Dizzying Rides

You might already be familiar with Edge. If not, it's an online forum where leading intellectuals (including Richard Dawkins and Lee Smolin) discuss stuff that interests them. Makes for good reading, but one of the more interesting features of the forum is their Question Center. Each year, a question is formulated, and replies from leaders in respective fields are collected. To give a specific example, the 2005 question was, 'What you beleive but cannot prove?', and for 2006 it was 'What is your Dangerous idea?'. The responses for both these years have been published in book form, and I recently got a chance to read both of them.

Dizzying Ride! That's the only way I can put it. You tend to like some responses, dislike others, agree with some (a few), but learn from almost all of them. They represent the cutting edge of research in wide array of scientific fields, and unlike the popular science books (which I tend to read from time to time), are not always easy to digest. More often than once I found myself thinking, "Ohh, I did not even know that such a problem existed!". It's a wonderful way to get a broad view of the very latest thinking in a wide range of scientific fields. Don't miss it! I tend to prefer the Dead Tree version, but they are available online too, just go here.

Enjoy!