omenti

partial stories and the color purple

Purple is a strange color - one that you won't see in the rainbow - it doesn't have a wavelength associated with it.

 

I was trying to explain that color is something manufactured in the brain.  There are a variety of ways you can do this, but the best is to project different colored lights on a white surface and let them overlap.  Someone must have done this as a video ... indeed they have ..  many of them in fact.  This one shows the effect rather nicely and I sent it along.

 

 

The problem is the presenter makes an error about a half minute in in...  He states that you can't mix photons.  It turns out you can - in fact if you have ever seen a green or violet laser pointer you're seeing it.¹ But explaining to a seventh grader who is curious about where purple comes from becomes extremely difficult and possibly impossible if I try to explain the what goes on with real physics.   

 

What works is to ignore the rare case.  It may be very interesting, but it isn't going to help the student.  Mostly photons can't combine - it is a good approximation to assume that and use the result to explain color synthesis.  This works throughout physics.  To calculate the path of a baseball I can ignore relativity even though using just Newtonian physics is good enough.  In fact I can ignore air resistance for some problems and get a good enough answer.

 

There is an art to knowing what to ignore and what to keep.  You have to understand the size of the contribution, how good your measurements are and what sort of precision is required.  The problem often arises in teaching.  How much depth is appropriate and how much background can be assumed?  There is a movement to remove jargon from  the description of science hoping that the result will be interesting.  Unfortunately you can only simply so much and that takes real skill - it is like writing poetry and I'm not terribly good at it.

 

As you learn more about a subject you develop a certain amount of experience to know what is easy, what is not and what is just silly.  A friend happens to be one of the most famous computer scientists on the planet and his fame is quite justified.  His email is easily available and he gets a lot from people who have "solved" fundamental problems that elude everyone else to those who have decided to do the next big thing and want something from him.  He recently sent one that may be the best yet.²  It turns out he gets really wacky bits from people who lack experience.  You may see this in your own field - I see it all the time in mine.  One of the best experiences for me was being asked to look over a set of patents that managed to clear the USPTO despite describing a perpetual motion machine:-)

 

One thing I try to convince students of technology who are attempting to predict the future is to get their hands dirty and learn a bit about the fundamentals.  Technologies don't spring onto the scene, but rather have an often lengthy development period.  Their commercial use may combine bits and threads of other technologies or even art into something that strikes us as novel, but there are important early hints.³

 

I talked a client into trying to learn how to use a 3d printer and design and use one.  This sort of exercise gives a much deeper view into what can be done as well as the necessary background for a user/designer.  You are only getting a partial story if you aren't using the tech in question.   She followed my advice and now has a much more realistic sense and timeline for the set of technologies.⁴  

 

It is exciting that people are starting to learn how to design and build "stuff" these days.  The notion of shop class 2.0 is on us.  Building a personal shop and, more importantly, learning how to use the tools, is beyond most people.  In a few cities Maker spaces have appeared - a concentration of tools, instructors, mentors, and other makers.  You generally pay a monthly rental for tool use.  This morning I caught a New Disruptors podcast where Glenn Fleishman interviewed a couple who have started MakerHaus in Seattle -  Ellie and Mike Kemery.  Recommended for anyone interested in one of the major "what next..." speculations - listen here (44 minute mp3)

 

I'm running low on time - there are dozens of ways this note could develop.  I almost want to say something about the relative use of STEM and STEAM in organizations, but for another time.

 

In the meantime go out and get your hands dirty doing something.

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¹ The stuff of non-linear optics.  This is way too complex to explain well here, but there is a really important safety issue involved and you have to be extremely careful with cheap non-red laser pointer.   Green laser pointers are the most common as our eyes are very sensitive to green and we perceive the light as very bright.  They are usually  "diode pumped solid state frequency-doubled" and are sometimes called DPSS or DPSSFD lasers.  A very powerful infrared diode laser is used to pump a crystal that lases at a somewhat longer wavelength.  The light from the pumped laser is passed through a KTP crystal which acts as a frequency doubler - the wavelength goes from 1064nm to 532nm ..  a very "green" light.  The KTP crystal is a nice piece of non-linear optics where photons are effectively combined to produce one of a higher energy.  

I don't know how to explain the lasing process and the non-linear optics without using some quantum mechanics.  The problem is the pumping laser is very powerful and very dangerous - 100 to 300 mW!  Looking at one of these would cause serious eye damage.  To make matters worse the light is invisible to us.  There is a secondary weaker, but still dangerous infrared beam ..  either can cause damage!  The cheap laser pointers are poorly designed and this light often leaks out.  This is really bad - particularly in the hands of a kid.

There are lasers that emit in the green and blue and other colors directly that are generally much safer, but they are usually much more expensive.  If you see a green or blue laser pointer in a meeting, I would ask if it has a safety certification and, specifically, a good infrared blocking filter.  If not ask the presenter not to use it.  I was handed one to use at a talk recently and it was clear it was a $40 special.  I had to tell them to throw it away.

² I've removed all names and other identifying information

hello,dear
first i want you to be friend because you  my idol

can help me I'm <name removed>  from  UK i want source code for <removed> for development this language to new language programming 

i student  in college in UK in computer science  and i want you to help me 

with best wishes

<name removed>

student and developer in first road 

³ This works very well in retrospect, but looking forward there is an issue with both imagination, timing and the shear complexity of combinations.  Fifteen we did a lot of work on what became modern smartphones and mp3 players.  What we made was not commercially viable, but it gave us a sense on how it worked and how it might work with other systems.  We were spending a lot of time looking at the social uses of geolocated smartphones and starting to look at the Internet of things and the wearable Internet.

 

⁴ I've been making things since I was a teenager and have about fifteen years, on and off, with 3d printing, CNC milling and routing, laser cutters and so on.  Some of these are much more mature than others and they tend to have very different niches.  3d printing is important and growing, but its relative importance is way overhyped by the tech press - most of whom have probably never designed anything and taken it to a physical object.

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Recipe Corner

I'm hot on the trail of trying to sort out an Afghani lentil soup.  It would be nice if Gabe or Colleen was around - both of them are honest-to-gosh chefs with strong skills doing recipe reconstruction.  I'm on my forth try and am getting close.  It turns out sweet dried plums were a major clue and now I'm trying to sort out the rest.  So nothing new

In place of a real recipe here is a quick vegan burger of sorts that is very good and approximately healthy.

Rather than make a bean and quinoa based veggie burger, I often cheat and use a California Burger (A&P's Greenway label).  The other fake burgers from them as well as those from Morningstar and several others just don't do it for me, but this one has lots of produce in it and can be the base of something good.

A great bread can make a sandwich and for the bun I use a couple of pieces of a very dense Danish rugbrød or, in a pinch, a commercial dense rye or pumpernickel. The German brand Mestemacher is widely available and very good.  

Microwave two of the burgers, lightly toast two pieces of bread.  Pour on a bit of olive oil on the bread (I prefer it to butter -much more healthy).  Now go for the condiments you like.  I add layers of sliced raw red onion, roasted red peppers (do 'em yourself - much better and very cheap and easy), sliced pepperoncini or pepper rings, homemade catsup (Jeri mentioned a homemade catsup at one point and that got me started - so much better than what you get in the store!!), a bit of Maldon salt, ground pepper, sometimes a bit of mustard and some crushed walnuts (Tree nuts are very healthy - the right sort of fat and lots of nutrients.  Just don't overdo them as they happen to be little calorie bombs.)

Very messy and very good.  Quick and easy doesn't hurt either:-)

 

 

triggers

Let's do a bit of dot connecting...

 

About 35 to 40 million years ago something rather cool happened.  The branch of primates we're from, now the apes and old world monkeys (Catarrhini) went from two to three cones in our eyes.  

 

Cones are the specialized cells that allow us to discriminate differences in something we call color.¹  We're pretty good at sorting out color - at least women are as many women know when they see men attempt to match colors when they dress.²  The extra type of cone that was added gives us the ability to tell the difference between red and green - an impossible task for your dog or cat - or most mammals for that matter.  But why?

 

Curiously there may be a trigger.  It turns out trees that produce fruit started to take off about the same time 40 million years ago.  Specifically trees that produced a fruit that changed in color from green to red when it was ripe.  And there appears to have been a trigger that produced the colored fruit.   

 

Around 40 million years ago the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere dramatically decreased.  Our planet depends on having some carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to act as a greenhouse gas.  As atmospheric CO₂ levels dropped the planet chilled.  The fruit bearing trees may have been a response to the changing climate.  

