Naked Gardening
I am not the most avid gardener at the best of times — as the state of our yard will attest. Nevertheless, I do enjoy the results sometimes of putting in the effort, and I'm always interested in seeing how plants grow. Nature continues to amaze me.
So, I was a bit disappointed to discover, while catching up on my reading, that I had just missed World Naked Gardening Day on 9 September — the second annual one, no less. Who can argue with this rationale?
Why garden naked? First of all, it's fun! Second only to swimming, gardening is at the top of the list of family-friendly activities people are most ready to consider doing nude. Moreover, our culture needs to move toward a healthy sense of both body acceptance and our relation to the natural environment.
Years ago, I remember dipping into the rec.nude usenet newsgroup and I was flabbergasted by what I found. I thought it was nice to find so many people who had an interest of some sort in nudity, but they sure had some issues with their bodies! I remember one guy's breathless report on an occasion when, hours into the night after his wife and children were in bed, he had closed all the curtains in his living room, turned out all the lights, taken off all his clothes, and sat totally naked for over 20 minutes. He felt quite liberated, according to his report. I had the oddest mixture of reactions, along the lines of "You go guy!" and "Get over it!"
I wonder whether he'd be ready yet for naked gardening?
In: All, Curious Stuff, Raised Eyebrows Dept.
Goldberg Variations in LEGO
Thanks to a short piece at Improbable Research,* I am now aware that there exists a harpsichord, looking like a single-manual Flemish reproduction, more or less, built entirely of LEGO bricks — except for the strings that is. Made up of some 10,000 LEGO pieces, the instrument has a 61-note range, weighs 150 pounds, and it 6 feet by 3 feet in size.
The picture at the Oddmusic Musical Instrument Gallery is quite lovely; however, the sound of the harpsichord being played in the first few bars of Bach's "Goldberg Variations", available at the same link, defies description, although the writer at Improbable Research suggested that it "sounds like a harpsichord melded with a typewriter", which might make it sound altogether too pretty.
———-
*Marc Abrahams, "Oddmusic musical instruments gallery", Improbable Research, 9 September 2006.
In: All, Curious Stuff, Music & Art
The Cusps of Warfare
I've been in a desultory sort of discussion at SW Anderson's blog (Oh!pinion) about how we, America, or even we, the targets of terrorists, should respond to terrorism. Tonight I worked out some of my frustrations at not seeing a path to a solution with any clarity by writing far more than I had intended in a comment. I'm not even going to try to say what I was writing about; I don't think SW will mind if I reproduce the text of my comment here. (For the rest of the discussion, follow the link above.)
One thing that someone has said about hate-crime and terrorism, which make them seem to have so much in common to me, is that retaliation against some one who has done wrong is transferred to some group who represents the evil doer, either actual or perceived.
There are many reasons for the transference. Perhaps the evil-does (real or perceived, mind you) is not actually identifiable. Perhaps the evil-doer is not immediately available. Perhaps one evil-doer has killed 2,000 people so more punishment is called for.
With country-to-country war, the transference is understood and its the army's that fight each other until one government capitulates to the demands of the other. This is actual warfare.
Then there's metaphorical warfare. The war on drugs, the war on poverty, and now the "war on terror". There is no enemy army that is identifiable, no country whose army one can attack, no government representing the terrorists who can be forced to capitulate, no terms of surrender that make any sense at all. How can you tell when you've won the "war on terror"?
And so some group, "terrorists", must now be identified as the enemy in a "war" that has no direction and no concrete goals or endpoint. A handful of "terrorists" destroyed the twin towers and killed over 2,000 people — some response was needed that was bigger than 7 suicide terrorists who were already dead anyway. So, we invaded Iraq which, by any stretch of the imagination, was quite an escalation over tit for tat, and eye for an eye.
Threatening to destroy a family whose son is a suicide bomber is just such a transference unless we know that the family inculcated hate into the mind of the bomber as SW suggests — then they might be culpable. Otherwise, it's just blaming the group for the individual.
Threatening to bomb one region of Pakistan after another until they find and give us bin Laden sounds rather like the Gestapo in occupied France killing one Frenchman a day until the town reveals the hidden Jew. After the war, when the winners and losers are known, such things become war crimes, not proportionate response.
The answers in this present case are not clear to me, so like a good liberal I fret over these paralyzing issues. What little I know from history seems to suggest that every time in the history of warfare when it became possible to kill larger chunks of people at one go it took some time for the combatants to settle on a rationale that made them feel comfortable doing it.
The history of World-War II had at least two such interesting cusps. The first was when it became all-out war instead of army-to-army war and the Allies fire bombed Dresden, as an example, or Germany bombed London. The rationale was that it was suitable to make a target of war production facilities and such, but everyone knew it was just an excuse. In fact it was an effort to terrorize the enemy populace, to break their will to fight.
