Two Ways To Celebrate a Holiday

Inclusivity and not letting children starve.

Universe Down to Earth

Just finished Neil deGrasse Tyson’s book UNiverse Down to Earth. I enjoyed the first half immensely, when Tyson explains the structure of scientific thought (scientific method, what is a theory). In the second half, he outlines several key concepts in physics (center of mass, energy) and astronomy (HR Diagram, constellations), but for me, this section dragged. Not that the writing is unclear – Tyson is informative and funny, even to a non-scientist – I just wasn’t in the mood for the nuts and bolts stuff.

Part of my reading science stuff has been looking at the similarities between the impulses that push some to science and some to poetry: investigation, exploration, creation. While the tools are often very different, that initial sense of wonderment with how things operate is much more related than the stereotypes let on.

So here you go, some ideas and quotes about science (and scientists) that could just as easily be about writing (and writers):

Tyson says science starts with questions. But just because a question is grammatically correct does not guarantee it is a meaningful question. Most often, questions are muddled because of unspoken assumptions hidden within them – rooting out these pre-existing biases makes the question both more relevant and more functional. Tyson says that

The most successful of all scientists are those who consistently ask the right question. pg 29

When combined with a spark of scientific inspiration, a successful theorist then sees what everyone else sees, yet thinks what no one else has thought. pg 32

The prospect of a profound discovery serves as an important research incentive, but it is the process of science that excites the scientist. pg 34

Good Books

Lots of year-end lists popping up everywhere, and Midwestern Sex Talk will no longer be an exception. By no means complete, and I’m not even 100% sure they were all released in 2009 (but they’re still pretty new, like 2008). So here you go, my official list “Some of the Books of Poetry I Enjoyed This Year (in no particular order).”

Down Where the Hummingbird Goes to Die by Justin Hyde (Tainted Coffee Press). Sparse poems criss-crossing the line between brutally honest and just plain cynical. The opposite of pretty. Like performing the Heimlich on yourself using the back of a chair – yes, it saves your life, but you probably cracked a rib or two.

Cracks and Slats by Mark Jackley (Amsterdam Press) Because I love the short poem. And it’s a rare thing to find a chapbook so full of them so well done that I have to come back over and over.

The Buried Sea: New and Selected Poems by Rane Arroyo (U of Arizona Press) Is it a cheat to put a “new and selected” collection on a list? Maybe. But a collection that follows Arroyo’s poems through five books, while also including earlier uncollected poems as well as new work, definitely makes my list.

Screaming Freedom by Allen Michael Hines (JBS Editions) A strong first collection by a poet from my hometown. Haunting and political with a twist of Zen. The abstractedness of politics is transformed into immediacy and urgency by way of the author’s candidness about his struggles with living with cerebral palsy.

Stealing Dust by Karen Weyant (Finishing Line Press) Probably the most memorable collection on my list. In twenty poems the author goes from girl to woman, while remaining working-class, growing up in and around factories. Also, the author keeps a fabulous blog (see sidebar).

Only one female author on the list, a fact which will lead me to go back and question my selection process, my bookshelf, my tastes and my predilections. What do you think?

Neil deGrasse Tyson quotes

The X-Mas season is upon us. Engaged in the “war on christmas” as we are, I feel compelled to offer what munitions I can.

More quotes from Neil deGrasse Tyson’s memoir The Sky Is Not the Limit.

Let there be no doubt that as they are currently practiced, science and religion enjoy no common ground . . . The claims of science rely on experimental verification, while the claims of religion rely on faith. Thse are irreconcilable approaches to knowing . . . pgs 182-3

By the time of his death in 1727, Newton had penned more words about God and religion than about the laws of physics, all in a futile attempt to use biblical chronology to understand and predict events in the natural world. Had any of these efforts worked, science and religion today might be one and the same.

But they are not. pg 183

The Sky Is Not the Limit

I’ve been more and more fascinated by science, astronomy and astrophysics in particular. I just gobbled up Neil deGrasse Tyson’s memoir, The Sky Is Not the Limit, in under 24 hours. It was a fast read, but honestly, not all that good. Rather than a full narrative, it reads more as a series of anecdotes, and concludes with a few chapters culled from magazine articles he wrote, mostly dealing with subjects other than himself.

Actually, one thing that makes it a thin read is his clearly focused life. He knew he wanted to be an astrophysicist at age nine. He works at the same planetarium he was inspired by as a boy. And he’s had the same moustache since college. Maybe I’m a little jealous, given the listless, drifting feeling I’ve been having lately.

[As a side note, I hate memoirs that cut out hugely important life events, as though they were unrelated to the matter at hand. Tyson mentions his wife, but never his wedding (and only one line about how they met). He mentions children, but not their births. Not the first memoir I've read to do this, but still annoying. It's all connected, and I want to hear how your love for your work interacts with your love for your family.]

