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The Price...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on January 19, 2015 at 7:30am

Topics: Civil Rights, Day of Service, Four Little Girls, Martin Luther King, The Price

President Obama has signed a bill that awards the Congressional Medal of Honor to the four little girls killed in the 1963 KKK bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, AL.

The girls – Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Denise McNair – were killed on Sunday morning when members of the Klan planted dynamite in the Church’s basement.

Their deaths shocked the nation and the world, and stands as one of the most violent, horrific events of the Civil Rights Movement. Info and Image Source: Black Youth Project

By 1963, homemade bombs set off in Birmingham's black homes and churches were such common occurrences that the city had earned the nickname "Bombingham."

Source: History Channel - Birmingham Church Bombing

In the spirit of a "Day of Service," I served meals to the homeless at Beulah Baptist Church in Poughkeepsie, NY with my brothers of Kappa Alpha Psi this past Saturday. We fed over 200 persons (estimated) in assembly line fashion: chicken, rice, green beans, bread and a dessert. It was a multi-ethnic group, and included many families. For the most part, they went for the meals only. It was personally rewarding (though tiring), as I will be working through the morning and evening on the official holiday today.

This occurred September 16, 1963, a day after my mother's 38th birthday. I would have been a year and a month old; a month from the missiles of October's anniversary (we had teetered on the precipice of Armageddon - that was almost 10 months shy of my ONLY year); President Kennedy's assassination in Dallas, Texas the very next month. The times probably worried her, I'm sure.

We tend to forget the price paid by those who in an instance found themselves on the front lines of a battle for fairness over supremacy; freedom over de facto slavery via Jim Crow.

We tend to forget that soldiers aren't muscled, mighty men. Sometimes, they can be four beautiful little girls in the safest place they could possibly think to be - in their house of worship.

We also tend to forget that icons like Dr. Martin Luther King we admire now was vilified by some of his own - culture and clergy - and the extreme right of the time wore white sheets instead of (now) Armani, pin stripes and Prada.

We also forget in living rooms of complacency, flat screens, MMORPGs and comfortable backsides, only interrupted by the occasional level of violence that used to be so...commonplace, that sadly perhaps is becoming so again. It need not be someone you know to act on the behalf of others. Being human, compassionate and common decency should be more than enough.

May today be a Day of Service for you as you see fit to express it.

I will resume posting 1 Feb 2015.

Justifying...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on January 18, 2015 at 7:55am

[Original] Image Source: Rain dance - famous actors who've never won Oscars

Topics: Apathy, Diversity, History, Oscars 2015, Selma, Voting Rights

I spent Friday watching "Selma" in tears from the haunting images, graphic displays of violence that was (is?) a part of our country on quite a regular basis in the 1960's. During the time of the Civil Rights Act (1964) and the Voting Rights Act (1965), I was 2 and 3-years-old respectively, too young to be of any good to the movement and merely a worry for my activist big sister.

I think a lot about my big sister in movies like this. She would have been one of the young people that got on "freedom ride" buses and put her life on the line for equality, or as she says now, everyone's equality, women, immigrants, LGBT. I remember her arguments with our parents about her safety. I remember praying I'd see her again. I remember crying a lot.

As I said (without giving away spoilers), my wife and I spent most of the movie in tears. I doubt if either my sister, mother-in-law or a lot of seniors in my family will want to see this movie. For them, it brings back painful memories.

If "demographics is destiny" - the mantra for the year 2042 - then, at 6,028 voters of which 94% are so-called "white"; 76% male and the average age 63 years, it's a pretty forgone conclusion that our stories were not going to get a mention above "best picture" and song; our actors were not going to get an Oscar nod. Also of note in that demographic, their sentiments of the time would have been shaped by their environments. Since we don't know where they lived before residing in "liberal" Hollywood, their view of Selma's value in lieu of #BlackLivesMatter and the recent, gut-wrenching atrocities of Boko Haram is an interesting contrast compared to how they all jumped on the #JeSuisCharlie bandwagon so quickly...and easily. A group of 5,666 and male gender of 4,581 pushing into senior citizenry don't likely have heroic memories of the 1960's since there was clearly two sides of the debate - depending on their families' politics at the time - they could have found themselves on. That makes for an academy clearly lacking diversity, either ashamed or indifferent.

What exactly is an "Oscar," and why does it matter? This is a self-contrived public pat-on-the-back by the industry itself. Whether you look at it or not, it is a vast infomercial on the movies you could have seen and didn't. You'll pay the $11.50 per person (New York prices) and the equally outrageous price for popcorn; you'll order it on pay-per-view; download it on bootleg: win-win-win-kinda-sorta (not).

