Rappin' about Economics

Heard about this one on NPR.  When I grow up, I want to do for physics what these guys are doing for economics:

Nick Cave, Haiti, and the Age of Weeping

"Father why are all the children weeping?

They are merely crying son.

O, are they merely crying father?

Yes, true weeping is yet to come."

-Nick Cave, The Weeping Song

I wouldn't categorize myself as someone who lacked empathy in my youth, but I wasn't really moved by abstract disasters - I pretty much had to see something for it to affect me.

Then, I had kids.  Now, I seem to be extremely sensitive to certain things.  I teared up the other day when NPR was playing MKL's "I have a dream" speech.  Certain "Law and Order" episodes drive me from the room.  And, lately, I can't bear to watch the disaster footage from Haiti.

I first heard "The Weeping Song" while  a freshman at Purdue.  I was newly turned on to Nick Cave after hearing and seeing him in Wim Wender's "Wings of Desire".  I remember thinking what a cool abstraction it was; the difference between crying and weeping.

I don't think I really know the difference yet, having had such a fortunate life, but my imagination can now take me there...

In Series or in Sequence?

In Physics, we talk about having circuit elements in "parallel" (current splits to go through either but not both) or in "series" (same current goes through one element and then the next).

In plain english though, we do the steps of a project in parallel (at the same time) or in sequence (one after the other).

So what is the difference between series and sequence? 

In Math it is the difference between an ordered set (sequence) and the sum of that ordered set (series). 

For everyday usage, dictionary.com supplies the following:
"Series is applied to a number of things of the same kind, usually related to each other, arranged or happening in order: a series of baseball games. Sequence stresses the continuity in time, thought, cause and effect, etc.: The scenes came in a definite sequence."

The Latin roots of the words are "connection" (series) and "to follow" (sequence).

It seems to me that the best alternate to "parallel" (from the greek "side by side") in the physics sense is actually "sequence" not "series".  In both series and parallel circuits, the resistors are similar and arranged relative to each other as well as being connected so there is almost not enough distinction between "parallel" and "series"!

So why do we say "series circuit" instead of "sequence circuit"?  It turns out that the total resistance of a bunch of resistors in series is the sum of all the individual resistors - so it looks like a mathematical series (being added).

I wish the parallel circuits had a formula for total resistance that reminded one of geometric parallel-ness, but (as far as I know) they do not.  So there is no good parallel for a parallel circuit, be it series or sequence...

Melville on my Mind

Just back from a Barnes & Nobles run on their last day of Teacher Appreciation Week (25% off!).  I hold in my hands a copy of Moby Dick.  I turn Forty (40!) in a few weeks and Melville has been on my mind.

First off, both my brother and I have attempted the reading at various points only to inevitably fizzle out.  It calls us back for we both know the book as "the only work of fiction that Dad has read twice". 

Then, last December, in one of many "my favorites" lists, a contemporary writer listed Moby Dick as one of his favorites but with the caveat "no one under 40 should really read it since they wouldn't get it".

A few weeks back there was a brief blurb I read somewhere about an artist who was drawing his way through Moby Dick, a page at a time. I haven't checked out the blog of his work, but I am thinking of checking on it as I read the book.

Finally, just this morning, in the Ideas section of the Boston Globe there was an interview with the author of a new book on whales.  But the interview seemed to be all about Moby Dick once again.

Call me Foolish, but I think the Universe has launched me on a quest.  Certain enlightenment awaits, no?

Or, maybe, it is all about the journey and not so much the result.

War & Peace & Obama & MLK, Jr.

Finally got around to reading Obama's much lauded Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech.  One should read the whole thing however you feel about Obama - it is a rich and stimulating speech.  However, on this day, I would draw your attention to this particular portion:

"...But we do not have to think that human nature is perfect for us to still believe that the human condition can be perfected. We do not have to live in an idealized world to still reach for those ideals that will make it a better place.  The non-violence practiced by men like Gandhi and King may not have been practical or possible in every circumstance, but the love that they preached - their faith in human progress - must always be the North Star that guides us on our journey.
For if we lose that faith - if we dismiss it as silly or naïve; if we divorce it from the decisions that we make on issues of war and peace - then we lose what is best about humanity. We lose our sense of possibility. We lose our moral compass.

Like generations have before us, we must reject that future. As Dr. King said at this occasion so many years ago, "I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the 'isness' of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal 'oughtness' that forever confronts him."          

