David > Recent Status Updates

Feeling like the stories and anecdotes are good, but it somehow lacks detail and specificity that I hoped for.

The plan to steal does from Efrafa is underway. Bigwig has waltzed into their midst, claiming he wants to join up, and because they are short on capable members now for various reasons he's being put right to work. Just before this, Hazel and co. had checked out the river and the big bridge before finding a smaller footpath bridge and a boat/raft that they think might be useful to escape from Woundwort with does.

Long story about the black rabbit of inle' while they're making a trek to Efrafa to secure some more does.

The narrator's brother's story, of meeting 2 ladies with a pony carriage, and the human stream they had to navigate as they fled, and the Martians pursuing the boats that were attempting to carry refugees out of England and possibly to France. Chaos!

Ch2 with a long discussion about algorithms, and how natural selection is one such. The summary of Darwin's dangerous idea is basically that the algorithm did not have anything like a "goal" of producing us, that there's no guarantee we would result if time could be rewound and evolution rerun.

Quoting an Indian epic, Mahabharata, in this book's final chapter. The question "what is the greatest of all mysteries" is answered "Every day countless people die, and yet those who remain live as if they were immortal." And a few sentences later he references the text of Bach's BWV 56 cantata.

This is not your typical physics book. :-)