This blog feature amusing and heartwarming stories about our late Leonberger dog Bronco, as well as other Leonbergers. It also has a lot of information about the Leonberger breed, the history, care, training, Leonberger organizations, etc. I also wrote a Leonberger book, which I am featuring in the sidebar.
Our Leonberger Bronco, well Le Bronco von der Löwenhöhle, and my book about him, as well as an interview with me by journalist Kersten Rettig was featured on page 10 of the Preston Hollow Peoples Magazine. This magazine is mailed to 47,000 households in north Dallas. Below are pictures from the on-line version of Preston Hollow Peoples Magazine. You can probably not read the text in the top picture. However, I added additional pictures which are enlarged/zoomed-in versions, and you may be able to read those. Also, if you click on any of the pictures you are taken to the magazine where you can zoom in and enlarge as much as you want.
This is the spread of Preston Hollow Peoples Magazine that feature our Leonberger Bronco and my book about him. Click on the picture to see the online page.
Just as an FYI, Preston Hollow is an area in north Dallas with a long history. Some of its residents include former President George W. Bush, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, Dallas Stars owner Tom Hicks, Dirk Nowitzki, Jordan Spieth, Tyler Seguin, and the late Ross Perot who once was a Presidential candidate.
The article in Preston Hollow Peoples Magazine. Click on the picture to see the online page.Zoom-in of the article in Preston Hollow Peoples Magazine. The illustration by Naomi Rosenblatt shows Bronco’s face as he is carrying two hamsters in his mouth. Click on the picture to see the online page.Another zoom-in of the article in Preston Hollow Peoples Magazine. Click on the picture to see the online page.Another zoom-in of the article in Preston Hollow Peoples Magazine. Click on the picture to see the online page.
There is a World Wide Independent Leonberger Database (WILD) which features more than 166,000 Leonbergers. That is a lot considering that there are 30,000 Leonbergers in the world and if you go back in time there were many fewer. In fact, genetic research has shown that there are only 22 founder animals (the ancestors of all living Leonbergers) who lived soon after the Second World War. By selecting the search item from the menu and then typing in the name of your Leonberger you can most likely find your dog in the database. If your Leonberger’s entry does not have a photo you can email them a photo, which I did.
Click on the image to visit the World Wide Independent Leonberger Database (WILD).
Another update I requested and had approved was an update to Bronco’s name. We wanted to name our Leonberger Bronco. It was our son’s choice. However, the Leonberger community and breeders have rules about how to name your dog. My wife Claudia was told that Bronco would not work because the litter Bronco was part of needed to have names beginning with an ‘L’. You can see the full sibling screenshot below. So, Claudia said “Let’s do Le Bronco”. Imagine our surprise when his birth certificate stated that his name was “Lets Do Le Bronco von der Löwenhöhle”. Well, “Lets Do Le Bronco von der Löwenhöhle” begins with an ‘L’. His birth certificate name including the unexpected preamble “Lets Do” made its way into the database. Fortunately, the World Wide Independent Leonberger Database recently updated his full name to “Le Bronco von der Löwenhöhle” upon my request.
This is the old data base entry for Bronco. Lets Do Le Bronco von der Löwenhöhle.This is the corrected data base entry for Bronco. Le Bronco von der Löwenhöhle. Click on the picture to visit Bronco’s database entry.
I should explain that the database entries feature not only name, birthdate and birthplace, kennel, etc. It also contains health related information including important tests, genetic defects and inbreeding coefficients (COI). Note that Bronco lived in Dallas, Texas, but he was born at Kennel Löwenhöhle outside Vancouver, Canada.
Bronco’s four full siblings (same litter). You don’t call it twins for dogs but that’s what they were. Notice that all their names start with an ‘L’.The database entry for Bronco’s father.The database entry for Bronco’s mother.The database entry for Bronco’s grandfather. Notice that he had 201 offspring. This was a kennel in Germany.
I followed Bronco’s ancestors back on his father’s side 22 generations. The last one with a photo was 17 generations back, born in 1922. However, ancestry is not a straight line along the father’s and the grandfather’s line. It is an ever-growing ancestry tree involving 2, then 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, etc., ancestors, so Bronco has many ancestors with photos.
This is Bronco’s great great great father etc., 17 generations back. Leo von der Sagamuhle. He was born February 20th 1922.Close up of Leo von der Sagamuhle, Bronco’s straight back ancestor on his father’s side, 17 generations (great great …. grandfather).Alma von der Niederhaid, a female ancestor on Bronco’s mother’s side from 1957.Leo von Hailtingen born in 1927, another of Bronco’s ancestors.Pasha von der Haardt born 1904, the farthest back Bronco ancestor I found that had a photo.
What about you? Do you know your dog’s or cat’s ancestry tree? How about photos, illnesses, and inbreeding coefficients? How about your own lineage?
