synchrotron light sources

I suppose there's a time when you should do something with what you've learned. You can't be a student your whole life! (Well, of course you can, and I fully plan to, but I should also do something useful.)

So. What am I doing? Well, I'm part of a group designing a third generation synchrotron light source: the NSLS-II.

Ok, so what is a synchrotron light source?

Check out this photo of a machine called the NSLS VUV ring:
See the brownish tube in the center going all the way around? (Just above the dark blue things, and with some yellow, orange and light blue things here and there.) Its a copper pipe, called the beam pipe and for this machine its 51 meters around. Electrons travel down that tube at close to the speed of light.

All right. Nice. Three questions:
1) How'd the electrons get there in the first place?
2) Why do they stay in the pipe and not slam into the walls?
3) Why on earth would we want to do this?

Question 1 is why this is really a branch of the field of accelerator physics. We need a particle accelerator to get the electrons going fast enough. The electrons in this machine have an energy of 800 thousand electron volts. That's the energy one electron would have after going through 800 thousand 1 volt batteries.

By the way, in case you forgot what an electron was... we're mainly made of them. They are negatively charged particles that orbit the nucleus in atoms.

The answer to question 2 involves the yellow, orange, and light blue things surrounding the beam pipe. They are magnets. The light blue one is a dipole magnet, meaning it has two poles, north and south. The magnetic field bends the charged electrons. So that's how we can get the bunch of electrons going in a circular shape. The problem is that with just the bending, the beam would be unstable- if it was just a bit off the "perfect" trajectory, it would very quickly die a copper death. So the yellow magnets are there. They are called quadrupole magnets, four poles. They are like lenses for the particles. The orange magnets are sextupole magnets, six poles. They're also necessary, but its a bit technical as to why.

Ok. So, on to question 3. Why?

Well, for those of you who have taken an electricity and magnetism class, you might remember that charged particles create electric and magnetic fields. And remember that light is just an oscillating electric and magnetic field? Look around you. Yep. That's what's hitting your eyes: electric and magnetic fields. Basically, whenever a charged particle changes state, it gives off light. So, the electrons running around the ring here are having their path bent by the dipole magnets and thus giving off light. Because these machines are also called "synchrotrons", the light is called synchrotron radiation.

So that's it. Get some electrons stored in a big circle and whenever they bend, they give off light. That ought to be good for something.

Actually, these machines, synchrotrons, were originally designed to smash particles together. The higher the energy the particle, the more interesting things that might pop out from the collisions. Unfortunately, the higher the energy, the more of this synchrotron radiation gets produced which saps energy from the system. So, originally synchrotron radiation was seen as a big nuisance! Until some biophysicist (and probably some others) came along and said: hey, we'll take the light! So they started running the particle smashing synchrotrons parasitically, using the synchrotron light for whatever they needed it for. It turned out that this source of light was so useful that it was worth building these machines solely to get the light out! Second generation light sources were redesigned so that the electron beam was more suited for radiation purposes rather than particle smashing purposes. Then, third generation light sources were designed where the beam was really allowed to bend. In fact these devices were put in that caused the beam to wiggle back and forth. They were called wigglers. They are also sometimes called undulators. Here's a picture of one of these beasts:


So that's what I've been up to. The work I do, mainly relates to Question 2 above.
In particular, now that we add these crazy undulators and wigglers to the ring, we have to really be sure that the beam will be stable. So we need to write some computer code that tracks the electrons around to see what happens. To do this, we need to understand Hamiltonian dynamics, a formulation of classical mechanics. In my own skewed world, this is the reason I got into this field, and I still actually find this aspect quite interesting! Remember the craze surrounding chaos theory? One of these days, I need to try to really understand the KAM theorem. Well, this one of the fields where some of the math was developed, or at least was a major recipient. There are still plenty of open problems here! As for whether quantum mechanics is relevant for these beams of electrons in these machines, the answer is that it is and it isn't (and it might be). But that's a story for another day.

volver

I saw Almodovar's recent film Volver last night.

There was something interesting about the way death was dealt with. Death is a central element, but the people, the emotions, the story, somehow don't allow it to dominate in the way it easily could have. Also, beauty itself has the same paradoxical role. A large budget film these days can have teams of artistic designers who sculpt each shot into a piece of art on its own. One can get lost in the beauty of the way the colors are balanced and one imagines that someone is quite (justifiably) proud of the aesthetic achievement of a single frame. However, overall, the film itself often suffers as a result of individual artistic talents not working together to support the central goals of the film. It can have a piecemeal feel to it.
I guess Almodovar's films are just so consistently gorgeous that you forgive the extravagence. Or maybe its the fact that humanity never leaves the screen, or is never more than a few seconds away. The beauty isn't triumphalist- it isn't a stick to beat you over the head with, but instead a flavorful sauce that brings out a subtle taste, or the melodic structure that pulls you in to a sad song.

snacks

fruit: fresh- apples and kumquats.
dried- cherries.
bars: Odwalla, Tiger's Milk
microwavable lunch items: Peanut Satay noodles and sauce
Mushroom soup
Teriyaki noodle bowl (x2)

Ok, Boaz, now get to work!

spectacle of religion

Consider:

Chapter 14 of "the sociology of religious movements" by
William Sims Bainbridge discusses Star Wars. The Jedi knights tap into The Force which is both powerful to the faithful and often seemingly laughable to the unfaithful. (Not coincidentally, the book also includes a discussion of TM)

The movie "What the Bleep". It says that by tapping into the quantum, we can control our destinies... do anything.

The movie "Pi". A certain number exists that underlies both the numerology of the Hebrew old testament and the stock markets.

Three modern day myths. Seductive conclusions.

Although the "miracles" done in Star Wars are somewhat subtle (Luke's perfectly timed shot on the Death Star), the movie does seem to strongly give the impression that these supernatural things do happen. The same is true of Pi. A lot of people tell me how much they like it. I would have liked it if it weren't for the fact that it assumed that such a number actually exists. I couldn't make it all the way through What the Bleep, so I can't really tell you what the overall picture is. But my impression is that there's a story there with miracles occuring along the way.
Oh, I just realized that we can add the Matrix to this list.

Am I just being dense and overly literal to fault these films for basing their premise on something that's not strictly true?

I want to focus on more interesting things. Smaller things, less showy things. But maybe I need to deal with this big religious imagery producing popular culture machine first? (I should probably actually read what Bainbridge has to say. I'm just too impatient here. And biting off more than I can chew, ignoring my conclusions from the previous post.)

working with other people

Ideas on how to work productively with others?
One aspect is to give people finished pieces that aren't too big. Then they can use those pieces with their own work.
The tricky thing is when you want to build something big, but a lot of the work still remains to be done. If not careful, this can turn into a nasty dictatorship situation.
Lots of work needs to be done but the final result isn't up for debate, so people don't control the meaning of their own work. It can also be a half-baked idea.
Its the same reason why people with emotional "baggage" are dangerous. They may have a big picture of what your relationship with them should look like, but they don't actually know how to implement that relationship. They project an image of a completed relationship that doesn't actually hang together. And when you try to start working on the details to patch things up, you find yourself constructing most of it yourself: the cloth is full of major holes. If there's not that much there, stop hanging on to the same big picture!

Oh, and can Eric Raymond teach something on this topic? This section seems relevant. "Can't code from the ground up in bazaar style."
Only if you want to get to a specific place!

foxes and hedgehogs

Inspired by a conversation with my cousin this weekend, instead of asking whether God is French or English, we might instead ask whether God is a hedgehog or a fox (or Tolstoy, a fox that thinks it ought to be a hedgehog).

What we were actually discussing was the danger of being a hedgehog ("The fox knows many tricks, the hedgehog only one, one good one"). I'm also reminded of this post.
The problem with being single minded is that we are not computers. We ask questions beyond the one thing we are focused on, and if we don't have very many tools/metaphors at hand, we may well make some pretty bad assumptions about other topics. Ok, I can't help adding the adage "If the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." This same fact seems to pop up in multiple ways... must be something we are trying pretty hard to remind ourselves of.

I know, too much self-linking. I don't want to turn into this guy (he does have some cool stuff, but the self-linking is way out of control... try clicking on a few links.)

tm-free

Hmm. I recently discovered the blog tm-free. I'd known about some of these people previously in my web searches for alternative information on TM. Anyways, I posted a few comments, and they put one on the front page, which is pretty cool, except that its a bit confusing out of context from the original comment. (They added a bit more context now, so its ok. But all the original comments were lost when they recently updated their comment system..)

