The Rogue Scholar

"Spooky Tome" Auctioned by Texas Library

The book in question is a 1933 first edition  copy of "Champion Textbook of Embalming" by A.O. Spriggs. And it seems to well and truly freak out at least one of the staff:

"Oh no, no, no, it's not something we could ever put on the shelves," Evelyn McLane, programming associate, said. "I think the embalming book came in about a year ago, as a donation."

I'm temped to describe the programming associate as a lightweight, but that wouldn't be fair. First, I don't run a  public library, so I avoid the political flak that public librarians do. We rarely if ever get complaints from our students, and when we do it's most often to deride us for not having a given book on the shelves. I don't think we've ever been asked to remove something already here. The medical textbooks are quite well-utilized.

Besides that, I had plenty of chances to check out the rare book room at the New York Academy of Medicine when I worked there. George Washington's teeth were a big draw; their most requested item, in fact. In a collection like that, the emblaming book might actually seem a little banal.

On the other hand, American culture seems more removed from death than ever. All the heavy lifting is taken care of by hospitals, morticians, and funeral homes, and they don't do so for free. It's no wonder that a book that describes in painstaking detail the care and feeding of human corpses creeps her out. She's hardly alone:

Library officials said donated books that can't find a home on circulation shelves sometimes become undiscovered treasures for others.

In the case of the embalming book, it was immediately clear it needed to go . someplace else far, far away from unsuspecting library patrons.

"We put the embalming book in the last one (sale), but it didn't sell," Ms. McLane said. "We paired it with Poe to see if someone would buy it."

Not a bad idea. The Poe book she mentions is a 1944 edition of "Tales of Edgar Allen Poe." All things considered, if you're into creepy stuff, this might be worth checking out.

America Chooses the Lesser Path

Shuttle Mission STS-135 is officially over. Space Shuttle Atlantis is home. She and her sisters are now grounded. We are done.

I've read a few counter-arguments to that position, but they all fall short of convincing me this is not the end. NASA isn't dead, they say . . . they've just shut down what is arguably the most successful manned space program in history. Humans will still travel to Mars and beyond . . . in 20 or 30 years. Cargo will still be lifted into orbit . . . by private corporations and other nations. Fine. That's not the point.

 NASA TV is now broadcasting landing replays and will most likely have extensive shuttle history coverage for today and the next few days, interspersed with astronaut and flight crew interviews and press conferences, if you're interested or if you want to catch up on anything you may have missed. That's not the point, either, although it is fascinating stuff.

The point is this: for the first time in my life I feel like a member of a dying civilization. For the first time I feel as if the American people have actually chosen to melt down the keys to the universe that they spent half a century collecting. As if we decided that it was just too much trouble to keep going. As if we have chosen the lesser path.

I'm not going to even dwell on the obvious practical shortcomings on this decision. NASA no longer has room to employ over 8,000 people, and they're going to get their pink slips and hearty handshakes and go off to do . . . something productive, I hope. These are 8,000 of the most dedicated, highly trained, talented individuals our society has produced. Letting them go is wrong. It's worse than wrong, it's cutting our entire society's nose off to spite its face. Those people are some of the best trained in the physical sciences in the world. If nothing else they need to be sent into other jobs where they can employ their engineering, design, organization, and technical acumen.

I'm not even going to mention the five hundred or so individuals who have bled, sweat, and died to earn the title astronaut. I don't think I have to. When I was in grade school, if you didn't want to grow up to be an astronaut at some point, there was something wrong with you. Granted, the reality was quite different--astronauts were chosen to be human Guinea pigs, TV celebrities and PR tokens as much as crew*--but we were kids, and we all dreamed of going into space on holiday some day, even as we knew that other future-dreams like teleportation and flying cars were just silly.

We have chosen ignorance over knowledge, consumption over production, banality over creativity. Worse, we have chosen to integrate the lesson that anything we aren't already doing cannot be done, when even a cursory examination of our history tells us exactly the opposite.

I don't know what happens after this. I have a vague sense that someone else will pick up where we chose to leave off, and I wish whomever does so all the luck in the universe. And why not? It will be theirs for the taking.

