June Update

A List--The Arabian Nights............................................473/823
B List--Between books
C List--A Douglas Stone, Einstein and the Quantum....215/294


It's taking me a long time to get my report on As the Earth Turns up, which has caused a stall in the B-list. The Arabian Nights continues to be what thought of it in the previous update. Many of the stories are charming enough, others don't hold my interest so much. I usually know by the end of the first page whether it is a story I am going to take to or not. These tales are not such as can overcome a sluggish beginning. I have just gotten through all seven of the voyages of Sinbad the Sailor.


Perhaps surprisingly I am enjoying the Einstein book even though about half of the writing is devoted to the problems of quantum physics. I generally neglected my science studies during my youth, which I regret somewhat, not that I could ever have pursued any kind of professional career in that area, but because I think I could have learned more about it than I did. I won't claim that I am following the matters under discussion here with any very competent understanding--I have a general idea of the concepts that Einstein sought to elucidate. Most of the equations make some sense to me when they are written out and I am staring at them on the page, but I could not begin at this point of my life to remember them or keep them straight without dedicating the greater part of my mental energies to the task. Of course these are not easy ideas even for very brilliant people. We studied some Einstein at school, mainly the relativity theory I think--my efforts at that time were poor--and I remember somehow having the idea that when all of this was first rolled out, all of the truly intelligent people, such as the faculty at my college would have been if they had lived 100 years earlier, recognized and appreciated its brilliance and correctness right away, and if Einstein himself were to wander into the classroom they would have to able to question him as near intellectual equals. In truth it took some time, as in many years, even for many top scientists, Nobel Prize winners in some instances, to grasp Einstein's work on relativity and quantum/atomic physics. The heads of physics departments at prestigious universities in Europe returned the relativity papers submitted by the position seeking Einstein declaring without any idea of having shame that they couldn't understand a word of what he was trying to say. The point is, it is difficult and decidedly non-intuitive stuff for most people, even those of some respectable level of education.


A. Douglas Stone is a professor of Physics at Princeton, by the way.


No time for a picture gallery this month.