WWBD?

In a new column on Baseball Prospectus I ask the question on every one's mind, "What Would Bacon Do?" (WWBD?).

No, not Kevin Bacon but Sir Francis Bacon the English philosopher and statesman. The question of course is what would Bacon think of Derek Jeter's defensive ability and the recent hub-ub surrounding it. Using Bacon's new-fangled inductive method of reasoning and his "idols" construct for categorizing the frailties of human reasoning, we come to a conclusion regarding The Captain. Enjoy.

On Evangelicals and Climate Change

Last week I had the opportunity to listen to a talk given by an evangelical Christian leader to an audience of primarily evangelicals on the topic of global climate change. Given the rancor that sometimes accompanies this issue, it was a bit of surprise as were some of the reactions I observed afterwards. But this subject has been on my mind for the last few months after attending a lecture given by Dr. Richard Alley, professor of geosciences at Penn State University in State College, Pennsylvania, last June at the Denver Science Museum and having just finished reading Tim Flannery's 2006 book The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth.

Actually, I hadn't kept up with the most recent surveys on evangelicals' views on climate change and so after the talk I took a look around and found that in one recent study 33% of evangelical Christians describe global warming as a "major issue" while the numbers are over 50% for people of other faiths or of no faith. The results were culled from a Barna poll and were based on nationwide surveys conducted on 1,007 adults in January 2007 and 1,004 adults in July-August 2007. They break down like this:

Percentage That Agree Global Warming is a Major Issue
Evangelical Christians                 33%
Non-evangelical born again Christians  55%
Notional Christians                    59%
Non-Christians of other faiths         61%
Agnostics and atheists                 69%

and the article goes on to give the following percentages within Christianity although it's not clear if this is in response to the same question...

Catholic      59%
Protestants   52%
Mainline      59%
Non-mainline  49%

However, another study referenced in a CBS commentary and done by CBS found that 46% of evangelicals "think global warming is having a serious impact on the environment" as compared to 52% of the population as whole. Obviously the wording of the question has a lot to do with the answers but it's possible that this signals a shrinking of the gap as discussed in this recent Washington Post piece..

Regardless, the gap still exists and the reasons for it and why it tends to shrinks as you go from evangelical to non-evangelical and Protestant to Catholic are intriguing. While I'm not sociologist I'll venture a few guesses based on my own experience and the reactions I observed last week.

A Conspiracy wrapped in a Hoax. Within the evangelical community there is certainly an emphasis on prophecy and end times events as evidenced by the popularity of the Left Behind series which focuses on one particular (and historically recent) interpretation of the book of Revelation. In that vein one of the conditions or preconditions for the rise of the anti-Christ that is often discussed is the formation of a one-world government that, interestingly enough dovetails with other groups who fear the same thing. And so many evangelicals feel that global climate change and the kind of international treaties it may produce (Kyoto) is just the kind of issue that could be used to hasten the creation of a one-world system as people look from national to international solutions. Christians of other stripes don't as often take this view of the book of Revelation and therefore this issue doesn't arise. Oh, and it doesn't help that in the U.S. one of the main advocates of climate change has been a traditional enemy of conservatives and that a large majority of evangelicals are political conservatives.

Scientific Skepticism. Spurred on by the very prevalent belief in young-earth creationism many evangelicals chafe when the discussion turns to the scientific consensus on climate change let alone things like ice cores showing temperature patterns that go back hundreds of thousands of years. On the former issue young earth creationists already believe that the scientific consensus on the pattern and history of life is fatally flawed and so disbelieving in the human connection with climate change is not only to be expected but is actually easier to deny than is biological evolution. As to the latter, the belief that the earth is only around 10,000 years old means that climate reconstructions and talk of previous ice ages (or even the most recent one) are unconvincing to the say the least. And of course there's a liberal sprinkling of myths that circulate as well including the one about volcanoes emitting more CO2 than man-made sources (in actuality human sources are 130-150 times more potent). Once again, other stripes of Christianity don't hold this view and in fact young earth creationism is almost entirely restricted to the U.S.

