Remember when Moanday was a groanday because we went back to work after a nice weekend away? I’ve been free of that since I retired (seven years ago) and now lots of people are free of that.
Unfortunately, many of them are also free of a paycheck, which, as the saying goes, really gives one something to groan about. (My 401K lost an ass-puckering amount of value last quarter, so I’m groaning, too.)
I dunno about you, but I could use some comfort food…
Bang!!
I’m reading Our Mathematical Universe (2014), by Max Tegmark, and I’ll post about the book when I finish. However, he got my attention early with the topic of eternal inflation. That got me thinking about how there are some key unanswered questions regarding the Big Bang and inflation of the non-eternal sort.
Inflation certainly does need some explaining. It may be related to dark energy, as both seem to do the same sort of thing (push space apart). The putative physics of inflation is bad enough; eternal inflation is (in my view) fairy tale physics.
For one thing, eternal? Seriously? Infinite something from nothing?
Neal Stephenson, like Greg Egan, is a hard science fiction author who never fails to delight me with something new and tasty. Both Stephenson and Egan seem able to leave footprints in otherwise well-trodden ground. Stephenson, in particular, often makes me LOL.
That’s not an acronym I use very often, but it seems especially appropriate here given this post is about The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O., by Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland. The book has so many tongue-in-cheek military acronyms (DODO, DTAP, DEDE, MUON, etc) that it has a glossary at the back.
The story concerns parallel worlds, wave-function collapse, and witches.
Recently I read Dog is Love, Why and How Your Dog Loves You (2019), by Clive D.L. Wynne, an animal behavior scientist who specializes in dogs. Despite the loaded word “love” in the title, this is a science book about a search for hard evidence.
Dr. Wynne is a psychology professor at Arizona State University and director of their Canine Science Collaboratory. He’s written several other books about animal cognition: The Mental Lives of Animals (2001), Do Animals Think (2004), Evolution, Behavior and Cognition (2013).
The book is the story of Wynne’s search for exactly what it is that makes dogs special and how they got that way.
Does anyone know where I can buy a Cone of Silence?
I thought it might be a good way to safely have a friend over. (Amazon apparently doesn’t carry them.)
Recently I posted about Manifold: Time, the first book in a trilogy by Stephen Baxter, a writer new to me. As I wrote, I wasn’t very whelmed, but a bad meal at a new restaurant can be a fluke — it’s only fair to give the chef at least one more chance. (A single data point doesn’t mean much.) And I did find the overall themes a little intriguing.
As it turned out, I rather enjoyed the second one, Manifold: Space. The story stayed grounded and engaged me throughout, plus there were several cool science fiction ideas I’d never encountered before (which is kinda the point of reading hard SF). So a definite thumbs up on book number two.
Unfortunately, the third book, Manifold: Origin, didn’t do much for me.
One of my favorite fiction quotes is Hamlet saying, “I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space.” (He goes on to add, “were it not that I have bad dreams,” which, if you know the story, was a definite problem for him.) The quote has a special poignancy these days now that we’re all bounded up in our own nut shells (and trying to avoid going nuts).
There have been some unexpected upsides and down sides. Air pollution is down (an upside); reports of domestic abuse are up (a downside). Streets are cleaner, city rats are starving. Bears and wolves are roaming freely in national parks while we cower in our caves.
What changes will stick with us? How different will our future be than we might have expected (assuming we survive this)?
This TV Tuesday, from the ‘Definitely a Matter of Taste’ (DaMoT?) side of life, I thought I’d mention two TV shows that consistently make me laugh out loud a lot: Archer and Happy! (The exclamation mark is part of the title!)
These shows, especially the latter, aren’t for everyone, but they win big points with me for freshness, irreverence, and sheer creativity. Archer leans heavily towards clever pastiches, and Happy! is… well just kinda plain off-the-chain nuts. The only thing they share in common is they both have me in stitches.
Admittedly, in both cases, a few beers not only adds to the funny but is entirely appropriate and in-universe.
I was surprised to discover I’ve never posted about the Many Worlds Interpretation (MWI) of quantum physics — I would have sworn I had. I’ve mentioned it a few times, and I know I’ve discussed it in comment sections, but it seems I never tackled the subject explicitly for the record.
It’s been on my mind lately because others have talked about it. Sean Carroll’s book promoting it generated a wave of discussion. The final push for me was Jim Baggott’s Farewell to Reality, which consigns MWI to the “fairy tale physics” heap.
Since I quite agree, this seems a good follow-up to yesterday’s post.
My voracious reading habit has deep roots in libraries. The love of reading comes from my parents, but libraries provided a vast smörgåsbord to browse and consume. Each week I’d check out as many books as I could carry. I discovered science fiction in a library (the Lucky Starr series, with Isaac Asimov writing as Paul French, is the first I remember).
Modern adult life, I got out of the habit of libraries (and into book stores and now online books). But now the Cloud Library has reinvigorated my love of all those free books, especially the ones I missed along the way.
For instance, Farewell to Reality: How Modern Physics Has Betrayed the Search for Scientific Truth (2014), by Jim Baggott.
Posts pertaining to programming!
Logos con carne 