Top 100 Science Fiction Books - Round 2

Some time ago I posted some information from National Public Radio listing the top 100 science fiction books as voted on by their listeners.    

Now the people at SF Signal have come up with a way to see which book you should read next. It is a huge flow chart that takes you on a path through all 100 books. Just keep following the decision boxes, answering YES or NO to see where you end up.    

It's probably too small to see here. Your best bet is to go here and enlarge it or print it out. I worked my way through the flow chart in about 2 minutes and ended up at HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy on the sci fi side. When I went through the fantasy side, I ended up at The Legend of Drizzt by R. A. Salvatore, which is a rather long (13 books so far) sword and sorcery epic which I enjoyed very much. If it sounds good to you, don't buy it; I've got all 13 books in the bookcase downstairs.    

Mostly, I found it enjoyable to follow different threads on the flow chart to see where they end up. It gives you some idea of what each book is about. You may find something there that is worth reading. Next up on my list is Anathem by Neal Stephenson. Sounded interesting.  Good luck! 

A Return to Traditional Zombie Values

One of our favorite British actors, Simon Pegg, has written an article for the Guardian, which is a significant UK newspaper, having the second largest online readership of any English-language newspaper in the world, after the New York Times. Simon Pegg is an expert on zombies, having starred in Shaun of the Dead in 2004 and Land of the Dead (he played a photo store zombie) in 2005. He also played Scotty in the reboot of Star Trek and is in The Adventures of Tintin later this year (which is on our must see list).  

His article had to do with an episode of British Television called Dead Set. He reviews the show, calling it smart and inventive except for one small detail: ZOMBIES DON'T RUN. Since the beginning (George Romero's Night of the Living Dead in 1968), zombies have always been a slow species. As Pegg says, It's hard to run when you have a cold. Think how much more difficult it will be when you are dead." Vampires and werewolves may be about sex and savagery, but zombies personify our deepest fear - death.     

However (and herein lies the sublime artfulness of the slow zombie), their ineptitude actually makes them avoidable, at least for a while. If you're careful, if you keep your wits about you, you can stave them off, even outstrip them - much as we strive to outstrip death. Drink less, cut out red meat, exercise, practice safe sex; these are our shotguns, our cricket bats, our farmhouses, our shopping malls. However, none of these things fully insulates us from the creeping dread that something so witless, so elemental may yet catch us unawares - the drunk driver, the cancer sleeping in the double helix, the legless ghoul dragging itself through the darkness towards our ankles.     

Well said, Mr. Pegg.  I think Michael Jackson's Thriller video would have been much less amazing if the zombies had sprinted across the dance floor.  See if you agree.  

         

Also, my friend Dave is reading Prude and Prejudice and Zombies, which was followed by the best selling Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. After he finishes, he should be ready for this one, available in hardcover from Amazon:    

Today's Geography Lesson

What does a bridge do? Well, when water is involved, the point of the bridge is to make it easier to walk across the waterway, so you don't have to make your horse swim across.   

What else could use a bridge to go across a waterway? Cars, tractors, ants, aliens without a space ship, aliens on horses, water...  Wait, did you say water? Yes, sometimes water needs helping going across other water. Witness this bridge in Germany.     

Shown above is the world's largest water bridge, built over the Elbe River in Magdeburg, Germany at a cost of 500 million Euros (about 672 million dollars). Completed in December 2003, the bridge is 918 meters long and has been modestly described as "a giant, kilometer-long concrete bathtub".  A pretty impressive engineering feat.   

The idea of a bridge for water is not new. There is one in St. Marys, Ohio where I grew up. It carries the Miami - Erie Canal over the St. Marys River on the south side of town (near Geiger Park, home of the newest Ohio miniature golf course which my Dad and I played two weeks ago). Technically, it is called an aqueduct pipe, but the point is the same.     

So there you have it. For $1000 you can fly to Germany to see the Magdeburg Bridge. For much less than that you can drive to St. Marys, Ohio and see the same thing (sort of). And play Putt-R Golf, which is worth the trip. Call my Dad. He loves to play miniature golf. Just don't let him keep score.   

It's Friday Gross Out Day!

