Tag Archives: review

Losing the Nobel Prize by Brian Keating

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Got this book from the Jeffco Whale of a Used Book Sale a couple of years ago.

Brian Keating is an astrophysicist/cosmologist. He had dreams and desires of winning the Nobel Prize in physics, but there was an issue with the results of the BICEP2 project. But, he was prominent enough to be able to nominate candidates to the prize for a year or two.

He certainly does have some good ideas for ways to improve the award. Pages 272 to 274 give his main recommendations.

  1. Add prizes in new and emerging disciplines
  2. Award the physics prize to groups of any size
  3. Give retroactive awards
  4. Allow for posthumous awards
  5. Recognize that true discovery is serendipitous In other words, he would like to see more prizes given to people who make unexpected discoveries, not just confirmation of previous theories

Other things of note:

Pages 174-175. “There is a fierce competition that begins the day you declare yourself a physics major. First, among your fellow undergraduates, you spar for top ranking in your class. This leads to the next battle: becoming a graduate student at a top school. Then, you toil for six to eight years to earn a postdoc job at another top school. And finally, you hope, comes a coveted faculty job, which can become permanent if you are privileged enough to get tenure. Along the way, the number of peers in your group diminishes by a factor of ten at each stage, from hundreds of undergraduates to just one faculty job becoming available every few years in your field.” Brian Keating, Losing the Nobel Prize: A Story of Cosmology, Ambition, and the Perils of Science’s Highest Honor

Yeah? Um, no. I don’t think so. I was a physics major, and I had NO interest in sparing for top ranking in my class.

Page 228. He also had the idea that the nominated people or groups should also be publicized, just like how people know who is up for Academy Awards. It can be an honor just to have been nominated.

Page 244. He mentions Planck data as showing that what BICEP2 found, was simply polarized light from dust grains in the Milky Way, it was not primordial polarized light from the time of the Big Bang.

After reading that he likes to hang with the likes of Joe Rogan, Ben Shapiro, Lex Fridman, and Jordan Peterson, my opinion of him drops waaaayyy down considerably.

He is turning into a physics YouTuber chasing clout. I am going to stay away from him.

Finally read Quantum Bullshit

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The full title is Quantum Bullshit: how to ruin your life with advice from quantum physics. I picked up this book at a JCPL Whale of a Used Book Sale.

I read a little of the book before diving into it, but I was not prepared for the huge number of times fuck and shit appeared in the tome. While I had a feeling profanity would be used quite a bit, I did not expect it to be used that much.

Here are some things of note:

  • He dedicated the book to “Albert Einstein: You would have hated this.” I agree. However, I think he might have learned some stuff, such as how his work led to lasers, and so much more.
  • He took a good dig at our current President by comparing him to Lord Kelvin. If Lord Kelvin was alive today, he would be the kind of person TYPING INSULTING THINGS IN ALL CAPS ON TWITTER, and that is not very becoming for leaders in science–or a country.
  • I learned that when things glow when they are hot, whether it is lava or copper or iron at 1000 degrees C, they glow in the same color–bright red. (Both of these on page 5.)
  • Page 42. There is three volume set called the Crystal Bible. The link goes to the first in the series by Judy Hall. This covers the “properties of each crystal including the spiritual, mental and psychological, emotional and physical effects, including its use in crystal healing.” Yup, this is some bullshit.
  • Page 45. Cymophobia is the abnormal fear of waves. This could be from Wi-FI to 5G to windmills to electric power lines to ocean waves.
  • Page 93. At several points in the book, he references the old TV show Numb3rs that ran from 2005 to 2010. While the author has not watched a single episode, he did not care for the premise, but I somewhat fondly remember the show. It was ok, since it may have shown mathematicians as somewhat normal people.
  • Page 127. “Realism comes in many flavors, which we will get to soon. Antirealism, on the other hand, says nope to all that shit. It also comes in many flavors, but generally it says that reality is not independent of who’s asking about it or that it really doesn’t matter since the question is irrelevant—like asking what a square tastes like.” Funny. Justin had written on a preschool project that something tastes like a triangle. Then we realized what he was talking about. We would cut up pancakes for breakfast, and some of the corner pieces were triangle shaped, and maybe those got hard after sitting for a while on his plate.
  • Page 176. “It’s important not to ridicule people who believe in bullshit. Regardless of what you think about insults, and far be it for some asshole quantum physicist to lecture you about morality, the fact is, you can rarely change behavior by insulting someone’s intelligence. There is ignorance, and there is willful ignorance. Naive people who fall for bullshit deserve your sympathy, not your scorn. Go on, insult those amoral bullshitters all you want—you only want them to go away after all—but don’t insult Papa.” This is good advice. When people believe bullshit, telling them about the truth with facts will probably just make them retreat more into the bullshit. People just cling to closely held beliefs no matter what.
  • Page 190. Introduced to the concept of the Great Filter by Robin Hanson. “The Great Filter is the idea that, in the development of life from the earliest stages of abiogenesis to reaching the highest levels of development on the Kardashev scale, there is a barrier to development that makes detectable extraterrestrial life exceedingly rare.” So, the universe has a way to filter out life from reaching a technological point where we could easily communicate with each other at the same time. The 1998 updated essay is here. I am also surprised that he did not mention the Dark Forest hypothesis.

