The Many Worlds of Hugh Everett III

For my science class, I had to read a biography of a scientist or philosopher of science. At first I thought I'd read up on Kant or Descartes (the former so I might be able to actually understand what he's talking about if I ever read his stuff again, and the latter because I think he's kinda cool). However, when thinking about some more I could do, in case those two were taken, it hit me: Hugh Everett III! I have been a big fan of the Eels for a few years now, and I've also been into the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. So it blew my mind to realize that the two were connected. Mark Oliver Everett, the man behind Eels, is the son of Hugh Everett III, the man who put forth the idea that quantum mechanics actually provides a basis for the belief in parallel universes.

So I picked up the book The Many Worlds of Hugh Everett III: Multiple Universes, Mutual Assured Destruction, and the Meltdown of a Nuclear Family, by Peter Byrne. This book was put together from numerous sources, the biggest of which was the collection of papers, letters, manuscripts, notes, etc. in Mark Everett's basement--a collection he never really looked into until 2007. As such, there are tons of great facts in the book, and a lot of nice insights into Hugh's life.

But...there are quite a few problems I have with this book. First off, there is far too much physics jargon. I would be fine with that normally, but I was supposed to write a paper about his life, not solely about the science he worked with. There was far too much detail about that, and practically only a tenth of it was devoted to his family life. The other big issue was that he didn't give dates all the time. His footnotes are replete with dates for his sources, but I had a huge problem finding out when Hugh's daughter, Elizabeth, was born. I had to find it in Mark's book, Things the Grandchildren Should Know. It's 1957, by the way. Now that I think about it, I could have just used the line later when Byrne says she committed suicide in 1996, after her 39th birthday, and did the math. But I really think it's ridiculous that he didn't explicitly say that, when he gave the exact date of birth for Mark.

And he jumps around. A lot. He basically traces each idea he has through Hugh's life, usually starting around 1957. And this makes it really hard to grasp which things happened before other things, because then you're thinking about things that happened later in his life when you're going back to his early life, and then he brings you back to later, and then he won't tell you when something happened and you have to guess... I guess what I'm saying overall is that this book has really good information in it, but it's all in the wrong order.

Rating: 5/10

Living Buddha, Living Christ

Living Buddha, Living Christ, by Thich Nhat Hanh, is the book we had to read for my religion class so we could reflect on it and discuss the ideas within. It was kind of pointless, since we didn't get to talk about East Asian religions as much, and we completely skipped New Age religions all so we could get a start on a book about connecting ideas of Christianity and Buddhism. The author of the book is a very engaged Buddhist, trying to facilitate discourse between faiths.

While most of my annoyance with the book is just because of its placement into the course, there are still some things that bother me about the text. For one thing, my teacher pointed out that Hanh gets Christianity wrong on a few occasions, applying too much Buddhist ideology to them. But that I can overlook, since I think people should be allowed to believe in whatever they want to anyway, so being picky about that is kind of contrary to his point.

What bothers me is the repetition, first of all, since I had to do reflections on different sections and found myself repeating things. But even that's okay, since he's trying to point out the nuances of the things. The worst part for me, though, was when he blatantly said that people who don't have a spiritual root/center "suffer tremendously." That, in my opinion, is a statement that can be true, but is definitely not always the case. If by suffering he means physicality, then people suffer regardless of spirituality. If he means spiritually, however, he is just plain wrong in making that blanket statement. There are many people in this world who are Atheists or Agnostics and happy. Successful. Smart. Joyful. And even moral. I, personally, am an Agnostic who suffers just as much as anyone with a spiritual root and/or center.

Of course, there are other ways of looking at what he means by that. He could just mean something more like a moral center, in which case yes, people without that tend to suffer because others see them as evil, and social karma comes back to haunt them. Or it could be a really ambiguous root/center, just meaning that you need to have something there, be it religion, morality or love, etc. In which case, maybe. I could say I have a spiritual root/center if that's what he means, since I act according to certain principles and have a sense of there being something "right" to do. But I specifically try not to put that at the center because that would make it absolute, which goes against my philosophy of tolerance for contrary facts and opinions.

Other than that, I'd say this book has some good insights, especially for anyone involved in organized religion. I think there should be more dialogue between faiths, and I hope that increasing this will result in more tolerance all around, though I doubt it will really lead to anything meaningful in my lifetime.

Rating: 3.9/10

The Year of the Flood

I just finished the last book for Environmental Lit.: The Year of the Flood, by Margaret Atwood. This book, while technically a sequel, is really a book that runs alongside Oryx and Crake, giving more detail about the characters associated with the God's Gardeners that the first book mentions in passing a few times. Personally, I think we should've read Oryx and Crake for our last book, since it encapsulates so many of the things we talked about in class, but I can see a few themes in the sequel that it makes sense to touch on at the end of the semester.

As a book in a series, it feels superfluous. Oryx and Crake by itself was perfect, in my opinion, for this type of story. Adding onto that, especially by simply adding new perspectives on the same thing, feels like a grab for more money. But I can understand that there are good things about telling stories from different viewpoints (Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow, for instance. Those complement each other well, though I guess part of why I like that is because they eventually diverge and are supposed to come together again soon). I've even thrown around the idea of making a series of books myself that did this kind of thing--showing different perspectives or, like The Stone Gods inspired me to do, showing what happens in the same place in parallel universes (though that story was repetition, not parallel timelines; it just seemed like it was at first, so it planted the idea).

This idea does work for the book, especially since it shows two different characters' experiences of events as well as showing Jimmy from other people's perspectives. It saddened me to see the way people thought about Jimmy, since I really connected with him in the first book, but I guess that's part of the point. I don't think this book could have been as good as it was without Oryx and Crake, even though my professor said it stands on its own. A lot of it just felt pointless without already having that background. I guess it's good to show how this effects people who aren't directly involved in the destruction of humanity, but still I really wish that Atwood had either stopped with Oryx and Crake or made this book explore even more of what happens after the point the two endings connect. The third book, MaddAddam, is scheduled to come out later this year, so I guess I'll have to wait until then to see if she actually goes any further with the story.

Rating: 5.8/10