UPDATE: Will has set me
right. The "Little Green Book" of note is an
introduction to modern statistical mechanics, which has something to do with thermodynamics, photon gas and Monte Carlo. (I swear I didn't see the link in Ms. Bond's post originally.) I am still clueless, but at least now I know what I'm clueless
about.
CONTEXT: I realize that the post below may seem a tad obscure. It refers to
Will Baude's reference to
Heidi Bond's complaints about losing her "Little Green Book" in the mail.
But the Little Green Book and I have been through a lot together. I learned stat mech from it the first few months of grad school, when I decided to work for someone who did statistical mechanical work. And my grad school research advisor wrote the thing. Two years later, I was the TA for the class that used it. And most importantly of all, it showed up in Spiderman (the only photoshopping in the below image is the obvious addition of the heart).
Two blogs and some googling later I still don't know what the Little Green Book is supposed to be. I can only assume, given the vague reference to statistics, that it is not a miniaturized version of
Muammar al-Qaddafi's political treatise.