 

It may be that a drop in greenhouse gases let triggers for two evolutionary paths -  trees that produced fruit that turned red when it ripened and our ancestors who got a third cone to quickly detect "redness" in ripe fruit.  Something that could be rather useful.

 

40 to 55 million years ago the Tibetan Plateau rose dramatically.  It altered wind flows as well creating a lot of weathering of the rock - a process that absorbed enormous amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and lowered the Earth's temperature as a result.³

 

A curious hypothesis with individual steps - triggering events - that are reasonably certain can be assembled connecting the dots from several fields.  It is not proven science, but gives an interesting chain of events that spin off other significant questions.  Who would have guessed that our ability to tell green from red may have roots in the rise of the Tibetan Plateau?

 

I used this as an example of connecting the dots and finding some interesting places to ask some interesting questions along the way at a talk to some computer artists six months ago.  The talk was about forty minutes and the question and answer portion was great going about an hour and a half until we needed to leave the auditorium as someone else needed it.  These folks were very tuned to ways they could play tricks with our vision to aid their storytelling and I probably learned at least as much as they did.

 

To pass the time rowing this morning I listened to an OnPoint podcast (WBUR) on education in Finland and South Korea.  (The program is archived here with the audio at the top of the page.  There is a linked video on the Finnish system that is worth watching at least a bit.)


I am concerned about the direction of education here - or at least what I've observed in the local schools - with the focus on STEM and testing, seemingly at the expense of nearly everything else.  Ours is a wealthy district and the kids are pushed fairly hard to make certain SAT and various other scores and this is reflected in relative property values.

If I had been in such as system I don't think I would survive - at least I wouldn't thrive.  It was very important for me to get the basics as a kid, but I had the luxury of a lot of free time  - sort of necessary as everyone was from an agricultural community.  There wasn't a lot of homework and it was possible to focus on that and use the spare time for other things - in my case being curious about nature.

I learned to ask questions and have them rewarded with new questions rather than answers and I learned subjects like math were thinly disguised tools that would allow me to sharpen the questions.  Even though I didn't have a lot of art I learned that it was very useful in visualizing more abstract concepts. Eighth grade art class turned out to be very important in the scheme of things.

In grad school we had several Korean students with perfect GRE scores but none made it past the master's degree level.⁴  The problem was that the first five or so years of a physical science is spent learning technique.  You are just barely to the point where you can go out on the two wheeler with training wheels and then you can start doing real science.  That required a very different skill than just memorizing factoids and manipulating some simple formula.  At this point you sound like a scientist, but you don't really know what you are doing.  The next three or four years after that is required to get to the point where the training wheels can come off.  The Korean guys never managed that leap.  They simply had no background in creative thinking. I "cheated" by starting when I was 12 and many of my successful classmates had similar stories.  At the time about a third of the new Ph.D.s in physics and astrophysics came from a rural community and half lived within a 50 miles of a good natural history museum.

I don't know what is optimal, but I suspect the Finish system is much closer than the South Korean.  But in any case I'd love to see a professionalization of teaching along with a wide range of offered subjects and a focus on connecting the dots among them. Becoming a nation of good test takers is probably close to being optimally wrong.

 

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¹  We take in some photons - the particles of electromagnetic radiation - through these two little dots in the front of our heads called pupils.  These are focused on a photoreceptor called the retina that, with the help of a chemical reaction, creates signals that are processed in the brain to give is a color movie in three dimensions that gives us a pretty good "visual" sense of the world around us.

"Color" is a an abstraction created in our mind.  It loosely corresponds to the wavelength of light, but not strictly

Way to simplistic, but I've written a bit more in earlier posts - particularly this one.

² In the "green-blue" region we're sensitivity to wavelength differences of about a billionth of a meter. In the "red" range about ten billionths of a meter - at least for women.  Men are much worse.  Color discrimination is one of the more interesting sexual dimorphisms.

³ A small article here.  Evidence has become stronger since then.

⁴ The Graduate Record Exam - at least the physics test - was multiple choice and covered a wide range of topics.  Some foreign schools focused on the test as a measure and taught lots of factoids and manipulation.  Measuring how much real science a person could do at this point would be much trickier and not something a test could manage, but an advisor would have a good sense.  Something much closer to the Finnish system.

 

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Recipe Corner

 

Sukie is allergic to chocolate.  While this might be seen as a tragedy, it does me that I get all of the chocolate that comes into the house.  But for special treats I've had to learn how to work with carob and certain types of white "chocolate" (like almond bark).  Here is a cookie that works for Valentine's Day.

 

White and Red "Chocolate" Chip Cookies

 

Ingredients

 

° 1 stick (about 115g) unsalted butter softened

° 125g white cane sugar

° 100g light brown sugar

° 1 large egg (pasteurized if you sample the dough:-)

° 1 tbl whole milk (I've used cream too)

° 1-1/2 tsp vanilla extract

° 125g bread flour (you can use all purpose flower, but the cookies won't be as chewy)

° 95g all purpose flour (add a bit if you are only using AP flour to get to a 250g total for flour. You can also add some if you like fluffier cookies or if you live in high humidity)

° 1 tsp baking soda 

° a bit of salt to taste (1/4 tsp for me)

° 15 to 20 maraschino cherries diced and patted dry with a paper towel

° a small bag (6oz) white chocolate chips (the cheap ones are almond bark)

° 100g broken walnuts or pecans

 

 

Technique

 

° Beat the butter on low speed for a minute or two at a low speed  until smooth and creamy and add the sugars and beat at a medium speed until combined and smooth - another two minutes or so.  Add the egg, milk and vanilla  and beat on medium high for a couple of minutes until light and fluffy.

° Slowly add the flours, baking soda and salt and mix at a lower speed until they are just combined - maybe a minute.  Don't over-mix!  Now stir in the chips, cherries and nuts by hand.

° Divide into about 16 bits of dough and refrigerate for at least 6 hours (very important!)

° Bake for about 8 to 10 minutes at 350°F on the middle oven rack.  The goal is a bit undercooked in the center as cooking will continue as they cool.  Add a minute or two if you like them crunchy.  Cool on a rack

 

 

staying warm and celebration a common tradition

It is really chilly for about the first time this Winter and I found myself out in the cold without gloves and a cap for a bit too long.  In theory I shouldn't mind much - after all, I did grow up in Montana and remember taking walks in -40° weather and fierce blizzards. 

 

About a year ago I was fortunate enough to have made contact again with Jeri - a fellow classmate from Great Falls High.   In an email exchange a poem came up.  It turned out both of us had memorized it in different junior high schools and both of us have taken delight in reciting it over the years.  The poet was a Scottsman who spent most of his life in Canada, becoming famous for poems associated with the Yukon and the gold rush. 

 

A bit earlier I met Reggie Watts at a TEDx talk.  Both of us had "performed" and somehow found ourselves chatting afterwards.¹  In my talk I mentioned that I was from Montana and he told me he grew up there too.  Another minute of talking revealed we had lived within 500 feet of each other and went to the same high school albeit separated by a couple of decades.

 
It turned out Reggie knew the same poem and it was the introduction to the word moil for both of us.  

 

The world seemed very small as we talked that night.

 

 

By now you're probably curious ...  I'm afraid I couldn't get all of it from memory and had to cheat a bit.  I guess I'm out of practice.  My guess is Reggie and Jeri wouldn't have any difficulty.

 

Turn the lights down, light some candles and crack a window to the cold.Read it outloud armed with a cup of peppermint hot chocolate (recipe follows).

 

The Cremation of Sam McGee

by Robert W. Service

 

 

There are strange things done in the midnight sun

      By the men who moil for gold;

The Arctic trails have their secret tales

      That would make your blood run cold;

The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,

      But the queerest they ever did see

Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge

      I cremated Sam McGee.

 

Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows.

Why he left his home in the South to roam 'round the Pole, God only knows.

He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell;

Though he'd often say in his homely way that "he'd sooner live in hell."

 

On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way over the Dawson trail.

Talk of your cold! through the parka's fold it stabbed like a driven nail.

If our eyes we'd close, then the lashes froze till sometimes we couldn't see;

It wasn't much fun, but the only one to whimper was Sam McGee.

 

And that very night, as we lay packed tight in our robes beneath the snow,

And the dogs were fed, and the stars o'erhead were dancing heel and toe,

He turned to me, and "Cap," says he, "I'll cash in this trip, I guess;

And if I do, I'm asking that you won't refuse my last request."

