Wild wonderful Wednesday

Once again, I am going to do something a bit different om this Wild Wonderful Wednesday. It is the first 5th Wednesday of the year (try saying that five times quickly!). And while we often have taken a walk somewhere, even if it is through our personal history (like this time), this month I would like to take you on a walk through our reading habits. 

Shirley and I both like to read or watch detective stories. Sherlock Holmes (in all versions, classic or modern), all of Agatha Christie’s characters (although the Belgian Hercule Poirot has a special place) and many other detectives make for fun and educative reading. We do not mind what the setting is. We have read Brother Cadfael mysteries set in the 13th century, Inspector Monk mysteries set in London of the 19th century, or Inspector Pitt mysteries set a bit later in the same city. 

On our last Home Assignment, David Cron took us downtown Los Angeles and mentioned a series with Detective Bosch which is set in LA (and we visited a building from one of the books). It was interesting to me that detective Bosch’s first name is Hieronymus. He is named after Jheronimus of Aken or Hieronymus Bosch, who was a Dutch painter from Brabant in the 15th century. The detective is not a painter, but the painter’s works are rather grotesque - which types of scenes detective Bosch often has to deal with. 

Last year I read a whole series about Owen Archer who is - can you guess - an archer who becomes a detective of sorts (or spy or apothecary) in the 14th century. It is wonderful how books can take you anywhere at all. The Foundation series from Isaac Asimov will even take you into outer space in the future. It’s science fiction, but it is basically a detective story. 

And these books have taken me to Canterbury, York and London. They have taken me to Shrewsbury and over the border into Wales. I have traveled with Maigret to Paris of the past or with Bosch to Los Angeles. Ray Bradbury has even taken me to Mars. Truly wild, wonderful destinations, all from the comfort of a nice, dry couch on any wet, dreary Belgian day. 

Where have you traveled in your reading? What do you like to read?  

Whodunit Wednesday - From detectives to forensics to physics

Shirley and I like detective series and enjoy Sherlock Holmes (and its newer versions), Wallander (from Sweden) and of course most Agatha Christie detectives. Anyone who has read about Hercule Poirot will know that, no, he is not a Frenchman, even though he speaks French. He is a Belgian and served in the Belgian police before moving to England because of the war and setting up as the best detective in the world. 

Much of what we enjoy about detectives also has to do with forensics. It is amazing what can be done these days with technology. “Fingermarks” were first used to identify criminals around the time that Poirot was supposed to have lived and worked. But it was much later that Ingrid Daubechies came up with a mathematical model which is used in many ways today, including by the FBI in stocking fingerprints. She developed wavelets which are the basis of computers and processors and digital processes. As a 6 year-old Ingrid would go to sleep multiplying numbers by two from memory. She was the first woman to become a full professor of mathematics at Princeton University. But she was born and raised in Houthalen, Belgium, not far from where we live. 

And speaking of physics, Belgian priest and scientist George Lemaître was the first to present the idea of the Big Bang theory of physics in 1927. At the time, most scientists were working with an idea of an eternal universe - one that had always been the same and would always remain the same. This fit with the newer ideas of the evolution theory and offered the millions of years necessary to believe that all of this could happen by chance. Lemaître posited the Big Bang theory because of increasing evidence that there must be a beginning to creation.