Arrow Through the Sun

Science Myths

2008-08-29T10:01:00.000-07:00

History is starting to frustrate me. That's because for every easily told story about science history there seems to be a deeper, more confusing, less scientifically orthodox explanation. And this is for four major personalities in the history of science discussion.

I've heard:

1.) Galileo's imprisonment was more about politics than geocentrism. Galileo also remained faithful to his idea of God, in his way.

2.) The debate between "Darwin's Bulldog," Thomas Huxley, and Bishop Samuel Wilberforce about evolution did not include many of the most quotable parts to it -- those were made up or exaggerated after the fact for effect. (Side note: I was able to visit the room where this debate took place, which is now a storage room at the Oxford Museum of Natural History. It wasn't as big as I had imagined, meaning I had probably exaggerated it in my own mind!) Huxley may have wanted to promote warfare between science and religion because there were too many of the clergy doing science! Back then before grants and all, if you wanted to do science you needed someone to give you money to live on. A few rich patrons supported science, but the biggest patron of them all, the one that gave people money and time that allowed them to ask questions about the natural world? It was the church. Huxley wanted to sever that connection so he could be a scientist without being supported by the church. Looks like it worked.

3.) When Copernicus placed the sun at the center of the universe, it did not imply to everyone that humanity was dethroned. The center of the universe wasn't considered the best place to be -- after all, it's precisely where Dante placed Hell. At the time people were worried because placing the sun at the center of the universe dethroned the SUN! (An excellent talk on this topic, one of the best I've heard all year, is available here in mp3 format or as text here.)

4.) And now, there's even footnotes to the story of Giordano Bruno, the philosopher who was (according to CW) burned at the stake for suggesting the universe was infinite and that there were other worlds. A book reviewed here says he too was more a victim of politics and bad personal choices than scientific censorship. The description of the character from the book sounds like some people I've met: someone who's looking for a fight and then uses science as the weapon. That some of the science ended up being right is actually beside the point. He wasn't burned at the stake for having heretical ideas; he had heretical ideas because he was a misanthrope and was burned at the stake for that.

So, not being a historian and being unable to fully investigate these four claims, I'm left with the sense that some of them are right and some of them are wrong. But even if only half of these are right, there's still some major myths being taught as truth in science class. I'm not talking about evolution, I'm talking about the place of science in the history of ideas, and I think that is more important than the specific biological mechanism of creation.

Chili Peppers are Good for You

2008-08-29T09:19:00.000-07:00

http://www.thechileman.org/guide_img/capsaicin.gif

Not only is the capsaicin in chili peppers anti-bacterial, it's also anti-fungal and can increase metabolism by changing the shape of a protein pump in the muscles, making it release energy as heat instead of pumping calcium. Is there a hot-pepper diet on the horizon?

Book Review: Ghostwalk

2008-08-28T11:11:00.000-07:00

Ghostwalk by Rebecca Stott is a semi-supernatural semi-thriller about Isaac Newton and alchemy. One of the revelations of the novel is that Isaac Newton spent much of his life being an alchemist, not really being a scientist. I'm fascinated by this man so I was hoping this book could shed light on him. But it's not really about him. It's about a semi-historical argument that someone committed a set of 5 murders in Cambridge at the time Isaac Newton was there. Trying to be all Da Vinci - codish with real history. And it just doesn't fly.

The author's strategy is to try to recreate alchemy by doing what alchemists did in her writing: by juxtaposing things, allowing time and characters to bleed into each other, etc. It ends up doing what most alchemy did: it makes a big mess.

The accuracy of the history is above par for this kind of novel, and the depiction of a 21st-century research scientist is passable, although I really doubt a bigshot research scientist would have the time to do what he does in this novel while keeping a lab running! Some passages actually work well in spots, and I found some insightful connections and vivid images.

But the dialogue can be terrible. What's supposed to be a white-hot clandestine relationship just seems self-absorbed and pretentious to me. The historical mystery is solved not by deduction but by turning to a medium for connections to the spirit world. The point can be made that there are things outside the usual definition of science -- but it needs to be made better than this.

Maybe part of the problem is that Newton's theology is downplayed. Sure, he wrote a lot about alchemy, but he wrote a lot about theology too. It's just as much of a distortion of his character and his history to downplay that as it is to downplay his alchemical interests.

Is Newton just too big of a man for one person to describe? I don't think I've ever read a truly convincing description of his entire life. I just don't "get" Newton, and maybe we never will.

James Gleick's book on Newton is better than this, as is Neal Stephenson's Baroque cycle (I've only read the first book but it covers the same timeframe as this). Ultimately Ghostwalk is just a silly story with an unusual historical accuracy that ultimately doesn't change or illuminate anything.

My Three Sons ... What are the Odds?

