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| Posted by: Bogon, 11:59 PM GMT en Julio 08, 2012 | +2 |
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Higgs(yawn)boson? Wake me up when there's a practical application of it! :)
There's a new series of online courses being offered. I've got all of them listed in my blog, but I brought this one over for you after I saw your entry. You might be interested. I forgot to pick up the date. I think it begins Monday, the 17th. When you check out the page, you'll laugh at the illustration for the video in the upper right-hand corner.
Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Computation
Prof. Umesh Vazirani, University of Berkeley, 8 weeks
https://www.coursera.org/course/qcomp
And didn't Armstrong conform to the rules and pass his tests like everybody else? If you keep picking and picking, there's no telling what all will come unraveled. I worry that the sport will be paralyzed by bureaucracy. This is not what I want to see on television.
The organizers of the Tour de France should decide on some appropriate level of scrutiny before the race. They need to publish the rules, then get out of the way and let the bicycles fall where they may.
Ha! Boson, schmoson. The folks at CERN found a particle. Now they need to find an explanation.
Hi, Shore. Quantum computing? I fear that must be a topic for the next fellow. The quantum world is too weird for me. Too submicroscopic, too. I need a machine I can fix with a hammer. :o)
I'll come look at the course list, when I get a chance. Right now I need to pack up, kiss Mom goodbye and drive two hundred miles east.
The weather report says that our heat wave should end today. The forecast is for rain. Hot dog, we need some.
Not for driving in, though. I want to get on the road before the storms arrive.
So it takes about how long to get home?
If I take a vehicle I have to ride two ferries to visit my mother. The driving part is only about 80 km or so but the ferry rides and waiting end up taking at least 6 hours. Our houses are actually less than 50 km from each other and we have made the trip with our boat in about 4 hours. Mom gave up her driver's license a couple of years ago and I brought her Plymouth back on the ferries to pass it on to her great grand daughter so if I go by plane or boat I have to get a taxi or a brother in law or sister to pick me up.
Assiduously: had to check the dictionary but I guess I do follow your writing that way.
Higgs: still waiting for my brother in law to call back with his take - he's a physicist but he is more interested in making drums and was off at a music festival when the announcement hit the news so I have yet to hear his take. I got interested in Quantum Physics a few years ago and asked him what he could tell me. He said:
"It is a tool. When you need it you take it out of the box and when you are finished with it you put it back."
Howdy, ycd. The main road here from Mom's house is practically all interstate highway. If I step on the gas and don't stop or get hung up in traffic, I can make it in three and a half hours. A more typical number is four hours, which is what I usually say when people ask me that question.
Of course, there's more than one way to go. Sometimes I like to take the scenic route. I get tired of burning up the same stretch of freeway. Last Friday I drove west from Winston-Salem toward Boone. The road is four-lane that far. After that you have to filter through a series of winding mountain back roads until you return to the interstate in Tennessee. That way takes longer, but it is actually shorter distance-wise. I got there with more gas left in my tank than if I had gone the fastest way.
That route is contraindicated in winter when snow is a possibility, but it's just what the doctor ordered when gaining altitude provides relief from the heat.
Yes, you are always a welcome visitor here.
The quantum world is counterintuitive. The things that go on at the subatomic level violate our notions of common sense. Yet the equations of quantum physics describe that world exactly, to the limit of physicists' ability to measure. It's a nifty tool.
The theoretical physicist in the vid says Higgs boson is a particle with no mass. How can you have a particle with no mass? lol Yes, counterintuitive. And my hope echoes yours.
The speed of light varies depending on the medium. The figure you usually hear is the speed of light in empty space. Photons propagate significantly slower through dense materials such as water or glass. It is possible for a massive particle to travel faster than light through one of these materials. If the particle carries a charge, the particle sheds energy through interaction with the medium, which produces a blue glow called Cherenkov radiation.
The promised rain finally arrived. For the last hour the sky has been leaky and rumbling. Guess I won't have to water the garden tomorrow. :o) On the other hand, all this rain is going to make the grass grow. :o( For the last couple of weeks I've been able to kick back and enjoy the heat.
Sort of.
I've never been a fan of this style of cycling, which sort of reminds me of roller derby, in that each team decides who their leader is and then the rest of the cyclists do what they can to make sure he gets and stays in the lead. At least that's my non-sports-enthusiast take on it.
