The Alien's Dilemma

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The mid-May edition of New Scientist features articles on "information."  Something called "Maxwell's Demon" plays a large role in one article. It seems that James Clerk Maxwell, the 1880s darling of the posh physics set, constructed a mind experiment to demonstrate how information could move from an intellectual, mental construct to a physical reality. 

Maxwell asked us to imagine a two-chambered box, divided by a wall with a frictionless gate. In each chamber an equal number of molecules were bouncing around at random.  However, Maxwell's Demon knew when a molecule was approaching the gate. Armed with only that information, the Demon could open the gate and allow a molecule to pass between the chambers, creating an uneven number of molecules in the two chambers. That, according to the second law of thermodynamics, would cause a temperature change in the box. This proves, according to Maxwell and his Demon, that "information" could do "work" and hence had very real physical characteristics.  I'll get back to you to clarify that concept in six or seven years. 

But it did get me thinking about the idea of thought experiments and how they might be useful in "rethinking" some of the important issues in our life.  So the idea of Maxwell's Demon combined, no doubt, with the episode on crop circles that I had recently watched on the History Channel to come up with this thought experiment I call The Alien's Dilemma. Imagine if you will that . . . . 

Zoron is a scout for the for the Galactic Empire.  It is Zoron's task to evaluate planets with life that has evolved to a certain level of intelligence and decide whether or not they can be admitted to the Empire.  This is a big deal because member planets receive Galactic knowledge, freedom from sickness, immortality, intergalactic cruises, all those for which intelligent life pines. 

Zoron begins the assessment of the third planet from the star in a minor star-system. The locals call it earth.  The wrinkle in this thought experiment is the fact that Zoron can only sense affiliation and action.  Zoron knows when the entities on Earth feel they are affiliated with other entities - so Zoron call discern among all our social and cultural clusters - from huge groups like racial identity and nationality, down through things like religious and political affiliation, all the way to cliques on a middle school playground.  And Zoron can assess the actions that unfold between and among those groups. But that is all that Zoron can understand. Zoron cannot understand the explanations that the various affiliated groups offer for their actions. It is a binary assessment: affiliation and action. 

What is revealed to Zoron is that we, most commonly, resolve conflicts between and among affiliated groups violently. Zoron looks up previous assessments of the planet called earth in the galactic records and discovers that there appears to be no record of any time on Planet Earth that was free from violent conflict between various affiliated groups. Earth appears to be a planet constantly at war. 

As you might guess this is sufficient data to put the blue ball of earth in the rear view mirror, set the GPS to Alpha Centauri, and set all thrusters on full escape mode. Nobody in their right mind would advocate bringing an entire planet of blood-stained cretins into the galactic empire. And that would be the easy choice, were it not for the Alien's Dilemma. 

You see, every scout has the option of visiting a sentient planet if the scout believes the planet is worth saving. If they so choose, the scout may land on the planet and champion the inhabitants by converting them to the harmonic precepts of the Galactic Empire. Zoron knows this option exists, and it has the scout on the horns of a .  .  .  well, you know what. You see, if the scout fails to establish the appropriate criteria for entry into the Galactic Empire on the planet - the punishment is harsh. The scout must remain there. For Zoron the frustrating thing about this little planet is that shows flashes of higher order thinking. There seem to have been isolated instances when affiliated groups have attempted to resolve conflicts without violence. Even the most dominant affiliated groups show occasional evidence of the harmonic precepts of the Galactic Empire, often just before bending all the resources of their affiliation to assuring the bloody demise of another affiliated group. 

For the time being, I am going to leave Zoron there, poised on the horns of the Alien's Dilemma. My next post will deal with how we, through our own behavior, might increase the odds that the Alien’s Dilemma might be resolved in our favor. 

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Diamond and Gold

Diamonds and gold,

Diamonds and gold, 

Neither will keep you 

Warm when you're cold. 

Still they sparkle and shine 

When pried from the mine 

And something about them 

We find passing fine. 

So we keep on digging 

No matter the toll 

We keep right on digging 

For diamonds and gold. 

It is a silly little ditty that crept into my head, waking me at 3 AM the other morning.  But rather than disparaging avarice, it reminded me that value clings to that which is scarce. Increasingly, for me, the commodity in question is verbiage. When I first wandered up to the front of a college classroom, some 44 years ago, to face a sea of student faces, loquaciousness was an important arrow in my quiver. Never was the old saw "if you can't dazzle them with brilliance, then baffle them with bullshit" more apropos. Give me any topic remotely related to my field and I could ride a veritable tsunami of sentences that, as often as not, would - some 50 minutes later - come to rest on a beach that passed for insight. Later I honed the skill to such a degree that anything less than a three-hour seminar seemed an unworthy challenge. 

Perhaps the ebbing of that tide of prose led to the late-blooming third of the four primary tenets of Distilled Harmony: Distill Complexity. Though my students would no doubt argue the point, I have largely abandoned bullshit, seeking instead to provide genuine insight supported by clear, contemporary, supporting evidence. Trying to hit that small, swift target on the fly has profoundly increased my respect for skeet shooting. 

The problem, you see, is that the classroom demands spontaneous composition. Unless you wish to be reduced to the stereotype of the ivy-covered professor droning on over yellowed notes before a classroom stuffed with dozing students, you need to create lectures that weave the verities of the past together with the evolving evidence of today - extemporaneously. Pull!  Blam! Damn! Missed! 

