Book Writing
drorzel | December 6, 2007John Scalzi is talking a big game:
I was just taking one of those Internet tests to see how much of a geek I am, when I suddenly thought, what the fuck am I doing? I'm a published science fiction writer. Do not pass "go," do not collect $200, you know? Just go straight to the geek win.
That's right, I win at geek. Tell me I'm wrong.
All I have to say is, "Enjoy it while you can, Heinlein boy."
I'm writing a book based on talking to my dog about quantum physics. Scalzi holds the title for the moment by virtue of actually being published, while my book is still pending.
But he's just keeping…
drorzel | December 1, 2007Another Jonah Goldberg moment-- can anybody recommend a reasonably neutral discussion of Bohm's non-local hidden variable version of quantum theory? A little Googling turns up this encyclopedia article and a tutorial dialogue on the arxiv, but I'd like to see a fairly complete treatment of it that doesn't go to great lengths to make proponents of other interpretations sound like clueless goobers who are just too dim to perceive the obvious correctness of the Bohmian approach.
This isn't critical by any means-- the hour and a half I've just spent reading these pieces is really more cat-…
drorzel | November 26, 2007I distinctly recall reading a quote from somebody talking about the debates between Bohr and Einstein, in which Einstein invented ingenious thought experiments to measure two non-commuting observables (position and momentum, or energy and time) and Bohr poked holes in them. The comment was something along the lines of "Of course, Einstein was much smarter than Bohr, but Bohr won every argument because he had the advantage of being right."
Unfortunately, my google-fu is weak, and I can't turn up a source for this. It's too good a line to pass up, if it's a real quote, but I don't want to quote…
drorzel | November 20, 2007Believe it or not, this is actually book-related: I have in mind to do a chapter at the end of the book about the use of misrepresentations of quantum physics to promise magical results. I've been writing the dialogue to go with that this morning (because it's more fun than what I'm supposed to be doing), and it struck me that this might be a decent question for the audience. So,
What's your favorite example of quantum chicanery?
By "quantum chicanery," I mean somebody using the language of quantum theory to make wildly unrealistc promises of magical results. Examples abound-- Bob Park got…
drorzel | November 14, 2007What's a mid-size breed of dog with a reputation for laziness? I need a slow-moving dog to contrast with a hyperactive husky, and I already used "basset hound" in a different context. Ideally, it should have about the same mass as a husky.
drorzel | September 30, 2007
"Dude, what is your deal?"
"What? I'm just taking a couple of pictures."
"A couple? You've taken, like, forty pictures of me already today. You're cramping my style. I'm trying to go for a walk, here. I've got bushes to sniff, lawns to pee on, critters to chase-- I don't have time for photography."
"Sorry, but you remember that book contract?"
"Yeah."
"Well, I'm obliged to provide them with a number of reproduction-quality photographs of you, for possible use as chapter illustrations."
"Oh." She's quiet for a minute. "So, these are going to be published?"
"Maybe."
"Well, then, at least make…
drorzel | September 26, 2007So, I've put myself into a position where I need to spend a substantial amount of time thinking about weird foundational issues in quantum mechanics. This has revealed to me just why it is that not that many people spend a substantial amount of time thinking about weird foundational issues in quantum mechanics.
Let's consider a Mach-Zehnder interferometer, of the type shown in the figure at left (click the figure to see the original source). A photon (or an electron, or an atom, or any quantum particle) enters the interferometer at the lower left, and is split onto two paths by a 50-50…
drorzel | September 24, 2007It turns out that there's actually a small clause in the standard publishing contract that requires any author with a blog to post periodic updates on the progress of the current writing project. Who knew?
Well, OK, there's no contractual obligation, but really, I have the blog, and I need to fill it with something, so why not the occasional progress report? I'm not going to commit to any particular schedule, but from time to time, I'll post updates on how things are going-- word counts, general impressions, out-of-context dialogue snippets.
So, how is it going?
The target here is around 40,…