Chuck's Page: Journal

June 23, 2003 -- I had been putting off seeing Jack Nicholson's "About Schmidt" because I have gotten a little tired of his usual film persona, but we rented it a few days ago and watched it from bed. It turned out to be an excellent example of a simple story full of compelling and rich allusions. Nicholson literally outdid himself -- left his old self behind -- and found a likeable, if simple, soul inside. (Here is the story: The 42-year wife of Nicholson's character died suddenly and left him to re-orient his life and come to appreciate what she had meant to him, and finally, through seeing the effect of a small act of kindness he had performed, came to appreciate himself.) .

There were times in this film when I wondered why I was watching it. Why, for example, did the incomparable Kathy Bates have to bad-mouth her well-meaning ex-husband so fouly? But in the end, even that scene carried meaning. It highlighted how lucky Nicholson had been, without his knowing it.

And I must admit that for the first half hour I kept watching Nicholson, saying to myself, what a virtuoso performance! But gradually I forgot him and saw only Schmidt. Maybe this is a film that has to be seen twice: First, for Nicholson, who deserved an Academy Award, and second for Schmidt, who helped him. I came away deeply touched.

I'd say this is Nicholson's best role since "One Flew Over the Cukoo's Nest." He is growing up.

But John Irving's, latest paperback "The Fourth Hand" is another story. A mere escape: disappointing. It is a novel that sets out to answer two questions: 1. What if a newsman were to lose a hand to a lion in a zoo on live TV? 2. What if that man is both charming and highly promiscuous?

Answers: 1. He gets a replacement. 2. He finally wakes up (in bed, needless to say) and settles down when he encounters a woman who, inexplicably takes him seriously. We are told that he is charming, but I, for one, find it hard to believe, and the woman's attraction to him remains a mystery. (Perhaps the point is, love is that way.)

There are some truly funny scenes in the best Irving tradition, and the woman who finally settles him down sounds like someone we would like to meet. But there are many cynical, and only too obvious, comments about the news media.

This is a pale imitation of "The World According to Garp" and "Prayer for Owen Meany." Like Pooh's deflated balloon, this novel has no shape. It's as though Irving has given up on the idea of being a serious novellist or of experimenting and trying to outdo himself.

May 26, 2003 -- In the New York Review for June 12, 2003, Mark Lilla discusses Susan Neiman's new book, Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy, which traces the consequences of the rise and decline of theodicy and religion, in general, for our ability (inability?) to cope with the problem of evil: Why is there evil? In the old days, God provided the context, but He seems to have been taken off the playing field. Rousseau wrote that man's departure from nature is the source of evil -- for example, constructing fragile houses in Lisbon, which rested on a fault zone and were destroyed in the Great Earthquake of 1755.

Let us ask not only, why is there evil?, but also why is there good? And along the same line we ought to ask, why is there beauty and ugliness? Why do we have a sense of fitness and morality?

But even before that we must ask what we mean by evil? We seem to feel that an evil act requires an evil-minded perpetrator -- it is a matter of a conscious decision. But the question, what is an evil motive? is no easier to answer than what is God's will for me?

A sense of good and evil has an obvious bearing on our survival as a species, and it has been examined by evolutionists. What about the senses of beauty and ugliness? Are they, perhaps, merely extensions of our search for safety, in food and shelter and the like.

May 19, 2003 -- Freeman Dyson, in the New York Review (May 15, 03) writes that "The Biosphere is the interacting web of plants and rocks, fungi and soils, animals and oceans, microbes and air, that constitute the habitat of life on our planet."

We need a word for the interacting web of convictions, intentions, biases, hopes and fears that constitute the habitat of personality and identity in an individual person. "Mindsphere" seems to have been co-opted by the Information Technology industry.

