Run, Don't Walk

I don't generally exhort people to go out and buy things, but this will just have to be the exception. You might have heard a certain band interviewed on Science Friday last week. If you care about science at all, if you're remotely interested, have kids that you want to interest, or are just a bit of a fan, then you need to get the new disc from They Might Be Giants, Here Comes Science. Even if you're not a fan of TMBG - and to be honest, while I like them, they're not my favourite musical combo - the lyrical content is fantastic. Good solid science, presented for children and adults alike.

Favourite songs so far? "I Am a Paleontologist", "Why Does the Sun Shine?", "Photosynthesis", and, of course, "Here Comes Science". I laughed out loud at these songs: they're that brilliant. Frankly, lyrics like these that don't mince any words or pander to the nonsense of the superstitious are a necessity right now.

So, as I say, if you're a friend of Science (I think the capital "s" appropriate here), an FCD (Friend of Charles Darwin), a teacher, friend of reason, or anything like that, give these tracks a listen. The two-disc set includes a DVD with some quirkily animated versions of the songs, which I can't imagine kids not going for. I'll test it on ours this week-end and report the results (I could probably construct a doubly-blinded study, if I really wanted to put the effort into it...)

Of course, these things sound all the nicer on a nice 160GB iPod, which thanks to GHR I now have, and can fit my entire music and audio and podcast library onto, with all of ten gigabytes to spare. Best gift for no discernible reason ever - now how to reciprocate?

NASA Swag

Science Club at our humble little science store is a meeting held on Saturdays where school children from kindergarten through the eighth grade can come monthly to hear discussions of various science topics. This year, being not only the International Year of Science but also the International Year of Astronomy, the four hundredth anniversary of Galileo's observations with a telescope, the bi-centennary of the birth of Charles Darwin and the one hundred fiftieth anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species (free etext from Project Gutenberg here), we've had a number of great topics to discuss. October's will be no exception. This month, the local NASA educational outreach officer is due to come in to discuss space flight and space exploration.

Unfortunately, she can't make two of the four planned meetings. Fortunately, the Amateur Astronomer is a keen student of space missions, so he's taking one presentation, and I am taking the other, my sole credential being with my life-long fascination with space travel (I was the kid with the scrapbook of Voyager mission newspaper cuttings, after all). Yesterday, we met with the NASA educator, and she presented us with some of the materials that we could use and distribute to the kids, including images, stickers, and experimental materials. The image cards are very cool, we have a poster of mission patches to show the kids, stickers to give out, and different ways to model the size of the solar system. Should be a good time.

We have some really great ideas about what to do for this presentation, so much so that it's going to be hard to cram it all into an hour. And no, I don't intend to answer the question about how one uses the toilet in space. Some mysteries are better left... well, mysterious, and I'd prefer not to stray into the scatological if at all possible. But that's just me.

Of course, we don't get to eat the space food that we will have to show. I understand that. It's expensive to put Smarties in a vacuum-sealed bag. But the idea of making ziploc instant pudding bags to simulate how you would eat when weightless sounds too good to pass up, so I think that we're doing that.

If you want to learn some more about NASA's educational outreach, check out the website (the local one for Missouri is here). And if you're a member of the Beagle's Science Club, be prepared for some fun in October!

Carl Sagan, Rebooted

Every science blogger and their brother seems to have posted a certain video recently, featuring the much-lamented and much-missed Carl Sagan. However, there may yet be one or two people who still haven't seen it yet (why they'd be reading my blog, I have no idea). A word of introduction, first: if you like the style of the AutoTune the News videographers, or just find it strangely interesting, then you may well like this (not by the same group, just so you know):

Carl Sagan was central to my early understanding of and love for the sciences, and this is a delightfully quirky tribute.

Awesome

Just noticed my Google adverts in the sidebar... the top one is for the very drool-worthy TeleVue Ethos eyepiece. Finally - adverts that I can actually agree with!

Back Into the Fray

It's been an inexcusably long time, faithful reader (by now, I'm sure that my inactivity has whittled you down to the singular).

I'd plead all of the usual rubbish... witter, witter - illness. Maunder, maunder - return to full-time work. Cribbet, cribbet - life and family offline. And it'd all be true, but you're not really caring about that, so let's just press on, shall we?

I've been reading, and writing, as it happens, just not posting. Here's an example, taken from some of my thoughts about the execrable Unscientific America:

"... In the face of a growing movement of scientists writing cogent and trenchant books - and, perhaps more tellingly, blog posts - Mooney has now decided, it would seem, that the lack of public understanding of science is... wait for it... the fault of scientists. More specifically, it is the fault of scientists who are... again, wait for it... poor communicators. While having just written the aforementioned cogent and trenchant books.