Perhaps it is the increasing illusiveness of the spontaneous bon mote that leads me to now prefer words upon a page. They don’t slip around as much there as they do in front of a hundred students, when the perfect example is lodged there on the edge of your brain but eludes your tongue.  On paper they behave more like brush strokes on canvas; changing the lighting there, softening an edge there, painting out the ugly parts altogether.  

  

The more I think about it, what I’m talking about - well, writing about - is part of a set of natural cycles of caring and competence.  As we move though our lives we encounter existential niches that capture our hearts and our minds and we invest in that niche to hone the competencies demanded by it.  Across the middle decades of my life, as a camp counselor, an acting major, and then as an instructor in small college classes [15 to 25 students], storytelling was such an important niche.  Whether telling a tall tale around a campfire, depicting Miller’s Willy Lohman, or unfolding the early history of the Pony Express - watching the gleam in the audience’s eye was the key to knowing when and how you would punch the important line.  And it shifted with every audience.  In today’s modern and “online classrooms” clinging to that caring for the individual camper, audience member or student is an exercise in frustration. In today's efficiently humongous lecture halls there are too many students in the classroom [60 to 360] to actually see them as individuals, or in the online classroom, there are no students there at all - just a camera pretending to be alive. 

It is more bland than distasteful.  After all, working in front of a camera isn’t that much different than working from a stage where you can hide in the light and imagine the audience loves you.  It’s OK - but just not much more than that. 

Words on a page however are something else entirely.  The allure is at least twofold, maybe threefold or morefold. One attraction lies there in “morefold” that my software is desperately trying to correct for me. [Psst! Robert, that’s not a word. It should be “more fold.”] But if you accept that correction the software will then try to correct your grammar. The fight can be tedious, but I have come to see it as a personal bond with Shakespeare.  The Bard is often credited with adding about 1700 new words to the English language. No doubt the upper crust looked down from their boxes and sneered, “Bedazzled!? Z’wounds, its not even a word!” But it became one - because it was just so right for the moment.  I doubt that “morefold” will gain the traction of "bedazzled,” but whenever I take arms against a sea of software, I feel a sense of, probably unwarranted, kinship with Billy, as we try to bend the language to our purpose. 

Secondfold, is the idea that the words leave here and make their merry way across the Internet, at least into your mailbox, to Senior Correspondent and perhaps even further afield.  It is not too difficult to imagine you reading them - as some of you write back and tell me that you do. Students, not so much, if tests are any indication of attention.  But still on occasion, sometimes after several years, a student will slide into my email box and say “Thank you. Your lectures were interesting and valuable.”  And, like golf, that one good shot keeps you coming back. 

Thirdfold, is just the pleasure of giving these thoughts and words and sentences a home.  They, I assume, wake me for a reason.  They are notes that are important, somehow, to the chord that is me; to the sentient articulation that is my unique presence in existence. I should give them the attention, the caring, they deserve.  And, of course, it would be silly to get up to write without seeing what was left in the refrigerator. 

And finally, there is morefold.  No doubt I will find just the right words to describe that entity after a small sandwich, or perhaps a doughnut. 

The Arrow of Time, or Sorry Marty and The Insidious MRC

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As a young stage-struck theater major, I thought that the first law of thermodynamics was that you always moved to the center of the brightest spotlight. I have since learned that it is the first of the three absolute laws of the universe that declares that the amount of energy and matter in the universe is constant. Neither can be created or destroyed. But they can transform; H2O can be ice, water or a gas, but the molecules that make up those three states must remain constant. I have also learned, I think, that information, as a phase of energy, is similarly immune to destruction. 

Perusing that last assertion will make your brain hurt if you are not fairly well versed in theoretical physics. Even Physics for Dummies - and, yes, there is such a publication - fails the Distilled Harmony mandate to Distill Complexity.  But as I said, I think that information slips in there with mass and energy in the first law of thermodynamics as “things in the universe that cannot be destroyed.”  Maybe it can - but only at the edges of certain types of black holes, and if you are Stephen Hawking, because most of the other physics biggies seem to disagree.

As I lie here in bed at 3 AM staring at the LED of the speaker playing a thunderstorm, this strikes me as important.  It would seem that entities, particles, people, puppies, what have you, in the course of existence, move from a state of less information to a state of more information. To reverse that process, for time to run backwards, energy would have to be lost, which contradicts said "first law of thermodynamics." Hence the arrow of time runs one way. From the past into the future. Which, it appears, puts the kibosh on the idea of time travel, at least on a round trip to the future, a realization that, seemingly will always prevent Marty McFly from going Back to the Future.

Whew. Now that we have taken care of that, let us move on to a more complicated issue: the stairwell memory repressing condensate hypothesis. The phenomenon is common enough. I am sitting at my desk in the downstairs office and I sudden realize I need something from the floor above. I get up and begin to climb the stairs. Upon reaching the landing I realize I have no idea why I am going upstairs.  The phenomenon can also be observed in reverse - unlike the one way arrow of time. I can be upstairs and realize that I need something on the main floor. Once again, upon reaching the landing, all knowledge of my objective vanishes.  The secret lies in the fact that if I continue, clueless, to the floor that was my original objective, either up or down, after a moment or two I can recall why I needed to be there. Hence:

The Stairwell Memory Repressing Condensate Hypothesis

There is something - let us call it MRC for Memory Repressing Condensate - that gathers in the stairwell landings that interferes with the normal neurological process we call "memory."  When we move through the MRC it ceases to affect us and memory returns. I would posit two solutions - ceiling fans or a nap. 