With today’s post I just wanted to show a photo of a beautiful young Leonberger called Hachi with my book. Brenda Saito allowed me to use the photo, which I took from her review on the Canadian Amazon site. I am so grateful for this review. You can read the review by clicking on the photo, and you can view the entry for my book on amazon Canada by clicking here.
Photo of Hachi a young Leonberger in Canada. Click on the photo to see the associated review.
On Amazon my Leonberger book has 13 ratings including 11 reviews and on Goodreads I have four reviews and on Bookbub and Barnes & Noble none. All the reviews are wonderful and supportive five-star reviews. I am extremely grateful for this .💖
However, with this post I would like to shamelessly request additional reviews. The vast majority of readers do not write reviews. I know, I am the same way. It is hardly something you expect. But if anyone out there who has read my book and has not written a review somewhere, is willing to do just that, I would be very grateful. I would like to stress that the review certainly doesn’t have to be a four-star, or five-star review and they don’t need to be elaborate or wonderful or long. Short honest reviews between one-star and five-star would all be very helpful to me.
If you go to the Amazon page for my book and you scroll down until you see “Customer Reviews” on the left-hand side, there is a white button below “Customer Reviews” bars that says, “Write a customer review”. You can also get here by clicking on the small blue text near the top that says, “13 ratings”. Once you click on the “Write a customer review” button you will see four fields “Overall rating”, “Add a headline”, “Add a photo or video”, and “Add a written review”. “Add a photo or video” is optional, and I admit I have never used it. You can either type something in the “Add a written review” box or copy from, for example, Microsoft Word. Note that Amazon takes a few days to publish a review after it has been submitted.
It works similarly on Barnes & Noble but here you have a blue button towards the bottom on the left. On Bookbub there is a red button towards the bottom left and on Goodreads there is a black “write a review” button in the middle halfway down.
By clicking on any of the pictures below you can visit my book on Bookbub and Goodreads.
This is a photo of our late Leonberger Bronco lying in the grass in the front yard soon after a toe surgery. Click on the image to go to the Bookbub location for the book.This is a photo of our Leonberger Bronco at 3 months old (left) and at almost 13 years old (right). Click on the image to go to the Goodreads location for the book.
Recent dialogues at the Wikman residence concerning our mini-Australian Shepherd Rollo.
Rollo loves belly rubs.
Rollo: laying down on his side, opening his legs a bit and barking once. That’s how he asks for a belly rub.
Thomas: Honey, can you give Rollo a belly rub? I’ve done it several times today.
Claudia: No, I am cooking. You do it.
Thomas: I walk over to Rollo to give him a belly rub. He loves it, turns over and kicks his legs, and he looks like he is laughing like a child being tickled. Then I stopped.
Rollo: One loud bark. That means he wants more.
Thomas: continues giving a belly rub.
Rollo is asking our Leonberger Bronco for a belly rub. Unfortunately, it is not easy for one dog to give another dog a belly rub.
Rollo wants to sit where you are sitting.
Rollo: I am sitting on the sofa and Rollo comes over and taps me twice on my knee. That’s the command Rollo gives when he wants to sit where you are sitting.
Thomas: I move over.
Rollo: jumps up and sits where I sat.
Claudia: Thomas do you remember the trainer who said that Rollo thinks he is in charge and that we need to fix that?
Thomas: Yes, but he is so cute.
Rollo and Daisy in sofa chair.
Rollo wants to sleep on the bed but not alone.
Rollo: I am sitting on the sofa and Rollo comes over and scratches me on my knee while leaning backwards as if he wants to leave. That’s the command Rollo gives when he wants to go to bed but he does not want to go alone.
Thomas: Honey can you go lay down in the bed with Rollo. I am busy reading.
Claudia: No, I am not doing that anymore.
Thomas: stands up and follows Rollo into the bedroom and lays down on the bed as Rollo jumps up on the bed.
Claudia: Thomas you should not be doing that either. Remember, it is not good that Rollo thinks he is in charge.
Rollo: falls asleep while Thomas reads a book on the bed.
Rollo tucked in under the covers on our bed.
Rollo and Bronco
Rollo and Bronco (our Leonberger) were best buddies. We no longer have Bronco, but we have Rollo who is the worst behaved dog we’ve ever had. It already started while we were still having Bronco. Rollo walked all over Bronco, like he did with people. If a few people were sitting on the sofa, Rollo would just walk from one end of the sofa to the other, stepping on everyone’s legs or bellies in the process. He still does that. He frequently bit Bronco’s tail and even swung in it as if it was a swing. Bronco was extremely patient and did not get angry, except one time when Rollo stole his toy. Bronco’s loud booming bark scared Rollo and he let go of the toy. However, to be on the safe side we put Rollo in a playpen, or baby jail, as we called it. Rollo came to love his baby jail.
Bronco and Rollo, best buddies. Bronco is quite old and Rollo is quite young.Rollo is pulling Bronco’s tail.This was Rollo’s Baby Jail
Rollo’s other commands and peculiarities.
