Experimental Blog #145

Quotations from "The Information" - A History, A Theory, A Flood by James Gleick

"The hardest technology to erase from our minds is the first of all: writing. ..'Without writing{Walter Ong}, words as such have no visual presence, ..'"
"The written word is the mechanism by which we know what we know. It organizes our thought. ... Language is not a technology, .. it is what the mind does."
"Before writing, communication is evanescent and local; sounds carry a few yards and fade to oblivion."

"In all the languages of earth there is only one word for alphabet. The alphabet was invented only once. .. near the eastern littoral of the Mediterranean Sea, ... not much before 1500 BCE .. "

"Logic might be imagined to exist independent of writing - ... but it did not. .. Logic descended from the written word, in Greece as well as India and China, where it developed independently."
"Mathematics too, followed from the invention of writing .."

"Three great waves of electrical communication crested in sequence: telegraphy, telephony, and radio. .. These devices changed the topology - ripped the social fabric and reconnected it .."

"Information{according to the American engineer Claude Shannon in 1948 or '49} is uncertainty, surprise, difficulty, and entropy .."

"Memes{bodiless replicators} emerge in brains and travel outward, establishing beachheads on paper and celluloid and silicon and anywhere else information can go."
"Memes could travel wordlessly even before language was born. Plain mimicry is enough to replicate knowledge .."

"The information produced and consumed by mankind used to vanish .. Now expectations have inverted. Everything may be recorded and preserved, at least potentially: every musical performance; every crime in a shop, elevator, or city street; every volcano or tsunami on the remotest shore; every card played or piece moved in an online game; every rugby scrum and cricket match."

Experimental Blog #144

Comments from "The Pattern on the Stone" - The Simple Ideas that Make Computers Work by Daniel Hillis

The copywright year of this book is 1998.

In the early pages of his book Daniel Hillis recounts his childhood introduction to Boolean algebra and logic.
Since all computers, so the author seems to say, operate on bits of information and in the same, or very similar way, Daniel Hillis once even made, with the help of friends, a computer with the switches and connections made out of the sticks of Tinker Toys and strings.

Besides functions that stay constant in time, there are functions that involve sequences in time. To implement such time-varying functions a finite-state machine must also include a summary of the past, or memory.

"The central idea in the theory of computation is that of a universal computer - that is, a computer powerful enough to simulate any other computing device." This is also known as "Turing universality", which refers to the British mathematician Alan Turing.

"Like digital phenomena, quantum phenomena exist only in discrete states. From the quantum point of view, the continuous ... nature of the physical world ... is an illusion ... there is no such thing as half an electron." ..and "nothing can be exactly in any place at all." !!

An algorithm is a "fail-safe procedure"; while a heuristic rule "almost always gets the right answer", but is not gauranteed to do so.

Experimental Blog # 143

Quotations and notes from "Turing's Cathedral" - The Origins of the Digital Universe by George Dyson

"A digital universe - whether 5 kilobytes or the entire Internet - consists of two species of bits: differences in space, and differences in time."
"That two symbols were sufficient for encoding all communication had been established by Francis Bacon in 1623." "That zero and one were sufficient for logic as well as arithmetic was established by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in 1679..."

"In March of 1953 there were 53 kilobytes of high-speed random-access memory on planet Earth."{in about 15 separate computers}"Each island in the new archipelago constituted a universe unto itself."

"The new machine was christened MANIAC{Mathematical and Numerical Integrator and Computer} and put to its first test, during the summer of 1951, with a thermonuclear calculation that ran for sixty days. The results were confirmed by two huge explosions in the South Pacific: Ivy Mike, yielding the equivalent of 10.4 million tons of TNT at Enewetak on November 1, 1952, and Castle Bravo, yielding 15 megatons at Bikini on February 28, 1954."
"The year 1953 was one of frenzied preparations in between. ... the eleven nuclear tests, yielding a total of 252 kilotons, conducted at the Nevada Test Site in 1953..."

"...the largest fission weapon ever produced .... the Super Oralloy Bomb yeilded 500 kilotons in the Ivy King test at Enewetak on November 15, 1952, and was intended to demonstrate that for any conceivable military purpose, half a megaton should be enough."

"The digital universe and the hydrogen bomb were brought into existence at the same time."

"The bombs ... were a spectacular success. ... there had been forty-three explosions at Enewetak and twenty-three at Bikini, for a total yield of 108 megatons. The computers did their job perfectly, but on Castle Bravo, ... there was a human error, perhaps the largest human error in history, in failing to account for the generation of tritium from lithium-7 as well as lithium-6. The explosion, on March 1, 1954, was expected to yield some 6 megatons, but yielded over 15 megatons instead."

Experimental Blog # 142

Quotations and notes from "Eating Bitterness - Stories from the Front Lines of China's Great Urban Migration" by Michelle Dammon Loyalka

"China has lifted a record 230 million people out of poverty. Its nominal GDP{Gross Domestic Product} has increased seventy-five times over{apparently since 1982}"!?
"At any given time, over 200 million such people{rural migrants} leave their families and farms behind and flock to China's urban centers, where they provide a profusion of cheap labor that helps fuel the country's massive city-building process as well as its staggering economic growth."

The eight chapters of this very finely written book focus on eight real people, or families, that the author, Michelle Loyalka, interviews and observes over a considerable period of time, "On average, ... about three weeks with each individual, though that was often spread out over several months."

"...migrants' salaries have risen rapidly in recent years and are now just 300 yuan lower, on average, than a college graduate's starting salary." "Even for well-trained professionals in the High-Tech Zone, a typical salary isn't more than 4,000 yuan a month..." If 200 yuan equals about 30 dollars, 4,000 yuan should equal 600 dollars. However, Michelle Loyalka points out that the college graduates' salaries will significantly rise, and the migrants lack access to affordable housing, education, health care, and other protections.
"The government is not indifferent to these issues, but the enormity and complexity of the task at hand are staggering." 

"Those{rural migrants} who undertake this journey are neither able to completely abandon their rural lifestyles nor are they able to fully join the urban ranks; they belong neither to the nation's traditional past nor to its modernized future." "...they remain largely in limbo, stuck somewhere between their point of origin and their intended destination."!!?  

Experimental Blog #141

Notes on "Natural Computing " - DNA, Quantum Bits, and the Future of Smart Machines by Dennis Shasha and Cathy Lazere

The first section of this extremely technical book is about how biological concepts, such as, evolution, learning, and adaptation are being applied in engineering and finance. Computers and machines for space probes that are millions of miles from Earth must be able to repair themselves. Evolutionary algorithms are being used to figure out when to buy or sell US Treasury Bonds. Missile defense saftey systems are tested to determine how well they adapt to failure.

The second section of this book is about the applications of "cellular computing". These applications make use of the "self assembly" characteristics of DNA and the "pattern formation" and "robustness" of embryogenesis.

The third section of this book is about the applications of quantum mechanics. These researches involve quantum chemistry, "quantum computing", and the differences between digital and analog computers. These are only a very few of the projects described in this book.

Experimental Blog #140

Comments on "Tubes - A Journey to the Center of the Internet" by Andrew Blum

Among other things the Internet{the author, Andrew Blum, prefers to capitalize the word} perhaps contains trillions of silicon chips and millions of miles of just as "magical" fiber-optic cables; including hundreds of thousands of miles of undersea cables. The Internet also involves satellites, but satellite transmission is slower and more expensive. All of these things make the Internet one of the most complex "things" in the known universe.

Andrew Blum says that it all started in 1969 when 3 computers at 3 universities in California and one university in Utah formed the first computer network. These 4 universities were joined the next year by 4 universities on the east coast, which Blum says were, perhaps, more conservative. By 1989, twenty years after the beginning, there were about 159,000 computers on the Internet.

In 1991 the US Congress passed the "Gore Bill", which was named after its original sponsor, Senator Al Gore. Andrew Blum says that this "push from the government was crucial in getting the Internet out of its academic ghetto." Apparently, there are now over 2 billion computers connected to the Internet.

The Internet today includes dozens of, sometimes huge, Internet exchanges, or IXs, around the world, such as in Frankfurt, Amsterdam, London, and Moscow. The data centers of the Internet are also sometimes enormous. One "500,000-square-foot building demanding fifty megawatts of power" is "about as much as it takes to light a small city". "According to a 2010 Greenpeace report, 2 percent of the world's electricity usage can now be traced to data centers..."!!

