MMM Addendum: Cool Runnings
I got to do some cool runnings today. By that I mean, of course, that I layered up and went for a 3-miler in 8-degree-weather. Awesome. The air is so crisp that it felt like my lungs spasmed for a while getting used to the temperature, and I had to tell myself not to lick my lips (because that just makes them colder).
When I got to the bike path near my parents' house, I saw that it was covered with at least a foot of snow. Then I realized that it was packed snow. Running on compacted snow is very cool. Unfortunately I didn't see any moose. That would've been cool. I'll go out again on Wednesday and hope to see one.
MMM: Physics of the Impossible, Alaska
Mini Book Review!!! Perhaps my last of the year. (Don't count on it since I'm bringing three books on the plane, and five altogether on vacation. Update: another finished, but I'll do a full review for Theology Thursday.) This time, it's Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel, by Michio Kaku. I love science books, and particularly ones of the short variety. This one wasn't precisely short (meaning 200 pages or so) at 300+ pages, but the topics were of reasonable length, and interesting enough to keep the pages turning. He basically walks through many of the beloved pet sciency stuff you find in Science Fiction and groups them into categories of Impossible. And what are those categories?
- Class I - Doesn't defy the current understanding of physics. Maybe it could happen in the next 100 years or so.
- Class II - Sits at the edge of known physics. Might be a thousand years off.
- Class III - Defies the known laws of physics. No way to predict when they could be realized.
Kaku does a pretty good job at keeping the lofty scientific jargon to a minimum and keeping the discussions accessible. For most of the topics, he discusses a range of possible approaches to the technology in question, then opines about the most likely or promising approach.
The frustrating thing was the way he handled pop-culture references. He was consistently sub-par in relating examples from movies and books. Now it may be that I'm just a movie-quote snob, but if I'm writing a book, I'm going to be reeeally sure all my pop-culture references hold up. For instance, even somebody who saw Star Trek IV one time would know that the Enterprise crew traveled back to the 1980s, not the 1960s. Yes, it was San Francisco, but it's not twenty years warped from the rest of the U.S.
When discussing the "many worlds" idea, he used Back to the Future as an example, and related that Doc Brown showed Marty on a blackboard how the universe split into two timelines. Bzzzt. That was Part 2. Bad form! I'd attribute these foul-ups to geekish ineptitude, but these aren't just generic pop-culture references. They're Sci-Fi movie references!!!!
All in all, though, I very much enjoyed this book.
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Well, we made it to Alaska with actually a minimum of trouble. The drive to Seattle went smoothly, with the exception of one unfortunate wrong turn coming out of Tacoma after dinner (this is not a phenomenon altogether rare when I'm driving). We didn't have to chain up, and the worst roads we saw were surface streets in Tacoma. It was nice to have the hotel waiting for us, even if our "non-smoking" room smelled like it had been inhabited by smokers until ten minutes before we arrived.
When we checked in at the airport, the weather report looked ominous, so we tried to go Standby on an earlier flight. The check-in lady also broke protocol and told us, when asked, that my sister (flying in from Japan) had already been put on Standby for the 12pm flight (she was booked on a 10:30pm one). We got put on the list for the 2pm flight (an hour earlier than our scheduled one). We didn't make it, so we went to the gate for our scheduled flight. Then we went back after being informed that our flight had been gate-changed to the one where we'd been waiting for Standby.
Our flight was delayed by a repair, which is always comforting, and then we had to wait on the tarmac and watch the weather get steadily worse. The de-icing crew came and sprayed us down, and we took off. It wasn't a bad flight, although it wasn't the smoothest I've ever been on either.
So, we're in the Great White North now, and it's cold and snowy, as expected. But we also wish we could be enjoying the snow at our house. And we equally hope that the snow isn't a factor on our return trip.