Birthdays by Month

While we're on the topic of random stuff I've always wondered about... which is the most common month for birthdays? I feel anecdotally that I meet/know a lot of people who, like me, have a November birthday, but maybe I just notice them more? What's the real deal?

It turns out that the Internet does indeed know the answer to this question (are we surprised?) but it's actually kind of hard to dig up. Every search I tried with any combination of the words 'birthday' and 'probability' automatically gave me a gazillion links to the Birthday "Paradox", which is a pretty interesting statistical oddity in its own right and not entirely unrelated, but also not quite what I was looking for. As these things go, it's always a matter of finding the right google phrase -- in this case "seasonal variation of births" did the trick. In the United States from 1978 to 1987 the distribution of birthdays looked like this:

Data: U. S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, 1989

So September is the most popular birthday month, and January the least. November is actually a bit below average (so much for my subjective impression). Notice that my plot is slightly deceptive in that the y-axis doesn't go down to zero. This means that the 'big' difference between January and September isn't really that big - the variations are only about 5% of the average. It seems, people tend to make babies just about any old time of year.

Perhaps most interestingly, this seasonal variation of births is not the same across cultures and nations. The U. S. peaks in late summer whereas Northern Europe has more spring birthdays. No doubt the variations are very different elsewhere in the world and probably have many interesting implications for the sociologists to untangle.

Singing on the Metro

I see people all the time on the Metro with little white earphones plugged into their heads, and I wonder constantly why more of them don't just burst into song (or at least nod their heads to the beat). No; it's mostly that dull, Monday-morning commute-stare. Not that I don't understand the dull, Monday-morning commute-stare, but this morning Sigur Ros popped up on my iPod (free mp3 here), the sun was shining, the air was crisp and shiny and suddenly it was quite a bit like being in my very own Sofia Coppola movie -- a little trippy, a little spacey, a little bit of public transportation -- but definitely worth breaking into song for. La la la.

Blogiversary

Oh man, I missed my own first blogiversary - now I'm in trouble. 1 year and 13 days ago I decided to blog and this marks my 78th posting - roughly 1.5 a week. I'm a tad surprised I actually stuck with it, although I have decided I rather enjoy blogging. I certainly have more ideas for posts than time to write them, which is good and bad, I guess. Onward into the 2nd season...

A Magnetized Planet

As we were driving around Ireland two summers ago, desperately trying not to kill ourselves, we naturally fell into a conversation about how certain countries drive on the right, while others drive on the left. I was intrigued that, off the top of our heads, the only countries we could name that drive on the left were island nations: Great Britain, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Japan. For nations that share a border, there are bound to be a myriad practical incentives to drive on the same side of the road, such that nations are likely to come into alignment over time. This phenomenon seemed like a good analogy to what physicists call 'spontaneous symmetry breaking' (SSB).

The most familar physical example of SSB comes from ordinary ferromagnets (the things stuck to your fridge). For fairly subtle quantum mechanical reasons atoms in a ferromagnet tend to line up with their magnetic fields all pointing in the same direction. Most atoms don't do this, which is why most materials in the universe (ducks, toast, your little sister) don't stick to your fridge. In other words, if one atom is surrounded by other atoms all with fields pointing in the opposite direction, it will be energetically favorable for it to flip its direction and align with its neighbors. Regions within a magnet where the atoms are aligned and a net magnetic field points in a certain direction are called magnetic domains. An iron bar then becomes magnetized when all of its domains point in the same direction. Alternately, you can de-magnetize a bar magnet by heating it or hitting it with a hammer, which has the effect of randomizing the magnetic domains.

SSB occurs when an initially randomized state (physicists use the term 'symmetric' for this, even though it's a little confusing) spontaneously evolves to a special state. That is, the system moves from a state where the domains all point in random directions to one where they are all aligned. Or to push my analogy further, from a situation where countries randomly choose which side of the road to drive on, to a situation where everyone drives on the left. The point is that it doesn't fundamentally matter which side of the road we drive on, or which way the magnetic field points, but that often there are benefits to going with the flow. And whenever there are such benefits, nature devises ways to take advantage of them. This phenomena is found everywhere in the natural world, from the electro-weak transition to super-conductors to deciding which water glass to drink out of on a circular table.

Map courtesy of World Standards.

It turns out that the reality of which nations drive on which side of the road is a little more complex than our initial short list of first-world nations would indicate. As can be seem from the map, many of the world's island nations are indeed left-driving countries, but there are also significant pockets of left-driving mainland countries that do share borders with right-driving countries. Most of these countries (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, east Africa), share a common administrative heritage: the colonial British Empire.

The history of left vs. right driving nations is long and fairly interesting (both links give a good overview). There has been a significant trend over the 20th century towards alignment in these regards, even among former British colonies. A century ago, many more countries drove on the left, but with the increase in car traffic over the years, pressure has mounted to conform to right-side driving. Many nations (including Canada, China and the parts of Europe not invaded by Napoleon) have switched from left to right in the past 100 years, but the only recorded switch from right to left is the island of Okinawa in 1978. Leaving island nations aside, there are really only two domains opposed to the dominant right-driving domain: southeast Africa and the Indian subcontinent (I bet the border crossings there are always exciting). It may be that these regions are populous and (relatively) powerful enough to resist assimilation by their neighbors, or it may be that as car-traffic over the borders increases with time, they too will join the right-driving universe.

