Web Information vs the Library's Collection

Bob Berring, professor at Berkeley Law, talks about the differences between what free legal information on the Web offers versus professionally organized and authoritative legal research.

Film: Dr. No, Sean Connery

Films: Adveture, Drama, Comedy - Free DVD Rental!

Being John Malkovich (DVD): John Cusack, Cameron Diaz, John Malkovich (1999)

Comedy: A puppeteer discovers a hidden doorway in his office, which turns out to be a portal into John Malkovitch (the famous actor)'s mind. Upon entering the portal, one gets to be inside Malkovitch's mind for 15 odd minutes. As with any great discovery of this century, the ultimate question immediately arises : 'How can we make money out of this?' He and his co-worker promptly set out to exploit this discovery. It doesn't take long for things to go haywire.

Dr. No (DVD): Sean Connery, Ursula Andress (1963)

Adventure: James Bond (007) is Britain's top agent and is on an exciting mission, to solve the mysterious murder of a fellow agent. The task sends him to Jamacia, where he joins forces with Quarrel and a loyal CIA agent, Felix Leiter. While dodging tarantulas, "fire breathing dragons" and a trio of assassins, known as the three blind mice. Bond meets up with the beautiful Honey Ryder and goes face to face with the evil Dr. No.

Hunting the Hidden Dimension (DVD): James Garner (1997)

Documentary: This movie is a 3D IMAX film, which is exciting to watch no matter what's playing. It featured the first-time ever scanning electron microscope (SEM) movie sequences. These sequences were in synthesized color (recorded with a system patented by David Scharf) and true 3D stereoscopic imaging. The film was engaging and interesting as it used various forms of scientific imaging such as macro and micro-photography and schlieren imaging to convey the story. However, the SEM sequences of insects, which ran over 5 minutes, were the highlite of the film.

Richard III (DVD): Ian McKellen, Annette Bening (1995)

Drama: William Shakespeare's classic play is brought into the present with the setting as Great Britian in the 1930s. Civil war has erupted with the House of Lancaster on one side, claiming the right to the British throne and hoping to bring freedom to the country. Opposing is the House of York, commanded by the infamous Richard who rules over a fascist government and hopes to install himself as a dictator monarch.

Sin Nombre (DVD): Spanish (2009)

Foreign: Honduran teenager Sayra reunites with her father, an opportunity for her to potentially realize her dream of a life in the U.S. Moving to Mexico is the first step in a fateful journey of unexpected events.

The Breakfast Club (DVD): Emilio Estevez, Paul Gleason, Molly Ringwald (1985)

Drama: They were five total strangers, with nothing in common, meeting for the first time. A brain, a beauty, a jock, a rebel and a recluse. Before the day was over, they broke the rules. Bared their souls. And touched each other in a way they never dreamed possible.

The Pianist (DVD): Adrien Brody (2002)

Drama/Biography: The true story of Wladyslaw Szpilman who, in the 1930s, was known as the most accomplished piano player in all of Poland, if not Europe. At the outbreak of the Second World War, however, Szpilman becomes subject to the anti-Jewish laws imposed by the conquering Germans. By the start of the 1940s, Szpilman has seen his world go from piano concert halls to the Jewish Ghetto of Warsaw and then must suffer the tragedy of his family deported to a German concentration camps, while Szpilman is conscripted into a forced German Labor Compound. At last deciding to escape, Szpilman goes into hiding as a Jewish refugee where he is witness to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (April 19, 1943 - May 16, 1943) and the Warsaw Uprising (1 August to 2 October 1944)

The Princess Bride (DVD): Cary Elwes, Billy Crystal, Robin Wright Penn (1987)

Adventure/Comedy/Fantasy: A classic fairy tale, with swordplay, giants, an evil prince, a beautiful princess, and yes, some kissing as read by a kindly grandfather.

Physics: Books Your Professors Wish You Read

An Introduction to Error Analysis: The Study of Uncertainties in Physical Measurements (BOOK): by John R. Taylor

Score a hit! The book reveals the exceptional skill of the author as lecturer and teacher. –The Physics Teacher

A high-quality resource [students] can continue to learn from, even after they graduate. –Physics Today

The need for error analysis is captured in the book's arresting cover shot - of the 1895 Paris train disaster. The early chapters teach elementary techniques of error propagation and statistical analysis to enable students to produce successful lab reports. Later chapters treat a number of more advanced mathematical topics, with many examples from mechanics and optics. End-of-chapter problems include many that call for use of calculators or computers, and numerous figures help readers visualize uncertainties using error bars.

