Well, this is one of the most intelligent science books I have ever read. Its position as a sience classic is well justified. It is extremely well written and it keeps its engaging prose even through some tough and dense discussions. But the important thing is that this book has made me think a lot. The perspective of the gene is fascinating, and its implications for concepts such as altruism, cooperation or even deception is far reaching. There is one negative thing, however: the machine is put under its proper role. I think there is more to say about machines. Genes are hugely important players, but to me are dead entities. I will soon publish a text on this topic, so keep it tuned with the publications section! And read this amazing book as soon as possible!
This book is also about the prime numbers but more oriented towards the Riemman Hypothesis. It should be harder to read to a non-technical reader but I extremely enjoyed all its details. Thank God some authors are not afraid of using equations and mathematics. In this book you can grasp many details of one of the greatest unsolved problems. If you are trying to understand such problem and maybe to attempt to solve it, this is your book.
Caught by the bug of the primes I dedided to read this amazing and extremely clear book about these fascinating numbers. It combines mathematical and historical background in a very pedagogical way. Once you begin you cannot stop reading it. I have become very excited not only with primes and the Riemann Hypothesis, but also with factorisation of RSA numbers and other extremely interesting topics. I feel tempted now to make a bit of research in these topics. The dream to solve the Riemann Hypothesis is too daring, though.
This is an excellent and not-too-brief exposition of the seven famous Clay problems, each one rewarded with a 1M$. It is outdated in the sense that the Poincaré Conjecture is already solved by Grigori Perelman. He showed in 2003 that Poincaré was right. He, however, declined the award... The book is at a nice intermediate point between the official book, which is too short and technical, and more detailed and specific books devoted to a single problem. This is the type of books that does not teach you a lot but brings a huge motivation to seek for more. It is important to say that the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture and the Hodge conjecture are so difficult to even state, specially the latter, that even such a pedagogical author has a great problem explaining them. Almost surely you will skip the last two chapters, as I more or less did. This book has been my first contact with the Riemann Hypothesis and now the bug is on me.
Incredible and extremely fun to read biography of one of the most important mathematicians of the XXth century, Paul Erdős (pronounced Erdish). It is difficult to find someone with a similar passion for his/her job. Most of us will consider that Erdős was a crazy-sick man, but I really admire his passion. I am divided by different passions and this makes me a lot weaker. I hope he's with the SF reading directly from the book...
Un libro muy interesante. Lo he leído porque me lo pasó un amigo que es primo del autor y me ha sorprendido el nivel de su prosa y la fuerza con la que te atrapan sus personajes. Violencia, estilo lapidario y filosofía de estar de vuelta de todo. Si lo hubiera leído siendo adolescente me habría gustado aún más.
This is more than a fantastic book. It is delightful from beginning and (mostly) to end. The last stories are masterpieces, but all of them contain the footprint of an extremely clever mind. Of course, you will fall in love with Susan Calvin. Along this collection you will cry and laugh, but most of all they will make you think. You cannot ask more from a collection of stories. The perfect book for robot lovers.
Otra obra magnífica de Lope en la que el Rey es un personaje principal y bastante peculiar. Enredos y más enredos. Reconozco que tras tantas obras de Lope ya estoy un poco mareado...
Los dos primeros actos son muy brillantes. El tercero no me gustó tanto, pero las reflexiones sobre feminismo y sobre la el amor a los libros y a la razón son suficientes para leer esta obra.
The beginning is so, so unexpected... Even though most of the book is about such unexpected start and not about the monoliths, etc, it is a fascinating, almost independent novel. It is the dream of every man! When the end comes and things get more serious, I find the book a bit precipitate. The end deserved a better resolution, I think, or at least better explained. However, it is most original. And the moral is to think a lot about some viruses... A very surprising aspect is that intelligent computers seem to be missing from the 3001 world. Quite a curious fact, since already at 2001 HAL was so able... In all, the 4-saga is not exactly a saga since every book you gain some things and lose others, sometimes for good, sometimes for worse, but I enjoyed a lot the whole perspective. The ET perspective is so necessary for us as an arrogant species... I hope we can find a monolith very soon, or at least a clear sign of superior species.
From all the novels in the saga, this is where the real adventure happens. The location where Discovery is stuck is revisited, where HAL awaits... The character of Chandra is extremely interesting, though not developed to the point of (my) satisfaction. Europa is teeming with life and the monoliths are a bit less misterious. It was difficult to imagine how the star child could appear in a sequel. Too powerful and non-human to be bearable in a book. But Dave Bowman turns out to be a still human and interesting role. The book is extremely engaging. I had the feeling of being inside the Odyssey, soaring the solar system inside Leonov. The birth of Lucifer is what I enjoyed more.