One-Third Equal Time...

The little white car has new additions...


In addition to the venerable Darwin fish, we have a very cool Ichthus fish as well as a Flying Spaghetti Monster. Laura Jean wishes me to point out that while these 3 icons do indeed gain one-third equal time on our bumper, only two of them represent plausible theories of the origin of human life on earth. Our third icon, the Ichthus fish, symbolizes rather a religious faith, and which actually makes no claims about biology one way or the other (despite what some people keep insisting). Apples to oranges to noodles.

You can also see evidence of our hard-won new license plate as well as our plug for the lovely, if remote, Scottish Isle where we honeymooned. Out of view to the left is our obligatory political bumper sticker.

Apparently, our car now has a lot more to say. Hopefully, it'll keep running too.

High Sierra

I finally got around to posting pictures from our 3-day hike of Mono Pass several weeks ago. Click the links below for each day's pics and narrative.

Day 1 -- Day 2 -- Day 3

Notice how I've cleverly back-dated the posts? Now we can pretend I was really blogging from the wilderness with a satellite phone (or something...)

Stupid Tax

We spent over three hours today at the Virginia DMV today. And that's not even the worst part. Get this: our car got towed while we were there!

It turns out that the DMV has this high-tech waiting room with a complicated electronic queueing system designed to handle hundreds of people... and then they have a teeny tiny parking lot outside. Because why would anyone need to drive to the DMV? Guh. So anyway, we had to park in a lot with somewhat ambiguous signs and we got towed. Of course, I was waiting in a long enough line that Laura Jean had enough time to call a ride to the impoundment lot and return with the car (100 bucks poorer) before my number was even called.

I haaate paying stupid tax.

The funny part is this: all day we were thinking we were kind of lame for getting our car towed from the DMV (I mean, lame, right?), but apparently this happens all the time. We had dinner with two friends tonight and the same thing happened to them. They mentioned that the business which owned the parking lot and the towing company had even been in trouble for predatory towing practices. And a quick google found a bunch more complaints about the same parking lot.

Not that I'm saying we were totally blameless, but it is a little weird. Welcome to Virginia, I guess.

New Blog

The fine folks I had briefly been interning with, Student Pugwash, put me up to writing a blog about transitioning out of academia and into the real world. As a result, I bring you...

Climbing Down The Tower

The plan is to write about some of the culture clashes you see in moving from academia into the non-profit world, to give some advice about interesting things you can do with a Ph.D., and to learn a little about some of the hot-button science policy topics of the day. Since I just got a job, the blog will be a bit less about job hunting and more about job having, but I'm hoping to make it a good resource for anyone interested in doing something similar. You can read more about it here.

And of course, I would never abandon this blog (stay tuned for the usual movie reviews, pictures, rants and funny links), but if you're interested in science and society, or if you're thinking of not applying for that post-doc, come on over and check it out.

J-O-B

Hey, I got a job! Just found out yesterday afternoon that I will be a Researcher/Analyst for the Union of Concerned Scientists working for their Scientific Integrity Program. So it's not just any job, but one I'm really psyched about.

For those who don't know them, UCS is a great organization that works to promote sensible, science-based solutions to environmental issues like global warming, clean energy, fuel-efficient vehicles, sustainable agriculture and nuclear non-proliferation. Their scientific integrity gig is a fairly new program designed to counter the recent wave of political interference in scientific results arising from certain quarters of the government (ahem). Since it is potentially such a wide-ranging topic, everything from climate change to endangered species to "abstinence-only" education to HIV/AIDS policy, I'm sure I'll have my hands full learning a ton of new stuff. Which is pretty awesome if you think about it. This week they're sending me to a 3 day crash-course seminar on how the government works.

Mainly, I feel really lucky to have found a job advocating for positive change in our world that also lets me use my scientific training. OK, I'm also relieved not to have to continue with the hideous process of actually looking for a job. Ugh. But for right now, this definitely looks like one version of my ideal job, so we'll see how it goes...

Hippies and Nerds

This made me laugh. Good 'ole Piled Higher & Deeper...

N. Va.

So we've moved to the burbs, apparently. We live right on the border between Arlington and the town of Falls Church, blessedly close to a metro stop. The neighborhood is called Madison Manor, a name that perfectly describes the cute little collection of modest and rather un-manor-ly little brick houses that comprise it (of course, if you live in an actual manor there's really no need to call it such; at that point you can just name it after a great aunt or a made-up French word). Most houses are small, two-story brick affairs that would look nifty and iconic with an American flag flying in front of them -- a conclusion that a great many residents seem to have come to on their own. On the Suburban Soul-Sucking Scale, you could do a lot, lot worse. For example, the houses don't all look the same, there's a park, tons of tall trees, a great biking path and small patches of forest that contain (according to an informational sign) the ruins of something called Brandymore Castle (!) that dates to pre-Revolutionary times.

