String theory

A few weeks ago, I had my first CityPaper byline in about a year. I should write more. Anyway, here's the article. It's a review of two recent books, The Trouble With Physics by Lee Smolin and Not Even Wrong by Peter Woit, that criticize string theory. I guess I cover the string theory beat for the CityPaper, since I wrote this (it's the fifth one from the top) a few years ago, too.

Writing about books written by people with Ph.D.'s in math and/or physics can be a little intimidating when:

* they're writing about the things they know well
* your math education stopped shortly after advanced calculus and functional analysis

One of the author/scientists, Peter Woit, has a blog which conveniently sports the same name as his book. The site is pretty interesting and lively, although some of the posts and/or comments won't make sense to you unless you've had at least a few years in a doctoral program in physics somewhere, which rules me out. There's a page tracking all of the reviews of his book, including a link to mine.

Lastly, this guy left a thoughtful (and positive!) comment on my article. I owe him a response, although the prospect of entering into a dialogue on string theory with someone who knows way more about it than I do is, like writing the original review, a little intimidating.

I'm an uncle, twice over

A few weeks ago, I became an uncle for the second time shortly after becoming an uncle for the first time. My little brother and his wife had twins. I went down to see them last week. Amazing.