Books reviews, current events, and other musings

 
Scientific American has an interesting article about Fotini Markopoulou Kalamara, a theoretical physicist who's trying to unify general relativity and quantum mechanics, one of the great unsolved problems in physics (from Slashdot). It's neat for a woman to take a lead role in a male-dominated field like particle physics, though the cooking analogy at the start of the article was gratuitous. Kalamara, along with Lee Smolin, Abhay Ashtekar, Carlo Rovelli and others, are using the loop quantum gravity, instead of string theory, to tackle the problem. The theory might have some observable predictions, which is almost unheard of in quantum gravity research:

One experiment could be to track gamma-ray photons from billions of light-years away. If spacetime is in fact discrete, then individual photons should travel at slightly different speeds, depending on their wavelength. Markopoulou Kalamara is trying to decipher the form of that dispersion.

posted by Julian at 5:15 PM

 
This Hu's on first routine is hilarious (from Ghost in the Machine):

Condi: Hu is the new leader of China.
Dubya: That's what I want to know.
Condi: That's what I'm telling you.
Dubya: That's what I'm asking you. Who is the new leader of China?
Condi: Yes.
Dubya: I mean the fellow's name.
Condi: Hu.
Dubya: The guy in China.
Condi: Hu.
Dubya: The new leader of China.
Condi: Hu.

posted by Julian at 10:05 PM

 
Time reports that al-Qaeda and Taliban forces are still fighting the American military in Afghanistan (from Democratic Underground):

If the U.S. has won the war in Afghanistan, maybe somebody should tell the enemy it's time to surrender. The bad guys are still out there, undetectable in the rocky, umber hills of eastern Afghanistan — until they strike, which they do with growing frequency, accuracy and brazenness. These days American forward bases are coming under rocket or mortar fire three times a week on average. Apache pilots sometimes see angry red arcing lines of tracer bullets rising toward their choppers from unseen gunners hidden in Afghanistan's saw-blade ridges. Roads frequented by special forces are often mined with remote-controlled explosives, a new tactic al-Qaeda fighters picked up from their Chechen comrades fighting the Russians. With phantom enemy fighters stepping up attacks and U.S. forces making little headway against them, General Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, felt compelled to acknowledge last week, "We've lost a little momentum there, to be frank."

Is Afghanistan slipping out of America's control? It's an especially relevant question at a time when Pentagon planners are holding up Afghanistan as a template for possible "regime change" in Iraq. Failure to pacify Afghanistan could make it tougher for the Bush Administration to sustain support for a new war against Saddam Hussein. "If Afghanistan falls," says an Army officer in Washington, "Iraq just got that much harder."

Wars are always so much messier than the way they're portrayed in network news shows. Just think how much worse Iraq could become if the US invades.

Meanwhile, Washington Monthy has an interesting examination of economist Paul Krugman, whose columns in the New York Times are among the best out there (from BookNotes).

Krugman's primacy is based largely on his dominance of a particular intellectual niche. As major columnists go, he is almost alone in analyzing the most important story in politics in recent years--the seamless melding of corporate, class, and political party interests at which the Bush administration excels. Like most people, the Washington press, and especially pundits, were slow to grasp the magnitude of the shift. Krugman, whether puncturing the fuzzy math of Bush's tax cut or eviscerating the deceptive accounting behind Bush's Social Security plans or highlighting the corruption behind Dick Cheney's energy task force, has nearly always been the first mainstream writer to describe--and condemn--Bushonomics in plain English.

posted by Julian at 11:00 PM