Learning This Week

I started trying to read some educational books in the last two weeks. I normally stick to "brain candy" type fantasy sci-fi. But, as of the new year I ordered some history books to see if I could learn something new. I do spend some amount of time reading technical books, but you don't want to hear about that. Let's just say that someday I think I might write a book about encapsulation.

I'm reading "Columbia History of the World" as my first try. I've got some books that a fellow blogger recommended coming from Amazon.

Anyway, this History of the World book is a hardback and almost 1200 pages. I found it at Half-Price books for $8 which seems to be a pretty good deal. The cheapest I could find it on the Internet was $12. I've read the first chapter and a half. It starts out with the beginnings of the universe with a discussion on mass, gravity, helium, hydrogen, etc. It's very interesting. Next chapter starts getting into the beginnings of the earth and then how the continents were formed and how life began (I'm not quite through the second chapter). I've got a long way to go. It was published in 1972. I can't help but wonder how many of the theories they talk about have been updated since then. Is the Atlantic Ocean really expanding by two inches every year?

This week I learned that the word failing doesn't necessarily relate to grades.

I also learned yesterday that Obama is left handed. Being a south paw myself, his status in my eyes went up by 2 points. If only he were an Aquarius.