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Social Security and Compulsive Centrist Disorder

To avoid possible brain damage, the Surgeon General recommends that Sebastian Mallaby's columns only be read using the StupidVu 9000 Someone needs to tell Bush that when I wrote a post titled "Democrats Crush GOP; Bush Declares 'Mandate'", I was joking. Now that El Jefe Maximo has psychologically disinvested from the Iraqi Occupation, he has decided that the message the American electorate sent in the 2006 elections was "You've done such a great job with foreign policy, FEMA, and the budget deficit, we would really like you to screw up Social Security." Really, Bush is once again, after…

The Bellagio Principles regarding planning for an influenza pandemic

The Rockefeller Foundation's conference center in Bellagio, Italy on Lake Como is a lovely place (digression: so I'm told by people I know who have spent time there. I haven't -- yet. This is a big hint to the Foundation that I am available to take a week there and tell you what I think. Or you can find out for nothing here. But I'd rather tell you in person.). In June Ruth Faden, a bioethicist at Johns Hopkins convened a group of experts there to talk about ways to soften the impact of a flu pandemic on the world's most vulnerable: "Within countries rich and poor, the burden will be felt…

Reading Diary: The Boy who Loved Math: The Improbable Life of Paul Erdős by Deborah Heiligman and LeUyen Pham

There are two kinds of children's books: those that are aimed primarily at the kids themselves and those that are aimed at the adults that actually shell out the cash to pay for the books. There's certainly a lot of overlap -- books that kids love but that also catch the eyes, hearts & minds and wallets of the adults doing the shopping. But wander the aisles of your local bookstore and you'll see what I mean. Often beautifully illustrated, with a sophisticated artistic touch and a mature and serious topic, you can tell the books that are aimed at the parents and uncles and cousins and…

From the Archives: Glut: Mastering information through the ages by Alex Wright

I have a whole pile of science-y book reviews on two of my older blogs, here and here. Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one. So I'm going to be slowly moving the relevant reviews over here. I'll mostly be doing the posts one or two per weekend and I'll occasionally be merging two or more shorter reviews into one post here. This one, of Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages, is from March 25, 2008. ======= This book should have been called Everything is not Miscellaneous. In fact, this book could be imagined as Weinberger's Everything is…

Occupational Health News Roundup

America’s petrochemical industry has spent millions trying to discredit the science on benzene, a known human carcinogen linked to leukemia and other cancers, according to an investigative piece from reporter Kristen Lombardi at the Center for Public Integrity. Lombardi begins her story with the life of John Thompson, who spent much of his life working for the petrochemical industry in Texas. She writes: Throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, he often encountered benzene, stored on job sites in 55-gallon drums, which he used as a cleaning solvent. He dipped hammers and cutters into buckets…

National Geographic: The Whole World Is Watching. Something.

Someone just asked on Facebook if humans are naturally carnivores. My response: What is a carnivore? Taxon? A certain percentage of meat in the diet? Some, even if just a few, humans living mostly off meat? What? Then, what is “naturally”? Genetically determined and unavoidable? Required because of our gut, or some nutritional thing? What if we were like cats, genetically driven to be effective hunters but seeming in need of some training from mom. Does that make it not natural? And, finally, of course, define the verb “to be” here. Thank you. So, with that in mind, what about the sentence…

A Risky Educational Experiment

It's that time of year again, when I start thinking about my fall term classes. I would really prefer to put it off for another couple of weeks, and I will put off spending much time on class prep in favor of finishing up some paper-writing and other things, but when the calendar turns to August, I inevitably start thinking about what I'm going to be doing in September, no matter how much I'd like to be thinking about other things instead. This year is worse than most, because I'm planning to really shake things up with regard to the way I teach the intro mechanics course. I've been doing…

Presidential Debates

Someone suggested that I should write something about the upcoming presidential debates that draws on my background as a debate judge, coach and theorist (yes, there is actually such a thing as debate theory and I've actually published on it). It brought to mind 1988, when I was in college and coaching a high school debate team, and the Detroit News asked me and a couple of other coaches to evaluate the Bush the Elder vs. Michael Dukakis debates. I said much the same thing then as I do now, which is that they're really not debates at all. At very best, they are little more than simultaneous…

