Strings, Rings, and Other Things

I want the whole concept of "juvenile charged as an adult" to be eliminated from the American legal system. (Maybe the US could then stop being the only UN nation other than Somalia not to have ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child.)

I want police officers to be trained under the assumption that protecting innocent civilian lives is even more important than their own safety. (And reminded that our society believes in a presumption of innocence.)

I want police officers and departments to consider any death (or injury) at police hands to reflect a failure. Officers should be trained to prioritize deescalation whenever possible. (Among other reasons, many violent or threatening individuals are mentally ill.)

I want black people carrying fake guns to be treated with at least as many rights as white people carrying real ones.

I want law enforcement officers to be legally classified as ordinary civilians under all circumstances unless their actions are recorded by a body camera and successfully uploaded to a public server. (Live wireless backup could be an important part of this.) (Any recording relevant to an actual civil or criminal trial should be publicly viewable, but I could accept restrictions on general access to all recorded footage.)

I want statistics to be kept on every police officer and every police department, including counts of officer-involved deaths, major injuries and minor injuries, as well as percentage of encounters that escalate to violence, all annotated with race and gender. Departmental statistics should be public, and tracked at the state and federal level. Individual officer's statistics should be confidential but regularly reviewed at the local and state levels. (For both individuals and departments, careful statistical analysis is of course necessary: some outliers are statistically inevitable even under normal behaviors and conditions, and careful attention would be necessary to develop proper apples-to-apples comparison groups. Statistics alone should never lead to censure or punishment, but they could prompt a more individual review, including recordings of the incidents in question.)

I want police officers (and society at large) to recognize that one bad apple ruins the bunch, and that their fellow officers must be held to standards at least as high as the general population.

I want a guarantee that the proceeds of civil forfeiture will never be shared with the officers, department, or local government directly responsible for confiscating the property in question. (Proceeds could be given to local community service organizations, or to state or federal governments.)

I want a (low) nationwide cap on the fraction of a municipality's revenue that can come from fines. (Excess could be returned to local citizens as some sort of tax rebate or given to local non-profits.)

I want a ban on military-style equipment for most police officers and departments. The use of such tools should be limited to small, highly trained teams to be deployed only in the most dangerous situations, and whose numbers are subject to strict caps based on local/regional population and violent crime rates. (Note that British police are almost entirely unarmed, and overwhelmingly want it to stay that way. That might not work here, today, but clearly our current model isn't the only way.)

I want the importance of affirmative, active consent to be taught in every school (and discussed as explicitly applying to sexual activity beginning at least by middle school).

I want drug possession to be treated as a public health issue rather than a crime. (Retroactive reductions in prison sentences to match would be a good corollary.)

I want the sale of any drug whose likely harm to the individual and to society is no worse than tobacco's (or maybe even alcohol's) to be legalized, taxed, and carefully regulated for safety. (More nuanced updates of that Lancet study would of course be very welcome.)

I want the US population to collectively decide that convicts deserve humane conditions and that rape and assault are just as important to prevent in prison as they are outside of it. (And that it's worth the investment of money and attention to ensure all that. I'm willing to accept a lot of cameras for this one.)

I (probably) want most of our national social safety net programs to be replaced by a universal basic income (along with some sort of access to Medicare/Medicaid or a similar program), too, but that's a more complex issue than most of these.


There's probably a lot more that should be on this list, but that's a start.

I recently finished reading a web serial called "Worm". (In other news, I forgot to bring any fun books to read to last week's physics conference.) I'm not sure what to say about it, or even whether to recommend it, but it was a heck of a read. Worm is a very long superhero story whose main character is a 15-year-old girl with the random and not obviously useful ability to control nearby bugs. The quality is a bit uneven, it's often pretty dark, and there were times that it was outright annoying or just too darn long. But its fictional world is quite good at aiming for "the inner consistency of reality", which is important to me, and it weaves a complex and (I think) satisfying story within that setting.


I obviously enjoyed Worm enough to read all of its ~1.8 million words on and off over the course of half a year or so (or more?). (That's something like 10-11 long novels, or almost 6 Wheel of Time books). I cared enough about the characters to want to know how things turned out for them, and enough about the fictional world to want to find out what was really going on. Many chunks of the plot were gripping (both on the scale of scenes and chapters and on the scale of novel-length arcs). It's an enjoyable story.

But on the other hand, there were multiple points along the way where I almost stopped reading (or where I did stop, only for unsatisfied curiosity to suck me back in weeks later). There are several points early on when the main character makes choices that seem blatantly at odds with her well-established goals (which may be forgivable in-story because she's so young, but that didn't make it less annoying to me as a reader). The pacing is inconsistent: in some places the character development and action flow beautifully, but in others it feels like a single plot arc is dragging out about twice as long as it needs to, and in others (well, one other) it skips right over a vast expanse of time that really ought to have been fleshed out more. The story could definitely benefit from a round or two of revision, and probably some professional editing.