Anyways, enough review. On to some relevant quotes:

As a black man on a New York City rooftop (where he star gazed), he constantly had the cops called. He writes

Whatever has been said about urban police officers, I have yet to meet one who was not impressed by the sight of the Moon, planets, or stars through a telescope. Saturn alone has bailed me out a half dozen times. For all I know, I would have been shot to death on numerous occasions were it not for the mystery of the night sky. pg 28

On tutoring GED-seeking prisoners in math and science:

Sometimes I need to remind myself that for all my scientific understanding of the stars, people will forever see them as poetic hooks upon which to place their dreams. pg 55

After ripping apart scientific inaccuracies in movies (for instance, Titanic got the constellations wrong):

If you want to write a book, make a film, or engage in a public art project, and if this work makes reference to the natural world, just call your neighborhood scientist and chat about it. When you seek “scientific license” to distort the laws of nature . . .then I prefer you did so knowing the truth, rather than inventing a storyline cloaked in ignorance. You may be surprised to learn that valid science can make fertile additions to your storytelling. pg 118

And perhaps my favorite of the bunch, for its poetic quality, and because it touches upon some elements in my own writing recently:

Ordinary matter and dark matter coexist, not in parallel universes, but side by side in the same universe. They feel each other’s gravity, but otherwise do not respond to each other’s presence. pg 129

“It’s only a theory”

A common chorus of people dismissing science is the phrase “It’s only a theory.” Creationists use this a lot, as in “Evolution is only a theory, not a fact.” But what’s the difference between theory and fact? Between theory and hypotheses? Saying “only a theory” is a way of equating theory with guessing, isn’t it? The fallibility of Man (sic)?

In A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawkins outlines what a scientific theory is. Specifically, he’s writing about astrophysics, but in the general, I think his definition holds.

In order to talk about the nature of the universe and to discuss questions such as whether it has a beginning or an end, you have to be clear about what a scientific theory is. I shall take the simpleminded view that a theory is just a model of the universe, or a restricted part of it, and a set of rules that relate quantities in the model to observations that we make. It exists only in our minds and does not have any other reality (whatever that might mean). A theory is a good theory if it satisfies two requirements. It must accurately describe a large class of observations on the basis of a model that contains only a few arbitrary elements, and it must make predictions about the results of future observations. For example, Aristotle believed Empedocle’s theory that everything was made out of four elements, earth, air, fire, and water. This was simple enough, but did not make and definite predictions. On the other hand, Newton’s theory of gravity was based on an even simpler model, in which bodies attracted to each other with a force that was proportional to a quantity called mass and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. Yet it predicts the motions of the sun, the moon, and the planets to a high degree of accuracy.

So a theory is a simplified model, based on observations, and is able to make predictions about the future. It also appears that not all theories are equal – some are better than others, based on the quality of their predictions. He goes on:

Any physical theory is always provisional, in the sense that it is only a hypothesis: you can never prove it. No matter how many times the results of experiments agree with some theory, you can never be sure that the next time the result will not contradict the theory. Om the other hand, you can disprove a theory by finding even a single observation that disagrees with the predictions of the theory. As philosopher of science Karl Popper has emphasized, a good theory is characterized by the fact that it makes a number of predictions that could in principle be disproved or falsified by observation. Each time new experiments are observed to agree with the predictions the theory survives, and our confidence is increased; but if ever a new observation is found to disagree, we have to abandon or modify the theory.

At least, that is what is supposed to happen, but you can always question the competence of the person who carried out the observation.

In practice, what often happens is that a new theory is devised that is really an extension of the previous theory.

He explains how Newton’s theory of gravity did not account for slight differences in Mercury’s movements, but Einstein’s general theory of relativity did, thus proving Einstein right. In a sense, Newton was proved wrong – however, the instances which necessitate the difference between Newton’s theory and Einstein’s are so specific and few that we mostly use Newton’s theory because a)it is much simpler and b) it holds true in most cases.

So is a theory a fact? I guess that depends on your confidence in the theory (and how you define “fact”). Gravity is only a theory, after all.

Laziness

Recently I’ve been wondering if maybe I’m not really a “writer,” per se – just a guy with a lot of time on his hands.

Another link from Siliman’s Blog.

Half the battle of being a poet is trying to transform what would otherwise be dismissed as a weakness into a strength, trying to find ways in which something that should fail under other circumstances finds an ecology within which it can succeed.

It’s an interesting article, but very self-deprecating, and I don’t think I agree 100%. But for today, it sounds good.

new poem up

My poem “Sure Fire,” a part of my manuscript about Dr. Tiller and reproductive choice, is up now in the new issue of children, churches, and daddies. (The link takes you directly to the pdf.)

comix

If only someone had been this stern with me in school, I would be a far more productive member of society today.

Giving Thanks

A hearftelt thanks to those brave enough to provide a critical lens through which to view this national holiday.

 

Pharyngula – Happy Wary Vigilance Day

Read Red – Thankskilling

Robert Jensen – How I Stopped Hating Thanksgiving and Learned to Be Afraid

An older article by Ward Churchill, complete with offensively racist comments – A Day to Give Thanks?

And of course, William Burroughs reading A Thanksgiving Prayer.

Update: Can’t forget Jill at I Blame the Patriarchy, now can we?