Tag: research

Every year as December winds down, I try to close with a book on a topic which is very close to my heart, a ritual I have been trying to do for some time now. This time, the book found me. I thought I’d close with Spaceman but then landed with Encounter with Tiber. It was first published in 1966 by former astronaut Buzz Aldrin and science fiction writer John Barnes. And the book didn’t disappoint me, by page thirty I knew I wasn’t just reading science fiction, I was…

Scientists and researchers are my intellectual heroes. I’ve spent years reading their papers, following their work, running a science and tech website that tracks breakthrough research. And in between, I’ll admit,  I used to wonder what they actually do when they’re not thinking about science.

Last week I was flying across cities because of office work and this time, I was accompanied by Daryl L. Scott’s debut novel The Andronaut’s Journey.

I have always imagined what must have been going through the minds of those early scientists when they first thought of exploring space and eventually came up with the idea of a telescope. 

This week I decided to re-visit Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations. Philosophy is something that I dive in every now and then as it grounds me amidst the noise of daily life, reminding me that clarity often comes not from adding more, but from subtracting what is unnecessary.  This book is not a regular self help book, in fact it wasn’t written to publish in the first place, it’s more towards Aurelius’s personal manual or notes scribbled in a tent between battles.

A couple of months ago, I gave this book a quick skim and realized it talks about the idea of systems thinking. That instantly caught my interest and made me want to explore it in more depth. I was actually about to order a copy when, luckily, I came across the PDF edition provided by Florida Tech. A huge thanks to them for making this resource accessible.