There were a few times when Worm's tone rubbed me the wrong way, too. Especially near the start, there's a significant vibe of "adults don't care enough to help" that felt unfairly broad and lacking in nuance to me. Later on, there are a handful of minor places where the story seems to buy in to juvenile anti-feminism. (But then you keep reading, and close to the end there's a completely tangential moment of explicit opposition to rape culture thrown in out of nowhere, so I was left more neutral on that score than I expected to be.) And it sometimes feels too cynical about its people: nobody's perfect, sure, but I wish more characters in the story were more or less decent.

Overall, though, the underlying ethos of the story was right up my alley. A big theme is watching characters find ways to succeed by thinking carefully and making the most of small advantages. Sometimes (sometimes) that's even enough to overcome opposition that is intrinsically stronger or more politically powerful. Even more central to the story is moral ambiguity: there are frequent questions of ends vs. means, conflicting loyalties to family, friends, and society, and it's very rare that there are any easy answers. Even a lot of the worst "villains" have some degree of depth. And the thing that makes all that work for me is simple: the main character is trying to do the best she can for the people around her, even when her choices aren't what they ought to be.

So should you read it? I really couldn't say. I don't even have a good answer to how far you should read before you decide whether it's for you. But there are things about the story that I think will stick with me for a while.

So that physics announcement that I posted the rumors about happened, and it was indeed just as big of a deal as rumor had made it. Here are a few links I've found that summarize the results nicely:

• An overview for general audiences by Scientific American.
• A nice discussion of the details along with some reasons for the usual skepticism.
• An informal rundown on some of the implications by a non-cosmologist.
• And finally, a charming video of theorist Andrei Linde hearing the news in person for the first time.

This is really cool, and there are some neat, neat implications. (The data points to an energy scale for inflation that happens to be very close to the expected energy scale of grand unification of fundamental forces in simple supersymmetric models of particle physics, for instance.) It'll be great to see if this result holds up.

I've been sharing links to this all over social media since I heard about it earlier today. "Robot Turtles" is a board game project on Kickstarter by Dan Shapiro (a fellow Mudder). From the looks of it, it's a fun game that's designed to teach kids (3-8 years old, he says) some basic programming concepts along the way (and that gives the kids the chance to be in charge of the adult playing with them: always fun). It sounds like there are multiple layers of complexity, depending on what a given kid is ready to handle.

Have a look! It's rocketed past its funding goal in the day or two that it's been out, and it sounds like the game design and logistics for production are pretty much set.

(While I'm at it, what are some other good board games for the preschool set? Bonus points if they're sneakily educational like this one.)

I've recently read two science fiction stories that proved to be more closely related than I expected, given that they were recommended by entirely different sources in (as far as I recall) entirely different contexts. Some of that may just be a matter of who I am right now and what I've been thinking about lately (apart from physics teaching and research), but I thought I'd share them. Both are worth reading, though the second has had a firmer grip on the back of my mind in the time since I read it. I may say more about my thoughts on these later, but I'd rather give anyone who's interested the chance to read them first, so for now I'll just give the titles and links:

The Women Men Don't See, by James Tiptree, Jr. Much of the point of this story lies in the choice of narrator. And yes, trust me, it's sci-fi, though it's fair to say that the overt sci-fi isn't itself the point of the story.

Bloodchild, by Octavia E. Butler. This is one that sticks with you, which may be why it won a Hugo and a Nebula. [Edit note: This deserves a trigger warning for pregnancy complications. My apologies to anyone who was caught off guard.]

Edit: Since I've commented on awards for "Bloodchild", it may be worth mentioning that well-known anthology editor Gardner Dozois said of the 1974 Hugos that, "The award in novelette should have gone to a story that wasn't even on the ballot, Tiptree's 'The Women Men Don't See'."

Glee-fan friends: I hear that last night's episode featured a fun cover of "Baby Got Back". I hope you liked it! It's a great parody arrangement written by Jonathan Coulton, one of my favorite singers today. You should check out his music; some suggestions to get you started are here: http://www.jonathancoulton.com/primer/listen/

For what it's worth, the Glee folks were pretty cruddy in the way they treated JoCo. They didn't give him any sort of credit on the show; in fact, they didn't even tell him they were using his work. NPR had a great writeup about it here: http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2013/01/18/169706944/ive-heard-that-somewhere-glee-covers-baby-got-back-and-it-sounds-familiar Meanwhile, Coulton's own blog about it is here: http://www.jonathancoulton.com/2013/01/18/baby-got-back-and-glee/ As a JoCo fan, I wish that Glee had found a way to express some gratitude to him.


Oh, and a final comment: When Ace Books used a copyright loophole to print an edition of The Lord of the Rings behind Tolkien's back, Tolkien added a note about it to the next authorized edition: "This paperback edition, and no other, has been published with my consent and co-operation. Those who approve of courtesy (at least) to living authors will purchase it, and no other."

