Interesting Little Brother link

Yes, yes, it's obvious: this increased tempo of posting is of course just a procrastination method. Not that I should feel that I'm procrastinating when I try to wind down in the evening, but that's how it is.

Anyway, I just want to link to this interesting post about Cory Doctorow's Little Brother by Henry Jenkins (researcher in the field of media and popular culture).

/.../Alec Resnick wrote me to ask me whether I could think of another book which had been so carefully designed to launch a resistance movement. Certainly science fiction authors have been trying to use the genre as a means of political commentary since before any one thought to call it science fiction. /.../ But I don't know of another book which provides so much detailed information on how to transform its alternative visions into realities. And as such, this may be the most subversive book aimed at young readers in the past decade.

It might not be great literature, but it is a good read -- and with the development we see right now it's probably also a very important book.

(And a question: what was the most subversive book in the previous decade?)

Not "normal" dark matter

Symmetry magazine has a news blog, as you might know. Today I read that next issue will discuss a dark matter controversy: the DAMA dark matter detector sees a signal, which cannot be seen in other experiments. It has pretty much been ruled out that it was dark matter causing the signal. What it is that they see is debated: something that has an annual modulation. Could it have something to do with cosmic rays? The number of cosmic ray particles vary with season because of the varying density of the atmosphere. This is just a speculation. We'll see if they sort it out.

What made me interested in this little news item is that they also mention COUPP, a detector i like. It's a bubble chamber!

Within a week or so I will post a little text about a dark matter detector. It was originally intended for first year physics students. There, now I have promised, so I have to do it!

Circling around the minefield, finding Dracula

Mostly I try to ignore the science vs religion debate in the blogosphere, because it really brings out the worst in people. Now the story about PZ and the communion wafers makes me deeply uneasy (actually really sad). The short version: there is this guy PZ Myers, a scientist with the interesting hobby to make a lot of noise about anything stupid that people say or do in the name of religion (well, actually I think he claims that it is religion itself that is stupid or makes people stupid). Now he reacted to some story involving bread from the communion by asking people to send him samples of the stuff so that he can desecrate it and post videos of it. I might have some detail wrong, but I'm not going to the sources to look into it because I think it would make me upset and destroy my day.

I agree that some people act a little bit strange, maybe even stupid, when it comes to threats to things that they hold holy. Also, sending PZ death threats is a very un-Christian thing to do (other humans should also be seen as sacred, and then there is this whole thing about loving the enemies...). This in itself makes me very sad, but his whole idea of deliberately demonstrating such utter disdain for other's ways of handling and thinking about the sacred is not only distasteful but deeply in-humanistic. I could also call it mean and childish.

About the meaning that communion can have for people I really recommend Take This Bread by Sarah Miles (thank you Elliot, for bringing this book to my attention!), a story that is perfectly readable also for people with no personal connection with any church.

This said, I have to comment on Dracula, the classic by Bram Stoker. In this book the heroes bring communion bread in enormous quantities, and they bury pieces in soil to make it unusable for vampires. I always wondered about that. Getting hold of some wafers is no problem, but not all wafers carry the vampire-smothering power: they need to be consecrated. This means that a priest has to perform a little ritual, involving the reading of the story of the first communion. The wafers that are left over after the ritual, those that are not eaten immediately, are usually locked in a little cabinet (the tabernacle in the church building, or otherwise in some other place, not accessible to the public). I have heard about people stealing consecrated bread for use in witchcraft, but as I understand it they did it by going to communion and then hiding the bread under the tongue until they left the church. How do you get hold of large quantities?

There might be some anglican priests who would do mass-consecration for use in vampire-hunts, but this is not mentionend in Dracula and I have never heard about it from anywhere. I picture a hidden chapel, with mass-production and a small staff of people packing the wafers for shipping together with vials of holy water (the water is usually much easier to find, but why pass on a good package deal?) and crucifixes. Buy the small vampire-package for home use, or the club pack to share with your friends when you travel to Transsylvania! And then little unconspicious ads in newspapers, sharing the space with mail-order companies selling hygienic underwear or pictures of ladies in costume.

