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  • 151 Contributors, 107,000 Words (Dean)

    That’s the tally as I skim the responses to the 2009 Edge Annual Question: “What will change everything?”—or, more prosaically, “What game-changing scientific ideas and developments do you expect to live to see?”

    The respondents tend to represent the science crowd (of the hard, social, and popular varieties), with lots of neuro-this and that-ologists. There is a token coterie of artsy folks. Consequently, the responses largely sound like failed pitches for science fiction movies. Lots of AI, some ET, cloning, and the like.

    The writers and artists don’t fare much better, although their responses are more likely to be quirky. One calls for “a different kind of male subjectivity” (I’m all for that, you jerk.), another (a male, I gather) for “no more reality.” To the credit of physicists everywhere, one brilliantly anticipates nothing more than “a very very good battery.”

    Some of the entries surprise me. I expect mostly drivel from Brian Eno, but I appreciate his sense that the “what” destined to change everything won’t be a thought, but a feeling, namely, that we’re screwed (my paraphrase). And a television producer(!) envisions “a farewell to harm.”

    Anyway, were I invited to contribute, I’d suggest, modestly, a very good poem. That will change everything more capably than, say, “superintelligence” (Nick Bostrom) or a “web empowered revolution in teaching” (Chris Anderson). There is one poem among the contributions, but it’s not very good. (All credit to Ron Silliman, whose daily posts are replete with this sort of stuff.)

  • Why I Fear For My Child’s Ability to Buy a Pontiac Vibe (Andrew)

    There's been a lot of talk about the roughly $10 more an hour that G.M. workers get paid than non-unionized American employees of Japanese car companies.  Add another $15/hour for legacy pension and healthcare costs, and there's one of the reasons that G.M. has a hard time competing.

    But there's been a right-wing tendency to think that if we just "break the unions," all will be well in America.  But if all that was ailing G.M. was relatively high labor costs, the cars would just be more expensive than Japanese cars.  But they're not particularly costly — the problem is that they're poorly made, and don't sell well when competing against the Japanese competition, particularly since the bottom has fallen out of the SUV and truck market with high fuel costs and then the recession.

    Sperling_photoThe biggest problem has been appallingly bad management.  But don't take my word for it.  Check out this chart from U.C. Davis transportation expert Daniel Sperling (inset), who lists  serious errors made by G.M. since the 1990s.  Some of my favorites: They spent  $4 billion buying Fiat, realizing that was a mistake, and then selling it back including penalties.  They vigorously, and for the most part successfully, lobbied against mileage standards and tougher clean-air rules.  They spent $1 billion developing electric vehicles, and then crushed them all.  They spent $9 billion buying back stock in the 90s, and then said they didn't have the money to develop fuel-efficient vehicles.

    I'm a pro-labor, progressive Dem, but even so I'm pretty unhappy having to bail out G.M. now, and presumably again once the big O takes office. 

    And no, Sperling doesn't think the much ballyhooed Volt will save GM either — due to relatively primitive state of the battery technology, it'll be too expensive with too short a range to become a hit like the Prius.  You can see his lecture, which touches on G.M. briefly amdist a general discussion of the policy and ecological challenges of transportation, here…

  • Text, Book, Matter (Dean)

    The latest Chronicle of Higher Education (January 9, 2009) includes a brief article (sub’n req’d) about an English professor and his biologist brother, who together are developing a way to use DNA to determine the local origins of medieval manuscripts.

    While in Europe researching the origins of a poem, Timothy L. Stinson, an assistant professor of English at North Carolina State University, became frustrated with the limited methods available for determining where the original text came from and when it was produced.

    “And then there was sort of this light bulb,” Mr. Stinson recalled. “Wait a minute, they’re on animal skin. Why can’t we look at DNA?”

