Reginald L. Goodwin's Posts

The Death of Expertise...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on July 8, 2017 at 5:00am

Image Source: PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY ELIZABETH BROCKWAY/THE DAILY BEAST

Topics: Existentialism, Politics, Science, Research

"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt." Bertrand Russell

I've had similar posts as well as off line conversations about this theme. The unexpected caveat from the "Information Superhighway" has been the rise of know-nothings that feel search engines are a part of human DNA; that become *experts* on any subject with a few inquiries and clicks. It has extended quite contemporaneously to members of the clergy: some work in pulpits without a license to preach, ordination or degree from a divinity school. They just look and sound good, thus *anointed*, not credentialed.

From the article excerpt:

These are dangerous times. Never have so many people had so much access to so much knowledge and yet have been so resistant to learning anything. In the United States and other developed nations, otherwise intelligent people denigrate intellectual achievement and reject the advice of experts. Not only do increasing numbers of lay people lack basic knowledge, they reject fundamental rules of evidence and refuse to learn how to make a logical argument. In doing so, they risk throwing away centuries of accumulated knowledge and undermining the practices and habits that allow us to develop new knowledge.

This is more than a natural skepticism toward experts. I fear we are witnessing the death of the ideal of expertise itself, a Google-fueled, Wikipedia-based, blog-sodden collapse of any division between professionals and laypeople, students and teachers, knowers and wonderers—in other words, between those of any achievement in an area and those with none at all.

I sincerely hope to not be a part of the "blog-sodden" or contributing to the morass. I used the term Information Superhighway - as the Internet was once publicly coined - deliberately, as the concern was there would be a divide between the "haves" (those who could afford $2,500 to plop down on a home desktop computer) and the 'have-nots," i.e. the urban poor demarcated by economics, ethnicity and cultural differences.

Enter the cellular telephone, first initially called a "brick" as it was heavy, clunky and analog as in Michael Douglas in "Wall Street." The conversion from analog to digital, the merger of phone and autonomous pager (obviously, the work of the devil); the miniaturization of transistors following Moore's Law increasing speeds and features to share cat, dog, owl and most recently cute baby elephants chasing birds on phones dubbed "smart", their owners another matter.

This has so far given us an interesting social makeup of a society that thoroughly depends on science and technology*, and disdains the people most equipped to bring about new systems and designs. The intellectual student is still a "nerd," noses are still shoved into lockers (or, students stuffed in them), bullying of them is still ignored; cheerleaders and jocks worshiped as the in-crowd cool gods from Mt. Olympus.

We tweet our versions of reality (45 is particularly deft at this), we join social media groups that conform to our already dug in notions. Google driver-less cars will likely lead to more distracted humans and stupid pet videos shared before they disembark.

The causalities of such an accidental dystopia are rationality, reality, science and ultimately what in an Orwellian era of "alternate facts" seems malleable and dangerously fungible: truth.

Social changes only in the past half century finally broke down old barriers of race, class, and sex not only between Americans in general but also between uneducated citizens and elite experts in particular. A wider circle of debate meant more knowledge but more social friction. Universal education, the greater empowerment of women and minorities, the growth of a middle class, and increased social mobility all threw a minority of experts and the majority of citizens into direct contact, after nearly two centuries in which they rarely had to interact with each other.

And yet the result has not been a greater respect for knowledge, but the growth of an irrational conviction among Americans that everyone is as smart as everyone else. This is the opposite of education, which should aim to make people, no matter how smart or accomplished they are, learners for the rest of their lives. Rather, we now live in a society where the acquisition of even a little learning is the endpoint, rather than the beginning, of education. And this is a dangerous thing.

* "We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology." Carl Sagan

America's Cult of Ignorance (excerpt), by Tom Nichols on The Daily Beast, author of The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters.

Selenide Vibrations...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on July 7, 2017 at 5:00am

In this illustration, an infrared laser beam (orange) triggers atomic vibrations in a thin layer of iron selenide, which are then recorded by ultrafast X-ray laser pulses (white) to create an ultrafast movie. The motion of the selenium atoms (red) changes the energy of the electron orbitals of the iron atoms (blue). (Courtesy: Greg Stewart/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory)

Topics: Condensed Matter Physics, Materials Science, Solid State Physics, Superconductors

Two important breakthroughs in the understanding of iron-selenide superconductors have been made by two independent research groups. One team has shown that the electrons responsible for superconductivity in the material probably come from a specific atomic orbital. The other team, meanwhile, has measured the interaction between electrons and atomic vibrations in iron selenide, which is believed to be involved in its superconductivity.

The research could shed light on the mystery of why some materials based on iron selenide are superconductors at relatively high temperatures, which has puzzled physicists for more than a decade. While bulk iron selenide is a superconductor below 8.5K, this transition temperature can reach as high as 75K when an ultrathin trilayer of the material is grown on certain substrates.

Experiments shed new light on iron superconductors, Hamish Johnston, Physics World

Crystal Cavitation...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on July 6, 2017 at 5:00am

Time sequence showing the growth of a cavitation bubble. The large circle is an obstruction to the flow of a liquid crystal, which is moving from left to right. The cavitation bubble is forming at the right side of the obstruction. (Courtesy: Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization)

Topics: Condensed Matter Physics, Fluid Mechanics, Materials Science

The formation and subsequent collapse of bubbles has been seen for the first time in a flowing liquid crystal. This process is called cavitation and occurs when the pressure drop in a flowing fluid is large enough to allow some of the fluid to vaporize and create a bubble. Cavitation is of great interest in hydrodynamics because the collapsing bubbles can dissipate large amounts of energy in small regions and cause significant damage to machinery such as propellers.

The discovery was made by Tillmann Stieger and colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization in Göttingen, the Technical University of Berlin and the ETH Zürich. Liquid crystals are fluids that are made of rod-like molecules that tend to align under certain conditions. In its experiments, the team pumped liquid-crystal fluids through tiny channels just 0.1 mm wide. The channels contained obstructions, which increase the speed of the flow and encourage cavitation (see image).