These are OUR stories, and all of humanity's stories: it is not for us to make some privileged, self-mythologized group of "others love us" - it is for us to love ourselves, they are validated in the telling of them; everyone else is along for the ride and welcome. Our campfires required no feedback from the tribe other than applause; they are now clearly in the electromagnetic spectrum. We can read; we can write; we can act and direct; we can upload videos and audio; we can distribute on DVD and via Netflix. If Selma is anything more than an ironic juxtaposition regarding Civil Rights and Voting Rights fought for by young people and fifty years later, their millennial grandchildren being too apathetic to decide their own hard-fought destinies in the voting booth (but, up front in line on Black Friday), they deserve whatever bizarre legislation that is likely to come of this 114th congress. Opinions are fine, but action is far better, and revolutions have never been won in living rooms on backsides, nor freedoms for "consent of the governed" maintained without constant vigilance and participation. Voting, as Selma did, and the midterms' aftermath will show: matters.

Offical Site: Selma Movie

Avoid Tidal Locking...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on January 17, 2015 at 2:50pm

An artist's impression of Kepler-62f, a planet that is in the habitable zone of a star smaller and cooler than the Sun, located about 1200 light-years from Earth. (Courtesy: NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech)

Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Exoplanets, Space Exploration

Even a thin atmosphere can keep a planet spinning freely, giving it a day-and-night cycle like Earth's, say astronomers in Canada and France. The result implies that many of the planets lying within the habitable zones of "dim suns" – the most common type of star – could have terrestrial-type climates.

"It was a surprise," says Jérémy Leconte, an astronomer at the University of Toronto. "We didn't expect that there would be such a strong effect."

Astronomers have so far discovered more than 1000 exoplanets – planets orbiting stars other than the Sun – and it is becoming clear that our tiny portion of the universe could contain vast numbers of such planets. What is not yet clear is how many of these planets could actually harbour life.

Most stars, known as orange and red dwarfs, are cooler, fainter and smaller than the Sun; so to stay warm, a habitable planet must huddle close to the star. But the closer a planet is to its sun, the stronger are the tidal forces that the star exerts on the planet. These tides can affect how fast the planet spins. In extreme cases, these tides are so strong that they produce "tidal locking", forcing the planet to spin as slowly as it revolves. This means that one side of the planet forever faces the star, while the other side forever faces away, creating a world with a permanent day side and a permanent night side. The night side may get so cold that air freezes there, robbing the planet of an atmosphere.

Physics World: Exoplanets could avoid 'tidal locking' if they have atmospheres
Ken Croswell

Star Stuff...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on January 17, 2015 at 2:53pm

Image Source: Brain Pickings

Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Carl Sagan, Sociology, Urban Planning

"We are made by the atoms and the stars… our matter and our form are determined by the cosmos of which we are a part."

"We are made of star stuff." Carl Sagan

TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: Urban sociologists have long known that a set of remarkable laws govern the large-scale interaction between individuals such as the probability that one person will befriend another and the size of the cities they live in.

The latter is an example of the Zipf’s law. If cities are listed according to size, then the rank of a city is inversely proportional to the number of people who live in it. For example, if the biggest city in the US has a population of 8 million people, the second-biggest city will have a population of 8 million divided by 2, the third biggest will have a population of 8 million divided by 3 and so on.

This simple relationship is known as a scaling law and turns out to fit the observed distribution of city sizes extremely well.

Another interesting example is the probability that one person will be friends with another. This turns out to be inversely proportional to the number of people who live closer to the first person than the second.

What’s curious about these laws is that although they are widely accepted, nobody knows why they are true. There is no deeper theoretical model from which these laws emerge. Instead, they come simply from the measured properties of cities and friendships.

Today, all that changes thanks to the work of Henry Lin and Abraham Loeb at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics in Cambridge. These guys have discovered a single unifying principle that explains the origin of these laws.

And here’s the thing: their approach is mathematically equivalent to the way that cosmologists describe the growth of galaxies in space. In other words, cities form out of variations in population density in exactly the same way that galaxies formed from variations in matter density in the early universe.

Physics arXiv: A Unifying Theory for Scaling Laws of Human Populations
Henry W. Lin, Abraham Loeb

futurehood

Posted by Arnold L. Johnson on January 17, 2015 at 11:28am

Sunny, a slight breeze, I had to meet with a guy about converting my garage into a tiny house/man cave.

The street was lined with older large homes, average city lots, all spiffied and immaculate like storefronts. Like storefronts because the sides were weathered and beaten. I pulled into the driveway, small sign said come to the back.

