Mark Reynolds > Recent Status Updates

Very enjoyable memoir, and an excellent narrator. However, the emphasis on religion, and the arguments between the different protestant groups (Presbyterian, Congregationalist, etc) gets a bit tiring.

Excellent audio book. A bonus is an actual recording of the king’s speech on Sep 3, 1939.

I’m finding that there many interesting - yet technically difficult - sections that stray widely from the main theme. Feynman is really trying to give his students a broad physics education. Now I understand why the students stopped attending the original lectures: it was over their head and covered much material that wouldn’t be on the tests.

So far Strogatz is the most insightful. With Kolb a close second. Wheeler is disappointing.

Ch 11 on the physical mechanisms of dielectrics has a lot of hand waving and very little direct calculation. So it’s not very understandable.

Cal, the robot writer, is an early version of ChatGPT.

So far, hilarious, irreverent, and insightful.

Excellent! Great stories about his experiences winning the US chess championship and going to the world championship interzonal in Manila. Also it’s an excellent chess tutorial on all aspects of the game. He blends technical analysis with verbal insight. Enjoyable.

Excellent! Along with "The First Three Minutes" by Steven Weinberg, it's the best popular physics book that I've ever read.

Lots of great checkmates - I keep playing them over and over for pattern recognition.

So far so great!

Excellent! As expected from Feynman.

Illuminating/funny comparison between Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard. At first I thought the islands were the “identicals” of the title. But no, there are identical twins as the protagonists.