"To get the full value of joy, you must have someone to divide it with."
~ Mark Twain
This brief video shows what happened in the NASA control room when the Curiosity rover touched down. It is 16 seconds of sheer joy. I'm posting it here so I can watch it whenever I want. Feel free to do the same.
"Scatter joy!"
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
Friday, August 10, 2012
Sunday, August 5, 2012
Sometimes the story is the thing
"The most common lie is that which one lies to himself; lying to others is relatively an exception."
~ Friedrich Nietzsche
Confusion and debate have gripped science journalism since July 30, when the talented and much-praised science writer Jonah Lehrer resigned his position with The New Yorker after admitting he had fabricated quotes. Why Lehrer would do such a thing — especially since the quotes he fabricated were attributed to Bob Dylan, whose every word is pored over by fans — remains a mystery.
Several interesting articles have followed. A Language Log post by linguist Mark Liberman posited that Lehrer's "unquotations" were not materially different from those of New Yorker writer Janet Malcolm or, in fact, any number of other journalists; in a subsequent post, he discussed the continuing controversy and law suit surrounding alleged misquotes and mistakes in a New Yorker article by scientist Jared Diamond.
On Friday financial blogger Felix Salmon* contributed his view that Lehrer's fabrication is of a piece with the nonsense contained in contemporary TED talks. TED (short for Technology, Entertainment, Design) is a series of live events that grew from one annual conference about "ideas worth spreading" to an endless series of events of diminishing quality. While I don't entirely agree with Salmon's conflation of Lehrer and TED, I wholeheartedly agree with his inspiration — Evgeny Morozov's "The Naked and The TED," a brilliant take-down in The New Republic about three jargon-filled, fatuous and fact-free books from TED's new publishing arm.
All of this made me sorry about the state of ideas and storytelling. Storytelling is all the rage in business nowadays — people have rediscovered the concept that context, quotes and examples make information more memorable. Unfortunately, most corporate storytelling is terrible stuff that might actually benefit from some fabricated quotes.
TED was once a forum for brilliant storytelling by people with high-quality minds. Sadly, those days seem to be gone. So, in memoriam, I present here my three all-time favorite TED talks. None makes a scientific case; all are about experience; each is unforgettable.
Sometimes the story is the thing.
"There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories."
~ Ursula K. LeGuin
In the first, neuroanatomist and brain scientist Jill Bolte Taylor talks about her "Stroke of Insight" — what it felt like when she had a stroke and experienced it as a scientific observer as well as a person in the grips of a life-threatening medical crisis. This 18-minute-plus talk will have you at the edge of your seat.
My second pick is "The 4 a.m. Mystery" by the extraordinarily clever monologist Rives. This one is only 8 minutes long and so entertaining, you'll want to watch it more than once.
My third choice is conductor Benjamin Zander's talk on "The Transformative Power of Classical Music." Zander believes that classical music has the power to leave us all "with shining eyes". Watch this talk and he will have you convinced.
"Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives, the power to retell it, rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change, truly are powerless, because they cannot think new thoughts."
~ Salman Rushdie
* Felix Salmon and I work for the same company, apparently in the same office building. I don't know him.
Sunday, July 8, 2012
The Mystery Is in Our Stars
Like many people, I sometimes suffer from insomnia. One of the things I like to do amuse myself in the middle of the night is visit NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day website. The photo for July 8 was this absolutely stunning specimen from Iceland — a volcano and an aurora.
When I posted this on Facebook this morning, I got into a conversation with a social media friend (hello, Thomas G. Fiffer!) about my belief that looking at the sky is the key to having a sense of awe and wonder about the world around us. Eventually the post below, which I wrote in March 2010, came to mind. And then, when I looked at the post, I realized it included a reference to a 2009 article by the excellent neuroscientist and top-notch dad Mark Changizi...who had referenced the same article on Facebook the day before.
These are what we fact-minded people call coincidences, and they inspired me to re-publish this post. I'd love to hear what you think.
March 17, 2010
"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed."
~ Albert Einstein
Every evening after the sun goes down, I look out my kitchen window at the Manhattan skyline. The view is a lot like this photo, although partly obstructed by nearby buildings.
To the left is the Empire State building; dead center, the fantastic hubcap-, hood-ornament- and gargoyle-laden Chrysler building. Below, above and all around, sprinkled among the city's predominantly domino-shaped structures, are pastry-shop-window constructions from an earlier time when building tops looked like fevered meringue dreams. I have been looking at this view for decades now, and it rarely fails to fill me with joy.
