The Geostationary Banana Over Texas, that’s what! Longtime readers will recall that we love the GBOT here at Cosmic Variance. What is not to love? Just the existence of the very concept holds out promise for a brighter future. Truly, it’s projects like this that define what it means to be human.

(After all, actual bananas may soon go extinct, leaving us with only their giant inflatable brethren to remember them by.)

Now, however, Backreaction points to terrible news: the GBOT is facing a funding crisis! Artist/visionary Cesar Saez has received about $100,000 from the Canadian government, and needs to raise another $1.5 million to make his dream a reality. So far, efforts have fallen short; only $12,018 has been collected. Hey, it’s a start!

Now, some will say that the GBOT isn’t really a realistic project; that it’s more an excuse to have a cool website, generate a bit of buzz, and play with some drafting software than an honest attempt to float a banana over the Lone Star State.

Some will say that the flight plan looks more like a scribble in Microsoft Paint than a NASA-approved model of the GBOT’s trajectory.

We say, true art doesn’t listen to people like that! True art thinks those people are wankers.

Some day the GBOT will fly — if only in our hearts.

When it comes to art (considered broadly, so as to include literature and various kinds of performance, not to mention a good bottle of wine) I am a radical subjectivist. If you like it, great; if you don’t, that’s your prerogative. There is no such thing as being “right” or “wrong” in one’s opinion about a work of art; what’s important is the relationship between the work and the person experiencing it.

Nevertheless, there’s no question that one’s attitude toward a work of art can be radically changed by outside information or experiences. You might come to understand it better, or conversely you might be overexposed to it and just get bored.

Scientists, in particular, love it when they discover that some boring old art thing that they had previously perceived as undifferentiated and uninteresting actually possesses some hidden structure. If you were ever caught in the unfortunate situation of teaching an art- or film-appreciation class to scientists, the right strategy would be to reveal, insofar as possible, the underlying theories by which the work in question is constructed. And if you think there are no such theories, you’re just not looking hard enough.

Recent examples, which I would blog about in extraordinary depth and breathtaking insight (with a dash of self-deprecating humor) if I were a professional blogger rather than a scientist with a blogging hobby:

• Patrick House in Slate reveals the algorithm for winning the New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest. Involves concepts such as the “theory of mind” joke. (Via 3QD.) As far as I know, there is not yet an algorithm for winning the New Yorker Cartoon Anti-Caption Contest.
• The Science of Scriptwriting! This one actually appeared on the arxiv, under the more formal title “The Structure of Narrative: the Case of Film Scripts.” (Via Swans on Tea and the physics arxiv blog.)
• Relatedly, back in March Jennifer was serving as the Journalist in Residence at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at UC Santa Barbara, and ran a series of Friday workshops. One of them was Inside the Writer’s Room: Where Physics and Hollywood Collide, featuring guest speakers David Saltzberg and David Grae. David #1 is a physicist at UCLA and also the science consultant for the CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory, which I will write about someday, I promise. David #2 is a TV scriptwriter, who was there to tell the physicists how to write for TV. About which maybe also more, someday, but right now I just wanted to highlight one phenomenon: when David was talking about possible plot lines and characters, the physicists played along and seemed mildly interested. But when he revealed that an hour-long TV drama is inevitably broken up into specific acts, each of which generally (in the case of each show) has a particular function within the larger narrative, the room lit up. There was a theory of TV dramas! More than one person said they would never be able to watch prime-time television in quite the same way again.

Also, of course, the assembled physicists all had a similar question: “Why don’t they make a TV show about me, or someone like me? Those people are all nerds!” I have a theory about that.

I bought this print to decorate the wall of my office. I like the art, and the title is “Time’s Arrow,” so how could I resist?

But I did have a worry: the painting clearly involved text, which I tend to think is an aesthetic mistake — it brings a depressing specificity to what should be an open-ended interpretive process. And here the resolution of the online image was too small for me to make out the words, so what if the text was completely dopey?

Now it has arrived, and here is the main text:

Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little.

The artist never entirely knows. We guess; we may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.

I kind of like it.

