Coast to Coast

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This Sunday night (Dec. 3) I’ll be appearing on Coast to Coast AM, a popular radio show hosted by Art Bell. The show is broadcast live, starting at 11:00p.m. Pacific time (2:00a.m. Eastern), and runs for three hours. Since I’m sure everyone will want to stay up to listen, you can find your local affiliate here.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the show, Coast to Coast (originated by Bell, now hosted by him on weekends and by George Noory during the week) specializes in discussions of, how shall we put this, esoteric phenomena. UFO’s, psychic powers, ghosts, that sort of thing. The hosts generally take a non-judgmental attitude, while callers and guests have been known to get quite enthusiastic. But the show also tackles more straightforward science topics, as well as politics, religion, civil rights, and what have you. Bad Astronomer Phil Plait has been on the show several times, debunking the craziness of Richard Hoagland and other crackpots.

I won’t be sharing any inside information about alien abductions — we’ll be talking about time travel and the dark sector. Okay, to the untutored eye, those topics don’t seem any more respectable than the paranormal, but we’ll be sticking quite closely to the normal, thanks very much. I hope to get a chance to talk about how respectable science is distinguished from UFO and ghost studies — it’s not quite so easy to move beyond the “I know the difference when I see it” level of distinction. But I think it’s crucially important to preach not only to the converted, but also to the skeptical. The fact that we can talk about dark energy and time travel in a rigorous scientific context should be all the evidence anyone needs that the real world is more than marvelous enough; there’s no reason to cling to ideas that don’t fit in with what we know about science.

And for C2C regulars who are just discovering Cosmic Variance for the first time, here are some older posts that touch on the ideas we’ll be talking about on the show — dark matter, dark energy, and the nature of time. Looking forward to the show!

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What Economists Agree Upon

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Study by Robert Whaples, summarized by Greg Mankiw:

  • 90.1 percent disagree with the position that “the U.S. should restrict employers from outsourcing work to foreign countries.”
  • 87.5 percent agree that “the U.S. should eliminate remaining tariffs and other barriers to trade.”
  • 85.2 percent agree that “the U.S. should eliminate agricultural subsidies.”
  • 85.3 percent agree that “the gap between Social Security funds and expenditures will become unsustainably large within the next fifty years if current policies remain unchanged.”
  • 77.2 percent agree that “the best way to deal with Social Security’s long-term funding gap is to increase the normal retirement age.”
  • 67.1 percent agree that “parents should be given educational vouchers which can be used at government-run or privately-run schools.”
  • 65.0 percent agree that “the U.S. should increase energy taxes.”

They like the free market, don’t they? Well, so do I. I basically agree with all of them except the bit about school vouchers — I even willing to be convinced about that, but the data so far seem to speak strongly against the success of vouchers (as I vaguely recall). The incentive structures don’t really point in the right direction. From the table, note that the above answers lump together “agree” and “strongly agree”; in fact, when it comes to vouchers, the agreement is not strong.

If you disagree with the economists, here’s why. All via Marginal Revolution.

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Preferred Frames of Reference

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Submitted without comment: how to pray facing Mecca from low-Earth orbit. An excerpt from “The Determination of Prayer Times and Direction of the Qiblah in Space,” by Dr. Zainol Abidin Abdul Rashid, translated from Malay by Jessica Ramakrishnan, published in the November issue of Harper’s, and also here. Presented at a conference on Islam and Life in Space.

As trips to space become commonplace, human civilization will no longer be tied to the surface of the Earth. But Muslims, wherever they are- whether on Earth or in space – are bound by duty to perform the obligations of worship.

A Muslim who wants to travel must study the techniques of determining prayer times and the direction of the Qibla ahead of travel in order to achieve complete worship. I will elaborate the method of determining prayer times and the Qiblah direction in space, primarily on the International Space Station (ISS). The ISS is more than 200 miles from the earth’s surface and orbits the earth every ninety-two minutes, or roughly sixteen times a day. Do we have to worship eighty times a day (sixteen orbits a day multiplied by five prayer times?) This seems unlikely, since it is compulsory for a Muslim to pray five times a day according to an Earth day, as determined by Allah during the creation of Heaven and Earth – no matter where in space the Muslim is located.

