Books and films.....

"In his aptly named new book, UNCERTAINTY, David Lindley introduces us to the giants who made this revolution - Heisenberg and Einstein, of course, but also Niels Bohr, Wolfgang Pauli, Arnold Sommerfeld, Erwin Schrodinger, Paul Dirac, Hendrik Kramers, and Max Born. Lindley's approach more or less traces the chronological history of the events leading to quantum physics and Heisenberg's formal statements of the ultimate uncertainty of measurement at the atomic level. At the same time, he provides excellent insight into the scientific and philosophical turmoil that these conjectures raised and the difficulties of acceptance they encountered. So much of this science was counterintuitive, and worse still, so much of it directly contradicted two thousand years of human belief about universal absolutes and the ultimate nature of science itself. Lindley presents these ideas in an easily understandable, non-mathematical way accessible to virtually any interested reader. To his credit, the author also presents the principals in this story in a decidedly human way, complete with their certainties and doubts and individual peculiarities. Thus, for example, we see Niels Bohr as an almost comical figure, a man for whom "his determination not to say anything straightforward or concise" while striving to reconcile classical physics with the quantum world "seem[ed] almost a phobia.""

This Amazon review of a book recommended to me based on a couple others I have picked up in the last six months definitely tipped the scale on my interest and I'm looking forward to it arriving shortly. I also ordered "No Country For Old Men", which I had been thinking about since I watched the film last month, and since I enjoyed Ben Stein's presentation mentioned in my previous posting, I picked up his collected essays "How to Ruin Your Life". Reviews will come later.....

Netflix has been a wonderful service for me and one of the better birthday gifts I have ever gotten (thank you Richard). Knowing that I'll be leaving for my extended trip in 6+ months, it has been a little sad seeing my queue dwindling down from over 150 to about 75 now. Just enough to get through before I fly away. Tonight I have two Holocaust films: one from Czechoslovakia "Divided We Fall" and a second from Switzerland "The Boat is Full". This is the second time in about a week that I've had a theme night like this. I recently watched both "Once Were Warriors" and "Rabbit Proof Fence" back to back and luckily in that order. I say that because "Once..." was such a depressing film from New Zealand and "Rabbit Proof..." from Australia was a story of hope and success despite overwhelming odds. What made it even better was that I had not realized it was a true story till the end when they introduced the sisters. I knew it was based on the Stolen Generations, but not that it was itself factual. I had assumed it was a historical fiction. (The same thing happened to me on a film called "The Newton Boys" and it made me similarly regard the film in a higher degree than if it had just been a story. I should track that film down and see it again.)