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Downsizing the Upgrades

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I run a values clarification exercise in my classes that asks the students to give serious consideration to their core beliefs; what those beliefs are, and where they came from. The idea for these technology classes is that when we encounter a new app for our phone, or a new piece of technology like virtual reality goggles, we need to decide if that is a good thing or a bad thing. We need to ask questions. Should the government be able to access your email? Should your phone always report where you are? Can people say anything they want about you on the Internet?  The idea I try to stress is that they need to run everything they encounter through the filter of their values; people, careers, technology, their own behavior.  Everything needs to be evaluated in terms of that core set of values.

I nudge them toward the idea of constructing a nice tight set of hierarchical core values that can serve as a “first pass” set of criteria as they move through their lives. Foster Harmony is the first tenet of my “hierarchical core” - Foster Harmony, Enable Beauty, Distill Complexity, Oppose Harm. So Foster Harmony becomes my first filter for new elements I encounter in my life. With people it is pretty simple. People who are discordant, rude, racist bullies simply drop out of the “worth my time or consideration” category. It doesn’t matter if they are neighbors, colleagues, or presidential candidates. Which of course brings us to the topic of this essay which is, no, not politics, it is software development. And the tenet under consideration is the third one: Distill Complexity.

The problem with upgrades, you see, is like the Hogwarts Staircases.  In the Harry Potter movies, more than in the novels, the staircases at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry seem to be in constant movement. The older students navigate them with nary a second thought, while new students seem in danger of imminent death by nasty knocking newells. It is a delightful cinematic device. Everything is in a perpetual state of change, you never know quite where you are or where you will end up. Delicious. But when the notion of constant chaos becomes the default for your computer, laptop or phone, the novelty quickly wears thin. 

“Upgrade” is a word whose meaning and impact has shifted significantly over the past few decades.  Think of that old movie from the early 1990s, “Sleepless in Seattle”: “Bing. You’ve got mail!” There was time when getting email was kind of exciting - someone you knew was reaching out to you across that Internet thingy to communicate with you. Now, when I awake to fewer than 50 new emails it may be an easy day.  And that, of course, is the crux of the matter.  Computers, the Internet, smartphones, etc., everything that makes up our digital world was originally designed to make us more efficient, more creative, better, happier. “Bing. Not so much."

Distill Complexity points to that failed promise.  In my life my technology should do those promised tasks, let me write, paint, draw, and contact people more easily and efficiently.  What software developers obviously do not understand is that if you continually develop and release “upgraded" suites of software that may correct existing flaws in the software, that same “upgrade" actually introduces undesirable complexity into my world.  The developers may, like the older students at Hogwarts hopping up and down the shifting stairways, see these upgrades as really excellent and intuitive improvements. 

However while coders see features like automatically sorting my mail into predetermined categories, asking if I want to save a website’s URL to the cloud, popping a text message on my screen while I am composing a document - as improvements, to many of us they are just messing up our digital world. What I did one way in the older version, I now have to do a different way in the “upgrade.”  The coders seem to have lost track of the fact that for me - and I would assert for most of us - software is just a tool, like a hammer, or paint brush or screwdriver. The software is not the element of importance in a task, it is simply a route to that more important objective; the document, the images, the song, that allow us to Enable Beauty - realizing the second tenet.

I would like to suggest a new tenet for coders based on “Distill Complexity”: Invisible Improvements.  The basic idea is that the improvements are “under the hood.” What I do, my “click route” to a task remains the same - the coder’s “better, faster, more stable” parts of the process are invisible to me. I don’t have to relearn how to use the software. And please, please, don’t change what I see on the screen.  While a coder might think it is “better” to have a neon hammer with four interchangeable heads with variable density, I just use it to hammer a picture hanger on the wall. Leave it alone.

Another analogy: Think “Upstairs Downstairs”. Think "Downton Abbey”. The servants were invisible, but absolutely vital. They made things happen, but never, never, did they interrupt the smooth flow of life above stairs. The code, the applications, and the people who create them should live downstairs. The test of their quality is measured by how invisibly they make sure that life above stairs functions smoothly, beautifully.

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The Continuing Promise of the Sunrise

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I have reached that age when conversations with friends often include discussions of "the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to" and their potential remedies. That is not, by the by, a complaint. The alternative is far less to be desired.

I would however like to assert that our objections to those "natural shocks" are largely the result of measuring our lives by the wrong ruler, or yardstick, or meter stick, or whatever you might wish to call it.  We make the mistake of measuring today in terms of yesterday. A brief example - yoga.  Would I like to regain the flexibility that used to amaze my doctor during my yearly check ups when I was in my 40s? Sure. Am I ready to buy a mat, special shoes and, shudder, spandex in order to coax my 67 year-old body back into that bygone decade? No. Especially when I realize that I, like all of us, was most flexible as a baby. I mean have you watched those little critters? They bend like Gumby, and no amount of sweat and spandex will ever get any of us back to those days.

Which might make the theme of this essay seem a bit strange: I believe I wake up every day better than I was the day before. Absurd? Better at 67 after two stem cell transplants than at 57, 47, 37? In a word: Yes.

It is, of course, all about the ruler. In 21st century America we tend to measure "better" in units defined by our media. Consider the t-shirt "You can never be too rich or too thin." We start getting "informative" emails from our employers telling us that not only are we eligible for "phased retirement," but we might want to consider what our Social Security options might be. Reality TV shows peek into the lives of 20 or 30-somethings as if there were something of importance to learn there. Wrong rulers. Warped rulers. Wrong. Wrong.

