We are currently in the midst of updating the too-long-unupdated software which underlies Science After Sunclipse. This process has largely gone without incident, though some mathematical formulæ are failing to display properly. Until we get everything sorted, just imagine an early-1990s “This Website Under Construction” icon next to anything which doesn’t look right.
All posts by Blake Stacey
Of Predators and Pomerons
Consider the Lagrangian density
\[ \mathcal{L} (\tilde{\phi},\phi) = \tilde{\phi}\left((\partial_t + D_A(r_A – \nabla^2)\right)\phi – u\tilde{\phi}(\tilde{\phi} – \phi)\phi + \tau \tilde{\phi}^2\phi^2. \]
Particle physicists of the 1970s would recognize this as the Lagrangian for a Reggeon field theory with triple- and quadruple-Pomeron interaction vertices. In the modern literature on theoretical ecology, it encodes the behaviour of a spatially distributed predator-prey system near the predator extinction threshold.
Such is the perplexing unity of mathematical science: formula X appears in widely separated fields A and Z. Sometimes, this is a sign that a common effect is at work in the phenomena of A and those of Z; or, it could just mean that scientists couldn’t think of anything new and kept doing whatever worked the first time. Wisdom lies in knowing which is the case on any particular day.
[Reposted from the archives, in the light of John Baez’s recent writings.]
Signature in the Cell (Repost)
For your convenience:
The following is a list of debunkings of Stephen C. Meyer’s Signature in the Cell, arranged more or less in chronological order. I have not included every blog post I’ve seen on the topic; as I did for Behe’s The Edge of Evolution, I’ve focused on the most substantive remarks, rather than keeping track of every time somebody just quoted somebody else. (I’ve also probably overlooked, forgotten, mistakenly thought I’d already included or never been made aware of some worthwhile essays.) In some cases, additional relevant posts can be found by following links within the essays I have listed.
Continue reading Signature in the Cell (Repost)
OpenLab 2010
The 2010 edition of The Open Laboratory, the annual anthology of science blogging, is now available for purchase, as a handsome print volume or a PDF compatible with e-reader devices. Proceeds from book sales go to funding the ScienceOnline 2012 conference, which is currently in the planning stage.
Eventually, I’ll find/make the time to write about how we make blog posts into a book. First, Series Editor Bora Zivkovic chooses the guest editor for the year. Then, the two of them contact me and tell me it’s time to take the LaTeX templates out of their ceremonial encasements. Next, I draw a transmutation circle and start looking for sacrifices. . . .
Updates
In the wake of ScienceOnline2011, at which the two sessions I co-moderated went pleasingly well, my Blogohedron-related time and energy has largely gone to doing the LaTeXnical work for this year’s Open Laboratory anthology. I have also made a few small contributions to the Azimuth Project, including a Python implementation of a stochastic Hopf bifurcation model.
I continue to fall behind in writing the book reviews I have promised (to myself, if to nobody else). At ScienceOnline, I scored a free copy of Greg Gbur’s new textbook, Mathematical Methods for Optical Physics and Engineering. Truth be told, at the book-and-author shindig where they had the books written by people attending the conference all laid out and wrapped in anonymizing brown paper, I gauged which one had the proper size and weight for a mathematical-methods textbook and snarfed that. On the logic, you see, that if anyone who was not a physics person drew that book from the pile, they’d probably be sad. (The textbook author was somewhat complicit in this plan.) I am happy to report that I’ve found it a good textbook; it should be useful for advanced undergraduates, procrastinating graduate students and those seeking a clear introduction to techniques used in optics but not commonly addressed in broad-spectrum mathematical-methods books.
Compliments of the Season
Merry Christmas, everyone.
