Responsibility

And the sons of Aaron, Nadav and Abihu, took [coals] from their censers and put them on the fire, and put on them incense, and they brought before ADONAI a strange fire, which he had not commanded them. And a fire came out from before ADONAI and consumed them and they died before ADONAI. And Moses said to Aaron, it is as the word of ADONAI said, “by my intimates [priests] I shall be sanctified and in the sight of all the people I will be honored,” and Aaron was silent.

[Lev. 10:1-3]

The priests are the intimates of God; since they have this intimacy, they may not use it for themselves and in secret, but only openly, and for the people.

The soldier is granted the power of death; since he has this power, he may not fight on his own account, but only for the safety of his country.

The king is granted rule over the land; since he has this authority, he may not use it for his own benefit, but only for the benefit of the people who are his responsibility.

Published in: on December 26, 2004 at 02:48  Comments (6)  
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On this day in history:

In 1992, President Bush the Elder pardoned the remaining major players in the Iran-Contra affair, abruptly ending the investigation just before the part where his own role would have come to light. (For those of you who’ve forgotten about it or weren’t around then, here’s a Wikipedia article on the business. I’ll leave the question of who the actual, day-to-day leader of this operation was as an exercise for the reader.)

Published in: on December 24, 2004 at 18:13  Comments Off on On this day in history:  
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A worthwhile read

For those of you who don’t read ‘ journal (you should), here’s a pointer to an excellent article from the Arkansas Times about the role of religion in politics in the past few years. Short and well-written.

Published in: on December 24, 2004 at 16:40  Comments (4)  
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Ethics of a copied cat

There’s a big ethical debate storming over the recent cloning of a pet cat. One line that caught my eye in this was from David Magnus, of the Center for Biomedical Ethics at Stanford: “It’s morally problematic and a little reprehensible… for $50,000, she could have provided homes for a lot of strays.”

This argument seems specious to me. For $50,000, she could also have provided homes for humans; does that also make the action reprehensible? Would it be less so had she spent it on a car? For that matter, a number of people persist in having biological children, even though there are plenty still available for adoption. Is he arguing that that’s morally problematic as well?

It seems to me that if there are ethical issues involved in this, the ones being discussed right now aren’t them – but I’m a bit surprised to see so many scientists and ethicists jumping on this bandwagon. Is it just me, or is some deep fear of “cloning” – not a fear of the actual procedure, but of something subconsciously associated therewith – taking over the discussion?

Does someone have a sense of what the actual underlying fears are?

Published in: on December 23, 2004 at 17:53  Comments (16)  
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Principles of salesmanship

A good rule of thumb when trying to sell things: If you think a potential customer may not have much money, and you’re especially polite to them anyway, that’s a good thing. If you think they may not have much money and you’re rude to them, that’s a bad thing. These two effects are magnified if you guess wrong: especial politeness to a customer who turns out to have money will make them happy. Especial rudeness to a customer who turns out to have money will make them take their money elsewhere.

On a completely unrelated note, if you’re ever buying a car, you may want to give Stevens Creek Acura in San Jose a miss.

Published in: on December 23, 2004 at 16:40  Comments (16)  
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Busy couple of weeks…

…actually, busy couple of months. I just finished reading “The Making of the Atomic Bomb,” by Richard Rhodes, and I can’t recommend it highly enough; it’s an amazingly engaging bit of history, well-researched and exceptionally written. And, of course, rather creepy to read.

It’s also got me thinking about an idea for a sophomore or junior-level physics course in nuclear physics, that would try to combine serious theory, engineering, experiment, and history; essentially following the early development of the subject, actually doing all of the major experiments (it’s one of the few fields of physics where that’s possible in a classroom setting), and getting the students up to the point where they understand both the technical and ethical issues associated with their field. I suspect it could be a great way to both really draw in the very serious students and to give them a much-needed parallelism of experiment and theory in a class.

(I remember that I didn’t get my first really interesting experimental physics class until my senior year. That was the year I got thrown in a lab with a bunch of spare parts and told to measure things. I remember building a gamma spectrometer and spending hour after hour looking for interesting things I could examine with it… and had I had a class like that a few years earlier, my life might have turned out very differently. Oh well… thus the urge to teach it to others.)

Also: It looks confirmed, my cousin Sharon is getting married in early June, so I’m going back to Israel for a few weeks. (Finally!) And my grandmother promised to teach me the basics of wood sculpture while I’m there. (And if it weren’t for the wedding being in June, I would probably go much sooner… dammit, I need a trip. Right now a few weeks in Israel and a few days on the side in Paris sounds really, really appealing)

Published in: on December 15, 2004 at 23:22  Comments (4)  
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Science update

A new report on substantial progress in treating spinal injuries with embryonic stem cells, from UC Irvine. They managed to cause the cells to grow into new myelin sheaths for neurons.

(Side note, which the article doesn’t mention: This couldn’t have been done with adult stem cells; working on neurons more or less requires totipotent cells, and thus embryonic research. Let the politics begin…)

Published in: on November 23, 2004 at 09:39  Comments (6)  
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Friday night…

…and I’m sitting in a cafe, drinking coffee and trying to understand K-theory. It’s probably a sign that I’m a geek, that this seems to be one of the most wonderful ways possible to spend a Friday night.

Incidentally, since I know there are other geeks out there: Does anyone happen to have a good intuition for Bott periodicity, in any context whatsoever? (Topological K-theory, algebraic K-theory, cohomology, something else…) I’m feeling very stuck in not having a good intuition for why it works.

Published in: on November 19, 2004 at 22:07  Comments (18)  
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This is just neat.

Google just launched Google Scholar, a search engine specifically for technical publications, books, and so on. It’s incredibly cool, and I didn’t work on this so I’m not personally biased. I’m mentioning this in a locked post since, even though we did publicly launch, I’m always a bit nervous about publicly discussing things.

But… try this out. It’s not just hard sciences and medicine; the social sciences are in there, too.

Published in: on November 18, 2004 at 11:15  Comments (16)  
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Powell Says…

Iran is trying to build and weaponize a bomb.

It’s really too bad that Powell had to waste so much of his international credibility on justifying the administration’s WMD red herring; that should give Europe the perfect excuse to ignore this statement. (Which, thanks to what I’ll politely call a combination of pusillanimity and financial considerations, they would very much like to do)

But the best I can say for this is “no shit?” I mean, did someone not get the hint from their (a) developing longer-range missiles, (b) developing more advanced missile guidance systems, and (c) pushing their isotope enrichment program into high gear? Does the rest of the world need an engraved invitation to an A-test?

What galls me most about this is that we encouraged it so strongly. The run-up to the Iraq war and our subsequent dealing with North Korea made it very clear to everyone in the world that someone who’s about to get major weapons is likely to get invaded by the US, but someone who already has them is permanently sacrosanct. Then we left them to their own devices and stopped all engagement with even the moderates, and turned a blind eye to their programs and their deals with NK for several years. I really do not want to have to deal with even a regional nuclear war because of high-level official fuck-ups…

Published in: on November 17, 2004 at 21:32  Comments Off on Powell Says…  
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