Happy Phi Day!

As you may not be aware, we have declared today, 14 August, to be Phi Day. Here at The Finch & Pea we don’t go in for the superficial assignment of such days to the date that looks like the estimated value of important numbers in your particular dating system (eg, putting Pi Day on 14 March).

Phi is also known as the Golden Ratio. While it can be expressed as the number 1.618…, Phi is an irrational number, which means that the decimal portion goes on infinitely without repeating. So, any simple numerical expression is just an estimate and does not represent the true meaning of the number.

Phi represents a particular ratio of segments. If we take the regular pentagram (composed of lines of equal length) on the right. The ratios of red:green, green:blue, and blue:pink are all equal to Phi.

If we imagine that the year is a line that is 365.25 days long, we can divide it into two segments whose ratio to each other is Phi. Dividing at Day 226 gives us the ratio 226/139.25 = 1.623*.

The 226th day of a regular calendar year is 14 August*. Happy Phi Day!

*Ideally, we’d go for Day 225.75, which is 6PM on 14 August, but then we’d have to decide on a time zone.

**In a regular year, 226/139 = 1.625. In a leap year, 14 August is Day 227, which gives us 227/139 = 1.633. 13 August is a bit better in a leap year (226/140 = 1.614); but I think there is something to be said for a consistent day on the calendar.

Rufus Wainwright and growing up immersed in music

Last week the Association for Psychological Science posted a summary for a session called Music, Mind and Brain. While it’s far from my academic area, I always enjoyed reading about research into the physiological, neurological and social effects of music. Even more than usual though, this one caught my attention. After several scholarly presentations the panel concluded with remarks from bassist Victor Wooten. He made some very interesting comments about how we should begin to treat musical education more like first language learning. Continue reading “Rufus Wainwright and growing up immersed in music”

Only if I get superpowers

Next month I will be boarding a flight at Dulles International Airport. The last flight I took was also out of Dulles and I became familiar with their security screening; almost every security line passes through one of the backscatter x-ray scanning machines. Normally, I’m pretty cavalier about most things but when agreeing to undergo a whole body x-ray, outside a hospital, I’d like to know the risks. In 2010, a group of scientists at UCSF, including a biophysicist and an oncologist, wrote a letter to the Assistant of Science and Technology reporting directly to the president, voicing their serious concerns about the safety of these devices. They felt that the data presented by the manufacturer was misleading and did not appropriately address whether this high dose of x-rays into the skin was truly safe. Fellow blogger Mike addressed this issue back in 2010. Since the time of the letter, there has been little research done on actual scanners because “security concerns” prevent the TSA from allowing scanners into public hands.

Several radiologists have stated that these scanners are probably not harmful to those who travel just a few times per  year. It is possible that older people, children and pregnant women are at a greater risk of DNA damage from ionizing radiation. It is also a public health concern when a large population of Americans who travel frequently or work in airports, are screened very often.  A recent scientific study shows evidence that these x-rays delivered at the specification of the scanning machine, can deliver radiation to internal organs.  These specifications also assume that the scanning machine is operating properly. Between May 2010 and May 2011 there were 3,778 service calls made about mechanical issues with back-scatter machines.

But why expose people to x-rays at all? Fellow blogger Josh has written about the cost benefit ratio involved in deciding whether risk of x-ray exposure is worth the potential to stop a terrorist. If there is a technology which can also detect non-metallic objects without delivering ionizing radiation, then its use should be promoted. An alternative to the backscatter x-ray is the millimeter wave scanning technology, which many airports already use. This method eliminates the worry that there may be potential side effects of screening all passengers and screening some passengers a great number of times.

For now, my choice is x-ray induced superpowers or a TSA pat-down. I’ve always wanted a superpower.

“The Failure of the Science Fiction Novel as Social Criticism”

I’ve been digging into my new Library of America copy of The Space Merchants. The book is an outstanding example of science fiction as social criticism. And so it’s interesting to read C.M. Kornbluth’s thoughts on the failure of the science fiction novel as social criticism:

I suggest from this that there is very little fundamental material in the “Skylark” universe which is congruent with adulthood. I suggest that there is much fundamental material in that universe congruent with the attitudes and emotions of a boy seven or nine years old tearing off down an alley on his bike in search of adventure. The politics of this boy are vague, half-understood, overheard adult dogmatisms. His sex-life is a bashful, inhibited yearning for unspecific contact. His cultural level is low; he has not had time to learn to like anything seriously musical. Around the corner there lurks the impossibly malignant black-haired bully who may be all of twelve, and his smart little toady. But Dicky Seaton has a loyal pal, Marty Crane, and together they will whip the bully and toady in a fair, stand-up fight.

What are these wild adventures of Seaton and Crane, then? These mighty conquests, these vast explorations, these titanic battles? They are boyish daydreams, the power of fantasies which compensate for the inevitable frustrations of childhood in an adult world. They are the weakness of the Smith stories as rational pictures of the universe and society, and they are the strength of the stories as engrossing tales of Never-Never Land. We have all been children.

Continue reading ““The Failure of the Science Fiction Novel as Social Criticism””

Sunday Science Poem: Modernists and Darwin

Modernist writers and artists were heavily influenced by the remarkable series of heavily popularized, late 19th, early 20-th century scientific findings that can still stir controversy today. The work of Darwin and Einstein in particular, as well as the less scientific work of Freud contributed to the notion that human nature was not what it used to be. The mechanized mass slaughter of World War I appeared to verify the modern picture of humans as driven by unconscious drives and primordial animal urges.

T.S. Elliot’s poem “Sweeney Among The Nightingales” can be read as a disturbed response to Darwin. The main character, Apeneck Sweeney, “the silent vertebrate” is portrayed as an ape who eats ‘oranges bananas figs and hothouse grapes’ in a café while being hit on by prostitutes. Against these animal images Eliot placed allusions to and images from classical literature – a literature which, despite the rampant violence and depravity it depicts, portrays humans as noble and heroic.

 
Apeneck Sweeney spreads his knees	
Letting his arms hang down to laugh,	
The zebra stripes along his jaw	
Swelling to maculate giraffe.	
 
The circles of the stormy moon	       
Slide westward toward the River Plate,	
Death and the Raven drift above	
And Sweeney guards the horned gate.	
 
Gloomy Orion and the Dog	
Are veiled; and hushed the shrunken seas;	        
The person in the Spanish cape	
Tries to sit on Sweeney’s knees	
 
Slips and pulls the table cloth	
Overturns a coffee-cup,	
Reorganized upon the floor	        
She yawns and draws a stocking up;	
 
The silent man in mocha brown	
Sprawls at the window-sill and gapes;	
The waiter brings in oranges	
Bananas figs and hothouse grapes;	        
 
The silent vertebrate in brown	
Contracts and concentrates, withdraws;	
Rachel née Rabinovitch	
Tears at the grapes with murderous paws;	
 
She and the lady in the cape	        
Are suspect, thought to be in league;	
Therefore the man with heavy eyes	
Declines the gambit, shows fatigue,	
 
Leaves the room and reappears	
Outside the window, leaning in,	        
Branches of wistaria	
Circumscribe a golden grin;	
 
The host with someone indistinct	
Converses at the door apart,	
The nightingales are singing near	        
The Convent of the Sacred Heart,	
 
And sang within the bloody wood	
When Agamemnon cried aloud,	
And let their liquid droppings fall	
To stain the stiff dishonoured shroud.