Bubble cavitation spotted in liquid crystals, Hamish Johnston, Physics World

Star Weight...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on July 5, 2017 at 5:00am

Image Source: Link below

Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Einstein, General Relativity, Gravitational Lensing, White Dwarfs

The passage of a white dwarf almost in front of a distant background star created the conditions for gravitational lensing

Einstein’s general theory of relativity predicts that in the gravitational field of a massive body, light rays should bend by an angle that depends on the body’s mass. Researchers at the Space Telescope Science Institute have now exploited that effect, known as gravitational lensing, to determine the mass of a star. For two years, the team tracked white dwarf Stein 2051 B as it crossed in front of a distant background star. The Hubble image shows Stein 2051 B and the background star, labeled “Source,” on 1 October 2013. Overlain are the nearer star’s trajectory and dots indicating its location on seven subsequent imaging dates. (The trajectory appears curved due to parallax.) At their closest, the stars were separated by a mere 10th of an arcsecond—roughly the angle subtended in the sky by Pluto.

As the stars came into alignment, gravitational lensing by the white dwarf subtly distorted the apparent position of the background star. Specifically, the background star appeared to trace an ellipse a couple of milliarcseconds wide, even though its actual position in the sky all but remained fixed. From the ellipse’s dimensions the researchers could infer Stein 2051 B’s mass, roughly two-thirds that of the Sun.

Weighing a star with light, Ashley G. Smart, Physics Today

Electrodeposition...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on July 3, 2017 at 8:00am

(a) Schematic depicting the experimental setup and different stages of the electrodeposition process. SEM images of (b) Ni nanoparticles (left image is a zoomed in image of the wire), (c) a Ni layer in tilt-view from the middle of the array. (d) Top-view SEM images show progressive Ni deposition over time with reductive deposition. Courtesy: Nano Letters DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.7b01950

Topics: Electrical Engineering, Electronics, Nanotechnology, Semiconductor Technology

Electrodeposition can be used to construct novel functional nanowire structures hitherto impossible. This is the new finding from researchers at Harvard University in the US who have deposited conformal layers of various materials onto high-aspect-ratio silicon and micro- and nanowire arrays of different diameters, pitch, aspect ratios, shapes, resistivity and orientation. The structures produced could find use in a wide range of technology applications in chemistry, physics and medicine as well as in energy conversion and storage, sensing and bioelectronics.

Being able to construct ever more complex nanostructures has allowed researchers to study many fundamental physics and chemistry phenomena, and to develop applications for use in a variety of different fields. For example, some 1D nanostructures can be used to manipulate light–matter interactions in novel sensing and light harvesting devices. Nanoelectronics devices based on 1D silicon nanowires can also be employed in bioelectronics and drug-delivery devices.

Further developing the architecture and compositions of such structures with metal-based and polymeric materials could lead to even more sophisticated applications. Electrodeposition could come into its own here since it has proved itself to be an efficient way to deposit films of different materials on flat materials. To date, however, it had never been used to modify nanowire structures with uniform shells or to prepare multiple coaxial shell layers.

Electrodeposition on silicon produces novel nanowire architectures, Belle DuméNanotechweb.org

Transitions...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on June 20, 2017 at 8:47am

a

Image Source: JSNN.NCAT.UNCG.edu

Topics: Education, Jobs, Nanotechnology, STEM

I shifted my posting schedule as I am currently inundated with tape, packing material and moving boxes: LOTS of moving boxes. I have 50 free boxes from the moving company my wife and I have contracted. I filled seven of my own. Several more to go...

I'm taking a blog break as we make this transition out of New York and back to North Carolina. I am both thrilled and a little nervous, looking at the impressive curriculum vitae's of the graduate faculty.

For the most part, I've updated my online profiles to reflect this change.

I am walking forward into the future, a desire that I could not subsume with substitute goals - either by myself or others. I am moving back to a city and a school I know only nostalgically as an alumni, now as a graduate student. I will now know in the stresses of graduate research, publication; eventually a position in academia the desired outcome. It is a fulfilling of this description:

I will complete my graduate studies in physics concentration: microelectronics/nanoengineering - now back in the semiconductor industry - and teach at the post secondary level at the end of my career in science.

My graduate orientation will be on my 55th birthday, reminding me why I fell into cynically not celebrating my birthday so much, starting at the ripe old age of seven. I realized then as now, school started two days later. I will be excited as well as thankful. I will be home.

This time though I will be excited, and remember the words I gave my adult sons as to why their mother and I are pursuing this goal:

Plan to live your lives. Pursue your visions with vigor. Dream your dreams with boldness. We will all come to an end eventually. Try to live this one life with as few regrets as possible.

"Education is the ‘currency’ of the 21st century." Marianas Variety, I also heard this on the Joe Madison Show, SiriusXM 126.

Moving. Will resume posting 3 July 2017. Posting in the fall and presumably the next four years or so will be understandably impacted by graduate work.

Community College Innovation Challenge...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on June 19, 2017 at 1:55pm

Using laboratory experiments, first place awardee, Del Mar College, Texas, demonstrated that their product, EnteroSword, could offer another solution to the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Here, team member Daniel Nasr Azadani, demonstrates how EnteroSword fights antibiotic resistant bacteria. Credit: NSF/Bill Petros Photography

Topics: Education, Jobs, STEM

Teams from Texas and Colorado received first and second place awards, respectively, in the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Community College Innovation Challenge (CCIC).

The American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) co-sponsors the annual event, which fosters students' interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) careers by asking them to offer creative solutions to real-world problems.

This year, CCIC had students propose solutions to issues focusing on three themes: Maker to Manufacturer, Energy and Environment and Security Technologies.

"Our role as an agency is to fund trailblazers with curiosity-driven ideas," said NSF acting Chief Operating Officer Joan Ferrini-Mundy at a Wednesday Capitol Hill reception, where students showcased their projects. "We know that community colleges are rich resources for the skilled technical workforce and provide an environment where bright new ideas can thrive."

