BLOWN AWAY BY PHYSICS

If my bike weighs about 50 pounds (K or J, do you know how much my bike frame actually is?) and I weigh 125 pounds, and I travel um slowly on a bike (say 15 miles per hour), at what point will the midwestern wind knock me over? Today I biked. Well, I bike every day, but today it was GLORIOUS and in the 40s!!!!!!! (I've actually biked in blizzard conditions which is NOT recommended.) Today was the first time where I was like, hey, I think I'm swerving because the wind is blowing me into the middle of the road. Usually K tells me this is an operator issue, e.g. me, but today it was legitimately the wind because look! Weather dot com:

Wind was between 25-35 mph today!!!! I never took physics in high school, which seems strange because shouldn't that be required? Like geometry and economics? And also because I love physics. Not its practical applications, but its place in history and some of the more useless, theoretical aspects. I used to transcribe lectures at The Commonwealth Club, and for a while I was really obsessed with Leonard Susskind lectures because he used to gossip so much about his contemporaries. Not shit talking gossip, but more like, anecdotal. I feel like Susskind would throw down if need be. I don't remember all the names but I do recall Stephen Hawkings coming up a few times, and Susskind kind of crowing over how right he was about the concept of singularities and black holes and the holographic principle and how wrong Hawkings was and how Hawkings had now seen the light.

I totally transcribed this interview -- and wrote a sidebar for the magazine:

Leonard Susskind - The Black Hole War

Weird. I never knew what he looked like, but I do know all his enunciation habits fairly well. He looks like evil Santa Claus. Do you know what I learned from listening to This American Life recently? There was this entire podcast dedicated to Santa wars. It was amazing. There are real-life crazy ass people who politicized these Santa Claus organizations, or as Jack Skellington likes to say, Sandy Claws. Anyway, the point is, Old St Nick's opposite, his evil side, was SATAN!! Ah!! Now I will have nightmares forever. :(

This is all a convoluted way of saying that I'm done reading "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" and I'm almost done re-reading "One Hundred Years of Solitude" and "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles." I've forgotten how much I like both! They really are just so technically well thought-out, detailed, love stories. Can you imagine writing these novels? They are epic. Everything fits. Everything happens, and in such minute, interloping ways. Imagine if Harry Potter was condensed into one book (!). I feel like that is the amount of stuff that Marquez and Murakami are able to get through in 400 or 500 pages. Sheer efficiency. I think I got really sick of Murakami last year, but now that I've had a breather, I can see why I loved him so much.

So... what to read next? I just got another Amazon gift card from participating in a study.

Maybe it's time for some Herzog.

xoxo! Friday! xoxo!

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