As for the Qiblah, for Muslims there is only one the Kaaba, located in Mecca. A Qiblah that changes in references to a specific system is not in order! It must be remembered that Allah’s creation is ordered.

A user-friendly, portable Muslims in Space calculator , could determine the direction of the Qiblah and prayer times on the ISS. Its essential feature would be the use of the Projected Earth and Qiblah Pole concepts. These are based on the interpretation of the holy house of angels in the sky above Mecca. The place is always rich with angels worshipping. As many as 70,000 angels circumambulate it every day. Thus, one virtual Qiblah pole can be taken as a universal reference to determine the direction of the Qiblah. When Earth is projected to the height of the ISS, every point on its surface is projected also, including the Qiblah point, which can be projected upwards and downwards along the Qiblah Pole. This allows the direction of the Qiblah to be determined in space and in the bowels of the Earth.

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Orbitz is the Workshop of Satan

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In China Mieville’s Perdido Street Station, there is a scene in which Mayor Rudgutter parleys with the ambassador of Hell. It’s a negotiation he has performed before, but is nevertheless disconcerting; although the ambassador appears as a well-spoken and immaculately dressed man, his words are accompanied by a faint echo from deep in the Pit below, “in the appalling shriek of one undergoing torture.”

I’m pretty sure I heard the same thing on the phone with Orbitz last night.

Our story begins several months ago, when I booked a round-trip ticket to attend a conference in Greece. (I normally wouldn’t even bother relating this little adventure, except that extensive focus-grouping has revealed that readers love nothing more than chronicles of our travel-related follies.) It was in September, just after I had moved to LA, and various things came up that couldn’t be neglected — unfortunately, and uncharacteristically, I ended up canceling the trip at the last minute. Which was too bad, as I had paid $1600 for the fare on Orbitz.

But all was not completely lost — they let you keep the unused ticket for up to a year, and later on you can exchange it for some other international trip on the same airline (paying whatever change fees and fare differences apply, of course). As it turns out, I’ll be traveling to England later this month, so last week I attempted to use my credit from the Greece flight to pay for the ticket.

It wasn’t as easy as it might have been. First, despite being one of those explicitly web-based companies that wants you to do everything online, and makes some effort to hide their phone number from you, this specific transaction is one you can’t do on the web, you have to call them up. Where, of course, the department you want to speak to is not one of the options you are given by the automated voice system that answers the phone. But that’s not the issue here. Once I did reach a human being, I explained what I wanted to do, and was told that I needed to mail the paper ticket back to them via a service that could track its progress, and call back once I could demonstrate that the package was in transit.

So okay, I did that, and Sunday called back, ready to get a new itinerary. In fact I had previously gone onto Orbitz and found exactly the itinerary I wanted. It was a little complicated, since I wanted to fly from LAX to London, take the train to Durham a few days later, and then fly back to LA from Durham, but I found a semi-reasonable set of flights that got me back to LA only half an hour after midnight. And a tiny bit of extra trickiness, as the return flight from London to LA (after a short flight from Durham to Heathrow) actually stopped at Dulles for two hours before continuing on with the same flight number — as I painstakingly described to the guy on the phone.

But at least it was a relatively cheap ticket — only $700 or so. Once they added a $200 change fee and various miscellaneous gouging add-ons, the whole thing came to about $1000. Which was less than the $1600 I had originally spent, so I was going to be out about $600. (What, you didn’t think they were just going to give it back to me, did you?) But I accepted that, as you always lose big-time when you try to make such changes.

But then yesterday when they emailed me the itinerary, there was a bit of a surprise. (Yes, for some reason it takes a day to email the itinerary — some times the Tubes are just a little clogged, you know.) And the return flight had me going from London to Dulles and staying there, not continuing on to LAX. I might not even have noticed, had I not gone to choose seats on the flight — all of the flight numbers and departure times were right, which is all I usually pay attention to.