Then there was discussion when the atom bomb became a reality and Roosevelt and Churchill were both adamant that it must be used. How to justify killing all those "innocent" people? Tit for tat: in the long run fewer people (allied soldiers and others) would die if we killed a few million in one go with the A-bomb and shocked the enemy (early "shock and awe") into capitulating. Ta da!
Now that we have global guerilla war with WMDs, it seems that another such cusp is upon us. Perhaps I'll just quite worrying, re-watch "Dr. Strangelove", and learn how to yell "Let's Nuke 'Em!", whomever they happen to be.
Beard of the Week XVII: Medieval Astronomy
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Isaac and I have both recently finished reading Tycho & Kepler, by Kitty Ferguson, and we thoroughly enjoyed it. (There's more about the book in our Science Besieged Book Note.) Thus it happens that this week's beard and rather extravagent mustache belongs to the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe.
Tycho, active in the second half of the 16th century, is often described as the greatest naked-eye astronomer in history. The biggest reason for this is that the telescope was just being invented — it was only in 1610 that Galileo discovered the moons of Jupiter in one of the earliest astronomical uses of the telescope. Think for a moment of what it must have been like to try to do science when, as Ms. Ferguson pointed out, geometry was the most advanced mathematics known. Calculus would not be invented by Newton & Leibnitz for nearly another century.
Regardless, he created some magnificent and clever instruments with which he made observations of unprecedented precision. In particular, he measured the orbits of the planets with enough accuracy that, just after Tycho's death, Kepler finally hit on his (Kepler's) 3 Laws of Planetary Motion and announced that the planets followed eliptical orbits. (The eccentricity of the orbits, which is to say the amount by which they are elliptical rather than circular, was very small and barely discernable.)
These portraits of Tycho do not represent his reddish-blond beard and quite remarkable mustache too clearly, but Ms. Ferguson's description makes it clear that he was physically rather to my taste:
Tycho had just turned twenty-nine [in 1575] and was an experienced courtier, polished by his travels and attendance at many courts. Garbed appropirately with flowing cape, feathered hat, and sword, he was an imposing figure, barrel-chested, elegant, and of distinctly noble bearing. His eyes were light-colored, and his hair, beard, and substantial mustache were reddish blond. In portraits, his false nose looks a fairly successful imitation, close to flesh-colored — though an astute portrait painter would have made it so in any case. [p. 72]
[from: Kitty Ferguson, Tycho & Kepler : The Unlikely Partnership That Forever Changed Our Understanding of the Heavens. New York : Walker & Company, 2002.]
Oh, about the nose: in his youth Tycho got a substantial portion of his nose cut off during a rather pointless duel. Although it is true that he had an ersatz nose fashioned of gold alloy, it was for special occasions only. For everyday use he had a copper and tin alloyed nose. He had made both noses himself.
In: All, Beard of the Week
Beard of the Week XVI: Queen of Queens
Most of my life I have been a partisan of "classical" music. No doubt this has something to do with my starting to play 'cello when I was in the fourth grade, but still it took time. In my junior-high years (nowadays: middle-school years) I adored my parents' few recordings of popular classics, particularly Johann Strauss, Jr.'s "Tales from the Vienna Woods" — what was that zither sound really coming from? — and the Overture to Die Fledermaus, but my exposure was quite limited still. I bought my first LP — Bach, not surprisingly — when I was in high school.
There was about a year in college when, because of some friends I spent time with, my mind tuned in to modern popular music. One friend (Naomi) was particularly into women artists: Phoebe Snow, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon, and their contemporaries. They were pleasant to my ear, but not terribly satisfying musically. Other bands and albums that were popular c. 1977 I still have an emotional attachment to: Blondie and Kansas come to mind. Steely Dan I thought then, and still think, made very good music.
But the stand-out discovery for me was Queen. What a phenomenon. Quintessential Queen for me is "News of the World"; the other albums are good, but News is faaabulous. In a way, this is odd, because the songs on the album can seem quite a hodgepodge; on the other hand, it can seem a miscellany of amazing creativity and versatility. The songs mostly amaze me with their exuberance and spontaneity, plus the fact that they sounded composed to me, planned rather than improvised. Goodness, was I surprised when I noticed that John Deacon's "Spread Your Wings" was in a sonata form to rival anything of Mozart for Classical balance. Brian May's guitar playing was notable, particularly in the charming calypso number "Who Needs You", where he was joined by Deacon.
But, the thing that really turned me on to Queen was listening to Freddy Mercury sing. One could tell that he must be an electrifying performer, but what really, really caught my attention — and won't this sound snobbish! — is that Freddy Mercury could sing in tune! Just listening to him snake his way through "My Melancholy Blues" — a torch song in the finest torch-song tradition, written by Mercury — was mesmerizing: never a flat or sharp note despite all the pitch contortions that he went through. It's a breathtaking performance.
This week's beard belongs to Freddy Mercury, lead singer for Queen. His birthday was on 5 September — he would have been 60 this year. He died of AIDS-related complications in 1991, at age 45. The photograph is from late 1989.
