I'm from the old school where a book ought to have a resolution to the climax (and it should come AFTER the climax). Right. I think literary critics call that "cuddling".
True. Unfortunately, my friends and I came up with that name for a character in junior high, a few years before the book came out. However, Stephenson might just gain bonus points for having the chutzpah to actually use that name.
Snow Crash vaulted into the "OK" category with the single line "after that it's just a chase scene". Everything else was rich, velvety, cholesterol-laden icing on the cake.
Agreed. I really *did* enjoy Quicksilver, with no reservations. But the following two were less dry and more engaging, even though the individual scenes became a bit more violent and disturbing. Scattered throughout all three volumes were various little nuggets of Stephenson humor -- not just the people struggling with concepts we would consider old-hat (in the modern sense of the term, not that prevalent as slang as recently as the 1940s!) -- but modern euphemisms. If I remember correctly, these became more common in the later two volumes.
Plus, it's usually up to the reader to provide the last chapter or so. Weave away, reader. It's a brilliant way to write books, because each one ends up being lovingly tailored to the individual reader's mindset.
you runed it you bastard now they have to send kneemails to the webmaster! The children will have to go through an admin to get their prayer requests how the f will God know what to do? What if the webmaster gets drunk and forgets to back up and then kneemails are lost? Where is their god now?!?
The faceless, chittering beings who are magicked into existence through the wormholes that thing is going to open up. Maybe you can at least slow them down a little bit so the rest of us have a chance.
Hmm... Maybe I'll check out Slashdot. Oh! There's a heartwarming IT story. [Pause. The sound of counting the technicians we have. Quick check of the numbers that we're administering.]
"Hey, John? Can we get a list of all the 16-year-olds on the network? Yeah, thanks."
Given that I'm sure the "most important server" is the one which handles their "Knee mail" (http://www.victorymillbrook.com/prayer.php), what do you think?
[Guys] all want to get laid by as many good looking women as we possibly can in a lifetime. You may think you're just being straightforward and honest, but you're being straightforward and wrong.
That's a very nice analysis of the whole brouhaha. I appreciate the link! Even without Lubos' reasoned, valid approach to the problem, the fact that someone in the "comments" section is advocating killing him (and the linked-to blog is so full of misinformation and ill-will toward Lubos), means that, by contrast, he looks totally sane.
IAAP, too, though not a P (Particle?) one. You're right about the strengths of other forces dominating that of gravity, of course. However, we were talking about "classically" capturing particles from outside the Schwarzschild radius. Note that if a particle escapes the black hole, it does so because it shows up outside the 1/r^2 "break-even" radius for its particular momentum. I don't know if it is claimed that pair creation still goes on inside the event horizon.
If white dwarfs stars and neutron stars *do* exist, I suppose your argument about "binding energy" (couched in terms of the Pauli exclusion principle) has particular merit. However, it remains to be determined whether gravitational forces can overcome the exclusion "force" beyond the event horizon of a black hole.
Gauss' law proves the absence of magnetic monopoles. Until they can find a problem with Maxwell's equations, they've got no case. Yes, Paul Dirac and Feynman were obviously hacks, as were (are) Witten, Wu, Weyl, Berry, and many others. Gauss' law suggests the absence of magnetic monopoles, but many physicists have their curiosities piqued when they notice that symmetry is seriously lacking in Maxwell's Equations (thus the introduction of things like the vector potential for magnetism, etc.). Allowing a monopole (in analogy to the discrete electric charge) restores a lot of symmetry, and turns out to be NOT inconsistent with Maxwell's Equations. Remember that Maxwell's equations are classically OK, and consistent with special relativity, but modifying them for quantum effects is nontrivial.
The argument from Gauss' law is *somewhat* analogous to that of the apparently infinite electronic self-energy when QED was young. However, no one seriously proposed that electrons don't exist as a result! Also, Maxwell's equations (as you no doubt know) insist that electrons should immediately radiate their energies and spiral into nuclei. There exists more between heaven and earth, Horatio, than is dreamt of in one single philiosophy.
