In my research class, we had Prof. Lathrop come to speak for us today to demonstrate effective "talk" techniques in presenting research findings. I had previously seen him in the "Magnetic Storm" NOVA special, so I was pretty excited during his talk. He was admittedly, much calmer than the PBS documentary which hinted that we were all on the verge of getting cooked by solar radiation due to the steep decline/inevitable reversal in the earth's magnetic field. He was also much more detailed about the specs on the liquid-sodium dynamo models that the lab has been working on than NOVA was, so that was a bonus for me.
(A very basic overview of the topic if you can't be bothered to read his webpage or read the show's transcript:
- Earth's magnetic field is theorized to result not from a giant bar magnet (ahahaha) but rather from the dynamo theory -- electric currents from Earth's molten outer core is organized by the convection from the outer core and the Coriolis effect into N-S oriented magnetic "rolls" (fields). Moving conducting material across these "rolls" creates more electrical current, creating more magnetism, etc etc etc blah blah Faraday and Maxwell and Gauss are awesome dudes blah blah, resulting in a self-sustaining dynamo.
- The magnetic field covers the Earth (aka "magnetosphere") keeping lots of solar radiation away from us -- except a bit at the poles, where you get those lovely auroras.
- Earth's magnetic fields switches it up every 300,000 years or so. We know this because this switch shows up in volcanic layers, ancient pottery, In fact, we know that the magnetic North Pole drifts around a bit.
- We also know that the Earth's magnetic field has declined about 5% in the last century or so.
- It would be nice to predict how the fields are going to shift, so that we don't accidentally fry too many satellites and astronauts.)
What's interesting is that every time he starts to examine the issue of magnetoturbulence*, his dynamo models result in something else, something just as interesting. He made a great statement saying that scientists should observe naively without hoping for "their" results, because explaining what results could be even more interesting in the end. In one of the experiments, the model produced inertial waves, which made the magnetic fields sound like this:
Isn't that lovely?
*which admittedly sounds less hysterical that "OMFG! THE EARTH IS SWITCHING IT UP! WE ARE PWNED BY RADIATION!"
Since I am about to stomp off Godzilla-like to my CS midterm, I wanted to place some interesting links and thoughts that I doubt that I'll have time to formulate anytime soon.
Mindhacks posted this awesome post about an exhibit
going on in Germany about visionary art regarding "pain machines."
Visionary art usually denotes "outsider" status, or sometimes even more
specifically, the art of the mentally insane. So, the interesting thing
is that historically, schizophrenic people take note of technology
early on and integrate them into their experiences. Probably because
the experience is so foreign that it requires an "outside" intermediary agent as an explanation.
the delusions of people with schizophrenia often involved them being influenced by a 'diabolical machine', just outside the technical understanding of the victim, that influenced them from afar and is operated by a shadowy group of the person's enemies.
I've always regarded visionary art as a medium for messengers who go to this strange land. It's especially compelling, because much of the time, visionary artists aren't technically gifted, but they are absolutely compelled to convey and communicate their experience.
Of course, reality is becoming as fiction, especially after Raytheon invented a functional pain machine.
PS.
It can't possibly be helping me that I'm listening to "Red Right Hand"
while ensconced in the Mathematics Library. Truly, music and
environment to encourage this sort of thing:
You're one microscopic cog
in his catastrophic plan
Designed and directed by
his red right hand
My instinctive philosophy is nihilism (that is to say, what my limbic mind reverts to), and the song addresses this from the first line:
At the end of days, at the end of time.
When the Sun burns out will any of this matter?
Except it moves to a different direction from there. As Ronan Harris puts it:
It's a variation on Mr. Puddleglum -- here is the bare bones of reality, give up to it, and now put something on top of it. The dark night of the soul, the long test of faith, I don't really know how things will end. But I always get a little hopeful when I hear this:
I know in darkness I will find you giving up inside like me.
Colbert's recent spiel on academia has led linguistics to the spotlight (albeit unwillingly):
- Folks, in today’s ‘anything goes’ ivory towers, kids earn credit for anything. For instance, if an English major writes a poem for a class, his credit is worth just as much as an engineering major who designs a weapon that can be used to repel poets [Like a Job].
