I mean the great book by that name which finally makes everything stunningly clear.
History of me and E=mc2:
I started trying to understand it my first semester in college (1954) with one of the first paperbacks ever published: George Gamow's One, Two, Three...Infinity and never got it. And I would squint and think hard and write down equations on a notepad as I read. Then give up. Then try again. That's a long time. Chances are good that you weren't even born when I started. Your mom, either. I even took some math and physics classes but honorably flunked out. It's just not what I'm good at. (I said less kind things to myself, about myself, back then.)
Nothing. Uh unh. I'd give up for a few years but then I'd try again. (I even dated physicists! With slide rules in their shirt pockets!) I thought terrible thoughts: Is it possible that the theory of relativity is actually boring? Hard to believe.
I even knew that E=mc2 wasn't really what made Einstein famous, it was something about the light from a star bending as it came past the sun, and how they had to wait for an eclipse. That's very interesting and unexpected and peculiar, but still....um, surely there was some significance to this I was missing.
But who am I? Just someone with too many interests and too few IQ points, apparently. Those physicists I dated swore they understood it all, but didn't really try very hard to explain it to me. I was your average 18 yr old co-ed, and they didn't see that I needed anything extra, certainly nothing in my brain. (It was the '50's remember. Before Betty Freidan and Simone de Beauvoir.)
So you can imagine what I felt when I first found David Bodanis's book on a bookstore shelf and opened to the Preface. The first sentences in the book were these:
"A while ago I was reading an interview with the actress Cameron Diaz in a movie magazine. At the end the interviewer asked her if there was anything she wanted to know, and she said she'd like to know what E=mc2 really means. They both laughed, then Diaz mumbled that she'd meant it, and then the interview ended.
"You think she did mean it?" one of my friends asked, after I read it aloud. I shrugged, but everyone else in the room -- architects, two programmers, and even one historian (my wife!) -- was adamant. They knew exactly what she intended: They wouldn't mind understanding what the famous equation meant, too."
Well, I'm here to say I love David Bodanis, have been through this book countless times, collar innocent bystanders by reading to them from its pages, can't fall asleep when I take it to bed at night because it's so astonishingly interesting and lucid. I've started cartooning it so I can teach it to my very curious almost-7-year-old grandson - and I can do it! The cartooning that is. :-)
Okay, well I'm hoping this is a fitting opening post for School For Scanners (in response to the post I got on Facebook today -- see 'comments) And please leave some comments, too. We Scanners need to talk to each other.
In the name of the joy of learning, I remain
Your Fellow Scanner,
Barbara Sher
www.geniuspress.com
It sure is! Thank you! I'm the one who left the original comment, and I fell quite honored ;)
ReplyDeleteI actually had that idea because I read (once again) that to get into 'elite' schools, the most important thing you had to have was a clear goal. Maybe I should clarify that, ONE clear goal.
But still you ought to have many talents.
Isn't that a bit unlogical???
So, what I thought was:
If there was a college...
...where you could pick majors as you like.
And switch.
...where you could study History for 2 weeks as at the time , you're into it, then maths and then Chinese.
...that would still give you a great education, because it might take a little longer?
...where there would be scanner career advisors to help you pursue as many of your goals as possible.
That would haeve been my dream college. :)
I went to sort of a "polymath" college...it was called US International U. Was structured in very short quarters where you took only three classes at once... one class a week. Independent study classes were allowed. The teachers had these tiny offices where you were supposed to drop in and talk with your other friends with the teachers. Most students lived on the campus, so it was pretty fun. Had some of the best relationships with other teachers develop there. I was (rather cluelessly) offered some fantastic opportunities, such as the possibility to get set up teaching English in Taiwan that I regret not being able to do. Had one of the best design classes anywhere there as well as learned Chinese, did naturalist illustration for a science class, learned video camera work (in 1971!) to document my friends doing psychology experiments in para-psychology psychic phenomena. Discovered a guy who was a genetics prof who used psychic ability to select cross-fertilization of specific plants for crops he targeted. (Derald Langham.)
ReplyDeleteWas a fantastic fit for a scanner like ME! It also had a performance art extension that I should have taken advantage of, but I couldn't do it all. Loved it! Wish it had been a four year college... But it was the last two years of high school & first two years of college and I had to take required classes for a four year degree that I had to continue elsewhere to keep my funding.