Edge.org has collaborated with the Serpentine Gallery in London on a fun kind of artistic event: a collections of formulas, equations, and algorithms scribbled (or typeset) on pieces of paper and hung from the gallery walls like honest-to-goodness pieces of art. I was one of the people asked to contribute, along with another blogger or two. You can check out the entries online.

Some of the entries are straightforwardly hard-core mathematical, such as the one from J. Doyne Farmer or this from Shing-Tung Yau:

Mathematical truths have a uniquely austere beauty in their own right, but the visual presentation of such results in the form of equations can be striking even if the concepts being expressed aren’t immediately accessible. (Yau is talking about Ricci Flow, a crucial element in the recent proof of the Poincare Conjecture.) Meanwhile, many of the entries take the form of metaphorical pseudo-equations, using the symbols of mathematics to express a fundamentally non-quantitative opinion (Jonathan Haidt, Linda Stone). Some of the entries are dryly LaTeXed up (David Deutsch), some are hastily scribbled (Rudy Rucker), some tell fun little stories (George Dyson), and some are painstakingly elaborate constructions (Brian Eno). Several aren’t equations at all, but take the form of flowcharts or other representations of processes, such as this from Irene Pepperberg:

My favorites are the ones that look formidably mathematical, but upon closer inspection aren’t any more rigorous than your typical sonnet, like this one by Rem Koolhaas:

Or the ones that are completely minimalistic, a la James Watson or Lenny Susskind. Note that the more dramatic your result, the more minimal you are allowed to be.

The big challenge, of course, is to choose just one equation. There are a lot of good ones out there.

In a follow-up to Julianne’s previous post on scientific communication, I thought I’d describe a lecture I attended last week. I’ll try not to say anything overly controversial (though CV readers can be a tough crowd). The talk was by Felice Frankel, as part of the Santa Fe Institute public lecture series. The title was “More than Pretty Pictures: The Power of Images in Science”. Frankel is known for her scientific photographs. She creates beautiful images of a large range of physical systems (from water droplets to nanocrystals). She’s been responsible for quite a number of cover images for journals such as Science and Nature.

Frankel spent much of her lecture discussing her philosophy in taking scientific images. This consisted mostly of comments about the power of visualization, and ideas for how to make scientific visualization more effective. She emphasized that it’s highly nontrivial to produce an image which grabs you, while simultaneously informing you about the science it’s meant to represent. Many scientific images are uninspired. Or confusing. Often both. The lecture was sprinkled liberally with her work, much of which is quite arresting. For example:

This is an image of a ferrofluid. Frankel took seven small magnets, and placed them below a glass plate with the fluid above. She then added a bright yellow Post-It note below, yielding the vivid colors. It is this last step which completely transforms the photograph, and which your average scientist would have neglected. We have much to learn in how to present our results, both within the community, and to the world at large.

Images are indeed an essential component of science. They are visceral and physical, in a way that a table of numbers cannot hope to reproduce. They allow for what Frankel terms “visual thinking”: a direct and unmediated engagement with the world. This is particularly evident in astronomy. I would argue that the Hubble Space Telescope has generated many of the most beautiful images ever produced. And an appreciation of the science underlying the images only strengthens one’s admiration. Astronomy is peculiar in that a large portion of the field is fundamentally based on pretty pictures. (Okay, some of these pictures are run through variants of prisms to produce spectra, which aren’t quite as beautiful (at least to my, untrained, eye).) Julianne is our resident expert on taking and interpreting astronomical images; I’m told it’s a little more involved than pointing a digital camera and pushing the button.

What I found most surprising about Frankel’s lecture was her repeated insistence that she is not an artist, and that her photos are not to be considered art. As she put it: “This is why I am not an artist: I am deeply committed to maintaining the integrity of the science.” In her view, because she is constrained to reproduce the world as it is, she is not allowed the free rein of an artist. Her focus is on communicating science as effectively as possible: education rather than aesthetics, meaning rather than art. I find this argument somewhat disappointing. Her most effective images are certainly art; in fact, a number of museums have added her photographs to their collections. And her ability to produce these images, without the liberty of composing unphysical scenarios, or the liberal application of photoshop, does not detract from her talents. If anything, the restricted domain in which she works emphasizes her abilities. Although the sonnet is a severely constrained form of expression, I don’t see anyone arguing that Shakespeare’s contributions don’t qualify as art.

