Swans on Tea

Tales From the World Before Yesterday: A Conversation with Jared Diamond

[A]s I got more experienced in New Guinea, I realized, every night I sleep out in New Guinea forest. At some time during the night, I hear the sound of a tree crashing down. And, you see tree falls in New Guinea forest, and I started to do the numbers. Suppose the chances of a dead tree crashing down on you the particular night that you sleep under it is only one in 1,000. But suppose you’re a New Guinean, who’s going to sleep every night in the forest, or spend 100 nights a year sleeping out in the forest. In the course of 10 years, you will have spent a thousand nights in the forest, and if you camp under dead trees, and each dead tree has a one in 1,000 chance of falling on you and killing you, you’re not going to die the first night, but in the course of 10 years, the odds are that you are going to die from sleeping under dead trees. If you’re going to do something repeatedly that each time has a very low chance of bringing disaster. But if you’re going to do it repeatedly, it will eventually catch up with you.

That incident affected me more than anything else, because I realized that in life, we encounter risks that each time the risk is very slight. But if you’re going to do it repeatedly, it will catch up with you.

He has a new book out, The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies? which, given his prior work, I will probably read at some point.

Cocktail Party Physics: dinosaurs, mars, and kareem abdul jabbar: science books for the kids on your shopping list

Cosmic Variance: Ten Toys That You Won’t Mind Buying

I recently finished Paradox, The Nine Greatest Enigmas in Physics by Jim Al- Khalili (which I got for free! This honor was accorded me because of my character, charm, good looks, and because the medical department contributed four gallons of grain alcohol to the contest I have a blog and said I’d write up a review.)

This is a book, as the title implies, about so-called paradoxes in physics, but the opening of the book actually takes us through logical paradoxes (including the “this statement is a lie” paradox I’ve modified for the thread title) and mathematical puzzlers such as the Monty Hall paradox. The difference between the logical paradoxes and the remainder, as Jim explains, is that a logical paradox is a true paradox — something that cannot logically stand. The mathematical and physics paradoxes he discusses have a resolution, it’s just that the answer is not obvious because you tend to get different answers if you look at the problems in different ways and you aren’t careful enough in your assumptions and analysis.

It was the resolution of the Monty Hall problem that told me I was going to like this book. I had heard it before, but it’s a clear explanation that points out why it’s such a puzzler the way it is usually presented.

In light of “I’ve heard this before” I will offer up my standard disclaimer (standard in the sense that I’ve stated it once before): since I’m a physicist, I can’t tell you that this book made me understand any new bits of physics. All I can tell you is that I found the explanations to be pretty clear. Explaining physics of this sort without equations isn’t easy, and there are times where the explanation has to end up with a “trust me, this is what the math says,” in part because quantum mechanics and relativity are not intuitive.

Al-Khalili takes us through some ancient paradoxes from Zeno, some thermodynamics in discussing Maxwell’s Demon, several paradoxes in relativity owing to the difficulties in simultaneity, and the weirdness of length contraction and time dilation, and into quantum mechanics with Schrödinger’s cat. Also included are some cosmology issues from Olber’s paradox and Fermi’s question and he also covers Laplace’s demon.

In each of the discussions he explains the underlying physics, though you’ll have to be patient, as the paradox is set up and discussed before the physics discussion happens, and I suspect that in some chapters this might cause some confusion as to why there is a paradox. All I can say is to trust that you will get to your destination. However — and this is one of the really enjoyable things about the book — the path to the destination contains many side treks to metaphorical scenic overlooks and other interesting places to visit, and (in my opinion) there aren’t any tourist traps — all of his tangential discussion has some value to it, in explaining some physics or history of physics.

There are a couple of minor nits I’ll mention. A couple of the paradox resolutions weren’t completely satisfying to me (such as one of the time-travel arguments that ends up looking circular: paradoxes aren’t permitted, so there is no paradox), and some details that matter only to a physicist (gravitational time dilation depends on the potential though he says strength of gravity, which is at best ambiguous but I always take to mean the acceleration, g; he also implies that GPS signals go both directions between receiver to the satellite when it’s only a broadcast from the satellite) and one detail that only matters to someone in a job like mine, which is that he associates the famous Hafele-Keating clocks-on-a-plane experiment with the “United States Naval Research Observatory” which sounds like a hybrid of the Naval Observatory and Naval Research Labs. I’m sensitive to that because people mix us up, or think we’re the same place, all the time. Fortunately he gets the attribution correct later in the book.

But, as I said, those are minor things. Overall it was an enjoyable book to read. I definitely give it a “spin up” rating.

This is late, and I have to apologize for that, but I finally got to finish reading Chad Orzel’s How To Teach Relativity To Your Dog. For my tardiness I blame the really nice stretch of weekend weather we’ve had, which “forced” me to do outdoorsy things with my disposable free time. (There’s also the issue of my bifocals, which make reading small-ish type somewhat uncomfortable, or I might have finished this one or two sittings)

Chad is a professor at Union College in Schenectady, NY (something I can type without looking it up, since I grew up in that area), has a background in atomic physics and writes a blog called Uncertain Principles. If you read my blog on a regular basis you should already know of him, since I link to his blog on a fairly regular basis.

I’ll get this part out of the way first: I am not a data point to confirm that this will help you understand relativity; I’m not really the target audience — I already have an understanding of relativity. I was happy to be offered a copy of the book for review, but I don’t normally buy mass-appeal (or books that aspire to be mass-appeal) physics books, because I already have a physics degree. But I can say this: I think it’s a valid approach, and it’s done fairly well.