    Indeed, in the age before paper was widely available and affordable, the written word was recorded on the hides of sheep, goats, and cattle. Shortly after Mr. Stinson had his epiphany, he began putting his idea into practice. Working with his brother, a biologist who has performed DNA extraction and analysis, Mr. Stinson is developing a method of using DNA to determine when and where medieval manuscripts were written. The approach will significantly improve the accuracy of the standard identification process, which typically relies on analysis of the author’s handwriting and dialect — approaches that are “notoriously unreliable,” Mr. Stinson says.

    Here is where the disciplines of art and science (and history and sociology…) perfectly complement one another. There is some precedent for this partnership. In the mid-’80s, Paul Needham, currently rare books librarian at Princeton, but then at the Pierpont Morgan Library, worked with physicists at (if memory serves me well) UC Davis to conduct cyclotron analysis of the ink used by Gutenberg in the production of his Bible. Their work (see the articles cited at the end of the the foregoing link) produced fascinating conjectures about the details of work in Gutenberg’s atelier, tied to findings about the physical substance comprising his books.

    But before Needham, there was Allan Stevenson. I read Stevenson’s monumental Problem of the Missale Speciale (London: Bibliographical Society, 1967) in one sitting at UCLA’s library school shortly after the Needham cyclotron articles appeared. Obviously, Stevenson worked with cruder technology than Needham and Stinson: a microscope, photography, his unaided vision, the historical tools of papermaking. Watermarks are formed by wires shaped and anchored to the wire mesh of a papermold, the bed on which paper was made. Naturally, the shaped wires began to lose their shape as more paper was produced on the mold. Observing the gradual deformation of watermarks in the paper used to print the eponymous missal, Stevenson, like Needham, was able to suggest how the work proceeded from copy to copy.

    “And then there was sort of this light bulb…” Perhaps it’s not at all ironic for Stinson to resort to a not quite antiquated figure to reflect the moment of his discovery.

  • Semi-cool science stuff (Joe)

    I can't promise actually cool science stuff pulled from the news because all I've been doing for the past week is watching the History Channel.  This series on the seven deadly sins is pretty cool.  Actually, the HBO "John Adams" mini-series is pretty cool, too.  Anyway—

    A Snickers bar from 50 feet away is NOT a lethal weapon.  At least not because of peanut allergies — James Bond might be able to make it happen.

    Also, Saturn's rings are going invisible.  We're hitting a ring-plane crossing, which happens about every 15 years.  Sept. 4, 2009 is the big day, so get your telescopes ready!

    And finally, third-hand smoke is bad.  That's the smell of cigarettes that lingers on your clothes after smoking or hanging out with a smoker for a day.  In other news, smokers killed the Pope and JFK and Jesus and the dinosaurs and all those baby seals whose deaths we blamed on the Canadians wielding clubs.

  • Israel’s Gaza Strategy

    After days of aerial assault, Israel has begun its ground offensive in Gaza.  Until now, I didn't bother to post on this depressing topic which has become as predictable as the sun rising in the east. The spate of news stories, analysis, point-counter point on the latest upheaval in the middle east are too just as predictable. The worldwide uproar is not about to lead to any solution until the US decides that it is time to bring the endless cyclical violence to an end. I don't see that happening in the near future. The ostensible reason for the latest Israeli incursion is the breakdown of the mostly meaningless six month old cease fire between Israel and Hamas in the form of rocket attacks by the latter into Israeli territory. However, I believe that as always, the violence in Gaza is a shadow play. Palestinians are mere proxy warriors and expendable victims for outside forces to test each others resolve. While there are many covert conflicts at work here among various Arab nations and Iran, Israel, as usual may be mainly playing to the US political gallery. From day one my feeling has been that in this sad and dingy war, Israel's action is actually  a shot across the bow of the incoming Obama ship, facilitated by the warmongers of the outgoing Bush-Cheney administration who wish to intimidate Iran, the one enemy they didn't have the time to tackle during their belligerent eight year rule. The one sided war is also meant to test Obama's resolve and to warn him to stay away from the high voltage third rail of US foreign policy. It is not a coincidence that this videoof Obama's press conference (the bottom one where Obama is in his shirt sleeves) in Jerusalem last summer, has been playing endlessly on Israeli television. My suspicion is echoed by others.

