Cocktail Party Physics

growing pains

A few months after I started Cocktail Party Physics in 2006, I was asked to join the then-relatively-new SEED Science Blogs. It was tremendously flattering to a spanking new science blogger, and very tempting: who wouldn't want to join a vibrant community of science bloggers and -- not coincidentally -- get a nice boost in traffic as a result? In the end, I reluctantly declined the invitation, mostly because my blog was new, I was pleased with the design, and said design would have been lost by moving to SEED. I also, to be honest, just liked the idea of having a space that was mine, and mine alone, with no pressure (real or imagined) about traffic stats and frequency of blogging. There's a lot to be said for creative independence, and while I can and do blog professionally (i.e., for pay) for both commercial and nonprofit outlets when called upon, Cocktail Party Physics remains special to me for that reason. It's my haven, as I hope it is for my co-bloggers (we went "group" in 2008). But I actively follow and participate in the Science Blogs community, nonetheless, and consider many of the Sciblings to be friends.

The point is, I'm emotionally invested. So this was a painful week for me, as "Pepsigate" erupted over at Science Blogs, and many of my bloggy buddies were forced to grapple with the ethical subtleties inherent in the tension between integrity and pragmatism in publishing (and yes, blogs are part of the publishing enterprise). Several Sciblings left the fold in protest -- who could blame them? -- while those who remain are asking themselves some tough questions about where to go from here. And Science Blogs' credibility has been badly damaged. No need to rehash the whole mess one more time; Ed Yong has a great list of the best commentary from the firestorm that broke out in the science blogosphere over this, and Carl Zimmer and Dr. SkySkull are both keeping track of where the orphaned bloggers end up.

Suffice to say, I come down 100% on the side of those who strenuously objected to the decision by SEED Media Group to "sell" a blog to Pepsi -- whether they ultimately chose to leave or stay. This, this and this nicely summarize my own thinking on the matter. I have no problem with advertising on blogs, provided it's clearly labeled as such. (We don't have ads at the Cocktail Party, nor do we plan to, but who knows? We might change our minds one day.) Media outlets have to make money, and this is a necessary part of the business model as it currently exists. And as several folks have pointed out, we all have inherent self-interests (see sidebar, "We Have No Shame"). But it's disingenuous to claim that therefore it's perfectly okay to sell editorial space (a blog) to a corporation as if it were not advertising, mewling about "inviting industrial scientists into the conversation." Industrial/corporate scientists have never been excluded from Science Blogs; they've just been invited as individuals, on the basis of merit, not by buying their way in.

So kudos to those who left in protest. And for the record, I also support those Sciblings who are troubled but adopting a wait and see attitude, because they played a courageous role, too. Everyone has a different situation, different concerns, and what's right for, say, David Dobbs, Rebecca Skloot, and Brian Switek, might not be right for Orac or Abel Pharmboy -- who first raised the alarm. (Indeed, poor Deborah Blum missed the whole damn thing and now finds herself caught in a much murkier gray area.) Make no mistake: had the outcry not been raised, had prominent Sciblings not opted to leave, had those who remained not demanded action by going on indefinite hiatus, the Pepsi blog would still be in place. And that would have been a bad day for science blogging. 

Understandably, the strongest objections came from bloggers who specialize in health, nutrition and medicine, and from professional writers like myself, for whom this was a clear violation of journalistic principles. Several research scientists (and commenters) didn't really understand the objections, or felt the protesting Sciblings were over-reacting. Chad at Uncertain Principles, for instance, apparently could care less about such issues, since the blog is a hobby for him and he views Science Blogs as nothing more than a technology platform, like Blogger or Wordpress or Typepad, except he gets paid a tiny amount for his efforts.

With respect and affection for Chad, I must disagree (while supporting his decision to stay). I pay Typepad to host Cocktail Party Physics; it's a standard business transaction, and I've been very happy with the service. But it's no Science Blogs. Science Blogs has always been much more than that. It's an impressively diverse community of individuals -- smart, opinionated, often boisterous and loud, occasionally rude, but always interesting. They fight with each other, and support each other, and they supported SEED Media; "good soldiers," every one. But they are not, and never will be, patsies for the Overlords. That's why the community has slowly built up a strong public identity, a loyal following, and considerable credibility in the science communications realm. I'm proud of the Sciblings for pushing back -- hard! -- and succeeding in setting some much-needed boundaries between editorial content and advertising/"advertorials."

