First Steps in a Certain direction

So, I wrote my first column for the INDEPENDENT UF Alligator. It was tough and awkward, but not moreso than many other writing assignments. I haven't had to do a lot of writing in these past few years, so it's probably understandable that my skills (whatever they were) from high school, have dropped off a bit.

I think that's a fairly depressing thought--that my college experience has dulled my writing abilities. And that's considering I have been pursuing Classics pretty strongly for the last few semesters. I cannot imagine the damage done had I been ensconced in the mathematical universe of physics.

The feeling of writing, however frustrating, is still--as it always was--something that's immensely satisfying to me. That's one of the most heartening thoughts, and hopefully not a fluke. Truth be told, I've always brushed the idea aside, mostly because I thought that my writing was never the most lucid or the most elegant or...the most anything. I thought it was good, maybe even above average, but never the best. And I think that unconscious belief put the idea of doing anything in a large SEP field in my brain. (For those of you who are so uncool--or perhaps just not very nerdy-- that you don't know what a Somebody Else's Problem field is, stop here, and go read Life, The Universe, and Everything. You will thank me later.) Now, I'm beggining to think that, perhaps my writing isn't Pulizter Prize-winning, but maybe it's still worthy of publication. Maybe.

So, with that outlook emerging, I begin anew. Trying to jumpstart my literary brain, with the idea of reporting the science that I have no desire to be trapped in a lab doing, yet still find it interesting and worth bringing to the public's attention. It gives me a good feeling, to think about seeking out scientists and engineers that are on the cusp of interesting discoveries and creations. Probing the brains of the people who plug away alone, and bringing their stories together, wholistically....really sounds like me.

I am nervous, of course. I hope this desire lasts and I pray that this does not lead to the same feeling of dead-end-ness that so many other prospective careers have led to. Perhaps all this sounds rather pessimisstic, but it is, in fact, simply ultra-cautious optimism. A fine line, I guess.

The editorial I just wrote wasn't even about science at all. It was about the recent budget cuts affecting some people and programs at the school that were dear to my heart at the UFIC. It was hard to write, I will say that. Column writing is tough and I won't be surprised if they don't pick it up. Nevertheless, it was a good experience and I am glad I tried. I hope they publish it, eventually, just because the story needs to get out there.

I suppose I need to go, though. My "hoping" is annoying me. There's a lot more I could be doing. Mark lent me some reporting textbooks and I could always be reading more science articles. I am going to give this project some good effort. Starting now.

Some People Can't Get Succes With Their Art

So, here it is folks. I am scared to death to say it, for if it smolders away like so many of my plans due to my lack of real enthusiasm, I will have yet another beginning to look at with another discouraging ending. But I definitely see science writing/journalism as a potential path for me...maybe not the full path, but part of it.

But if I keep trying, perhaps I will find that thing that will lead to an end, no? I just listen to the language my mind is speaking. I wish it would wise up and learn English.

Here it is: Let us commemorate the newly established SCIENCE BLOG by one, L'alchimico, and wish him (me) good luck keeping it up.

DaVinci's Flight: I think it has a nice ring to it. But maybe tomorrow you'll come back and it will be changed.

I just hope to be able to take a simple approach: let's not reinvent the news, just retell it, and gain some experience with journalistic writing style. Then maybe attach my own opinion on the end, just to give you your money's worth. I hope this works, and I hope you enjoy.

Strange Loops and Mental Magic

In Godel, Escher, Bach--my current literary love interest-- Douglas R. Hofstadter is on the hunt for one of the most interesting, tantalizing, and elusive constructs of the human mind: the concept of "I", of the individual's ability to self-reference. During his own intellectual odyssey, he realizes that the works of mathematician Kurt Godel, artist and visual philosopher M.C. Escher, and musical titan J.S. Bach all demonstrate similarly self-referential properties--properties which he believes are tied to the way our consciousness works.

