This has been a month of divestiture.  All within the past few weeks, I had my last day at work; we moved out of our house, donated our car, sold our bicycles; and I brought my dog back to St. Louis so that my parents can watch her while we’re on our road trip.  While I’ve been excited to unburden myself of these first four, I’m having a little trouble coming to terms with the last.  I was ecstatic to leave my job behind me.  The predominant feeling with the apartment, car, and bikes was one of relief.  I have to admit that some part of me was hesitant to see those things go.  I’m attached to some of my stuff and have fond memories associated with all of those things.  But I’ve convinced myself that the things I loved the most about those things are things that I can take with me.

Anyway, if you’d like to keep track of us on the road trip and throughout our time in the Peace Corps, you can follow us on our photo-centric travel blog: AdventurerZ.

As a physics grad student, I’m sometimes accused of esotericism by my non-technical friends.  And sometimes I agree.  It is hard to pursue a life’s work in science when you feel the tug of other causes.  But I also firmly believe that the advancement of science is important to the well-being and flourishing of the human race and that I can leave the world a bit better than I found it by making my own modest but original contributions to the wealth of human knowledge. But I admit it is hard sometimes to maintain trust in the worth of abstruse and seemingly irrelevant discoveries.

I was therefore pleased to read a paper in February on arXiv about the relationship between wind turbine farm design and the hydrodynamics of fish schooling.

Clockwise from top left: 1) The Brazos wind farm with horizontal axis wind turbines. (public domain, wikimedia commons user Leaflet). 2) A vertical axis wind turbine. (public domain, wikimedia commons user Aeolus88). 3) The hydrodynamics of fish schooling. (ref: arxiv.org/abs/1002.2250: Fish schooling as a basis for vertical axis wind turbine farm design).

Reference: Fish schooling as a basis for vertical axis wind turbine farm design

The paper itself is fairly accessible. And if your not in the mood to read it, the folks over at The Physics arXiv Blog have written a very nice review of the paper.  But if you’re not in the mood to read that either (slacker), here’s the gist:

Wind turbines come in a couple flavors: horizontal-axis and vertical-axis.  You’re probably used to seeing vertical-axis turbines, which typically have higher power output per turbine.  But they don’t play nice together; the turbulence created by the turbines in front attenuate the power output of the turbines in the rear.  The solution is to spread these horizontal-axis turbines out, thereby taking up more land.

Conversely, vertical-axis wind turbines typically have lower power output per turbine, but don’t have the same turbulent wakes that the horizontal-axis turbines do.  Whittlesey and the other Caltech folks who wrote the paper realized that an array of vertical-axis wind turbines is similar to a school of swimming fish (from a fluid dynamics perspective).  And what do you know, some guy named Daniel Weihs (reference #15 in their paper) studied the hydrodynamical aspects of fish schooling in 1975.  It turns out that not only can you pack the vertical-axis turbines (or fish) closer together, the leading turbines create vortices that can accelerate the current around the tailing turbines.  In other words, the fish draft off of each other and there’s no reason that we can’t exploit that behavior to increase the group power output of vertical-axis turbines.  So despite the lower power to unit ratio of the vertical-axis turbines, we can get a higher power to acre ratio than with horizontal-axis turbines.  Whittlesey claims that the power per unit area can increase by an order a magnitude.

This wind turbine stuff is interesting in its own right but my main point is this: Daniel Weihs’ research on fish schooling may seem esoteric, but it is no feat of mental masturbation.  In 1975, he probably had no idea that his modeling of fish schooling behavior would play a small but original role in solving the next century’s global climate crisis.  On the rare occasion that I doubt my choice to become a scientist or the importance of scientific literacy in public policy, I’ll think of fish power.  And once I’m done giggling, I’ll get back to work.

Before I go on, I’d like to juxtapose Morgan Freeman’s brand of science advocacy with that of astrophysicist and science ambassador Neil deGrasse Tyson, who’s been on The Daily Show many times by the way.  I highly recommend you watch those appearances if you want to know how to be a steward of the scientific endeavor.  Okay, let’s compare Tyson’s description of dark matter with Freeman’s god factor.

Now riddle me this: which approach to science publicity makes science more accessible?  Which approach promotes critical thinking?  Which approach properly relates the passion of scientific inquiry to the public?

The first thing we should notice from the comparison between Tyson and Freeman is that scientists are not nearly as baffled by dark matter as Morgan Freeman is.

“One should make a fine distinction between the known laws of physics and the laws of physics known to you.”
Hannes Alfven, Nobel Laureate, in response to someone’s claim that Alfven’s theory violated the known laws of physics.