- Nation, our young people are being taught that all knowledge is valuable, whether or not it leads to a promising career. But the fact is, folks, there is a real world difference between a graduate with an advertising degree [Account Executive In Five Years] and one with an art history degree [Account Executive In Six Years].
- Thankfully, some state universities are recognizing that by making tuition for some majors more expensive than others.
- Now according the universities, they need to charge more for courses like business, engineering and hard sciences because of expensive lab equipment and high faculty salaries. They say they have no choice. Now, I don’t know whether they *have* a choice; I’ll leave that to the Philosophy Department [They Have Free Time, If Not Free Will].
- But I, for one, am excited about this. It’s a breakthrough that allows me to achieve a long time dream, arranging all fields of knowledge into a three-tiered pricing system: ‘marketable’, ‘non-marketable’, and ‘you KNOW this is killing your parents’.
- Now, ‘marketable’ is the priciest: business, engineering and science. And whatever future professional football players major in. [Dogfighting]
- Then there’s ‘non-marketable’. That’s for majors like history. Why spend a lot for it when you won’t get a high paying job? Plus, if you don’t learn history, evidently you’re doomed to repeat it, and you’ll find out what happened for free. [Are You Listening, Michael Beschloss?]
- Finally, the lowest tier, which includes classics, comparative literature, linguistics; basically, anything taught by someone who says he ‘lives to teach’. Of course, if these universities really want to revolutionize education, they should apply monetary values not just to majors, but to individual facts [Like Alex Trebek].
Of course, Stephen Colbert speaks from the experienced position of... growing up in a family of highly Catholic intellectuals. Obviously, I am neither speaking nor sparking with outrage here. However, his comment addresses an annoying fact: linguistics often receives little credit and much disdain as a science. I am currently reading the "Twitter Machine," and the introduction starts out with a defensive response to a withering quote against linguistics.
There has also been another recent Internet linguistic kerfluffle. To find out more, first go brew yourself a strong pot of tea or coffee -- this will take awhile. Then, go to Polyglot Conspiracy to read about the blogosphere's response to a recent NYTimes article on linguist Mary Bucholtz's work on "nerd" traits as a manifestation of "hyperwhite" behavior, and then go read Bucholtz's work. (Warning: PDF) For extra credit, go ahead and read Language Log's take on the situation, and delve into Mixing Memory's frustration with society's understanding (or lack thereof) in cognitive science. Take your time, my post will still be here when you get back.
With regards to Bucholtz's work, the responses can be sorted into a few (rough) categories:
- Linguistics lacks numbers, and therefore is so much intellectual hand-waving. Considering that Bucholtz conducted an intense longitudinal study in one high school, there are numbers and so on -- X number of personal narratives, X% of students defining Y behavior as "nerdy," and so on. The NYTimes article did not discuss her research collection, and did not provide external links to her research. I do wish that Bucholtz had addressed numeracy / math skills in her work, but those types of numbers is not her field of research (linguistic markers are), and it would be slightly beside the point for her to do so.
- Linguistics is a social science, dominated by the fluffy-minded, and is "not useful." I have a hypothesis that some of these comments stem from non-white (and non-black) self-identifying nerds who feel that Bucholtz is hinting that they are effectively race traitors. An additional concern that non-white/black "nerds" may have is that if nerd behavior is tagged as "hyperwhite," their right to identify as nerds may be questioned in the same way that society (wrongly) questions the notion of the "black nerd." (Cueing the Stormfront people to start vociferously arguing for non-white nerds to abdicate intellectual occupations in society that rightfully belong to the Volk and return to paddy-farming in Asia 3... 2... 1...) Considering the strong pressure on second generation U.S. immigrants to study "hard sciences" and lucrative jobs, it would not be surprising for many immigrants to internalize the idea that the social science field is not useful.
- Sociolinguists = RACE WAR. I think that race, and not health care, is the third rail in the U.S. system. Touch it and die. As a minority in the U.S., I admit to getting vaguely annoyed and offended when people use my race to stereotype me. The stereotypes are often positive (doing math well, being very pretty in a perpetually child-like way, excellent work ethic, in touch with some sort of ambient spirituality) but the mental short-cut annoys me. Anything that even remotely reinforces racial stereotypes (even without an agenda) worries me, because I feel that this will keep people from critical thought. (Translation: Bucholtz's paper made me personally uncomfortable.) Bucholtz's paper does leave me uncertain as to how au courant she is on race identifiers, along with nerd identifiers. Of course, coming up with a consensus on nerd identifiers may well be impossible, considering the cultural breadth of nerds around the world.
