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reading and travel
Jun. 6th, 2007 05:46 pmTravel: I'll be arriving in Minneapolis on June 26th, and plan to stay all summer, for various possible definitions of the end of summer.
Reading: Shayin lent me Miss Leavitt's Stars, the first half of which successfully carries out what I was attempting to do with the second half of my senior paper when I finished my bachelor's degree in history, so that was satisfying. Now if only I could find a similarly thorough secondary source with more information about the work of Leavitt's predecessors such as Cannon, Maury, and particularly Willamina Fleming. These were the women computers who did most of the foundational work in empirical astrophysics in America at the Harvard Observatory around the turn of the century, and got practically zero credit for it at the time, because they were women who had been hired to compute and not to establish empirical astrophysics. Well, because they were women. Everything else followed from that. Leavitt herself discovered the Cepheid yardstick that Harlow Shapley later tried to claim credit for having discovered.
Shayin also lent me a journal of Alexander von Humboldt's from his scientific expedition in Latin America 1799-1804, which I've been reading random bits and pieces of. This works because Humboldt is a picaresque journalist, with constant digressions that are usually not returned from, but just lead on to the next digression.
Right now I'm rereading David Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus, which is next up on my project of rereading books that I was obsessive about when I was in middle school and that I have not read since. I'm enjoying it even more than I expected to, but I'm only about halfway through so far.
Finally, an essay to mention. On Pamela's recommendation, I read Carolyn Heilbrun's "The Character of Hamlet's Mother", which is exquisite, and which exemplifies the virtues that Heilbrun finds in Gertrude's character.
Reading: Shayin lent me Miss Leavitt's Stars, the first half of which successfully carries out what I was attempting to do with the second half of my senior paper when I finished my bachelor's degree in history, so that was satisfying. Now if only I could find a similarly thorough secondary source with more information about the work of Leavitt's predecessors such as Cannon, Maury, and particularly Willamina Fleming. These were the women computers who did most of the foundational work in empirical astrophysics in America at the Harvard Observatory around the turn of the century, and got practically zero credit for it at the time, because they were women who had been hired to compute and not to establish empirical astrophysics. Well, because they were women. Everything else followed from that. Leavitt herself discovered the Cepheid yardstick that Harlow Shapley later tried to claim credit for having discovered.
Shayin also lent me a journal of Alexander von Humboldt's from his scientific expedition in Latin America 1799-1804, which I've been reading random bits and pieces of. This works because Humboldt is a picaresque journalist, with constant digressions that are usually not returned from, but just lead on to the next digression.
Right now I'm rereading David Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus, which is next up on my project of rereading books that I was obsessive about when I was in middle school and that I have not read since. I'm enjoying it even more than I expected to, but I'm only about halfway through so far.
Finally, an essay to mention. On Pamela's recommendation, I read Carolyn Heilbrun's "The Character of Hamlet's Mother", which is exquisite, and which exemplifies the virtues that Heilbrun finds in Gertrude's character.