But never mind that.  Let’s assume that Freeman’s befuddlement over dark matter is representative of the scientific community’s understaning.  A typical creationist criticism of science is that scientists are arrogant in claiming to know the certain truths about the universe.  I’ll quote Sam Harris’ response to this myth because I think it’s germane to our discussion:

When scientists don’t know something — like why the universe came into being or how the first self-replicating molecules formed — they admit it. Pretending to know things one doesn’t know is a profound liability in science. And yet it is the life-blood of faith-based religion. One of the monumental ironies of religious discourse can be found in the frequency with which people of faith praise themselves for their humility, while claiming to know facts about cosmology, chemistry and biology that no scientist knows. When considering questions about the nature of the cosmos and our place within it, atheists tend to draw their opinions from science. This isn’t arrogance; it is intellectual honesty.

Freeman’s invocation of the god factor is a trademark of religion’s aversion to the lack of answers.  In talking about dark matter, he could just as well have said “we don’t know,” or more accurately, “there are many theories about this but there’s no scientific consensus yet.”  The practical meaning would have been exactly the same as using “the god factor.”  But it wouldn’t have carried any of the epistemic baggage of religious supplication.  Instead, we get a treatment of dark matter that fails to explain the true gaps in our scientific understanding.  Moreover it portrays scientists as clueless and scientific truth itself as inherently inferior to religious truth.

Let’s compare this to Neil deGrasse Tyson’s answer.  As Tyson said in one of his own Daily Show appearances, “[not knowing] is not the trouble.  [It's] the seduction.”  In the video above, Tyson freely admits to our ignorance of the sources of dark matter.  But he does so in a way that relates the competing theories and engages the audience in scientific matters.  To steal a phrase from Feynman, Tyson’s approach conveys “the pleasure of finding things out,” while Freeman’s approach suggests that the lack of complete understanding implies the futility of rational inquiry.

I understand that Morgan Freeman has a right to his own opinions about the philosophy of science, but if he wants us to believe that he’s more than just the voice talent for a science show, then he ought to act like it.  The “god factor” doesn’t help science by occupying the real estate of scientific ignorance.  Science is perfectly capable of allocating that space on it’s own.  What the god factor does do is inveigh science by equating ignorance with incompetence and insignificance.  As Phil Plait says of astrology, “it takes away from the real grandeur of the universe.  [it] dims the beauty of nature, cheapens it.”

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Editorial note: The good folks over at Physics Buzz responded to this very soon after Freeman’s appearance on the Daily Show.  I read their post after drafting mine, but before reviewing, editing, and posting it.  I’ve tried to capture my initial reactions but it would be inauthentic of me if I failed to mention and reference their post.

Firstly, I resented the implication that Meehan spoke on behalf of all military members.  His language frequently insinuates that his feelings and attitudes are representative of the feelings of all of us in the military.  For example,

Killing enemy combatants comes with its own emotional costs. On the surface, we feel as soldiers that killing the enemy should not affect us — it is our job, after all.

Throughout his article, Meehan shifts subtly between “I,” “you,” and “we.”  In my most cynical interpretation, I imagine Meehan would like to appoint himself the warfighter representative in order to help his book sales.  His 2009 book Beyond Duty recounts his actions and attempts to reconcile his experiences in Iraq.  I have not read it, but I should say that it is highly reviewed by other authors that I admire.  In truth, I think Meehan’s motives are pure.  But compare his language to that found in Roman Skaskiw’s article Narrative and Memory at War:

…the problem with war narratives isn’t lying. The problem is there’s too much truth. Everything you’ve ever heard or suspected about armed conflict is likely true. The enterprise is so vast that writers, myself included, can choose whichever truths support a particular thesis.  So yes. We struggle. We struggle famously, and probably more so as our wars approach the decade mark.

But who will tell the story of those who don’t struggle to adjust? Is there space in our consciousness for those who enjoy themselves? For those who choose to return to do similar work as contractors for a salary three times as high? Those who return because they didn’t get enough action? Who will admit that many of us are capable of facing combat? I never met anyone emerging from an intense firefight who wanted to go back, but those who folded under the pressure were the exception, not the rule. Who will admit that some of us even revel in it? And if such statements are made, who will listen?

I much prefer Skaskiw’s depiction of the diversity of combatants’ attitudes.  (In fact, it’s similar to something my good friend Nick once told me about assuming a representative experience of life in India, but you’ll just have to wait for Nick to start a blog to hear that one).  And I’m more receptive to his message when I know he’s telling me his story, rather than telling me what everyone else’s story should be (a point that Skaskiw makes much more eloquently in his entire article).