But what is self-reference? On the surface, it seems fairly simple: To exhibit self-reference, something has to "refer" to itself. A person can refer to trees, books, emotions, laws, wine bottles, interest rates, and, of course, other people. So what should be so strange about me referring to myself? You cook, I cook. He laughs, I laugh. The change of person seems almost trivial...but thinking deeper about the situation reveals some very evident weirdness. What am "I"? "I" changes for every person, but the concept stays the same. Or to pose another question, how do we so easily reconcile our perceptions of external stimuli with our perceptions of ourselves? We do it so casually, but in science it would be tantamount to trying to use a microscope to examine itself or trying to verify the length of a ruler by referring to it's own inches markings. When it comes to most things, in fact, the idea of self-reference and self-perception is quite strange.

Let's take a cue from another self-referential situation. A TV camera in a news studio is filming two anchors give their daily 6 o'clock report. The camera films people, blue screens, fake plants, and a giant set. When the news is done, the anchors have gone, and the cameramen are packing up, one of them swings the camera over to one of the TV monitors on the edge the set. The TV monitor now displays itself, since the camera is pointed at it. What is on the TV screen within the TV? Another set with another TV of course! And, as you've probably have seen for yourself, this effect goes on to infinity...or theoretically goes on to infinity, but in reality stops at the resolution of the camera. The resulting image is an absurd repetition of TV images buried in more TVs, on and on and on. TVs "referring" to themselves is a strange situation indeed.

This is what Hofstadter classifies as a "Strange Loop" or "Tangled Hierarchy," in which A leads to B, which leads C, which somehow magically leads back to A. Perhaps you may recall a famous optical illusion where monk-like people trudge down stairs on the top of a castle, and although all of the stairs go "down," the small people end up back where they started. That's an Escher, by the way. So is the picture of a waterfall turning a mill which lets the water out on to a stream that somehow flows back down (up?) to the top of the waterfall. So is the picture of two hands emerging from a picture, drawing each other. As you can see, Escher's world is one full of Tangled Hierarchies, put forth in the most visually jarring ways.

Although Escher's work helps to visualize the strangeness of these loops, Hofstadter is first and foremost a scientist, and will attack these logic pretzels through formal mathematics. It is then that Hofstadter introduces Kurt Godel into the mix of things. Godel used the Strange Loop concept (not by name, of course) to do something both ingenious and disruptive--he proved that there could never be a complete and consistent mathematical system. Godel's role does take some explaining: In brief, before the early 20th century, theoretical mathematicians--in all of their brainy bravado--believed that they could eventually produce a system of mathematics that was complete and internally consistent. That is to say, they thought that they could devise the perfect system, where all truths would be provable and everything provable would be true.

Godel's work simply shows the magic of simple statements like "This sentence is false," (which is another example of a Strange Loop) can be translated into mathematical jargon and disrupt logical paradise. The details are gnarled and, I'll admit a few neurons were warped in the process of the understanding them. Nevertheless, the end result is crystal clear: Godel's Incompleteness Theorem demonstrated that some statements can be known to be true, but cannot be proven within their respective system. Thus, no system can be mathematically perfect.

Now, you should know that this search for these "air tight" systems was not just some current academic fad. It was a strong belief by many mathematicians, for hundreds of years, that number theory could be perfected and completed. So it was a huge event in the history of mathematics when a 25-year-old Austrian, barely out of graduate school, destroys any hope of achieving this end. And, of course, it's all the more intriguing for our story to realize that it was a Strange Loop that was used to strangle mathematical perfection.

So, what does all of this have to do with your consciousness? Let's keep the suspense about the big question, and answer the second one first. Johann Sebastian Bach was a mathematician's musician. If you have never heard Bach's work (which is improbable...you probably just didn't know it was Bach), then download one of his Fugue's or the Goldberg Variations, and you will here something that might well be described as "the music of numbers." Bach's works were full of inversions, transformations, and expansions--terms usually left to Algebra II textbooks. Yet, Bach could devise simple melodies which could be inverted (essentially take the notes and put them upside down on the staff), reversed (play it backwards), and transposed (played in a different key) and somehow these transformations could be put together with the original melody and produce beautiful, complex harmonies.

