Monday, November 25, 2019
Friday, November 22, 2019
Ringworld Audiobook
I'm going to highly recommend this audiobook. I read the 1970 book about 30 years ago, but now I find the audiobook to be a delight to listen to.
This is the most famous and most award-winning of about 40 books that take place in the "Known Space" Universe created by Larry Niven. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Known_Space
Other recordings of this book have been removed from youtube, most likely for copyright reasons. This particular recording seems odd and not particularly the best quality, as if it was copied from audiotapes and maybe from more than one source. The quality is not consistent. You can barely hear some background interference like it is being copied from tapes.
However, I wasn't bothered by the inconsistency of the recording. The story is so good that I really enjoyed listening to it.
There are four recent prequels to this novel in the "Fleet of Worlds" series, which are not a prerequisite, but a delight to listen to. I paid Audible to listen to those.
Monday, October 21, 2019
Is Time Travel Impossible?
https://youtu.be/pGnMiGrYmPE
I still have a problem with "space-time" as a unified thing. This leads to conclusions like time didn't exist before the Big Bang, which I find highly questionable. However, Special Relativity depends upon it. In order for space-time to not exist, we would need a completely different model of the universe.
I still have a problem with "space-time" as a unified thing. This leads to conclusions like time didn't exist before the Big Bang, which I find highly questionable. However, Special Relativity depends upon it. In order for space-time to not exist, we would need a completely different model of the universe.
Friday, October 11, 2019
Tuesday, October 1, 2019
Monday, September 30, 2019
Tuesday, September 10, 2019
Sunday, September 1, 2019
The Egg
This is a nice fairy tale, but I don't buy it. This seems like an odd mix of pantheism, Hinduism, and Mormonism to create something unique.
Thursday, August 29, 2019
Monday, August 19, 2019
Thursday, August 15, 2019
Monday, August 12, 2019
Thursday, August 8, 2019
Friday, July 5, 2019
Why I believe in UFOs, and you should too... | Ben Mezrich | TEDxBeaconStreet
I'm extremely skeptical. There is a real lack of evidence.
The distances between stars are so vast that the energy requirements for interstellar travel are by our standards almost infinite. The cost of the moon program in modern dollars was around a hundred billion dollars. Sending little robots to Mars costs several billion dollars. Any kind of interstellar program would cost at least a trillion dollars. It is not about money. It is about resources required, either by us or by another civilization, which are enormous.
There are also practical considerations. Space is very radioactive making it impractical for travel. It takes a great deal of effort to keep humans alive in space. Also, anything moving faster than 1% the speed of light is in danger of being obliterated by a grain of sand that happens to be in the way. At 10% the speed of light, the super thin interstellar gasses, although almost non-existent, are enough to create considerable resistance. I have heard that it would difficult to go any faster than this.
For this reason, if I were designing an interstellar craft, I would make it shaped like a giant needle with it being very thin. I don't know if this is practical.
Sunday, June 30, 2019
Monday, June 24, 2019
Wednesday, June 19, 2019
If the universe is only 14 billion years old, how can it be 92 billion light years wide?
There was a time when parts of the universe were moving away from other parts of the universe faster than the speed of light. That time is right now. The point is space itself is expanding everywhere at a very rapid rate. It was even more in the very early universe, during a period called super inflation. Then it settled down to something reasonable, but because of Dark Energy, the expansion will become greater over time.
This video explains and clarifies what we mean by the visible universe and the microwave background radiation. However, it takes some effort to understand it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIJTwYOZrGU
This video explains and clarifies what we mean by the visible universe and the microwave background radiation. However, it takes some effort to understand it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIJTwYOZrGU
Monday, May 20, 2019
My Video Went Viral. Here's Why
Anybody who is anybody is on some form of social media, and that includes youtube. The amount of content on youtube dwarfs everything else combined. This is an interesting discussion about why some youtube videos go viral and how the youtube algorithm works.
The video he is talking about is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxPdPpi5W4o
Friday, March 8, 2019
Sunday, February 10, 2019
Saturday, February 2, 2019
Linus Tech Tips on Youtube
This guy is amazing. He has 8 million subscribers. Some people are supporting themselves with 100,000 subscribers. There are a lot of cable shows that might only get half a million viewers.
Recently, the actor Jack Black started a youtube channel and immediately got six million subscribers with hardly doing anything because he is Jack Black.
Thursday, January 31, 2019
Tuesday, January 1, 2019
Monday, December 31, 2018
Saturday, December 22, 2018
Monday, December 17, 2018
Thursday, December 13, 2018
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