Book Description
The Happiest Man in the World buoyantly describes seventy-four-year-old David Pearlman, a restless and migratory soul, a mariner, a musician, a member of the Explorers Club and a friend of the San Francisco Beats, a former preacher and sign painter, a polymath, a pauper, and a football strategist for the Red Mesa Redskins of the Navajo Nation. When Pearlman was fifty, he was bitten on the hand by a dog in Mexico and for two years got so sick that he thought he would die. When he recovered, he felt so different that he decided he needed a new name. He began calling himself Poppa Neutrino, after the itinerant particle that is so small it can hardly be detected. To Neutrino, the particle represents the elements of the hidden life that assert themselves discreetly.
Inspired by Thor Heyerdahl and Kon-Tiki, Neutrino is the only man ever to build a raft from garbage he found on the streets of New York and sail it across the North Atlantic.
The New York Daily News described the accomplishment as “the sail of the century.” National Geographic broadcast an account of the trip as part of its series on extreme adventures. And now he is on a quest to cross the Pacific on a raft. If he makes it, he plans to continue around the world. No one has ever sailed around the world on a raft. Meanwhile, he has invented the Neutrino Clock Offense, an unstoppable football play, which a former coach of the New York Jets describes as being as innovative as the forward pass.
The philosophical underpinnings of Neutrino’s existence are what he calls Triads, a concept worked out after years of reading and reflection. He believes that each person, to be truly happy, must define his or her three deepest desires and pursue them remorselessly. Freedom, Joy, and Art are Neutrino’s three.
The Happiest Man in the World is a lavish, exotic, funny, and deeply serious book about a man who has led a life of profound engagement and ceaseless adventure.
Customer Reviews:
A Portrait of a Hero and Nut.......2007-07-17
Alec Wilkinson has written for _The New Yorker_ for years, and has ideas about who makes a good subject for his prose. "I do not believe that someone is a proper subject, or a laudable figure, only if he has made a lot of money or been a politician, an actor, a freakish public figure, or a criminal," he writes in _The Happiest Man in the World: An Account of the Life of Poppa Neutrino_ (Random House). Indeed, Poppa Neutrino is none of these. He is a rafter, a football strategist, a street musician, and most of all an independent being who in his seventy-odd years has relentlessly done things his own way. This makes him a real hero, but it also makes him a nut; there is no reason the two cannot be conjoined, but his way of living his life is not one readers can expect to be completely comfortable with. "I wouldn't suggest that anyone regard Neutrino as a model," Wilkinson confesses. "It wouldn't be sensible. I don't even myself regard him entirely as one." Model or not, Neutrino is unique, and he is happy, and if you jettison materialistic standards (as Neutrino surely has) he is a success, and Wilkinson's delightful, amused, and affectionate portrait lets us in on the life of an eccentric who is as worth knowing in his way as any tycoon or president.
Neutrino's mother was an incorrigible gambler, and his father was a sailor who wasn't around. He flunked school and was thrown out of the Army because he enlisted at fifteen. He attended seminary and was thrown out, and then headed a group called the Salvation Navy, which traveled on waterways and made money by painting signs. He formed a ragtag musical group and got some money by it, but money wasn't important, just getting by was: "His poverty had exposed him again and again to the harshest torments, and yet he behaved as if no one could be as fortunate as he was to wake up with the whole day long to invent." He invented a football tactic by which a quarterback can send signals to a receiver after a play is underway, and part of the book is devoted to Neutrino's traveling to different schools to interest them in his revolutionary tactic, which seems to work but is just too different for the teams to incorporate (so far). The main arena for his invention, however, is that of rafting. "Neutrino was not the first man to build a raft and sail it across the Atlantic," writes Wilkinson. "He was the first to cross the Atlantic on a raft built from garbage." Neutrino may have spent his life as a drifter, but he did so literally, and made an adventure and an art form of it.
He also made it a spiritual quest. He created the Church of the Seven Levels, which incorporates his metaphysics based on triads. "There's only one thing in my soul," Neutrino says. "It's attack. Whether it's musical, spiritual, emotional, it's a multileveled attack. If you don't attack, you're just receiving all the blows of life." And yet paradoxically, he is on a non-offensive and introspective quest: "I am always asking myself, How can I become more involved, more passionate, and less vulnerable?" If Neutrino had taken his philosophy and energy and expended it in business, he would have been a millionaire many times over, but then he would just be one of millions of millionaires, and he would not have been the fascinating character profiled here. At the end of the book, Neutrino, elderly but hanging on after heart attacks, is still making rafts, perhaps one to go across the Pacific. Few who read this intimate and absorbing book will want to imitate his particular style of life, but there is much to admire about Neutrino's eccentricity. "I'm going out of this life as what I have worked and striven my whole life to be, a free man - free of possessions, free of greed, free of worry and strife. Free of anything superfluous."