The bad news is that it seems this might not have been an isolated incident. Gaia Vance wrote in the Guardian about having a column pulled by a former SEED editor because it was potentially offensive to an advertiser they were courting. Apparently said editor is no longer there, but it's disturbing, nonetheless. And I was surprised to learn of prior "corporate sponsored blogs," albeit written by independent scientists, not the PR flaks or employees of the sponsoring corporation. I did note the World Science Fair and US Science & Engineering blogs when they appeared, and felt a twinge of dismay at the recent inclusion of blogs by specific research institutions rather than individuals. I just assumed this was part of an education and outreach effort on the part of SEED Media. Now, in the wake of Pepsipocalypse, I'm not so sure. I, personally, would really like to know which blogs are paying to be there -- and thanks to Kendra Snyder of the new Brookhaven blog for making it crystal clear that Brookhaven is not paying for the blog space. That's the real, lasting damage that has come out of this. I shouldn't have to wonder, and folks like Kendra shouldn't need to explicitly clarify.

Since the Pepsi blog has now been removed, many remaining Sciblings are waiting to see if there will be any significant changes in response to their concerns -- and it's a promising sign that SEED Media CEO Adam Bly now has his own blog and is entering the fray for a more direct discourse with the Sciblings. The rest of us will be watching with interest as this unfolds, not because we're salivating voyeurs, but because this is something many other media outlets are likely to struggle with as we hammer out new models for blogging and the media in the 21st century. We're in the midst of a major sea change (just can't bring myself to use "paradigm shift"), where blogs are transforming the mainstream media, and as blogging moves into professional circles, the MSM is starting to transform blogs, as bloggers (and the outlets that support them) find themselves facing the same kinds of pressures that the MSM must face on a daily basis. It isn't pretty. But it's necessary. And as others have said as well, sometimes "old media" does have something to teach "new media" -- in this case, about the importance of maintaining that critical wall between editorial and advertisement.

Pepsigate is further proof (as if any were needed) that blogging is coming of age, with all the growing pains that come with it. At Science Online 2008, I gave a keynote address about how I viewed blogging and where I saw it going in the future. Granted, I'm no psychic octopus, but here's what I wrote after that conference:

I've never viewed blogs as a threat to mainstream media. The two feed off each other; for all the contentious antagonism, it's a pretty symbiotic relationship. Among other benefits, science bloggers can hold each other and the science media accountable in ways that are kind of unprecedented in recent history, because now everyone who wants one, has a platform to express their ideas. Sure, it's loud, crowded and occasionally confusing -- and the same freedoms extend to utter crackpots -- but people find ways to sift through the noise to latch onto what they like and/or need. I'd like to see that natural synergism enhanced and developed in the coming years. ... [P]erhaps blogs associated with major media outlets could benefit from a layer of light oversight and quality control. ... The trick is giving just enough oversight not to kill the very qualities that people love about blogs in the first place: personal, subjective, highly opinionated, with the opportunity for an interactive free-for-all with readers in the comment threads. Traditional letters to the editor are such a yawn-fest in comparison.

As blogs become more professional, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect them to be paid a reasonable wage/fee, depending on whether they're full-time staff or freelancers. Media outlets are already doing this: journalism school graduates of the future are definitely going to be doing some blogging in their future positions, in addition to straight reporting or feature writing (which is why, when asked, I advise instructors to start up class blogs for their students, or encourage students to start their own).

I said something along these lines during my wrap-up presentation, and someone in the audience expressed concern that if blogging becomes profitable or (god forbid) lucrative, people would start blogging for the "wrong reasons." I didn't realize there were "right" or "wrong" reasons; the concept strikes me as absurd. Peoples' motivations for blogging are as varied as the individuals themselves. And frankly, the comment smacks of a bizarre elitism, even a high school clique-ishness: "If EVERYONE starts blogging, we won't be as cool and special!" I think that rather misses the point of the source of blogging's power to effect change: giving a voice to everyone who wants one.

