lurkinggherkin

"Every now and then a man's mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions." (O.W. Holmes, Sr. 1858)

Holmes would, I think, have agreed that this book is a provider of such mind-stretching ideas. Here you'll find an excellent discussion of some of the more radical new ideas from the model-building camp of theoretical physics. Taking ideas of higher dimensions and branes borrowed from string theory, Prof. Randall and co-researchers have produced interesting models of physics in which the extra dimensions of string theory are shown to not all necessarily be miniscule curled-up planck-scale regions beyond experimental probing. She demonstrates possibilities for larger additional dimensions the existence of which might be experimentally verified when the Large Hadron Collider swings into action, and alternative possibilities to supersymmetry for unification of the forces of nature.

There's not very much cosmology in this book. It mainly concentrates on spatial geometry, particle physics, quantum field theory and the (possible) relationships between them. Of course the obligatory explanations of relativity, quantum mechanics and the standard model of fundamental particles and forces, all de rigueur for any pop science tract, comprise the first half of the book.

Don't be fooled by the reassuring commentary by newspaper reviewers on the cover about how this book is 'remarkably clear'. No journalist wants to admit that they can't make head nor tail of a 'pop' science book. Though Randall steers clear of mathematics there are many abstract concepts in this book that are not at all easy to grasp, especially the idea of non-spatial symmetries and symmetry breaking. 'Remarkably clear' is a very relative term here - in that, given the inherent difficulty in explaining these subjects to the uninitiated, yes, she's done a great job; but that doesn't mean it's easy-going or accessible. In fact I would have preferred more mathematics to give a structure to hang the conceptual understanding on and give it shape - without the maths there are parts of the book that come across as a formless mass of phrases like 'inter-brane communication of symmetry breaking' - OK, I have a grasp of the ideas of symmetry and broken symmetries and branes but I can't see how or why symmetry breaking can or needs to be 'communicated' - I sort of imagined it was something that happened spontaneously, as in the well-known theoretical physics phrase 'spontaneous symmetry breaking'. But when you bring maths into a book you are always faced with the question 'Where do I start? How much do my audience know already?' so I can understand her reasons for avoiding mathematical descriptions.

I liked her sections on the Standard Model which go into more detail than Brian Greene's books. I think this book was tougher going than his books 'The Elegant Universe' or 'The Fabric of the Cosmos'. This is partly because Greene, I think, is slightly more adept at the use of analogies, and partly because Randall goes into more depth because this book is more specific in its focus than his works.

Lisa Randall has actually made a very brave move in publishing this work, because her conjectures might be disproved or at least thrown into doubt by the results of LHC experiments (whereas - contrary to what some people on the interweb seem to believe - string theory as a general concept will neither be proved nor disproved because the LHC doesn't probe anywhere near the energy scales needed to do so conclusively). More power to her elbow for doing so.

Copied from xmalx:

* Post 3 things you've done that you believe nobody else on your F-list has done.
* If anybody responds with "I've done that," add another thing.
* Encourage your friends to paste this into their own journal to list the unique things they've done.

I've seen things you people....wouldn't believe.

1) Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion
2) I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate.
3) All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain...

Sorry. Even if it's a bit of a stretch to call it three things, I thought an hommage to Roy Batty was better than anything I could contrive about myself.

...or maybe a virus? Whatever it is, I had a hangover-type thing today.

Which is most unfair. OK, so I went to a party last night. But thanks to some antibiotics I'm taking for yet another dental infection (courtesy of a broken tooth this time and a dental service that doesn't seem to understand the concept of early intervention) - I wasn't able to touch a drop of alchohol. All I had to drink was lashings and lashings of ginger beer. Maybe ginger beer and antibiotics don't mix.

I still think it's my brain saying 'You went to a party last night, therefore based on past experience you have a hangover. Take that!'

Then again maybe it's codeine withdrawal after three days of being a Solpadeine junkie.

I frickin' hate toothache.

At around about 5:00 this morning the Earth finished another complete orbit around the Sun since I drew my first breath.

Spent a lovely afternoon at the Preston Steam Rally on Sunday.