The Obamamercial Live

Live blogging the Obama Infomercial .... so you don't have to. (see this, this, this) Wheat .... Flags .... Fans in slow motion. Children and uncertainty. Ooops. He's standing in a room thta looks a little too presidential, Kennedy eskqe. Looks good but a little OTT. Please, Barach, don't be OTT. Not now. Rebecca. Rebecca looks like she could take Sarah Palin easy. Rebecca is a White Flightist. That's funny. Husband with surgery. Only seen in a photo. That's not looking too good for the husband. this is like the intro to Whole House make over. She's a football mom who can do…

Metaphor IV: The Reckoning

[First posted on 11/03/04 at the old blog.] In the final installment of Mixing Memory's metaphor series (for now -- at some later date I'll get to novel vs. dead metaphors), I try to use the empirical data to distinguish between the categorization and structure mapping theories of metaphor. Before I start, I should make it clear that there is certainly not a consensus among researchers about which model is the correct one, though my feeling is that most are in the comparison camp, rather than the categorization camp, even if they don't fully buy the structure mapping account. Part of the…

Roberts faces stiff opposition

I haven't written much about Jim Slattery's race to replace Memory Pills Roberts. Not because it isn't an interesting race, just because I haven't had much to say. Slattery knows Kansas and is experienced at winning elections there, Roberts has done a crappy job, and I hope Slattery wins. For more on his biography, check out the MyDD profile. It's been encouraging to see polls come out from the Slattery campaign showing Roberts consistently in poor position. An incumbent polling below 50%, as Roberts does in several successive polls, is in sad shape. But internal polls are iffy, not…

Scale: How Large Quantities of Information Change Everything

Technorati Tags: scale, computation, information Since people know I work for Google, I get lots of mail from folks with odd questions, or with complaints about some Google policy, or questions about the way that Google does some particular thing. Obviously, I can't answer questions about Google. And even if I could, I wouldn't. This isn't a Google blog; this is my blog, which I write as a hobby in my free time. But there are intersections between my work life and my hobby. And one of the ideas that underlies many of the questions that I receive, and which also hits on my work, and my…

Lithium, Circadian Clocks and Bipolar Disorder

You probably realize by now that my expertise is in clocks and calendars of birds, but blogging audience forces me to occasionally look into human clocks from a medical perspective. Reprinted below the fold are three old Circadiana posts about the connection between circadian clocks and the bipolar disorder, the third one being the longest and most involved. Here are the links to the original posts if you want to check the comments (especially the first comment on the third post): January 18, 2005: Clocks and Bipolar Disorder August 16, 2005: Bipolar? Avoid night shift February 19, 2006:…

Lithium, Circadian Clocks and Bipolar Disorder

You probably realize by now that my expertise is in clocks and calendars of birds, but blogging audience forces me to occasionally look into human clocks from a medical perspective. Reprinted below the fold are three old Circadiana posts about the connection between circadian clocks and the bipolar disorder, the third one being the longest and most involved. Here are the links to the original posts if you want to check the comments (especially the first comment on the third post): January 18, 2005: Clocks and Bipolar Disorder August 16, 2005: Bipolar? Avoid night shift February 19, 2006:…

Lithium, Circadian Clocks and Bipolar Disorder

You probably realize by now that my expertise is in clocks and calendars of birds, but blogging audience forces me to occasionally look into human clocks from a medical perspective. Reprinted below the fold are three old Circadiana posts about the connection between circadian clocks and the bipolar disorder, the third one being the longest and most involved. Here are the links to the original posts if you want to check the comments (especially the first comment on the third post): January 18, 2005: Clocks and Bipolar Disorder August 16, 2005: Bipolar? Avoid night shift February 19, 2006:…

Lithium, Circadian Clocks and Bipolar Disorder

You probably realize by now that my expertise is in clocks and calendars of birds, but blogging audience forces me to occasionally look into human clocks from a medical perspective. Reprinted below the fold are three old Circadiana posts about the connection between circadian clocks and the bipolar disorder, the third one being the longest and most involved. Here are the links to the original posts if you want to check the comments (especially the first comment on the third post): January 18, 2005: Clocks and Bipolar Disorder August 16, 2005: Bipolar? Avoid night shift February 19, 2006:…

An Open Letter to Chris Mooney

Dear Chris, I don't think for a moment that you (or for that matter, Matt or Sheril) are creationist apologists. But you are successfully pissing off a lot of evolutionary biologists...like me, even though I should be incredibly receptive to your argument. I've always argued that the creationist controversy is a political, not scientific, controversy. I would go so far as to claim that among the evolutionary biologists I know, I've been one of the staunchest advocates of bare knuckles political responses to creationists (even if those bare knuckles are enclosed in a velvet glove). Likewise…