 

*Susan Faludi documents these aspects of the Gemini and Apollo programs in her book, Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man.

Earth Day 2011: NYPL Reading List

I think the title of this post says all that need be said on the subject: NYPL takes its reading lists quite seriously. This is a good one.

There are some good selections there, too: Rachel Carson's Silent Spring is an old favorite now in its billionth printing, Power Trip: The Story of America's Love Affair With Energy by Amanda Little, and Alternative Energy by Brian Black are all excellent resources to look through as you consider how you can help convince Mother nature not to wipe out Homo sapiens in the next century or so.*

Anyway, the list is here and the day is young. Start reading!

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*Don't kid yourself--she's come perilously close to doing so a number of times over the past few million years. The only reason we've been able to settle down and build our current civilization is a weirdly stable climate which allowed agriculture to become a reliable means of food production for large populations that began something like 20,000 years ago. That climate is now ending. By any estimation we are living 0n borrowed time.

Changes Made by Thomas Jefferson in Original Draft of Declaration of Independence

In honor of Independence Day, I give you living history:

Hyperspectral Imaging by Library of Congress Reveals Change Made by Thomas Jefferson in Original Declaration of Independence Draft

Recent hyperspectral imaging of Thomas Jefferson’s rough draft of the Declaration of Independence has clearly confirmed past speculation that Jefferson made an interesting word correction during his writing of the document, according to scientists in the Library of Congress’ Preservation Research and Testing Division (PRTD).

Jefferson originally had written the phrase "our fellow subjects." But he apparently changed his mind. Heavily scrawled over the word "subjects" was an alternative, the word "citizens."

The correction seems to illuminate an important moment for Jefferson and for a nation on the eve of breaking from monarchical rule: a moment when he reconsidered his choice of words and articulated the recognition that the people of the fledgling United States of America were no longer subjects of any nation, but citizens of an emerging democracy.

The correction occurs in the portion of the declaration that deals with U.S. grievances against King George III, in particular, his incitement of "treasonable insurrections." While the specific sentence doesn’t make it into the final draft, a similar phrase was retained, and the word "citizens" is used elsewhere in the final document. The sentence didn’t carry over, but the idea did.

Fenella France, a scientist in PRTD, conducted the hyperspectral imaging in the fall of 2009 and discovered a blurred word under "citizens," France said, "It had been a spine-tingling moment when I was processing data late at night and realized there was a word underneath citizens. Then I began the tough process of extracting the differences between spectrally similar materials to elucidate the lost text."

Hyperspectral imaging is the process of taking digital photos of an object using distinct portions of the visible and non-visible light spectrum, revealing what previously could not be seen by the human eye. The hyperspectral imaging system is located in the Library’s Optical Properties Laboratory, on the sub-basement level of the James Madison Building. Fascinating details of our historical heritage have been coming to light with the use of hyperspectral imaging. For instance, recent imaging of the heavily varnished and visually obscured 1791 Pierre L’Enfant Plan of Washington, D.C., has clearly revealed invisible streets and special locations, including the "President’s House" and "Congress’ House."

The Thomas Jefferson word correction has been suspected for some time by scholars. In "The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 1: 1760-1776" (Princeton University Press, 1950), Julian P. Boyd wrote "TJ originally wrote ‘fellow-subjects,’ copying the term from the corresponding passage in the first page of the First Draft of the Virginia Constitution; then, while the ink was still wet on the ‘Rough draught’ he expunged or erased ‘subjects’ and wrote ‘citizens’ over it."

The rough draft of the Declaration of Independence can be explored in stunning detail in the online version of the exhibition "Creating the United States" at myLOC.gov (and on-site, appropriately, at the Library’s Thomas Jefferson Building).

The original post can be found here. Enjoy!

Three Americans Share 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics

3 Americans share 2009 Nobel physics prize

By MATT MOORE and KARL RITTER, Associated Press Writers Matt Moore And Karl Ritter, Associated Press Writers 16 mins ago

STOCKHOLM – Three Americans whose 1960s research laid the foundation for today's world of computerized images and lightning-fast communication shared the 2009 Nobel Prize in physics Tuesday for their work developing fiber-optic cable and the sensor at the heart of digital cameras.