Recently I have been cleaning out files that stretch back over my four decades as a university professor. Correspondence before computers. Yearly semi-aggrandizing “reports” on my accomplishments. Oh my. Now, truthfully, when measured by "age and maturity appropriate rulers" I did OK. But given the opportunity to speak to my 27 or 37 or 47 year-old selves, my 67 year-old self would say, "Son, let's grab a beverage and chat. I can make this all a bit easier for you."

Eastern cultures, Native American cultures, aboriginal cultures all seem to have grasped something that we have let slip away in modern America: as we grow older, we often grow wiser. And that is what I mean when I say I wake up every day better than I was the day before. You see, I - and you - wake up every day a bit older and a bit wiser than we were the day before.

A couple of important caveats: When I say wiser, I don't necessarily claim to have a bunch of solid answers to life's confusions. But I do have some, and I have a lot of better questions than I had when I was younger. And, hopefully, I express both the questions and the conclusions with more grace and subtlety than did the youngster I once was.

Also, I have made many more mistakes than I had had time for when I was younger. So little time, so many mistakes.  But there is no better way to learn how to do something right than by doing it wrong a few times.

So that is the continuing promise of each sunrise: we wake each day - perhaps stiffer, maybe nursing the occasional twinge - but still we rise, older and wiser than we were the day before. And that, my friend, is something for which we should be thankful.

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The First of Nevermore

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The first time ever 

Announces itself 

With trumpets and cymbals:

The first time ever I

Came to this place

Breathed this air

Saw your face

Felt your kiss

Trumpets and cymbals.

But

The first of nevermore,

Like death,

Slides in silently.

Cloaked in secrecy:

Never to be seen again

Vanished without a trace

No further evidence 

The last time I ever

Knowing this

Remove the sting 

Of nevermore

By painting each

Precious day

In the fleeting hues of

The first time ever. 

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The Last Refuge of the Incompetent

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Once you set out to articulate your personal code of life, you soon discover why so many people choose to let someone else do it.  All the world’s great faith communities, governments, political parties, and most social and fraternal organizations have codified their beliefs in a “good book” or a series of laws, regulations, best practices, symbols, handshakes, what have you.  The problem, of course, is that as those codifying documents and rituals proliferate, it becomes relatively easy to find bits and pieces that contradict each other. This allows the various adherents to that particular “good book" to cherry pick which elements of “the truth” they intend to claim.  This tends to lead to bloody schisms as folks following one subset of beliefs decide that they must confront - often violently - those other folks who have foolishly chosen another subset of beliefs to guide them.

 

However, when the document you begin to examine for contradictions is one you yourself have created, you often find yourself deep in heartfelt arguments with, well, yourself.  It would be nice to blame someone else for those discordant inconsistencies. It would be nice, but not terribly productive, and more than a touch schizophrenic 

Distilled Harmony would, at first glance, appear relatively free from ideological contradictions. I mean, after all there are only four tenets: Foster Harmony, Enable Beauty, Distill Complexity and Oppose Harm. Pretty simple right? Only at first glance.  Maybe I put Foster Harmony and Oppose Harm at opposite ends of the mantra so it wouldn’t be so obvious that they are in direct contradiction.  Foster Harmony clearly has its roots in philosophies similar to Isaac Asimov’s assertion that "violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.” Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. King come to mind as significant, relatively recent adherents to that non-violent creed. But then you open your morning news emails and read about the latest atrocities committed by one group or another in order to enforce their notion of “truth” upon innocent others, and you wonder at what point one needs to move past Fostering Harmony to a remedy based in Opposing Harm.

These days the media, both corporate and social; as well as coffeehouse conversations ring with the strum und drang of contemporary geopolitics marred by much volume and little reflection. The dominant theme is discord, angst, and variations on “my way or the highway!”  The truly ironic element in these parrying pontifications is that they are often voiced by people who, like me, have no power to implement the changes they advocate so strongly. Truthfully now - what role do I have in determining who occupies the White House in DC, or the Governor’s Mansion here in Raleigh? Oh, don’t get me wrong - I vote, I click and contribute my $3.00 or 5 dollars - several times - to the candidates whose positions are most harmonic with mine. I sign online petitions that support issues that seem to express a harmonious interaction among people and the fragile earth upon which we live, and on which depend.  Yet, I am not content to accept the notion that my single digital data point among millions in our internet driven “mentally of the herd” world is “the best I can do.” 

So, while realizing the minimal impact I have upon the globe, at the moment I am content to let “real personal impact” be my guide.  Political scientists and economists have, for decades, discussed “spheres of influence”. These are, to the best of my knowledge, the geopolitical areas whose policies and practices are guided by the most dominant nation  in the region.  The cold war was a tug of war between the US and the USSR to maintain and/or expand their “spheres of influence."

What, realistically, I ask myself, is my sphere of influence? What is the reach of my behavior? How can I maximize Harmony and reduce discord by Opposing Harm? If I restrict my “area of angst” to events and individuals that I can actually influence, the contradiction between Foster Harmony and Oppose Harm becomes less intense.  I have no real influence over the “haters” of the world.  To directly thwart ISIS, to move our government out of contentious gridlock, to reaffirm the value of higher education in the nation - these are goals beyond my meager efforts. But I may be able to exert a gentle influence over others - my students, my friends, those of you who encounter these ramblings on one screen or another. In those areas I will still give Foster Harmony precedence, I will still attempt to champion Harmony whenever possible. To Foster Harmony, through individual harmonious acts, is analogous to tossing a pebble into a pond. The harmonious act spreads out across the surface of the pond, replicating ripples that gently, eventually, fill the surface. It is chaos theory, with the wings of the jungle butterfly spawning cooling rains across parched deserts continents away.  This may be the nature of my "sphere of influence”, largely invisible to me, but of possible value to others.