Just in case you wanted to know, NPR has a video showing what happens to the flu virus that is expelled when someone sneezes:         








Robert Krulwich has a "Sciencey Blog" at NPR which explains that all the stuff in the video happens in an extremely short time (fractions of a second). Also he mentions that the colors in the video are not really accurate. But it does make it easier to see. And in response to why all those viruses don't kill us, he explains further:    

Here's a better, longer answer than the one in the video. First, some new viruses get caught in mucus and other fluids inside your body and are destroyed. Other viruses get expelled in coughs and sneezes. Second, lots of those new viruses are lemons. They don't work that well. Some don't have the right "keys" to invade healthy cells so they can't spread the infection. And third, as the animation shows, your immune system is busy attacking the viruses whenever and wherever possible.    

 I think I'll go have a Twix bar - I've heard they are helpful in boosting your immune system. Maybe two.   

Two New Books to Think About

Two older authors are publishing new books in the next few weeks and I'm thinking these might need to be book purchases and not kindle purchases.    

First, Maurice Sendak, at the age of 83, is publishing his first book in many years. Bumble-Ardy is the   

story of a 9-year old orphaned pig who has never had a birthday party. There is an interview of Sendak done by Terry Gross of NPR's Fresh Air here where he talks about the death of his longtime partner and his thoughts on growing older.  He says his favorite part of the book is after throwing his own costume birthday party, when his aunt returns she says, "Okay smarty, you've had your party but never again." Bumble-ardy replies, "I promise, I swear, I won't ever turn 10."    


Second, Terry Pratchett has a new book coming out next month. Snuff is a new Discworld novel (the 37th, at best guess)  that    

finds Lady Sybil and City Watch Commander Sam Vimes on a vacation. As they say, hilarity ensues. Pratchett was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease four years ago, has continued to write by dictating to a personal assistant, and made the journey to Madison, Wisconsin this past summer to be the honored guest at the North American DiscWorld Convention. A new book is great news. 
   

Today's Math Lesson is a Big One

Today's math lesson is brought to you by David Hilbert, a German mathematician who was one of the most influential mathematicians of the 19th and early 20th centuries. At the International Congress of Mathematicians in Paris in 1900, he set the tone for the new century by outlining the 23 most important unsolved problems in mathematics. One of the new ideas in mathematics that he embraced and supported was Georg Cantor's theory of sets and transfinite numbers, or more commonly known, the study of infinity.

One of the interesting ideas when thinking about infinite sets is their size. In general, sets are the same size if they can be put into a 1 - to - 1 correspondence. For instance, the set of the first 20 natural numbers and the set of students in the class are the same size if I can find a way to match them up one by one. So, Sally is #1, Jimmy is # 2, and so on, until the last student, Maria is #20. When you start to pair up infinite sets, it becomes a little less intuituve. For example the set of odd natural numbers (1, 3, 5, 7, ...) is exactly the same size as the set of all natural numbers:


1  3  5  7  9      2n - 1        199   . . .

1  2  3  4  5       n              100  . . .

Every number in the top row is paired with a unique number in the bottom row. Both rows go on forever. If someone challenges me to find the number in the top row that matches up to any natural number, I can do that. So the two sets must be the same size. That's when infinite sets become non-intuitive. We threw out half the numbers from the list (we threw out 2, 4, 6, 8, ...), but the new list is the same size as the old list. In fact, one of Cantor's most famous ideas is that the set of all positive fractions is also the same size as the set of natural numbers. Think about putting the fractions (reduced to lowest terms) in rows based on their numerator. Row 1 would be all the fractions with a 1 on top. Row 2 would be all the fractions with a 2 on top, and so forth. Note: 1 is 1/1, 2 is 2/1, etc. 2/2 doesn't show up because that's the same as 1 in the first row.

Row 1:     1   1/2   1/3   1/4   1/5    1/6  ...

Row 2:     2   2/3   2/5   2/7   2/9    2/11  ...

Row 3:     3   3/2   3/4   3/5   3/7    3/8   ....

Row 4:     4   4/3   4/5   4/7   4/9    4/11   ...

Row 5:     5   5/2   5/3    5/4   5/6    5/7  ....