To our thinking, Reader, it was a sorrowful star, that star of Bethlehem. What good purpose for Jesus or for anyone it served we cannot discover. It stood over Bethlehem, however, with a dire meaning to the homes there. All the little children there, except the one that “fled” into Africa were soon to be little corpses. The star of Bethlehem has had some little tolerable poetry and a great deal of doggerel addressed to it; also a considerable quantity of religious and sentimental prose. It has, too, had a good deal of banter bestowed upon it, which yields less amusement however, than the laborious effort of some theologians to throw light upon it by semi-natural conjectures as to how it may have been produced. They seem to have been led into these ill-advised attempts to naturalize the Magi’s light from its being termed a star; forgetful of the fact that the Jews who did not know what or where the real stars are, but thought them to be little ornaments to our earth, would very naturally give that name to such an appearance.
[…]
There were, so it seems to us mortals, two ways open to Providence of shielding Jesus from harm. First, by staying the arm of Herod, and thus saving not only the life of Jesus, but also the lives of all his fellow little towns-children; or, as here given, flight on the part of the holy family, and abandonment, sauve que peut, for all the other little Bethlehemites. We are grieved to find that Providence chose the latter. And as we read this, we are compelled to say that our heart is not with the fugitives into Egypt, but entirely with the little victims and their parents thus left behind.
[…]
The visit of the Magi to Jerusalem proved to be a most calamitous occurrence. Their declaration in Jerusalem that a King of the Jews was just born excited Herod’s attention; led to the flight of Jesus and his parents from the country; and, worst of all, led to the dreadful massacre our author now proceeds to narrate. What useful, what conceivable purpose was served by this untoward announcement on the part of the Magi, is not discoverable. Jesus, for at least thirty years afterwards lived in seclusion up in Galilee, his very existence unknown in Jerusalem. And when he went there towards the end of his life, we shall look in vain for the slightest reference either by himself or by anyone else to what we here read. Anything more utterly purposeless than this visit to Jerusalem of the Magi and its pitiable consequences it would be difficult to imagine.
[…]
Were we told that Herod overtook these mischievous Magi and slaughtered them also, we think few readers would feel very much more grieved.
The first Christmas was not a festive one in Bethlehem. There was “lamentation and weeping and great mourning” there. Poor Bethlehem! The journey of Joseph and Mary from Nazareth for the special purpose that Jesus might be born in Bethlehem may have been an honour, but it was dearly bought.
[…]
With the amiable view, we suppose, of softening our pain at the narrative of this massacre, and its permission in such a connection, some commentators have ventured to offer us some considerations, intended, we gather, to be soothing to our hearts if not to our minds. These little victims were in reality favoured beings, we are told; they are now termed “the holy innocents,” though why more holy or more innocent than any other children dying young is not stated; they were by this means saved from the ills and trials of life; and they are now safely lodged in Heaven. Some doubt, however, seems to exist as to whether they continue babes in that happy land or no. We do not know what warrant there is for such assertions, nor do we know whether these commentators would like their own children to be favoured in a like way. From such a point of view it almost seems a matter of regret that the radius of the slaughter was not greatly extended. We know nothing in the world more truly sad than the wild arguments used by pious men in struggling with the ugly parts of their holy writ. For ourselves, we find a much more solid comfort as we think of this melancholy story. It is that it rests on the sole unsupported statement of our author. Of corroboration there is not a vestige. Learned Christian scholars have toiled zealously, not, as one might have hoped, to dispel this story, but we regret to say, to substantiate it. We are thankful to add without any success whatever.
From pages 12 ff. of A Plain Commentary on the First Gospel by an Agnostic, Williams and Norgate, 1891. http://books.google.com/books?id=cXpCAAAAIAAJ.
Goodnight, children, everywhere.
Policy
Odd as it may seem, I have received several e-mails lately inquiring about these subjects; so, I’ve decided to set down my positions.
1. I have no desire to run ads on Science After Sunclipse. Per basic journalistic ethics, I believe in keeping a firewall between editorial and advertising, and this site is my editorial space. I am not so poor that I cannot afford the smidgen of hosting which a low-key site like mine requires. If I promote anything with profit in mind, it’ll be something which is as much mine as this site is.
2. I am not likely to run “guest posts” by people I’ve never met. This is a matter of practicality more than of principle. My experience with blog collectives has been that they bring more drama than I find genial; likewise, being an active Wikipedia editor is not an effort I’d like to repeat. Involving other people in this notebook of mine, unless I already know them personally, is a hassle I’m happy to avoid.