Speaking of not being constrained by logic, that's about where the Higgs boson, string theory, and dark matter fall. It's almost like the physicists determined that something just doesn't add up, so they took a leap of illogic to come up with an explanation. Heck, I can't even grasp the correlation between Einstein's theory of relativity and nuclear fusion.
When it comes to technical info, I'm more a student of Goldie Hawn than Einstein or Higgs. Here she explains time zones, which are also relative. Pay attention now. It's kinda complicated.
Not that I have anything against Goldie. She's one talented lady, without whom Laugh-In would have lost its Sparkle (Farkel).
There is no reason at all why you should feel constrained by logic. Logic has definite limitations. It won't let you "think outside the box".
As for Tour de France, there are many ways to participate, and at least that many ways whereby a fan might be engaged. For instance, some people seem to enjoy watching all those multicolored spandex-covered rumps oscillating back and forth on their saddles for hours on end. Where's the logic in that?
Can you even begin to imagine what it takes to drag a body through the gruelling 3 weeks of the tour? They start out with around 200 riders and lose on average 4 a day, many with broken bones, punctured lungs, razor wire lacerations…
It’s really dangerous.
They ride virtually shoulder to shoulder, inches between each bike, at between 30 and 40mph for up to 200km a day. A cross wind on exposed routes can cause a domino effect of falling riders. The lucky ones are out front, avoiding the pack. Those at the back often pick up their bikes and run through the fields to get past the carnage to rejoin the road race. They have dozens of cars and motorbikes filming them, just feet away and moving at the same breakneck speed. Helicopters fly low over head, and complete idiots stand out in front of them to take a photo. And then knock them down. Lunatics in fancy dress (or frequently just their knickers) run alongside them offering encouragement, often patting them on the back, or worse, grabbing the saddle and pushing them. Riders aim punches at those who most offend – it must all add to their pain and stress.
They dodge deadly street furniture, jump road bumps, hang on for dear life over greasy cobbled surfaces and fire round roundabouts like bullets in buckets. They fly around sharp corners with little idea of what is just out of view – even discarded water bottles can become deadly obstacles. Even immobile spectators are a nightmare. Two days ago a little old man who sat in a folding chair right on the narrow roads edge caused a pile up of riders which, once they had unpeeled themselves from the tangled wreckage, was found to have caused the poor wretch at the bottom of the pile to suffer a couple of snapped bones. End of his tour.
These guys have virtually no body fat – the only padding on them is the stuff sewn into their shorts. They snap alarmingly easily. Those wafer thin cycling outfits they wear appear to be sprayed on to mere skeletons, and yet they have to somehow stuff 10,000 calories a day down their necks just to get by. Incidentally, being an unofficial tour aficionado of many years standing I can inform you that all that food goes in one end and to any great extent doesn’t come out the other. Sorry if that offends. But it’s true. That is what you call expending all your energy.
They tackle mountains. The roads sometimes so steep I would be out of my saddle, foot stamped to the pedals just begging my engine to make it up there IN MY CAR. They might have 7 different mountains to climb in ONE DAY. Then they reach the summit, the cold air hits them. People hand out newspapers to the riders, they stuff them down the front of their jackets, zip up, and hurtle down the hair pin bends faster than the motorbikes dare do it.
The newspaper lagging is to prevent pneumonia with the sudden temperature change in hot wet lungs.
Each team member is there for their differing skill. Some excel at the sprint finishes or are time trial specialists, some are great strong climbers, some specialise in daredevil descents. The team member with the best all-round skill set and with many tours experience under their belt will be helped by the rest of the team. They surround their man, protect him from the inexperienced in the field – keep him close behind their wheel, as doing so expends 5% less energy than being in the lead position. The glory is a shared experience when ‘their’ guy achieves their common goal. A Tour de France team that is well managed and well prepared, working closely in unison is virtually unbeatable. Lance Armstrong would always be the first to recognise that. He never won it by going alone.
As for all the drugs scandals? A never ending story. How can a man like Lance have cheated at the same time as having PASSED over 200 separate tests over all his years in the tours? Why is it OK for team members to have their own charges dropped for doping offences just because they agree to testify on what they saw and heard over the years on the one star of the sport they seem determined to sully the name of?
