Miss Atomic Bomb goes to Washington

Yesterday, I participated in what's known as a "fly in" - people linked by a common goal all come together in DC for one day to blitz as many public offices as possible with their message. Our common goal was funding for nuclear physics (we were, incidentally, all nuclear physicists); we came together for a day to let our representatives know that we supported the President's proposed budget for DOE Office of Science and that they, too, should support it.
One important thing to note about such fly-ins is that the people flying in don't often meet with the actual representative. Your Senator or Congressperson is too busy to meet with everyone who would like to share a story or voice an opinion, so instead you meet with a staffer - a legislative assistant who has been assigned to a specific topic (such as budget, or science & tech, or immigration policy). These people range in experience from fresh-faced political science majors just out of college to PhD scientists on AAAS Congressional Fellowships (I had the good fortune of encountering one such fellow in the office of Colorado's senator Michael Bennet). One should not, however, assume that just because the meeting is with a staffer, the meeting is a wasted effort. These assistants bend the ear of their respective representatives, and can have a tremendous amount of influence - a Senator or Member relies upon the input of their staffers for making important decisions (because, as I said, they're busy). Just like you would trust the opinion of your butcher when buying meat or your mechanic when fixing your car, the staffers provide educated opinions on their assigned topics to the office where they work.
Because we're only in Washington for one day, schedules are tight. I had meetings with six different offices, in both the House and Senate, between 10:30am and 3pm (with a short break for lunch in the House cafeteria!). There were others with me, usually one or two, and the day's organizers made sure to provide us with materials that we could leave with people (such as pamphlets on how nuclear physics is important to national security, medical research, isotope production, and the like). All of the offices I went to were full of interested and supportive people, people who took time out of their day to listen to what we had to say. By the time I was finished yesterday afternoon, I was exhausted but pleasantly surprised at how the day had gone.
Today I'm back in my regular office, back to my regular work, and the whirlwind of yesterday already seems that much further away. But asking for something once isn't generally enough, so I'm sure I'll be back in Washington again to make sure we have funding, not just now, but for the future.

What's it worth?

Being a scientist is hard, not least because we're constantly struggling to find funding.

Our jobs are difficult, require more than average dedication, and yet are often only temporary. We bounce from one project to the next, hoping to find a permanent academic job (so that we can then fight for funding and tenure) or giving up and moving into less demanding occupations. We get paid little in the grand scheme of things, certainly much less than what we are worth. But we love what we do, and so we put up with it.

It took me roughly a decade of education past high school to become a scientist. Then, just like in the medical profession, I embarked upon a "residency" - postdoctoral positions, all temporary, where you are meant to learn more than even what your degree taught you. You have to go through these positions, often many of them, and often for many years (each lasts 1-3 years, depending on field of study, funding, etc), before you can even think about applying for a permanent job. So I'm now at the end of my third postdoc and finally applying for permanent jobs. Such is the nature of the beast, if you will. My effort, my hard work and dedication, all goes toward science - toward the furthering of the knowledgebase of humankind - and for the most part, my satisfaction in this pursuit is enough reward.
Now let's consider a different story. A man, who starts with nothing but a desire, works hard, goes to college, designs a gadget that acts as both a phone and a radio (think iPhone), manages to sell the idea to a big firm and ends up rich. Our cultural zeitgeist says he earned it, through his hard work and dedication, and we should let him have it. Don't penalize the successful people, right?
Here's where we expose the lie. Is the story really all that different, at least at the start? I'm successful, too - or, I would be, if the "product" that I have worked to create was something other than intelligence. All of my hard work and dedication goes toward making something that we (as capitalists) have a difficult time understanding, much less assigning a monetary value to. If I spent that last decade plus of my life designing iPads or "special" assets, I'd be rich. As it is, however, my hard work and dedication is not rewarded. I don't earn money based upon my level of effort. In fact, sometimes, no matter how hard I try, funding dries up and I don't earn money at all.
Capitalism doesn't have to be this way - we can assign a monetary value to intelligence, or to protection of natural resources, or any of those other things which we know intrinsically have worth but which we never bother to quantify. We can acknowledge that my effort is worth money, just like the effort of someone who invents Windows software is worth money.
There is also the matter of where the money comes from. In the case of iPhones and Microsoft and Bank of America, the money for the thing comes from people who are less well off than the people who designed the thing. In other words, people who purchase iPads are, on the whole, not people who make nearly as much income as Steve Jobs did, and the people underwater in their BoA mortgages will never be as rich as the bank's president. The money that the rich make in a capitalistic society comes from the poor (or the "poorer"). But the money I get comes from the government, which means it comes from everyone. Everyone puts in a share, a little or a lot, and that is where my "reward" comes from. It used to be that the rich gave back to society by personally funding things like science experiments and symphonies and social welfare projects, but we don't have that anymore.

