BBC4 are going for a week of map-related stuff pivoting on the four-part Beauty of Maps (narrated incidentally by the steely-voiced, Scottish X-Wing Pilot and Uncle of Obi-Wan - Denis Lawson). Last night this was about the Mappa Mundi which despite being in Hereford and close to where I grew up, I have never seen. This is a map which would probably keep me happy for hours (once I'd learnt to read Latin I suppose) though Grayson Perry's tribute/homage to MM, Map of Nowhere is a modern substitute. Give me an atlas an I am happy for some time.
And also keeping me busy is the band-wagon-jumping of Why Does E=mc2? (and why should we care?) by intellectual de-jour, Professor Brian Cox and equally clever Professor Jeff Forshaw. This is a readable book and jumps straight in with the explanation of why light speed is fixed and why this means that time and distance is not. It uses the standard light-clock-on-a-train method and Pythagoras to explain the changes and this is fine. However, it then avoids the standard historical narrative of Special Relativity followed by General Relativity and all the standard means of trying to explain them and goes into a real-world example of why space-time is a signal entity using the example of the time and distance between waking up and finishing your breakfast from both your point of view and that of a passing observer. I have to admit I have had to go back and read this bit again but the promise of a beautiful revelation at the end of it draws you in to quite happily repeating the difficult bits. I am hopeful for a full path to understanding all of relativity rather than just isolated bits of the equations.
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