Oct. 14, 2002 --- I recently came across a list of guidelines for effective dialogue, whether between foreign diplomats, spouses, partners, or children and parents. I was struck by how well these rules might apply to the classroom dialogue among teachers and students, and I present them here restated in my own terms:

1. Name ourselves -- assert and accept our individual identities and their validity.
2. Seek an authentic human-to-human interaction based on trust in the other person and a sense of equal worth.
3. Empathize with the other, try to see from the others point of view. We can only move from where we are, but we don't know which way to move without empathy.
4. Be humble; listen to oneself and be self-critical.
5. Minimize assumption about goals and what needs to be learned in any particular class session; be open-minded and cherish open-ended discussion that may veer off the track you had foreseen.
6. Be sincere about sharing uncertainties and interests. Be willing to make oneself vulnerable.
7. A dialogue is a two-sided give-and-take. Students' as well as teachers' ideas are private facts, whether misguided or not, and they must be respected. They are the starting point of any dialogue or any learning experience.
8. Be willing to change one's ideas, to risk discovering that you were wrong. This is more frightening than it may seem, as it implies a change of our view of who we are.
9. Seek and respect intrinsic motivation -- that is, motivation based on each person's views, interests, and values. Rewards doled out by the teacher can be harmful.
10. Do not impose your own enthusiasms as though they ought to be shared by everyone else. (Do not hide your enthusiasms; they help identify and authenticate you.)

Oct. 12, 2002 -- Here are my candidates for the most powerful ideas that have been invented to help understand the world of physics. I exclude chemistry and biology, because they are not my field. These ideas are in no particular order, but they are selected as being big ideas that led to significant research and more ideas. They are abstractions--I am not listing experimental results. I post it for the purposes of comparison, because no two physicists will entirely agree. Each such list will reflect the background and bias of the lister, and there is little point in attempting to make a master list that will satisfy all of us.

•Use of mathematics for modelling nature: e.g. calculus and geometry. In this context I consider Stephen Wolfram a scientific caveman and his cellular automata children's toys.

•Equivalence of gravitation and acceleration: General Relativity and the curvature of space-time.

•Maxwell's equations for electromagnetism. (How light behaves when it is not behaving like particles.)

December 10, 2001--I offer the following example of the influence of our sense of identity on our ways of thinking --

I sat in on a conversation (debate?) between a professor of astronomy who publishes heavy texts and a faculty member with a degree in education who heads a project aimed at showing the ineffectiveness of lectures as a means of teaching undergraduates. The focus was the question: What should we teach in introductory astronomy courses? Should we survey modern discoveries in order to convey the excitement of current research, or should we confine ourselves to elementary concepts such as the phases of the moon, in the hope that students can have the authentic experience of discovery?

Of course, the professor advocated teaching from modern research and the education specialist insisted that the elementary approach was more suitable. This is not surprising. Their sense of worth depends on validation of what they do. (And the educator would have been uncomfortable in modern astronomy.)

No, it is not surprising, but it ought to warn us not to expect logical or cogent arguments in favor of either position from such people. They seem willing to use any rhetoric at all, as long as it supports their point of view.

When the shoe goes onto the other foot, and the professor advocates setting aside the arcane knowledge that is at the center of his career in favor of the phases of the moon, then I will start listening to the debate.

November 25, 2001-- Albert Camus (d. 1960) in reviewing Jean-Paul Sartre's Nausea, wrote the following in 1938: "The mistake of a certain sort of writing is to believe that because life is wretched it is tragic...To announce the absurdity of existence cannot be an objective, merely a starting point." (Quoted by Tony Judt in the New York Review, Nov. 29, 2001)

Nov. 19, 2001 -- Most of us have done the school-science experiment that is meant to demonstrate air pressure. Fill a soda can or a large plastic bottle with boiling water. Seal it and immerse it into cold water. (With a soda can, you merely tip it over and dip the open end into the water.) The resulting condensation of the steam causes the container to collapse under air pressure.

The pressure is uniform on all sides and the container resists collapse due to this symmetry, until something mysterious occurs. The symmetry is broken and the container collapses into a 1-, 2-, 3- or 4-sided shape. (See picture of some examples.)

I would like to know what determines the number of sides in the collapsed configuration. Please e-mail me with suggestions. (If you send a suggestion, please also describe an experiment that will test it.)

I know that soda cans usually opt for 4 sides. Big plastic bottles will do any number up to 4. The result does not seem to depend on the way you put the bottle into the cold water, nor is it sensitively dependent on the narrowness of the bottle.

The two bottles on the right in this picture collapsed with 3 sides, the other two have 4 sides.

Are there any other "kitchen" examples of symmetry-breaking that I could play with? I know the breaking of dry noodles shows some interesting properties.

Here is a sampling of plays and novels with scientists and/or science as protagonists. I have not read them all, but when I do, I will add comments. Please e-mail me with suggestions. I do not mean to include science fiction in this short list. The border is difficult to define. (Where should Carl Sagan's Contact be placed? It is science fiction, but comes close to scientific fiction.)

