I started the Friday Notes series in March of 2021. (I would have mentioned the five-year anniversary in last month’s edition had I noticed it.) Since then (61 posts), I have managed to whittle down long-standing, and in some cases ancient, piles of notes.
The piles aren’t all vanquished; likely they never will be. New notes spring up like mushrooms, so it seems there will always be fodder for future posts.
Or at least endless editions of Friday Notes.
This Science Notes series (a subset of the Friday Notes series) gives me a chance to record bits of science articles that catch my eye and seem worth sharing. I’ve been doing this since my library app provided access to a huge number of online magazines.
Nearly all of which don’t interest me — in some cases, seriously don’t interest me. Bridal and Fan magazines are an obvious example, but there are myriad magazines devoted to interests that don’t interest me at all.
But I do like the ones devoted to science, and some articles fit some receptor in my mind enough to generate a note.
I don’t usually write two Friday Notes posts in one month, but I was dog-sitting my funny little “nephew” Bentley for a week, and every time I don’t post for a while it’s hard to get back into blogging mode. In fact, it’s harder each time. I increasingly find social media less and less interesting or rewarding.
Some of that is on me, but more of it is disappointment and disgust with social media and technology companies in general. A bit more on that below.
Mostly, though, I wanted to — at long last — post the last two notes that have been lingering on my Apple Notes app for years (in one case, since 2018).
Being retired, along with doing all my TV watching via streaming services, has the consequence of almost completely disconnecting me from the weekly rhythm. Weekends mean nothing when every day is Saturday. To create some structure, I follow a simple schedule. For instance, Mondays I do laundry and Thursdays I buy groceries.
More to the point here, Monday (and sometimes Tuesday) evenings are for YouTube videos, many of which are science related. Last night I watched Jim Baggott give two talks at the Royal Institution, one about mass, the other about loop quantum gravity (LQG).
In the latter, Baggott mentioned gravity waves and that generated a Brain Bubble.
It took almost exactly 100 years. In 1905, über-geek hero Albert Einstein presented four papers of major significance to the world. One of those was about Special Relativity. It took Einstein ten more years to figure out the General theory of Relativity. He presented that work in November of 1915.
One of the predictions of General Relativity is that gravity warps space, creating gravity waves (which move at the speed of light). And while many other predictions of GR have been tested and confirmed (to very high precision), we’ve never quite managed to detect gravity waves.
Until September 14th of 2015!
I have friends who are Hippie Earth Mother types. They tend to have in common a reflexive hate for non-hippie things, such as guns, nuclear power, genetically modified foods, and gasoline engines. It’s always something. Many of my programming geek friends have in common a reflexive love of Unix or a hatred of anything Microsoft.
To me, people with reflexive hates — or loves — just seem to beg for teasing, an education that certainty is dangerous, and that it’s good to not take things too seriously. (The education comes from repeatedly whacking someone’s sensitive spot and ducking, so it’s risky work.) Hot buttons one can’t be teased about lead to ugly territory: hurt feelings, broken jaws, bombs. I think it’s important to tease the deadly serious, is what I’m saying.
So I tease my Hippie Earth Mother friends that gasoline is solar power!
Posts pertaining to programming!
Logos con carne 