Comforting as this conclusion may be, it does not entirely still my fear of leaving Oppose Harm a place among the four major tenets of Distilled Harmony.  The danger is that the haters of the world have often pried their violent manifesto from some minor passage in their “good book” and elevated it to a mandate for evil.  It would be foolish to deny that evil exists in the world. Stalin and Hitler in the history I studied; ISIS, and other terrorists - both foreign and domestic - in the world that unfolds around me today. These evidences of evil should not go unopposed. But that opposition must not subvert the moral dominance of Harmony, allowing some evil, violent, social contrariness to parade as “the real truth” around which moral discord may rally. 

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Towards a Philosophy of Cosmology, Or Slicing the Universal Salami

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I don't know if I was born near-sighted. I assume I was. But when you are two, or three, or four years old, there is no great harm, and perhaps some benefit, in being so inclined. I remember being able to see things that enchant a lad so young with great clarity; the veins in a leaf, the trails of ants and the paths of raindrops on a window. School, however, valued more formal skills. I remember making a fist over my eye, thumb against my cheek and my little finger creating a tiny opening through which I could peek. When I pointed my little "fist-scope" at the chalkboard in the front of the room, the fuzzy letters on it became discernibly clearer.  No doubt my teachers observed my antics and mentioned them to my parents. Not long after, I must have acquired my first pair of glasses. They have been with me, in one form or another, ever since.

I mentioned the possibility of near-sightedness be a benefit. Let me explain. The "uncorrected" near-sighted eye focuses much like a microscope. I have always been able to see things a mere inch or two in front of me with great clarity. So all my life I have been naturally in the presence of a focused reality that those with "normal" vision can observe only with the aid of some artificial - and usually awkward - magnification device. Of course, I needed glasses to see the world as others saw it, but those were common enough - as was, perhaps, the world they revealed.

The point, I guess, is that all my life I have been immersed in a world in which "focus" shifted often, and often radically. Which leads, naturally, to the Large Hadron Collider and the questions the work there raises regarding the nature of the universe, truth and reality.

I have often admitted to being a "physics and cosmology groupie." I read every tidbit I can find about new particles, or black holes, or multiverses, or gravitational waves with the same delight with which fans greeted the latest revelations at Hogwarts or among the nobles of Westeros and Essos. But lately something has been bothering me, and it has to do with that whole issue of focus.  It all came to a head when I stumbled across the 2013 documentary Particle Fever the other night - I think it popped up on PBS. Anyhow, the film chronicles the pursuit at CERN to use the LHC to search for, and ultimately detect the illusive Higgs boson. The film ends with the victorious detection of the Higgs, and yet our physicist-protagonists seemingly genuinely caught between the elation that naturally accompanied the discovery and a fear that there was enough wiggle room in the data that they might not have gotten it exactly right, leaving the standard model of physics that rests on these various particles somehow flawed.    

It is an axiom in science that, in addition to any answers provided by a particular experiment, new questions are also produced. So one would expect this to be the case with the "Higgs at CERN" experiment. But, at least as portrayed in this film, there was a greater level of "post-results anxiety” than one might expect. It was almost as if the scientists felt that their results didn’t so much reflect the nature of the universe, as determine it. It is an understandable warping of reality. When you spend an incredible amount of time and money peering at existence at a particular “focal length” it is easy to believe that what you see at that focal length is “truth.” 

It strikes me that we have probably already captured all the particles. "The problem, dear Brutus, is not in the particles, but in ourselves."  We need to stop racking the lenses, stop concentrating as CERN seems to have done, on a rather narrow range of reactions that would reveal the Higgs particle. [I date myself with that analogy. Back in the early days of television, there were no zoom lenses. Instead there was a turret on the front of the camera that had four fixed-focus lenses. So if you want to go from a close-up to a wide angle shot, you would tell the camera operator to “rack the lenses” to whatever focal length was required for the next shot. And the operator would rotate the turret so that the desired fixed-focus lens snapped into position. It was called "racking the lens.”]

If, instead of racking through a set of lenses, one examines a specific moment with the equivalent of zoom lens, slowly observing the moment at every possible focal length, then every particle will eventually come into focus when the particle and our field of observation match. It seems to the layman that most theories of particle physics assert that the all particles, even those quite rare, have passed through our various collectors. The recurring problem, apparently, is that the event needs to occur within the depth of field of a "racked" lens and we needed to have our collector's eyes open at that unique moment. Hence the need for the common "racked lens" process described above. But if we could use a zoom lens model, every event that has been captured by the collector will eventually slide into focus and confirm or redirect our perception of reality.

But, - and this is the point that I keep coming back to - whatever we discover through those various observational  processes will not “unmake" the universe. The universe is what it is, what it is, what it is. Or as, somewhat ironically, the doxology asserts, "It is now, and ever shall be, world without end." Defining what the "it" is, is of course, the fierce focus that drives physicists and cosmologists. They, seemingly more than theologists, are turning themselves in knots trying to throw a rope around just what the “it” is, that is now and ever has been. “It” is obviously, more than just our little globe. But is “it" more than just our little universe? And the question drives bigger and bigger colliders and telescopes.  And I read about them with great interest.