    Jim Hoagland in the Washington Post:

    Israel's brutal assault on Hamas rocketeers — and the Palestinian civilians among whom they hide in the Gaza Strip — is not just another tactical round of mutual, if unequal, bloodletting by ancient adversaries. Israel's campaign was skillfully conceived with strategic aims that involve Iran, the American political calendar and perhaps the nature of pan-Arabism today.

    Bush must respond at that strategic level — within his time-limited means. It is pointless to expect him suddenly to exert pressure on Israel for lasting concessions to the Palestinians. He did not just give Israel a green light to inflict as much damage as possible on Hamas once that radical movement foolishly renounced a six-month-old truce. Bush knocked down the traffic light post and waved the Israelis through the intersection.

    His unwavering support will not have amazed Israeli leaders. However outwardly positive Barack Obama was about Israel during the campaign, the president-elect is an unknown quantity for them. To Israel it must have made sense to slam Hamas as hard as it could under Bush and start with a theoretically clean slate with Obama on Jan. 20.

    Brian Leiterin the Leiter Reports:

    But why this savagery now?  One imagines it has something to do with the specter of a change of Administration in the United States–from a far right to a perhaps centrist government–though Obama's choice of Senator Clinton, unapologetic supporter of the criminal war of aggression against Iraq, hardly suggests that 'radical' notions (like the Golden Rule applies to Palestinians) are about to come into ascendancy.

    What a sad and ugly business.

    And Pat Oliphant in an editorial cartoon:

    Oiphant

  • CotL # 81

    CotL The last Carnival of the Liberals of 2008 (published on December 31st) is up at Rust Belt Philosophy.   Please check it out. The next carnival will be featured here on Accidental Blogger on January 14th, 2009. Be sure to visit then.

  • A High Flying Baby

    My son was on his way home from New Delhi yesterday on Northwest Flight # 59 from Amsterdam to Boston. A few hours into the flight, over Canada, there was a sudden flurry of activity towards the back of the plane. A set of seats was cordoned off with sheets and a plea was made over the P.A. system for any doctors / medically trained persons on board to come forward to assist with an emergency. Two doctors volunteered. After some time, it was announced that a new baby girl had joined the list of passengers. My son, who was a dozen or so rows in front, informed me that he and other passengers heard no screaming from the curtained area in the back. As a woman who has gone through two natural childbirths, that for me was the most remarkable thing about the incident!

    BOSTON – There were 124 passengers on Northwest Airlines Flight 59 when it left the Netherlands. There were 125 when it landed in Boston.

    A woman went into labor and gave birth to an apparently healthy baby girl over the Atlantic Ocean during the eight-hour flight Wednesday from Amsterdam, said Phil Orlandella, a spokesman for Logan International Airport.

    The plane landed without incident in Boston about 10:30 a.m., and the mother and baby were immediately taken to Massachusetts General Hospital, Orlandella said.

    "It was wonderful," Dr. Paresh Thakker, a family physician from Methuen, Mass., who assisted with the mid-air delivery, told reporters at the airport. "Happy New Year for everybody in the family."

    Orlandella said for customs' purposes, the baby was considered a Canadian citizen because she was born in Canada's airspace. He could not confirm media reports that the mother was a Ugandan national.

    "The spirit of America is alive and everybody was there to help," said Dr. Natarajan Raman, an oncologist from Minneapolis who also helped deliver the baby, told reporters at the airport.

    "It is always a joy to see a newborn baby and I was glad I was able to help," said Raman. "At the end of it, (the mother) thanked me. She seemed a little exhausted."

