Sections

I have recently finished reading ‘Time: A User’s Guide‘ by Stefan Klein and thought I would share my views on the book.

The cover of this book caught my eye (but I cannot explain why!); a man is sunbathing on a field of grass which is overlooked by a large block of flats in the distance, set against a lovely blue sky with a few clouds. I picked it up and read a few sections (‘When Sex is Best’, and ‘The Art of Cooking Goulash’) then promptly took it home.

The cover of 'Time: A User's Guide'.

The book covers various aspects of time and is written in an interesting and accessible way with plenty of good examples. I read the book with little prior knowledge about time and would say you do not need a good understanding of anything the book covers to appreciate it.

I would recommend the book if you want a general and accessible overview of time. It covers the physics, biology, psychology and sociology behind time with plenty of footnotes and references, and would be a good starting point for someone who wanted to study the topic further.

The book is divided into three main sections. The first, ‘Experiencing Time’, looks at time from a biological and psychological perspective. Numerous examples are used from daily life, such as how we experience time at different speeds (such as when bored and time seems to go slowly, or in a state of excitement when time seems to go quickly). At the end of the section, case studies of brain damaged patients are given to illustrate which areas of the brain are important for different components of time perception and what happens when they do not work (or are not present!).

The second section, ‘Using Time’, compares the perception of time usage in different countries, and in the workplace and society. The section starts by looking at the role of time in hectic modern lifestyles and how our refined ability to measure time has changed both how we value and use time. The culture of constant communication is touched upon, alongside the effects on our brain and how we cope with a constant bombardment of stimuli, such as replying to instant messages, emails, texts, phone calls… This book was written before Twitter became really popular, but I am sure it would have been mentioned if it was!

The final section, ‘What Time Is’, begins with a brief history of the modern clock and moves into Einstein’s theory of relativity. It is the shortest section of the book but it contains some of the hardest ideas to understand.

The book concludes with some of the author’s ideas on how we can lead a more relaxed life by developing a different view of time. All of the suggestions seem sensible, the first of which I had been thinking about before reading the book! Whilst our society is composed of people with a variety of schedules and lifestyles, most public services and quite a few private services follow unwaveringly conservative schedules. Visiting my bank or the doctor usually means I need to get time off work (and I get home earlier than most people I know!). For parents, having access to good childcare would allow them to make better use of their time. Of the other suggestions, I remember a particular bit about cherry blossom:

…the major Christian holidays revolve around the birth of Jesus more than two thousand years ago and his resurrection into eternity. In Japan, by contrast, the appearance of the ephemeral cherry blossom is an event that creates a whirl of excitement throughout the nation. For the Japanese, the magic of this magnificence lies in its brevity – in a matter of days, the dazzling display is gone.

It made me think about how I look forward to seeing the first insect of spring and how many seasonal insect lifecycles I would see.

I enjoyed the book; it gave me plenty to think about and was a generally easy read.

The idea of a bedroom/basement laboratory has appealed to me since childhood, and probably has for my scientist friends, so when I read the Rise of the garage genome hackers (McKenna, 2009:20-21) in last week’s New Scientist magazine my mind started wandering back to my time as a biochemistry student.

The article interviewed a few people that do homebrew biology and have achieved some impressive results with modest equipment: one amateur has inserted green fluorescent protein genes into bacteria whilst another claims to have engineered bacteria capable of basic logic functions.

Some of these people belong to amateur organisation called DIYbio which “is an organization that aims to help make biology a worthwhile pursuit for citizen scientists, amateur biologists, and DIY biological engineers who value openness and safety”. Their blog has interesting articles like gel electrophoresis at home and considering safe storage of reagents, disposing of experiments and general waste disposal.

Would any of you try some homebrew genetic engineering, or have any ideas for interesting entomological applications? With seemingly low setup costs, the article implies equipment could be obtained for under £100 if you have some ingenuity, a home lab could be a possibility for many people. It’s also easy to see potential problems, not just with the experimenter’s safety…

Reference:
McKenna, P. (2009) Rise of the genome hackers. New Scientist. No 2689

Merging biology and programming can lead to some very interesting developments: today I read an article found on Slashdot about the use of genetic programming to produce an image of the Mona Lisa.

Using just 50 semi-transparent polygons a very good version of the painting was produced using a process of random alteration and comparison to the original image. If the new random polygon alterations were closer in similarity to the old alterations then the new set of alterations was saved.

The post on the author’s weblog goes into a little more detail and shows a selection of images to illustrate the process.