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Spider Star
The human colony on the planet Argo has long explored and exploited the technology left behind by an extinct alien race. But then an archaeology team accidentally activates a terrible weapon...
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Praise for Star Dragon
"Seldom does a storytelling talent come along as potent and fully mature as Mike Brotherton. His complex characters take you on a voyage that is both fiercely credible and astonishingly imaginative. This is Science Fiction."
-- David Brin"Star Dragon is terrific fare, offering readers a fusion of hard science and grand adventure."
-- Locus Magazine"Star Dragon is steeped in cosmology, the physics of interstellar travel, exobiology, artificial intelligence, bioscience. Brotherton, author of many scientific articles in refereed journals, has written a dramatic, provocative, utterly convincing hard science sf novel that includes an ironic twist that fans will love."
-- Booklist starred review"Readers hungry for the thought-provoking extrapolation and rigorous technical detail of old-fashioned hard SF are sure to enjoy astronomer Brotherton's first novel."
-- Publishers Weekly"Mike Brotherton, himself a trained astrophysicist, combines the technical acuity and ingenuity of Robert Forward with the ironic, postmodern stance and style of M. John Harrison. In this, his debut novel, those twin talents unite to produce a work that is involving on any number of levels. It's just about all you could ask for in a hardcore SF adventure."
-- Paul di Fillippo, SCI-FI.COM
Einstein Got Laid Like a Rockstar
April 21st, 2009
I guess this isn’t surprising. Smart is sexy, right?
But really he was born into the era of celebrity and was a pioneer that way. Scientists today rarely make it to celebrity status, and those that do tend to do it for reasons only tangentially related to their research (e.g., science popularizers like Carl Sagan).
Celebrity is sexier than smarts, I think, for most women.
Men are funny. Many don’t seem to want women smarter than them, or more successful. Their loss. It does seem to result in a lot of celebrity marriages, and when your dating pool is limited to folks who have to deal with celebrity on a daily basis, relationships are bound to be challenging.
Anyway, back to Einstein. I promised Einstein.
The official public facts are unremarkable. He married twice. The first time he was young, hormones and romance drawing him to Mileva Maric, a smart and rare female physics student like himself. Older, dark, and mysterious. Well, after one illegitimate child put up for adoption, two legitimate sons (the younger mentally ill), Einstein had had it with Mileva. He started an affair with his cousin, Elsa Einstein, and eventually married her following a drawn-out divorce. In addition to love and affection, at least initially, he seemed to marry his first wife for the science they shared, and his second to have someone to cook and clean and be comforable around.
A couple of years ago many of Einstein’s personal letters were finally released leading to a plethora of stories in the press. One that predated the release of the letters, citing Einstein’s well-known tendencies, proclaims “Einstein was a Babe Magnet.”
The news coverage is also so very varied. I don’t know why journalists pretend to be unbiased and refuse to call crap on obvious crap and then go ahead and report on Einstein’s personal life either being in “turmoil” while another colleague says “Einstein, sex fiend,” and another “babe magnet.”
Was it his cute German accent? This website has some recordings of Einstein discussing a number of topics from science to world peace.
One of the things I love about Einstein, beyond his brilliant discoveries in physics, which are legion and more than you’re probably aware of, is that he just didn’t care what people thought about him. He didn’t wear socks. He didn’t maintain his hair. He wore the same frumpy clothes (he had a set of identical outfits) so he didn’t have to think about what he was going to wear every day. He even apparently told his wife about his affairs.
That sort of personal confidence and strength can be attractive.
Women weren’t after him for his money. He had little early on, got some later with the Nobel prize, then llost much of it in the stock market. It wasn’t until he got his Princeton job that he pulled down a really good salary. Most of his mistresses were well off.
We could contrast Einstein with Newton. Newton was very religious, mystical, and prided himself for dying a virgin. Both shared the same quality important for forging new paths in science: they followed their own ideas and didn’t care what others thought. I’m sure Newton could have gotten laid like a rockstar if he had wanted to.
But I digress. This is interesting, salaciously so, I suppose. Still, I wonder if throwing in some history, some story, into introductory physics classes wouldn’t bring in and retain more students. Professors who bring history to life are loved by their students. Professors who bring science to life…those are called professors of the history of science, I’m afraid. Most of us aren’t trained in the stories unless we seek them out and learn them, and even then there are issues of presentation that scientists are not well versed in. History professors have to deal with touchy issues all the time: slavery, philandering, etc. Scientists sometimes have to deal with religious issues, but we usually default to something like, “This is how I’m going to test you, let’s not talk about anything controversial in class.”
The recent Walter Isaacson Einstein biography is very good if you want to learn some of the story from a master. He doesn’t delve too deeply into the philandering, but does mention weekends away from Princeton with the occasional co-ed. It was good to be Einstein, and I won’t judge him badly for leading exactly the life he wanted to.
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April 21st, 2009 at 7:50 pm
Professors who bring science to life…those are called professors of the history of science, I’m afraid.
Which is why I had a second major (and regretfully declined the offer of a Phd slot) in HPS. Probably because they’re such a small and obscure faculty, the HPS crew at my university threw a lot of passion and care into their teaching. Gotta love all that Copernicus/Galileo/Newton stuff.
However, this debate (about putting a bit more background into science education) was something that came up in class during my HPS time. I went through high school when science teaching in Australia was completely without context and spectacularly dull. I was advocating your position (ie: more background detail), but the rest of the class (mostly about 8 years younger than me) objected. They claimed that when they were at school they burnt so much time on biographical content that they never got around to studying the actual science.
It’s a tricky balance thing. What science education really needs is more time, I think.
July 5th, 2009 at 12:17 am
[...] Einstein got laid like a rockstar. A couple of years ago many of Einstein’s personal letters were finally released leading to a plethora of stories in the press. One that predated the release of the letters, citing Einstein’s well-known tendencies, proclaims “Einstein was a BabeMagnet.” [...]