What I Read Becomes My Own,What I Write ... Is Yours Alone

Physics

In The Economist I recently read:
Ye cannae change the laws of physics
or can you?

Aug 31st 2010

RICHARD FEYNMAN, Nobel laureate and physicist extraordinaire, called it a “magic number” and its value “one of the greatest damn mysteries of physics”. The number he was referring to, which goes by the symbol alpha and the rather more long-winded name of the fine-structure constant, is magic indeed. If it were a mere 4% bigger or smaller than it is, stars would not be able to sustain the nuclear reactions that synthesise carbon and oxygen. One consequence would be that squishy, carbon-based life would not exist.

...the universe stretches far beyond what telescopes can observe

Fascinating stuff. And possibly a grain or two of rough grist for the Science Fiction Writer's mill.

. . .

The Twilight Zone

There is a three-part YouTube video of an earlier Rod Serling's Twilight Zone presentation An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge which is based on a short story written by Ambrose Bierce.

As old and outdated as some of the early science fiction and fantasy stories might seem to the prowling, growling and yowling youngsters of this modern age, there remains within the classic stories of yesteryear some grains of wisdom unattainable from grade-school edicts, high school enlightenments, or even from the universities' lofty lectures.

Ya' just gotta read a whole lot of stories and let your inner-self filter out or absorb and retain for personal use whatever it will.

Free On The Web

Ambrose Bierce stories can be found and downloaded at no cost from Porject Gutenberg.

. . .

Moby Dick

The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us.
--Herman Melville
(Moby Dick)

I wonder if President Obama has read, in Chapter 1 of Herman Melville's Moby Dick:

...so for the most part the Commodore on the quarter-deck gets his atmosphere at second hand from the sailors on the forecastle. He thinks he breathes it first; but not so. In much the same way do the commonalty lead their leaders in many other things, at the same time that the leaders little suspect it.

. . .

Language Log mentioned, ...the "study conducted at Stanford University, which showed that heavy multimedia users have trouble filtering out irrelevant information -- and trouble focusing on tasks".

See: Cognitive control in media multi-taskers from Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

I waded my way through the thing and was singularly unimpressed, which means it bored me to death and made me say to myself, "So what?"

(Don't ask me why I wrote about it in the blog because I don't know)

. . .

Gotta go now . . . see ya'


Definition of Pray:
To ask the laws of the universe to be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.
--Ambrose Bierce