The problem with mere textbooks is that they are usually quite dry, and pop-sci books often skimp on technical accuracy in trying to compensate to engage the reader. Chad has grabbed the middle ground in using the conversations with his German shepherd, Emmy (The Queen of Niskayuna) to both set up the discussions and to raise objections to the various conundrums that appear in learning about relativity. The dialogue format is helpful, because as anyone familiar with the topic knows, there are a lot of moments in learning relativity where the natural reactions is, “Whoa! That doesn’t make sense!” and this is pretty much what happens. (The only textbook I’ve read that uses a conversational approach is Electrodynamics by Griffiths, which is excellent) There’s a lot of dog dialogue (dogalogue?), and depending on your tolerance for the approach (along with some puns and pop-culture references) it might be a little much. There’s 300 pages of it.

Chad covers all the topics, starting with special relativity, including spacetime diagrams. Invariant quantities and E=mc^2 follow, and then general relativity, with all that entails, along with the ramifications of relativity in the form of cosmology and high-energy/particle physics.

The diagrams and equations are a necessary evil, but shouldn’t scare you off if you find them intimidating, because there’s plenty of discussion, and no problems to work. The satisfying part for me was that the level of technical accuracy is quite good (which is not at all surprising) even at the level where it probably wouldn’t matter to the casual reader, but things I would pick up on, especially in discussing clocks. In fact, I think my only technical nit was when he discusses energy holding nuclei together (forces hold things together) but in the context of the depth of the discussion, I understand the approach.

All in all, a pretty good book, and something a science enthusiast would probably find to be a worthwhile read.

Five Sci-Fi Children’s Books

‘Catch-22′: A Paradox Turns 50 And Still Rings True

There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. [Bomber pilot] Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. … Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.

One of my favorites, even if I didn’t “get” some of it the first time I read it back when I was a teenager.

Gbur’s Mathematical Methods

By golly, I wish I’d had this book as an undergrad.

As it was, I had to wait until this past January, at the ScienceOnline 2011 conference. These annual meetings in Durham, North Carolina feature scientists, journalists, teachers and students, all blurring the lines between one specialization and another, trying to figure out how the Internet can help us do and talk science. Lots of the attendees had books recently published or soon forthcoming, and the organizers arranged a drawing. We could each pick a book from the table, with all the books anonymized in brown paper wrapping. Greg “Dr. Skyskull” Gbur had brought fresh review copies of his textbook. Talking it over, we realized that if somebody who wasn’t a physics person got a mathematical methods textbook, they’d probably be sad. So, we went to the table and hefted the offerings until we found one which weighed enough to be full of equations, and everyone walked away happy.

The “we” includes me, because I scored a copy as well, and was in on the activity of sizing and weighing the anonymized books. There were probably more of these books than physicists (perhaps we can do better this year), though, so I imagine some species of biologist and/or journalist (statistically speaking) was disappointed.

Pulling back the curtain: MIT anthropologist peers into the mysterious world of professional magicians

To find out how the craft works, Jones spent two years inside Paris’ thriving world of magic. He acquired mentors, passed an examination to join France’s largest magic association, and has emerged with a new book about the experience, Trade of the Tricks, published this month by the University of California Press.

Abstruse Goose: Aragorn

Swing for the Fences. A discussion of Scorecasting: The Hidden Influences behind How Sports Are Played and Games Are Won

What is the source of home field advantage? Is it one of the usual suspects, or an influence of the crowds on referees?

Take any European football league in which all the teams play each other twice in a season, once at home and once away. Add up the total number of home victories and compare it to the total number of away victories. The ratio will be at least 60:40 in favour of the home sides (often it’s more: in the English Premier League home advantage currently runs at around 63 per cent, in Spain’s La Liga it’s 65 and Italy’s Serie A it’s 67). The advantage holds across almost every major sport, though exactly how big it is tends to vary. Fans are so used to this that they take it for granted their team is much more likely to win on its own turf. They also take it for granted that they know why – it’s because the home crowd is cheering the team on. But there is no evidence for this. In fact, despite a fair amount of research in the top sports science journals, there is no conclusive explanation of what makes teams play better at home. This is the real puzzle about home advantage: everyone knows it exists but no one knows why.

The best intro book for any topic

Of course I checked out physics and in addition to Larry Gonick’s The Cartoon Guide to Physics, it gave a bunch of books on various topics within physics. I have read none of these books, so I have no basis for endorsing or disputing the choices; I don’t know if “Best Intro” means they were going for pop-sci books for a general audience or intro textbooks for the student or serious amateur. The Cartoon Guide might indicate one way — I’m not sure — but the other titles are or seem more like textbooks. The closest I can come to a recommendation is noting that the QM book is by David J Griffiths, I’ve heard good things about it, and his Electrodynamics textbook is very good.

Letters of Note: May I suggest that Mr. Bond be armed with a revolver?

Boothroyd’s long letter continued in a similar vein, filled with incredibly detailed weaponry suggestions for 007. Fleming, delighted to be furnished with such expert advice, immediately replied with the letter seen below, and, as a result of their subsequent correspondence, equipped Bond with a Walther PPK in the novel Dr. No.

Boothroyd’s observation about the Beretta being a lady’s gun lacking stopping power made it into the movie as “Nice and light — in a lady’s handbag. No stopping power” and the armourer was given the name Major Boothroyd.