2008-08-21T17:03:00.001-07:00

I finally found an article that doesn't just assume that each time you have a baby there's a 50/50 (or technically 51/49) chance that you'll have the same gender again. This is a tougher search problem than it sounds, because so many science explainers take the easy way out and refer to pregnancy as a coin flip. Obviously the previous coin flips don't inform later ones. But how do you know birth is a coin flip? I suggest that the immune system + reproductive system + parental choice + environmental factors = something more complicated than a coin flip, something with memory potential. SO ... I finally found this article, which references an earlier one done by actual statisticians:

http://www.in-gender.com/XYU/Odds/Gender_Odds.aspx

It turns out there may be a slightly increased chance (up 2 to 6%) of having a fourth boy if you already have three. Maybe not the same for girls, interestingly. I'd guess if we have another child, there's a ~55% chance of having a boy, based just on this survey of actual family birth orders. And that sounds about right: nothing too different from the "coin flip" explanation, but something revealing a system that's more complex and interesting. Personally, I wonder if my NKG2D or MICA immunoproteins might not be involved?

Introducing Baby #3

2008-08-21T11:50:00.000-07:00

... Now at 20 weeks and counting, we got an ultrasound of our third baby boy today:

A Natural History of Internet Trolls

2008-08-20T11:47:00.000-07:00

This is a highly amorphous post about trolls.

It's been a while since this NYT Magazine article came out ...
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/magazine/03trolls-t.html?scp=1&sq=troll&st=cse
... but I've been thinking about it since then. They don't live under bridges but between servers. Their ethical dilemmas concern whether it's OK or not to hack into an epilepsy website to put flashing graphics on it to induce seizures. I'm fascinated by the alternate morality of this world, and what kind of invisible assumptions they base their actions on. It's not always possible to take them at their word but sometimes you have to read between the lines. Then again, sometimes they flat-out say what they mean.

Trolls have absorbed hierarchies based on strength and weakness, and do seem to have a fundamentally Darwinian midset. They conceal their own weaknesses and put on shows of strength to cow other people into respecting them. And it's all about virtual strength. About the strength to ignore what other people say about you, to be self-sufficient, to take a joke however crude or rough. No man is an island but these trolls would like to be.

The NYT article is interesting but really not deep enough. It's mostly about interviewing them and taking their words at face value. But there's really a spectrum of trolls online. There's one baseball website that I like the main page but never read the comments because it's just a lot of doctored photos and loud obscenities flying back and forth. Trollmanship in training, focused on a baseball team. I really don't see what the point is, but the full-fledged troll grows out of this environmental free-for-all. And none of it works on a large level. It needs to be a niche ... it takes a village, but if that village gets too big it falls apart. Troll communities are important to them as a place of combat as well as refuge; they aren't that individual after all.

If you meet a troll in the wild, don't stare him in the eye. Just walk on by, slowly.

What happens when a troll (or troll-ish strategies) moves into another environment? Did Ernst Haeckel develop troll-like characteristics in certain arguments? Does Richard Dawkins? Does Ken Hamm? Does this poison the well for discussion? How do you detoxify the environment once a troll has passed through? (Sulfur-chelating compounds?)

And why is it so easy to absorb the normal model of strength and weakness, of talking big and pushing back, without even trying, but it takes a person like Jesus to show us what God is really like? (And then 30 minutes later stuck in traffic I've forgotten again.) Why is the creation so different from the creator? Now we're back to Genesis 3-11.

In any case, thinking you're being all original, and successful, by being strong and powerful is the trolls' biggest self-deception. It's the most common, non-original thought of all. And ultimately, the most successful troll is boring. You've been able to rent a Rolls-Royce for your interview with the NYT reporter -- good for you. But what do you really think about that? Why do you want to impress the reporter that badly when you don't own your own bed? Can't tell, you're too busy pushing people away with your words.

There's a lot going on here. Sin, strength, the grain of the universe, what we're made for ... there's something in the story of trolls that's fundamentally modern and ancient. It's about what really matters and how to live life together when you come down to it. Something to chew on at least.

Video Sermons

2008-08-15T14:12:00.000-07:00

Why is the central charismatic preacher so important for having a big church? It doesn't help the church and it weighs stress on the preacher disproportionately. Slate had an article about the "video franchise" services that are popping up across the country:

And as an engine of church growth, video preaching poses problems for even the most ardent evangelicals. Some fear it will allow well-known pastors to swoop into new territories and roll up struggling locally led churches while rolling over smaller ones, especially those tied to mainline Protestant denominations, such as the Presbyterians and Baptists, that are already losing adherents to nondenominational megachurches—and talented pastors to other careers. "Where does a man or woman who feels called to preach get practical experience if their local church is a video venue?" says Bob Hyatt, founder of the Evergreen Community, a small evangelical church that holds services in two pubs in Portland, Ore.