Pity the Poor Couple Who Make $450,000 Per Year (Yet Another Failure of Our 'Elite' Educational System)

I swear every time I go on vacation, there's an outbreak of stupidity. One symptom is a ridiculous plaint by law professor Todd Henderson, who whines about barely getting by on $450,000 per year. No, really, I'm not kidding. I suppose the rest of us should just eat a bullet or something (and bullets are cheap!). Thankfully, Michael O'Hare and Brad DeLong (aka 'Mr. Deling') tear down this staggering display of narcissism. I would only add that when one has $500,000 of student debt, you probably shouldn't buy a million dollar house. Or maybe, you'll have to forgo part of the $100,000…

Religulous opens tonight

And it's not showing anywhere near me. In fact, I will be very surprised if it opens anywhere in this rural, religious area…I'll probably have to wait for it to come out on DVD. Religulous is the new movie by Bill Maher, an agnostic who thinks religion is a "load of nonsense", which by all reports is going to mock religion mercilessly — if this hysterical review by a devout fundamentalist is any indication, it's going to be great. Maher, though, isn't exactly an unblemished source with a deep dedication to reason, since he's fallen for some embarrassingly silly altie medicine nonsense before…

So You Want To Be An Astrophysicist? Part 1.5: thinking about grad school

So, now you're at university, and you're thinking about heading for grad school ... More re-runs from Ye Olde Blogge The following is horribly UScentric, 'cause that's where I am right now. The general principles are broadly applicable, the actual getting into grad school procedure bit in future post will be both US and THEM centric. Now what? Caveat: these numbers are somewhat dated, but the shift is not large enough yet for me to bother re-searching them. Each cohort in the US is about 4+ million people, about 4000 of those major in physics. Since participation in the further education in…

NASA: wiping the slate clean

IXO and LISA are dead and disbanded as NASA missions. We are looking at a very thin pipeline and few new missions for a while, unless there is drastic new direction from above and strong guidance on funding. NASA is a mission oriented agency. This is especially true of Astrophysics. At any given time, there are operating missions, missions in development, and planned future missions, each at various stages of effort. Each mission successfully launched has a nominal operating lifetime, after which it may be considered for an "extended mission", if possible. NASA tends to have catastrophic…

Occupational Health News Roundup

Family-friendly policies in the workplace are a good thing, but as Claire Cain Miller writes in The New York Times, there’s also a risk that such policies end up hurting the very workers they’re intended to help. Miller starts off her piece with international examples of family-friendly policies, such as a law in Chile that requires employers provide child care for working mothers and a policy in Spain that gives the parents of young children the option of working part time. The unintended results of each example? All women — whether they have children or not — get paid less and face fewer…

November Pieces Of My Mind

Once when I was a kid I read in the paper that Elvis had stolen black people's music and sold it to the whites. What an incredibly racist perspective. Archaeologists have it easy at Hallowe'en parties. No need to dress up: just be a grave robber and come as you are. You know you're not a kid any more when your wife buys Bornholms Rugkiks crackers. Love the scent of bog myrtle and marsh Labrador tea, pors & skvattram. Let's all start pronouncing Asquith "ass queef". Correspondence analysis: Freudian therapy conducted by mail. Students demand that I teach them during the spring term as…

Class and National Service

The Dean Dad posted an interesting article about "national service" programs yesterday. He's against them, for class reasons: The message that national service programs send strikes me as dangerous. The implication seems to be that rich kids can just jump right into higher ed and start moving up the ladder, but the rest of us have to do our time first. It's a sort of penance for not having wealthy parents. I know our society worships money, but there should be some kind of limits. It implicitly defines higher education as a purely private good, which I reject out of hand. (This isn't just the…

Our brains react differently to artificial vs human intelligence

With their latest film WALL-E, Pixar Studios have struck cinematic gold again, with a protagonist who may be the cutest thing to have ever been committed to celluloid. Despite being a blocky chunk of computer-generated metal, it's amazing how real, emotive and characterful WALL-E can be. In fact, the film's second act introduces a entire swarm of intelligent, subservient robots, brimming with personality. Whether or not you buy into Pixar's particular vision of humanity's future, there's no denying that both robotics and artificial intelligence are becoming ever more advanced. Ever since…

Casual Fridays: Is political wishy-washiness a general phenomenon?