Hmm. This is where blogging protocol requires me to write "I digress" and promise to stay on topic in the future. And actually, I really should bring my daughter to daycare now, and get to work.

Interview with Malin Sandström

After the interview with Peggy Kolm, blogger at Biology in Science Fiction, I have sent some questions to Malin Sandström, who is bringing science news to the Swedish part of the blogosphere at Vetenskapsnytt. Sorry that it has taken me so long to get around to posting this!

What came first, your interest in science or in science fiction? To what extent are they aspects of the same interest?

I am actually not sure. Probably I did not make that clear division between "science" and "fiction" when I started reading books, but I definitely had more opportunities to nurture my interest in science. The first science fiction I remember reading and can place in time was Gibson, and then I might have been... eleven? twelve? Old enough not to be immediately evicted from the "grownups" section of the library, at least.

Of course these interests have parts in common. I think the underlying theme in good science and good science fiction is partly the same; neat logical threads between known things, nevertheless leading to the unexpected unknowns. And science often makes for good stories, even if it is not usually framed in that way. Reading a scientific paper with "story-teller" eyes can be quite revealing, and it also gives you a few pointers on how to improve your own papers.


In your experience, do scientists read science fiction?

I'd guess more do than are willing to admit it ;-) But sadly, I'd also say that most scientists I have met seem to read very little apart from their academic litterature. (Makes you wonder how many get all the way down the Contents page of Nature to read Futures... I'd love to see those reading statistics.) The few booklovers I've met among my collegues are quite often sf readers, though. And if you go from my part of the field - natural sciences - to the more interactive and reflecting social sciences, I'd expect to find more readers, hopefully also more sf devotees.

What is the role of science fiction for the communication of science? Is it useful, is it negligible, or is it just a source of misconceptions?

It can be useful, but I think you would have to pick and choose rather carefully to avoid misconceptions and get an overarching theme together to communicate the science you want. But as a medium for communicating the excitement of science and pointing out ways to think about science, it has a lot of potential. For instance, what will individual identity mean if we ever will be able to produce human clones? If we add prostheses and improvements to our bodies and psyches, at what point are we no longer human? These questions are still inching their way into the general public discussion, but they've been in the books and short stories for more than twenty years.

What do you think about the portrayal of scientists in science fiction? In other forms of literature?

I actually have no set opinion on this any longer. I'd normally go with my gut reflex and say "bad! All stereotypes!", but I was at a seminar at the PCST-10 conference i Malmö last week where they discussed the development of the portrayal of scientists in the culture, and they had a lot of positive counter-examples for both sf and general literature. Let's just say it varies, and it is getting better - but the scientists I know are definitely more normal :-)

---

If you read Swedish, make sure to check out Vetenskapsnytt!

Babysitting a detector

Many experiments need to be monitored around the clock, and so does our dark matter detector. I'm "on shift" this week, which means that I have to adjust my schedule to watch the status of the detector and the flow of data. We take data in batches called "runs" (lingo inherited from accelerator experiments), and especially when a run starts and ends I need to watch closely so that things go right. We also have a data taking plan, and sometimes change the temperature between the runs.

Of course all of this is done remotely. Actually, the whole lab is closed for summer break ("shutdown") and we have no physical access. It means that I sometimes need to be at the computer in the middle of the night, but it's much more comfortable to do it from home than to sit in a control room.

Ideally it should be a minimal amount of work, but knowing experiments you can be sure that there will always be something that does not turn out exactly right. It's only in the movies physicist can make everything work smoothly at the first try. Therefore: sleep deprivation. I also this morning tried to change some parameters and start a run while dressing and feeding our daughter. It was complicated (especially before her father got out of bed and could help us), and I would not recommend it. I will try to avoid combining these two activities in the future, but there is no guarantee.

I will write more about the detector in the future, and explain how it works.

