Category Archives: Bibliophilia

Bibliophilia, Popularization

Open Lab Reviewed in Nature

The second annual anthology of science blogging has been reviewed in Nature. Joanne Baker writes,

The editor of this second anthology of the best scientific communiqués from the blogosphere thinks blogs offer new ways to discuss science. The Open Laboratory 2007: the Best Science Writing on Blogs (Lulu.com, 2008) takes the curious approach of using dead tree format to highlight the diversity of scientific ideas, opinions and voices flowing across the Internet.

It is a little paradoxical, when you think about it. To pick the “best” science blog posts, you have to find the ones which work in a non-bloggy format!

Next they’ll be asking which blog posts make the best plots for movies. . . .

Every year a different guest editor — here Reed Cartwright, a blogger and genetics and bioinformatics postdoc from North Carolina State University — picks the best posts to coincide with the Science Blogging Conference (in North Carolina on 19 January). First-hand accounts bring to life the stresses of a graduate student, a mother returning to the bench and an archaeologist’s joy at unearthing mammoth fossils. Topics tackled are as varied as the writers, from Viagra and tapeworms to trepanning. Explanations are often offered with a personal twist, such as a father’s tale of his child’s Asperger’s syndrome. The measured voices of trustworthy academics make medical research easy to swallow.

Just a spoonful of authority helps the medicine go down! Incidentally, do these selected highlights sound slanted to the life sciences? Well, I should really be asking the same question about the full list of entries, but on that list we’ve got the perils of taking averages, what a “year” really means, the life and death of cold fusion, cyberwar and quantum algorithms, not to slight a more philosophical piece on testability in Earth science.

If you are overwhelmed by the surge in science-related blogging and don’t know where to start, then this compilation may help you steer a course through the sea of perspectives on offer — or inspire you to start a blog yourself.

Well, I guess I didn’t screw things up for everybody else, after all.

(Tip’a the fedora to Bora.)

Bibliophilia, Evolution, Favorites, Popularization, Transhumanism

Spraying Habits of Pop Science

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OK, my fellow specimens, it’s time for a rant. This subject came up at lunch today, and I noticed it again at Terra Sigillata; the second occurrence managed to ruin the good mood I’d achieved by reading Neil Shubin’s Your Inner Fish (2008), which is a great book that everybody should buy.

The subject of this rant is the role economics plays in debates on science education, and more broadly, on a meta-level of rantery, the way people are deciding the roles which different tactics should have in science education. To illustrate the problem, let’s have a story. You’re a scientist, I’m a concerned parent, and we’re at a PTA meeting. You say, “We have to teach evolution in our schools, because evolution is the central concept in biology, and the biotech sector is a big part of our economy.” You’ve got my attention — that’s step zero! Job well done. Isn’t the appeal to the pocketbook — and the “think of the children” ploy — an effective tactic?
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Bibliophilia

What I Value Most in Life

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I was just about to settle in with a slice of chocolate cake, fresh from the oven, and a DVD of Laura (1944), when I noticed that a new Carnival of the Godless had come online. While skimming the essays therein collected, I left a comment at John Wilson’s place, on a subject I’d like to explore more fully sometime soon, and then I found that Mike Haubrich had discovered a book called (it really satirizes itself) The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Bible (2007). Its author, Robert J. Hutchinson, should certainly be proud of the reviews:

The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Bible by Robert Hutchinson fires back at this icy trend with history, statistics, logic, humor and even a few rabbit punches. If counter-terrorist Jack Bauer were to take up Christian apologetics, he might have penned something like this.

Well, Dan Dennett might get his fingernails torn off, but I’m not sure that style of apologetics really constitutes a worthwhile intellectual argument.

“For secular fundamentalists, religion in general, and the Bible in particular, are not just wrongheaded but actually dangerous,” Hutchinson writes. “That’s because religion and the Bible stand in the way of everything they value most in life—primarily unlimited sex, of course, but also the power to reshape society into a kind of secular utopia free from traditional ethical restraint.”

That these words were put in this order the way they were just fills me with admiration for the sheer variety of wirings which can exist between human ears. It also pumps up my urge for the cheap shot: don’t ya know that the “traditional ethical restraint” against, oh, say, rape was only fifty shekels and an arranged marriage? You can’t get much more traditional than Deuteronomy 22:28–9.
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Bibliophilia, Pseudoscience

Sunday Sokal

The following comes from a preface which Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont wrote for a book of Jacques Bouveresse, a preface entitled “Modesty, Rigor and Irony.” Bouveresse, it so happens, had been criticizing the literary/critical establishment for the same sins which Sokal and Bricmont enumerated in Fashionable Nonsense (1997), only he went farther, got there first and delivered even harsher jeremiads.

