Agatha Christie. The Mirror Crack’d (1962)

Note: I've read this book several times, and also written about it more than once. This review is from 2008.    

Agatha Christie. The Mirror Crack’d (1962) One of Christie’s best, with a believable plot (in which, as so often, a past hurt is the key to the present crime), somewhat fuller characters than usual, and Miss Marple in fine form. Christie also allows herself more than the usual quota of social observation and gentle satire.
     Film star Marina Gregg has bought Gossington Close, and offers it as a venue for a fete in support of St John’s Ambulance in Market Basing. Unfortunately, a woman dies of an overdose of an anti-depressant. While a girl, this woman had left her sick bed to meet Marina and get her autograph, inadvertently infecting the star with German measles, which in turn caused her child to be born with severe brain damage. That’s the motive for the first murder, the subsequent two are Marina’s attempts to eliminate witnesses.
     Miss Marple, despite her home-care worker’s attempts to shield her from overmuch excitement, manages to find out what she needs to know, and solves the puzzle. Marina however dies, perhaps a suicide, perhaps not; her current (5th) husband loves her very much. This ending amounts to cop out, one that Christie often uses, and the only serious flaw in an otherwise nearly perfect Christie. *** (2008)

O. Henry. Heart of the West (1993)

     O. Henry. Heart of the West (1993) A collection of O. Henry’s Western stories, put together by Readers Digest, with adequate illustrations, and a nicely done afterword by an English prof who loves O. Henry. The stories have the ring of truth, despite their being written to the formula that O. Henry perfected, the long slow curve and fast break. This style of plotting short stories influenced popular literature in the English speaking world for several generations. Pulp fiction especially imitated O. Henry, but few writers handled it as well as he did. Underlying the sentimentalism and the sometimes overly cute use of high-flown and misunderstood words by the semi-literate characters of his tales, O. Henry’s vision is essentially clear-eyed and even ruthless. The good don’t always win, the happy ending as often as not depends on luck, and rivals don’t always play fair. Like all humourists, O. Henry relies on stereotype and caricature, but these never deteriorate into venom or prejudice. A good read. *** (2008)

When Longships Sailed (1998)

     Editors, Time-Life Books. When Longships Sailed (1998) A well done survey of Viking history from ca. 800 to 1100 CE. Clearly written, with nicely chosen quotations from the sagas, and the usual well-done photographs and sidebars. Analysis is light, the facts are as reliable as the fact checkers at Time-Life could make them. A good read. I will send this to Jonathon, so he has some sense of his Viking background.**½ (2008)

Richard Feynman. The Meaning of it All (1998)

     Richard Feynman. The Meaning of it All (1998) The text of the John Danz Lectures given by Feynman in 1963. The contemporary references are steeped in Cold War attitudes, even though Feynman is generally a very humane and open-hearted man. The three lectures deal with the uncertainty of science, the uncertainty of values, and the unscientific attitudes and beliefs that Feynman saw around him. The tone and style is very much that of speech. I’ve seen a couple of films on Feynman, and I can hear the cadences of his speech in the text. That helps, as the syntax is generally quite informal, which makes for occasional ambiguity. But all in all, Feynman’s thinking is clear and straightforward.  A pleasure to read. *** (2008)

L. R. Wright. The Suspect (1985)

     L. R. Wright. The Suspect (1985) George Wilcox murders Carlyle Burke. The mystery in this novel is why he did it, and when and how Staff Sergeant Karl Alberg, recently stationed in Sechelt, will discover the truth. Wilcox doesn't want to go to jail, and tries to hide evidence. It's his past, and Carlyle's intersection with it, that triggers the murder. the resolution is plausibly fuzzy: Wilcox's judgement that Carlyle deserved to die morphs into an awareness that he misjudged many things. His deathbed confession letter to Alberg satisfies the policeman and the reader.
     Alberg has answered a personal ad placed by Cassandra Mitchell, librarian in Sechelt. The other mystery is their back stories, and whether and how their relationship will flourish. Later books in the series will presumably answer those questions.
     Wright is good at the details that set the mood and reveal character. The town is not a replica of Sechelt, but the weather and the bay are recognisable to anyone who’s visited the Sunshine Coast. A pleasant read; I also have the second one in the series, and will look for the others. It seems that The Suspect was to be filmed in 2004, starring Donald Sutherland as George, but the project died when Telefilm Canada withdrew funding. Another casualty of the Harperites’ inability to imagine government as anything other than a tax collector. **½