Secondly, Meehan closes with:

Soldiers bring the ghosts home with them, and it’s everyone else’s job to hear about them, no matter how painful it may be.

Again it’s easy to imagine that Meehan has concocted this newfound civic responsibility because it will help his book sales.  And yet again, I don’t think that’s correct but the truth is even scarier: he really believes it.  Let me start with my initial reaction to Meehan’s closing line (with the caveat that I’ve had a chance to cool off a bit):

1. Sorry Capt Meehan, but I am under absolutely no obligation to hear your war story or anyone else’s for that matter.  Your suffering is not more special or more deserving of consolation than civilian suffering.  Nobody says that it’s “our job” to hear the stories of rape victims or abused children, but it’s somehow incontrovertible that it’s “our job” to hear your story.  Yes, you should be cared for before, during, and after your service.  So should everyone else.  And I have no problem with my tax dollars going to fund your treatment.  If I know you personally, I will invest my time into hearing of your experiences and helping you recover.  But beyond that, I have no more obligation to hear your story and help you heal than I do to the untold numbers of other trauma victims.  Meehan is not invoking a national call to psychological service here, he’s advocating an unconditional support structure for military mental health.
2. And because this support is unconditional and accorded a special privilege above the plane of normal dialogue, it becomes much harder to combat when it supports the war or supports the military recruiting machine.  It provides protection to the myth that the military is uniquely qualified to foster good character or service ethic.  Challenging the soldier myth becomes conflated with obstructing veteran rehabilitation.  As Skaskiw puts it:

Although it puts me and many of my personal friends in a flattering light, I fear the narrative of the reluctant, well-intentioned soldier because, along with similar reverence for all things military, it seems a requisite for endless war. The misguided motives of empire hide behind the sympathetic portrayal of its servants. I also know, as we all probably do but hesitate to admit, that many of us servants were far from reluctant.

I’ve thought about it a bit more since my initial reaction and I applaud both Meehan and Skaskiw and the other Home Fires contributors for telling their story.  It is brave to confront your war trauma and even braver to do so publicly.  I don’t wish to silence anyone who wants to talk about their experiences.  More dialogue is almost always better.  And the psychological toll of any experience shouldn’t be swpet under the rug, especially not when that toll is taxpayer funded.  But I do have reservations about the simplicity with which we treat our war stories.  There is a fuzzy line between the glorification of war and the psychological repatriation of the warfighter.  As Skaskiw closes, “wars, like everything else, are replaced by the telling of them.”

Sorry I haven’t posted in a while guys. Here’s what I’ve been up to:

• Published my first article in a scientific journal (I’ll link the preprint version once it’s available/legal).
• went back home to St. Louis for Christmas and reconnected with some great friends.
• Traveled to India with Zoë to visit my good friends Nick and Elizabeth.
• came back to L.A. and have been working crazy hard on my thesis ever since.
• plus some other career related developments that I won’t go into here but that are the subject of a future blog post.

So I’m starting to get back into the swing of things. Thanks for the harassment/encouragement from those of you who’ve been bugging me. I’ll try to not to disappoint.

I got the book for my mom simply because she’s always had an interest in Čapek and I thought the book would be entertaining for her. To facilitate a religious conversation, I read the book before I gave it to her and wrote margin notes whenever the book piqued my interest, which turned out to be often. I honestly did not expect to find the book so engaging, nor Čapek so compelling. Every year as a child, I would celebrate the flower communion that Čapek invented in Prague in 1923. But beyond that (or perhaps in spite of that), I didn’t feel much of a connection to Čapek or to my UU roots. But Čapek’s story made me reconsider the role and meaning of liberal religion. Over the next few blog posts, I will try to summarize my reconsideration using quotes from the book. For reference, all quotes are cited in Norbert Fabian Čapek: A Spiritual Journey by Richard Henry, 1999, Skinner House Books, Boston.

Liberal religion is, by the way, a very prickly term. I’ve often been tempted to describe myself as spiritual, so as to differential my beliefs from that of most organized religion. As Tomáš Masaryk declared:

We want a religious life that goes beyond all churchly forms of religion. This new religion can be nothing other than a non-revealed religion; we are seeking for the non-revealed God.

Just as Masaryk demanded a “non-revealed religion,” I’ve tended to avoid the term religion in order to distance myself from “churchly forms of religion.” But there is something stale and solitary about the word spirituality. A spiritual journey seems very independent. A religious journey on the other hand, seems made of bonds and commiseration. Religion has congregations. Spirituality seems to lack them. In some interpretations, the word “religion” itself may stem from the Latin religare, meaning “fasten” or “bind fast.” (See also “rely” from Latin religare or “ligament” from Latin ligare. All binding words). This could emphasize the bond between the humans and the gods. Or, in my more convenient yet not at all linguistically supported interpretation, it could emphasize religions ability to bind its congregants together, fostering compassion and kinship.

