: science, chicks, beer, life, ambition, writing, not bogged down by religiosity in all of its flavours.

that does sound similar.  I guess similar to Surfer Dude as well.

here's his latest company, by the way: http://www.syntheticgenomics.com/index.htm