Several members of this current Tour de France are able to finish this race, compete in the Olympics – and then start their next 2 year ban from September onwards. How convenient for them. It makes a mockery of ever pressing charges in the first place.
I love the sport. It seems such an impossible task to start out on Day 1 – face all those injury risks – avoid all those potential pitfalls – keep your daily finish times up near the top of that leaderboard – cope with every impossible to predict variant – and three weeks later hurtle down the Champs Elysees in Paris to claim victory.
I’ve often wondered how a woman in the Tour de France would fair.
She’d need that protective team around her, same as all the guys do.
She’d need nerves of steel, same as all the guys do.
She’d need to take a very quick ‘comfort break’ at roadside….. er……
The Higgs boson thingy – way over my head I’m afraid, despite being a fan of The Big Bang Theory TV show. I can just about cope with the Will-I-Am Twitter version of events –“Without the Higgs boson, the universe would have remained a formless soup of particles shooting around at light speed…”
Much like cycling in France then?
Go Bradley Wiggins! Go!!!!!
I understand what you're saying. My mind cannot fathom "particles" of light either. Light having mass makes no sense to me, counterintuitive just like a massless particle. Perhaps whatever the eye sees when light bathes it has mass but light itself does not. Perhaps light is the medium and particles the memory, in the sense of human consciousness. Perhaps the continuing CERN experiments and the eyebrows it raises in the creative minds of theoretical physicists worldwide will lead to a blend of human knowledge in ways not envisioned by Dr. Higgs.
Got a little rain here the past couple days. That's a happy thing.
Have a good one.
Pushing pedals for two thousand miles through the Alps and the Pyrenees is no small thing, either. It's amazing to me that anyone is willing to try. These athletes are held in such high esteem by their fans that young riders join the Tour almost as a form of hero worship. They are driven to find out whether they, too, have the Right Stuff.
One of the things you need to win is luck, and plenty of it. As you say, experienced riders are felled daily, usually through no fault of their own. If they're lucky they are able to return to the race with a few bandages to cover the road rash. Those whose luck runs out end up in the hospital. That's what happened to reigning Olympic champion Samuel Sanchez two days ago in stage 8. Even some of the riders who initially keep going are forced to abandon the race later, when the pain becomes too great.
As for the notion of female participation, there are surely many obstacles, just as there are in most other sports. I doubt there is room in the world for two Tours de France, which means that women would have to ride alongside the men. Certainly the average Frenchman would appreciate a set of softer, rounder curves molded around some of those saddles. The issue with occasional pitstops can be overcome. It is a plumbing problem, after all; it must yield to a technical solution. :o)
The Higgs boson is a technical solution to a problem with the Standard Model. The article in The Economist includes a chart of all known particles and forces. They all fit inside a neat grid... except for the Higgs boson. The Higgs field is the only scalar force. It sticks out like a sore thumb. That is what bugs me about it. I can't decipher the math on John Ellis' t-shirt, but I can see that the Higgs boson doesn't fit the pattern of the rest of the theory. To me, that makes it suspect. I'm hoping the new particle refuses to fit the Higgs model, and that particle physicists at CERN and elsewhere will have to try again to reconcile their theories.
Barefoot, ‘photon’ is the name we give to the boson which carries the electromagnetic force. In the quantum world it can be both a wave and a particle. Which aspect you see depends on how you measure it.
The photon has no mass, but it is affected by gravity. One of the first experiments devised to test Einstein's theories measured a deflection of light from a distant star by the sun's gravity. It was a small scale demonstration of the equivalence of mass and energy. For a large scale demonstration look at the sun itself. Several hundred million tons of matter are converted to energy every second to stoke the sun's nuclear furnace.
My back yard is considerably cooler and wetter today than it was at this time yesterday. Well over two inches of rain fell overnight. There's more on the way. I hear distant thunder.
hmmmmm
I must be getting old. I never considered that asspect (sic) ((oh my!)) until you pointed it out. I might just have to check that out. >8-}
Not really about either topic but I was reminded of an article I posted awhile back about human intuitions regarding the natural world. We are limited by our perceptions without technical assistance. The example that struck me from the article was that, even though we know that the earth orbits around the sun, it takes a moment to remember that fact because our intuition tells us it's the sun that goes around the earth. I mean, we can see that with our own eyes. It's a funny thing. Still, once one knows the facts and is able to visualize it, it sticks (with the occasional reminder, perhaps). But, it is never going to be an intuitive understanding - as long as we are earthbound, anyway.