I'm still coming to terms with my opinion of TM. I really appreciate the work these people do, but because they are basically a force to counter-balance all the false TM propaganda, reading that material makes it pretty difficult to not have a really negative view of TM and makes it quite tempting to just cut connections to things like meditation, religion, etc. which I think would be a loss.
Anyway, I'd like to be on the side of peace. I'd like to encourage finding common ground, a middle way to things. I don't want to be drawn into a war.
But for the most part, I think that blog is a really good thing. A number of different voices with differing opinions. A broader perspective than was available from the individual web-sites such as Trance-net and other anti-cult sites.
Wow. This is a pretty charged area. I thought that hanging out on the pro/con string theory sites was rough!

physics of shooting deer

What do you do when your small farm is being over-run by too many deer?
Well, if you happen to also have in interest in balistics science and biomedical engineering, then you write a paper on testing hand gun bullets in live deer.
I do eat meat, and I suppose this obliges me to come to terms with the question of killing animals. But I still get the feeling that some moral line is being crossed here that I'm not at all comfortable with. Reading through the physics paper, its remarkably easy to imagine replacing deer with person. I am then reminded of the discussion from Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello comparing our treatment of animals with the Nazi's treatment of Jews. But nobody wanted those people, and valuable science came out of it, right?

At the same time, Coetzee's book raises the question of what to do with such difficult metaphors and how to view those who hold them rigidly. I guess I'm saying that I'm reluctant to impose such a sweeping denunciation on this research without looking further into it, but my first impulse is definitely revulsion.

pronouns

Gender-neutral pronouns? Spivak pronouns. Instead of him/her, we have em. Instead if he/she, we have ey (or alternatively, e). Apparently they're mainly used in online games such as MUD's.

math?

$$


0 1 0


0 0 1


1 0 0




hmm... trying to figure out if I can put equations into a post using mathml by just throwing the markup stuff in there. No success so far... (Its sort of a matrix anyway)

A little more reading later makes me think you can't do this. (Apparently you have to change the mime type to xml or something like that and you can't do that w/ blogger.) Oh well. I'll leave it in anyway for fun.

How about this?
∫ d μ = ℵ
Almost as fun.

communication

I have to give a short talk tommorow, and I've been so wrapped up in details, its hard to draw back and think about the big picture.
Previously I've been far into equations and then my talks are just one equation after another. If the equations are abstract enough, then the person who listens thinks, "Ahh, yes, its very simple at the heart of it all, its just about linear algebra, invariant subspaces, etc. I don't have a great grasp of those concepts, and I don't know exactly how they relate to the problem at hand, but math is pretty solid stuff."
Now I've been doing computational work for awhile and my tendency is to give plot after plot without clearly defining things. "Trust me," these plots say. "This code works and is smart."

In both these cases, the audience doesn't learn very much. At the moment, I'm considering showing one equation, and that seems like a dramatic gesture.

I used to wonder how people could be bad teachers but still know things. If they can't explain it to me, why should I think they understand it? Now I realize that you can learn things in either a narrow way or a broad way. In a narrow way, each thing you learn is connected to one solid thing. You follow a thread. In the end, you may have gone quite far and found something quite interesting, but all you can do is tell other people how to follow the same thread you did. If there are independent ways of checking that something is right... the pie is delicious, or parachute does indeed open, then that may be good enough. To learn something in a broad way is to carve out a path to the result in which each step along the way is connected to something else. This means that you can enter the process at any point and feel relatively comfortable. This is what you need to do in order to teach something. Then, if the person you are teaching has different knowledge, assumptions, understanding than you, then they can still find a way to the answer that is compatible with what they know.

I suppose the same goes for personal communications, which is in some ways about teaching people about yourself. I always feel uncomfortable arriving anywhere in the narrow sense I just described. I then feel isolated and that no one can help me from there since it was by means of such a narrow path that I got there. If there are enough rewards, people push themselves through narrow situations to get to the big prize at the end. But if the journey was so narrow that it becomes untellable, then a big piece of personal history may be lost, which may or may not be compensated by the prize.

once upon a time...

I had a sense of humour.
Oh where did you go, my fine feathered friend?

"I think it was the
Oobleck that got 'em."

dream catcher

Another movie. These kids wandering, working things out.
Anger running deep. Rules to live by? Edge of society.

house of sand

Tonight I watched House of Sand, a 2005 film from Brazil. I was reminded of the Japanese film Woman in the Dunes. Both films involve being forced to live in an inhospitable environment involving sand dunes. Both have erotic elements. But you don't get as wrapped up in the desolation in House of Sand. Some aspects seem unpolished. The transitions occur silently, and I wanted to put a sound effect in there, a giant "chunk, chunk, chunk" to represent the passage of time. But in the end, the result is a different emphasis than you expect. There is little room for nostalgia and not a lot of dwelling on psychological character development. This was a relief in a way, because the actors and writer does a lot of the work here. You are not asked to follow every twist and turn, to remember each line in the way that some films set up a sort of reward system where your diligence is paid off by returning to each such set-up at a later time. Characters do return and themes develop, but in an understated way, as if life is allowed to be so much bigger than the little glimpse you are given.

Physics and life merge together in an interesting way in this film. The date is early 1900's and the main character has an interaction with the team of scientists observing the solar eclipse which was supposed to test Einstein's general relativity. But this story reveals itself in the background. We don't hear from the scientists themselves, but from the man who is acting as their guide. Relativity is seen as a glittering representative from the outside world almost on par with music.

frozen

Light snow again today.

I've consolidated much of my internet reading using Google Reader.
Now my homepage contains a list of new news, new posts, new YouTube most popular videos. The wildness of running around from site to site seems less.

I feel frozen today. I've been working on this code that simulates a storage ring (maybe I'll start writing a bit about what I've actually been working on, instead of my distractions?)

The worrisome thing is that I feel less bad than usual, or rather, that the edge isn't there. Instead its just a numbness from the overstimulation. Usually there's a feeling underneath that something is wrong, that I'm not settled, that I need to keep pushing another mile, to the summit; ford one more river, turn over one more stone. But that feeling is gone and yet the numbness remains.

In a dream last night the base I was working from had two rooms. Like Ruth in SFU learns in "The Plan", perhaps I have finally drawn up new blueprints?
But if I sit still will I freeze to death?

guitar

In high school, I took guitar lessons for a few years. After school, I would walk behind the tennis courts, up a hidden path, emerge on a larger street and walk a few more blocks to my teacher's house. His house had a small loquat tree in front and was musty and dark inside. He only wore purple jump suits, and had almost nothing in his refrigerator. He would play the guitar with a pencil in his hand, writing out the tablature for me after finding the right note. He would only eat food that didn't involve killing anything, including plants. He was working on a science fiction novel, of which he already written over 1000 pages. The story involved the last guitar player in the world (he assured me the character was not based on himself).

Telling him that I liked math,I found out that he was a victim of the phenomenon of "new math". This was the brilliant concept inspired by Sputnik in which students would learn set theory before addition. I suppose the idea was to teach math in a "logical" way in which concepts precede application. Unfortunately, my guitar teacher got stuck on the distributive law (a*(b+c)=a*b+a*c) and so never learned much else, being put into the stupid track for not being able to master this concept. I showed him how it worked and gave him a few examples, and he seemed supremely grateful to realize it wasn't as hard as it had seemed at the time.

At my dad's house, I had a nylon string Gibson guitar that probably sounded wonderful when my dad had first bought it (advised by my uncle), but it had a crack in the main board and certain tones caused odd vibrations or didn't project much at all. But I spent hours and hours playing around with simple picking patterns. I'd play a lot of minor chords and play the same things over and over. I also painted a lot at that time in my room, in a somewhat similar vein, taking simple acrylics and painting abstraction after abstraction. The guitar was quiet and the paint didn't smell or make too much of a mess. It was pretty great how much I could do in the small space without making much of an impact.

I started lessons again recently and my new guitar teacher gave me a DVD of Elizabeth Cotten to watch, and I was amazed to find out how much of what my earlier guitar teacher had taught me had come from her. Of course there was Freight Train, but even the picking patterns for Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Bob Dylan songs all had a similarity to Cotten's (she did influence those musicians). Cotten was pretty amazing.
She would sneak into her brother's room and play his guitar, first learning with it flat on her lap. She was left-handed, so when she did turn the guitar on its side, she played upside down. She invented her own tunings and overall her own style.
In the interviews, I saw a similarity to myself. Not that my finger picking blues is anywhere near hers, or have invented any new forms of music, but the slow plugging away, the insistence on doing things in her own way without making a show of it, I could relate to.

I can't quite say that I'm "on fire" with my guitar playing and enthusiasm, but I'm getting some of the basics of music reading I never got the first time around. At the moment I'm working on a piece written for the fiddle called "After the Battle of Aughrim"

more science/religion debate

Here's an interesting debate (from Metafilter) between Sam Harris and Andrew Sullivan.

