“Dignity” Follow-Up

May 11th, 2008

CNN has an article about the Pope speaking with the headline “Sex can become ‘like a drug.’”

Well, that bit is content free. I suppose for some seeing the Pope can become ‘like a drug,’ based crowd reaction he’s encountered. It’s one of those stupid comparisons, especially considering that there are helpful drugs, ineffectual drugs, and harmful drugs.

But enough about that. Here’s the bit that resonates with Pinker’s criticism of the President’s Council on Bioethics and their report on dignity:

“What was true yesterday remains true even today. The truth expressed in ‘Humanae vitae’ doesn’t change; on the contrary, in the light of new scientific discoveries, it is ever more up to date,” the pope added.

Benedict appeared to be referring to artificial procreation methods, which in the Church’s view offend the dignity of life and go against Vatican teaching that the only way to conceive a child is through intercourse between husband and wife.

“No mechanical technique can substitute the act of love that two married people exchange as a sign of a greater mystery,” Benedict said.

So we have an appeal to dignity to justify only one way to have kids, an argument I find both vague and offensive. I also find offensive the notion that as we use science to figure out more things, what the Church has said before is more important and won’t change. Consider this in light of their stance against contraception, including outright lying in Africa about the effectiveness of condoms against STDs, and the AIDS crisis. How exactly is dying of AIDS, or giving birth to a baby with AIDS, dignified?

And technically, I think that the “mechanical technique” definitely does adequately substitute, and there’s not a big mystery about how procreation works. At least not among those scientifically educated. Babies happen with or without love. I’m not against love or mystery, but I am against supporting death and suffering in the name of superstition and weasel words and seeing so many people suck it down like it was a tasty milkshake of truth.

“What must be defended is not only the true concept of life but above all the dignity of the very person,” the pope added.

Right.

Posted in Education, General, Popular Events, Science | 2 Comments »

Five Science Fiction Movies that get the Science Right

May 11th, 2008

I tried for ten physical science-based science fiction movies a few months back. Five is less ambitious and easier, letting them pick better movies on average, although I have quibbles.

This is the list from New Scientist:

2001: A Space Odyssey. I agree. Tops my list, too.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It’s a good movie, but it doesn’t “get the science right.” We know very little about how to manipulate memories this specifically, and with it being set in the present, it was very implausible. I think the best that could be said for the science is that it’s so vague in this film that it isn’t obviously impossible.

Alien. Another good movie, and one on my original list. I removed it on my revised list, however. It wasn’t at all clear that they’d avoided FTL travel, even though travel times were long and suspended animation was used. Also, doesn’t the alien explode in space? That’s unlikely, among some other biological issues.

Gattaca. Another fine film. I like it very much. The physical science was absent or stupid (that was astronaut training?!), however, so it didn’t make my list. The biological science was much better, although I was skeptical about some details.

Solaris. I’ve heard good things about both versions, and the original Lem story, but I confess I’ve never watched or read any of them. I want to, at some point. I do object to New Scientist pulling a fast one here. “This Russian classic makes the list not so much for the specific science it portrays, as for its portrayal of the limits of science and of human understanding.” What??? That’s getting the science right? This movie represents 20% of the entries.

Posted in Science Fiction, Science | 3 Comments »

The Sickness of Theocon Bioethics

May 11th, 2008

James Nicoll linked to this yesterday.  Thanks, James.

Stephen Pinker, one of the better science writers in the business these days, has an insightful yet troubling look in his New Republic article at how our medical and biological research is being damaged by the current administration, in particular through the Presidential Council on Bioethics, which is stacked with religious and political conservatives out of step with democratic values.

In the recent past, they’ve used calls to protect human “dignity” to pass judgment on, and often to attack, anything and everything from stem cell research to “drugs that would enhance cognition, genetic manipulation of animals or humans, therapies that could extend the lifespan, and embryonic stem cells and so-called ‘therapeutic cloning’ that could furnish replacements for diseased tissue and organs.”