There's also the inference that blogging is this pure, noble selfless endeavor that should only be done for pleasure. Um, okay, it can definitely be that, but since when is it antithetical to love what you do and also make a living wage? The whole point of my talk is that blogging is moving out of the quirky little hobby category and into the professional sphere, and if someone wants to take their blogging to a professional level -- which would mean doubling (at least) the degree of effort, editing, fact-checking, etc. one would normally do with a blog post -- there should be a mechanism in place to ensure they can be adequately compensated. In no way do I think that everyone should be a professional blogger; it will just become another job option. There will always be a place for the idealistic amateur in the blogosphere.

We're navigating uncharted waters, people, but that doesn't mean we can't draw on the lessons of the past for guidance. And like the Sciblings, we must be willing to raise a stink and push back occasionally when a line is crossed: this far, but no farther. It is only through constant vigilance that the trust between blogger and reader can be maintained.

zapping the new age

I really could have used co-blogger Allyson's advice about skeptic etiquette earlier this year. At a recent party, a bunch of my non-science-geek friends and I got to moaning about all the time we spend in front of our computers. I've always thought one of the ironies of my life was that when I was growing up, my parents yelled at me to not sit so close to the TV and I now earn my living . . . sitting too close to what is, essentially, a TV. Lots of us older folks have eye fatigue from it, especially from the old CRT screens that really were pretty much the same as a TV. But one of my fellow partiers loudly declaimed that we were all being irradiated by our computers too, and that she'd bought this special amulet to turn back those rays and all the other irradiation modern life subjects us to and "other negative energies." The best part was that the woman she bought the amulet from is able to recharge it remotely and is always adding new protections to it. Best money she'd ever spent, she said.

 Moments like this just make my brain hurt.

We'd already had the LHC-black hole discussion in which I'd successfully quashed that panic, but my bullshit meter was almost off the dial with this. I had to really bite my tongue not to say something scathingly sarcastic to someone I didn't know, and it was all I could do not to roll my eyes like a Kewpie doll. It was odd (and kind of heartening) how the room went really silent though. And then I was chagrined to realize I didn't really have enough hard data at my fingertips to rebut everything she said, and that was embarrassing. I know about the scientific studies refuting the dangers of overhead high voltage wires, but I only have a vague grasp of how CRTs and LCDs work. So I thought I'd use my ignorance (shameful, I know) to offer up a quick lesson in how to refute this particular species of New Age Quack, diplomacy not included. (Check with Allyson about that.)

Part of the problem is that people get freaked out by the idea of radiation in general, not realizing there are many types of it and that we are, indeed, being irradiated all the time, not just by our electronics. That darn visible light bombards us all the time! The electromagnetic (EM) spectrum is huge and only the higher end, beyond the visible spectrum, is strong enough to be truly dangerous. The harmfulness of radiation depends on its energy, whether it's powerful enough to knock electrons off an atom's orbital shell, turning it into an ion: ionizing radiation.

For example, the wavelength in sunlight that tans you or, in excess, gives you skin cancer is not the visible spectrum or we'd all have fried eyeballs (which is what happens when you look directly at the sun because the light is concentrated through the lens of your eye onto a small spot on your retina, like a bug under a magnifying glass). It's UV or ultraviolet radiation, just next door to the violet end of the visible spectrum (hence the ultra prefix) that makes you sizzle. And that's the least of its effects. Over the long term, UV light can cause cellular and molecular changes that result in cataracts, permanent changes to skin and fibrous tissues, and skin cancer. Because it causes chemical changes in the body, the effects can be exacerbated by "birth control pills, tetracycline, sulphathizole, cyclamates, antidepressants, coal tar distillates found in anti-dandruff shampoos, lime oil, and some cosmetics."

The most common sources for ionizing radiation are nuclear reactions natural and man-made (fusion and fission) and natural radioisotopes. Don't know an isotope from an antelope? An isotope is a version of an element that has a different than usual number of neutrons (a different mass number) but the same chemical properties. A radioisotope emits enough EM energy to strip away the normally tightly bound electrons from an atom, making it a charged particle, like x-rays. Only the shortwave end of the EM spectrum has enough energy to do this—not the electrons coming out of your CRT TV.

While it's true that every appliance in your house that uses an electric current is surrounded by an extremely low frequency (EMF) electrical field, that radiation is of the non-ionizing sort, even the microwave. The health hazards of this type of radiation are probably negligible in the low concentrations we're exposed to.There are some exceptions, of course. Stick your head in the microwave and you'll cook yourself, but that's because microwaves excite the water molecules until they give off heat. You won't be radioactive afterwards, just cooked. Likewise infrared radiation, which  makes some beautiful photographs!). IR filters allow viewers to see differences in ambient temperature, which is why they're used in night scopes, but the radiation itself is not up to much more in everyday concentrations than heating you up a little.