I was enjoying it until they got into the issue of whether there is truth beyond science or not. I often feel that the word "science" is taken too seriously in these kinds of discussions. Its as if the only way I can really think to continue such a debate in a productive way is to ask again and again: "and what do you mean by science?" Actually the same goes for the word "religion". I supose that one value of such a debate is to raise these questions. But if they never actually get raised, then it doesn't seem so interesting. Its just the battling out of two old powers. Reminds me of the finale of The Big Country in which the battle of the Terrills and the Hannasseys is seen to be a lot more about selfish stubborness than about any kind of real irreconcilable differences.

large fish swimming below in murky waters

Well, I got overwhelmed and had to cut out one of my projects. I used to think that the people aspect of accomplishing something should be easy. That it shouldn't take too much effort, and that if it was taking too much effort, then something is wrong. I guess this comes from a distaste for bureaucracy.

One of Balakian's insights into the Armenian genocide is that it was the bureaucracy that gave the Young Turks power to do what they did. Kafka writes about being out of the know in a bureaucracy. Conspiracy theorists imagine enormous power for those who manipulate bureaucracies. But I always thought that in the end, no one wins in a bureaucracy, that no one's interests are served, that it is basically a big gunky mess that slows things down.

The American genius in science was supposedely in the ability to manage large projects.

Out of these incoherent pieces, I'll just say that I feel more like a Kafka character than anything else.

birthday

32 degrees F, light snow on the tree branch that diagonally divides my window.
Now I just need to get out of bed.
Mom will call at 11.
Have a beer later?
Continue to fight the good fight?
If there were an ends of the earth, this place would be as good as any. A place to steal fire from the gods?
I'm learning to read music on guitar. Learning to use a beam dynamics computer code library. Learning to manipulate Lie Algebraic expressions to compute useful quantities for accelerators. Learning, learning, learning. All uphill, never down.
Someone told me that I'm like a big bag of presents, collecting gifts as I go along. At first I was angry at this characterisation, then thought there might be a lesson there. My heater kicks in reminding me of passing time. Off i go.

back to physics

Sometimes I fel like I forget how to do physics. There are actually lots of different activities that fall under the description. One break-down of physics is in terms of computational/theoretical/experimental. Lately I've been focussing on the computational and theoretical, which basically means computer programming and math. If you do this too much, you can forget that you are supposed to be talking about the real world.

So, I was given a calculation to do: some gold ions fly along at relativistic speeds through a cold (4.5 K) metal pipe. There's a very high vacuum inside the pipe, but there's still some air floating around. If the gold ion traverses 3 KM of this pipe, then about how much energy will it lose?

This is a side project, so I haven't been able to put too much time into it, but I've been slowly panicking. I forgot how to do physics! But (again slowly) I read a few things and start to find that there aren't that many formulas out there, and I maybe figured out how to do it.

One challenge is to be a practicing physicist and to continue reading Nancy Cartwright. Its funny that this should be the case, but its like you need a certain amount of propaganda to keep going. Cartwright doubts the completeness of physics. She says that it covers much less than we think it should.

How do I think about the problem I just mentioned? Think of the gold ion flying along. Use the ideal gas law to figure out the density of air... let's say its hydrogen molecules- H_2. Now figure out an estimate of the cross section for ionization for H_2. I look it up in the Handbook of Accelerator physics and Engineering and find that it is around 2E-23 m^-2. The cross section is basically how big of a target the process under consideration presents. In this case- for the Gold ion to kick off an electron from the Hydrogen. So now, given the density (2E13 molecules/m^3), you can figure out how many interactions the ion is likely to have in the 3KM. It turns out to be about 5E-5. In other words, in 10^5 times through this pipe (around the accelerator) you'll get about 5 ionizations. Multiply by the average energy loss per ionization (~20 ev?) and you get the energy loss.

Anyway, this is basic physics. I make a variety of assumptions here. Someone else might make slightly different assumptions. Experience gives faith that all these ways will give similar results which are approximately accurate to what happens in the real world. It is this experience, this craft of doing physics that rebels against the picture Nancy Cartwright paints of physics.

But I don't want to say that this implies that Nancy Cartwright is wrong. When you learn a craft, you learn all sorts of things without realizing it. For example, I happen to know that people do calculations like these all the time and they generally give pretty reasonable results. This is one such hidden assumption. Analyze this calculation enough and you can probably make it fit with Cartwright's approach.

But like I said, its hard to practice physics at the same time as holding Cartwright's philosophy. It encourages the kind of doubt that slows you down. I suppose in the same way that it would be hard to be a CEO and hold a Marxist philosophy. You might think: good, reform from inside the system! But in practice, its pretty difficult.

The general question here is to do a philosophical analysis of back of the envelope physics. Such back of the envelope calculations are supposed to be the true test of a good physicist. You should be able to estimate anything within an order of magnitude within a few minutes. That this is possible is the faith of the physicist. If true, even in some approximate sense, it says something interesting about the world. I take it that Cartwright says it is not true. Its only appears true because the questions are rigged ahead of time.

writing

to my writing friends: an
essay by Zadie Smith which seems quite good to me.

mirror of technology

Let's see. So there was Frankenstein. He had a big bolt coming out of his neck, and hurt people through his clumsiness. Then there's the robot, a silicon Frankenstein. As computer technology developed, we got cyborgs.

These give us the scary side of the people/technology relationship. We are afraid because we are more than these things. Most (or what I've seen, anyway) literary representations emphasize the dystopic aspect. But under the radar, incrementally, we are changed. We talk of memory loss, information processing, local defeaters of the second law of thermodynamics.

The inspiration for this post is the word cybernetics. It has been a dirty word that I've been afraid of. It has represented for me an expansion of our world into the digital that seems so inferior to the world it partially displaces. But that is hysteria speaking. Norbert Wiener conceived the term to be a combination of control theory with communcations.

Control theory. Another term that hammers against my sensibilities. Images of 1984 rise up, questions of disparities in relationships present themselves. If I read a textbook on control theory, will I forever give up the possibility of having equal relationships? Am I a doctor Frankenstein or Faust? Obviously an area of sensitivity... But when I start to read, I see that it is absurd to not have the concept of control system. My heater is a control system. Our bodies have all sorts of control systems (homeostasis).

I guess I'm trying to get beyond distopias. I am a part (or becoming a part) of the giant technology developing machine. If we understand the relationship we have to technological change can it be less disfunctional?

Check out this post on the way in which blogging can change you. I'd like to say that we need to claim an identity so that we have more say in where technology is taking us. But maybe that just happens naturally in the process of deciding that a relationship is important.

Regarding this last link, I'd say that I certainly haven't had the same experience in my small effort at blogging as Bowers of myDD. He says that his internal dialogues have quieted down as a result and he feels to be less of an individual, more a part of a collective. For me, its more just like having a productive outlet for ideas. I think that without the internal processes of sitting on something for at least a little while, you don't add very much to a discussion. All you do is react with preconcieved ideas, which is good for a time, but in the end turns you into a sort of cisco router... Maybe the router is the new Frankenstein/robot/cyborg??

patterns

Why do we repeat patterns? Certain kinds of relationships, certain lifestyle patterns we just keep up ending up in. In therapy we learn to recognise patterns and to see where they come from. This can put a negative light on the issue. It can be framed in terms of, such and such a bad thing happened and I continue to repeat that situation. But really its just a kind of learning. We do something because its important to us, because we find meaning there. Maybe we are attracted to certain people or situations because we are working out some issue from our family history. But we might also see it in the positive light that there is meaning and love and warmth (or at least the desire and potential in ourselves for) in that family dynamic and we are looking for such qualities in other people in order to continue the striving.

I guess the point of looking at these patterns is to identify the unwinnable ones. The ones where whatever it is we are trying to achieve can never be achieved. Then all we have left is the sadness inherent in impossible things. Most pattern following is less clear though. Its not obvious whether we can win or not.

When you are a kid the world can be overwhelming. If we try to learn something too advanced too early on, then we will hurt ourselves. But over a lifetime, we can take a gentler route to the goals.

I guess I'm venturing into self-help territory here, but why not?
I just rewatched the episode of Six Feet Under in which Ruth goes to the "Plan" in which she learns to "rebuild the foundations of her life." This house metaphor is taken pretty seriously, and they are told asked to consider the ways in which they don't live in their own house. The Indian woman who's father lit her on fire when he didn't approve of her boyfriend is told that he is the one living in her house and she should invite him over to her house... etc.
When I first saw this, I was in my anti-cult mode and given the course of events determined that Ruth got out only too soon. But watching the episode again and having seen some of what happens later, it does seem like that experience causes a change for the better. (I do give the writers a fair amount of credit for allowing the characters to evolve in realistic ways.)
Anyway, my point is that this self-help approach to self-understanding and development does have its place, though it shouldn't be taken overly seriously.
This guy I met in a coffee shop once told me that his complaint about most religions is that they don't encourage graduation. I like that as a perspective on what constitutes a cult and what doesn't. A cult is like an over-protective clingy parent that won't let you go develop in your own way beyond the bounds of what they have to teach you and nurture you with.

Wait, so I went from pattern following to cults... I guess I was trying to say that self-help like thinking doesn't have to be cultish, but it can if you're not careful to move on at some point.