Beyond the end of the house sat a shed attached to a quonset greenhouse and another shed on a trailer docked to the end of the greenhouse. Strangely patterned quilts hung in a clothesline and a solar bar-BQ grill I never seen in real life. I was expecting a Martian to appear in my presents as I gazed disconnected from reality.

"The quilts are a matrix of piezo crystals and solar cells to capture sun, sound and wind energy." I didn't even spin to see whom was speaking. "The front house facade is for show, I mostly live back here now." Yoda, you must be Yoda! I blurted out. There was silence then we burst out laughing. "I've been called that. Who is that anyway?"

"We are all joined by the hip to the grid. I just thought I sip through a straw instead of gulping like it's my last day on earth." "How much of anything do I need anyway." "Besides, it's fun to do what I do with my own time and dime and not spending most on grid fees." "They give incentives to use less energy, then raise the rates because you aren't paying your share, endless game." "I am constructing a smaller house within the big house so in the winter time I won't have to heat all of it."

"In the summer I come out here, it's a minimalist paradise, I'm an urban techno native." "The stationary shed sleeps two, has everything needed for a simple decluttered life." "We live mostly in our mind so once you clean your head of others thinking, demanding, approving, and influencing, you can get on with unobstructed living."

"The greenhouse has a fish unit, veggies, herbs, I can really go shopping once a month." "The mobile shed is my travel house, I haven't seen the inside of a motel in years." "On a good sunny day, I can grill whatever, even steaks. It also has a thermo/electrical converter that makes electricity." "I charge batteries of all kinds for the whole neighborhood with my extra energy." "Too bad the hood isn't all as I but some get it and some never get anything."

I took it all in. Sitting here at home reliving that experience and complaining. Damn, I just let that man redefine my values and I've got to do something about it. I'm drawing plans for an inner house, mobile shed and greenhouse. I wonder where he keeps his light-saber?

Mythology Week

Posted by Lauren Phantoms on January 16, 2015 at 5:46pm

The Ramayana www.quazoo.com

Mythology week is coming up on the @afrophantoms Twitter account. Before I go further into detail about mythology week, let me first say that I love myths, legends and all things from the ancient world. Mythology is the reason I wanted to become an archaeologist as a kid. Eventually, I studied anthropology in college with a focus on folklore.

Growing up, myths and lore from the western world was readily available for the picking. I cannot stress how many times I’ve read Homer or the Arthurian legends. In a previous post I talked about how I took a Harry Potter class in college because J.K. Rowling makes direct references to these giant works of literature. You can read it here.

Sadly, I couldn’t help but feel lonely. These epics and myths are not my history. I can talk all day about how multicultural and ethnically diverse the ancient Mediterranean area was, but for the sake of this post I’m going to say that most of the heroes we read about had white faces.

In high school I took a world mythology class where I was introduced to the Ramayana and the love story of Osiris and Isis and Osiris’s evil, jealous brother Seth. Interestingly, we never talked about sub-Saharan African or Chinese mythology.

Osiris and Isis drakinan.weebly.com

My thirst for knowledge is the inspiration for mythology week. This is a learning opportunity for all of us. During these seven days of greatness, Asian, African, Australian, Native American and Caribbean mythology will be explored. If anyone has any myths they want talked about email me at afrophantoms14@gmail.com and like us on Facebook.

Mythology Week is January 25th-31st, 2015.

Ethnic issues in Movies: my response to a facebook friend

Posted by Brandon Hill on January 17, 2015 at 1:32am

So, I have a friend on Facebook who is a moviemaker and martial artist, who has been quite verbose about the recent casting of Scarlett Johansen in the adaptation of the anime classic, "Ghost in the Shell" slated for a 2017 release. This decision has sparked something of a controversy about ethnicity and movies among internet bloggers, and my friend was no exception to the rule, here.

Now, I don't completely disagree with all his views, but there are some things that have concerned me. And since this has become a very involved discussion, I felt the best way to do it was to make a video in response to his article, which can be found here. I recommend you all go and read it, and then take a look at my video response. I want to see what you think, as writers and aspiring filmmakers, about this issue of ethnic diversity.

-Brandon

Quantum, BEC et Francais...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on January 16, 2015 at 6:58am

Image Source: PhD Comics TV

Topics: Collaboration, French, Humor, Quantum Mechanics

Also found in the first video:

The second video is subtitled in French, but the concept is discernible from the animation. It would be interesting to blend say, a high school French class with a Physics class: industry refers to this as cross-training or joint development; young minds are no different. Translating the video should take a little collaboration and work from both classrooms; post yours in the comments section below. Teachers: Award extra credit where applicable. Juste un petit quelque chose pour pimenter un vendredi...