Much like the radiation that's coming off your computer and TV screens. CRTs are not so popular now that flatscreens have gotten cheaper, but the initials stand for Cathode Ray Tube, which is the source of the "ray" part that seems to freak people out. That ray is a stream of electrons produced by the heated cathode filament and steered by electromagnetic coils. Those electrons pass through a fine-mesh mask and strike a screen coated with phosphors, temporarily goosing them into a more excited state, making them glow. So that electron energy beam is mostly absorbed by the phosphors on the screen. Some of it does escape, but it's mostly hanging around the glass screen making it staticky and attracting dust motes. Because the first thing a free electron (not to be confused with a free radical) wants to do is bind to something. It's lonesome, just a little negatively charged particle looking for its love match in the orbital shell of some other atom. If there are enough atoms with odd-numbered electrons around (like copper's 29), they pass the electrons around like a swingers party and you get a current. That's the crackle you hear when the screen turns off, and why you sometimes get zapped when you touch a CRT display. The free electrons find you more attractive than the glass.

So, those pesky free electrons—how harmful are they? Um, depends on the source energy (see comments below). There is a type of radiation that involves free electrons (beta decay), but these are high-energy ionizing particles that come out of of the nuclei of radioactive materials like plutonium, not out of hot filaments in a cathode ray tube (which is essentially like a lightbulb). The truth is, you're exposed to more radiation risk in a routine x-ray or in the radon-choked basement of your house than from a cathode ray tube. That's because not all radiation is alike.

Because radiation exists as both particles and waves, its potential for damage depends on how much energy it has. The higher the frequency, the more energy it has and the more potential for damage. That's because some radiation—radio waves, for instance—either passes harmlessly through you or is reflected off your skin, like some wavelengths of light; they're low energy, long wavelength. High levels of exposure to even low-frequency/low energy waves can have an effect on biological systems, but the that seems mostly negligible at everyday exposure levels. Some EM radiation, like x-rays, pass through the softer tissues of your muscles and organs but are stopped by the denser bones, leaving those blank, unexposed spaces you see on x-ray film that show your skeleton. When x-rays strike the atoms in your tissue, including those in your DNA molecules, they have enough energy to knock the electrons off, creating charged ions that alter the usual chemical reactions in your body, or even break the DNA up. The cells die or work in weird ways. If this happens in enough cells, mutations or other reactions that we read as radiation sickness or cancer can occur. In small doses though, the body is self-correcting enough to heal whatever damage is done in the name of seeing that fracture in your tibia or the denser mass of cancer tumors.

LCDs are an entirely different fish in some ways, but operate similarly. These displays are built in kind of a sandwich style with the liquid crystals in the middle between layers of glass, filters and electrodes that supply the current. The material that gives LCDs their acronym are crystals that have lost some of their positional rigidity. Nematic liquid crystal molecules, which are usually rod-shaped, are still more organized than isotropic crystals, but both are semi-liquid. Application of a current causes them to realign or "untwist" themselves into various configurations that block or reveal the light which also passes through vertically and horizontally aligned polarizing filters. The pixels in this case are a substrate of indium-tin oxide. If you've got a liquid crystal display (LCD) monitor, you may have noticed that it attracts significantly less dust to its display surface than your old CRT. This tells you that there are fewer free electrons floating around looking for other atoms to bind to (or that your house is a lot cleaner than mine is). That's because instead of spraying electrons gatling-gun style, in LCDs the current is channeled in a grid to different parts of the screen in a closed circuit.

Plasma displays have a similar structure to LCDs, but the medium that's excited by the current is, obviously, plasma: charged gas confined in "cells" sandwiched between several layers of glass and other materials. Since plasma displays ultimately use UV radiation to excite their pixel phosphors, they contain a protective layer of magnesium oxide (the same compound found in both Milk of Magnesia—as magnesium hydroxide—and some electrical cables. Versatile stuff!) that blocks the ionizing UV radiation) but is transparent to the visible spectrum. So you're still probably getting zapped less by your plasma TV than by an old CRT, though the CRT "leakage" is the standard by which safe radiation is measured for electronics.