Still, coming from Chicago and Hyde Park it is something of an enormous culture shock. At night, it gets fairly dark and really quiet. I can walk to the metro, but have to drive almost anywhere else. I catch myself wondering where are all the currency exchanges, bus stops and bookstores? And why can't I hear any sirens or honking cars? There's parking everywhere -- very strange.

The roads in Virginia are total chaos. A map of Arlington County looks like someone took a perfectly rational city and put it in a blender. 11th Road might cross 11th Street at a funny angle before meandering into 26th Avenue for a block and then changing its name to John Marshall before dead-ending. Oh yeah, and there are no signs to explain any of this. There's a place nearby called Seven Corners, which is exactly what it sounds like. Other names like Bailey's Crossing and Leesburg Pike make you realize that these modern highways mark the same path as muddy, wagon-rutted trails 400 years ago and it's just been that way ever since.

Actually, I haven't explored very much yet. Someone recently told me that Falls Church is "still funky and weird," which sounds encouraging. I don't know much of the history, but I feel like Arlington has historically had a very conservative, anti-DC feel to it, but that it is changing and becoming more liberal (and way more diverse) in recent years. At any rate, many adventures to be had -- it's very exciting to learn the ins and outs and the hidden cool stuff of a new place. And there's always DC if I desperately need my urban fix.

[ PS- Laura Jean points out to me that Brandymore Castle is not really a ruin of a castle, but is actually just a limestone rock outcropping on top of a hill that looks a bit like a castle and so got that name. It was however, a prominent landmark used by surveyors dating to 1724. Link here and scroll down a bit to read the description. It's still a nice little walk up the hill, though... ]

Summer of Travels, Part 1

At long last, we're back in our new home in Arlington, VA and are mostly settled in. I've accumulated lots to blog about, but for now I'll just post some pics of some of our travels this summer.

Early in the summer, we went to Virginia to scope out our new house and have our first meal together with Jesse, Grace and Amy.


Then we took a trip to Omaha, Nebraska to visit with our friends, Becky and Joe. Becky was roomies with Laura Jean at Christ House, and we had to miss their wedding last summer since we were double booked with another friend's wedding that same day.


By random coincidence, my Mom and my Aunt Kathleen were also in Nebraska visiting family with my grandmother, and they drove to Omaha to take us to lunch...


... and some delicious locally made ice cream.


We also went car-camping with Bromleigh and Josh up in Kettle Moraine State Park in Wisconsin.


If you're into geology, Kettle Moraine is really cool since it marks part of the furthest advance of the glaciers during the last ice age and has lots of really unusual land formations. They are building a 1,000-mile trail called the Ice Age Trail that takes you through Wisconsin all along the edge of the glacial advance; we walked about 20 feet on the trail just for fun.

Mostly, we just enjoyed the woods and the water and the feeling that we weren't in the middle of an enormous city.

Then we were off to Ann Arbor, Michigan for Eduardo and Jen's wedding.


There were lots of Chicago folks making the trek over, along with dancing...


... and cake.

Mono Pass Hike: Day 3

[ Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 ]

I awoke the next morning when the stars were still out, and Jessica and I hit the trail at around 6:30 am, hiking in near darkness. The reason for this was that we planned to run ahead of the rest of the group and meet the ferry at Edison Lake. The ferry, which would cut our walking by about 5 miles, left the landing at 9:30 and we still had six miles to go. It didn't seem like all six of us would make it in time, but we hoped to convince them to wait, or else come back for us later.

So Jess and I were already a few miles down the trail when the sunrise began touching the tips of the mountains.


So we wound our way down the river to where it let out into the man-made lake. We made great time, and reached the ferry landing well before the time. The ferry didn't wait for everyone else, but they did promise to return in a few hours to fetch us. So we spent a few hours lounging on the beach, waiting to be rescued...


... which we eventually were... by a pirate boat, which took us across the lake to the furthest inreach of civilization: a boat rental, a cafe and some cabins at the end of a windy dirt road. And a great view looking back in the high country from where we had just come.

[ Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 ]

Mono Pass Hike: Day 2

[ Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 ]

The next morning, the lake mirrored the mountains perfectly.


We had coffee and oatmeal and savored the sunlight.


After packing up, we climbed up higher and there was a beautiful view to the south, including the lake we had just camped at. Sun and thin air meant that we were both hot and cold at the same time, and we stopped often to catch our breath.


At one point, we heard a loud rumbling that sounded like a jet plane, but then we noticed the plume of dust rising up off the snowfield where an avalanche had just come to rest. Thankfully, it was on the other side of the canyon.



Mono Pass -- 12,000 feet above sea level, and we made it! Apparently this route, which is one of the easiest over the Sierras, was often used by the Mono Indians on the east side of the Sierras to trade with other tribes to the west.


We had lunch at a lake just below the pass. There was nothing but rock and snow and wind - it was like eating on the moon. It was barely hospitable in high summer, so I can only guess what it's like here on a winter night.


Finally, we started off for greener valleys below. Beyond this point we only ran into a small handful of people. A day of walking had wrung out all the pop songs and commercial jingles out of my head, and I became more aware of the sun and trees and water and just how gorgeous everything was.












