Bedtime Stories

John Baez once wrote something to the effect that if one wanted to become a mathematical physicist, one should get the book Analysis, Manifolds and Physics by three French ladies and keep it by one's bedside until you knew everything in it. Gullible naif that I am, I tried it. Unfortunately I always fell asleep somewhere around page 15 and had dreams tormented by having to prove that the epsilon delta definition of continuous functions was exactly equivalent to the image of open sets version.

I still keep books by my bedside, even though I almost never read in bed.

Anyway, I cracked open my new copy of QFT in a Nutshell and started reading the blurbs. One guy talks about his wife being mad at him for staying up all night and the next day reading the first half and somebody else has to go and say it should be kept by one's bedside.

I won't make that mistake again. I'll just put it up on the shelf where books belong. If I could just find a space that isn't already taken. For now I'd better leave it next to my computer, under my coffee cup...

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