Of Courage and Optimism

This article in today's New York Times made my head spin: Filling Classes With Learning, Not Fears. It is about the girls and young women in Afghanistan, who assert their right to an education. And this is an amazing story. Yet, the sub-header struck me, in it's pollyannaish optimism: Attacks on Schools Plummet to About Eight a Month, Afghan Officials Say. Sure, they "plummeted", since a year or two ago, attacks on girls' schools happen with more than twice the frequency. But the situation for girls in Afghanistan is still bleak, and far from even remotely reaching the range of what we would call "normality". Still, it is a powerful testimony to the courage and determination of Afghanistan's girls and young women, who face these threats every day on their way to school.

The Aesthetics of Utility Poles

I couldn't help but laugh, when I saw the following headline on the New York Times' front page on Thursday: Solar Panels Rise Pole by Pole, Followed by Gasps of 'Eyesore'. Really? The delicate aesthetics of these strictly utilititarian utility poles, which line the roads an streets all over the country, will be negatively impacted by adding a few square inches of shiny blue solar panel? Why don't we step outside and look. This is what I see:

And now I wonder how this could possibly become more of an "eyesore" than it already is ...

Image: Juergen Schoenstein

"I would do it again"

Every now and then, I will use this blog to re-post translations of some older articles or interviews that I wrote for German publications in the course of my career. But why re-post what's already out there? Hasen't Google made everything searcheable, and turned the web into a great preserver? Maybe - but all too often I feel reminded of what one might call the "catch 42": The biggest problem is not finding things, it is knowing what to ask, what to search for. (For those who did not get the "42" reference - here's a hint.)

I chose the following interview with Edward Teller, which appeared in the German magazine FOCUS after he died, because to this day I am haunted by his admission that he would not hesitate to develop the nuclear arsenal once again, even if he knew that the enemy - i.e. the Germans, in that case - did not try to build their own nuclear weapons.

This interview with Edward Teller was conducted in July 2001; it was possibly the last interview that Teller, who was already frail and nearly paralyzed by a stroke, sat down with a journalist. The following text is an English transcription; since the interview was intended for a German magazine, Teller had insisted on answering in German, the language that he had learned from his mother. Edward Teller died on September 9, 2003.

Professor Teller, nuclear science seems to be in decline: Over the years, the number of active nuclear reactors on US campuses has gradually been reduced from 40 to 28; between 1992 and 1997, the number of students in nuclear physics declined from more than 1500 to 570. has nuclear science come to an end?

Hard to say. But the signs are there, and they are significant. Nuclear science today creates only little news, compared to cosmic science.

Particle accelerators, which had been built as the essential research facilities for nuclear scientists, have been turned - I am quoting the NEW YORK TIMES here - into "cosmic discovery machines" ...

It is an undisputed fact that in recent years more things have happened in cosmic sciences than in nuclear sciences.

But this could provide a real challenge for your own field, couldn't it?

I must confess that my own interest - my health permitting - lies more with cosmic science. Black holes are just too fascinating.

What happened to the peaceful use of nuclear fusion? After all, you were the first to create a scientifically controlled fusion reaction ...

The possibilities had been there before. I was instrumental in actually making it happen.

... and the biggest hope for that technology had been to turn it into an energy resource. But this is just as far away from becoming reality today, as it was in the time of the first hydrogen bomb. Can you explain this lack of progress?

Well, sure, a peaceful use of nuclear fusion is imaginable. But I can't see why fusion reactors would make a better energy resource than fission.

And why is that?

Because it is too hard to do. The details are very difficult to control.

So the idea of fusion reactors is all but dead?

Not at all. But we must not be too optimistic about this at the risk of neglecting nuclear fission energy.

Could it be, that younger generations were simply afraid of nuclear sciences, what with their reactors and nuclear missiles?

I cannot dispute that, but I don't think it should be relevant. We must not be afraid of science and knowledge. I was never afraid. But I believe that the main reason for a lack of new interest is that only through making news you can create curiosity. But there has been very little news in nuclear science in the last few decades.

Does the fact that nuclear science is still a matter of national security, and therefore largely classified stuff, while today's academics need to be published or perish, explain the lack of its appeal for young scientists?

I can see the conflict, but it lies less in the science itself than in the specific applications. But I think that it would be best to stop the secrecy altogether. This may take some time, but now is the time.

But what's the problem? Political or military necessity? Or just old habits that die hard?

It is a development that got on the wrong tracks.

What do you mean?

It is a fact that many countries - China and India, for example, but also many countries in Europe - discovered these so-called secrets all by themselves. I do not think that secrecy has a future, I think it has only a negative influence. But it is still there, and it will not be easy to get rid of it. Even if there is so much to be gained in open discussions.

But openness in such delicate areas of research also demands confidence in politics and the military. You have always worked closely with these two sides ...

