Review of "There Are Places in the World Where Rules Are Less Important Than Kindness" by Carlo Rovelli

Carlo Rovelli is an Italian theoretical physicist and writer. I've enjoyed two of Rovelli's popular books about physics and was curious about 'There Are Places In The World Where Rules Are Less Important Than Kindness.' The book demonstrates Rovelli's wide-ranging interests and breadth of knowledge and is interesting to read.


Carlo Rovelli

Rovelli fits the definition of a Renaissance Man in that he tries to embrace all knowledge and develop his own capacities as fully as possible. In this compendium of essays that were previously published in various newspapers, Rovelli writes about poets, scientists, and philosophers who have influenced him in some way. He also touches on his travels, black holes, religion, atheism, statistics, octopus nervous systems, inequality in society, Mein Kampf, free will, and much more.

Rovelli has studied the texts of historical figures like Aristotle, Copernicus, Galileo, Dante, Plato, Isocrates, Newton, etc.....as well as modern scientists and mathematicians like Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, Kip Thorne, Karl Popper, Roger Penrose and more. Rovelli likes to 'connect the dots' between ancient and modern knowledge and to muse about diverse subjects that catch his interest.


Great Scientists

To provide a feel for the essays, I'll give some examples.

ღ Lolita and the Blue Icarus
Most people probably associate Vladimir Nabokov with his novels, especially 'Lolita.' But butterflies - such as the Blue Icarus - were Nabokov's passion. He collected butterflies as a child, published detailed descriptions of hundreds of species, and was the curator of the Lepidoptera section in the Harvard University Museum of Comparative Zoology. The writer was also fascinated by insect mimicry, and wrote, "When a certain moth resembles a certain wasp...it also walks and moves its antennae in a waspish manner" and "When a butterfly has to look like a leaf, not only are all the details of a leaf beautifully rendered but markings mimicking grub-bored holes are generously thrown in."


Vladimir Nabokov with his butterfly net


Blue Icarus Butterfly


This moth mimics a wasp to avoid predators


This butterfly mimics a leaf to avoid predators

ღ Dante, Einstein, and the Three-Sphere
In Dante's epic poem The Divine Comedy, completed in 1321, he depicts the universe (in more lyrical terms) as two sets of concentric spheres, each of which encloses the other. Rovelli observes that Dante is describing a 'three-sphere', the shape of the universe Einstein hypothesized in 1917. The physicist observes, "Dante's unbridled poetic imagination and extraordinary intelligence anticipated by centuries a brilliant intuition of Einstein's."


Dante Alighieri

A three-sphere is a 4-dimensional mathematical construct that's hard to picture. However, Rovelli notes that in a three-sphere universe, a very fast spaceship always moving in the same direction would eventually end up back where it started from. So.....not an infinite universe.



ღ Why Does Inequality Exist?
Most societies have great disparities: billionaires and the poor; generals and privates; freemen and slaves; etc. How did this come to be?

Research suggests that members of nomadic hunter-gatherer groups, which consisted of 10 to 20 individuals, were socially equal. There were no leaders and no accumulation of wealth because booty from the hunt, which spoiled quickly, had to be distributed right away.


Hunter-Gatherers

But when farming began, and extended stationary clans developed, social distinctions emerged. "The conspicuous success of certain individuals began to be socially recognized....and men began to assign higher value to their own gender." 😣 In time, the clan came to be run by a minority that controlled its rites, and this was the origin of the aristocracy, of the clergy, and of large concentrations of wealth. Inequality in human society was born.


Early Farming Community

ღ Marie Curie
Marie Curie won two Nobel Prizes in two different sciences (physics and chemistry) while struggling against adverse circumstances - because she was a woman in a world where it was often assumed women were inferior to men, and because she was a migrant from Poland to France.


Marie Curie

One of Curie's major practical achievements was the realization that X-rays could have medical applications. Marie constructed the first mobile radiography units, and used them on soldiers during WWI. It's estimated that a million servicemen were treated with the benefit of X-rays, saving thousands of lives.