"This thesis is a load of dingo's kidneys."

I'll whip up a full review in good time, because it's just too delicious to pass on the chance to explain just how this self-congratulatory* and smug little volume (and I do mean little) gets it all so wrong. My view of UA is held in comparison to lots of other wonderful current works on science (Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution Is True is excellent, as is Donald Prothero's Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters; I've just started on the new Richard Dawkins book, The Greatest Show on Earth, so far it's quite good too), let alone to a book like Charlie Pearce's Idiot America, which is, for the most part, a lark and a lovely read. But then, I would say that, would I not? I'm part of the problem, aren't I, dears?

Here also are some ruminations on the sort of people who have quite inadvertently found themselves shopping in a science store:

"...Sometimes, though, people come through our portals unaware of where they are, and unaware of what to expect. And this, for whatever reason, can make them turn... er, well - unpleasant. When they're hostile, they typically fall into one of three categories:

• The sneering, knows-it-all, "my god can beat up your god" (even if you don't have one) type, who flaunts their unreason as a sort of badge of honour


• The "la-la-la-la - can't make me hear it" school of argument: this one includes the sort of person who says smug things like "stars are millions of light years away? Well, I don't believe that", as though you were some sort of drooling infant who had just claimed that the bloke round the back was busy turning water into wine.


• The openly nasty "I don't want to be here, they [accusingly points at compatriots] made me come in the door" type (had one of those about a month or two back, and suspect that she might have been an old boss of mine)

Presented just to show that I haven't been bone idle all this time. What else have I done? Let's see... Put together and gave a - very shaky - workshop on mineral identification, which I'd hope to do much better next time. Done a lot of reading. Taught some children the basics of geology (hardly qualified to do so, but did it anyway). Went on holiday. Went to a wedding (note to self: in future, when going to a wedding of people about whom I know and care nothing, imbibe more. Much more.). Did some observing with trusty telescope. Neglected friends (another noun rapidly moving toward a singular, rather than a plural, construction). Constructed a small laboratory in the basement (must nip out and get dehumidifier before chemicals end up as unrecognisable sodden masses), largely out of old tables and string. Still haven't build either of my two Spitfire model kits. *Sigh.*

In short, wasted a lot of time. But no more. Or at least, less time wasteage in future, more posting!

Here are some quick ideas for the future:

• More science!


• Periodic rebuttal of the "ID the Future" podcast - because it's much healthier than shouting at my iPod while I drive


• Book reviews! At long last... er... again!


• Actually updating my Twitter feed! (some have argued that I'm a bit of a twit anyway, but never to my face).


• More about me! Because a blog about my interests isn't self-centred enough already.

So that's the plan, roughly. Love it or not, we'll see how long this lasts.

I'm old enough to have kept diaries journals when I was younger - proper paper things in which I earnestly scratched away. Trouble was, after a few weeks, I'd get bored. Attention span of a radish, me, whether twenty years ago or now. But we'll give it a go, see what happens. No promises. Now get on your bikes and ride.

---

* For example, count the references in UA to ScienceDebate 2008 in the light of the authors' rôles in its creation and perpetration... I didn't dream that, right? They were hugely involved in SD2008, weren't they? So isn't it just a tiny bit... well, crass to point at it and say "look, look, at the wonderful thing that we did!", or is that just me?

My Favourite Sort of Morning

Cool, quiet, rainy. The sort of morning which typically one only experienced in the imagined Octobers of one's youth. A bit like living a morning in a Ray Bradbury novel; all small-town America and just a hint, a soupcon of warm-spirited spine-tingling mystery in the air.

I have the shop to myself, listening to the static-laden AM-signal of the local classical radio station. Some Vaughan Williams would be nice, but Elgar or Copland or Debussy would do.

Hairs freshly cut by an only moderately-incompetent barber.

A smooth, rich cup of coffee.

Some more books on which I need to be working, preparing my workshop on Techniques of Mineral Identification, to be held slightly less than two weeks hence.

All in all, could be worse. But for now, I'll enjoy the quiet and the absence of the telephonic overload. I'll watch the delivery vans go by, and wait for the one with parcels for my attention.

And the rain, it raineth down.

New Hominid Discovery

The story of the discovery of a new hominid fossil, found in Spain, is making the rounds of the news circuits at the moment, hot on the heels of the Darwinius massilae discovery; the new hominid has been reported in Science Daily. Named Anoiapithecus brevirostris, the fossil, called "Lluc" by researchers, is another piece in the puzzle of hominid development.