Think of this as going on forever to the right and forever down as well. Every fraction would appear on this list somewhere. Now what we are going to do is assign the natural numbers to the fractions in an organized manner so that there is a 1- to - 1 correspondence.


Row 1:     1     1/2    1/3    1/4    1/5    1/6  ...  

               1     2      4      7      11      16



Row 2:     2      2/3    2/5    2/7   2/9    2/11  ...

               3      5       8     12      17



Row 3:     3      3/2      3/4    3/5   3/7    3/8   ....

               6      9       13      18



Row 4:     4      4/3     4/5     4/7    4/9    4/11   ...
              10     14        19



Row 5:     5      5/2      5/3    5/4   5/6    5/7  ....

                15       20

[Note: I don't know how well lined up they will be on your screen, but the first few elements in a fraction row should have a colored number below it.]

We are assigning the numbers by moving along diagonal lines starting in the upper left corner of the list. The diagonals all go from upper right to lower left. The first diagonal (in red) only contains the number 1 (which is labeled below it with a red 1). The second diagonal (in green) contains 1/2 (which is numbered 2) and 2 (which is numbered 3). Think of laying a ruler along that diagonal to hit the numbers in that group, then sliding the ruler to the right one number to get the next group. The third diagonal (in dark blue) contains 1/3, 2/3, and 3 (labeled 3, 4, and 5). The fourth diagonal is pink (7 - 10), the fifth is light blue (11 - 15). Every fraction will appear once on the list and will be paired (eventually) with a natural number. SO, the two sets are the same size.

To illustrate the idea of infinite sets, Hilbert devised the Grand Hotel, which has infinitely many rooms numbered, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and so forth forever.  One night the hotel is full (don't spend too long thinking about that - it will make your head hurt) when a car drives up with one person in it, who asks for a room. "No problem", says innkeeper Hilbert. "We will put you in room 1, put the person in room 1 in room 2, the person in room 2 in room 3, and so forth. Everybody will have a room to move to and we will still be full."

Just then a very big bus drives up with infinitely many guests on board. "Wonderful," says Hilbert. "Every guest already in the hotel will move into the room that is twice their current number. The person in room 1 moves to room 2, the person in room 2 moves to room 4, and so on. That will leave us infinitely many rooms empty for the new guests. The first one off the bus goes to room 1, the second one goes to room 3, the third to room 5, and so on. Still full!"

Unless you're the housekeeper, things are wonderful at Hilbert's Grand Hotel.

Avast Ye, Ya Scurvy Bilge Rat

Yes, it's hard to believe that a year has passed, but Monday, September 19, is "Talk Like A Pirate Day" again.  I'm giving you a few days notice so you can get your T-shirts ordered.

And for the Math Pirates

                       








If you are a little light on knowing your pirate lingo, here's a little primer to get you started:

Ahoy! - "Hello!"

Avast! - Stop and give attention. It can also be used in a sense of surprise, "Whoa! Get a load of that!" which today makes it more of a "Check it out" or "No way!" or "Get off!"

Aye! - "Why yes, I agree most heartily with everything you just said or did."

Aye aye! - "I'll get right on that sir, as soon as my break is over."

Arrr! - This one is often confused with arrrgh, which is of course the sound you make when you sit on a belaying pin. "Arrr!" can mean, variously, "yes," "I agree," "I'm happy," "I'm enjoying this beer," "My team is going to win it all," "I saw that television show, it sucked!" and "That was a clever remark you or I just made."And those are just a few of the myriad possibilities of Arrr!

You can find more here. It will help you make it successfully through what can be a stressful day (depending on how heavily your co-workers / students are into "Talk Like A Pirate Day"). I'm guessing you will hear enough "lubber"s and "scurvy bilge rat"s to keep you smiling all day.

And if you need more reason to join in, read Dave Barry's column in the Miami Herald which includes some historical examples:

REPORTER: Could you please explain either your foreign or your domestic policy?

PRESIDENT BUSH: Arrrrr.

What Puppy Training Should Be

Whimzy is part boxer - we're gonna work on this while she's doing sit and stay.    


             


From here.  