Rollo scratches doors he thinks should be open, which is basically every door, and if no one comes to open the door, then he barks. When he wants to play with a toy, he barks at the toy box with one loud bark until I give him the toy he wants. He barks at balls that roll in under sofas and beds and expects someone to get them for him. Rollo loves balls. I should say, naturally, we have commands for him as well, such as sit, stay, come, and shake, and he obeys them most of the time. But he has commands for us too. He sleeps in our bed, typically in the middle, surrounded by his subjects, me, Claudia and Daisy.
Rollo loves balls. He loves to chase balls, chew balls and roll balls.Rollo is ball crazy.
The greatest quality that someone could have.
What is the greatest quality someone could have? Is it intelligence? Is it knowledge? Is it wisdom? Is it charm? Is it beauty? Is it courage? Is it strength of character? Is it work ethics? Is it honesty? Is it integrity? No, it is none of that. The most important thing in the world is that you are cute. That is why Rollo is the King of the House, in fact the King of Texas. But seriously, Rollo is spoiled, he sleeps in our bed, he does not like other dogs (except Daisy), and this is our fault. Before we can get another Leonberger we must work on certain bad habits. However, his cuteness and his innocence make this harder.
Rollo as a puppy. Being cute is all that matters.Our daughter with Rollo and Daisy.
What is the greatest intellectual achievement of the human race? Is it Beethoven’s third symphony? The book War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy? General Relativity? Quantum Physics? multi layered neural networks? Or is it a theory of almost everything that comprises quantum physics, special relativity, Noether’s theorem and gauge theories, as its basic elements, and then Quantum Electrodynamics, Quantum Chromodynamics, and a framework for all elementary particles, and more. This is the so called “standard model of elementary particles”, or the “standard model” for short. It is a subjective question.
The standard model of elementary particles, the greatest intellectual achievement of humankind. Close up illustration of atomic particle for nuclear energy imagery. From iStock photos.
Some people like to say, “Science does not know everything”. They are right. If it did, it would stop. However, the people who like to say that typically grossly underestimate what science knows, and not by a little but by a lot, like a million times, or a trillion times. There are things science knows and there are things it doesn’t know, and the difference is often not obvious unless you have near expert knowledge. However, we have figured out a lot. The book I am describing below is a breathtaking reminder of how much we know. It is the book about the theory of almost everything after all.
Science does not know everything, but it knows a lot. The standard model of elementary particles is the theory of almost everything. Collision of Particles in the Abstract Collider. From iStock photos.
I read The Theory of Almost Everything: The Standard Model, the Unsung Triumph of Modern Physics Hardcover – July 22, 2005, by Robert Oerter, more than 15 years ago. I wrote a lengthy review, which is still the top review for this book. The hardback version is 336 pages. It currently costs $31.93. The dimensions of the hardback are 6.5 x 1.25 x 9.75 inches, and the weight is 1.2 pounds, ISBN 978-0132366786. The paperback version is 336 pages. It currently costs $17.00. The dimensions of the paperback are 5.5 x 0.8 x 8.4 inches, and the weight is 10.9 ounces, ISBN 978-0452287860. The kindle version costs $13.99 and is 348 pages ASIN : B002LLCHV6.
Front cover of “The Theory of Almost Everything” by Robert Oerter. Click on the image to go to the Amazon location for the book.
Someone reminded me that today, Wednesday August 9, is National Book Lovers Day. Even though I already published a post on a Leonberger book today I decided to post about one more book, one of the most mind-blowing books that I’ve ever read. I have a master’s in engineering physics from Uppsala University that was turned into a master’s in electrical engineering and applied physics by Case Western Reserve University in Ohio. That is why I am interested in this topic, which I understand is not everyone’s cup of tea, maybe no one’s. I took a few classes in Quantum Physics, Nuclear Physics, and Molecular Physics, and I had heard of the standard model, I just never realized what it was. Then I read this book many years later and as I said, I was blown away.
Quick note, if you have never heard of Noether’s theorem, don’t worry, almost no one has, yet it is an extremely important discovery in mathematics. Emily Noether discovered that associated with every symmetry was a conservation law and vice versa. It is one of the greatest discoveries of mankind, yet almost no one has heard of it. For example, if you assume (rather acknowledge) that the laws of physics don’t change over time, then energy is conserved. If you acknowledge that the laws of physics don’t change as you change position, then momentum is preserved. You use mathematics to derive one from the other. This is very useful because, if you find a symmetry you can find a conservation law. If you find a conservation law, you can find a symmetry. This has turbo charged modern physics.
The standard model does not get a lot of love. One reason is that unless you have a physics education it is difficult to grasp. It is also a gigantic theory. Well actually not really. You can summarize it in a few formulas that almost no one can understand, as the author of the book does. Another reason is that as soon as physicists were done with it, they were looking to replace it. That was because of the “Almost” in “the theory of almost everything”. There were a few things it could not explain, and it was not compatible with General Relativity even though it incorporated Special Relativity. Anyway, I cleaned up my review a bit and it is given below. If you want to see my original Amazon review, click here.