Experimental Blog #139

Comments on "Science Set Free" - 10 Paths to New Discovery by Rupert Sheldrake

The scope of this book appears to be all of science, old and new. Throughout the entire book the author, Rupert Sheldrake, criticizes and challenges what he refers to as the "materialist{or mechanistic} worldview of science". Some people might say, however, that the philosophy of science is something more like pragmatism; which is not quite the same thing as materialist philosophy, but depends more on the consistency and dependability of results and products.

Sheldrake's writing is very stimulating about many scientific questions and problems, including: the total amount of matter and energy in the universe, the fixity of the laws of nature, the extent of consciousness and mind and memory, the purposes of nature and evolution, and biological inheritance and developement.

Sheldrake points out that what are considered to be the universal constants of nature, that is: Newton's gravitational constant, the fine structure constant{which is necessary in calculations of astrophysics}, and the speed of light, have all inexplicably varied since they have been discovered and calculated. However, does it really seem to be so counter-intuitive that these 3 constants should very slightly vibrate, or oscillate, throughout space and time in the universe?

Experimental Blog #138

Comments on "In My Father's Country" - An Afgan Woman Defies Her Fate by Saima Wahab

This account of the author's life, which begins in Kabul, Afganistan, apparently, in 1976, is fascinating and very instructive; besides being frequently tragic. Saima Wahab describes, in equal terms, her Pashtun people and culture, and their numerous villages and tribes. She also writes about their relationships with the Farsibans and Hazaras, who are other minority people. Besides these people, there are also villages of Uzbeks and Tajiks in Afganistan.

Saima Wahab returned to "her father's country" several times from 2005 to 2009. At first she was a civilian translater, or CAT II. Later, and still a civilian, although she might be in military uniform and very heavily armed, she went as a member of a "Human Terrain Team", or HTT. HTT is one of many American Army acronyms, such as: IED, RPG, CONEX, MWR, FOB, PRT, HESCO, CAT, IBA, ECP, TOC, CMOC, and COIN, besides others which pepper this book.

Saima Wahab's experiences with the American Army and other "civilian contract" employees are also extremely informative.

Experimental Blog #137

Summary of "Loyal to the Sky - Notes from an Activist" by Marisa Handler

Reviews of this book, which was published in 2007, seem to be quite positive. A somewhat negative comment was that the author, Marisa Handler, was too young to write a memoir at only about 30 years of age. However, Marisa Handler writes very well and provides very interesting chapters of her childhood and adolescence in Cape Town, South Africa and California, USA. These chapters are followed by her young adult journeys in Israel, Nepal, and India. All of this writing is vivid and informative.

Sometime in 2002 Marisa begins paid employment as a "full-time National Organizer" for the "Tikkum Community", which involves "building a national campus network of students supporting a progressive middle path to peace in Israel and Palestine..." At the same time, as much as possible, she continues to volunteer in what she describes as the "global justice movement"; most often in the "Code Orange affinity group".

In these few years, until she writes her book, she continues to travel across America. Marisa Handler describes her activity in more detail in San Francisco, where she lives, and Miami, to demonstrate against the Free Trade Area of the Americas, or FTAA. She then travels to Ecuador and Peru and writes chapters about, among other things, the affect of globalization on some of the indigenous people in these countries.

Marisa Handler finishes her book with chapters on demonstrations in New York, against the 2004 Republican National Convention, and at Fort Benning, Georgia, against what was formerly called the School of the Americas, or SOA, which was "a combat training school for Latin American soldiers.." Evidently, quite a few of the graduates of this school went on to acquire very bad reputations, and when Marisa Handler went there it had been reorganized and renamed the "Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation".

Experimental Blog #136

Quotations from and comments about "How We Live and Why We Die" - The Secret Lives of Cells by Lewis Wolpert

"...there are more molecules of water in a glass of water than glasses of water in all the oceans."
"Proteins, of which there are around 100,000 different types in our body, are strings of ... amino acids. ... "Most of our cells contain several thousand different proteins..."
"The 200 or so different types of cells in our body - skin cells, nerve cells, liver cells, fat cells and many others - all have their function determined by the proteins they contain ..."
"Genes control developement of every bit of our bodies by determining which proteins are present in our cells ... "
"The key to understanding living systems is proteins, and genes merely provide the information for making proteins."

Can this really be true?!! "..there are a thousand million synapses in a tiny piece of our brain the size of a grain of sand - and think how many grains of sand there are in our brains."

"Genetics, it is asserted, is not destiny. ... as it is all too easy to be misled as to what genes actually do for us, nor is it easy to accept that much of our destiny is due to our genetic inheritance." "Why is there so much resistance to accepting that genes can play such an important role in our behavior?"
The author, Lewis Wolpert, goes on to write about men and women, criminality, homosexuality, and mathematical, language, and spatial skills, besides very many other things. He never, or rarely, uses the word ancestry; such as, perhaps, "ancestry is destiny." At least, as far as we can know.

Experimental Blog #135

Notes and Quotations from "Almost President" - The Men Who Lost the Race but Changed the Nation by Scott Farris

As of today in American history 34 men have run for President of the United States as the nominee of a major political party, sometimes 2 or 3 times, and always lost.
Scott Farris describes how some of them, 9 in particlar, should be considered more important in their impact on the American political system than quite a few other candidates who actually became president. He also points out that, because of 3rd party campaigns, 40% of the time the presidential winners have received less than a majority, that is 50%, of the popular vote.

However, the 9 who are written about at length in this book are:

Henry Clay ran 3 times and, apparently, should be cosidered the principal founder of modern liberalism; that is, a "belief in the necessity of an assertive national government to act positively for the economic, social and moral well-being of the nation." Scott Farris's point of view seems very contrary to the very long standing "Jeffersonian-Jacksonian" presentation of American history.

Next are Stephen Douglas, in 1860, and William Jennings Bryan, who also ran 3 times.

In the chapter on Al Smith the author writes extensively on the Motion Picture Association of America{MPAA} and the Production Code Administration{PCA}. The code was "deeply Catholic in tone and outlook" and required that films "show deference to civil and religious authority", "that characters accept personal responsibility for their actions, demonstrate a belief that suffering has value as a step toward salvation, resist the glorification of sin, and never depict the ultimate triumph of evil over good." "Any studio that released a film without PCA approval faced a hefty twenty-five thousand dollar fine."
Further writing about anti-Catholic prejudice, one way or another, Scott Ferris notes that, "as of 2012, six of the nine justices on the U.S. Supreme Court were Catholic, including Chief Justice John Roberts, and with the other three justices being Jewish there was not a single Protestant on the nation's highest court."

Thomas E. Dewey ran twice, in 1944 and 1948. And so did Adlai Stevenson, in 1952 and 1956, who was born in 1900; so he would have been at, or about 52 and 56 years of age in those years. Next come Barry Goldwater, in 1964, and George McGovern, in 1972.

Ross Perot, in 1992 and '96, is the last of the "great losers". "No person has moved directly from the business world directly into the White House. Of those presidents{notice! presidents} who had a background in business before they entered politics, < > none could be labeled tycoons". However, "Perot still collected 19% of the popular vote{in 1992}. Only Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 had done better as a third party candidate."

"In a nation that has fretted for decades over whether it has properly honored its Vietnam War veterans, it is ironic that the three presidential nominees who served in Vietnam - Al Gore, John F. Kerry, and John McCain - were all defeated, while the two men of the Vietnam generation who were elected president did not serve in Vietnam."

Experimental Blog #134

Notes on "All Roads Lead to Austen" - A Yearlong Journey with Jane by Amy Elizabeth Smith

One of the most interesting things about this book is that it can be so interesting to people who have never read a book by Jane Austen.

At the very begining of her book the author, Amy Elizabeth Smith, writes that "Austen keeps coming to life through sequels, updates, and spin-offs".
And she asks, "What is it about Jane Austen that makes us all talk about the characters as if they're real people? People we recognize in our own lives, two centuries after Austen created them?"

Among many other historical and literary pages there are long discussions about 3 of Jane Austen's books: "Pride and Prejudice", "Sense and Sensibility", and "Emma".
There are also long descriptions of Amy Smith's long stays in Antigua, Guatemala; Puerto Vallarta, Mexico; Guayaquil, Ecuador; Santiago, Chile; Asuncion, Paraguay; and Buenos Aires, Argentina. These are all capital cities, except for Puerto Vallarta and Antigua, although it was once the capital city.

Experimental Blog #133

Comments and quotations from "Uncompromised" - The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of an Arab American Patriot in the CIA by Nada Prouty

Although this book contains an opening disclaimer, "This material has been reviewed by the CIA to prevent disclosure of classified information," it is, nonetheless, very informative and exciting about training and work in the American FBI and CIA. 