Saddleback Church's Rick Warren, perhaps the best-known megachurch leader in the country, has said for years that he never broadcast his services on television for just that reason. But he has evidently softened his stance: This spring, Saddleback opened the first three of 10 planned video venues in and around its Orange County, Calif., home. "We're not reaching out because we need to be bigger, we're reaching out because more people need Jesus," the church's Web site says. Try telling that to the small-time minister when Mr. Purpose-Driven Life comes to town.

And it's not just a problem for other pastors. In fact, says Shane Hipps, author of The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture: How Media Shapes Faith, the Gospel, and Church, using video goes against a critical tenet of Protestant faith: the priesthood of all believers. Instead of a real experience, it offers a mediated one that inherently puts the pastor in a position of greater power over the masses. "It's actually undermining their theology," he told me recently. Hipps, who worked in advertising for Porsche before entering the seminary, says the small Mennonite community he leads in Glendale, Ariz., asked him to consider "going multisite," as it's called. He refused. Even podcasting his sermons makes him uncomfortable. He started doing it for the benefit of elderly members who couldn't make it to church, but a year later, his own minor celebrity has helped him acquire 6,000 subscribers.

http://www.slate.com/id/2197166/

The bottom line is that people keep coming to these video franchises, and as long as that's our criterion we'll keep offering them. That is a good thing, because different people come to these different services. Our church misses the "video cafe" we used to have because it allowed us to set the service up like a coffeehouse and dispense with things like pews. Many people were more comfortable with that. But why as the years go by does it seem like my church is focused more and more on that one central speaker? Is the problem societal and there's nothing to be done about it? Or can something change it?

I don't know, so I'm asking.

Book Review: The Cell's Design: How Chemistry Reveals the Creator's Artistry

2008-08-12T11:44:00.000-07:00

http://store.reasons.org/us/the-cells-design

[Note: I have been asked to review this book by the American Scientific Affiliation journal Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith. This is a first draft for an eventual published review, so if you post comments they can help me refine/expand!]

The Cell's Design is both new and old at the same time. It represents a new line of argument for the Intelligent Design hypothesis, and yet the argument itself is as old as William Paley's Watchmaker Argument. Fazale Rana, vice-president at Reasons to Believe and co-author of Origins of Life with Hugh Ross, describes his strategy in the preface: "Instead of arguing for creation by relying on the perceived inability of natural processes to generate life's chemical systems, this approach frames the support for intelligent design in positive terms by highlighting biochemical features that reflect the Creator's signature." Rana uses "Biochemistry as Art" as a consistent metaphor for design throughout this book, beginning most chapters with a famous painting and inventive links to a school of art. Often "Biochemistry as Engineering" is used as a secondary metaphor, with analogies drawn to quality assurance steps in manufacturing and other similar processes.

As a practicing biochemist, I welcome this change in strategy and tone from the increasingly narrow confines of the Irreducible Complexity argument found in Michael Behe's Darwin's Black Box (referred to passingly but approvingly by Rana). The complexity of DNA Polymerase III, for example, deserves our admiration, as do other complex biochemical processes. As much as half of this book is spent explaining these biochemical workings for an audience assumed to have no prior experience with biochemistry. As instruction, it is adequate, although a book centered around the beauty of nature should itself be beautiful, while the cartoons depicting these processes are simplified and drab. Standard biochemistry textbooks convey the complexity of these machines better, although for a different audience, as does the online video “The Inner Life of the Cell.” The level at which Rana describes biochemical mechanisms seems chosen to support the underlying argument, which compares biochemical assemblies to cogs in a watch. This is most easily accomplished by depicting the proteins simply, minimizing their fluid nature. Most importantly, this depiction elides the fact that all these proteins are polymers of the same 20 amino acids, in every species, on every continent, a fact that allows for adaptation and transformation.

Often Rana’s arguments boil down to describing how molecules work and calling it “fine-tuning” -- when it very well could have been simple adaptation to available conditions. Chapters include discussions of minimal genomes, assembly of protein machines, production of proteins from DNA, gene structures and organization, membrane structures, and rebuttals to previous claims of poor design. A few strong arguments are mixed in with weaker ones. The speed of the development of the genetic code is indeed astonishing, occurring just about as soon as the Earth cooled enough to support life. The finding that DNA replication machinery may have 2 origins instead of one is also "too wonderful for me" to fully describe. But maybe it evolved twice – that is too quickly glossed over, as is the counter-argument that out of millions upon millions of organisms, we can reduce DNA polymerases to only 2 possible ancestors.

Chapter 11, on evidence for convergence of biochemical function, is a prime example of the missed opportunities in this book. Several fascinating examples of convergence are listed, but in a list that tells little more than the titles of papers that could be obtained from a perfunctory PubMed search. Stephen Jay Gould’s argument that evolution is contingent is recapped and rebutted, but the ideas of Simon Conway Morris, who has made a career out of collecting examples of convergence, are not mentioned. What could be a strong point for the book becomes little more than a laundry list.

