Current Book:
 Alex & Me : How a Scientist and a Parrot Discovered a Hidden World of Animal Intelligence-and Formed a Deep Bond in the Process
By: Irene Pepperberg
Tuesday, November 24, 7-9p.m
Grumpy's Downtown
1111 Washington Av. S. Minneapolis, (612) 340-9738
Alex's brain was the size of a shelled walnut--he was a parrot, after all--and when Irene and Alex first met, birds were not believed to possess any potential for language, consciousness, or anything remotely comparable to human intelligence. Yet, over the years, Alex proved many things. He could add. He could sound out words. He understood concepts like bigger, smaller, more, fewer, and none. He was capable of thought and intention. Together, Alex and Irene uncovered a startling reality: We live in a world populated by thinking, conscious creatures.
The book documents his thirty-year relationship with his trainer and the ways in which his life has changed scientific understanding about language and thought.
Next Books:
TBD
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The Big Bang Book Club is a monthly book club for non-scientists that relishes in folding arts and science into a heady brew.
Sponsors: Magers & Quinn Booksellers; Secrets of the City; Center for Science, Technology and Public Policy; and Grumpy's.
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A Helpful Science Reading List -- Past Books:
Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life by Carl Zimmer
A biography of a germ, touching on genetics, biology, and evolution, as well as public health
Author Carl Zimmer traces E. coli's pivotal role in the history of biology, from the discovery of DNA to the latest advances in biotechnology. He reveals the many surprising and alarming parallels between E. coli's life and our own. And he describes how E. coli changes in real time, revealing billions of years of history encoded within its genome. E. coli is also the most engineered species on Earth, and as scientists retool this microbe to produce life-saving drugs and clean fuel, they are discovering just how far the definition of life can be stretched.
 13 Things That Don't Make Sense: The Most Baffling Scientific Mysteries of Our Time
By: Michael Brooks
It's a fascinating account of the things science just can't explain... yet.
Science’s best-kept secret is this: even today, thereare experimental results that the most brilliant scientists cannot explain. In the past, similar “anomalies” have revolutionized our world. If history is any precedent, we should look to today’s inexplicable results to forecast the future of science. Michael Brooks heads to the scientific frontier to confront thirteen modern-day anomalies and what they might reveal about tomorrow’s breakthroughs.
 The Black Hole War: My Battle With Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics, By: Leonard Susskind
At the beginning of the 21st century, physics is being driven to very unfamiliar territory--the domain of the incredibly small and the incredibly heavy.
One of the biggest questions involved black holes. Famed physicist Stephen Hawking claimed that anything sucked in a black hole was lost forever. For three decades, Leonard Susskind and Hawking clashed over the answer to this problem. Finally, in 2004, Hawking conceded.
The book describes the author's professional battles with Stephen Hawking, a conflict that has significantly influenced the scientific community's understanding of the universe's fundamental laws.
My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey. By: Jill Bolte Taylor
The question of whether one is right or left brained will take on new meaning.
At the age of only 37, author Jill Bolte Taylor suffered a stroke.
She observed her mind deteriorate to the point that she could not walk, talk, read, write, or recall any of her life—all within four hours—Taylor alternated between the euphoria of the intuitive and kinesthetic right brain, in which she felt a sense of complete well-being and peace, and the logical, sequential left brain, which recognized she was having a stroke and enabled her to seek help before she was completely lost.
Over the next eight years of her recovery, she turned her neuroscientist's eye on herself. The resulting book is a fascinating blend of science and memoir.
The Ghost Map By: Steven Johnson.
Join us for a page turning adventure about two men who finally won the battle against the worst cholera epidemic to hit Victorian London and how that changed cities, science and the modern world.
It is the summer of 1854. Cholera has seized London with unprecedented intensity. Two million people are crammed into 30 square miles and London is lacking the infrastructure necessary to support its dense population - garbage removal, clean water, sewers. The city has become the perfect breeding ground for a terrifying and deadly disease no one knows how to cure.
As their neighbors begin dying, two men are spurred to action. The Reverend Henry Whitehead, and Dr. John Snow, set out to prove they know how the Cholera is spreading which have thus been rejected by the scientific community.
Rock, Paper, Scissors by Len Fisher
Game Theory in Everyday Life is
a review of game theory, the math and logic behind conflict resolution. It's a bright, readable exploration of everyday situations as seen through the lens of science.
Praised by Entertainment Weekly as “the man who put the fizz into physics,” Dr. Len Fisher turns his attention to the science of cooperation in his lively and thought-provoking book. Fisher shows how the modern science of game theory has helped biologists to understand the evolution of cooperation in nature, and investigates how we might apply those lessons to our own society. In a series of experiments that take him from the polite confines of an English dinner party to crowded supermarkets, congested Indian roads, and the wilds of outback Australia, not to mention baseball strategies and the intricacies of quantum mechanics, Fisher sheds light on the problem of global cooperation. The outcomes are sometimes hilarious, sometimes alarming, but always revealing. A witty romp through a serious science, Rock, Paper, Scissors will both teach and delight anyone interested in what it
what it takes to get people to work together.
Apr. 28 - Physics of the Impossible by Michio Kaku is the center of Big Bang’s April discussion. Kaku appears in the Twin Cities at the University of Minnesota about two weeks prior to our event.
April's book is Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel by Michio Kaku. Teleportation, time machines, force fields, and interstellar space ships: is this the stuff of science fiction or of potentially attainable future technologies? Inspired by the fantastic worlds of Star Trek, Star Wars, and Back to the Future, renowned theoretical physicist and bestselling author Michio Kaku takes an informed, serious, and often surprising look at what our current understanding of the universe's physical laws may permit in the near and distant future. Entertaining, informative, and imaginative, Physics of the Impossible probes the very limits of human ingenuity and scientific possibility.
Michio Kaku is the Henry Semat Professor of Theoretical Physics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is the cofounder of string field theory. He has written several books, including Parallel Worlds and Beyond Einstein. His bestseller, Hyperspace, was voted one of the best science books of the year by the New York Times and the Washington Post.
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