Brian Micklethwait at
Samizdata is reading some
alternate history, specifically
What If? a little while ago, and now
More What If?.
More What
If?.
He says that his 'favourite what-ifs are the ones that start with
someone very obscure doing something very obscure slightly
differently, which causes X, which causes Y -- Y being a happening
of universally agreed importance -- not to happen. The human
version of the Butterfly Effect, in other words.'
James Burke's
Connections book,
Scientific American columns, and
television series of the same name, were great entertainment and
stimulation, though they instead of changing one of the
connections, they follow the web of knowledge and events along
paths less imaginative or less poetic folks wouldn't see. 'What do
the Hubble Space Telescope, Buffalo Bill, and the Spanish
Inquisition have in common? How do margarine's strange origins tie
it to plankton shells, receding stars, hot chocolate, and the first
solo Atlantic flight?'
James
Burke, and how is Robert Owen's 19th-century socialist commune
in New Harmony, Indiana, connected to the transistor?
Connect This!. Read the
book and watch the shows.