So I called again, and explained the problem. In particular, I explained that I had asked to take that flight all the way back to LAX, and their agent had obviously not typed that in, which was their mistake. They pointed out that the agent verified the itinerary with me before booking it, which I’m ready to believe is true. It was my mistake not to catch that the flight he had me on didn’t continue to LA, although an easy mistake to make — that’s what happens when you pay attention primarily to the flight numbers and departure times.

Can they fix things by putting me on the flight that I had asked for, the leg going from Dulles to LAX? Sure they can — for the fare difference, plus another $200 change fee, for a total of $300 extra. Even though they had screwed up? Yes. Could that $300 come out of the $600 of free money I was already giving them? No. How many minutes of frustrating phone conversation would it take to uncover these pleasant truths? About 45.

So $300 of my money has disappeared into the ether, as the result of an easily-correctable mistake. It’s not my first bad experience with Orbitz — they are notorious for doing things slightly wrong, and making them nearly impossible to fix, or at least gouging you whenever a fix is required. For example, if you book a hotel through them, the hotel is completely unable to fix or alter anything about the reservation; only Orbitz can do so, and they’re not always so helpful about it. (Other examples of Orbitz’s evil ways here, here, here.) But it will be my last, as I’m not going to be using them any more.

In fact, I’d like to call for a boycott. If I remember correctly, Bill O’Reilly was able to bring down the government of France by asking his listeners to stay away from French products. Surely if CV readers stayed away from Orbitz in droves, the company would spiral into a tailspin of bankruptcy and shame. (Or at least give me a sense of personal vengeance, which is more important.) So let’s get on that right away, okay? It’s about time we used the power this blog to make the world a better place.

And suggestions for alternative sensible ways to make complicated travel arrangements are welcome.

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Lost in Translation

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I love the internets, because they know more about the ancient Greeks than I do. Timaeus is one of Plato’s Socratic dialogues, the one that deals with the origin of the universe. (Long story short: the demiurge created our universe, but not out of nothing; rather, by organizing some of the pre-existing chaos.) It’s also where Plato talks about Atlantis, and has remained popular for that reason. I don’t know much about Plato, but I do know something about the creation of the universe, so I’ve been invited to a conference on Timaeus to be held in Urbana next year. Which means, I suppose, that I should actually read the thing.

But my ancient Greek is rusty, so I’ll be reading it in translation. Anyone who has made any non-trivial effort to read classics in translation knows that the particular translation makes all the difference in the world — two different translators can render the same text as stilted and incomprehensible or cogent and compelling. But how to choose? I’m not so dedicated to this project that I’m going to pick up six different translations and compare them side by side.

Fortunately — the intertubes have already done it for me! We’ve reached that lovely critical point at which, given any question you have, someone has answered it on a web page somewhere, and Google can lead you to it. A bit of poking around led me to this page by Joseph Wells. He seems more interested in arguing about the existence of Atlantis than in addressing the qualities of different translations, but whatever — I didn’t say your questions would be answered intentionally. The page lists side-by-side tiny excerpts from the Timaeus in six different translations, so you can compare for yourself. For example:

Jowett 1871 Taylor 1793
for in those days the Atlantic was navigable; and there was an island situated in front of the straits which are by you called the Pillars of Heracles; the island was larger than Libya and Asia put together, and was the way to other islands, and from these you might pass to the whole of the opposite continent which surrounded the true ocean; For at that time the Atlantic sea was navigable, and had an island before the mouth which is called by you Pillars of Hercules. But the island was greater than both Libya and all Asia together, and afforded an easy passage to other neighbouring islands; as it was likewise easy to pass from those islands to all the continent which borders on this Atlantis sea.
Bury 1929 Lee 1965
For the ocean there was at that time navigable; for in front of the mouth which you Greeks call, as you say, ‘the pillars of Heracles, there lay an island which was larger than Libya3 and Asia together; and it was possible for the travelers of that time to cross from it to the other islands, and from the islands to the whole of the continent over against them which encompasses that veritable ocean. For in those days the Atlantic was navigable. There was an island opposite the strait which you call the Pillars of Hercules (Straits of Gibraltar), an island larger than Libya (Africa) and Asia combined; from it travelers could in those days reach the other islands, and from them the whole opposite continent which surrounds what can truly be called the ocean.
Kalkavage 2001 Zeyl 2000
For at that time the ocean there could be crossed, since an island was situated in front of the mouth that you people call, so you claim, the Pillars of Hercules. The island was bigger than Libya and Asia together, and from it there was access to the other islands for those traveling at that time, and from the islands to the entire opposing continent that surrounds that true sea. For at that time this ocean was passable, since it had an island in it in front of the strait that you people say you call the Pillars of Heracles. The island was larger than Libya and Asia combined, and it provided passage to the other islands for people who traveled in those days. From those islands one could then travel to the entire continent on the other side, which surrounds that real sea beyond.

