Classical musings

I've recently read two related books on the subject of music (a major non-professional interest): This is Your Brain on Music (by Daniel Levitin) and Why Classical Music Still Matters (by Lawrence Kramer). More on the books themselves another time perhaps, but through reading them I've been led back to listening to a genre that I'd moved away from for many years. I'm discovering a new appreciation for the complexity of classical music, and in particular am for the first time enjoying music of smaller groups (soloists, duets, quartets). Right now I am enraptured by a string quartet by Dvorak, his "American", opus 96, in particular the second Lento movement. It opens with a sublime melody sung by the violin, repeated by the viola (or perhaps the second violin?) and then broken down, rearranged, modulated, re-assembled to various stages of (in)completion until it is fully re-stated at the close of the movement. It's ravishing. What is a "melody"? Why do some series of notes constitute one, whereas others though interesting and enjoyable do not? And when there is no obvious melody, why is it still sometimes great music?

Arthur Clarke wrote a story about a scientist who sets his computer to analyzing all the catchiest tunes in history, trying to identify a common element. The computer succeeds, and then constructs and plays out the ultimate catchy tune, an earworm that runs through the scientist's head excluding all other thought and input, making him a vegetable for life. Luckily for the world, the night custodian is tone-deaf and turns off the speakers before anyone else can enter the room. It's similar to the Monty Python sketch about the joke so funny that it makes you die laughing. The British army uses it as a weapon during WWII, after translating it into German with teams of translators, each working on only one word. Silliness, but still appreciating melody and humor seem to be universal and possibly defining human attributes.

Our photo here is one of the two housecats, Pepper. She shares some attributes with us that are not definingly human!

The lost science

Next time you're in a large bookstore, go to the science section and compare the number of different books offered by subject. You'll see a lot of biology (especially evolution), a lot of physics and astronomy, and a fair amount of mathematics and even earth science. But there will probably be little by way of chemistry. Perhaps several college study guides, and two or three popular books about oxygen, but that's it. For some time I have noticed this and pondered possible explanations. I suppose the large publishers have their reasons, but my suspicion is that chemistry is simply too messy. It is not intrinsically more difficult than any other science, or less difficult for that matter. But it seems to be harder to explain, in an interesting way at least, to a nonprofessional audience. The problems it deals with are not as fundamental as those of physics or mathematics. Nor are they are immediate as those of biology or earth science, where anyone has at least a chance of seeing the objects of study. Chemistry deals with the electronic interactions of atoms, that create infinite opportunities for new molecules from high temperature superconductors to new pharmaceuticals. But no one has ever really seen a molecule (except in indirect ways such as with electronic or atomic force microscopes). It is not easy to explain what a molecule actually is, since no one has directly seen an atom either. What are some objects we can see and hold, like iron bars or gold rings, elements (gold rings actually are not, they contain other metals to harden them, but in principle they could be), whereas others like salt or sugar are molecules? If you take one electron from a dangerously reactive metal (sodium) and give it to a poisonous gas (chlorine) you get table salt which is essential for us to live. To me that is amazing, but once you have said this, what else can be said without going into a lot of technical detail about orbitals and valences. Chemistry has many wonderful stories to tell. I loved Napoleon's Buttons, a book about many interesting chemicals, their discovery or synthesis or use. And I confess that from time to time I browse in Nature's Building Blocks, a book in which each chapter covers a different atomic element in detail. But these are compendia of stories, they do not have any clear flow. The history of chemistry does have such a clear chronological and intellectual flow, which has been recounted in numerous books. But such books tend to cover mostly the same ground repeatedly. Other than presenting new interesting molecules (like the nanocar, shown above on the right from a recent article), there does not seem to be anything new being said in popular literature about chemistry. This is a shame, as I doubt that it is true that there is nothing new worth saying. I call on literary chemists to tell us about their work.

Why do sudoku?

I've been a longtime afficionado of crossword puzzles. When I was younger I used to do the Sunday times with my mother, looking over her shoulder as she sat in her favorite chair in the living room. There was a wonderful sense of camaraderie as we worked together, complementing each other's knowledge so that we could usually complete a puzzle that neither of us could do alone. But for years I resisted the sudoku craze. There must have been multiple reasons: resisting the herd, preference for verbal not numeric puzzles for example. But for some unclear reason I recently tackled some easy ones in the local newspaper, and got hooked. From there it was an easy step to addicted. My stepson even bought me Sudoku for Dummies last Christmas. I've made my way through the sections from Easy to Tricky to Tough, but am currently stumped by Diabolical.