Dissonance with God's Plan. Although it seems simple on the surface one of the primary issues may simply be the belief that the all powerful God is in control of his creation and so Christians needn't worry. This would make sense but I think it goes a little deeper and reflects a feeling of dissonance with the idea of God commanding mankind to proliferate and subdue the earth. If indeed not only the industrial revolution but all of mankind's activity on the earth for the past 10,000 years (the so-called "Anthropocene") has brought about these changes, something would seem amiss with God's plan. One would think this conflict would arise in other flavors of Christianity as well but perhaps their view of God's plan is somewhat less deterministic.

A Question of Priority.
Finally, there are many evangelicals who simply believe that Christians should be focusing on other more pressing social issues. While that's an argument I can certainly respect, there would seem to be no reason why one would necessarily preclude the other and Christians couldn't both focus on issues like the right to life and the environment.

In the end this seemed to be the main point made by the speaker I heard last week. Christians can all agree that we have a responsibility both to our fellow man, especially the poor and the oppressed, and to be stewards of the creation. In the area of climate change these go hand in hand since by caring for the environment we can help lesson or avoid the deleterious effects, most of which will be felt by the poor whom Christians are called to serve.

The Majestic Mangonel

So last night my wife discovers that on Tuesday my 6th grade daughter is to have created a catapult or trebuchet for science class, much to my surprise.

Although there weren't many parameters other than that it had to fire a golf ball into a newspaper wall and be about 2 feet tall, we Googled a little to see what we were up against. What we discovered was that there are a few sites that sell plans and a few others that show photos and so we worked from there. In the end we decided to base our catapult on a design called the Mangonel (from the Greek word "magganon" meaning an engine of war) which was descended from the Roman onager (Greek for "wild ass" nicknamed as such because it kicked like a mule when discharged).

In any case we spent about an hour last night planning and then three and half more this morning completing the project and thought we should provide some instructions for those like us who might need to do something similar in the future.

In order to provide the force the mangonel relies on torsion from a twisted cord in which the arm is inserted. We decided to use one of those black rubber straps used to fasten items to a car carrier. We replaced the metal hook with a small drill bit and threaded the bit through both ends of the strap creating a loop.

For the base we used some 3.5" by .5" boards and cut two of them 24" in length. We then drilled a 1 1/8" hole 10" from one end in both boards. After measuring the length of the strap when pulled taught we cut two more boards 16.25" in length. After screwing them all together we had our frame.

When the arm is released it's stopped by a pad and so we simply put one more board on top and fastened another 13" board in the center and used a rubber band to secure a bit of foam to the top.

Finally, we added two boards to the bottom so it would sit up a little along with cardboard wheels to give it that historical touch.

To load the catapult we ran the strap through one of the holes pulling it taught at the end with the drill bit. It took a little force but together we were able to pull the loop end through the other hole and slide a stick of sun block in it. Now the strap (or skein in the technical sense) is pretty tight. From there we slid the arm, which was a wood strip about 1.5" wide and cut to 18", into the middle of the strap at the center. By twisting the drill bit on one side and the stick of sun block on the other you can then create the tension in the strap. After about 8 turns we found the sun block would start turn back so we added a small piece of wood to the top that can be turned to stop it from twisting backwards. At this point the arm wants to swing forward and so we put two nails in the board on which the arm rests and a rubber band between them to hold it down and act as the trigger.

On the arm itself we created a small cardboard cup in which the golf ball rests and used duct tape to secure it.

All that's left is to load the golf ball and fire by releasing the rubber band and the arm swings up and releases the ball as it hits the padded board. It doesn't fire as hard as I had imagined and ends up propelling the ball about five feet on a line. Of course, the more you twist the strap the more force you get.

Einstein: His Life and Universe

"I think physicists are the Peter Pans of the human race. They never grow up and they keep their curiosity." - Nobel Prize winner Isidor Isaac Rabi

Throughout my entire elementary, middle school, high school and college educations I never had occasion to read a real biography of, write a paper on, or let alone actually study the technical work of Albert Einstein. Thinking about it now it sounds hard to believe but my only exposure to the famous equation E=mc² came from a book on science we had in our home (related to our antiquated encyclopedia set I think but can't recall anymore) that I picked up around the time I was twelve years old or so. I do recall thinking how simple and elegant that formulation is and, once I learned how fast the speed of light really was, trying to wrap my around the idea that such a small amount of matter could contain such a large amount of energy (a kilogram of mass if converted completely into energy would yield 25 billion kilowatt hours of electricity).