Bach also produced an interesting tune, known as the Crab Canon, which--through subtle melodic shifts that are barely noticable--rises to higher and higher keys until...it gets to the original one. Kind of like a...yep, Tangled Hierarchy.

So, that's all the steam I have for now. Yet Hofstadter keeps going. The book is over 700 pages. I'm barely at 300. I will let you ponder how consciousness may fit into Hofstadter's theme, partially to give you something to think about, partially because I don't entirely know myself.

The Ascent of Castel Aragonese

I said, almost jokingly, when I first saw the castle that we had to explore it. I mean, that's who I am, in my idealized heart--the intrepid, 19th-century explorer. The castle was an island off the coast of an island, a drop of land that seemed to be created for the divine purpose of guarding the Mediterranean paradise of Ischia Ponte. Had I a less scientific and more theistic view of things, I would easily believe it.

The castle was carved out of the island's stone, seemeing to emerge organically from the shear rocks, like a fine sculpture. I figured that even if we couldn't access the castle, it was still an incredible sight; besides, it was hard to be dissappointed on Ischia. Greg, who's good fortune had taken him to many places in this wide world, commented that Ischia had to be one of the most gorgeous places he'd ever seen. As the ferry boat made waves through perfectly blue water, I found myself smiling for perhaps the one-thousandth time, happy that I threw in all of my chips (most of which were borrowed) and went on the UF trip to Italy.

The island of Ischia lies just west of Naples--a big and dirty city, older than Rome and all the worse for wear--near the famed Isle of Capri, which is said to be even more breathtaking than Ischia... a concept I find hard to imagine. Ischia is not well known to Americans or the British; in fact, most tourists there are either Germans or Italians themselves, taking a break from the mainland heat during the summer. Its small towns and villages skirt the island's coasts, for Ischia's heart is Mt. Epomeo, a dormant volcano that was the driving force of island's geologic birth.

Ischia's towns were essentially small groupings of shops and homes, with all the requisite cracking paint and uneven shingles, nestled together in that specifically Italian way, as if the buildings were all old friends, unchanging through time, with transient occupants that were given the rare privilege to bask in their camaraderie.

In the four days that we were on Ischia, I had made friends with those buildings, and those people. Everyone from the gelateria lady to the friendly family who owned the "hotel" (more like a big house) where we stayed. Sam and I, one night, sat on their porch, speaking only Italian with them for at least an hour, as their whole family--aunts, cousins, nephews, brothers--came strolling down the street to join them before dinner. A whole enormous family on one street block, as if mass globalization and the 21st-century were something that never noticed the people of Ischia.

Another night was the exciting "partita di futbol" between US and Italy--a match-up that revealed the fairweather side of the UF in Rome trip: none of us, save for Kyle, even considered cheering for Gli Americani. I mean, we were trying to blend in, you know? Well, hell, honestly who wants to be rooting for the "other" guys in a town when everyone is in the streets and bars, crowding the roads like its a festival, all for a soccer game? We were Italiani.

Other small moments of interest: climbing Mt. Epomeo, visiting a private beach and dipping into the icy Mediterranean, discussing philosophy in a hut, and....yes, we absolutely got into that castle.

Another perfect idea

"In the end, we self-perceiving, self-inventing, locked-in mirages are little miracles of self-reference. […] Our very nature is such as to prevent us from fully understanding its very nature. Poised midway between the unvisualizable cosmic vastness of curved spacetime and the dubious, shadowy flickerings of charged quanta, we human beings, more like rainbows and mirages than like raindrops or boulders, are unpredictable self-writing poems — vague, metaphorical, ambiguous, and sometimes exceedingly beautiful."
-Douglas R. Hofstadter