Freddie Mercury was born Farookh Bulsara in Zanzibar. He joined the nascent band, being formed by guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor, in 1971. They packed a lot of history into the next 30 years.
I was amused to read news earlier this week that a big celebration was being planned in Zanzibar to mark his birthday, but it was being discouraged by the government, who thought that celebrating the life of a notorious homosexual might not present the right image. It suddenly seemed that homophobic reactionaries looked much more ridiculous than they ever had before, trying to keep down an unstoppable force of nature like Freddie Mercury.
Thanks Freddie.
In: All, Beard of the Week, Faaabulosity
Lily Tomlin is Faaabulous
Lily Tomlin just make me feel so happy sometimes.
ACTOR Lily Tomlin[, in Australia for her first comedy tour,] has criticised the United States and Australian governments over their opposition to same-sex marriage, saying everyone should have the right to wed.
The openly-gay Hollywood veteran, 66, has been with her female partner, Jane Wagner, a writer and producer, for 35 years.
While she and Wagner have no plans to marry, Tomlin feels all people should have the choice.
US President George W Bush and Australian Prime Minister John Howard have both spoken out against same-sex marriage, and the Federal Government recently quashed ACT legislation allowing homosexuals to create civil unions.
"I am happy for anybody who wants to get married and I think they should have every right to," Tomlin said today. "It is an aggressively negative rejection," she said of the governments' responses to the issue.
[from Jonathon Moran, "Actor Tomlin slams gay laws", news.com.au, 27 August 2006.]
Feeling Presidential
I don't know whether I've mentioned before that around our house noises made by the body are held in high esteem. Well, if not high esteem exactly, at least we recognize that many odd and entertaining sounds emit from our bodies, often without warning.
In particular, I have a certain reputation for farting a lot. It's not something I'm all that proud of, but I am an old fart, so there you go.
So how happy I am to find a useful new phrase to describe this earthy delight, thanks to Melissa / Shakespeare's Sister. I don't usually quote entire blog articles, but this exchange is pleasantly short and I'm such a sucker for a Scottish accent — which is another story entirely.
Last night, Mr. Shakes and I were lying in bed, and had just been talking about the president’s fondness for farting, when I heard Mr. Shakes’ gut grumbling menacingly.
“Do you have an upset tummy?” I asked.
“Aye,” Mr. Shakes replied, “and the oopset’s heading sooth, so get ready for soome Bushisms.”
And thusly was it decreed at Shakes Manor that farts will hereafter be known as Bushisms, and gassiness as “feeling presidential.”
["News from Shakes Manor", Shakespeare's Sister, 23 August 2006.]
Seeing What One Sees
I was reading an article* in the New York Times in which the author is trying to describe the excitement among mathematicians over the apparent proof of the "Poincaré conjecture"# by Russian mathematician Grigory Perelman. There's human interst and mystery, too, since there's a million-dollar award on offer to the one whose proof sustains three years of professional scrutiny, but Dr. Perelman has not been seen since initially publicizing his proof. If I had more time I'd use it as a plot to a crime novel.
Anyway, in the midst of this article came a stunning statement by a mathematician named William Thurston of Cornell (for those familiar with my biography, that would be the other Cornell). Since I am an admirer of the movie "Buckaroo Banzai: Across the 8th Dimension", I felt that I was particularly receptive to Dr. Thurston's message:
“You don’t see what you’re seeing until you see it,” Dr. Thurston said, “but when you do see it, it lets you see many other things.”
Despite my having a bit of fun with Dr. Thurston's manifestly true observation, I'll say that the article I've referred to is actually rather informative, giving us the human-interest story about the elusive Dr. Perelman but also getting across some of the flavor of the mathematical work and community without doing violence to the accuracy of the ideas. Now, that's a rare treat.
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*Dennis Overbye, "Elusive Proof, Elusive Prover: A New Mathematical Mystery", New York Times, 15 August 2006.
#I'm sorry to say that I know nothing more about the Poincaré conjecture than I get from these NYT articles — which isn't much, except that it seems to be a result that is now considered part of the mathematical subfield of topology. However, Mr. Overbye gives it a go with the following, which sounds quite sensible and probably captures the essence rather nicely (and he does expand some on this later in the same piece):
Depending on who is talking, Poincaré’s conjecture can sound either daunting or deceptively simple. It asserts that if any loop in a certain kind of three-dimensional space can be shrunk to a point without ripping or tearing either the loop or the space, the space is equivalent to a sphere.
The real trick here, applying Mr. Thurston's understanding of understanding, is to see that this rather simple idea is of fundamental import, and then to see that that notion implies that it could be quite difficult to prove it mathematically even though it seems a rather straightforward idea.
In: All, Common-Place Book, Eureka!
