Judgement Day, a review, but first its Frogmass!

Spring officially began this last weekend by Chaoist reckoning, for that’s when the pond at Chateaux Chaos filled with frogs. We have about 50 this year for the start of a 24/7 two week non-stop party and shagfest. The ‘music’ gets rather loud in the evenings. They have come in a variety of colours from whitish-yellow through greens and browns to a few that look a bit burgundy.

Let us hope we don’t get a late freeze, the climate seems oddly disturbed; we have just had the coldest Easter in a very long while.

The Science of Discworld 4, Judgement Day, has just appeared, I love this book although I suspect many liberal arts based Pratchett fans may find the extended science sections from Prof Ian Stewart (Maths and Physics) and Dr Jack Cohen (Biology) a bit of a challenge. Pratchett himself weaves an amusingly quirky tale that basically allows the two scientists to let rip with some of the more extraordinary recent developments in our understanding of reality, and an exploration of their strange philosophical implications.

I note with pleasure that the Big Bang hypothesis and the Higgs Boson get treated with a robust scepticism, as do many topics in cosmology and quantum physics. I began to wonder if the morphic fields of The Apophenion and The Octavo have found some resonance in the memesphere.