So the question is - how much is it worth? How much is intelligence worth, and why don't we reward it the same way we reward the capitalistic creation of crap? Why do I have to struggle for money, sometimes even for a job, when I worked just as hard to get to this point as someone who makes ten times what I make in a year?

Science is hard enough as it is.

A lesson on precision and accuracy from the highway patrol

On a recent trip down a long and lonely highway, I found myself being issued a warning from a courteous highway patrol officer for traveling 77 mph in a 75 mph zone.
But this got me thinking. With his radar gun (regularly calibrated and checked), he was able to determine my speed to probably quite a good precision - perhaps fractions of a mile per hour. So he knew how fast I was going. However, that doesn't mean that I knew how fast I was going.
There is a well-known source of uncertainty in measurement, which states that the precision of any measurement can't be better than half of the smallest increment of the measuring device. Picture a ruler. Maybe it's a good one and it has increments marked on it down to every 16th of an inch. If you were to measure the length of something with this ruler, you wouldn't be able to say that you measured that length to better than half of 1/16th inches. The same is true for your liquid measuring cup: if the divisions on the cup are ounces, then your volume is only known to half an ounce. Even though you may be able to estimate the measurement better than that, it is invariably (and incurably) subjected to that imprecision. Consider a meter stick, which has 1 mm divisions. If you measure the length of a piece of metal with that meter stick to be 179.3 mm, you would still have to report the length as 179.3 +/- 0.5 mm. Because the precision of the meter stick is only half the smallest division (so half of 1 mm).
The speedometer in my car has 5 mph increments. So even if, in practice, I can estimate from the location of the needle that I was going 77, I must report that number as 77 +/- 2.5 mph. Which means that it's entirely possible that I was, in fact, going the speed limit, or even slightly under it (77-2.5 = 74.5). Because of the inherent precision in my speedometer, I simply can't know to any closer than 2.5 mph.
This, additionally, isn't the only problem I encounter in wishing to know my speed. While the highway patrolman's radar was probably calibrated recently, my speedometer may never have been calibrated (more likely, it was calibrated once, on the factory floor when the car was brand new). All sorts of things can affect the overall calibration of a car's speedometer, including the size and shape of the tires, the car's age, and the device originally used to perform the calibration. This kind of uncertainty (inaccuracy, as opposed to an imprecision) is referred to as systematic (recall my discussion of the faster-than-light neutrinos), and it's the hardest kind to find and quantify. Even if my speedometer says I'm going 75, I might be going 73, or 77. I might even be going 80. The only way I can tell is to compare my result (my speedometer reading) with one or more simultaneous external results (like the patrolman's radar measurement).
In other words, I need an external reference to check my speedometer's accuracy, while the speedometer's precision is determined through the speedometer itself; and both are needed to fully understand the speedo's functionality and operation.
Fortunately, in this particular instance, I just happened to have a GPS unit with me. And the GPS unit agreed with both the radar and my speedometer: I was driving 77 mph. (In my defense, I was coasting down a small hill. If he'd seen me going up the hill instead, he'd likely have clocked me going 72.)
So from a simple traffic warning, I was able to learn that my car's speedometer is accurate to better than 1 mph and precise to 2.5 mph. My conclusion: don't let nerds go on road trips!