Is God French or English?

Nancy Cartwright in "How the Laws of Physics Lie" (p. 19):

Pierre Duhem distinguished two kinds of thinkers: the deep but narrow minds of the French, and the broad but shallow minds of the English. The French mind sees things in an elegant, unified way. It takes Newton's three laws of motion and turns them into the beautiful, abstract mathematics of Lagrangian mechanics. The English mind, says Duhem, is an exact contrast. It engineers bits of gears, and pulleys, and keeps the strings from tangling up. It holds a thousand different details all at once, without imposing much abstract order or organization. The difference between the realist and me is almost theological. The realist thinks that the creator of the universe worked like a French mathematician. But I think that God has the untidy mind of the English.

Myself, I suppose I started out with a somewhat "French" approach and am slowly integrating a more "English" perspective.

ghosts

Sometimes its like one of those video games where everything turns into a ghost and you can't touch it. You can walk through walls, shout at the passersby, no gold to be found. And then it fades back in and though I can interact again, the objects are random, their purpose unclear. Is it a relief? All I can say is that it signifies change.
All right, I'll add a concrete fact to this abstract exercise:
Today I met one of the creators of ghoul a go-go: A public access tv show that combines a horror movie aesthetic with American bandstand. Or perhaps: "The World's Only Monster Musical Kiddie Show"
Fade out, I say. Fade out.

fences

Well, its been an interesting visit to the West Coast. One of my favorite parts of flying is seeing the land from above: the salt marshes by the Dumbarton bridge, maroons and browns, or the multi-textured light greens fields of the central valley. This is another inspiration for paintings and provides an image for the patchwork life I live. On this trip the values were kept balanced. The colors didnt clash too badly.
My radio alarm goes off to the words: "like leprosy, theres something for everyone."
Time to go. With sadness, and the usual fear of the unknown mixed with excitement that such transitions involve: Happy new year. See you on the other side.

dirac on poetry

Paul Dirac's comment on the difference between science and poetry is

In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite.

With a slightly different emphasis this doesn't need to be seen as such an insult to poetry. Maybe poetry shows something known in a new light, or perhaps connects the known to the unknown, mysterious.
From the small amount I know about Dirac, I would think he might admit to the value of this sense of poetry in physics, the connecting of something small, well-delineated and clear, to a larger, richer, more amorphous body of material. He's been refered to as a magician, and perhaps this is a key to that magic.

criticism

Via Metafilter, a neat essay by Bruno Latour on the current state of criticism.

adiabatic invariants

Research, research, research. Trying to find the right definition of action.

So, what's an adiabatic invariant?
Its something that stays constant as the environment changes.
For my undergrad thesis, I tried to figure out what happens to simple systems as they are transported from here to there. So this research provided an answer to the question: which part of Boaz is unchanged by his weekly transitions from A to B, from mom to dad. Adiabatic invariants. Just find them and I will know what to count on.

Ok, still working on these metaphors. Does it say something about isolation and self-containment that I focus on the single particle case? Does it take away the fun to give away the punchline... that I'm trying to find my own adiabatic invariants? When does one transcend the personal and create something of interest to others? Perhaps this dynamic is healthy? Continually reinterpretting in terms of trenchant metaphors?

Let me give a concrete example of an adiabatic invariant: the classic example is a pendulum which has a string the length of which is slowly shortening. As the environment changes so does the motion. The frequency of the pendulum increases as the length decreases (f~sqrt(g/l)). But the energy of the pendulum divided by the frequency stays constant. This is an adiabatic invariant.

Are there fluid dynamicists out there that think of themselves as scale models of the world and wonder what their true Reynolds number is? Are there quantum field theorists who renormalize away their existential concerns, find that the infinite difference between self and God can be swept under the rug if one cares only about practical solutions? What about economists who see all interactions as a game and try to make the market of human kindness as free as possible?

But I will be an adiabatic invariant. I will search for that which remains the same in me and allows for equilibrium. I can only be so many things at the same time. A 2n dimensional integrable Hamiltonian system has only n adiabatic invariants.
Right. right.

death of my computer

My poor Powerbook. Its hard drive is making terrible noises. I think its just about dead. So I've been using my work PC laptop. Microsoft!!

choosing

Since I've been throwing out pebbles related to the pieces of my life I've been working on/thinking about, (although maybe in an overly academic way) I might as well say something about divorce...
I have this picture of life like jumping around on rocks in a creek. When parents can't live together, they leave the kid with two big rocks that are uncomfortably far apart. The kid can either choose one of them to use as a base and build from that, or not choose. In that case, you are stuck with a large world with no center. I didn't choose, and so I've been trying to become a broad enough person that stability extends from one rock to the other. And when I fall I just have to trust that there will be a rock somewhere to land on. Its not that finding a path from one parent to the other, or one part of myself to the other is really so hard. The thing is that because the parents decide that they can't live together, this sets up a model that certain things are incompatible. Even with a marriage where the two people are very different, the kids see an example of those differences coexisting.
I'm not into judging and saying that I (and other such non-choosing kids of divorce) have it so hard. Its more just that I have it different in particular sometimes hard to articulate ways. I say this because I've found it hard to talk about this with my parents without them feeling attacked. Its really like saying that there is a part of my experience that has not been understood. I find this experience interesting. But one needs to be able to take the good with the bad in order to see the whole. And its probably a hard thing as a parent to take things in such an objective way.

comparing tragedies

I'm watching the movie version of the play "Rent".

I've also been trying to get back to reading Balakian's
The Burning Tigris about the Armenian Genocide. As I watch these people cry and sing about their friends dying from AIDS, a voice rises up in me saying that at least they aren't victims of genocide. Disrespecting their tears, this voice says "you're lucky".
I know that this voice is the voice of my step-mother who's parents lost most of their family to the Turks. But the voice has been internalized; I find it in me hidden under many guises. At this point, all I can do is pose it as a problem.

I think the problem is the unknown enormous scope of something like a genocide. And this problem is seriously compounded by the Turkish attempt to deny its significance and face up to its magnitude. As a result, you can never put it in front of you and say "there it is"; "there is the tragedy of the genocide". There is always the worry that lurking in the unknown elements are tragedies much worse than what one is currently encountering and so how can one take the present seriously? Is this the purpose of art? To tell a story that doesn't at the same time take meaning away from life?
I'm having trouble finding this art in Balakian's book, though I don't doubt its waiting to be found. It just takes work on my part. I can only read a little bit at a time. I can read a line like (p. 195) "In the end between a half and two-thirds of the more than two million Armenians living on their historic homeland in Ottoman Empire were annihilated." but still imagine that there is some even larger tragedy looming than the sheer number of deaths. One can learn about Armenian culture and track its destruction, or look at specific cases and try to fathom the extremes of individual suffering. And until this has been done, one imagines that there is still something so much worse, so completely awful, that no current tragedies are worthy.
The fear of the unknown. It is paralyzing.

new age

I'm finally reaching the end of "Heaven on Earth". Speaking of the writing of Ananda leader J. Donald Walters in the concluding chapter of the book, D'Antonio writes

This way of thinking does not point to the creation of a "new" age. Rather, it implies a return to an idealized version of an old New England village, a community of believers striving to live in relative simplicity, with God not far from their minds. Ananda suggests self-sufficiency, modesty, plainness, and rectitude--the bedrock Protestant values of early America. It may be difficult for those who regard the New Age as flaky, avant garde, or irresponsible to consider, but after my experience at Ananda, I became intrigued by the notion that the New Age is as much a revival of old American values as it is an embrace of the counterculture. Indeed, the villagers seem to reflect perfectly the Protestant ethic described by the great historian and sociologist Max Weber. They were industrious, Godly, communal, and ascetic--all qualities Weber identified in his analysis of the utilitarian successes of Protestant societies. Ananda has survived, and thrived, because of its old-fashioned work ethic, and a piety that discourages materialism, competitiveness, and jealousies.

I see a similar element in TM. My step-dad reads Emerson and has said that Maharishi admires the American founders. He and my mom read a lot of biographies of early American presidents. Anyway, there is at least an attempt to connect to what tradition we do have in this country, which perhaps is in some sense necessary for a transplant to thrive.

too far into the academic middle?

Thanks to this amazing internet, I found a book based on a (U of Copenhagan) Ph.D thesis that couldn't be more perfect for what I've been trying to understand about TM:
"Belief Transformations:
Some Aspects of the Relation between Science and Religion in
Transcendental Meditation (TM) and
the International Society for Krishna Consciousness"
by Mikael Rothstein, 1996.

For some reason, the proverb about being careful of what you wish for because you just might get it has been coming to mind.

Now I can think about TM's view of science in terms of an extended view of Eliade's concept of "hierophany", that is, a concrete occurence of the sacred in the world.

