I just finished reading Feynman’s “QED: The Strange Theory of Light And Matter” (henceforth ‘QED’) and, in the context of my post on reading more, I would like to give you a writeup of my thoughts. ‘QED’ is a pop-sci book covering the quantum theory of electromagnetism known as quantum electrodynamics. ‘QED’, however, takes a slightly different approach of presenting the science; it does not dumb things down to give you the illusion of understanding. For me, personally, the book was a breeze to read due to the fact that I am already familiar with most of these concepts from my physics studies. However, let’s look at this book from the perspective of the layperson instead. Do Feynman’s explanations still hold up? I think they do.

The popular culture picture of quantum mechanics is highly inaccurate. The word “quantum” has become synonymous with weird and wacky physics. “In quantum physics, a cat can be dead and alive at the same time!”, people say. In this article I will attempt to explain QM in a way that people can understand as well as shed light on the infamous cat, while utilising minimal notation and mathematics.

So, I know that it is very likely that no-one actually reads this blog, but I will make this commitment public nonetheless: I want to read more. If I recall correctly, I read something like 3 books last year. That is not bad in and of itself, given that the things I read were of reasonable difficulty and I had quite a full year at university. But now there are (almost) no excuses. So, here is my plan: I am going to read (at least) a book a month this year. Since I am already behind for January, I will have to make it up at some point. Accompanying me reading the will be a post of the form already seen before¹. So, I hope to see you on the 29th of February or 1st of March (I don’t know my schedule yet).

Translation is a necessary cog in the wheel of a world where we have to operate with a multiplicity of languages. However, in spite of its recent ubiquity, we typically forget that translation is as much an art, as it is a science. As an art, it has a subjective side. Although this can be freeing with certain texts, it often leads to imprecision in others. I’ve come across this most recently while reading George Long’s translation of “Meditations” by Marcus Aurelius¹. “Meditations” was originally written in Koine Greek which was in use around 2000 years ago, most famously in the New Testament². In “Meditations” there is constant reference to “universal reason” and “universe”³. As it turns out, in the original, Aurelius uses “λόγος” (logos) and “κοσμος” (cosmos)⁴ respectively⁵.

So, another quick post in the vein of quick, Emacs-related content. I just set up E-Mail in Emacs with mu4e! That, I feel, is a great step in the journey to doing everything in Emacs. Albeit I still believe that I won’t ever switch to Emacs as my primary web browser or PDF viewer. Those two positions are firmly held by firefox and zathura respectively. Anyhow, Emacs is a great text-based interface and E-Mail is primarily a text-based medium, hence why I think that they are practically perfect for each other.