In the very nick of time I have tried to put some order to my 2013 experiences.
One of the best experiences in 2013 was the ''Constructing The World'' workshop
(author, David Chalmers, meets critics) in Bonn.
The result was a homepage with some Impressions and Links from the workshop.
The result can be seen here.
A Youtube video with similar material can be seen here.
Monday, December 30, 2013
Sunday, December 29, 2013
1.2 mill years ago there were only 18.500 people ... (was: population size in the ancient ancestors of Homo sapiens)
population size in the ancient ancestors of Homo sapiens:
By comparing the likelihood of various demographic models, we estimate that the effective population size of human ancestors living before 1.2 million years ago was 18,500, and we can reject all models where the ancient effective population size was larger than 26,000. This result implies an unusually small population for a species spread across the entire Old World, particularly in light of the effective population sizes of chimpanzees (21,000) and gorillas (25,000), which each inhabit only one part of a single continent.doi.org/dv75x8
Monday, December 9, 2013
Timetravel - A great wormhole in time back to 11.22.63
Surely, finding a wormhole in time that leads from 2011 Maine to September 9, 1958
in your local diner would be a bit surprising...
Especially, when you realize that you can visit the past for as long as you like - days, months, even years, but when you return to the present it's always exactly two minutes later.
Certainly, the hero of this epic King novel, Jake Epping, a divorced high schoolteacher from Maine, is surprised. Perhaps even more so, when the dying restaturant owner then gives him the task of
correcting american history, by preventing the assassination of JFK.
Arguing that stopping the assassination would make the Vietnam war and other horrors after that impossible.
And off we are, back to 1958. A world without GPS and mobile phones, cigarette smoke-clouds everywhere, the cold war, idle housewives that go shopping while their men are busy at work and with racism lurking around every corner.
The fifties in America becomes intensely real. Indeed, the King time machine really works.
But, and this is the truly great part, time doesn't especially like to be changed. It disturbs the "harmonies" of the universe.
The machinery of time has a certain logic to it. So, if you drive to Dallas to kill Lee Harvey Oswald on the 21st, chances are that you will end up with a flat tire and get nowhere near Dallas...
Kings description of this is really masterly done and makes the book a real cliffhanger, all 880 pages of it actually...
Another twist is added when our hero falls in love with the lovely Sadie, and becomes torn between his duty to stop the assassination of Kennedy and his desire to abandon the mission to spend the rest of his life with her.
Juggling a life in an apartment next to Lee Harvey Oswald and Oswald's wife Marina (he must observe Lee to make sure that he is the real killer), and a girlfriend that doesn't understand his taste in music (Rolling Stones songs from 10 years later) is probably "normal" stuff for timetravellers -
But in Kings version you can actually feel the fabric of time being twisted and turned.
Life is really just performed upon a stage that might crack open at any time to reveal another truth.
Again, masterly done.
The upcoming TV mini series and the movie (obviously, there will eventually be a movie) are certainly going to be hits.
The harmonies of time dictates it.
Wonderful stuff.
-Simon
Reviews at Amazon:
Amazon Amazon UK
in your local diner would be a bit surprising...
Especially, when you realize that you can visit the past for as long as you like - days, months, even years, but when you return to the present it's always exactly two minutes later.
Certainly, the hero of this epic King novel, Jake Epping, a divorced high schoolteacher from Maine, is surprised. Perhaps even more so, when the dying restaturant owner then gives him the task of
correcting american history, by preventing the assassination of JFK.
Arguing that stopping the assassination would make the Vietnam war and other horrors after that impossible.
And off we are, back to 1958. A world without GPS and mobile phones, cigarette smoke-clouds everywhere, the cold war, idle housewives that go shopping while their men are busy at work and with racism lurking around every corner.
The fifties in America becomes intensely real. Indeed, the King time machine really works.
But, and this is the truly great part, time doesn't especially like to be changed. It disturbs the "harmonies" of the universe.
The machinery of time has a certain logic to it. So, if you drive to Dallas to kill Lee Harvey Oswald on the 21st, chances are that you will end up with a flat tire and get nowhere near Dallas...
Kings description of this is really masterly done and makes the book a real cliffhanger, all 880 pages of it actually...
Another twist is added when our hero falls in love with the lovely Sadie, and becomes torn between his duty to stop the assassination of Kennedy and his desire to abandon the mission to spend the rest of his life with her.
Juggling a life in an apartment next to Lee Harvey Oswald and Oswald's wife Marina (he must observe Lee to make sure that he is the real killer), and a girlfriend that doesn't understand his taste in music (Rolling Stones songs from 10 years later) is probably "normal" stuff for timetravellers -
But in Kings version you can actually feel the fabric of time being twisted and turned.
Life is really just performed upon a stage that might crack open at any time to reveal another truth.
Again, masterly done.
The upcoming TV mini series and the movie (obviously, there will eventually be a movie) are certainly going to be hits.
The harmonies of time dictates it.
Wonderful stuff.
-Simon
Reviews at Amazon:
Amazon Amazon UK
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