Mobile Bay Jubilees

Always heard about these things and kind of wondered.

Mobile Bay Jubilees at Gastro Obscura

It'd be fun to get in on one, but the odds of me moving to the Eastern Shore are near zero.  Still... vast numbers of fish coming ashore and begging to get caught sounds really great.

Fall?

Three days past the equinox into "official Fall" and the extended forecast doesn't show any lows below 73F.  OTOH, none of the predicted highs get above 90F, so I guess that sort of counts.  Anyway, the days are noticeably shorter, so this hot streak can't keep on much longer.

FWIW, today's APOD has a summary of this fall's astronomical highlights.

Short Book Comment: The Road to Middle Earth

A slog, but in a good way.  As you might guess by the title, this book lays out the academic and wartime events that shaped J.R.R. Tolkien's views and writings, while avoiding being any sort of a biography.  It also spends time on some of the harsh criticism both his writing and his professional work received, and shows how these criticisms have not held up with the passage of time.  There're lots of dives into philology vs. literature, and Old English verse, as well as various northern European legends and their patterns.  Finally, there's an appendix that assesses the value of and differences in Peter Jackson's film adaptation of Lord of the Rings.  Mercifully, this was published in 2003-4, well before the not-so-good adaptation of The Hobbit.

Did I say this was a slog?  No, not really.  More of an enjoyable, extended hike through somewhat familiar woods, accompanied by an extremely knowledgable guide who points out things you otherwise might never have noticed.  This is one of those books that, if you think you would enjoy reading it, you probably will.  Conversely, if you think you won't, you're probably right too.

Quick Book Review: Lost in Math

There has been a ton of ink spilled about this book over this summer just past, most of it with a slightly sheepish "yeah, that's about right; dunno what to do though" tone throughout.  Here, read the blurb from Amazon, and then I'll have a bit more to say afterward:

Whether pondering black holes or predicting discoveries at CERN, physicists believe the best theories are beautiful, natural, elegant, and this standard separates popular theories from disposable ones.  This is why, Sabine Hossenfelder argues, we have not seen a major breakthrough in the foundations of physics for more than four decades.  The belief in beauty has become so dogmatic that it now conflicts with scientific objectivity; observation has been unable to confirm mind boggling theories, like supersymmetry or grand unification, invented by physicists based on aesthetic criteria.  Worse, these "too good not to be true" theories are actually untestable and they have left the field in a cul-de-sac.  To escape, physicists must rethink their methods.  Only by embracing reality as it is can science discover the truth.

Yeah, that's about right.  Dunno what to do though.  And the problem is that there are still so many unanswered questions.  (For a fun popular-level dive into that topic, see Cham and Whiteson's book, We Have No Idea.)  With the price tag of the next-generation accelerator estimated to be somewhere in the $100 billion range though, we do need to carefully consider our next steps.

Back to the above-quoted blurb, it really boils down the key points of the book, but of course the blurb can't capture the humanity, the wit, the tone of the book itself.  It's worth the read just for the interviews with leading physicists, for the travelogue, for the occasional wackiness of wanting a cup of coffee after a long flight before the next interview begins.  If you are at all the kind of person who at all considers these sorts of things (either big, deep questions, or where that next cup of coffee is coming from), this book is this year's indispensable reading.


ps: Yeah, I know that all the cool kids already blog-reviewed this back in July.  What can I say, I've been busy.

Nuclear Pasta

It's complicated.  Story over at Big Think.  From their bullet-point abstract:

• The strongest material in the universe may be the whimsically named "nuclear pasta."
• You can find this substance in the crust of neutron stars.
• This amazing material is super-dense, and is 10 billion times harder to break than steel.

Oh, and it comes in a variety of textures, in some ways analogous to actual pasta:

I have nothing to add here beyond perhaps lame jokes about my cooking skills.  It's better to move on and let you go read the article, if so inclined.

Beware: Substandard Knock-Off Bike Helmets

Story over at NPR.  Of course, they had to label them "Fake Bike Helmets" for the eye-grab, but it's still a compelling story.  TLDR version: somebody is selling helmet-shaped objects made of non-helmet materials for cheap, usually through eBay.  Naturally, these HSOs don't work in actual crashes.  Manufacturers and retailers are pissed about this, having put good money into engineering and marketing a trustworthy, comfortable safety item.  No mention if someone has actually been injured while wearing one, but that's beside the point and only a matter of time.

If the price is too good to be true, yes it is.

ps: Now is a good time to revisit this old post, Wear your bike helmet.

rrr--crank-crank-crank-crank-rrr rrr-crank-crank-RMMMMM!

Oh man, I ought to run this thing a little more often.  Almost didn't crank up that time.