Why Africa is still poor

 Michael Burnand's interview with Daron Acemoglu

https://open.spotify.com/episode/29baU0mwsDhQoTd3XVJzxt

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P60TX-dwd4s

Bicycle head badge

On One Inbred in white bronze

https://www.headbadges.com/store/c2/Headbadges.html

Yes, I remember.

If you like riding bicycles and

fun is the right amount of ridiculous

 then this simple, little bike had it in spades.

plentyofsky.blogspot.com/2023/06/riding the front triangle

Dream

I had a strange dream. I was in some pharmacy after deciding not to fly back after attending some scientific meeting. I asked the owner whether I could work in his shop and he said, “Sure,” and gave me a white lab coat that clinicians and scientists wear. It was all pretty casual. I wondered what my secretary would be thinking when she found out I wasn’t back. In any case I had my mobile phone on me and didn’t receive a call. Or text. Soon after an elderly woman walked in with arthritic hands and asked me whether there was something that would ease the pain in her hands. It was snowing outside and I happened to be standing beside some heating device made to warm hands. I suggested that she consider buying the hand warmer. She smiled, picked it up, and went to the counter. I went to the owner and told him that I had just sold the lady an electric hand warmer. I was seeking validation for my employment. He looked at me crossly and asked, “Did you bamboozle her with thermodynamics?” The device cost $150. There are cheaper options. I was chastened. It was joyous.

Space, Time and Motion by Sean Carroll

When you are done with work and other commitments you might find some time to do other stuff. You might be wondering what to do with that time. Well, if your brain won’t calm down and it’s too late to go outside then you could do worse than wondering about why a world of rocks, trees, frogs and humans exists in the first place. Subjects that are grounded in the real world - from geology to agriculture, psychology to medicine, and engineering to economics - segment the world into chewable chunks and are themselves fields of specialist endeavour. Yet they all reference more fundamental aspects of human enquiry even if they choose not to delve into the details. A sociologist might reference the work of a field biologist studying baboons. A field biologist knows a lot about the Krebs cycle even if she doesn’t explicitly reference it. A biochemist studying oxidation in the Krebs cycle knows about atomic orbitals but might not understand the math that comes with it. And - somewhere down a dark hall - a physicist smirks as, finally, someone in the real world wants to talk to him. 

Theoretical physicists, like their philosophising friends, dive deep into the fundamental nature of things. Some philosophers agonise over epistemology and ontology. Just as some physicists struggle with where their math takes them. Thankfully, that’s their problem. Not ours. Fortunately many also take the time to educate those that seek scholarship and a few even write books for the merely curious.

This book about classical physics is written by a physicist and educator well-known for being resolute about how concepts in physics should be presented and understood. For the average punter physics is not an easy topic to engage with. So the remarkable thing about this book is how readable it is. The chapters do progress rapidly and, for a book aimed at a popular audience, exposes the reader to a lot of math. This brevity and that dreaded four letter word means a step up in attention but the math is kept superficial and the arguments easy to follow. Taking classical physics into the 20th century also means that there are occasional leaps of faith. Lucky for me I am as malleable with my math as I am with my grasp of reality. Replace the plus (+) sign with a minus (-) sign in Pythagoras’ theorem? Puh! I can do that.

Seriously, WTF?

There aren’t many jolts like this and the accompanying explanations give some coherence to the otherworldliness that is modern physics. Indeed, the author shows how the reality we experience is skewed by dimensional and temporal restrictions and encourages the reader to take a step back and rethink everything from first principles. First, by re-examining our understanding of how objects move through space; then by adding dimensional time; before tackling the mapping of manifolds. Nevertheless this book is only accessible to a wide audience because noobs like me have the ability to tap into content created by some incredible online educators. Key words are highlighted in bold text so when I can’t follow the argument for “metric tensor” then I know what term to look up. Tap.. tap.. tap.. and, bingo! 3Blue1Brown walks me through the essence of linear algebra (which is not as dry as it sounds) before I move on to tensors and differential geometry (although Dialect does an excellent summary).

This is a small book on a big topic. Physics students spend years grappling with these ideas and some will devote an entire career within and/or expanding its boundaries. For a popular science book the first instalment of “Biggest Ideas in the Universe” imposes a rigour that is first surprising, then challenging, then satisfying. It does not tell us everything about the physics of space, time and motion. Of course not. What we get is an exciting glimpse closely attended by a more considered perspective of the mind-bending beauty and magnitude encapsulated in such conceptualisations. The target audience with high school math and a history of wandering the vagaries of physics is delivered a series of well explained chapters that starts with a ball rolling down a hill and ends with General Relativity. As such the book flows seamlessly. The perspective is unapologetically that of a physicist and the intuitions gained come with solid, logical grounding. That’s gold.