The Langrangian function that summarizes all of the propagators and interactions in the standard model.
Note; when I wrote the review below, we had not yet found the Higgs Boson. It was found at LHC in Switzerland in 2012.
An introduction to the greatest intellectual achievement of the human race
This review is a little bit long; however, it is more than an assessment of the book, it will also help you prepare for reading the book and explain confusing parts of the book.
Imagine if we had found a two-billion-year-old alien underground civilization under the desert in Arizona several years ago, and you still knew nothing about it, because journalists thought this information was pretty boring stuff and therefore didn’t bother telling anyone about it. Well, that is most likely not true, but what is true is that the general public has entirely missed the greatest scientific revolution in the history of the human race partially because mainstream media has largely ignored this information, even though the Nobel Prize committee has been raining Nobel Prizes over it.
In the 70’s a theory explained, at the deepest level, nearly all of the phenomena that rule our daily lives came into existence. The theory called “The Standard Model of Elementary Particles” is a set of “Relativistic Quantum Field Theories” that explains how elementary particles behave, which elementary particles there are, and why they have the properties they have, for example, isospin, spin, charge, color charge, flavor, even mass, or mass relations in many cases. The theory explains how all of the fundamental forces in nature work except gravity. The theory describes how the elementary particles interact; decay, how long they are expected to exist, and how they combine into other subatomic particles. The theory uses only 18 adjustable parameters to accomplish this.
In the extension the theory thus explains how nucleons and atoms are formed and what properties the atoms will have, and how molecules will form and what properties molecules will have, their chemical reactions, and what elasticity, electric conductivity, heat conductivity, color, hardness, texture, etc. any material will possess. In the extension it explains why mass and matter exist, how the sun and the stars work, and the theory is therefore the ultimate basis of all other science. It also provides a formula, or an equation of almost everything. Best of all it has been thoroughly verified experimentally, in fact the predictions the theory has made have been confirmed with such stunning accuracy and precision that it could be considered the most successful scientific theory ever. A theory that successfully unites all of physics and basically all of human knowledge of the Universe into one single theory has never before existed.
However, “The Standard Model” does not incorporate gravity and the general theory of relativity, and cannot explain dark energy, dark matter and why neutrinos have mass. Therefore as soon as the theory came into existence physicists started looking for the next theory that would finish what the “The Standard Model” did not finish. Example of such theories are GUT theories, SO(5), SO(10), string theories (abandoned), super string theories, and M-theories. Even though those new theories are extremely interesting they have not been verified or able to predict anything. In comparison with the “Standard Model”; superstring theories, grand unified theories, chaos theories, you name it, are essentially nothing, but are still better known.
This book explains to the layman what the “Standard Model” is and how it came into existence. The book is by no means a perfect book. I think there are several problems with the book. However, I decided not to take off any star because there are very few books written for science interested non-physicists that explain the “Standard Model of Elementary Particles”. Dr. Oerter deserves five stars just for his fairly decent attempt at doing so.
Even though the book is a Physics book, it is also a book on Philosophy. In fact Physics is often the best and the deepest Philosophy, the kind of Philosophy that can be falsified, verified and proven wrong or correct. To understand what I mean consider Noether’s theorem. Noether’s theorem states that whenever a theory is invariant under a continuous symmetry, there will be a conserved quantity. As an example of what a continuous symmetry is the following: any physical experiment that is performed at a certain time will have the same result if it is performed exactly the same way a certain time later. That seemingly self-evident observation means that Energy is conserved. Another example is, any physical experiment that is performed at a certain place will have the same result if it is performed exactly the same way somewhere else. That seemingly self-evident observation means that momentum is conserved.
Let me add that “exactly the same way” really means that! Gravity, other forces, differences in light, or anything else cannot be different in the second experiment. The only thing allowed to be different is the position “x” (if that is our symmetry variable). That is what continuous symmetry means, changing just one thing, and everything stays the same.
Noether’s theorem has been the guiding principle behind the standard model, and it is used to find conservation laws where symmetries are found, and it is used to find symmetries where conservation laws are found. It is a spontaneous symmetry brake that allows the Higgs Boson to give all other particles their mass (excepting mass less particles). This is why matter and everything in our Universe exist. The Higgs Boson is also called the God particle (guess why). So Noether’s theorem is both very useful in a practical sense and deeply philosophical at the same time.
The God particle has not yet been found, but scientists will be looking for it using the new Large Hadron Collider (LHC) that will come on line this fall (fall of 2008). LHC will start operating in August and the first collisions are planned for October. It is the largest machine ever built and it has a circumference of 17 miles. However, a lawsuit has been filed in an attempt to stop the LHC from operating. Some people believe that the LHC will create small black holes that could suck up all of the earth. In essence, they believe that our attempt to find the God particle will be the end of the world.