A four-judge panel selected first place awardee Del Mar College for their proposed solution to a problem that affects about 2 million people each year in the United States: the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Their project, called "Slowing Antibiotic Resistance with EnteroSword," promotes the use of tailor-made viruses that only infect and kill bacteria resistant to conventional antibiotic treatments.

Red Rocks Community College received second place for their project, "Cyber Lab Learning Environment," which demonstrates how students can learn without fear in the safety of student-created cyber labs and develop real-world skills in response to real-world challenges. With print and digital materials, the cyber lab provides a real-world environment for advanced learning.

Third NSF Community College Innovation Challenge rewards top entries National Science Foundation

Media Contacts Bobbie Mixon, NSF, (703) 292-8070, bmixon@nsf.gov Martha Parham, American Association of Community Colleges, mparham@aacc.nche.edu

Jackpot...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on June 16, 2017 at 6:49am

Six different images from the Hubble Space Telescope have been magnified by a cosmic effect called gravitational lensing. The images were taken in infrared light by Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3. Color has been added to highlight details in the galaxies. Credit: NASA/ESA/J. Lowenthal (Smith College)

Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Cosmology, Gravitational Lensing, NASA, Space

A glittering jackpot of ultrabright galaxies bursting with star formation has been revealed in a series of stunning images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.

The galaxies captured in these images sparkle like jewels of cosmic light. These massive collections of stars are each as much as 10,000 times more luminous than the Milky Way in the infrared range, or 10 trillion to 100 trillion times the brightness of the sun. They are also forming about 10,000 new stars each year, according to a statement from NASA. (By comparison, it is estimated that fewer than 10 stars form in the Milky Way each year.)

Viewers may also notice strange shapes, including rings and arcs of light. Those are mostly the result of a cosmic phenomenon known as gravitational lensing, in which a foreground galaxy acts as a lens, warping and magnifying the light from a more distant galaxy.

This lensing has magnified the light from these very distant galaxies, giving scientists the opportunity to study in them in much finer detail than would be otherwise possible.

Hubble Hits Jackpot: Images Capture Ultrabright Galaxies via Cosmic Magnification, Calla Cofield, Space.com

Shades of Tesla...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on June 15, 2017 at 7:00am

Topics: Consumer Electronics, Economy, Electric Vehicles, Electrical Engineering, Jobs, Nicola Tesla

The Old

University of Illinois student Steve Ward and Fermilab senior technician Jeff Larson developed twin Tesla coils capable of emitting 12 feet (4 meters) of sparks. Credit: Fermilab

Among his numerous innovations, Nikola Tesla dreamed of creating a way to supply power to the world without stringing wires across the globe. The inventor came close to accomplishing this when his "mad scientist" experiments with electricity led to his creation of the Tesla coil.

The first system that could wirelessly transmit electricity, the Tesla coil was a truly revolutionary invention. Early radio antennas and telegraphy used the invention, but variations of the coil can also do things that are just plain cool — like shoot lightning bolts, send electric currents through the body and create electron winds. [1]

The New

Stanford scientists have created a device that wirelessly transmits electricity to a movable disc. The technology could some day be used to charge moving electric vehicles and personal devices. Credit: Sid Assawaworrarit/Stanford University

If electric cars could recharge while driving down a highway, it would virtually eliminate concerns about their range and lower their cost, perhaps making electricity the standard fuel for vehicles.

Now Stanford University scientists have overcome a major hurdle to such a future by wirelessly transmitting electricity to a nearby moving object. Their results are published in the June 15 edition of Nature.

"In addition to advancing the wireless charging of vehicles and personal devices like cellphones, our new technology may untether robotics in manufacturing, which also are on the move," said Shanhui Fan, a professor of electrical engineering and senior author of the study. "We still need to significantly increase the amount of electricity being transferred to charge electric cars, but we may not need to push the distance too much more."

The group built on existing technology developed in 2007 at MIT for transmitting electricity wirelessly over a distance of a few feet to a stationary object. In the new work, the team transmitted electricity wirelessly to a moving LED lightbulb. That demonstration only involved a 1-milliwatt charge, whereas electric cars often require tens of kilowatts to operate. The team is now working on greatly increasing the amount of electricity that can be transferred, and tweaking the system to extend the transfer distance and improve efficiency. [2]

"What's past is prologue." William Shakespeare

1. Wireless Electricity? How the Tesla Coil Works, Kelly Dickerson, Live Science
2. Wireless charging of moving electric vehicles overcomes major hurdle, Sid Assawaworrarit et al, Phys.org

Tears of Crocodiles...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on June 14, 2017 at 8:00am

Movie Poster - Bonanza.com

Topics: Commentary, Diversity, Diversity in Science, Science Fiction

Marvel has only had a trailer out for its Black Panther film for one weekend and already the backlash has been severe.

The poster features Chadwick Boseman posing in costume as the titular Black Panther, the king of a fictional African nation, seated on his throne and looking powerful.

However, several critics compared it to a famous picture of Huey P. Newton, who was the co-founder of the Panther Party, a figure who in the 1960s was seen as extreme and “militant.” In the picture, Newton was holding a gun and spear, and while Boseman is not posing with any weapons, many are saying that the pose and even the chair are similar. [1]

***********

Will #LukeCageTooBlack be the next hashtag? Probably not. But following the release of Netflix’s latest Marvel series, Luke Cage, many viewers are complaining about the show being “racist.”

Many fans jumped on Twitter to protest Marvel’s audacity to represent minorities throughout the 13-episode series. “Lack of white people in Luke Cage makes me uncomfortable. This show is racist, how is this on Netflix,” one person tweeted. Another questioned why the black people on the show were speaking about being an African-American. “Im not racist but :/ why is luke cage so political :/ why do they talk about being black all the time :/ where are the white characters.” [2]

**********

Last week, the World Science Fiction society named N.K. Jemisin the first black writer to win the Hugo Award for Best Novel, perhaps the highest honor for science-fiction and fantasy novels. Her winning work, The Fifth Season, has also been nominated for the Nebula Award and World Fantasy Award, and it joins Jemisin’s collection of feted novels in the speculative fiction super-genre. Even among the titans of black science-fiction and fantasy writers, including the greats Octavia Butler and Samuel Delany, Jemisin’s achievement is singular in the 60-plus years of the Hugos.