We made it below tree-line and found a great little campsite right by the stream. The one downside of camping low and by water are the foot-long, carnivorous mosquitoes that feast upon your flesh.

The stream at dusk, while I was shivering and doing the dishes.

[ Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 ]

Mono Pass Hike: Day 1

[ Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 ]

We drove six hours through Yosemite and over Tioga Pass to the east side of the Sierras where our trail began. As usual, Mom was quite happy to drive and leave the hiking to us. This was also the first major backpacking trip for Aunt Kay and Steve, so we decided to have an easy 3-mile first day.


The parking lot at the trailhead was already about 10,000 feet high, which meant we only had about 2,000 vertical feet of hiking to reach the top of Mono Pass, and head cross over to the west side.


We found a nice campsite at Ruby Lake, and we were extremely grateful to stop early since when you have towering peaks to your west the sun tends to set pretty early. I also tend not to sleep very well when camping above 10,000 feet, so it was nice not to be sore on top of that.


Once the sun dropped behind the ridge, it got cold pretty quick. Kay and Steve seemed especially chilled, although they steadfastly refused to complain. We ate a gourmet meal of gnocchi with sun-dried tomatoes (really) and got directly into our sleeping bags.


As the wind died down, the lake became calm and smooth as glass.

[ Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 ]

We-Hauled

Well, we made it to DC, stuff and all. Tuesday was truck-packing and goodbyes. Wednesday was a 14 hour drive from Chicago to DC. Thursday was unpacking and this weekend is full of wedding festivities for Eric and Holly. Monday is a job interview and then off to California for a few weeks. At some point I will have a free minute to relax and then blog a bit. 'Til then...

My Teeth and Moral Hazard

Until this month I hadn't been to a dentist in over two years. This was the unfortunate result of no dental coverage and (truth be told) shocking laziness on my part. Turns out the damage was extensive (yikes), as was the bill (double yikes). Thankfully, we were able to get dental insurance through Laura Jean's new job so we didn't have to choose between our teeth and paying our rent. Since I will also be switching jobs soon, we've been looking at various health insurance options, and the whole thing has got me thinking about our national health system, which leaves 45 million people (and growing) without health coverage, works and doesn't work. The episode with my teeth reminded me of the opening section of a recent article by the always interesting New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell entitled:

The Moral Hazard Myth

It's well worth a read. The take-away points I got from it are the following:

• Insurance changes people's behavior to some extent. When people don't pay the full cost for some resource (like covered health care) they may tend to use it more, which might lead to wasteful overuse. Economists call this "moral hazard" and it is the intellectual underpinning of the conservative push for Health Savings Accounts and their opposition to universal health coverage (as exists in every other industrialized country).
• But, in the case of health care, is "more use" really "overuse"? Maybe, maybe not, it seems. Gladwell makes the point that uninsured people not only cut-back on "frivolous" use of the health system (whatever that might mean) but also necessary care and (more importantly) inexpensive preventative care (mammograms, yearly checkups, dental cleanings, etc) that has been proven to save a lot of money in the long run. And indeed, it is often said that universal health care systems are much cheaper than our American system, although I don't know much about the details. Hmmm. I guess since most of us aren't doctors, cutting costs in the health care system by forcing us patients to be more frugal is not really the best idea.
  
• Gladwell talks about two models of insurance: (1) social insurance, where the healthy pay for the sick and elderly (in the form of higher premiums or higher taxes), with the assumption that someone will pay for them when they (inevitably) become sick and elderly themselves, versus (2) actuarial insurance (think car insurance) where high-risk people with illnesses pay higher premiums for their care, while the young and healthy pay less. For me, option (1) just makes sense as a good way to organize society, a social contract between generations if you will, while option (2) seems unfair, although good for the insurance companies, no doubt. Driving a car is just different than health care, and shouldn't be treated the same way.
  

Anyway, I wish I knew more about this stuff, and I'd love to hear other folks' thoughts on it.

War and Certainty

Kevin Drum has an interesting post at his Washington Monthly blog addressing our human need for moral certainty (and moral superiority) and how that feeds into nationalism and war (and vituperative rhetoric). The two articles he cites within (one a conflicted look back at 2001-3 by a conservative pundit and the other a very interesting short essay by an Israeli writer based in Tel Aviv) are worth a read as well.

It's certainly a truism that pro-war folks love to compare our current adventure to World War II (casting Bush as Churchill and Kerry/Murtha as Chamberlain), and anti-war folks typically bring up Vietnam (with Bush and Cheney as a mixture of Johnson and Nixon). Of course it's neither -- we'll be making entirely new mistakes this time 'round I'm sure. The only certainly in my mind is that things look very bad in the Middle East right now, and everybody (Israel, Hizbollah, Hamas, Iran, Syria, the U.S.) is playing exactly the roles they've been assigned.

No More Rock 'N' Roll Fun

After 11 years and 7 amazing albums, Sleater-Kinney ("the best rock band in the world" or maybe just "America's greatest rock band") are calling it quits. As they posted on their website:

After eleven years as a band, Sleater-Kinney have decided to go on indefinite hiatus. The upcoming summer shows will be our last. As of now, there are no plans for future tours or recordings.