Bouveresse also astutely analyzes the sociology of intellectual life and the tactics used by some media stars (and their supporters) to immunize their ideas from reasoned critique. Here is one (pp. 64–65): First, you make some ambitious and revolutionary philosophical claim, citing in its support a prestigious scientific result such as Gödel’s Theorem; then, when critics become too precise and insistent, you explain that your use of science was “only metaphorical” and you berate your critics for being so bloody literal-minded. Here is another (pp. 18–20): Start again by making a flamboyant assertion that is either illogical or unsupported by evidence; then, when challenged, pose as a victim and accuse your opponents of being “flics de la pensée” [thought cops], “gendarmes” and “censeurs” [censors]. When people who control major collections in the publishing houses, hold chairs in the universities and have prominent positions in the media repeatedly pretend that any criticism of their views amounts to censorship, it is, as Bouveresse observes, quite comical indeed.

Comparing Bouveresse’s observations of French lit-crit circles to the antics of American cdesign proponentsists is left as an exercise for the reader.

Bibliophilia

Dawkins’ Book Endorsements

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I just noticed that RichardDawkins.net is now advertising books in the left-hand sidebar, below the quotations and links to other skeptical and freethinking websites. These include Daniel Dennett’s Breaking the Spell (2006), Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World (1995) and The Varieties of Scientific Experience (2006), E. O. Wilson’s The Future of Life (2001), A. C. Grayling’s Against All Gods (2007) and Michel Onfray’s Atheist Manifesto (2007). This sampling is significant for two reasons: first, if your reading has been limited to American glossy media, the latter two names will probably make you go, “Who?” Second, the implied endorsement of Sagan’s work is interesting, since many people (even some who should know better) have taken to canonizing Sagan as the anti-Dawkins of science advocacy. The same goes, to an extent, for E. O. Wilson.

The list of books is generated anew with each page load, just as with the other sidebar information, incidentally.

Bad Math, Bibliophilia

Vacation Memories 2: Baggage

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I’m back home from my brief travels, and I returned to find the latest outbreak of quantum woo infection, followed immediately by a heap of silliness about anthropic twaddle.

“Too soon,” I thought. “I need to go back on vacation.”

So, instead of complaining at great length about things I’ve already complained about, I’ll just share one quick observation and then head out into the outside world, shopping for art supplies.

Yesterday, I flew into Boston. In my laptop I carried a hardback of Lois Lowry‘s The Giver (1993) and, to recapture a more innocent time, Feynman and Weinberg’s Elementary Particles and the Laws of Physics (1987). In between reading these two, I happened to glance at the pamphlet-type thing which the airline clerk had given me to hold my boarding passes in. Here’s the puzzling part, under the “Free Baggage Allowance” heading:

Carry-on Baggage is limited to one piece per passenger, plus a personal item such as a purse, briefcase or laptop computer. The carry-on cannot exceed 51 inches (11″ × 14″ × 26″) and must fit under the seat or in an overhead compartment.

Why are the three linear dimensions added? The frame device the airline positions at each gate for testing whether or not your carry-on will fit rejects your baggage if any dimension exceeds the threshold set. Your baggage is deemed invalid even if the total volume is less than 11″ × 14″ × 26″ = 4004 in3 (just try carrying on something long and skinny). The longest diagonal of an 11″ × 14″ × 26″ box is

[tex]\sqrt{14^2 + 26^2} \approx 29.5[/tex]

inches long. So, you can have a carry-on item the sum of whose edge lengths is, say, thirty-one inches, and which won’t fit the actual airline restrictions no matter how you try to wedge it in sideways. The sum of the height, width and depth is a meaningless number.

Bibliophilia

Vacation Memories 1: Unbuilding

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One of the fringe benefits of visiting family is that I get to reacquaint myself with the books among which I grew up. Prominent among my warm and sunlit memories of bookworm-hood are David Macaulay‘s illustrated volumes. Macaulay’s career began with Cathedral (1973), the story of a medieval town building a Gothic cathedral; he followed with Pyramid (1975) and Castle (1977), among others, and his whimsy grew to (heh heh) mammoth proportions with The Way Things Work (1988).

The book I’d like to talk about today, however, is Unbuilding (1980). After describing how all sorts of great architectural works were built, Macaulay decided to explain how one gets taken apart, and for his example, he chose the Empire State Building. The whole book is full of fascinating details on how a building can be demolished, with some portions preserved for re-erection elsewhere, but those details aren’t what caught my eye. In each of his illustrated architecture books, Macaulay provides a back story, telling who’s building the title piece of the book and why. Naturally, he constructs a story for the Empire State Building’s demolition, too.

Prince Ali Smith, a Saudi oil tycoon educated in the United States, needs a new corporate headquarters for the Greater Riyadh Institute of Petroleum (GRIP). To the surprise and bafflement of his fellow executives, Prince Ali announces that GRIP will buy the Empire State Building, dismantle it, and rebuild it in the Arabian desert. What happens next, I quote below the fold:
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Bibliophilia, Transhumanism

Glum in the Bookstore

Over at the Hellfire Club, Russell Blackford has been writing 15,000 words on American science fiction for a big zarkin’ literary encyclopedia. Part of his job seems to be the invention of history: he gets to write about “contemporary” science fiction, the writing on which judgments have not yet been made. And while talking about books is always fun, saying things which have never been said before about them is even better.