The Fifth Season is a stunning piece of speculative-fiction work, and it accomplishes the one thing that is so difficult in a field dominated by tropes: innovation, in spades. A rich tale of earth-moving superhumans set in a dystopian world of regular disasters, The Fifth Season manages to incorporate the deep internal cosmologies, mythologies, and complex magic systems that genre readers have come to expect, in a framework that also asks thoroughly modern questions about oppression, race, gender, class, and sexuality. Its characters are a slate of people of different colors and motivations who don’t often appear in a field still dominated by white men and their protagonist avatars. The Fifth Season’s sequel, 2016’s The Obelisk Gate, continues its dive into magic, science, and the depths of humanity.

Just a year ago, the idea of a novel as deliberately outside the science-fiction norm as The Fifth Season winning the Hugo Award seemed unlikely. In 2013, a small group of science-fiction writers and commentators launched the “Sad Puppies” and “Rabid Puppies” campaigns to exploit the Hugo nomination system and place dozens of books and stories of their own choosing up for awards. Those campaigns arose as a reaction to perceived “politicization” of the genre—often code for it becoming more diverse and exploring more themes of social justice, race, and gender—and became a space for some science-fiction and fantasy communities to rail against “heavy handed message fic.” Led by people like the “alt-right” commentator Vox Day, the movements reached fever pitch in the 2015 Hugo Award cycle, and Jemisin herself was often caught up in the intense arguments about the future of the genre. [3]

I have been literally waiting for this movie my entire life. I have been reading it, fantasizing about T'Challa and the fantastic technologies he commanded - no more fanciful than warp drive, but the character development from Jack Kirby to Ta-Nehisi Coates (ironically the comic he was authoring has been canceled and the Dora Milaje spin off has been also) drove the stories forward, so as in any fiction, I suspended belief and read on. I find it amazing you can say it's the #1 comic in sales and then cancel the series after two issues for...sales. I posted about it in 2015 [4], and to quote from it something I saw about the comic fiction that wraps everything said above neatly:

“Wakanda is a small country in Africa notable for never having been conquered in its entire history. When you consider the history of the region, the fact that the French, the English, the Belgians or any number of Christian or Islamic invaders were never able to defeat them in battle…well it’s unprecedented.”

Too black...too militant...not enough "diversity," and like Kamala Harris asking ANYTHING as part of her job in the Senate: too "uppity."

We wear the mask that grins and lies,

It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—

This debt we pay to human guile;

With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,

And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be over-wise,

In counting all our tears and sighs?

Nay, let them only see us, while

We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries

To thee from tortured souls arise.

We sing, but oh the clay is vile

Beneath our feet, and long the mile;

But let the world dream otherwise,

We wear the mask!

Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Poetry Foundation

The stress that African Americans go through literally shortens our lifespans at the genetic level. That "mask" is a hard taskmaster that exacts a price. Living in a system and society so exquisitely designed for you to frankly...fail, you create stories about yourself. John Henry was a steal-driving man. Automation and mechanization caused John to have a massive coronary in the myth, itself a metaphor in modern times for the replacement of mining jobs by robots.

The "Mask" makes shucking-and-jiving a necessary skill; step-in-fetch a disguise that roils beneath the surface of phony smiles. We anesthetize ourselves with religion, fraternities and sororities, drugs and alcohol; sometimes all of the above.

We are always celebrating "firsts": first black astronaut, first black astronaut from a historically black college and university; first black president.

Do I ask for your forgiveness when the trailer was met with exclamations like "dope"; "I'm hyped"; "tears of joy." Do I NEED your forgiveness?

True story: I never followed "Friends" or "Seinfeld." I've seen it in syndication...at the gym when someone else had it on. I heard a lot of water cooler conversations and saw the lament when the series were canceled. I didn't watch them because the cultural references were as relevant to me as "Leave It To Beaver." Did it halt the shows from having fans? Did I not watch "white shows?" Hell, I watched "Cheers" and even visited the bar back in '85. I also watched "A Family Affair"; "That Girl"; "My Three Sons"; "Rat Patrol"; "The Six Million Dollar Man" occasionally the cavalcade of non-cultural-themed shows was interrupted by "Julia"; "The Jefferson's" "Good Times" and the hope we'd all survive our own hubris "Star Trek." My watching, or lack of watching meant nothing to either shows' popularity or length of their runs.

After a while, you get tired of masks and grinning and shucking and jiving and making everyone from sad to mad puppies "comfortable" as your own telomeres shorten.

“Whenever men and women straighten their backs up, they are going somewhere, because a man can't ride your back unless it is bent,” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It's obvious from Luke Cage to Black Panther to NK Jemisin to Kamala Harris, straightened backs are a perceived threat to the social order. A social order inherently dependent on the debasement of others should be challenged artistically, politically and professionally (Guion S. Bluford and Ronald E McNair earned PhDs in the STEM fields of Aerospace Engineering and Laser Physics respectively). For that I offer no apology.

I joked with a college friend in a call to California that the rabid pound-puppy-trolls would come out in full-force by the time the movie premiered February 16, 2018. He laughed when I said "I'm wearing a dashiki and war paint." Who knew the venomous snowflakes would pounce 24 hours after our conversation?

I'm seriously considering the dashiki...

1. ‘Black Panther’ movie poster slammed as ‘too black and militant’, The Grio
2. People Are Complaining That ‘Luke Cage’ Is “Too Black”, Jessica McKinney, VIBE
3. N.K. Jemisin and the Politics of Prose, Vann R. Newkirk II, The Atlantic
A conversation with the recent Hugo Award-winner about science fiction, race, gender, power, and Trumpism
4. Slow-Walking Wakanda, #P4TC, August 16, 2015

Tribalism...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on June 9, 2017 at 5:30am

Topics: Existentialism, History, Politics

George Washington only served one term. In his farewell address, he warned the new country of breaking up into "factions."

