Isaac Newton

Isaac Newton

Who was Isaac Newton? In his own age, Newton was a god of reason who created a perfect and perfectly rational universe. To a later and more romantic age, he became a monster, a bizarre unsociable creature who stripped the world of its rich mystery. More recently he has been outed as a closeted mystic who delved deeply into religious prophecy and alchemy. As John Maynard Keynes famously pronounced, “Newton was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians.” Which Newton do you see? James Gleick does a fine job in this book of telling the story not only of the man, but of how he was perceived. After all, where exactly are the lines that separate magic, religion, and science? They are foggy enough even now, and in the 17th century they were indiscernible. Newton, in pursuing occult matters, wasn’t engaged in a childish sideshow. He was doing the same thing that led him to his law of universal gravitation. He could not know that his investigations into the biblical prophecies of Daniel would not lead him to results as fundamental as his physics. He was simply doing what he did better than anyone before or since: observing, theorizing, experimenting, and systematizing. In so doing he sharpened the lines between what we now think of as the clear and separate domains of science, magic, and religion, though this was certainly not his intent. It’s just that his science succeeded where his theology did not. But who can blame him for thinking that his vision could penetrate any topic? Gleick’s book is very good, a sympathetic and rounded portrait of a strange and extraordinary man.

Dark matter STILL missing

Years after most of the universe’s mass went missing, it seems we still can’t figure out where it went. Scientists have put a WIMP detector in a Minnesota mine hoping to find the elusive quarry, but to no avail. See the BBC News story here: BBC NEWS | Dark matter detector limbers up.

A WIMP is an (as yet undemonstrated) weakly interacting massive particle, and the theory says that the missing mass may be packed in the back pockets of these heavy but barely detectable particles. It reminds me of 19th century efforts to keep the old ether theory of light propagation alive, despite all evidence to the contrary. But I’m no physicist. For some reason, I’m charmed by the fact that fully 70% of the universe is locked away somewhere and we have absolutely no idea where it is. It’s both humbling and exciting to see such gaping holes in our model of the universe.

Anyway, if you happen across the missing mass, please notify the authorities. You may want to print up a few our Americans for a Closed Universe flyers for distribution around town. Or, as Derwood Tuthill says, “Save the Universe: it’s the environmental issue of all time.”

Plasmatron reformer

This just in from the Science Fiction Technology Naming department… scientists at MIT are building a pollution mitigation device for diesel engines called a (wait for it) plasmatron fuel reformer. It works like this: some of the diesel fuel passes through the reformer, which forms a hydrogen rich gas, which is then combined with the diesel exhaust to lower the noxious nitrous oxide emissions. But that’s not the important thing. What really matters is, who came up with that fabulous name? I guarantee you the plasmatron reformer was named by someone with a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf crammed with paperback science fiction (“If you can just shut down the tractor beam, I should be able to knock the plasmatron fuel reformer offline.”). I hope this technology cuts pollution levels and all, but these guys deserve an award for the name alone.

Industrial biotech

The Economist has a good article on biotech this week. The moral of the story is that there’s a lot more to biotech than the pharmaceuticals business. Industrial solvents, food products, textiles, energy production, even the feedstocks to the plastics industry can be produced from living organisms that have been appropriately wired. Early indications are very promising. As the money pours in and the public catches on, we’ll soon find out if people are as opposed to genetically modified laundry starch as they are to genetically modified corn flakes.

I was intrigued by the description of a French company mentioned late in the article: Metabolic Explorer. Assuming it works as advertised, they have a terrific business model: “In silico lead strain generation for the development of new bioprocesses to replace existing chemical syntheses.” Check out their Products and Service page.

Synth bio makes SciAm

Synthetic biology is the subject of a feature story in Scientific American. Happily, it’s being made available for free on their website: Synthetic Life. They get up close and personal with synthetic biology rock stars Ron Weiss (Princeton) and Drew Endy (MIT). The article has a good summary quote about synthetic biology.

This nascent field has three major goals: One, learn about life by building it, rather than by tearing it apart. Two, make genetic engineering worthy of its name–a discipline that continuously improves by standardizing its previous creations and recombining them to make new and more sophisticated systems. And three, stretch the boundaries of life and of machines until the two overlap to yield truly programmable organisms.

If you want to see what synthetic biology “looks like”, look at this project page for one of the MIT classes that’s designing an organism. It looks like a science fiction mishmash of electrical engineering and biology, but it’s a real DNA “circuit”.