 

Well, he seemed so low that I couldn't say no; then he says with a sort of moan:

"It's the cursèd cold, and it's got right hold till I'm chilled clean through to the bone.

Yet 'tain't being dead—it's my awful dread of the icy grave that pains;

So I want you to swear that, foul or fair, you'll cremate my last remains."

 

A pal's last need is a thing to heed, so I swore I would not fail;

And we started on at the streak of dawn; but God! he looked ghastly pale.

He crouched on the sleigh, and he raved all day of his home in Tennessee;

And before nightfall a corpse was all that was left of Sam McGee.

 

There wasn't a breath in that land of death, and I hurried, horror-driven,

With a corpse half hid that I couldn't get rid, because of a promise given;

It was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say: "You may tax your brawn and brains,

But you promised true, and it's up to you to cremate those last remains."

 

Now a promise made is a debt unpaid, and the trail has its own stern code.

In the days to come, though my lips were dumb, in my heart how I cursed that load.

In the long, long night, by the lone firelight, while the huskies, round in a ring,

Howled out their woes to the homeless snows— O God! how I loathed the thing.

 

And every day that quiet clay seemed to heavy and heavier grow;

And on I went, though the dogs were spent and the grub was getting low;

The trail was bad, and I felt half mad, but I swore I would not give in;

And I'd often sing to the hateful thing, and it hearkened with a grin.

 

Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge, and a derelict there lay;

It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice it was called the "Alice May."

And I looked at it, and I thought a bit, and I looked at my frozen chum;

Then "Here," said I, with a sudden cry, "is my cre-ma-tor-eum."

 

Some planks I tore from the cabin floor, and I lit the boiler fire;

Some coal I found that was lying around, and I heaped the fuel higher;

The flames just soared, and the furnace roared—such a blaze you seldom see;

And I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal, and I stuffed in Sam McGee.

 

Then I made a hike, for I didn't like to hear him sizzle so;

And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled, and the wind began to blow.

It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled down my cheeks, and I don't know why;

And the greasy smoke in an inky cloak went streaking down the sky.

 

I do not know how long in the snow I wrestled with grisly fear;

But the stars came out and they danced about ere again I ventured near;

I was sick with dread, but I bravely said: "I'll just take a peep inside.

I guess he's cooked, and it's time I looked"; ... then the door I opened wide.

 

And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm, in the heart of the furnace roar;

And he wore a smile you could see a mile, and he said: "Please close that door.

It's fine in here, but I greatly fear you'll let in the cold and storm—

Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, it's the first time I've been warm."

 

There are strange things done in the midnight sun

      By the men who moil for gold;

The Arctic trails have their secret tales

      That would make your blood run cold;

The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,

      But the queerest they ever did see

Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge

      I cremated Sam McGee.

 

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¹ TEDx Gotham.  I'm afraid my talk wasn't great and was very much in the shadow of Regge's amazing performance.  Mine was followed by a wonderful talk architect Craig Dykers and then the electric Juliette Powell.  As a speaker it probably makes sense to stay away from events with such serious talent.

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Recipe Corner 

 

Somehow a nice warm soup seems appropriate.  This one makes good use of carrots - use a rich vegetable broth, water just won't work.  As always all amounts are approximate

 

Carrot Soup

 

Ingredients

 

° 2 tablespoons butter

° 1 large yellow onion chopped

° 450 g carrots, peeled and diced to about 1/2 inch

° 600g  vegetable stock stock

° 1-1/2 tsp cumin seeds

° 1 tbl honey

° 1 tbl lemon juice

° 1/8 tsp allspice

° Salt and pepper

° sour cream or plain yogurt for garnish

 

Technique

 

° Melt butter in a large sauce pan over medium-high heat. Add onion and saute for 2 minutes.

° Stir in carrots and broth and bring to boil. Now cover and cut the heat to a simmer until carrots are tender.  (20 - 25 minutes)

° In a small skillet stir and toast the cumin seeds over medium-high heat until you can smell them (about 5 minutes?) Now grind them in a spice mill.

°  Puree the soup with a stick blender until smooth.  

° Whisk in the honey, lemon juice and allspice and season with salt and pepper.

° Pour the  soup into bowls and sprinkle with toasted cumin.  Add a bit of sour cream or yogurt and serve.

_____

Peppermint Hot Chocolate

Ingredients

° one cup heavy cream chilled in the 'fridge (half is for topping and is optional)

° 2 tbl + 1 tsp white cane sugar

° 2 cups whole milk 

° 120g 60% chocolate chopped into chunks

° a small pinch of salt

° 1/4 tsp peppermint extract

° chocolate (85% is good) for shaving to use as garnish if you like

Technique

° Whip half of the cream and the tsp of sugar into whipped cream and put back in the 'fridge

° Whisk the other half cup of cream, the sugar and milk in a pan over medium high heat and bring to nearly a boil

° Remove from heat, whisk in the chocolate, salt and peppermint until it is smooth

° Pour into mugs, add a dollop of whipped cream and shave some chocolate onto the cream

 

beyond 3d printing

4:37 AM - a minute past nautical dawn and a pleasant breeze of negative pions continues from the South Southwest at 17 GeV/c ...

 

We tried to make at least one log entry per shift entertaining for the next shift.

 

This was from a particle physics experiment.  We were colliding negative pions into a target that was mostly protons (liquid hydrogen).  There were millions of tiny collisions that had enough energy that allowed the creation of new particles.  I was specifically interested in finding a few that would say something about the fundamental nature of the charm quark.  The problem was such events were very rare - there was an enormous amount of uninteresting information to sort through.

 

You get rid of most of this - about 99.99%) very quickly by knowing something about what the physics of the interaction you were looking for predicted.  This had to be done quickly as information was constantly flooding in.   Back then we built event triggers out of fast logic elements - literally AND, NOT, OR, and NOR gates.  It looks like a rat's nest as all of this had to be precisely timed.  A one foot long wire provided about a billionth of a second of delay.¹  We also had a more complicated trigger...

 

At the heart of two of our charm triggers was a then huge two megabyte memory array that allowed us to store the geometry of likely charm events directly.  If an event fell within some predicted position and energy boundaries, it was saved to tape - if not we dropped it on the floor. This was a new revolution in physics at the time - programmable triggers.

 

What made it possible was the rapidly falling price of memory and the emergence of cheap microprocessors.  There was a revolution underway with hobbyist computers fueled by eight bit chips like the Intel 8080 and  Motorola 6800.  We took advantage of it and I programmed the 6800 in assembly language to make it run as fast as possible.  We were surfing the microcomputer tsunami.  

 

A few years later I found myself at Bell Labs doing physics and applied physics.  I found myself doing lithography - one of the fundamental technologies of the past few hundred years - how finely can you draw lines and something at the heart of making integrated circuits.  The process was automated with computer aided design tools and the bits became atoms in the photomask.  The process was a form of custom manufacturing.  There were a couple of chemical processes for positive and negative image masks, several sizes of quartz plates, design rules and so on - but it was rare for the writing tool to write the same design unless it was a replacement.²

 

Somewhere along the way I did some work with a computer vision group.  There was an interest in building a 3d copy machine.  What would it take to scan an 3d image and recreate it in atoms rather than bits?  A hot topic in the late 1980s and it continues to be interesting.  Somewhere about 1990 I printed a crude 3d part taken that replicated a scanned model of the Star Wars death star.

 

My little death star wasn't very impressive, but it was an exercise you learn from.  I went on to other things, but periodically tried state of the art printing just to see how it had evolved.  By 2000 it started to make a dent in the prototyping world and, maybe 5 years ago, the hobbyist market began to explode.

 

There have been many predictions on how 3d printing is the next PC revolution or, a bit more conservatively, the next printer revolution.  While it is fundamentally important to some types of design, I don't buy those predictions for a variety of reasons.  Materials, physical limitations of existing and laboratory tools,  and the difficulty of design drive my belief.  But it is a great hobby and it is making a big impact on industrial design.  And for a few like Iris Van Herpen,  those who understand design and art, it is given access to new materials and shapes that influence their creative process.  

 

There is a larger revolution underway that 3d printing is often connected with...