As ever, I was perturbed by the annually decreasing level of basic literacy skills amongst the sign-writers of the food stalls. It seems that it is now the norm rather than the exception for signs to contain spelling errors. I'm sympathetic towards genuine dyslexics but when someone writes 'DIET COCK' on a sign advertising drink prices and then repeats exactly the same error on another sign in the same venue, I can't see that this could be claimed as a case of dyslexia - it's too systematic. They've just failed (despite, one presumes, repeated visual exposure to its presence on cans of drink they are handling) to learn the correct spelling of the word 'Coke', or the way the 'e' modifies the sound of the preceding vowel.

I just can't understand how on earth, as they traced the word 'COCK' with their marker pen, how on earth it didn't ring any alarm bells?!

(I don't think it was a joke either.)

I was going to rant a bit about how many important, iconic works are missing from this list including a total lack of anything about mathematics, philosophy or the natural sciences and then it occurred to me that actually this is just the contents of someone's bookshelf that they posted.  Also I notice an awful lot of books that have been made into films or tv series' in this list.

OK, here goes:

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible. (not all of it word for word but a fair amount
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller (Repeatedly!)
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
37. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
38. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
39. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
40. Animal Farm - George Orwell
41. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
42. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
43. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
44. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
45. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
46. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
47. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
48. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
49. Atonement - Ian McEwan
50. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
51. Dune - Frank Herbert
52. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
53. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
54. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
55. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
56. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
57. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
58. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
59. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
60. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
61. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
62. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
63. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
64. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
65. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
66. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
67. Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding
68. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
69. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
70. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
71. Dracula - Bram Stoker
72.The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
73. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
74. Ulysses - James Joyce
75. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
76. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
77. Germinal - Emile Zola
78. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
79. Possession - AS Byatt
80. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
81. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
82. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
83. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
84. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
85. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
86. Charlotte's Web - EB White
87. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
88. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
89. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
90. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
91. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
92. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
93. Watership Down - Richard Adams
94. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
95. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
96. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
97. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
98. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
100. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie

Score = 28

Amongst the many omissions I was particularly disappointed that the Kama Sutra and The Necronomicon of Abdul Alhazred didn't make an appearance.

No more MSc until September. Completed two courseworks for which I earned 90% in both and an exam in which I scored 96%. So I think that one's going well.

The OU Cert Web Apps continues apace. Got my mark for the first module (Principles of Web Design). 61% - actually not bad considering I handed the ECA (End-of-Course Assignment) in about half-finished due to a schedule clash with the MSc Electromagnetics. I was seriously worried I might have to resit that one, so this has assuaged my fears.

I'm working on the second module (Client-Side App Development) now and it's going well, better I'd say than the first one which was a bit waffly for my liking. It's all about Javascript and the DOM (Document Object Model), with a bit of XP (eXtreme Programming) methodology thrown in. This is all good stuff and doing exactly what I wanted it to do which is plug the gaps in my IT skills set that had arisen from being kept locked in a server room and forced to work on ERP databases for ten years.

Fitness training is also going well. Progress has slowed on the resistance (weights) after rapid improvements in the first couple of months, but I am still gradually building up (I'm pushing about 3x as much weight in most routines as I was when I started). After a slow start my cardiovascular fitness has suddenly surged and I have masses more stamina (relatively speaking) than I had before. I've started jogging on the treadmills instead of restricting myself to powerwalking, and I'm jogging along and reaching my target and thinking 'actually I could easily keep going' (but I stop anyway because I don't want to knacker my ankles which I tend to have trouble with esp. the right one which still hasn't quite recovered from the broken foot escapade last year).

A bit of a milestone in yoga today. Six weeks ago we had a lesson where we concentrated on shoulderstands and headstands and I couldn't manage either without toppling over. Today - oop-la! Got into the shoulderstand. Very satisfying.

So....all is going well.

The 18th was the first anniversary of my mother's death. I meant to post something here but I was so busy last week I never got around to it. We went to her grave and tidied it up and put a new pot plant there. I've been listening to her funeral wake mix on the car hi-fi since then. I don't talk about it much but I think about her every day.

This is the kind of stuff I was brought up on.