The upshot is that none of the radiation emanating from your appliances is the kind emitted by nuclear materials, so you're not going to get cancer or radiation sickness from it. None of it is of sufficient energy to fry so much as a mosquito, let alone cook your brain. In fact, one thing most people overlook is that we are ourselves walking electrical fields. Our brains are electrochemical dynamos, zipping signals along our synapses millions of times a second, the proverbial telephone switchboard. Our own electrical field created by the movement of current between cells is slight, but the fields inside our cells are as powerful as lightning bolts. One day, we may actually become our own local area network. That little shock of electricity between people that we talk about is not only a metaphor.

Okay, now that you know you're not being bathed in deadly ionizing radiation or high levels of non-ionizing radiation from your computer or TV or microwave, what about that "charging remotely" thing? How's that work? Wifi? Radio waves? Light? Microwaves? Hey, maybe that's frying our brains! Slap a radiation hazard sign on all those psychics' doors! But thanks to Allyson, at least you can be polite about it.

dial-a-scientist

I used to get the standard phone calls and emails that most physics professors get:  the one from the guy who claims to have refuted Einstein's theory of relativity, the one from the guy who is positive that we never landed on the moon and it was all done on the soundstage, and the one from the guy who is really upset that Physical Review Letters won't publish his paper on the perpetual motion machine he's invented only because he doesn't have a Ph.D. and would I please submit the paper with my name on it because it would surely get published then.  The last guy clearly hasn't seen my CV, or he'd know my success rate with PRL.

Jennifer wrote a great blog about mediagenicity a couple years ago that I recommend to everyone, and not just because she tagged me as 'a bit of a physics bombshell'.  Before elucidating five rules for improving your mediagenicity quotient, she wrote:

"Mediagenics" are insightful, articulate, and likeably approachable, with a good sense of humor and innate ability to connect in any number of different ways with various audiences.  It's making the connection that's so critical, because without that, communication is impossible.

If you're at all mediagenic - and in physics, the bar is pretty low -- the kinds of phone calls and emails you get change.  Which is why I was standing out in the parking lot at school Friday night at 6:00 p.m. in 100 degree heat wearing a sweater over my sleeveless top because I dinged myself while moving things from one lab to the other and have a gigantic bruise on my upper arm.  (Note added 6/28/09: You can see the results here.)

It all started Wednesday, when I got an email from Brandon Webb, who handles PR for the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics at UT Dallas.  He wanted to know if I could talk to a reporter who wanted to know whether a Styrofoam cup could break a windshield.  (That's an advantage to being officially mediagenic - I don't get contacted directly now - they go through my 'people' a.k.a Brandon.)

C'mon - a Stryofoam cup break a windshield?  Not likely.  Then the reporter emailed me the photos.  The windshield looks like a rock went through it just above the inspection sticker.  For you non-Texans, that's a few inches from the bottom left side of the windshield. 

Marilyn Mackey, the driver of the car with the broken windshield, was traveling about 65 mph down a highway.  As a car passed her in the opposite direction, its driver threw a cup out his or her window.  We know it was a cup of soda because, in addition to poor Marilyn getting wet, there is sticky dried cola-colored liquid all over the inside of the car.  The police pulled part of the cup out of the windshield (which is how we know it came from Sonic) and found a shredded straw inside the car.  (Thanks to the family for permission to post the photo!)

This called for a little research and one of Oullette's rules of mediagenicity is to take the call when it comes and appreciate that reporters work on hard deadlines, so it had to be quick.  The Sonic website has a nutrition calculator, complete with masses.  A small Coke is about 3/4 of a pound, while a Route 44 (the giant size) is about 2 lbs. A regulation baseball is about 1/3 of a pound, and the ginormous sode weighs about as much as a bag of sugar, just to put things in perspective.  A gallon of water weighs 8.3 lbs. The weight of the cup is negligible compared to the soda.  Yes, I did check: A Diet Coke weighs only very slightly less.

The two cars were coming at each other and we'll approximate that they were both going about 65 mph, which means that the speed of the cup relative to the car it hit was about 130 mph.  (You never thought you'd need to use relative speed when you learned it in high school, did you?)  If the driver of the oncoming car threw the cup instead of just releasing it, the cup would have an even greater speed when it hit the other car.

