This is where we're at

From the AP: Cloak of invisibility takes a step forward.

Researchers at Germany's Karlsruhe Institute of Technology report they were able to cloak a tiny bump in a layer of gold, preventing its detection at nearly visible infrared frequencies.

Their cloaking device also worked in three dimensions, while previously developed cloaks worked in two dimensions, lead researcher Tolga Ergin said.

The cloak is a structure of crystals with air spaces in between, sort of like a woodpile, that bends light, hiding the bump in the gold later beneath, the researchers reported in Thursday's online edition of the journal Science.

From Nature: Scientists supersize quantum mechanics.

A team of scientists has succeeded in putting an object large enough to be visible to the naked eye into a mixed quantum state of moving and not moving.

Andrew Cleland at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and his team cooled a tiny metal paddle until it reached its quantum mechanical 'ground state' — the lowest-energy state permitted by quantum mechanics. They then used the weird rules of quantum mechanics to simultaneously set the paddle moving while leaving it standing still. The experiment shows that the principles of quantum mechanics can apply to everyday objects as well as as atomic-scale particles.

Okay, people of Earth. You are officially no longer allowed to complain that it's the year 2010 and there are no jetpacks or flying cars. You're looking for cool future tech in the wrong place.

Coffee Party

FiveThirtyEight.com's Tom Schaller has posted an interview with Annabel Park of the Coffee Party Movement.

I’d like to start by asking you to give our readers a brief history of how you, using Facebook, came up with the idea to form the Coffee Party.

It was actually a very simple idea, or a hypothetical idea. Right after the Massachusetts election, leading up to Tea Party convention in Nashville, it seemed like there was non-stop coverage of the Tea Party movement. There was a growing narrative that the Tea Party represented the real America or a majority of Americans. And I thought that was completely wrong. I know they don’t represent me and I found the narrative alienating. And I just felt that was a shared opinion among many people.

So I kind of just started ranting on my Facebook page on late January 26. “Oh, God, I’m just so sick of the Tea Party. We should just start our own party, call it the Coffee Party, or the Smoothie Party—anything but Tea.” Friends of mine online bonded immediately. Within about a half an hour of that rant I created this fan page, Join the Coffee Party Movement.

The whole interview is worth reading.

I don't know an awful lot about the Coffee Party or what it stands for, but it makes me very, very happy to see somebody saying all this. And it makes me happier to see that so many people apparently agree.

You know what I hate about American political discourse?

I hate the idea that politics is properly approached the way people think and talk about sporting events.

I hate people who think the way to talk about politics is to shout nonsense and see how much spittle you can get on the other person's face.

I hate the idea that if you're giving your opinion about some politician or political issue, you don't need to restrict yourself to the truth or even make sense, and if I object on those grounds then I'm being a pedantic nerd.

I like what I've read about the Coffee Party so far.

Lesson with a Needle

Eric Mead's TED talk on the magic of the placebo has spawned some interesting comments. The site's top 3 adjectives to describe it are "Confusing", "Funny", "OK". As I write this, there are still very few comments and every one is a variation on "Huh. That was interesting, but I'm not sure what he's trying to say."

Here's my take on it, written in full ignorance of any comments that came along later that explain Mead's talk.

First, a quick summary. Mead comes out, shows the audience a simple magic trick where he makes it look like he's got a knife stuck to his hand. In reality, as he shows us, he's holding it up with a finger. But people's brains don't notice that not all of his fingers are visible and accounted for; they only see the knife hanging there like magic.

Then he talks a bit about placebos and what he finds fascinating about them. A little blue pill with writing on it is more effective than a plain white pill, even if they're both placebos. And a placebo injection is most effective of all.

So then he repeats his knife trick, with a twist. Instead of a knife, he produces a long needle, which he purportedly sticks through the skin of his forearm. He leaves it hanging there, and removes his other hand, showing that he couldn't be using the same trick that he used for the knife.

Then he shows us the alleged wound, and it looks like he's really pushed the needle through his skin and a bit of flesh, leaving it firmly attached to his arm. (The audience squirms in discomfort.) Then he goes so far as to wriggle it around, producing some realistic-looking "blood." (Several audience members cover their eyes and peek out from between fingers.)