The Happiest Man in the World: An Account of the Life of Poppa Neutrino.......2007-07-17
I question the title. There are certainly happier people than Poppa Neutrino. However, Poppa Neutrino is an interesing character for a well written book. After reading the latest books on major polical figures, it is a pleasure to read a book about someone who "marches to his own drummer" and is not at least concerned with his image. I don't think many people will like this man, but it is inspiring to read about someone who is truly an individual in the age of conformity.
That being said, by the end of the book, I find myself disappointed. I ended the book feeling sad for Poppa Neutrino, although, the author clearly admires him. I found myself feeling that Neutrino wasted much of his opportunites to leave the world a better place.
Great Book.......2007-05-12
Great reading, seemed to remind me of On The Road. Highly recommended.
The Freedom of Movement.......2007-04-05
Alec Wilkinson's book has one big thing going for it: Poppa Neutrino, aka David Pearlman. Even a hack writer couldn't ruin this story.
Wilkinson begins with a 3-pronged hook - (1) Neutrino has just created a football play that will revolutionize the game; (2) he is planning to build a raft from scraps and sail across the Pacific; and (3) he's so eccentric that he changed his name after a dog bite in Mexico.
The first part of the book, in my opinion, is the best. It's a history Poppa Neutrino from birth to age 70. Peppered throughout are his philosophical musings. We learn of his childhood in San Francisco as the son of a Gambling mother, memories of falling asleep under card tables and living on the road, joining the army at 15, fights, love affairs; other highlights include Neutrino and others starting a religion, creating a band, sailing across the Atlantic in a raft. At first, I thought I was reading the greatest put-on ever written; the book seemed to be pretending to be non-fiction, and yet had to be totally, outrageously, fabricated. There are many elements of tall-tale here, and since Neutrino is the one retelling his story, one has to believe he is stretching the truth a little. Getting his teeth punched out, and then sticking them back in his gums backwards, where they remained for 30 years, is one example. Nevertheless, fact or fiction, the history of this itinerant man, his adventures, his outlook on life, are golden. Wilkinson sticks well to the meat of the narrative; but at times he treats major events too brusquely. Some of Neutrino's adventures need more space - they are that compelling. I think an extra 100 pages to the man's history would have benefited the book.
The last 2 sections of the book settle into the present, with Neutrino a 70 year-old man recovered from several heart attacks, trying to pursue 2 more ideas/adventures. The football play ends up being merely an interesting idea, although not so revolutionary - but reading how Neutrino follows his ideas through to the end, and his time on an Indian reservation in NM with a high school team is compelling. The final 1/3 of the book is the weakest, I feel, as we spend far too many pages with Neutrino as he prepares to sail a raft across the pacific. For a book that has such punch, such an engaging pace, much of this section feels redundant and at times page-filler. The interesting parts are the adventures, not the mundane details of a man procrastinating.
Neutrino's rafts are unbelievable looking - I suggest going online to see them - as there are no pictures in the book, and they defy description.
Overall, I can't help but regaling my friends and neighbors with the details of this man's life. On another level, one has to feel that Wilkinson's book could have been at least 1/3 better. I await the documentary - Random Lunacy: Videos from the World Less Traveled.
Average customer rating:
- takes you to the frontiers
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Observational Astrophysics (Astronomy and Astrophysics Library)
Pierre Lena ,
Francois Lebrun , and
Francois Mignard
Manufacturer: Springer
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 3540634827 |
Book Description
Written specifically for physicists and graduate students, this textbook focuses on fundamental and sometimes practical limitations on the ultimate performance that an astronomical system may reach, rather than presenting particular systems in detail. This second edition has been entirely restructured and almost doubled in size, in order to improve its clarity and to account for the great progress achieved in the last 15 years. It deals with ground-based and space-based astronomy and their respective fields. It presents the new generation of giant ground-based telescopes, with the new methods of optical interferometry and adaptive optics. But it also presents the ambitious concepts behind space missions aimed for the next decades. Avoiding particulars, it covers the whole of the electromagnetic spectrum, and touches upon the "new astronomies" becoming possible with gravitational waves and neutrinos.
Customer Reviews:
takes you to the frontiers.......2005-04-11
Astronomy is going through exciting times, as new and better instrumentation and methods gives us greater insight into the universe. This book helps explain what some of the advances are. It gives basic material about radiation, photometry and the like. There is an important explanation of how the atmosphere has traditionally limited the resolution of images (at least in the visible spectrum) due to turbulence. Which leads the book into some of the attractions of space-based telescopes.
But the book also goes into how ground based telescopes are overcoming the atmospheric barrier. Using adaptive optics in "smart" telescopes. This lets them cancel out the effects of turbulence, on the time scale of that turbulence. Very impressive. We can push to the instrinsic limits of the optics.
