Shannon and I spent a dizzying hour at Borderlands Books in the Mission last Friday. (I know, I know, it’s been over a week.) Borderlands is the perfect geek bookstore, right down to the unnaturally friendly Sphinx cat who haunts…

Total number of books I have owned: no real idea, but probably between one and two thousand. Last book I bought: Michael Shermer, The Borderlands of Science. I confess that it cost $3 in the remainder rack at Red Hill…

Each night, I read a few pages of Lynch and Livingstone’s compendium of natural optical phenomena. Although the writing is a little wooden, and they assume more of a background in physics than I possess, Color and Light in Nature…

I’m trying to slog through Jaynes’s Probability Theory: The Logic of Science. It’s a refreshing change to read a book where I spend a good portion of the time clutching my head, feeling hopelessly stupid. This is no fault of…

I have just finished reading John Gribbin’s The Scientists, which is a wonderful book on the history of Western science, from the era of Copernicus to the present. The style of the book is biographical, avoiding deep treatment of discoveries…