Amazon - Overflow - Painting

New arrivals from Amazon today.

• The Quiet War by Paul McAuley


• The Mating Mind by Geoffrey Miller


• The City & The City by China Mieville.

Paul McAuley's book got an excellent review at Strange Horizons, here (Reynold's book "House of Suns" less so) while China Mieville's book has been seen as a return to form with a truly weird premise.

Miller is an up-and-coming evolutionary psychologist and his book has been widely recommended for its examination of the role of sexual selection in human cognitive evolution: I guess the title was Marketing's contribution.

Additionally to come

• Philosophy of Mathematics and Natural Science by Hermann Weyl


• House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds

once Amazon has got hold of a copy of Weyl's book.

On the domestic front, there is some kind of overflow pipe from the heating system which emerges just outside our back door. It has intermittently dripped water for some years now: echelons of plumbers have scratched their heads, simulated competence and opined that they have no idea what is causing it but that it can't possibly be doing any harm.

Recently the flow has increased somewhat, and rather than expend a fortune in calling out yet another nonplussed plumber, Clare decided to channel the water to the flower bed. The two photos below show the hydraulic mechanism which has now been put into effect.




Meanwhile Adrian demonstrates those aerial skills which have so contributed to his snowboarding and skiing success (below), painting our windows from an elevated height.


OK, enough displacement activities. Back to quantized angular momentum and spin.