And then -- he doesn't remove the needle, he doesn't show us how it's done like he did with the knife, he just leaves us to think about his message.

Here's what I think his message was:

Why are injections more effective placebos than pills? Because we human beings naturally respond much more strongly to needles and blood than to something innocuous like swallowing a pill. This is a reaction that occurs very deep in our unconscious minds.

Mead demonstrates this through his two magic tricks. The audience applauds politely when he makes the knife stick to his skin. But if he'd ended there, even if he hadn't explained how he did it, it probably wouldn't have stuck in their minds for very long. So he got something to stick to his wrist when it ought to have fallen to the floor. Big whoop. Everybody knows an 8-year-old who can do that.

Compare the audience's reaction when he brings out the needle. Even before we see the "wound", when for all we know it's being held there with his finger, there's already a strong "squick" reaction. Needles and the idea of piercing flesh gets people's hindbrains involved.

And when Mead shows us the "wound" dripping "blood" and never lets on how he did it, he insures that the people in the audience won't forget his performance for a long, long time. (I won't either. I mean, I know it's all a trick, but I thought he sounded somewhat dazed at the very end. Which is just what you'd expect to hear if he really had pierced his arm through with a needle...)

That's his lesson. He doesn't just tell us that our unconscious reacts more strongly when these visceral feelings excite our hindbrains. He tells us and shows us.

Alice in Wonderland

Recently I saw Tim Burton Imagines a Sequel to Lewis Carroll's "Alice" Books, whose name has been shortened to Alice in Wonderland for wide release. It's a pity; now people are accusing Burton of all sorts of adaptation decay, which probably wouldn't have happened if he'd gone with the long name instead.

The two "Alice" books are probably unfilmable if the filmmaker doesn't take substantial liberties with the source material (and no, the famous Disney animated film from the 1950s is not a faithful adaptation). There's hardly any narrative continuity in what is basically a series of surreal little episodes. And don't forget that there's no continuity at all between the two books, despite the events that are thought of as the "Alice" canon being split between them. (The first novel's got slightly more famous bits in it, but it's in the second where you can find Tweedledum and Tweedledee, Humpty Dumpty, and "Jabberwocky".)

Now I want to read the books again, this time paying attention to the cultural context. Apparently the books are full of references to Victorian-era culture that hardly anybody gets anymore. The poems are parodies of stodgy moralistic poetry that every English kid had to know by heart back then, and now would be totally forgotten if it wasn't for Lewis Carroll's gentle mockery of them. Writing in The New York Times, Melanie Bayley points out how Carroll's mathematics background inspired much of the stories' lunacy.

And if TV Tropes can be believed (and I sure hope so), much of the dialogue that was Carroll meant to sound surreal and off-kilter sounds perfectly innocuous to modern readers, because colloquial English has evolved to match it - possibly due to Carroll's influence!

Much of the wording was meant to be surreal and strange, but has actually made its way into common parlance so that it seems perfectly normal to a modern reader. For instance, Alice says "Let's pretend," in the beginning. At the time, "pretend," meant "to lie or deceive", so "Let's pretend," sounded very strange. Now, thanks to Alice In Wonderland, the meaning of the word has changed quite a bit.

That is super-neat.

As for Tim Burton's movie, I enjoyed it for what it was: a surreal, hallucinogenic trip that had Burton's fingerprints all over it. The fact that he explicitly made it a sequel rather than a proper adaptation from the novels gave him a great deal of artistic leeway. Still wish he'd used the long title I suggested above.

Same goes for another movie I enjoyed immensely this year, Guy Ritchie Does a Movie about Sherlock Holmes. He could have avoided all the carping by Holmes fans if only he'd used my title.

Satire in Real Life

BoingBoing reports on a bit of official preposterousness that is particularly inane - and inconvenient and possibly traumatizing for its innocent victim:

Nicholas George, a senior in Middle-Eastern Studies at Pomona College, was detained, handcuffed, and intensively questioned by the TSA while trying to catch a flight back to school from Philadelphia. The TSA guards found English-Arabic flashcards in his luggage and said that because Osama bin Laden spoke Arabic, "these cards are suspicious." The FBI was called in, and an agent called him a "fucking idiot" when he asked why he was being held. After being asked if he was a communist or a Muslim, he was released. He was not read his rights at any time.

