Mark Reynolds > Recent Status Updates

So far so good. Krauss, while a good explainer, makes a common mistake. He tries to explain quantum mechanics to non physicists using classical analogies with no math. While these are as good as you can get, they are not correct, and sometimes just more confusing than if you actually used some math.

The plot thickens as we learn more about Ani’s story and the relationship to the present day.

Worth reading and re-reading.

The first half of the book discusses compassion, but not in a deep way. Just an admonition to everyone to practice compassion because it is good. This is a very useful reminder, but not very profound.

We call quantities that are invariant during isentropic processes “adiabatic invariants.”

Pictet's experiment, and Count Rumford's and Pierre Prevost's explanation: objects absorb and emit both "caloric rays" and "frigorific rays". Now, of course, we calls these electromagnetic waves, or just light.

“… the idea of locating the energy in the field is inconsistent with the assumption of the existence of point charges."

The six perfections: generosity, ethical discipline, tolerance, joyous effort, concentration, wisdom.

“ … the most important medieval text on an instrument, Chaucer’s well known Treatise on the Astrolabe, was written in 1391 … “

Now we come to a miraculous mathematical theorem which is so delightful that we shall leave a proof of it for one of your courses in mathematics. (We should not reveal all the mysteries of mathematics, or that subject matter would become too dull.)

Hic jacet Arthurus, Rex quondam, Rexque futurus.

Translated in full, the phrase is "Here lies Arthur, King Once, and King in the Future"--or as T.H. White so succinctly translates it, "The Once and Future King."

"A sphere is the locus of all points for which the distances from two points [one inside the sphere, the other outside] are in a constant ratio."

What was England, before Wolsey? A little offshore island, poor and cold.

The duke [Norfolk] stabs a forefinger into his [Cromwell’s] shoulder. “You … person,” he says; and again, “you nobody from Hell, you whore-spawn, you cluster of evil, you lawyer.”

I guess he doesn’t like lawyers.

“We worked hard to keep hope in our minds, and the more you talked yourself into it, the more you believed in that hope. If a hungry person believes that he’ll find something to eat later, he can last longer. If he thinks, it’s pointless, and I won’t survive, he dies faster. I saw it happen many times. Pessimism is a terrible sickness. You destroy yourself. You have to have optimism all the time.”

As with most Holocaust memoirs, intense.