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

Gwynn Dyer. War (1985)

 

     Gwynn Dyer. War (1985) Dyer devised, wrote much of, and presented a TV documentary series on war. This book is based on or related to that series, and while it includes much material from it, it is not a print version. Both aim to explain the development of war, and the need to find an alternative or replacement for the present system of independent sovereign nations, each of whom sees no moral limits on pursuing its own interests, and each of whom sees all others as rivals. It’s an impressive work, and although a few things have changed (climate change being now as great a threat to human survival as nuclear war), the central thesis is as valid as ever. We do still run the risk of stumbling into a world-wide nuclear war, the results of which will make the current argy-bargy about climate change utterly irrelevant.
     Dyer’s central point is that war and civilisation were invented at the same time, and that we have to separate the two. Early civilisations, city states, competed for resources, and the invention of war made conquest a quick and relatively cheap way of increasing wealth and expanding territory. For thousands of years, the inefficiency of killing technology meant that war cost the victor relatively little. The victors usually destroyed the enemy as thoroughly as possible, but war itself was profitable. That has now changed. A few so-called conventional weapons, e.g., tanks and fighter bombers, unopposed are capable of destroying a city. We are stumbling towards alternatives to war, but whether we will devise a way of living together on our crowded planet before some fool triggers Armageddon is anyone’s guess. **** (2008)

I reread the book, and wrote this review I wrote in 2010 :
     Dyer, Gwynne War (1982) I've been reading Gwynne Dyer's book about war. He wrote it in 1982, basing it on a television series on war that he made for the CBC and PBS. It's a gloomy and depressing subject, but anyone who wants to understand how the world works has to take account of war.
     Dyer’s thesis is that civilisation and war were born of the same agricultural revolution that led to the invention of cities, to an increasing human population, and the accelerating developments of technology and science that have made war a suicidal institution in our own day. Significantly, all the ancient references to cities take it for granted that they are walled and gated: cities were invented to protect people from robbery and murder, and war was initially merely highly organised crime, and as such was profitable. Nations and states (ie, their rulers) that went to war got what they wanted politically and economically at a price they could afford to pay. That is no longer the case. The next world war will cost the destruction of our civilisation. The smaller local wars of our day end in stalemate, in which the losing side often turns to brutal terror instead of giving up its political ambitions.
     Dyer wrote at a time when nuclear war between the great powers was a real possibility, either in direct confrontation, or triggered by a minor war between their client states. The probability of a world-wide nuclear war is both lower and higher than it was then. Lower in the short term, because the major powers do not want to destroy themselves; higher in the long term because global warming could well trigger wars of survival, in which people could see the destruction of rivals as the only way to ensure a passable standard of living for themselves. The only environmental concern Dyer discusses is nuclear winter, which would certainly result from a nuclear war, for even a minor, localised one would entail the explosion of several dozen weapons, each several times the power of the ones that obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Whether that would reverse global warming is another question, but there wouldn’t be many people left to observe the answer or contemplate it, and they would have other things on their minds than arguing a moot controversy..
     Dyer’s conclusion, that war must be replaced by something else, is slowly entering people’s consciousness. Despite the Conservatives’ exploitation of the jingoistic “support for our troops” in Afghanistan by the more paranoid, most Canadians (and Americans) realise that some rule-based protocols for conflict resolution must be found. The core dispute is about who will make and enforce the rules: no one wants to surrender their “national sovereignty”, but it will have to happen. The rise of the international criminal court at the Hague is a promising start. Even though none of the major powers are willing to accept its jurisdiction over themselves, they are quite happy to use it as an alternative to war to keep the lesser tyrants in line. There is also a much greater willingness for groups of nations to intervene within a country, if its ruler displays ambitions to widen his tyranny over neighbouring states, or threatens the making of profits.
     But war is still the primary means for forcing political change. Or rather, attempting to force political change. As the US failure in Iraq, the NATO failure in Afghanistan, and the failed (and ever more brutal) rebellions in central and southwest Africa show, war is less profitable than ever. Except of course for the armourers. ****

This snippet was written before the above:
     I've been reading Gwynne Dyer's book about war. He wrote it in 1982 when he made a television series on war. It's a gloomy and depressing subject, but anyone who wants to understand how the world works has to take account of war. The reasons for war vary from the laughable to the serious, the results range from no change to the status quo to the destruction of whole nations. Recorded history is about 6,000 to 7,000 years old, and over that time span the one constant has been war. The earliest records make it clear that war is older than writing, and as far as we can tell began around the time that humans invented agriculture and herding. These two inventions gave humans some control over their food supply, enabling the growth of human populations, and providing time and resources for arts and crafts. But the increased wealth came at a price. It required control over the people that tilled the land or watched the herds, and it made land itself valuable. If someone took your land, you would starve. The result was the invention of war. War is organised killing of other groups of people in order to take from them what they will not give by way of trade.
In short, in order to make agriculture efficient, we invented the state; and in order to protect ourselves from other states, we invented war. We call this state of affairs civilisation. (2010)

 

P. G. Wodehouse. The Luck of the Bodkins (1935)

     P. G. Wodehouse. The Luck of the Bodkins (1935) Wodehouse works better in short bites; at novel length you see the creakiness of his plots, especially since he repeats them over and over again. Monty Bodkins wins and loses Gertrude Butterwick many times on a trans-Atlantic voyage, while friends and others suffer variations on this theme. A Hollywood film mogul has been ordered to smuggle his wife’s pearl necklace through customs, and his misapprehension about who may be who mixes things up some more. He’s also Wodehouse’s opportunity to satirise film moguls. The steward is a variation on Jeeves, without the latter’s wit and intelligence. And so on. A pleasant enough read, when imbibed in small doses. ** (2008)