What will be the effect of this whole slew of new connections, of history, this treasure trove of scholarship, on me, on my relationship with my mom, my view of science, religion, etc.? We shall see. I think it will be very good, but right now I just feel very tired.

middle ground?

Quote from Heaven on Earth by Michael D'Antonio p. 286 (note that MIU is Maharishi International University, the previous name of MUM):

But the deception I uncovered at MIU was more disturbing, on a personal level, because the people I met there
were somewhat like me. They were educated, seemingly open-minded, and idealistic adults. They were well aware of the challenges that science and reason posed for religion, but they still ached for spiritual comfort. So they had sought a middle ground, a spiritual practice supported by empirical fact. Such a middle ground would appeal to me. I, too, have been disillusioned by the conflict of reason and religion, and I also feel the hunger for spiritual comfort and community. I would have welcomed the discovery of a middle way, a path to spirituality that was consistent with reason.

But TM, as it is practiced at MIU, isn't a middle ground. It is like the worst of religion: unreasonable, repressive, authoritarian. And knowing this, I had to acknowledge that these people, my peers, were vulnerable and fragile human beings. They were as vulnerable as any of the born-again Christians who were duped by TV evangelists in the 1980s. They were just as fragile as the frightened, impoverished believers who sent millions of dollars to the Depression-era radio priest Father Coughlin, who preyed on the fear and disillusionment of his time.
...
... Whatever the reason, like the others, Orsatti has followed his leader into a retreat from reality. With the Maharishi, they have turned Transcendental Meditation, the tap root of the New Age, into a grandiose, narcissistic dream, a form of intellectual bondage, which they call enlightenment.

This is so far some of the most neutral writing I've found on TM. I guess there was a book about the sociology of new religious movements, that I unfortunately lost.
My hope for TM is that it will become less isolated. To do this, it would have to be less guru-centric, because one person is just not enough. I wonder what will happen after the Maharishi is gone? Will he become like Joseph Smith for the Mormons? I imagine that he can't maintain his hold on the day to day life any more, but it will be interesting to watch.

digging a tunnel to Wonderland

Thanksgiving at the Maharishi University of Management.
I spend mornings at the 2nd Street Coffee House. I talk with this guy who's wife is taking one of the courses here. Meditation many hours a day. He is not so into it, but they are thinking of moving here. He says that its cheap enough here that he could retire. He thinks of it like a 3rd world country. He voices his complaints with "the movement".
"If you're not a part of it, there's really not much to do here," he says.
"So, if you move here, you'd be comfortable with that?" I ask him.
"Its no problem," he assures me. "I'm fine just spending the days watching football."
"We'll take several months a year and drive down to Mexico."

I give him my email and he emails me the next day saying he has more questions about TM. I call him and meet him at the coffee shop again and we continue discussing.

I ask my mom later if she knows any couples where one is into TM and the other isn't. "No, but I'm sure there must be," she says.

Trying to find opposing points of view on TM, one comes across sites such as this site which describes TM as falling down a rabbit hole, a metaphor they encourage. How does one find common ground with Wonderland? It requires double vision and patience. I'm interested in physics, as are they. But that is a dead end. They site the Vedas as the source of their knowledge. If I tunnel in from literary criticism and philosophy of religion, can I end up anywhere near them? Its certainly not designed to be easy. Maharishi (Mahesh Varma) closes off all easy exits. His goal is that all attempts to leave end either by returning, or ending up in a swamp of difficult scholarship.

I talk to a son of a friend of my mom's who is a "Parusha", basically a TM monk. He is articulate and tries to tell me what's so great about TM. I finally feel like I've gotten somewhere. I know the tricks. There are certain words that one cannot be seduced by. "Subtle" and "enliven" are two such words. When one hears these words, one knows that the person talking is not thinking, and by asking them to use a more neutral language, they are required to find their own approach. Its a fun conversation. He ends by telling me of his own doubts about the "scientific" end of the enterprise. I tell him I respect the lifestyle and even partially respect the attempt to use scientific language to describe one's subjective experience.

But today I'm feeling beaten again. Its too big. There is no common ground.
It would be intersting to read up on the freedom of religion legal and moral arguments.
"I wish I could believe it," I tell my mom. "It just doesn't work for me."
"Its a free country," she says.

great expectations (new version)

watching this movie. wow is it absurd. but enjoying it anyway.

when i was in high school i was pip in an equally absurd 3 minute video.
i frothed at the mouth with toothpaste. "orlock!!!"

watching a movie like this makes me feel like I don't understand anything.

if gravity took a break

I would slowly rise off of my couch and drift into my loft.
Then, if the substance of glass took a break, I would rise through the sky-lights and slowly
make my way to the trees. Yes, slowly. There is no hurry.
If I had some pruners in my back pocket, I would then cut off a small piece of a branch and bring it back as a souvenir.

confusing the model with the whole

I seem to keep having to fight a similar demon. Becoming too theoretical. Thinking that some piece of the world, some pciture of the world encompasses everything. I felt this way about images when I was writing image compression software. Somehow having a mathematical model of something makes me devalue that thing. Every possible visual experience I could have became a set of bits in a digital image. Somehow Susan Sontag's "On Photography" helped me out of that one.

Lately its been information and the internet. The fact that all information can be transmitted through the internet makes me devalue reality in a new way.

But doesn't physics in general do this? Provide a model for reality that all existence, experience is supposed to fit into?

I wrote something about this before in the context of virtual reality.

Could this be a psychological problem hiding out as a philosophical problem?
Let me try to address it anyway. Start with the image and the visual world. What is the model of the image? It is a set of pixels. What is depressing about this? First there is finiteness. There are only a finite number of images that one can distinguish from another. But it is a very large number. There that wasn't so hard.
Now... the internet can transmit information. Does this devalue the real world? A similar finiteness issue seems to arise. But the number of possible information streams is very large. There, that wasn't so hard! Now I can sleep much easier!

social construction/conciliation/clarification

On an impulse purchase at Border's this weekend, I bought Ian Hacking's "The Social Construction of What?" and spent much of the weekend reading this book. The last thing I'd read by Hacking was an article about how certain types of illness such as multiple personality disorder have been socially constructed in the sense that the existense of a new "disease" where no such diagnosis existed before has a real affect on those who now suffer from this disease. He is pointing out how even though something real about the disease predated the new diagnosis, the diganosis itself in certain ways serves to create the disease.

In this book, Hacking seeks clarity on the entire subject of social construction. I was particularly interested in the physics chapters, though I am looking forward to reading the chapters on mental illness as well. A book that brings mental illness and physics together into the same investigation!

The following passage was particularly interesting to me:

...Thus my strategy here is the exact opposite of Sergio Sismondo. He is a peace-maker. One "reason for the lack of realist/constructivist debate lies in the fact that each side usually views the other position as obviously untenable" (Sismondo 1996, 10). By lopping off extremism on the edges of both doctrines, he hopes to find common ground. In constrast, my sticking points emphasize philosophical barriers, real issues on which clear and honorable thinkers may eternally disagree. (p 68)

I have often thought of myself as a peace-maker, but find this role exhausting in the face of so many extreme differences out there. Here, Hacking offers me a new suggestion for an approach to strong diasagreement. In a way, one can be more modest in one's goals. Instead of seeking reconciliation and hoping that eventually everyone will come to a common understanding, one can at least seek a mutual respect for each other's opinions relating them to age old controversies.

My first impulse on hearing this is a gut sadness that people with opposing views will forever remain embattled. But then I remember that there is more to a person than their views on a few philosophical positions. This perspective allows people to more clearly say "fine, we disagree on x, y, and z" and once that is articulated, maybe the areas of agreement and mutual humanity can be more clearly articulated and appreciated as well.

video game life

i am a member of the first generation of video game players.
for the most part, i see this as a very good piece of me- the use of metaphors derived from video games.
there are some times in life when one must do repetitive things for a long time in order to earn enough money to buy the armour to get the next magical item. and the very idea of levels, that things get harder as one goes along, but one is also more skilled. the early video game makers were true masters. true myth makers, depositing age old wisdom in the computer code with low-res graphics and repetitive musical scores.

what were some of the early ones? there was some labarynth game where you found different colored crossbows and climbed up to higher levels. i don't remember the name of this game or the system it was played on, but thinking of it brings over me a nostalgia and sense of mystery that maybe other people from previous generations would have for playing a game in the closet, or exploring a market. then there was Yar's Revenge. a yar is a kind of fly. you shot away at the blocks surrounding a rapidly moving bright object and tried to shoot it when it turned into a sun and flew across the screen towards you. the music from the game comes back to me sometimes and brings on something akin to synaesthesia, where a texture in the back of my head takes on a substance richer and scarier than seems contained in the word or experience of "texture".

there was boulder dash that I played at my friend ryan's house. i've played later incarnations of the game, but the game play and the excitement and mystery of surrounding a growing blob with boulders until it turned into diamonds was never quite recaptured. i also played dungeons and dragons a few times in the attic at that house.

the first game i played was called sneakers and it was on an Apple IIE computer in elementary school. I played it after school, and imagined that i would win great wealth if I could ever get to the next level. i'll leave it there for now, but somehow, thinking of video games, for me, opens up a rich path back to earlier versions of me with the hint that i might take off in new and more promising directions starting from those early couches and soundtracks and pushing of buttons as fast as I could,

talking about things you know very little about

In the online wars over how people should view string theory, one of the issues that often comes up is whether someone has a right to express an opinion or form a judgement on something they know very little about. Someone will say something like: "I don't know much about string theory, but it seems like those people are just blowing hot air!" It could also be something more technical, like that a certain perturbation expansion doesn't converge, or whatever, but a typical response is to say: "if, by your own admission, you don't know anything about string theory, then can you just keep your opinions to your self??"