We feel lucky to have had the support of many wonderful people over the years. We want to thank everyone who has worked with us, written kind words about us, performed with us, and inspired us.

But mostly we want to extend our gratitude to our amazing fans. You have been a part of our story from the beginning. We could not have made our music without your enthusiasm, passion, and loyalty. It is you who have made the entire journey worthwhile.

This sucks. It's not like they were running out of steam -- their latest album was maybe their best, as well as a radical new direction for them. But they just don't seem like the sort of people who would make this decision lightly or embark on a nostalgic reunion tour. Still we can hope...

I guess it's apparent that this band meant a lot to me -- it's weird to think they won't be around. I was lucky enough to see them twice live: once opening for Fugazi at a massive outdoor benefit concert for San Francisco Food Not Bombs, and the other at the Metro here in Chicago, which was one of the best concerts I've ever seen. It's almost worth buying a $150 ticket to see them play Lollapalooza in Chicago in August (their second-to-last show) -- almost. At any rate, they will be missed.

fireworks !

On July 3rd, everyone in Hyde Park ducked through the 55th Street tunnel and spilled out onto the Point to watch the distant, professional Navy Pier fireworks ...


... along with many rounds set off by armies of local enthusiasts. This one was shot from the Point over the water, although the water was also full of swimmers. The artillery shelling continued late into the night, and for most nights since.


The distant display, like a giant candle has been lit beside the city lights, glinting off Lake Michigan and the red haze of smoke.

the Religious Left

Senator Obama gave a speech recently at the Sojourners -- Call To Renewal conference about the role of religion in public life (full text is found here). I happened to like the speech quite a bit, as did some others. But some folks in the lefty blogosphere are fairly annoyed; Kevin Drum gives a pretty good defense of Obama, but check out the long list of peeved comments.

Mostly they seem up in arms about Obama's use of the "some liberals don't like religion" canard. Which is fair enough. It's an extremely annoying way of editorializing without facts, as used by FoxNews and el Presidente Bush ad nauseum to bash liberals. So shame on Obama for falling into the RNC talkingpoints trap.

But, really, that was just 2% of an otherwise terrific speech on religion and politics and well worth the read. He talked about his personal faith journey. He talked about the biblical call to feed the hungry and house the homeless and create a more just society. Crucially (for me) he spoke of the importance of separation of church and state, and affirmed that religious folks do not have a monopoly on morality. And for the first time in a long time, the MSM was giving favorable media coverage to a Democrat talking about religion (the Chicago Sun-Times even front-paged the talk), which I'm guessing did more to bury the "liberals are anti-religion" storyline than anything else in the past two years. Awesome!

Because, of course, there is already a sizable religious left in this country; it's just not the story that the MSM wants to sell papers with right now. So changing the framing of religious issues is an absolute must for the Democratic Party. If the Republicans are an unstable alliance of the business community and the religious right, then, strategically, the Dems need to find ways to fracture that alliance and pick up the pieces, without losing their soul and becoming Republican-lite Lieberman clones. And I would argue that (oddly) it is the religious conservative voter who is more of a match for the Dems than the corporate types. Just because Coors hires Mary Cheney and runs a few gay-friendly ads does not make them our friends. Ten million photo-ops with cute endangered animals won't make Chevron environmentally friendly. Granted the leaders of the religious right (Falwell, Dobson, et al) are mostly fascist Taliban-wannabes so forget them, but the folks sitting in the pews are getting screwed, just like the rest of us.

A nice mix of economic populism (raise the damn minimum wage already, get some decent health care and more scholarships for working-class families) and ecumenical-friendly issues (end the war in Iraq, save Darfur, crack down on sex trafficking) should do a lot to break the gays-n-abortion stranglehold the religious right has put on the media these days. Anyway, Obama's main point seems to be that sincerity is the key in making these connections. Which I guess means we need more people like him making the speeches.

In appreciation of the "oldest kid"

When I started working for the HETE project as a young impressionable grad student, another scientist on the team gave me the rundown. There were "adults" and there were "kids." The "adults" on our project were a group of 6-7 principal investigators, senior scientists and full professors who were generally responsible for the broad scientific direction of the mission, press-releases, grant-writing, political arm-twisting, etc. Many of the adults maintained only a general understanding of the underlying working of the satellite and the software. The term "kids" wasn't limited to just mean grad and undergrad students, but also the group of non-professor-level Ph.D. scientists who actually ran the mission and knew what was going on day to day. When we went out for team dinners, the adults and the kids often sat at different tables and had entirely different types of conversations. Kinda like Thanksgiving with my family, in a way.

Now, having participated in two largish scientific collaborations I can say with certainty that the most crucial member of any team is the person (or sometimes, persons) you might describe as the "oldest kid." I think any good collaboration must have at least one of these. As an entering student, they are absolutely the person you go to when you want to know something and really understand the details of it. They tend to have an encyclopedic knowledge of who is an expert on 'x' issue, which students are working on 'y' calculation, and the best way to extract 'z' data product. They are traffic-directors extraordinaire. And most importantly, they communicate the nitty-gritty details upward to the adults and make sure they don't make dumb decisions for lack of understanding the facts on the ground.

