Richard Feynman

I decided not to go up the LSE today. John Milton was due to speak about Francis Bacon - about whom I know little, but also about whom I don't really wish to know anything more. Instead, I spent the morning finishing reading Shapin's History of Science and Its Sociological Reconstructions - a wholly unconvincing piece of SSK.

As I have wound down my obsessive MSc work, so it has freed up time for some other things. Exercise for instance. I have now completed the first 5 workouts from the 49-DVD box set that Linda has recently acquired from the USA. These are weight workout and leave me really aching badly. I am not keeping up with the schedule but at least I have started. I have added around 15 lbs of weight over the last 6 or 7 months which is not good. So at least I have started to do something about it. Maybe 3 or 4 months time I will have some progress.

Over lunch today - a very sensible poached eggs on toast - I watched an old edition of Horizon that I acquired on the internet not long ago - This was the second Richard Feynman programme, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, from 1981. Feynman died at just 69 years old. He is one of those people whose loss I have felt most. The world is a worse place for his absence. What would SSK make of his approach? Oddly enough, I find that I have 14 books either by or on Feynman.

These seem to both be pictures in some way related to apple.com - not sure why

Later in the afternoon I re-read the chapter from What do you care what other people think? about Arlene. Of all the films I've seen, or music I've heard, or books I've read, the story of Feynman's marriage to Arlene is still one of the saddest things I have ever experienced.