From Allegro Non Troppo.

Part one:



Here's part two:

Got my final result I was waiting for - my Numerical Methods for PDE exam.

96%

I'm a bit worried. It's suddenly occurred to me that maybe this means I'm really, really boring.

I must start spending more time getting smashed.

I have to larf. During the past 24 hours, the inflation headline on the beeb news has gone from:

'Inflation could top 3%'

to

'Inflation now 3.3%'

to

'Inflation could top 4%'

I'm sure we couldn't have worked this last one out for ourselves.

My first coursework on PDE solution by Numerical Methods I was pretty confident about, and this was borne out by my 90% result. But I really wasn't sure how well I'd done on the Electromagnetics coursework. It involved rather more physical understanding and creative thinking and the problems were stated in a way that I felt was a bit ambiguous.

Seems I needn't have worried. I just clocked another 90%.

My smugness has non-zero divergence right now.

First, some horsey stuff. I got to canter again today. Not on my regular ride Dublin, though - I've taken the bull by the horns and transferred to Nero. This is the horse that I saw go psycho recently so it's with no small amount of trepidation.

I spent months trying to get Dublin to canter with no success. I understand Dublin, he likes to do things at his own pace, he's not the kind of horse that goes out of his way to please people and turns nasty if you try to force him to do something he doesn't feel inclined to do. A bit like me, then. Nero is more inclined to get going than Dublin but once he gets going he's difficult to hold back. Hard to steer as well, and has a bit of a wild streak. Still, if that's what it takes.....I think now might be the time to invest in some body armour.

My laptop has died. Hard disk failed and the OS has corrupted. Massive arse, really. Mostly backed up apart from some more recent stuff which I'm still hopeful of recovering. I'm using Anna's iBook for the occasional interweb fix to tide me over until I get a machine working again. I have various old desktop machines that could be resurrected but they're all buried under a big pile of junk right now. Maybe the universe is telling me that now is the time to get an eepc.

Time lately has mostly been spent decorating and catching up on OU stuff. Waiting for various MSc results.

Watched Mulan 2 with Alice earlier on. This film is so wrong on so many levels that I regretted hiring it really. The very first thing Mulan's father (who seems to speak entirely in aphorisms) utters is wrong. 'Gambling is like playing Mah Jong with blank tiles - nobody wins' he wisely intones. Well for starters Mah Jong was invented in the 19th century not the 5th, and secondly it was invented specifically with gambling in mind. As soon as he said this I realised I was probably about to watch an hour and a quarter of complete bollocks. I wasn't far wrong. The entire film seemed like a thinly veiled critique of asian culture in which the protagonists finally attain happiness by embracing western traditions of selfish individualism. I'm not claiming that cultural traditions should never be questioned or found wanting but Disney's moral certitude and sermonising, patronising approach isn't the way to go about it. I was also horrified when one of the characters sticks a pair of chopsticks up her nostrils as a comic gesture as chopsticks are among the more dangerous eating utensils and if you happen to trip over with a pair shoved in your nose it's Darwin Award time for you. Bearing in mind that this is a kids' film. Oh, and if you're going to give your daughter and her betrothed two halves of a yin-yang amulet, how about getting them the right way round? And why is the comedy sidekick in these and so many other films always, always a black guy (or at least voiced by one)? Doesn't anyone involved feel the slightest bit uncomfortable with this?

...before the consumer finance sector start pumping this stuff into the air conditioning of their high street outlets?

...or that exam went pretty well.

We'll wait and see which.

...I sit my first exam in 16 years. This should be interesting.

Swords are high up in the public perception at the moment, what with the government's recent knee-jerk banning of swords (which will of course deter criminals from owning them, being the law-abiding folk that they are).

Now, the gang killing of Paul Erhahon was a sad affair of course. At the time the murder took place, there was no mention of a sword inflicting the fatal blow. It was a knifing, straight and simple. So it was with some surprise that I read today that the murder weapon was in fact a sword.

Hmmm. Hang on a minute. It says:

"Paul was stabbed with a seven-inch sword after straying into their path near his Leytonstone home."