I find this extremely exciting, but it doesn’t surprise me that it gives a lot of people the creeps. However you feel about it now, you’re going to have to get used to it, because it’s the leading edge of something really big. Sophocles once said that nothing vast enters the life of mortals without a curse. But he’s been dead for 2400 years, so how smart could he be?

MATLAB wizards do battle

Our latest MATLAB Programming Contest is nearing completion. Since this is an election year, the puzzle this time (“Gerrymander”) is to divide a state into electoral districts of equal population. If you want to see real gerrymandering in action, look at this: 107th Congressional Districts. Dallas/Ft. Worth is particularly interesting.

Matt has done almost all the heavy lifting for the contest this time. Way to go, Matt! Check out the cool statistics page he’s put together. Be sure and tune in for the exciting 5 PM finale tomorrow afternoon.

Matt and I gave a presentation about the contest at IBM Watson Research Center in Cambridge last January. Based on that talk, there was enough interest to get me invited to write an article about the contest for CHI interactions magazine. Here’s the link, but you need an ACM membership to read the whole thing: In praise of tweaking: a wiki-like programming contest.

Crohn Banished by Diet of Worms

Your body evolved in an environment that was vastly filthier than the one you now inhabit. As a result, living with all this good hygiene can actually cause real problems in cases where your body has come to depend on filth. Your gut expects to manage large numbers of parasitic whipworms, for example, and, for the sophisticated readers of this weblog anyway, this just isn’t the case. For people with inflammatory bowel diseases (IBDs), like Crohn’s disease, the gut is violently wrestling with an opponent that never showed up. Or that’s the theory proposed by gastroenterologist Joel Weinstock.

Weinstock had a brilliantly testable idea: feed IBD sufferers a diet of worms. The clinical results, as reported in this New Scientist article, are nothing short of astonishing. Seventy of the hundred Crohn’s sufferers in the study experienced complete remission of the symptoms. If this all holds up, you will soon be able to order a “drinkable concoction containing thousands of pig whipworm eggs” (this from the same company, no lie, that brings you quality medicinal maggots and leeches).

I sense an exciting new high-concept juice bar business opportunity. The “Old McDonald” will be a lightly frothed blend of wheat grass and pig whipworms that can be spooned right out of the barnyard.

Scary retouch magic

Francis found this one a while back. A digital artist named Greg Apodaca is not only a talented photo manipulation artist, he also happens to be great at putting together a site that effectively gives away his magic tricks. Like any good magician, however, he can confidently show you what he does, but that doesn’t mean you’ll be able to do it yourself. Look at his Digital Portfolio page. They’re all fascinating little studies, but the ones with people in them are the most remarkable. Look at the pictures of the women at the far right and far left of the second row. For a really disturbing treat, move the mouse back and forth quickly over the image so you get a grotesque little animation.

People like Greg are manufacturing what your notion of beauty is. The women in glamor magazines don’t exist; they are built in tiny digital factories by a variety of skilled artificers. The raw materials for this process may be real women, but the desire-inducing finished product can only exist in the ether. Does that make us happier or more miserable?

Chernobyl, revisited

I commented on this back in March, but the woman behind the site has since revisited it and added a lot of stuff. Whether or not you saw it the first time around, go back and look at it again. GHOST TOWN is a first person account of what it’s like to drive through (on a motorcycle at high speed) the radioactive wasteland around Chernobyl in Belarus.

Correct forms of address

Let us say, speaking speculatively, that the Earl of Withington (who is also Viscount Munthorpe and has the family name of Grisham) is coming over to your place for beer and poker night Tuesday next. You grab the nearest Mont Blanc pen and your best cotton bond stationery to begin an invitation… but how to address him? Correct Forms of Address is the site for you. You might have dashed yourself upon the rocks of social self-destruction by referring to The Right Honble. The Earl of Withington as simply “The Honble. Earl of Withington” or “My Dear Viscount” or, heaven forbid, “My Main Man Earl.”

Cruise around this helpful site long enough and you will soon be deciphering jawbreakers like this.

He was the Most Noble Adolphus Gillespie Vernon Ware, Duke of Sale and Marquis of Ormesby; Earl of Sale; Baron Ware of Thame; Baron Ware of Stoven; and Baron Ware of Rufford…

I love jargon, and I especially love the patient, helpful people who enjoy explaining it. Nevertheless, when you come across a site like this, you’d like to think that it is actively maintained by an impeccably dressed Englishwoman, not a Trekkie lawyer who lives with her parents in Sour Lake, Texas (that’s her, first row, third from the left). Then again, fascination with form tends to congregate at the edges of the empire.