Wednesday, December 25, 2013

Pope Startles World with Reversals in Christmas Day Address

By erlin
VATICAN CITY - In his first Christmas Day speech as leader of the Catholic Church, addressing a crowd of some 70,000 people from the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica, Pope Francis called for "peace to mankind." And he asked for everyone "who hopes for a better world" to join him in this "heavenly song."

But the Pope went on to say that wishes and hope are not enough to make the world a better place. That task requires hard work and courageous decisions. So, in that spirit, the Holy Father expanded on his seasonal message by declaring a reversal of the Church's long-standing opposition to same-sex marriage and the participation of women in the Catholic priesthood.

Most remarkably, recognizing that two of the scourges that have afflicted mankind since its fall from grace, hunger and infectious disease, could be alleviated with a stroke of his pen, Pope Francis announced that the world's community of 1.2 billion Roman Catholics would now be free to use contraceptive practices according to their own desires as led by the lights of their own consciences

Saturday, October 12, 2013

Our Obligation to Malala

It's hard to express how much I admire Malala Yousafzai, the young Pakistani woman who has championed the cause of education for girls in her homeland, in defiance of Taliban threats and in spite of an assassination attempt that left her badly wounded.

Indeed, I wish that she had won the Nobel Peace Prize that went to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons a few days ago. As I have written elsewhere, awarding the prize to institutions and celebrities does not inspire the world the way awarding it to frontline heroes does. And, without a doubt, Malala is a hero and an inspiration, deserving of the same honor that has been bestowed on Suu Kyi and King and Mandela and Schweitzer.

Her intelligence, poise, eloquence and bravery are a marvel to behold. It is hard to believe that a sixteen-year-old could embody these qualities so fully. My guess is that this is why we are inclined to forget that Malala is indeed a teenage girl, who, by all rights, should have a long life ahead of her to enjoy.

It is for this reason that I found portions of the interview that Malala gave to PBS NewsHour's Margaret Warner yesterday disturbing. In it Malala says,
"And I think that I must not be afraid of death. First, I might have been before this attack, but now if even they threaten me, I'm not afraid of any threat. I have seen death already. So now I'm more powerful. Now I'm more courageous. And I will continue my campaign."
As noble as these statements are, coming from a sixteen-year-old, they send a chill up my spine. This kind of fearlessness on the part of young people is too often exploited in this world. It helps fill the ranks in our armies and is put to dastardly use by elders who dispatch their sons and daughters on missions of self-destruction.

Although it would be unquestionably a loss to "the cause," I ardently hope that those responsible for Malala's welfare will take her out of the limelight. She deserves the opportunity, in spite of her bold and heartfelt declarations, to drink from life's cup fully. Only then should she reconsider whether to fear death.

Friday, October 11, 2013

Suspension of Disbelief and the Matter of "Gravity"

Spoiler alert - This blog post contains spoilers about Alfonso Cuarón’s film Gravity.

Science fiction films by their nature invite us to suspend disbelief. They are vehicles of the imagination, often asking us to buy into improbable or impossible situations. But is there any way for us to assess when their flights into counterfactuality are justified and when they go too far?

Science writer, Dennis Overbye, stakes out a position in this debate in a recent article in the New York Times. In it he discusses, in the company of veteran astronaut Michael J. Massimino, the recently-released film Gravity. The writer and his companion really like the movie. They admire its realistic recreations and, in particular, its faithfulness to the action-reaction demands of Newtonian physics. It is with some reservation, though, that Overbye points out that,
"Unfortunately, with all this verisimilitude, there is a hole in the plot: a gaping orbital impossibility big enough to drive the Starship Enterprise through."
According to Overbye, this hole gapes because the film asks us to suspend disbelief and accept as a premise that the Space Shuttle on a Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission and the International Space Station (ISS) would find themselves in the same orbit, indeed within spitting distance of one another. (It should be noted that, thanks to the aforementioned Newton’s laws, spitting distance in the vacuum of space can be considerable.) Overbye may be right as a matter of history, but I believe that he is wrong as a matter of film criticism. And, contrary to his expectation, I don’t think that “space fans will groan” as result of Gravity taking this liberty.