I would mention that the chapter on Time is not as poignant than the rest of this excellent book. But it is the only section that reads like a series of statements and commentary. Time is an incredibly difficult concept to come to grips with and because each chapter anticipates the next I think I was expecting an impossible revelation. In any case I got through the chapter, moved on to Spacetime - where the above equation dropped (lending Time a dimensional context) - and the world of classical physics continued to reveal itself. 

It’s not everything. But it is thunderingly good.

Sean Carroll’s book on Quanta and Fields - the second in this series of “Biggest Ideas in the Universe” - comes out on the 1st of October.

https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/biggestideas/

Explainers and storytellers

Educational YouTubers can be divided into explainers and storytellers. The best are always a good mix of both. Some topics lend themselves to description and explanation (eg physics, engineering, bicycle technology, military strategy) while others are better suited to storytelling (eg history, politics, bicycle racing, actual war). Whether a particular video works for you largely depends on whether you have a specific question you want answered. The more specific the question, the more a describer/ explainer fits the bill. Storytelling is much more fluid and, as far as I can tell, far more compelling for the vast majority of people.

Tadej Pogačar’s bicycle

Jonas Vingegaard’s bicycle

Stage 11 finish at the 2024 Tour de France

I generally favour descriptions and explanations to the rambling path of a storyteller. That’s because few topics engage me enough to want to know more. I also appreciate that there will be a finite limit on what I will be able to understand. The topics that pique my interest all share an underlying clarity based on maths, science, logic or reason so a description of what it is and an explanation of why it happens works well. In other words, these topics are punctuated by points of fact or, at the very least, by an agreed theory or hypothesis. Don’t get me wrong, the vast library of storytelling can be educational and informative as well as enlightening and entertaining. But a meandering storyline can also be frustratingly slow to get to the point and utterly unsatisfying if it doesn’t deliver, or - even worse - when it weaves a narrative so tight that I’ve forgotten why I was there in the first place.

Stage 3 finish at the 2024 Tour de France 

Biniam Girmay becomes the first black African to win a stage at the TdF (and eventually takes the green jersey)

Stage 5 finish at the 2024 Tour de France 

Mark Cavendish breaks Eddy Merckx’s record with his 35th sprint victory at the TdF

Stage 9 white roads

Stage 12 Girmay takes three

Stage 19

Sorry. Let’s get back to it..

Two things surprise me. The first is that humans are particularly drawn to stories and storytellers for subjects that are best left to description and explanation. Theories and ideas that are fundamental to the hard sciences should be punctuated as such and made open to reimagination and redundancy but never to alternative forms of interpretation. An article on a breakthrough in nuclear fusion should avoid sensationalism. It should indicate the total energy input right beside the breakthrough in fusion output then proceed with why the story is relevant. The description of a concept in physics can be introduced to an audience with a question for which the answer is an illuminating insight into the topic. It should not begin by exposing ignorance in people minding their own business or simply passing by. The science and engineering of renewables, batteries, and electrification is enlightening when the topic is restricted to the technology but becomes unwieldy when politicians, geopolitics and business become entangled in its application and feasibility. The former is well suited to explainers, the latter to storytellers. In short, explainers are best placed to cover knowable topics by understanding (and reinforcing) what the audience already knows and delivering what the audience wants (or needs) to know. The ideal description/ explanation should be clear, concise and respectful.

Recognise that descriptions and explanations are not the real world. They are merely tools for understanding the world we live in.

The second is the exact converse: that humans are drawn to the focussed lens of describers when ideas and concepts are so fluid that the narrative is best left to storytellers. This results in confirmation bias and polarisation and is often blamed on social media - ie on particular groups of enraged, focussed describers. It is puzzling how some humans can be so certain of their position on topics like religion, political ideology and identity. These are delicate, powerful and engaging stories that don’t deserve the demotion to mere descriptors. Storytellers are those remarkable people that weave multifaceted tapestries that among many things probe belief systems and memories, draw links between past and present, investigate intent and circumstance, build bridges between the real and the imagined, and play into the ebb and flow of emotions. Moreover, what a reader brings into a story can fundamentally change at the end of the story and, again, at a second reading. That’s the reason why there are book clubs for stories and lessons and lectures in physics. I happen to believe that all people are created equal and if that is mandated by God then so be it. If not then the story I tell myself is that the well-being of all people carries equal value: your pain is equal to my pain, your joy equal to my joy. I have no proof for this. I also have no proof for God. In the real world there are people that are faster, smarter, and stronger than me. The story I tell myself makes me their equal. I am realistic enough to know that bullies often win and idealistic enough to wish that they didn’t win all the time. I want to believe that free will is an emergent property because I want to believe that I have a choice. Above all, I like to think I allow these narratives to gain complexity and evolve in their retelling. 

I recognise that stories are not the real world. They are a reflections and conversations about the world we share. 

I am not a fast reader. But that doesn’t matter.

Happy 50th!

 

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/history-bar-code-180956704/

Villefranche to Nice via the Coastal Track