I figure the least disturbing explanation for this incident - and also, the least insulting to the TSA - is that the student got caught up in an anti-government satire. You know, a full-blown production put on to make fun of the U.S. government and airport security systems. Here's how I imagine it playing out:

TSA supervisor: "You know who did 9/11?"

Student: "Osama bin Laden."

TSA supervisor: "Do you know what language he spoke?"

Student: "Arabic."

TSA supervisor: "Do you see why these cards are suspicious?

Student: "OK, I get the point. TSA guys are morons. Can I go now?"

TSA supervisor: "What?"

Student: "That's the point of this whole game, isn't it? You want me to think the TSA is staffed by a bunch of illiterate racist morons, aren't they all so stupid, let's all point and laugh at them, ha ha ha? Like that time a few years ago, when that guy wasn't allowed on board a plane because his T-shirt had a picture of a gun on it? Well, I get the point. Very funny. Can I get on my plane now?"

TSA supervisor: "You're not taking this very seriously, young man. I represent the United States Federal Government."

Student: "You want me to take it seriously? Okay, then let's talk seriously. My aunt's a government bureaucrat too. She works for Health & Human Services. She's got a master's in public health. She takes her job very seriously. I respect her a lot. You want me to take it seriously, really? Well, take my brother Bob. He's a Marine. He volunteered to go fight in Afghanistan. You know why? Not because he wants to go blow up 'Ay-rabs', as you probably think, but because he respects what the U.S. military is trying to do over there and he wants to lend his skills. I respect the hell out of him and he's probably got more book smarts than me. Does he fit into your little pre-conceived notions of what a big stupid US army guy should be? No, I'd guess he probably doesn't."

TSA supervisor: "You--"

Student: "So yeah, if you want me to take it seriously, I really don't appreciate the way your silly little satire tars people affiliated with the U.S. Government with such a broad brush. It's unrealistic and it's kind of offensive."

TSA supervisor: "Listen, you fucking idiot. Satire doesn't have to be realistic. If you found the TSA guy who nailed the passenger who was wearing that T-shirt with the gun, and told him he was being unrealistic, do you know what he would have told you? He'd have told you that you were missing the fucking point."

Student: "But--"

TSA supervisor: "You think Monty Python practiced strict realism? You know that Python bit where the guy goes to the doctor's office, and when he gets there the nurse stabs him in the stomach for no reason, and the doctor makes him fill out all this paperwork while he's bleeding to death? Do you think that was realistic?"

Student: "But the difference is, the guy who got stabbed in the Monty Python bit was played by one of the Python team. They didn't set up a hidden camera so that they could stab a random guy off the street. I, on the other hand, do not wish to be a part of your little play, and may I remind you that my flight is boarding in less than 15 minutes and I would rather like to be there."

TSA supervisor: "No. I don't like your attitude. If you think I'm doing a fairly good job making the TSA look stupid now, I'll be doing an awesome job making fun of the TSA when I toss your Arabic-studying ass in a detention cell."

Student: "If I miss my flight, so help me I am calling the ACLU."

TSA supervisor: "Really now. Did Allen Funt get the ACLU called on him when he did Candid Camera, involving people in jokes without their knowledge?"

Student: "Allen Funt didn't intimidate people who'd been minding their own business, so that the organization he worked for would look like a bunch of incompetent asses."

TSA supervisor: "Fine then. Involve the ACLU. Maybe that's what I want. Because then, this whole satirical little scene will make the news. I'll get some publicity. People from coast to coast, and in other countries, will read about my idiocy and will have one more reason to believe we TSA guys are morons. How will your government bureaucrat aunt feel, when the American people see one more data point to confirm their notions that government bureaucrats are surly, incompetent fuckwads? And your brother in Afghanistan. How will he react when people's stereotypes of the men and women protecting America are pushed a little more in the direction of ignorant, racist imbeciles?"

Student: "You know, they're both adults. I think they can handle it."

Apple's new product

Wednesday, January 27, 2010, will be a great day in the history of the human race. It should, of course, be immediately obvious to everyone what I am talking about, but in case there's anybody out there who doesn't know: today is the day that Apple is introducing its revolutionary new product.