... Only to the extend as it was necessary ...

... so, did you always have that confidence in the rationality of those who gained enormous power through your work?

Yes, I always had a lot of confidence. I had neither reasons nor the extreme audacity to criticize them. This is a difficult question.

Speaking of confidence in politics: After the war, Werner Heisenberg - whom you knew well - and his colleagues insisted, that they never really intended to build an atomic bomb, but only stalled the regime for time, while secretly working on civil uses for nuclear energy. Do you think they told the truth?

Yes, I do. I am certain that Heisenberg never wanted to work for Hitler. But he was just too good a German. Although that seems understandable in the context of his time.

So you're implying that the development of an American nuclear bomb program, that had been justified by the German nuclear effort, was not really necessary?

For me, knowledge is always good. The more we know, the better. I first learned of the military uses through my Hungarian friend Leo Szilard. We could not know that Germany would not achieve much in this area. For me, such research seemed rather necessary than desirable. Many scientists wanted to stay away from it, but it had to be - and I did it because others did not want to.

Would you do it again?

Absolutely, yes.

In spite of all the criticism that you had to face?

I wrote a book about exactly that problem. It will come out later this fall, and I hope there will be a German translation.

Ronald Reagan gave a new twist to the nuclear arms race - defense and deterrence were superseded by the goal of Soviet economic exhaustion.

I would not look at it that way.

How do you see it?

He did what he had to do. The threats were only a side effect, something that mostly hindered what he wanted to achieve. I agreed with Reagan's policy - and he was successful. It is largely his work that Germany has been reunited.

But at a very big risk. What if the Soviet Union would have considered a first strike, fearing that their nuclear arsenal might otherwise become obsolete?

Explain that to me.

If the country would have been driven to the brink of its capacities, facing the risk of losing the arms race, a nuclear first strike could have become a last resort and, as such, a real possibility.

This is hard to say. I would rather point out the positive effects.

What positive effects do you see here?

That Germany, that was always meant to be a cultural unity, did not remain divided. German unity was good for Germany, and it was good for the world.

And now, Reagan's vision of a strategic missile defense has been revived as "ballistic missile defense" or BMD.

No doubt that such a defense system is necessary. The more damage such missiles could do, the more you have to protect yourself. Sure, it is hard to do, but I find the possibilities are realistic. Luckily, the present US government has made it very clear: Defense is good.

But there seems to be a scientific consensus that such a defense plan is not feasible.

Only because it has been neglected for so many years. Under such circumstances it was very hard to plan for the future. It is certain that a missile defense system is needed and reasonable - and it is a fact that we neglected it.

Scientists from all sides have criticized George W. Bush and his administration for ignoring science. They're not necessarily anti-science, but definitely not interested. How do you see it?

Bush made a strong statement for military defense. And many scientists do not like that - which is why they spread all kinds of nonsense about him. But he sees what is necessary and he spoke clearly about it. And I hope, he can achieve it.

But it took him six months to decide who would be his science advisor, before settling on John Marburger. Rumor has it, the search took so long because no other scientist wanted the job.

Nonsense! But Bush was elected under very difficult circumstances, and that made it harder for him to fill important positions.

But maybe it is a sign that science itself has reached an end point?

Who says that?

In his book "The End of Science", John Horgan makes an argument that everything we need to know, has been discovered.

The same argument has been made a thousand years ago. The idea that we know everything that is essential, is a mistake that's as common as it is outrageous.

Maybe it is not the end of science - but could it be the end of the scientist as celebrities? Einstein used to be a household name, but how many people could name a physicist off the top of their head?

The first decades of the 20th century saw big advances in two scientific areas: relativity, which is associated with Einstein, and quantum mechanics, where Heisenberg and Bohr come to mind. Something like that cannot be expected in every century.

But look around the Stanford campus: Young people are mostly interested in subjects that are easily "marketable", like computer science or internet technology. Surely, the scientific questions may still be there, but what if nobody cares to answer them?

There is hardly anything that can be compared to the scientific advances of the early 20th century. Maybe the era of Galileo and Newton. In the 19th century electricity made huge progress. Which lead to many important and practical results - but they never posed a conflict to the beliefs that existed at the time. But relativity and the fact that the speed of light is an absolute speed limit, or quantum mechanics and its implication that the future will always be unpredictable - those were completely new concepts which came in conflict with existing world views. Something as spectacular as that can only rarely be found.

But wouldn't that explain some of the fears caused by science? The notion that science, albeit useful, but can also pose a threat to the world as a whole?

That certainly may have caused some fears. When I became interested in science, in the 20's of the last century, the concepts of relativity and quantum mechanics had been largely complete. My scientific career was based directly on these big developments, but it had not brought them on.

And yet you are, for some at least, the personification of everything that is frightening about science ...