- Academic essays are full of horrible elitist/Marxist/impenetrable language, and act within a highly self-referential frame. Okay, I'll bite. Finding words like "hegemonic" in papers makes me cringe as well, because I have to mentally unpackage the higher-level language (super-standard English) in lower-level language (standard-level English). In a way, these linguistic traits are representative of what Bucholtz is discussing: since super-standard language is part of the "seekrit* intellectual handshake," an academic paper isn't going to be taken seriously if it uses standard-level language. Not that super-standard English is always consciously polysyllabic and logorrheic: Douglas Hofstadter demonstrates the reverse in Le Tombeau de Marot when he writes an entire chapter in monosyllabic English, where he ascends to heights of verbal agility in order to maintain said restriction. (This is unsurprising since the book also addresses Oulipo-style restraints in verbal translation.) As far as the self-referential frame, I used to feel the same way until I started doing papers of my own. I would turn up essays that I couldn't understand in the least bit -- until I read the accompanying dozen of referenced papers, which would in turn reference n number of essays and research, and... turtles all the way down, or until I reached a saturation of understanding on the subject. I do feel that academic papers suffer due to this, at least in that any cursory coverage (say, in the NYTimes) will fail to achieve understanding based on a single paper.
I would like to make some observational points on the topic of nerdiness. Nothing backed by research or anything, just just thinking points on my part. The whole "nerd" culture as we know it (language and ephemera) can be traced back to the post-war Big Industry workers in the U.S.: the IBM man, Bell Labs, radio, and so on. While scientific tinkering and exploration had been previously explored by gentlemanly dilettantes during the 18th century and industrializing inventors during the 19th century (Edison, the Wizard of Menlo Park here), a few factors made the 20th century a more egalitarian time for home workshops in the U.S:
- The increasing uses and miniaturization of electronics in the 20th century made home tinkering possible on a national basis.
- World War II, and the G.I. Bill allowed a nation of men to reach a level of education that would have been less likely, had they remained in their previous towns and lives. Wars expedite technological advancement due to strategic necessity -- WWI brought sonar, WWII brought radar, and countless other examples can be cited. All of these pieces of equipment require maintenance, and the basic education required to maintain the equipment. have a technical manual from WWII for radio operators that starts from basic arithmetic and ends in basic electrical engineering in about 100 pages. These returning soldiers had basic technical skills and the chance to attend additional schooling.
- The post-war increase in living standards + electronic advances + post-war industry seeking outlets = more toys in the house. Refrigerators. Vacuums. TVs. People made concerted efforts to maintain their appliances.
- The Cold War carried over the emphasis that learning was not just a personal whim but rather a civic obligation. The arms race, the space gap... the smart gap. Learning could catapult the U.S. to victory over the communists I have one of my stepfather's high school yearbooks from the early 60's: the Science Club is presented in all of its "nerdy" glory as learning the weapons in fighting the Red menace. Remember how pivotal chess matches were back in the day? Yeah -- being smart meant being a fighter.
So if technology-nerd** culture seems "hyperwhite" -- it is. What I am trying to say is that contemporary nerd culture is possibly descended from the 50's technical boom which occurred in the U.S. It is this nerd boom that brought us the computer, which is the iconic standard for all nerdliness right now in [global] society.
Aaaaand, I think I'm done. Except I'm really not done, because I want to discuss the evolution of my pretentious speech and how the military changed my speaking habits. So belay my last: I'm done for now.
*As I wittily and not-so-secretly reveal my Internet meme humor handshake!
** Because this is a different nerd culture than say, Confucian scholars. Or post-war Japanese salaryman nerd culture.
I have a huge, huge collection of music that I need to listen to more often. With this in mind, I think I'm going to share something from my music archives every so often.
