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Grand unified books thread

Started by Syt, March 16, 2009, 01:52:42 AM

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Savonarola

#3990
January 07, 2020, 02:17:53 PM
I reread Einstein's Relativity and Other Essays.  What struck me this time is that The Special Theory of Relativity is explained with some basic algebra (mostly in order to explain the Lorentz Transformation) while the General Theory is explained conceptually (starting with the thought experiment involving aliens pulling a man in a box  :area52:.)
In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace—and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock

Savonarola

#3991
January 13, 2020, 03:02:30 PM
I read Richard Rhodes "The Making of the Atomic Bomb;" it's an engaging book and one that gives a fairly good, basic, introduction to atomic theory.  It begins at the 19th century with the discovery of radiation and ends with Nagasaki (with an epilogue that covers the development of the Hydrogen bomb.)

Rhodes provides a number of anecdotes along the way.  I learned that the name "Fat man" was chosen to throw off German agents.  There was a dummy bomb (for testing purposes) called "Thin Man", and the US hoped that the Germans would think they were referring Churchill and Roosevelt when they talked about Fat Man and Thin Man respectively.

I think someone had asked if Hitler was opposed to atomic weapons when we were discussing "The Man in the High Castle."  Rhodes claims that Hitler really didn't understand the concept and thought there was a good chance that an atomic bomb would ignite either the ocean or the atmosphere.  For this reason the German bomb program was underfunded.  The allies, though, were convinced that the Germans were just about to get the bomb.  Everything was seen as proof of that.  Heisenberg had given Niels Bohr the designs for a heavy water reactor.  When Bohr fled to the US and showed it to the US scientists, they were convinced that was deception and the Germans were indeed using graphite as a moderator.  It wouldn't be until France had been liberated that the Allies discovered how far behind the Germans were.
In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace—and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock

The Brain

#3992
January 13, 2020, 03:07:07 PM
Why were the Allies so tense in WW2?
Women want me. Men want to be with me.

Savonarola

#3993
January 20, 2020, 05:03:47 PM
I read The Chivalric Folk Tradition in Sicily: A History of Storytelling, Puppetry, Painted Carts and Other Arts by Marcella Croce.

It starts by examining storytelling and some of the local festivals and the storytelling tradition; both of which go back to the middle ages.  (The author speculates that both Ariosto and Boiardo were influenced by storytellers.)  One particularly weird festival takes place during Carnivale in Mezzojuso; where a play with a one of a kind plot is put on.  The Master of the Field loves the Queen of Mezzojuso and plots ways to scale the castle wall, defeat the king and carry her off.  Meanwhile wizards are digging at the wall of the castle looking for treasure.  Meanwhile the Saracens are besieging the castle.  Fortunately Garibaldi and the red shirts show up, defeat the Saracens, the wizards find their treasure (a chamber pot filled with spaghetti) and the Master of the Field is able to defeat the king and win the love of the queen.

In the nineteenth century puppetry became the dominant folk art form and a long cycle of puppet shows around Charlemagne was developed to be shown night after night.  This was an art form for adults and (this being Sicily) adult men, (except for a few one shot shows about lives of the saints which were considered acceptable for women.)  The art form reached its height at the end of the nineteenth century, but did continue on until the emergence of television in the 1960s.  It was revived as a heritage art mostly for tourists about a decade later.  (I saw a Charlemagne show at the International Museum of Puppetry in Palermo.)

The Sicilians are a peculiar breed.  In one of the villages outside of Palermo once saw a man honking his horn in irritation at a passing train; as though that would make it go faster.  The author interviewed a number of puppet masters, one said that one night he was beset by a mob who demanded he burn Ganelon (the traitor puppet.)  The death of Orlando was among the most popular performances (they puppet theater owners could charge double for that show); but Orlando isn't a favorite among the Sicilians, they think he's a bit dumb.  Their favorite puppet is Rinaldo, and his death was always the least attended show.

The author then goes on to describe the various arts that supported puppet theater; posters, puppet making and the painted carts for which Sicily is famous.  The carts only emerged in the 19th century when Sicily got its first roads.  This was an art form that largely disappeared in the 1960s when some amount of prosperity made the automobile affordable.  These carts were sometimes given as gifts; George Marshall was given one as was General Patton.  Patton's one has painted scenes of American GIs storming the Sicilian beaches, fighting off Nazis, Fascists and a green dragon.