And there is only one explanation that could justify the astonishing amount of hype and excitement. Apple is actually going to introduce consumer technology from the future.

Think of it. Steve Jobs has made contact with time travelers from the 22nd century. They have given him samples of their wondrous futuristic technology, which Jobs and his team of engineers have used to create the product that they will introduce today.

Oh, I'm sure that even now, at the eleventh hour, some nay-sayers will say that I've got the facts wrong. But I'm ready for their objections.

Objection: Apple couldn't possibly introduce technology from the 22nd century into the year 2010! That would change the course of history, leading to a different 22nd century from the one in which the technology was developed! It's a temporal paradox!

Response: Time travel doesn't work like it does on Star Trek, you silly person. In real life, when you travel in time, what you're actually doing is traveling to a universe identical to this one but a certain number of years behind (or ahead). Once you're there, you can kill your grandfather, assassinate Hitler, or sell iPods to ancient Romans, secure in the knowledge that you're not creating any paradoxes.

Objection: But even if I travel back to the 19th century and give a bright young engineer the secret of the iPhone, he's not going to be able to get rich off of it. The manufacture of modern technology requires an entire industry to already be in place. How is my 19th-century engineer going to replicate the parts that were mass-produced in high-tech factories in 21st-century Taiwan and China? Similarly, an iPhone in a world without Internet or cell phone reception would be pretty boring. Surely Steve Jobs will have similar problems trying to sell us 22nd-century technology?

Response: Ah, but Steve Jobs didn't meet his first person from the future just last week! What happens today is the culmination of years and years of Apple engineers working in tandem with tech guys from the 22nd century. They've been building factories that are capable of mass-producing 22nd-century technology.

Objection: You really think they'd be able to keep all that secret?

Response: Oh, only a few people know that Apple's new technology is from the 22nd century. Everybody else in the company just thinks Steve Jobs and his engineers are a bunch of geniuses. And they've been introducing 22nd-century design principles very gradually. Do you really think the MacBook Air and the late-generation iPods aren't influenced by the future?

Objection: Okay, okay, but maybe it's not people from the future. Maybe Steve's been talking to aliens! Maybe the new product he's introducing today is chock full of alien technology!

Response: Aliens? From outer space? Now you're just being crazy.

He's an American. Deal and move on

Gary Younge in the Guardian discusses opposition to President Obama in economically depressed parts of America. His article leads off with:

One year after his election, Barack Obama's approval rating is lower at this stage than for any US president since Eisenhower. So why has the optimism surrounding his victory disappeared so suddenly?

But that's a bit misleading. Younge doesn't so much discuss people who were optimistic about Obama but have lost the faith. Instead he mostly talks about those elements of society who never gave him a chance in the first place. And the people he quotes keep coming back to the issue of race. But they dress it up all nice, not explicitly mentioning race but implying Obama's a Muslim or somehow not American.

Usually I'm annoyed when I hear things like "People who oppose Barack Obama just oppose him because he's black." Not only do I think there are plenty of people who oppose him from both the left and the right who aren't racist, but tarring people who disagree with you with the broad "racist" brush is a way of shutting out viewpoints that differ from yours. You don't like the guy I voted for? Then you're a bad person and I don't have to listen to you.

But come on. Would there be a "birther" movement if the President were Al Gore or John Kerry or John Edwards or Hillary Clinton? Would people be muttering "(s)he's not even a real American"? Would people reflexively be calling the President a Muslim?[1]

No, of course not. Part of it is Obama's skin color. But I think a big part of it is also his name. A lot of people can't get over his name. Hussein. Barack Hussein Obama. B. Hussein Obama. And quite frankly, attacking him based on his name is racist too. His name is his heritage.

Here's what I'd like to see.

Who are seen as leaders in right-wing anti-Obama "tea party" movements? Palin? Scott Brown? Beck? Limbaugh? Let's have somebody actually show some leadership.

I'd like to see a prominent somebody that these tea-party guys respect forcefully repudiate all of the race-based anti-Obama crap. I want to see them loudly and unequivocally say that the idea Obama was born in Kenya is nutty, that calling him a Muslim is just mindless name-calling, that implying he's less "American" because he's B. Hussein Obama is simply unacceptable.

