"Not Even Wrong"

I've been reading (which in this case does not necessarily mean understanding) Peter Woit's book "Not Even Wrong", subtitled "The Failure of String Theory and the Continuing Challenge to Unify the Laws of Physics". Some pithy stuff from there, hope to add to this post at intervals:

( Wikipedia would have entries for most names or terms that you don't understand below)

"Not Even Wrong" -- this was Pauli's way of describing a theory that he felt was worse than wrong. Woit's taking a dig at string theory by reusing that phrase.

From a strong criticism of string theory by Sheldon Glashow:
"...Until the string theory people can intepret perceived properties of the real world they simply are not doing physics. Should they be paid by universities and be permitted to pervert impressionable students ? Will young Ph.Ds, whose expertise is limited to superstring theory, be employable if, and when, the string snaps ? Are string thoughts more appropriate to departments of mathematics, or even schools of divinity than to physics departments ? How many angels can dance on the head of a pin ? How many dimensions are there in a compactified manifold, 30 powers of ten smaller than a pinhead ? "

A topologist is someone who doesn't know the difference between a coffee and a doughnut

The Hindu's opinion page is crap !

The Hindu had a major redesign/revamp almost a year back and finally it dawned on me that its Opinion page has become a complete mess. It still has a decent article on an average once every 2 days or so, (like today's one about the Archeological Society of India) but other than that its pretty terrible. I tend to respect their Editorials because of their on-high tone but then recently read a critique of editorials on thehoot.org that made me realize that they were probably not so hot. And sometimes they have these asinine paen editorials to Roger Federer or other sports personalities. Or weighty weigh-ins on the state of the cricket team.

But much worse they have this major syndication thing going with the Guardian of the UK. The syndicated articles might fall into one of these categories:

1.) An article about the US. Mostly I find these run-of-the-mill left wing stuff that doesn't show any insight. Great -- we get to understand America through the standard British left-wing lens.
2.) Some stuff utterly irrelevant to India like obesity epidemic, curbing unsolicited telephone calls, how secure FaceBook is (!!!)
3.) Somewhat more relevant stuff, usually ponderous meditations on terrorism.

The local opinions tend towards being monopolized by a small set of people and generally don't merit being on the edit page. Sometimes the articles are cringeworthy.

However it does compensate by some truly excellent occasional articles. Sainath gets a look-in every now and then, and its always healthy to be reminded that there are still people committing suicide at regular intervals while we grow at 9% (although when he goes off-topic he sucks). There were a couple of great pieces by Krishna Kumar the head of NCERT. I remember 1 or 2 great pieces by Jean Dreze.

Umm... well that's it I guess. Not a very coherent post.

Woh Lamhe

Quite a raw, wince-worthy film but with some sweet scenes. I'm happy to see a sensitive film about mental illness. The real interest is that it is inspired by Mahesh Bhatt's relationship with Parveen Babi. I also find the title echoing in my head "Woh Lahmeee, Woh Lamheee..." and the flower artwork on the poster is nice.