W O R D S 1

I read the number 1 of this title the other day. It was pretty good. I'm not much of a DC man, but I've always had an affinity for Green Lantern, especially Hal Jordan. I happened to sort of accidentally pick up a collection trade that I think was toward the end of Hal's human life before he became the Spectre. I don't really know much about that other than he became some sort of cosmic maniac (not unlike Marvel's Jean Grey when she became the Dark Phoenix) and almost did a lot of damage but then, just before dying he used his own power to save the earth's sun or something. The universe then made him the Spectre, the agent of retribution, as penance for his deeds when he became super powerful. Whoever wrote the story when Hal was first getting those powers was really good. It may have even been Geoff Johns, who is the writer for this current Rebirth series. Anyway, the first issue was good.

Brian posted at 1:57 PM.

David Mack's newest installment of the Kabuki books, subtitled "The Alchemy," is phenomenal. I've been peripherally aware of Mack's work for a long time and sort of have always contemplated picking up something to really look through, but never have until now. Mack creates works that are truly labors of love. He exhibits the kind of care and attention to detail that forces one to use the word "craftsmanship." He is a perfect example of why the phrase "comic book" should be eradicated from the English language. His pages seem to be assemblages of mixed media including origami figures, intricate cut paper borders, evocative watercolors and of course charmingly-worded narrative balloons. I just bought the first and second issue of The Alchemy (the first issue came out just last month) and after a single read I am completely hooked. I strongly urge fans of comic books and fine art alike to pick up any of David Mack's works. Fans of Daredevil may remember that Mack has done several covers of said book and has written several issues as well.





In other news, I'm also reading Colleen McCullough's The October Horse, which is I think the 5th or 6th book of the "Masters of Rome" series. McCullough is a true Renaissance woman. She's a neurophysiologist, but she also writes these incredibly well-researched historical novels. She paints ancient Rome so well, it feels like a place I've been before. Her characters like my old friends (or at least acquaintances). What she captures exceptionally well is the HERO. Lucius Cornelius Sulla, Gaius Julius Caesar, these amazing historical figures she's fleshed out and made into real people.

This book is much about the relationship between the Pharoah, Cleopatra, and Caesar. It's quite obvious that McCullough holds a special place for Caesar, since she's devoting three books to him, while other of Rome's notable figures only received single books. I'm only about a hundred pages into it, but it's as good as the others I've read by her (which at this point is most of them: The First Man In Rome, The Grass Crown, The Thornbirds, Morgan's Run, Caesar, Caesar's Women...). I highly recommend anything by her.

Brian posted at 2:36 PM.

Finally, something I've read that evokes some true emotion.

Supreme Power #12, by J. Michael Strazcinski was written well and its four concurrent storie-lines culminated brilliantly.

First of all, Strazcinski took advantage of the medium. Some writers just take a cinematic approach, which can be very nice (and one might even expect it from someone like Strazcinski, who conceived of and wrote much of Babylon 5), but it's great when a writer uses the intrinsic attributes of the form of the comic book, words and pictures, to tell the story.

Basically, the comic's story unfolds from 4 different perspectives simultaneously using four different long horizontal panels on each page.

The main story (so far) of Supreme Power is that there is an Earth just like ours. One day a superman-like event happens. A space craft appears in the sky and there's a baby in it, just like the classic superman story. Where it changes is that the government takes the baby from the rural family who initially finds him (-yes, Strazcinski even goes to this length of similarity, creating a more "what if" type story). The military raises the child and feeds him propaganda and lies to him in order to be able to control him. Eventually he catches on and leaves the government.

Meanwhile, 4 or 5 other people come out of the woodwork who also have extraordinary powers. They are all connected, somehow, by the initial superman-like event.

Meanwhile, the government has been experimenting with the alien DNA and in their infinite wisdom (Straczinski must have had our current administration in mind) decides to use people on death row for their experiments.

There is a successful DNA meld with one of the prisoners, who easily escapes prison with his new-found super-strength and he is now a super-powered serial killer on the loose.

This issue culminates in him (the serial killer) killing a prostitute out in some cabin in the middle of nowhere.

Anyway, it gave me chills.

Over the past month or so, I've also been reading Mario Livio's book on mathematics, The Golden Ratio: The Story of Phi, The World's Most Astonishing Number. I've finished it without once having the serious compulsion to write about it, which kind of attests to my overall take of it.

I agree that Phi (pronouced fee) is indeed an astonishing number, but I think its story could have been told better.

After having read great books about science, physics and mathematics such as Alpha and Omega: The Search for the Beginning and the End of the Universe, or The Elegant Universe, both of which are written clearly and beautifully, I guess maybe I expected too much.

Basically, The Golden Ratio felt like it was written with this formula: [interesting fact] "and then" [interesting fact] "and" [interesting fact]. There was no thread that kept me wanting to know more.