Charles K. Kao, 75, was cited for discovering how to transmit light signals over long distances through glass fibers as thin as a human hair. His 1966 breakthrough led to the creation of modern fiber-optic communication networks that carry voice, video and high-speed Internet data around the world.

"What the wheel did for transport, the optical fiber did for telecommunications," said Richard Epworth, who worked with Kao at Standard Telecommunications Laboratories in Harlow, England in the 1960s. "Optical fiber enables you to transmit information with little energy over long distances and to transmit information at very high rates."

Kao solved the problem of transmitting through miles of glass without having the glass itself absorb the signal. Corning Glass Works built on his ideas to create the first fibers that could be used for large-scale long-distance communications, making today's Internet possible.

Kao said he never expected the award despite the vast changes that resulted from his research.

"Fiber-optics has changed the world of information so much in these last 40 years," he said in a statement released by the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where he was formerly vice chancellor.

Willard S. Boyle, 85, and George E. Smith, 79, were honored for inventing the eye of the digital camera, a sensor able to transform light into a large number of pixels, the tiny points of color that are the building blocks of every digital image.

Their charge-coupled device, or CCD, is found today in devices ranging from the cheapest point-and-shoot digital camera to robotic medical instruments equipped with video cameras that let surgeons perform delicate operations deep inside the human body. It also revolutionized astronomy by letting spacecraft equipped with digital cameras take images from previously unseen regions of outer space and transmit them back to earth.

The work of the three men is "something that has really changed our lives," said Joseph Nordgren, chair of the academy's physics committee. "The impact on science is enormous."

Read the rest of the article here.  Enjoy!

Next Stop: Mars! (Or Not)

40 years ago we landed humans on the Moon.  It was A Very Big Deal.  It really happened.  That said, let us all watch a clip of Buzz Aldrin punching a conspiracy theorist in the face.  Personally, I could watch that clip all day, but I think once is enough to make the point.

 I was a little over two years old in 1969 and don't remember a thing about the big event. My parents did, and so did their parents friends and neighbors and coworkers, however. To some extent it was a generational thing. So, first, some review: in 1957, the U.S.S.R. launched a satellite called Sputnik 1 into low orbit and for the first time, anybody on Earth could adjust their short-wave radio to a particular frequency and listen to the signal from this artifact that the future Evil Empire had sent into the sky. The engineers and engineering students understood that nothing would be the same again. The Cold War was in full swing, both superpowers were building fleets of heavy bombers and bombs to drop from them, and the nation that could build a missile big enough to push a satellite into orbit could just as easily build one big enough to carry a nuclear bomb across the North Pole.  Such a nation would then be the Unquestioned Supreme Power in the Universe, or so went the thinking at the Pentagon and Kremlin.

Faced with this obvious shortcoming, Americans behaved predictably: we got scared. Yes, we had enough B-52s and atomic bombs to annihilate all of Eastern Europe, but the Russians had demonstrated that had something better. We needed one, too.  Preferably a whole fleet of them. So over the next half-decade the U.S. government poured money into a ballistic missile program of our own. Finally, JFK put the issue on center stage when he declared in 1961 that he would make it a goal of the United States to put a man on the Moon "by the end of [the] decade." And we did.

The thing to remember is that the Apollo program didn't just happen because the American president wanted it to happen, even one as renowned as John Fitzgerald Kennedy. The work that led to it was a long string of failures, partial failures and some pretty darned cool successes as engineers in the U.S. and Soviet Union perfected their understanding of ballistic science, life support systems, microgravity and acceleration, and multi-stage thrust systems. It's one thing to comprehend the trigonometry that enables you to plot where a given projectile, traveling at an assumed speed, in a particular direction for a specific amount of time, will land. Building a rocket big  enough to transport three human beings a quarter million miles of harsh vacuum and return them safely to Earth is something else. But marrying these two accomplishments into the Apollo program is several orders of magnitude more difficult. There are relatively few among us who truly grasp the difficulties and labor involved in making that day happen. There's a good reason that Buzz decked the conspiracy wacko.

