Physics
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On translation and quantum mechanics.
We have so many ways to depict the world – they’re not all equally good for all ideas.
3 body problems, 3-body problem, base ten numbering, Beyond Weird, Child with a toy hand grenade in Central Park, Chinese, Dance Your Ph.D., Dance Your PhD, decimal notation, describing photographs, Diane Arbus, does God play dice, Eliot Weinberger, God does not play dice, God is a gambler, God is an inveterate gambler, grain size of the universe, Hugh Everette, infinite precision, infinite series, irrational numbers, language, math, math is language of universe, mathematics, meaning of quantum mechanics, metaphoric language, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Ninetween Ways of Looking at Wang Wei, Perry Link, Philip Ball, physics, pi, pixelation of physical space, precision, quantum mechanics, quantum physics, Richard Feynman, Science Olympiad, Stephen Hawking, three body problem, translating, translating mathematics into words, translating poetry, Translation, voxelation, what does quantum mechanics mean, Write It Do It, writing
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On the water-fueled car.
Sometimes our fear of spooky, covert conspiracies makes us overlook the people blatantly conspiring to destroy us.
Ashes, automobiles, Berenstain Bears, Berenstain Bears conspiracy, Berenstein Bears, brancing points, carbon, carbon economy, carbon emissions, carbon tax, chemistry, choice of universe, climate change, cold fusion, combustion, comic, common mistakes, conspiracy, conspiracy theories, conspiracy theory, consumerism, decoherence, energy conversion, Evil Dave versus Regular Dave, false memory, fuel, fuel efficiency, gasoline, global warming, Hugh Everett, jail, Mandela Effect, mass incarceration, octane, oil companies, Old Hat New Hate, pollution, power, prison, prophecy, quantum collapse, quantum mechanics, reaction diagrams, Second Law of Thermodynamics jail poetry, teaching in jail, teaching poetry in jail, thermodynamics, water cars, water-fueled car, wavefunction, webcomic
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On Vaughan & Staples’s ‘Saga’ and parenting metaphors.
‘Saga’ beautifully depicts the trials of parenting … like the risk of plunging into a black hole and never seeing your friends again.
A. Zee, astronomy, astrophysics, babies, big stuff, black hole, blame, Brian Vaughan, child abuse, children, comics, curved space, event horizon, fatherhood, Fiona Staples, graphic novel, gravity, Hawking radiation, interplanetary travel, Interstellar, Lying Cat, math, numeracy, On Gravity, overcoming sexual abuse, overcoming trauma, parenting, physics, PTSD, relativity, saga, shame, space fetus, the universe, time suck, timesuck, trauma
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On love and physics.
Even when love doesn’t change the world, it changes us.
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On the history of time travel.
Sometimes we have to prove ourselves wrong.
Back to the Future, best time travel movies, Chronocriminales, closed timelike curve, free will, Godel, James Gleick, John Hospers, Kurt Godel, Looper, Nacho Vigalondo, Oedipus, paradox, philosophy, Stephen Hawkins, Terminator, time travel, time travel films, time travel paradox, Time Travel: A History, Timecrimes, Trump, who built the pyramids
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On Stephon Alexander’s ‘The Jazz of Physics.’
Everything vibrates! Vibrations make sound! But does the universe make music?
bowing random objects to hear what sound they make, Curse of the Ratist, formation of galaxies, holiday record, jazz, Johnny Fuerza, nucleation of structure in the early universe, paralysis of choice, photoelectric effect, physics, restrictions breed creativity, science analogies, soloing, sound, The Jazz of Physics, uncertainty principle, vibrations
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On Lisa Randall’s ‘Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs.’
I love cool stories as much as anyone, but not under the auspices of science for a general audience.
astronomy, conspiracy theorists, conspiracy theory, dark matter, Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs, electromagnetism, Evicted, Gabriel Zucman, gold foil experiment, gravity, Lisa Randall, Matthew Desmond, Occam’s Razor, popular science, Rutherford, The Hidden Wealth of Nations, weakly interacting massive particles
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On proving that elections will make you miserable.
Somehow I’d deluded myself into thinking that typing this essay would make me happy. I see now that I was wrong.
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On uncertainty (with cartoon ending).
I solved equations Robert Johnson crossroads style, except I had a Texas Instruments graphing calculator instead of a guitar.
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On undeserved forgiveness and global warming.
I wish there were more essays focused on philosophy in Freeman Dyson’s collection Dreams of Earth and Sky. I thought all his remarks on morals and philosophy were nuanced and compelling. His essay “Rocket Man,” for instance, is very powerful. This essay discusses Wernher von Braun, a German scientist who helped develop Nazi weaponry during…
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