Since Mike inspired me to start delving through my music again, today's pick is from Thug Murder -- a Japanese female streetpunk group. Sadly defunct, they're best know for their cover of "I Fought the Law." But loving that song is easy, far too easy really. So here's another excellent song from the group. Listen, enjoy, and then grab a chunk off your day
If the mind is, as the neurologist contends, the brain then acts of reading and writing are not simply acts of a disembodied spirit that judges, selects, rejects, dismisses, but rather they are irreversible, physical events that transform ones neurology. To read is to create a physical trace that will irreversibly be there. Discourse with another is here no longer an innocent way of passing the time like Socrates beneath the tree with the young, charming and handsome Phaedrus, but is to transform, if only in a small way, both of those involved in a way that is irresolvable and that even has its own chemistry.
Of course, an ultimate physicalist argues that we are but machines that scan input, send some electrical signals around, and disperse/encode this new information. The text itself, the meme/information it contains, the person reading it, and the neurochemicals flooding your brain are all in the end... equal.
In light of the recent news that the game of checkers has been cracked, I retain the slim consolation that my favored game will remain a viable working project for a long, long while.
There's a recent article in Seed magazine regarding the rising field of roboethics. It's quite good with regards to current events (I'd like to get copies of EURON and South Korea's charter) but really quite introductory read with regards to the philosophical aspects of roboethics. For a better introduction to the subject of roboethics, I'd suggest Anne Foerst's "God in the Machine." However, this quote in the article caught my attention:
And so, roboethics is starting to ask some questions for which we, as yet, have no concrete answers. "If our experience with [these robots] is based on a fundamentally deceitful interchange—[their] ability to persuade us that they know of and care about our existence—can it be good for us?" asks Turkle.
(This photo from my trip to Boston is of Kismet, a robot created by Cynthia Breazeal at MIT Labs. Some of Turkle's work directly involves Kismet.)
Authors love to tackle this difficult notion in fiction: what we create can turn on us, disappoint us, because we (in forgetting to account for human nature) have created better or worse than we had anticipated. Paying attention to our creations gives them a certain power over us, the ability to ensnare us with this "fundamentally deceitful interchange."
Except robots are made. Making as an act implies that the creator deems the creation (and its role) necessary, necessary enough to devise and finish. It is not enough to walk, we have deemed it necessary to create horseshoes and saddles and F-16s. Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay arrives at this conclusion, but in a stronger fashion:
But it seemed to Joe that none of these -- Faustian hubris, least of all -- were among the true reasons that impelled men, time after time, to hazard the making of golems. The shaping of a golem, to him, was a gesture of hope, offered against hope, in a time of desperation. It was the expression of a yearning that a few magic words and an artful hand might produce something -- one poor, dumb, powerful thing -- exempt from the crushing strictures, from the ills, cruelties, and inevitable failures of the greater Creation.
Whatever deceit is being coined, it starts with us. I recently finished Villier de l'Isle-Adam's Tomorrow's Eve, where the theme of a man's attachment to an android is the central theme. The android, Hadaly, is meant to be a superior substitution to the original woman -- a woman who while fair of face, remains obstinately morally bankrupt. Edison, playing a Faust-mythologized version of his authentic self, explains to the man:
Nobody can see the real character of what he creates because every knife blade may become a dagger, and the use to which an object is put changes both its name and nature.
What versatile uses! If you pour your heart out day and night to a dog, it becomes your confidant. If you stab your husband with the butter knife, it becomes a murder weapon. If Edison creates a beautiful doll with a high number of pre-assembled sayings spoken in a melodious voice... whether or not it remains a potential or an actual lover depends on the man.
Aftert reading this article by Joe Tsien at Scientific American, I have to confess that I find myself very taken with the view of memory encoding as categorical and hierarchical. For one thing, it would make sense why certain situations have a negative flavor even before a person has articulated why -- the event can be triggering a particular neural clique into action by having X number of common factors.
The presence of neural cliques indicates that certain paths and connections are strengthened by repeated exposures/uses. CBT, pay attention! With the news that specific memories can be erased, we're hitting a brave new world of mental manipulation. A data-efficient system of memory encoding that can be computationally reproduced is certainly something interesting -- back up, copy, read/write privileges, transmission... all sorts of uses and abuses are certainly possible.
A final and delicious fillip: I'll note that the author threw in a transhumanist reference as a farewell note. I am not a transhumanist in the sense that I seek to prolong my life, but I find the movement fascinating.