Chem4Kids.com: Bose-Einstein Condensates
Physics4Kids.com: Quantum Mechanics
Quantum Made Simple: Tout Est Quantique en Francais
(French-English on-page text translation tool available at the site)

Annus Mirabilis...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on January 15, 2015 at 8:20am

Source of Quote: Brain Quotes

Topic: Einstein

History note: Today is the actual birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. More on that Monday.

Einstein's first paper on the photoelectric effect was received March 18 and published June 9. He proposed, inspired by Max Planck, the idea of light energy in packets, or "quanta."

The Latin phrase annus mirabilis is rightly translated "year of wonders" as well as "year of miracles." 1492 saw the discovery of the West Indies by Columbus and the birth of grammar construction for modern language. 1543: the scientific revolution with Andreas Vesalius, "De humani corporis fabrica" (On the Fabric of the Human Body), and Nicolaus Copernicus "De revolutionibus orbium coelestium" (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres) in Nuremberg, Germany. It was applied to a poem written in 1667 by John Dryden, commenting on the Battle of Lowestoft fought by English and Dutch ships in 1665; the Four Days Battle of June 1666, and finally the victory of the St. James's Day Battle a month later. The second part of the poem deals with the Great Fire of London that ran from September 2–7, 1666. He wrote this escaping the Great Plague of London at Charlton in Wiltshire. The poem contains 1216 lines of verse, arranged in 304 quatrains. The reference has had many iterations and uses up to and since Einstein. Source: Wikipedia

We are now 110 years from the event that birthed the modern age of physics and technology we now find commonplace enough to take for granted by a guy in a patent office that at the time, didn't feel he was too successful. He would thankfully be proven in this instance quite wrong in his self-assessment.

"Do not worry about your difficulties in mathematics, I assure you that mine are greater."

"It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge."

Hyper Physics: The Photoelectic Effect

The Library of Congress: The Annus Mirabilis of Albert Einstein

Black Phosphorous...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on January 14, 2015 at 8:02am

Image Source: Technology Review

Topics: Field-Effect Transistors, Materials Science, Nanotechnology

TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: In the last few years, two-dimensional crystals have emerged as some of the most exciting new materials to play with. Consequently, materials scientists have been falling over themselves to discover the extraordinary properties of graphene, boron nitride, molybdenum disulphide, and so on.

A late-comer to this group is black phosphorus, in which phosphorus atoms join together to form a two-dimensional puckered sheet. Last year, researchers built a field-effect transistor out of black phosphorus and showed that it performed remarkably well. This research suggested that black phosphorous could have a bright future in nanoelectronic devices.

But there is a problem. Black phosphorus is difficult to make in large quantities. Today, Damien Hanlon at Trinity College Dublin in Ireland, and a number of pals, say they have solved this problem.

These guys have perfected a way of making large quantities of black phosphorus nanosheets with dimensions that they can control. And they have used this newfound ability to test black phosphorus in a number of new applications, such as a gas sensor, an optical switch, and even to reinforce composite materials to make them stronger.

In bulk form, black phosphorus is made of many layers, like graphite. So one way to separate single sheets is by exfoliation, simply peeling off layers using Scotch tape or other materials. That is a time-consuming task that severely limits potential applications.

So Hanlon and co have been toying with another approach. Their method is to place the black phosphorus lump in a liquid solvent and then bombard it with acoustic waves that shake the material apart.

The result is that the bulk mass separates into a large number of nanosheets that the team filters for size using a centrifuge. That leaves high-quality nanosheets consisting of only a few layers. “Liquid phase exfoliation is a powerful technique to produce nanosheets in very large quantities,” they say.

One potential problem with black phosphorus nanosheets is that they degrade rapidly when in contact with water or oxygen. So one of the advances the team has made is to predict that certain solvents should form a solvation shell around the sheet, which prevents oxygen or other oxidative species from reaching the phosphorus.