The book takes you to the frontiers of modern astronomy.
Book Description
This introductory textbook gives a uniform presentation of nuclear and particle physics. The first part, Analysis, is devoted to disentangling the substructure of matter. This part shows that experiments designed to uncover the substructures of nuclei and nucleons have a similar conceptual basis, and lead to the present picture of all matter being built out of a small number of elementary building blocks and a small number of fundamental interactions. The second part, Synthesis, shows how the elementary particles may be combined to build hadrons and nuclei. The fundamental interactions responsible for the forces in all systems become less and less evident in increasingly complex systems. Such systems are in fact dominated by many-body phenomena. A section on neutrino oscillations and one on nuclear matter at high temperatures bridge the field of "nuclear and particle physics" and "modern astrophysics and cosmology". New developments are covered, e. g. in sections on the double beta decay including a discussion of the possibility of a neutrinoless decay and its implications for the standard model. This concise text, translated into many languages, has become a standard reference for advanced and undergraduate courses.
Customer Reviews:
Up to date and State of the art.......2000-08-09
Povh, Rith, Scholz, and Zetsche have written an exceptional book about nuclei and particles. It is comprehensive, but not too elaborate to confuse the reader, it is up to date, but provides a thorough guide to the contemporary topics, and it has an unusual structure that is very compelling: In part one, the decomposition of matter down to the structures of elementary particles is presented, in part two, the synthesis of composite systems out of these fundamental particles and their interactions is discussed. This approach is - from a structural point of view - a brilliant idea.
So why do I rate this book with 4 stars only? Maybe because I personally like Donald Perkins' book on high-energy phyics even better (and if the new edition is as good as announced it will probably remain my preferece). The nuclear physics content (my personal field of interest) is also only briefly addressed in the book by Povh et al. (Perkin's book of course contains no introduction to nuclear structure at all, even on a very rough scale, but it has its focus clearly only on high-energy physics whereas Povh et al. also address nuclear structure issues). Clearly, Povh et al. focus on the introduction to a wide field where addtional reading is required anyway.
It would be highly desirable if the authors could enlarge their interesting introductory textbook by a few topical results of nuclear structure physics. But all in all, it is a very good approach to the world of nuclei, particles, and their interactions.
Average customer rating:
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Neutrino Physics (High Energy Physics, Cosmology and Gravitation)
Kai Zuber
Manufacturer: Taylor & Francis
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0750307501 |
Book Description
Neutrino physics remains one of the most exciting fields of fundamental physics today. The neutrino's position at the intersection of particle physics, astrophysics, and nuclear physics ensures continuing interest in the subject. Major activities at accelerators like Fermilab, KEK and CERN, in addition to underground facilities like Gran Sasso, Kamioka and Sudbury, continue to enhance our understanding of the origins and properties of neutrinos, and their implications for the Standard Model and cosmology. Neutrino Physics provides an up to date and comprehensive introduction to the subject as well as an invaluable resource for researchers in physics and astrophysics. Starting with a brief historical overview the author proceeds to review fundamental neutrino properties, the neutrino mass question, and their place within and beyond the Standard Model. The final chapters examine the role of neutrinos in modern astroparticle physics, cosmology and the dark matter problem. The book concludes with a summary of the current status of neutrino physics and the implications of recent results. Written to be accessible to readers from different backgrounds in nuclear, particle or astrophysics and with a detailed reference list, this title will be essential for any researcher or advanced student who needs to understand modern neutrino physics.
Book Description
The recent groundbreaking discovery of nonzero neutrino masses and oscillations has put the spotlight on massive neutrinos as one of the key windows on physics beyond the standard model as well as into the early universe. This third edition of the invaluable book Massive Neutrinos in Physics and Astrophysics is an introduction to the various issues related to the theory and phenomenology of massive neutrinos for the nonexpert, providing at the same time a complete and up-to-date discussion on the latest results in the field for the active researcher. It is designed not merely to be a guide but also as a self-contained tool for research with all the necessary techniques and logics included. Specially emphasized are the various implications of neutrino discoveries for the nature of new forces. Elementary discussions on topics such as grand unification, left-right symmetry and supersymmetry are presented. The most recent cosmological and astrophysical implications of massive neutrinos are also dealt with.
Customer Reviews:
Exceptional Insight.......2004-02-05
A generous thank you goes out from myself goes out to Dr. Solomey's relatively short book about our search for the neutrino. As a fellow physicist myself I find his readings to be insightful enough to be appreciated by any reader and simple enough to be understood by someone outside of the particle physics community. The illustrations and the graphs add to the ease of reading without taking losing any professionalism or importance of material. Exceptional work, and I can't wait for his next book to come out.
