The Altera Centauri collection has been brought up to date by Darsnan. It comprises every decent scenario he's been able to find anywhere on the web, going back over 20 years.
25 themes/skins/styles are now available to members. Check the select drop-down at the bottom-left of each page.
Call To Power 2 Cradle 3+ mod in progress: https://apolyton.net/forum/other-games/call-to-power-2/ctp2-creation/9437883-making-cradle-3-fully-compatible-with-the-apolyton-edition
I got into physics through popular books on astronomy (~5 years old) and later from science fiction.
I read A Brief History when I was 13 or so. I had the sneaking suspicion that wheelchair-bound bastard was lying to me, and I found out later I was right.
Originally posted by KrazyHorse
Dawkins writes about stuff which is much more comprehensible to laymen. They might get a simplified view, but it's at least somewhat accurate. Trying to write to layman about Hawking radiation, for instance, is generally an exercise in futility. You might as well just make **** up. It'll contain the same amount of useable knowledge.
You can't explain why it happens, but you can give them a basic understanding what happens - black holes leak. Which, frankly, has as much practical utility as knowing how nat. selection works to most people.
Why can't you be a non-conformist just like everybody else?
It's no good (from an evolutionary point of view) to have the physique of Tarzan if you have the sex drive of a philosopher. -- Michael Ruse
The Nedaverse I can accept, but not the Berzaverse. There can only be so many alternate realities. -- Elok
Those books spend most of their time either trying to explain why things happen or making wild-ass conjectures based solely on the author's own personal opinions.
Originally posted by Kuciwalker
I thought you were an EE.
My degree is EE and physics. I chose to specialize in theo. phys./applied maths.
And if I shook of this depression and finished my studies, I'd soon be churning out pleas for grants.
Why can't you be a non-conformist just like everybody else?
It's no good (from an evolutionary point of view) to have the physique of Tarzan if you have the sex drive of a philosopher. -- Michael Ruse
The Nedaverse I can accept, but not the Berzaverse. There can only be so many alternate realities. -- Elok
Originally posted by Kuciwalker
See, this is why CS is better. I got into compsci by actually doing it
'Tis not my fault black holes aren't as cheap as computers.
Why can't you be a non-conformist just like everybody else?
It's no good (from an evolutionary point of view) to have the physique of Tarzan if you have the sex drive of a philosopher. -- Michael Ruse
The Nedaverse I can accept, but not the Berzaverse. There can only be so many alternate realities. -- Elok
Originally posted by KrazyHorse
Those books spend most of their time either trying to explain why things happen or making wild-ass conjectures based solely on the author's own personal opinions.
Then you should be complaining about bad popsci, not popsci per se.
Why can't you be a non-conformist just like everybody else?
It's no good (from an evolutionary point of view) to have the physique of Tarzan if you have the sex drive of a philosopher. -- Michael Ruse
The Nedaverse I can accept, but not the Berzaverse. There can only be so many alternate realities. -- Elok
Honestly, I don't really care if some physicists are able to make boatloads of money off a gullible public.
I'm just going to continue to make fun of those who read such books and then come try to argue with me based on what they've read.
I dispute not only the pedagogical usefulness of such books, but even the possibility of any future book aimed at teaching the same things to the same audience having such usefulness.
If you want to treat them as a useful marketing device for scientific grant money, then fine. But they are not really educating the public.
Why can't you be a non-conformist just like everybody else?
It's no good (from an evolutionary point of view) to have the physique of Tarzan if you have the sex drive of a philosopher. -- Michael Ruse
The Nedaverse I can accept, but not the Berzaverse. There can only be so many alternate realities. -- Elok
Originally posted by KrazyHorse
Dawkins writes about stuff which is much more comprehensible to laymen. They might get a simplified view, but it's at least somewhat accurate. Trying to write to layman about Hawking radiation, for instance, is generally an exercise in futility. You might as well just make **** up. It'll contain the same amount of useable knowledge.
I see your point, but again, why the constant argument that somehow there needs to be "useable knowledge"?
Why can't interest in the subject be enough of a goal?
Originally posted by Kuciwalker
See, this is why CS is better. I got into compsci by actually doing it before that I always thought I'd be a mathematician.
You weren't doing compsci, you were doing programming.
You probably just started recently learning about proper comp SCIENCE.
Originally posted by KrazyHorse
Honestly, I don't really care if some physicists are able to make boatloads of money off a gullible public.
I'm just going to continue to make fun of those who read such books and then come try to argue with me based on what they've read.
I dispute not only the pedagogical usefulness of such books, but even the possibility of any future book aimed at teaching the same things to the same audience having such usefulness.
If you want to treat them as a useful marketing device for scientific grant money, then fine. But they are not really educating the public.
I have read many stories of great mathematicians\scientists, and know first hand many others who have told me how great effects such and such popsci or popmath book had as influence on them when they were younger.
The money grant thing was to be a bit cynical, but in the longer term, getting the general public INTERESTED in science is very important. That's the most important consequence of such publications and it is very crucial to the long term health of our fields.
1) The universe was born small, dense and hot
2) It got bigger, less dense and cooler
3) Black holes are black, except they aren't
The only problem is nobody would pay 15$ for a book which contains 1 paragraph...
I don't get your point.
If somebody gets that out of reading the book, that's already much better than nothing no?
I think even your view of how people become experts in their field is distorted.
Let's take you for example.
I am willing to bet that you did not learn all the subjects linearly like you've explained it should be done to become an expert, but instead read ahead, getting dim views of things you didn't understand yet, but that gave you interest and motivation to understand better what you were learning at the moment, and later clarified your understanding on these more advanced topics.
That's how it was for me, and for almost everyone I know.
I was always reading "ahead" and not properly understanding and that gave motivation.
I still do actually, as I can never hope to even come close to understand everything there is in mathematics.
I read about sub fields I know less about, get a broad idea etc.. If I'm lucky, at some point in my life I'll deepen my understanding of that particular subfield, but in the meantime, the shallow understanding I have is in no way worse than no understanding at all.
I see your point, but again, why the constant argument that somehow there needs to be "useable knowledge"?
Why can't interest in the subject be enough of a goal?
So I could accomplish the same thing by claiming that black holes radiate through the mechanism of magic pixies shuttling mass out of them?
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