  • Math Art

    Long time reader and family friend, Jatinder Bhatia has sent me the link to an upcoming Math-Art exhibition in Washington D.C. (Dean, don't throw up your hands yet!)  The interesting thing about the exhibition seems to be that the mathematically inclined artists have deliberately expressed math concepts as "real' art. While most of the pieces are two or three dimensional visual depictions, I also came across at least one poem (see JoAnne Growney). For the list of selected artists and links to their works, see here.

    Jatinder's friend Suman Vaze is one of the featured artists whose acrylic on canvas painting, Monge's Theorem (see image below) will be on display at the Math-Art exhibition. Suman is a high school mathematics teacher in Hong Kong and she describes her love of art and math thus:

    Monge's_Theorem  "I seek to depict interesting mathematical truths, curiosities and puzzles in simple, visually descriptive ways. Mathematical amusements inspire the color and form in my paintings, and I try to strike a balance between the simplicity of the concepts and their depiction in art. The logic and balance of the discipline is beautiful, and I like art that both stills and stimulates the mind – these are the qualities I strive to capture in my work."

    Congratulations, Suman and thanks, Jatinder!

    (Image posted here with the permission of the artist)

  • Happy Holidays And A Blogging Hiatus

    Season's Greetings to our readers and my co-bloggers. Hope everyone returns to A.B. refreshed and cheered after the holiday festivities are over and done with for the year. I am going on a short trip and won't be blogging for some time. Unless someone else finds the time to post, the front page will remain static for a few days. I will leave you with a potpourri of unrelated but interesting links to muse over if you find time to visit during the holiday rush.

    India's Dangerous Divide Two thoughtful essays about the recent bombings in Mumbai and the tensions that tug at the national fabric of India – Ramachandra Guha in the WSJ and Badri Raina in ZNet.

    Christmas cat TS Eliot on The Naming Of Cats.

    Mosquito An insect crime buster in Finland!

    Enjoy the holidays!

  • Better Living Through Chemistry (Andrew)

    Tj During my Ph.D. program, there were two important premises that kept recurring throughout the 7 year process:

    1) There is no thought outside narrative  — rather than escape a mythical way of thinking to truly "see reality," we can only move from one "prison-house of language" to another.

    2) Stay away from the cheap wine at Trader Joe's — you get what you pay for.

    But in the grand tradition of passing knowledge between generations, I'd like to direct current grad students to this report in The New Scientist, suggesting that exposing new wine to electrical fields can help speed up the aging process.  The electricity causes the acids in the wine to react with the alcohol more quickly, getting rid of some of the nasty-tasting long proteins and aldehydes, while creating some of the esters and free amino acids that give particular wines distinctiveness.

    No word on whether passing a grad student through a pair of high-voltage electrodes will speed the dissertation process though.

  • Why Women Can’t Sleep

    Have you ever wondered how a woman's brain works?
    Well….it's finally explained here in one, easy-to-understand illustration:


     

    womens-mind

    Every one of those little blue balls is a thought about something that needs to be done, a decision or a problem that needs to be solved.
      
    A man has only 2 balls and they take up all his thoughts.  

    (This came from a friend via e-mail)

  • Shoemanship – bringing down the curtain on a reign of (t)error

    Shoe drop Denied respect and attention at home, George W. Bush recently made an unannounced visit to Iraq, hoping I am sure, to perform a victory lap of sorts in the last few remaining days in office. What greeted him there was not the confetti of a ticker tape parade, but two flying shoes aimed at his head by Iraqi journalist, Muntazer al-Zaidi who called Bush a "dog" and described the projectiles as "gifts" from Iraqi widows and orphans. Acquainted as I am with a national culture of shoe throwing, let me tell you that the contempt expressed by the gesture is far greater than a pie in the face or being pelted by rotten tomatoes and eggs. I experienced conflicting emotions while watching the video (see here). Despite my nearly eight years of uninterrupted anger at Bush-Cheney, I flinched a bit at the spectacle and the blunt message of condemnation. I also felt a grudging admiration for Bush's athletic reflex in dodging the speeding footwear and at the same time wondered about the lack of agility of the Secret Service men who allowed the second shoe to fly (Iraqi president Maliki reached out to deflect the missile but missed). However, I was not at all surprised by Bush's clueless and  unrepentant response to ABC's Martha Raddatz with whom he spoke about the incident. Bush thinks that the insulting message was interesting and the Iraqis and the Iraqi press, not he, were humiliated by the action of the irate journalist who merely wanted to get on TV! Or perhaps Bush took it all in stride, smug as he is in the knowledge that truckloads of shoes thrown at him cannot match the injury and insult he has inflicted on Iraq. Read the whole interview for Bush's thoughts on the Iraq war / Al Qaida. He leaves no doubt that his presidential philosophy has been one of lies, alibis and defiance and his governing style, that of ducking and weaving.