In addition to Noether’s theorem the standard model is built upon the special theory of relativity and a modern formulation of quantum mechanics (Quantum field theory), QED, QCD, as well as some discoveries regarding elementary particles. I can add that Noether’s theorem was formulated by a Jewish woman, Emmily Noether, who could not get a job in academia because she was a woman. This theorem is one of those very important but mostly unknown discoveries, like the invention of paper by the Chinese Tsai Lun.
Oerter does not attempt to explain the special theory of relativity; however, he tries to give the reader an idea of what it is. The problem with his approach is that he gives the reader just enough information to enable the observant reader to come up with the apparent paradoxes within the special theory of relativity, but not enough information to help the reader to easily resolve them.
He also confuses the reader by not distinguishing between rest mass and relativistic mass. The observant reader will think that he is contradicting himself. The term relativistic mass is the total mass and the total quantity of energy in a body. The rest mass is the mass of a body when it is not moving. The formula E = mc² is always true, when it refers to relativistic mass, which is why we talk about an energy/mass equivalence. The other more complex formula Oerter presents refers to rest mass. There is no such thing as an energy/rest mass equivalence (except at speed 0) but that is what the reader who is not already familiar with the subject will end up believing.
Another mistake Oerter makes is in regard to the fact that the speed of clocks will be measured differently in different reference frames. On page 35 last paragraph Oerter writes “Here, we have an apparent paradox: If each reference frame sees the other as slowed down, whose clock will be ahead when the passengers leave the train?” Then he implies that the paradox has to be solved by incorporating the General theory of relativity. Even though that may be how it was first solved, you can solve this form of the so called “Twin Paradox” and other similar paradoxes from within the framework of the special theory of relativity itself.
Oerter explains Quantum Physics in a very typical manner, but he mostly avoids making it look much weirder than it actually is which he should be commended for. However, there is one thing that all Physicists seem to do when they explain Quantum Physics to the layman which annoys me greatly. The matter waves (or quantum fields) in Quantum Physics are quite strange entities. The reason they are so strange is because they do not exist in a real sense, they are more correctly stated mathematical abstractions. Oerter states this clearly, which is good. However, he then goes on to mention De Witts’ idea about multiple Universes without acknowledging that these “bizarre solutions” to Quantum Wave conundrums are completely unnecessary and worthless. There is no more reason to believe in multiple Universes based on matter waves than there is to believe in multiple Universes because we all have different reference frames.
In fact when I took my first class in Quantum Physics (as an engineering physics student) I successfully proved, using a combination of the Schrödinger equation and plain Galileo transformations, that the matter waves are not only “not real” they don’t even represent information in an objective sense, in fact every reference frame had its own matter wave for the same particle. Our own single Universe is thus already all the Universes you need all at once. My associate professor was just scratching his head but the leading Swedish authority on Quantum Physics at the time, Staffan Yngwe, immediately agreed with me. So, in summary there is no need to make Quantum waves weirder than they are or draw unwarranted conclusions from apparent conundrums. Just take them for what they are; one possible mathematical model (among many) of a particle as seen from your frame of reference only.
After giving a background to the special theory of relativity and Quantum Physics Oerter continues explaining relativistic Quantum Physics including the fantastic prediction you get when you combine the special theory of relativity with Quantum Physics; that for every particle there is a twin particle with exactly the same mass, and spin, but opposite charge and isospin. These particles were called anti-particles and until they were actually found physicists tried to get rid of them from the theory. However, the combination of the special theory of relativity and Quantum Physics would lead not only to much better explanation for such things as the radiation and light spectrum and the properties of atoms, it would also lead to new discoveries.
Richard Feyman came up with a new representation of relativistic quantum physics for electrons that did not use waves called Quantum Electro Dynamics, and this was one of the first steps towards the standard model. Physicists started discovering a lot of unexpected particles which remained unexplained for decades (until the standard model came about), QCD was invented, the Higgs Boson (the God particle), symmetry breaks, etc. The story is simply breath taking and Oerter does a good job telling this story, except I think he should have used more and better pictures. However, as I said I cannot honestly take any stars off for these minor flaws. Finally Oerter discusses possible modifications to the standard model, GUT’s, string theory (abandoned), super string theories, and M-theories.
I also would like to add an interesting fact that I think everyone should be aware of. There are elementary particles with whole number spin and they are called Boson’s, and there are elementary particles with half number spin called Fermions. The Pauli Exclusion Principle (that no two particles can occupy the same state) applies to Fermions but not Bosons and therefore the two different types of particles behave very differently and follow different kinds of statistical rules (Bose-Einstein statistics versus Fermi-Dirac statistics). All force carriers are Boson’s while some Fermions are used to build “nomral matter”. Examples of Bosons are the photon, gluons, W and Z Boson, mesons, the Higgs Boson (the God particle). The Fermions come in three families each with four particles and their anti particle.