Bad Science & Bad Religion
The times when I agree with something Deepak Chopra says are rare enough that this seemed worth noting:
I was trained as a scientist, but you don't need that to realize how badly the waters are muddied between religion, science, and politics these days. When John F. Kennedy ran for President in 1960, there were dark mutterings that as a Catholic he would take political orders from the Pope. That was nonsensical and prejudiced, yet somehow Pres. Bush is tolerated for taking his science from the Bible and then turning it into politics.
His version of the Bible, or perhaps his personal connection to God, tells him that microscopic clumps of embryonic cells contain a soul. Such a position merges bad science with dubious religion. Jesus made no comments about babies' souls, just as he made none about two other "moral" points that Bush hammers on, abortion and homosexuality. Bush didn't bravely adhere to a moral line that he wasn't going to cross. That might be his version, but no politician has the right to call everyone who disagrees with him immoral. Doing it on religious grounds is just as shaky.
[Deepak Chopra, "The Sad Legacy of Bad Science and Bad Religion", Hufington Post, 21 August 2006.]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Speaking of Science
Rumpole & Terrorism
Here's a little story* that could always turn into an inconveniently larger story and gives one a bit of hope. The headline, "Rumpole author claims UK is selling out to fascism" seems a fair summary.
John Mortimer, who created all those wonderful Rumpole stories, plans a new book to be called Rumpole and the Reign of Terror. This will give Mortimer his mouthpiece to discuss the problems as he sees them — and he generally sees them quite clearly — with letting the UK government (but pay attention, US government) suspend civil rights in the name of anti-terrorism and national security.
"The book's about terrorists, but it's not really about terrorists – it's about this wonderful government, who have given away all our civil liberties," he said.
"They've cancelled the Magna Carta, they've stopped trial by juries, and removed the presumption of innocence just because the terrorists are around, which is a certain way of changing our life – which is what the terrorists want to do.
"One of the things that Rumpole inveighs against is that his client does not know the charges against him.
"The changes have put us back way before 1215 AD, Mr Blair has removed us back to the Dark Ages. God knows who advises him on legal matters: although he is very near to God apparently."
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*Phil Miller, "Rumpole author claims UK is selling out to fascism", The Herald [UK], 17 August 2006; via Avedon Carol.
In: All, Books, Common-Place Book
"No Hereditary Kings in America"
I have read through Judge Anna Diggs Taylor opinion* in the federal case of ACLU v. NSA, i.e., the federal case over the constitutionality of the President's authorizing the NSA to spy wholesale on Americans without warrants. It makes good reading, with an interesting section (Part IV) on "The History of Electronic Surveillance in America".
In short, Judge Taylor determined that the President's authorizing the program
- violated the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution;
- violated the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution; and
- violated the Constitutional principle of separation of powers.
As is being mentioned by virtually anyone who comments on the decision, the words of Judge Taylor that resound and echo are these:
We must first note that the Office of the Chief Executive has itself been created, with its
powers, by the Constitution. There are no hereditary Kings in America and no powers not created
by the Constitution. So all “inherent powers” must derive from that Constitution.
One hopes this is the beginning of the end of that silly "unitary president" idea cooked up by the legal nitwits in the current administration.
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*Available here.
In: All, Common-Place Book, Current Events
"Christian Zionist" Foreign Policy
I know, I know. Perhaps I am slightly obsessive about all this weirdness with America's foreign policy and the pre-millenial dispensationalists under the bed, barely out of view, but it's a bit like global warming: if they're having even a tenth the influence on policy that one fears in the early hours of the morning, that's too much and we need to shine some light on God's Little Cockroaches.
Of course, I'm not the only; after all, I picked up the infection from Bill Moyers and that whole red-heifer thing. (As was pointed out there, it doesn't matter if I believe these absurdities as long as millions of others do and are willing to act on it.)
Today I'm reading Max Blumenthal's "Birth Pangs of a New Christian Zionism" (The Nation, online, 8 August 2006). He's talking about David Brog, the jewish lawyer, and his lobbying for John Hagee ("a fire-and-brimstone preacher from San Antonio who commands the nearly 18,000-member Cornerstone Church and hosts a major TV ministry where he explains to millions of viewers how the end times will unfold"), who is the leader of "Christians United for Israel" (a tellingly odd combination of religious traditions in that name), and the secret meetings that Brog claims to have been having with the White House. Doesn't matter if it's true so long as millions believe it is….
Anyway, CUFI
tells its members that supporting Israel's expansionist policies is "a biblical imperative."
and we know what that means they believe is happening in the Middle East and why they would not be overjoyed by a cease-fire (although they are good at building anticipation before the rapturous climax) or a diplomatic solution. "Bring it on!"
Blumenthal describes Brog's reactions to first meeting Hagee in 2005:
"I was just curious," he said, "are these guys really some evil people working for Armageddon as the media portrays them?"
Any concern in Brog's mind that evangelicals harbored nihilistic motives for supporting Israel was dispelled, he says, once he and Hagee sat down and chatted. It was then that Hagee revealed his vision of a massive new Christian Zionist lobbying organization. Brog expressed enthusiasm for Hagee's idea and touted his political experience. Hagee was sold. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. "I thought it was the most important thing I could do, not only for Israel but for America," Brog said of his decision to work for the preacher.