 

The revolution is inexpensive computer assisted manufacturing in low quantities.  Mass customization and even single unit manufacturing.  The barriers to manufacturing anything used to be enormous, but now hobbyists can find a niche. Perhaps a niche that would allow them to quit their day job.  The hard piece -- going from a few dozen examples to thousands is now relatively easy.³  

 

There are still many tools to build and write and people need to be trained in design (STEM k12 education is not sufficient - you need to add the arts - STEAM eduction!).  Good design is approximately hard - most of us have no idea how difficult it really is.  There is great design in physical objects and services, but the best way to appreciate it is simply to get your hands dirty - most of us are functionally illiterate when it comes to articulating design, let alone creating it.⁴  

 

One can go on and on, but a recent interview of Chris Anderson by Glenn Fleishman (52 minute mp3) on his The New Disruptors podcast is a great tour of the new bits to atoms world of mass customization and scaleable manufacture

 

Highly recommended!

 

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¹ Rear Admiral and computer pioneer Grace Hopper used to carry around foot long wires and handed them out as "nanoseconds"  In the old charm experiment all of the fast signals were timed to within about a half nanosecond.  Colleen, who is exactly two meters tall, sometimes tells people she's six and two thirds of a nanosecond tall when people ask...

² The lithography tools of choice were electron beam writing machines.  We had a homebrew system called EBES - the Electron Beam Exposure System.  It could write half micron features to about a twentieth of a micron accuracy.  There have been enormous improvements since then.

³ I still regularly build 3d objects.  They are still temperamental and very restricted to design and material.  My larger interest lies in other types of mass customization.  In particular clothing.

For those who are interested in this revolution - even those who just track the state of technology - I  strongly encourage you to get your hands dirty.  You can learn an enormous amount trying to design and 3d print something on your own for example.

⁴ This notion of the learning of design is something that has been fascinating Jheri and I for the past few months.  How is design learned and articulated in apparel and how is that impacted by different types of community? There is a good deal of change taking place.

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Recipe Corner

 

Two recipes this time.  The first is so quick, easy and good.  And many variations with topping them.

 

Roasted Brussels sprouts

 

Ingredients

 

° a kilo or so of brussels sprouts

° 3 to 4 tbl olive oil

° sea salt

° ground pepper

° maple syrup or honey

° white wine vinegar

 

Technique

 

° set oven to 450°F 

° cut the brussels sprouts in half, coat in oil salt and pepper 

° arrange face down on a tray and roast for 25 minutes or so until beginning to caramelize

° flip over with a spatula and continue roasting for about 10 minutes

° plate and drizzle a mixture of maple syrup or honey and white wine vinegar

 

_____

 

The second is hardly a recipe, but is way better than store bought peanut/cashew/almond butters.

 

Peanut/Cashew/Almond Butter

 

Find some honey-roasted cashews, almonds or peanuts and throw them in a blender for 5 to 6 minutes, scraping down the sides of the blender as necessary, until you have a peanut butter consistency.  

That's it!

If you like you can roast the raw nuts yourself (7 - 10 minutes in a 350°F oven), but the honey-roasted nuts (or legumes in the case of peanuts) have a little sugar and sweet and work out very well without all of the stabilizer nasties you get in most commercial spreads.  If you roast your own you probably want to add a bit of salt and possibly some honey or maple syrup.

 

 

on creativity

Over the years I've been lucky enough to have known and worked with several exceptionally creative people and a couple of creative organizations.   There seem to be a few components that enable it.  Perhaps the best news is it doesn't seem to be a talent someone is born with.  A few themes emerge:   play, being unafraid to fail (confidence and play perhaps), the opportunity and ability to focus on a single task without interruption, isolation at some times and the right forms of communications at others, and letting the problem become a background task at times seem to be centrally important. ¹

 

This morning I was going through email and an old client wanted a bit on the subject for his organization.²  As an introduction I sent him links to two excellent John Cleese videos.  It seems appropriate to share them, so rather than writing much in this post (no recipe corner today - I need to get to my mini-sabbatical - a critical piece of my own journey to being a bit more creative), here are the videos:

 

from 1991

 

 

 

and from a few years ago ...

 

 

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¹ Many of these are connected and simple to state, but many are very difficult to achieve in a conventional workplace and many of us find critical pieces difficult to implement.

² In the past decade I've been asked to help a few organizations enhance and grow the creativity of the organization as well as that of its members.  There have been some successes, but this can be a non-trivial task with many dependencies.  

 

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your own private air force and a bit on creativity

I'm in the middle of my annual mini-sabbatical, but I spend the evenings and part of the weekends letting my mind wander as well as keeping things running.  That seems to work better than total immersion. I was part of a discussion on great projects for a 10^th grader who wants to impress engineering schools.  UAVs strike me as something potentially fascinating and there are more than a few unexplored areas where a smart teen could do impressive work - the field is very open ended.  

 

Lightweight video cameras and small flying platforms - unmanned ariel vehicles - can be mixed in a variety of ways.  You can put a camera on a RC airplane, fly it around, and watch the video later.  A more advanced flavor is called first person video - you put a camera in the aircraft, stream the video back and use it to control the flight - often watching the view with video goggles.¹  And you can let the aircraft fly autonomously to a pre-planned flight path and either store or transmit the video.  

 

Lots of fun, but there are any number of social implications.  It is still very difficult to fly autonomously in the US and commercial use of these flying cameras is still largely barred by the FAA (although they are working towards allowing it).  There is an experimenter/hobbyist space with certain weight and distance limitations along with a rule that flying must be within line of sight. Thousands participate and a cottage industry has sprung up making the bits and pieces that make this work.  Much of the software comes from research projects at Universities and some of it is fairly sophisticated.

 

a few videos have become popular 

 

 

One has to wonder what was running through the moose's mind - perhaps some lines from the Bullwinkle show are appropriate.  

 

Eirik Solheim -the Norwegian guy who created the video - has a site that is rich in content for advanced hobbyists.²  While there are very small toy class platforms, most of the serious  experimenting is taking place using kits that require something in the neighborhood $500 to $1,000 to build and fly.  Stability and control can be very impressive and the police who were involved in the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations became very nervous when one of these appeared.

 

A number of turn-key autonomous commercial class drones used for police, military, construction, scientific and other work ...  the people who make the toy class AR.Drones (still very impressive technology) are involved in an autonomous UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) product called the senseFly.  Starting at about $9,000, but currently illegal in the US, you get an autonomous mapper.³  These would have been very useful in the wake of the recent  Sandy superstorm.  There is a lot of competition in this area with large increases in capabilities and reductions in prices likely.

 

 UAVs bristle with society and technology issues, but can be a great platform for engineering students.  I suspect hundreds of organizations in the US probably have someone playing with them on salary or as a hobbyist and suspect a lot of activity if the FAA announces regulations with few restrictions (which is expected). Think about any task that uses a helicopter for observation and lower the operating cost by a factor of 100.  And that is just a starting point.

 

This is very much a technology that an amateur can sink his or her teeth into - we're at a period that is similar to PCs in the late 1970s as far as required sophistication goes. Many reasons to get involved and learn if you have the time and inclination and a great activity for kids who are interested in engineering.   I'm a big believer in getting your hands dirty if you intend to learn about anything in depth.

 

Clearly one of those technologies that, while neutral by itself, can easily be used for good or evil...  And all the better reason for learning about it.  Not to mention that immersing yourself in something like this can encourage creative thought - perhaps in areas you may not have expected.

 

 

 

__________

 

 

There is growing evidence that multitasking limits creative thinking.  There is an increasing amount of social research in the field - some of it strikes me as flawed and experimental design can be tricky ... even basic definitions are fluffy ..  but this paper in PLoS is interesting and worth reading.  It has some issues, but the notion of using nature to promote creative thought is an old one that works for many people.  Recommended reading and I'm sure it is far from the final word on the subject.

 

I've been lucky enough to have advised a couple of exceptionally creative companies on increasing their creative level.  There have been some experiments, some failure and a few major victories.  The common thread among the best strategies to date has been allowing people to have the freedom to single task and convincing them to try.  There are a lot of basic components necessary in the first place - great hiring, great problems, certain communication patterns (very open communication paths are not universally healthy!), and a half dozen other things.  But once you have most of these the trick is keeping the gears meshing and tuning the system.   Fascinating stuff - but that's all for the time being.

__________

¹ There is quite a bit of hobbyist FPV these days as evidenced by sites like this

² Notes on his moose video

³ This marketing video from senseFLY gives an idea of their capabilities

 

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Recipe Corner

 

This is really great - parsnips are still good and you can find Granny Smith and similar apples that are ok.  A homemade vegetable stock is, as always, a central component.  I've never come across a good ready-made stock.  You can make it a bit safer by using substituing skim milk and using olive oil rather than butter. It would still probably be excellent.