If you share that sentiment, here's a direct link to a page where you can buy JoCo's recording of the song: http://www.jonathancoulton.com/wiki/Baby_Got_Back

(And, y'know, at least Ace Books printed Tolkien's name on the cover.)

[I'm guessing that a lot of my friends here are more likely to know the JoCo side of this story than the Glee side, but I wanted a more "solid" home for these comments than Facebook.]

I was thinking about color this morning (yes, I do these things), and I was struck by a disturbing thought: when did I last see violet? Not purple, which I see all the time, but actual violet. [I'm not the first person to wonder this: here's a very thorough discussion.]

Purple, as you no doubt recall, is a compound color: it's what we perceive when we see a mixture of red and blue light. But violet is a pure color: light with wavelength somewhere a little over 400nm. (Side question: anyone have a clue as to why purple and violet are perceptually similar?) So what's the problem? RGB monitors, that's what. The shortest wavelength of light produced by an RGB monitor is blue, which is probably around 460nm or so. That means that your monitor is incapable of producing a violet color. Looking at a picture of a rainbow on your computer screen is inevitably a less vibrant experience than seeing one in person.

So, fine, look at a printed photograph. Well... not so fast. I don't know how all the different types of photo printing work, but a lot of printers are RGB or CMY themselves (and I think that CMY has the same problems as RGB in this regard, or worse). I have no idea what the process is (or was) for traditional photo printing from the analog era, but I'm willing to imagine that there are photo printers today who are capable of printing with actual violet dyes. But wait: what sort of camera took the photograph? Again, I don't know how good traditional film cameras were at capturing violet, but today's digital cameras are (as far as I know) also RGB.

So: when did you last see violet? Think back: what does it look like?

This is an absolutely stunning image: the Curiosity rover spotted while descending to the Martian surface, dangling under its parachute. It took some tremendously careful calculations by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter team (and some good luck) to snap this shot of a fast-moving object in the few moments available (they had to aim the camera in advance, tell it when to take the shot, and hope). The Bad Astronomer gives a bit more detail. (Click the image for a larger version.)


(Image via NASA/JPL/University of Arizona )
I honestly yelped out loud with glee when this image showed up on my screen. (Good thing my office door was closed.)

I'm still in awe that this insanely complicated landing scheme worked; for once, the reality of space exploration turned out to be just as awesome as what science fiction promised us fifty years ago. I mean, heat shields and parachutes are old hat, sure, but to follow those up by setting the one-ton rover gently on the ground using a crane suspended from a hovering rocket platform? That's just crazy talk. (Here's a nice video summary, for those just catching up.) And it worked. IT WORKED. (Sorry... I seem to have something in my eye.) Now we get to find out what remarkable science we can do.

EDIT: For those who aren't following all this on their own, a couple of followups. First, it turns out that the same (large) image by the MRO also includes the heat shield that had separated from Curiosity a minute earlier, still falling toward the ground. And second, there's already a rough video of the landing as seen from a camera on the bottom of Curiosity itself. (It sounds like they'll eventually have the whole thing in high definition, too!) This just keeps getting cooler.

Charged particles released after the big solar flare last week have been reaching the Earth all weekend, and there's a good chance of an impressive aurora tonight! (I probably ought to have said something yesterday...) There's a good Aurora Forecast page from the University of Alaska that will show you what to expect where. In fact, if it weren't sunny right now, their Short Term forecast map seems to imply that auroral activity would likely be happening right over Michigan (and Montana and Maine and possibly even farther south than that) and that it might even be visible on the horizon as far south as New Orleans. Who knows whether it will be anything like that tonight, but try to have a look!

The rumors were true! Both experiments at the LHC that were searching for the Higgs announced discovery-level evidence early this morning. This is a Big Deal, even if we did pretty much expect that the LHC would produce a result like this eventually. There's a lot to say (and lots of good discussions out there at various technical levels), but for a nice layman's overview I might recommend Bad Astronomy's Higgs post. The quotes near the beginning of this post by Tommaso Dorigo are good, too.

The very short version is this: a new particle has most definitely been discovered, and CERN found it by looking in all the places that one would look for the Higgs. Its properties aren't nailed down very well yet, but they appear to be broadly consistent with the properties we expect for the Standard Model Higgs. But, enticingly, there are tentative hints of some differences from that expectation, too. Further data over the next few years will (we hope) show us whether those differences are just random noise in the detection system or whether they reflect entirely new physics. (Most of us really, really hope it's the latter.)

Edit: I've seen some folks linking to a nice video explaining the Higgs from PhD Comics a couple of months ago. Also, since the topic of Comic Sans came up in my blog last week, I'm sad to see that the things I grumbled about last December were still a problem for the real announcement.

Edit2: Strassler's post lists a few more specifics in a nice, clean way.