**** - I got sent this DVD containing a pair of two-hour PBS ‘Nova’ specials for free thanks to my paid subscription to ‘Discover’ magazine, and completely forgot that I was going to be receiving it. That was a nice little surprise in the mail the other day, along with the $50 check I got from the State of New Jersey for ‘Property Tax Relief’ even though I live in an apartment and don’t pay property tax. I guess that’s one of the few advantages in having an obese Republican jackass for a governor. Anyway, back to the Einstein thing. The first special focuses on Einstein’s famous E=MC² equation by breaking down its component parts and showing historical reenactments of Einstein as well as some of his precursors (Faraday, Lavoisier, Maxwell, etc). I’ve always had a certain fascination for the gentleman, as he is truly one of the most amazing abstract thinkers in Earth’s recorded history, and also had the wherewithal to be able back up his theories with pure mathematics. That’s pretty darn impressive. Any schmo can come up with a theory, but to be able to back it up with functions that can be empirically tested takes a truly extraordinary ability that is just not available to large majority of humanity. It is nicely presented by John Lithgow and pretty entertaining, although a bit overdramatized. The second special is a little more traditional in that it juxtaposes images and graphics of the past and future of space exploration with interviews of experts in the field, discussing potential missions to Mars and SETI and things like that. I could watch this stuff all day long (and have in the past), but there’s nothing here that the more intellectually inclined hasn’t already seen a number of times.
No comments:
Post a Comment