"Uncompromised" is, perhaps, necessarily vague, sometimes, and it contains quite a few reconstructed apparently partly artificial conversations. However, Nada Prouty's book might be described as a rather controversial, but inspiring and thought provoking, search and struggle for father, family, and country. She writes that the American FBI became her new family, at least temporarily; and she also seems to maintain dependable relationships with her 2 sisters, and she finds a good husband and starts a family.

Nada Prouty says that she has now converted to the Catholic faith, but her "parents were Druze, a minority religious faction amounting to approximately 7 percent of the Lebanese population. The Druze religion started as a religious-philosophical movement in Egypt in the tenth century. The Druze consider their faith a blend of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam and believe that their spiritual message was inherent in the prophetic voices of Moses, Jesus, and Mohammad."

"...the Druze eliminated all elements of ritual and ceremony, leaving no fixed daily liturgy, no defined holy days, and no pilgrimage obligations." ... "The Druze religion is also secretive and closed to converts."

A few pages earlier Nada Prouty writes of the Druze religion, "There is a definite mysticism to it, and the Druze strongly believe in a supreme being. I had never practised this religion in Lebanon, but its mysteries and otherworldliness intrigued me at times. I suppose I was similarly susceptible to the mysteries of Roman Catholicism."

Experimental Blog #132

Comments on "Where They Stand - The American Presidents in the Eyes of Voters and Historians" by Robert W. Merry

Rating all the American presidents from #1, the best, to #44, the worst, seems rather absurd and irrational. Besides that, do the terms "Great" and "Near Great" describe real human beings in a, hopefully, democratic society? The enormously changing times over 224 years make comparing the presidents of all 9 generations of very questionable value.

Probably, for most people the most important presidents are those that they remember and lived with, which, of course, is highly variable. Besides those presidents are some earlier presidents that their parents, or, maybe their grandparents, remember and lived with.

The author, Robert Merry, is very persuasive in some matters, for instance; that the electoral college still works to prevent the smaller states, by population, from being completely swamped by the larger states, even though this has led to the election of a president with slightly less{and always slightly less} popular votes than the other candidate in 4 presidential elections.

However, Merry also repeats the unconvincing story of the "stolen election", stolen by the Republicans, in 1876. Merry doesn't seem to consider the murderous violence commited against the southern Negroes to keep them from voting; and that they would surely have voted overwhelmingly for Rutherford B Hayes, who had 48% of the popular vote to the Democrat Samuel J Tilden's 51%. Hayes was not only a Republican of the party of Abraham Lincoln, but was also a distinguished Civil War veteran.

However, the idea that the American presidential elections are a "referendum" that, like it or not, occurs every 4 years on the incumbent president, or, at least, his party, is a very useful and helpful concept.

Experimental Blog #131

Notes from "Live From Cape Canaveral" - Covering the Space Race from Sputnik to Today by Jay Barbree

Although there is sometimes a frustrating lack of dates, this book is a very exciting history of the competition between America and the Soviet Union in manned space flight. The author, Jay Barbree, appears to be unusually well acquainted with the Soviet and Russian satellites, cosmonauts, rockets, and spacecraft; but as for the Americans:

The Project Mercury spacecraft were for single astronauts and short flights or orbits, up to 22 in number.
The Project Gemini spacecraft were "two-man spacecraft that would test and perfect all the key techniques needed to reach the moon, rendezvousing and docking with other vehicles and walking in space."

Apollos 8{December, 1968}, 10, and 13 went to and around the moon; and Apollos 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, and 17{December, 1972} went to the moon and sent 12 astronauts, 2 on each trip, to the lunar surface and outside the lunar module.

On July 15, 1975 two Russians aboard a Soyuz 19 spacecraft and three Americans aboard an Apollo spacecraft{the author says it was "the last Apollo in the stable"} rendezvoused and docked in space.

After this event NASA built 4 reusable space shuttles: Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, and Atlantis. The tragic fates of Challenger on the 25th shuttle launch, in January 1986, and Columbia on the 113th{or 112th} shuttle descent, in February 2003, are well known. However, altogether the shuttle fleet apparently made over 130 flights before they were retired by presidential order by September 30, 2010{which is after this book was written in 2006 and '7}.

 The American shuttles had many missions, among others: sending off  a TDRS, which was a tracking and data relay satellite to a stationary orbit at 22,300 miles; the Magellan, which was a probe to Venus; Galileo, to Jupiter; Ulysses, to orbit the Sun; a Gamma Ray Observatory; the Hubble Telescope{and its repairing mission}; secret CIA satellites; and many launches to help construct the International Space Station.

Experimental Blog #130

Quotations from "Chasing Hubble's Shadows" - The Search for Galaxies at the Edge of Time by Jeff Kanipe

"If fireflies flickered in the dark recesses of the moon, we could see them with the Hubble telescope."

"Some of the galaxies in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field ... lie more than 12 billion light-years away. But that immensity also represents a span of time - of more than 12 billion years in the past ... "

However, it is also true that:
"Observations during the mid-twentieth century showed that, on average, all galaxies in the nearby universe, including our own, are very old. Some of the Milky Way's oldest stars, which congregate in dense spherical systems called globular clusters, are about 13 billion years old, almost as old as the universe itself..."

"Because the universe is expanding, light coming from sources at progressively greater cosmological distances is stretched .. toward longer, or redder, wavelengths. The greater the redshift, the more distant the object and the farther back in time it lies."

"The fact that astronomers can stand before their colleagues today and present findings about galaxies that existed in a universe barely 700 million years old speaks volumes about how much more of the cosmic landscape has been assayed compared with the tracts of the last decade of the last century."

"The cosmological principle states that the universe looks basically the same in all directions from any location."

"One of the ironies of the current state of cosmology is that more is known about the universe when it was 300,000 years old than when it was 1 billion years old."

Experimental Blog #129

Mostly notes from "Journey Beyond Selene" - Remarkable Expeditions Past Our Moon and to the Ends of the Solar System by Jeffrey Kluger

Selene apparently is the name of the ancient Greek goddess of our Moon.
In all, the author Jeffrey Kluger, writes about 29 "unmanned missions to the moons" that were launched between August 23, 1961 and October 15, 1997. All, but two, were designed, developed, and managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

The first nine were all Ranger missions that were designed to take a few minutes{maybe 10 to 15} of pictures before they were deliberately crashed onto the Moon, but of those 9, numbers 1 through 6 were failures for one reason or another.
There were 7 Surveyor missions that were designed to soft-land on the Moon in various places and then take pictures. They were much more successful, but numbers 2 and 4 failed and crashed, undeliberately.
Five Lunar Orbiters were all successfully launched and put into orbit around the Moon.
So , it seems, that the manned American Apollo missions were as well equipped as they could be with lunar maps and photographs.

The Mariner 9 mission was launched May 30, 1971, and it successfully orbited Mars and flew by Phobos, one of Mars' moons.

The Pioneer missions 10 and 11 were designed and developed primarily by the Ames Research Center, also in California. In Richard Corfield's book, "Lives of the Planets", it says that Pioneer 10 achieved a speed of 82,000 miles per hour due to Jupiter's "massive gravity", but only about one half of this speed, at most, seems to be confirmed by other sources.

Also in the second half of "Journey Beyond Selene", Jeffrey Kluger writes about the Voyager missions 2 and 1, which were launched on August 20 and September 5, 1977.
All of these unmanned missions, but especially the Pioneer and Voyager distant solar missions, which crossed 100s of millions, and then billions of miles of space; which, of course, eventually delayed communication for up to an hour, and then more, each way, seem to be virtually miraculous examples of  the application of Newtonian mechanics and equations.

The last 2 missions the author writes about{in 1999}, Galileo and Cassini-Huygens, were still in progress or en route.

Also it is mentioned that "Kurt Debus, the Peenemunde veteran", apparently one of Wernher von Braun's team, was running the Florida launch complex in the 1960s.

Experimental Blog #128

Comments on "Astro Turf" - The Private Life of Rocket Science by M. G. Lord and "My Dream of Stars" - From Daughter of Iran to Space Pioneer by Anousheh Ansari with Homer Hickam

Among many other people and subjects, in the first book the author M. G.{that is, Mary Grace} Lord writes extensively about "Project Paperclip, a U.S. Army program that permitted certain valuable Nazi scientists{maybe even hundreds, according to the New York Times} to work in this country, despite their compromising war records".