Still, my concern is that the intensity of the question of what it is has drawn our attention away from the equally, if not more important, question of what does it mean? If form and function are inherently interwoven, what does the form of the universe mean for the function of the individual in the universe? What the LHC and similar undertakings teach us about the nature of the universe will not change the nature of the universe, but those insights do have the potential to change our understanding of ourselves. The danger is that if the investigations continue to use fixed focus lenses, we could just slide past meaning. 

And the consideration of that danger bounces us back to The Art Institute of Chicago and A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by Georges-Pierre Seurat.  It is a huge painting, about 10’ by 7’, and when you look at it from across the room it appears a softly dated painting of exactly what title indicates - gentry enjoying a bucolic afternoon on an island park. And that is what it is - sort of. But it also one of the finest extant examples of pointillism, the process - later brought to its current pinnacle in HDTV - of creating an image from thousands of tiny dots of color. If you get close enough to A Sunday Afternoon to make the guards nervous, the little dots of paint are clearly visible, and seemingly bear no resemblance or relationship to the scene we glimpsed from across the salon. It is only when we step away from the painting and re-adjust our focus that the meaning of the painting becomes clear. Is it so absurd to assume that the same might well be true of the universe? Might concentrating on the tiny dots cause us to miss the meaning that is better understood at a different focal length? Or through a perusal of existence simultaneously through a variety of focal lengths, as is possible in a “light field camera”?

Forgive me, but yet another analogy for both a light field camera and the universe.  Imagine that you are slicing a salami. The salami is, oh say, a foot long and 3 inches in diameter. Your slices are an eighth of an inch thick. So, depending on your knife skills, you end up with 90 some slices of salami.  The whole salami is analogous to the universe, and each slice of the salami is analogous to an observation of the universe made at a particular focal length through a specific collector.  You pull out a particular slice and look at it. The pattern of light and dark captured in that slice paints a picture of the universal salami observed at a particular focal length - a “rack-focus image”, if you will.  Cosmology, to date, seems to be dominated by the “single slice” model. The particle folks at CERN and elsewhere, the quantum mechanics aficionados, fans of super massive blackholes and gravitational waves, all seem to fall in love with their particular slice of the universal salami; and, as is true with any obsession, the object of our obsession often blinds us to everything else: we cannot see the salami for the slice. 

A light-field camera presents us with a different model. A light-field camera gathers optical information from all the space in front of the lens, simultaneously exposing all the slices of the salami, if you will.  This allows us to see the whole universal salami at one time.  Your observations are not artificially restricted to one, or a few slices, of the universal salami. Rather, we can examine the whole thing. And, it is, I believe, the patterns discernible in such an all encompassing view of the universe that stands the best chance of yielding information relevant to assertions regarding what the universe means. 

Which returns us to the notion of form follows function. If we can discern the whole salami, then we come to know the form of the whole universe, and if form and function are inherently linked, then knowledge of one allows us to explore some assumptions about the other.

It is highly unlikely that any physicist started out to be a one slice scientist. Physicists, and philosophers, tend to be “big picture” people. However, it is often their intellectual journey; the results in the lab, the view from the telescope, the data from the collector, the idea of absolute truth, or the dimensions of beauty that can trap them in a one-slice obsession. But those who avoid that slippery slope are able to maintain their focus on the idea of the whole salami, or, as both physicists and philosophers are more inclined to call it, a theory of everything.

The theory of everything that I find most satisfying as a tool in grasping both what the universe is, and what it means is String Theory or M-Theory.  An in-depth explanation of the theory would make this already incredibly long post even longer.  Let me point you to a couple of references.  Brian Greene’s book The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory, is an excellent work for the serious layperson. My own work, The God Chord: String Theory in the Landscape of the Heart, is a further distillation of string theory that also expands the theory to consider the link between string theory and human thought and behavior.  It has the additional attraction of being free at Feedbooks.com :-)

For this post let us only consider the very kernel of string theory: Everything in the universe, from the inconceivably immense “Large Quasar Group” to the equally mid-boggling tiny string itself, is made up of indivisible vibrating units call strings. The physical nature of the universe then is dictated by the relationships among vibrating strings. In English we call uniquely vibrating strings notes, clusters of notes become chords, chords in sequence become music. String theory then asserts that we, and everything else in the universe and, yes, the universe itself is made of music. So as we consider the universal salami, and how each slice informs the whole, we would be well advised to consider harmony and discord as the core of both a universal physical and existential discussion.

String theory provides the physical facet to accompany an existential mandate which, together, define a transcendent theory of everything.  And that mandate is Harmony.  If the mandate were discord, the universe would not have formed after the Big Bang. The micro-second of inflation that formed the cosmos would, in a discord dominated event, have continued an uncontrolled expansion, spewing the nascent universe out of existence. Harmony, the inclination to gather notes into chords and chords into compositions, pulled the strings together and began the composition of the universe. And as I follow the findings of both theoretical and experimental physicists, their results appear - on a variety of levels - to constantly point ultimately towards harmony and away from discord.

So I am willing to assert that harmonic unity is the form of the universe. What then is its function?  First, as we obviously move more clearly into the realm of philosophy, I suppose it is possible to imagine a discordant, meaningless universe. Notes without melody, sound without music. That is a deeply dark perspective and one that is, for me, disproved by simply being, and being mindful of the world that surrounds my being.  In a discordant world my behavior would have no impact, no meaning.  While we all certainly have brushes with such despondency, we also realize that simple actions can increase the harmony that is the universe. And yes, I am talking about little things. Things like acts of “undeserved kindness”; letting the person who is driving with their horn take the parking place, letting your partner choose what to watch on TV, cleaning up the kitchen when it isn’t "your turn." These seem tiny things when compared to the "super-massive black hole gravitational waves" slice of the universal salami, but when compared to the tiny strings themselves, these are world-altering events. It is by such little acts that we - as unique individuals on an unassuming planet in a minor galaxy - assist in the harmonic construction of the universe. To broaden a currently popular meme: all lives matter, all actions matter. 