Normally I'd agree that people shouldn't talk too much about things they don't understand. But what if you encounter a certain subject frequently, but it is so full of details that you aren't likely to be able to understand it, even with a fair amount of effort? Another example would be a religion based on text in a foreign language. Suppose, for example, that someone keeps telling you that you will be reincarnated, but when you inquire further, you find that the evidence is supposed to be in some obscure Sanskrit text. What do you do? If you start to argue with the person (who supposedly knows at least some Sanskrit), they can just tell you that until you learn Sanskrit, you can't really form a complete opinion on the subject. You could read a translation, but they could always argue that the translation is imperfect when you start trying to poke holes in their arguments.

In the case of string theory, you have take each claim on its own terms. For example: "The world is made of 10 dimensions, 6 of which are tightly wrapped up so that they are hard to see."

"Fascinating," you may respond. "So, can I travel into these extra dimensions? Can I disappear here and appear over there? Can I gain great power by becoming master of more than the normal 4 dimensions?"

"Oh, no, not really." Will probably the response. The honest response, anyway. A somewhat dishonest response would be "maybe".

In the mind of the person who made the original claim is a bunch of math about surfaces and fields wrapped around strange abstract spaces. But when they make a claim to you about the world you live in, unless they can put it in terms of words you understand and have experience with, then they haven't communicated anything to you. You may hear these words that you don't understand and because of your opinion of how smart they are, take those words in a non-literal sense, and let them be a "mystery". Words in this symbolic part of your thinking can then take on all sorts of colorful meanings. They can take on a sort of religious meaning. You may hope that the powerful God of 10 dimensions will hear your prayers. Or picture your soul as made out of vibrating strings that are connected to all other people's souls. Or something along those lines.

So this kind of talk can start myths. Not that myths are bad. They can be comforting and beautiful. But they can also be misused by those whose talk started them in the first place. They can say: "meditation connects you to these strings, and so you'd better pay me some money to show you how to meditate the right way." So how do you fight against this kind of power someone can have over you? You have to have a conversation about something you don't know very much about. And you have to be very clear about what you know and what you don't know. And you have to make a sacrafice. You have to say: even though the idea of 10 dimensions and a unified field of consciousness is beautiful, because its not expressed clearly enough in language that I understand, I will not accept it.

This is why its natural to tell scientists to shut up. Not because the practical effects of the stuff they do, used by those who "do" understand it is necessarilly bad, but because the mythic element of the language takes your power away from you. To be clear, in most cases I think that the mythic component to scientific claims is not understood by those making them. They don't necesarilly realize that the whole world of metaphors that their words will give birth to in the uninformed listener, has little to do with the more precise understanding of the concepts in their own mind.

tunnel

I found this tunnel made out of corragated aluminum a few minute walk away from my office. I went walking there a few minutes ago and stood in the tunnel to stay out of the rain. The tunnel amplifies sounds so that you when you walk, the sound of your scuffling feet is sharp and crisp. In one direction, you can see a large warehouse type building that looks somewhat deserted, and in the other, you look off into the distance of the rest of the lab, with the view somewhat obscured by trees.

rain rain rain

too much computer, movies, email, books, sore throat, thinking about religion, trying to understand non-linear dynamics, symbols, J_x,y in involution, independent, isolation, all these theorists, some respected and political, some isolated yet tolerated for their achievements. too much. stomach tight. a new form of tension. cut on finger, in the shape of an arrowhead, slowly healing. but somehow still at the bottom of things. a new place of stability? or a lack of ghosts? a lack of undoable work? will it make life lose meaning? meeting other people who talk about their difficult first winters on long island. three people now, have told me of how unhappy they were. one raised a red flag. two remember the cold. both ended up in relationships afterwards. but leaves changing are beautiful right? split as always. but learning to color in the edges/cracks, deemphasize isolation. as always. most optimistic face. i learned to be flexible. flexible.

aw. this sweet movie. they finally end up together. but lightning strikes. chinese superstition, sometimes ridiculed, sometimes honored.
the parallel postulate, renormaliztion, a barren field? picking up the pieces for other people?
probably not. its always more complicated than that.
phew. she's not dead. the turtle returns. and its raining in the movie too.

squares

kitsch

...is a folding screen set up to curtain off death.
-kundera, "unbearable lightness of being"

physics of religion (religion of physics)

Here's two examples:

Physics of Immortality by Frank Tipler of Tulane University.

and

Restructuring Physics from its Foundation in Light of Maharishi's Vedic Science by John Hagelin who used to teach at Maharishi University of Management.

I might also add Fritjof Capra's "Tao of Physics" to this genre. The thing to understand about these writings is that they work on a metaphorical level. They basically relieve, at a surface level, some of the cognitive dissonance for people for whom both science and religion has a hold. Its a set of word games so that when, on a breezy afternoon (or late at night?), one's mind roams freely around its different regions, there are word bridges connecting one to the other. The problem is that the bridges don't actually go where they claim to go.

I won't go into the reasons why these bridges don't go where they claim to go. Maybe I'll think about it in more detail some other time.
The game is just to build something that has an anchor in each world and then to call it a bridge. For Tipler, these structures are "God" and "resurrection". He has taken these religious concepts and defined them in physics language. "God" is what happens to life and complexity when (and if) the universe collapses on itself, and "resurrection" is the possibility that at that highly technologically advanced time, the same set of atoms that compose you could be brought into the same configuration again.

For Hagelin, he identifies the "unified field" of hypothetical physics models with subjective consciousness in a sort of Hindu (Maharishi-ized) perspective which identifies consciousness with God.

I don't object to this type of intellectual pursuit. What I object to is the lack of honesty. I think that in both these cases, the audience is mainly someone who doesn't understand much of the physics and can't really check the arguments. The role of the technical appendix in each case is just to ward off technical questions from someone who almost knows enough to counter the arguments. "Its all in the appendix" would be the response. But how the appendix relates to the text is where the dishonesty occurs. Really, a neutral language that is broad enough to include both physics and religion is needed. Or lacking that, a statement limiting the scope of the investigation to a metaphorical level is required. Some of their power derives from the over-hyped claims from physicists themselves. To explain why Hagelin is wrong, to sort of get to the other side of his thinking, as it were, one has to be able to concieve of physics as metaphor. We're used to thinking of religion as metaphor, but not science. At its most speculative level, physics requires metaphors to fill in the many technical unknowns and to ground mathematical concepts. By overselling superstring theory as more solid than it really is, people are more likely to find its connections to other areas as causal, rather than metaphorical. Perhaps Hagelin himself is confused on this issue and this is what allows him to continue selling "The Maharishi Effect" to the public. But my feeling is that its more out of intellectual exaustion and a sort of revenge on those who fed him the over-hyped string theory claims to begin with.

(
One interesting thing I found in reading Peter Woit's "Not Even Wrong" was that Maharishi's posters connecting the unified field theory to consciousness were popular among physicists at one point (I don't know whether seriously, or as a joke).
)

east/west coasters

so i had this sort of story about how west coasters are friendly on the surface but below that kind of hard whereas east coasters had a rougher surface but kindness and loyalty beneath. tonight i met this danish guy who has the opposite perspective. someone please tell me what to think! i don't know what stereotypes to operate under anymore. arghhhh!

a few comments

I left a few comments on The Reference Frame under the pseudonym "Phil". The interaction always leaves me feeling a bit dirty. Why do I do it? I tried it once before in response to his linking to Fox News regarding a certain issue of sexual harassment. A boy was accused of sexual harassment, and Lubos argued that it was impossible because sexuality starts at a later age. I raised the possiblity that Fox News didn't necessarily have all the facts. I can't even remember all the names I was called, "liberal nutcase" would be a pleasant version of it.
Anyway, here I am spreading the disease of giving attention to Lubos. But there's a sort of sick pleasure in it... Also, I've been reading the two books he hates so much- the dreaded blue and black...
I should add, however, that I wrote my comments in good faith. Not necessarilly to get a rise out of him, and I was actually 70% interested in what he might say in response. Its just very difficult not to degenerate into name calling. And he has so much more of a stomach for it, that I'd never survive even if I were so inclined.

learning and interacting

There's a weird non-intuitive thing I notice about the process of learning something new. I find that when I'm in the thick of absorbing new stuff that I don't understand very well, I feel arrogant and in a way, better than everyone else, or at least different from everyone else. Its as if I'm the only one who could possibly understand this really hard thing. The strange thing is that the feeling fades away after I actually understand the stuff I'm trying to learn.