I'd say the question that leaves in my mind is: "Did Brog then think Hagee a non-evil person working for Armageddon, or as an evil person working for more than Armageddon?"
Brog was working on a book at the time he met Hagee and joined the evangelical crusade.
Brog's recently published book, Standing with Israel: Why Christians Support the Jewish State, expands his case for Jewish acceptance of evangelical political goals. Brog told National Review that his book has universal appeal and will help anyone to "better comprehend the birth pangs of what in time will be a very important alliance." The phrase "birth pangs" is clearly understood by evangelicals as a scriptural citation from Matthew 24, which refers to the apocalyptic struggle that will usher in the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
Mind you, most of the political successes described in the article are reported by none other than Brog himself, so one expects a fair amount of puffery is involved, not to mention self-delusion. At least, one hopes that's the case.
Despite his best efforts, Brog remains dogged by questions about evangelical reasons for backing Israel. Hagee has told his supporters that supporting Israel is a "biblical imperative," and proudly pronounces his belief that Israel is the future site of the Rapture. Hagee has even reveled in events that most Israelis would describe as tragic. For instance, in his 1996 book The Beginning of the End, Hagee described the murder of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin as fulfillment of prophecy and suggested admiration for Rabin's assassin, Yigal Amir.
[…]
More recently, some of Hagee's allies, such as nationally syndicated evangelical radio host Janet Parshall, became ecstatic when Israel and Hezbollah commenced hostilities last month. "These are the times we've been waiting for," Parshall told her listeners in a voice brimming with joy on July 21. "This is straight out of a Sunday school lesson."
Even Brog, who claims that the Christian Zionist movement is about so much more than just Armageddon and end-time prophecies, seems a little defensive, even hysterical:
Brog dismisses concerns about the Christian Zionists' fixation on end times as a "misreading of Christian theology. "One sign of the Second Coming is that there will be widespread moral decay in society," Brog told me. "If Christians really thought they could speed the Second Coming, then why aren't Christians out there opening brothels and selling drugs? Quite to the contrary and quite to the chagrin of many liberals, they are doing the opposite."
Puhlease. For anyone brought up in the online age who's engaged in a single online argument, that strawman sticks out like a sore thumb above the spacebar and a dozen easy refutations spring to mind. Who does he think he'd kidding other than himself? From the article, we find that mostly he's hoping to fool gullible Jews whom he accuses of having a pre-Nazi mindset (sound familiar to anyone?) and seeing Christian bogeymen everywhere who wish them harm. Blumenthal doesn't mention whether Brog is also trying to sell the Brooklyn Bridge to the AIPAC, but it sounds likely.
"We want to speak to Washington and encourage support for Israel whatever the conflict may be," Brog said. He paused, adding, "Provided of course that Israel's cause continues to be just."
But the renewal of the peace process and rolling back the West Bank settlements would be an unjust cause. For Hagee and for CUFI, all roads lead to a "nuclear showdown: with Iran. Diplomacy would only make God angry. As Hagee warns in Jerusalem Countdown, "Those who follow a policy of opposition to God's purposes will receive the swift and severe judgment of God without limitation."
Of course, I remain guardedly optimistic. Knowing that the whole end-time thing is a delusional fever, I hope that sooner or later the pre-millenials will get tired of waiting for something that's not going to happen and go home. On the other hand, they've been expecting to see Jesus return come the weekend since the late 19th century, so it could a little while yet. GLCs seem amazingly resiliient.
Farewell to James Van Allen
Physics* tends to carry around all manner of homages to its creators and discoverers. Vast numbers of units of measure, constants, concepts, equations, effects, principles, and laws are named for famous scientists: Galilean Relativity, Newton's Laws of Motion, Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion, Bernoulli's Equation, Euler's Equation, Laplace's Equation, Boltzmann's Constant, Planck's Constant, Hubble's Constant, the Compton Effect, the Zeeman Effect, Kelvins, Celsius degrees, Curies…. Obviously the list is not strictly endless, but it does go on quite a bit.
I've always found it a humanizing influence to acknowledge scientific pioneers this way, and a useful way for students of physics to learn some of its history as they go, which I also think is a good thing. I also find that it helps me remember which equation, constant, or effect is which — just imagine the mental chaos if all our equations and constants were simply numbered!
One thing that virtually all these nominal designations have in common is that the person after whom they are name is dead. There are a few exceptions, of course, for those that are associated with phenomena discovered more recently.
One such was the Van Allen radiation belts around the earth. They had been discovered in 1958 by James Van Allen. Van Allen and his team had built Explorer I, the first satellite launched by the US. The satellite carried only one instrument: a Geiger counter#. The instrument's readings led Van Allen to deduce the existence of regions of high-energy charged particles trapped by the Earth's magnetic field. **
I went to college in Iowa (Cornell College, in Mt. Vernon, Iowa) in the late 70s. I knew about the Van Allen Belts, but hadn't quite caught on to the fact that they had been discovered after I was born (albeit in my extreme youth: I was 2 years old). Thus, I thought of them as named for an historic scientist — if I thought of it at all back then.
