So, I recently finished The Trouble With Physics (initial comment here, full review forthcoming) and I read Not Even Wrong a little while ago (review here). I suppose I could dig up Lawrence Krauss’s book, and go for the String Theory Backlash trifecta, but I could also hit myself in the head with a brick… […]
Category: String Theory
Physics Contains Multitudes
I finished Lee Smolin’s The Trouble With Physics last night, and will write up a full review in the next couple of days. On the whole, I thought it was a well-done book, and he makes some good points. It’s not without its problems, though, chief among them being the fact that the title is […]
Taxes, Death, and Trouble With Physics
The discussion of Lee Smolin’s book just keeps on rolling. One of these days, I’ll actually finish it, and make my own informed comments. (It’s been a busy couple of weeks hereabouts.) For the moment, I’ll have to settle for pointing you to two new reviews. One is by Sean Carroll at Cosmic Variance, who […]
How Others See Our Arguments
Over at Evolution Blog, Jason Rosenhouse looks at the String Theory argument through the New Yorker‘s article about Woit and Smolin, and draws a parallel with his own field: As an outsider looking in, I would want to know how physicists respond to these charges. After all, creationists level precisely the same charges against university […]
Take the Bad with the Good
So, the good news is, Gregg Easterbrook is writing about football for ESPN again. His “Tuesday Morning Quarterback” columns are some of the most entertaining football writing around. Here’s hoping he can make it through the whole season without saying something stupid to get himself fired. The bad news is, Gregg Easterbrook is writing about […]
Peter Woit, Not Even Wrong
The two most talked-about books in physics this year are probably a pair of anti-sting-theory books, Lee Smolin’s The Trouble With Physics, and Peter Woit’s Not Even Wrong, which shares a name with Jacques Distler’s favorite weblog. I got review copies of both, but Not Even Wrong arrived first (thanks, Peter), and gets to be […]
Too Many Science Books?
One of the perks of this corporate blogging gig is that it’s put me on the radar of book publishers, who have started sending me free stuff. We like free stuff, here at Chateau Steelypips, and we like books, so that’s a Good Thing. It’s becoming almost too much of a Good Thing, though– In […]
Cold Atoms for Gravity Probes
This is nearly a month old, now, because I keep saying “Oh, Idon’t have time to do this justice– I’ll write about it tomorrow.” I really need to stop doing that. Anyway, Physics News Update has a story about a scheme to measure gravity using Bloch oscillations, based on a paper in Physical Review Letters. […]
Know Your Gadfly Theorists
One of the perks of this semi-pro blogging gig is that people have started sending me free copies of books about physics. I’m halfway through a new book on quantum mechanics at the moment, and a copy of Lee Smolin’s forthcoming The Trouble With Physics is on its way. If you can’t wait to hear […]
String Theory, RHIC, and Furr’s Law
An off-hand comment in my RHIC post has provided a lot more traffic and entertainment than I would’ve thought possible, and has also accidentally re-confirmed what we used to call “Furr’s Law” back in my Usenet days– namely, that the fastest way to get information on the Internet is to say something wrong, and let […]