sidewalks as fjords
sheer cliffs of snow that has known better days
grey-brown bergs shearing from the face
into the dreary muck of concrete and ice soup
as i place each footstep
gingerly
into the slushy depths of this transient watershed
i offer prayers to the patron saint of
vulcanized rubber
that my faithful galoshes
remain so
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
Monday, February 04, 2008
Go Sled
towering monster
is not an apt description
for our officially sanctioned sled hill
city fathers merely quivering
in the risk and liability nightmares
of making a mountain out of a molehill
and yet
21st century young Kenevils
on mass-produced polyurethane/polypropylene disposasleds
(waxed steel and wood rails apparently class actioned out of existence)
find new/old ways to feel newly alive
improvising danger like Snowpants Miles Davis
“let’s play cards going down”
says my son
wielding his imagination like an emergent superpower
but we don’t have a deck
says his father
suffering the long term effects of kryptonite exposure
the looks he gets from his mother do
occasionally
have their desired effect
cutting through the haze, igniting comprehension
oooohhhhh… … …
right, let’s play cards
“you sit on front facing back and
i'll sit on back facing you”
you’re sure about this
“dad”
mmmmk, here’s seven cards for you and 7 for me
“great, lets go!”
wait! how do i hold my cards and the sled at the same time
“dad (three letters transfigured into 2 syllables), gravity is our friend”
strains of some long-forgotten truth echo within
so i shrug my shoulders
ok, let’s go
i contemplate the fickle nature of gravity’s acquaintance
as i tumble
head over heels
the world a cacophony of dead grass and live snow
as i lie
in my final resting place
pondering the infinite grey above
my son
simply vibrating with laughter
tackles me shouting
“i won! i won!”
which, i guess, is true
he’d laid down aces
and i hadn’t even had time to play
before my cards and i went flying
as we grin together
the playing cards softly fluttering to the ground around us
i think to myself
this time, i’m asking for nines
is not an apt description
for our officially sanctioned sled hill
city fathers merely quivering
in the risk and liability nightmares
of making a mountain out of a molehill
and yet
21st century young Kenevils
on mass-produced polyurethane/polypropylene disposasleds
(waxed steel and wood rails apparently class actioned out of existence)
find new/old ways to feel newly alive
improvising danger like Snowpants Miles Davis
“let’s play cards going down”
says my son
wielding his imagination like an emergent superpower
but we don’t have a deck
says his father
suffering the long term effects of kryptonite exposure
the looks he gets from his mother do
occasionally
have their desired effect
cutting through the haze, igniting comprehension
oooohhhhh… … …
right, let’s play cards
“you sit on front facing back and
i'll sit on back facing you”
you’re sure about this
“dad”
mmmmk, here’s seven cards for you and 7 for me
“great, lets go!”
wait! how do i hold my cards and the sled at the same time
“dad (three letters transfigured into 2 syllables), gravity is our friend”
strains of some long-forgotten truth echo within
so i shrug my shoulders
ok, let’s go
i contemplate the fickle nature of gravity’s acquaintance
as i tumble
head over heels
the world a cacophony of dead grass and live snow
as i lie
in my final resting place
pondering the infinite grey above
my son
simply vibrating with laughter
tackles me shouting
“i won! i won!”
which, i guess, is true
he’d laid down aces
and i hadn’t even had time to play
before my cards and i went flying
as we grin together
the playing cards softly fluttering to the ground around us
i think to myself
this time, i’m asking for nines
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Science is Hard, or Joe vs. the Cosmoquantumdestructocollider
There’s been this idea churning in the back of my head for the last week or so. It got going reading this post at the (aptly named) Science Blog. In it, Jonah Lehrer bemoans an issue he has perceived: that advanced scientific research is generally headed into areas that have little relevance to the public at large. My initial reaction was a snarky “I bet Einstein would have annoyed the bloggeristas as well.”
Then I picked up the Chicago Tribune Sunday Magazine last weekend (yes, we all know it pales in comparison to NYT Sunday Mag), the focus of which was dynamics in the ongoing soap opera that is creationism vs. evolution. While the primary article was a decent primer in current trends towards reconciling a deity-driven model of the universe with the scientific approach, it didn’t cover any new ground. The more interesting piece was this backgrounder on the Creation Museum that’s recently opened in Louisville, Kentucky. The museum developers have spared no expense in creating a pseudo-science museum experience, right down to animatronics of homo sapiens sapiens hanging out with various grass-eating dinos (of course, they wouldn’t be hanging out with T. Rex, would they?).
At first glance, the two items seem completely unrelated. Either author is likely to be offended to be mentioned in the context of the other. Yet try as I might, the themes embedded within each kept swirling around the other like a pair of stars trapped in a complex gravity dance. Somehow, there was an intrinsic relation between the two articles.
As I’ve had time to mull on it, I think I’ve come to comprehend the underlying issue: we, as a society, do a dismal job engaging people in understanding the “what” and “why” of science (ok, so I’m sure it feels like a bit of a “duh” moment, but stick with me). We do a better job at the “how”, inasmuch as scientists like to show off their shiny cosmoquantumdestructocollider beams to the world. Humans can intuit hardware—they have a harder time with software. What we don’t do, what we’ve never done, is to foster human intuition where it comes to scientific principle, and both these articles are perfect examples.