Ruth Rendell. Shake Hands For Ever (1975)

 

   

Ruth Rendell. Shake Hands For Ever (1975) An especially tricky murder, not in its method but in the planning. A woman is strangled and found by her mother-in-law while the husband looks elsewhere. Wexford is ordered off the case, but his nephew (also a policeman) helps him pursue discreet inquiries and about a year later the prime suspect is nailed. The puzzle is too convoluted, but Rendell’s ability to create believable characters and her insight into abnormal psychology shape the story into a plausible entertainment. This is a late Wexford; his backstory is taken for granted, and we don’t find out much more about him. He’s lost some weight and is attracted by a pretty widow, but he’s not one for casual dalliance. Michael Burden hardly figures. **½

Schrödinger’s cat

Schrödinger’s cat is often used to illustrate the absurd nature of quantum mechanics. Schrödinger devised the thought experiment to highlight the paradox implicit in the fact of entanglement. We are told that the cat is neither alive nor dead (or alternatively, that is both alive and dead) until we open the lid of the box, at which point the wave function describing the cat’s state is said to collapse into one or the other state. See this article for a good description of this thought experiment.

We are told that opening the box is an “observation”, and that it is the act of observation that causes the wave function to collapse. Opening the box kills the cat, or saves its life. Schrödinger devised this absurd thought experiment in order to clarify the paradoxes that appear to arise from entanglement.

I understand entanglement as follows: Two particles interact. They leave each other’s vicinity. The mathematics of quantum mechanics imply that until one of the particles is “observed” or “measured”, we cannot know which particle is in which state. However, when one of the articles is observed to have State S, the other will be in the complementary state S’. The usual interpretation is that until the measurement is done, the particles are in both states, which are said to be superposed on each other. The measurement forces the collapse of the indefinite state of the measured particle into one of the two possible states.

Experiments have been done that show precisely this state of affairs. The question is whether the interpretation of the model is correct: Are the two particles actually in indefinite states until they are measured? Or is it merely the case that we cannot know which particle is in which state until we measure one of them? Note that measurement is an interaction. So the more accurate question is, Are particles that have interacted in some indefinite state until their next interaction? Or is it the case that we cannot know anything about the states of particles unless and until we arrange some interaction that results in effects large enough that we can both observe those effects and infer the states that caused them?

I think that QM is ultimately about the limits of knowledge, about what we can and cannot know about particles. Until we measure the particles, we can’t know what the result will be. More importantly, according to Heisenberg’s principle, the act of measuring the particles changes their states. Measurement or observation is not a privileged interaction. It’s just the one of many possible interactions, and it will be followed by another one, and then another one, and so on.

The Copenhagen interpretation argues that the two particles are in superposed states until they are measured, at which point one of two possible states becomes real in some sense, and thus constrains the next interaction. The many-worlds interpretation argues that whenever the function collapses, both possible outcomes become real, and ontologically separated from each other. I think both interpretations miss a fundamental point: QM, like any other theory, is a model. A model explains the observations (data) that have been observed or predicted. It can’t explain what isn’t part of it or isn't implied by it. Interpreting QM ontologically or metaphysically is absurd.

Schrodinger’s cat is alive or dead, as the case may, before we open the box. Our observation doesn’t cause cat to live or die: the radioactive atom that did or did not decay caused that.               

WEK 2013-11-18