Physics arXiv:
Liquid exfoliation of solvent-stabilised black phosphorus: applications beyond electronics
Damien Hanlon, Claudia Backes, Evie Doherty, Clotilde S. Cucinotta, Nina C. Berner, Conor Boland, Kangho Lee, Peter Lynch, Zahra Gholamvand, Andrew Harvey, Saifeng Zhang, Kangpeng Wang, Glenn Moynihan, Anuj Pokle, Quentin M. Ramasse, Niall McEvoy, Werner J. Blau, Jun Wang, Stefano Sanvito, David D. ORegan, Georg S. Duesberg, Valeria Nicolosi, Jonathan N. Coleman

NASA's KELPER SPACECRAFT DISCOVERS NEW BATCH OF EARTH-LIKE PLANETS

Posted by Da'Shen on January 13, 2015 at 5:30pm

click to read article

Colloidal Quantum Dots and Solar...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on January 13, 2015 at 7:26am

PbS/Cd₃P₂ quantum heterojunction colloidal quantum dot solar cells. Source: Link Below

Topics:

Colloidal Quantum Dots, Exciton, Heterojunction, Shockley-Queisser limit, Solar Cells

PbS = lead sulfide, Cd₃P₂ = cadmium phosphide

Colloidal quantum dots (CQDs) provide a tunable bandgap via the quantum size effect. They are solution-synthesized and -processed semiconductor nanocrystals. They are very attractive for application in low-cost, high-efficiency solar cells capable of harvesting the broad solar spectrum beyond the Shockley-Queisser limit. This is a result of the tandem or multi-junction strategy and their promise in multiple exciton generation. Reporting in Nanotechnology, researchers demonstrate quantum heterojunction CQD solar cells and explore the versatility of the concept.

Researchers from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, and Soochow University in China synthesize well crystallized and nearly monodisperse tetragonal Cd3P2 CQDs. They demonstrate the quantum heterojunction solar cells employing the PbS CQDs/Cd₃P₂ CQDs architecture. Here, both the p-type PbS and n-type Cd₃P₂ CQD layers are quantum-tunable and solution-processed light absorbers.

Nanotechweb.org: Colloidal quantum dots: solar applications

#P4TC: Related articles on quantum dots

NZERTF...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on January 12, 2015 at 7:46am

Image Source: NIST

Topic: Net Zero Buildings

The Net-Zero Energy Residential Test Facility (NZERTF) is a unique laboratory at the National Institute of Standards (NIST) in Gaithersburg, Md. A net-zero energy home produces at least as much energy as it consumes over the course of a year.

Both a laboratory and a house, the two-story, four bedrooms, three-bath NZERTF would blend in nicely in a new suburban subdivision. It was designed and built to be approximately 60 percent more energy efficient than homes built to meet the requirements of the 2012 International Energy Conservation Code.

I've discussed Net Zero Buildings in a previous post. But...if you knew there was an engineering solution that could benefit the middle class; more about such homes existing, you might demand it, and affect the "free market," currently deciding the price of fuel at the pump; groceries (grocers paying the shippers by raising our food costs); clothing, plastic, consumer products (ditto reasons) and generally dealing in parts of the world that clearly don't want us in their back yards. You're not supposed to know it exists, so shh!

NIST:
Net-Zero Energy Residential Test Facility

Terms of Indifference...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on January 11, 2015 at 6:28am

Image: Gall Source

"The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent, but if we can come to terms with this indifference, then our existence as a species can have genuine meaning. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light." Stanley Kubrick, Wired Magazine - "Beyond" issue, December 2014, on the last page.

Topic: existentialism

Before we can exhale from the violence of 2012 and Trayvon Martin, Jordan Davis and Sandy Hook; 2013 and Renisha McBride; 2014: Michael Brown, Eric Garner and Tamir Rice, we barely breathe the air of a new year without the reminder of violence we visit towards one another.

I could only offer my condolences to two coworkers - one, a French teacher I met at my last high school, the other a current industry colleague. My fellow teacher had just celebrated a birthday. Me to her: " ____, I'm so sorry. I mourn for the loss of your countrymen." Her only reply: "It's a shame...:'(" I only studied French in high school and college; I am not French, but I am human. We are...ALL...human.

I can only offer my condolences to the affected families now in Paris. On 9/11/2001 the world became Americans for a brief, fleeting instant of solidarity. Tragedy should not be the glue of humanity, but it often is.

The artificial barriers we've erected for ourselves - ethnicity, language, Melanin, neighborhoods, politics, power, religion, wealth - all are centered in terms of grappling with that indifference, and for some it is terrifying enough to do violence. The aforementioned barriers are what made many of us "anointed, chosen, set apart; special." It is how we've defined ourselves in our villages and valleys until encounters with other tribes over the hill; in other valleys or on other continents made us question our own uniqueness. It is the first thing that comes to mind when we say: "I/We am/are FILL IN THE BLANK." Because of this terror of cosmic indifference, we seek after something I've heard referred tongue-in-cheek in urban slang as the "Nirvana complex" (more formally, the Nirvana fallacy), which is on a subconscious level, and socially quite ecumenical. I personify it and construct its sentence:

"The world would be perfect, if everyone was just like 'us': FILL IN THE BLANK."

