Real Physics

I've gotten away from the blog "Real Physics" lately, though it was one of the first I had ever engaged. I met it's author, "Lawrence Gage," at a conference hosted by Dr. Anthony Rizzi at Notre Dame several years ago. The blog covers theology (Catholic), literature and current events as much  as physics, but has a good take on things. He's a big Tolkien aficionado as well. The author seems to have gotten away from it, too, though we can hope for a comeback;) Check it out, look through it's archives, you're sure to find something interesting enough to comment on. A little traffic is always encouraging to a blogger.

Also check out the link to Dr. Rizzi who is doing good work through his institute in undoing the current materialist, scientistic culture. He's a top-notch physicist who participated in setting up the Laser Interferometric Gravitational-wave Observatory (or LIGO) and worked on experiments included in missions to Mars. He made quite a mark in coming up with first satisfactory relativistic definition of angular momentum in a 1998 notice in Physical Review Letters, a popular account of which was presented in the journal Science (Both articles are unfortunately paywalled, but you might be able to get them through a local college or university. They commonly allow "townies" access to their library computers which are typically logged in to their subscriptions.) A Real Genius.

He has since written a book, "Physics for Realists," which presents his  approach to re-grounding science in a realist metaphysic. There is a brief review of it in The Review of Metaphysics by renowned Catholic philosopher Jude P. Dougherty, Dean Emeritus of the School of Philosophy at the Catholic University of America.

SEM: Search Engine Misdirection

Once in a while I notice traffic from a link from an old incarnation of www.meadabawdy.com (actually another site I managed; there was trouble with some dns settings) I suspect that there are some cached references in the search engines. If you arrived here looking for something more technical or scientific, apologies for the misdirection. And check back once in a while, I may hit those notes here once in a while.

The latest hit was from an old biographical blurb on Pierre Duhem, a French theoretical physicist from the turn of the last century (1861–1916: Was that the turn of the 19th or 20th century?) I'd like to write up something more substantial on him sometime, but could likely do no better than a distillation of Fr. Stanley L. Jaki's (pronounced "Yah-key") Uneasy Genius, which is out of print but available used (it's pricey) through Amazon. You might check Barnes & Noble, Alibris or other sites, or better still, a good local used book store.