There. That’s that sorted.
Christopher Maloney is a Quack
Christopher Maloney is a quack who just keeps on quacking.
Gogo Proxy
Modern air travel! The worst trouble I had with the in-flight WiFi service (on my return from Skepticon 3) was that it didn’t work, or, rather, that it worked for less than the time necessary to load a page. A friend of mine travelling on the same day had a more interesting issue: the Internet connection gave him someone else’s identity. He went through the procedure to sign up for the Gogo Inflight Wifi, logged into Facebook and realized he was seeing someone else’s news feed. With someone else’s picture on the page. Using a total stranger’s account. Upon reloading, the same thing happened, but with a second stranger taking the place of the first.
HTTP Proxies are strange and mysterious things.
Science & Fiction at ScienceOnline 2011
I’ll be co-moderating a couple sessions at ScienceOnline 2011 this coming January. Here’s the abstract for one of them:
Can we stimulate a wider interest in and appreciation of scientists and what they do via the medium of mainstream fiction, whether be it novels, plays, movies or TV dramas? And how can we leverage online tools to help? Is it possible to entertain and educate without becoming too pedantic or pedagogical, and how do we define “scientific accuracy” in the context of made-up stories? This session will explore the world of imaginary science and how we can leverage its powers without compromising our scientific principles.
With Jennifer Rohn, who will bring the respectable content, while I provide my best Wesley Crusher impression.
Synchronicity for Fun and Profit
So: Ryan North, Matthew Bennardo and David Malki ! organized a synchronized book-buying event which propelled their short-story anthology Machine Of Death to the #1 spot on Amazon.com’s bestseller list. Since any bestseller only actually moves a few hundred copies on a single day, they figured, why not get everybody to buy on the same day and push the book to the top of the list for just that long?
It worked. And then it got better:
American conservative talky guy Glenn Beck called us out on his show yesterday because it turned out that his book also had its official release date on October 26th, and he was upset that it was in third place to Keith Richard’s new autobio “Life” and our little book. He told his listeners that he’d worked on his book for over a year, and that his books always debut at #1, and that we (along with Keith) were part of a left-wing “culture of death” that “celebrates the things that have destroyed us” and that everyone should support life by buying his book instead of ours?
It’s basically amazing.
Every time you piss off Glenn Beck, a LOLcat gets its invisible bike.
In completely unrelated news, Brian Switek‘s Written In Stone is coming out next Monday, the first of November. (Free preview!) Written In Stone is about evolution. Glenn Beck is a creationist.
(Whatever you fellows do, I’m buying two copies. I promised my mother I’d get one autographed for her at ScienceOnline 2011.)
UPDATE (29 October): Ach! All my evil plans, they are ruined!
“This Room Smells of Mathematics!”
I reposted the previous entry from the depths of the Sunclipse archives because I found the whole “giggling over stuff you don’t understand” theme to be of a piece with this self-indulgently moronic article from New York magazine. The article in question appears to be written by those who, as Greg Egan sez, “have convinced themselves that the particular set of half-digested factoids in their possession perfectly delineates the proper amount of science that can be known by a truly civilised person and discussed in polite company”. Or, as C. P. Snow would have been too quintessentially British to say, we have this Two Cultures nonsense because people are #@!$%ing lazy. I was tempted to rant at some length about it.
But, as it happens, Zeno has done my work for me.
Woo hoo! Now I can get on with more serious matters (and procrastinate in a way which is safer for my blood pressure).
EDIT TO ADD: Stick around for the comments after Zeno’s post. Turns out, the description for the #1 most “ridiculous” mathematics class is a clumsily-concealed quote mine.
REPOST: Scathing Review Fail
A discussion elsewhere on the ‘tubes this morning reminded me of this, so I decided to dig it out of my archives. Short version: people complaining that something sounds silly got it coming right back at them because they have no clue what they’re talking about.