To Rana’s credit, some alternate evolutionary explanations are described, such as in the case of the formation of the genetic code. Most times, however, possible evidences for common descent and divergent evolution are not included. The most complex examples of biochemical machinery are cherry-picked and described in detail, while similar, simpler prokaryotic versions that accomplish the same task are omitted. Much is made of the precise location of a few specific amino acids for protein function, while it is left unsaid that these crucial amino acids are only 1-2% of the total, while many others can be changed without significant loss of function. Overlapping genes are emphasized as evidence of deliberate design, while the fact that these genes are a tiny minority of cases, often at the very ends of genes in genomes under extreme pressure, is left unsaid. No mention is made of the endosymbiotic theory for formation of mitochondria, although that event would hold several possibilities for discussing artistry, theology, and the methods of a creator.

I would like to know what specific predictions are made by Rana’s model of creation, in which separate species are designed and accumulate only deleterious mutations over time. Why are bacterial and human polymerases so similar if they were created separately? Why are there no designs that are clearly impossible without a Creator, such as a species that uses 20 unique amino acids or a different genetic code? (Surely not everything must be optimized exactly the same exact way for life to exist!) What phylogenetic patterns should be deduced if mutations are only harmful, reducing proteins from an optimized starting point? What old, optimal proteins can you identify, and what stepwise progression downward is observed?

The wonder of biochemistry and what it may reveal about the Creator is indeed a worthy topic, and Rana often tells us how elegant and efficient these protein machines are. But if it is a possibility that the Creator chose to form a universe where all life sprang from a single point, and one in which chemical changes could cause life to adapt itself to the world around it over millennia, it does not substantially decrease the wonder of biochemistry, which is the main point of this book. In fact, if He chose to do so through chemistry rather than direct manipulation of atoms, that is a more elegant and efficient solution than having multiple, directly manipulated starting points. It also would give a book like this more to say if the evolutionary processes could be detailed. Such arguments would be more aesthetically satisfying and would reveal a creator more worthy of praise.

As a statement of biochemical wonder, this book is a step in the right direction. As scientific discussion, it is largely inadequate and slanted. Evidence of this can also be found by counting the promotional quotes inside the book’s cover: all are from ministers, none are from scientists. I hope other scientists will follow Rana’s lead and develop more substantial books about the wonder of biochemistry in creation, while remaining open to all possible techniques by which the Divine Artist may have created.

Book Review: The Invention of Curried Sausage

2008-08-11T10:20:00.000-07:00

How to describe this book? It's not a cookbook. It is history, but it's more about the end of World War II than curry or sausage. Here's the search terms from Amazon:

Key Phrases: equestrian badge, curried sausage, squirrel coat, Lena Brucker, Adolf Hitler

And yes, those are good search terms for the book. The story, told by Uwe Timm, is a surprising combination of these diverse elements. It opens a window on civilian life as Germany transitioned from wartime to post-wartime. I can quibble with the plot's depiction of marriage, or telling the truth, or a number of different things, but it's not really about that: it's about being in a country that's falling apart and what it takes to start to put things back together.

For all the war, and dark subject matter in general, this really is a surprisingly light book. The Holocaust is mentioned in a few particularly stirring pages but mostly separated from the story itself. It's also a fast read with plenty of white space, yet still it took me more than a week to complete. It was a surprise nominee for a 100 Best Books list, and while it probably isn't on my 100 Best Books list, I can understand it being at least on the 100 Good Books List.

Music and Natural Theology

2008-08-07T09:42:00.000-07:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Bose_Einstein_condensate.png

I've been waiting for the audio files for the Beyond Paley Natural Theology conference I attended in June to be posted, and it's getting close to two months and no results yet, so I thought I'd just post a few thoughts on what was my favorite talk there, by Jeremy Begbie titled "On the 'Naturalness' of Natural Theology: Learning from Rameau and Rosseau on Music." It sort of snuck up on me, because it was about comparing Rameau and Rosseau, and I didn't know that Rameau was one of the theorists who set up modern music, I just thought he was some random French philosopher. Once the comparison was made, it wasn't just a "compare and contrast" talk, but much of the talk focused on music and natural theology, and made fascinating points left and right about the relation. It makes sense, because music is so scientific at its heart, but I hadn't heard the two put together so well before.

One point Begbie made near the end: Objects must occupy locations, but different notes can occupy the same space, forming harmonies, yet remaining distinct and different. This brought to mind the Bose-Einstein condensate, in which if you get boson particles cold enough, they will collapse into an overlapping, big atom-like condensate. This had been demonstrated with rubidium: imagine overlapping rubidium atoms, like a chord! And the natural theology part of this is that this must be like the Trinity, or like the body of Christ in the church today.