"

Amen

Starlight, Sunsets, Equations, and T.S. Eliot

I sometimes tell my students a tale of how Irene had a math professor at M.I.T. who wrote an equation on the board, looked at it, and told the class "This equation is why I believe in God."  The equation is 

e^iπ = -1

e: the natural logarithm - the perfectly increasing curve

i: the imaginary number - the square root of -1

pi: the cyclical number - the ratio of any circle to its diameter

Why should these three irrational & imaginary numbers combine in any meaningful way - much less in such a simple, elegant way?  The universe must be carefully crafted indeed goes the argument.

"Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars - mere globs of gas atoms. I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination - stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one - million - year - old light. A vast pattern - of which I am a part... It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it."
- Richard Feynman

Several years ago, an erstwhile student of mine (MF) came back from college newly empowered by higher level math courses and proudly proclaimed to me: "Hey - all that e to i pi stuff you used to talk about?  That's just Euler's equation."

It is sometimes said that scientists are unromantic, that their passion to figure out robs the world of beauty and mystery. But is it not stirring to understand how the world actually works–that white light is made of colors, that color is the way we perceive the wavelengths of light, that transparent air reflects light, that in so doing it discriminates among the waves, and that the sky is blue for the same reason that the sunset is red? It does no harm to the romance of the sunset to know a little bit about it.” – Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot

Technically, he was right, but I knew he was missing something, though I wasn't sure what exactly. Now I realize that our appreciation of profound truths is cyclical and he was simply at stage two:

At first we are awed by its mere existence;
Then we dissect its truths into constituent parts and feel we understand it;
Only then can we come back around and be awed once again in an even more profound way

"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploroing
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time."
- T. S. Eliot

Educational Mercenaries and Socrates

"If we're seniors, why should we learn anything if we're not taking the final exam?" asks JB in class today.  All teachers get this question  (or versions of it: "Will this be on the test?"; "Should I write this down?"; "Why do we need to know this?"; "When will I ever use this?").  Since seniors leave early, we don't give them a final in science.

Feeling feisty today, I launch right into my "You're just an educational mercenary" speech.

Learning is not the goal of an educational mercenary - their theory of education is "High school grades get me into college" then "college gets me a good job"  then "A good job earns me good money" and finally "Money lets me buy things and services that can make me happy".  Just in it for the money.  A mercenary.

I went into my "true searching for understanding leads to a richer, more satisfying life - the other path just has you going through the motions and trappings of life".  As a friend put it recently:  occasionally, rats trapped in a maze may find a piece of cheese and experience happiness, but it's so much better to simply get out of the maze!

I had a good rhythm going and felt pretty full of myself (imagine that!) and some of the other students were nodding and enjoying my tirade.  Then, when I was done, JB and his friends looked up and said "Wait - you didn't answer his question - why do we have to learn it if there's no final exam for us?"

I was so happy with myself at this point, I didn't even get depressed.

"The Unexamined Life is not worth living" - Socrates

(pics from clog.dailycal.org (graduation)and www.poligazette.com (mercenaries))

Derivative Entertainment and the Swinging Pendulum

NPR had a nice piece this morning on music and film:  Basically saying that the number one movie (Avatar) and the number one song ("Tik Tok" by Ke$ha) are completely derivative (just recycled old ideas put together; a "montage of tropes" as NPR put it), but very skillfully produced.  They seem like they should be great all-around but they are actually unoriginal.  They are great productions only.

I thoroughly agree with their analysis (but please note that I like watching and listening to highly produced things - it's just entertainment though, not art).  It got me thinking about the cultural pendulum swings:  bell bottoms in, now bell bottoms out only to be back in-style next decade; facial hair in, now facial hair out followed by side burns and goatees; slick productions now soon to be replaced by naturalist Cinéma vérité and back; synthesized voices  followed by acoustic guitar back to sampled hits of yesteryear; etc.

Thus is ever was so - history shows us these patterns of taste oscillate back and forth over time.  So, at first I was going to blog about how perhaps this NPR piece is an indication of the end of the highly produced derivative era we have been in:  We should expect retro-grainy black and white movies with no CGI next year with lots of acapella singing and acoustic guitars.

