Vol. 19 No. 1 · 2 January 1997
pages 13-22 | 17014 words
A Feeling for Ice
Jenny Diski remembers her childhood
I am not entirely content with the degree of whiteness in my life. My bedroom is white; white walls, icy mirrors, white sheets and pillowcases, white slatted blinds. It’s the best I could do. Some lack of courage – I wouldn’t want to be thought extreme – has prevented me from having a white bedstead and side tables. They are wood, and they annoy me a little. Opposite my bed, in the very small room, a wall of mirrored cupboards reflects the whiteness back at itself, making it twice the size it thought it was. In the morning, if I arrange myself carefully when I wake, I can open my eyes to nothing but whiteness.
You are not Logged In
- If you have already registered login here
- If you are a print subscriber using the site for the first time please register here
- If you are not yet a subscriber you can subscribe here
- If you are a member of a subscribing institution or University library please login here
- If you have an Institutional print subscription and online access is not included, find out about our Institutional online subscriptions
This article is also available for purchase from the London Review Bookshop. Contact us for rights and issues enquiries.
- print this article
Letters
Vol. 19 No. 2 · 23 January 1997
From Mark Harris
Jenny Diski confuses two subtly different ideas in quantum theory (LRB, 2 January). One is a fundamental (Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle), while the other is a thought experiment (Schrödinger’s cat). She is right that her mother may indeed correspond to a kind of Schrödinger’s cat if she has made no contact with her, and has no knowledge of her whereabouts, or even her existence. However, this is not the Uncertainty Principle, which instead is concerned with what happens when a measurement has actually been made on a quantum mechanical object. In particular, it relates the uncertainty involved in attempting to measure simultaneously both the momentum and position of the object. Since she has made no measurements of her mother’s position, let alone her momentum, the Uncertainty Principle is irrelevant.
Mark Harris
Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
From Barbara Smoker
There is a minor error in Jenny Diski’s piece: Prince Monolulu (whom I met a number of times) was never a bookmaker: he was a racing tipster.
Barbara Smoker
Bromley, Kent
Vol. 19 No. 3 · 6 February 1997
From Matt Fretton
Whose failure of understanding is the greater: the person who confuses Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle and the Schrödinger’s Cat thought experiment, or the sort of pedant that responds to a piece of writing as intensely moving as Jenny Diski’s ‘Skating to Antarctica’ with an observation as arid as that of Mark Harris (Letters, 23 January)? And who gives a fuck if Prince Monolulu was a bookmaker, racing tipster, or even an employee of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Oxfordshire?
Matt Fretton
London, W1