They often don't publish a lot of papers or get a ton of recognition. Some may work an entire scientific career without truly joining the ranks of the "adults." But I'm convinced that without these oldest kids, the entire scientific enterprise would grind to a halt. I can certainly attest to how absolutely essential many of these people have been to me during my time in grad school. So here's to you, oldest-kid researchers! Huzzah!

Torture Awareness Month

Lest we think the ceremonial naming of months is merely a public relations tactic employed by for lobbyists from the Pork Council or the Canadian Dental Hygienists Association, this June is Torture Awareness Month. Of course, according to Wikipedia, June is also Samurai Awareness Month, so go figure.

Sadly, torture has become a terrible blot on our country, and the time has long since passed to make some noise. We've all heard the litany of abuse: First, Bush will not be abiding by the Geneva Conventions. Then (surprised?) the photos of abuse at Abu Ghraib. Thus far only a few lowly 'bad apples' are implicated, but as Sy Hersh reported in the New Yorker, the abuse was possibly orchestrated and approved by military intelligence in a desperate attempt to gather information on the insurgency. Guantanamo Bay and the mysterious 'black sites' in Europe and Asia, have become a land beyond law, where hundreds of people have been held incommunicado and largely without access to the courts. Now there have been 3 suicides. It has become so embarassing, that Congress even passed a law prohibiting the use of torture; Bush signed it, but then delivered a signing statement claiming he will obey the law only when it suits him. This is bad.

The pro-torture apologists always tend to come up with one of two responses: (1) the bad guys do worse things, or (2) the inevitable 'ticking time bomb' scenario.

The first argument, while emotionally appealing in light of some of the horrible things that go on in the world, is just morally dumb. That sort of argument didn't cut any ice in kindergarten and sinking down to the lowest level of humanity in our national policy is no way to run a country now that we're grown-ups (well, some of us anyway). It is, at it's core, a scare tactic. The strongest argument against torture is simply that it is evil and wrong. It was wrong when Saddam and Pinochet and others did it - it's still wrong now. The fact that we are a democracy is no fig leaf here. Indeed, it makes it all our responsibility.

The second argument shows how much Hollywood action movies have informed our political debate. We can just see Bruce Willis beating the crucial life-saving info out of some sweaty terrorist, defusing the bomb, rescuing his tough (yet imperiled) former wife and delivering comeuppance to the spineless bureaucrat. Go Bruce Go! The real-world, it turns out, isn't very much like the climax of an action movie. I know, I know, it's shocking to think that Hollywood has misled us on this matter, but it's true. The vast, vast majority of people in question are not Al Qaeda masterminds with secret information about imminent attacks. Most of the prisoners at Gitmo have been there for three years or more; even if they were once high-up in AQ (and almost all of them weren't) any intelligence they might have now is worse than useless. Some were 'bought' from Afghan warlords for $5000 a head. Some were picked up on 'hunch' of some CIA officer and later released without charges after it was apparent they were nobodies. Most of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib were taxi drivers in the wrong place or the brother-in-law of some wanted insurgent picked up in a general sweep.

It's never a good idea to base your official policy on a rare case. In the heat of the moment, it's too tempting to see every situation as life-or-death, when in hindsight it's really not. We would have to ask ourselves, how many innocent people do we want to torture in order to find that needle in the haystack that will hypothetically save American lives? 1000? 10,000? And remember, such a policy means 10,000 false leads to add to the top of the haystack (if you torture someone enough they will typically say anything to make it stop). It's also pretty easy to be pro-torture when you're white and/or American; you really don't have to worry that each time you board a plane, you might end up in a cell in Syria for ten months (as happened to Maher Arar).

And what have we lost in exchange for this hypothetical gain? We've lost the respect of our allies, confirmed fears that we are an unaccountable tyranny, spawned yet more insurgents and joined a tawdry fraternity of nations condemned by Amnesty and the Red Cross. To paraphrase Karl Rove, it will take the U.S. generations to live down the Abu Ghraib pictures and gain credibility in the Middle East. It's time we started making amends.

For ideas on how to make your voice heard: http://www.tortureawareness.org/

Blog about it: http://blogagainsttorture.blogspot.com/

Join Amnesty International

Sign this petition: http://www.nrcat.org

Twisted Link 'o' the Week

I saw this at an animation festival years ago and very nearly actually died laughing. Click the red balloon. What a wonderful thing is YouTube that such happy memories can be revisited often (I don't think this link has the full clip, but you'll get the idea).

Billy's Balloon, by Don Hertzfeldt


It is possible that I am a bad person for finding this funny. You have been warned.

Star Flight

This past Friday we gave our final presentations for my museum internship. It was basically a chance to show off our work to a handful of museum bigwigs -- it actually went pretty well, for the most part.