Electron / positron
Neutrino / anti-neutrino
Up quark / anti up quark
Down quark / anti down quark
muon / anti-muon
Mu Neutrino / anti-mu-neutrino
Charm quark / anti charm quark
Strange quark / anti strange quark
tau / anti-tau
Tau Neutrino / anti-tau-neutrino
Top quark / anti top quark
Bottom quark / anti bottom quark
The quarks can be used to build other particles. For example, a quark and anti-quark pair is called a meson (there are many kinds of mesons). A triplet of quarks is called a Baryon. An example of a baryon is the proton which consists of two up quarks and one down quark. Another example is the neutron which consists of one up quark and two down quarks.
I highly recommend this book for anyone who wants to understand something about our world and the Universe. However, don’t expect to understand everything, it is not written so that you can. I wish Physicists would become a little better at explaining these things to the layman using nice descriptive pictures and a little bit of math too (don’t assume math is always bad). I once read a 30 page long Swedish book on the special theory of relativity that successfully explained the kinematics, dynamics, and magnetism in relativity, to your average high school kid. The Lorenz transforms, formulas for acceleration, E = mc², and magnetism were derived using simple algebra and a tiny bit of calculus at one point. That is the way these kinds of books should be written, but I have seen this only once in my life. Excluding this single example (Swedish book), Oerter’s book is one of the best books on Physics for the layman that I have ever read.
Finally, I would like to ask a question for discussion. Will you and our planet survive this coming fall considering that the LHC is coming online?
Back cover of “The Theory of Almost Everything” by Robert Oerter.
I recently finished reading “Leonberger: Dog breed overview and guide Paperback – July 8, 2023”, by Nina Pultova. I bought the paperback version from Amazon, and it is 94 pages. It currently costs $9.99. There is also a kindle version, 74 pages, that costs $2.99 but if you have Kindle Unlimited it is free. The dimensions of the paperback are 6 x 0.22 x 9 inches, and the weight is 5 ounces, ISBN 979-8851501135.
Front cover of “Leonberger” by Nina Pultova. Click on the image to go to the Amazon location for the book.
Briefly, the book had some strongpoints but also some significant weaknesses. The author has written 192 dog breed books in a fairly short time. Impressive but that might explain why it was felt so generic. It was obvious that she did not have much experience with Leonbergers. I gave the book three stars. Below is my review of Leonberger by Nina Pultova. Click here to see the original review on Amazon.
The Well-Being and Happiness of Your Leonberger
The author, Nina Pustova, is a Ukrainian veterinarian who without question has a lot of knowledge of dogs. She is undoubtedly doing wonderful work for dogs in Ukraine under some very difficult circumstances. In this book she gives great advice on caring for and training dogs and the book has a positive and warm feel. It is well edited with respect to the English. I did not see any typos. The book is in black and white and contains no photos except for the beautiful Leonberger photo on the front cover. Nina Pustova has written 192 books on different dog breeds, which is quite an accomplishment.
Unfortunately, the information she presents in the book is pretty generic. Any book on a specific dog breed is bound to contain a fair amount of information that applies to dogs in general. However, if you are looking for in-depth Leonberger specific information this book does not provide much of that kind of information, even though there is some. It seems to me that the author does not have a lot of personal experience with Leonbergers. The book did not contain a lot of incorrect information, but I noticed a couple of noticeable errors. The author claims that a distinctive feature of Leonbergers is their double dewclaws on the hind legs. I think she is referring to Great Pyrenees here, not Leonbergers. She also states that they may have a black mask on their face. Well, that is a breed standard requirement, not just a “may”. They all have black masks.
I also found the “Myths and Misconceptions Debunked” chapter at the end of the book a bit peculiar. As an example, the first myth she is debunking is “Leonbergers are aggressive and dangerous”. Leonbergers are in general certainly not aggressive and dangerous, but no one thinks so either. It’s like debunking the myth that “Chihuahuas are large dogs” or “Canadians are impolite”. People don’t think so in the first place. The same applies to all her alleged myths. There are, however, real Leonberger myths. For example, one myth is that Heinrich Essig, the founder of the Leonberger was the mayor of the town of Leonberg. This is stated in a lot of Leonberger books and websites including Wikipedia, even though it is false information.
The biggest issue for me was the layout of the book. First there was a lot of repetition of information as well as overuse of certain words and phrases such as “…well-being and happiness of your Leonberger”. Secondly, the layout / book design made the book feel like a long list. Each page had a few subtitles on gray background followed by one paragraph written as a command or a fact, and this pattern was repeated throughout the book. Every now and then the subtitle would be at the bottom of a page and the associated paragraph at the top of the next page, which doesn’t look nice. I think this list pattern would work in a blog post but not in a book.
So, this book has some great strengths but also many weaknesses and therefore I am rating it three stars.