He spent a great deal of time debunking prior claims of the golden ratio appearing in historical art and architecture, such as the pyramids of Giza or in the works of my favorite abstract painter, Piet Mondrian (I was kind of hoping Mondrian had utilized the golden ratio, since I eventually plan on having tattoos referring to Mondrian and the Golden Ratio, but alas, he did not). I would have been more interested in examples of those who did use it and the significance, if any, of those instances, but I guess he had to fill those 253 pages with something.

Ah well.

The following are the tidbits of information I found particularly interesting:

Pythagoras was a contemporary of Buddha and Confuscius. I find it interesting that the east/west dichotomy started so long ago. While Buddha and Confuscius were looking inward for answers, Pythagoras was looking at the outside world.

Plato imagined that all of matter was composed by small particles, and that new matter was formed from reactions between different types of matter. The specifics of this theory were all wrong, but the basic premise is fundamental to modern physics. Wow. Good job, Plato.

A relationship I found between my personal life and the Golden ratio is that the animal that symbolizes my birth zodiac, the ram, grows its horns in a logarithmic spiral (a mollusk also grows its chambered nautilus home in this pattern, as well as many plants' leaf patterns and the descending flight pattern of Peregrine falcons). Oh, so the Logarithmic spiral - what does IT have to do with the golden ratio? Well, according to Livio, they go "hand in hand." See the edges of a logarithmic sprial fit precisely over the edges of the infintely looping Golden Rectangle. If I had time, I'd fine images to show you, which would make it more comprehensible.

A quick explanation of the Golden Rectangle.

A golden rectangle is a rectangle whose sides are in ratio to one another in the golden ratio(approx. 1.61803). If you were to make an equilateral sqare out of the edge of a golden rectangle, the remaining part of the rectangle would then be golden rectangle. And you can do this process over and over until it's so small the natural laws of physics don't really apply anymore.

So, yeah, you can tell by my enthusiasm that I'm a little more into the phenomena of the Golden Ratio than the literary merits of this book.

I just started reading Colleen McCullough's The October Horse last night. I'm excited about that.

Brian posted at 1:55 PM.

I just read the new Chris Ware comic in this week's Chicago Reader. I've never really read Ware's stuff, though I've known for a long time that it's pretty critically acclaimed. I have to say it was really good. Innovative paneling, great use of color, personal without being sensational or melodramatic. At the end, I felt excited about next week's installment, where the story will continue.

I guess I always thought that Chris Ware was male, but the protagonist of the story is female. I suppose I could do some research right now and find out the gender, but I also don't really care, too much. It's of minor consequence as far as I'm concerned.

I have a pretty long post about a book I've been reading under way. Stay tuned.

Brian posted at 5:47 PM.

I just got back from seeing Michael Moore's new movie, "Farenheit 9/11." This was a very compelling film. I consider it every American's patriotic duty to see this movie and try will all the will they can muster to fully grasp the ramifications of what our "elected" commander-in-chief has contributed in doing. The "War on Terror" seemed like such rhetoric even as it was shoved down our throats by the media, but this film really made it all the more transparent. If there's anyone here who wants to see this movie, but doesn't have anyone to go with, I volunteer to see it again. PLEASE GO SEE THIS MOVIE. And, perhaps more importantly, get someone who is unsure of how they feel about this country's current administration to go see it.

Brian posted at 1:18 AM.

Thanks to my buddy Stik, I read this article, adapted from a press release published by the University of California, Santa Barbara. It's some more recent insight into String Theory and particularly talks about string cosmology and an experimental approach to confirming the existence of strings as the fundamental building block of the universe. As I've mentioned with regard to String Theory, it's almost entirely a theoretical and mathematical exploit, because the size of the particles we're talking about are so small, there's likely no way to ever see them. So, this is exciting news indeed.

There were a couple things that stuck out for me in the article.

The first was the mention of the curled-up spatial dimensions that exist unseen because of their unique shapes which basically allow them to "hide" their spatial existence. The article says, "Some of the "extra" dimensions are thought to be curled up or compactified and therefore exceedingly small; and some, to be larger, perhaps infinite."

Now, according to Brian Greene, author of The Elegant Universe, it is not even a point of contention that these curled up dimensions might be infinite. In fact, he stated something to the effect that when working out certain calculations having an answer of "infinity" usually denoted that something was amiss in the calculation. I am interested in whether what Greene was talking about and what the people over at UofCSB is really the same thing.

I think it is the same thing only because I particularly remember thinking how short-sighted it was for theoretical physicists to simply disregard the possibility that a curled-up spatial dimension could be infinite.