Wernher von Braun hardly needs very much introduction. He became an American TV celebrity, and he seemed to be on friendly terms with Walt Disney. M. G. Lord also writes about Arthur Rudolph. "In 1984{Werhner von Braun was no longer living}, Arthur Rudolph, the head of the Saturn V program, renounced his American citizenship rather than face a denaturalization hearing", and was "eventually charged with war crimes." She also mentions a Walter Dornberger, who was "instrumental in the developement of U.S. ICBMs".


Anousheh Ansari, the author of the second book, with her husband and brother-in-law{and a few other people} became a highly successful businesswoman in America. Apparently, they all became very rich; and this allowed her to fulfill her lifelong love of the stars.

Anousheh's description of the extremely thorough, lengthy, and arduous examination and training in Russia for her spaceflight will keep many people from being too envious. However, in September of 2006 she went into space on Expedition 14 on a Soyuz spacecraft from Baikonur, Kazakhstan, and then transferred to the International Space Station 2 days later.
 
Although it seems that she eventually adjusted, Anousheh's description of how sick she became for about the first 2 days, in spite of all her training, would also discourage many people. However, her vivid descriptions of what she saw and experienced on her spaceflight are available not only in this book, but also in her blogs, accompanied by videos, that she made while in flight.

 Although she says that her "ticket" cost about 20 million dollars, she seemed to become an important, that is helpful, passenger, or even crew member, during her several days aboard the International Space Station. The re-entry and rough landing that Anousheh describes at the end of her fairly short visit of about one week should also discourage many people from being too envious.

Experimental Blog #127

Notes from "Gravity's Engines" - How Bubble-Blowing Black Holes Rule Galaxies, Stars, and Life in the Cosmos by Caleb Scharf

"Black holes" form when enough "stellar remains ... implode" into a sphere and collapse "inwards to a single point that is , to all intents and purposes, of infinite density - an inner singularity." These places in the universe can be detected by the enormous amount of energy that is released as stars and other matter are absorbed across the surrounding "accretion disk".

 There are "baby black holes only a few times the mass of our sun". However, others also occur up to 10 billion times the solar mass; which is the largest yet observed, and may be a maximum size.

The author, Caleb Scharf, says that compared to the at least 100 billion galaxies in the universe, our Milky Way is one of the largest that has been observed and it contains about "200 billion stars{that} amount to a mass approximately 100 billion times that of our Sun, and its disk stretches across a diameter of 100,000 light-years." And every "210 million years, we complete another circumnavigation of the Milky Way." And every year our galaxy creates a few new stars of about 3 solar masses total.

In spite of being a rather large galaxy, the mass at the center of the Milky Way beyond the event horizen and around the singularity can be measured! It is believed to be only about 4 million solar masses.

Experimental Blog #126

Notes and Quotations from "Faint Echoes, Distant Stars - The Science and Politics of Finding Life beyond Earth" by Ben Bova

"Clouds of water vapor have been found deep in interstellar space"... "Water is the most common triatomic {three-atom} molecule in the universe."

In November of 1969 American astronauts retrieved a camera from the Surveyor 3 probe that had reached the Moon in 1967. NASA scientists "were stunned" to find the bacteriun Streptococcus mitus still alive after "thirty-one months on the Moon without air or water, subjected to hard radiation and temperatures that varied from" plus 132 degrees C to minus 151 degrees C.

"There are all sorts of microbes{called extremophiles here on Earth} living in environments that had previously been thought to be too hot, too cold, too acidic, too salty for life to exist."

"Comets are actually kilometers-wide icebergs laced with carbon-rich dust."

"To date{probably early 2003}, more that a hundred molecular species{including complex prebiotic molecules} have been detected in interstellar space."

"In 1994, Jupiter was struck by twenty-one fragments of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 ... Blasting into Jupiter's atmosphere at an estimated 200,000 kilometers per hour ... with the energy of a million hydrogen bombs."

It has been postulated that in the Oort Cloud far beyond the orbit of Pluto there are trillions of comets. The Oort Cloud might extend half way to the nearest neighbor star Alpha Centauri, 4.3 light-years. "Perhaps some of the comets that we have seen in our skies actually originated around our stellar neighbor."

Experimental Blog #125

Notes and quotations from "Death by Black Hole - And Other Cosmic Quandaries" by Neil deGrasse Tyson

Among the most interesting subjects in this book are the origin and extent of life in the universe. Organic chemistry turns out to be not at all uncommon in our solar system and the universe, too.

"Eventually, in what must surely be countless billions of places in the universe, complex molecules assemble themselves into some kind of life."
"Notables on the short list of complex molecules include adenine{one of the nucleotides, or "bases," that make up DNA}, glycine{a protein precusor}, and glycoaldehyde{a carbohydrate}. Such ingredients, and others of their caliber, are essential for life as we know it and are decidely not unique to Earth."

The new sciences of astrochemistry and astrobiology were virtually unknown a few decades ago.

"Biologists once presumed that life began in "some warm little pond," to quote Darwin; in recent years, though, the weight of evidence has tilted in favor of the view that extremophiles were the earliest earthly life-forms."

Experimental Blog #124

Notes and such from "Lives of the Planets - A Natural History of the Solar System" by Richard Corfield

"Stonehenge is a Stone Age supercomputer" which "was built over a fifteen hundred year period from about 3100 BC to 1500 BC". It "helped Neolithic peoples keep pace with the turning of the seasons ... and predicting the occurance of crucial astronomical events such as eclipses."

"Mariner 2 was launched on August 27, 1962, and ...  became the first spacecraft to successfully fly by another planet; it sped past Venus on December 14, 1962."
On October 22, 1975 the Soviet "Venera 9 had become the first spacecraft to place a satellite in permanent orbit around another planet."
"In 1969, Venera 5 and 6 were also successful atmospheric probes, and in 1970, Venera 7 became the first Earth-built spacecraft to land on the surface of another planet."
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency has landed a small spacecraft named Hayabusa on the surface of the astroid Itokawa. The launch was on May 9, 2003 and Hayabusa arrived at Itokawa in September of 2005.{After this book was written samples were returned to Earth in 2010.}

The American Pioneer 10 was launched on March 2, 1972; and within 18 minutes achieved a "staggering" 32,000 mph. By December 3, 1973 "Jupiter's massive gravity had accelerated Pioneer 10 to 82,000 mph.
Voyagers 1 and 2 were launched in September and August of 1977 and arrived near Jupiter in March and July of 1979. Voyager 2 arrived in Uranian space on January 24, 1986 and then reached Neptune on August 25, 1989. On the same day "Voyager 2 had passed the last of Neptune's moons and was dropping out of the bottom of the solar system to begin its eternal fall into the vastnesses of space between the stars. In slightly less than 300,000 years, it will make its first approach to another star - the hot, bright furnace of Sirius."

Experimental Blog # 123

Notes and such from "Space Chronicles" - Facing the Ultimate Frontier by Neil deGrasse Tyson and edited by Avis Lang

The author, Neil deGrasse Tyson, points out that both he and NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Agency, were "born" in the same year, 1958.
Among many interesting facts in this book are:

Hydrogen, helium, oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen are the 5 most common elements in the universe and, except for helium, which is not chemically reactive, the other 4 are also the most common elements of life, including people. So, we indeed are very much a natural product of the universe.

The Earth now has hundreds of communication satellites and 12 space telescopes. Hubble, which was launched in 1990, is the most well known, and, hopefully, will soon be replaced by the even more powerful James Webb Space Telescope.
The International Space Station is located in a low Earth orbit about 225 miles above the Earth.
In most cases it is "vastly cheaper to send robots" into space than people; usually about a fiftieth of the cost.

There are 5 "Lagrangian points" around the Earth-Moon system "where the gravity of Earth, the gravity of the Moon, and the centrifugal forces of the rotating system all balance."
There are also 5 such points around the Earth-Sun system, and it is planned that the James Webb Space Telescope will be placed in one of them.
There are thousands of asteroids gathered at 2 of the Lagrangian points in the Sun-Jupiter system, and there is other "space junk" in the Sun-Earth and Earth-Moon systems as well.

However,  "On Friday the 13th, April 2029, an asteroid large enough to fill the Rose Bowl as though it were an egg cup will fly so close to Earth that it will dip below the altitude of our communications satellites. ... If the trajectory of Apophis{the asteroid} at close approach passes within a narrow range of altitudes called the "keyhole," then the influence of Earth's gravity on its orbit will guarantee that seven years later, in 2036, on its next trip around, the asteroid will hit Earth directly, likely slamming into the Pacific Ocean between California and Hawaii. ... If Apophis misses the keyhole in 2029, we will have nothing to worry about in 2036."

