Of Munich, Good Craic, James Joyce and spacetime

It is that time on night when the gravitational effects of beer, Commissario Salvo Montalbano and a packet of Tayto cheese and onion crisps approach the Blogging event horizon and who am I to mess about with the fundaments of internet physics?

But first a quick “Danke” to my friend Werner Motzet who on my recent wee trip to Munich drove down some 100 miles from his home for a chat, a meal and some beer (Well for me anyway Werner was driving). The two of us “put the world to rights” covering topics as diverse as Social Business, ibm i5 domino and metaphysical apologetics! Which as those of you that know me will understand that is not only RIGHT up my street but it is  drinking my cup of tea 🙂 Thank you Werner and I owe you a similar night the next time we meet!

Also rather worryingly my interesting use of english (*Val’s edit* = inability to spell of read what he has just typed) I may have convinced another chum to read Jame Joyce. An odd consequence of trying to type “YODA” on the HTC and it correcting it to “TOSS” on twitter lead to me having to explain what I meant. I excused myself by a rather rash comparison to the wonderful splendiferous Mr Joyce’s work and as a result my friend Femke Goedhart is having a go at “Portrait of the artist as a young man” and “Ulysses”  now for me Joyce is a painter who uses words adn I love him to bits. However even for native English speakers he can be .. challenging .. i expect queries as the meaning of some of his more inventive phrases. Thank goodness I did not mention Brendan Behan!

Anyhows … onto spacetime … i am for my sins a lover of hard sums and the easiest sums at first glance are sometimes the hardest to get your head around, and so it is with E=mc^2.
Passing through Birmingham airport I happened upon this slim volume by Prof Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw “Why Does E=mc^2? (an why should we care?)” and I just HAD to buy it!

Now I will leave the heavy insightful book reviews to Duffbert but I do have to say that this wee book does a fine job of explaining in some detail how the universe does what it does but without recourse to hard sums, the first 150 pages are nice and easy the rest get a bit intense at times, but remain understandable . excellent A+ gold star … oh i did spot an error on P27 they tell us that sound in air changes with varying atmospheric pressure .. ah no it doesn’t … the speed of sound in air is totally independent of pressure. It only depends on the Temperature, the Average Molecular Weight and the Adiabatic Index (1.4 for air), so THERE .. Nah nah nah nah nah. 🙂  <= smug geek quotient approaches infinity =>

(PS Val and Eileen Fitzy want me to add that sadly there are no pictures of the bold professor Cox either clothed or naked )

Right I have reached the bedtime event horizon and the joys of climbing through a bog on the eastern slopes of Bendradagh with my chum Andy start early tomorrow… toodle pip for the now

Benbradagh