The Earth was once thought flat...until it was found it was not. The Earth was thought the center of the universe...until Galileo peered through a telescope and became a heretic with his church. Melanin was the arbiter of all things superior deciding laws and living spaces, until science - with the breathtaking exception of even Nobel laureates mistaken promotion of the pseudoscience Eugenics - found "we are all Africans" (more correctly: former residents of Pangaea; more precisely: Earthlings), thoroughly discrediting lynching, slavery, racist coded laws, segregation, Jim Crow, red lining; xenophobia. Yes, African and Arab tribes sold fellow tribesmen; Aristotle had views pro-slavery of Greeks owning other Greeks, as well as many philosophers through the ages: that does not justify the ownership of another human being; nor (admittedly, bigoted) satire justify the murder of 12 fellow humans or speaking for an entire religion's adherents. Je suis humain...nous sommes humains.

"The world would be perfect, if everyone was just like 'us': FILL IN THE BLANK."

Note the Drake Equation from the SETI institute and its namesake Dr. Frank Drake, is the method radio astronomers use to peruse the heavens for intelligent extraterrestrial life. The last factor, L = the length of time such (intelligent) civilizations release detectable signals into space - for the Planet Earth, that is under question and debatable.

The "Internet of Things" is quickly becoming reality as is the terrifying fact with some any change, any technological or social advancement, there is a seismic, regressive reaction from those who peer into the vast darkness and find their worlds getting smaller. We need a global conversation about our genuine meaning, before our brief light is dimmed to an indifferent universe that will not mourn our species' self-destructive passing. It will just be forever...silent.

“When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind.” Jiddu Krishnamurti

The Mirror Up To Nature...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on January 10, 2015 at 7:59am

Image Source: World Science Festival, Bill Blakemore

Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion
be your tutor: suit the action to the word, the
word to the action; with this special o'erstep not
the modesty of nature: for any thing so overdone is
from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the
first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the
mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature,
scorn her own image, and the very age and body of
the time his form and pressure. Now this overdone,
or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful
laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the
censure of the which one must in your allowance
o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. O, there be
players that I have seen play, and heard others
praise, and that highly, not to speak it profanely,
that, neither having the accent of Christians nor
the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so
strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of
nature's journeymen had made men and not made them
well, they imitated humanity so abominably.

Hamlet, Act 3, Scene II, A hall in the castle

Again, quoting Carl Sagan: "We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology." And sadly, as demonstrated recently in the US and the "land down under," some of the aforementioned get elected to public office.

Topics: Climate Change, Global Warming

Is Hollywood Our “Collective Unconscious”?

It has often been suggested that Hollywood, and popular arts in general, may be something like a Jungian “collective unconscious” responding to deep underlying worries of the time – to the time’s ”form and pressure”, to use Hamlet’s phrase.

In recent years, Hollywood has poured out a growing number of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic movies, as if responding to our gathering collective anxiety about global warming and the related destruction of species and ecosystems. There’s even a new sub-category of such films, coined in 2007 by blogger Danny Bloom: “Cli-fi” is science fiction set in worlds disrupted by manmade climate change.

In 2004, The Day After Tomorrow showed us a world suddenly thrown into a severe ice age when global warming melted so much heavy fresh water from the Greenland ice sheet into the Atlantic Ocean’s Gulf Stream that its circulating current shut down and stopped carrying tropical heat to the northern latitudes as it does today. In 2014, Interstellar gave us a parched and blighted earth unable to provide food for its starving inhabitants – and the fantasy that humanity would somehow even have time to find a home on another planet, though none alive today might make it that far.

Nor do today’s actual climate scientists and world leaders, working hard on the climate crisis, give any thought to such escape. They are working with reports that global warming is already killing many (who would not die if there were no manmade climate crisis), is bearing down fast, and is already showing early signs of the sort of economic disruption which, amplified, could make the expense of any space efforts unconscionable here on our only home. The planet’s leaders tell us we’re not there yet—life still goes on fairly normally, pleasant or not, for most people, but not all—and that we’re all headed that way.

World Science Festival:
Climate Change What Will The Humans Do? (Part 3), Bill Blakemore

Related Link
MIT Technology Review:
How Much Fossil Fuel Should Be Left in the Ground? Mike Orcutt

Tomorrow: Terms of Indifference

"The Book of Negroes"....

Posted by H. Wolfgang Porter on January 9, 2015 at 3:38am

While many were watching the premiere of 'Empire', I caught the premiere of the Canadian series based upon Lawrence Hill's Novel, "The Book of Negroes". Off the top here at a sci-fi social networking site, that may sound like a racist fantasy-adventure tome. But it isn't. Rather TBN is the account of an African Woman named Aminata taken from her homeland by African Slavers and her life as a slave in the 'new world' during the late 18th and early 19th Century.