One side-note which Frankel briefly touched upon was the issue of “true” or “accurate” representation in science. While Frankel makes an effort to maintain the essential integrity of her images, most Hubble images are somewhat enhanced (false-color). This means that, were you to manage to stick your head into the focal plane of the Hubble telescope (the fact that it’s hundreds of miles above the surface of the Earth notwithstanding), the image you would see with your eyes would look completely different from the postcards we’re all familiar with. Scientists have taken liberties with the color palette and contrast in producing the images. Often the frequencies of the light in astronomical images are well outside human experience. The human eye is a particular sensor, and there’s no reason that it “sees” the universe in a way that’s in any sense profound. For example, we don’t see infrared. If we did, a hot pan on the stove would glow as a warning, and all those times I have dropped spaghetti sauce all over the floor would have been avoided. We don’t see x-rays either (superman presumably does; but in his case his eyes must not only be sensitive to x-rays, but also emit them in the first place, since the Sun isn’t bright enough in x-rays to give him good images on Earth). There are interesting astronomical sources of light at essentially all frequencies we’ve cared to observe, and so we generate images in a tremendous range of wavelength bands. Furthermore, by playing with the contrast and color scale, we can highlight various features and structures in the images; perhaps we’d like to “see” star forming regions, or shocked gas, or interstellar dust. As a happy byproduct, we also make the images visually stunning. It’s probably not entirely happenstance that images which emphasize interesting science also happen to be more beautiful. Although you would never see the identical scene with your naked eye at a telescope, the images are no less physical or instructive. They represent good science and good aesthetics. What’s not to love?

Exactly what it says. Who needs naturally-occuring spectacles when we can create our own?

Via Cynical-C, naturally.

Broadly speaking I have two great literary loves. Sure I enjoy plenty of grand historical fiction, and certainly I won’t argue the objective worth of any literary giant with you. But when I’m browsing in a bookstore, or sitting at home in front of the fire, I will inevitably buy, or pull from my shelves, a great work of contemporary fiction, or (and I use this word because many people think of these as disparate categories, although you’ll find some crossover in one of Sean’s posts) something that qualifies as a contemporary detective drama.

In these categories, I have many favorites, but in almost any reading physicist’s list (and I am no exception) of great contemporary authors you will find Thomas Pynchon, even if they have only read Gravity’s Rainbow. In my other category, I really do have a favorite, and it is Ian Rankin. Rankin’s plots are tightly constructed, and his deeply-flawed-but-fundamentally-good protagonist, Inspector John Rebus, is a wonderful example of the type. But it the coupling of these staples of the genre with a nuanced understanding of Rebus’ territory – modern day Edinburgh – that puts Rankin in a class of his own, closely followed, in my opinion, by Peter Robinson.

When I read Rankin, I can feel the chill of an Edinburgh winter, smell the inside of a rundown pub, taste the beer. I become invested in his battles in this world because it is, in my experience of similar parts of the country, such a faithful description. Because of this, I buy into Rebus’ tribulations to an extent to which no plot device on its own could ever entice me.

Pynchon and Rankin are two pillars of my literary world, but I must confess, even though I am aware enough to see that many of the qualities that I admire are common to them both (they are both bawdy, for example), I have never thought of them in the same mental breath.

But all this changed on Saturday, when I read a wonderful essay in The Guardian, written by Ian Rankin, and in praise of – you guessed it – Thomas Pynchon.

It turns out that Pynchon is one of Rankin’s heroes, and that Rankin has done his hero proud as he bubbles over in excitement at the impending release of Pynchon’s new work

… once more I would begin to inhabit the shadowy, conspiracy-driven theatre of the absurd that seems to be Pynchon’s imagination. It’s a place that constrains and hypnotises the general reader, and exerts an even greater pull on the true fan. My wife and children would lose sight of me for as long as it took to read the book, and afterwards I would be shell-shocked, wide-eyed, and seeing everywhere around me the signs of another world, similar to the one I seem to inhabit, but darker, odder, and altogether funnier.