Oh, God(win)

Godwin's Law, not really a law as such but more an idiom in the Murphy's Law sense, states that "as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1."
More plainly, Godwin's Law asserts that, given a long enough time, any online discussion (regardless of topic, scope or participants) will eventually contain someone making a comparative reference to Hitler or the Nazis.*
I had never seen this happen firsthand, however, no matter how well acquainted I was with the idea. It was the stuff of legend, something that happened to famous people or internet trolls.

That is, until a week ago.

An acquaintance on facebook, known to purposely provoke debate, posted a statement about gun control really being about our Second Amendment rights to bear arms against our government if necessary. Of course, knowing the person behind this particular argument, several people (myself included) responded with snarky comments: how can a government's own constitution condone treason against said government; or that if the point is really to arm ourselves against the government, why can I not have some submarines and an Air Force and a few tactical nuclear weapons to make the fight more even?

And then, so swiftly that no one saw it coming, enter The Thread Killer.

Thread Killer jumped right into the heretofore good-natured banter with an epic description of how he knew people who owned tanks and anti-aircraft guns and that they were prepared to use those weapons against the government if necessary. Without time for a breath, he stated additionally that it appeared it would be necessary because the "Socialist-in-Chief" Obama was trampling all over our constitutional rights.
I hoped, naively perhaps, that the levity of the original mood could be regained. I didn't know the person, but he was friends with the original poster, as I was... so surely it couldn't be as bad as the dark and dangerous internet, where comments are a free-for-all. "Obama a socialist? That's funny," I said. Especially (I thought it wise to point out) if one goes to Europe, where the real socialists can't stop rolling in the aisles every time they hear such ridiculous accusations.
Oh, no. Nope. It's not funny at all. Thread Killer pounced: it's not funny, it's horrifying, Obama is going to take away our guns and turn our country into Nazi Germany, and little me, the obviously brainless and acquiescing sheep that I am, well, well, well, I was just going to let it happen just like I would have let all those Jews waltz right into the gas chambers**. Luckily, Thread Killer was on the side of Israel, unlike the rest of us socialist Nazi wannabes who would rather do useless things like vote. (Ah, yes, and how dare I assume that he'd never been to Europe?)

I was taken aback. I tried to keep a lighter conversation going with the original poster, but I simply could not let such hateful and harassing statements go without reply. So I was matter-of-fact and brief: I should hope he would take back what he said, as it was unacceptable and shameful.

Well, that didn't work. Instead, Thread Killer demanded to know why he should take back his statements when they were true and Obama was a fascist, or, I assume, whatever Obama's currently thought to be on Fox News.

Because, I said. You just called me a Nazi. And you don't even know me.

After this, Thread Killer's comments in the thread disappeared, as if by magic. I thought that perhaps reason and civility had won the day, that he had seen the unnecessary cruelty and inappropriateness of his statements and thought it better to rescind them from public view. I continued a conversation with the original poster, but something seemed off about our back-and-forth. It seemed, well, not precisely back-and-forth. And a couple of days later, I discovered why.

Thread Killer hadn't deleted his posts - he'd blocked me.