My group worked on two interactive computer exhibits. One exhibit (that I didn't work on very much) let people physically play with a virtual sound wave by moving an IR wand -- faster wand movement == smaller wavelength == higher frequency sound, and vice versa. The exhibit I worked primarily on (called 'StarFlight') allows people to fly through a 3D virtual reality model of our local universe with a video game controller.

For the most part it is very, very difficult to determine distances to astronomical objects -- in many ways, the problem of distance has been the central problem in astronomy for centuries now (and hopefully the topic of a future blog post). As a result, for many objects on the sky, we have very good 2D information, but only a rough estimate of the 3rd coordinate of radial distance. Inside a comparatively small radius about our sun, accurate distances to other stars in our galaxy can be determined through stellar parallax (which measures the apparent shift in positions of stars as the Earth goes around the Sun). The gold standard for this sort of measurement comes from the European Hipparcos satellite, which measured the parallaxes (and hence the distance to) nearly 120,000 of our closest stellar neighbors.

But more importantly, for our purposes, this dataset gives us a full 3D picture of our local corner of the Milky Way galaxy. Our exhibit lets the user "fly" through this cloud of stars just like a video game. Using this data, it's fun to consider what familiar constellations look like from different vantage points. For example, my sign is Scorpio, and this is what the constellation Scorpius looks like from Earth:


But when we fly off to one side and take a look it assumes this crazy zig-zag shape because some stars are really close to our sun and others are really far away. Our sun is represented by the tiny white circle on the far left that all the blue lines are "pointing to".


The basic implementation of the program is a mix between free form exploring of the stars with the video game controller, and a more guided tour of a few famous constellations, complete with narration explaining astronomical concepts and giving the mythological stories behind the shape. We also have an animated intro that puts everything in context by blasting off from downtown Chicago (Adler Planetarium actually) and launching us into the solar system, and finally out into the sea of nearby stars. The program can run on anything from a laptop screen (Mac, Win, Linux) to a GeoWall (a relatively inexpensive stereo 3D system that many museums use).







Implementing this exhibit took the combined efforts of many people, and it was aided infinitely by the existence of the very cool and super-useful electro application development environment. We will be distributing "StarFlight" on the web (link TBD) once we iron out a few more kinks, but since we based our program on a simpler implementation of the Hipparcos catalog (the 'total perspective vortex') that comes bundled with the electro download, you can try it yourself right away if you like. As a teaser here's an image of 'vortex' running on the 100-megapixel, 11x5 tiled display at the Electronics Visualization Lab at UIC. (Tangent: Can I just say EVL has some pretty impressive toys? In addition to the tiled display, we got to play with some of their varrier displays, which use various forms of eye- and head-tracking to create a personal stereoscopic 3D display without the use of annoying stereo glasses, which always give me a headache. They have it set up to do 3D video conferencing, which is a little freaky.)

So anyway, perhaps this exhibit will be effective in teaching a few basic astronomy ideas (stars are far away, but get brighter when you get close to them), and hopefully it will have a high 'cool factor' to hook visitors into playing with it. Participating in this project has given me nothing but respect for people who design human-computer interactions and museum exhibits. It is just not easy to design an object to do your communicating for you. With luck, 'StarFlight' will end up playing at SciTech Hands-On Museum in Aurora, IL (and maybe somewhere else too), and at any rate, was a lot of fun to make.

spring...

finally.

Lame Things About Good Movies

I've seen a lot of good movies lately. All of these are highly recommended, despite my complaining.

Film: King Kong
General Impression: I was trawling through a video store while the giant-bug-attack scene was playing on the TV screens, and every single person in the store stopped what they were doing and gaped at the screen with their jaws hanging open until it was over. Tremendously creepy scene. The rest of the movie swings from one wildly implausible situation to the next (think dinosaurs fighting while swinging on jungle vines), but it never stops entertaining and never slows down long enough for you to realize how bizarre it all is. Andy Serkis is amazing (again), and The Empire State building scene is nicely done.
Part That Sucked: The portrayal of the natives. OK, I get that Peter Jackson is remaking a film from an earlier time and deliberately not updating it to reflect modern sensibilities, but still, this is a little over the top. The Skull Islanders aren't just aboriginals, they're also evil - you can tell by their crazed, glassy eyes and stringy hair, and the freaky, guttural chanting. What gives? He might as well have cast the Orcs from LOTR. Maybe he was trying to save money by reusing the costumes.

Film: Munich
General Impression: Political violence and and our notions of when and how it can be legitimate is something I've always obsessed about (see here and here), and so it goes without saying that I found 'Munich' to be pretty fascinating. Oddly it reminded me of the Bourne movies -- heart-pounding action sequences set in the capitals of Europe -- and highlighted the truth that most spy movies are pretty empty-headed. Although it's probably to Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner's credit that they managed to anger both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian debate, I don't think the movie is best thought of as an opinion piece about the Middle East. The focus of its argument is on the psychological effects of violence on those who commit it. All told, an extremely exciting and thought-provoking film; rent this with 'Paradise Now' and talk amongst yourselves.
Part That Sucked: OK, this is more of a tangent, but one bit of the film that sticks with me is the offhand remark by an Israeli general that the targeted killings of the terrorists are unnecessary since Israel has alreadyretaliated for the Munich killings by bombing training camps (in Lebanon and Syria) and killing 60 (a Palestinian character later puts the number at 200). Still -- 60 people? All guilty terrorists we presume? Or maybe random people in the wrong place at the wrong time? Or if some were innocent, are we are to think that those killings are less heinous because they are 'accidental'? And then the movie asks us to agonize over the targetted killings? Perhaps we should be more worried that our technology now allows us to kill without directly experiencing the violence, and that that dehumanizes us even more. But that's a different movie, I suppose.

