Being a mathematician, I'm a sucker for Physicist and Ziltoid the Omniscient. The two albums are really about the same thing, I think: the quest for knowledge and the meaning of life. Physicist *is* about a physicist, I believe; one who has spent a lifetime searching for ultimate truth: making exhilarating discoveries, suffering mind-wrenching setbacks, and in the end (in "Planet Rain", perhaps dying) grappling with regrets and the great loneliness that often haunts the footsteps of those obsessed with the pursuit of knowledge. It is all at once sad, poignant and victorious.

"Kingdom" begins with this:
I,
I wonder...
...why I wonder why

The late physicist Richard Feynman once wrote this as a child:

"I wonder why I wonder why. I wonder why I wonder. I wonder why I wonder why I wonder why I wonder"


As for Ziltoid, he was obsessed with order and control, which naturally led him (with a little prodding by the "Hive Mind") to turn away from shallow power-plays and seek for the order underlying reality. He finds it, fleetingly, in a flash of insight granted by the Omnidimensional Creator which "colored his world"; but, kind of like Icarus flying too close to the sun, he was "burned" by the rush of heady revelations, and so descend back into a haze of grays, uncertainty and disorder; he dies, perhaps, and is reincarnated as a poor three-dimensional bastard working at a coffee house, surrounded by a chaos of garbled voices and the constant distractions that cloud everyday life.

I'm convinced that Dev is a physicist at heart.

Very interesting thoughts. I'm a physicist myself, and I like the way you've interpreted those. I recall reading somewhere from Dev that Ziltoid was about drugs and other personal experiences (surprise), and it's all about the metaphor, as opposed to the music. Regardless, I think the theme of each seems to me to be "searching." For what? I'm not sure that it matters...

PS: Nice Feynman quote!

[The Dev]

I'll take an order of quantum and strings please!

And A deep field Phi for desert!

Now, now, don't neglect your B- and E-Field groups. They may not be tasty, but they're good for you...

(Obviously they don't teach jokes with physics. I take that back. They don't teach good jokes.)

Very interesting thoughts. I'm a physicist myself, and I like the way you've interpreted those. I recall reading somewhere from Dev that Ziltoid was about drugs and other personal experiences (surprise), and it's all about the metaphor, as opposed to the music. Regardless, I think the theme of each seems to me to be "searching." For what? I'm not sure that it matters...

PS: Nice Feynman quote!

Oh, yeah, I should qualify what I said a bit: when I listen to Physicist or ZTO, I choose to interpret each to be the tales I described above, because it speaks to me personally. The lyrics are like poetry and fairly wide open to myriad interpretations, all of them subjective.

Incidentally I started my academic career in physics, but switched to math because it was...well...easier!

I'll take an order of quantum and strings please!

And A deep field Phi for desert!

If you are The Dev (and it looks like you are), I'll just take this opportunity to say your music really moves me. And when I got Hummer in the mail recently and started playing it in the car, I had to crank the subwoofer down almost to its lowest setting to keep the rear-view mirror from moving down to the floor!

I'll take an order of quantum and strings please!

And A deep field Phi for desert!

If you are The Dev (and it looks like you are), I'll just take this opportunity to say your music really moves me. And when I got Hummer in the mail recently and started playing it in the car, I had to crank the subwoofer down almost to its lowest setting to keep the rear-view mirror from moving down to the floor!

Listen to hummer in complete silence and you will truly experiance it!

Why are physicists called physicists and not physicians?

I'm very interested in physics myself. Specifically astrophysics (which covers a hell of alot of ground but y'know...), and quantum physics. I've never taken any classes or lessons of any kind but I just have this interest in it. I know it's abit off topic but can anyone recommend any particular reading matter?

I got an E in math at school

Guess what my degree is in! Hint: it's astrophysics! Anyway, if you haven't read it, A Brief History of Time by Hawking is a good introductory book to all sorts of physical tomfoolery. Also, Thorne's Black Holes and Time Warps is a good read. Another thing coming to mind is an article in the July Scientific American this year about a way to reconcile quantum mechanics with general relativity. Very cool ideas in it (more so than usual, anyway). There are plenty of others but I can't think of many of them right now.

I'll look around my bookshelf and see what else comes to mind...

Amazon is always a good place to look, though. Just search for what you're interested in, like "quantum physics without math". You're bound to get some good results.

Guess what my degree is in! Hint: it's astrophysics! Anyway, if you haven't read it, A Brief History of Time by Hawking is a good introductory book to all sorts of physical tomfoolery.

Funny story, my grandmother and my uncle caught me reading A Brief History of Time when I was about 9 tenths through. So guess what they bought me for christmas last year.....

A Briefer History of Time!!!

The year before that they bought me, The Big Book Of Space!!!

Anyways I'll check out those books, and I currently only subscribe to National Geographic, can I even get American Scientist in the UK?? Or are the ideas too big?






And noone got my 'particular reading matter' joke

Just because we didn't laugh doesn't mean we didn't get it...

Only kidding.

Anyway, I used to work in a bookstore, and no one ever comes in looking for science/math-oriented stuff. It's always Oprah's latest trend book and shit like that. Regardless, A Briefer History of Time didn't look quite worth it. I'm not sure if you can get the magazine in the UK. You could check on http://www.sciam.com, though. I always get a subscription for Christmas, so I never worry about the specifics of getting it...

Still have yet to peruse my collection and gather some recommendations.

Soon.

Haha it was a lame joke anyway

I am already looking up about a subscription to AS, I already get myself an annual NG subscription paid for every xmas by my grandrents, so I'll see if I can get AS included in that. Any other decent journals?

And can u get me a link to that july issue about the quantum relativity?? It sounds extremely interesting. To me anyways

I don't know my time tables.

Whatever happened about the reworking of Physicist or remaster or whatever?
I read something about it being on the hard drive of a broken laptop.

I'd love to know where that is relatively speaking.