Imagine my surprise then when I learned not only that Van Allen was a living, working physicist, but that he was also living and working at the University of Iowa, a mere 30-minute drive south through the corn fields from me! It was probably the only time I would be young enough and naive enough to react to something like that with such profound surprise — I had never imagined something like that! It seemed almost mystical at the time, since I was certainly still in awe of anyone who had something like that named for him. Since then I have met physicists with things named for them and they seemed like … people.## It's just as well, though, that I never met James Van Allen since, for me, he had mytical status and I'm sure I would have been embarrassingly tongue-tied.
James Van Allen died this past Thursday, news that seems surprising to me since — in my mind — he is immortal.
Here's what Bob Park had to say in today's "What's New":
JAMES VAN ALLEN: THE FIRST AMERICAN SPACE HERO, DEAD AT 91.
Almost nothing was known about conditions beyond the ionosphere when the US launched Explorer I on 31 Jan 58. The Cold War was at its peak, and the Soviets seemed to own space. Sputnik I, launched 4 Oct 57, carried no instruments. Sputnik II, a month later, could only send back Geiger counter readings taken when it was in sight of the ground station. In June, however, at a conference in the USSR, James Van Allen, a physics professor at the University of Iowa, announced that Explorer I had discovered the first of the two "Van Allen radiation belts." Soviet space scientists were crushed; the "space age" was not a year old and already the U.S. had taken the lead in science. Two years ago I visited Prof Van Allen in his office at the U. Iowa. At 89 he was down to a 7-day work week. He showed me an op-ed he was sending to the NY Times in which he described human space flight as "obsolete" http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN04/wn072304.html. I don't believe they used it. Van Allen said using people to explore space is "a terribly old fashioned idea."
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*I'm sure this is true of many other fields, but I'm a physicist, so I'm talking about physics.
#Named for Hans Geiger, one of its inventors in 1908.
**Here are two pieces about the radiation belts: one more technical, one less technical; also, an article with lots of pretty pictures — be sure to scroll down past the section "Reading to be Informed Questions" to see them.
##With maybe one exception (although we didn't actually meet). The background is this: there was a famous textbook in quantum mechanics written by Eugen Merzbacher that was known to any physics student at the time; not surprisingly, given the familiarity of his name, Merzbacher also had a status that exceeded mere personhood. Once, when I was at a meeting of the American Physical Society, Merzbacher was there: I happened to stand in line next to him at a McDonald's for breakfast. To this day it fascinates me to have heard someone of such exhalted status say: "I will have an Egg McMuffin, please."
In: All, It's Only Rocket Science
A Fresh Asian Salad
This title is not metaphorical or oblique, but the name of a recipe a friend sent; she found it in a magazine from the supermarket check-out lane, but I don't remember which one. I was interested in it for the rather simple approach to the "Vietnamese Dipping Sauce", which I perennially enjoy at our local Noodle House, and have been fascinated by ever since I realized that the central ingredient and flavor must be the mysterious fish sauce. I had looked at dipping sauce recipes before and always found them unnecessarily complicated, but I never had the energy to figure out how they might be simplified. However, she also tells me that her family enjoys the salad quite a bit.
Vietnamese Dipping Sauce (Nuoc Cham)
3 lg cloves garlic, minced
1 hot red chile, thinly sliced
1 cup water
1/2 cup fish sauce
1/2 cup red wine vinegar
1/2 cup granulated sugarStir all the ingredients in a medium bowl. Set aside.
Vietnamese Noodle Salad with Pork Patties (Bun Cha)
8 or 9 ounces rice vermicelli noodles (thin rice sticks)
Kosher salt
1/2 cup very thin carrot strips (julienne)
1/2 cup very thin daikon radish or jicama strips (julienne)
3 t granulated sugar
1 t red wine vinegar
Vietnamese dipping sauce
1 lb ground pork (coarsely ground pork butt)
4 large scallions, thinly sliced
1 1/2 t fish sauce
Freshly ground black pepper
6 large leaves romaine lettuce, torn into bite-size pieces
1 cup roughly chopped fresh mint
1 cup roughly chopped fresh cilantroSoak the rice vermicelli in a large bowl of warm water for 15 minutes. Meanwhile, bring about 2 quarts water and 1 teaspoon kosher salt to a boil in a large saucepan over high heat. Drain the noodles and add them to the boiling water, stirring with chopsticks to gently separate the strands. When the water returns to a boil, drain the noodles in a colander. Put the noodles on a platter and fluff them with chopsticks. Set aside until cool, at least 30 minutes and up to 2 hours.