 

Parsnip and Apple Soup

 

Ingredients

 

° 28g butter

° 1 tbl olive oil

° 2 medium yellow onions, peeled, chopped and diced

° 600g parsnips, cut into inchish pieces

° 2 garlic cloves, crushed

° 600g pie class apples peeledand cut into chunks

° 1/2 liter (500g) vegetable stock

° 150g whole  milk

° kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

 

Technique

 

° Melt the butter and oil in a large saucepan. Gently fry the onions and parsnips on a low heat for 15 minutes, until the onions are softened.

° Add garlic and apples and cook for 3 to 4 minutes, stirring regularly.

° Add the stock and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat to a simmer and cook for about 20 minutes, until the parsnips are very soft.

° Remove from the heat and season with salt and freshly ground black pepper.

° Blend the mixture with a blender stick or use a blender.  Season to taste

° Cool and serve

 

epigenetics, story telling as input for a serendipity engine, and dogs and relativity

December 30^th is looming.  An important day for me as it marks the birthday of a close friend and an annual deadline.  I probably need to explain the deadline.

 

When I joined Bell Labs years and years ago my director took me aside and told me I should find a way to think about something different from what I was doing and hopefully different from what anyone else in the labs was doing at least once a year.  Work scheduling was very flexible in those days, but he said he would cover for me if necessary.  He didn't want a report, but felt the exercise of devoting my working hours to something that interested me was extremely important.  The practice was not uncommon, although approaches varied widely.  

 

I spent a fortnight learning about how mother bats located their offspring in caves as millions returned from their nightly feedings. The question had been posed during a lunch table discussion just before Christmas and was something none of us (all physicists) knew about.  

 

My tools were a pad and pencil, the then wonderful Bell Labs Murray Hill library, access to Princeton's libraries, a telephone and a bit of curiosity.  

 

It is silly to think you can learn very much in two weeks, even if you are going seven days a week at twelve hours a day (it was a really interesting problem!).  But I was able to track down a few researchers and get a lot of information on signal encoding in bat calls including some very raw information that I was able to preform a bit of signal analysis on.  

 

It was completely delightful and much better and rejuvenating than a vacation.  Two weeks was long enough to get a sense of the problem and perhaps a bit of direction and no more.  But I was refreshed and sharp for my regular work at the end of the period.  It has become an important element in my education over time.

 

My mini introduction to bat signal processing came in very handy a few years later when some of us were asking some questions about signal encoding.  It is always nice to see a system that just works.  It provided a bit of insight that may have seemed out of the blue to anyone who didn't know about bats, but was obvious when pointed out.  It allowed me to connect a few important dots that would normally be outside the scope of what you might think Bell Labs did.  But it turned out a lot of people were spending some time thinking about very different areas.  I believe it was one of the "secret" core strengths of the old Bell Laboratories.

 

I've been doing it since.  Sometimes I take real vacation time, other times I've been able to manage my work.  Finding a seed question to think about is sometimes difficult and sometimes completely obvious. Some have proven to lead to rich topics and others don't - I don't make the selection on the likelihood of success as the important byproduct of this activity is serendipity over the long term. I don't make the decision until December 30^th and start my mini sabbatical on January 2^nd.

 

Some of you know I do this and have been asking questions about this year's seed.  The simple answer is I don't know yet.  There are a few candidates.  One that I've thought about before that came up again when I was rowing in the pre-dawn darkness today is how to explain important bits of science to non-scientists.  A problem that has been bothering me for a long time and one that is very important to crack.  Most scientists are very bad at it, but a few are excellent.  I've spend some time talking to a few who know what they are doing, but that only leads to more questions.

 

Without going into the different techniques I know about, I'll give some examples.  

 

Anyone who follows science at the Scientific American or even the Science section of the NY Times level, is familiar with epigenetics.  It is fundamentally important, but most people seem to be ignorant of it and most explanations assume more background than the average person has.   WNYC's RadioLab does a most good job of communicating some of these ideas at a very high level.  They do it only using the spoken word - something that is very important to their technique.  Their story telling requires an enormous among of time, but is effective.

 

Listen to these two pieces from a recent show that focused on epigenetics.  The stories are familiar to any science type, but would be mostly ignored in favor of a technical description.

 

I'm lucky enough to have access to some amazing storytellers, so it is an accessible area for me.  I have to think about how I might get started down the path.  

 

There are a half dozen other candidates and I'm sure I won't know until Monday. It almost always comes down to the last moment.

 

Feel free to propose interesting questions - I'm used to a bit of lobbying.   

 

In return I have a suggestion for a bit of mini dive that may be delightful for you if you have never had (or have forgotten) your high school physics,  It is also something any 14 year old who has a bit of trig and algebra under her belt can handle - learning special relativity^.1

 

Somehow "relativity" is labeled as being difficult.  I'll concede that general relativity requires a fair amount of mathematical sophistication if you want to learn and understand it, but special relativity is really just high school level.  It does require some careful thinking and logic in addition to a few hours of study and is an great learning experience.  It may not be important in your field, but working out some of the more interesting apparently paradoxes is great mental exercise and, as such, maybe an important dot or set of dots to add to your arsenal.

 

special relativity is not difficult!

 

I'll recommend two books:

 

How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog by Chad Orzel.  A very gentle introduction that gets at the basics and requires only a bit of algebra and trigonometry - nothing a 9^th grader can't handle.  I do recommend working though it with a pad and pencil and to make drawings and thing about things as you go.  It has a serious impact on our lives even though it is generally regarded as something that only is observable with very fast moving objects.

 Spacetime Physics by Ed Taylor and Archibald Wheeler is a classic for those who are a bit more secure with math (although only high school level math is required) and are used to sorting things out logically.  It is more demanding than the first book and gives you more tools to explore a bit more deeply.  I'd recommend it to someone intending to major in the physical sciences or as a text for a college student in a first year course for science, math and engineering students.  Spendy, but probably good for at least 60 to 100 hours of serious learning, so cheap on a dollar per hour basis.

 

And as a bonus why not treat yourself to learning how to use a slide rule?  Basic rules are available online and regular use will give you and intuitive sense for logarithms as well as sharpen your ability to do mental math.  I was asked by my management not to take my rule to the corporate headquarters for brainstorming sessions (I'm not a fan of brainstorming unless it is carefully constructed) as "it gave too much of an unfair advantage" (his words)...

__________

¹ I note that there must be a desire to learn this.  Not everyone has the motivation and that is just fine as there are so many things worthy of learning. It will take a bit of effort, but there is a real elegance and beauty in its simplicity.  It also runs counter to most people's notion of how the world works, but turns out to be a better description than Newtonian physics.  And the most important point is that we know it is "better" from experiment - the real world really does behave in this strange way.  It is an excellent example of how our senses and experience fail us.  Realizing this is important to many fields.

 

__________

 

Recipe Corner

 

Some time ago I put in some comments on making a good mango lassi.  In the past few days I've made a few variations and have a better version. Most Indian restaurants use canned mango pulp for seasonal consistency.  I've had good luck with Rellure Kesar Mango Pulp.  You can find this sort of thing online or in most Indian groceries.

It is important to chill the ingredients to near freezing - you may even want to slightly freeze the milk.  Also chill the serving glasses in your freezer.

This makes a very rich and thick lassi.  If you prefer lassis that move through a straw easily and are perhaps a bit less rich use non-fat milk and regular (not Greek) non-fat plain yogurt.  Many prefer something even less thick and one approach is to go with the thin regular yogurt and add some crushed ice to achieve the chill.

 

Mango Lassi 2

 

Ingredients

 

° 200g  Fage 2% plain greek yogurt ( I tried whole Fage and it was almost overkill)

° 150g whole milk (near freezing)

° 150g mango pulp (near freezing)

° 25g  white cane sugar (or to taste)

° some ground cardamom to taste - I probably used a tsp.  I tried a holiday variation that was ok - nutmeg, cinnamon and ginger, but prefer cardamom

° slice almonds or chopped toasted pisachios to top (optional)

 

Technique

 

° add incredients (except for the topping) into a blender and blend until smooth

° serve in a chilled glass and top with the nuts.