Political opinion polls are very tricky. Answers to questions depend on the order they're asked in, and on precisely how they are phrased. If you ask people whether they're in favor of killing unborn children, you'll get a much different response than if you ask if there's any situation where women should be allowed to terminate a pregnancy. What's even more difficult is to assess public opinion on complex pending legislation. Most polls find that most Americans like the idea of requiring everyone to buy health insurance. But it's only a slim margin -- 56 to 41 percent. Kevin Drum cited a…

Do babies like color? If so, which ones?

New parents can come up with a seemingly endless array of vexing questions about their infants, from the best brand of stroller to the ideal song to sing them to sleep. The questions begin well before the child is born: what type of clothing should you purchase? What kind of crib? One question Greta and I dwelled on quite extensively when Jim was an infant was color. We were renting an apartment and couldn't paint the nursery, so we wondered about the color of the toys we bought and the blankets and other bedding for the crib. Would a purple outfit be appreciated? What about a multi-colored…

In response to comments on my last post (traveling to conference with baby)

Wow everyone! Thanks for all your suggestions on my last post. I thought I'd respond here, since my comments are plenty long enough.... I'll probably still miss some things though. Re: pumping and breastfeeding. I am planning to nurse on the plane and during the conference proper. Unfortunately the first day I have an off-site field course for 10(!) hours. Hence the need to bring the frozen milk and pump that day. I'll probably end up tossing what I pump, but if I don't pump at least somewhat I'll be in serious pain. I've got a manual Avent pump for that purpose. Apparently, in addition to a…

Clinton vs. Obama

I am utterly undecided. Feel free to make a suggestion. To me, it is simply not the case that in most regards one candidate has better positions than the other. The main difference I see is in that Clinton has articulated her positions in more detail than Obama. Obama seems to be running more of a hope and charisma campaign. I liked Bill Clinton, and I never had negative feelings towards Hillary Clinton, as many people seem to. I hear Hillary Clinton supporters expressing the thought that she would be a good president and the best possible campaigner against any of the Republicans,…

Temptation

Why are we so dishonest? Why do we bad things, even when we know we're doing something bad? Ever since Adam and Eve ate that apple, we've assumed that there is something inherently tempting about sin. If left to our own devices, we'd all turn into men at a Vegas bachelor party, indulging in sex, drugs and slot machines. We'd loot and pillage and lie. Immorality feels good, which is why it's so hard being moral. Some people, of course, are made of stronger stuff, which is why they stay on the righteous path. Because they're better than us, they don't eat too much cake or cheat on their taxes…

The one news source I can't do without

Hypothetical: If you had to make do with just one source of news, what would it be? I don't mean which medium, either. Let's narrow it down to one outlet, one group of journalists operating under a collectively identity, working with a common set of standards and principles. Twenty years ago, I probably would have chosen a newspaper, likely the New York Times, with its breadth and depth of coverage, one of the best (and now last surviving) sections devoted to science, and a largely intact reputation for honesty and accuracy. Today, I have a different answer. Not because the Times' reputation…

A family practitioner and epidemiologist are prescribing dichloracetate (DCA) in Canada

It never seems to end, does it? I'm talking about the hype and questionable practices revolving around dichloroacetate (DCA), the small molecule chemotherapeutic agent that targets the Warburg effect, in essence normalizing the metabolism of tumor cells and thereby inhibiting their growth. (See here and here for more details.) A report by Evangelos Michelakis at the University of Alberta in Cancer Cell in January reported strong antitumor activity against a wide variety of tumors in rat tumor models resulted in a phenomenon ballooning out of control in a way that he could never have imagined…

Paleontological Profiles: Michael Skrepnick

Paleo-artist Michael Skrepnick It is difficult for me to pick up a book about dinosaurs and not find some gorgeous artwork by artist Michael Skrepnick gracing the pages, if not the cover, of the book. He has created beautiful restorations of the distant past for Nature, National Geographic, Project Exploration, and many books about prehistoric life, making him one of the most hard-working and well-known paleo-illustrators around today. (For those who have been itching to see some of his new artwork, Michael has some good news for you. His website is going to be rebuilt and stocked up with…

Citizen Science: all fun and no data? ScienceOnline 2010

Do citizen science efforts ever go beyond "feel good" contributions? Do the data get published in peer-reviewed journals? In an earlier post, I started a list of citizen science projects that allow students to make a contribution. Many commentors are graciously adding to that list and I thank you all! I'm glad to learn there are so many interesting projects and ways for people to get involved. Science is so empowering! My question today concerns things like outcomes and deliverables. We'd like to assume that good things are coming from citizen science because people are involved, but I…

Watson's genome, Venter's genome, what's the difference?