When a film like Gravity asks us to buy into something that we know is unlikely or out-and-out untrue, it does so as part of a bargain. In exchange for our credulity we are promised a compelling story, with the understanding that the impossible or improbable things that we are asked to accept are essential to the tale that is to be told. Whether these whoppers are large or small or whether they numerous or few, they cannot be arbitrary; they have to be critical to the development of place or plot or character in some important way.

Like any work of fiction, Gravity enjoys moderate license to play fast and loose with historical facts. We don’t complain, for example, that its story is impossible because the space shuttle program has come to an end and all surviving instances of that spacecraft have taken up final posts in museums around the country. Nor are we much bothered by the fact that, even if the space shuttle remained operational, it would not be dispatched on another Hubble repair mission. Getting the funds from Congress and a “go” from NASA for the last one was a was a near impossibility.

NASA astronaut Nicole Stott,
poses in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.
In exchange for these lapses in historical authenticity we get a plausible space adventure, one which begins with a breathtaking, yet oddly familiar, establishing shot: our protagonists, rookie Mission Specialist Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) and veteran astronaut Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) space-walking in the vicinity of an orbiting space shuttle and the attached Hubble Space Telescope, floating against the backdrop of a beautiful, blue, cloud-dappled Earth below.

Significantly, this opening scene tells us that director Alfonso Cuarón intends to anchor Gravity in a faithful recreation of contemporary space technology; this movie is not going to be some sort of fluffy sci-fi contrivance filled with make-believe spaceships decorated with bogus control panels. Instead, what Cuarón has in mind is a painstakingly realized period piece, the period being the second decade of the twenty-first century and the setting, the human outposts of low Earth orbit and their surrounds.

Robinson Crusoe illustration,
N.C. Wyeth
The tale that Cuarón has to tell here is, in part, an age-old one of survival against all odds, the triumph, by grit and cunning, of a hapless and isolated wayfarer over the unforgiving forces of nature. Traditionally, stories like this unfold at sea. (Take for example Ang Lee’s Life of Pi in 2012 and Robert Redford’s soon-to-be-released All is Lost.) For centuries our planet’s vast oceans have provided storytellers with the ready possibility of total isolation. Menace in these circumstances is usually delivered in the form of raging storms from above or man-eating predators from below. And, of course, there is the inevitability of death, if food or water should become exhausted.

In Cuarón’s reimagining of this genre, the deep blue sea is replaced by a transparent, airless region of space two hundred miles or so above the surface of the Earth. Vacuum and extreme temperature are the the ever-present predators here, kept at bay by the thin white line of spacesuit and the thin gold one of visor. An expanding cascade of high-velocity space-debris destroys all possibility of communication with Mission Control, drawing the curtain of isolation tightly about our astronauts. To make matters worse, this very same storm of orbiting shrapnel rains down like clockwork every ninety minutes, growing in intensity and destructive force with each circling of the planet. Minutes count. There will be no ticking off the passage of days by anyone with marks on the side of a life raft. Eventually Ryan’s isolation is made total as her partner Kowalski drifts off into the void at the end of the first act of the film. In this environment, hunger and thirst aren't killers; death comes quickly when oxygen runs out.

International Space Station,
May 29, 2011
This is where Overbye's objection about the location of the International Space Station so close to the Hubble comes into the picture. Having stranded his hero, Cuarón is obligated to provide her with a way home. He must do so while remaining faithful to his artistic vision for the film, which means staying true to a recreation of contemporary space technology. So, in defiance of historical fact, the director places the Space Station nearby the orbiting Hubble telescope. It will provide Ryan with a temporary place of refuge and the possibility of using the attached Soyuz spacecraft as a lifeboat to ferry her to Earth and to safety. It will also provide the director with the opportunity to demonstrate his virtuosity at bringing this beautiful and intricately constructed space habitat to life on the screen.

