Paul's blog

Archive for the ‘Books’ Category

Tomorrow I’ll be headed to San Antonio, Texas, to join my wife who’s there for business, and to visit some good friends.
I know that there are rumors that the one and only true reason for my trip to San Antonio is an opportunity to raid the various local Half Price Book stores, but I, of course, have to deny these slanderous and vile rumors: the fact that I travel with a ridiculously large, yet almost empty suitcase for just four days is merely incidental.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to meeting my friends.

What I’m most certainly NOT looking forward to, is the actual flight.

I have always been fascinated by flying and airplanes.

However, ever since my maiden flight, in 1973, in an old tail dragger over the skies of that sorry excuse for a North Sea resort town, Skegness, Lincolnshire, England, flown by a seemingly deaf, blind and dumb WWI veteran, complete with stuttering engine, to the more comfortable trips in Boeing ‘Jumbo’ 747’s of such respectable companies like KLM, Quantas. Garuda en Singapore Airlines, I have been ambivalent about being the actual subject of transportation in these otherwise fascinating flying machines.

Yes, while at different times at different levels of intensity, I suffer from fear of flying.

Unlike most people with phobias, I don’t think my fear is particularly unreasonable or irrational!

Let’s face it: these things DO crash from time to time!

Sometimes I wonder about all those tens of thousands of people who, on any given day, voluntarily board an airplane.
Don’t they see the risk?

Are ALL those people of the mistaken but extremely popular opinion, that, yes, planes DO crash, but this, as by a law of nature, always happens exclusively to ‘other people’?

While this statement has been true, especially for me, so far … am I the only one who sees the fallacy in such a notion?
Don’t they see that there IS a risk that THEY will die in a crash?
True, the odds are firmly against it, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible! Do they simply dismiss the risk based on its low odds?

But don’t these same people buy lottery tickets, hoping to become overnight millionaires on even worse odds?

Okay, admitted, that’s maybe not a good example: the ‘bad’ outcomes of each ‘bet’ aren’t really in the same ball park: losing a few bucks by ‘not winning the lottery’ isn’t nearly as life altering as dying in a fiery plane crash.

And here I am, pondering all this, knowing full well, come tomorrow, that I’ll take a deep breath, drive to the airport, park my car, check in, buy a Scientific American, eat the traditional hot dog at the food stand between gates 123 and 125 in Terminal A, and finally board that plane… accepting my fate, “playing the odds”…

 

… just not one of mine …

… but it certainly and easily could have been one!

The following is a quote from a book I just finished (and recommended earlier: this is how chapter 21 starts in “The Black Hole War” by the renowned theoretical (theoradical!) physicist Leonard Susskind).

I post it here, because this is a perfect example of the type of conversations my wife and I sometimes have.

One morning, when I went down to breakfast, my wife Anne, remarked that my T-shirt was on backwards; the V shape woven into the fabric was in the back. Later in the day, when I came home from a jog, she laughed and said: “Now it’s inside out.” That set me to thinking: how many ways are there to wear a T-shirt? Anne mockingly said, “That’s the sort of stupid thing you physicists are always thinking about.” Just to prove my superior cleverness, I quickly declared that there are 24 ways to wear a T-shirt. You can stick your head through any of 4 holes. That leaves 3 holes for your torso. Having picked a neck hole and a torso hole, that leaves 2 possibilities for your left arm. Once you decide where your left arm goes, there is only one choice for your  right arm. So that means 4 x 3 x 2 = 12 ways to choose from. But then you can turn the shirt inside out, giving another 12, so I proudly announced that I had solved the problem: 24 ways to wear a T-shirt. Anne was not impressed. She replied, “No, there are 25 ways. You forgot one.” Puzzled I asked, “What did I miss?” With a look that would freeze hell, she said, “You can roll it in a ball and shove it …” You get the idea ¹.

¹. Since writing this, Anne has discovered at least 10 more ways to wear a T-shirt.

Sometimes … you just can’t win.

In episode 29 of the Star Trek series “The Next Generation”, the holodeck computer generates a character from the Sherlock Holmes novels by Arthur Conan Doyle: the villainous Professor Moriarty.

The interesting twist is that this holographically created image, at some point, starts to realize that he, in fact, IS a computer generated entity, and not the actual human being he is supposed to represent.

A remarkable feat! Only outdone by his success in actually leaving the holodeck.

