Monday, November 05, 2007
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became totally inspired
while having a 2 hours chat with a friend of mine who is currently doing Ph.D Physics in Cambridge last night.
chatting with this friend is like having a really casual but educating lesson (wont fall asleep at all = D), as she kept teaching me new stuff on the phone, without really being aware of it at all.she secured my thoughts on a few things, such as Geography is really everything, and that subjects are inter-linked. topics/ issues are being separated is a total man- made business.
as i am currently studying Geography, and have been struggling in finding (a) book(s) that is about Geography, and there she was, recommended "Guns, Germs and Steel" and "Collapse" by Jared Diamond. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns%2C_Germs_and_Steel]
This book links almost all topics together, but the main thing that it talk about is the reason for different countries to have war, and the way (a) country(/ies) become highly civilised. the reason different countries are having war is because of ... FOOD! whereas the reason for some countries being able to become highly developed/ civilised is because they do not have shortage of food, you see U.S. as a First world country, do they have problems with food, except havin too much food? no! so they are now highly civilised, but i guess they are just the desire of having more that they are at war with Iraq, a country rich in fuel.she also reminded me that, it really doesnt matter how long you are spending time on a certain level, for if you really actually need that much time on a certain thing, in order to understand a fact or a theory, then spend however long you need on it.
she pointed out to me that Geography at some point is actually even more complicated than Physics, as Geography links humanilities, history and psychology and many other subjects together. the big topic, sustainable development is all Geography, as this topic talk about improving the living standards or people while perserving the Earth's resources, i.e. not disrupting the ecosystem.
While physics are basically a whole load of dead objects bombing or sliding towards each other, causing forms of energy, sound, heat and/ or reactions to happen, and to calculate them, you use all those funny symbols and formulae.i have also manage to have a little glaze at the current topic in Ph.D physics: the structure of black hole and the density of it, which relates to Newton! = )
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Comments (2)
geography deals with a lot of things on earth, including plate tectonics, weather systems, and a lot of humanaties. But the earth is only a tiny bit of "everything". Some planetry geologist deals with the magnetic core/ volcanic activity/ atmosphere of planets (eg. Io and Titans). But all the stars and galaxies in the universe is only a tiny fraction of everything. more than 95% of matter in the universe is made of mass-energy that we can't see =) > about 25% dark matter and 70% dark energy~ which geography don't deal with~ The string theory also raises possibility that the universe may have 26 dimensions, according to my knowledge, geography hasn't dealt with that yet.
Furthermore~ The collision between particles/strings is what maintains the whole human civilisation. So it is theorically possible to work out the probability outcomes of very complicated things, eg. "human thoughts". Althought heisinburg's uncertiny principle states that it is impossible to know the present state of the universe... "Physics is dead objects colliding together?" Life is merely a collection of many dead molecules colliding! It is amazing to imagine simple collisions can lead to complicated beings like us. So in fact there is no such distinctin between life and dead.
Sorry for the bombardment above =P
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hehe~ i wonder how well does black hole relate to newton~
Black holes are amazing~ Chandrasekhar limit (for non rotating black holes, 2GM/c^2), Event Horizon, Hawking radiation are all inspiring discoveries. we simply live so far away from these extreme conditions
that book is excellent. especially when you are interested in anthropology.