Scientist
As Bender Says: “We’re Boned.”
There is a great article in this week’s New Scientist by James Lovelock about the state of Global Warming and “green” mitigation strategies. His view is not comforting, nor does he mince words. It is a great read and I highly recommend it.
I’ve had ongoing discussions with friends about how much of a scam carbon trading is and about what technologies have any viability from a system level analysis. James addressed many of my favorite subjects and he’s obviously very bright because I tend to agree with him (though the biochar sequestration idea is not viable on the wee amount of biomass created through global agriculture compared to the global system as a whole, alas).
The best part of the whole interview is James’ matter of fact assessment of a likely genetic bottleneck in the next century. He seems optimistic for the outcome as an evolutionary driver, which is a pleasantly cheerful way to look at near extinction of the human race, a substantial “cull,” as he puts it.
Inspirational Books
New Scientist had a good article in the 10 April 08 issue about the formative books of the youth of 17 leading scientists. I found the most compelling Sean Carroll’s recommendation of One, Two, Three… Infinity.
It reminded me of a book that I remember reading in 4th grade that had a huge influence on my development: The Curve of Binding Energy.
I was already interested in nuclear physics and was motivated to read it. I think the book either inspired or reinforced many things that have become central parts of me; in particular an appreciation that understanding how things actually work gives one the ability to manipulate reality in a way that people who are less aware of how things work expect. Understanding things is lifetime power and (ever more importantly as I get older) a source of amusement. It illustrated how much fun being able to solve problems could be; the subversive (not merely empirical) value of knowledge.
I also learned how to make a mediocre nuclear weapon. Something that has made me a bit of smart ass ever since: if you know how to make the most fearsome weapon on earth it’s hard to be too intimidated. I wrote a paper in 9th grade describing how to build a weapon based on what I remembered from the book. About that time a student at Princeton got a lot of press for making a model nuclear bomb but using toothpaste instead of U-235, coincidently reinforcing my sense of significance.
After high school and after working as a programmer at a health physics company for a summer (and spending some formative time at a nuclear physics lab at U-Penn in grade school) I was one of a small number of nuclear engineering students on the fusion track at MIT. The Curve of Binding Energy inspired a love and appreciation of Nuclear Physics (and a sense of knowing something special) that only an act of congress could crush. When I was a freshman congress canceled funding for TARA, the tandem mirror experiment at MIT that about half the grad students I had just met were working on. While I dropped my FORTRAN efforts in support of FULIB and turned to robotics and eventually computers, I still ended up getting a degree in physics, course 8, not too far in practice or theory from course 20. And in no small part thanks to John McPhee and Ted Taylor.