A bunch of different topics:
Re: biological consquences of flipping things in 4-D: Dorothy Sayers had a short story that was (sort of) about this. A man finds his heart on the wrong side one day, and seems to have done things he doesn't remember. He thinks he may have been flipped. Lord Peter has to figure out what's really going on... It also seems to me she had one that hinged on the difference between dextro-rotary and lavo-rotary sugar molecules (which I think are mirror images of one another. Anyway only one occurs in nature, by some frozen accident, which is why it was the key to solving whichever mystery it was.) When we came to those phenomena in my polarization optics lectures, I already knew about them from Dorothy Sayers. No wonder she's so popular among SF fans.
The story "-And He Built a Crooked House" was my introduction to Heinlein, and to the idea of a fourth spatial dimension. It appeared in an anthology titled _Fantasia Mathematica_ and editted by Clifton Fadiman, which also introduced me to Aldous Huxley, Lewis Carroll, H.G. Wells, Sir Arthur Eddington, Martin Gardiner, Plato, Arthur C. Clarke, Karl Capek, and Edna St. Vincent Millay, among others. Lots of good stuff about extra dimensions and crazy topology in there, along with the poetry and comedy and tragedy. I was a math-hating thirteen-year-old. Now I'm a physics grad student (23, and sure from Andy Perrin's list of movies and TV shows that he was just exactly my age. Though I also loved My Little Pony and She-Ra -- and Jem and the Holograms.) Anyway, I credit Mr. Fadiman for making me into a math person, or reasonable approximation. I see it's been reprinted...
As long as I'm recommending books, and since it is an open thread, I want to mention a book that I've been thinking about a lot more since the Abu Ghraib scandal came to light. I haven't found a natural place to put it in yet, so I'll just fit it in here... It's called "War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning" and it's by former New York Times War Correspondent Chris Hedges. Well, I wrote a long review of it after I read it, and find it hard to write a short one... Let me just say that Abu Ghraib felt like a fulfillment of all his predictions and descriptions. He talks about the appeal of war, about the inevitable dehumanization it brings, about how one can come to take the unthinkable for granted, and how easy torture and mutilation become once that happens. He talks about the corrosive effect of jigoism on culture, and about the attraction of death as a source of, as the title says, meaning. I can't link to my review, because it's not up, but my friend put his notes on his website: http://pubweb.northwestern.edu/%7Ealn854/wiaftgum.html
I wish you'd all read it. I'd like to see it become a standard text on the subject in our culture...
I believe...
That everything makes sense, if you look closely enough and think hard enough.
That on large scales and small, the universe is beautiful.
That art is how we turn pain into beauty.
That in telling stories, human beings create meaning for the world.
That in telling stories to their children, human beings create meaning for their lives.
That there is such a thing as “truth.”
That we never know the whole truth.
That stories don’t have to true to be meaningful, but they can’t be false.
That human beings are basically good.
That there is such a thing as “good.”
That all people are equally valuable, even when they’re not good.
That when people aren’t good, it’s usually because they’ve lied to themselves.
That all people lie to themselves sometimes.
That the truth is almost always complicated, though comprehensible.
That it is always better to forgive, even yourself, but to forgive is not to excuse.
That accidents happen. Not everything is someone’s fault, or someone’s success.
That we’re all in the same boat, and none of us really knows what we’re doing here.
"Don't get me wrong, I can't stand Bush, and I very much dislike his administration and think they have made many, many mistakes, but I don't think that they control the amount power that some say they do."
Michelle, takes the words out of my mouth.
Regarding where to find articulate conservative blogs and columnists: I know Orson Scott Card has made himself extra-unpopular lately, but I still like his columns at http://www.hatrack.com and http://www.ornery.org/ (where other people also post.) I read them for just this reason: to get insight into positions that I (mostly) disagree with. Likewise, I'm also still an admirer of Thomas Friedman (whose columns you can probably find in a local newspaper, or on any number of websites) in spite of being somewhat surprised and disappointed by his support of the Iraq war. P.J. O'Rourke is more economically than socially right-wing, I think, and I don't read his stuff regularly, but his books are funny, and fairly well-argued. You might find similar positions in the Wall Street Journal, though I don't read it often enough to recommend specific columnists. I'm in the same position regarding some religious newspapers. My mother subscribes to the National Catholic Register and Our Sunday Visitor, so I tend to read those when I'm visiting. It seems you can find material from both at http://www.catholic.net/. Finally, there's always http://www.townhall.com/. Lots and lots of conservative columnists, unfortunately mostly of the shrill or bombastic type that is likely to re-inforce one's prejudices.
In addition to all of those, I find it helps to read stuff from other countries: http://eurosavant.com/ and http://www.worldpressreview.org (the print edition of that is even better) for perspective. And it helps to read things written in other times, as well as other places. A few decades ago, *everyone* opposed ideas like gay marriage, and there was even more blind patriotism, with spikes near the big wars. Conservatives today really are fighting a rearguard action, however powerful they may presently seem. I don't see a nightmare dystopia if they win. I see the entire world having to relive the 1950s, with all current conflicts forced into a mold of the Cold War (the Korean War is a better metaphor, but it will no doubt stay forgotten). This is bad enough, certainly, but not apocalyptic. Or anyway, probably less apocalyptic than the last time around. Anyway, for a whimsical POV from the past, you could try this conservative political cartoonist:
http://orpheus.ucsd.edu/speccoll/dspolitic/Frame.htm
Occasionally I worry that those of us with physics degrees may be legally required to write hard SF, if indeed we're allowed to write fiction at all. It's so-- unrigorous. Embarrassing enough to be sending in slush in the first place, even more embarrassing to have other academics hear of it, and deadly if they find out its fantasy, I fear. It feels like a sort of secret vice. (Which is funny, because the physics started out as a whim, and the writing as the life goal. Now the road to a PhD seems much clearer than the road to publication.)
A little late for relevance, but Jonathan asked, "Anyone else able to find that super sentence? I vaguely recall him calling it a gem, or masterpiece, or something."
Sure enough, page 26 spilling onto 27:
"Several of the real masterpieces sent in belong to what I call the /self-documenting/ category, on which a simple example is Jonathan Post's 'This sentence contains ten words, eighteen syllables, and sixty-four letters."
Certainly fewer would not do.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2004 | 6 |
Total: 6 comments. View all these comments on a single page.
The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Mary Messall:
Show all comments by Mary Messall.