Brief history of the future by John Naughton

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The full title of the book is A brief history of the future: From radio days to Internet years in a lifetime. This was written around 1998-1999, and it was published in 2000. That was so long ago, Google existed, but it was not even mentioned in the book. The author talked about how he used Alta Vista as a search engine. There was no blogging, no YouTube, no Facebook, no social media of any kind. I wanted to see if he had any inkling about what the Internet might look like in the future.

The closest he came was on page 265 when he said that “it’s clear that the forces which seek to make money on the Net have become noticeably stronger and more threatening in the years since the Web took off.” Yes, that indeed is the case. in 1997, I mentioned Amazon as a good place to buy books. I did not picture that it would grow to become the behemoth that it is today. I also maybe knew about eBay in the year 2000, but I thought it was a stupid name, and I did not think it would be as big as it is today.

Two pages late on page 267, he brings up Lawrence Lessig, and his 1999 book, Code and other laws of cyberspace. I have yet to read this book, but it sounds interesting. In it, he seems to argue that we had a lot of liberty in using the Internet in the late 1990s, but that liberty is not guaranteed to remain. “Freedoms that were foundational will slowly disappear.” (That is a direct quote from the Lessig book.)

Some other things of note:

  • He is a British author, and he had some strange turns of phrases. For example, on page 75 he wrote “Some of them, indeed, were potty about it.” Potty=happy or giddy? Also, “the folks at MIT had long ago twigged this.” From the context twigged=figured this out, but really, twigged?
  • Much of the language assumes that a dude is using a computer. The remote user sits at a terminal…. For much of the time he… Then he hits perhaps…. another burst of characters which appear on his screen. Only once near the end of the book does he consider that perhaps a woman might be using a computer and/or the Internet.
  • Page 176, he uses the word pukka. What the hell is pukka. I Googled that word to find that it is British slang — that something is genuine, authentic, excellent, or cool.
  • He also seemed a little racist. On page 185, he mentioned how outsiders who wished to have access to ARPANET or Usenet might have been like how “poor kids in black neighbourhoods might peer over the wall at rich kids enjoying the facilities of an expensive tennis training complex.” Really?
  • There was not really much about the fear that publishers had concerning the Internet. Commercial publishers did not get excited by the ability to publish content on the web. None of this angst was mentioned.
  • The website for the book is now dead, but most of it can be found at the Archive. However, his last reference/citation/footnote is saying that he put a picture of his father at http://www.briefhistory.com/da, but that link was never saved. I am curious what that image is.

Overall, it was an interesting read. I learned some stuff about some of the people who were involved in the early development of the communications system. I knew all about Vint Cerf and a little bit about Marc Andreesen, but there is more about them in the book than I have read elsewhere.