Experimental Blog #122

Quotes and Notes from "Heaven's Touch" - From Killer Stars to the Seeds of Life, How We Are Connected to the Universe by James B. Kaler

"Among the most amazing discoveries of modern astronomy is that even our day-to-day affairs are in fact subject to the vageries of distant planets and stars."
Photons have no mass; "they are the only particles that do not." So, only they can travel at the speed of light, where everything else would have infinite mass, which is impossible.
The most distant thing the unaided human eye can see is the Andromeda Galaxy, two and a half million light-years away.
The Earth's communications and high-orbit research satelites might be 22,250 or more miles from the center of the Earth, and are beyond the Earth's magnetic protection; and their sensitive electronics must sometimes be turned off to prevent hundreds of millions of dollars of damage from solar particle bombardment.

Kepler's and Newton's laws and equations apparently provide the basis to determine the masses of everything in the universe.
There are millions, maybe billions, of asteroids. Most of them are the size of large rocks, but there might be a million or more that are larger than 50 miles in diameter.
"Nearly 100 meteorites have been identified as coming from the Moon." "We find Martian meteorites as well, about three dozen known."
In 2006, the "Stardust" spacecraft, which was launched in 1999, brought back samples from "Comet Wild 2". In 2005 the "Deep Impact" spacecraft visited "Comet Temple 1".
"the gift of water was given to us by the accretion of hoards of leftover comets that hit us, each sent inward by the outer planets...."
Almost all of the three light elements, boron, lithium, and beryllium, are the products of cosmic ray collisions with carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen; and so is carbon 14, at least until the atom bomb testing of the 1940s and 1950s.
The author includes an all-sky map of the Cosmic Background Radiation, which was released a half million years after the Big Bang, and says it is the oldest thing that we know. Apparently, whatever precedes is theory.

Experimental Blog #121

Comments on "The Man Without a Face - The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin" by Masha Gessen

Although Masha Gessen has written a very interesting and informative book, isn't it true that vast multi-cultural Russia has always been a police state in one form or another? And, perhaps more accurately, a secret police state with additional occupied territories?

The whole world has, at best, something like poorly concealed gang warfare, although mostly in various states of truce or ceasefire.

The Russian leaders Vladimir Putin and Dimitri Medvedev are hardly "natural born tyrants". Probably to most people they seem to be about as innocuous world leaders, but still responsible, as can be found anywhere.

Wouldn't any of those people demonstrating so much against the present Russian government, assuming that they were capable, eventually become "tyrants" if they were somehow given the power?

Experimental Blog #120

Comments on "Romanov Riches" - Russian Writers and Artists under the Tsars by Solomon Volkov translated from the Russian by Antonina W. Bouis

Monarchy and monarchial society are not very familiar to Americans.

"...the ideological triad "Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality," developed under his{Nicholas I's} aegis, ... it has survived in its basic form to this day. It was used, with modifications to suit changing political realities, ... even by Joseph Stalin, Leonid Brezhnev, and Vladimir Putin."

Although Alexander Pushkin seems to be the Russian writer most referred to in this book, the lives of the other writers Nikolai Gogol, Fedor Dostoevsky, and Leo Tolstoy are usually more interesting to American outsiders. Solomon Volkov's very knowledgable account of the composer Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky and his interpretation of Alexander Pushkin in his opera "Eugene Onegin" are also very informative.

Solomon Volkov characterizes Leo Tolstoy as a "Christian anarchist", who, of course, had much influence and many followers.

The book ends with the downfall of the tragically incompetent Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra in the February Revolution of 1917.

Experimental Blog #119

Quotations from "The Magical Chorus - A History of Russian Culture from Tolstoy to Solzhenitsyn" by Solomon Volkov and translated from the Russian by Antonina W. Bouis

Here are only a few of the hundred or more of references to Joseph Stalin in this book:

"Even though Stalin's formal education ended when he was expelled from the Tiflis Seminary < >, he read a lot{some recall his reading 400 pages a day, both fiction and nonfiction} and he had a lively interest in cultural issues."
"In his youth, he had written poetry, and he was a lifelong avid reader of varied nonfiction < > and fiction, including foreign and naturally Russian classics..."
"He was a great lover of film and classical music. < > He was frequently seen at the theater."
"The road to this intellectual parity was not an easy one for Stalin, but he was a good student, mastering the lessons and advice of people with a wider worldview< >, such as Lenin, and other old party leaders with emigre' experience."
"Certainly Stalin was ruthless toward his own people and other nations. < >"but his attitude toward the cultural elite was outwardly friendlier than that of Lenin  < > {he} felt more respect for people of culture. < >Stalin ... almost never shouted at cultural figures, and when he was angry, he actually lowered his voice. Simonov, who heard many stories of how cruel and coarse Stalin could be ... stressed that the ruler 'was never once boorish' to writers."
"Stalin might have read "Doctor Zhivago", as he did dozens of other novels by Soviet writers .. As stated Simonov, who attended many discussions of literary works nominated for the Stalin Prize at which Stalin was present, 'everything that was in the least bit controversial and caused disagreement, he had read ..."
"Gorbachev was better educated than Khrushchev or Brezhnev, but less well read that Stalin or Andropov."

Experimental Blog #118

Quotations and Comments on "DNA USA - A Genetic Protrait of America" by Bryan Sykes

It seems that except for a fairly limited number of diseases, "the Human Genome Project has achieved very little as far as alleviating or even untangling the suffering caused by disease."
"...for most diseases with an inherited component, ... the links to specific genes are a great deal more tenuous." "The reality is that the genes involved are many in number and individually weak in their effect."

As far as the English are concerned, "the predominant myth today {is} that the English are descended from Germanic Saxons" ... However, "Genetics shows that this is not the case, and that the genetic bedrock of the whole of Britain ... is fundamentally Celtic overlaid with a thin topsoil of Saxons and Vikings, nowhere more than 20 percent."

And speaking of "origin myths" in general, is it not true that it is through our DNA that we are all human, and we are all related to each other, and to all of the rest of life on Earth as well?

And also generally speaking, is it not true that China and India, for example, are "succeeding" by beating the "winners", that is Western Europe and America, at "our own game" by becoming experts in the necessary sciences?

"DNA USA" is also a very entertaining travel book.

Experimental Blog #117

Comments on "1493 - Uncovering the New World Columbus Created" by Charles C. Mann

"1493" is a sequel to the author's previous book "1491 - New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus", and it also could be called an academic revolution in the study of American history.

Throughout "1493" Charles Mann continuously refers to the term "the Columbian Exchange", which is a phrase apparently coined by another writer, Alfred W. Crosby. It refers to the specific "ecosystems that had been separate for eons {that} suddenly met and mixed ..."

Charles Mann apparently coins his own new term, the "homogenocene", which means  a new biological era, "homogenizing ... mixing unlike substances to creat a uniform blend", and he also writes that "places that were once ecologically distinct have become more alike."

Charles Mann tells a largely overlooked and endlessly complicated history of people; American Indians, Africans, Europeans, and Asians{primarily from the Philipines and China}; diseases, such as malaria and yellow fever; and many plants and animals; and, of course, silver, silk, tobacco and other commodities.
Especially interesting, and new to many people, are the histories of the Africans, including thousands and thousands of escaped slaves, called maroons, in Brazil, Honduras, Ecuador, Panama, and other places.

Experimental Blog #116

Comments on "In Pursuit of the Unknown - 17 Equations That Changed the World" by Ian Stewart

Besides 6 equations described by Robert P. Crease in his book, "The Great Equations" commented on in blog #98 on January 22, 2012{in that book and blog those equations were #s 1,3,5,6,7, and 9}, Ian Stewart writes about:

In the 17th century:
#s 2. The logarithimic equation of Henry Briggs and John Napier.
    3. The calculus equation of Isaac Newton.

In the 18th century:
#s 5. The equation of the square root of negative 1, which led to imaginary and complex numbers.
    6.The equation about faces, edges, and vertices of polyhedra by Leonhard Euler.
    7. The equation of normal distribution, about patterns of chance by Abraham De Moivre.
    8. The wave equation of Jean Le Rond d'Alembert.

In the 19th century:
#s 9. The {Joseph}Fourier transform equation, which has many applications in extracting and
         compressing information.
    10.The fluid mechanics equation of Claude-Louis Navier and George Stokes.