We obviously didn't listen.

We've been factions since the founding of the republic. "All men are created equal" is quite poetic sophistry, since that did not extend to my ancestors of African descent, nor women until the 19th Amendment. Homosexuals were acknowledged only in the early Uniform Code of Military Justice as "bungholery." The only persons that could vote at the founding were property (typically slave) owners.

Now we are here: post the first African American to hold the position in 232 years of the republic, post poll taxes, lynching, KKK terrorism and Jim Crow - apparently, the "good old days." He was followed by a candidate now president that put dog whistle politics through a meat grinder of 140 characters and turned it into a Foghorn; lying brazenly has become performance art; "truthiness" is quaint and nostalgic in comparison to the breathtaking obfuscations we're exposed to on a regular basis from corners we need to trust for the republic to properly function. "Breaking news" is almost oxymoron now.

Now, we're supposed to be calm that the man with the nuclear codes is "new" to the job. At last, my insomnia has a cause to its effect.

The Administrative State

Then we had a long talk about his approach to politics. He never called himself a “populist” or an “American nationalist,” as so many think of him today. “I’m a Leninist,” Bannon proudly proclaimed.

Shocked, I asked him what he meant.

“Lenin,” he answered, “wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.” Bannon was employing Lenin’s strategy for Tea Party populist goals. He included in that group the Republican and Democratic Parties, as well as the traditional conservative press.

I emailed Bannon last week recalling our conversation, telling him that I planned to write about it and asking him if he wanted to comment on or correct my account of it. He responded:

“I don’t remember meeting you and don’t remember the conversation. And as u can tell from the past few days I am not doing media.” [1]

Of course that's a convenient dodge and Snopes says it's unproven. Yet we currently have a few dozen candidates announced for a total of 554 positions. [2] What happens if we have a terrorist attack, or a hurricane, flooding, tornado, earthquake here or abroad? Who indeed is running the joint? [3]

Whether myth or mission: Mission accomplished!

The Administrative State are the norms we've established for ourselves, covered by laws, customs and expectations of common sense. Social media has entered the political arena where every representative from senators, house members and the president are expected to send out something into the Zeitgeist. We are in new territory with this ongoing, morose experiment of government-by-tweet of 140 characters or less.

The sad part is our civics knowledge and civility are both at all-time lows, lost in a translation of atomizing electronics that parrots back to us our tastes in music, customized news feeds; decimating what used to be the "The Common Good." The Republican Party removed any mention of their traditional opposition to Russia in the Ukraine at the designing of their platform before the GOP convention, influenced by the candidate that had been a registered democrat for 65 of his 70 years on the planet, he and his surrogates with more ties to the Kremlin than Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale. The "party of patriotism" post the apotheosis of Joe McCarthy is now soft on Commies. Who knew? We live in interesting times.

Missing in the conversation: the Orwellian-named "Crosscheck," AKA Kris Kobach that was designed not to fight the statistically non-existent incidence of voter fraud, but to eliminate voters - especially African and Hispanic/Latino Americans - from the rolls. This was an inside and an outside job.

While we investigate for collusion, we're allowing both games to go on unchecked before the 2018 and 2020 elections. The choice of our own representation is the feature of our imperfect republic. A foreign nation picking our leaders pushes our national self-definition from a federal republic to banana. Nothing about Director Comey's testimony changed any minds, depending what tribe/faction you find yourself in.

"The Russians are [not] coming," Director Comey: they are already, and still here.

"There are but two parties now: traitors and patriots. And I want hereafter to be ranked with the latter and, I trust, the stronger party." Ulysses S. Grant, Commanding Union General in the Civil War, 18th president of the United States of America.

1. Steve Bannon, Trump’s Top Guy, Told Me He Was ‘a Leninist’, Ronald Radosh, The Daily Beast
2. Help wanted: Trump administration still has hundreds of jobs to fill, John W. Schoen, CNBC
3. WHO'S RUNNING THE GOVERNMENT? Trump has yet to fill 85% of key executive branch positions, Sonam Sheth, Business Insider

Confirmed Again...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on June 8, 2017 at 8:29am

FILE PHOTO: This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows the bright star-forming ring that surrounds the heart of the barred spiral galaxy NGC 1097, a Seyfert galaxy. NASA/ESA/Hubble/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo

Topics: Astrophysics, Einstein, General Relativity, Gravitational Lensing

The first observation of gravitational microlensing by a star other than the Sun has been reported by astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope. Predicted by Albert Einstein as a consequence of his general theory of relativity, gravitational microlensing involves the gravitational field of a star bending light coming from a more distant star. It was first observed during a total eclipse in 1919 by looking for deflections in the positions of stars in parts of the sky next to the Sun. Now, Kailash Sahu of the Space Telescope Science Institute in the US and an international team have measured the gravitational lensing of a background star by a white dwarf star called Stein 2051 B. Because the background star is not lined-up perfectly with Earth and Stein 2051 B, a combination of gravitational lensing and Earth's motion around the Sun causes the background star to appear to trace out a loop around Stein 2051 B. Sahu and colleagues mapped its position at five different times in 2013-14 and used this information to calculate the mass of Stein 2051 B. It turns out that astronomers have puzzled over the mass of the white dwarf for over 100 years. It is part of a binary system and the motion of its distant companion suggests that Stein 2051 B has a smaller mass than most white dwarfs, implying that it might have an exotic composition. This recent work, however, suggests that the star has a mass expected for a white dwarf of its radius. The observations will be described in and upcoming paper in Science. [1]

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Astronomers have found a new application for Albert Einstein's century-old theory of relativity - using it to directly measure the size of a star beyond the sun.