Consider Lehrer with his “science is hard” complaint. If you look at the significant strides that have been made, especially in the field of physics (where the bulk of his ire is focused), they have all occurred in the shadow of an uncomprehending public. I joked about Einstein, but your Joe Bagadoughnuts still doesn’t intuit relativity. Try explaining to him that relativistic effects could cause different observers to experience a time series of non-casually related events in different orders, and see what kind of look you get. You might as well fuggetabut da math.
The Creation Museum represents the idea taken to its illogical extreme. Faced with an environment lacking a clear framework upon which to develop intuition, humans revert to the known. Consider: Galileo wasn’t a heretic because he was right. He was a heretic because he challenged the preexisting intuition. Evolution challenges our current environment in much the same way. Yes, there are some in the scientific community who relish in rear guard attacks on evolution’s principles. But the real problem is our inability to integrate evolution within our human intuitive framework in the same way that, say, Euclidian geometry is part of the things we "don't know we know". I may not be able to write a proof that two parallel lines in two-dimensional space never intersect, but I "know" it to be the case.
Ultimately, I think this challenge results from deficiencies in three areas, which I will discuss in future posts (this one is already too long):
(1) Lack of effective explanatory models;
(2) Failure to maintain integration between the fields of philosophy and science;
(3) Culture.
Then I picked up the Chicago Tribune Sunday Magazine last weekend (yes, we all know it pales in comparison to NYT Sunday Mag), the focus of which was dynamics in the ongoing soap opera that is creationism vs. evolution. While the primary article was a decent primer in current trends towards reconciling a deity-driven model of the universe with the scientific approach, it didn’t cover any new ground. The more interesting piece was this backgrounder on the Creation Museum that’s recently opened in Louisville, Kentucky. The museum developers have spared no expense in creating a pseudo-science museum experience, right down to animatronics of homo sapiens sapiens hanging out with various grass-eating dinos (of course, they wouldn’t be hanging out with T. Rex, would they?).
At first glance, the two items seem completely unrelated. Either author is likely to be offended to be mentioned in the context of the other. Yet try as I might, the themes embedded within each kept swirling around the other like a pair of stars trapped in a complex gravity dance. Somehow, there was an intrinsic relation between the two articles.
As I’ve had time to mull on it, I think I’ve come to comprehend the underlying issue: we, as a society, do a dismal job engaging people in understanding the “what” and “why” of science (ok, so I’m sure it feels like a bit of a “duh” moment, but stick with me). We do a better job at the “how”, inasmuch as scientists like to show off their shiny cosmoquantumdestructocollider beams to the world. Humans can intuit hardware—they have a harder time with software. What we don’t do, what we’ve never done, is to foster human intuition where it comes to scientific principle, and both these articles are perfect examples.
Consider Lehrer with his “science is hard” complaint. If you look at the significant strides that have been made, especially in the field of physics (where the bulk of his ire is focused), they have all occurred in the shadow of an uncomprehending public. I joked about Einstein, but your Joe Bagadoughnuts still doesn’t intuit relativity. Try explaining to him that relativistic effects could cause different observers to experience a time series of non-casually related events in different orders, and see what kind of look you get. You might as well fuggetabut da math.
The Creation Museum represents the idea taken to its illogical extreme. Faced with an environment lacking a clear framework upon which to develop intuition, humans revert to the known. Consider: Galileo wasn’t a heretic because he was right. He was a heretic because he challenged the preexisting intuition. Evolution challenges our current environment in much the same way. Yes, there are some in the scientific community who relish in rear guard attacks on evolution’s principles. But the real problem is our inability to integrate evolution within our human intuitive framework in the same way that, say, Euclidian geometry is part of the things we "don't know we know". I may not be able to write a proof that two parallel lines in two-dimensional space never intersect, but I "know" it to be the case.
Ultimately, I think this challenge results from deficiencies in three areas, which I will discuss in future posts (this one is already too long):
(1) Lack of effective explanatory models;
(2) Failure to maintain integration between the fields of philosophy and science;
(3) Culture.
Friday, January 25, 2008
Cold like...