What more could you ask for? On this basis I’m going for the Zeyl translation, which seems to read the most like something that could have been written in English. I kind of like “navigable” rather than “passable,” but you can’t have everything.

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Brilliant!

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Brilliant! New Scientist has asked over 70 of the world’s most brilliant and charismatic and modest scientists to forecast what might be the big breakthroughs in their fields over the next 50 years. Some of the many examples that might be of interest to CV readers:

  • Alex Vilenkin thinks we might find cosmic strings.
  • Gerard ‘t Hooft imagines a deterministic theory that would supercede quantum mechanics.
  • Lisa Randall hopes that the LHC will tell us something about the fundamental nature of spacetime.
  • Edward Witten thinks that string theory will be fertile, and is excited about extra-solar planets.
  • Steven Weinberg would like to see a theory of everything.
  • Max Tegmark will be printing T-shirts emblazoned with the aforementioned TOE.
  • David Deutsch looks forward to working quantum computers.
  • Rocky Kolb and Kip Thorne both predict that we’ll find gravitational waves from inflation.
  • Martin Rees wants to know if there was one Big Bang, or many.
  • Richard Gott imagines a colony on Mars.
  • Lawrence Krauss prevaricates about dark energy.
  • Frank Wilczek actually steps up to the plate, predicting superintelligent computers and abundant solar power.
  • Steven Pinker thinks it’s all just a trick to make him look foolish.

Hey, wait a minute — even I’m in there! Who knew? Here’s my prognostication:

The most significant breakthrough in cosmology in the next 50 years will be that we finally understand the big bang.

In recent years, the big bang model – the idea that our universe has expanded and cooled over billions of years from an initially hot, dense state – has been confirmed and elaborated in spectacular detail. But the big bang itself, the moment of purportedly infinite temperature and density at the very beginning, remains a mystery. On the basis of observational data, we can say with confidence what the universe was doing 1 second later, but our best theories all break down at the actual moment of the bang.

There is good reason to hope that this will change. The inflationary universe scenario takes us back to a tiny fraction of a second after the bang. To go back further we need to understand quantum gravity, and ideas from string theory are giving us hope that this goal is obtainable. New ways of collecting data about dark matter, dark energy and primordial perturbations allow us to test models of the earliest times. The decades to come might very well be when the human race finally figures out where it all came from.

[Here you can imagine some suitably aw-shucks paragraph in which I appear to be vaguely embarassed at all this talk of “brilliance,” which might be appropriate in describing Weinberg and Witten and ‘t Hooft but certainly doesn’t apply to little old me, who would never have made the cut if it weren’t for my blogging hobby, although I’m not quite sure how Max got in there either, and hey, if anyone wants to protest that I certainly do belong, that’s what comment sections are for. Don’t have time to construct it just now, but you know how it would go.]

Anyone else want to predict what the biggest breakthrough in the next 50 years will be?