So our harmonic acts demonstrate how sentience is manifested in existence.  And if the universe is itself an overwhelming manifestation of harmony, do we not have to at least consider the notion that the universe is itself sentient? Yes, we do. But not right now.

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Insistent Shreds of Poetry

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It used to take less effort 

To hold poetic observations at bay.

A quick breath, and a stern internal, 

"Quiet. Lie Down."

And they would circle a few times,

And flop down, but with ears

Still pitched forward and twitching.

Now they seem to be getting

Rather more than out of hand.

In the midst of a serious meeting

"Heads nodding like frantic hens

Winnowing cracked corn before 

The first freezing gusts of winter."

Just leaps out onto the table.

"So moved." Says someone.

"Second." All in favor. Aye.

Opposed? Nay. The ayes have it.

Did any of that happen out loud?

Did we pass an allotment for corn?

You see now, given the least encouragement,

These dialogues just pop out.

As I work my way to the first significant

Transition in an introductory lecture

I am captured by the syncopation

Of dozens of pens dancing across paper

"Scratch, scratch, scratch."

An entire violin section backed by

A sneezing of cellos

And maybe the cough of a double bass.

At faculty meeting I glance up,

My sketch not yet complete,

As voices are raised, and then

Settle back,  receding waves

"It seems to me. . . "

"I thought the Dean said.  .  ."

"But from Foucault's perspective . . "

As my colleagues sing their refrain

and then resume, steady gazing,

Mews subsiding, as they curl into

Lazy attention, as sunning cats upon a sill.

I pull out of the parking lot,

Hitting home on the GPS 

Freeing those now useless neurons.

Traffic dances a swishing samba

Across rain swept streets.

Head lights, and tail, streak

Impressionist moments across

The black and shiny canvas.

“When possible, make a legal U-turn."

Yeah, right. Possible? Legal U-turn?
Don’t even get me started .  .  .   

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Schrag Wall: If I Ran the Lab

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As I was leaving the building yesterday the Dean stopped me and said: "I learned something about you that I never knew."

"What is that?" I asked, a bit hesitantly as this is not something one often hears from your Dean.

"You have a personal, signed Cat in the Hat note from Dr. Suess." 

"I do, yes, I do." 

It all started about 10 years ago - maybe longer when in a strange fit I penned the following homage to the classic Suess work "If I Ran the Zoo."  I sent it off to him and he replied with the attached "Thank you note."  What a classy man. 

==============================

If I Ran the Lab

By

Robert L. Schrag

“It’s a pretty good lab,” said weird Harold McNab,

“Though the egghead who runs it is really a crab.

And the work that they turn out’s not quality work,

‘Cause the Project Director’s a bit of a jerk.

But if I ran the lab, said weird Harold McNab,

I’d splice up some genes not halfway so drab

As the genes they’ve been splicing ‘round here up ‘til now.

When it comes to strange genotypes, I’d show them how!!

First I’d change the lab’s name from ‘Ace Genes and Research’

To ‘Home of the Weirdest New Gene Types on Earth 

And the Strangest New Creatures in this Universe.’

As a name with a grab, that’s not really bad.

And each creature’s rear, when released from my lab

Would carry this label: New Genes by McNab. 

There’d be no starting small with bacteriumasis,

I’d jump right on in with a creature colossus

A beastie that started life out as a fungus,

Now stretches from Pittsburg to southwest Columbus.

I’ll call this new creature a Fermi-o-fump

‘Cause we’ll use it on Tuesdays for a nuclear dump.

And the glow that it gives for the rest of the week,

Reduces the oil we now buy from the Shiek.

I’d move on to grain the following morn,

And I’d whip up a Superdee-Popper-d’Corn,

A version that passes an elephant’s eye

And tops out in August at forty feet high!

With self-popping kernels of one pound or two,

And cobs, that when carved, make a nifty canoe,

The shucking’s made simple with an easy pull tab,

That grows on this nifty new corn by McNab!

And the Superdee-Popper-d’Corn’s not alone,

There’s another new corn-type that begs to be grown.

I’ll call it The Ultimate Cornflake Created

‘Cause the leaf on this monocot corn is mutated

To form cereal bowls for all those who’ve waited

For ready-made breakfasts, organic, prefab,

And grown from those fabulous genes by McNab.

They say rice is nice and easy to breed,

And here at McNab’s lab we’ll make what you need.

No domestic rice, all tamed down and mild,

Here in my lab I will start with rice wild.

Then we’ll splice in some genes from a hot chili pepper,

Add tomatoes, add onions, bring garlic you schlepper!

And when this new rice in the free open air grows,

You’ll smell why we named it McNab Rice Rancheros!

And wheat is quite neat, but it too is too bland.

So here at McNab lab we’ll all lend a hand

And whip up a wheat strain a touch more exciting 

Than wheats that are currently palates delighting.

First, amber wheat’s nice and is fabled in song,

But to leave it just amber is certainly wrong.

We need purple wheat and blue wheat, don’t y’know?

We will whip up a strain called Wheat Eau d’Rainbow!

Just think of the bread you could bake with this stuff!

Why MOMA’s main hall will not be big enough

To display all the wares that will end baked goods drab,

Another triumph for New Genes by McNab!