(Yo, transhumanists: is there any market which will pay me to discourse on how the practice of “tubing” fetuses in the Honorverse, and particularly in the novel At All Costs (2005), is the science-fictional antithesis of Brave New World (1932)? )

Anyway, having this freshly in mind put me into a bit of a melancholy mood last night, while I was wandering through the local Barnes-and-Borders-A-Million. (I’m visiting family in a town where there’s not much else to do.) From the looks of their science-fiction section, the surest way to get published is to write a Star Wars or Star Trek novel. To paraphrase Mr. Spock, that’s a situation which calls for a colorful metaphor. I mean, do we really want the New Jedi Order to be the public face of contemporary SF?

Bibliophilia, BPSDB, Electromagnetism, Favorites, Pseudoscience, Quantum mechanics

I Get E-Mail

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BPSDBBelow the fold is an e-mail I received this morning from Victor Senchenko, human space navigator, and his “Media Team.” According to his website, Senchenko can explain why homosexual humans exist (OK), why God doesn’t exist (not clear whether this is the Abrahamic tantrum-tosser or something more sophisticated) and why time also does not exist (and right there, we hear the fuses blow).

Greetings Blake,

Considering your involvement with science, the following Press Release may be of interest to you.

As an astute person, you probably would agree that for a long while humans – especially the scientists – had been claiming that they wanted to solve all the mysteries of physical existence. They have also repeatedly indicated that they wanted to understand the causes of human behavior.

I don’t know many scientists who’ve claimed they want to solve all the “mysteries of physical existence.” We’ll settle for solving one mystery big enough to get us tenure; the others are left as an exercise to the interested reader.
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Bibliophilia, Network theory

Words You Can’t Say in an Obituary

This is from the Washington Post obit of Norman Mailer:

After the war ended, he served with occupation forces in Japan, then returned to the United States in May 1946. He spent the rest of the year in a bungalow near Provincetown, Mass., transmuting his military experiences into “The Naked and the Dead.”

His publisher, Stanley Rinehart, insisted that he clean up the language in the book. Mailer complied by inventing the word “fug” as a substitute for an expletive that the publisher found offensive.

Now. . . .
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Bibliophilia, Classical Mechanics, Popularization, Video

James Burke, Weightless

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I grew up on James Burke‘s books and television series, a taste I inherited from my father. All the way through high school, I had a reputation as a know-it-all, a walking encyclopaedia (who was, at least, a helpful guy). I kept telling people that if they’d watched Connections — and read The Cartoon History of the Universe — my know-it-all-itude would be a great deal less impressive.

I saw James Burke live, once, at an aerospace conference back in 2000. I had to run off and do something else right after his talk, so I didn’t get a chance to have a conversation or even get a book autographed (one more reason I’m glad I was able to say thanks to James Gleick). I do, however, remember a story he told about his days in the BBC, covering the Apollo program.

He was responsible for explaining the scientific motivations for going to the Moon, the motivations which stay valid after you beat the Russians there. As he reports in the Connections book, the British media put more emphasis on this than the Americans did, so British interest remained relatively high during the later missions, when NASA’s TV ratings in the United States were dropping. At the time, the significance of all this was probably less apparent, and Burke was busy enough just trying to translate NASA tech-speak into something people could understand.

Part of this job involved reading through NASA’s manuals for the equipment which would be used on the Moon. These machines were not simple devices, nor were their instructions straightforward. Each manual had to have a full description of possible failure modes, with contingency plans for each eventuality, and all written with such detail that both the astronauts and the Mission Control people could handle all possible malfunctions without going back to the original engineers. The result, Burke said, was something like this: “If X-Y-Zed, then gobbledygook. If X-Y-Zed-Beta, then gobbledygook squared.”

Finally, after a whole page of bullet-pointed technical jargon, came the last contingency plan:

“If all else fails, kick with lunar boot.”

And because this is the multimedia era, here’s a clip from BBC Four, in which James Burke demonstrates how the KC-135 “Vomit Comet” was used for weightless training.

Bibliophilia, ICCS, Plectics, Quantum mechanics, Seminar Summaries

ICCS: Monday Evening

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The parts between talks are the best parts of conferences. Sure, it’s great to hear Greg Chaitin deliver his sermon about the ideal realm of pure mathematics being an infinite ocean of complexity, out of which we can only seize finite buckets — but Chaitin writes about that kind of thing, and you can read it for free online. It’s an altogether different experience to discuss during the coffee break Mike Stay and Cristian Calude’s paper, “From Heisenberg to Gödel via Chaitin,” with one of the three men in the title.

Question-and-answer sessions after the presentations can also be quite good. Last night, for example, Barbara Jasny of Science Magazine explained how that publication is adapting to the whizbang modern world. It’s reassuring to hear that at least one person in the publishing community has a common-sense understanding of what cheap, open digital access means: journals can only justify charging prices if those prices reflect the actual value which those journals add. More interesting than that, however, was Jasny’s reaction to the question from Frannie Leautier, former Vice-President of the World Bank and currently head of the World Bank Institute. Leautier asked if Science would publish articles which used cartoons as illustrations (instantly endearing herself to all the Larry Gonick and Sid Harris fans in the audience).
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