Arrowsmith, by Sinclair Lewis. The story of a medical researcher and what it means to be a scientist. Reading this book was a remarkable experience. On virtually every page, I found a comment that shone light into a corner of my own life in science. It was a trip of self-discovery. An antidote to the story of Babbit.

Two Moons, by Thomas Mallon. A tale of love and astronomy at the U. S. Naval Observatory during the 19th century. Disappointingly out of tune with some of the facts of life. For example, the protagonist walks to the observatory in the rain, evidently expecting to see Mars through the clouds.

Hubble time : a novel / Tom Bezzi. Book Description from Amazon.dom site--A stylish, fictionalized "autobiography" written by the renowned scientist Edwin Hubble's granddaughter. In the twenties, Edwin Hubble identified the galactic structure and expansion of the Universe. Many consider his discoveries as important as the work of Albert Einstein. Hubble Time explores the private lives of Edwin and Grace Hubble and their compelling legacy. This stylish "autobiography" is written by Hubble's fictional granddaughter, Jane. It contains excerpts from Grace Hubble's actual diaries as well as previously unpublished material by the Hubbles' intimate friends Aldous Huxley and Anita Loos. In her nightly journal entries, Jane meditates on her grandparents' clever set, which encapsulated the style and wit of Los Angeles in the thirties and forties, and she reflects wryly on living alone in Los Angeles today.

Oxygen, Carl Djerassi and Roald Hoffman. (Click to see Derassi's web page on science in fiction and references to his other works in this genre.)

This is the other side of the coin, when the exposition of science is so well done that it is readable as literature -- the reader is personally touched.

Mr Tompkins in Paperback (Canto Series) by George Gamow, Roger Penrose (Designer), perhaps this should be listed under science fiction, but Gamov was trying to convey science, and he succeeded.

Eddington, the most distinguished astrophysicist of his time / S. Chandrasekhar.

The Stargazer [Fictionalized Life of Galileo], Z. Harsanyi. I was inspired by it as a teenager and recently bought a copy second hand. It's still pretty good.

Starry Messenger (1997 Caldecott Honor Book) by Peter Sis

Isaac Newton, Frank Manuel. Fascinating study of the roots of science in Newton's life.

Alexander Fleming and the Story of Penicillin (Unlocking the Secrets of Science), by John Bankston

Barbara McClintock: Pioneering Geneticist (Unlocking the Secrets of Science), by Kathleen Tracy

Edwin Hubble : Discoverer of Galaxies (Great Minds of Science) by Claire L. Datnow

Edwin Hubble, the discoverer of the big bang universe / Alexander S. Sharov and Igor D. Novikov ; translated by Vitaly
Kisin.

Euler: The Master of Us All (Dolciani Mathematical Expositions, No 22) by William Dunham

Johannes Kepler : And the New Astronomy (Oxford Portraits in Science) by James R. Voelkel

Longitude : The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time by Dava Sobel

Louis Pasteur : And the Hidden World of Microbes (Oxford Portraits in Science) by Louise Robbins

Marie Curie : And the Science of Radioactivity (Oxford Portraits in Science) by Naomi Pasachoff

Men Who Made a New Physics : Physicists and the Quantum Theory by Barbara Lovett Cline, Silvan S. Schweber

Michael Faraday : Physics and Faith (Oxford Portraits in Science) by Colin Archibald Russell

The Monk in the Garden : The Lost and Found Genius of Gregor Mendel by Robin Marantz Henig

Nabokov's Blues: The Scientific Odyssey of a Literary Genius by Kurt Johnson, et al

Boltzmann's Atom : The Great Debate That Launched a Revolution in Physics by David Lindley

What a Mad Pursuit: A Personal View of Scientific Discovery. Francis Crfick, Basic Books. 1988.

Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers. Philosophical Library, Max Planck. 1949.

Geons, Black Holes, and Quantum Foam : A Life in Physics by John Archibald Wheeler, Kenneth Ford (Contributor)

Nov. 19, 2001 -- Our best response to the insight that we live in a haphazard world governed by the laws of chance is an aesthetic ecstacy in the face of its beauty and fascination. It was well-expressed by Sinclair Lewis in Arrowsmith, Chapter III:

From this ecstacy there can emerge a counter-insight: that we can and must give our own meaning to our lives. What is the source of this meaning?