Seven inch sword? Even the roman Gladius, renowned for its shortness, wasn't that short! Nor was the japanese Wakisashi. The germanic Seax was known to be that short, but wasn't a sword really. It was a knife. Which is exactly what I suspect killed Paul Erhahon. A knife.

Since they're so ban-happy at the moment I do wish the government would hurry up and institute a ban on media bullshit.

The Fabric Of The Cosmos is Brian Greene's second popular science offering, following on from The Elegant Universe. His earlier work focused specifically on String Theory. In this outing, Greene takes a step back and talks about Cosmology from a broader perspective. String theory makes a showing towards the end of the book, but Greene goes into less detail and recommends the reader to his earlier work for greater detail. Much of the book discusses the Standard Model, Inflationary Cosmology and Higgs fields. A cynical observer might remark that Greene is hedging his bets with this book; if the scientific pendulum swings away from String Theory, as some would like to see happen (and some noisily claim has already happened), then much of this book would still be relevant - unless Inflationary Cosmology itself is overturned, and as the most promising candidate to do so is a string-theory based conjecture, then he can't lose really.

Towards the end of the book Greene discusses some even more way-out notions that seem to point the way for future developments in String Theory. He also embarks on some flights of fancy, discussing teleportation and time travel and the prospects for doing either of these things on a macroscopic scale.

He mentions Loop Quantum Gravity - String Theory's main rival for the prize of grand unification of physical theories - in a complimentary fashion, admitting that it is strong in areas where String Theory is weak, and vice-versa, and speculates that at some point in the future they will merge into a single theory, as they have certain points of similarity (String Theory has strings, Loop Quantum Gravity has...er...loops, unsurprisingly). He recommends with disarming courtesy that the reader check out Lee Smolin's Three Roads to Quantum Gravity - Smolin is an advocate of the Loop Quantum Gravity approach, and a fierce critic of String Theory.

Greene's quirky sense of humour, evident in his first book, manifests itself with greater flair and confidence in this volume. His analogies flow thick and fast and he is very effective at communicating difficult concepts with them.

All in all a very satisfying read - I would suggest, I think, that if one hasn't already read The Elegant Universe, it might actually be better to start with The Fabric Of The Cosmos instead, and then read The Elegant Universe to 'zoom in' on String Theory to a greater level of detail.

I've had a couple of mildly scary experiences this week. First off, the brakes failed on my landie as I was coming up to a junction. Made a quick grab for the handbrake in time to prevent a collision.

The brakes seemed to be working again after that so I carefully drove it home (which was fortunately just around the corner) with one hand hovering over the handbrake. Drove Alice to school in the Honda instead. Ah, the shame of not turning up in a 4WD tank for the school run....will I ever live it down? ;-)

A visit to KwikFit (about 1 mins drive from my house) confirmed that one of the brake pads had popped completely out of its seating and so there was nothing for the braking piston to push against, which had caused a temporary loss of pressure in the braking system. They couldn't fix it because I've got sports brakes and they only fit standard gear. So I'm waiting for my neighbourhood specialist landie mech to come and take it away next week.

Needless to say I'm rather glad this didn't happen when I was on the motorway last week.

Fun and games at the stables today, or perhaps that should be the 'unstables'. Nero - the rather spirited horse I successfully managed to get to canter on last week - threw a complete wobbly. Fortunately (for me) I wasn't riding him this week, it was his usual rider Natasha. He broke into canter when he was supposed to just be trotting in a circle, then gallop - tore across the school, nearly crashed into the rest of the ride, reared dumping Natasha on the ground, and then started ballistically tearing about the place in random directions. My horse, a moody bugger at the best of times, started bucking but I managed to get him back under control. Then I saw Nero charging straight towards us like a cannonball so I gee'd Dublin to get out of the way.

Nero eventually settled into running in circuits on the track again which made everyone feel safer. Some of the other riding instructors came and managed to catch him and escort him from the school.

Alice of course was entirely unfazed by the whole thing.

One for krakenwakes, methinks....

http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1250579695?bclid=1252300654&bctid=1519113176

There's an article in this week's NS, too.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7364663.stm

RESULT!

(But let's hope it's not shite....the involvement of Sky doesn't bode well, frankly)