I guess this is just another way of saying that arrogance is usally a sign of insecurity. Its a defense mechanism when your grasp of the facts is tenuous. To avoid slipping into arrogance, one can just describe oneself as out of commision in certain ways during those times. In academic or other environments where grasp of information is key, arrogance is always a job hazzard- both for yourself and for the other people you have to work with.

I have to remind myself of this process sometimes. I'm pretty good at math, but each time I learn something new, I have this feeling that if I learn this new thing, I'll have so much knowledge that I'll never be able to relate to normal people again. But as I mentioned, this feeling fades away after I actually learn the thing, and in fact, once its internalized, the math feels very human and I can even explain it relatively easy. I suppose there's a danger of trying to learn things that I'll never understand and getting stuck in a purgatory as a result. Anyway, all jobs have their hazards as well as their rewards.

proof

I started watching this film awhile ago and was annoyed, but somehow I ended up trying it again.
This time it worked for me. A minor complaint was that they didn't need to be so afraid of showing math. It had the feel of some editor coming in and saying, "the audience doesn't know math- tone that stuff down, it will scare them." There was also a little bit of self-conscousness surrounding the issue of women in math, a sort of tentative try to make a few comments, but not exactly sure what it was saying. But emotionally the film was pretty interesting. A nuanced look at how to determine whether or not someone's crazy and the subjectiveness about the conclusion. In this respect, the film was refreshing in its sparse treatment of math itself. Movies like "Pi" and "A Beautiful Mind" tied craziness with math ability more explicitly. Here the issues are separate.

Hmm, directed by John Madden... I'd love to hear the commentary with the play by play!

the price of intelligence

Some highly productive individuals seem to also produce a sea of garbage. In dealing with the writings of Harvard string theorist Lubos Motl, for example, one encounters a very defensive individual who characterizes people who don't see things as he does as unintelligent and protects his view of science by throwing the word "crackpot" around every chance he can get. Yet he has enormous stamina and writes prolifically on all sorts of subjects on his blog.

Consider also, Stephen Wolfram, the creator of Mathematica, who's recent book, A New Kind of Science contained vague claims, poor referencing and an attempt to claim all future concepts as derivative of his own.

I also consider Noam Chomsky to be a similar type of individual, though I tend to be more sympathetic to him because I mostly agree with his politics.

I see these people as having narrow world views and enormous intellectual energy. One can say to them: "come on: clearly [string theory, cellular automata, universal grammar] is not enough to understand everything", but to ask them to back off from using the tools of their trades in understanding the world is to ask them to not to have a complete picture.

In some sense, I view them as sick. Normally they would require the reaching out from family and friends to give them a more nuanced perspective, but because of their high profiles, a more public form of help is required. It seems unfair in a way, because there are so many people in need of help, why should the public put all this energy into helping these few. But somehow their very sickness is tied into the public private interaction and it is our duty to help them out. I really see Wolfram's book as a cry for help. He is shouting out his isolation and asking to be understood. Having given us Mathematica and a few theorems on cellular Automata, if there were such a public help mechanism available, I would say he should be a recipient.
I guess I'm saying that highly focused individuals can make great contributions to society. The price society should pay back, if it wants to make use of these contributions is to put up with the garbage of those people and find a way to fill them out as individuals. "Fame" has tried to fill this role but probably usually fails.

What do I mean by help here? I guess I mean putting out the energy to do the analysis that could help them. Not that they will read these analyses. Who of us has the benefit of hundreds of people writing psychological analyses of us? Of course there is much simple tit for tat angry responses to these people. I guess I'm hoping for peace. And that requires a public that has a large enough perspective that it can accept the gifts of its members while explaining to those individuals how those gifts fit into the larger whole.

Having said all this, however, I would say that I don't actually see these people as all that much more intelligent than average. I have in mind a sort of "conservation of intelligence" type concept where if you put all your intelligence in one direction, you lose it in another, along the lines of the line I quoted by Richard Feynman a few posts back.

everything

What if everything was already known by someone, but the answers were just too hard to understand, intrinsically...?
We spend time figuring things out because we figure that the answer isn't already there just waiting for us.
Does this make any sense? I'm not sure.
Why did I think that becoming a computer person was a good idea??

cartwright

I seem to keep coming back to trying to understand what Nancy Cartwright is saying about science.
Here's a nice essay which gets at some of what I've been struggling with. On the one hand, Chakravartty points out the exaggeration of the claims of Cartwright's "headlines" (she also wrote a book called "How the Laws of Physics Lie"), but on the other says that she has a compelling analysis that should be taken seriously.

The particular point I'd really like to understand is what she says about quantum mechanics. I know some stuff about the formal structure of quantum mechanics, and it is sort of relevant to my research, but I'm interested in how it can be so useful at the same time as so poorly understood. How can it be simultaneously true that it solves many techical problems and that no satisfactory interpretation of it exists? She addresses this question here, but I'd like to understand more of the details. Specifically, how can we use quantum mechanics to build lasers and computer chips (and eventually quantum computers!!??) and not "understand" it?? This question gets into the specialization of science. One might think that all laser technicians are experts at quantum mechanics, or (as I mistakenly thought) all accelerator physicists know profound things about relativity. In a sense these are true, but at that technical of a level, the results are not easilly recognized and put into a form which would be awe-inspiring for a lecture in a "physics for poets" type class, or even a more technical first year introductory physics class. This is where I start to get excited about teaching...

Heaven on Earth

I've been reading an out of print book (published in 1992) called "Heaven on Earth: Dispatches from the Spiritual Frontier", by Michael D'Antonio. The author is a journalist who sets out to explore the new age movement in America. I wanted to read it because one of the chapters involves a visit to the Transcendental Meditation university Maharishi International University (Now Maharishi University of Management). Having struggled with the question of whether TM is a cult, and finally settling on the description of New Age Religion, I was eager to see it situated in the context of other New Age phenomena. Get past the deliberate lying about science, and maybe I can see it as a genuine attempt to create myths which are consistent with what is known about science.

Actually the author singled TM out as the one new age movement that seemed cult-like to him. He describes it as ultimately a repudiation of the values of the 60's, settling into a rigid authoritarian regime, where much of day to day life is controlled by the Maharishi. He gives Maharishi credit for in some sense starting the new age movement in America, even though where he ended up was so far from where he started. (Actually I'm a little skeptical of how magnanimous his early attempts were.) I've also read a chapter on the "vortices" in Sedona. I like the way in which the author is an integral character in the stories he tells even though he is interviewing people, giving background and other such research oriented activities.

feynman

Interview with Richard Feynman- Pleasure of Finding Things Out..
Comment on why he's not particularly interested in the humanities:
"I have a limited intelligence, and I have used it in a particular direction."

cult of microsoft

My question for the moment is: do I maintain this spreadsheet in Open Office or Microsoft Excel? My main computer runs Linux and the OO software works pretty well and interacts nicely with the Linux world. Excel is on my laptop which involves annoying transferring of files, plus the fact of a small screen that I don't really want to work on.
Annoying, very specific issue to my situation in some ways. What's not specific to my situation is the fact that OO spreadsheet can read Excel documents, but Excel can't read OO documents. But most people I need to collaborate with use Excel.

I call it a cult because I think that lack of interoperability is one of the issues that could be used to distinguish cults from religions. A cult tries to pull you in and not let you interact with ideas that don't fit nicely within its small worldview. They can't attract and retain enough people just on the merits of their product, and so they cut off exits, or at least build high walls so that its extremely clear who is in and who is out.

Actually, thinking about it, OO isn't perfect. If they can read Excel documents, why can't they write them? This would remove the interoperability issue. Not that it should be all their job. I guess the corresponding point about cults would be that for someone flexible enough, they could move in and out of all but the most jealous cults.

(Oops, just realized that OO can write Excel documents... problem solved.)

detailed vs. context work

I think that there are two (at least) kinds of work. One kind involves operating within a fixed set of rules. You take a bunch of stuff as fixed and then try to solve problems. There's a certain kind of comfort associated with this work. You really make progress. You can clearly see that stuff gets done. Its also comforting because you don't have to constantly think about the big picture. Focus on the details. Or maybe you find it uncomfortable, because you like to question assumptions and don't like taking things for granted; matter of personal style I suppose.