That's just one sentence from the talk. If the talk is ever posted, it'll be here:

http://www.naturaltheology.org/beyondpaley_downloads.html

"Designing Proteins" Talk Online

2008-08-05T10:30:00.001-07:00

So the ASA convention in Oregon kept me busy and away from my family all weekend. I got to present my research along with some of its theological implications. Met a lot of very interesting people from all over, all scientists and Christians. I may blog more about the goings-on of the weekend in a day or so, but for now I noticed the web implementation of the conference is very very fast, and the mp3 of my talk titled "Designing Proteins: The Creative Potential of Enthalpy and Entropy" is already up. If you'd like to listen in here it is:

http://www.asa3.org/ASAradio/ASA2008McFarland.mp3

Fast-forward past the first few minutes where they recorded the audio as I struggled to juggle laptops and VGA connections. I'm not sure how much sense the talk will make without the pictures ... or even with the pictures! The Q&A was fun too. (Sorry I was too nervous to remember to repeat the questions for the mike!) All talks are online, which is great because I can go back and listen to the talks I wasn't able to hear because often three talks are going on at once (or you're having a great conversation with someone over a meal and ... well all of the sudden the talks have been going on for half an hour already!).

Rest in Peace Aleksandr

2008-08-05T10:15:00.000-07:00

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was as inspirational, then as annoying as any prophet can be. There's no way he was right on everything, but when he attacks you, you need to listen to him, even if you don't agree. And a small episode from his life has implications for historical first-century studies. This is from his obituary in the New York Times, via the Freakonomics blog:

At Ekibastuz, any writing would be seized as contraband. So he devised a method that enabled him to retain even long sections of prose. After seeing Lithuanian Catholic prisoners fashion rosaries out of beads made from chewed bread, he asked them to make a similar chain for him, but with more beads. In his hands, each bead came to represent a passage that he would repeat to himself until he could say it without hesitation. Only then would he move on to the next bead. He later wrote that by the end of his prison term, he had committed to memory 12,000 lines in this way.
[END of quote -- sorry, Blogger's block quote tool won't undo itself ... ]
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/04/memory-then-and-now/
I mention this because of the debates about oral tradition, and how accurate the gospels could be about something that had taken place decades before. Well, if some device was available to organize the stories in the people's minds, like the bread or beads, they could do a large amount even if they were brought up in the 20th century. In older times when you'd rely on this kind of memory more, I'll bet you could do away with the physical bread/bead reminder and just remember the stories. Not to mention, look at Mark's gospel: short stories a few sentences long, like beads on a string. Then the gospel writer would be putting the stories into a whole, but the stories could be accurate, down to the very words. So oral tradition could preserve Jesus' words accurately for a long time. It's not like a game of "Telephone" if the words are important to the people passing them on.

Book Review: The Moviegoer

2008-07-31T11:06:00.000-07:00

Perhaps I was a bit premature in my review of The Thanatos Syndrome in suggesting I was starting to "get" Walker Percy. Reading this, his first, most appreciated novel (that won the National Book Award in 1962), I'd come across pages that were brilliant and pages that were opaque, and I attribute that to my own innocence in Southern literature, Southern place in the 60's, and Southern people. I don't really get those three things and so I don't always get Walker Percy. I'm sure he'd have something to say about that too!

The brilliant pages are just that, bringing together history, science, literature, psychology, place, all together in paragraphs that are too well-constructed to be quotable. Some very funny, light passages too. It seems Percy got less funny as he got older, and a little more straightforward in some ways. In other ways, he laid out his reasoning in this, his first book, and sort of assumes you're up to speed in the later books. Note to self: If author's first book won the National Book Award, consider reading it first, not next-to-last.

This novel's also a dark horse for being included in my biochem seminar some year. It does concern research, medical schools, man's place in the universe, etc., but really a minority of the material is directly relevant. But it would be fun to have an actual literature discussion in that biochem class.

I definitely will keep up on my "Percy project." Now that I've read a majority of his published output I'm getting to the point where I can go back and re-read some novels. But first, on to the definitive biography! I want to find out more about this writer. And sometimes he just plain cracks me up.

Surprising Walker Percy Wiki-tidbit: he was instrumental in getting one of my favorite novels, A Confederacy of Dunces, published. You know, I really need to read that again sometime too.

This Must Be Rock Bottom

2008-07-30T09:52:00.001-07:00

How bad is this season for the Mariners? So bad we're a punch-line in The Onion:

http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/mariners_improve_to_eight

This literally made me LOL... the sad part is it's true.

Movie Review: Space Chimps

2008-07-28T14:48:00.001-07:00

Don't laugh. Or, rather, do laugh, you will if you see this movie. It may not be worth it without a kid tagging along, but let me tell you, with two small easily frightened boys ... it's a good one. Every year one movie comes out of the assembly-line computer-animated studios that puts everything together especially well, well enough to be enjoyable and even a little too short. Last year that movie was Surf's Up and this year it's Space Chimps. Space Chimps is a little too glib on characterization, but it tackles its characters with such enthusiasm that you don't really mind. It's a little too fond of "chimp" puns, but it has really good ones. It has just enough physical comedy to keep Sam in stitches, and wasn't too scary for Aidan. And it has a GREAT visual 2001 reference for Dad. So it was worth a total of $25 for all of us to go to a matinee. At those prices, you want to research your investment, after all.