As with many hominid fossils, this one is sadly but not unexpectedly largely incomplete, but study has been possible, regardless:

"[The research team's] findings are based on a partial cranium that preserves most of the face and the associated mandible. The cranium was unearthed in 2004 in the fossil-rich area of Abocador de Can Mata (els Hostalets de Pierola, l’Anoia, Barcelona), where remains of other fossilized hominid species have been found. Preparing the fossil for study was a complicated process, due to the fragility of the remains. But once the material was available for analysis, the results were surprising: The specimen (IPS43000) combined a set of features that, until now, had never been found in the fossil record.

"Anoiapithecus displays a very modern facial morphology, with a muzzle prognathism (i.e., protrusion of the jaw) so reduced that, within the family Hominidae, scientists can only find comparable values within the genus Homo, whereas the remaining great apes are notoriously more prognathic (i.e., having jaws that project forward markedly). The extraordinary resemblance does not indicate that Anoiapithecus has any relationship with Homo, the researchers note. However, the similarity might be a case of evolutionary convergence, where two species evolving separately share common features.

"Lluc's discovery may also hold an important clue to the geographical origin of the hominid family. Some scientists have suspected that a group of primitive hominoids known as kenyapithecines (recorded from the Middle Miocene of Africa and Eurasia) might have been the ancestral group that all hominids came from. The detailed morphological study of the cranial remains of Lluc showed that, together with the modern anatomical features of hominids (e.g., nasal aperture wide at the base, high zygomatic rood, deep palate), it displays a set of primitive features, such as thick dental enamel, teeth with globulous cusps, very robust mandible and very procumbent premaxilla. These features characterize a group of primitive hominoids from the African Middle Miocene, known as afropithecids."

It's a fascinating article, and if your time permits take a few minutes to read and absorb it.

I am also obliged to say there that if any "Intelligent Design" proponents would like to try to step forward and offer their comprehensive and authoritative view on how their "theory" addresses major paleontological finds like this one, I'll be waiting - amusedly - for your rhetorical infelicities to pour forth. In the meantime, the grownups can carry on with the real science, and I look forward with great anticipation to the next big find.

Confidence Shaking

One of the features generally known about me is that I'm not a mathematical sort of cove. In fact, pretty much the opposite.

Nevertheless, I was pretty pleased with myself for starting to read through Donald E. Sands' Introduction to Crystallography. It's a subject that I've never properly understood, and I thought that it might be worthwhile to spend a few hours trying to become acquainted with the subject in greater detail.

I made it as far as nine pages before I encountered this:

Calculations involving oblique coordinate systems are certainly more tedious than they would be if the axes were at right angles to each other, but compensation is provided by features such as the identity of the fractional coordinates of equivalent points in different unit cells. The following formulas will be useful.

The volume V of a unit cell is given by

V = abc(1- cos² α - cos² β - cos² γ + 2cos α cos β cos γ)^1/2

The distance l between the points x₁, y₁, z₁, and x₂, y₂, z₂ is

l = [(x₁ - x₂)²a² + (y₁ - y₂)²b² + (z₁ - z₂)²c²

+ 2(x₁ - x₂)(y₁ - y₂)ab cos γ + 2(y₁ - y₂)(z₁ - z₂)bc cos α

+ 2(z₁ - z₂)(x₁ - x₂)ca cos β]^1/2

You should verify these formulas for the familiar case where α = β = γ = 90 degrees. Derivation of these formulas is accomplished easily by means of vector algebra.

Blink.

Vector algebra?

Blink. Blink.

Clearly, this isn't going to be quite as easy as I had hoped.

Liquid Water on Mars

Here's a quick link to a rather interesting article from Universe Today, regarding the somewhat controversial topic of liquid water on Mars. It will be interesting to watch the development of this story.

In the meantime, here's a quote that fits the mood which this news engenders in me...

"No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. And early in the twentieth century came the great disillusionment."

-- H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds, 1898

It's still one of the more chilling opening passages of any book. I re-read TWOTW a few years back, and was delighted to find parts that I didn't remember. Probably due to the setting and the nature of the story, it holds up ever so much better than it's near contemporaries, the Edgar Rice Burroughs Mars (or "Barsoom", if you like) novels...

In the meantime, back to the science. Dreams of other species and terrible war machines for another day.

From the "It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time" Files

In view of a lack of time, here's a quick story to amuse you. It's something of a moral tale, so clearly, as a non-theist type-person, I shouldn't be telling it, right?

It was late January. A telephone call came in to the science store. It was a local representative, an academic, for a science competetion for secondary school students. They needed help: did we have anyone who could run one of their sections of the upcoming competetion, specifically the section on fossils?

It sounded like the sort of thing that I would enjoy, so after some negotiation and fact-finding, I accepted. I generally enjoy the opportunity to do science education - it's a good and useful expenditure of my time. I would have been happier running a section on rocks and minerals, and I normally tell people that fossil are not my strong suit, but in this case, it would be straightforward. It was essentially an exercise in identification and placement of the fossils at the correct point in geologic history. I went out, bought the recommended source book so I wouldn't be working too far out in the wilderness from what the students had prepared, and set to work.