But then I started thinking - the cycle time for the cultural pendulum swings seem to be getting shorter.  We may be the first generation in a position to actually feel the oscillations.  At some point, perhaps the oscillations will simply stop and we will enter a new dialectic. Or perhaps, just as a real pendulum winds down eventually, we may be entering an era of no oscillations - everything will just be mashed together as self forming groups sample their own "montage of tropes" at their own pace.

(pics of Kesha Sebert and James Cameron)

Gravity Rap

What’s up with gravity?
Who’s down with gravity?
Listen to this rap and,

Blind man, you’ll see -

Inverse square laws scare you?

What is the m-one, m-two?

From these fellas, take your clue:

Kepler – he showed the ellipse

Explained the eclipse

On a ton of data he sits -
Into planetary motion he dips

And Solar System nectars he sips

Newton – he’s so versatile
Made others look infantile
Saw gravity fields universal
Mass: more than just inertial
Action at a distance:
Controversial

Einstein – his mind so fine
Showed gravity warps space-time
1919 eclipse he predicts
A star’s light-stream slips
Down a bowl in which the Sun sits
Punchin’ holes through space and time -
Black holes – no friend of mine!
Tidal forces pull me thinner than a fork tine

Big G little g
What begin with g?
Gladly Grounded by Gravity
Jordan had hang time
Seuss made the words rhyme
For you, I can’t make the time -

You thinkin’ little g is small

But the 9.8 makes you fall
It’s not small at all!
On facebook you try to friend me
I deny before you hit send key

Big G: so very, very small
Trying to reach out, gravitational?
Can’t feel your gravity, hardly at all
Got Caller ID: I don’t take your call

Need mass on a planetary scale
To keep me down, close this sale
I deleted all your voice mail

To Mother Nature, I say “Yes Ma’am!”
To 3 body problems, I say “Shazam!”
Your urgent emails: tagged as spam

(photo credits from top to bottom:http://knol.google.com/k/gravity-how-mass-attracts-mass#, NASA, &  http://astro.physics.sc.edu/selfpacedunits/Unit57.html)

Dostoevsky, Nietzche, and Nightmares

When I was a Junior at Purdue, one snowy morning I awoke from an extended dream that was so intense and vivid that I thought it was an actual memory.  I think this kind of thing is not too rare, but this incident was disturbing because in the dream I had killed someone in the distant past.  As I was trudging across campus, I was completely depressed because I knew the authorities had finally figured it all out and connected me to the murder from years ago.  I had no remorse for the unmotivated killing (a clue!), only sadness for my life behind bars that was coming.  As I tried to remember the details of why I had actually killed some random person so long ago, I started to realize something was not right.  Just before I got to the Physics Building, I realized that there was no logic to my "memories" and that I probably didn't kill someone actually.  Then, like a fog lifting, I figured out, several hours after waking, that it was all just a dream.

Sometime later, I think a few years, I was telling this story to someone and a subconscious part of my brain connected the dream to Crime and Punishment which I had read at the beginning of my senior year in high school.  The novel had an enourmous impact on me.  (I remember an early conversation on a date with Irene when we discussing literature and she put some good, but not excellent book in its place by casually saying, "I mean - it's no Crime and Punishment, but it's still good." - as if I needed any more reasons to fall for her!)  But to cause me to have a nightmare three years later that was so intense as to be taken for a memory?  Wow, Dostoevsky certainly had gotten his hooks in me!

For years this story of mine has ended there:  A "gee, isn't that interesting?" kind of anecdote on the power of literature.  But today a final piece that I didn't even know was missing fell into place while reading the Boston Globe's Ideas section.  The writer of a new book on Russian literature casually throws this out at the end of the interview:

"Take “Crime and Punishment”: Raskolnikov is asking, “How does Nietzsche apply to me, a destitute student living in Petersburg? Can I maybe become a superman by murdering a depressing old lady?” That resonates with us, because it’s an experiment in applicability taken to the furthest degree, and not in an abstract way, but in the most concrete, concretely observed way."

Nietzche and Dostoevsky?  Of course!  I had taken a course in existentialism my freshman year and had found the readings and discussions on Nietzche very intense.  Just like Dostoevsky is my standard bearer for literature, Nietzche is for philosophy - many is the time I have watched or read a pseudo-philosophical work and thought "That's just watered-down Nietzche!"

I had never, consciously, associated the two.  But, thanks to Ms. Batuman (the interviewee of the article), I now realize that my subconscious had made the connection all those years ago...

Will to power, Raskolnikov - will to power.