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Monday, February 2, 2009

Books Reading Tonight

Posted by Paul Constant on Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 10:13 AM

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Four events today, along with a couple open mics.

At noon, in the UW Communications Building, there will be a conference titled "Teaching Racial Literacy in a Colorblind Era." Putting "colorblind era" in the title of your conference is enough to keep a group of people arguing all day.

Calvin Trillin is reading at two different places today. At noon, he'll be at the Elliott Bay Book Company. This evening, he'll be at the Words and Wine event at the Pan Pacific Hotel. Elliott Bay is free, Words and Wine is $45 (which includes the book and all the wine you can reasonably drink in three hours.) This would be the reading of the day, probably even the week, if this were Calvin Trillin talking about The Tummy Trilogy or About Alice or even Tepper Isn't Going Out, but instead he's here to promote Deciding the Decider, a collection of short poems he wrote for The Nation about the presidential election. The poems are not good and the whole book is reminiscent of Mark Russell, that guy who sings stupid little songs about politics with piano accompaniment. Mark Russell isn't funny or clever, either. I read The Nation regularly, and I always have to make a mental effort to leap over Trillin's little box of doggerel verse in the corner of the page. It's like The Family Circus of The Nation.

And at Town Hall, Mario Livio reads from Is God a Mathematician? I wish the book didn't have God in the title; it's not about God. It's really about whether humans invented math or discovered math. Here is a question from the dust jacket that explains the book even more perfectly:

...why is mathematics so effective in describing nature and is mathematics an invention of the human mind or part of the fabric of physical reality?

This is obviously the reading of the night. Sorry, Mr. Trillin.

The full readings calendar, including the next week or so, is here.

Comments (11) RSS

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Holy crap, I've been interested in the topic of 'is god a mathematician' for years... I had no idea anyone ever wrote on the subject, or at least addressed it in a way that was not just in passing. Cool!

Posted by Stoppin ze throwinze on February 2, 2009 at 10:37 AM

Um . . . No, I'm not a mathematician. To tell you the truth, I just kinda threw it all together and WHAM, look what happened. It's not something I really gave a lot of thought to.

Posted by God on February 2, 2009 at 10:40 AM

As John McCain's chances seem weakened or dead,
Republican rallies become mobs instead.
They have no civility left--not a shred.
They curse at Obama, their faces bright red:
"A traitor!" "A terrorist!" "Off with his head!"
"He's not one of us," Sarah Palin has said.
Lucky him.
--Calvin Trillin

(Shit's funny. Lay off).

Posted by DOUG. on February 2, 2009 at 10:43 AM

Carl Sagan defined God as the sum of the physical laws of the universe. In that sense the title is appropriate.

Posted by matt; on February 2, 2009 at 10:46 AM

Listening to Calvin Trillin on KUOW this morning, I was again alarmed at what a complete fuckwit Steve Scher is. He knew absolutely nothing about poetry (he had never heard of a villanelle, and made a caller explain what it was on air, then wouldn't give her enough time to recite the whole thing, which is the point of a fucking villanelle), yet he went on to critique the meter of other poems. Why is this man allowed to have his own radio show?

Mr. Trillin was charming, but I agree with Paul, the political poems are terrible. Terrible and so to-the-minute to be rendered practically outdated already.

Posted by Aislinn on February 2, 2009 at 11:03 AM

Woah, Trillin knows his poetry is terrible. That's the difference between him and Russell.

Posted by c m on February 2, 2009 at 12:10 PM

@4 precisely. The concept of "god" is far older than the straw man Western materialists (both literalist monotheists and secularists alike) have erected in our own image.

The cosmologies of Hinduism and Buddhism are largely based on codifying mathematical insights about the nature of reality derived from highly developed processes of meditation, observation and intuition. I could say more, but a recent blog post by a local programmer sums it up beautifully here.

Posted by Emily on February 2, 2009 at 1:26 PM

I dunno - the supposition that we discovered rather than invented mathematics seems as flawed as suggesting we discovered rather than invented clocks. The universe exists with or without our attempts to measure its behavior.

Posted by yelahneb on February 2, 2009 at 1:49 PM

I think math is the language of the physical universe the way music is. Can you not ask if music is a human invention or a manifestation of sound waves organised into mathematical equations by humans? People did not invent light waves but people did find a way to explain light with a spectrometer. A sort of language of light. A way to organise and explain to the human mind what appears to be chaos.

Posted by Vince on February 2, 2009 at 2:21 PM

I work at the Space Telescope Science Institute at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, and saw Mario Livio give a talk about the book at the Institute last Wednesday. Actually...he gave a talk about the question (of the book's title).

It was...amazing. One of the best talks I have ever sat in on at the Institute (and getting those talks from the scientists and astronomers who work there are one of the best spiffs Ever I'm here to tell you...) If you can you have to go hear him.

Posted by Bruce Garrett on February 2, 2009 at 7:05 PM

Aislinn @5....well Trillin didn't know what a villanelle was either, so I'll cut Scher some slack on this one.

But it is just another example of the enduring question: why in the hell does KUOW keep Weekday, The Conversation or The Beat (and even worse feels compelled to rebroadcast segments of them at night...repeatedly....months and months later)?

Station management obviously sees a reason to keep them, but they are godawful radio. The Conversation in particular. I can rarely listen to more than 4 or 5 minutes, even when it's covering a subject I'm interested in.

Posted by gnossos on February 2, 2009 at 11:09 PM