In an effort respond to criticisms about how “dignity” is a poorly defined and slippery term, the council has issued a 555 page report.  Pinker skewers it, pointing out how the report confirms the criticisms.  The report also points out that most of the council members as represented by essays in the report resort to religious arguments to justify their positions — arguments largely out of the mainstream beliefs of Americans religious or not and contrary to modern notions of personal freedom — resulting in a particularly conservative religious viewpoint that constricts research that could lead to better and longer lives for billions of people.

For instance, Leon Kass, the idiot originally head of the council, believes it’s undignified for people to lick ice cream cones in public.  Accordingly, I’d suspect him and his allies stacked on the council to oppose any and all scientific research based on their own personal conservatism, and think he would serve the world better by hiding in a closet where he can’t interact with modern America.

That’s an affront to my dignity as a scientist and human being who depends on modern medicine for my well being.  How dare “thinkers” like this threaten my future health on the basis of such nonsense?

Pinker’s article is aptly titled “The Stupidity of Dignity” and I urge you to read it.  For the hardcore, you can go read the report yourself here.

I can only hope the next president abolishes this abomination, and returns the status of the Science Advisor to what it was before Bush.  There’s a better way to go about this.

Posted in Education, General, Popular Events, Science | No Comments »

Local Weirdness: Man Wants Denver to Form Extraterrestrial Affairs Commission

May 10th, 2008

Here’s one article about it.

Basic situation.  Man claims he has video proving aliens exist (”greys” looking into a window), and wants Denver to cough up $75k forming a commission about how to deal with them (presumably peacefully).

I’m skeptical about aliens visiting Earth, and think the vast majority of the evidence doesn’t hold up to scientific scrutiny.  I don’t think it’s impossible, merely unlikely and far from proven.  UFOs exist for sure, but the “U” is critical: a lot of flying objects turn out to be things from this Earth, and those that aren’t are usually meteors.

If alien visitation is happening, we get to meet with them when they want to meet with us, not the other way around.

Besides, the guy is doing this wrong.  If his video really proved the existence of aliens (and not just indistinct figures looking through a window), there’d be a lot more money and energy applied to the issue.  Asking for the money first, and action, with only claims of having a video, is pretty damn weak by any standard.

Posted in General, Popular Events, Science Fiction, Science | No Comments »

Absolutely Incredible Photos of Electrical Storm/Volcano in Chile

May 10th, 2008

It looks more ominous and foreboding than Mordor…Peter Jackson should have seen these first.

Check it out here.

No, seriously, take a few minutes to look.  I’ve rarely seen anything so awesome, and never on Earth.

Posted in Education, Popular Events, Science | 2 Comments »

Science vs. Fantasy False Dichotomy Redux at Fantasy Magazine

May 9th, 2008

A revised version of my original post is up at sfnovelists.com today, but more interestingly over at Fantasy Magazine, to, as their “Blog for a Beer” contest.

Fantasy has a prize for best/most interesting comment with the goal of sparking lively, fun debate, so please do check it out.

Below is the revised post.  Thanks go in particular to Dan Levin for reminding me about the X-Files.  I think his additional insights about that show would make a competitive post over at Fantasy.

There have been a number of books, movies, and tv shows presenting apparent conflicts between the scientific world view and that of the believers in the fantastic. Characterize this dichotomy on a science vs. fantasy spectrum, if you will.

I submit that many of these stories, with a few notable exceptions, have been unfair.

Science is a methodology for developing reliable knowledge about the world, and all it depends upon is that there is an objective reality that behaves consistently. Science works in our world. We have a world of technology that demonstrates this in no uncertain terms. It should work in any consistent world, particularly worlds resembling our own. Any world with magic, assuming the magic system is consistent, should be understandable through science.

A conflict under these situations, pitting a logical scientific type against a wild-eyed believer, reason against belief, is a false conflict. Scientists are not dogmatic and their measurements, experiments, and observations can and do change their minds. Or not, in too many cases. How many times have you seen the skeptical scientist character in a story with fantastic elements mutter something like, “There must be a logical explanation,” and then go on to offer something feeble and likely stupid in face of the reality of the story? Let me illustrate this with some TV series that regularly pitted science against the fantastic. The first never really played fair, the second is currently running and there’s hope, and a final case where the appropriate character change finally did come to the skeptical scientist (thanks to smart writers and a long run).