Expect a novel very faithful to the film, or viceversa. With the novel you will probably understand more things concerning the mission of Discovery, but the great references to Nietzsche of the film are not so evident. Probably it was Kubrik the Nietzsche fan... In short, the novel is as great, as the movie, and it is a nice shuttle to jump to the three sequels, which promise to be very exciting (now I am reading 2010 with great delight). The novel is more SETI-like than the movie as well. While Kubrik leaves the ET's silent and mysterious, Clarke explicitly describes them and we can witness their direct actions on us. First of all I'd like to say that this is an excellent book and I enjoyed and learned a lot by reading it. However, don't expect a book on the question of what is life. The actual title, the origin of life, is exactly the topic that is covered. And they are two very different things. It's true that the first chapter is devoted to philosophical aspects, but the author is not really writing with philosophical depth. We can find the typical discussion (or naive denigration) of the vitalistic approach. As if language itself were not vitalist in essence, or as if vitalism were just a crackpot scientific theory and not a highly complex phenomenologic view of life by alive beings... But OK, we can skip this section and go ahead to the heart of the book, which is the origin of life, at least life as we know it (it is difficult not to be Earth-centric in this topic). The last part of the book is a presentation of one of the original theories of the author: the mutual contamination between Mars and Earth. I think it is at least a very plausible hypothesis and also very intriguing. As a bonus, you learn a lot of things concerning Mars. I think this is a very clever book written by a very clever scientist. The con is clearly the pseudophilosophical first part, but it is worth reading it.
A must read if you are interested in the SETI project, either for expanding your knowledge on the topic or for an introduction. Paul Davies is not as passionate as Carl Sagan (at least he does not express it) but gives a serious an updated unaccount on the search for (not only intelligent) life outside (and not only outside) Earth. This book has taught me many amazing facts and has made me think a lot. Highly recommended.
Una obra muy especial para una noche muy especial. Un buen ejemplo de que el casarse por amor y no por acuerdo ya era algo que se planteaba mucho antes del romanticismo.
Obra bastante desconocida. Es una locura de faldas. Tenemos al mismo rey en situaciones bastante poco honrosas...
Deliciosa obra de amor, desamor y cortejos. Sin desperdicio.
This is a most original and interesting book. Written by a truly brave man, who defies both mainstream physics as well as the conventional career that forces you to pursue quantity and impact factor instead of quality and depth. The work and life of Dr. Barbour seems to me really exemplar and encouraging. Focusing on the book itself, I think we have to admit that this is not a book for everyone. I am not saying it is too tough for a non-physicist or mathematician, but there is something that I don't understand: the book is not for the general public, maybe just for a genius or two. So what is the point to write without equations and without more technical terms? I went through red, green and blue mists for more than 300 pages, but maybe to define probability amplitudes at the beginning would have been more suitable for the actual readers. I find the proposals of the author extremely interesting, and definitely I will look for Mach's work. However, I really miss the actual theory of the author. Sometimes during my reading I became confused on what is the author contribution and what is the already existent theory. And of course I miss the actual theory, with the equations, examples and more details. At least in a technical appendix! I have the feeling that this book is not the perfect reflection of the research of the author. Such proposals deserve better explanations, more details, more clarity. There is some point at which you think whether the actual theory will appear on the book or not. And such question remained unsatisfied after I finished it. As a preliminary work it is OK, It is full of very clever and suggestive discussions, but I think that J. Barbour should write another book on his Platonia from scratch, without being afraid of giving more details to the reader. There are many science divulgation books which are very well written but with lack of original ideas. Well, this book is just the opposite. It is pregnant with ideas but not perfectly explained as such fertility deserves. And I, of course, prefer the later! I am looking forward to read more of this topic from the author. Probably I will have to go to his scientific articles. In all, The End of Time has made me think a lot, which is the best thing you can say from an author and his/her book.