That would be leadership. And if right-wing opposition to Obama and his agenda really is based on his economic agenda, fears of a huge national debt, and opposition to expanded government programs, then denouncing the nasty race-based rhetoric wouldn't weaken or compromise their message one bit.

Once again, if Beck or Palin or Limbaugh or Brown said this loudly and forcefully, that would be leadership.

[1] Actual American Muslims, take note: They're trying to insult President Obama by comparing him to you. But no need for you to take offense. Of course.

First President!

So if in 100 years' time Europe is a single unified country and a major world superpower, are European kids going to learn in school that Herman Van Rompuy was their country's first president? Or will he be more a Peyton Randolph sort of figure - the first president of the Continental Congress in what would become the USA, who no one remembers?

35 Amazing Science Fair Projects!

Today, a lesson in contextualizing: 35 Amazing Science Fair Projects!

Now, I'm not going to pass judgement on any specific one of these fine science fair presentations. But I'm going to say that I strongly, strongly suspect that this set of thirty-five contains a mixture of sincere projects and deliberate jokes. (My fiancee says there's unmistakable signs of Photoshopping in at least one of the photos.) What's more, I suspect the deliberate attempts to be funny tend to be arranged near the top of the page, and the sincere attempts at a science fair project are clustered near the bottom.

This means that if you look at these sequentially, by the time you reach the kid concerned about the horniness of his/her mom's feet, you're already looking for signs of Photoshopping in case it's been manipulated, and you're trying to figure out the original context in case it hasn't been changed but was meant as a joke all along.

These kids - the ones who meant it sincerely - are going to have their hard work scrutinized by legions of Internet wankers who would have simply giggled and moved on if they'd come across their project in the context of, say, FailBlog. Poor kids.

Advertising hate

Maine's Question 1, which repeals the state's legalization of same-sex marriage earlier this year has passed by a small margin. That makes me very unhappy. I expected it to be defeated.

I can respectfully agree to disagree with people who disapprove of homosexuality for religious reasons. And I've come across secular arguments against same-sex marriage that are intelligent enough to make me think, even if I don't agree with them.

But from my perch here halfway around the world in Taiwan, I hear from the media and my parents that Mainers have been subjected over the past month to all sorts of nonsensical hatred via their TVs and radios, warning them of emboldened queers coming up from out of state to prey on Maine's schoolchildren.

Now, I can't read the mind and look into the heart of every Mainer who voted "yes" on 1. I don't honestly know what influenced them. But if Question 1 had to pass, why did it have to pass following such an offensive "yes on 1" campaign? I hate the idea that someone might think this kind of ad campaign has been validated.

On my fantasy wish-list for humanity, I think I'd like to propose a "no hate-spewing political ads" rule, whereby every political action organization across the political spectrum agrees that political advertisements that encourage hatred against a segment of society cannot possibly do good. Want people to repeal gays' right to get married? By all means you can run TV spots advocating your position, but you gotta do exactly that: advocate your position. Don't feature ominous music and dark lighting to make viewers afraid of the vile faggot lurking round the corner, waiting to pounce on and seduce some pure-hearted straight children.

Sure, scaring voters may be a more effective use of dollars (AAAH! GAYS!). But if my fantasy wish-list came true, we'd all realize that it's bad for society. It increases public ambient hate and distrust. Some people might actually think the ads are real.

This applies across the political spectrum. If some extremely misguided gay rights group decided to make an ad that depicted conservative Protestants and Catholics and Mormons as threats to the well-being of same-sex couples, and used all the standard advertising tricks to make the viewer afraid of the hypothetical hate-filled religious person who could be living right next door, that ad would help us all to hate one another just a little bit more. It wouldn't do a bit of good to anyone.

There's too much ambient hate out there. If you use the powers of TV and radio to stoke it and encourage it to grow, you're just making things worse for everyone - and shaming whatever your cause happens to be.

Labels

Apparently November 18 is International Science Fiction Reshelving Day.