I was not frightened by science, and that meant that I had to accept the consequences and try and push nuclear science even further. Many people said that they were not interested in that kind of knowledge. I fundamentally disagree with them: Every kind of knowledge is welcome to me.

Every kind of knowledge? No restraints?

Absolutely no restraints. If something is true, then I want to know about it.

But the issue here is not what science can do but what science should do.

If we can do it, we should do it.

And who will bear the moral responsibility for whatever the outcome is?

Everything that is new may have good and bad consequences. But when you have confidence in mankind, you can hope that the good applications will be the ones that matter. I am all for progress, under any circumstances. Just because knowledge can be abused, one cannot dispense with knowledge altogether. If we had, we would still be behind by a thousand years. Certainly , constraints may be necessary - but not constraints for research, only for its practical applications.

And who will decide this?

In a democracy, everyone should be allowed to participate in such decisions. The scientist should know, discover, explain, and by doing so, enable everybody to participate in such decisions. But it is not a decision about what may be known, but how you use knowledge. This is an important difference, that must be made clear. But let me point out just one more thing:

The world has grown smaller. What happens in one country will often have effects on the world as a whole. We are not prepared to avoid the conflicts resulting from such connections. We just don't know how to handle this. But that cannot mean that we should limit progress - it means that we have to promote worldwide cooperation. This is just as true for small problems like weather forecasts, as it is for the big problems, like global climate change. We have to cooperate with our neighbors, even if the cooperation becomes more complicated, simply because we have more neighbors than we did in the past. That makes cooperation harder, but also more inportant. We cannot allow fear of failure to make this unfeasible.

Flapping for traction

First, I must apologize to all the biologists who have known this for quite some time, and who might ask why I even bother to blog about it. But on the National Science Foundation's website, I found this little video clip about the fascination of bird flight, which quite casually illustrates how wings, and the capability to fly, might have evolved: Young ground birds (like the partridge, shown in the video) can make use of their wings, even before they are fully developed for flight - by using them like a race car uses a spoiler, to gain added traction which enables them to run up inclines, like a tree trunk. Quite fittingly, it is called wing assisted incline running, and it neatly explains how birds could gradually develop their forelimbs into wings and attain flight:


Nothing fundamentally new here, but since proponents of intelligent design persistently cite the evolution of flight as an example for irreducible complexity, one should just as persistently point out the fallacy behind it. Which I have done herewith...

A "pedestrian paradise" makes for better neighbors

Although paradise might be too big a word here: The research paper Examining Walkability and Social Capital as Indicators of Quality of Life at the Municipal and Neighborhood Scales , which was published in the current edition of Applied Research in Quality of Life actually talks about walkable neighborhoods, where amenities like playgrounds, restaurants, grocery stores, or post offices can easily be reached on foot. People living in such neighborhoods are, on average, not only healthier (thanks to the exercise of walking) and more connected (because they have more encounters with neighbors and friends in the street, for example), but they also possess more social capital, which was defined by the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu in Ökonomisches Kapital, kulturelles Kapital, soziales Kapital as the

aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition – or in other words, to membership in a group – which provides each of its members with the backing of the collectivity-owned capital, a ‘credential’ which entitles them to credit, in the various senses of the word.

Social capital comprises aspects of social interaction, like trust among neighbors (they know each other), or participation in local politics (regarding the funding for playgrounds, for example, or schools, or parks). According to lead author Shannon Rogers, Ph.D. student at the University of New Hampshire, being better connected might even lead to better health and more economic opportunities.

The research paper is based on 700 interviews in 20 neighborhoods in Portsmouth and Manchester (NH). Participants had to identify, how many of a total of 13 locations in their neighborhood they could reach by walking. Neighborhoods with at least seven locations in walking distance were categorized as "walkable". Social capital was determined by using a scale that was developed by Harvard professor Robert Putnam for his Saguaro Seminar.

But one must not forget that the paper establishes only a correlation between walkability and social capital; it would be false to read anything more into this, since it can be said with some plausibility that walkable neighbors might be self-selecting by, let's just say, attracting groups and people who prefer a lifestyle less dependent on cars, for example, and enjoy being politically active. Or people who prefer knowing their neighbors, who prefer living in a place where they can meet people in the streets, in parks, at neighborhood events etc. But as a Geographer, I find satisfaction the fact that social and spatial behavior can inform each other. And it shows that walkable neighborhoods might not be a bad thing after all - contrary to what many urban "designers" seem to believe ...

