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Thursday, April 24, 2003 10:50 p.m.
Cottage Homes
Thursday, April 24, 2003 10:32 p.m.
Large is in charge?
"That crucial and controversial question will be answered by a panel of big-wave experts . . . with surfing's biggest prize taking on a new significance as a symbolic showdown between two countries at odds over global policy — France and the United States of America."
Thursday, April 24, 2003 06:50 p.m.
Joe (Stover) McNair
McNAIR, Joseph. Commander Coatrack Returns. Houghton. Tr $13.95. ISBN 0-395-48295-X.
Gr 5-9 -- Lisa is overprotective of her younger brother, a special-needs child for whom she has devised an intricate fantasy world in this tender novel about growing up, accepting change, and self-sacrifice. A provocative look at family roles and learning that part of love is letting go. (June 1989)
Thursday, April 24, 2003 06:46 p.m.
Blog Survey
Wednesday, April 23, 2003 09:28 p.m.
Chris Bram
Wednesday, April 23, 2003 09:24 p.m.
Like sands through the hourglass . . .
Wednesday, April 23, 2003 07:36 p.m.
Boy! And he said I was eclectic!
Wednesday, April 23, 2003 07:30 p.m.
Two North Poles
Wednesday, April 23, 2003 07:29 p.m.
Space Weather
Wednesday, April 23, 2003 07:28 p.m.
Mirages in Finland
--its unique events--
Wednesday, April 23, 2003 09:13 a.m.
Boston Radio
Sights and Sounds:
Wednesday, April 23, 2003 09:07 a.m.
News about Ned Steinberger
Wednesday, April 23, 2003 09:04 a.m.
Guitar Shows in New England
Tuesday, April 22, 2003 05:50 p.m.
Widget, shirt of
--its unique droppings--
Tuesday, April 22, 2003 05:48 p.m.
Bruton Parish, history of
--its unique life--
Tuesday, April 22, 2003 05:45 p.m.
Mosaic, history of
--its unique life--
Tuesday, April 22, 2003 09:54 a.m.
Older and No Wiser
Tuesday, April 22, 2003 09:53 a.m.
Books by Forrest Gander
Tuesday, April 22, 2003 09:50 a.m.
Books by Peter Klappert
Tuesday, April 22, 2003 09:49 a.m.
Thanksgiving by Peter Klappert
Tuesday, April 22, 2003 09:44 a.m.
Review of Chokecherries
Tuesday, April 22, 2003 09:34 a.m.
Peter Klappert
Tuesday, April 22, 2003 09:31 a.m.
Forrest Gander
Tuesday, April 22, 2003 09:20 a.m.
Middle Earth--Poems by Henri Cole
--The fullest culmination to date of an original voice and “a central poet of his generation” (Harold Bloom)
Time was plunging forward,
like dolphins scissoring open water or like me,
following Jenny’s flippers down to see the coral reef,
where the color of sand, sea and sky merged,
and it was as if that was all God wanted:
not a wife, a house or a position,
but a self, like a needle, pushing in a vein.
—from “Olympia”
Tuesday, April 22, 2003 09:12 a.m.
Henri Cole
"The principal of my elementary school drove a black Cadillac with shark fins. One day, as I stood beside my classroom desk with the other children jeering at my ___, I recognized that I was a stranger in the cruel citizenry of childhood, that my only nation would be the imagination. Passing out embarrassingly at the feet of my teacher, I woke in the principal's hearse-like Cadillac, the flesh of my arms and face adhering to the black vinyl seat cover. I was being driven from one shore of childhood to another."
Tuesday, April 22, 2003 09:04 a.m.
Guido van Rossum
--his unique life--
Tuesday, April 22, 2003 09:00 a.m.
Dan Bricklin
--his unique life--
Tuesday, April 22, 2003 08:56 a.m.
Captain Crunch
--his unique life--
Sunday, April 20, 2003 12:36 a.m.
Station Keeping
Sunday, April 20, 2003 12:30 a.m.
Let dogs bark--the wind bears their barking away.
Sunday, April 20, 2003 12:23 a.m.
Study Russian!
The seller needs but one eye; the buyer, a hundred.
Saturday, April 19, 2003 11:56 p.m.
Sanctum Sanctorum
Saturday, April 19, 2003 11:25 p.m.
Doctor Strange
Saturday, April 19, 2003 02:03 p.m.
Proverb
It's a nuissance to go alone, even to drown oneself.
Saturday, April 19, 2003 12:00 p.m.
The Conquest of Bread
Many Worlds Fed, Clothed, and Housed
Saturday, April 19, 2003 11:59 a.m.
The Everett FAQ
Many Worlds Fed, Clothed, and Housed
Q1 Who believes in many-worlds?
"Political scientist" L David Raub reports a poll of 72 of the "leading cosmologists and other quantum field theorists" about the "Many-Worlds Interpretation" and gives the following response breakdown [T].