The next book I'm reading, which I've just started, is Mario Livio's The Golden Ratio: The Story of Phi, The World's Most Asonishing Number. Phi (pronounced 'fee') is the number which corresponds to the particular pattern that appears in such things as chambered nautlii or the 12-sided polygon (12-sided die for fans of Dungeons and Dragons). Anyway, the interesting thing about Phi (other than it's numerous seemingly unrelated occurrences in nature), is that it's an irrational number, meaning, 1.6180339887..., it's never ending and never repeating - no pattern. This seems to me like an instance of the infinite in nature.

Ah, what do I know about theoretical physics anyway? I got a D in Algebra II/Trig!

In my readings, I've noticed there are very few female theoretical physicists, cosmologists or mathematicians of any considerable noteworthiness. So when I saw this:

"During the "Superstring Cosmology" program at the KITP, Alessandra Buonanno (Institut d'Astrolophysique de Paris) provided an overview of the possible gravitational wave signatures from the early universe. "When she gave the talk," said Polchinski, 'I didn't pay careful attention because I wasn't thinking about that, but later I went back to her talk in the KITP online series and started clicking through and got to where she talked about gravitational waves from cosmic strings. She had these curves which were quite amazing.'"

It was funny. My stereotypical idea of what a theoretical physicist might be like makes me think he didn't even realize how this quote might be read.

Ahhh, science and boobies.

Brian posted at 11:52 AM.

On my flight home from New York last weekend, I finally finished the last 23 pages of Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe. Though I've finished the book, my final thoughts will take a couple of postings. As I've said before, this was a pretty dense book. Many paragraphs were of the order that required more than one reading to fully grasp.

One thing I feel I did understand was that the entire concept of String Theory is almost entirely theoretical. Basically, String Theory is the idea that the universe can be explained in entirely mathematical terms or not. And because of the size in which String Theory deals, there is almost no way, experimentally, to prove that String Theory is correct. At least, not yet.

Since the enlightenment, or even going further back, to Aristotle, there has been an underlying human need within our society to explain the universe in rational terms. It seems to me that String Theory, because of certain mathematical relationships too uncanny to dismiss, is trying to do this.

Another thing that Greene touches upon in his book is the completely different way in which physicists and mathematicians attack problems using the same mathematical tools. Here is an excerpt that I think really eloquently illustrates the difference between physicists and mathematicians AND delves a little bit into the psyche of what kinds of people seek out careers in either profession:

"This reflects the large cultural divide between the disciplines of physics and mathematics, and as string theory blurs their borders, the vast differences in language, methods and styles of each field become increasingly apparent. Physicists are more like avant-garde composers, willing to bend traditional rules and brush the edge of acceptability in the search for solutions. Mathematicians are more like classical composers, typically working within a much tighter framework, reluctant to go to the next step until all previous onces have been established with due rigor. Each approach has its advantages as well as drawbacks; each provides a unique outlet for creative discovery. Like modern and classical music, it's not that one approach is right and the other wrong - the methods one chooses to use are largelly a matter of taste and training."

Maybe this metaphor spoke to me because I'm a musician, but either way, I think it sort of paints a picture.

String Theory deals with all forms of physical reality. In this way it is different from quantum theory, which only deals with matter on a subatomic scale, or Einstein's Theory of Relativity, which deals with objects that are either huge or moving at incredible speeds, such as those speeds nearing the speed of light. So, String Theory gets to deal with black holes. What's very interesting about black holes (and unfortunately, I'm not sure if this data is from RESEARCH or from EXPERIMENTAL DATA, but...) is that despite the fact that they are huge and suck up everything that comes within reach of their event horizon, "except for a small nubmer of distinguishing features, all black holes appear to be alike." Those distinguishing features, i.e. mass, electric and force charges and spin, are the same exact features that distinguish elementary particles such as quarks, muons and taus from one another. Essentially, These gigantic galaxy-sized phenomena are overgrown elementary particles!!!! How crazy is that?!?!?

When I consider ontology, I often imagine the universe as being infinitely tiny, rather than infinitely large, and the fact above only makes me wonder at it all the more. I think about the entire sequence of one's life, particularly my own, as being some infinitessimally minute factor in some larger scheme. Like, take for instance all of the complexity in respiration. If we were able to zoom down upon on a molecule of oxygen being inhaled by a goat for example, and then down to one atom, and then one electron and then realize that the electron was really a black hole in a micro-universe, and then there's this little guy named Brian in that universe and his entire life, which seems so long to him, is in the macro-universe a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a second, and regardless of what his life seemed to amount to in his perception, it was really just this tiny role that only had the same kind of role I actually have NOW with the nearest black hole. Which in turn only has this little tiny interaction with it's own atom, in fact, the elecron only exists as PROBABILITY in an atom, and then that atom is part of a molecule, which gets sucked up in that chemical reaction that we learned in Biology class which makes CO2.

OK, yes, I am a freak.

Brian posted at 11:09 AM.