Someone else, someone capable of seeing the entire thread, finally told me so. The conversation had continued without me. What I found the most discouraging was that Thread Killer didn't even want a debate to air his opinions. He didn't want me saying contradictory things or accusatory things in relation to his comments. He preferred the uncertainty of knowing whether anyone was listening at all to the certainty that I would argue with him.
The night of that post, I happened to be home alone, and let me tell you the sleep I got that night was fleeting and troubled. I heard every creak and snap of the house, every rustle and whisper of the trees outside, my brain convinced that someone willing to accuse me of destroying the country might also be willing to take whatever steps he deemed necessary to prevent me from doing so. A day or so later, I finally got up the courage to write one last post, explaining to anyone else who could see the thread that I had been blocked and thus could not read or respond to any of Thread Killer's comments. I should think, I said, that ownership of opinion is one thing that we can agree upon in this country. We take the right to free speech just as seriously as anything, or, at least, I thought that was true. So let it be known, world, I concluded, that I was disappointed in Thread Killer's behavior, despite the fact that the discussion itself had been essentially worthless. At least, while it was a discussion, it had the potential to get somewhere, but now that potential was lost completely. Two monologues do not a dialogue make.

It does sadden me that this happened; not just that it happened to me, but that it could happen at all. At what point did we give up on trying to compromise? At what point did we decide it's ok to hurl accusations at people we don't know, simply because they disagree with us on something? When did we begin to allow ourselves to believe that a person could be categorized so completely that the words we use to describe them don't even have to make sense anymore - how can someone be a socialist and a fascist dictator at the same time? - or, in another sense, when did we become so angry that it didn't matter what words we chose? Why does it seem to be so easy for an online thread to escalate from discussion to accusations and threats of violence? And how do we know if such violence isn't (or is) really intended?
Is it the nature of modern communication? We are so easily able to remain anonymous and hidden in a word of internet memes and text messages that perhaps we don't bother with civility anymore, the same way we're more likely to pick our nose in the car than elsewhere in public. Or is it the media, which blasts us with so much information that we're unable to process anything but whatever simple mantras they feed us, without even knowing what they mean: socialist, Second amendment, constitutional rights. Is it just human nature to feel that it's always "us versus them"?
I worry, mainly, because whatever the cause, this behavior is indicative of a dangerous current; the hidden undertow of willfully ignorant tribalism that threatens to destroy the very democratic social contract on which our country was, at least in theory, founded. We are losing our educated and informed public opinions, and we are losing our desire to even engage in the discussion and debate necessary to fairly and communally apply those educated and informed opinions. And that is a very frightening thought. Far more frightening than whether Obama is trying to take away our guns.


*It should be noted that Godwin's Law does not apply in the circumstances that the discussion is actually about something to which a comparison with or reference to the Nazis is relevant, such as WWII.

**I do not wish to make light of the tragedy that happened, but I also do not wish to mince words. The relevant portion of the exact quote in question: "Apathy like yours was the same apathy that allowed millions of Jews to walk into ovens." This was a hateful and cruel statement directed straight at me, and it is not acceptable to let such behavior go unchecked.

On Holst, and the benefit of uniformity

This afternoon, I took in a chamber orchestra performance of four pieces by British composers. Before the concert began, the man seated next to me mentioned to his companion that the orchestra always reminded him of funerals - everyone dressed in black, with dark, heavy curtains draped around the stage as if at a wake*. I was surprised by this admission, actually, because to me, the pageantry is obvious; the purpose of the dark clothing and darkened stage boundaries is to allow the performers to fade into the background, and the music to take center stage instead.
The conformity - or uniformity - of the orchestra serves this purpose. Not only must they all dress alike (so much so that entire clothing companies exist solely to provide "concert black" - imagine if one cellist was wearing really dark blue instead), but they must even behave alike, bowing together and in time. One or two musicians from a section who are out of sync with the rest cause us to wonder if they are capable players; if everyone in the orchestra "did their own thing," it would be horribly distracting, and we would be unable to appreciate the music itself.
So there are, in fact, circumstances wherein conformity to a prescribed system is beneficial; there are instances where we must be willing to give up our individualism for the "greater good." In the case of the orchestra, it is the music; in the case of society, it is the betterment of human life. Of course, as soon as that system ceases to provide a net positive, it and its defined limits of conformity can be discarded. But we should not be disparaging of the system simply because it demands uniformity of its members.
Of course, it also helps when the "system" in question is Holst's St. Paul's Suite.


