Saturday, November 24, 2012

The Great Freeman Dyson...

The fringe of physics is not a sharp boundary with truth on one side and fantasy on the other. All of science is uncertain and subject to revision. The glory of science is to imagine more than we can prove. The fringe is the unexplored territory where truth and fantasy are not yet disentangled. Hermann Weyl, who was one of the main architects of the relativity and quantum revolutions, said to me once, “I always try to combine the true with the beautiful, but when I have to choose one or the other, I usually choose the beautiful.” Following Weyl’s good example, our string cosmologists are making the same choice.

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

BRIAN DOMITROVIC To the Randians of All Parties Why Ayn Rand’s economic arguments make sense—and why they’re ignored 19 November 2012

r goals of The authors endorse the Randian argument that remarkable people need extra space to achieve self-realization. Their capacities are larger than most people’s, their horizons broader, and their scope of impact more vital—so get out of the way, government. And when remarkable people succeed in business, the authors note, the public benefit is often immense. But such people aren’t greedy, according to the authors. Rand described the motivation of businesspeople and entrepreneurs as “rational selfishness,” and Yaron and Brook elucidate Rand’s view that purely acquisitive or “greedy” types are not rationally self-interested—that they haven’t thought fully about the propelife.

Thursday, November 8, 2012

On the Hold Shelf Double Entry by Jane Gleeson-White and Mr. Penumbra's 24-hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan


PW Reviews 2012 August #1
For those who fear that the Internet/e-readers/whatever-form-of-technological-upheaval-is-coming has killed or will kill paper and ink, Sloan's debut novel will come as good news. A denizen of the tech world and self-described "media inventor" (formerly he was part of the media partnerships team at Twitter), Sloan envisions a San Francisco where piracy and paper are equally useful, and massive data-visualizationâ€"processing abilities coexist with so-called "old knowledge." Really old: as in one of the first typefaces, as in alchemy and the search for immortality. Google has replaced the Medici family as the major patron of art and knowledge, and Clay Jannon, downsized graphic designer and once-and-future nerd now working the night shift for bookstore owner Mr. Penumbra, finds that mysteries and codes are everywhere, not just in the fantasy books and games he loved as a kid. With help from his friends, Clay learns the bookstore's idiosyncrasies, earns his employer's trust, and uses media new, old, and old-old to crack a variety of codes. Like all questing heroes, Clay takes on more than he bargained for and learns more than he expected, not least about himself. His story is an old-fashioned tale likably reconceived for the digital age, with the happy message that ingenuity and friendship translate across centuries and data platforms. Agent: Sarah Burnes, the Gernert Company. (Oct.)
[Page ]. Copyright 2012 PWxyz LLC

Saturday, November 3, 2012

Fortune: Everyone seems hungry to make a fortune, but on nearly every occasion the word ‘fortune’ pops up, it refers not to the treasure, but to chance, to accident, to people committed to pushing their luck. In this book, a fortune isn’t always something you are pleased to take possession of Kids Gone Rotten,by Matthew Bevis,London Review of Books

 Everyone seems hungry to make a fortune, but on nearly every occasion the word ‘fortune’ pops up, it refers not to the treasure, but to chance, to accident, to people committed to pushing their luck. In this book, a fortune isn’t always something you are pleased to take possession of Kids Gone Rotten,by Matthew Bevis,London Review of Books