Film: The New World
General Impression: A beautiful film. It's opening mirrors both the opening passage of Howard Zinn's history and Wagner's narrative of innocence lost, with the shimmery prelude to Das Rheingold playing as the Virginia natives look out on the arriving ships of the English settlers. The movie barely manages a narrative, instead offering up a series of poetic images roughly telling the story of Pocahontas, John Smith and the Jamestown settlement. It bogs a bit in the middle, but the scenes in the native village and later when she travels to England to meet the royals are pretty much perfect.
Part That Sucked: Hollywood seems to have a one-hit-movie quota for beautiful, accomplished non-white and/or non-western actresses, and then it's back to television and independent films with them. Cases in point: Irene Bedard, Ming-Na, Keisha Castle-Hughes, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Sarita Choudhury, etc. So its worth hoping Q'Orianka Kilcher, the young native actress who plays Pocahontas, gets to act in another movie again someday ever, and isn't doomed to a career of bit-parts on Law and Order.

Make My Funk the P-Funk

Yeah! We saw Dar Williams, RJD2 and George Clinton + Parliament/Funkadelic at the annual Summer Breeze concert Saturday night. Dar had some funny jokes about finally sharing a stage with George Clinton, but that's exactly why Summer Breeze is so awesome: a few years ago they had Guided By Voices, Jurassic 5 and Medeski, Martin & Wood on the same stage. Talk about eclectic. Anyway, the concert was awesome.

Dar: This was the 4th time I've seen her in concert, and it was nice to hear her do the solo guitar thing without her backing band (which sometimes makes her sound a little too adult-contempo-lite-rock-y). As usual, she was her funny, goofy self, and she played a nice mix of old and new stuff. Apart from a small group of acolytes around the stage, a lot of the crowd wasn't really paying that much attention, which was too bad. A lot of them didn't even sing along to 'Iowa' even though she promised them it would get them into bed with cute girls. Their loss, I guess.

RJD2: Pretty cool DJ music. The thing about seeing DJ's spin live is that I don't really know enough about what's going on to be properly impressed. He certainly ran around, shuffled vinyl and did stuff with the 4 or 5 turntables he had, and the music that came forth was really interesting and engaging, but I'm never really sure (without getting a closeup view) exactly which "parts" he's creating through cut-n-paste and which are pre-recorded. I'm happy to take it on faith that he's a real badass, however.

P-Funk: Pretty much a religious experience. I did have a moment of doubt early on... (I mean, GC's been doing this for, what? 30-40 years? And he's clearly an old man now. Even the guy in the diaper is an old man, and he's been wearing that diaper for-ev-er. So, is this just a nostalgia act? Are they merely a party band now, here to get the frat boys pumped up? You can just imagine how crazy and dangerous and anarchic they must have seemed back in the 70's when they ruled this planet and several others from the deck of their mothership. And now the anarchy has been going on so long, it's become... pre-planned - is that weird? or sad? or something?) ... but then I decided to stop thinking about it and dance. And, really, they still don't compare to anything else out there - the passing years have only made them better at what they do. There were like 147 of them up there on stage -- 14 guitarists, 8 keyboard players, 64 backup singers, the male-belly dancer/acrobat with a six-inch prosthetic nose dressed up like a pimp and climbing all over the stage, the guy eating cereal, the skinny sound-tech guy breaking up fights, the female rapper, the keyboardist who looks like Che, the guitarist with the half-hour solos that would make the Grateful Dead have to take a break and sit down, and on and on... in the end you can't fight the funk. You have to join it.

Science Blog!

For my museum internship, we've been asked to contribute posts to the Science Buzz Blog that's a part of the Science Museum of Minnesota. Keith and I decided to post on the recent formation of a second Red Spot on the face of Jupiter. You can read our full posting by clicking here.

Anyway, check out their blog - it's pretty cool, and they're always looking for people to leave comments and initiate discussion.

Dear NSA,

Funny Link of the (unspecified time period),

http://www.dearnsa.com/

I especially like the Liberian scam one. Substantive blog post coming soon, I plomise.

gripe gripe gripe

Ugh. What a 'orrible day. 40 degrees, rainy, windy. And of course I left the house without a coat or a functioning umbrella. And why would I do that, you might ask? Because, dammit, it's the middle of May already!

Stupid Chicago "spring". For some reason I can handle ten-below-zero in January. That's even kind of exciting (assuming a warm coat, of course). But, I expect spring to arrive on March 1 like clockwork, and by May, the continued appearance of damp, frigid weather drives me a little... crazy. Hee.