*The man seated next to me also indicated, rather matter-of-factly, to his companion that watching "a lot" of BBC America - Downton Abbey, presumably - makes one "an anglophile." So we musn't take his opinions too seriously.

The Scientific Stereotype

Paul Dirac was once famously (though perhaps anecdotally) quoted as saying, "In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in the case of poetry it's the exact opposite!"
And we laugh, and perhaps picture Sheldon on Big Bang Theory saying something inanely similar.
Of course, we have a right to laugh, and I do not wish to sound as though I am a spoil-sport.

A little context to begin. The anecdote involving Dirac comes from the book Brighter Than a Thousand Suns: A Personal History of the Atomic Scientists by R. Jungk. The full story goes thusly:

Nearly all of the Americans who became well known later on for the development of atomic energy had been at Gottingen at various times between 1924 and 1932. They included Condon, who complained in lively fashion of the lack of comfort in the Gottingen lodgings; the lightning-brained Norbert Wiener; Brode, always deep in thought; the modest Richtmyer; the cheerful Pauling - one of Sommerfield's pupils, who often came over from Munich; and the amazing "Oppie," who managed to pursue in Gottingen not only his physical studies but also his philosophical, philological and literary hobbies. He was particularly deep into Dante's Inferno and in long evening walks along the railway tracks leading from the freight station would discuss with colleagues the reason why Dante had located the eternal quest in hell instead of in paradise.
One evening Paul Dirac, who was usually so silent, took Oppenheimer aside and gently reproached him. "I hear,' he said, 'that you write poetry as well as working at physics. How on earth can you do two such things at once? In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in the case of poetry it's the exact opposite!"

The difference between the two men could not be more pronounced.
At the Trinity test, which demonstrated the success of the first nuclear weapon in history and culminated the years of the secretive Manhattan Project, the well-read Oppenheimer would quote the Bhagavad Gita: "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." He is often cited as having additionally thought of the verse: "If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one." (Incidentally, this second verse is where the Jungk book derives its name.)
Dirac, on the other hand, was "pathologically reticent, strangely literal-minded and almost completely unable to communicate or empathise."
Which of these two men should we wish to emulate? Which of these two has stayed true to the calling of humanity, that is, to be human?
And yet, Dirac often spoke of beauty, especially the beauty of mathematics. He went so far as to say that "getting beauty in one's equations" was a "sure line of progress," and that in fact he preferred the mathematical beauty to the "physical concepts" he "learnt to distrust." So he obviously understood the poetic impulse, if only on an unconscious level.

My point in relating this story is that, while we find the renowned social ineptitude and narrow focus of the scientist (specifically physicist) humorous, we must not be taken in by the lie. We must not be content to fall into that stereotype. We must not continue propagating this myth. On becoming scientists, we do not resign our titles as human beings.
It is to the detriment of both ourselves and the world if we, as scientists, fail to engage in other spheres of life. We have so much to gain from literature, music, art, nature, food, politics, economics, spirituality, philosophy... and life has much to gain from our involvement. We are all the more hypocrites if we focus only on science and yet demand that the rest of humankind accept our scientific views in addition to their own. If there is never any quid pro quo, then we will never be considered trustworthy. I do not mean to say that we should allow religious doctrine to steer scientific inquiry or that politics has a right to direct the topic of scientific study, but instead that we, as scientists and human beings, should at least understand that these different views exist. We should try our best to see the merit in any point of view, not degrade them simply because they differ, and we should be able to take a step back - out of science, if you will - to understand the context of our own view. Science is not all there is, and we scientists should not live as though it is.
All of us, scientist or not, will benefit from the poetic impulse as well as the scientific one.

Humorous as it is, I have to side with Oppie on this one.

Curation

I encourage all of you to head over to the BBC to read this op-ed, and then to buy yourselves and everyone you know a subscription to Lapham's Quarterly.