This is where the physicist side of me started to get fidgety.  I get uncomfortable with numbers, because there's a lot we don't know. As you can see from the diagram, if we really wanted to do this right, we'd need to know how close the cars got to each other before the cup was thrown, how hard the cup was thrown, the angle the cup was thrown, the drag on the cup, how much of the drink was left in the cup...

Jennifer's second rule comes to mind - know your audience and tailor your message.  Newspapers and television don't really want to know about all those details because they have to tell the story in a minute or two and caveats like that tend to take a lot of time to explain.  And they DO want numbers.  I explained to the reporters all the unknowns so they'd know why I was giving them a big a range of numbers.  Take a conservative case: Let's assume that taking everything into account, the cup hit at a speed of 130 mph and came to a stop.  (Again, an approximation because the cup went through the windshield and kept going.)  Then the change in momentum (the difference between the momentum the cup had prior to hitting and the momentum the cup had after coming to a stop) would be:

where I've used that 130 mph=191 ft/s and made the distinction between weight (2.00 lb) and mass (weight divided by the acceleration due to gravity).   The change in the momentum isn't the most important thing.  The force is the change in momentum divided by the time it takes to change the momentum. 

We have no idea how long the cup took to come to a stop, plus it hit the windshield, slowed down, and then part of it continued moving into the car.  So let's just arbitrarily take a range from a tenth of a second to a half second.  At a half second, the force would be about 24 pounds and at a tenth of a second, the force would be about 120 pounds.  And that's the range I felt comfortable being quoted on in the newspaper article.

 

The reporter for Channel 8 asked me what the force actually meant.  The best way to describe it would be that a scale placed on the windshield would register between 20 and 120 lbs when the cup hit.  That quick calculation convinced me that it wasn't beyond the realm of possibility that a drink cup could actually break a windshield. If the cup were thrown, even a pretty bad arm could give it an additional 30-40 mph, so the force could have been much larger.  

When we taped my interview for Channel 8, the reporter asked if it mattered how the cup was oriented when it hit.  It does.  Brandon - who is just a joy to work with - had pitched them the idea of taping the segment in front of a car using a Sonic cup as a prop, so I had the cup right there.  This was a question that just came up, so I hadn't had a lot of time to think about it.  That always makes me nervous because the last think you want is to be captured on tape saying something wrong.   

It does make a difference.  Compare what happens when a cup hits bottom first or side first, as I've tried to illustrate to the right.  The bottom of the cup is really rigid, so there isn't going to be a lot of give.  If it hits side first, the cup is going to give.  If you've ever grabbed a flimsy drink cup and it squished and the lid came off, that's exactly what would happen.  This is the exact same principle the SAFER barriers use for racetracks.  Deforming the wall increases the time it takes for a car to come to a stop, and that decreases the force the driver feels.  If the cup hit side first, it wouldn't create as much force as if it hit end first.

And, of course, I wasn't mentally or numerically agile enough to think to calculate the kinetic energy during the taping.  A 2 lb cup of soda going 130 mph would have the same kinetic energy as a baseball thrown at 150 mph, or the same energy you get from exploding a half gram of TNT.  I've spent the last year doing nothing but trying to get my lab up and running again.  I apparently have lost the ability to do even simple math.  

So I was only off by a factor of 2 or so. 

(Total tangent: A 44 oz Coke contains 371 kilocalories of energy, which is equal to the kinetic energy of a passenger car going 86 mph.)

There are two important things you should take away from all of this.  First, don't throw stuff out the window of your car.  Ms. Mackey was wearing glasses and that's a really fortunate coincidence.  The glasses were pitted from where pieces of windshield glass hit them. If she hadn't been wearing glasses, she might have had very serious injuries to her eyes.  She could have lost control of the car and crashed and been killed.  We are fortunate that this is a "what the...?" story and not a tragedy.

That leads to my second point.  Did any of you ever consider a problem like this in any physics class you took?  If not, why not?  I spent about half a day answering questions about this situation from the media, from random people who emailed with follow up querstions.  It's clearly something people are interested in.  I mentioned this to one of my less free-thinking colleagues and was told that a problem like this is "simply too hard for beginning physics students".  Balderdash.  Doing calculations without friction when you like in a world where you can't escape friction is hard because nothing you calculate has any connection to real life.  Figuring out whether a drink can go through a windshield and kill someone is complicated, but I didn't use anything you don't learn in first semester high school physics.  I keep wanting to teach a course called 'Physics You'll Actually Use', but I haven't gotten anyone to approve such a title.  Yet.