Allowing the Space Station and the Hubble to share the stage in Gravity is a concession which permits the director to relocate the traditional shipwrecked survivor tale to low Earth orbit. The story must supply some way for Ryan to save herself. Using the Space Station seems a reasonable choice, given the artistic restrictions that Cuarón has imposed on himself. In addition, we are rewarded as a result of this choice by a display of CG verisimilitude that is all the more compelling because it is rooted in detail that can be found only in existing engineering marvels such as the International Space Station.

This bargain offered by Gravity was more than enough to meet my criteria for suspension of disbelief. I willingly accepted its premises and, thanks to Alfonso Cuarón, got a plausible and compelling tale of triumph against all odds in return.

Friday, October 4, 2013

When it comes to the government shutdown, let's not round up the usual suspects for a change

Vichy Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains) instructing
the police to "round up the usual suspects" in "Casablanca."
Let's get one thing straight here, when it comes to the federal government shutdown, Congress is not the problem. This is what the drama-stoking machinery that masquerades as the popular news media would have you believe. It is also the anodyne, hand-wringing, why-can't-we-just-get-along explanation preferred by people who see national politics as nothing more than family dysfunction writ large.

The people who buy into this analysis, or at least parrot it mindlessly, imagine that putting pressure on Congress, let's say by withholding their pay, will knock some sense to these bickering clowns. As though our Senators and Representatives are quaking in their boots at the prospect of forgoing a paycheck or two or ten. Others imagine that, since Congress is the problem, then the solution is that tried and true - rather that should be trite and failed - demand to "throw the bums out." As though all members of Congress deserve equal treatment, since, of course being politicians, they are equally venal and self-serving.

Well, I've got news for this naive, lump-them-all-together crowd, and that is that the problem here is not Congress, as reassuring as that notion might be to you, the problem is that a majority of the Republican Party in the House of Representatives - and notably not a majority of members of the House itself - wants to roll back a important piece of legislation that is a critical first step in making healthcare accessible to all Americans. They despise this idea and will go to destructive lengths to make sure that this advance in our march toward social justice does not see the light of day.

It is this very same group of troglodytes - and not Congress - that opposes marriage equality. It is this very same group - and not Congress - that undermines even the smallest efforts to deal with climate change and preserve the integrity of the environment for our children and grandchildren. It is this very same group - and not Congress - who continue to conduct a dastardly war against women, in particular, against their right to exercise choices about their reproductive health options and about control of their own bodies.

So, for fuck's sake, quit blaming Congress in some abstract and ultimately ineffectual way and start blaming the backward-looking Tea Party cretins who are responsible for this mess. And, while you're at it, don't forget to blame Speaker John Boehner who, in a trice, could allow a clean continuing resolution to be voted on and likely passed by a majority composed of both Democrats and Republicans in the House.

Sunday, January 27, 2013

City of Atlanta Proclamation Honoring Charles Darwin

Thanks to the support of members of the Atlanta Science Tavern and to endorsements from more than two hundred of science enthusiasts and professionals in the Atlanta area, including students, teachers, staff and faculty at high schools, colleges, universities and research institutions, District 6 City Councilman, Alex Wan, has issued the following proclamation, on behalf of the citizens of Atlanta, to
recognize Charles Darwin and his Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection and commemorate the important contributions he has made towards the advancement of our understanding of the biological world and the improvement of the quality of life for humankind.
This is the first step in our efforts to have February 12 proclaimed "Darwin Day" in Atlanta by the full City Council in 2014. You can view and download the text of this year's proclamation here.


City of Atlanta Proclamation in Honor of Charles Darwin


Monday, January 14, 2013

Finding a Home at ScienceOnline

At the end of this month I'll be making my way to Raleigh, North Carolina to attend a conference called ScienceOnline2013, the seventh annual installment of an event that brings together "scientists, students, educators, physicians, journalists, librarians, bloggers, programmers and others interested in the way the World Wide Web is changing the way science is communicated, taught and done." I must admit to being both intimidated and excited by the prospect of joining this illustrious group for the first time.