This book is directly related with my PhD thesis, since both texts talk about molecular motors. So I expected a lot more from such attractive title. The introduction is very easy to follow and full of fascinating facts. But then the author completely twists the attitude and we are face to face to very specific discussions on biological details. I became quite disappointed because the author seems to think, like me, that molecular machines can be defined as minimum alive beings but he does not deepen in this issue. From a book with such title I expected him to talk more about what life is and how motor proteins are plugged into its definition. But no deep philosophy here. On the other hand, the technical discussion of how chemical energy is converted into mechanical work, which is the big question of the field and maybe the big question for understanding life at a fundamental level, remains as obscure as it can be. I think that the author darkens the question with some unfortunate decisions. The subtitle of the book is how molecular machines extract order from chaos. This is a misguiding sentence. The author is playing at the edge of second law violation. Fortunately, the book explains how the consumed free energy is the ultimate responsible for such order, but this subtitle, and many sentences in the book, lead to think for some moments that motor proteins are Maxwell demons. While thermal motion is extremely important for these machines to work, I would not dare to make such fancy affirmations because the non-expert reader can be mislead. The order comes from the order of the energetic input and from the anisotropy and polarity of cell structures such microtubules or actin filaments, which seem to play almost no role in this book. This is a big mistake. Motor proteins like kinesins or myosins cannot be described without a close relation with their tracks. Such tracks are not secondary players, and this book dedicates very little to them. Thermal motion allows these systems to explore the phase space with more efficiency, but concepts such as diffusional search, which are common in motor proteins field, are quite dangerous because diffusion is, by definition, unbiased. The bias is introduced by other factors that are not random at all. Moreover, the author insists on calling chaos to thermal motion or noise. This can be a little confusing. It is true that a general definition of chaos can include disorder, but in physics we normally distinguish between the stochastic and the chaotic. The stochastic is what we have to describe with probabilities because we know nothing of the internal variables. We do not have deterministic rules for them. It is a coarse grained approach, and it applies to thermal motion in the cell environment. On the other hand, chaos seems to me a word more appropriated to deterministic systems where there is an exponential divergence between two histories that are very similar at their initial conditions. I would have not used the therm chaos in the context of this book, but noise, stochasticity or simply undeterministic motion. Finally, it is significant to read the description of the kinesin-1 motor mechanism. In such description, the phantom of second-law violation flies close. The author arrives to the paroxysm of saying that "What is striking, however, is that the main source of energy, the hydrolysis of ATP, does not seem to be directly used for locomotion." To me, this is a defect of many models of such motors, that they rely so much on the power of thermal motion that they underestimate the role of ATP, which has to be the key player. Of course, the author considers ATP as a crucial player, but not to the degree that it deserves. For example, if one head of the kinesin performs a diffusional search, why such searches is almost always directed to the plus-end of the microtubule? He mentions the tilted profile of the microtubule in a very obscure fashion, when such important thing would deserve more pages of the book than any other topic. I do not blame the author, though. He seems to be close to some researchers who strongly rely on the role of the noise but not on deterministic forces. It is still a controversial subject and maybe the author could have been more open to discuss other alternative theories which are more deterministic (but with thermal noise as a key player). To summarise, I enjoyed reading the book, mostly the first half, but I think that a non-expert reader can extract wrong conclusions, or at least clear conclusions on a topic that today remains dark. Finally, from a philosophical point of view, this book is very deficient. This topic is too important to avoid deep discussions. As it is typical when some physicists write about life, they naively make fun of vitalism and celebrate technology without providing deep conceptual discussions.
To me, working on the subject of time, this book is a must. It is referenced by almost everyone working in the subject. Moreover, the author is also the author of Time in History, a magnificent book already cited here. It has very different parts, each one associated with the role of time in different disciplines such philosophy, physics, biology or even psychology. It is clearly a formal work, not intended for a general reader. Do not expect revolutionary theories or proposals. It is a book that reviews the mainstream, even though the discussion on Zeno's paradoxes is really surprising. In short, it is a classic but only for those with strong background in physics, since the author will not avoid any equation. I would have enjoyed more a book exclusively dedicated to a physical/philosophical viewpoint.
De las mejores obras de Lope, sobre todo el primer acto, el cual es extremadamente brillante. El tema principal, la amistad, es tratado con gran profundidad y mantiene una actualidad evidente. El personaje cómico, Galindo, es de lo más ingenioso a la vez que entrañable. Un canto a la generosidad y un aviso para los que se lanzan a ella. Magnífica en todos los sentidos.
Esta es una obra bastante difícil, sobre todo al principio, donde la acción y las referencias específicas me hicieron perder un poco. Más adelante se retoma el hilo con facilidad, el cual versa sobre amor, disfraces y engaños una vez más.
Un ejemplo de hasta dónde puede alguien autohumillarse para perseguir a su amor. Y también una muestra de lo difícil que es que otros aprecien ese sacrificio.
Belisa es un personaje para volverse loco. De esos que adoras en escena pero al que odiarías en la vida real. La obra está llena de engaños y equívocos. La oscuridad final es buenísima.