Put the carrots and daikon or jicama in a colander. Sprinkle on 1 teaspoon of the sugar, the vinegar, and 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt and mix well. Let the colander sit in the sink for 10 minutes, and then gently squeeze the vegetables to get rid of the liquid. Add the vegetables to the bowl of dipping sauce.
Put the meat in a bowl. Add the scallions, the remaining 2 teaspoons sugar, the fish sauce, 1/8 teaspoon kosher salt, and 1/8 teaspoon pepper and mix gently with your hands. Shape the meat into small patties about 2 inches wide and 3/4 inch thick; you should have ten patties.
Grill the patties over a medium-hot gas or charcoal grill, until they're well browned outside and cooked through but still moist inside, 8 to 10 minutes on a grill; 15 minutes on a grill pan. Add the cooked patties, still warm, to the bowl of sauce and vegetables and let sit for 5 to 10 minutes before serving.
Serve the noodles on the platter, along with the lettuce, mint, and cilantro. Remove the pork patties from the sauce and put them on a different platter. Give everyone a large bowl and let people serve themselves noodles, lettuce, and herbs, then top that with pork patties and a generous drizzle of the dipping sauce and vegetables in it. Toss gently.
Wings & Wonderland
I propose to ignore the excitement over some current events* and get personal and gay and all that and talk about musical theatre. This explains, in part, why I've been distracted for awhile and relatively inattentive in this place. (That, and still feeling I'm catching up after returning from Rome, and giving more attention to working on Ars Hermeneutica things — including a new feature at Science Besieged: Book Notes. Why not have a look?)
As I may not have mentioned before, Isaac and I are involved, twice a year, with musical theatre productions at his church: St. Matthew's UMC in Bowie, MD. (More details on this page.) This started out 10 years ago this fall as a way for him to keep his choir members off the street and raise some money for the new pipe organ that had just been installed. Anyway, now it's time for production #21 — our 10th anniversary as it happens! — and I'm directing.
Mind you: I started out taking tickets. Then I operated spotlights. Then, another singer was needed in the cast. Then I did a lead role. Next thing you know we've had tap-dancing classes and now I'm directing. Yes, it could be just a power grab on my part, but I prefer to think it's because of this show I've wanted to put on for a few years that will star our usual director.
The show in question is called "Wings". The music is by Jeffrey Lunden and the book and lyrics are by Arthur Perlman, based on the play of the same name by Arthur Kopit. The story concerns one Emily Stilson who, in her youth, was an aviatrix and dare-devil wing-walker. As the show opens Emily, now an older woman, has a stroke which leads most noticably to speech aphasia. The drama is presented largely through her eyes as she makes it through her initial terrifying confusion to recover her sense of adventure and realize a new attitude about the end of her earthly existence. Contrary to the way any description of the plot makes it sound, the show is surprisingly positive and life-affirming. David Richards wrote (in 1992) an unusually positive review of the show in the New York Times called "A Hounting [sic] New Musical Illuminates A Gallant Soul" that's worth the few minutes it takes to read it. There is a recording of the original cast which is quite good.
"Wings" is a longish one-act piece; to balance it, I'm doing a shorter comic one-act opera called "Scenes in Wonderland". The words are by Lewis Carroll, the music is by Seymour Barab, a composer and cellist living in New York. (Search for his name at online record stores and you'll see that he's done a fair amount of playing for broadway and jazz recordings.) Anyway, "Scenes in Wonderland" sets 9 excerpts from Carroll's "Alice" books, complete with narrative, for vocalist and narrator. Mr. Barab evidently finished with the music rather recently so we get to work on our production from scratch — no recordings, no reviews, no pictures, nothing. Exciting! He writes with an agreeably light touch, and his musical style is pleasantly modern without being aggressive about it.
Anyway, up until a couple of weeks ago most of my effort went into arranging performance rights and materials rentals. This past Sunday we finally had our "auditions" — really a hazing ritual in which the usual cast members who are available and interested show up and sing a song and get a part. With that done, we now have a cast and I'm spending this week doing the casting, which is about half finished; however, my lips are sealed until next Sunday, as is our tradition.
Next week we have a read-through / listen-through, and then we begin rehearsals. Performances are over the last two weekends in October — details on request for anyone who might be interested. I'm secretly hoping that all three authors might happen to come to a performance since they are all extant and living in New York, but I won't say so aloud until I need to terrify the cast into better performances.
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* My surprise in all this discussion about Lamont's decisive victory — which I think is a bellweather — is the fear the Lieberman's running as an Independent will split the Democratic vote and give away a Democratic seat in the Senate. Now, I wouldn't want to bank on it strategically, but given the incredible support Lieberman has from Republicans, not to mention the offer of help via Karl Rove from the White House, doesn't it seem more likely that Lieberman will split the Republican vote or perhaps, given the discussion of how weak the other Republican candidate is, gain virtually all the Republican vote? They can't change the ballots, but I expect the Republican party to look for ways to support Lieberman (surreptitiously or overtly) to try to get him elected as the better Republican candidate in November.