Free Americana Music

2008-07-24T15:19:00.000-07:00

Katy Bowser has just offered to make her EP free online for download. She's got an interesting voice, a vitruoso guitarist for a husband, and some witty lyrics. If that sounds interesting, visit her Myspace page for the entire album for download:

http://www.myspace.com/katybowsermusic

Book Review: Gawain, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo

2008-07-22T14:04:00.000-07:00

These translations of three medieval poems by J.R.R. Tolkien give a sense of what it must have been like to be his student. I know he would start his course on Beowulf by walking in and shouting out a loud "Hwaet!" (the first word of the poem, loosely, "Listen up!"). Although there's no Tolkien translation of Beowulf, we do have these three works. All I can say is, I recently read the highly acclaimed Seamus Heaney translation of Beowulf and I think Tolkien is a better translator than Heaney. I can't put my finger on exactly why; after all, I'm not a medieval scholar and am reading for pleasure. But the vitality of Tolkien's translation, his sense of exactly how to alliterate, enough but not too much, his occasional "hard word" that nonetheless fits perfectly, everything about these translations is just right. And the content is great too. Gawain is a complex morality tale with some exciting action, and Pearl is both sad and deeply theological. (Sir Orfeo is the least of the bunch in length and in quality.) This isn't a side project for Tolkien: this was his academic and pedagogical bread and butter. It was well worth it to sit in this class with Professor Tolkien. I just wish I could find his Beowulf!

Why is the Sky Blue?

2008-07-21T09:37:00.000-07:00

The Freakonomics blog had a good guest post about Greenland at http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/18/eating-polar-bears-is-okay-in-greenland/. It's worth reading the whole thing, but I was particularly impressed by a good explanation of the difference between blue and white ice, why the sky is blue, but most importantly, why skim milk is blue. No word yet on if it explains old-lady hair. (You'll have to read the rest of the post to find the part about eating polar bears, and the locals' skepticism about global warming):

Glaciers are rivers of ice, but there are a number of interesting aspects to this. Glacial ice has its origin in snow that falls during a winter storm. As snow continues to fall on the top of the ice cap its weight compresses the bottom layers squeezing out the air.

About 50 feet of snow depth is required to pack the snow into typical glacial ice. That ice is white because it is full of air bubbles and crystal boundaries which scatter the light — what a physicist like me would call Mie scattering.

It’s the same phenomenon that makes milk or clouds white.

Non-fat milk is much less opaque than full-fat milk or cream and has a bluish tinge. This is a different kind of scattering, called Rayleigh scattering, and is why the sky is blue, and why deep water is blue. The difference between Rayleigh and Mie scattering is the size of the particles.
Glaciers often have liquid water in them — called meltwater. This can either be inside the glacier or can appear at the surface. Once a meltwater lake starts it tends to get deeper because it absorbs sunlight more than the surrounding ice. It is intensely blue from Raleigh scattering.

Quotes from The Thanatos Syndrome

2008-07-17T10:19:00.000-07:00

p.85: [A doctor thinking about the epidemic of happy people in his area] "Happy is better than unhappy, right? But -- But what? They're somehow -- diminished."

p.89: "It is not for me to say whether one should try to be happy -- though it always struck me as an odd pursuit, like trying to be blue-eyed ... "

p.339: "I realize that I do not have many thoughts about Canada. Reading Stedmann, who mentions the heroic role the Canadians played in World War I, I realize a curious fact about the Canadians: When you hear the word Canada or Canadians, nothing much comes to mind -- unlike hearing the words Frenchman or Englishman or Chinese or Spaniard -- or Yankee. I realize this is an advantage. The Canadian is still free, has not yet been ossified by his word."

p. 364: "Even if the truths of religion could be proved to you one, two, three, it wouldn't make much difference, would it? One hundred percent of astronomers have discovered that the universe was created from nothing. The explanation is obvious but it does not avail. Who can handle it? It does not signify. It is boring to think of. Ninety-seven percent of astronomers are still atheists. Do you blame them? They are also boring. The only more boring thing would be if all ninety-seven percent all converted, right? It follows that there must be some other force at work, right?"

p. 365: "Do you know why this century has seen such terrible events happen? The Turks killing two million Armenians, the Holocaust, Hitler killing most of the Jews in Europe, Stalin killing fifteen million Ukranians, nuclear destruction unleashed, the final war apparently inevitable? It is because God agreed to let the Great Prince Satan to have his way with men for a hundred years -- this hundred years, this twentieth century. And he has. How did he do it? No great evil scenes, no demons -- he's too smart for that. All he had to do was leave us alone. We did it. Reason warred with faith. Science triumphed. The upshot? One hundred million dead. ... Because almost everyone has lost hope. Christians speak of the end time. Jews of the hopelessness of the mounting Arab terror. Even unbelievers, atheists, humanists, TV anchormen have lost hope ... Do you think that there is a secret desire for it? But you must not lose hope ... Because if you keep hope and have a loving heart and do not secretly hope for the death of others, the Great Prince Satan will not succeed in destroying the world. In a few years this dread century will be over. Perhaps the world will end in fire and the Lord will come -- it is not for us to say. But it is for us to say, she said, whether hope and faith will come back into the world."