But the term also has a lot of baggage. Rightfully so. Most people that know me have heard me quote Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, or Christopher Hitchens (sorry Daniel Dennett, I haven’t read your books yet). Religion’s vast and pervasive failures are somewhat beyond the scope of this post though.

The point is that I’m pleasantly confused about the role and meaning of liberal religion. Can one proselytize reason, curiosity, and love? Can I be both religious and anti-theist. I’m not sure what the answers to these are, but I guess I’ve decided these are worthwhile things to strive for. Like I said, over the next few blog posts, I’ll try to use Čapek’s words and journey to reflect upon my own spiritual journey and the need for progressive spiritual engagement. I would really appreciate your comments, reply posts, links, etc.

So, wordpress.com doesn’t allow Google Analytics, or more generally any user-inputted javascript, on its hosted blogs.  Initially, I thought this was a deficiency, but I know realize that it’s an exquisite gift.  You see, I check my blog stats more than I should anyway.  To some extent, this has a positive effect on me.  The delusion that I have a readership encourages me to write more often.  E.g. “Oh man, I better write something soon; it’s been 8 days since my last post.”  So that’s good.

But just like caffeine and StumbleUpon, this must be taken in moderation.  Blog stat fixation caries two distinct drawbacks:

1. Sophisticated site statistics make large viewership an independent objective.  “Instead of spending time writing stuff, I’ll just see which search terms are most effective in bringing people to my site.”  So I wind up obsessing over who clicked what and where just so I can get them to click somewhere else and bring their friends too.
2. More importantly, I begin to perceive site views as a measure of the value of my thoughts.  For example, here’s a snapshot of my rather humble site statistics.  Besides the modest numbers and the sawtooth pattern, notice the poor performance of my recent posts compared to my 10 Nov post on grief and remembrance.  This was by far my most popular post.  And it’s not surprising.  The grief post was certainly more difficult to write and was on a much more personal topic.  It’s easy to see that this topic would be more interesting to read.  Two days later, I wrote a post on the media coverage of the Fort Hood shootings.  I completely understood that it was not as compelling as the former post, but still I began to view the smaller viewership as a reflection of the merit of my thought.  “Well gee, this one’s not doing so hot.  I guess that was a pretty dumb idea.  I probably shouldn’t have written it down” (said in a mopey Mr. Ed kind of voice.)  This self-flagellation distracts me from the reasons I started blogging in the first place.  So I’ve decided to concentrate less on content consumption and focus more on content creation.  This does not mean that I’m promising more frequent posts, by the way.

One should never mistake modesty for diffidence.  And I find it easier to remind myself of that when I’m not looking at my stats page.  So I’m thankful for WordPress’s fairly basic blog statistics.  My ignorance is blogging bliss.

Okay, now before you go and get all offended by the title of this post, read this (http://ashleykilgore.blogspot.com/2007/01/drmartin-luther-king-jr-day.html). Ashley’s post inspired me to write a little note in response to the gentleman’s off-hand, and off-color, comment. Thus, the title is meant to be a somewhat ironic reference to Ashley’s article while also introducing a theme on the universal applicability of Dr. King’s legacy and of the civil rights movement. It is meant to persuade that man to care about the rights of others.

There is, of course, a selfish reason to care about minority rights. This is the most trivial of the reasons, but it’s a good start. Any society that can subjugate one particular slice of the population can do it to your slice of the population. If they (see footnote)* can oppress black people, then they can do it to women, blind people, vegetarians, people who wear blue watches, people with stars on their belly, and people without stars on their belly. A threat to one person’s civil liberties, represents, in the final sense, a threat to everyone’s civil liberties.

But even if this were not the case, I’d argue that decent human beings should still care about the rights of others, that each person has inherent worth and dignity (my UU roots are showing) that should be respected. If these are really inherent, then an attack on one person’s rights, is not just an individual attack. It constitutes a devaluation of rights, worth, and dignity themselves. I can’t really back this up without getting into a bunch of metaphysical, interconnectedness-of-all-life stuff. Not everyone would agree with me and I’d probably wind up preaching satyagraha (which I’m not comprehensively committed to anyway). But that’s not really where I want to go with this. My point is this: I think most people would agree with this at least notionally (perhaps for different reasons) and that even if they don’t, the more trivial assertion above should be obvious. So the treatment of others is important to us.