I recall watching Northern Exposure on TV some 15 years ago, more or less. It was an interesting show about a doctor with a fellowship compelled to serve in Alaska for several years to pay off the debt. What was stupid was that he represented a scientific point of view, while the locals provided a new age, fantasy-based point of view, and he never took into account the data of his experiences there in adjusting his outlook. The show didn’t play fair. They cheated. Science takes into account information from the environment, experiments and observations, in reaching conclusions, having an objective fantastic reality. For the majority of the show, Joel just looked like an ass denying the events that occurred based on his past experience rather than the physical evidence he was presented with week after week. It wasn’t science. It was a believer’s version of science.

This is happening on Battlestar Galactica to a certain extent. Baltar is our scientist there. He’s making the rationalist argument, but he’s also being swayed. I’m okay with that, because on the show the faith-based perspective has numerous facts in support of it, with rather unambiguous visions regularly coming true on a regular basis. It isn’t really religion as we know it when the writers can make the visions and prophecies clear and true every week. We call that fantasy. I’m very sympathetic toward Baltar. He’s a smart guy, like me. He has a weakness for women, like me. He just wants to survive, like me, and probably you, too. He’s too often made to be the bad guy. I hope he’s redeemed in the end. He hasn’t been immoral as I’ve seen it. He’s been rationally human. The final verdict hasn’t quite come in yet.

Perhaps one of the best cases, in the end, of how science can tackle the fantastic occurred on the X-Files. In the beginning we had the classic and poor false dichotomy: Mulder the believer against Scully the skeptical scientist. Her job in the early seasons was to disbelieve Mulder’s wild ideas with a more “scientific” explanation, which she did dutifully even in the face of compelling evidence. Eventually, however, her character and the show grew, although it took a very long time for them to move away from the false dichotomy at the heart of the original formula. The data started leading her to agree with Mulder’s notions. The scientific evidence supported them, in the show’s reality, and science got her there.

Look. In a piece of fiction I’ll buy into the realities of that fiction. Just make them clear and honest. Too often we have idiocy. Characters like Joel Fleishmann who keep on with a modern, scientific worldview despite events that he sees and experiences, repeatedly, regularly, and can collect evidence about. Change the rules, and science will figure it out. Stories that fail in this respect represent stories that fail to properly portray science.

I’m not claiming that science is the be all and end all on all matters. Life is about much more than that. But if you want facts to cling to, rules to understand, and live in a consistent world (fantastic elements or not), stick with science.

Where science conflicts with other paradigms, the other paradigms are probably wrong. This is just based on how science works. Science doesn’t work everywhere, but where it works, pay attention. And it should work in any self-consistent fantasy, too. If it doesn’t, someone isn’t playing fair.

Posted in Popular Events, Science Fiction, Science | 2 Comments »

Six Creepiest Superheroes of All Time

May 9th, 2008

From Cracked. Made me crack up, I admit. They are in reverse order: Supergirl’s superhorse, Comet, the incestuous wondertwins Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch from the Ultimates, Starfox from the Avengers, Inner Child (Dorothy’s Doll) from Doom Patrol, Proty from Legion of Superheroes, and Terry Long from Teen Titans.

Now, I object to the last guy. What’s wrong with a divorced college professor who hooks up with a hottie like Wonder Girl?! Sigh. No love for the divorced college professors.

I’ll submit that this should be some kind of “creepy classic.” Every issue of Garth Ennis’s The Boys has multiple characters that out creep this list. Except for maybe Comet, the superhorse. But come on, who is really competitive with “Love Sausage,” whose kryptonite is busty girls? Check him out:

Posted in Science Fiction | 4 Comments »

More Science, Science Fiction Stories of Interest

May 8th, 2008

Stefanie Komossa, whose work I pointed at yesterday concerning a black hole being ejected from a galaxy merger, has another cool result today: the light echo of a supermassive black hole swallowing a star in a distant galaxy.  She’s done interesting work the last few years, and I think it’s been due to her actively looking for new and proposed phenomena.  A lot of us astronomers are wrapped up in the minutia of current projects, studying objects we already know, and using techniques we already know.  That brings success, but not a lot of breaking discoveries.