A couple of weeks back, a producer from Good Morning America left a voicemail on my phone wondering whether it would be possible for LeBron James to jump over a taxicab.  We shot a segment and it ultimately never aired because the dumb ol' Cavs got themselves bumped out of the championship race.  I'm counting on Shaq to get them there next year so that I can finally reveal the answer.

daring to be extraordinary

Imagine that you are on the board of directors for a major corporation, or nonprofit organization, or physics department, or other such entity, and you are interviewing  candidates for one of your top positions: second in command to the Big Cheese. And let's say your organization hasn't been doing so well lately and is pretty much at the tipping point for failure. So you need someone who can bring their "A" game from the outset, especially since the Big Cheese is getting on in years, has been making increasingly erratic bad decisions, and will most likely be asked to step down (if he doesn't keel over first) in a few years.

Given the dire state of your company, you're willing to consider some nontraditional choices who are a bit outside the conventional "box"; it's not like business as usual has been working all that well for you, and you're tired of nothing but the same "insider" old white guys running the show. So you're eager to embrace youth and freshness, someone with new ideas -- provided said job applicant can demonstrate that he grasps the fundamental issues facing your organization (which includes familiarity with its august history), and can propose solid solutions that include a few specific suggestions for implementing those proposed solutions. Oh, and he's going to have to be able to get the squabbling underlings -- who have divided into two very hostile warring factions -- to put aside their differences and start working in tandem again. So, people skills -- kind of a "must."

The stakes are high, so you set up an intensive, multi-stage interviewing process. Enter candidate Bob Smith, a white 40-something, middle class Regular Guy with a spotty academic record and minimal job experience running his own business in Small Town, USA. The inexperience is a concern, but you've got one another applicant who's also a bit young and inexperienced (albeit with stellar academic credentials), and that applicant did great in the interviewing process, clearly showing that he grasped the issues and had some concrete ideas to help your organization. Bob Smith could do so, too, plus he's energetic, enthusiastic, charming, and handsome -- he's certainly got the people skills, and he's a big hit initially with at least half the board members.

Then comes the first interview, and you realize you've got a serious problem. First, he refuses to show up unless he is shown proper "deference and respect." While he is engaging and likable, he can't seem to speak in anything other than pre-rehearsed canned sound bites -- and, if forced to go "off script," not even in complete sentences. He garbles facts and figures, gives nonsensical answers, can't offer a single concrete specific example (of anything -- not even his favorite newspapers and magazines) and seems genuinely put out when you gently ask a few follow-up questions in a vain attempt to get something coherent out of him. 

Afterward, he tries to rationalize his poor performance by claiming the interviewer (you) "annoyed" him by asking him all these pesky "gotcha" questions about topics he didn't want to talk about -- or, more accurately, could not answer because he didn't know the answers. (Sometimes it seemed like he didn't even understand the question.) In fact, his list of unacceptable "gotcha" questions consists of pretty much anything relevant to whether or not he could actually do the job for which he is applying.

Given the opportunity to rectify that, he still doesn't answer questions about his own qualifications; instead, he spends the entire time trashing all the other applicants to make himself look better in comparison.  For the final interview, he announces that he will talk about whatever he damn well pleases, regardless of the question asked, and will not allow any follow-up questions, because heck, he hasn't been at this that long, and nobody really cares if he can rattle off facts or figures, or demonstrate any real depth of understanding. Wink, wink.

Would you seriously consider, even for a moment, hiring Bob Smith? Of course you wouldn't. Bob Smith would be laughed out of the conference room, and rightly so. So the fact that anyone, regardless of political orientation, still considers Sarah Palin to be a viable candidate for vice president just boggles the mind. Don't get me wrong: she's not as stupid as the Couric interviews would lead one to believe (although someone with a degree in journalism and TV experience as a sportscaster shouldn't have been so inept). Heck, she might be great in a different position, say, Secretary of the Interior, or Ambassador to Greenland, where she can keep coasting on her looks and charm. But she's not even remotely qualified to be vice president in 21st century America -- unless your only criteria is that the candidate be a carbon-based life form of a minimum age. And anyone daring to point out this painfully obvious fact -- hey, the Empress has no clothes! -- is automatically labeled sexist, elitist, a traitor (to gender or party), or one of them gosh-darned unpatriotic socialist-lovin' liberals, by those who so desperately want to believe in her. Kill the messenger, indeed.