In research published on Wednesday, scientists said they used the Hubble Space Telescope to plot minute changes in the path of light coming from a distant background star as it passed by a relatively close target star, known as Stein 2051B.

Researchers applied Einstein's findings to measure how Stein 2051B's gravity warped the background star's light, a phenomenon the physicist predicted more than 100 years ago and a direct means to assess its mass. The technique could be applied to other stars.

"It was like measuring the motion of a little firefly in front of a light bulb from 1,500 miles away," astronomer Kailash Sahu of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore said at a news conference.

The research was presented at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Austin, Texas, on Wednesday and also published in this week's issue of the journal Science. [2]

1. Flash Physics: Bent light reveals stellar mass, amorphous topological insulators, Tibetan Plateau rose rapidly, Sarah Tesh, Physics World2. Einstein's theory provides new technique to size up stars, Reporting by Irene Klotz; Editing by Letitia Stein and Bill Trott, Reuters Science

Smart Fools...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on June 7, 2017 at 7:35am

Credit: michaelquirk Getty Images

Topics: Commentary, Education, Politics

BOSTON—At last weekend’s annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science (APS) in Boston, Cornell University psychologist Robert Sternberg sounded an alarm about the influence of standardized tests on American society. Sternberg, who has studied intelligence and intelligence testing for decades, is well known for his “triarchic theory of intelligence,” which identifies three kinds of smarts: the analytic type reflected in IQ scores; practical intelligence, which is more relevant for real-life problem solving; and creativity. Sternberg offered his views in a lecture associated with receiving a William James Fellow Award from the APS for his lifetime contributions to psychology. He explained his concerns to Scientific American.

[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]

In your talk, you said that IQ tests and college entrance exams like the SAT and ACT are essentially selecting and rewarding “smart fools”—people who have a certain kind of intelligence but not the kind that can help our society make progress against our biggest challenges. What are these tests getting wrong?

Tests like the SAT, ACT, the GRE—what I call the alphabet tests—are reasonably good measures of academic kinds of knowledge, plus general intelligence and related skills. They are highly correlated with IQ tests and they predict a lot of things in life: academic performance to some extent, salary, level of job you will reach to a minor extent—but they are very limited. What I suggested in my talk today is that they may actually be hurting us. Our overemphasis on narrow academic skills—the kinds that get you high grades in school—can be a bad thing for several reasons. You end up with people who are good at taking tests and fiddling with phones and computers, and those are good skills but they are not tantamount to the skills we need to make the world a better place.

What evidence do you see of this harm?

IQ rose 30 points in the 20th century around the world, and in the U.S. that increase is continuing. That’s huge; that’s two standard deviations, which is like the difference between an average IQ of 100 and a gifted IQ of 130. We should be happy about this but the question I ask is: If you look at the problems we have in the world today—climate change, income disparities in this country that probably rival or exceed those of the gilded age, pollution, violence, a political situation that many of us never could have imaged—one wonders, what about all those IQ points? Why aren't they helping?

What I argue is that intelligence that’s not modulated and moderated by creativity, common sense and wisdom is not such a positive thing to have. What it leads to is people who are very good at advancing themselves, often at other people’s expense. We may not just be selecting the wrong people, we may be developing an incomplete set of skills—and we need to look at things that will make the world a better place.

Do we know how to cultivate wisdom?

Yes we do. A whole bunch of my colleagues and I study wisdom. Wisdom is about using your abilities and knowledge not just for your own selfish ends and for people like you. It’s about using them to help achieve a common good by balancing your own interests with other people’s and with high-order interests through the infusion of positive ethical values.

You know, it’s easy to think of smart people but it’s really hard to think of wise people. I think a reason is that we don’t try to develop wisdom in our schools. And we don’t test for it, so there’s no incentive for schools to pay attention.

Is the U.S. Education System Producing a Society of “Smart Fools”? Claudia Wallis, Scientific American

Pushing the Quantum Limit...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on June 6, 2017 at 7:23am

A zoom in on the Josephson junctions. Two layers of niobium are visible in the image, with the upper film colored blue and the lower film colored red. Josephson junctions are formed in the circular pits (they look a bit like an element of a muffin tin) where the two layers overlap (green). Credit: K. Lehnert/NIST/JILA

Topics: Black Holes, Dark Matter, General Relativity

Here’s a surprising fact: We don’t know what makes up 80 percent of the matter in the universe. I don’t mean that the matter is made of atoms, and we just don’t know which kind of atoms. What I mean is that four-fifths of the universe appears to be made of something that isn’t atoms at all, or more to the point, it’s not made from any of the fundamental particles that we know of.

Why do we think that this mystery matter exists? The short answer is that Albert Einstein’s theory of gravity, general relativity, has painted us into a corner. When we look through telescopes at stars and galaxies moving through the universe, something we can’t see is causing their motion to bend in a particular way. Einstein’s theory of gravity tells how much of this invisible mass—physicists call it “dark matter”—there must be to bend the trajectory of things we can see.

Faced with a situation like this, we make guesses (hypotheses) that we hope explain our strange observations. A good hypothesis should both be consistent with every known fact and have other detectable consequences. If we look for these other consequences and don’t find them, we discard or revise our hypothesis.

Somewhat to my surprise, I find myself working on an experiment designed to look for the consequences of a hypothetical dark matter particle known as the axion. This was surprising because physicists, like those in all professions, divide themselves up into distinct sub-fields. Predictably there are rivalries between, and stereotypes associated with, different cultures that build up around the subfields—the rough equivalent of engineering versus sales in the corporate world.

NIST: Pushing the Quantum Limit in the Search for Dark Matter, Konrad Lehnert

Our Closest Star...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on June 5, 2017 at 7:34am

An artist's rendering of the newly named Parker Solar Probe spacecraft approaching the sun. Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory

Topics: Astrophysics, Heliophysics, NASA, Research, Solar Flares

It's a mission that's been in the works for nearly 60 years. NASA says it will launch a spacecraft in 2018 to "touch the sun," sending it closer to the star's surface than ever before.

