He was standing there holding court about the state of science education in the country. He was also discussing the lack of political vision, and I thought how the level of this decline came with an astounding --and perhaps corresponding-- level of malaise. Looking back, other than World War II and perhaps the country's early days of Revolutionary politics, has anything truly excited and united people here more than scientific innovation and the space program?
We went to see the movie Instellar last night. Despite being a huge fan of Kip Thorne, I had been dreading this for weeks. I have never really enjoyed seeing Hollywood movies and this one promised to be both too intense and too long...My astronomer, however, really wanted to go --so what could I do? We went and --in a nutshell-loved it. As he said it, this was the movie he had been waiting for all his life. It's true, it had all the theories I had loved reading about as a kid--wormholes, black holes, exoplanets and time travel...and it was absolutely stunning to boot! The critics hated the "cosmic love letter" aspect of the movie, but I really loved that part since I too believe that love is a lot like gravity.
As John Semley said in Maclean's:
“Love is the one thing we’re capable of perceiving that transcends the dimensions of time and space.” More than a pricey ad for NASA,Interstellar feels like Nolan’s love letter to the human spirit. Sometimes, the glass of Tang is more than half full. Sometimes it’s positively overflowing.
For more: What I wanted to tell him on 3Quarks.
Kip Thorne: Physicist who inspired Interstellar spills the backstory—and the scene that makes him cringe
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