Capt. Mondo's World o' Mondo-ness

Michael at work told me over a recent lunch that he'd read this book and recommended it. I pricked up my ears at the mention of the title, since I'd read a positive book review in a recent New York Times book review supplement, and long ago I had read and enjoyed The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat. So I borrowed his copy when he was done with it.

It's a marvelous book, and despite its descriptive title (and subtitle: "Memories of a Chemical Boyhood", not quite what I expected. The book is an amalgam of autobiography and a history of chemistry. The flow of the book looks over Oliver Sacks as he grows up during WWII in London, and follows his adolescent fascination with metals and with chemicals, and then using that as a launching pad to talk about the relevant section on the history of chemistry.

What a family Sacks grew up in! The "Uncle Tungsten" of the book was an uncle of his who ran an electric light manufacturing plant, and he would teach the young Oliver his own experiences with incandescent light, pulling out old bulbs made by Edison and his contemporaries and explaining to Oliver the ways in which different filament materials were tried, and why the properties of tungsten were best suited for the job. Later, the young Oliver visited the elder brother of Uncle Tungsten, who was into phosphorescent lighting ("cold light" vs "hot light"), and had experimented with phosphors and with radioactive elements for years. He shows Oliver an early phosphor-based television set, as well as apparatus similar to that which Roentgen discovered X-rays with. He also lends Oliver some radioactive pitchblende ore to repeat the original experiment by which radioactivity was discovered. This eventually leads to a tangential exploration into the exploring the history of radioactivity, via the Curies and through to theories of Rutherford and Bohr. All fascinating stuff, much of which I was only vaguely aware of prior to reading the book. I knew most of the scientists by name and even what they did, but the book brought the process of their discoveries in their own time -- just as a young Oliver was discovering the same things in his home-based chemical lab -- driving home the importance of such discoveries, and how they opened up new questions that would be answered later.

I was hoping that the book would reveal more about Sack's decision to enter neurology, but there are only tantalizing glimpses here and there in the book -- the book really focuses on his "chemical boyhood", and leaves off just as he enters puberty (and leaves his childhood fascination with chemistry behind).

The idea behind the book doesn't fully work -- there are times when I wished he had delved further into his own history, and times when I had wished the opposite. Still, it makes for one of the best books I've read on the history of any science.

The book brought back lots of memories for me, especially of the times my Father showed me the engineering fundamentals he learned, and the history of clocks (he was a certified horologist, though he worked in Canada as an gyroscope engineer for Litton Systems. Perhaps when I get to Mr. Sack's current age I'll do some writing towards "memories of an engineering boyhood". ;-)

Sunday: Beauty and the Beast
Today I took Vanessa out to see an Imax presentation of Beauty and the Beast at the Paramount downtown. This is one of the few recent Disney films currently unavailable in either video or DVD format, so she had never seen it before.

It was interesting watching the cartoon on such a large screen. Disney had apparently done some work to ensure a smooth transition of the original to the large-screen format -- presumably unlike the famous "Magician's Apprentice" scene in the Imax version of Fantasia 2000, which was distinctly grainy when blown up to such a large size screen. No grainy-ness here, but there were the occasional tell-tale signs of details of things which ordinarily wouldn't be seen, such as individual brush-strokes visible in the background paintings, or crudely-done fine details -- such as scenes where Belle is seen far-off and she's looking up, and the whites of her eyes seem to change size and shape from frame-to-frame. Watching a film like this made me appreciate all the more the fact that it is all done by hand, a frame at a time. The occasional early 90s state-of-the-art computer animation looked the most dated by comparison with work in more recent films was flat and "computer-y".

Still, Vanessa enjoyed it all. At the end she started to cry, because she was sad for the Beast (even though he had just been transformed back into a handsome prince), so I had some reassuring to do. We then had an ice cream together, and then went over to the Chapters next door where I picked up the latest BBC History magazine, and Vanessa for the first time paid for something -- a small ballerina sticker book -- by herself (I gave her the money for it).

Soon after we got home late in the afternoon, Jean and Erika finished putting together the TV cabinet they had been working on all weekend. They did a splendid job, and it looks really good. Erika was quite pleased with herself about it, and was glad that the living room no longer necessarily has the "black maw" of the TV set dominating the room.

Saturday
Erika and her mother started work on building the cabinet for the TV set today, and I was charged with getting Vanessa out of the house (and out of their hair) for the day. So it was decided that I take her to the Zoo. Vanessa had expressed the wish, and it was announced by fiat that I'd be taking her. It bugged me that I wasn't consulted first, though otherwise I had no objection to heading there.

As it turned out, it was a pretty miserable day to head to the Zoo. It was overcast in the morning, and in alternated between a cold drizzle and snow over the course of the day. I think I was slightly hung-over from the party the previous night to boot, and had a slight but ever-present headache for the whole of the day.

It was a good visit on the whole. We took things slowly, and together spent long periods of time watching particular animals: the impressive gorillas, the pygmy alligator bobbing in the water, the playful mandrills, and the impressive wall of colourful African cichlid fishes. We also got to see the polar bears, and I think Vanessa was impressed by their size, but the rain and drizzle kept us from staying long.

The visit was not without incident. Vanessa brought along a dolly of hers, and at one point, while watching the Meercats, she dangled it inside of the display. I chastised for doing this -- and it may have been unintentional -- but she started crying and carrying on like there was no tomorrow. Oi! I eventually got her calmed down and explained things to her, that the meercats may have tried to grab the doll from her, that it wouldn't have been good for them, and that she wouldn't likely get her doll back if she did drop it in there.

By day's end we had done a lot of walking, and I think we were both glad to be heading for home. We ended up taking a deliberately long transit ride home, giving her the chance to take a much-needed nap against my shoulder in the bus on the way back.

Party Friday!
We had been invited to a neighbour's birthday party this evening. I don’t really know the couple that well, but Erika does, so what the heck, we arranged to go, getting a local girl to baby-sit while we went to the party.

The party was a blast. Our immediate neighbours are all a hoot, and we seemed to have lucked out by moving into a funky little enclave of the Beaches. A keg of Kilkenny kept all of the guys (and most of the gals) happy, and the music got increasingly louder over the course of the evening.

I guess I was in the mood to party – normally I’m pretty shy, and for the most part find an excuse not to go to most parties I am invited to. I’m glad I went to this one though – I ended up chatting with a number of our neighbours, and found out what characters they all were. One guy related his near-futile quest to find a beer and/or a bar in Salt Lake City (he ended up having to buy a “membership” at a the only bar he could find outside of town, which also just happened to be a strip club). I had the chance to talk to the fellow down the street who is a morning DJ for a local Top 40 radio station (I'm not naming names as I don't want to get him into any trouble). Was pleased to find that he has no love for the music his station plays, and is much more into straight-ahead rock and roll. He is also apparently the ringleader for a bunch of the locals who like to go out to “80s-night” dance events – so Erika and I vowed to go on the next such happening.

We got paged by our babysitter at about 11:00pm -- Annie had been crying pretty much the whole time since we left, and the poor babysitter was completely frazzled. Of course, the moment she called us, the babysitter relaxed, Annie must’ve picked up on this, and she finally fell asleep. I gave the babysitter a decent tip, and Erika fed the baby, and put her down for what turned out to be a full-night’s sleep.

# posted by Keith : 9:09 AM  0 Comments