My tweets

• Wed, 12:38: The Northern Lights Valentine Playlist 14/02/2012 http://t.co/lAQMlf6w
• Wed, 16:31: In Evening Star pub and had a pint of Revelation and now a half of Westmalle Dubel 7.0 abv
• Wed, 16:36: The final one here will be a half of De Graal Triple at 9 % abv
• Wed, 17:10: The Triple is lovely
• Wed, 17:15: Alice is being wonderfully buoyant and bubbly as ever -well she is my fav barmaid at the Star
• Wed, 17:18: Def last one now before going back to Kent so a dubbel it is
• Wed, 18:20: I shall miss the vibe of Brighton again
• Wed, 21:54: The Beer amd Book Dissection http://t.co/M2dD7dvX
• Thu, 09:17: Jazzy d has left the house and on his way to Kent

( Read more... )

The Quantum Spoon Renormalization

Arrived back in Teynham around three in the afternoon after a good journey broken up by a coffee break in Tunbridge Wells.

I had a cappuccino at The Opera House, a Wetherspoons pub, and some tasty soup. They brought out the soup with two slices of bread and butter plus a knife to spread the butter. However, they also supplied, I kid you not, a fork to eat the soup, so I asked one of the staff to fetch me a spoon! If it was a usual visit I would have marked them down for that.

I am now on the last two chapters of the Super symmetry book, with my mind boggling over twister space and gravity. Once done I can then move on to the Lisa Randall book which had arrived. My second series of The Big Bang Theory has also arrived.

Related to this big bang conundrum, we have just watched a BBC 4 Horizon programme on black holes and the strange entity that resides in the middle of the black hole known as the singularity, and how the laws of physics tend to break down at the singularity. Relativity is superb for describing how the universe operates on the large scale until you get down to the extreme compactness of a black hole, where quantum mechanical effects take over, and yet quantum gravity as such, is something we do not know much about. We have to find a way of unifying gravity with the other forces of nature, and that is where these books on string theory and supersymmetry might hold the clue.

Little Jasper was very ill earlier in the week and cousin had the vet out again, so that is more expense he had to incur. Both cats are at the age where they will get poorly more frequently.

I have no plans for doing a Brillo in March and might have one towards the end of April, which is also the same month for the next World Book night. I enjoyed the one in Brighton last year, and would like to do so again this year. Meanwhile, it looks definite that brother will be coming down for St. Patrick's night , which coincidentally, is the day before Mothering Sunday.

The Book List Expansion

I just checked , World Book Night is on April 23rd, a Monday, which would be ideal for a visit to the Sussex coast on the Saturday preceding it. Once again, a time to obtain loads of free books, but more important than that, a chance to discover voices I would not have considered before. David Mitchell and Margaret Atwood being examples from the previous year in March, respectively “Cloud Atlas” and “The Blind Assassin” .

These are the 25 titles given away this year -

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (Vintage)
The Player of Games by Iain M Banks (Little, Brown)
Sleepyhead by Mark Billingham (Little, Brown)
Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson (Transworld)
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho (Harper Collins)
The Take by Martina Cole (Headline)
Harlequin by Bernard Cornwell (Harper Collins)
Someone Like You by Roald Dahl (Penguin)
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (Penguin)
Room by Emma Donoghue (Pan Macmillan)
Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier (Little, Brown)
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro (Faber)
Misery by Stephen King (Hodder)
The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella (Transworld)
Small Island by Andrea Levy (Headline)
Let the Right One In by John Ajvde Lindqvist (Quercus)
The Road by Cormac McCarthy (Pan Macmillan)
The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (Vintage)
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O’Farrell (Headline)
The Damned Utd by David Peace (Faber)
Good Omens by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman (Transworld)
How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff (Penguin)
Touching the Void by Joe Simpson (Vintage)
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith (Vintage)
The Book Thief by Markus Zuzak (Transworld)

From that list I have already read “The Road” and part read the Bill Bryson book, and not read any of the others except for the Jane Austen one for an Open University course. The only one which does not interest me at all is the Sophie Kinsella novel.