Join us this November in a new and unique celebration of science fiction and fantasy literature. Many books from our fine genre are regularly placed in the wrong section of bookstores. This not only hides the books from us, but it prevents readers of those books from discovering the rich tradition to which they belong.

On November 18th that changes. We will go to bookstores around the world and move science fiction and fantasy books from wherever they might be to their proper place in the “Science Fiction” section. We hope that this quiet act of protest will raise awareness of this problem and inspire new readers to explore our thought-provoking genre.

It's on November 18th because that's Margaret Atwood's birthday, as she's the author to claim most infamously that her work isn't SF even though much of it obviously is (most notably The Handmaid's Tale). The probable reason is that she doesn't want to be pigeonholed into what many perceive as a literary ghetto.

I suppose I can try to muster up some small amount of sympathy for her, by assuming she wants people to see her in particular literary tradition rather than another. If you write General Fiction you get shelved here and attract one group of people, if you write Science Fiction you get shelved there and attract a different group of people, and so on.

For instance, one recent book I read was Amy Tan's Saving Fish from Drowning, which is marketed as and universally accepted to be General Fiction. The novel's POV character dies suddenly at the beginning (not a spoiler) and for the rest of the book she's a ghost, able to narrate the events of the story but not able to influence them directly, except that a few times she plants thoughts into key character's minds during dreams which then have a real influence on how events develop. If a short story with the same ratio of the fantastical to the realistic were to appear on, say, PodCastle, I don't think there would be much "Not enough fantasy!" grumbling in the discussion forums. But it would seem somewhat weird to see Saving Fish from Drowning shelved in the "Fantasy" section of the bookshop, rather than "General Fiction".

Why is that? I think it's because we don't see Amy Tan as following in the literary traditions of the books that generally do get shelved in the "Fantasy" section. Tan is seen as a General Fiction author. Atwood wants to be seen as a General Fiction author as well, and she's prepared to say cynical and dismissive things about SF in order to stay there. That's because we all know you can't be both General Fiction and SF/Fantasy, unless your name happens to be Iain M. Banks, and for all we know he's got super powers or something.

This is usually symbolized by the subdivisions within brick-and-mortar bookshops, where each book can be given one and only one classification (General Fiction, SF/Fantasy, Mystery, Romance, etc). You can avoid this to a degree with online booksellers, where each book can be given a variety of tags, but aren't actual physical bookstores that you can go and hang out in more fun?

But when each book can only be marketed as one thing, some arbitrary decisions have to be made. Markus Zusak's The Book Thief usually gets marketed and sold as Young Adult fiction, but if it were shelved under General Fiction instead, I bet it would cause not even a single grown-up reader to end up shaking their head in dismay thinking "This is a kid's book!"

I'm surprised there's not more controversy coming from the fact that many bookstores have separate sections with names like "African-American Fiction", "Gay/Lesbian Fiction," and so on. Can you draw a line separating "General Fiction that happens to be about gay people" from "Gay/Lesbian Fiction"? How do you quantify that?

And I'm wondering if this will be an unsolvable problem for as long as we have brick-and-mortar bookshops where books are physically lined up on neat shelves. Unless people are willing to tolerate having one great big "Fiction" section where the authors are sorted only in alphabetical order.

In spittle news

As everybody who watches American cable news knows, the way to discuss politics and society in America is to park your face four inches from your opponent's, scream utter nonsense at the top of your lungs, and the way you know you've won is when the other person flinches and wipes the spittle off their face. No wonder so many Americans don't watch the news and can't name a single Supreme Court justice.

Here in Taiwan, the English-language Taipei Times publishes a Quote of the Day on page 2, and yesterday it was taken from coverage of anti-Obama rallies in Washington DC:

"[US President Barack Obama] is a traitor. He's either a Marxist or a Communist ... I think Saudi Arabia is behind him."

And the Maryland resident who said that got rewarded for their stream of words by getting their name printed in a newspaper in Taipei. Oh good lord. I'm all in favor of letting people speak their mind no matter what weird stuff their mind contains, but maybe the media shouldn't be rewarding nonsense at the expense of actual discussion. I read the actual article on page 7, and the only anti-Obama people who got quoted were the nonsense-spouters. Were there really no anti-Obama protestors at that rally with constructive things to say?