Einstein - His Life And Universe

I just finished reading Walter Isaacson's biography "Einstein - His Life and Universe." I didn't think I'd ever have to read another Einstein biography after "Subtle Is The Lord" by Abraham Pais.

Abraham Pais was a also physicist, a younger protege of Einstein's at the Institute of Advanced Studies at Princeton. He knew Einstein personally; he was versed in the details of his work; he was uniquely qualified to write an intimate biography. His book is remarkable for its level of detail. Book publishers claim that adding a single equation, even one as "simple" and well known to the general public as , would reduce the readership by half.

If that's true, and knowing how rapidly converges to zero, then I must have been the only person on earth who ever bought and read Pais' work. Not only did he have plenty of equations, they included generalized tensors with sub-scripts and super-scripts proudly waving. I'm neither a mathematician nor a physicists, but I've taken a course that included generalized tensors. The presence of metric tensors didn't scare me away or detract from my enjoyment.

As much as I liked "Subtle", I think Isaacson's book was more fun and accessible. He made Einstein seem less like an intellectual, unapproachable deity and more like a real human being. I could appreciate him expressing his frustration towards the folks at Zurich Polytechnic for dithering about a job offer by saying on page 176: "The dear Zurich folks can kiss my..."

Einstein was a man of great humor. He was quite a hit with the ladies - divorced once, married twice, and amorous with a few more. He loved music, especially Mozart for his violin. He was detached from people, yet he had friendships that lasted his entire life.

Walter Isaacson is a terrific writer. I enjoyed this book very much. It makes me want to grad his Steve Jobs biography as soon as possible.

Running Again

It's been too long since my last post. I've got a lot of pent up stuff to write about. I'll certainly improve on my poor showing so far this year.

Part of my problem was being away. I spent part of April in Ireland. Sounds like a post waiting to happen.

Another problem is that today is a perfect, beautiful, late spring day that makes it impossible to stay inside for long. I did well running throughout the winter and spring. I've stuck to half mile repeats on the road in front of my house. I try to pay attention to cadence, rhythm, breathing, pace, and staying relaxed. It's gone very well. I've had no injuries. I can actually say that I've enjoyed running! That hasn't been so for thirty years or more.

It was cool and sunny this morning, with perfect blue skies after a day of steady rain. I decided to head out for a run before lunch. I decided to go for a longer jaunt instead of half mile repeats. There's a route going in the other direction that has a long, gradual hill for the first mile, followed by a right turn and a mile of flat running with a hill at the end. I got to the end of that and took another left and kept going. Buck Road is a pretty one-mile stretch that ends at Route 66. The first three miles went very well for me. I kept up a consistent pace the whole time.

I was tired on the way back. The downhills that helped me on the way out were my enemy on the way home. Potential energy had to be paid back. I walked a couple of times, but nothing excessive; just enough to catch my breath. I finished the six mile run in a decent enough time for me. It wouldn't impress anyone to post it, but in the immortal words of Mark Logan: "Finishing is winning."

I was pleased to finish off such a long run in fine style. I never would have guessed that I'd still be able to run in impromptu fashion on a nice day at my age. We'll see how I feel tomorrow. It'll be a good sign if I recover well.

I started learning how to run again on 20-Jun last year. I've managed to keep it up the whole year through. I hope I can build on that over the next year and get strong enough to take it to another level.