The Alder Grove

"In my sleep thought that I was standing in an alder grove of the straightest and fairest trees which the heart of man could think of or imagine."

Picking up the threads

So, I've been neglecting the blog as of late and it occurs to me that I have not been using it to discuss all of my interests. I will endeavor to correct that with upcoming posts. I have also been lax about titling the posts which is silly as I never had that issue when I had the Queen's Musick blog (sad that it has vanished). And how is it that my other blogger account is gone when my LiveJournal account is still active?!?!

But, as usual, I digress. :)

Those who know me know that I have a long-standing science crush on Neil deGrasse Tyson. Who doesn't?? However...Dr. Tyson has recently been getting some competition in that area. I've known about Brian Greene for a while now from various panel discussions I've seen with Lawrence M. Krauss and the Origins Initiative. But I never had a true appreciation for him and not only his wonderful teaching method but his unexpected sense of humour until lately. It's been creeping up on me since the "Storytelling of Science" panel and later when I saw the clip of StarTalk live with Neil and Brian reenacting a scene from "Gravity" to explain a rather large mistake in the ending. Then, a couple of months ago, I signed up with his site World Science U for his course on Special Relativity. I did the conceptual part, got the certificate and potentially wrapped my brain around the whole weird idea that comes with it. And now? I'm doing the math portion.

I do not do complex math for just anyone. But there's Brian with his whole, "I hope you will at least try the math version of the course" business. Have I mentioned that he's handsome and has a really nice smile? Yeah, fine. So here I am doing equations. Well, he's doing equations and I am attempting to wrap my brain around math that's more difficult to understand than the special relativity is. I am struck with both the wish that I had taken physics in high school and remembering WHY I did not take physics in high school.

But, I persevere and will eventually come to understand this whole thing...at least a little bit.