I haven’t yet seen the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still. Generally speaking, I haven’t been terribly speedy about seeing movies as they come out; sometimes, I just wait until they’re available on mplayer. The reviews have not been kind, but on the flipside, not all the reviews have been particularly insightful. To wit, here is Alonso Duralde at msnbc.com:
The new “Day” can’t be bothered to include the thought-provoking dialogue of the original, choosing instead to bury the audience with special effects that are visually impressive but no substitute for an actual script. And what words do remain are so exquisitely awful that they provide some of the season’s biggest laughs.
OK, bring it.
My personal favorite? Astro-biologist Helen Benson (Jennifer Connelly) takes alien Klaatu (Keanu Reeves) to see a Nobel Prize-winning scientist and notes that her colleague was honored “for his work in biological altruism.” What would that entail, exactly? Helping frogs cross the street?
The sound you hear is my palm hitting my forehead, rather emphatically, followed by a howl from deep within my thorax: “Learn to [expletive deleted] Google, you [anatomically uncomplimentary compound noun]!” Just because Chris Tucker of the Daily Mail can’t do a simple web search doesn’t give you an excuse.
Claudia Puig at USA Today is no better:
What, exactly, would that entail? It sounds like something Cleese and his fellow Monty Python wits might have dreamed up.
You ignorant [epithet derived from SF television show]. Why don’t you go [verb unsuitable for a family blog] with Dave White, who apparently thinks that the mere mention of an actual scientific subject makes a movie instant MST3K fodder.
In Scientific American, Michael Shermer gives the movie a mostly positive review, and indicates that “biological altruism” is a real subject. Kenneth Turan of the LA Times is also mostly happy with the film, and he doesn’t crack wise about the “biological altruism” business, though I’m not sure about his grasp of it:
Aside from Klaatu and Gort, the “Day” team claims to have retained the original’s snappy catchphrase, “Klaatu barada nikto,” but it’s so hard to hear that viewers will be forgiven if they miss it. Also still around is the charming blackboard scene, in which Klaatu solves an equation for Professor Barnhardt (John Cleese), a man smart enough to have won the nonexistent but indisputably high-minded Nobel Prize for biological altruism.
Supposing that Barnhardt did work in the field of kin recognition, evolutionary ecology or some such topic which was honoured with a Nobel Prize, it wouldn’t be “the Nobel Prize for biological altruism”, but rather the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine or, possibly, Economics (if Barnhardt’s research focused on, say, evolutionary game theory).
MTV’s Kurt Loder calls the film “boldly mediocre” but says that “biological altruism” is “a very Pythonian name for an actual subject of scientific inquiry”. Stephen D. Greydanus has a similar attitude. The recapper at the Agony Booth was also underwhelmed, by this part and by the rest of the movie:
Helen explains that Karl won the Nobel “for his work in biological altruism.” This sounds like something goofy they made up to make Karl sound noble, but in fact it’s a real field of philosophic study that investigates why, in times of limited resources, individual organisms throughout the animal kingdom occasionally produce fewer offspring (which, in Darwinian terms, is self-abnegation) for the good of the community. Which is great, but since it’s not explained, most of the audience is left to think that it’s something goofy the filmmakers made up.
So, I guess you can still dislike the movie after you’ve looked up the relevant science.
Last Airbender Tweet-a-Thon
WARNING: This post rated NSFW-17 by the Mainstream Prose Association of America. Contains multiple instances of foul language, all of them, given the subject matter, entirely warranted.
Normally, I take a pretty sanguine attitude to arguments about movies. You can maybe argue somebody into finding a film historically significant, technically accomplished or philosophically interesting, but arguing them into liking or disliking it? I’m not so sure. The popcorn bucket has its reasons, which reason knows not. Debate over matters of sentiment is often a spectacularly futile effort.
Continue reading Last Airbender Tweet-a-Thon
Know Thy Audience?