[...]

It will be a challenging book – Pynchon’s novels are nothing if not challenging – and I’ll be first in the queue to buy it, because (in an all-too-Pynchonesque twist) the joint UK and US embargo on reviewing the book meant I was not able to read it prior to commencing this appreciation. Nevertheless, let us begin.

This infatuation goes all the way back to Rankin’s student days

Pynchon seemed to fit the model I was learning of literature as an extended code or grail quest. Moreover, he was like a drug: as you worked out one layer of meaning, you quickly wanted to move to the next. He wrote action novels about spies and soldiers which also happened to be detective stories and bawdy romps. His books were picaresquely post-modern and his humour was Marxian (tendance: Groucho). On page six of The Crying of Lot 49, the name Quackenbush appears, and you know you are in safely comedic hands.

It is pointless for me to try to do justice here to Rankin’s homage to our common hero, but I hope those of you with a literary bent will take a look at the article. I particularly liked the suggestion that, while one of Rankin’s inspirations is a “literary giant”, this might be a two way street

Yet his books are romps and detective stories. In Lot 49, the heroine Oedipa Maas begins to feel like “the private eye in any long-ago radio drama”. Pynchon has also credited the spy novels of Graham Greene and Le Carre and the thrillers of another Scot, John Buchan, as inspiration, alongside likelier suspects such as Jack Kerouac (and Pynchon does remain the most Beat of contemporary literary authors).

If you aren’t familiar with Rankin’s work it is well worth a look. You don’t need experience of gritty British pubs, and you don’t need to know Edinburgh. You just need to recognize realism when you read it.

Oh, and the plots are a lot of fun too.

This is a quick reminder about the “Apocalypse” Categorically Not! event this Sunday (see here or here), featuring Marc Kamionkowski, Jonathan Kirsch, and Carolyn See.

I’d also like to let you know about the next Southern California Strings Seminar, next week Friday and Saturday at USC. A number of topics in string theory will be discussed, from applications to topics in Mathematics (the Langlands program), through black hole physics, and all the way to applications to the physics of experiments involving collisions of heavy nuclei. More about this regional meeting over on Asymptotia.

-cvj

The next Categorically Not! is Sunday 24th September. You may recall my post on the Categorically Not! series of events held at the Santa Monica Art Studios. They’re fantastic, and I strongly encourage you to come to them. Have a look at the last two descriptions here and here, and the description of the recent special one on Uncertainty that was held at the USC campus is here.

Here is K.C. Cole’s teaser:

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The next Categorically Not! is Thursday 31st August. You may recall my post on the Categorically Not! series of events, started by K. C. Cole, and held at the Santa Monica Art Studios. They’re fantastic, and I strongly encourage you to come to them. Have a look at the last two descriptions here and here.

It is important to note that this one is a USC event, and not a Santa Monica event! It is on a Thursday and not a Sunday! You might wonder – why these changes? Ah! I promised to reveal what was going on behind that photo shoot I told you about a long time ago (with K.C., Tara McPherson, and myself – recall the fun we had with that picture?), and now realize that I did not get around to it.

This is it. There is a series of wonderful events going on throughout the year on the USC campus – the embodiment of our new Provost’s “Arts and Humanities Initiative”. It is called “Visions and Voices”, and I’ll tell you more about it on Asymptotia. Our program within that larger program is not called Categorically Not! but “Science and Serendipity”. Anyway more on that elsewhere.

So will the old Categorically Not! series stop? No. The Santa Monica series will continue, but there will be some gaps to accommodate the USC events. We hope that the regular Santa Monica crowd will make the short trip across the city to USC on those nights. For more information, visit the Categorically Not! website. More about the relation to the Categorically Not! events can be found in this post on Asymptotia.

Anyway, here is the blurb for the upcoming event on the 31st August:

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