David > Recent Status Updates

One hour and 23 into the audio book and I'm hooked. The Count is a character of reserve and refinement, unruffled by events that would surely leave most of us distraught or worse. But how will he endure this life sentence of confinement? We shall see.

Yeah for the chain rule! And wow am I rusty with those trig function derivatives, eg csc et al.

Yeah for Claire Patterson, who is credited here with giving the earth an age that has basically stood up since then (4.5 billion years, give or take 70 million). One of the roadblocks to a good sample for testing was lead contamination, and that led to him being a crusader against lead that led to the clean water act of 1970 and other lead restricting policies.

It seems lots of 'gentlemen' were interested in doing casual science back in, say, the 1800s. Seems a stark contrast with today.
There are so many stories of people not getting credit for things they discovered, or having their credit removed later by lies and deceit. Definitely tweaks my sense of fairness.

Just went through the time periods and discussion of how the divisions are different from one country to another and even between textbook authors(!). Part I recall best: "there won't be a test...." :-)

His guard thinks he's a cat now, be cause he has survived and come back when others have not, when he was not expected to return.

Through the first couple chapters, which basically say it's little short of a miracle that we are here to comprehend our surroundings and that our solar system is huge, even though it's minuscule in relation to the overall size of space.

Now he has a girlfriend, Gita, whom he has somehow managed to save from typhus with his construction-worker connection. And Gita's coworker is the first rape victim described.

So Ye is head of the group anticipating the arrival of the Trisolaris refugees. Quite a tale she tells of receiving a return transmission 30ish years prior after she had sent a test message bouncing off the sun, sending a response to invite them to come and take over the earth, killing the commander who discovered the message and having to sacrifice her husband in the act, just after discovering she was pregnant.

End of part 2. Next part seems ominous: "Sunset for Humanity"