"Come quickly, Watson," said Sherlock Holmes, "I've been asked to review a mysterious sequence, whose importance I'm only now beginning to comprehend." The unidentified stranger handed Holmes a piece of paper inscribed with symbols and said it was a map of unparalleled value. Holmes gazed thoughtfully at the map, then slowly lifted his eyes and coldly surveyed his subject's beaming countenance. "You have an affinity for the ocean," said Holmes, "that you indulged to excess as a reckless youth. An experience as a medic in the military changed your life and gave you a reason to do more than…

Liveblogging the conference on Engineering, Social Justice and Peace

I'm sitting in panels and sessions at this great conference on Engineering, Social Justice and Peace which is the 7th annual conference of this kind. Here are only some of the snippets of what I've been seeing and hearing: I heard yesterday of exciting and courageous curricular attempts to integrate social justice into engineering education. I heard of a course called "Engineering and Social Justice" offered through engineering and sociology at Queen's University, a first-year course where projects were focused on social justice, year-long experiences for students in Engineers Without…

Citizen Science: all fun and no data? ScienceOnline 2010

Do citizen science efforts ever go beyond "feel good" contributions? Do the data get published in peer-reviewed journals? Cross-posted at Discovering Biology in a Digital World. In an earlier post, I started a list of citizen science projects that allow students to make a contribution. Many commentors are graciously adding to that list and I thank you all! I'm glad to learn there are so many interesting projects and ways for people to get involved. Science is so empowering! My question today concerns things like outcomes and deliverables. We'd like to assume that good things are coming…

How the IBC number is reported

In an earlier post on the IBC I wrote: Sloboda says: We've always said our work is an undercount, you can't possibly expect that a media-based analysis will get all the deaths. Our best estimate is that we've got about half the deaths that are out there. OK, then why does the IBC page say "Iraq Body Count: Max 38661"? That's not really the maximum possible number of deaths, is it? Why not report their estimate that the true number of deaths is 70,000 or so? IBC's Josh Dougherty responded with: No. It's the maximum number of reported civilian deaths, as is stated on their homepage, counters…

Working Blue: Good, Low-Energy Sex in a Depleted World

Get nine women who have thought a lot about peak oil and climate change together around a dining room table, and perhaps expectedly, the conversation turns umm...blue. Get them around *my* dining room table and the turn to sex is pretty inevitable, given a certain native blueness (this is a polite way of saying "dirty mindness"). The absence of gents from this affair (completely unintended) made us rather uninhibited about certain subjects. And at the end of one conversation, I realized that I've got a rather gaping hole in my body of works on how to go forward into the future - I've never…

Too Many Choices Spoil the Pop Culture?

Radley Balko links to, and rightly lampoons, this silly article by Fortune writer Marc Gunther. Gunther claims that we have too many choices now, with 300 TV channels focused on particular niches. It's reduced the power of the 3 networks to present the news to a bulk of the population, it's reduced the commonality of our shared experiences (since we no longer all watch the same thing, we don't talk about it around the water cooler), and it's "fragmented" our society. Is he joking? One would hope so. Are we really supposed to lament the fact that we can now buy and watch what we actually want…

Monkey Girl

If there's one good thing about spending an extra night in Buffalo, without access to a computer and with a rather limited selection of channels on the television, it's that you get a lot of reading done. I managed to plow through all of Edward Humes' book Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion and the Battle for America's Soul. It's mostly a blow-by-blow account of the big Kitzmiller v. Dover case. It also provides a fair amount of historical context. Overall it's an excellent book, difficult to put down. The trial scenes are especially compelling. I was following the trial…

Cancer is a disease

Barbara Ehrenreich had breast cancer, and ugly and frightening as that disease is, she found something else that was almost as horrible: the 'positive thinking' approach to health care. People are stigmatized if they fail to regard their illness as anything other than an uplifting, positive life experience, an opportunity to examine their lives and identify what is most important to them…and also, most disturbingly, if they fail to appreciate that the attitude that they bring to the problem will determine whether they live or die. It's the Oprah-zation of medicine. In the most extreme…

