What are you reading now - and then

[trish]

Sacre Bleu by Christopher Moore
Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway
Bird Sense by Tim Birkead

Just finished Jared Diamond's Collapse, Ratner-Rosenhagen's American Nietzsche and David Bellos' Is that a Fish in Your Ear?

[runningdownthatdream]

Sacre Bleu by Christopher Moore
Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway
Bird Sense by Tim Birkead

Just finished Jared Diamond's Collapse, Ratner-Rosenhagen's American Nietzsche and David Bellos' Is that a Fish in Your Ear?

When do you sleep?

[trish]

I always have my kindle with me. So I read in line, on the bus, at the coffee shop...I'm a reader...when I'm not thinking about mathematics or physics or checking out what people around me are wearing. I usually work on two to four books at a time...finish a chapter in one and start a new chapter in another. It's just like following several different tv-series through a season; and if you're lucky enough to have picked a good set of books, it's better than tv. To be fair it takes me a month or two or three to finish a set.

[Prospero]

Mathematics... now tell me this then Trish. I've run across the claim in many places that there are more synaptic connections to neurons in the human brain than there are particles in the known universe.' This clim was first made to me by Professor (now Baroness) Susan Greenfield (not a physicist but a neuroscientist) and I've seen it repeated ad nauseum. It doesn't make sense. For surely synaptic connections must be composed of the very particles they're meant to outnumber.

[Stavros]

right now- The Road by Cormac Mcarthy

Took me a few hours to read that rubbish, prose so brittle it falls apart at the slightest pressure. Now, the Naked Lunch -that to me is the kind of outrageous, inventive, sarcastic, erotic, even informative prose that doesn't get published these days. Together with Selby's Last Exit to Brooklyn and John Rechy' City of Night Burroughs has this genre licked, as it were.

[trish]

Mathematics... now tell me this then Trish. I've run across the claim in many places that there are more synaptic connections to neurons in the human brain than there are particles in the known universe.' This clim was first made to me by Professor (now Baroness) Susan Greenfield (not a physicist but a neuroscientist) and I've seen it repeated ad nauseum. It doesn't make sense. For surely synaptic connections must be composed of the very particles they're meant to outnumber.

Lovely argument. I think you’ve got a proof there.

It’s hard to know what the authors of the claim may have meant. Maybe they meant the observable universe and the average brain extends into reaches beyond the resolving powers of modern telescopes

I recall reading the brain had 10^11 (100 000 000 000 = one hundred billion) neurons. If each one was connected to each of the others by a single connection there would be about 5 x 10^21 connections (5 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 connections. The formula is n(n-1)/2 connections if there are n neurons). That’s still less than the number of hydrogen atoms in a gram of hydrogen (Avogadro’s number is about 6 x 10^23). So there're still way more particles in the universe.

Perhaps the authors meant the number of possible brains one could obtain by various wirings. For example suppose each of the 10^11 neurons can be connected to each of the others by one connection or no connection. Then there are 2^(5x10^21) possible brains or possible wirings of a single brain. That’s a one followed by five septillion zeros. It’s probably greater than the number of anything in the universe.

On the other hand if two neurons can share more than one connection then the number of possible connections would climb economically. (I think it was Feynman who once commented that economical numbers have gotten way bigger than astronomical ones).

Still I think you have an airtight objection. The number of actual physical connections cannot exceed the total number of molecules that constitute the connections.

I believe Eddington estimated the number protons in the observable universe to be less than 10^80. It’s worth noting too that Richard Feynman observed a consistent interpretation of quantum field theory allows that there is only one, albeit very busy, electron in the entire universe.

[buttslinger]

Good one, Trish.

[Prospero]

Trish - thank you for that. It is odd how this statistic is bandied about by even great experts in the field of Neuroscience as a wow gosh fact when it is clearly spurious. (Im afraid I'm culpable on this too for including it in a film I made a few years ago about the search to understand consciousness. The claim has bugged me ever since - but was in a quote from a scientist.)

[Stavros]

Larissa Taylor The Virgin Warrior, The Life and Death of Joan of Arc (2009)

A relatively short and concise history of 'the Maid' which goes beyond the mystery of her 'voices' and shows what a truly extraordinary woman Joan/Jeanne/Jehanne was. The book also sets her in the context of a 'France' that was still being formed (Jeanne was born in the Lorraine which at the time was not part of France), and also as one of many female mystics and savants (some of them frauds) who emerged in the middle ages and who were often taken seriously by people. Taylor explains Joan's rise to power as a figure who emerged when the French were so disorganised and demoralised after waves of English victories that anyone with a positive view was encouraged, whatever their gender. She also received counselling from members of the King's circle and was trained how to use weapons. If her success on the battlefield is one thing, he ability to outwit her interrogators, after her arrest and incarceration in Rouen, and her impacable belief she was visited by the Angels is undeniable. One of those figures from history I would like to meet...or at least see from a distance, preferably not tied to the stake....

The Virgin Warrior: The Life and Death of Joan of Arc: Amazon.co.uk: Larissa Juliet Taylor: Books@@AMEPARAM@@http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/517mEOf4clL.@@AMEPARAM@@517mEOf4clL

[Prospero]

Just finished The Enchanter by Lila Azam Zanganeh, a short confection inspired by her passion for the writing of Vladimir Nabokov - a wonderful reminder of why I found him so inpsiring in my 20s.

And am now reading the new book by Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi called "The Great Partnership" on the relationship between Religion and Science. He writes beautifully though, so far, I am not persuaded by his arguments for God.