Normally the focus of my blog is on Leonbergers, especially our late Leonberger Bronco, but sometimes I present a good book which I want to promote. Today I would like to present and review The Climate Casino: Risk, Uncertainty, and Economics for a Warming World, Hardcover – October 22, 2013 and paperback– February 24, 2015 by William D. Nordhaus. The hardcover version has the dimensions 6.13 x 1.06 x 9.25 inches and the weight 1.54 pounds and currently cost $13.41 on Amazon.
Nordhaus received the Nobel prize in economics 2018 “for integrating climate change into long-run macroeconomic analysis” (Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences). Nordhaus is one of the most prominent economists in the world and without doubt a genius. He is worth listening to.
Before I present my Amazon review, I would like to point out that this book is very important for a few reasons.
Nordhaus has been referenced, for example, in articles in the Wall Street Journal as someone who claims that climate change / global warming is costlier to mitigate than to allow to happen and that it might even be beneficial. He vehemently denies that he ever said something along these lines, and it is important to understand how this misunderstanding came to be.
Nordhaus believes that climate change / global warming is happening, that it is dangerous, costly and that we humans are the cause of it.
When calculating the potential cost of climate change Nordhaus does not take into account things like the extinction of species, not because it doesn’t matter, but because it is so difficult to put an economic value on it. Therefore, his calculations should be viewed as a baseline, a minimum to consider. If death is free of charge, it is not included, which he makes clear.
Nordhaus takes into account the fact that technological progress and economic progress is making us more resilient. For example, despite the fact that natural disasters are getting worse, much fewer people are dying from them because we have become much better at preventing casualties. For example, WHO calculated that if global warming continues unabated 80 million additional people will die from malaria by 2050 due to the extended geographical spread of mosquitoes carrying malaria. Nordhaus takes into account the fact that future medical technology will be much better so that this may not be a big problem.
Nordhaus also takes into account discounting. The fact that money is more valuable today than it is tomorrow. Twenty thousand dollars may be worth one hundred thousand dollars fifty years from now if you let it earn interest. Therefore, we should not spend too much money today to fix future problems (despite that fact we should still spend money today). The annual discount rate he is using is 4%. Some say that is too high.
All that is mentioned above causes many environmentalists to jump to the conclusion that he is downplaying the cost of climate change / global warming. It also makes fossil fuel industry apologists falsely conclude that he is on their side. Thereof the confusion in Wall Street Journal articles.
What he is doing is making his economic arguments for action today unassailable. No matter how you downplay the risks they should be addressed today based on purely economic rationale.
He stresses the concept of economic externalities, something a lot of people don’t understand, especially people who learned economics from talk show hosts and politicians instead of taking classes in economics. An externality is an indirect cost or benefit to an uninvolved third party that arises as an effect of another party’s activity. It makes the free market fail and allows regulation to improve economic efficiency. It’s a big deal.
It should be noted that he is the world’s topmost expert on the economics of climate change / global warming. To see my original review, click here.
Front cover of the book The Climate Casino: Risk, Uncertainty, and Economics for a Warming World by Nobel Prize Winner in economics William Nordhaus. Click on the picture to go to the Amazon location for the hardcover of the book.
My Amazon Review
About The Thorniest of Externalities
In this book Nobel Prize Laurate in Economics (2018) William Nordhaus analyses the economic consequences of global warming. Nordhaus takes seriously the potentially catastrophic impacts of climate change, but he avoids all exaggeration and tries to be as realistic and conservative in his estimates as possible. He stresses that global warming is a major threat to humans and the natural world. That past climates were driven by natural sources, but that current climate change is increasingly caused by human activities. He gives us a brief introduction to climate science and the conclusions presented by the IPCC. He states that potential damage will be concentrated to low-income and tropical regions and explains that there are dangerous tipping points.
He explains that his economic analysis leaves out some potentially important consequences of climate change because they are difficult to quantity or because economic concerns are not the primary concern in those cases. He states that the most damaging impacts of climate change – in unmanaged and unmanageable human and natural systems – lie well outside the conventional marketplace. An example is species extinctions. There is no price tag on the value of a species. He explains that there have been five mass extinctions over the last 500 million years and now a sixth one is developing. That is a serious scenario he could not include in his economic analysis.
In his economic analysis he takes into account that many northern developed nations will be economically advantaged by global warming, as long as the temperatures do not rise too much. He takes into account that future generations will be wealthier, have better medicine, and will possess technologies that will help them adapt better to climate change. For example, the area in which malaria is endemic is likely to grow because of global warming thus potentially killing tens or hundreds of millions of people assuming today’s medical technology, but in the future medical technology will be better so that is not likely to happen. In fact, many of the health impacts of climate change are likely to be manageable in a future wealthier world. This is one reason why trying to slow economic growth to stop global warming is a bad idea that is counterproductive. There are much better ways.