 

 

play and learning

At a holiday party I noted I had just installed something over 34 billion transistors in Sukie's Macbook giving her a bit more working space and how this amazes me when I think about it a bit - after all, when I was a kid I used to count the number of transistors we had in our house and remember when the number was in the single digits.  Someone asked

 

How big are transistors these days?

 

Then, a day later another question

 

What are the special skills of incredible programmers?

 

The  first question came up at a holiday meal.  You can quickly work that out in terms of feature sizes on an integrated circuit, but I wonder how many people know what a transistor is?  The same for diodes, resistors, capacitors, inductors and so on...  Things that were important building bricks to me as I tried to understand radio as a kid.

 

These days the building block is often module like - integrated circuits or groups of integrated circuits that can perform fairly high level functions.  These modules are composed of more basic components - the capacitors, transistors and other things that could turn into a simple radio.

 

Building a simple radio and understanding what each component is and how they interoperated in an electrical circuit can provide great insight for a 12 year old - or for anyone.

 

What prompted this was thinking about science kits that show up as gifts during this time of the year.  There was a grand age of these things when I was young - the atomic age, rise of physics and chemistry and the space race were all drivers and radios were everywhere and understanding them was straightforward.

 

Some of these kits were poorly designed with little effort made to instruct.  Some were age inappropriate, some (particularly chemistry sets) were dangerous and many were based on low quality apparatus (particularly terrible microscopes and telescopes).  As a result a lot of kids were either discouraged and ended up just mucking around for awhile and not learning very much.

 

There were wonderful exceptions. At the high end motivated high school level kids could work with kits produced by Bell Labs.  I remember hearing about them in high school, but had no idea how to get one.   They were far from step by step and kids who managed with them were probably prime recruiting material for the best science schools in the country. The photo is from the solar energy kit which had kids making their own solar cells from raw materials and basic principles.   Nothing like having to make your own furnace...   

 

Scientific American had a great resource in the form of a column called The Amateur Scientist.¹   The best ones were conduced by C.L. Strong and probably made an impact on American science as great as the space race.

 

I was into telescope and radio building and both "hobbies" were supported through magazines like Sky and Telescope and QST as well as specialty companies.  These days richer resources are available on the web, but you have to know where to look and sort out what is good and bad.

 

A few of us were asked to review science kits a year ago.  Most were not very good, but there were standouts.  The best general kits - like chemistry sets - were from Thames and Kosmos, but as with all of this the kids should be motivated if they're going to learn anything.

 

I learned a lot building a simple crystal radio and then progressing by adding elements to the circuit to make it more selective and sensitive.  Finally I migrated to vacuum tubes (which were conceptually easy to understand, but a bit dangerous with the high voltage on my homemade "breadboard") - that quickly moves you into understanding forms of modulation (AM vs FM) and you get a low level practical view on how to use radio waves.

 

A deeper appreciation of electromagnetic waves can, and perhaps should, be built on this foundation.  The rules and regulations that drive our radios today are artifacts of ancient policy that came about 80 years ago during an era when radio receivers were very primitive.  Our struggles with spectrum allocation and the resulting business models that leverage those rules and have produced oligopolies in the US trace back to policy based on ancient design.  You can and should expect major disruptions here, but it will take awhile (a decade?) as policy change is glacial.²  This is an excellent technology and society issue that is only beginning to be addressed outside the laboratory.  One wonders if the entrenched companies will defend their current very profitable business model, or adapt and change?

 

Finding the bits and pieces for a simple learning experience like a simple crystal radio can be a bit difficult these days as no one does it anymore, but I still recommend it if you have an interest in learning a bit about radio.  Here is an excellent resource and the explanations are accurate enough at this level - and deeper than most people with a college degree know.  Maybe that is motivation enough for a teenager.

 

Kids can develop any number of interests.  The trick is to find an appropriate entry - one that will fascinate them and still be possible.  In many of these areas things can get too complicated for a beginner. Some schools are well equipped to handle this type of curiosity and play, but many (most?) aren't.

 

About ten years ago a tenth grader approached me and wanted to build a cosmic ray telescope.³   This turns out to be a reasonable project for a teenager who knows his or her (it was a her in this case) way around high voltages and some basic electronics.  Kids like this really should have mentors.  Many universities can match kids with professors.  My experience has been that many welcome this kind of interaction and will even provide apparatus and material to do the work.  It is possible to even become part of real exploration.  My thesis experiment benefitted from a young hacker who only had a high school education and a real talent for particle physics trigger design.

 

Learning a bit about radio can take you in many directions branching off into science and into engineering.  The basic education is good as it gives a better sense of how these things we carry around with us work - moving past the idiot savant stage that mature technologies leave most of us in is a nice education.  

 

I'm particularly excited by the make movement and the inclusion of kids into the fun.  It largely works with the building blocks of today - things like sensors and microprocessors and a bit of programming are common - and is probably the modern equivalent of amateur radio.  The kid-friendly part is even developing structure - NPR recently had a segment on hacker scouting.

 

I'm not longing for the times of my youth when amateur radio, telescope making and The Amateur Scientist column were the primary introduction and motivation for many of us.  The introductory levels have shifted a bit, computers greatly amplify what can be done and the Internet is a fantastic way to find information.  But there are a few basics that are still relevant and more kids and adults probably need to be exposed to the new toolsets and opportunities for learning.  

 

I haven't touched on the important thread of linking this kind of study with the arts.  Passion requires a driver.  You'd be amazed how many people learned how to do something technically demanding to support a passion, only to find the new subject was beautiful and rich enough that a new passion often develops.

 

All of this beats passive entertainment.

 

Oh - transistor size...  It turns out a more meaningful question is what is the cell size?  For something really simple - like the basic element of a NAND memory chip - the cell is just a transistor and a capacitor.  They are generally 3f x 2f (6f²) or about 0.29 square microns for a 0.22 micron feature size process.

 

The second question is one I'm still thinking about.  I'm not a programmer, but know a few amazing ones and have asked them to comment.  One thing seems certain to me - play must be involved.

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¹ Check out Scientific American issues from the 50s through the 70s for examples.  They should be in most libraries.  There was a CDROM compilation, but it is awkward to use and difficult to find.  C.L. Strong's columns were collected into a book that is now out of print, but available through used booksellers.

² There is no reason that there should be a shortage of "spectrum" for cellphones.  The underlying physics, assuming you use proper design and take advantage of computers, should allow for potentially hundreds of times as much usage and it could be very cheap.

³ I wrote a high level introduction to making a simple cosmic ray telescope  in three parts.  Additionally there is a bit on building a cloud chamber, which is something a curious 14 year old could do without too much worry or expense. I would probably worry a bit about younger teens, not because a cloud chamber is difficult, but because you are handling some dangerous materials.

 

 

 

 

 

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Recipe Corner

 

I love roasted vegetables - sweet potatoes are particularly wonderful.  Normally cutting them to french fry shape, coating with a bit of oil and perhaps some other seasonings and then roasting just plain works.

This one is different and I can't remember where is came from . We coat them with some ground nuts.  Pecans are wonderful.  No oil is used...

 

Nutty Roasted Sweet Potatoes

 

Ingredients

 

° 1 very large or 2 medium sized sweet potatoes

° 1 cup pecans, ground

° 1/4 tsp cinnamon

° 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

° 1/4 tsp paprika

° 1/4 tsp non-iodized sea salt

° a bit of black pepper

° 1/4 cup almond milk

° 1 tsp cornstarch

Technique

 

° Oven to 425° F and cover a baking sheet with parchment paper

° cut the sweet potato(s) into french fryish strips

° Parboil the strips for 5 minutes in a pot of boiling water.  Immediate put the strips into a large colander and and immerse it in a larger bowl (tub) of very cold water (use lots of ice cubes).  Set aside 

° mix the ground pecans in a bowl with the cinnamon, cayenne, paprika, salt and pepper.

° in a bowl large enough for the sweet potato strips, mix the almond milk and cornstarch until the cornstarch is completely dissolved.

° pull the colander out of the icy water and dry off the strips with a paper towel 

° one by one dunk the strips into the milk mixture and then place on the baking tray keeping them closely together (touching even)

° sprinkle about half of the pecan mix onto the array of strips

° one by one turn them over

° sprinkle the rest of the pecans on the array

° now spread them out so they aren't touching

° roast for about 10 minutes, rotate the travel to deal with oven cold sports and continue for 10 to 15 minutes.  Don't allow the pecans to burn

° remove from the oven and allow them to cool for about 10 minutes before removing from the tray.