1) "Yes, I think MWI is true" 58%
2) "No, I don't accept MWI" 18%
3) "Maybe it's true but I'm not yet convinced" 13%
4) "I have no opinion one way or the other" 11%
Amongst the "Yes, I think MWI is true" crowd listed are Stephen Hawking and Nobel Laureates Murray Gell-Mann and Richard Feynman. Gell-Mann and Hawking recorded reservations with the name "many-worlds", but not with the theory's content. Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg is also mentioned as a many-worlder, although the suggestion is not when the poll was conducted, presumably before 1988 (when Feynman died). The only "No, I don't accept MWI" named is Penrose.
The findings of this poll are in accord with other polls, that many- worlds is most popular amongst scientists who may rather loosely be described as string theorists or quantum gravitists/cosmologists. It is less popular amongst the wider scientific community who mostly remain in ignorance of it.
More detail on Weinberg's views can be found in _Dreams of a Final Theory_ or _Life in the Universe_ Scientific American (October 1994), the latter where Weinberg says about quantum theory:
"The final approach is to take the Schrodinger equation seriously [..description of the measurement process..] In this way, a measurement causes the history of the universe for practical purposes to diverge into different non-interfering tracks, one for each possible value of the measured quantity. [...] I prefer this last approach"
In the The Quark and the Jaguar and Quantum Mechanics in the Light of Quantum Cosmology [10] Gell-Mann describes himself as an adherent to the (post-)Everett interpretation, although his exact meaning is sometimes left ambiguous.
Steven Hawking is well known as a many-worlds fan and says, in an article on quantum gravity [H], that measurement of the gravitational metric tells you which branch of the wavefunction you're in and references Everett.
Feynman, apart from the evidence of the Raub poll, directly favouring the Everett interpretation, always emphasized to his lecture students [F] that the "collapse" process could only be modelled by the Schrodinger wave equation (Everett's approach).
[F] Jagdish Mehra The Beat of a Different Drum: The Life and Science Richard Feynman
[H] Stephen W Hawking Black Holes and Thermodynamics Physical Review D Vol 13 #2 191-197 (1976)
[T] Frank J Tipler The Physics of Immortality 170-171
Saturday, April 19, 2003 11:57 a.m.
Many Worlds Fed, Clothed, and Housed
Chelsea Green is now located in White River Junction,
Vermont. Additional information about the company and its products
are available by calling 800.639.4099
Chelsea Green Publishing Company
Post Office Box 428
Gates-Briggs Building #205
White River Junction, Vermont 05001
Saturday, April 19, 2003 11:46 a.m.
Free Celtic Art!
Saturday, April 19, 2003 11:30 a.m.
Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Great resource created by Kevin Moss at Middlebury College
Thursday, April 17, 2003 05:18 p.m.
Regarding the Pain of Others by Susan Sontag
"Sontag is a moralist, as anyone who thinks about violence against the innocent is liable to become. The time she spent in Sarajevo under fire gives her the authority. Most of us don't understand what people go through, she writes. True, we only have photographs. Even if they are only tokens, they still perform a vital function, Sontag insists. They certainly do for me. Like the one by Gilles Peress I saw some years ago of a child with eyes bandaged being led by his mother down a busy street in Sarajevo. Or another, by the same photographer, where we see a man in a morgue approach three stretchers with bodies lying on them and cover his face as he recognizes a friend or a relative. The morgue attendant is expressionless as he stands watching.
"Men and women who find themselves in such circumstances, one says to oneself, do not have the luxury of patronizing reality. Such photographs preserve, however tenuously, the mark of some person's suffering in the great mass of faceless and anonymous victims. We ought to be grateful to Susan Sontag for reminding us of this. If photography is a form of knowledge, writing about it with critical discernment and passion, as she does, is bound to make trouble for every variety of intellectual and moral smugness." --Charles Simic
Thursday, April 17, 2003 05:14 p.m.
Dichotomies
A has an empire that he is really unwilling to support. B would support reforming a religious empire with a hero leading it.
When B invades A's country, B sacks the city. When A invades B's country, B sacks the city.
If B could reoccupy his holy places, he would be in heaven. When A occupies B's holy places, A is in hell. If A could only stay away from B's holy places, A would be in heaven.
If A exterminates B, A goes to hell. If B exterminates A, B goes to paradise.
B moves to A's country for a better life. A goes to B's country for a horrible death.
When A loots, it's a riot. When B loots, it's liberation.
A tries to control or eliminate his weapons because they are frightening. B tries to make more terrible weapons because they are frightening.
Wednesday, March 26, 2003 09:02 a.m.
Ray Taliaferro
Friday, February 21, 2003 12:26 p.m.
St. Luke's Episcopal Church
Tuesday, February 4, 2003 06:23 p.m.
John Straley
John Straley is a great fictioneer.
Tuesday, February 4, 2003 06:09 p.m.
Walt Whitman
"This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body..."
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