It may be that all that quantum stuff will be the same, one day - never intuitive but understood and accepted.
Maybe not. Feynman said, "If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics."
Glad you got your rain and some heat relief. My aunt is visiting Weaverville right now and is probably happy for the cooler temps, if not the rain they're getting.
There are three kinds of camera angle in the Tour de France coverage:
1. the view from a motorcycle ahead of the riders,
2. the view from a helicopter above the riders, and
3. the view from a motorcycle behind the riders.
It is the latter that produces the effect I mentioned. Unfortunately for fans who are primarily interested in that point of view, the network producer forces us to timeshare among all three. Riders are not permitted to draft behind the team cars and camera vehicles, so it's somewhat more likely that you will get a close shot from behind.
Personally, I'm rather partial to the shots from the helicopter. From up there you can see a lot more than bikes and spandex. There are rivers and castles, mountains and forests, fields and towns. In short, you get a panorama of everything la belle France has to offer.
Maybe one of these days television will acquire a two-way capability like Skype, and it will be possible to orient the camera with a joystick from your sofa. How much do you think marketroids would pay for the data on where everybody wants to look?
Hi, sp. The duplex format does seem to be working pretty well. Chances are I'll multiplex again. Sometimes I'm unable to hatch a single idea big enough to fill this space. In this case there were two major stories breaking simultaneously.
The problem with understanding quantum theory is exactly what you describe. All of our experience comes to us from the macroscopic world that we can see and feel. In the subatomic world of fermions and bosons the rules are different.
You don't have to shrink your point of view by nearly that many orders of magnitude to begin to see differences. The water strider can walk on water. Surface tension is strong enough to hold the insect up, because it doesn't weigh much. Waterborne microorganisms move about using cilia or flagella. They do so because, to them, water feels thick and viscous. The methods we might use, such as oars or propellers, wouldn't work for them any more than cilia would work for us. To us water is... watery. Our little hairs don't get much traction. They just get wet.
Speaking of getting wet, it's raining again. In the space of three days our yard has transformed from desert to swamp. It's like moving from El Paso to Orange, TX. There's danger of culture shock.
LUMP: Linguistic Ubiquitous MultiPlex was an A.I. character in a SciFi paperback by S.R. Delany?
Seems to me it talked about humans as behaving in three classes: Simplex, Complex and Multiplex.
To be honest, I didn't like those much the first time around. One's tastes change over time, though. Maybe it's time to whip 'em out and have another go.
Wrong. Obviously this guy's tastes are so different from mine that his review is useless to me.
Inside the front cover is a short description of what the book is about. A motley crew of bizarre characters embark on a fool's errand.
Sorry, I'm not going there. There is a fundamental disconnect. I can't identify with either the characters or the situation. Forget it. Guess my tastes haven't changed that much after all. If anything, I've become less patient with nonsense now.
Surely part of the problem is that I'm not feeling well. When she was in California Wife caught an ailment. It manifests as a hacking cough, sometimes accompanied by fever. She's getting better now, but in the interim she has passed the Pernicious California Cough to me.
That's why I'm awake at three in the morning. I'm waiting for the Nyquil to kick in.
First of all, I don't have kids. I need a container that can be opened by a sixty year old man. At the risk of belaboring the obvious, perhaps I should point out that I only have recourse to these pill boxes when I'm sick. Under those circumstances I'm apt to be weak, clumsy and impatient. Don't hassle me when I'm sick, Jack.
Secondly, I have a deep and abiding conviction that, if I pay for something, it is mine. I expect, nay, demand to have access to my drugs.
Thus I will make one, maybe two, attempts to open my pills using tried and true methods. If those fail, the situation escalates rapidly. Where are my Channellocks? You can't imagine how little interest I have in the instructions written on the lid.
Belay that. There's no future in it. If the Channellocks don't work, maybe the limb lopper will. I mean, I'm not above running the whole container through a band saw lengthwise. One way or another I will get in.