D. W. Logan et al. have an editorial in PLoS Computational Biology giving advice for scientists who want to become active Wikipedia contributors. I was one, for a couple years (cue the “I got better”); judging from my personal experience, most of their advice is pretty good, save for item four:
Wikipedia is not primarily aimed at experts; therefore, the level of technical detail in its articles must be balanced against the ability of non-experts to understand those details. When contributing scientific content, imagine you have been tasked with writing a comprehensive scientific review for a high school audience. It can be surprisingly challenging explaining complex ideas in an accessible, jargon-free manner. But it is worth the perseverance. You will reap the benefits when it comes to writing your next manuscript or teaching an undergraduate class.
Come again?
Whether Wikipedia as a whole is “primarily aimed at experts” or not is irrelevant for the scientist wishing to edit the article on a particular technical subject. Plenty of articles — e.g., Kerr/CFT correspondence or Zamolodchikov c-theorem — have vanishingly little relevance to a “high school audience.” Even advanced-placement high-school physics doesn’t introduce quantum field theory, let alone renormalization-group methods, centrally extended Virasoro algebras and the current frontiers of gauge/gravity duality research. Popularizing these topics may be possible, although even the basic ideas like critical points and universality have been surprisingly poorly served in that department so far. While it’s pretty darn evident for these examples, the same problem holds true more generally. If you do try to set about that task, the sheer amount of new invention necessary — the cooking-up of new analogies and metaphors, the construction of new simplifications and toy examples, etc. — will run you slap-bang into Wikipedia’s No Original Research policy.
Even reducing a topic from the graduate to the undergraduate level can be a highly nontrivial task. (I was a beta-tester for Zwiebach’s First Course in String Theory, so I would know.) And, writing for undergrads who already have Maxwell and Schrödinger Equations under their belts is not at all the same as writing for high-school juniors (or for your poor, long-suffering parents who’ve long since given up asking what you learned in school today). Why not try that sort of thing out on another platform first, like a personal blog, and then port it over to Wikipedia after receiving feedback? Citing your own work in the third person, or better yet recruiting other editors to help you adapt your content, is much more in accord with the letter and with the spirit of Wikipedia policy, than is inventing de novo great globs of pop science.
Popularization is hard. When you make a serious effort at it, let yourself get some credit.
Know Thy Audience, indeed: sometimes, your reader won’t be a high-school sophomore looking for homework help, but is much more likely to be a fellow researcher checking to see where the minus signs go in a particular equation, or a graduate student looking to catch up on the historical highlights of their lab group’s research topic. Vulgarized vagueness helps the latter readers not at all, and gives the former only a gentle illusion of learning. Precalculus students would benefit more if we professional science people worked on making articles like Trigonometric functions truly excellent than if we puttered around making up borderline Original Research about our own abstruse pet projects.
ARTICLE COMMENTED UPON
- Logan DW, Sandal M, Gardner PP, Manske M, Bateman A, 2010 Ten Simple Rules for Editing Wikipedia. PLoS Comput Biol 6(9): e1000941. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000941
Colloquium on Complex Networks
I might be going to this, because it’s in the neighbourhood and I suppose I ought to see what colourful examples other people use in these situations, having given similar talks a couple times myself.
MIT Physics Department Colloquium: Jennifer Chayes
“Interdisciplinarity in the Age of Networks”
Everywhere we turn these days, we find that dynamical random networks have become increasingly appropriate descriptions of relevant interactions. In the high tech world, we see mobile networks, the Internet, the World Wide Web, and a variety of online social networks. In economics, we are increasingly experiencing both the positive and negative effects of a global networked economy. In epidemiology, we find disease spreading over our ever growing social networks, complicated by mutation of the disease agents. In problems of world health, distribution of limited resources, such as water, quickly becomes a problem of finding the optimal network for resource allocation. In biomedical research, we are beginning to understand the structure of gene regulatory networks, with the prospect of using this understanding to manage the many diseases caused by gene mis-regulation. In this talk, I look quite generally at some of the models we are using to describe these networks, and at some of the methods we are developing to indirectly infer network structure from measured data. In particular, I will discuss models and techniques which cut across many disciplinary boundaries.
9 September 2010, 16:15 o’clock, Room 10-250.