But in today's news environment, the Moon is considered boring. Now, we're told, the next stop on the journey is a manned mission to Mars at some point in, say, the next 20 years.  That's fine. Dandy, even.  But what do we do in the meantime? Our existing fleet of space shuttles is A) over 20 years old and B) due to retire in a few years. The Air Force no longer builds the heavy Atlas-type boosters that were the mainstay of NASA's heavy lift fleet 30 years ago in quantity (although if the Atlas V proves anything it's that somebody can still build them well.)  And now they want us to believe that sending astronauts 35 million miles away is the answer to maintaining a viable human presence in space? I don't agree. A better choice is going back to the Moon.

I can think of a few reasons for this. The Moon is A) known territory, having been explored thoroughly by us and the Soviets back when we had the money and drive to do it, B) only a quarter million miles away, and C) getting there is something we've done before. We need to go back and dig in. There are plenty of ways to do this, some of which are insane and others pure genius. It can be done. And it makes sense to work the kinks out of any space colonization program we adopt closer to home than not.

That said, it remains the case that Mars is by any reckoning A Very Big Deal.  The thought of going there captures the imagination of astronauts, politicians, science geeks (including me) and Joe and Jane Average in a way that few projects do.  But putting some very big (and valid) parts of that deal--the price tag, the timing, the political will, for starters--off to the side a moment, there is one concern that looms large in my mind about this particular proposal: if something goes horribly wrong, we lose the entire investment. It's 35 million miles from here to there one-way and let's face it, things go wrong.  Sometimes they can be fixed (or, such as in the case of Apollo 13, not fixed but at least navigated through and endured). But, as in the case with Space Shuttle Challenger in 1986 and more recently, the Columbia in 2003, when something goes wrong, it often all goes wrong at once and the result is destruction and death.

I totally buy the argument that says that when you explore new frontiers, you need to pay the piper, and in the case of our collective space programs, that means the occasional blood sacrifice.  I agree, that much is the nature of the game. Only a fool or a Pollyanna would argue with it.  But let's also admit that planning a trip to Mars is a long-term goal (ten years? twenty?), so while we plan for Mars, why not get in as much practice as possible in the meantime? Why not go back to the Moon and this time stay there?

The bottom line is that a manned mission to Mars would be impressive as hell if it ever happens but not in the same way the Apollo missions were back in the seventies. Then, the Cold War was still on and the space shuttle--a remarkably successful program for all the problems--hadn't even been built yet. The entire industrial world relies on satellite communications and a dozen countries have ballistic technology sufficient to launch them into stable orbits now. But a working Moon base that gives us the reason and opportunity to develop and refine the infrastructure to get our carbon-based monkey asses off this pale blue dot and into the inner solar system for the benefit of future generations would be infinitely more worthwhile.

If it ever happens.

The Universe Just Gets More and More Interesting

Odd planet's extreme global warming: Highs of 2240
BY SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer 
Wed Jan 28, 3:18 pm ET

WASHINGTON – Astronomers have found a planet with a galactic case of hot flashes. In just six hours, this planet four times the size of Jupiter heats up by more than 1,200 degrees, according to a study published in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. "It's the first observation of changing weather" on a planet outside our solar system, said study author Gregory Laughlin, an astronomy professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz. He used NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope to study the planet.

Change is a mild way to put it for the lifeless world, called HD80606b, where the word "mild" would never enter a weather forecast.

Normally, the planet is a toasty 980 degrees or so. But in the few hours it whips around its sun the planet gets zapped with mega-heat, pushing the thermometer closer to 2,240 degrees.

During its brief close pass to its sun, the planet is 10 times nearer its star than Mercury is to our sun. When it comes closest to its star, it becomes one giant "brewing storm" complete with shock waves, Laughlin said. The radiation bombarding the planet is 800 times stronger than when it is farthest away.