In the book, Weaving the Web, by Tim Berners-Lee, who was one of the key inventors of the World Wide Web, I find the following on p. 12:

I think this says it all. We can substitute for "the world" the phrase "personal identity," or "intelligence." An educational system should foster an awareness and exploration of connections. This is also a role for personal religion.

(Photo by J. Andy Whitney)

July 10, 2001 -- Our pets raise us to levels of sentimentality that even our closest friends can barely tolerate. But we expect to be forgiven.

To start at the end of the story, Monique died this morning sometime between 2 am and 5 am. We buried her after lunch next to "Marti" in the clearing, encased in two plastic bags, which will not preserve her, but will keep the dirt out of her eyes for a while.

She lay in the living room listening to opera with me; she went to the drug store and waited in the car, and when I returned, she licked my ear; she hogged a favorite spot in front of the fireplace; she led us on our morning walks and our excursions in the Weston woods.

She barked at small dogs along the road; she snarled at strange dogs, and she harrassed the delivery people, racing to the door and sliding across the kitchen when the doorbell rang; she lay in the sun, snoozing while we worked in the yard, occasionally rising to chase a passing car, if it was going at just the right speed; she knew how to open the kitchen door with her foot, and she could work the handle of the hall door.

She interrupted our suppers by pretending she had finished her meal and was ready for dessert; she insisted on knowing where I was, and if she had not seen me for a while, she would scout the house and mark my location in her mind; she never stole from the table, although she poked her nose into my pocket for handkerchiefs and fragments of biscuits; she never threatened me, although she snarled at children who encroached in her space.

She leaned over the edge of the canoe and drank from the lake, threatening to spill us; she slept in our tent; when she had insisted on licking a sore foot, she accepted the "Elizabethan collar" with patience and grace, and she learned to navigate among the chairs and through the doors in our house, swinging the collar as she went.

When going through a door with me, she always waited for permission; she announced herself at the kitchen door with a quick, emphatic bark.

July 11, 2001 -- My love for her was inhuman. In nearly 12 years, I never felt anger toward her, and my fondness and sense of sharing merely increased. Now that she is gone, I feel obligated to see the world through her eyes.

When it rains, I need no longer worry about Monique's getting wet. She is two-feet under ground, well protected from the rain, the snow, and even the frost. She was, I am sure, the only dog in Weston with a raincoat and snow booties. She wore them without complaint and with a touch of pride.

July 12, 2001 -- We collected small field stones and put them around Monique's grave this morning. Suddenly, I am wrestling with guilt. My stomache feels as though I had been kicked, and I have persistent visions of Monique that night, wandering back and forth outdoors at midnight, looking everywhere for a place to stand that would bring her relief. The Vet did not answer. If I had known it was gas that was distending her sides with bloat, I would have tried to cut her open or punctured her stomach. Nothing I could have done would have made her worse. She would be dead in an hour or two if I did nothing. I would have shaved a spot on her side and cleansed it with alcohol.I would have looked for the football needle, taken it to the boat house to sharpen and to look for a hammer. Then I would have laid her down on the floor and driven the needle into the expanded side. She would have yelped and snapped, and I would have said, "It will feel good in a minute." She deflates; the pain subsides, she lays her head on the floor and seems to relax.

I thought she might be going through kidney failure. But her tests last month made that unlikely. It was my ignorance -- excusable, but fatal. When she lay down, I went to bed. I slept while she was dying. I should have stayed with her and kept her on her feet until morning came and we could have gone for surgery. Standing might have prevented the cutting off of her blood circulation by the inflated stomach.

If you are going to take an old dog into the woods, it behooves you to understand how dogs die. What are the signals that tell you something must be done if the dog is to live. We need a book on the subject, "How dogs die." [I later found that how she died was called "the dreaded bloat."]

Within 8 months, I had taken delivery of a poodle puppy, "Josey," who can be found elsewhere on this website. As I expected, she has brought the memory of all the previous poodles to life again. It is as though the sequence of poodles I have owned were all one dog with a life-span of some 40 years.

June12, 2001 -- By the execution of T. McVeigh, the government has accomplished something that I would have thought to be impossible. I actually felt a tinge of pity for one more victim of murder. That, of course, is monstrous.

May 20, 2001 -- The Oregon State Department of corrections says, "We want inmates practicing on the inside what works on the outside." Commendable. Now, if our public schools could adopt this attitude, we might transform our educational institutions from corrections to learning.