A thorough, at times dazzling, display of physics taking on physics, raising many questions as it throws a withering...
A challenging rebuke to many of the foundation stones of physics.
Launier has many bones to pick with the way in which the science of physics is conducted, most notably its disassociation with simple logic and commonsense, and he tackles them with vigor. “Physics is about elucidating the mechanics of our materialistic environment; but unfortunately, in too many instances, it is deceived by mysticism, vanity, and/or blind idolism.” The idea espoused in his book rests upon the principle that a physical equation must accurately describe how a physical event unfolds, without the inconsistencies and incongruities that pepper the field. In that sense, and as a card-carrying skeptic, Launier makes you do that most elementally gratifying thing—stop and think. Take a minute—well, at 700 densely composed pages, a few minutes—and run a test or two. Watch closely as he displays how Young’s classical kinetic energy equation founders when run in conjunction with the conservation of energy law, using the same figures and parameters. Observe how he shrewdly delineates his quarrels with relativity theory. Launier is happy to give credit where it is due—Newton’s corollary 1 vector theory works for him, corollary 2 doesn’t; he appreciates Feynman’s work regarding interactions between elementary particles and their carrier bosons. And he is bold, but practical, with his own constructs: “Einstein’s idea, that the transfer of energy always involves a proportional transfer of mass, is illusory. If there is an increase in energy, it involves a proportional increase in mass and/or a proportional increase in velocity.” He moves steadily forward, starting with energy, on through time, forces, gravity, light; pointing to where scientific orthodoxy caused the fudging of experiments; tendering corrections where he has been able, freely admitting when he is flummoxed.
A thorough, at times dazzling, display of physics taking on physics, raising many questions as it throws a withering spotlight on old favorites.Pub Date: March 11, 2011
ISBN: 978-1456560201
Page Count: 702
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This early reader is an excellent introduction to the March on Washington in 1963 and the important role in the march played by Martin Luther King Jr. Ruffin gives the book a good, dramatic start: “August 28, 1963. It is a hot summer day in Washington, D.C. More than 250,00 people are pouring into the city.” They have come to protest the treatment of African-Americans here in the US. With stirring original artwork mixed with photographs of the events (and the segregationist policies in the South, such as separate drinking fountains and entrances to public buildings), Ruffin writes of how an end to slavery didn’t mark true equality and that these rights had to be fought for—through marches and sit-ins and words, particularly those of Dr. King, and particularly on that fateful day in Washington. Within a year the Civil Rights Act of 1964 had been passed: “It does not change everything. But it is a beginning.” Lots of visual cues will help new readers through the fairly simple text, but it is the power of the story that will keep them turning the pages. (Easy reader. 6-8)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-448-42421-5
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2000
Sedaris’s sense of life’s absurdity is on full, fine display, as is his emotional body armor. Fortunately, he has plenty of...
Known for his self-deprecating wit and the harmlessly eccentric antics of his family, Sedaris (Me Talk Pretty One Day, 2000, etc.) can also pinch until it hurts in this collection of autobiographical vignettes.
Once again we are treated to the author’s gift for deadpan humor, especially when poking fun at his family and neighbors. He draws some of the material from his youth, like the portrait of the folks across the street who didn’t own a TV (“What must it be like to be so ignorant and alone?” he wonders) and went trick-or-treating on November first. Or the story of the time his mother, after a fifth snow day in a row, chucked all the Sedaris kids out the door and locked it. To get back in, the older kids devised a plan wherein the youngest, affection-hungry Tiffany, would be hit by a car: “Her eagerness to please is absolute and naked. When we ask her to lie in the middle of the street, her only question was ‘Where?’ ” Some of the tales cover more recent incidents, such as his sister’s retrieval of a turkey from a garbage can; when Sedaris beards her about it, she responds, “Listen to you. If it didn’t come from Balducci’s, if it wasn’t raised on polenta and wild baby acorns, it has to be dangerous.” But family members’ square-peggedness is more than a little pathetic, and the fact that they are fodder for his stories doesn’t sit easy with Sedaris. He’ll quip, “Your life, your privacy, your occasional sorrow—it’s not like you're going to do anything with it,” as guilt pokes its nose around the corner of the page. Then he’ll hitch himself up and lacerate them once again, but not without affection even when the sting is strongest. Besides, his favorite target is himself: his obsessive-compulsiveness and his own membership in this company of oddfellows.
Sedaris’s sense of life’s absurdity is on full, fine display, as is his emotional body armor. Fortunately, he has plenty of both.Pub Date: June 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-316-14346-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2004
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