There’s a gallery of Hubble Space Telescope images of colliding galaxies.   My press release next month is going to be on something similar, although my objects are more distant and won’t look as cool, even though they’ve got a lot more going on at the moment with their accreting black holes.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is doing an exhibit on superhero costumes:  Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy.  Armani is involved, even.  The show covers Superman through the X-Men and Catwoman and runs through September 1.  (Thanks for the pointer, Bob, AKA Quailman!)

Seth Shostak has a really interesting article on space.com about why SETI seems to be primarily an American enterprise these days.   It goes into research done on cultural differences in American society vs. others, and there’s a suggestion that Americans as a people are more likely to take on ambiguous projects and to search for new truths, boiling down to a low score in “uncertainty avoidance.”  Apparently China and India also score low here, so as their economies and expertise grows, perhaps we’ll see them taking on similarly ambitious and uncertain projects.

APOD shows us the “Dark Tower of Scorpius.”

Over on Scientific American, a call for more novels about real scientists.  I can get behind this.  My next novel should fall right in this window.  The author, Mark Alpert, has his own science novel Final Theory coming out next month.  It’s weird how a novel has to have speculative elements to be called “science fiction,” and that natural label can’t easily be applied to fiction about science/scientists.

Posted in Education, General, Popular Events, Science Fiction, Science | No Comments »

Cool (or at least Interesting) Links in Science and SF

May 7th, 2008

io9 talks about getting the camp out of science fiction.

Bad Astronomy reports a photo of the newest of new moon.

There are apparently time travelers from the ancient past shocked at today’s street pornography.

Canada wants to build an army of Iron Men.

Tokyo arcology plans.

An interesting NASA story about a “super solar flare” from 1859. Naw, upgrade the “interesting” to “cool.”

A claim of a supermassive black hole being ejected from a galaxy merger. Theory just recently predicted this, and we’re seeing it already? Color me skeptical until I check out the journal paper. Hmm, okay, they put a question mark in the title. If this sort of thing were common or obvious, we’d have noticed it before it was predicted. I actually expect to read more about this topic this week in the pile of Hubble Space Telescope proposals I’m still working through (my panel has 4-5 on this topic).

James Nicoll’s blog today pointed at a neat Solar System Visualizer.

The Iron Sky trailer is available for your viewing pleasure. Looks cool, but definitely a dangerous degree of camp probably present. I mean, flying saucers and Nazis in space? And they make the stupid mistake of referring to the “dark side of the moon.” Grr. But it still looks kind of cool.

Posted in General, Science Fiction, Science | No Comments »

The Academic Ponzi Scheme

May 7th, 2008

I want to talk a little bit about the dark side of academic sociology, a dark side that does have a silver lining. This situation I will describe may be obvious to some of you reading, and a complete surprise to others. For those to whom it’s obvious, perhaps I’ll still have some subtle insights that make this post worth the time.

When I’m not being general, I’ll refer to my own field of astronomy which represents a perfect case study.

In a zero growth situation, every professor in a graduate program needs only to train one student during their career to replace them when they retire. Every University with graduate programs expect professors to get funding to support themselves and their graduate students, and wants to see as many PhDs awarded as possible. The average professor trains way more than one graduate student during their career. I currently have three graduate students, and expect to have four in the near future. Getting half a dozen through to PhDs during my career is not unlikely.

Are you starting to glimpse the problem?

I recall seeing a paper maybe some ten years ago that suggested that about half of all astronomy PhD recipients managed to stay in astronomy one way or another, and that this number hadn’t changed much over the past few decades. Well, there was a lot of growth in astronomy programs in the 1960s and 1970s, and the establishment of places like the Space Telescope Science Institute in the 1980s continued growth. The 1990s saw the first real job crunch that I’m aware of, with highly qualified people — award-winning young scientists — failing to land jobs, or at least ones they thought to be acceptable in comparison with their expectations. And that’s continuing and becoming tougher at least in quality of positions.