I own a wonderfully politically incorrect Saracen puppet that I bought from a puppet maker in Palermo.  :cool:
In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace—and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock

Habbaku

#3994
January 20, 2020, 05:27:10 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on January 20, 2020, 05:03:47 PM
Fortunately Garibaldi and the red shirts show up, defeat the Saracens, the wizards find their treasure (a chamber pot filled with spaghetti) and the Master of the Field is able to defeat the king and win the love of the queen.

Nobody expects time-traveling Garibaldi!
The medievals were only too right in taking nolo episcopari as the best reason a man could give to others for making him a bishop. Give me a king whose chief interest in life is stamps, railways, or race-horses; and who has the power to sack his Vizier (or whatever you care to call him) if he does not like the cut of his trousers.

Government is an abstract noun meaning the art and process of governing and it should be an offence to write it with a capital G or so as to refer to people.
-J. R. R. Tolkien

The Brain

#3995
January 20, 2020, 05:29:20 PM
[spoiler]The red shirts get killed.[/spoiler]
Women want me. Men want to be with me.

grumbler

#3996
January 21, 2020, 06:10:31 AM
Quote from: Habbaku on January 20, 2020, 05:27:10 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on January 20, 2020, 05:03:47 PM
Fortunately Garibaldi and the red shirts show up, defeat the Saracens, the wizards find their treasure (a chamber pot filled with spaghetti) and the Master of the Field is able to defeat the king and win the love of the queen.

Nobody expects time-traveling Garibaldi!

Let alone a B5/Star Trek mashup.
The future is all around us, waiting, in moments of transition, to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future or where it will take us. We know only that it is always born in pain.   -G'Kar

Bayraktar!

jimmy olsen

#3997
February 02, 2020, 10:03:24 PM
Recommend me some books on the hundred year war and/or the black death
It is far better for the truth to tear my flesh to pieces, then for my soul to wander through darkness in eternal damnation.

Jet: So what kind of woman is she? What's Julia like?
Faye: Ordinary. The kind of beautiful, dangerous ordinary that you just can't leave alone.
Jet: I see.
Faye: Like an angel from the underworld. Or a devil from Paradise.
--------------------------------------------
1 Karma Chameleon point

Habbaku

#3998
February 02, 2020, 10:05:00 PM
Just read Sumption.
The medievals were only too right in taking nolo episcopari as the best reason a man could give to others for making him a bishop. Give me a king whose chief interest in life is stamps, railways, or race-horses; and who has the power to sack his Vizier (or whatever you care to call him) if he does not like the cut of his trousers.

Government is an abstract noun meaning the art and process of governing and it should be an offence to write it with a capital G or so as to refer to people.
-J. R. R. Tolkien

Admiral Yi

#3999
February 02, 2020, 10:10:00 PM
A Distant Mirror

FunkMonk

#4000
February 03, 2020, 12:11:32 AM
Finished What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848. Quite a solid narrative history of this era.
Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV.

Razgovory

#4001
February 03, 2020, 01:04:48 AM
I've given it serious thought. I must scorn the ways of my family, and seek a Japanese woman to yield me my progeny. He shall live in the lands of the east, and be well tutored in his sacred trust to weave the best traditions of Japan and the Sacred South together, until such time as he (or, indeed his house, which will periodically require infusion of both Southern and Japanese bloodlines of note) can deliver to the South it's independence, either in this world or in space.  -Lettow April of 2011

Raz is right. -MadImmortalMan March of 2017

Razgovory

#4002
February 03, 2020, 05:01:38 PM
Reading a Biography on Queen Nzinga of Ndongo.  For years I've looked an accessible history of 17th Century Angola.  This probably the best I will ever do.
I've given it serious thought. I must scorn the ways of my family, and seek a Japanese woman to yield me my progeny. He shall live in the lands of the east, and be well tutored in his sacred trust to weave the best traditions of Japan and the Sacred South together, until such time as he (or, indeed his house, which will periodically require infusion of both Southern and Japanese bloodlines of note) can deliver to the South it's independence, either in this world or in space.  -Lettow April of 2011

Raz is right. -MadImmortalMan March of 2017

Eddie Teach

#4004
February 03, 2020, 05:56:40 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on February 03, 2020, 05:01:38 PM
  For years I've looked an accessible history of 17th Century Angola. 

Only on Languish...   :D
To sleep, perchance to dream. But in that sleep of death, what dreams may come?
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