You finish the book, you don’t want it to be over with, there’s still one more printed page, so you read it. “A Note on the Type,” it says, and heads off into the highest weeds: the name of the font in which the book is printed, then the font’s forebears, its continuing history, its […]
Ann
This first ran on Sept. 6, 2012. My nephew was then a biology graduate student; he is now a fully-functioning scientist. He is confident, self-collected, easy to talk to, curious — in short, he made it through his education in one piece. But the education itself has not changed — not the advice, not the […]
@nattyover: I turn for comfort to “A Dying Universe: The Long Term Fate and Evolution of Astrophysical Objects” https://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/9701131.pdf @nattyover is Natalie Wolchover, science writer and editor at Quanta. “A Dying Universe” is a paper I love and have loved for years. The paper’s abstract: “We consider,” it says, how planets, stars, galaxies, and the […]
The following are excerpts from a profile of Jim Peebles, who just yesterday won a Nobel Prize. Peebles is a quintessential theorist — “I spent a few days standing near telescopes getting cold,” he said, “and in the end, my attention wandered” — whose opinion of his own theories is finely balanced. The profile is […]
Ann: The first thing I have to say is, that is a glorious title. Was it yours? I ask because with every book I’ve written, the title was a matter of intense negotiations which I usually lost, and I wonder how you got away with such elegance and relevance both. Chris: It was my editor’s […]
I haven’t heard the foxes for a good year now. The woods is still there but the owners sold it to a buyer who promised to cut down only the middle of it, you know how buyers promise things. No trees have been cut down yet but a lot of people have been tramping through […]
Ann: After you’ve gone to the immense trouble of writing a book, having to sell it seems a bit much. My own personal best was always with the radio interviewers who began with, “So what’s the name of your book again?” So Richard, what’s the name of your book again? Oh, right, Gravity. What’s it […]
One day Erik and I were chatting happily about birds and birdfeeders, all sweet reason and collegiality. Then he said he’d found a squirrel-proof birdfeeder. And the conversation turned dark. Words were said in haste. We eventually calmed down enough to state our cases in a pleasant, civilized manner. [NOW WITH UPDATES. See below*] E: […]