There’s also resistance to recognizing the situation on the faculty side. Some of us, especially the older professors at the more prestigious places, don’t want to consider this a problem. I’ve heard first or second-hand some big name astronomers you may have seen on TV documentaries flat out ridicule the idea of graduate programs providing guidance toward non-traditional jobs, or, in another case, idly muse about how graduates of Princeton, Caltech, and Harvard seem to be the only ones getting jobs at Princeton, Caltech, and Harvard. (More on this point in a moment.)

The situation now is worse. It’s relatively easy these days to follow the professional astronomy job market. There’s a wiki page all about it. With a couple of post-docs seeking permanent positions, I’ve been paying attention. Think about how each Princeton, Caltech, or Harvard professor may produce a handful of PhDs, and about how only one of them gets to be the replacement. The others can get jobs at places down a rung or two on the ladder, which displaces all of those University’s graduates down another few rungs. You finally end up with graduates from the top Universities, top-notch researchers, taking jobs at places you’ve never heard of, often teaching-intensive departments in which research time and support is limited. I don’t want to knock teaching — it’s important and a lot of astronomers enjoy it immensely (I do) — but spending more time writing multiple choice tests for non-major students than doing original research is not what most Princeton graduates signed on for originally.

This can and does have a significant effect on morale among astronomers at all levels. The academic system has set up a Ponzi scheme of sorts that, at least in astronomy, seems to be threatening to collapse. Okay, maybe collapse is too strong a term, but it’s going to shake up things in a profound manner.

What’s the silver lining? Well, lower-rung Universities can now attract much better talent. The difference in quality of faculty between the top departments and the lower-ranked departments is narrowing. The top departments are still likely to give their faculty more time for research, better facilities, and better support in general, but really good people are spread throughout the system teaching undergrads and graduate students both.

Maybe some people will reading this will be rolling their eyes, having seen similar issues years ago in the humanities, or any academic field that didn’t experience the growth of science and has few positions for PhD holders outside of academia. Well, it’s part of my professional landscape on a regular basis and I’m talking about it now.

I advise a lot of students. Is it ethical for me to push any but the most exceptional students toward advanced degrees in astronomy?

I think it is, but in much more limited terms than in the past. If you love astronomy, or any field, pursuing it at the highest levels can’t be a bad way to spend a few years. Moreover, there are a lot of ways to be successful in a field and it isn’t only the people with the highest GPAs and GRE scores that turn out to be the best scientists. I mean, it helps, but there are a lot of other important qualities, and many of them are not well measured by grad school applications.

And departments like my own at the University of Wyoming? In order to best prepare our students, we really need to specialize a bit and make sure our students are among the best in some respect and can compete. For instance, I think our niche is going to be to turn out top-notch observational astronomers. We have our own 2.3 meter telescope and our students can get a lot of experience that’s not so easy at many other institutions. We can do this thing well, and get a reputation for it.

The situation isn’t really fair or unfair. It’s just how it is, and while we can adapt to it, we aren’t going to be able to change it without fundamentally altering how academia works. There’s steady or growing demand for students, and diminishing demand for PhDs.

More so than ever, students should only go into grad school for love, because the dream job may not be waiting at the other end.

Posted in Personal, Education, Science | 3 Comments »

FAT Monkeys (with pics)!

May 6th, 2008

I’m fascinated and horrified by the pictures here.  We’re far from the only species that will eat ourselves to obesity, but we do seem to be the only one to consistently enable others.  Well, the tourists in Japan contributing to this indicate it’s not just the fault of fast food.  There’s something profoundly disturbing about our willingness to do this to not only ourselves, but to animals, too.

My kitty gets light food, but will someone please think of the monkeys?!

Posted in Education, General | 4 Comments »

Teacher Fired for “Wizardry”; Werdna Pleased

May 6th, 2008

Unfortunately, I’m not joking.  Check it out.

It’s hard to believe this is 21st century America sometimes.  And we’re talking a school teacher, a place where education is supposed to happen.  There was an opportunity here for the school to refuse to act based on such a ridiculous accusation, to let an unreasonable parent/kid deal with the real world, to educate.

Where is the Tiltowait of reason?

Posted in Education, Popular Events, Science Fiction | 1 Comment »