But more generally, we should celebrate Dr. King for a different reason: he helped to reconstitute the validity and power of one’s hopes and dreams. There is a reason that the “I have a dream” speech resonates so well within the American subconscious. To quote Barack Obama: “That simple notion—that one isn’t confined in one’s dreams—is so central to our understanding of America that is seems almost commonplace.” But oppression severs this idea from one’s life. Dr. King should be remembered not because of the power that he held, but because of the way he empowered others.

A few months ago, Zoe and I had the occasion to visit the National Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, AL.  It was an extremely moving experience for me for a number of reasons. Primarily, it did an excellent job of conveying the intensely personal stories that usually get lost when people talk about the entire movement.

I mention this because when we talk about the history of the civil rights movement, we tend to assimilate it entirely into the biography of a few key leaders. Furthermore, we tend to elevate these leaders to a level of perfection that belies their true nature and the attainability of their accomplishments. It’s easy to forget that that history was made by milkmen and postal workers, truck drivers and librarians. And in that forgetting, we forget our own power to change the world around us. We say, “I can’t fix these things; I’m no Dr. King (or Gandhi or Margaret Mead or whoever).” This is why Rosa Parks and Paul Rusesabagina are so inspiring to us. We must be reminded that mere mortals, with their own insecurities and inadequacies, suffered threats, beatings, and arrests in pursuit of a noble cause. This realizations allows us, perhaps obligates us, to take action against the injustices that we see today. That is, after all, one of the things Dr. Martin Luther King did. He empowered and mobilized others to make a difference in their lives and in the lives of others.

And there is still a lot more work to be done (as Ashley has already pointed out).  So on this day, I hope you’ll take a few minutes to reflect on Dr. King’s legacy and use this as an opportunity to change the world in some small way. Perhaps you’ll call your congressperson or write a letter to an editor. Maybe you’ll donate to a charity or commit to a smaller carbon footprint. Perhaps you’ll sit back in self-aggrandizing satisfaction because you already do all of these things. Just do not attest to your own insignificance because the entire civil rights movement will testify to the contrary.

* “They” is a very general term here and doesn’t really reflect the complexity of prejudice. I use it here because it’s convenient. But often, “they” serves to disassociate oneself from a problem. “They” really includes we, you, I, and others.

By now, I’m sure that everyone has heard of the tragic shootings at Fort Hood.  My thoughts and emotional reactions to the shootings have probably already been summarized more quickly and more eloquently by some other blogger so I’ll spare you those.  I don’t want this blog to be an aggregator site.  But I would like to scrawl my thoughts on the media coverage of the shootings (someone’s probably already done this as well):

Let me be clear, the shootings on 05 Nov were a tragedy.  They are absolutely horrible; 13 people are dead and many more families are shattered.  But I think that they have been accorded a disproportionately large ownership of the media cycle.  On 08 Nov, floods and mudslides in El Salvador killed as many as 160 people.  Here’s a look at the Google Insights comparison of news searches for the Fort Hood shootings and the mudslide in El Salvador:

Note that I’ve been very generous to the mudslide, counting “El Salvador” OR “mudslide” OR “flood” OR “mud” as valid searches.  Conversely, I’ve been very restrictive to the shootings, counting only “Fort Hood” as a valid search.  Even with these odds stacked against the shootings, and even considering the proportionality of suffering and the recency of the mudslide, the shootings still dominate the web interest.  Similarly, lets compare the 25 Oct suicide car bombings in Iraq, which killed at least 155 and wounded 500, to the 26 Oct Afghan helicopter crashes that killed 14 American soldiers:

Not quite as dramatic, but the Iraq line still doesn’t get above the Afghanistan line during the period of interest.

Editorial Note: I have very little pride of ownership on these Google Insight searches.  These are not, by any stretch of the imagination, comprehensive representations of media interest and I invite anyone with a Lexis membership to supplement my findings or prove me wrong.

But the point is, American suffering garners much more media attention than international suffering (see this cartoon from 2003 for a humorous take).  Now I know that some of you are saying “Adam come on, it’s natural to feel more for the stories that take place closer to home.”  And you’re right.  It is natural.  And so are rape and hurricanes but that doesn’t mean they’re good.

Okay that was also tongue-in-cheek.  But the point is that the news should be about extending our emotional and cognitive borders.  It should make us better citizens by bringing us the stories of people from outside our daily lives and familiar confines.  The public is a child playing peek-a-boo.  We lack object permanence.  We really think that misery disappears when we can’t see it.  But the truth is that we can’t make the world better by closing our eyes and empathy should have no such understanding of proximity.  So please news people, spare me the solipsism and the interviews with Hasan’s cousin’s lawyer and tell me something I don’t know.