science

A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking

Image source Audible

Read via Audible (Narrated by John Sackville)

Reading Reflection Written August, 2022

I often feel as if I'm at war with time. When I’m in the trenches of completing an artwork, if I don't use an alarm on my phone, I'd completely lose track of time. If I worked on each artwork without limiting time, everything I created would be overworked and I would never be satisfied. I need time-restraints in my artist-tool-kit. I seem to gravitate more towards the rhetoric in this book on: light, symmetry, asymmetry, wavelengths and temperature. The timelines of religious institutions and their relationships with scientists throughout history is such a juicy topic, I have to take another bite of this in the future and look out for more books on this.

For me to truly think of the universe as multidimensional and without boundaries is a new exercise. My brain cannot compute even the most rudimentary physics terms in this book, let alone the distances discussed; ‘a million million kilometres times 60’, what a special kind of mindfuckery it is to think of these types of distances. Special numbers and imaginary numbers, now there’s something I might like to explore further when I have the headspace; there’s something sexy about this. Reading this book is the mental equivalent of arriving at the peak of a rollercoaster and feeling momentarily weightless followed by an intense gravitational force. 

Read this book when you want an aggressively rough massage for your mind. Read again and again when you feel your life and world are closing in on you and you’re curious about the bigger and smaller picture.

Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil Degrasse Tyson

Image source Audible

Read on Audible, narrated by the author

Reading Reflection written July 2021

What is it about Neil DeGrasse’s voice that is so damn magnetic and comforting? His voice is a continuous injection of dopamine.

I know the universe is massive, a vast endless space full of life, but wow, I really know nothing. Why didn't I pursue/study astrophysics or chemistry when I was younger? It’s as if all the galactic-curiosity I possessed as a child dimmed as my glow in the dark space stickers transitioned into globs of dried BluTac on my bedroom ceiling. I think my self-deprivation in this field must have seeded itself as I developed my inflammatory relationship with maths and numbers. In hindsight, I probably wouldn’t have had the attention span to read through the astrophysics terminology in the tangible book, so I'm ever so grateful for the gift of Neil’s oratory charm. I’m so glad I read this, it feels good to wander in wonder. 

Read this book when you want to zone out to a master in their field. Read again and again when you want to feel the humble-gratitude of not being the smartest person in a room.