Welcome

Welcome to my ever-evolving blog. It started out as a blog on Beachbody workouts and products, mainly when I was a Beachbody coach. I no longer coach, not because I don't believe in Beachbody's programs (I subscribe to Beachbody on Demand and use their workouts every day), I am just not a salesperson and hated that aspect of it. I am more than willing to answer questions about my experiences with their products and the various workouts, and I feel freer to do so without the appearance of giving a biased review of something.

I have also started adding reviews for various things I have purchased like movies, books, CDs, and other products. This was brought about by a fight with Amazon in which all of my reviews were removed over a completely bullshit allegation that I posted a review that violated their terms of service. After going back and forth with the morons in the community-reviews department (even after they admitted that my posts did not violate their guidelines) they restored my account (which took them six months to do), but I have been posting my reviews on my blog to have them preserved in case something like that happens again. And here, I will post uncensored reviews so I will swear from time to time and post reviews that may be longer than Amazon's character limit. Everything I post here on any topic or product is my personal opinion, and I take no compensation for any product reviews I post. I am a member of Amazon's vine program and because I get those products for free, I keep those reviews on Amazon only, but everything I have purchased with my own money, whether from Amazon or some other store/website/outlet, I will post here.  

I also plan to do some longer blog posts on various topics, such as how to learn physics, how to get through calculus, and longer reviews of workout programs as I do them. Basically, whatever strikes me as interesting at the time.  As you can see if you navigate around the blog, I had many years in between postings. During that time I was going back to school to get an engineering degree, and learning material that I avoided my first time through college was a different experience and one that gave me a lot of insight into how to do well in those classes, which I will try to impart here for those who are looking to get a science or engineering degree. 

Tuesday, March 14, 2023

Book Review: Cosmic Queries: StarTalk's Guide to Who We Are, How We Got Here, and Where We're Going

 


This book is a combination of the two seasons of Cosmos that Neil deGrasse Tyson hosted, his Star Talk TV show, and the Star Talk podcast/webisodes mixed together. The book was written by Tyson and co-author James Trefil. In it, Tyson explains what the various sciences (basically physics, chemistry, biology, and astrophysics) have figured out about the origin of the universe, the formation of our solar system, life on Earth, the possibility of alien life elsewhere in the universe, and how the universe may ultimately end. As importantly he goes through things that there is evidence for, but is not well understood (e.g., dark matter and dark energy). He is able to explain the concepts clearly without throwing a bunch of equations in the book that would require multiple years of calculus to even begin to understand. In fact, the only equation in the book is the famous Drake Equation that is used to try to predict the number of planets or moons that may have intelligent life, and even in that case, he is really just explaining what the variables in the equation represents. 

The book is what I consider an intermediate length, at just over 300 pages. There are a lot of pictures in the book, both actual photographs taken through telescopes or the various probes we have sent out into the solar system, and artist renderings of how we think things look. And, some of the tweets that Tyson has tweeted over the years on various topics are included. So, the book reads fairly quickly. My only complaint is that throughout the book the authors include what amount to margin notes that delve a bit more deeply into something that was mentioned in the main text. However, the font used for these asides is smaller and the ink used is much lighter than the main text. So, unless you have really good eyesight, they can be hard to read, especially if you are at the point in your life where you need to use reading glasses or progressive lenses. That aside, it is still a good read for anyone who is interested in Astronomy and Astrophysics.

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