Another important feature of his analysis is discounting. Money is more valuable today than tomorrow. Twenty thousand dollars may be worth one hundred thousand dollars fifty years from now if you let it earn interest. Therefore, it may not be worth paying a thousand dollars today to save future generations five thousand dollars. He uses a significant discount rate that has been criticized, but the important thing to remember is that this way he is not exaggerating. As it turns out, climate change is still expensive to future generations depending on how far we allow it to go. It is definitely worth investing today in slowing climate change. His graphs demonstrate that economic losses quickly become gigantic if you go too far beyond the temperature optimum (which depends on the assumptions behind the graph). One graph was 2 ¼ Celsius, another 3 ½ Celsius. Note, that is without considering unquantifiable consequences.
All his talk about discounting, certain economically positive consequences of climate change, that we will get better at adapting, etc., has led to misunderstandings by those with imperfect reading comprehension. Some environmentalists have concluded that he is underestimating climate change, and some climate skeptics have incorrectly concluded he is on their side. An article in the Wall Street Journal incorrectly claimed that William Nordhaus predicted that climate change would be economically beneficial.
Perhaps the most central concept in his analysis of how to approach the problem is externalities. An externality is an indirect cost or benefit to an uninvolved third party that arises as an effect of another party’s activity. For example, those who produce emissions/pollution do not pay for that privilege, and those who are harmed are not compensated. Global warming is a particularly thorny externality because it is global. Inventions correspond to positive externalities. Innovators are frequently paid only a small fraction of the benefits their innovations bring, while benefiting all of society. This is why subsidizing technology and innovation can be beneficial to the economy.
He states that economics teaches us that unregulated markets will not put the correct price on externalities like CO2. To make the market more fair, efficient, and grow the economy faster you try to correct for the externality and the best way to do that is a Pigouvian tax. Market fundamentalists who’ve learned economics from talk show hosts but never taken an economics class may balk at this, but it is a basic concept in economics, like supply and demand. Towards the end he strongly argues for some sort of a carbon price, which I saw as the conclusion of the book. I thought his book was very informative, excellent analysis, and very well written.
Back cover of the book The Climate Casino: Risk, Uncertainty, and Economics for a Warming World.
In my recent post called “Culture Shock Sweden USA” I included a photo of myself opening and smelling a can of north Swedish fermented herring, or as it is properly called “surströmming”. It is a specialty from the north Swedish Highcoast where I grew up. Underneath the photo I wrote “Unfortunately, all the Americans experienced a culture shock from the fermented herring.” See the excerpt below. What I should maybe have mentioned in my post is that even though it was a joke, it was still true. People were not ready for what was coming.
Four Swedes inviting Americans to a fermented herring party. Fermented herring is a north Swedish specialty. Unfortunately, all the Americans experienced a culture shock from the fermented herring. I am the guy smelling the fermented herring can.
After I had posted “Culture Shock Sweden USA”, I posted a link to my blog on my Facebook and I received a few comments including comments from two people who actually were there at the fermented herring party in 1987. I’ve included the comments below.
Surströmming first-timer videos are getting pretty common these days, but I still always end up laughing until I can barely breathe when they start the uncontrollable retching! Always reminds of the Surströmming party and that nasty prank we pulled on the residents of Glaser House! 🤣 — Lee
Delicious memories….NOT!!! 🤢🤮 — Alyce
What happened was that as soon as I opened the can, all Americans dashed for the windows or doors trying to escape the smell. In the party invitation we had left out one or two details, like that surströmming is often said to be the worst smelling food in the world. The “nasty prank” Lee was referring to was me and him going around the dorm and placing left over surströmming in the ventilation drums of the dorm. I admit that was immature. Luckily, it did not work as well as we had hoped, or we probably would have both been expelled.
Herrings that we caught in northern Sweden. Plus, a fish called Simpa.
Since gaining notoriety as one of the world’s smelliest foods, surströmming has become the focus of a number of “challenge” videos on YouTube and other platforms where people uninitiated to the food show themselves opening a can for the first time, usually to visceral reaction, and then try to eat the fish without additional preparation. Often the videos show the participants gagging, swearing, holding their nose, or vomiting.
To read more about surströmming on the disgusting food museum’s webpage click here.
In the end we had a good time. The smell dissipated and people ate and drank other things we offered. We swedes ate the surströmming but a few others tasted a little bit as well. We knew what the reaction would be, and we did not offer the fermented herring in the hopes that people would love it. It became a good source of conversation and jokes, and that’s what we hoped for. I should say that you normally open the cans outside and let the smell dissipate before you eat them. The surströmming taste mostly like pickled herring with lemon and lots of salt and you typically eat with onion and potato or rolled in soft and thin bread (tunnbröd).
My niece Alma holding a herring. My dad in the background.
The most gripping and well written survival story I have ever read, The Winding Road by Miriam Hurdle is free on Amazon today. That is to commemorate the release of the book and the day she discovered she had a very dangerous form of cancer. This is your opportunity to get the Kindle version for free. Click here for the free book on Amazon. Check her post in the reblog below for additonal places.
Leonberger Life 