The spacecraft is small – its instruments would fit into a refrigerator — but it's built to withstand temperatures of more than 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, all the while maintaining room temperature inside the probe.

"Even though the sun is so close to us, there's actually a lot about it we don't understand," says heat shield lead engineer Betsy Congdon from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

Scientists are hoping the data gathered might solve some of the big mysteries about the sun.

NPR: NASA Plans To Launch A Probe Next Year To 'Touch The Sun'Rae Allen Bichell, Merrit Kennedy

On Stupid...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on June 2, 2017 at 7:46am

Intellectual Takeout - Bonhoeffer on the ‘Stupidity’ That Led to Hitler’s Rise, Annie Holmquist

Topics: Existentialism, Stochastic Modeling, Politics

Facebook, Google, Microsoft, The Gap, Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips, National, Grid, Apple, Adobe, Danfoss, Levi Strauss & Co., Mars Incorporated, Hewlett Packard, Enterprise, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, Morgan Stanley, Unilever, Tiffany & Co Dignity, Health Ingersoll, Rand, Intel Corporation, PG&E Corporation, Johnson Controls, Royal DSM, The Hartford, Salesforce, Schneider Electric, VF Corporation

“A lot of US businesses are concerned about the potential trade ramifications of a US withdrawal,” Elliot Diringer, executive vice president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, the organization that sponsored the full-page ads, told Business Insider. “They think it’s important that the US remain in Paris to ensure them access to the growing clean energy markets around the world, and they see that a US withdrawal could hurt their access to those markets.”

During his time as CEO of Exxon Mobil, Trump’s now Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the company supported the agreement.

“At Exxon Mobil, we share the view that the risks of climate change are serious and warrant thoughtful action,” Tillerson said at a speech in 2016. “Addressing these risks requires broad-based, practical solutions around the world.” [1]

We have joined Nicaragua - a country we decimated in the "war on drugs" to arm the Contras and Syria - currently in a meltdown of civil war and refugees - and Russia as now one of four nations opting out of the Paris Climate Accords, hat tip to Pittsburgh.

I have an appreciation that when you talk about the age of the universe and the younger in comparison age of the Earth, humans have a perspective of "I'm from Missouri: I'll believe it when I see it." So, sense we've never SEEN a billion years its hard even with radiometric dating to prove to fellow humans that such an age is...provable.

2050 is 33 years, or a little over a traditional generation away. Non-scientists question actual scientists' stochastic models. President Bannon has reasserted himself by damning generations yet born. [2] Thirty-three years is enough time for incremental changes in the climate to take place and be seen by human eyes either living or born in 2017.

The non-sensational name of the phenomenon is "anthropogenic climate disruption." Despite the list of companies covering two fossil fuel companies and many that use them in either manufacture, power generation or transportation of goods and services, our chief "executive" wants to renegotiate ala his ghostwriter's inaugural tome, obviously to put his stamp on it as his ego won't allow him to follow the policies of his predecessor.

The irony is it will be China that will lead the way in green tech and alternative energy generation because they HAVE to: the very air is the number 1 way of dying in their vast country. [3] They will employ their billions of citizens and leave us in the global dust. [4] This will diversify their economy from electronics to that market, making solar and wind cheaper in comparison. In response to rising seas, they will likely move their populations over that landscape inland as other parts of the planet ponder other options. Lobbyists for the fossil industry (my guess) will make laws to combat the "free market" in this regard, similar to solar being so prohibitive to own in Koch-ruled Oklahoma. [5] Germany, China et al will step forward as well, time's arrow in Entropy points always inexorably to the future...it is only the Neanderthals denying science howling at the moon that revel in the nation's dark past as "ideal."

1. 28 major US companies that don’t want Trump to abandon the Paris agreementVeronika Bondarenko, Business Insider2. Trump Will Withdraw U.S. From Paris Climate Agreement, Michael D. Shear, NY Times3. China's Smog Is as Deadly as Smoking, New Research Claims, Feliz Solomon, TIME4. China cementing global dominance of renewable energy and technology, Michael Slezak, The Guardian5. The Koch Brothers' Dirty War on Solar Power, Tim Dickinson, Rolling Stone

Fifth at the Center...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on June 1, 2017 at 5:40am

Topics: Astrophysics, Black Holes, Cosmology, Einstein, General Relativity

General relativity has stood the test of time. But researchers are still exploring alternatives to the theory, attempting to unify gravity with other forces or to explain observations attributed to dark matter and dark energy. Many of these theories involve an additional force beyond the four known fundamental forces. Now, Andrea Ghez and Aurélien Hees at the University of California, Los Angeles, and co-workers, have analyzed the orbits of stars around the Milky Way’s center to derive limits on such a fifth force. While similar constraints had been obtained in weak gravitational fields, this is the first time fifth-force scenarios have been tested in a strong field, such as that created by the supermassive black hole at the center of our Galaxy. [1]

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Our current understanding of the Universe states that it's governed by four fundamental forces: gravity, electromagnetic, and the strong and weak nuclear forces.

But there are hints of a fifth force of nature, and if it exists, we'd not only be able to fill the remaining holes in Einstein's general relativity - we'd have to rethink our understanding of how the Universe actually works. And now physicists have figured out how to put this mysterious force to the ultimate test.

Gravity and the electromagnetic force are on the larger end of the scale - electromagnetic force is needed to keep our molecules together, while gravity is responsible for ensuring that entire galaxies and planets aren't ripped apart.

It's all very neat and sensible, but there's a problem - in a lot of ways, gravity is the 'odd one out' in this very important group.

For one thing, gravity is the last of the four fundamental forces that humans haven't figured out how to produce and control.