Because not only will I get access to my pills on this single occasion, but the problem will be solved once and for all. That sucker will be open, Jack. Believe it.
Get Well Soon x
Oh, those containers. It's not just pills any more. My dishwasher detergent, and so on and so forth, present the same sort of challenge. Some I deal with by getting out The Razorblade and slicing off the plastic tabs that "catch" the lid if it goes all the way back on. A few will give way to vise grips, although there's no guarantee the lid will emerge intact. Phooey.
Hope your day goes well and improvement comes quickly.
I had a bit of a tussle with a bucket of screws yesterday. Eventually got the tines of the hammer inside and ripped the top off.
Another paradox I see (or don't see in this case) is that as I age and use more meds and supplements the printing on the pill boxes gets smaller and smaller.
I can not find any Delany books around here just now but I did enjoy them.
Seems to me he predicted the modern world where everyone is connected with the capability of broadcasting to the world and anyone might get 15 seconds of world wide fame. Also the Human/machine interface described in "Nova" seems to have come to pass.
Sorta like Facebook. Though I am just making that up because I try to avoid "Friending".
Sorry about that bug you are shaking off - I still smoke tobacco so the cough is a constant companion.
Be better soon, eh.
FYI, Jack is the guy I yell at in traffic. It's a name I use when I don't care what a person's real name is. It's a generic form of address for purposes of accusation, derogation, condescension, excoriation etc.
UK - Thanks. I'm feeling low this morning, but I'm optimistic that the disease is progressing through it's various stages, and that soon I'll emerge on the other side.
shore - When I was single I had pretty good health for the same sorts of reasons you mention. Now I have a help mate, who wants to smooch her germs on me. I have a hard time saying no.
Vise grips! I love vise grips. They're great for holding the bottom part of the container while you apply Channellocks to the top.
I've noticed those locking tabs on my mouthwash. I always whack 'em with a big set of diagonal pliers. Then the cap works Real Good as in days of yore, before lawyers started designing consumer products.
ycd - You showed up unannounced while I was responding to UK and shoreacres. I suppose I ought to give Delany another chance when I'm feeling better.
I am not on Facebook. I have no plans to get on Facebook.
Recently I responded to an invitation from someone I knew in high school to join something called LinkedIn. It was a bad idea. Now I get a lot of annoying e-mail from LinkedIn, and I still don't know what the site is supposed to do for me. One of these days, when I have lots of time of my hands, I think I shall pursue my options for getting LinkedOut.
Sadly I don't have breaking news on the Higgs boson. The next major development in that story could take decades. Insight doesn't punch a timeclock. Thanks to Google I can offer a glimpse into the lighter side of a heavy subject. For those who are still not satisfied, here is a bottom-up explanation of what all the hoopla is about.
Next month, assuming we all survive to rendezvous again, will begin my fourth year as a blogger here at Weather Wunder World. Traditional Dry Slot fare for August is the Atlantic hurricane season. The tropics jumped off to a quick start this year, including a couple of early swirlies near the Carolinas. Since then... nothing. There's nothing doing now and nothing in the pipeline.
Meanwhile the east Pacific has been pumping out tropical systems like a prize hen laying eggs. The first storm in the current series just passed Hawaii. It is showing its age. No longer listed as a named entity on the Wunderground Severe Tropical Weather page, it is still identifiable as a residual blob on MIMIC.
At the moment it's under stress from cool water below and sinking air above. I'm rooting for it to make it just a bit farther west, where it will find more hospitable conditions. Lots of warm water and rising air await, if only it can hang together for a few more degrees of longitude. Things should begin to loosen up somewhere around the International Dateline. Perhaps we'll witness a resurrection.
People in the Philippines, Japan and elsewhere in the west Pacific probably have little sympathy for this point of view. Their tropical season has been active enough already without importing extra aggravation from Central America.
My weapon of choice for these packages is scissors, but it can be hard to find a pair strong enough to handle the job and big enough to fit my hand. I wonder how tin snips would do?
On television I've seen people use a convex semicircular knife for jobs like skinning an animal. That might work, but I don't know where to find one. I'm not equipped to make my own.
I've also seen pictures of hooked knives with a concave cutting surface. A google search turns up "gutting knives" (ech!), linoleum knives (more like it) and a generic "hook cutter" billed as "the ultimate knife for opening packages and cartons". Maybe that's what I need.