Then just as quickly, the planet slingshots away and radiates the heat to the cool vacuum of space. It glows cherry red and the temperature plummets, Laughlin said.

"Utterly bizarre," he said. "It is thoroughly completely uninhabitable. In a galaxy of uninhabitable planets, this one stands out as being completely inhospitable to life."

The planet circles its star — the larger of two stars in a binary system — in a comet-like orbit in just 111 days.

The star is visible from Earth near the Big Dipper. On Feb. 14, HD80606b will travel between the Earth and its star. There's a 15 percent chance that amateur astronomers using small telescopes could see it swing by, obscuring a tiny part of the star, Laughlin said.

"This is indeed an oddball planet, where the temperature range of the season changes from hellish to super-hellish," said Carnegie Institution astronomer Alan Boss. "This place makes Venus look like a nice place to live and that is saying something."

Astronomers Find "Super Earth"

I know that this has almost nothing whatsoever to do with libraries, books, or anything else I generally deal with, but boy, it's the coolest news story I've seen all week:

New 'Super-Earth' Found in Space

It's orbiting a red dwarf star (Gliese 581) just about 20 light-years from us, it's about half again the size of Earth, and there's a great chance it has liquid oceans.

Jackpot.

News from the Human Genome Project

See, here's the thing.

The Human Genome Project is without doubt one of the most ambitious, important, and just plain  brilliant ideas put forth by the science establishment ever.  The guys over at the American Society for Microbiology explain why better than I can:

With the help of new techniques and powerful computers, scientists have finally pieced together in order the entire human genome. This means that they have strung together in the correct order all three billion (that’s 3,000,000,000) or so biochemical rungs of our spiral ladder-shaped DNA molecule. What we now have is the entire book of life for making a human being.

This is a hugely big deal! Why? Well, much of what happens in our bodies is the result of molecules called proteins doing their thing. And proteins are made from recipes called genes that are contained in our DNA. (The sum total of all the genes in a living creature is called its genome <gee-nome>.) By having all the genes spelled out in the right order, researchers will now have an easier time figuring out which genes make what proteins. This in turn will help in figuring out which genes are responsible for or have an affect on different diseases when they get messed up. That may lead to better ways of tackling some diseases. Also, knowing the human genome sequence may help scientists figure out just what makes humans "human."

       

Which makes it all the more interesting when I read something like this in what appears to be a rather (ahem) different conclusion:

Scientists Find Extraterrestrial Genes in Human DNA

It looks like a real article.  It feels like a real article.  And it goes a few places I just do not want to follow for purely emotional reasons, one of which being that for the past 20 years, I've been making enormous fun of people who swore we were bred from aliens.  I can't find any other source for this discovery, however that doesn't mean it's not real, just that there have been no responses to it yet.

If it turns out to be true, I'll apologize to the people I made fun of.  And wonder if our DNA was in fact crafted by some unknown (and perhaps unknowable) intelligence somewhere in the universe I'd like them to explain why they did such a crappy job of it.  I mean come on, we can't hear, we can barely see, we can't smell anything.  We're amazingly vulnerable to viruses and bacteria of every size and description, and worst of all, we are prone to malfunctioning outside of a very narrow range of temperatures and atmospheric content. Not exactly Timex watches, are we?  The only reason we're still here as a species is because there are so darned many of us--it takes a lot more to wipe out 6.7 billion people than it does 500 million, and there are times during past ice ages where there were decidedly fewer than 500 million human around.

Oh well. I'm waiting to see what kind of response this announcement induces.  There may not be one.  I hope there is, though, because if it's true then this is a Very Big Deal.  We shall see.

Avoid Milk? Yes!

I don’t know Mark Hyman personally, nor have I read his book, but I do subscribe to his e-mail listserv and he seems to know what he’s talking about when I can follow his reasoning and the science behind it. At any rate, it’s just plain fun to read a MD ream the agriculture industry, food processing industry, medical research establishment (as if there is a such a single unified entity as that) and U.S. government. (There's a link to his blog at the end of the article, which is behind the cut).

Enjoy!