 

books and challenges

With this time of year there is a bit of reflection.  A few readers asked for my current book list and I sent out a note to several regular readers who tend to be interested in such things.  Now that many of the holidays have come some of you may be in a position where you are looking for a gift for yourself...

 

A few readers asked what I've been reading.  I read a lot, but my preference is to work on projects with friends.  Sadly this has been mostly a readying year.  But some of the books have been good.  And as the year winds down a jewel emerged that - at least for me - was above the rest.

A few weeks ago I was sent a preprint of The Lost Carving by David Esterly  - a really fine piece of work on making and doing it well.  He is a gifted writer - a real pleasure to read prose like this.  Up until then I would have recommended Sean Carroll's The Particle at the End of the Universe to non-physicists as a nice current view of the standard model. There are richer books on the subject, but this one is up to date and, with the discoveries at CERN this past year, being up to date makes all the difference.  

It isn't new, but for those who are trying to get a better handle on energy and how humanity relates to it I think the best non-technical book on the subject is David MacKay's Sustainable Energy.  An area that is extremely difficult to summarize at a good enough popular level, he comes closest.  It also may be our most pressing fundamental problem, so a deeper background for the general public is useful.

My favorite book that aids creativity isn't a book, but rather an iPad program - the application Paper.  Completely delightful, but i recommend getting all of the brushes.  The caveat is you have to like - or at least be open to sketching.  This may have one of the best computational user experiences I've seen - but these still are lacking compared to a good set of pencils and a high quality pad of paper. There has been some excellent progress on an iPad program that helps inspire musical thinking.  I'm poorly grounded here, but am spending some time with those who are deeply immersed thinking about, and experimenting with, what it takes to help people think in this space by routing around the conventional education path.

And on education I keep getting asked what computer language should my kid be learning.  Usually - "what book or online course should they use" ...  I have to note that although I've spent a good deal of my life programming, it is a tool rather than a passion and I prefer not to do it.  I have worked with some people who are amazing at the art. Like the fine art and writing there are individuals who are simply so much better at it than anyone else that their work can bring change.  I was lucky enough to have worked with four people at this level and count one as a very close friend.  With that in mind, the "wisdom" I offer is the language isn't important.  Logic and clear thinking is.  I would recommend kids at the high school level study some formal logic first and ideally pick up a bit of a human language that has a similar, but different structure than English - Latin would be ideal. Alternatively play a musical instrument - musicians seem to take to programming naturally.    I see people entering college with backgrounds in Java, Ruby, Basic (yikes!) and so on … but they also picked up a large number of bad habits that need to be unlearned.  When the time comes to learn a language I recommend something that gets you into what programming is rather than the language.  One of the best books on the subject is by a friend (I have to note this as it is a source of bias) - Bjarne Stroustrup's Programming Principles and Practice Using C++.  I've seen 10th graders who *really* want to learn use this successfully and note that people coming at the subject freshly, end up as better programmers than those who come at it with a lot of middle and high school programming experience.  This book does demand serious study - anything less will lead to failure.

Over the holidays I plan to make a tiny dent in some papers I've been meaning to read that are outside my field(s).  Then, on the 29^th, I make the decision on what I'll spend a couple of weeks of study on to get a better sense of the problem space.  That fortnight of study is my gift to myself every year - one that my first director at Bell Labs suggested as a way to become a bit more open to creative thought.  It doesn't generate the serendipity that crazy projects with friends does, but helps with a better grounding on what is happening.

happy holidays to you!

 

There is this issue of why should we be doing something - what is important to us at some deeper level?  What should we be doing as individuals?  Here is a nice piece by Neil deGrasse Tyson 

 

I have an enormous respect for Neil and the work he does as the best cheerleader for science.  I do have some issues with bits of his message, but understand were he is coming from.  It is great to have an environment, unlike the current state of American politics, where you can have great admiration for someone and simultaneously agree and disagree with them.

 

We agree on the need for grand challenges and much better science education.  Exploration has been a huge driver, but so are other challenges.  We need to better understand our relationship with Nature as well as our use of resources.  It is easy to draft a list of a dozen worthy grand challenges, but there is little will.  

 

Neil believes the best challenge is manned spaceflight and, although I think that is an interesting area, I have to disagree.  There are any number of deep challenges facing society that not only need to be attacked, but are large enough that serendipity is likely.  Neil believes that manned spaceflight - something like a mission to Mars - would ignite the imaginations of kids in America and inspire them into STEM career tracks.  I'd be delighted if he is right, but I just don't see it and there would be real problems mustering the political will.

 

I'm frustrated to see so much human energy and creativity go into making it easier for people to consume and to be entertained.  There is much larger game that isn't receiving enough attention.  And it is also frustrating to look at the state of education in America - a country with an enormous gap between those who are numerate and have a basic literacy in science and those who don't.¹  Not to mention there are some extremely serious problems facing us including some that may lead to change that is almost certainly terrible for our children and grandchildren (and us if we are under 40 or so)...

 

I certainly don't have any answers ...  a lot of untested speculation, but nothing concrete

 

Consider this a challenge for you to ponder during your spare time this holiday season.  What are the challenges that can inspire society enough to change everything and are possible and achievable?  What are the challenges that would fundamentally change education?  What would make people welcome such a challenge?

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¹ American STEM focused education is far too narrow.  To get at creativity we need to add the arts and change the approach.  Way to much to talk about.  Currently I think Finland has the best model, but I don't see an easy path to make real improvements here.  Some of you are experts in the area and are doing great work.  Such an important area for focus...

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Recipe Corner

 

Since many of us are in a sugar induced stupor from the holidays, here is a delicious and simple soup that takes advantage of produce that is seasonal.  As with most soups the amounts shown are just a starting point.

 

Apple Soup

 

Ingredients

 

° 25g butter

° 1 tablespoon olive oil

° 2 medium onions, peeled and diced

° 600g parsnips, cut into inchish pieces

° 2 garlic cloves, crushed

° 600g tart cooking apples peeled, cored, and cut into chunks (I like Bramleys if I can find them)

° 450g vegetable stock

° 150g milk  (it works ok with fat free, but is *really* good with whole milk)

° sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

 

Technique

 

° Melt the butter and oil in a large saucepan and gently fry the onions and parsnips on low heat for about 15 minutes, until the onions are softened.

° Add the garlic and apples and cook for 3 minutes more, stirring constantly

° Add the stock and bring to the boil. Now reduce the heat and simmer for about 20 minutes, until the parsnips are very soft.

° Remove from the heat and season with salt and freshly ground black pepper.

° Blend the mixture until smooth.  I like to use an immersion blending stick, but regular blenders work too

 

 

Stir in the milk, adding a little extra if required. Season to taste with salt and freshly ground black pepper.

 

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I'm a vegetarian and generally don't miss meat - I'm not attracted to the "fake" meats as too many vegetarian and vegan dishes are wonderful by themselves.  But there are a few flavors I do miss.  Here is one with fake bacon strips.  The amounts aren't critical, so I just used measuring cups rather than weighing

 

Maple Roasted Sweet Potatoes

 

Ingredients

 

° 4 average sized sweet potatoes peeled and diced

° 1/4 c olive oil

° 1/4 tsp non-iodized sea salt 

° a box of Morningstar Farms "bacon" strips

° 1 medium onion, chopped

° 2 large Gayla apples, diced

° 1/4 c Grade B Maple Syrup (you'll want something robust)

 

Technique

 

° Preheat oven to 425 ºF

° Toss sweet potatoes with olive oil and salt, put in a roasting pan and bake for 20 minutes.

° Sauté bacon over medium heat and add onions once the bacon has begun to render its fat.  Continue cooking until bacon begins to become crisp and onions are translucent.

° Throw in the apples and continue to cook for a couple of minutes.

° Add roasted sweet potatoes cook away until potatoes begin to become soft - about five minutes for me.

° Almost there! - toss with maple syrup and serve.

 

it isn't peeling onions...

Looking up at the sky is one of those pleasures that leads to the sort of questions kids ask.  What are clouds and why do they float?  Why are rain clouds so dark?  Why are the edges of clouds so well defined? What makes a sunrise or sunset red?  When did people start noticing the sky is blue?  Why is the sky blue?

