Today at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Professor Edwin Taylor of Carnegie Mellon University will give a physics workshop entitled 'Feynman's Sum over Paths Quantum Theory', which, despite its frightening title, is aimed at secondary school science teachers and those from universities.
This reminds us that two books are currently available about or by Richard Feynman, the remarkable Nobel prize-winner famous not only for his formidable brainpower and wonderful enthusiasm in lectures, but his love of Brazilian steel bands, with whom he used to play, and his irreverent approach to life. His colourful personality even spawned a Hong Kong Fringe Festival play about him last spring.
The new books are The Meaning of It All (Allen Lane, $170), a collection of three previously unpublished Feynman lectures from 1963 in which he emphasises the philosophical (despite his avowed dislike of philosophers), considering the role of scepticism in science, the light scientific method might throw on religious and political thought, and the 'unscientific' age of the 1960s. The other is John and Mary Gribbin's work, Richard Feynman: a Life in Science (Penguin, $135), out now in paperback.
Going against the grain Indian rice growers are horrified to discover that a Texas company, Ricetec, has patented basmati rice and trademarked the word 'basmati'. India and Pakistani groups have joined forces to fight the firm, arguing that nowhere in the US can proper basmati rice be grown and that it is a staple of South Asia. In a similar vein, Central and South American groups are fighting a patent awarded to a US company for one of their native plants.
New idea pitched James Fretwell of Nottinghamshire in England plans to make money from the World Cup by selling grass from the football grounds where your favourite team played. He has patented a plan to gather grass from pitches when it has been cut, dry it, mix it with silica gel to stop it rotting, and put them in a glass cylinder to make a paperweight to sell as a souvenir.
Roman bath discovered A Roman bath likely to have been frequented by the Emperor Augustus and the poet Horace when cold mineral baths were the rage in about 20BC might have been discovered in Tuscany, Italy.