Cold, like…
a Joe Lewis right hook
pre-GE Jack Welch
the stare of Parisian waiter serving Iowans
a hospital gown
an end-of-shift gate agent
the Saks 5th fragrance counter attendant when asked for a low-budget Dior
a Liberal response to the Conservative agenda
pranks involving body parts and Super Glue
a professional sniper
humming Manilow in a roomful of Boomers
spoiling Santa Claus for a child
the scene in Goodfellas where Pesci gets “made”
stiffing the paperboy
the sensation of knowing you’ll lose your home to foreclosure
spoofing your nemesis’ IM account to cause trouble
a lopsided victory at a children’s game
an IV drip
posting YouTube of scholarGirl binge drinking
tasering your parakeet
knowingly creating false hope
a Kathryn Hepburn stare
taking center stage at your ex’s wedding
changing your blocking opening night
honking as you pass a cyclist
assigning the manual calculation of the square roots from 1-50 (to 25 decimal places) on a Friday
the best dish of revenge ever
Hillary and Bill against
the person you become when you let greed in
the relationship between an absentee dad and his adult children
the potential of an unfired revolver
Simon on Idol
an economist predicting a mild recession
a drug company with an exclusive patent
the candlelight anniversary dinner served to the late arriving, too-much-to-drink husband
the Junior League luncheon to Gloria Steinem
metaphor devoid of meaning
a Joe Lewis right hook
pre-GE Jack Welch
the stare of Parisian waiter serving Iowans
a hospital gown
an end-of-shift gate agent
the Saks 5th fragrance counter attendant when asked for a low-budget Dior
a Liberal response to the Conservative agenda
pranks involving body parts and Super Glue
a professional sniper
humming Manilow in a roomful of Boomers
spoiling Santa Claus for a child
the scene in Goodfellas where Pesci gets “made”
stiffing the paperboy
the sensation of knowing you’ll lose your home to foreclosure
spoofing your nemesis’ IM account to cause trouble
a lopsided victory at a children’s game
an IV drip
posting YouTube of scholarGirl binge drinking
tasering your parakeet
knowingly creating false hope
a Kathryn Hepburn stare
taking center stage at your ex’s wedding
changing your blocking opening night
honking as you pass a cyclist
assigning the manual calculation of the square roots from 1-50 (to 25 decimal places) on a Friday
the best dish of revenge ever
Hillary and Bill against
the person you become when you let greed in
the relationship between an absentee dad and his adult children
the potential of an unfired revolver
Simon on Idol
an economist predicting a mild recession
a drug company with an exclusive patent
the candlelight anniversary dinner served to the late arriving, too-much-to-drink husband
the Junior League luncheon to Gloria Steinem
metaphor devoid of meaning
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Hubble Bubbles and You
I’ve been immersing myself recently in the weirdness that is Information Theory. Briefly, IT originated in the mid-20th century as part of an effort at Bell Labs to describe the rate at which information can be pushed through a given medium. Since then, it’s gotten entangled with such diverse concepts as thermodynamics, genetics and quantum mechanics. Underlying Information Theory is the concept that objects are the sum of their information—their measurable properties.
A particularly fascinating idea is the concept of Hubble Bubbles(1). Take a sphere of matter and energy—for argument’s sake, let’s say one the size of a dust mote. Based on research at the intersection of Information Theory and quantum mechanics, it’s generally accepted that the matter and energy comprising this dust mote-sized Hubble Bubble can be organized in a finite number of ways. Like the Rubik’s Cube I was never able to solve, there are lots (and I mean LOTS) of different ways things can be arranged, but there is an upper limit.
When you explain this to most people, they might scratch their heads a bit but they eventually accept this as reasonable. What gets strange is when you extend the logic. If there is a limit to the number of states (“wave functions” in technical jargon) possible for your tiny Hubble Bubble, then there is also a limit to the number of wave functions possible for a sphere of matter and energy the size of a tennis ball. Yes, the number is larger; but, it remains finite.
So, what happens when we expand our Hubble Bubble to planet size? Galaxy size? Known universe size??? If we accept that the rule holds for a dust mote, then (by extension) it must also hold for our universe. Scientists generally accept that there are a finite number of ways the matter and energy in our universe can be organized.
Mull that over. Conceptually, it may not seem like a big deal, but it leads to some really outlandish conceptual models once you take the training wheels off. I’ll come back to this in a future post.
(1) A term applied to a number of different scenarios in astrophysics. The usage described here originated with Charles Seife in his book Decoding the Universe.
A particularly fascinating idea is the concept of Hubble Bubbles(1). Take a sphere of matter and energy—for argument’s sake, let’s say one the size of a dust mote. Based on research at the intersection of Information Theory and quantum mechanics, it’s generally accepted that the matter and energy comprising this dust mote-sized Hubble Bubble can be organized in a finite number of ways. Like the Rubik’s Cube I was never able to solve, there are lots (and I mean LOTS) of different ways things can be arranged, but there is an upper limit.
When you explain this to most people, they might scratch their heads a bit but they eventually accept this as reasonable. What gets strange is when you extend the logic. If there is a limit to the number of states (“wave functions” in technical jargon) possible for your tiny Hubble Bubble, then there is also a limit to the number of wave functions possible for a sphere of matter and energy the size of a tennis ball. Yes, the number is larger; but, it remains finite.
So, what happens when we expand our Hubble Bubble to planet size? Galaxy size? Known universe size??? If we accept that the rule holds for a dust mote, then (by extension) it must also hold for our universe. Scientists generally accept that there are a finite number of ways the matter and energy in our universe can be organized.
Mull that over. Conceptually, it may not seem like a big deal, but it leads to some really outlandish conceptual models once you take the training wheels off. I’ll come back to this in a future post.
(1) A term applied to a number of different scenarios in astrophysics. The usage described here originated with Charles Seife in his book Decoding the Universe.
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