About Physicists
Posted by Qrystal on August 30, 2010 at 9:18.
Category: Concepts. Tags: nature, physicists, physics.
Physicists spend a large part of their lives in a state of confusion. It’s an occupational hazard. To excel in physics is to embrace doubt while walking the winding road to clarity. The tantalizing discomfort of perplexity is what inspires otherwise ordinary men and women to extraordinary feats of ingenuity and creativity; nothing quite focuses the mind like dissonant details awaiting harmonious resolution.
But en route to explanation—during their search for new frameworks to address outstanding questions—theorists must tread with considered step through the jungle of bewilderment, guided mostly by hunches, inklings, clues, and calculations. And as the majority of researchers have a tendency to cover their tracks, discoveries often bear little evidence of the arduous terrain that’s been covered. But don’t lose sight of the fact that nothing comes easily. Nature does not give up her secrets lightly.
— Brian Greene in The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality, first paragraph of Chapter 16. [Published by Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2004].
— Wikipedia article about the book
— Amazon link The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality
Overall, I’ve been really enjoying this book for how it keeps my head in the space I need it to be in for my thesis. Sometimes I just open it randomly to read whatever I happen upon, and sometimes I scan for specific topics. I have almost made it all the way through sequentially, though, or at least I think I have. I might have to read it again, though, but that’s okay because I really have enjoyed all that I’ve read.
I recommend this book to anyone who is curious about spacetime and the current state of research (well, at least, up to 2004). I don’t think much has changed since then, except that the Large Hadron Collider is up and running, and it hasn’t (as of this blog post) found anything yet to prove or disprove any of the theories mentioned in this book (specifically: no Higgs particle has been found yet, no evidence of miniature black holes being formed, and no evidence of the extra dimensions required for string theory).
Passive Voice versus ‘We’ in my thesis
Posted by Qrystal on August 3, 2010 at 18:46.
Category: Concepts. Tags: grammar, thesis.
I was contemplating the problem of the “royal we” versus the use of passive voice in my thesis, and it sparked the following ideastorm on twitter:
RT @timtfj:
Passive [voice] makes the facts harder to absorb. Disengages the reader.
Harder than in normal non-scientific writing, I mean.
I wonder if anyone’s done the [...] Continue Reading…
Classic Blunders of Western Civilization
Posted by Qrystal on March 18, 2010 at 17:42.
Category: Miscellany. Tags: .
Getting involved in a land war in Asia.
Going against a Sicilian when death is on the line.
Holding an important meeting the day after St. Patrick’s Day.
via meetingboy
:)
Winter Tanka
Posted by Qrystal on January 5, 2010 at 18:02.
Category: Poetry. Tags: poetry, tanka, winter.
| Ambient white light
| reflects from snow-crusted ground;
| such brightness, outdoors,
| contrasts the darkness indoors,
| requires drawn shades to see.
- by Qrystal
Resolving to Overcome My Stuckness
Posted by Qrystal on January 4, 2010 at 17:35.
Category: Life. Tags: .
A new year is beginning. It’s a time that inspires people (myself included) to change some things about their lives. In the past, I had always gotten stuck on coming up with something specific enough to be measurable, and so it was never actually attainable; in fact, the exact [...] Continue Reading…
Challenge level versus skill level
Posted by Qrystal on November 24, 2009 at 13:00.
Category: Concepts. Tags: .
This is a diagram of mental states, as developed by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, showing how challenge level and skill level contribute to various mental states. I found it when looking up Anxiety, something I am trying to understand in myself.
Twitter’s New Retweets: a proposal for change
Posted by Qrystal on November 19, 2009 at 21:36.
Category: Miscellany. Tags: .
Here is the feedback I just sent to twitter about their new retweet feature:
The new retweet feature has a lot of potential, but it’s being overshadowed by the fact that it isn’t the same as the organic retweeting that emerged from how we use twitter. It seems the main [...] Continue Reading…
Dreaming of a Droid
Posted by Qrystal on November 14, 2009 at 14:58.
Category: Life. Tags: .
Oh xkcd, you make me laugh so often, but it’s especially potent when the content is so timely. Boo iphone, yay androids!
Currently trying to resist, with all my might, going out and getting myself an htc hero. However, I can’t quite pin down why I’m resisting so much. Am I afraid [...] Continue Reading…
For the Love of Writing
Posted by Qrystal on November 12, 2009 at 11:15.
Category: Life. Tags: nanowrimo, thesis, writing.
It may not be obvious from this blog yet, because I don’t post nearly as often as I would like, but I really truly love writing. I just keep trying to restrain myself from doing it, especially recreationally, because I know I should be writing my thesis instead. Somehow, [...] Continue Reading…
Mental Battlefield
Posted by Qrystal on September 24, 2009 at 13:51.
Category: Life. Tags: .
So. It is down to me, and it is down to me*. Me versus me, as it seems: my tendency to avoid That Which Must Be Done, versus the desire to get finished That Which Must Be Done.
For the longest time, I was not alone on this battlefield. Two [...] Continue Reading…