On the Possibility of Grandkids

I am going to commit a cardinal sin here and let my kids know that if they don't have kids it's OK with me. Now I know that it is a high-ranking goal of nearly every parent to have grandchildren. I know my Mom and Dad loved to go to their grandchildren's basketball and soccer games, graduations, and school activities if they were around. And the fact that I am in Ohio at my Dad's house and Ann is not means that I haven't had a chance to shoot this past Ann before I wrote it. She may disagree entirely, although I think she would agree that whatever our kids decide is OK with us. We are very much a "right to your own choice" family.

What prompted this was an article in Reproductive Health magazine (here on their website) by a woman who writes "I am the Population Problem". I think when most of us think about the population problem, we tend to fix the blame on other groups of people: those people in Africa or India cranking out babies without any thought, or immigrants here in the US who arrive with 5 or 6 children in tow. But Lisa Hymas makes a very strong claim that the population problem actually rests with the middle - upper class , usually white family. Her point is based on that trendy concept of "carbon footprint". Now people who know me know that I tend to scoff at the "suburban environmentalist". In my mind these are the people I see at the recycling yard getting out of their Cadillac Escalade dropping off their aluminum pop cans. I have reservations about what impact they are having on the environment. Ms. Hymas makes that point very well.    

When a poor woman in Uganda has another child, she might dampen her family's prospects for climbing out of poverty or add to her community's challenges in providing everyone with clean water and safe food, but she certainly isn't placing a big burden on the global environment.    

When someone like me has a child—watch out, world!  Gear, gadgets, gewgaws, bigger house, bigger car, oil from the Mideast, coal from Colombia, Coltan from the Congo, rare earths from China, pesticide-laden cotton from Egypt, genetically modified soy from Brazil. And then when that child has children, wash, rinse, and repeat it all (in hot water, of course). Without even trying, we Americans slurp up resources from every corner of the globe and then spit 99 percent of them back out again as pollution.   

She bolsters her argument the way everyone should - with statistics (real ones, not the ones the TV and radio political talking heads make up every day).    

Far and away the biggest contribution I can make to a cleaner environment is to not bring any mini-me's into the world. A 2009 study by statisticians at Oregon State University found that in America the climate impact of having one fewer child is almost 20 times greater than the impact of adopting a series of eco-friendly practices for your entire lifetime, such as driving a hybrid, recycling, using efficient appliances and installing compact fluorescent lights.     

That's a pretty compelling statistic.  Now I am not attempting in any way, shape, or form, to tell people not to have kids. I have two great kids and they are a major focus in my life. But having kids is the original irreversible life-changing operation. If it is not a step you think you are really excited about, don't let other people guilt you or manipulate you into having kids.  I saw plenty of parents while I was teaching who seemed to have kids because they were supposed to. They were not especially wanted or prized except as trophies to show off to their competitors friends. "My child is in the gifted program, you know, and let me tell you what she did last week...."    

So, kids.  You decide. If kids are in your future, great. I have been practicing on Whimzy (our new puppy) and think I would make a great grandfather. And in our larger extended family, a new baby is on the way and you can tell that he/she will be the center of focus for the new parents (and soon - to - be grandparents). We are happy for them and think they are making the right decision. But don't have kids because everybody else is. Being a parent doesn't make you a better person, just a different person. We'll be here for you whatever you decide.    

Only in Indiana

 So I'm driving across Route 30 in north central Indiana today headed for my Dad's house in Ohio when I happen to come up behind this:    

If you look closely, you will see a bright (but small in comparison) red and orange caution sign on the back of the truck. It's a good thing it was there or otherwise I would have missed this.  My first thought was:  

OK, this year my Christmas list only has one thing on it.    

So, I passed it, then pulled on to a side road to wait for it to catch up:    

I already have a truck with a hitch on it. I just need to buy a trailer. Then I would go up to the grocery store in style. I bet I'm the only one in the parking lot with an elephant (unless the circus is in town). I hope Whimzy (our new puppy) doesn't mind sharing the yard with my Christmas present. At least it moves more slowly than the squirrels she has been chasing lately.    

The best part of the whole interlude was sitting on the side road with my phone up to take a picture and having a cop car turn in front of me to go down the side road. He sees my phone up and starts laughing. I imagine that happened a lot on Route 30 this afternoon.    

I'm gonna have my phone set to camera when I head back to Wauconda later this week. You never know what you'll see in Indiana.