A 15-Inning All-Star Game

2008-07-16T12:47:00.000-07:00

I don't know why, but I was laughing through the All-Star Game. Not that it was a horrible game or anything, it's just that several things struck me as funny. Since the All-Star Game still doesn't really count for much, it's easier to look at the bad/unlucky things that happen and just find them, well, funny:

-- Seeing so much of underrated ex-Mariner George Sherrill
-- Seeing Ichiro's awesome throw to get Albert Pujols at second
-- Poor Dan Uggla with 3 errors in one All-Star Game
-- Every inning from the 9th on ... surely this will be the last ... surely the bases loaded with 1 out will mean a run will score ... nope!

My only disappointment is that I was hoping to see a position player have to get up and pitch. The game definitely had the right entertainment value for me, just not in the way the organizers were hoping.

What to Get For the Protein Chemist Who Has Everything

2008-07-15T09:49:00.001-07:00

I am not putting this up just because my birthday is in a few months:
http://www.bioetch.com/index.php

That site is for a business that will take your protein structure coordinates and etch them into a small crystal block. It's awfully pricy at >$100 for a little crystal paperweight. I can't think of any way to justify a grant to get one of those either. But I could do it for my protein ... that's tempting. And the LED-lit rotating base is cool too.

Gives a whole new meaning to the term "crystal structure."

Book Review: The Thanatos Syndrome

2008-07-15T09:44:00.000-07:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thanatos_Syndrome

I'm finally starting to get Walker Percy. After reading three or four of his previous novels, and one of his non-fiction works, I started in on The Thanatos Syndrome and thoroughly enjoyed it from start to finish, a first for me. That's not to say it's a perfect work -- it may be the most imperfect of all his novels -- but it's ambitious, dream-like, and a little off. That made me like it more.

You may have heard of psychological thrillers, perhaps? This is a psychiatric thriller. The main action involves what happens to a community when science meddles with brain function to make people happier. There's clandestine plans, government plots, chemicals in the ecosystem and showdowns with guns. But it's not Dan Brown by any stretch of the imagination. It's not really about the action, or about wacky historical theories, it's really about us and how we should look at ourselves.

As the book unfolds, some of the stuff that happens is truly horrible, and though a few sentences made me laugh out loud, there just wasn't enough humor, not as much as usual for Percy. Part of the plot involves separating people from their self-perceptions, resulting in disconnections of the psyche, so it's too bad the novel is also so messy, because you can argue that the plot itself is disconnected. How can you argue against disconnectedness with a disconnected plot? But what makes it work for me is that the author is a Catholic with an interpretive lens for understanding the entire twentieth century and I'm always a sucker for that kind of ambition. I think he deserves to be heard, even in this post-Cold-War, post-post-modern world.

I read this along with Don Miller's book (see previous posts), and that might be why Miller's book seemed a little too simplistic in its view of human nature. Percy's view is as complex as the South itself (the region that formed him). Next to Percy's daring and broad theories, Miller's, for all his caveats, looks doctrinaire, gentle, and surprisingly mundane. That's OK, really -- I just hope to see Miller continue to develop and tilt at more windmills. Percy wrote this book in his seventies (and died in 1990), so Miller's got time to catch up.

It's hard to recommend this book on some levels, but on others, it's impossible for me not to recommend it. It's easier to understand the cultural references from the 80's than those from the 60's/70's in his other books, so it might be a good "starter Percy", but on the other hand, its major flaws mean it may not be!

Art Review: St. John's Bible and Thomas Tallis in Tacoma

2008-07-14T12:15:00.000-07:00

http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/stjohnsbible/stjohns-checklist.html

Somehow someone sent me an invitation to the Tacoma Art Museum for the opening of a traveling exhibit on the St. John's Bible. This is the first English-language, fully hand-illustrated illuminated manuscript ever commissioned. The basic idea is to do a Bible with medieval methods but a 21st-century sensibility. What resulted was an impressive art museum exhibit (and lots of books you can buy for varying amounts of money!). One thing is sure, seeing it in person is much more impressive than on a computer screen. The gold shines, the details are sharp, the colors are much more vivid, and the art looks great on the vellum, in person. To tell the truth, some of the calligraphy looked a little CCM-ish to me on the screen, but in person, it unfolded all its dimensions. (That's a good thing.) The top picture above is of the seven days of creation, from chaos on the left to man on the right, with a darkened dove above it all. The bottom pictures is of the crucifixion from Luke. You can get a small sense of the raised relief of the Christ figure from the picture above, but its full impact must be observed in person!