Interview with Peggy Kolm

This is the next installment in my series of interviews with interesting people about the relationship between science and science fiction. After the interview with Peter Watts I'm interested to see what other biologists say. Who can be more qualified to talk about this than Peggy Kolm, of the Biology in Science Fiction blog.

What came first: your interest in science fiction or your interest in biology? What is the relationship between the two interests?

That's a tough question, since I've been interested in both since I was in elementary school. I think, though, that my interest in science probably came first, since I went through a long Nancy Drew phase before I really got into science fiction. What drew me to science fiction was mix of science and adventure. I gobbled up the descriptions of space ships orbiting black holes and aliens, and that, in turn sparked my interest in learning more about the real science.

You have been blogging about biology in science fiction since 2006. Have you learned or discovered anything interesting by doing this, that you would like to share?

Before I started my blog, I didn't really read that much new science fiction. I purchased the occasional copy of Asimov's or the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and a few end-of-the-year "best of" anthologies, but most of my reading was from used book stores, which put my knowledge of science fiction novels at least a decade behind the times. Once I started blogging, I realized there was a lot of great fiction that I hadn't even heard of, let alone read. As a happy coincidence one of the major developments of the past few years is the expanding availability of fiction
online. I still prefer reading old-fashioned paper books, but e-books have helped get me up to speed with what's been published in the past few years. My "want to read" list is still pretty long, but at least know I know what books to look for.

How well do you think science fiction needs to be founded in real science? What is the relationship between idea and story?

I think that the story - the characters and the narrative - is the most important part of any story, science fiction or otherwise. If the story is engaging and entertaining I find it easy to overlook scientific absurdities. However when the science or technology, rather than character development, is the central element of the story, it's more important to me that the science is plausible. That's especially true when the science is something we're close to achieving, or have actually already achieved - I am much less bothered by faster-than-light drives and travel by wormhole than implausible genetics or cloning. But maybe that's my biology bias showing.

Do you think biology is under-appreciated or under-represented in science fiction or in the sf community?

I do think that biology is often unfairly considered a less "hard" basis for science fiction than physics. That seems to have been slowly changing over the past 20 years or so, as genetic engineering has become routine and cloning of humans has gone from being pure speculation to a likely reality. I suspect that the increase in biology-based science fiction in recent years is also due to the fact that there are more writers with backgrounds in the biological sciences now than there ever have been. (Has anyone actually done a survey? I'd hate to think it was just my imagination.) I'd like to think that trend will continue.

---

Find more at Biology in Science Fiction .

Canada and Sweden (links all over)

Yesterday was Canada day. We went to see the fireworks. It also made me think of Canada, and Sweden, how things are in general in these countries.

I recently found this plot of the general values of different countries, the Inglehart-Welzel Cultural Map of the World:



I have seen similar maps before, and always Sweden is kind of extreme in one corner.

In the recent novel Shelter by Susan Palwick Sweden, Canada and the Netherlands are the first western countries to give citizenship to artificial intelligences. I assume these three countries have solid reputations of being liberal and progressive. If you only judge from distances on these maps there are several countries closer to Sweden i values than Canada, but from my own experience I would say the countries are fairly similar.

Right now I don't know what to think about my home country on the other side of the Atlantic. Things are so strange lately, I would never have guessed that we would get a law that allows surveillance of private communication. I'm disappointed. There are also strange discussions going on in the European Union about registration and regulation of blogs. And now, the last thing seems to be the possibility that we lose the right to remove our own samples from the tissue records that are kept for medical research (and there is talk about releasing the DNA information to the police...)

On a completely different note I found an interview with William Gibson where he talks about Canada, among other things:

Canada is set up to run on steady immigration. It feels like a twenty first century country to me because it's not interested in power. It negotiates and does business. It gets along with other countries. The power part is very nineteenth century. 99 percent of ideology we have today is very nineteenth century. The twentieth century was about technology, and the nineteenth was ideology.

I haven't lived long enough in Canada to say anything about the state of the country or about the national identity or anything, but I think it's interesting to hear what other's say.

My next post is going to be another interview, this time with Peggy Kolm from Biology in Science Fiction blog.