Though there have been other series and recently the film '12 Years a Slave', TBN in many ways is a chronicle like the original Roots from the perspective of an enslaved woman.

Like with 'Amistad', few punches are pulled with how conditions were aboard a slave ship despite it being a network show. They also showed how many captured slaves plotted and fought to keep from being carried off to who-knew-where for who-knew-what. What I like about the show so far is how they portrayed African people as having perfectly good and reasonable lives without the 'help' of the white man. Even showed how African lives began to suck because of the white man's influence.

So far, they haven't 'romanticized' the situation and I look forward to seeing how they handle Aminata's life as an adult among the whims of her Southern white master and whether the story turns to romanticized mush or if they stay the course and keep it real....
http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/the-book-of-negroes-makes-tv-debut-wednesday-on-cbc-tv-1.2891161

Nada Mucho...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on January 9, 2015 at 6:24am

Image Source: See Link [2] below

Some levity in light of current events that I will address in an essay on Sunday. RG

The number zero as we know it arrived in the West circa 1200, most famously delivered by Italian mathematician Fibonacci (aka Leonardo of Pisa), who brought it, along with the rest of the Arabic numerals, back from his travels to north Africa. But the history of zero, both as a concept and a number, stretches far deeper into history—so deep, in fact, that its provenance is difficult to nail down.

"There are at least two discoveries, or inventions, of zero," says Charles Seife, author of Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea (Viking, 2000). "The one that we got the zero from came from the Fertile Crescent." It first came to be between 400 and 300 B.C. in Babylon, Seife says, before developing in India, wending its way through northern Africa and, in Fibonacci's hands, crossing into Europe via Italy. [1]

To mathematician Amir Aczel the most important number of all might just be zero. Zero—nothing—may sound boring, but without it our entire number system and the world of mathematics it enables could not exist. In his new book, Finding Zero: A Mathematician’s Odyssey to Uncover the Origins of Numbers (St. Martin’s Press, Palgrave Macmillan Trade, 2015), Aczel searches for, and finds, the earliest known artifact bearing a representation of zero.

The object, an inscription on a stone slab, was originally found in the 1930s in the ruins of a seventh-century temple in Cambodia. It was lost over the years and scholars feared it was destroyed during the 1970s reign of the Khmer Rouge. But Aczel finally tracked it down and reintroduced this important milestone into the historical record. [2]

Zero as concept can be credited to Ancient Babylon (nowadays Iraq), India and appeared in the New World with the Mayans [2]. This got us thinking about "big" numbers, changing our concept of things large, such as architecture, the cosmos and wealth; and things long, like time.

It's also a good excuse to embed a true "infomercial" from my youth, when kids had cartoons and an education in the advertisements:

Scientific American:

1. The Origin of Zero, Much ado about nothing: First a placeholder and then a full-fledged number, zero had many inventors, John Matson
2. This Mathematician Figured Out How to Solve for Zero [Q&A], Amir Aczel explored jungles and ancient temples to trace the history of the number zero, Clara Moskowitz

#P4TC Related Link

Zilch...Nada...and a little more..., November 28, 2011

fear of tomorrow

Posted by Arnold L. Johnson on January 6, 2015 at 7:30am

Why do people who live in the here and now

long for the distant future

and people who claim a future mind

long to relive the past

Perhaps a clueless resolve of the here and now,

a fear of the next step.

The future and the past are comfortably known,

the next step is filled with anxiety and speculation

the next step is not what anyone envisions.

Will the next step produce the future we envision?

Don't know. Who will take it? Not me, what about you?

No way, I don't know how it will turn out.

We have fashion and cars that change every half year,

architecture and minds change with the glaciers.

I've always wondered why grungy apocalyptic scenes with seasoned feudal anarchy

are faithfully rendered as a hopeless future. The future is coming, we are doomed!

While one sings the Happy song, another sings Let it go or is that Let it snow?

We stand at the door tugging till the hinges are ready to bust. Salt 'n' Peppa magically appear,

Push it, push it real good! Cause that is the next step.

We've been waiting to move so long the past has caught up to us.

Time to take the next step.

The house model project is progressing, the building stage is done, next the painting.

Einstein's Impossible Measurement...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on January 7, 2015 at 7:04am

Figure 1. Brownian motion trajectories. When examined at modest measurement rates (a), the observed positions (red dots) of particles executing Brownian motion appear to lie on the jerky trajectory illustrated in red. The black curve shows the underlying particle path. (b) Measurements at finer time scales reveal that the particle path is in fact built from short bursts of constant velocity motion.