Just recently, I realized what it does not fill me with: wonder and awe. And that's because, in this light-drenched panorama, I cannot see the sky. No planets, no constellations, no milky belt of suns wheeling by.
This realization hit me yesterday while I was out walking under New York's first clear sky in a week, brooding about the sad state of science knowledge. According to Pew Research, 47% of Americans believe life evolved over time (with or without heavenly guidance), while 42% believe humans have always existed in their present form. Many also believe the universe was created 10,000 years ago and dinosaurs and humans existed at the same time.
"Mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis of man's desire to understand."
~ Neil Armstrong
Cognitive scientist, evolutionary neurobiologist and author Mark Changizi of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has written persuasively about why many people cannot grasp evolution. In this blog post, he compares their confusion to his son's shock and fear on first encountering a jacuzzi. Like a jacuzzi, he says, evolution seems nuts when you first run into it. And as he wrote, "If you’re so used to evolution that you fail to see how weird it is, you’ll be in a poor position to explain why it isn’t as crazy as it at first sounds."
What keeps me up at night is the fear that today's anti-science bias is dragging knowledge into the past. I worry that in a few more generations we'll be teaching our kids the earth is flat and the sun revolves around it. It's as if we're in a time machine that's stuck in reverse.
"We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made or only just happened."
~ Mark Twain
But I have an idea, and it's very simple: turn off the lights. Literally shut off the glaring lights at least one night per month and let the people of this planet see the stars again. Staring at the stars led early man to try to understand the forces at work around him. Staring at the stars gives us that sense of wonder that is fundamental to science and to appreciating science. Here's a place to start wondering.
"All is mystery; but he is a slave who will not struggle to penetrate the dark veil."
~ Benjamin Disraeli
When I posted this on Facebook this morning, I got into a conversation with a social media friend (hello, Thomas G. Fiffer!) about my belief that looking at the sky is the key to having a sense of awe and wonder about the world around us. Eventually the post below, which I wrote in March 2010, came to mind. And then, when I looked at the post, I realized it included a reference to a 2009 article by the excellent neuroscientist and top-notch dad Mark Changizi...who had referenced the same article on Facebook the day before.
These are what we fact-minded people call coincidences, and they inspired me to re-publish this post. I'd love to hear what you think.
March 17, 2010
"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed."
~ Albert Einstein
Every evening after the sun goes down, I look out my kitchen window at the Manhattan skyline. The view is a lot like this photo, although partly obstructed by nearby buildings.
To the left is the Empire State building; dead center, the fantastic hubcap-, hood-ornament- and gargoyle-laden Chrysler building. Below, above and all around, sprinkled among the city's predominantly domino-shaped structures, are pastry-shop-window constructions from an earlier time when building tops looked like fevered meringue dreams. I have been looking at this view for decades now, and it rarely fails to fill me with joy.
Just recently, I realized what it does not fill me with: wonder and awe. And that's because, in this light-drenched panorama, I cannot see the sky. No planets, no constellations, no milky belt of suns wheeling by.
This realization hit me yesterday while I was out walking under New York's first clear sky in a week, brooding about the sad state of science knowledge. According to Pew Research, 47% of Americans believe life evolved over time (with or without heavenly guidance), while 42% believe humans have always existed in their present form. Many also believe the universe was created 10,000 years ago and dinosaurs and humans existed at the same time.
"Mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis of man's desire to understand."
~ Neil Armstrong
Cognitive scientist, evolutionary neurobiologist and author Mark Changizi of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has written persuasively about why many people cannot grasp evolution. In this blog post, he compares their confusion to his son's shock and fear on first encountering a jacuzzi. Like a jacuzzi, he says, evolution seems nuts when you first run into it. And as he wrote, "If you’re so used to evolution that you fail to see how weird it is, you’ll be in a poor position to explain why it isn’t as crazy as it at first sounds."
What keeps me up at night is the fear that today's anti-science bias is dragging knowledge into the past. I worry that in a few more generations we'll be teaching our kids the earth is flat and the sun revolves around it. It's as if we're in a time machine that's stuck in reverse.
"We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made or only just happened."
~ Mark Twain
But I have an idea, and it's very simple: turn off the lights. Literally shut off the glaring lights at least one night per month and let the people of this planet see the stars again. Staring at the stars led early man to try to understand the forces at work around him. Staring at the stars gives us that sense of wonder that is fundamental to science and to appreciating science. Here's a place to start wondering.
"All is mystery; but he is a slave who will not struggle to penetrate the dark veil."
~ Benjamin Disraeli
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