My old mentor and friend, Peter Saeta, is writing a Statistical Mechanics textbook (whimsically titled, Statistical and Thermal Physics). I just received a draft copy to review. Peter probably thinks I’m doing him a big favor, but the truth is I am deeply honored that he would seek my input on this.

(You can probably tell that even after several years, I’m still having trouble with the transition from hero-worship to friendship here. Bear with me.)

See, years ago, I wanted to be Peter. Ok, maybe I wanted to dress a little sharper, but other than that, Peter was where it was at. The problem was that I wasn’t really cut out for it. Here’s the thing about experimental physics — when you’re starting out, you need to learn an awful lot about an awful lot, awful fast. For example, a typical condensed-matter physicist would need proficiency in:

• vacuum systems
• low-temperature physics and cryogens
• system administration (UNIX or NT)
• digital electronics
• analog electronics
• at least one programming language
• lithography and semiconductor processing
• machining (mostly lathe and mill)
• general physics knowledge
• general mathematical knowledge

There are a very small number of people who are
A) mathematically inclined and who B) ferociously and fearlessly attack
any new learning situation that they’re thrown into, no matter what.
People who are both A) and B) should be scientists. People who are only A)
should be engineers. (And people who are terrified of learning anything
new at all should be programmers.)
Personally, I can handle one or two new things just
fine… but eight or ten? Nope. I wish it were otherwise, but no.

So Peter managed to crank out the rough draft of
Statistical and Thermal Physics in about three months.
There’s your famous physicist’s tenacity for you. I don’t think Peter knows
what writer’s block is.
Anyway, I’m definitely looking forward to reading it.
The funny thing is that Stat Mech was never really
my strong suit… I was more of a Quantum Mech and E&M kind of guy.
(Strangely, I was never big on Theo Mech, even though it shares a fair
amount of math with E&M. Go figure.) Many students have trouble with
Stat Mech, because, well, it’s kind of weird and abstract… and that’s weird
and abstract by a physicist’s standards, which should tell you
something. I wish I had some analogies or some good examples for
why this is, but I don’t. I bet if push comes to shove, I can steal
something from Peter…

Michael Williams, a 28-year-old congressional candidate in Alabama, has suggested that we tax science-fiction to help fund NASA. According to the article, the consensus is that Williams is a loon. Well, let’s give him some credit: if Williams is a loon, he is a loon who has parlayed his looniness into at least several hundred thousand dollars worth of free publicity.

The tax proposal, of course, is impractical to say the least. The most obvious problem is that it is nearly impossible to define what science-fiction is. Defining genres is an interesting parlor game, to be sure — but it would get a lot less fun once real money was on the line. However, I kinda sorta see Williams’s point. The problem with NASA is that it spends its money on science-fiction driven goals such as putting humans in space — rather than doing science.

Take the International Space Station (please!). The construction budget has eaten into the budget for scientifc experiments to the point where they can only support the maintenance of the station… because they have no money to support the four civilian crew members who would be running the actual experiments. Unless the ISS gets another huge budget increase, the entire $125 billion dollar project will merely serve to establish a human presence in space.

Then there’s the Space Shuttle. My college once invited Freeman Dyson to speak, with an informal chat afterwards. I was shocked to discover that Dyson hated the Space Shuttle. Whaaat? My formative years had been spent reading Odyssey Magazine, and they had never once mentioned that there was anything bad about the Shuttle. On the other hand, when someone whose brain works on an entirely different plane from yours tells you that one of your cherished beliefs is just flat-out wrong, it behooves you to Investigate Further.

And so I did. And I discovered that contrary to its original design specifications, the Shuttle is not fully reusable, it cannot achieve high Earth orbits, and it is anything but cheap. Worst of all, it has wasted billions of dollars that could have been spent doing research far more efficiently.

Honestly, I’m all for humans in space. But what is our goal here? If it’s to do science, let’s do science. If it’s to colonize space — great. But we need to develop the next couple of generations of materials and propulsion systems so that it becomes cost-effective. Unfortunately, because our technology is so primitive right now, the sad fact is that if you do one, you hobble the other.

When China announces that they have managed to hatch a few chicken eggs in orbit — that’s nice, and I’m sure they’ll gather some interesting data on the effects of space travel on biological organisms. But so what? First, who says that chickens in a tin can in low earth orbit is an accurate simulation of the ships of the future? (Will our ships have better radiation shielding? Will they rotate to simulate gravity? Who knows?) Second, even if the data is valid, we won’t need it until long-term space travel becomes affordable — several decades at least.

Look, we sent some men up in tin cans in the 1960s, and miraculously very few of them died. And we beat the Russkies. Yay us! But space is no longer a pissing contest, and I would rather see the money spent on robot probes. Or heck, vaccination programs. In the meantime, I’m perfectly happy to read books and watch movies… hopefully tax-free.

I did it! I compiled the Dada Engine!
So far I only have it working on the commandline on my webhost’s server.
I haven’t gotten a chance to do much much than run the default scripts.
But I have a new toy to play with… oh boy oh boy oh boy…

From the Yeah, what I said department:
Michael Lewis asks, “Are
Enron Workers Owed Anything?”

For the most part, workers held shares voluntarily and could have sold them, and diversified their
portfolios, at any time. The reason they didn’t is that they were greedy: They had seen Enron’s
stock rocket and decided the smart thing to do was bet that it would keep rocketing. It’s sad for
them that it didn’t, but should the rest of us be responsible for them, any more than we feel
responsible for people who sunk their life savings into TheStreet.com Inc.?

Finally, what no science major should be without:
1001
things to do with liquid nitrogen. Boy do I miss liquid nitrogen.

My favorite item on the list is the first one, making
ice cream — although fer crissakes, you can use better ingredients than
yogurt (as the site suggests). Here’s a
more
sensible recipe… should you just happen to have a dewar lying around.