Despite the Palin-centric focus, this is not meant to be a political post; rather, her candidacy epitomizes one of our most fundamental failings as a nation. I'm talking about the triumph of mediocrity, of settling for "good enough," in America. No wonder our country is in a shambles, teetering on the edge of economic ruin and losing our historical edge in technological innovation. No wonder we're lagging so far behind other developed countries in educational testing scores, when we demand so little of even the highest offices of our land.

With her folksy appeal, Palin reinforces the mantra that anyone can grow up to be president -- at least on the surface.  But actually, that notion has become twisted from its original intent. Anyone has the potential to grow up to be president (or an astronaut, fireman, or brain surgeon) -- and everyone should have the equal opportunity to pursue that goal -- but you still have to put in the work to becoming qualified for the office. You've got to have the requisite knowledge and skills to be able to compete in the major leagues, because nobody is going to change the rules or set the bar lower for you just because you happen to a pretty woman, and such a gosh-darned likable person.

Except, in Palin's case, we have, because for all her twangy, gun-totin' bravado (Sarah Barracuda? I don't think so!), she can't hold her own against the big boys in the major leagues. Come on -- John McCain literally had to babysit her during one interview and protect her from Big Bad Katie Couric. How humiliating is that? Any woman who has struggled to be taken seriously in a male-dominated field has got to be cringing in embarrassment right about now. Can you imagine a female physics graduate student going into her PhD thesis defense demanding to be treated with deference, refusing to answer the questions posed to her, insisting that facts and figures are irrelevant, and being unwilling (or unable) to demonstrate even a rudimentary grasp of the basic subject matter -- relying instead on flirting with the examination board? Would it then be "sexist" to deny her a PhD? I find it ironic that the same folks who have loudly criticized affirmative action in the past, now seem to be fawning all over the ultimate Token Woman.

When I started at a private high school, I won a small scholarship to help pay for the tuition. After the first couple of months, the board that had awarded the scholarships called in the various recipients for a follow-up interview. The chairman asked how my classes were going. I was painfully shy as a teenager, and modestly responded, "Oh, you know, about average." He was outraged: "AVERAGE?!? What do you mean, average?!?" I hastily assured him I meant mostly A's, maybe with one or two B's. This only mollified him a little; he fixed me with a baleful eye and sternly pronounced, "That is simply not acceptable from someone with your potential. This board expects better from you, young lady. We expect to see all A's." Surprise, surprise: I got straight A's after that --  because that man cared enough, and was committed enough to his educational principles, to gave me a much-needed kick in the pants. He refused to let me "coast" and settle for mediocrity. "Good enough" simply wasn't an option. Imagine what he would say to the spectacle of Sarah Palin.

I encountered a similar challenge in my 10 years of jujitsu. While the guys took it easy on me as a beginner, the further I advanced in the ranks, the tougher they became about holding me to the highest standard, and the less they pulled their punches. I passed the same brutal, 2-1/2 hour test as every other male black belt, despite a size and strength disadvantage; my techniques just had to be that much better. Nobody lowered the bar or cut me any slack; if anything, they were tougher on me, knowing that any attacker would show no mercy, either, and I'd better be prepared for that kind of brutality. And I am a better, stronger person for it. Why should we pull our punches with Sarah Palin, when there's so much more at stake? We're not doing her any favors in the long run.

So I was inordinately depressed after Thursday night's empty mockery of a vice presidential "debate," and the predictable inanities that followed. ["She spoke in English! She didn't completely suck! Yay, victory!"] Fortunately, Friday morning I had the pleasure of chatting with Cosmic Variance's Julianne Dalcanton on Blogging Heads TV. Julianne is the perfect Post-Palin Pick-Me-Up. She's pretty. She's smart. She's articulate, engaging, and eminently likable. She's a working mom. She studies galaxy formations and discovered a comet (that now bears her name). She is anything but average and ordinary, and doesn't pretend to be -- instead, she dares to be extraordinary.