Citation: Phys. Today 68, 1, 56 (2015); http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.2665

It's always exciting when I recognize and actually know the authors!

Dr. Mark G. Raizen is the Sid W. Richardson Foundation Regents Chair of Physics and Professor of Physics at the University of Texas, Austin.

Dr. Tongcang Li received his PhD under Mark's guidance and is now Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy/Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University. They were both kind enough when Dr. Li was completing his graduate degree to give Cassandra and I a tour of their lab and impressive work at UT.

Mark has pioneered, in his own words, a "general methods to control the motion of atoms and molecules. This work will be used to test very basic questions in physics, and will also find real-life applications," which is a modest understatement! First to do this was former Department of Energy Secretary and Nobel Laureate Dr. Steven Chu. The process in the Raizen Group is a vast improvement on this impressive achievement. An excerpt of the article is below; explore the article at the link for "optical tweezers": think James Clerk Maxwell's "demon" thought experiment. Keep in mind real-life applications going forward. Nicely done, gentlemen: I applaud your great research and a well-written presentation. I thank you for your permission to post this.

Particles undergoing Brownian motion move with constant velocity between Brownian kicks. Albert Einstein predicted the velocity distribution, but he wrongly thought his result would never be experimentally confirmed.

Brownian motion, the seemingly random wiggle-waggle of particles suspended in a liquid or gas, was first systematically studied by Robert Brown in 1827 and described in the Philosophical Magazine the next year (volume 4, page 161). When Brown used a microscope to look at particles from pollen grains immersed in water, he “observed many of them very evidently in motion.” It looked like the particles were alive, so vigorously did they move.

The phenomenon of Brownian motion was first explained by Albert Einstein in 1905 as a consequence of the thermal motion of surrounding fluid molecules. Einstein’s theory predicts that Brownian particles diffuse; as a consequence, their mean-square displacement 〈(Δ x)²〉 = 2 Dt in each dimension is proportional to a diffusion coefficient D and the measured time interval t. As illustrated in figure 1 a, the motion of Brownian particles looks like a jerky and unpredictable dance, and the sudden changes in direction and speed seem to indicate that velocity is not defined. Moreover, the mean velocity
〈 v〉 ≡ 〈(Δ x)²〉 ^1/2/ t = (2 D/ t) ^1/2 diverges as t approaches 0. If you think all that is strange, you are in good company: Einstein felt the same way.

Physics Today: The measurement Einstein deemed impossible
Mark G. Raizen and Tongcang Li

Related #P4TC Links:

Improved Isotope Enrichment, July 1, 2014
Einstein, Entropy and Information, March 23, 2013
Brownian Motion...Einstein "wrong..ish", May 16, 2011
Maxwell's Demon & information-to-energy, November 16, 2010
Comprehensive Control of Atomic and Molecular Motion, August 23, 2010

International Year of Light...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on January 6, 2015 at 6:59am

The International Year of Lightand Light-based Technologies will see hundreds of events around the world celebrating the science and applications of light.

Physicists around the world are gearing up for the International Year of Light and Light-based Technologies (IYL), which kicks off later this month at an official opening ceremony at the headquarters of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in Paris. Some 1500 delegates are set to converge on the French capital for the event, which runs from 19 to 20 January, and will include representatives from the UN and UNESCO as well as the Nobel laureates Zhores Alferov, Steven Chu, Serge Haroche and William Phillips. Designed to highlight how light and light-based technologies touch every aspect of our lives, the IYL will involve more than 100 partners from 85 countries – including the Institute of Physics (IOP), which publishes Physics World.

The UN has declared "international years" since 1959 to draw attention to topics deemed to be of worldwide importance. In recent years, there have been a number of successful science-based themes, including physics (2005), astronomy (2009), chemistry (2011) and crystallography (2014), with the idea for a celebration of light having been initiated by the European Physical Society (EPS) in 2009.

It is light and its careful, focused exposure to finer details that has allowed us to shrink feature sizes and thus technologies in line with Moore's Law. Beyond light, we're looking at nanomanufacturing techniques using e-beam (electrons); nanoimprinting, nanoscratching and using AFM (atomic force microscope) and STM (scanning tunneling microscopy) for finer control still (ref: Physics Today, "Top-down Nanomanufacturing," Matthias Imboden and David Bishop, page 47). This post accompanies Monday's "Fab on a Chip" post. What we do in this industry is not trivial, but it is learn-able, doable and quite rewarding with the right dedication and discipline.

Physics World: Physicists get set for UNESCO's Year of Light

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