For Einstein the construction of the formula that equated mass and energy was merely a coda to his "miracle year" of 1905 which he published in a three-page paper in September titled "Does the Inertia of a Body Depend on it's Energy Content?" That was last of his papers from that year which also saw him devise the quantum theory of light, help prove the existence of atoms, explain Brownian motion, and of course produce the special theory of relativity in addition to what proved to be the most famous equation in science. As with much of Einstein's work, Walter Isaacson does a masterful job of taking the general reader through not only the chronology but the big ideas behind these discoveries and their historical context in his new biography Einstein: His Life and Universe. I had the pleasure of making Einstein and his world a more or less constant companion over the last two months and can say I thoroughly enjoyed the company.

The book is the first of what will likely be several new biographies of Einstein that draw on a set of letters newly published in 2006 by the Einstein Papers Project at Caltech. Most of these are personal letters and provide additional insight to Einstein's relationship with family and friends and Isaacson seems to quote from them liberally as he provides a straightforward chronology. That chronology is much more detailed from the time of his birth in 1879 through the completion of the general theory of relativity in 1915 and picks up speed considerably after that and especially from the time of his immigration to the United States in the early 1930s to where only scattered events from his final decade of life are mentioned.

But even if the book doesn't detail all the chronology, Isaacson does a wonderful job as he did with Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, in chronicling the key intellectual development, struggles, and triumphs of his subject. This is particularly evident in the chapters on the miracle year and the march leading up to the paper on general relativity. In the latter case what we learn in the book and what I found especially fascinating was that Einstein simultaneously pursued parallel physical and mathematical strategies in his quest to generalize relativity. The physical approach had to comport with Newton's laws and Einstein's own intuition about the physical world (on which he heavily relied in his earlier work) while the mathematical strategy was based on work previously done by Bernahrd Reimann among others. As the story is told in the book the mathematical approach, much to Einstein's surprise since his physical intuition served him so well in his earlier successes while he sometimes derided a reliance on pure mathematics, was the winner while the physical approach ultimately cost him several years as he attempted to refine what is known as his Entwurf theory (German for "outline"). This interesting detail has an appeal since it highlights the effectiveness of taking multiple approaches to solving a problem. The trick of course is in being able to work both sides simultaneously and this episode shows how even a genius had some difficulty in doing so.

As a side note to this narrative, Isaacson chronicles what turned out to be a race with mathematician David Hilbert in the fall of 1915 to publish the final equations after the two had corresponded earlier in the summer. In fact Hilbert published a version of the final equations on November 20 while Einstein didn't deliver the fourth in a series of lectures where he finalized his equations on November 25th. Although there has been some controversy over the priority of general relativity as a result, it was discovered about a decade ago that Hilbert changed his paper in December based on Einstein's version. In any case Hilbert always gave priority to Einstein.

In addition to the key episodes and papers, the book paints a portrait of Einstein's beliefs about the physical world and how those subtly changed over time. From his early career Einstein was heavily influenced by his reading of Ernst Mach who insisted that concepts only had meaning if one could create an operational definition of them and who derided Newton's views of "absolute space" and "absolute time" as a "monstrosity". This skepticism of received wisdom and adherence to what is observable helped Einstein break through the earlier framework when his contemporaries, who had all the same data, simply could not. But while Einstein would later abandon Mach after his general theory and instead rely more on his intuition about reality, Baruch Spinoza was also a huge influence and his belief in a deterministic universe would stay with Einstein until the end. When confronted with the implications of the revolution he started in quantum physics and its reliance on chance, Einstein famously couldn't believe that at the heart of all things determinism didn't rein despite the growing evidence that he was wrong. As a result he spent the remaining 30 years of his life in a quest to find a unified field theory that would marry electricity and magnetism with gravity and quantum mechanics that culminated with twelve pages of equations he scribbled in his last days in the hospital.