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Natalie Angier’s God Problem

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Natalie Angier is the Pulitzer-Prize-winning science writer for the New York Times, author of Woman: An Intimate Geography and most recently The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science. In a new piece at Edge, she points a finger at the hypocrisy of many scientists who wail and gnash their teeth at superstitious craziness like creationism or astrology, but invent elaborate rationalizations about non-overlapping magisteria when it comes to things like the virgin birth or life after death. A somewhat lengthy excerpt, as I can’t help myself:

In the course of reporting a book on the scientific canon and pestering hundreds of researchers at the nation’s great universities about what they see as the essential vitamins and minerals of literacy in their particular disciplines, I have been hammered into a kind of twinkle-eyed cartoon coma by one recurring message. Whether they are biologists, geologists, physicists, chemists, astronomers, or engineers, virtually all my sources topped their list of what they wish people understood about science with a plug for Darwin’s dandy idea. Would you please tell the public, they implored, that evolution is for real? Would you please explain that the evidence for it is overwhelming and that an appreciation of evolution serves as the bedrock of our understanding of all life on this planet? …

Scientists think this is terrible—the public’s bizarre underappreciation of one of science’s great and unshakable discoveries, how we and all we see came to be—and they’re right. Yet I can’t help feeling tetchy about the limits most of them put on their complaints. You see, they want to augment this particular figure—the number of people who believe in evolution—without bothering to confront a few other salient statistics that pollsters have revealed about America’s religious cosmogony. Few scientists, for example, worry about the 77 percent of Americans who insist that Jesus was born to a virgin, an act of parthenogenesis that defies everything we know about mammalian genetics and reproduction. Nor do the researchers wring their hands over the 80 percent who believe in the resurrection of Jesus, the laws of thermodynamics be damned. …

So, on the issue of mainstream monotheistic religions and the irrationality behind many of religion’s core tenets, scientists often set aside their skewers, their snark, and their impatient demand for proof, and instead don the calming cardigan of a a kiddie-show host on public television. They reassure the public that religion and science are not at odds with one another, but rather that they represent separate “magisteria,” in the words of the formerly alive and even more formerly scrappy Stephen Jay Gould. Nobody is going to ask people to give up their faith, their belief in an everlasting soul accompanied by an immortal memory of every soccer game their kids won, every moment they spent playing fetch with the dog. Nobody is going to mock you for your religious beliefs. Well, we might if you base your life decisions on the advice of a Ouija board; but if you want to believe that someday you’ll be seated at a celestial banquet with your long-dead father to your right and Jane Austen to your left-and that she’ll want to talk to you for another hundred million years or more—that’s your private reliquary, and we’re not here to jimmy the lock.

Consider the very different treatments accorded two questions presented to Cornell University’s “Ask an Astronomer” Web site. To the query, “Do most astronomers believe in God, based on the available evidence?” the astronomer Dave Rothstein replies that, in his opinion, “modern science leaves plenty of room for the existence of God . . . places where people who do believe in God can fit their beliefs in the scientific framework without creating any contradictions.” He cites the Big Bang as offering solace to those who want to believe in a Genesis equivalent and the probabilistic realms of quantum mechanics as raising the possibility of “God intervening every time a measurement occurs” [arrrgh! — ed.] before concluding that, ultimately, science can never prove or disprove the existence of a god, and religious belief doesn’t—and shouldn’t—”have anything to do with scientific reasoning.”

How much less velveteen is the response to the reader asking whether astronomers believe in astrology. “No, astronomers do not believe in astrology,” snarls Dave Kornreich. “It is considered to be a ludicrous scam. There is no evidence that it works, and plenty of evidence to the contrary.” Dr. Kornreich ends his dismissal with the assertion that in science “one does not need a reason not to believe in something.” Skepticism is “the default position” and “one requires proof if one is to be convinced of something’s existence.”

Read the whole thing. Scientists who do try to point out that walking on water isn’t consistent with the laws of physics, and that there’s no reason to believe in an afterlife, etc., are often told that this is a bad strategic move — we’ll never win over the average person on the street to the cause of science and rationality if we tell them that it conflicts with their religion. Which is a legitimate way to think, if you’re a politician or a marketing firm. But as scientists, our first duty should be to tell the truth. The laws of physics and biology tell us something about how the world works, and there is no room in there for raising the dead and turning water into wine. In the long run, being honest with ourselves and with the public is always the best strategy.

Update: In the Science Times, George Johnson reports on a conference in which scientists debated how to interact with religion. This was a non-Templeton affair, and most of the participants seemed to be somewhat anti-religion. Videos of the talks should soon be available at The Science Network.

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