Sudoku is not really about math at all, it's pure logic - arbitrary symbols would work equally well though they would be much harder to track mentally. The harder puzzles involve longer chains of reasoning, or managing more alternatives in your head at once. But ultimately the satisfaction is probably the same as for other types of puzzles - the feeling of closure. In life, and certainly in the professional life of a research scientist, real closure comes infrequently and rarely with a definitive moment of "Aha!" Sudoku is to science as Woody Allen once said art is about life, we can make things come out better in one than they usually do in the other.

The photo has nothing to do with Sudoku, it's a selection of some of my exotic instruments from eastern and southern europe: turkish saz, oud, macedonian tambura, bulgarian tambura and dumbek. If I can figure out how to upload music I will hopefully add some samplers.

Opening the door

Well, this is my very first blog post. I have nothing special to say today, just hi! Lots more to come on science, music, politics...

A sucker for romance

I admit it, I'm a sucker for romantic comedy films - date flicks. I seem to have an endless capacity to watch new ones. Maybe a 19th century Englishman travels to the future and courts a 20th century woman in an unusual way (Kate and Leopold). Maybe two people fall in e-love (You've Got Mail). A socialite falls for a pesky journalist (The Philadelphia Story) or a scientist (Bringing up Baby), or a movie star with a nebbish (Notting Hill). The combinations are indeed endless. But in basic story line they are generally the same. As the old Jewish man complained deploring the theater: "First he wants and she doesn't want. Then she wants and he doesn't want. Then they both want and boom! down comes the curtain". If the story is so predictable, then how could anyone watch all these? (OK, Phila. Story does take an unexpected twist.) Not everyone can, I have friends who find the genre tedious, but at least some of us can, or Hollywood wouldn't keep making them.

I believe the answer is that we do in fact care about the details, the sometimes infinitesimal differences between the situations in each of these films. Finding a mate is one of the most essential biological drives, and whether we already have one in our lives or not, it's serious business. We need all the help we can get to find one, or keep the one we have. Seeing others succeed gives us ideas for our own lives - maybe silly ones, but no idea is too silly for some consideration in this critical activity.

I love the series of short documentary style interviews of couples in When Harry Met Sally - particularly the elderly chinese guy who went to great lengths to check out his intended bride before their arranged wedding. And there's the couple in Annie Hall, who tell Woody's character: "I'm shallow and have nothing to say"..."And I'm the same"; they've found each other. I was hiking once in southern Utah with my then current girlfriend, two eastern intellectual types enjoying the outdoors. We happened to cross paths with another couple, two blonde athletic waspy types in spotless white tennis clothes. We went our separate ways, but my friend and I looked at each and burst into simultaneous laughter. It was so...congruous. So the next time I see ads for a film in which a molecular geneticist falls head over heels for an artist he happens to meet on a ferry ride across the arctic, I'll be there. Or at least I'll see it when it hits the video stores.

Wow, it's been a year since I last posted here. A lot has happened this year, both personally and in our society (more on personal updates another time). Unfortunately, the most important thing that could have happened has not, namely major policy changes on the part of the largest nations regarding climate change. On the one hand, the media coverage and general awareness of this issue has never been stronger, with articles regularly in major news outlets and many public demonstrations by citizens in multiple countries. On the other hand, this has not led to any really meaningful changes. By meaningful I consider things such as: major new sales taxes added to gas-guzzling vehicles, and fuel per se, restrictions on air travel, restrictions on meat consumption, etc. In other words, anything that would seriously reduce carbon emissions quickly. Carbon taxes, while arguably effective, are still sufficiently far removed from the individual consumer as to have had little effect on actual behavior.

Of course, some major national governments are still actively denying there is even a problem, although at least some have acknowledged the reality. Presumably at some point events will overtake denial to the point of ludicrousness - one would think we were there already but clearly not. Still, serious change in the behavior of individuals will require some equally serious changes in society functions - there's no way to have major reductions in fuel consumption if people still have to drive most places, work, shopping, social activities. And obviously automobile companies will not stop making large inefficient SUVs or similar vehicles for family use on their own initiative, in fact Ford has essentially stopped manufacturing cars in North America, citing that they can only make money or that there is only demand for SUVs. This is the opposite of what needs to happen. Only a very large tax, either directly on fuel or indirectly on fuel-inefficient vehicles, is likely to reverse this trend. Strangely, at the same time there are more hybrid and even fully electric cars on the market than ever, at least in terms of variety if not total sales. As in other areas of our society, there seems to be a great polarization between some people doing their best at an individual level to minimize their carbon footprint, and others who basically ignore the issue completely in their personal and family lives. Presumably, both groups will be affected equally once society-threatening climate change events start to happen. Sadly, this is very discouraging to those trying to mitigate climate change. If eocological destruction is already inevitable because we have waited to long, then why even bother, why deny oneself the comforts of air conditioning, vacations overseas, steak dinners, large roomy vehicles, and so on.