In the 20th century.
#s 15. The Information Theory equation of Claude Shannon.
    16. The "Chaos theory" equation of Robert May. This equation describes "deterministic chaos -
          apparently random behavior with no random cause" ... "apparent randomness may conceal
          hidden order."
    17. The "Midas formula" of Fischer Black and Myron Scholes, who was awarded the Nobel
          Prize in economics along with Robert Merton in 1997. This equation has been very important
          in world finance and speculation.

Experimental Blog #115

Comments on "John F. Kennedy" by Alan Brinkley

There are now 40 presidents, with 41 authors, in this "The American Presidents Series". The late Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr, who was called "the preeminent political historian of our time", was the first and primary general editor of this series. However, the book on William Howard Taft has not yet appeared, and Ronald Reagan is still not included in this list!! George W. Bush is the latest addition, and this book too, more understandably, is yet to appear.

These 38 books, that have been published so far, vary considerably in style and interest.

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. was very much involved with Democratic Party politics and, in particular, with the Kennedy administration.

Although the list of presidents goes on and more books are expected to come out, this particular book about John F. Kennedy by Alan Brinkley is arguably the most important; maybe even a primary purpose, of the whole series.

Alan Brinkley goes into considerable revealing detail describing, among quite a few other things, the absolutely necessary importance of Joseph Kennedy, Sr., Jack's father, in the life and political career of John F. Kennedy, through his very many connections and wealth: John F. Kennedy's many "serious life long illnesses"; and "almost pathological womanizing".

Experimental Blog #114

Comments on and quotes from "The Dolphin in the Mirror" - Exploring Dolphin Minds and Saving Dolphin Lives by Diana Reiss

This book is about the author's lifetime work with bottlenose dolphins; plus a well-known encounter with one humpback whale named Humphrey, although it turned out to be female.

The relationships of people, such as Diana Reiss, with dolphins and other cetaceans are uncanny and thought provoking. Especially fascinating are the many well-documented remarkable accounts of dolphins actually saving people who are exhausted and likely to drown in the ocean.

"Dolphin brains are approximately 4.2 times larger than expected for their body size - the highest ratio of any species other than humans"{which ratio is 7.0},"making them easily the second most cerebrally endowed species on the planet, way ahead of the great apes."
"Another measure of intelligence and brain complexity is based on the amount of cortical folding."
"Our brains are more convoluted than those of our primate relatives. Only one brain is known to be more heavily convoluted than ours. Again, it's the dolphin brain."

Experimental Blog #113

Comments on "1491 - New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus" by Charles C. Mann

This book is a summary of very recent, controversial, and academically revolutionary studies of American history, both North and South, before the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1492.

The earlier arrival of people from Asia has been discussed for a long time. However, it is increasingly argued, and supported by scientific research, that there were many more people in the Americas when Columbus arrived than was previously thought, and that they lived at a much higher level of cultural developement. They also had a very large affect on vast areas of their natural environments over many centuries: encluding even the Amazon rain forest.

The arrival of Europeans in 1492, and later, Africans, brought diseases to which the American Indians had very little resistance. The result was that the great majority of American Indian tribes lost 90%, and more, of their populations a century, and even more, before the arrival of the later European explorers and colonists who encountered them. By then even the American Indian tribes had "forgotten" about these old calamities and much of their old cultures as well.

Experimental Blog #112

Comments on "Woman in Exile" - My Life in Kazakhstan by Juliana Starosolska with forword and translation by Marie Ulanovicz

Juliana Starosolska was born in 1912 in Lviv, Ukraine. Although the first edition of these collected essays appeared in the Ukrainian diaspora press in 1969, this English translation was not published until 2011. 

"Forced to endure unimaginable horrors, she retains a strong feeling of humanity, dignity, respect for others, and a sense of humour," is from the comments of Marta Dyczok at the University of Western Ontario.

Experimental Blog # 111

Comments on "A Midwife's Tale" - The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785 - 1812 by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

"Historians have distinguished three general systems of labor in early America: chattel slavery in the South, indentured servitude in the mid-Atlantic region, and family labor in New England."

Laurel Ulrich describes how before the 19th century most children in America were brought into the world by "midewives", such as Martha Ballard. However, with the developement of more scientific,sometimes apparently called "heroic", medicine, the "aggressiveness of the new doctors"{male} and their poorly justified scorn of the practice of midewifery probably gradually discouraged young women from entering the profession.

When men decided that they wanted something they took over, and women deferred and ultimately yielded; as seems to be usual.

Experimental Blog #110

Comments on "The Calculus Wars - Newton, Leibniz, and the Greatest Mathematical Clash of All Time" by Jason Socrates Bardi

Jason Bardi writes that calculus, "As a body of knowledge, it is a type of mathematical analysis that can be used to study changing quantities", and, "Differentials are small momentary increments or decreases in changing quantities, and integrals are sums of infinitesimal intervals of geometrical curves or shapes."

It is interesting that, although Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz never met, they did correspond sometimes.
It is also thought provoking and disturbing that in the early years of their careers they had considerable esteem for each other, although at a distance, of course.

However, in their old age, when they were both past 60, and to the ends of their lives, neither of them could keep themselves from being provoked into an increasing and very acrimonious conflict with the other; and neither of them could believe in the intellectual honesty of the other.

Experimental Blog #109

Comments on "Moscow Stories" by Loren R. Graham

"A Boy from Indiana", whose grandparents had associations with both the Ku Klux Klan and the Wabash Valley Socialist Party{his grandmother said that they both had "wonderful" picnics} visits the Soviet Union, or Russia, perhaps 100 times or more, and they all add up to several years of time. His trips begin in 1960, when he is a 27 year old exchange student, and are still continuing in 2005, when this book was written.

Loren Graham was often accompanied by his wife Pat, who apparently also became fluent in Russian. On Graham's earlier visits he silently encountered the "Old Bolsheviks" Vyacheslav Molotov and Lazar Kaganovich in the Lenin Library; where they all spent a lot of time. He also had short or long conversations with Iurii Gagarin, Trofim Lysenko, and Anna Mikhailovna, the wife of the old and executed Bolshevik, Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin. In later years he meets, perhaps more that once, Andrei Sakharov and Mikhail Gorbachev.

Loren Graham, and sometimes his wife Pat, become well acquainted with quite a few other important Soviet scientists and government people, besides many other relatively unknown people in the Soviet Union and Russia.

Needless to say, Loren Graham has had many encounters, and sometimes conversations{usually not very pleasant} with both the FBI and the KGB.

Experimental Blog #108

Quotes and notes from "A Tour of the Calculus" by David Berlinski

"The calculus is the story this ... scientific culture of the West ... first told itself as it became the modern world." "In its largest aspect ... the calculus is a great ... spectacular theory of space and time ..." "The calculus is a mathematical theory ... to represent or recreate the real world in terms of the real numbers."

"The system composed of the natural numbers, the integers, the fractions, and the irrational numbers acquires a new identity as the real number system ..."

The author, David Berlinski, writes that the polynomial functions include: the constant functions, the power functions, and the root functions. He also describes the exponential functions, the logarithmic functions, and the trigonometric functions. The continuities created by these functions, or mathematical equations, have derivatives, which are real numbers at a local point on a Cartesian map of the function; and integrals, which are real numbers representing bounded areas below a Cartesian map of these functions.

Experimental Blog #107

Comments on "Quantum - Einstein, Bohr, and the Great Debate about the Nature of Reality" by Manjit Kumar

Besides contributors to quantum theory written about by Gino Segre' in his book, "Faust in Copenhagen - A Struggle for the Soul of Physics", commented on in the previous blog #106; the author of this book, Manjit Kumar, adds 3 more physicists to his list of the top 10 contributors to quantum theory. They are: Ernest Rutherford, another Englishman, but from New Zealand; Max Born of Germany; and Louis de Broglie from France.

It seems quite obvious that if someone really wants to understand very much physics, and especially the advanced physics of electromagnetism, relativity, and quantum mechanics, they have to be well acquainted with a lot of mathematics. Beyond the usual algebra, plane and solid geometry, and trigonometry; they must know differential and integral calculus, probability and statistics, differential equations, tensor calculus{which is also called differential geometry}, matrix algebra, complex numbers, and how these are all applied, and maybe more besides.

This would be a curriculum beyond the ability of most people, but in the whole world there must be thousands of people who are capable of mastering it, and relativity and quantum mechanics too.

Although most physicists say that Albert Einstein was the most outstanding theoretical physicist of his time, and some people say of all time; Manjit Kumar reveals that it is questionable that he should be seen as genuinely "saintly".