While Isaacson does a nice job of describing Einstein's sparring with the "young turks" of quantum physics including Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, a second book titled Uncertainty: Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr, and the Struggle for the Soul of Science by David Lindley documents that struggle in more detail. In particular Lindley includes in-depth portraits of Heisenberg, Bohr, and Erwin Schrodinger among others as well as the debates that raged in the famous Solvay conferences that occurred primarily between the first and second world wars.

As the years went on, of course, Einstein became known almost as much for his political views as for his scientific accomplishments which were increasingly seen as ancient history. His revulsion at the strict militaristic school he briefly attended as a youth instilled in him a deep disdain both for conformity and the military. It wasn't surprising that he embraced both socialism and pacifism through a refusal of individuals to bear arms, although the latter was markedly softened in the face of German militarism and anti-Semitism in the 1930s. Later he would advocate a world government with its own military which was enforced by his personal lack of nationalistic feeling. He never felt at home in the country of his birth, although he lived in Berlin for many years primarily because his second wife Elsa was from there, as he preferred first Switzerland and later America where he became a citizen in June of 1940. At the same time events in Europe increased his awareness of and solidarity with his Jewish heritage and throughout the book his support of and sometimes entanglement with the Zionist movement (including his dealings with Hebrew University and being offered the presidency of Israel much to David Ben-Gurion's displeasure) are discussed.

Isaacson also spends a good deal of the last few chapters in recounting Einstein's peripheral role in the development of the atomic bomb after having help draft the letter to President Roosevelt outlining the possibility. More entertainingly he describes the somewhat slapstick efforts by the FBI to obtain information and build a dossier on him while completely missing the one true Soviet spy he consorted with and whom he had an affair after the death of his second wife Elsa. Finally, he also talks a good bit about Einstein's firm resistance to McCarthyism. For Isaacson, Einstein valued political systems that cultivated personal freedom and especially freedom of thought. In America he saw as primary the first amendment and continued to speak out on a variety of issues despite the strictures that the Red Scare induced.

In the end Isaacson concludes that curiosity was the primary driver for Einstein. And when combined with his imagination and ability to visualize the physical reality behind his equations, it created a genius. Although I haven't commented much on the personal portrait the book paints, as with Franklin Isaacson seems to fairly show multiple sides of his personality. Both his warmth towards acquaintances and strangers as well as his self-induced emotional distance accompanying his often uncaring attitude towards his wives (Isaacson touches on but doesn't dwell on several of Einstein's mistresses through the years) and children, are on display. In that regard, which incidentally is a weakness of Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, the book humanizes a figure that for me, as for many others I'm sure, had always been little more than the caricature of the absent-minded professor.

The Family That Couldn't Sleep

In the introduction to the 2006 edition of The Best American Science and Nature Writing, editor and physicist Brian Greene (author of the excellent book Fabric of the Cosmos among others) has this to say about the genre of popular science writing:

Like master chefs, the best science writers pare away all but the most succulent material, trimming details essential to the researcher that would be only a distraction to the reader. And by carefully crafting narrative and using expository devices that showcase the drama of scientific exploration and discovery, popular works can maintain a high level of scientific integrity while making difficult and technical subjects not only accessible but moving and compelling. Good science writing can humanize the abstraction of scientific research by establishing visceral, meaningful connections to questions and issues we care about and by humanizing the scientific process itself. In Einstein's words, scientific research consists of "years of anxious searching in the dark for a truth one feels but cannot find, until a final emergence into the light." A reader who is led to envisage this search, I believe, will start to bridge the gulf between the science and the humanities. The best science writing can have that effect.

Never were truer words spoken than when applied to the book The Family That Couldn't Sleep: A Medical Mystery by D.T. Max.

I purchased this book for my wife, the erstwhile nurse, for Christmas after hearing an interview with Max on NPR's Science Friday. After she finished and recommended the book, it sat on my night stand amongst the collection of books that are either in the queue or in various stages of completion. After finally finishing Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin and Diamond Dollars by Vince Gennaro (I told myself I wouldn't start another until those were complete and I'll write more about the latter in the future) I picked it up and found it even more interesting than I had first imagined.