Beard of the Week XV: Pride Edition
This week's beard belongs to our friend in Toronto, the faaabulous* Chris Ambidge. He is shown here# in the 2006 Gay Pride Parade in Toronto, sporting his traditional gay-pride regalia in homage to HM Elizabeth II.
No doubt this photo of him would make some people uncomfortable because of his apparel, which is a shame; in particular, it would make some gay men uncomfortable, which may be an even bigger shame. There are too, too many gay men who ruin their own lives and fight to hold their own closet doors closed to avoid being identified with them. Them in this case is any man who dresses or behaves in any way that steps outside certain narrowly drawn boundaries of putative masculine bahvior, or suggests anything about "the gay lifestyle". Hence, anything that might suggest cross-dressing, S&M, biker guys, effeminate guys, hair dressers, a lisp, a swish, a limp wrist…. The list is lengthy and fully known only to the paranoid in the closet.
The universal reaction: "But I'm not like that!" I've known — still know — too many men who think like this, even men who believe they are well-adjusted, self-accepting gay men. They're usually easy for me to spot because I was once like that, too. Maintaining that attitude takes a lot of work and it's a lot of nonsense.
We know, of course, that identifying enemies and emphasizing their differences from us is thought vital in prosecuting a war. The same seems to be true in individuals: the gay man who distinguishes and dissociates himself from "the gay lifestyle" (a very large chimera. used by so many in so many cultural skirmishes) is fighting a battle to maintain his own denial. How this could possibly be healther than simply coming out is difficult to see, but personal vision from inside the closet is notoriously nearsighted.
When I finally came out, for real, and accepted myself just the way I am, my transition was accompanied by — perhaps even caused by — a change in perception. When I could look at all those people whom one might see in a Gay-Pride parade and see, not how I was different, but how I was the same as each and every one, then I finally felt like I had begun to integrate all of myself into a whole, complete human being. After the fact, it seemed like all it took was a change in perspective, as thought life before had been an optical illusion.
I have no reason to think that my own path is the universal path, but I suspect we all could contribute to improving our world if we could see our similarities as easily as we seem to see our differences.
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*Another friend tells a story about a teacher, a person of some flamboyance, in an exchange with some young children. The teacher yells out: "How many 'A's in fabulous?" The children respond: "As many as you want!"
#The photo is from Pride-Celebration coverage by Fab, the Toronto "Gay Scene Magazine".
A Finger in the Dyke
Demonstrating the extent to which The Gay Agenda has, um, penetrated the American Psyche, Alec Baldwin wrote* in a blog piece:
Gore has been standing there with his finger in the dyke for some time now, patiently and insistently exhorting us to come to the aid of the ailing planet.
One suspects, of course, that he intended to write "dike".
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*Alec Baldwin, "The Specialist", Huffington Post 7 August 2006.
In: All, Laughing Matters, Such Language!
Conyers' "Constitution in Crisis"
I don't know when I'll get around to reading this report, but I want to note its release:
Today, I am releasing the final version of my report, the "Constitution in Crisis." The report, which is some 350 pages in length and is supported by more than 1,400 footnotes, compiles the accumulated evidence that the Bush Administration has thumbed its nose at our nation's laws, and the Constitution itself. Approximately 26 laws and regulations may have been violated by this Administration's misconduct.
Our Constitution established a tri-partite system of government, with the notion that each branch of government would act as a check on the other two. Unfortunately, for the last six years, the Republicans in Congress have largely viewed themselves as defenders of the Bush Administration, instead of a vital check on overreaching by the Executive Branch. By doing so, I believe they have acted to the detriment of our Constitutional form of government.
We have seen so many transgressions by this Administration that it is easy to forget last week's scandal amid this week's new outrage. I am hopeful that compiling all of these events of the last few years will help wake all of us up to the gravity of these matters and the cumulative damage to our country.
[US Representative John Conyers, "The Constitution in Crisis", Huffington Post, 4 August 2006.]
The Rapturous Bush
Whatever Bush's personal beliefs, the ideology of the Christian right is both familiar and congenial to him. This strange amalgam of ideas can perhaps throw light on the behaviour of a president, who, it is said, believes that God chose him to lead the world to Rapture, who has little interest in social reform, and whose selective concern for life issues has now inspired him to veto important scientific research. It explains his unconditional and uncritical support for Israel, his willingness to use "Jewish End-time warriors" to fulfil a vision of his own – arguably against Israel's best interests – and to see Syria and Iran (who seem to be replacing Saddam as the "enemy of the north") as entirely responsible for the unfolding tragedy.
[from Karen Armstrong, "Bush's fondness for fundamentalism is courting disaster at home and abroad ", Guardian Unlimited [UK], 31 July 2006.]
Glitches in Normality
In an email I received from my father today, he used the following phrase, which I think I can put to very good use to describe some events in my life from the last few years:
I've had some glitches in my normality lately.