The leading edges of modern, or advanced, physics might be described as "science fiction that works". That is, it is almost pure imagination, but it consistently explains a great amount of scientific facts, sometimes called "data"; and it makes predictions that can be tested and confirmed.

Experimental Blog #106

Comments on "Faust in Copenhagen - A Struggle for the Soul of Physics" by Gino Segre'

The theory of quantum mechanics begins in 1900 when the German physicist Max Planck discovered, or defined, a new constant that he named the quantum, which designates the smallest increment, or parcel, of energy. In the next 30 years or so, Albert Einstein would make some basic contributions from his relativity theories, and many criticisms of the developing theory; "God does not play dice! And He is not malicious! ... {or is He?}"

However, the major contributors to the theory of quantum mechanics were the authors of the "Copenhagen interpretation", completed in 1926 and '27. They were: Niels Bohr{"Albert, stop telling God what to do"}, Wolfgang Pauli, Werner Heisenberg{"And then I said to the Fuhrer ... "}, and Paul Dirac.

The author, Gino Segre', gives special attention to the participation of Lisa Meitner, an experimental, not theoretical, physicist and the only female participant, and Max Delbruck and Paul Ehrenfest. Besides also writing about the contribution of Erwin Schrodinger, Gino Segre' describes the input and/or criticism from at least 10 other, mostly German, physicists to quantum theory.

Quantum mechanics, or physics, is not the same as Newtonian or classical mechanics, and it is often called "counter-intuitive". It is very highly imaginative and largely unobservable.

It is said that physics tells us how to think about the world that we live in.

Experimental Blog #105

Comments on "God's Equation" - Einstein, Relativity, and the Expanding Universe by Amir D. Aczel and "Einstein's Cosmos" - How Albert Einstein's Vision Transformed Our Understanding of Space and Time by Michio Kaku

The author of the first book, Amir Aczel, is a well known mathematician, and the author of the second book, Michio Kaku, is a well known physicist.

Both authors write about the works of Isaac Newton and James Clerk Maxwell, and his 8 partial differential equations, and how the works of these two people form the beginning for the developement of Albert Einstein's relativity theories. Then things become even more complicated; with 4 dimensional space-time, differential geometry or tensor calculus, which is the mathematics of curved surfaces in any dimension, "symmetry", "covariance", and many other very technical matters.

In the early 20th century it turned out that the clarity of the "Newtonian clockwork universe" was actually an illusion, although still an extremely useful and a mostly very dependable illusion. After all, America has sent people to the Moon and back, safely, and more than once, while not using any Einsteinian physics or equations.

Albert Einstein's relativity theories and quantum theory, or mechanics, although both very bewildering and not at all clear for most people, and both essentially completed by 1916 or the late 1920s, eventually produced much fantastic technology with world-wide use and application.

Experimental Blog #104

Comments on "Ordinary Geniuses - Max Delbruck, George Gamow, and the Origins of Genomics and Big Bang Cosmology" by Gino Segre' and "E=mc{squared}" - A Biography of the World's Most Famous Equation by David Bodanis

In spite of the communist regime in the Soviet Union, George Gamow had become a well known young physicist by 24 years of age who had been sometimes allowed to study in Germany and England in the 1920s. However, in 1933 he took advantage of being allowed to attend a science conference in Brussels, Belgium, and he and his wife, who had been allowed to go with him, did not return to their country. They both came to America in 1934.

George Gamow had many interests besides physics, including cosmology and genetics. The author, Gino Segre', says that, although Gamow's many scientific ideas were usually wrong, they very often importantly contributed to the developement of more correct concepts. George Gamow also wrote many popular science books.

Max Delbruck, in Weimar Germany, also became a promising physicist before he was 30 years of age. Germay was a country that seems to have produced many, if not most, of the world's prominent physicists for several decades up to that time. However, Nazi Germany drastically affected German science, and scientists, and Max Delbruck, who was not Jewish, came to America in 1937. By this time Max Delbruck was more involved with biology, more specifically genetics, and he became one of the principal founders of the new science of molecular biology.


This second book is by a very capable mathematician and science writer, David Bodanis. It was a "best seller" popular science book, and it has very much more in it than science.
David Bodanis describes the life and work of Albert Einstein, and many other people besides. A few of these people are seemingly "saintly", such as Albert, but some others are apparently more "wicked".

Experimental Blog #103

A summary of "The House of Wisdom - How Arabic Science Saved Ancient Knowledge and Gave Us the Renaissance" by Jim Al-Khalili

The Abbasid Caliphate begins in Baghdad around 762 CE. During this time the translation of Greek texts of philosophy, mathematics, and science was promoted on a large scale. This movement went on for about 200 years, until it seemed there was nothing more to be translated. Texts, or contributions, from India were also translated.

With very impressive and persuasive thoroughness, Jim Al-Khalili writes about the many scholars, and some of their 1000s of works that they produced, begining around 800 CE and continuing into the 10th century and beyond, and, later, in other places of the Islamic conquest. Not all of the translators and contributors were Arabs or Moslems. Among them were often Christians, Jews, and Persians, but most of them wrote in Arabic.

These scholars and proto-scientists produced 1000s of works in chemistry, medicine, algebra and trigonometry, physics, and astronomy and cosmology. Perhaps other fields as well. Some of these works eventually reached Europe and were translated into Latin by the 15th and 16th centuries. And some of these books became standard texts or reference books that were used for centuries.

Experimental Blog #102

Comments on "Electric Universe" - The Shocking True Story of Electricity by David Bodanis and "The Constants of Nature - From Alpha to Omega - The Numbers that Encode the Deepest Secrets of the Universe" by John D. Barrow

The author, David Bodanis, writes, using no mathematics, in his very narrative style a popular history of the developement and utilization of electricity. He writes about the discovery of the relationship between magnetism and electricity, the movement and flow of electrons, electromagnetic fields and waves, conductors and semiconductors, and computers and the major earlier inventions as well. Even all of life and especially our brains and nervous systems are run by electricity.


The second book is all about mathematics and numbers. Besides Isaac Newton's gravitational constant G, there is Plank's constant, h, which is the "smallest amount by which energy can change", or the quantum; e, the electron charge; and, c, the speed of light. These last 3 constants put together create the "fine structure constant", which is fundamental to the existence of the universe, with the creation of stars, the elements, and the possibility of life.

Especially at the end of the book John Barrow becomes so involved with the infinite possibilities of, and in, the universe that there seems to be little or no difference between genuine science and science fiction.

John Barrow indirectly touches on the subject of chaos and its opposite, determinism; that is, between those things that can be accurately predicted because they are determined, and those things that can not be predicted because they are too chaotic and may not even be determined.

Experimental Blog # 101

Comments on "For the Love of Physics - From the End of the Rainbow to the Edge of Time - A Journey Through the Wonders of Physics" by Walter Lewin with Warren Goldstein and "The Quantum Story" - A History in 40 Moments by Jim Baggott

The first book, by Walter Lewin, is a popular and extremely informative survey of the entire science of physics; as the subtitle describes it to be. It is also autobiographical, and it includes several pages of the history of the author's childhood in Nazi occupied Holland. Walter Lewin had Jewish grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins on his father's side of the family.

The second book, a history of quantum theory{not capitalized}, begins in 1900 with the German physicist Max Planck. From the theoretical point of view the first 3 decades of the 20th century seem to have been the most productive and revolutionary. World War II and the developement of the atom bomb interrupted the study and developement of quantum theory somewhat, but eventually came 2 or more decades of discoveries of many sub-atomic particles.

Jim Baggott says there are now 61, not all yet observed, sub-atomic particles of matter or energy, counting the particles of anti-matter.

The extraordinary accuracy of prediction and measurement based on quantum theory cause it sometimes to be called "the most successful theory in the history of science" or similar statements, in spite of being so bizarre and controversial in some ways.

Experimental Blog #100

Comments on the book "William Henry Harrison" by Gail Collins

This is a well written book that is interesting for the American History it describes from the very late 18th century to 1841, which was when William Henry Harrison died. The author, Gail Collins, provides vivid descriptions of people and events of those times in the Ohio and Indiana territories, which involve Native American, or Indian, people and tribes with their tragic, but provocative histories.

Gail Collins' histories of the Whig and Democratic parties and the evolving American politics, very modern or contemporary in some ways, are also very informative.

Experimental Blog #99

Quotations from "Newton's Gift" - How Sir Isaac Newton Unlocked the System of the World by David Berlinski

The copyright year of this book is 2000.