Slashdot Mirror
Thank the gods for NoScript!
Now that KDE4 runs on Windows too, I don't see why you have to *duck* :)
True. Unfortunately, my friends and I came up with that name for a character in junior high, a few years before the book came out. However, Stephenson might just gain bonus points for having the chutzpah to actually use that name.
One might want to use the "-mit Lasern" flag, of course.
Or just apt-get install wireshark :)
Snow Crash vaulted into the "OK" category with the single line "after that it's just a chase scene". Everything else was rich, velvety, cholesterol-laden icing on the cake.
Agreed. I really *did* enjoy Quicksilver, with no reservations. But the following two were less dry and more engaging, even though the individual scenes became a bit more violent and disturbing. Scattered throughout all three volumes were various little nuggets of Stephenson humor -- not just the people struggling with concepts we would consider old-hat (in the modern sense of the term, not that prevalent as slang as recently as the 1940s!) -- but modern euphemisms. If I remember correctly, these became more common in the later two volumes.
Plus, it's usually up to the reader to provide the last chapter or so. Weave away, reader. It's a brilliant way to write books, because each one ends up being lovingly tailored to the individual reader's mindset.
That's a rather touching story.
Oh. Waaaaiiiiitttt.....
Stop wearing 100% cotton pants?
I wasn't, but I must say....
OMG!!!! PONIES!!!!!!11!1!!111!!!11!!
The faceless, chittering beings who are magicked into existence through the wormholes that thing is going to open up. Maybe you can at least slow them down a little bit so the rest of us have a chance.
Have fun!
Hmm... Maybe I'll check out Slashdot. Oh! There's a heartwarming IT story. [Pause. The sound of counting the technicians we have. Quick check of the numbers that we're administering.]
"Hey, John? Can we get a list of all the 16-year-olds on the network? Yeah, thanks."
Given that I'm sure the "most important server" is the one which handles their "Knee mail" (http://www.victorymillbrook.com/prayer.php), what do you think?
Sorry: prior art.
Girls.
Oh... sorry. I thought you said fleshlights.
That's a very nice analysis of the whole brouhaha. I appreciate the link! Even without Lubos' reasoned, valid approach to the problem, the fact that someone in the "comments" section is advocating killing him (and the linked-to blog is so full of misinformation and ill-will toward Lubos), means that, by contrast, he looks totally sane.
Loved that book. Especially the baboons.
IAAP, too, though not a P (Particle?) one. You're right about the strengths of other forces dominating that of gravity, of course. However, we were talking about "classically" capturing particles from outside the Schwarzschild radius. Note that if a particle escapes the black hole, it does so because it shows up outside the 1/r^2 "break-even" radius for its particular momentum. I don't know if it is claimed that pair creation still goes on inside the event horizon.
If white dwarfs stars and neutron stars *do* exist, I suppose your argument about "binding energy" (couched in terms of the Pauli exclusion principle) has particular merit. However, it remains to be determined whether gravitational forces can overcome the exclusion "force" beyond the event horizon of a black hole.
The argument from Gauss' law is *somewhat* analogous to that of the apparently infinite electronic self-energy when QED was young. However, no one seriously proposed that electrons don't exist as a result! Also, Maxwell's equations (as you no doubt know) insist that electrons should immediately radiate their energies and spiral into nuclei. There exists more between heaven and earth, Horatio, than is dreamt of in one single philiosophy.
http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/0038-5670/27/10/R03/PHU_27_10_R03.pdf is a nontechnical review of some thoughts of the last 50 years on the monopole. http://www.springerlink.com/content/mk1244q338n84205/fulltext.pdf suggests that QED is consistent with the existence of monopoles. A quick search will turn up many more such. Good luck.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox#It_is_the_nature_of_intelligent_life_to_destroy_itself