Quantum Rocketry

Normally, I have great respect for Jon Stewart as an interviewer. On The Daily Show, he knows when to be serious and let his guests say their piece, but he’s also primarily a comedian rather than a journalist and so he has the freedom to call them like he sees them when he feels like it. For a great example of one of his better interviews, I like this wonderful mid-Obama-Administration talk with David Axelrod: 1, 2, and 3. However, Thursday I was rather stymied by his interview with Marilynne Robinson, about her new book on religion vs. science.

First, let me say that I thought Robinson did a terrible job making her thesis clear. It sounded to me like she was trying to say, basically, that Big Science and Big Religion are at each others’ throats when they don’t have to be. (This is, aside from the implied existence of Big Science and Big Religion, a fine idea – though not a very new one.) However, she would say things like,

people on one side of the argument have claimed the authority of science, but they have not construed an argument that satisfies the standards of science.

As soon as I heard her say that, I thought her statement begged the question: What’s “the argument?” Who, representing capital-S Science, had made an Argument to or about capital-R Religion? So far as I know, the scientific method and body of scientific knowledge is not diametrically opposed in any way to religious belief. Certainly, a scientific theory could contradict a religious tenet, but “science” and “religion” themselves are not the mutually exclusive poles of any spectrum I can think of. Nor can I think of any “argument” that the entire scientific community or body of knowledge have with the very idea of religion. I waited with bated breath to hear Stewart immediately voice my thoughts (“And what argument would that be?”), but sat in frustration as he nodded along with her, letting her define this imagined Science vs Religion debate on her own terms.

This struck me as dangerous. Read the rest of this entry »

Ten years ago, a seventh-grade class did an intriguing project. The students drew pictures and wrote descriptions of what they thought scientists were like. Then the entire class visited Fermilab, a US accelerator physics lab. After the visit, the students created a new set of drawings and descriptions of scientists.

The results are here, on a Fermilab outreach page.

Almost all of the “before” pictures drawn by these students show a man in a white lab coat holding a test tube. Many of the scientists depicted are balding, wearing glasses, and have a shirt pocket stuffed full of pens. The accompanying written descriptions talk about people who are “kind of crazy, talking always quickly,” “a very simple person . . . simple clothes, simple house, simple personality;” someone who “never got into sports as a child; he was always trying to get his straight A grades even higher,” is “brainy and very weird,” and “has pockets full of pens and pencils.” The descriptions from female students are particularly fixated on the stereotyped image of a geeky guy in a lab coat. Many of the students described someone who does try to do good things, who tries to make the world a better place, but they are still a person who is ultra-smart in some obscure way that does not relate to the students.

The “after” drawings and descriptions were quite different. Gone were the lab coats, test tubes, and glasses. Some of the background items like desks or computers remained, but the students drew men in jeans and tee shirts and women in ordinary blouses. Suddenly, “scientists” are people who “are interested in dancing, pottery, jogging and even racquetball” and “are just like a normal person who has kids and life.” The scientist “doesn’t wear a lab coat” and “got normal grades in school.” Scientists “come in all shapes and forms,” “aren’t very different from everyone else,” “played sports, still play some sports or still watch and go to games,” “are really nice and funny people.” One of these seventh graders “even saw a person with a Bulls shirt on.”

In the new descriptions, I saw that many of the students realized that scientists were not driven to science by their intelligence, by social rejection, or by an innate need to best everyone around them in intellectual gamesmanship; but by a passion to discover, to create, to invent, to explain, and to improve our everyday lives. Scientists chose their careers because they love science and are dedicated to answering the questions they pose. And that love remains with them. They are pursuing a dream, doing what they want to do and have wanted to do for much of their lives. In the words of one student, “if you want to be a scientist, be like these wonderful people and live up to your dreams.”

Many of these students also came away with a new sense that with this passion and dedication, they could be scientists, too. While few of them put the idea in those words, a number of descriptions echoed the phrase “they are just like you and me.” Some thought that “a scientist’s job looks like a lot of fun” because “they can do whatever they want and they still get paid for it.” One girl in the class even went so far as to say “Who knows? Maybe I can be a scientist!” I was particularly glad to see the work of the  girls like Amy, who started with a fairly stereotyped image of the balding, nearsighted man in a white coat, but ended up with a woman in ordinary street clothes who has a full set of hobbies along with her love of science. Even if Amy didn’t write “I could be a scientist, too,” her after-visit picture probably looks a lot more like she thought of herself in seventh grade.

The “Who’s a Scientist?” page was last updated in May 2000. Now that those students are old enough to have graduated from college, I’d love to see someone get back in touch with them to see how many pursued science in college and how many of them have gone on to advanced studies or to scientific careers!

I love the idea of this project, and I wish more schools in this country would do similar things. It would be incredibly valuable for our students to see that it’s not just brains that make a scientist, and the required brains don’t crowd out all the other qualities that make people interesting or friendly or outdoorsy or social or anything else these students might want to be. We physicists and chemists and astronomers and biologists and geologists are not merely adult versions of the stereotypical middle-school nerds!

