On 02/24/2026 09:26 AM, Stefan Ram wrote:
john larkin <jl@glen--canyon.com> wrote or quoted:
He sounds interesting, so I just ordered one of his books.
-a-a Well, if you read that book, you also should read one book
-a-a about how the Higgs boson and the standard model became what
-a-a they are today, like, maybe: "The Particle at the End of the
-a-a Universe" by Sean Carroll.
-a-a Leon Lederman wrote a book about the Higgs boson, which book
-a-a he called "The Goddamn Particle". But his publisher changed
-a-a the title into "The God Particle".
That Kevin Brown's "Reflections on Relativity" e-book is
really a pretty great account.
When we were kids we read "A Brief History of Time" and
then about mostly "Goedel, Escher, Bach". Asimov has
some good accounts in his non-fiction as popularizations.
Reading the likes of Gribbin and Hawking and Kaku and
Feynman and Greene and Tyson and Stewart and Krauss
and Davies sometimes and Barrow and other sorts,
"popularizers", of physics, sort of demands both
reading them and understanding that personal views
of science are as of through a lens.
One time I picked up one of those Rovelli monographs
and put it down in about five seconds. It's like that
one guy with "there is no time" and it's like "get out
of here". The "mathematical universe hypothesis" bit was
good until it got into "... and we're living in a simulation"
and it's like get out of here. That said then something like
Allan Franklin's was sort of good, then something like Earman,
Stachel, and Wald, those are pretty good reading.
I got a lot out of reading Davies.
Probably you should read "Brief History of Time"
as a sort of historical artifact before some
latest talking-head off the pulp-mill. They'll
all have read it. It's about the only science
popularization that was ever really a "best-seller".
The "The Dictionary of the History of Science", or the
old one, is pretty great. The Wikipedia these days is
actually pretty great, though it's mostly a sort of
transcription of the linear curriculum, editors are
often slipping in qualifications and mentions that
would otherwise leave it closed and in a wider account wrong.
Of course, the beginning of the "The Handbook of Chemistry
and Physics" is tons of text before the thousand page table.
Something like the "Physics Formulary" that was floating around
is considered a great sort of note-card.
Video essays really can't get across the real textual import
of information as it is, though, about conference proceedings
and the like, or concerted developments, it's nice to have
an instructor who does more than read off the Wiki.
Heisenberg has a book called "Nuclear Physics", the beginning
of that is pretty good, Born's "Restless Universe",
I got here McKeon's "Aristotle".
How about "Concise Encyclopedia of Atomic Energy"
or "An Illustrated Dictionary of Computer Science".
You better had read a business administration book.
Ross Finlayson schrieb:
On 02/24/2026 09:26 AM, Stefan Ram wrote:
john larkin <jl@glen--canyon.com> wrote or quoted:
He sounds interesting, so I just ordered one of his books.
Well, if you read that book, you also should read one book
about how the Higgs boson and the standard model became what
they are today, like, maybe: "The Particle at the End of the
Universe" by Sean Carroll.
Leon Lederman wrote a book about the Higgs boson, which book
he called "The Goddamn Particle". But his publisher changed
the title into "The God Particle".
That Kevin Brown's "Reflections on Relativity" e-book is
really a pretty great account.
When we were kids we read "A Brief History of Time" and
then about mostly "Goedel, Escher, Bach". Asimov has
some good accounts in his non-fiction as popularizations.
Reading the likes of Gribbin and Hawking and Kaku and
Feynman and Greene and Tyson and Stewart and Krauss
and Davies sometimes and Barrow and other sorts,
"popularizers", of physics, sort of demands both
reading them and understanding that personal views
of science are as of through a lens.
One time I picked up one of those Rovelli monographs
and put it down in about five seconds. It's like that
one guy with "there is no time" and it's like "get out
of here". The "mathematical universe hypothesis" bit was
good until it got into "... and we're living in a simulation"
and it's like get out of here. That said then something like
Allan Franklin's was sort of good, then something like Earman,
Stachel, and Wald, those are pretty good reading.
I got a lot out of reading Davies.
Probably you should read "Brief History of Time"
as a sort of historical artifact before some
latest talking-head off the pulp-mill. They'll
all have read it. It's about the only science
popularization that was ever really a "best-seller".
The "The Dictionary of the History of Science", or the
old one, is pretty great. The Wikipedia these days is
actually pretty great, though it's mostly a sort of
transcription of the linear curriculum, editors are
often slipping in qualifications and mentions that
would otherwise leave it closed and in a wider account wrong.
Of course, the beginning of the "The Handbook of Chemistry
and Physics" is tons of text before the thousand page table.
Something like the "Physics Formulary" that was floating around
is considered a great sort of note-card.
Video essays really can't get across the real textual import
of information as it is, though, about conference proceedings
and the like, or concerted developments, it's nice to have
an instructor who does more than read off the Wiki.
Heisenberg has a book called "Nuclear Physics", the beginning
of that is pretty good, Born's "Restless Universe",
I got here McKeon's "Aristotle".
How about "Concise Encyclopedia of Atomic Energy"
or "An Illustrated Dictionary of Computer Science".
| Sysop: | Amessyroom |
|---|---|
| Location: | Fayetteville, NC |
| Users: | 59 |
| Nodes: | 6 (0 / 6) |
| Uptime: | 24:11:07 |
| Calls: | 810 |
| Calls today: | 1 |
| Files: | 1,287 |
| D/L today: |
12 files (21,036K bytes) |
| Messages: | 195,978 |