Hello cyberspace

Wow. It has been over a week since I've posted anything. Longer than that since I posted anything of any consequence or which was posted for the sake of posting. Other sites have gone a month without any updates. It's amazing the guilt trip a blog can put on you. Simply loading it and seeing that your stats are remaining high while you do nothing can make you feel like a bad blogmaster. Well, maybe not... but it sure sounds good :)

Work has kept me too busy to write much. What little free time I've had has been spent biking or working on bikes, or getting over a cold. A little over a week ago I came down with a horrible cold and today is the first day that I've felt really good the entire day. It is truly amazing how much you can be affected when just one little virus gets loose in your body.

Anyhow, I'm going to call it an evening and retire to a book. I picked up Stephen Hawking's On the Shoulders of Giants this evening. It contains the English translations of Copernicus' On the Revolution of Heavenly Spheres, Galilei's Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences, Kepler's Harmony of the World Book Five, Newton's Principia and selections of Einstein's The Principle of Relativity. I was looking for an good science book to read, so I figured why not read some of the texts that lay the foundation for all modern physics. Throw in a bonus commentary and introduction by Hawking and I figure it should be good. As always, I'll post any commentary on the book here.

And I'll leave you with one quote from On the Revolution of Heavenly Spheres' Introduction. Bear in mind that the final text was edited without Copernicus' guidance, but just the same, from the little bit I do know of this Polish priest, this does sound like something he might have penned for fear of being branded a heretic.

... let no one expect anything in the way of certainty from astronomy, since astronomy can offer us nothing certain, lest, if anyone take as true that which has been constructed for another use, he go away from this discipline a bigger fool than when he came to it.

If only the modern sciences were presented with such humility...