Marie Curie's X-Ray Machine

ღ Black Holes I: The Fatal Attraction of Stars
At one time black holes were considered to be theoretical phenomena that didn't really exist. Then in 1972, a compact dark object in the Cygnus constellation, called Cygnus X-1, was seen to have another star rotating around it at great speed. Physicist John Wheeler wrote: "A black hole is like a man dressed in black who waltzes in a barely lit room with a woman dressed in white. We know that it is there only because we can see a bright star whirling around it."

Now it is estimated that in our galaxy alone there are tens of millions of black holes similar to Cygnus X-1.


Black Hole

ღ Black Holes II: The Heat of Nothingness
Stephen Hawking demonstrated that black holes are naturally hot. This surprised scientists, who once thought nothing could escape a black hole, So how could a black hole give off heat? The heat of black holes involves both the theory of general relativity and quantum theory. This is a scientific breakthrough because it's an indication of a way to combine these two great (seemingly unmergeable) physics theories. In quantum terms, Rovelli speculates that the heat of black holes may be the clue that reveals the existence of 'molecules of space' whose vibrations create heat.


Stephen Hawking determined that black holes emit heat

ღ Black Holes III: The Mystery of the Center
We don't know what happens when matter falls into the center of a black hole. The research group Rovelli works with in Marseille, together with other physicists, are exploring the idea that matter slows down and stops before it reaches the center of a black hole; it forms a kind of extremely small, dense star, a Planck star. Then the matter rebounds and forms a white hole....a region of space into which nothing can enter, but from which things emerge. Why don't we see the explosion immediately? Because time does not pass at the same speed everywhere; it's slowed down by gravity. So if you're INSIDE the black hole, the explosion occurs quickly. But if you're OUTSIDE the black hole, the explosion takes millions of years. (Pretty weird, right?)


Rovelli and other physicists speculate that matter at the center of a black hole might explode back out

ღ Churchill and Science
Winston Churchill was the first British prime minister to appoint a scientific advisor. He followed scientific advances with interest and wrote articles on popular science. Churchill even speculated about the possibility that life may exist elsewhere in the universe, observing: "With thousands of millions of nebulae, each one containing hundreds of millions of suns, the probability that there is an immense number containing planets where life is possible is high."

Churchill was also rather skeptical about humanity and wrote: "I am not so impressed by the successes of our civilization as to believe that in this immense universe....we may [not] be the highest level of mental or physical development that has been reached in this vast expanse of space and time." (I agree.)


Winston Churchill



There's much more in the book, and the essay format makes it especially good for dipping into between other life activities. Highly recommended.

Rating: 4 stars

Review of "The Rescue: A Thriller" by T. Jefferson Parker

I'm entertained by books with amusing animal characters, especially pets that 'talk.' One of the main protagonists in this story is a mongrel pooch named Joe, a 55-pound Labrador-Terrier mix with gull wing ears and an exceptional sense of smell.

Joe doesn't talk per se but we're privy to Joe's thoughts as he grows from a cute puppy, to a talented Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) canine, to the pet of a San Diego self-defense instructor, to a pooch being pursued by a Mexican drug cartel.

Joe's current owner is journalist Bettina Blazak, who writes stories and does video interviews for a newspaper called 'The Coastal Eddy' in Laguna Beach, California.



Bettina first saw Joe at an animal shelter in Tijuana, Mexico, when she was doing a story about Mexican street dogs.



Joe was recovering from a bullet wound, and Bettina learned that, 35 days ago, a boy found the injured dog on a Tijuana street and carried him to the clinic. There Joe was saved by an emergency operation.

Bettina was drawn to Joe, adopted him, and called him Felix. The journalist then wrote an article about Felix's life-threatening adventure, which went viral. This brought the canine to the attention of several previous owners as well as a Mexican drug cartel.



From Joe's thoughts we find out that he lived with a boy named Teddy Delgado as a puppy, but was taken away when a relative was allergic;



Joe was then trained to be a DEA sniffer dog, and worked for several years until he got burn out.