Finally read – Starlight Nights: The Adventures of a Star-Gazer

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Why did I wait so long to read this book. Had I read this 35 years ago, it might have turned me into a variable star observer and comet hunter. (Leslie found at least 10 comets during his lifetime. Some say he found 12.) I am not sure how I could add to the plethora of 5 star reviews at Amazon.

In any case, I write these book reviews just so that I can remember that I read it, and what I particularly liked about it or found interesting. So, here we go.

Even though he was not able to graduate from high school (because he had to work on the farm while a brother was off in Europe for WWI) He seems to respect and encourage the academic pursuits of his wife Dottie, who had graduated from college during the mid-1920s.

The discussion of Native Americans was usually somewhat respectful, but there was a mention in the book about him being glad that he did not get scalped by an Indian for trespassing on their land. (Page 161.)

In the chapter where he and his wife went looking for native pots and fragments of evidence of life in a cave, I found this sentence odd. “Had we found the cave untouched we would have left it intact, for we well knew that many times important evidence has been destroyed by amateur explorers and souvenir hunters.” So, after seeing that much had already been dug into, they figured that most of the cave had already been dug up, so they could dig up some more to see what else they could find as “amateur explorers”? (Page 152.)

I am not sure that just because the cave was previously touched, that they should have felt confident in trying to find their own treasure, but the 1930s was a different time in the west.

It was interesting that Robert (Bob) Ingersoll was invoked on page 158. Maybe Leslie had an agnostic bent.

In chapter 20 on Mt. Locke, he took great pains to describe the steak that they purchased and cooked up for a guest of honor, Dr. Van Biesbroek. I was not surprised to learn that Van B was vegetarian, and he did not touch the steak. They could have asked him what he wanted for dinner. They just assumed that he would like what they wanted for dinner.

This is a great book, even though it is now 59 years old. I also like the inventiveness and ingenuity of his mind. The merry-go-round observatory should be a thing that is commercially made.

Some Astronomy Hacks

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Read the book Astronomy Hacks: Tips and Tools for Observing the Night Sky

Even though this came out 19 years ago, it was still interesting to see what kind of tips and tricks I might be able to glean from the 65 hacks that they provide. The book is from O’ Reilly, and while they typically have computer based books, they delved into other technology topics, since they know that they have geeky readers.

Some of the hacks that I found most interesting were:

#9 on choosing the best telescope was quite lengthy. It was about 29 pages. Most of the other hacks are a lot shorter. They do a good job of covering the basics, but they steer people away from apo refractors.

#11 covers eyesight and vision. I don’t think I’ve previously learned about the chemistry of the rods and cones in the eyeball. I did not know that there are L, M, and S cones. I thought all cones were the same.

I learned of the book because the DAS linked to hack #45 on dark adapting your vehicle. Other parts of the book are also online, such as this segment on barlows.

The section on eyepieces at #49 was just ok, and they seemed focused on Tele Vue and Pentax eyepieces to consider. Celestron and Meade were mentioned as well as some other makers, such as Orion, University Optics, and Vixen. They skipped other makers such as Baader, Brandon, RKE, and others. I guess Explore Scientific was not around yet – the company formed in 2008.

The review of 1x finders was good at #53. I will have to see if I can find a Rigel QuikFinder.

I did not like that he only called the Moon — Luna. I’m sure that was done to not confuse Earth’s Moon with other moons of the solar system. Still, it was a little jarring. It was also a little weird to have the authors use the term binocular for a single instrument instead of binoculars or let alone the phrase — a pair of binoculars. Really? We all know that a pair of pants is a single garment that one wears. It is not a pant. One wears pants, or a pair of pants.

End rant. The book is still a useful read 19 years after first publication.

The 4% Universe: Dark Matter, Dark Energy, etc., etc., etc.