I planned for it to be really fascinating and cool as well. While the identification could have been done from photographs or sketches, why would we do that when I had the cool stuff at my disposal? We have some fairly interesting, unusual, and expensive fossils and fossil casts at the store, and I felt certain that I could persuade the owners to let me borrow some of them for the competition. I also had an overarching plan - to present the fossils as evolutionarily grouped over the different geologic epochs. Bonus questions would allow the students to fill in the gaps, if they could. And, despite it falling on St. Valentine's Day and a Saturday, GHR, rather than balking at the idea, wanted to come with me and help. Scheduling would be tight, but I could make it work. Everything seemed to have fallen into place.

About a week later, with exactly ten days to go, an email arrived:

Hi William—
 
My name is [name], and I am a member of the [withheld] Club ([office held withheld]). [The Party of the Second Part] had asked me a while ago to compose the test for the fossil portion of the [this event]. I understand that the director of this year’s [event], [Event Director], has asked you to conduct the fossil test. If you wish to do this, I am o.k. with that. If you want to split the questions, that would work also. I have a few questions done on trace fossils, trilobites, and brachiopods. Let me know what you want to do and if you want me to help. I will be available to proctor the test on Feb 14, and also have some specimens that can be used for the stations.
 
Thanks,

[name]

And here's how it sounded in my head:

My name is [ name withheld ]. I was originally asked by [ someone who's name I don't recognise ] to run the fossil section of this event.

I [hold a high office] of the [ local fossil society ]. I know a lot about fossils, and have a collection. I was preparing to run the event's fossil section, but I hadn't bothered to write back to the organisers yet to tell them. It seems as though they've asked you, whoever you are, to do it instead.

I could take over running this. Or I suppose we could work together. If we had to. Let me know.

It's actually a misuse of the "blockquote" tag there in the second instance, but I think that I've accurately reproduced the tone that I heard in my head. This is what, on reading it, I got from the email. Of course, that's one of the dangers of email: unless you're precise, your reader may or may not get the message that you intend.

In any event, this was something that I had not expected, and I quickly weighed my options:

1. I could accept co-proctoring the event, and attempt to work with someone I didn't know, at the last minute, against the backdrop of my already-planned programme.


2. I could refuse, and say that I wanted to run the event by myself.


3. I could drop out from running the event.

You would be right in saying that there was no good thing to do. I could adapt, and work with someone who - from the tone of their email - was clearly some sort of über-fossil royalty, and clearly casting themself as my better - after all, I wasn't a part of their club. I could carry on myself, with now-wrathful eyes watching my every step for a mistake. Or I could step aside, in favour of someone who was, by dint of their interest and apparent experitse, probably more qualified than I.

I emailed the organiser and stepped aside.

At the time that I did this, I presented all sorts of justifications to myself, saying that "I'm sure they can do it better" and that while, yes, my version would have been pretty cool, "they're bound to have access to all sorts of good fossil to use". And surely, "they've been planning to do this, therefore it should be good".

Why, then, had they wanted to work together? On, I think, the Wednesday before the competition Saturday, I found out.

An individual came into the store mid-afternoon, and introduced themself as my email interlocutor. Did we have any fossils that they could purchase for the section? They had lost all of theirs.

I was more than a little gobsmacked. This was the person who had flaunted their expertise? This was a local society office-hodler? They went on to explain that they only really knew local fossils, and didn't have any representation of anything outside of the Pennsylvanian era. After looking and clucking their tongue at how expensive fossils can be, they spent about $20 on a few tiny instances and left.

I didn't hear anything about how the eventual event went over. I feel certain that, as a result, the students who participated in this event didn't have as rich an experience as they might have done. I couldn't possibly have known it at the time, but I certainly felt badly seeing the paltry selection of fossils that went out the door with this fossil society leader. I felt badly knowing that my ideas, my plans... based on what I had seen, they would have been better.

Like every time that I make a bad decision in my life, I try to learn how not to do the same thing again. Remember how this was going to be a moral tale? Or, at least, a tale with a moral? This time, I think that the moral that I learned was this: I should really, really trust my instincts. I should learn to see through titles, and hollow bluster, better than I do now. The line that I should have taken? "I've already put a lot of work into this event. If you would like to see my notes, you are welcome to, but currently, I think that I have a handle on everything. If you would like to assist with proctoring this event, let's talk about when and how you will be there to help out."

Honestly, it would have been better. Better for students trying to be keen on science. Better for the event. And better for me, not having to realise that I was essentially out-bluffed by a brachiopod hunter.