Afterwards, Joe was adopted by an ex-cop/self-defense instructor named Dan Strickland. Dan secretly works for the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, where he uses Joe's outstanding sniffer to steal drugs and cash from the Sinaloa Cartel.



Joe was injured during a cartel shoot-out in Tijuana, and Dan inadvertently lost the pooch in the chaos.



Dan Strickland is a sort of good guy/bad guy who runs an excellent self-protection school, drives a green Maserati Quattroporte, and really loves Joe.....but also loves the drug money Joe makes for him. Moreover, Joe loves Dan back, and misses his former home, which was filled with dog treats and dog toys.



Once Bettina's article about Felix/Joe goes viral, the journalist is contacted by all of Joe's previous owners:

❧ Teddy Delgado sends a series of emails, saying he raised Joe as a puppy, loves and misses the dog, and is saving up money in hopes of buying him back.

❧ A DEA officer says the agency owns Joe, and - though they don't want to take the dog away - have a plan to use Joe against the cartels.

❧ And Dan Strickland asserts Joe is his dog, and he wants Joe back.



Moreover, the Sinaloa Cartel - which lost a lot of money because of Joe - wants to kidnap the canine.

By now Bettina is very attached to Felix/Joe and plans to keep him no matter what.

This is the set-up for the story, which leads to all manner of action and adventure for the characters involved, especially Bettina, Dan, Joe, a bicycle-cop, and a cadre of DEA agents.







This is an exciting adventure story with a touch of romance, recommended to fans of the genre.

I listened to the audiobook, narrated by Victoria Villarreal, who does an excellent job.

Thanks to Netgalley, T. Jefferson Parker, and Macmillan Audio for a copy of the book.

Rating: 3 stars

Review of "Cheddar Late Than Dead: A Grilled Cheese Mystery" by Linda Reilly

 

In this 3rd book in the 'Grilled Cheese Mysteries' series, restaurateur/amateur sleuth Carly Hale gets involved in two investigations: a murder and a missing person. The book works fine as a standalone.



*****

When thirtysomething Carly Hale's husband died in a tragic accident, she moved back to her hometown of Balsam Dell, Vermont and opened Carly's Grilled Cheese Eatery.



Carly's restaurant has become quite popular, and she now employs assistant manager Valerie Wells;



part-time server Suzanne Rivers;



and grill cook/aspiring chef Grant Robinson.



It took time for Carly to move past her grief, but she's now dating electrician Ari Mitchell.....and things might be getting serious.



As the story opens, two women Carly hasn't seen since high school, Dawn Chapin and Klarissa Taddeo, drop in to Carly's eatery for lunch.



Carly and her old acquaintances hug and catch up and Carly learns Klarissa is engaged to marry Tony Manous, head of Balsam Dell's Grounds and Recreation Department. Klarissa is excited about her upcoming wedding shower, which is scheduled to take place at Balsam Dell Inn in twelve days.

During lunch Klarissa gets a phone call and learns that Balsam Dell Inn is no longer available for her shower because the deposit was late. Though Klarissa herself failed to pay the deposit, she loudly blames Dawn, who's her maid of honor and wedding planner. Hearing the commotion, Carly sidles over to calm the waters.



The situation is resolved when Klarissa - who's something of a bridezilla - announces she'll have her wedding shower in the toney home of Dawn's mother, and Carly is recruited to cater the affair. On party day Carly serves the guests three versions of grilled cheese donuts: plain, with crisp bacon, and with thin-sliced tomatoes, all of which are successful.



After the food is eaten, Carly is brought to the drawing room to be thanked by the attendees. As Carly is returning to the kitchen she comes across Tony Manous's stepmother, who's alone and crying because of Klarissa's mean behavior. Afterwards, Carly overhears an agitated conversation among Dawn Chapin, Tony Manous, and videographer Ron Benoit, who's filming the party. Tony then goes upstairs, and shortly later is found dead at the bottom of the steps.....murdered.