(Those are the computer scientists.)

Stephen Hawking has been in the news recently for saying that aliens will likely be hostile to us poor Earthlings.

In a series for the Discovery Channel the renowned astrophysicist said it was “perfectly rational” to assume intelligent life exists elsewhere.

But he warned that aliens might simply raid Earth for resources, then move on.

“If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans,” he said.

Prof Hawking thinks that, rather than actively trying to communicate with extra-terrestrials, humans should do everything possible to avoid contact.

He explained: “We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet.”

That last statement is the source of my disagreement with him. Aliens are going to be, well, alien compared to us. They will have completely different evolutionary and cultural histories from us. They probably care about entirely different things than we do. Just about the only thing we are likely to share with aliens would be the assortments of atoms that make us up (and maybe not even that). Hawking’s last statement pertains more to the possible human reactions to finding alien species. As I said to my roommate, I can only speak for humans. In fact, I can really only speak for one human.

This is especially important because human history is littered with examples of different cultures having radically different beliefs, holding different things to be important. For example, looks at the Native Americans and their interactions with colonial Europeans. The issue wasn’t really that the colonists were more technologically advanced – in many ways, the Native cultures had superior technologies for their environment. But they had entirely different cultural values, and disease decimated the natives early on in the interaction. With aliens, we won’t even have the disease element.

So, I’m not comfortable making any statements about how aliens are likely to behave – even given human history as an example. And if the aliens do want to just pillage our Solar System for resources, they could scour 99% of them on planets other than this rock filled with spunky creatures who would be hell-bent on making life difficult for them.

STS-131 / Exp 23 group photo

The Space Shuttle mission which just undocked from the International Space Station, STS-131, has beamed down from orbit some great photos of astronauts in space. This is a wonderful chance for us stuck planetside to remind ourselves that we have people living and working in spaceships!

The Discovery crew in the Cupola

And, of course, this mission is historic for having the largest number of women simultaneously in space – four out of the thirteen total crew. Considering small-number statistics, that is pretty close to a fifty-fifty split! Here is the orbiting Bay Stater, Stephanie Wilson:

MS Wilson in the Kibo laboratory

And here’s JAXA’s Naoko Yamazaki in the Destiny laboratory at a robotics console made of lots of ThinkPads taped to the ISS wall,

MS Yamazaki in Destiny

although I think this is my favorite picture of Yamazaki!

In the Cupola!

That’s where JAXA astronaut Soich Noguchi has been taking and Twittering down amazing Earth-observation and Space Station photos. (That is the single best application of Twitter I have ever seen, and is not likely to be surpassed, ever.)

Finally, I will leave you with astronaut family dinner!

I love astronauts (PS - obey the speed limit: 28,000 kph!)

Depending who you ask, freshman Senator Scott Brown got himself elected on a platform of populist rage against health care reform, a reaction of populist frustration with the health care reform process on Capitol Hill, or a flood of insurance-company money. In those two cases that involve Bay Stater constituents, Sen. Brown styles himself as a faithful representative of his people. In all three cases, he is an elected representative of Massachusetts to the national government. He has constituents. And he styles himself as a leader in Washington.

However, Sen. Brown has made it very difficult for his constituents to contact him. His web site, which despite being up for a month still says “temporary” on the front page, lists no email address for him, and some Boston Globe readers have in the past written letters to the editor on how hard it is to contact his office by other means. Now that health care reform is safely passed his vote – and the Democrats are not likely to bring the issue up again – I suspect that his Senate email address will magically pop into existence in short order.

Sen. Brown has certainly made his priorities in Washington very clear. One of the first things he did was get campaigning for Sen. John McCain’s reelection. And he spent some time with Republican leaders getting cushy committee appointments. And he went to extra effort to look immediately like a leader in Congress. But for his constituents in Massachusetts, no email address. (Message to American voters: “I’m a Washington outsider!” is campaign code for “I want to be a Washington insider!“)

It took me, oh, about a week to code up my own personal web site from scratch. That’s me, one person, working in my off hours. I’m guessing Sen. Brown hired someone to make his Senate web site, so there’s no reason it should still say “temporary.”

I worked for the federal government over the summer, and it took them one day to give me a working email address. (Pretty funny IT training, too: “When you get your email, please don’t go emailing all your friends and relatives because it says your name @nasa.gov.”) Does he really not have an address for voters to write to him yet?

It’s the Internet age, Senator Brown, and you have constituents. Time to give up the campaign truck and get on the ball.

More importantly, why does a recent Gallup poll, as reported by Newsweek, say that 58% of Republicans believe that Palin is qualified for the job of being President, but 65% of them would vote for her. For those of you who know that probabilities must add up to 100% and possess the skill of subtraction, this means that at least 7% of Republicans think that Palin is unqualified to be President but would still vote for her. Gallup.com does not report the actual intersection between these sets, so keep in mind that 7% is a lower bound on that figure.

