Monthly Archives: March 2025

Science Notes (3/21/25)

I’ve written here before about the Libby app I use to access the local library’s ebook catalog. Over the years, I’ve read hundreds of library books without ever having to actually visit the library. (Which is a pity in some ways. I’ve always loved libraries and even was a student librarian in high school. And there is value in being able to wander and browse.)

A while back the Libby app seriously expanded access to periodicals, so I’ve been reading the British magazine, New Scientist.

Which has turned out to be yet another reason to take notes…

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Pi Day Friday

Happy Pi Day! Also, happy 146th birthday to Albert Einstein. (I love that his birthday is Pi Day. Seems appropriate and makes it so easy to remember.) Over the years, I’ve written quite a bit here about the weirdly omnipresent transcendental number we call pi (p) — 3.14159 (roughly speaking).

As such, I won’t go into it again here today. (Though I do plan something for my Substack blog — where there is a fresh audience for old posts.)

This is actually a Friday Notes post, although — change for the new year— I’m dropping the standardized title format I’d started using for day-based category posts.

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Netflix: 3 Body Problem

It’s funny, sometimes, the twists and turns of life. When I first heard of The Three Body Problem (2006), a science fiction novel by Liu Cixin, it didn’t grab my attention because I’m a little weary of “alien invasion” stories. But I’d read and enjoyed Ball Lightning (2004), so I watched Three Body, the Chinese adaptation of the first novel.

I posted last year about how much I liked it. So much so that I recently watched and posted about it again. And re-read the first novel (I read the trilogy last year). I even watched the first season of the Netflix adaptation.

To my eyes, it demonstrated everything that’s gone wrong with modern writing for TV and movies. The contrast between the Chinese adaptation and the Netflix one is stark and revealing.

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