"{Newton's} definitions have now spread and enlarged themselves so that they cover and explain virtually every aspect of material behavior that is larger than the atom and smaller than the universe."
"The law of gravitation constitutes the frame of the universe because its sphere of application is every material object, whether large or small, here or there, to the uttermost ends of the cosmos."
"We are acquainted with gravity through its effects; we understand gravity by means of its mathematical form. Beyond this, we understand nothing."
"Newtonian mechanics is now complete. Almost all problems that can be posed within the structures that it provides have been solved. It is only turbulence that remains a significant and baffling question."
"There have been in the tide of time four absolutely fundamental physical theories: Newtonian mechanics, of course, Clerk Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism, Einstein's theory of relativity, and quantum mechanics."
"The attempt to explain the biological world in terms of the laws of physics has not been a notable success."
"There is much in nature that cannot be explained in terms of purely mechanical forces - electricity and magnetism, to take one example, the behavior of light, to take another."
"Within the Newtonian universe, the laws governing the behavior of particles in motion hold dominion over the past, the present, and the future."
"Newton's discovery that very significant aspects of the physical world behave in ways that would appear to have nothing to do with the exercise of any will is, when properly understood, deeply disconcerting...."

Experimental Blog #98

Summary of "The Great Equations - Breakthroughs in Science from Pythagoras to Heisenberg" by Robert P. Crease

The "great equations" in this book refer to 10 single or groups of several equations in the history of mathematics.

The first equation is the well known Pythagorean Theorem from around the 6th century BCE, but it apparently had been known for over 1000 years in Babylonia, and it was also apparently independently known in ancient India and ancient China. There are over 500 proofs for this theorem.
The second and third equations were formulated by Isaac Newton. They are: Newton's Second Law of Motion, that is, motive force equals mass times acceleration, and Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation. The work of several other people of Newton's time contributed to one or both of these equations.
The fourth equation was derived by Leonhard Euler in the 1740s, and it has been called the "Gold Standard for Mathematical Beauty". It involves rational numbers, irrational constants, and an imaginary number in an almost "mystical" relationship.
The fifth equation is the Second Law of Thermodynamics; that is, entropy, or disorder, is "forever" increasing in the universe. Robert Crease lists 12 contributors from the 19th century who contributed to this most simple equation.

Number 6 are the equations of James Clerk Maxwell that describe the relationships between electricity and magnetism. These equations were reformulated into a more understandable form by Oliver Heaviside in 1884.

Equations number 7 and 8 are Albert Einstein's: the equation for "Special Relativity", which attempts to solve{apparently successfully} contradictions between the physics of Isaac Newton and the physics of James Clerk Maxwell, and is about the conversion of mass and energy; and the equation for "General Relativity", which describes the curvature of space and time by mass. Several other scientists had achieved some progress on the equation for "Special Relativity", and Einstein's famous equation is derived, in part, from the Pythagorean Theorem. The equation for "General Relativity" is based, in part, on non-Euclidian geometry.

Equation #9, derived in 1926, is called "{Erwin} Schrodinger's Equation" and it is the "basic equation of Quantum Theory." It appears to be a long and very difficult equation, and it attempts to achieve a "compromise" between the wave and particle theories in physics.
Number 10, derived in 1927, is the "{Werner} Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle". It appears to be a simple equation, but, similar to equation #9, it has had many "critics" or "inputters".

Experimental Blog #97

Comments on "Infinite Ascent" - A Short History of Mathematics by David Berlinski and "The Artist and the Mathematician" - The Story of Nicolas Bourbaki, the Genius Mathematician Who Never Lived by Amir D. Aczel


The author, David Berlinski, describes mathematics as "a discipline dominated by men who were often hysterical and almost always vain." However, high school and college mathematics classes probably almost always have a few girls and women who are among the top students, but the "original geniuses", both past and present, seem always to be "guys and more guys", but not very "normal"; and they seem to understand each other almost clairvoyantly.

Although it turns out that most of these "original geniuses" often do a very great amount of long trial and error computation to arrive at their final formulas and theorems; but numbers, figures, spaces, collections, and other abstract mathematical objects are probably their passion, or even their obsession.

Amir Aczel, the author of the second book, more or less begins with a discussion of Einstein's Relativity theories in physics, and cubism, and the modern art of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. The intellectual life of the 20th century was then violently interrupted by the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, Facism in Italy, and, most of all, by Nazism in Germany. After World War II came the Existentialist philosophers in France, but Amir Aczel says that Existentialism was replaced by the movement of "Structualism" developed by the French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss working with the "Nicolas Bourbaki" group of mostly French mathematicians.

This "Bourbaki" group was founded in the 1930s by Andre Weil, and Amir Aczel writes about 19 members of this group in all. He divides them into three "generations", plus one "in-between". He also describes in very great detail the life and work of Alexander Grothendieck, a temporary member of "Nicolas Bourbaki". Alexander Grothendieck is described as "the most visionary mathematician" of the 20th century.

Experimental Blog #96

Comments on the books "Incompleteness" - The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Godel and "Betraying Spinoza" - The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity by Rebecca Goldstein

The first book, "Incompleteness", is about Kurt Godel, who was born into a Sudenten German family in Brno, Moravia, but he "considered himself always Austrian and an exile in Czechoslovakia". Perhaps the most stimulating part of this book is Rebecca Goldstein's vivid description of Vienna, especially its unsurpassed intellectual life and culture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
However, this is a book about mathematics, which Rebecca Goldstein seems to understand very well. For a "math challenged" reader to summarize the "Incompleteness Theorem" and say that Kurt Godel mathematically proved that, "There are some things that are true, but they can not be proven to be so," probably mostly reveals the reader's lack of ability to follow so much abstract and abstruse mathematical reasoning.


Rebecca Goldstein's second book, "Betraying Spinoza", also provides quite a lot of vivid history, especially Jewish history in Western Europe. The author's account of how the Inquisition was mostly directed at Jews is especially informative. Other accounts, by comparison, tend to minimize this interpretation. The resulting formation of the Jewish community of mostly former "Marranos" from the Iberian Peninsula in the Netherlands is described in great detail.
In this book of philosophy the philosophical works of Baruch, or Benedictus{which means blessed} Spinoza are quoted and enlarged upon many times. However, Rebecca Goldstein never very clearly explains just how or why she is "betraying" Spinoza. Besides that, when she defines and writes about the meaning of "modernity", Rebecca Goldstein gives the impression that "modernity" is not the "good thing" that most people probably assume that it is.
As for things that can not be proven or things that can not be rationally understood; is it or is it not true, that nobody really ever escapes from their fate or destiny? And that history always is confirmed, every day and in every human life, one day and one life at a time?

Experimental Blog #95

Comments on the books "A Strange Wilderness" - The Lives of the Great Mathematicians by Amir D. Aczel and "Is God a Mathematician?" by Mario Livio

This book begins over 2500 years ago in Ancient Greece and Alexandria describing the lives and works of Thales, Pythagoras, Archimedes, Euclid, and others, who were especially outstanding in geometry. The author, Amir Aczel, then provides some very interesting information on the mathematical accomplishments of India, Arabia, and Persia from around the 5th to the 12th centuries AD, who were very inventive, or original, in algebra and trigonometry. A few pages contain some information on the Chinese mathematical achievements from about the 3rd century BCE to the 15th century.

The author's attention then goes back to Italy and the rest of Europe beginning in the 12th century and culminating in the "great heresy" of Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, and others of "heliocentrism".

Although the author describes many Italian, French, German, and other European mathematicians and their achievements, he seems to concentrate on Rene Descartes, Gottfreid Leibniz, Isaac Newton, Evariste Galois{who died at 20 years of age in a duel}, Georg Cantor{who died in a mental hospital, where he had often been a patient}, and Nicolas Bourbaki and his group who published papers and books even though Nicolas Bourbaki was a ficticious person who never lived.

The whole second book, "Is God a Mathematician", revolves around the never ending debate about whether mathematics is a science of "discovery" of the "absolute truth of the universe" that exists independently outside the human mind, which is often called the "Platonic" point of view; or whether mathematics is only an "invention", or creation, of human imagination, and would, and could not exist without the human brain.

Among much other information the author points out how virtually timeless mathematics seems to be; that is, it rarely really changes over time. For instance, Euclid's geometry is as true and useful today as it was 2300 years ago. Mario Livio also describes how so many things are not only explained, but have been, and can be predicted by mathematics to extraordinary degrees of accuracy.

By contrast, however, the science of biology is limited to our planet Earth, to an infinitesmal place in the universe with no known relationships to anywhere else. Mathematics seems to apply consistently and everywhere in space and time.