Um, hi, Republicans? Just FYI, no cause for alarm, but… There is something wrong with your brains.

A judge has sentenced Dale and Leilani Neumann, Christian fundamentalists who were convicted of negligence in the death of their diabetic daughter when they prayed for her healing rather than contact any medical professional. They get six months in jail, to be served one month out of every year for the next six years. I think they got off easy. They are guilty in my mind of criminal insanity and hubris, and at the very least, their two remaining children should now be wards of the state.

One purported definition of “insanity” is to repeat the same action or set of actions, over and over again, seeing the same result each time but somehow expecting a different one. When their daughter felt faint, the Neumanns prayed. When she could no longer walk, the Neumanns prayed. When she could not eat, the Neumanns prayed. When she could no longer even speak, the Neumanns prayed. And when her breathing came in ragged, shallow gasps, the Neumanns prayed. Only after her breath and pulse stilled did they think to contact EMS; by then, of course, it was far too late. These parents have demonstrated that their convictions are more important to them than the safety and health of their children. They have also demonstrated an inability to form a workable understanding of the world from observable phenomena. Insanity that endangers lives: these people should be put away for psychiatric evaluation.

I’m reminded of that pseudo-joke – or, more appropriately, the modern parable – of a man with devout beliefs who hears on the evening news one day that his city is in the path of a terrible hurricane. “I’m not worried about that,” he says to himself, “because I know that God will save me.” The hurricane hits, and as trees and power lines crash the ground around his house, a policeman comes to his door. Yelling over the wind and rain, the officer offers the man a ride out of town. “No, thank you,” says the man, “I trust in God to save me.” Hours later, the city floods and the man flees to the roof of his house as the water level rapidly rises. He sees a family paddling down the whitewater of their street, and they backpaddle for a moment to draw closer to the man. “Come quickly!” they cry, “we have room for one more! We can save you!” But the man refuses again, telling them that he knows God will save him from this predicament. The water continues to rise, and the man eventually drowns in the ruins of his home. His soul finally comes in contact with the God he always believed in, but, his faith shaken by the hurricane, the man cannot help but shout, “God, I believed in you all my life! How could you leave me on that house to die?” God retorts, “What are you talking about? I sent a TV newsman, a police officer, and your neighbors, all to help you!”

This brings me to my second point: for the Neumanns to refuse to contact medical professionals is arrogance, pure and simple. They were, in essence, refusing to admit that their fellow human beings could help their daughter. Not only were they refusing their fellow men and women, but the were refusing their daughter – putting their own beliefs, even in the face of dwindling supporting evidence, as more important than her life. If there is a God who created people in the image of God, then people and their capabilities are at least representatives of divine power. Even if you take issue with that statement, then you must admit that people do have the capability to treat type 1 diabetes, which caused the Neumanns’ daughter’s death. So, unlike in the parable I reproduced above, there was no uncertainty to the outcome in her case – without insulin, she would die; in the hands of medical professionals, diabetes would be easily identified and treated. She would still be alive. Her parents refused a course of action that would have kept their daughter alive in favor of a course of action that they could plainly see was allowing her condition to deteriorate. This level of pride, to “stay the course” when a quick, easy, and known solution exists but would require some ideological capitulation, is staggering.

I have type 1 diabetes myself. I know that my treatment regimen revolves around human ingenuity and technical proficiency. God did not create the insulin pump that keeps me alive. God did not hand down to humans the techniques for cajoling pig pancreatic cells to produce human insulin. And God certainly hasn’t waved a mighty hand to miraculously cure me. No, for those first two items and hopefully for the third, human intelligence is responsible. Human training. Human learning. Human teaching. Human experimentation. Human courage. If a God is in any way responsible, it is solely in allowing human brains to evolve such that we could produce the advances in science, medicine, and technology that would lead to insulin production, glucose monitoring techniques, subcutaneous insulin infusion pumps, and the education of those who must treat themselves. For me to rely on wishful thinking to hope my diabetes away would be negligence. If someone else was responsible for treating me, for them to rely on wishful thinking to hope my diabetes away would be criminal negligence.

Red and blue states agree: Jon Stewart is America’s most trusted newsman, according to a Time.com poll.

I had to wonder after learning this. The man is a satirist, after all. His delivery is sarcastic, his graphics are built around smarmy puns, and his style might be described as, perhaps, “theatrical antics.” He’s a comedian first, not a newsman!

However, on further consideration, I did realize something that probably factored into the poll: Stewart seems to have a knack for pointing out the obvious in a convoluted political situation. And sometimes it just takes someone pointing out some straightforward implication for us to keep our perspective on the twisting world of politics. And I, for one, am glad to have a guy around who will keep pointing out how childish and inane Sarah Palin is.

My first realization, though, on seeing that poll result was that it’s mostly a commentary on the demographic that is most likely to respond to Internet polls.