The next thing we folks at McNab’s lab will dare

Is to clone a whole forest from Grandma’s best chair.

We’ll not talk about copies or facsimiles,

But the very same genes from those very old trees,

The trees that were old when Abe Lincoln was young,

Good wood from the days when the country’d begun.

But don’t worry my Earth Friends, no logging’s in store

When a chair from New Genes by McNab hits the floor.

There’s been no clear cutting or practices grim,

We pick all our chairs from the end of a limb.

They grow right out there, in patterns quite fab,

All thanks to those coded New Genes by McNab. 

But it’s time to quit dealing with things vege-table,

Let’s move to the animal kingdom while able.

I’m sure there’re some beasties just waiting for life

To spring from McNab lab’s new gene splicing knife.

For example, the Porker d’Piggy His Nibs,

Engineered for the South, made completely of ribs,

And his littermate, Porker d’Piggy Foo Foo,

Who grows into two tons of pulled Bar BQ!

These swiney, so finey, are just the first stab,

At creating great beasts with New Genes by McNab.

But while pork is quite nice, and Pig Foo Foo’s divine,

For the kosher food market we will take a bovine,

And splice in the genes of the sea swimming salmon.

And the creature we get will be perfect, dear madam,

To serve at Bar Mitzvahs and Sisterhood talks

For where else could you find a nice brisket of lox?

And then when we manage to pull this one off,

You will hear a great cheer – ‘To McNab! Mazel Tov!’

In addition to ethnic food one must, these days,

Meet the market demand for the holiday craze,

When dishes traditional must grace the table,

Whether or not the poor sous chef is able.

Thanksgiving’s a day that is tied to a feast,

But the cook in the kitchen just slaves like a beast!

There’s turkey and hams, mashed potatoes and yams,

For guests that your family hauled home in four trams!

And pies without number, pumpkin and mincemeat,

Put the finishing touch on this holiday treat.

But while the stuffed-full relatives roll out the door

The cooked-out old cook slowly slumps to the floor.

That’s how it once was, but McNab says, ‘No more!’

McNab’s new research has made such a break-through,

That a holiday meal is no task you must ache through.

By blending the genes of one fowl and two grains,

Add a couple of fruits, save the best from each strain,

We’ve created a creature that looks quite beserky,

It’s the Eight-Legged, Four-Breasted Self-Stuffing Turkey!

And it nests in the oven to save you more steps,

Laying eggs that taste just like fresh vegetable crepes.

So the main course and side dishes now hit the slab

In one beast, from those folks at New Genes by McNab!

But we won’t stop there with dessert to be made.

To ignore the last course fails to service the trade.

So we’ll whip up a plant called The-Pie-In-the-Sky

That grows out the window, six feet or so high.

And the pies that it grows have already been baked,

Boasting crusts upon which reputations are staked.

Plus, it’s crossed with a grasshopper so it is able

To walk cross the floor and hop up on the table.

There it’s served, like the rest of the meal, upon dishes

That are grown on the back of rare deep-diving fishes.

These dishes are cloned from some sweet English custard,

And are eaten at meal’s end with fine Spanish mustard.

When the last bite’s been eaten, Cook declares from a chair,

As well-fed descendants lounge ‘bout everywhere,

While a feeling of gratitude fills up the room,

‘Mid the lingering traces of dinner’s perfume,

‘Before all you kids start your games and your pranks,

To the Lord – and the folks at McNab’s – let’s give thanks.’

But the holidays come, at the most, once a year.

To make business sense it soon becomes clear

That McNab’s lab needs products so new and so strong

That the market demand remains high all year long.

So we’ll whip up more beasts with awesome new traits

That will leave all the other gene labs at the gate

When we introduce in our Fall catalog

Critters to set the whole country agog!

There’s the Grid-Lock-Reducer, a sort of a mammal,

A new type of gene type, an urban type camel

With legs well-designed to stride over the autos

That tie the world up in mechanical knotos!

It’s a creature that sees by both day and by night,

And in really tight places can even take flight,

Thanks to the genes of the Humbird Gigantus

That we dredged from the mud of mighty Atlantis!

And the Fast-Food-o’Fetcher’s a wonderful beast

With forty-eight Kangaroo pouches, at least,

To keep hot food hot, and to keep cold food cold,

That feature alone’s worth the beast’s weight in gold.

But we didn’t stop there, though we could have stopped, brudder,

Instead, in each pouch we designed a small udder

With spigots for ketchup and mustard and mayo

And an optional tap for the sauce of the day-o!

We think it’s a beast that you’ll find is ideal

To send out to fetch you a fine fast food meal!

For sub-urban folks we’ve designed a new steed,

That we modestly think is the best of the breed

For yard work and gardens that need some up-keeping

This beast the whole countryside soon will be sweeping.

It’s an Ovis-d’Bunny-cum-Elephantatus,

And wait ‘til you see what this creature has brought us!

Part sheep, it keeps lawns and curbsides neatly trimmed,

The bunny gene’s spliced upside down on a whim,

That causes the critter in vegetable beds,

To avoid eating veggies – it plants them instead!

And our garden consultant assures us it’s wiser

To use, in the place of some chem fertilizer,

An organic source of good food for the plants,

Hence, all of the genes from those huge elephants.”

“Soooooo. It’s a pretty good lab,” said weird Harold McNab.

“Though the stuff that they turn out is still far too drab.

I would sprinkle the world with some creatures quite fab.

Ah, I certainly would – if I ran the lab.”

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