Things I recommend (non-medical)

• Reading
  • ANYTHING by Isaac Asimov.
    __Nonfiction______
  • Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution by Steven Levy and Steven Levy
  • Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government Saving Privacy in the Digital Age by Steven Levy
  • 109 East Palace: Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos by Jennet Conant
  • The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage by Clifford Stoll
  • Last Breath: Cautionary Tales from the Limits of Human Endurance by Peter Stark.
  • Catch Me If You Can by Frank Abagnale - Young man takes up fraud for a living. Fascinating, fun story. Very good movie, excellent book.
  • Miller Planisphere's - OK not quite a book, but a durable, easy to use plastic wheel that allows you to dial up the view of the night sky for any date and time, great for identifying stars and constellations. - Available - in 2 versions for different northern hemisphere latitude ranges.
  • The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks.
  • The Anthropologist from Mars by Oliver Sacks.
  • In His Image by Paul Brand and Phillip Yancy.
  • Fearfully and Wonderfully Made by Paul Brand and Phillip Yancy.
  • Pain the Gift Nobody Wants by Paul Brand and Phillip Yancy.
  • Bringing Down the House: How Six Students Took Vegas for Millons by Ben Mezrich
    __Fiction_________
  • The House of God, the Classic Novel of Life and Death in an American Hospital by Samuel Shem, M.D. - Fiction, but you don't want to know how true it is. A cult classic in the medical field.
  • The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Return of the King, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. by J.R.R. Tolkien. Truly a timeless classic.
  • A Million Little Pieces by James Frey. Despite the controversy over how much of this book is true, it's a good fun read. It's my personal decision to list it in the fiction section, because that's how I look at it, a good, fun story, which captivated millions of American.
  • My Friend Leonard by James Frey. See above.
• References.
  • Wikipedia the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.
  • Google. All good searches start with Google.
  • Amazon.com I know it's a book seller's site, but for finding a book, I've not found anything that beats it. Never thought I'd find an online site that beat browsing in a book store.
  • Project Gutenberg Project Gutenberg is the Internet's oldest producer of FREE electronic books.
  • Internet Movie Database. The site claimes to be "the biggest, best, most award-winning movie site on the planet" - for good reason.
  • Google Maps. Best maps on the internet.
  • PubMed PubMed is a service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine and the National Institute of Health that allows MEDLINE searches for medical articles.
  • units.txt and units-egs.txt
• Scientific Sites.
  • Astronomy: Build a scale model of the solar system - enter the size of the Sun you want and it will give you the scale diameter and distance of the planets. Don't just look at the page, go out and try building a scale model of the Solar System. You'll be amazed at it's vastness. - If you start with a 4 inch (10 cm) diameter sun, earth is just under 1 mm diameter and 35 feet away, Pluto will be 0.1 mm diameter about 1/4 mile away.
  • Astronomy: Cartes du Ciel - an AWESOME free and POWERFULL sky chart's program.
  • Chemistry: WebElements.com. Hands down the best site on the periodic table and elements on the web!
  • Science is fun: Mr. Styles' Chemistry site how to make chemistry fun. (Largely by blowing things up.)
  • units.txt List of units of measurements & their converstions I've collected and found helpful over the years. and units-egs.txt List of examples of things using these units.
  • Music
    • Bach's "Goldenberg Variations" - See Wikipedia's article for details.
  • Software
    • Text and Hexadecimal Editor: Ultraedit . The best text editor in existence. Includes macros, advance search and replace capabilities, column modes, open/save directly from/to FTP, of course spell checking.
    • Irfanview "IrfanView is a very fast, small, compact and innovative FREEWARE (for non-commercial use) graphic viewer for Windows." - The best.
    • Astronomy: Cartes du Ciel - an AWESOME free and POWERFULL sky chart's program.
    • Database: MySql. "The world's most popular open source database." Used widely in Linux for web based databases applications. Licensed under GNU General Public License. A few years ago I installed it - with some difficulty - on a Windows 95 based system using Apache and PHP. -- Don't ask me how I did it. I don't remember.
  • Video clips online.
    • The Mentos and Coke Video featured on NPR
  • Just for fun.
    • This American Life For a relaxing evening. Turn on your computer and listen to an episode of "This American Life" produced by Ira Glass
    • Improv Everywhere " Improv Everywhere causes scenes of chaos and joy in public places." -- Very funny web page, look around at the dozens of "Missions"
  • Movies. -- Lots of great movies out there, here are some of my favorites. . . Random order?
    • Crash Well deserved the 2006 Academy Award Best Motion Picture of the Year award it won. The best story I've seen for a very long time - a must see. Warning, it's not a happy story.
    • The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), The Return of the King (2003), The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) -- I waited almost 20 years after reading this series for the live action film to be made and was not dissapointed.
    • Who the #$&% Is Jackson Pollock? -- True story about a 73 year old truck driver who buys a painting at a thrift shop for $5.00, becomes convinced it is a Jackson Pollock, and takes on the art world to try and prove she's right. Fun, story, interesting glimpse into the art industry.
  
  
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