The was no blog this day, but I have found a lengthy book review that’s half washed away. I think I was reading Stephen Hawkings though not his bestseller. Here is what I can retrieve, remember these are not my usual writing, but notes taken. “118 pages, but allow 16 – 20 hours reading time” tells me it was difficult material. A scan of the most readable page appears at the end.
Well, the library called. The last person brought it back [early] I noticed the bind showed he/shegot to page 24, not bad. There are 11 chapters, they are written in two different styles, very suspect. Also, it is a history book which barely touches on the actual state of physics research in 1988. Still, it is very comprehensible up to about Chapter 8 without specialized knowledge on the subject.
Hawking, and I am now personally satisfied that he is not a genius, uses the (standard) analogies and (?). Except his coin is a ping-pong ball. The others I did not say because I did not predict he would cover the subject; was the jigsaw puzzle. There is one way the pieces for a picture, many [says] they do not.In the even anyone reads this book for other than entertainment, here are a few helpful hits. Otherwise this book gets a “read later” status from me.
Remember the ‘Two Big Theories’? Fame awaits the person who (?) the bridge between them. The two subjects . . . been the . . .quantum mechanics, . . .
Physics tends to look at small particle for clues as to how the larger universe workds, because they are handier to observe for now. The ‘Exclusion Principle’ simply states not two earby particle of the same characteristics cannot have the same speed and velocity at the same time. This may sound obscure but it prevent all matter from collapsing under gravity.
Hint 1: ‘Uncertainty Principle’, it’s a bad translation because it is quite certain. When you want to measure something small, you have to bounce light off it. You can’t see any detail that is smaller than the wavelength of the light you’re using. The problem is that smaller waves of light have more power. When you want to measure something as small as a subatomic particle, the light wave you use has more than enough power to stop it. So the more you know about its position, the less you know about its speed and vice versas.
Hint 2. ‘Quantum Theory’, small particles do not exist over an infinite range, rather must occupy specific spot . . . the distance of an electron from . . . change position, it must . . . this change is . . . .
[Author’s note: here I seem to stop and explain that the book makes constant referals to these ideas, hence my explanation [that] without knowing a least this much, nothing after Chapter 8 makes sense, “tho Chapter 0 has an interesting treastise on time”.]
The reason you can remembver the pas but not the future is because of entropy – otherwise all time is identical. Entropy states the tendency of Nature is toward disorder. Putting the puzzle together requires more energy than the puzzle has when it is complete, hence the overall result is a less ordered system, picture or not. If you shake the puzze picture up, more energy is used up. Yet some pieces will usually stay put together for a while and you can see parts of the picture. This is what physics is – spotting the partial picture before the entire universe eventually shakes itself into total disorder.
Thus the universe may have started as a huge . . .ordered system that began to use up it’s energy toward becoming disordersss – the Big Bang Theory. But whether you put the universe together or take it apart, you use up energy, . . . takes time. Thus you can only remember the past.
At this point I mention Hawkins:
Last, let me state [that] among professionals, unless it is the topic, whining is not allowed. Hawkins whines on every occasion that he mentions himself, about a dozen times in this book. Never once does he mention thing such things as the generous disability allowance that allowed him to pursue and academic career beyond anything more fortunate people could hope to afford. Physics and biography do not mix well.
ADDENDUM
Shortly after this entry, I would have begun driving south east, via Grant’s Pass, Oregon. I have several unexplained notes, but I believe the gasoline bill to from Yakima to Charlotte was $463. I had just spent $400 tuition on some course I did not record and that an employment agency in Atlanta, GA, said a portable message trailer company needed a technician. I declined when the position paid $7 per hour.
The notebook is old and will be thrown out. It mentions I had transferred $3727 to a stock broker named Kent to keep my taxable income below some limit, and that I complained tuition had gone from $415 to $560 three months before I graduated, saying “The bastards know I won’t refuse to pay now.”