Original Post: Im Fußgängerparadies leben bessere Nachbarn

"One drop" on a hot-button issue: racism

Barack Obama is the first black US president, Halle Berry was the first black woman to receive an Oscar for Best Actress, and Colin Powell was the nation's first black Secretary of State. Were they, really? Obama and Berry both have caucasian mothers, and Powell has, courtesy of his Scottish ancestry, a lighter skin tone than a beach bum on the Jersey shore. Why do we see them as "black", although they are just as equally "white"? Because we may live in the 21st century, but we still keep an age-old racial hierarchy in our minds, which reserves the top rung for caucasians, labeling all other "races" as inferior and, consequently, as contaminants. And that is not just my personal opinion, but the conclusion in a paper on Evidence for hypodescent and racial hierarchy in the categorization and perception of biracial individuals, which appears in the most recent issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

I must confess: I had never heard of hypodescent before and had to look it up:

Hypodescent is the rule that automatically assigns the children of a mixed union or mating between members of different socioeconomic groups in the less privileged group.

This is also known as the one drop rule, and it is more than just one of many racial prejudices still prevalent today: it was written into law in 1662 in the Virginia colony and remained on the books for centuries; it was the basis for laws against intermarriage; and as late as 1985, it was essentially confirmed by the US Supreme Court: The highest US court had let stand, in the case of Jane Doe v. Louisiana, that Suzy Phipps could not legally change her (in her view erroneous) racial identification from black to white.

And this notion that one drop of "inferior" blood leads to a "contamination" of "white blood" (my apologies for all the quotation marks - but from my German point of view, such racial labeling, although widely accepted here in the US, seems extremely questionable and makes me very uncomfortable), is still widespread, according to the research of James Sidanius, Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, and his co-authors Mahzarin Banaji, Arnold K. Ho, Ph.D. student of psychology at Harvard, and Daniel T. Levin at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. They used a series of computer-generated images, morphing white and black as well as white and Asian faces (ranging from 5 percent white to 95 percent white); the 50-50 mix of two races was practically never identified as white - to be considered caucasian, black-white biracial images had to be at least 68 percent "white" (Asian-white required "only" 63 percent "white").

There is one conclusion which I would dare to question, though:

The team found few differences in how whites and non-whites perceive biracial individuals, with both assigning them with equal frequency to lower-status groups.

It's the "lower status" reference that I find questionable in this context, at least when it refers to the minority views: It might also express some kind of ethnic pride, when an Afroamerican choses to label a face "black", although it is predominantly "white" - it should not be interpreted as demeaning to him to be perceived as black. Although, quite honestly, I know that even in today's society, this view might still qualify me as naive.

Ein Tropfen auf das "heiße Eisen" des Rassismus

One thing that I am not talking about in my original German-language post (see above link), is that in the United States, racism - which is not automatically identical with racial discrimination - is still an acceptable and accepted concept. We are constantly required to identify ourselves by race, be it in the Census, or on government applications, or whatnot (as a non-citizen, I am not privy to all the paperwork requirements that Americans have to endure). This concept seems even odder to us Germans (and, I might add, given our history, it should be) - we actually don't use the word "race" for human beings. Our word "Rasse" would be correctly translated as "breed", and as such it applies only to domesticated animals. You need proof? Search "Menschenrassen" on Wikipedia.de (I know, that doesn't really prove anything, but it'll do for now), and you will be redirected to the subject of "Rassentheorie", which, right in the first line, is decribed as "heute als überholt angesehene Theorien" - theories that are now considered outdated.

Which doesn't mean that there is no ethnic discrimination in Germany; sadly, the issue received an unexpected boost with a book by former Deutsche Bank executive Thilo Sarrazin, who received not only (well deserved) criticism, but sadly also a lot of applause for his theory, published in his book "Deutschland schafft sich ab" (Germany dooes away with itself), that Muslim immigrants are culturally, intellectually, and genetically inferior. A stupid, unfounded, revolting, disgusting (add more words of contempt here: ______) view - but terrifyingly populistic, too.

Good grades = good health

That is, according to a new paper by sociologist Patricia Herd of the University of Wisconsin, based on data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, and published in the current Journal of Health and Social Behavior. According to the data retrieved from that study, which followed 10,000 Wisconsin high schoolers of the class of 1953 throughout the decades,

Herd's findings showed that the higher a study participant's high school rank was, the lower the probability that participant experienced worsening health between 1992 and 2003, when the class members neared retirement age.

Okay, I would not doubt that there is a correlation between grades and health - but I do doubt that there is causation. In other words: Good grades do have some relevance when later income and wealth is concerned, and the nexus between income and overall health has also been plausibly established. So it might not be the good grades, but the advantageous economic situation that is the determining factor in good health. And even the relationship between grades and income might be as simple as good work in school leading to better-paying jobs - after all, family wealth can buy tutoring, save the student from the need to work for his upkeep (certainly not unusual in the 1950's), and allow him to focus on his studies; more affluent neighborhoods also generally enjoy better-equipped schools and better-paid teachers - both certainly important factors in academic success.

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