Semi-Technical history with nice artwork........1999-05-06
I read the book because particle physics is a hobby of mine. The almost-coffee-table book is clear and reads well, if a bit too wordy. DO NOT be scared by this book's subject, it is a grade school tome compared to many mind-bending works on the market. The artwork is clean and concise. The scientific library series is always superb.
An enjoyable and most informative book........1997-08-03
The book is an entertaining account of the effort to understand the most minute and fundamental bits of nature. Thanks to its roots in lectures for the general public the book is readable and provides glimpses into the persons and personalities behind this never-ending effort.
One of the most fascinating themes explored and explained here is the connection between the infinitesimal (neutrino) and the almost infinite (universe). Spectacular photographs and concise drawings complement the well-written text.
The author is somewhat harsh on theorists in the first 150 pages although he mellows and restores some balance in the end. Students contemplating a pursuit of theoretical science are well-advised to either ignore the comments or read the whole book before they make up their mind.
J.M. Karanikas
An informative look into particle physics for everyone........1997-06-06
This book is not only a collection of great pictures, entertaining captions, and interesting stories, it is also packed with information.
The history of modern physics is explained leading up to questions of nature that we have today. The neutrino is a small particle that will have great influence on the nature of things. We need to know more about it and in so doing we will learn about the world we live in. This book uses the neutrino as a cornerstone in explaining many modern physical concepts. - John J. Adams
Customer Reviews:
Great.......2000-04-18
It is strongly recommended to read this book for a fundemental understanding of neutrino problems
Average customer rating:
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Are There Really Neutrinos?
Allan Franklin
Manufacturer: Westview Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0813341280 |
Book Description
In this intriguing and accessible book, physicist Allan Franklin examines the experiments on neutrino oscillations. He argues that this history gives us good reason to believe in the existence of the neutrino, a particle that interacts so weakly with matter that its interaction length is measured in light years of lead. Only recently, the scientific process has provided evidence of the elusive neutrino. Written in a style accessible to any reader with a college education in physics, Are There Really Neutrinos? is of interest to students and researchers alike.
Average customer rating:
- Excellent Practical Text
- Excellent Practical Text
- Superbly written
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Getting Started with QNX Neutrino 2 -- A Guide for Realtime Programmers
Robert Krten
Manufacturer: Parse Software Devices
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0968250114 |
Book Description
Getting Started with QNX Neutrino 2 presents a detailed description of QNX's latest operating system, Neutrino. It includes lots of tested code samples, diagrams, and descriptions of the key features, such as message passing, interrupt service routines, and, most importantly, resource managers. Written in an informal, easy-to-read style, the book is suitable for junior programmers right up through senior systems architects. Code samples are available online.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent Practical Text.......2001-07-20
I have used this text twice for instructing a course on real-time and concurrent programming. The author's approach is very practical (as opposed to theoretical) and makes it easier for students to quickly understand the material. Anyone wishing to discover or use a nicely-crafted RTOS should get this book and download Neutrino.
Excellent Practical Text.......2001-07-20
I have used this text twice for instructing a course on real-time and concurrent programming. The author's approach is very practical (as opposed to theoretical) and, when combined with the sample code, makes it easy for students to quickly understand the material. Anyone wishing to learn or use a nicely-crafted RTOS should get this book and download Neutrino.
Superbly written.......2000-06-22
I found this to be an excellent resource for Nuetrino users, ranging from the most inexperienced user all the way to the senior Neutrino programmer. Rob Krten has captured the essence of QNX's Neutrino in a richly featured guide that includes in depth understanding of the operating system and perceptive glances at the architecture itself.
Most programming references on the market today do not have the insight into the architecture of the operating system like this extensive programming guide has.
A must for all Neutrino users at any stage of development. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND IT...
Average customer rating:
- Nice book for checking all kinds of info
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Stars as Laboratories for Fundamental Physics: The Astrophysics of Neutrinos, Axions, and Other Weakly Interacting Particles (Theoretical Astrophysics)
Georg G. Raffelt
Manufacturer: University Of Chicago Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0226702723 |
Book Description
The first extended work of its kind, Stars as Laboratories for Fundamental Physics stands at the intersection of two burgeoning fields, astrophysics and particle physics. Georg Raffelt, one of the world's leading researchers in this field, describes what the study of stars reveals about fundamental particle interactions.
Raffelt presents the many uses of stellar astrophysics for research in basic particle physics. He focuses primarily on the properties and nongravitational interactions of elementary particles. Numerous graphs and figures complement the text.
Stars as Laboratories for Fundamental Physics is a valuable reference for cosmologists, astrophysicists, and particle physicists.
Customer Reviews:
Nice book for checking all kinds of info.......2001-11-07
This book is a bible for those who do astroparticlephysics. I warmly recommend to all PhD students as well as people writing reviews of subjects close to this area. Georg has done great work especially in marking down all references.
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