I hope they find the culprit and puncture him up good...
NBC will rebroadcast the stage this afternoon, and I plan to Be There this time. Gotta go!
Aside from my own state of convalescence, it's freakin' hot outside. Not like an oven -- it's a Turkish bath. The metaphor is perfect except for marble floors and fat guys wearing white towels. Thanks goodness for that last part!
The dissolute blob formerly known as Daniel is nearing the 180° line. The blob has lost its swirl, which means that now it's just another parcel of moist tropical air, much like the one above my lawn. Looks like it's a goner, but I'll continue to watch as long as I can identify the spot.
Sister Emilia continues to follow in Daniel's tracks. She remains east of Hawaii, though, still a long way from regenerating into a typhoon.
But, I don't know Jack ;)
Sorry you're still feeling the effects of your cough. Haven't you any bored teenagers in your neighborhood to do the lawn?
Our humidity is at 60% and that is too high for me ... if the temperature was much more than the current 72 degrees I'd be miserable.
My problem with all these books was that they are soft sci-fi. They are more literary than scientific. They are all about the characters. Their claim to being sci-fi rests on the futuristic setting, which is never really explained. There are only bizarre people doing weird things that, given the setting, seem more or less believable.
I like hard sci-fi, where speculative technology is one of the players, and where the author goes to some trouble to explain how everything works. The futuristic setting has a history, which, in most cases, could result from our present. It's okay to talk about the effects of technology on culture, and it's fine to run the characters through a wringer as a result. It is not enough simply to be bizarre. I want some (metaphorical) rockets and laser beams in there. If somebody overamps the pizazzatron, I expect to see a fuse blow.
Take Star Trek for example. When the transporter gets cranky, they give Spock some dialog about "cross-circuiting to B". It's all mumbo-jumbo, but it shows they're trying to make it real.
Thanks for your concern about my health. I still have lingering cough and phlegm, but the fever and runny nose have come and gone. I actually feel pretty chipper this evening. Need to go rustle up some chow!
We should both sign up for the SciFi course Shore mentions. Not this summer for me though. There is enough Fantasy already planned c.
I think I agree with your summation of the genre but there have been some surprises along the way: When I re read Ursula K. Le Guin's "The Word for World is Forest" I was shocked at my memories of the first reading. I had first read it as an adventure set in the future and since I might have been logging forests at the time there is a good chance I sympathized with the loggers. Watched "Avatar" on a tiny screen without any sound on a plane to Turkey or Brasil or who knows?
Same story.
Sort of
Then on the other hand, there are some good books that I read for school that I might never have read otherwise. Take Orwell's 1984 for instance. That's on sp's list of "Books You've Never Read". I read it -- once -- for high school English class. It was so disturbing that I've never wanted to read it again. For the same reason it was also memorable.
I can't say that about Dhalgren. All I remember about that story is that there was a guy with one boot and one bare foot. I can't recall any reason to care about that guy or the world he inhabited. Maybe if I had written a report...
I don't think I ever completed Dhalgren but the written dialect reminds me of the modern "Texting" abbreviations like LOL, eh.
Speaking of George Orwell: his "Homage to Catalonia"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homage_to_Catalonia
impressed me.
Most of my book reports were based on "Cole's Notes".
I'm sure both those fellows are still doing boffo business. Just now I found this site on the internet, and google tells me it has competition. Think I'll start out by running the study list from shoreacre's class through the site's search engine.
Referring back to comment 28, the area of blobulation formerly associated with hurricane Daniel is now moving onto the right edge of the blue NOAA map of the western Pacific. There's nothing much going on with it any more, but it's still there, and I'm still watching.
Therefore let me post an erratum re my comment 35 to sp: though I may have made at least two attempts to read this book, I never succeeded. It's not worth the effort. The book deserves it's place on the list at io9.
Opinions about the book differ wildly, however, and I'm not sure why. The wiki lists some of them. There's one taken from the back cover, a review from the Raleigh News and Observer, which I'm happy to quote here because of it's geographic proximity and its laudable brevity:
That's fair. It is a tour de force. It's an outstanding example of something that I do not want to read.
Here's another quote from Harlan Ellison.