Although this isn't an enterprise that requires new clothes, I did wonder whether I might need to be equipped with a new title for the job. Once upon a time I considered myself a scientist, a physicist to be exact, but my efforts to put together a presentation on the recent Higgs boson discovery reminded me just how long ago that episode was in my career. Of course I am a blogger now - who isn't? - and I do blog about science, that is when I'm not blogging about movies and politics. I imagine myself being a science writer one of these days, but I'd feel more comfortable assuming that mantle once I had book under my belt. That's not going to happen anytime soon. Certainly not by January 30th.

So, echoing the confusion of an erstwhile vice-presidential candidate, I find myself asking the question, "who am I? And what am I doing here?" What is ScienceOnline about and why is it a fit for me?

Well, according to their website
ScienceOnline is a non-profit organization that facilitates conversations, community, and collaborations at the intersection of Science and the Web.
The intersection of Science and the Web? That's pretty much my home address.

You see, I am the Director of a group called the Atlanta Science Tavern, Atlanta's premier grassroots public science forum, organized on Meetup.com, with over 2,800 members. We produce or promote several science-related educational or cultural events each and every month and specialize in bringing research scientists and science writers to an audience of science enthusiasts who just can't get enough of the stuff, especially when food and drink are involved.

Our topics cover everything from The Manufacture of Glass in Ancient Egypt to Neutrino Astrophysics; from Mr. Jefferson and the Giant Moose to Global Climate Change Policy. Many of these talks have been captured as podcasts available free-of-charge from our iTunes library.

Founded in June of 2008 by my friends Carol Potter and Josh Gough, the Atlanta Science Tavern began life as a science cafe in the tradition of Cafe Scientifique. But their decision to use Meetup.com as an organizational tool rapidly transformed what were to be informal, small-group encounters with scientists over beer or coffee into large public science presentations over dinner at our home base, Manuel's Tavern, routinely drawing over 100 people on a Saturday night each month. This has been an entirely Internet-fueled phenomenon, with easy discovery on Meetup allowing us to mobilize a vast community of under-served science lovers.

In the last couple of years we have leveraged our Internet presence to promote events and activities hosted by other organizations and groups. This has led to a partnership with the Atlanta Botanical Garden, in which we help them to get the word out about their own summer science cafe series. Two years back we launched the very first Science Track at the Decatur Book Festival, the largest independent book festival in the country. It was a fortuitous result of our featuring Holly Tucker and her book Blood Work there in 2011 that finds me attending ScienceOnline2013, thanks to Holly's encouragement. Our collective Science Tavern gig as contributors to Holly's history-blogging website Wonders & Marvels has given us a new way to extend our reach to an even wider audience on the Web.

The sky, it appears, is hardly a limit when it comes to expanding our program. Our Mars Landing Party the night of August 5-6, 2012, which included a five-speaker symposium streamed live around the world, attracted over 300 guests to the Georgia Tech Enterprise Innovation Institute, including people who traveled hundreds of miles from neighboring states, to witness the landing of the Curiosity rover. It also attracted the attention of The New York Times and CNN.com. Closer to Earth, we are currently organizing another big public event, the first annual Darwin Day Dinner here and are working to have February 12, 2013 proclaimed Darwin Day in the City of Atlanta. It's a challenge not quite on a par with Curiosity's "seven minutes of terror," but still fraught with some suspense as of this writing.

So all said, although I'm still not exactly sure of the title I should adopt for this new enterprise - "science impresario" would be my dream - I am convinced that I belong at ScienceOnline. If that's where the intersection of Science and the Web is, then I'm there! It feels a lot like I'm going home.

Creative Commons License
Finding a Home at ScienceOnline by Marc Merlin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at http://thoughtsarise.blogspot.com/2013/01/finding-home-at-scienceonline.html .