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Ok, the whole book title is The 4-Percent Universe: Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Race to Discover the Rest of Reality. This book documented the process of how two different teams of scientists discovered that the expansion of the universe is accelerating back in 1998. If you are interested in the sociology of how different scientific disciplines do their work, this would be of interest. The author explained how the astronomers did group-based work quite differently from the physicists.

For example, on page 229, one can read this. “The core of White’s argument was that astronomy and particle physics constituted two different cultures. Astronomers, White said, were ‘generalists,’ exploring the complexities of the universe on a case-by-case basis. Particle physicists were ‘fundamentalists,’ wringing the complexities of the universe in the hope of squeezing out an ‘ultimate foundation’—a ‘Truth.’ ‘Dark Energy,’ he wrote, ‘is a unique link between them, reflecting deep aspects of the Fundamental Theory, yet apparently accessible only through astronomical observation.'” (From https://millstonenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/panek4PercentUniverse.pdf)

The book covered dozens and dozens of scientists, and I got lost trying to keep track of them all in my head. I probably should have taken notes. Pictures of the scientists involved might have helped me keep track of them all.

Overall, if you are interested in learning more about dark energy, and how different scientific teams work together (or not), then this book would be a worthwhile read.

Another book — Do Dice Play God?

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This book is by Ian Stewart. No, not the 3rd baseman who played for the Rockies and the Cubs about 15 years ago, this Ian Stewart is a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Warwick.

Thus, the book has a British focus, and some of his examples are based in the UK, but that is ok.

The subtitle is the Mathematics of Uncertainty. The title is a play on the statement by Einstein, “God does not play dice with the universe.” While god may or may not play dice, do dice ever play god?

Ian says that there are six ages of uncertainty, and he does not cover them in the order that they were found for various reasons. Chaos theory was discussed out of order from when it was found by humans.

  1. The first age of uncertainty involved gods, prophets, fortune tellers, seers, and the like. They could try to predict the future. They could supposedly explain what was going on in the world.
  2. The second age of uncertainty came about during the scientific advances in the 1500-1700s. This is when Newton’s laws defined how gravity works, and it explained how we could predict where the planets will be in the future. If we could predict the movements of planets, would it be possible to predict everything, including human behavior?
  3. The third age came with greater understanding of mathematics and probability. Gamblers, astronomers, mathematicians, and many others would like to know the odds of a future event happening.
  4. The fourth age came with quantum mechanics, and our understanding of never really knowing the location or the momentum of atomic and subatomic particles. These ideas took off in the early 1900s.
  5. The fifth age is when chaos theory was developed.
  6. The sixth age is our current situation. He said that it is “characterized by the realisation that uncertainty comes in many forms, each being comprehensible to some extent.” (page 10.) Mathematics can help us understand the universe a fair bit, but much of the world and the universe is “still horribly uncertain.” For example, we are better at predicting the weather about 5-7 days out, but predicting the weather 10-14 days out is still a crap shoot. Predicting climate change is different matter.

One thing I found fascinating was an oil droplet experiment that made teeny oil droplets behave like both waves and particles. This made Newtonian sized objects behave more like atomic particles. (See pages 233-235.) I had not heard of this experiment since I left physics back in the 1980s. But, it looks like that has been debunked as of 2018. Oh well.

Overall, I enjoyed the book, and I found it interesting. It would probably be best for people who have already had some college-level math or physics.

The book – Imaginary futures: From thinking machines to the global village

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This is another book that was recommended by Alison Macrina of the https://libraryfreedom.org/ project. It was listed in the further reading section of one of her talks.

I thought it would cover artificial intelligence and cybernetics a lot more than it did, but it was more of a book on the politics of the US and Russia, and on the cold war race to develop faster and better computing that supported military applications. I hoped that the final chapter would be a better conclusion to tie things together, but lo, it did not.

Sooooo much of the book covers political theory, especially capitalistic systems vs socialism and communism in particular. One should be familiar with Marshall McCluhan and the book Understanding Media, but I had not read that.