In another room, an artist recorded five choirs singing a 40-part motet by Thomas Tallis. Each member was recorded individually, and each track is played over its own specific speaker. The speakers are set in a circle and you walk around, hearing the parts differently depending on where you are standing. It was neat, and a great piece of music, but not really relevatory to someone who sings in a choir and is used to having an imbalance of audible parts depending on position!

It's well worth the drive to Tacoma for this combination of exhibits. We're thinking about if there's chance to go again sometime.

Quotes from Searching for God Knows What

2008-07-13T14:10:00.000-07:00

Taking a page from a fellow prof's blog, I'm going to retype quotes that hit me in particular from the books I read, so I have a record of them for later and I think about them as I type them. So here are the quotes I'd like to keep from Don Miller's book:

p.108 "... the most selfless thing God could do, that is, the most selfless thing a perfect Being who is perfectly loving could do, would be to create other beings to enjoy Himself."

p. 160 "When the church began to doubt its own integrity after the Darwinian attack on Genesis 1 and 2, we began to answer science, not by appealing to something greater, the realm of beauty and to spirituality, but by attempting to translate spiritual realities through scientific equations, thus justifying ourselves to culture, as if culture had some kind of authority to redeem us in the first place. Terms such as 'absolute truth' and 'inherency' [sic., which is ironic in itself! BJM] (a term only used to describe Scripture in the last hundred years or so) became a battle cry, even though the laws of absolute truth must, by their nature, exclude ideas such as Jesus is the Word, He is both God and man, the Trinity is both three and One, we are united with Him in His death, because these are mysterious ideas, not scientific ideas."

[I really like this paragraph, but I have to say something at some point that redeems the idea of translation! Some translation is necessary.]

p. 190/1: "If we are preaching morality without Christ, and using war rhetoric to communicate a battle mentality, we are fighting on Satan's side. The battle we are in is a battle against the principalities of darkness, not against people who are different from us. In war you shoot the enemy, not the hostage."

[Combining Galatians and Ephesians in one vivid quote. Nice!]

p. 204: "Lately I have been thinking about the verse in Scripture that says to work out your salvation in fear and trembling (see Phil. 2:12): I take this to mean salvation isn't something you go around feeling sure of, they way you might if you had completed a to-do list. I take this to mean working out your salvation involves a very careful searching of the heart, asking time and time again what we really mean by attending church, what we really mean by reading the Bible, what we really mean when we worship God."

Book Review: Searching for God Knows What

2008-07-11T09:54:00.001-07:00

http://www.donaldmillerwords.com/searching.php

To tell you the truth, I only read this book because they were handing it out free on Father's Day at my church (along with Wild at Heart which I've already read), it was very small and paperback so I threw it in my London luggage, and then I got so much reading done in London I actually got it started while I was over there (last book I started), and once I start a book I will almost always finish it. The ending of something just pulls like gravity once I open that front cover.

So how was it? I was pleasantly surprised. It was better than Blue Like Jazz, which I liked alright, but had the distinct feeling that it was the magnum opus of Donald Miller, in the same way that Pulp Fiction was for Quantin Tarantino. His laid-back, self-deprecating style and focus on his particular Portland community didn't convince me there was enough left in the well for a good second book (really third, but I usually read the author's first book last for some reason!). But this is evidence that there is enough in that well, and in many ways Searching is better than the "big hit" book. To tell you the truth, I only remember three things from Blue Like Jazz right now: the description of a bowl-like geographical feature in Portland, the "confessional booth" at Reed College, and some talk about the narrative function of scripture. It didn't seem to "add up" or illuminate much beyond Portland culture and narrative, emergent theology. This book comes much closer to being a coherent, sustained narrative.

The biggest reason it's better is that literally half the book is actually exegesis. Miller writes about Genesis 1-3 (a big passage for me as a scientist), the gospels, and Romeo and Juliet. I don't buy his theory on the last one but it's interesting enough that I'd like to know more about it, and the book seems to end too early, meaning I want more and look forward to his next book. Miller ties everything together with some social theorizing that isn't really that deep or complex, but is apt enough to be worth thinking about in its genuine criticism of "normal life." (His "theory of everything" doesn't really compare with Walker Percy, whose novel I'm reading simultaneously, so I might be a little harsh on that aspect -- very few people have as well-defined and unique a theory of everything as Percy!)

Miller's most poignant stories are pulled from high school, either his or his friends, and he does a good job of bringing in stories from other people in general into the narrative. I think there are several moments in there that will stick with me for a while. So I judged a book by its cover and didn't think it would be a step forward, but it was. Miller is a lot closer to writing like Eugene Peterson in this book than he was previously, and you know, that's where he should be heading.

They should put a label on this book "Now with 50% more Bible!" Then again, that might not make a Miller book sell ...