Sounds honest to me. I'm not a diehard fan of everything Mr. Ellison penned, but I will stand by that statement. That is my experience in a nutshell.
Philip K. Dick said,
I haven't thrown my copy away, perhaps because of all the unaccountably favorable reviews. Perhaps there's something in there I'm missing. Perhaps, if I live another century or two, I'll eventually find it.
I doubt it. Your mileage, dear reader, may vary.
There was a thing going on in early 70's - lots of psychology-based sf that just doesn't hold up today - and I wonder if that's when Dhalgren was published and if that's part of what's "wrong" with it.
So, who do you read for hard sf, if I may ask?
I started with what I found on the shelf circa 1960. At that time H. G. Wells and Jules Verne were classic. You might include Arthur Conan Doyle in that group. I've always enjoyed Sherlock Holmes stories. Some of those have a hint of sci-fi edginess.
It wasn't long until writers like Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov caught my attention. Also I became aware that regular collections of short stories were being published. Those gave me an introduction to a lot of writers in a short time: (in no particular order) Poul Anderson, Fritz Leiber, Robert Silverberg, Frederik Pohl, Brian Aldiss, Damon Knight, Fred Saberhagen, Theodore Sturgeon, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
One name that served me well over the years is Larry Niven. I bought a lot of paperbacks with his name on the back. Then there's the dean, Robert A. Heinlein. Oh, heck, there are too many to name individually. I can't think of them all. Even my neighbor Orson Scott Card over in Greensboro can spin a decent yarn.
It's fun to read some of the older stuff, like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. The modern reality of nuclear submarines eclipses anything Captain Nemo might have dreamed on his best day. To view this story as sci-fi you have to imagine what the future would have looked like in the late 19th century. It's a strange inversion of the usual forward looking sci-fi point of view. Nowadays there's a subgenre, Steampunk, which seeks to replicate that alternate history feeling after the fact.
Let's take a look at that io9 list again. I'm only familiar with about half the names on the list, but the first couple surprise me. I really like Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon. I've read it cover to cover at least twice. Furthermore, based on that experience, I was game to tackle the three volume Baroque Cycle, which fills in centuries of historical background and culminates in Cryptonomicon.
And how could you not like Frank Herbert's Dune? It's a classic. It's better than any of the movies. We're all used to science fiction stories in which the speculative technology is faster-than-light space travel. Sometimes it's extrasensory perception, genetics or robotics. Dune has all that, but the key tech is ecology. That's rare in sci-fi, which makes this book special.
I devoured Asimov's Foundation trilogy back when it was new. The case for reading it now might be less compelling. It might be harder to find. Still, these books are neither hard nor long. If you're interested in sci-fi and you're collecting notches on your belt, you might as well carve a notch for this one.
Lately I've been trying to fill in some blanks with William Gibson and Neil Gaiman. David Brin is a good read. I'm looking forward to Existence.
I mentioned H. G. Wells and Jules Verne. We still read these despite subsequent scientific and technological advances. Around the World in Eighty Days is fun even though we know astronauts routinely make the trip in ninety minutes. Michael Palin hosted a decent BBC television series while trying to duplicate Phileas Fogg's journey using modern surface transportation. It wasn't easy.
The syllabus for shoreacre's class starts even earlier with Grimm's fairy tales. The course is half over before you get as far as H. G. Wells. I'm not sure I would call some of those stories sci-fi (Alice in Wonderland?), but the professor certainly makes the point that sci-fi need not be new to be good.
It's more likely that your own interests and tastes have changed over time. When I was younger I read a lot of sci-fi short stories that relied on some facile gimmick or plot twist. Nowadays I have a greater appreciation of what might drive a struggling young writer to invent such a story. He's under time pressure. He has a family to support. Nevertheless I have less patience with such stories today. Life's too short. I have no time at all for Dhalgren and its pretentions to literary splendor. If you have Dhalgren and a dollar, you might be able to buy a cup of coffee.
Add: Experience extends understanding. We learn more about life, the universe and everything. Thus it's likely that I would be less entertained by a rollicking space opera these days than when I was an adolescent. Conversely I might be more partial to a complex and nuanced story that would have bored me then. I would like to think so, anyhow. :o)
The blob of moisture once associated with hurricane Daniel has been swept up in a northerly flow which will recycle it into the westerlies. Looks like Daniel will come back to America.