Reading Diary: It's Catching: The Infectious World of Germs and Microbes by Jennifer Gardy and Josh Holinaty

I have some theories about both children's books and about science-themed graphic works. There are basically two kinds of children's books: those that are designed to please children versus those that are designed to attract the adults that buy most children's books. There are also basically two kinds of science-themed graphic works: those that are essentially regular information dump-style textbooks that mix in some funny pictures and light-hearted banter as kind of a spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down and those that truly take advantage of the strengths of the graphic medium to…

Astroturfing to Protect Astroturf

By Liz Borkowski  Thereâs an article making its way around the internet warning that a lobbying reform law currently in the Senate will require bloggers who criticize Congress and reach audiences of more than 500 to register and file quarterly reports with Congress -- or risk jail time. Mike Dunford of The Questionable Authority decided to investigate this, and found no such provision in the bill. In fact, he cites passages of the bill stating that it covers paid attempts to stir up the public on behalf of a client. Sums above $25,000 also need to be involved. In fact, this piece of the…

Some People's Trash, Other People's Missing Million Dollar Masterpieces

tags: art, Rufino Tamayo, Tres Personajes, discarded masterpiece "Tres Personajes" (1970) by Mexican artist, Rufino Tamayo (1899-1991). Oil on canvas with marble dust and sand worked into the paint. Image: Sotheby's [slightly larger view]. I am one of those people who pokes through other people's garbage in search of treasures. This isn't difficult to do in Manhattan because people conveniently discard their trash on the sidewalk, where garbage men come to pick it up at some point during the day. My favorite place to look through trash is on Manhattan's Upper West Side (UWS) because the…

The more you know: Study finds calorie signs do influence sugary beverage purchases among youth

In ongoing public health efforts to curb the obesity epidemic, better menu and nutrition labeling is often tapped as a low-cost way to help make the healthy choice, the easy choice. And while the evidence on the effectiveness of such interventions is still emerging, a recent study found that educating young people on the calories in sugar-sweetened beverages did make a positive difference. Published in the December issue of the American Journal of Public Health, the study focused on an experiment inside six corner stores located near middle and high schools within low-income, predominantly…

As the Poker Game Turns

The guys have decided, for the time being at least, to change the format of our weekly game. Instead of a cash game, they want to have a series of single table tournaments for $20 each. They figure we can do 3 a week, that way no one can lose more than $60 and it will attract more people. The reasoning is astonishingly stupid. They say the game has "gotten out of hand" because there are 2 or 3 players who come to the game with hundreds of dollars and they bet like crazy, so you can lose too much money. They say that by doing a tournament format, everyone starts the same so it's more fair.…

Popular Media Should Do Science

Lest you think I'm transforming the entire site into cute-baby-pictures-dot-com, let me reassure you that while the posting frequency may drop off a bit, Uncertain Principles will always be your go-to site for slightly ranty blogging about issues of science and larger culture. Well, one of them, anyway. This is brought to you by a recent post at Physics and Physicists, in which ZapperZ takes issue with the New York Times. The Times wrote a silly piece on radioactive granite countertops a while back, which the Health Physics Society responded to, prompting ZapperZ to write: When will these…

Pocket Knives, Snow Globes, and National Security

I've noticed, of myself, lately, that I never have a knife or a bottle opener handy, but I was once the guy who always had a knife or a bottle opener handy. That is generally true of archaeologists, and I used to be a full time archaeologist. Originally, I assumed that my lack of preparedness came down to that .... my ever increasing distance with involvement in archeology. But now, I realize this is not the case. It really is more a matter of National Security. There is a link between the pocket, the belt-slung case or holster, the kit bag, and the backpack. They are all places where…

The Art and Science of Naming Things

We had a talk last night by Alan Lightman of MIT, a theoretical physicist and novelist, best known as the author of Einstein's Dreams. He spoke for about an hour about his own background, and the similarities and differences between the worlds of science and the arts. One of the differences he mentioned was the way the different disciplines handle names. He claimed that science is deeply concerned with naming things, because naming a thing in some sense defines it-- the word "electron" carries with it a whole host of properties that are shared by all electrons in the universe. In the arts, on…