Grains of Sand (Free subscription) | 07/22/2008
In Surfing the Universe , Benjamin Wallace-Wells surveys the controversy over Garrett Lisi's work . Towards the end Wallace-Wells quotes Betram Kostant of MIT who is "unaffiliated in the string theory wars": Columbus made mistakes and thought he was in India. [Garrett] Lisi made a few errors, but this pales into insignificance to his possibly opening up a whole new world for exploration...E*...
Late Reviews and Latest Obsessions (Free subscription) | 08/08/2008
The Billionaire’s Vinegar : The Mystery of the World’s Most Expensive Bottle of Wine , by Benjamin Wallace, Crown, 2008 Somewhere around two-thirds of the way through this entertaining account of the controversy surround possible counterfeit antique wines, I began to hope that there’d be a definitive answer. The book seems to fall on the side of very, very strongly suggesting that all...
Emdashes (Free subscription) | 08/01/2008
Paul explains today's brainy "Wavy Rule" (click to enlarge): In the July 21 issue of The New Yorker , Benjamin Wallace-Wells wrote about roaming physicist-surfer Garrett Lisi, the author of "An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything." The fantasy of someone coming out of the woodwork (or the surfshop) to announce the fact that they've figured out all of the secrets of the universe...
WINE IN SWEDEN (Free subscription) | 08/01/2008
I just finished reading my copy of The Billionaire's Vinegar by Benjamin Wallace; it is subtitled The Mystery of the World's Most Expensive bottle of Wine . It is published by Crown Publishers of New York. I picked my copy up at Chapters in Montreal for 29.35 Canadian Dollars but I have seen it at NK here in Stockholm. The most expensive bottle of wine was a 1787 Chateau Lafite sold in...
Today's Tribune-Review (Free subscription) | 07/23/2008
Benjamin Wallace's entertaining "The Billionaire's Vinegar: The Mystery of the World's Most Expensive Bottle of Wine" (Crown Publishing, 2008, $24.95) proves some wines are for people with more money than brains.
The Reference Frame (Free subscription) | 07/15/2008
A new issue of New Yorker (not available online) includes a story about Garrett Lisi written by Benjamin Wallace-Wells. I was also asked several questions by this guy but convinced him to ask senior yet conventional physicists instead. He did it - but surprisingly, he has also asked some non-physicists. In the article, people generally agree that Lisi's text doesn't contain any working...
Not Even Wrong (Free subscription) | 07/15/2008
This week’s New Yorker has a quite good article by Benjamin Wallace-Wells entitled “Surfing the Universe” about Garrett Lisi and the controversy generated last year by his paper An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything (which I wrote about here). Unfortunately the article is not available on-line as far as I know. One of the main themes [...]
