real physics, crappy book club

Also! "We" just "read" Calamity Physics, yes? I found this article on retrocausality today, it seems appropriate. I don't understand word one of the physics of it, but...retrocausality!

Such are the perils of retrocausality, the idea that the present can affect the past, and the future can affect the present. Strange as it sounds, retrocausality is perfectly permissible within the known laws of nature.[...]Dating back to Newton's laws of motion, the equations of physics are generally "time symmetric" -- they work as well for processes running backward through time as forward.

How awesome is that?

Anyway, Clint and I are of the opinion that both The Vast Unthinking Masses book club and DISPERSION(s) have died slow and painful deaths. If other members of TVUM and Team DISPERSION(s) would be interested, we could continue to update this blog with the periodic musings that would have found homes in the pages of DISPERSION(s) if we were better at meeting deadlines. What say you?

Umm...hello out there. I finished the book. Did anyone else?

No?

Well. This is turning out to be an awesome book club. I tell you what.

I don't remember any other physics formulas.

I don't know about you guys, but I've totally read the first 107 pages of Special Topics in Calamity Physics already.

How can you not love a book that starts out talking about how great professors are, and how the curriculum is some sort of divine tool to organize the chaos of life itself? And the annotations...awesome. It's always nice to have my dependence on the structure of academia justified by my choice of reading material. Sometimes the meta grates a little, but for the most part, very enjoyable.

But I do hate that I've fallen into another of those quirky high school novels. I mean, really. Has there ever been a young adult novel, or an adult coming-of-age novel, that accurately depicted high school? Maybe it's just me, and the fact that I went to a terrible public high school and was completely oblivious to high school social dynamics as well, but...who has all these kooky teachers? Cliques with goofy nicknames, and without even slightly permeable membranes? Did anyone else ever have that "golden child" no fictional high school is complete without, beloved by everyone including teachers, etc. etc.? And the study group...really? I find it all wholly alien to my personal high school experience--not this book in particular, really, just...every depiction of high school life, ever. And maybe that's the point, and I know high school (particularly from my personal perspective) is not really the stuff of legend (or even popular fiction), but I'm really sick of all the revisionist crap out there.

F=MA

So, Special Topics in Calamity Physics is over 500 pages long. And, judging by the enthusiastic response all 85 pages of The Prophet received, Clint and I have determined that it might be best if we both extend and segment the reading of this tome. I think tome is the correct word for so...weighty a text, yes?

Thus: We will all attempt to have around a hundred pages read every week. This should take just over a month (Clint may need to check my numbers. We're not all math majors, you know). All participants are encouraged to both develop and answer discussion questions for/by their fellow readers, to foster even more of that stimulating debate this humble blog has played host to in its illustrous one month history. Of course reading ahead will be permitted, and falling behind, though mocked, will be tolerated. Barely.

The first hundred pages should be finished by, let's say, next Saturday (the 24th). We should finish the book by or before the 23rd of March, but discussions are encouraged throughout this process. We will recommence suggestions and voting for April's book when Special Topics is done. It'll be like an extra-special birthday surprise for me. And Shane, I guess. As if he even counts.

p.s. you'll thank me later

I hadn't actually realized until rereading this how much of a communist Kahlil Gibran seems to be. That said, I think what appeals to me about this book is that his advice by and large comes at two levels. He gives you the ideal behind his advice, the thing that would be best for you to do were you infinitely wise and if we lived in a perfect world, and then he gives you the "since that can't happen" version. It's a very effective rhetorical technique, in my opinion, to give the advice and the cosmic principle behind it. I feel like it's both pragmatic and idealistic at once.

I also like how very concise and without waste he writes. I'm glad other people agree. For being largely ignorant of English for the first half of his life, he achieved an impressive effectiveness with it (except for all the ands at the beginning of sentences...god, that pisses me off).