There is still a chance for Emilia. She sits about where Daniel was when I started tracking him. The odds are long. Not many storms have made it all the way across the Pacific. One example is hurricane John, which became a typhoon for a little while in 1994.
Weather remains hot here in the Dry Slot. Another cool front is creeping closer. The local forecast promises lower temperatures and rain for the weekend.
That should make Wife happy. A jet is supposed to bring her back to Raleigh this evening.
So where did it rain? Over the airport. Wife's plane sat on the taxiway at Dulles (according to her story) for two and a half hours on account of "bad weather". I had to drive in rain on one of the busiest, nastiest stretches of road in the state, the part through Research Triangle Park by RDU. Wife's plane was an hour and a half late on a forty minute flight. Yee-hah!
They won't let you park at Raleigh-Durham airport. If you're there to pick someone up, you just have to drive around and around until your party comes out the door at baggage claim. Yee-hah again.
I hate RDU airport. I would much rather drive to and/or fly from Greensboro. Trouble is, you can't go anywhere directly from Greensboro. You have to fly somewhere like Atlanta and connect to your destination from there. Ah, the wonders of aviation.
http://www.bookrags.com/shortguide-slan/?ref=anti
"Engine Summer" John Crowley
"Childhood's End" A.C. Clark
"The Word for World is Forest" Ursula K Le Guin
"Cat's Cradle" Kurt Vonnegut
"Slan" A.E Van Vogt
"I. Robot" Issac Asimov
'Course there's Herbert out there in the "Stillsuit"
which could come in handy.
We have a 60% chance of rain today, which, you have to admit, is above average. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. Nice soft rain is better for the yard than the City of Burlington's chloramine-treated water.
Thanks for chipping in some science fiction. I have read most of those. I don't recall Engine Summer. I'll see if the library has that one.
One outstanding author's name I left off my list is John Brunner.
Also add Greg Bear.
Piers Anthony.
Andre Norton.
Roger Zelazny. I love Zelazny's Lord of Light.
Another novel I like a lot is Contact by Carl Sagan. I mention that book, in particular, because Sagan is not known primarily for his sci-fi.
If you look at a fairly long animation such as this one at Intellicast, you can see a high pressure cell centered on (roughly) Kansas with a clockwise rotation. The shorter animation at Wunderground's own radar and satellite maps will show you the same thing.
On the west side of this gyre moisture-laden air from Mexico rides northward over the Rockies all the way to Montana. This 'monsoon' circulation will bring welcome rain and, hopefully, not too much lightning to a region that has been at high risk of forest fires.
On the east side, where I am, the return flow is driving cold fronts from Canada into the mid-Atlantic and southeast. The current episode brought us a couple of inches of very welcome rain yesterday. Today the sky remains mostly cloudy. The local forecast predicts more rain.
Meanwhile, under the dome of high pressure, high temperatures and drought persist. This morning I ran the weather models to see what they could tell us about the next week or so, and the verdict is: more of the same.
I looked at GFS, NAM and ECMWF. All three showed a ridge over the plains states which lasted throughout the model runs. GFS was a bit more beneficent than ECMWF for my area. It wrapped the 5700 thickness line a bit further south along the Atlantic coast down to Chesapeake Bay, while ECMWF held it up in the vicinity of New York or New Jersey.
In ten days it will be Lammas, one of the cross quarter days that I like to track. Lammas marks the start of autumn. There probably won't be any immediate change in our weather, but the period of daylight will begin to shrink. A break in the heat, while not exactly likely, becomes possible. In some years August opens with a delicious momentary chill, a little reminder that in this part of the world ninety degree days do not last forever.
I often wonder, especially with the Olympics right around the corner, just when humans will top out. When will someone have run the fastest race? When will someone swim just as fast as they can go? Won't we have a topping out???? And when we do, what will we do then?
It's sort of like testing at schools. I'm a teacher and I HATE that so much is put on testing. We have a school in our district (elementary) that tests really high. But, once they've reached the highest, it seems the only thing to do is go down. How disappointing will that be? How high do we have to be to be considered good? How will you feel when you go down? (I keep thinking, if 100% is the top, and you get 95%, how can that be bad? That's still good, but it would be a drop and people will look at that badly). Crazy world we live in!
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