 

The wonderful online comic strip xkcd reminded me of this the other day.  Kids pepper their parents with questions and this one is likely to come up.  The simple answer is given in the strip, but that doesn't get at what scattering is and why Rayleigh scattering works with air molecules.  Why it does and why it scatters as wavelength^-1/4 is something that usually happens in the first or second year of a college level physics course, but the follow-on question can stump the adult who hasn't considered a few more things.  It turns out our distorted perception of the world is centrally involved which leads to another herd of questions.¹

 

If perception is involved one begins to question if there are any cultural components to color perception.  It turns out there are.  Now one begins to question the nature of what color is.  Is it fundamental or is there a mapping between wavelength and what we perceive as - say - blue, red or yellow?²

 

childlike questions frequently aren't!

 

Some people use the analogy that science is like pealing an onion - you describe something but find, upon closer inspection, that there is a deeper explanation and beneath that yet another.    I'm afraid it doesn't work for me.  A better analogy is throwing a stone into a pond.  There is a splash and then a circular wave that expands outwards.  The wave laps up against things that you didn't know existed.  The edge of it can be thought of as the boundary between what we know and what we can know if we work at what has been uncovered.  We are newly ignorant and that is a wonderful thing.  The beauty is that our ignorance is expanding much more rapidly than what we know.  It is like diamond filled beaches that no one has seen are being constantly discovered.  Mining the old beaches can lead to questions that will lead you to entirely new shores.  That is why people do science - it isn't the discovery of an answer, but rather the discovery of a question.

 

Michael Faraday, in addition to being a brilliant physicist, was the Carl Sagan and Neil deGrasse Tyson of his day.  He had the habit of delivering public science lectures on subjects like candles.  Alan Alda (yes - that Alan Alda) is passionate about the communication of science and is an associate professor and one of the founders of the Center for Communicating Science at SUNY Stony Brook.  He felt there is a huge problem communicating science to the public and wanted to do something about it invoking Faraday as an inspiration.

 

Alda proposed a competition to simply describe how a flame works - a question that drove him when he was young.  There were hundreds of serious entries and they were judged for clarity by an army of volunteer 11 year olds.  

This year the challenge will be to explain time.  This may turn out to be interesting,  Science is pretty good at explaining how a flame works at a fundamental level and, for a gifted explainer, the gist of it can be communicated to an 11 year old. Time is deeper - it is fundamental at the level where we really don't know what it is.  That doesn't stop people from trying to learn about it by observation and experiment.  Physics is beginning to take cautious baby steps - time once was only for philosophers, but now some science is being done. Somehow the process of discovery needs to be communicated.  Figuring out how to communicate this to an 11 year old seems like an impossible task.  I'm very curious to see if there are some clever ways to communicate something basic about science.   At least it gets away from the fallacy that science is about assembling "facts"...

 

These things are fine and good, but there is still much to be discovered just staring at the sky.

 

If you are in a spectacularly dark area - the sort of place you sometimes get in places where large telescopes tend to get built - the Milky Way becomes impossibly bright and rich on moonless nights.  As your eyes adjust to the dark, you begin to notice a faint glow far from the times when you have remaining hints of sunrise or sunset.  The glow is strongest at the horizon and so faint it is colorless.  If you have some tools available you discover it is mostly green, but there are some other even fainter colors - far too weak for your cones to let your brain in on the show. This is the airglow.

 

Recently I came across this wonderful image taken from the International Space Station. It happens to be the airglow from space.  If you look very closely you'll see a faint bluish band that hugs the Earth.³  That happens to be the dense part of the atmosphere - the piece up to about four miles up that sustains life.  Most of our weather takes place here and we call it home and tend to think of it as large and expansive.  

 

It isn't and we need to take care of it...

 

But that aside the atmosphere continues for some distance.  The brightest region - the outer green band- is about 100 km above the surface.  This is where a bit of physics begins to unravel what is going on.   If you break light from this area into its spectral components, you get a few pronounced lines that were mostly described by atomic (not nuclear!) physics more than 100 years ago.  The bright green line has a wavelength of 558nm and is given off when atomic oxygen is struck by ultraviolet light.  It also has a fainter red line from a region at a higher altitude.  The yellow light is from sodium atoms and there is red light from excited OH radicals at somewhat lower altitudes.  But without getting deeply into spectroscopy and worrying about each line there are a few other questions that come up.

 

Why is it so bright?  Of course you have to consider the camera, but it turns out the airglow is about 1000 times bright on the side of the Earth facing the Sun (duh), but it is washed out during the day (duh again).  From orbit we can see a slice of the atmosphere that is still illuminated by the Sun while we are on Earth's dark side.  Nothing like an ideal location!

 

Why are the colors confined to such narrow bands?  This gets really interesting.  It turns out that bright green band comes from the atomic Oxygen excited state - it takes a very long time (by the standards of atomic physics) for this to happen - about a second.  At lower altitudes there are so many other air molecules that most of the just excited Oxygens get whacked by some other molecule that collides with them.  This process changes their energy and they usually don't give off that particular light.  As you go up in altitude the air becomes less dense and there is a point where the average collisions are rare enough - over a second between them - that the process can occur.  There are similar arguments for the other layers, but it is all about putting different bits of information together from fields that, on the surface, seem different.

 

It is common in science to find a new bit of ignorance in the ordinary world.  With the wonderful work going on at CERN it is easy to forget that quite a bit of real ignorance lurks on tabletops with very simple apparatus and, in some fields, there are wonders in a local pond (8 minute mp3). 

 

The whole trick is to be curious like an 11 year old and learn to ask questions and be open to something you don't expect.  I've had surprising and sometimes excellent results being curious and linking to outlying fields while doing work in fields far from my training and I suspect the same is true for of many of you.

 

Science has a formal method for doing this, but the same principles apply in many other fields.  Drilling in and asking questions, being open to answers you don't expect and even finding there are richer new questions, and connecting the dots with other fields that are very different from your own.

 

Oh - and if you have never seen a very dark sky you owe it to yourself to do so!  You can find some fairly dark areas in the lower 48 states - mostly in the desert Southwest, but there are a few good areas in other regions.  I'm about 250 miles from a pretty good area in Pennsylvania and have been known to drive for watching a meteor shower (not tonight though) or just getting a fix and remembering what a dark sky is like.

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¹ It turns out the answer has a couple of pieces.  The intensity of shortwave length visible light from the Sun decreases rapidly as wavelength decreases, but more important is perceptual.  We have three cones that register what we call color.  The cone associated with blue (the S cone) is very insensitive to shorter wavelengths.  We simple don't perceive most of the violet that is in the sky.

It turns out many birds and insects are sensitive into the ultraviolet.  They would see a much more violet sky - even a somewhat ultraviolet sky - than we do. 

It is wonderful when kids ask great followup questions.  This one is deep, but obvious in retrospect - if you see an eight year old do that you may want to encourage them to keep asking.

² It turns out color is very artificial - you can convince yourself of this easily by overlapping a very pure "red" light with a very pure "green" light.  Where they add we register something we call "yellow."  Neither of the original lights had any yellow wavelength in them.  It turns out to be a construction of your mind.

The wonderful NPR show Radio lab had a great segment on color perception that will leave you with some wonderful shores to explore from.

highly recommended!

³ Also look closely and you'll see the constellation Orion.

 

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Recipe Corner

 

Echoing the theme we end with peeling apples rather than onions.

 

This one is simple and good - maple roasted apples that almost give the flavor of an apple pie without the crust.  Great as a dessert by themselves - perhaps with a little topping like crushed walnuts.  I've tried it with a bit of cinnamon and nutmeg mixed in, but prefer them straight.  You'll want to use a rich grade B maple syrup (the grade has nothing to do with quality - grade B is darker and richer than A ..  which has its own delights).  

 

Feel free to scale the recipe - there won't be any problems as long as your tray is large enough.  It is terrific served over slightly softened vanilla ice cream or (better yet) a vanilla gelato (try Talenti)

 

Mapled Apples

 

Ingredients

 

° 4 large baking apples peeled and cored

° 100g high quality grade B maple syrup

° 55g butter (a half stick)

° pinch of salt

° 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon (optional)

° 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg (optional)

 

Technique

 

° preheat the oven to 375° F

° cut the apples into about a dozen equally sized wedges each

° melt the butter in a microwave oven in a bowl big enough to hold the apple slices

° mix the maple syrup, salt and optional spices in with the butter and toss in the apples and make sure they get coated with the mixture on both sides

° spread the pieces out on a greased cooking sheet and bake until soft and just caramelizing at the edges - about 40 minutes in my oven.  Turn them over about 20 minutes into the bake.