Cosmic Variance’d

To my great surprise and pleasure, Sean has been so kind as to mention physics musings in his last post at Cosmic Variance. First of all, I just wanted to say thanks: i’m sure that in many cases reading Cosmic Variance is one of the reasons one starts thinking of writing a physics blog in the first place. At least it was for me. I’m also happy because i’m fond of Sean’s writings in more than a way. A few months ago, i spent some weeks getting up to speed, again, in General Relativity, and carried home several textbooks. Some from my university days, and others published in the interim. And of all those books, the only one that i finally read (and enjoyed) from cover to cover was Sean’s “Spacetime and Geometry: An Introduction to General Relativity”. I’m sure it needs no presentation or recommendation, but, just in case, you can get a feeling of how good it is by reading the notes it’s based on or visiting the book’s website.

Sean’s post has also enlarged my list of monitored blogs with several interesting new entries. Among them, there’s one i’ve been enjoying specially during the last couple of hours. Lest you miss it in the post’s comments, here’s my recommendation: Alejandro’s Reality Conditions is just excellent. He has a lot to say about quantum gravity and the interpretation of quantum mechanics (two of my favourite areas), but also frequently touches more philosophical themes i find absorbing, like cognitive science and the problem of consciousness. With a dose of humor and many interesting links for a good measure. Highly recommended!