The final chapter gushes over Wired Magazine, as if that presents the final word concerning society and the internet. There were a ton of reference to Wired Magazine, but not many (any?) other periodicals that cover the internet as a social tool. It was like he was cherry picking quotes from Wired Magazine to show a point, and he did not explore other sources that might challenge that point.

The author did talk about the academic gift economy (p. 277 for example) and the way academics share information more freely, but the concepts of open access, and the problems with academic information hidden behind paywalls was not mentioned at all.

It is noteworthy that the book came out in 2007, and it got some things right. It mentioned that YouTube was a growing source of media viewing (p. 285), and it was pretty new in 2006/2007. It only mentioned the word blog once, and it is not in the index. Social media was not really covered or predicted.

Here are some specific things that jumped out at me.

Very soon, when the Net was ubiquitous, everyone would be equal within cyberspace. The rule of the few over the many was only a temporary condition. (p. 275.)

Ummm. What? The internet is not going to make the world an egalitarian place.

Of course, Napster was mentioned.

Anyone who distributed unauthorized copies of copyrighted material over the Net must be punished. Anyone who invented software potentially useful for on-line piracy should be criminalized. The courts and police had to stop consenting adults from sharing information with each other without permission. (p. 281)

Academics have been getting around this problem and issue for decades and decades. There are ways to get copyrighted material (journal articles and other bits of research) from others through email. This was not discussed at all. Napster made it easier for people to share songs with each other, and the music industry did not like that.

Overall, the book was a hard slog, since I was not expecting a book about communism vs the capitalist system. This review in Goodreads hit the nail on the head. “The book provides a lot of historical insight, really interesting, though it’s written in a such boring manner it’s really hard to go through it.”

I do agree with this statement from a different review of the book.

Barbrook has an amusing take on our distorted – if not delusional – relationship with technology, but his underlying point is serious: future visions of technology are used to distract us and also control us, and if we forget these imaginary futures, we are likely to repeat them.

Automating Inequality by Virginia Eubanks

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The whole book title is Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor.

This was a real eye opener for me. I grew up in a working class family, and we did have a time when we were quite poor, when my dad was on strike for about a year back in the 1970s, and we did not have much money. Also, my mom and dad divorced, and I was lucky to get scholarships to attend college with my mom being a single parent effectively. She did get income from my dad until I turned 18 I think.

Here is a good review of it. I first heard about the book from a talk about information privacy and AI and libraries by Alison Macrina of the https://libraryfreedom.org/ project. It was listed in the further reading section of her talk.

Anyway, the author, Virginia Eubanks, covers three case studies. The first is in Indiana, the second is in Los Angeles, and the third is in Pittsburgh. Chapter 5, The Digital Poorhouse, does a fine job of summing up the previous chapters. Essentially, the United States does a great job of using technology to track and police poor people. The system criminalizes poverty to keep poor people in that state. The system is designed to be opaque so that people can’t see how it really works.

Chapter 6 addresses ways to dismantle the digital poorhouse. I don’t see her recommendations coming to fruition any time soon. She brings up rhetoric from Martin Luther King, Jr., but technology has its claws so deep into law enforcement and in social support systems all across the country, I don’t think people will listen to the words of MLK, Jr. to dismantle those systems. She presents an Oath of Non-Harm for an Age of Big Data on pages 212-213. It will take a lot of work to convince companies to agree to that Oath. (While Google used to use the phrase — “Don’t be evil,” but that is now a former motto.)

I see it as a collective action problem. Even though she shows that the majority of people use social services as a temporary or full-time poor person, most people don’t see that Big Data has harmed them in any way. They might be convinced that Big Data has harmed some or many people, but it has not hurt them, yet. There needs to be more and better stories that get people to understand that Big Data hurting their neighbors is also hurting them. (People react better to stories than they do to plain old evidence and data, ironically.) That is when the voting public will act to change laws and policies when it comes to Big Data and the monitoring and policing of poor people in computer systems.

This book came out in 2017. It would be interesting to see how systems have changed with the Pandemic in the last three years.