In short Max tells the story of the research that led to the discovery of prions (pronounced "pree"-on by most but "pry-on" by the British) and their role (such as the state of current research can figure out) in a variety of neurological diseases in humans and other species from the kuru of the Fore people of Papua New Guinea to scrapie in sheep, mad cow disease or BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) in cows and CWD (chronic wasting disease) in deer, to GSS (Gerstmann-Straussler-Scheinker) to CJD (Creutzfeldt-Jakob) and finally to FFI (fatal familial insomnia) which forms the core of the story around which the book is written.

Prion diseases, so the theory goes, are infectious bits of protein that are abnormally structured and cause other proteins with which they come in contact with to fold incorrectly as well through a process akin to crystallization. They are especially fascinating since they appear to be the only kind of disease that takes three distinct forms. Some are inheritable like FFI (termed genetic), others are infectious like Mad Cow, and others (although Max admits in the Afterword that he doesn't really believe this is possible) are accidental (termed sporadic) as is the case with CJD. Prion diseases are also important because they're akin, although not the same much to the disappointment of researchers, to diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Huntington's where defective proteins play a role. Beyond the obvious benefit of helping those who suffer from prion diseases, the hope is that understanding even those diseases that effect relatively few (BSE has killed less than 200 people worldwide despite widespread fear that it would kill millions) will lead to breakthroughs in these diseases that do affect millions.

Just as in Greene's description of what the best popular science writers do, Max humanizes this complex and still not well understood field through the use of two very human stories. The first centers on an Italian family (one of 40 such families in the world where a child of a person with FFI has a 50% chance of contracting the disease) whose various branches have likely suffered from FFI since at least 1765. It was then that, ironically enough, a Venetian doctor probably contracted FFI, a disease which typically strikes around 50 years of age and causes its sufferers to sweat profusely, their pupils to contract to pinpricks, as they eventually to lose sleep to the point where they often hallucinate and eventually die of exhaustion. In the end their brains, especially that part that controls autonomic (not under conscious control) impulses like sweating and sleep, are almost entirely eaten away as misfolded proteins ravage the brain. Max traces the disease to the present day recounting the lives and deaths of many of the family members and the family's struggle to come to grips with the implications of their disease in the modern world where research holds out some hope of progress. Having some understanding that the disease is brought on by stress, most of the family had lived under the unspoken rule that, as in the words of one family member, "the best way to prevent the disease was not to mention it." Much of that has changed thouhh and now the family has even created an association to raise money and reach out to other FFI families.

Interspersed with this often heart wrenching account is the story of the scientists who first encountered the prion disease kuru in humans (spread through the funerary feasts of the tribe where body parts of dead relatives were consumed) after "first contact" with the Fore people in Papua New Guinea in the 1940s. The most interesting character in this vein of the story is Carlton Gajdusek, the scientist with pedophillic tendencies who worked among the Fore tribe and who received a Nobel Prize for his work on prions. Max then chronicles the various lines of research and accompanying animosity in the scientific community as well as perhaps the most polarizing figure, Stanley Prusiner, who also won a Nobel Prize and coined the word "prion". This part of the account takes on the air of a mystery while discussing the various approaches and theories that came and went in the years since kuru was discovered. From that perspective the book appears to be fair in its attribution of the contributions made not only by Gajdusek and Prusiner but many others as well who often did not receive the credit due them. And most importantly Max is up front in acknowledging what we don't know and gives the reader a sense of the uncertainty, hence the mystery, still to be solved. That may not always be satisfying since we love our stories to have endings, but is intellectually honest and I think that's all we can ask of any writer.

Woven into both these stories are a good deal of the political and social history of the kuru epidemic, scrapie in sheep going back to the late 1700s, Mad Cow in England in the 1980s and 1990s, and finally CWD and the hint of Mad Cow in America in the present even detailing the conspiracy theories of the "Creutzfeldt Jakobins", as Max calls them, who believe there is a massive cover up underway. In the end, Max is hard on the British and American governments and uses the infectious transmission of prions as an object lesson in the dangers of human arrogance.

An excellent book and one that exemplifies what is best in popular science writing.