I found that a very interesting episode, mostly because I have often thought along those lines myself (and who hasn’t?) .. what IF? What IF we were just part of a computer simulation? Could it be we’re just somebody’s (cruel) science project? Could it be that the universe as we perceive it, is just a hologram?

As I recently found out, scientifically, this is maybe not such a crazy nutjob idea after all.

The idea more or less started when the Dutch physicist (and Nobel laureate) Gerard van ‘t Hooft proposed his holographic principle, which, simply put, states that all information in a three dimensional space can be mapped onto a two dimensional boundary surface of that space. Or, to turn that around, the information described on a two dimensional surface can be projected in a three dimensional ‘holograph’.

The American scientist (who started his career at age thirteen as a plumber) Leonard Susskind developed that idea further.  If you find the idea of a holographic universe intriguing, you may consider getting yourself his book “An Introduction To Black Holes, Information And The String Theory Revolution: The Holographic Universe“ [Update: Disclaimer: This book is NOT exactly a ‘popular science’ book: it’s chockful of ‘higher’ mathematics! WAY over my head.].

Or, for a quick introduction, read the August, 2003 article in Scientific American by Professor Jacob Bekenstein.

Fascinating stuff, and I wish I would understand ten percent of it. [Update: Now that I have thumbed through the above mentioned book – that I no longer recommend for lay persons like myself – I have to humbly adjust that percentage from 10 to 1]

 

“Computer … resume program!”
 
[Update: Instead of the book mentioned above I WOULD recommend two of Leonard Susskind’s books that ARE written for the lay person. See below.]

The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics

The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design

A certain Laura Mallory, of Loganville, GA, is loudly campaigning to ban the Bible from class rooms an libraries. This young mother of four is horrified about the book’s content and fears that the book will cause children, who can’t think critically yet, to indulge in, and even attempt to experiment with, the super-natural. I’m with her on this. I also think we should ban books in which people drive cars. I mean, haven’t you read those stories where 9 year olds get into daddy’s car and cause all kinds of accidents? Comic books are probably the worst: can you imagine the horror when kids think they can do what Superman and Spiderman can do?

We should also keep them away from anything that has to do with politics: kids are so gullible, they may think that politicians actually mean what they say (although, I must admit, the chance that kids understand what politicians are saying is quite remote). In fact, we must ban any form of fiction, because it could be taken as reality, and we all know that fiction is the exact opposite of reality, and we don’t want our kids to get confused about which is which. In fact, it’s better that we don’t expose our kids to any of the craziness that’s going on out there: keep your kids in the house (which, needless to say, is TV and radio-free).

Way to go Laura Mallory! Ban that Bi… errrr hang on… I read that wrong, it’s not the Bible she wants banned, but Harry Potter books. Oh well… same thing. Evil evil evil.

Now, go take your meds.

 

(I guess no Halloween for the four Mallory kids either… can you imagine, oh horror, a night full of witchcraft?)

 

Wake up, Laura Mallory! This is the 21st century.

 

For the story, just google ‘Laura Mallory’. I lost the link to the article, but the most frightning thing about the whole story was, that there was a poll connected to the article: of over 68,000 people who took the poll, 11% agreed with her!

I live in a country where 11% of the people think Harry Potter books should be banned and are dangerous for kids to read. Maybe I am the one who needs to wake up… from a very very bad dream!

I just finished reading Sam Harris’ new book(let) “Letter to a Christian Nation”.

The book instilled in me the urge to buy a big bag full of them and go knock on people’s doors on Sunday mornings at 8am to urge them to read the ‘Better Book’.

However, I realize that in order for this crusade to have any success, the people I would be targetting would be asumed to approach religion in a rational fashion, as Sam Harris’ arguments are all very rational and logical.
Since I know from experience that even some of the smartest and best educated people I personally know have ‘decided’ to not ever let reason interfere with their religious beliefs, this expedition is doomed to fail.

So I will NOT actually go knock on people’s doors.
Which is good, because I don’t like getting up at 8am on Sunday mornings.

Instead .. I just started in Richard Dawkins’ (whom, I can proudly say, I once met. Okay, so it was during a book signing session, so what? I am actually in a picture with the Great Man himself! So! There! I bet you’re all jealous now! And so you should!) new book “The GOD Delusion”. Very promising! So far I only read the introduction, and even THAT was already delightful reading!
 

Sam Harris: Letter to a Christian Nation 

Richard Dawkins: The GOD Delusion