    Martha Raddatz: Let's start with what just happened. And that is someone threw a shoe at you, whether it's an Iraqi reporter?

    President Bush:Yeah, I think it's a reporter. At least that's what they told me on the way out, that it's a person who works in the Iraqi press, stands up and throws his shoe. And it was amusing. I mean, I've seen a lot of weird things during my presidency and this may rank up there as one of the weirdest. On the other hand, I do remember when the president of China came to the South Lawn, and a member of the press corps started yelling. I think it was Falun Gong slogans at the Chinese president. So this happens and it's a sign of a free society.

    Raddatz: It's also considered a huge insult in this world, the sole of a shoe, throwing a shoe.

    Bush: I guess. Look they were humiliated. The press corps, the rest of the Iraqi press corps was humiliated. These guys were just besides themselves about, they felt like he had disgraced their entire press corps and I frankly, I didn't view it as, I thought it was interesting, I thought it was unusual to have a guy throw his shoe at you. But I'm not insulted. I don't hold it against the government. I don't think the Iraqi press corps as a whole is terrible. And so, the guy wanted to get on TV and he did. I don't know what his beef is. But whatever it is I'm sure somebody will hear it.

    The media and blogs are abuzz with the story – numerous variations of "the other shoe dropping" are making the rounds. In my opinion, the other shoe dropped long ago – with revelations about missing WMDs, Abu Ghraib, rendition of prisoners for torture, corruption in the Justice Department and the manipulation of CIA intelligence. But if that were not enough, in an interview with ABC's Jonathan Clark, Dick Cheney, the master cobbler of the Bush administration sent the last shoe flying at our faces.

    KARL: But you've heard leaders, the incoming Congress, saying that this policy has basically been torture and illegal wiretapping, and that they want to undo, basically, the central tenets of your anti-terrorism policy.

    CHENEY: They're wrong. On the question of terrorist surveillance, this was always a policy to intercept communications between terrorists or known terrorists, or so-called "dirty numbers," and folks inside the United States to capture those international communications….

    On the question of so-called torture, we don't do torture. We never have. It's not something that this administration subscribes to. Again, we proceeded very cautiously. We checked. We had the Justice Department issue the requisite opinions in order to know where the bright lines were that you could not cross.

    The professionals involved in that program were very, very cautious, very careful — wouldn't do anything without making certain it was authorized and that it was legal. And any suggestion to the contrary is just wrong. Did it produce the desired results? I think it did.

    I think, for example, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was the number three man in al Qaeda, the man who planned the attacks of 9/11, provided us with a wealth of information. There was a period of time there, three or four years ago, when about half of everything we knew about al Qaeda came from that one source. So, it's been a remarkably successful effort. I think the results speak for themselves.

    And I think those who allege that we've been involved in torture, or that somehow we violated the Constitution or laws with the terrorist surveillance program, simply don't know what they're talking about.

    KARL:Did you authorize the tactics that were used against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?

    CHENEY: I was aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared, as the agency in effect came in and wanted to know what they could and couldn't do. And they talked to me, as well as others, to explain what they wanted to do. And I supported it.

    KARL:In hindsight, do you think any of those tactics that were used against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others went too far?

    CHENEY: I don't.