It also doesn't appear to explain everything that it should - studies have shown that there's more gravity in our Universe than can be produced by all the visible matter out there. [2]

1. Synopsis: Restricting the Fifth Force, Matteo Rini2. Physicists Are Probing The Centre of Our Galaxy to Find The Missing Fifth Force of Nature,BEC CREW #P4TC related link Fifth Force...May 31, 2016

Face Huggers to Covenant...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on May 31, 2017 at 7:01am

Topics: Commentary, Science Fiction, Space Exploration

I was sixteen when my best friend and I saw the first "Alien" movie in Winston-Salem, NC. We jumped, guffawed and were amazed at the special effects and the "Amityville Horror in space" motif. And just like any Earthbound horror flick, we both asked the same question each scene: "what the HELL are you still doing there?" I'm not sure we knew the alien as a xenomorph, just something big, menacing, acid-breathing and ugly.

From the review, they do make a nod to neutrinos and solar sails. Everything is apparently at relativistic speeds that are one day attainable. Prevalent in the movies was the mechanized nature of the spacecraft and the reference to corporations that in a Star Trek universe, gave way to warp drive, world brotherhood, Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle-defying replicators, money becoming obsolete; peace, love and phasers.

I was equally surprised to find a review on Physics Today. The quintessential question science fiction repeatedly asks "what does it mean to be human" has in this review the spotlight has been turned in reverse:

"Should we improve on our design?"

"What if our improvement no longer needs us?"

*****Spoiler Alert*****

In 1979 Ridley Scott shocked and delighted filmgoers with Alien, a tense tale of the crew of the spacecraft Nostromo. Despite the movie’s science-fiction theme, the subtext was pretty basic: “It was seven people locked in the old, dark house,” Scott says. “Who’s going to die first, and who’s going to survive?” Buried within the tale were questions about the role of humanity, the human condition, and the hubris of greedy corporations. Those themes were explored more thoroughly by other directors in the action-packed sequels Aliens, Alien 3, and Alien: Resurrection.

When Scott returned to the Alien universe by directing the 2012 prequel, Prometheus, what had been side notes to the horror and action became significant plot points. Prometheus looked more closely at the relationship between humans and our progeny, whether carbon or silicon based, and at how we influence and adapt to our environment. The film pondered the nature of the legacy that humans—or, for the purposes of the movie, a superintelligent alien species—hope to leave when they pass on.

The movie is beautifully filmed by Scott. It is nice to see old-school techniques such as building giant sets instead of using green screens to create a new world. The Covenant’s bridge has 1500 working lights and displays, and the astronaut suits were inspired by modern deep-sea diving suits. The acting, as you would expect from a Scott movie, is top notch; Fassbender (the androids David and Walter) stands out because he has the best lines.

Physics Today: Review: Alien: Covenant is more than an origin storyPaul K. Guinnessy

Puff N Stuff Planet...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on May 30, 2017 at 7:33am

An artist’s rendering of KELT-11b, a “Styrofoam-density” planet recently discovered by Lehigh astronomers that orbits a bright star in the Southern Hemisphere. (Image by Walter Robinson/Lehigh University)

Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Exoplanets, Space Exploration

Fifth-graders making Styrofoam models of the solar system may have the right idea. Lehigh researchers have discovered a new planet orbiting a star 320 light years from Earth that has the density of Styrofoam. This “puffy planet” outside our solar system may help solve the long-standing mystery of the existence of a population of highly inflated giant planets.

“It is highly inflated, so that while it’s only a fifth as massive as Jupiter, it is nearly 40 percent larger, making it about as dense as Styrofoam, with an extraordinarily thick atmosphere,” said Joshua Pepper, astronomer and assistant professor of physics at Lehigh, who led the study with researchers from Vanderbilt University and Ohio State University, along with researchers at universities and observatories and amateur astronomers around the world.

The research, “KELT-11b: A Highly Inflated Sub-Saturn Exoplanet Transiting the V+8 Subgiant HD 93396,” is published in The Astronomical Journal.

The planet, called KELT-11b, is an extreme version of a gas planet, like Jupiter or Saturn, but is orbiting very close to its host star in an orbit that lasts less than five days. The star, KELT-11, has started using up its nuclear fuel and is evolving into a red giant, so the planet will be engulfed by its star and will not survive the next hundred million years.

Lehigh University: ‘Styrofoam’ Planet May Help Solve Mystery of Giant PlanetsAmy White, Kurt Pfitzer

Dawn's First Light...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on May 29, 2017 at 6:43am

Image Source: Link below

Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Big Bang, Black Holes, Cosmology, Theoretical Physics

Not long after the Big Bang, all went dark. The hydrogen gas that pervaded the early universe would have snuffed out the light of the universe’s first stars and galaxies. For hundreds of millions of years, even a galaxy’s worth of stars — or unthinkably bright beacons such as those created by supermassive black holes — would have been rendered all but invisible.

Eventually this fog burned off as high-energy ultraviolet light broke the atoms apart in a process called reionization. But the questions of exactly how this happened — which celestial objects powered the process and how many of them were needed — have consumed astronomers for decades.

Now, in a series of studies, researchers have looked further into the early universe than ever before. They’ve used galaxies and dark matter as a giant cosmic lens to see some of the earliest galaxies known, illuminating how these galaxies could have dissipated the cosmic fog. In addition, an international team of astronomers has found dozens of supermassive black holes — each with the mass of millions of suns — lighting up the early universe. Another team has found evidence that supermassive black holes existed hundreds of millions of years before anyone thought possible. The new discoveries should make clear just how much black holes contributed to the reionization of the universe, even as they’ve opened up questions as to how such supermassive black holes were able to form so early in the universe’s history.

In the first years after the Big Bang, the universe was too hot to allow atoms to form. Protons and electrons flew about, scattering any light. Then after about 380,000 years, these protons and electrons cooled enough to form hydrogen atoms, which coalesced into stars and galaxies over the next few hundreds of millions of years.

Starlight from these galaxies would have been bright and energetic, with lots of it falling in the ultraviolet part of the spectrum. As this light flew out into the universe, it ran into more hydrogen gas. These photons of light would break apart the hydrogen gas, contributing to reionization, but as they did so, the gas snuffed out the light.

Quanta Magazine: Discoveries Fuel Fight Over Universe’s First LightAshley Yeager