miraculous visions of breathless hoopla
A century after Einstein’s miracle year, most people still do not understand exactly what it was he did. Here, we attempt to elucidate …
okay, if you don’t understand what einstein did, read this entire article and then see if it’s been “elucidated”. ha! feynman was right; many people attempt to simplify things so far that they merely describe something else instead — usually something that’s wrong. the only way to “understand” einstein’s work from an article is to do what the article does: spout buzzwords, and scuttle via “ain’t nuttin butta thang” bamboozlement any hope of exploring the subject properly. but you can sure spit out some impressive sounding hogwash afterward.
einstein interests you? for some serious reading at the novice level, two books will take you nicely from special/general relativity to quantum electrodynamics. even then you won’t truly understand squat — just like m’boy richard says.
January 5th, 2005 at 23:27
Ditto. I read that article about a week ago and had exactly the same thought. Your characterization is dead-on, in my opinion. Information is useful to me to the extent that it either entertains me or allows me to make distinctions that in turn are useful vis-a-vis decisions I need to make. The information in that article did neither.
Popular writing about physics is a pet peeve of mine. Pardon the pun, but Schroedinger’s cat? Do you share my loathing of supposed sophisticates who take this analogy literally? Guess what, blatherers, the cat remains alive, whether you are observing it or not. What pomposity.
January 6th, 2005 at 02:26
maybe we should have a pet peeve contest sometime. i bet i win! heh heh.
well, ya nailed it with “supposed sophisticates”. the pomposity is a cover for fear — fear of saying what i’m proud to scream when necessary: “i don’t know!”
re schroedinger’s cat, i’ll try to understand that one better after i figure out some of the things still bugging me from that damned “einstein’s universe” book. trouble there is that it gets you excited and curious about things, but then it’s hard to bridge the gap from its discovery channel approach to something more direct (e.g., a question about anything the book covers as settled fact) without having to learn way more than i want to. (similar to feynman in one respect, i learn things the hard way).
as a struggling novice, i sometimes suspect that nigel calder didn’t have a complete handle on everything he was writing about there. great book though. his problem was nowhere close to the scam (as you mention) most writers pull with physics.