This is a well written book with good illustrations, index and general bibliography...The book is well suited for engineering and science courses at universities and as a basic reference text for those engineers and scientists in practice. –Strain, Journal of the British Society for Strain Measurement

Cosmology (BOOK): by Steven Weinberg

"Time is right for a survey of the physics of what has become a large and well-developed subject. Weinberg has done it, in an impressive fashion. He presents a full and careful assessment of the broad range of physics of modern cosmology, from the tools for measurements of the structure and evolution of the universe we see around us to the puzzles of dark matter and dark energy and the ideas about what the universe was like in the remote past, before it could have been described by the well-tested part of the theory."--Jim Peebles, Princeton University

"This book tackles the main events of today's cosmology: cosmic acceleration observed with supernovae, the exquisite structure of the cosmic microwave background, and the evidence for dark matter. Weinberg pays close attention to the historical development and summarizes the observations with care. He brings deep knowledge of the underlying physics and weaves these threads together into a rich text that will be of great value to astronomers and physicists. The first half of this book is a wonderful introduction to cosmology, suitable for a graduate course or for someone coming into the field from a neighboring region of the scientific forest. The second half is an original development of the theory for the growth of inhomogeneities in the Universe. Everyone who works on cosmology will find something to learn in this book.—Robert P. Kirshner, Harvard University

"Nobel laureate, Steven Weinberg, is known not only for his exceptional contribution to modern physics, but also for his incomparable pen...With his unsurpassed ability to explain even the most difficult mathematical and conceptual steps with a few strokes of his pen, Weinberg takes the reader from the basics of cosmological kinetics and dynamics...to advanced topics."—Mathematical Reviews

In Search of Time: The Science of a Curious Dimension (BOOK): by Dan Falk

Beginning with a 5000-year-old tomb in Drogheda, Ireland, illuminated only at the winter solstice, science writer Falk asks the question, "What is time? The stuff that flows or a dimension, like space?" Falk explores the origins of calendar time, from primitive astronomical observatories to the precision clocks of today.

Though the movement of the heavens provided the basis for years, months, days and even the seven-day week, it wasn't until the Catholic Church needed to date important events like Easter that reconciling the lunar and solar calendars became a major concern; as such, the Church became "one of the strongest supporters of precision astronomy and timekeeping." Falk seamlessly combines science with literary and philosophical observations and digresses to fascinating topics like root notions of past and future, the vagaries of memory and the behavior of birds at breakfast time. Rounding out his multi-course feast, Falk contrasts Newton's notion of "absolute, true, and mathematical" time with Einstein's final words in 1955, "the distinction of past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion," to present modern speculations on black holes and the universe's future.—Publisher’s Weekly

Naming Infinity: A True Story of Religious Mysticism and Mathematical Creativity (BOOK): by Loren Graham and Jean-Michel Kantor

The most unusual book I have read this year. –Alex Beam, Boston Globe

A passionate confluence of mathematical creation and mystical practices is at the center of this extraordinary account of the emergence of set theory in Russia in the early twentieth century. The starkly drawn contrast with mathematical developments in France illuminates the story, and the book is electric with portraits of the great mathematicians involved: the tragic, the unfortunate, the villainous, the truly admirable. The authors offer an account of Infinity that is brief, deft, serious, and accessible to non-mathematicians, and their evocation of the mathematical circles of the period is so intimately written that one feels as if one had lived, worked, and suffered alongside the protagonists. Graham and Kantor have given us an amazing piece of mathematical history. –Barry Mazur, Harvard University

This absorbing book tells astonishing stories about some of the most important developments in mathematics of the past century...Perhaps the most moving section of the book is that dealing with the famous Moscow School of Mathematics in Soviet times. Its origins are traced to the Lusitania seminar established by Egorov and Luzin (the source of the name "Lusitania" is obscure). The enthusiasm that these teachers inspired in their students is clearly conveyed, as is the atmosphere of intellectual excitement, despite the freezing lecture rooms (the rule that lectures could not take place if the room temperature fell below -5C was ignored)...This is a remarkable book, illuminating the history of 20th-century mathematics and its practitioners. The stories it tells are important and too little known. It is clearly a labor of love and deserves a wide audience: it is an outstanding portrayal of mathematics as a fundamentally human activity and mathematicians as human beings.
--Tony Mann (Times Higher Education )

Fifty years ago, C. P. Snow gave a soon-to-be famous lecture on the "Two Cultures" of modern society, the culture of the humanities and the culture of science, and the need to bridge the gap between them. Today we are more likely to hear debates about the alleged gulf between science and religion. Both divides are bridged in this superb book, which takes us from French rationalism at the turn of the 20th century to a thriving center of world-class mathematics in Moscow, where the presiding figures were also devout Russian Orthodox believers of a mystical bent. –John Wilson, Christianity Today