The other type of work involves trying to find the best overall framework to use in going about solving problems. To do this work, you will probably do similar work as the detailed work I just described. The difference is that you constantly relate it to the big picture. You constantly ask how this problem would have been formulated differently had the overall framework been different. Its hard to know whether anything gets done in this type of work. Its always a moving target. A certain result may stay the same, but seen in a different context takes on a much greater or lesser importance. The difficulty of this kind of work is that its really hard to move forward. Any step involves a million questions about its relationship to the big picture.

I think I am good at the second kind of work and not so good at the first. I'm not very good at just sticking with a set of rules and working within that framework. It makes me slow. Instead of going ahead to the end of a project, I constantly question the framework under which the project was given. I'd like to be able to turn off this constant context checking sometimes. it'd be easier to get work done.
I suppose this perspective is similar to Kuhn's "normal" vs. "revolutionary" science, but applied to all sorts of things, not just science.

Living with Nietzsche

Boxing up my books, getting ready to move to a new apartment, I came across my four or five books by Nietzsche. I was in one of those dangerous reading moods where I'm attracted to difficult topics bound to cause me problems. Brushes with Nietzsche will often leave me feeling mentally beaten up, wondering how I was suckered into the fight. However, using my new tools on the internet, such as Wikipedia, I thought I'd give it another go. Perhaps if I learned a few things about his life, I'd have at least a small advantage over him, and after that advantage had been spent, I'd quit for the day and come back another time. I was hoping to put the books into the box, with him as an ally, or at least as a subdued enemy. Probably overly ambitious, almost an obsessive-compulsive need to understand everything... Usually a sign that I should find some friends to hang out with, or get some exercise, or something like that.

Later on, I went to Borders and came across "Living with Nietzsche", by Robert Solomon. This seemed to be just the book I was looking for.
I read a bit of it. Maybe I'll read more later. It seems like a kind of aikido approach to Nietzsche. Use his own momentum to your advantage, without hurting either of you. It takes some of the concepts he ridicules most, such as pity, and gives them a more sympathetic understanding, showing that we can still use Nietzsche's insights on these topics without taking the poison along with it. Not that the knowledge won't still change you in important ways, but that knowledge will be yours, not associated with N as the "guru". Indeed, N seems to want this, but the circumstances under which he wrote maybe prevented him from taking such a tact.

Thinking of the title later on, it reminds me of such topics as "living with alcoholism", or "living with depression". In the end, one hopes that one can learn something from these illnesses. That since one is stuck with them, and they are quite powerful, perhaps one can channel their power in a positive direction? However, if this were the underlying meaning of the title, then is the advice responsible? Would you really wish alcoholism on someone in order that they extract meaning from this destructive force?

questions

I'm learning this big messy code for accelerator modeling.
The input is a file that describes the magnets, and the code tracks particles through the accelerator and computes resulting useful stuff about the orbits and global quantities.
To access the individual magnets when writing programs, one refers first to the "family number" of the magnet, and then to the "kid number" to specify the specific magnet in the ring.
I'm always worried about what the metaphors I take in do to me. Did the person who decided on this metaphor do it out of joking? or longing? Did he really think of the storage ring he was designing as a surrogate family?
What am I getting myself into here?

theorist as politician and his/her

two ideas and a question:

1) There are two (at least) parts to being a theorist. The first is to solve useful problems. The second is to represent a group of people for whom this theory is relevant; to arbitrate on rules relating to usage. The problem here is that the theorist hasn't been elected, and so those he/she represents may not be interested in having their disputes arbitrated. I think this second role gets slipped in on top of the first... "wow, that's really an interesting, useful idea!" says person x. "Well, if you want to use that idea, then I suggest you folks straighten out your thinking on A,B, C." says theorist y.

2) The discrepancy between theory and practice isn't that theory isn't followed in practice. A good theory should apply in reality otherwise its not a good theory. But theories only cover a small part of reality. They always come with suppose that "x,y, and z" which probably aren't exactly true in practice. When developing a theory, it may be easier to temporarilly forget the simplifying assumptions. How else could you get anything done. But you should periodically remind yourself that they exist.

3) Shouldn't we straighten out this "his/her" business? The / is really not a solution, its an indication that a problem exists. How about "hser", or "hir"? Any other solutions out there? You could say this is just the PC police.. but shouldn't there be at least an option for a gender neutral pronoun? I find myself conflicted about which stage of a story to use the pronoun, after which the gender of the person in question is clear which may be irrelevant at that point, or not wanted to be emphasized. A language should give move options.

painting?

Here's a painting I've been working on.

This weekend I visited the Pollock-Krasner house, the house where Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner lived and painted. They have an audio tour where you listen to an MP3 player that guides you around and tells you stuff about their lives and the site. It produces a weird effect where you see all these people standing by themselves staring off at the trees or river or sky, just listening. Instead of thinking of the lost conversations and lost independent thought, I went with it, and it seemed a somewhat effective way to see a place. The conversations can come afterwards. I enjoyed it, but somehow didn't feel anything new about art on an emotional level. That's ok. Like falling in love, right? Its supposed to happen later?

humility again..

so I was asked to be specific...
but of course, i will continue to be (somewhat) metaphorical. spin, spin, spin, like all the hero politicians of our times.

one piece of the puzzle is the fact that I can explain to just about anyone what my research is about. the caveat to that statement would be the word "interested". If someone is interested, I can find a way to explain that wiggling electrons give off x-rays and one needs to know whether those electrons are stable like the moon's orbit, or unstable like comets getting thrust beyond the solar system. what i'm trying to say is that no matter how technical one gets in trying to understand something, one can always stand back and give a more accessible description of it. a bridge can be built, though it takes some good faith effort from both ends.

loneliness. there are many paths that lead to this well known territory.

i'm not sure how to make the point, but there's a sense in which the more elitest one gets, the more down to earth one gets. getting away from the popular gets you in touch with what is common internally amongst people, not that which is imposed from without. fierce independence can be related to by anyone. I'm reminded of a line by dostoyevsky about how there are no structures so sacred, no crystalline castles so pristine that they cannot be laughed at. something like that.

here's a story: when i was in kathmandu for a summer, i rented an apartment a little ways away from the center of town. across the street from me was a pharmacy. being not overly careful with cleaning of mangoes and such, I came down with a stomach sickness and walked across the street to consult the pharmacy. i was told that being american i probably knew better than them what to do about my sickness. indeed, i did have some cipro which i took and perhaps helped me out over the next few days. but i made some friends at the pharmacy. this one guy (i'm trying to remember his name) came with me over to my apartment and somehow i ended up reading my journal to him. i was sad about not being able to connect with a certain person and wrote about her quite a bit. this guy listened carefully and gave me his understanding. it was amazing to have this almost immediate connection with someone who grew up on the other side of the world in a pretty different environment from me. on the other hand, my dad also came with me during part of this trip. we were in different worlds. he was looking for external evidence of my humanity. when i taught someone a few chords on a guitar, he used this as a logical argument to convince himself that i could relate to people. it was sad. we had very little connection.

humility

Its easy to think that the way you ended up somewhere is the only way.
If you hold on to that too tightly then its pretty weird to find someone at the
same place, but with a totally different background and maybe seeming to not understand the
basics.
Being process oriented is important, but sometimes its also important to be results oriented I suppose.
Examples you say? Nah, not today.

messes

A mess can be either a lack of choice of an organizing system, or a lack of energy to put things into the chosen system. My messes are a combination of these. Why should my ski pants be on the floor next to my bed? Don't winter clothes go in a bag in the closet? Or does putting them in the closet imply an acceptance of owning ski pants? I haven't used these ski pants in over 5 years. So the building of an order that includes these red pants will imply a taking into myself of something I don't use.
etc. etc. "e" "t" "c"
thoughts for the evening.

minor disappointment

One of the things about accelerator physics modeling that I'd found out recently was that the mathematical maps that track particles around the accelerator use a technology related to so-called "differential algebras". In particular, the claim was that there was a relationship to a subject known as "non-standard analysis". Its a pretty cool topic. The idea is to extend the real numbers to include "infinitesimals" dx, such that dx < y for all real values y. Kind of like extending real numbers to the complex plane. Anyway, the result is that one can find derivatives and integrals using algebraic methods, rather than needing to define limits and do these annoying "delta-epsilon" proofs.

So, its still true that non-standard analysis is cool. And I'm happy to have learned a bit more about it. But the guy I'm working for has the viewpoint that pushing this perspective of "Differential Algebra" methods in accelerator physics has been a bit of a fraud. His point is that when you go ahead and implement the algorithms in the computer code- you don't actually use such structures. This would be a bit disappointing because it removes some of the sex appeal of the subject... On the other hand, I'm starting to get more used to the idea of building up nice things from elementary, not so exciting pieces. (Growing up beyond exoticism, if you will.)
I haven't yet gone through the code myself to understand the extent of the claim. My suspicion is that the truth may lie somewhere in between, with "DA methods" inspiring algorithms without being used explicitly.
Anyway, I'm sure everyone will be waiting with baited breath for an update on this topic...