Though Police Chief Holloway tells Carly to keep her nose out of the investigation, Carly's a natural born busybody and can't help but make inquiries.



The situation is complicated when town manager Gretel Engstrom - who had a business disagreement with Tony - disappears. Carly makes up excuses that give her the chance to question people, hoping to gather information that exposes the perpetrator.

Meanwhile, in Carly's personal life, she's dating Ari; worrying about her assistant manager Valerie, who's being harassed by an ex-boyfriend; talking to Grant about his ideas for healthy school lunches; visiting her landlady Joyce who has multiple sclerosis; playing with her cute dog Havarti; and more.



I enjoyed this cozy mystery, which has appealing characters and an interesting plot.

Lots of delicious food is served in the story, and recipes for grilled cheese donuts and Grant's tomato soup are included.

Grilled Cheese Donuts with Bacon


Tomato Soup


Thanks to Netgalley, Linda Reilly, and Poisoned Pen Press for a copy of the book.

Rating: 3 stars

Review of "Jimmy Dean's Last Dance: A Novel" by A.K. Alliss

This fictional story is a work of alternative history set in 1962 when (real life) Hollywood actor Jimmy Dean was already deceased. The author A.K. Alliss notes that the novel contains many splits from the real world timeline in the areas of music, movies, people, and events 'to highlight the spirit of the early sixties and the celebrity and political culture of the time.' So readers who like to reconcile historical fiction with real life are out of luck. 🙂

*****

As the story opens Jimmy Dean and his pal Elvis Presley are in Mexico, having been sent by a Vegas gangster called Dominic Frazini to bring back a shipment of money and weed.



Things go badly wrong and the partners decide to go home, lie low, and try to keep off Frazini's radar.

Skip ahead five years and Elvis is a truck driver in Mississippi.....



.....and Jimmy is a small-time actor in Hollywood.



Jimmy is friends with Marilyn Monroe, a troubled actress whose private life has been the subject of catty gossip for years.



Over drinks one evening, an anxious Marilyn tells Jimmy the studio is trying to fire her....but she won't say why.



The next morning Marilyn is found dead in her house, and the authorities announce that she killed herself. Jimmy is skeptical about the alleged suicide and decides to investigate. He finds Marilyn's diary, but is soon mugged and beaten by thugs who take the journal, and the message is clear: 'Stop diggin' kid, or you'll end up dead.'



Jimmy knows he needs help and calls his friend Elvis in Mississippi, saying he's in trouble and it's worse than Mexico. Elvis immediately leaves for Los Angeles, and Jimmy and Elvis's adventures begin.



Jimmy is chased by a Secret Service agent sent by President Jack Kennedy, with whom Marilyn was having an affair; and Elvis is abducted en route to L.A. and brought to Dominic Frazini, who says Elvis owes him for Mexico, and he has to kill Jimmy. Elvis can't help but think, 'Why now?'



As Jim and Elvis look into Marilyn's death they're repeatedly followed and attacked and even find a Hollywood bigwig murdered in his home. Finally, a man named 'Hank' - purportedly with the CIA - grabs Jim and Elvis, and says they'll be framed for murder if they don't assassinate President Kennedy.



There's a lot going on in the book with blackmail, murder, and suggestions of a huge conspiracy involving government agencies and the mob. There are also appearances by Dean Martin, George Cukor, Harvey Weinstein, a man called Lee, a woman named Priscilla, Fidel Castro, and more. Jim and Elvis know they're in WAY over their heads, and will need to be clever and lucky to survive.



I enjoyed the story, which is action-packed, with break-ins, kidnappings, brawling, wrestling, martial arts, shooting guns, and more. There's also plenty of humor, and a little bit of nooky as well.



I listened to the audiobook, narrated by Johnny Heller, Neil Hellegers, Bill Lord, Joya Colucci Lord, Jo Anna Perrin, and Anneliese Rennie, all of whom do a good job.

Thanks to Netgalley, A.K. Alliss, and Spectrum Publishing for a copy of the book.

Rating: 3.5 stars