To some extent this depends on the science. No one really knows today whether we have passed crucial tipping points or not, whether complete societal breakdown is already inevitable or not, or what the time line might be (decades? centuries?). In the face of this uncertainty it does seem reasonable to continue taking personal actions to reduce carbon use, and making sure one's friends and neighbors are aware of this. Certainly there are far more hybrid cars on the road than when I purchased my first Prius. Much of Montreal's taxi fleet, and many buses are now hybrids. This suggests that there has been at least some movement in the right direction, albeit slow and modest. If total destruction of our environment is not yet inevitable, if there is still time to rescue an ecosystem in which humans will be able to survive sustainably, then it's time to redouble not reduce one's personal efforts. My wife has certainly taken this to heart, even more than I have. For me switching to a low meat diet is the hardest adjustment. Luckily I live in a city with good public transit, especially a metro system, so I can go many days without touching my car, and drives around town for shopping or entertainment are so short that often I only need to refill my (small) gas tank once a month. And I have stopped eating steak and burgers, going veggie in that regard. Chicken, eggs, fish, cheese still a significant part of my diet though. Small steps!

There have been a couple of recent movies in a sci-fi or thriller genre on the theme of overpopulation (spoiler alert!). Examples are Inferno, based on the Dan Brown book, and of all things Marvel's Avengers: Infinity War. In both, the villain (hero?) has decided that overpopulation is the cause of the world's (read galaxy's) ills, and the solution is to kill off half of all living people (read intelligent life forms). In one movie, the solution is a novel bioengineered deadly virus, in the other it's a gauntlet powered by remnant energy from the Big Bang (or something like that, it's left a bit vague).

Almost needless to say, in the absence of any additional actions both of these schemes are completely pointless. Populations expanding by exponential growth will inevitably recover to their previous size in the absence of any new checks, and potentially very quickly. If one were to kill off half of all intelligent life in the universe, and the ones left just had four kids each (for species with a mere two genders), then in a generation things would be right back to where they were before. I've oversimplified the numbers a bit, not being an epidemiologist I'm not sure what the exact number of extra kids would have to be, but it's small. As a real world example, after many years of flat budgets, the NIH in the US doubled its total research funding during the 1990's, after which it once again became fairly flat. After a short period where success rates of new grants rose dramatically, that too levelled off as universities hired more researchers. Today the success rate for new research proposals at the NIH is low again, pretty much back where it was before the budget doubled. The reason is that the size of the research community also tends to grow exponentially (though with a fairly small absolute exponent). In such a situation, in order for the new grant proposal success rate to stay high, the total budget also has to grow exponenentially, forever as in every single year. That is completely unrealistic in today's economy.

The only way to prevent inevitable human overpopulation is to either 1) keep killing off a big chunk of the population every generation by war, famine, disease, etc, or 2) reduce the birth rate to replacement value or less. In fact, with scenario 2 you don't have to actively kill off anyone, since we have a natural mortality rate. By managing the total birth rate, one can achieve any desired absolute population, as quickly or slowly as you want, and do so stably and with minimal violence.

Unfortunately, such a scenario is fairly unlikely, since humans are no better at self-restricting their population growth rate than any other species. The sad part, and the way we are in fact special, is that we are capable of understanding this. No other species as far as we know consciously restricts its population, although all species' birth rates are regulated in some way according to their environment. Indeed, there are places in the world where stable human populations are the norm, or have become so. In industrialized countries such as in Japan or Europe, this actually creates a problem since our capitalist economies demand constant growth, ultimately driven by population size. A  stable population requires a completely different economic model at least to avoid widespread poverty. That too seems pretty unlikely at the moment, although there are lots of proposals of how such a truly sustainable economy could work. I can only hope that some fairly severe shocks to the system will wake enough people up that they will entertain such counter-evolutionary, yet long term necessary, alternatives.