The Hairdresser of Harare

The bar was crowded, I was tired and hungry and hoped for cultural distraction. This is what I got, and more: an entertaining lecture, something to eat and to drink and my copy of his book signed by the author, Tendai Huchu, with “keep on reading!” Which I did, the next evening.

“The hairdresser of Harare” was the title, and the author had indeed great hair, carefully braided in dozens of tresses. He knew well about hairdressers. The novel begins like a chat in a hairdresser’s salon, with the merciless observations of Vimbai. She is the star hairdresser in that small salon, taking care of the most difficult ladies, a young woman struggling in Harare as everybody, with inflation, colleagues, bad transport and her life as a single mother. She is fast in judging people, based on her former experiences. When a new hairdresser arrives, she loses her status and hates him first.  But Dumisani is a special man and deeply needs her friendship. A big drama unrolls, driven by Vimbais emotions and political circumstances in Zimbabwe. And Vimbai creates real trouble.

There is a rupture in the language, from Vimbais funny observations in the first half of the book to a more matter of fact-tone in the second half, due to the looming violence and brutality. A great novel about life under oppressive circumstances. But apparently not read much in Zimbabwe, where one part of the population might be too poor to care for books, and the other part too rich or too happy with exactly that system.I do not believe that a book will lessen the burden on the citizens of Zimbabwe, but  this book could help to understand, how homosexuals suffer in a homophobous society. Keep on writing, Tendai!

more about Tendai Huchu

Hopeless quest for certainty: Bertrand Russell in Logicomix

When I was a teenager, I did read a book by Bertrand Russell, which impressed me deeply. “Why I am not a Christian” was its title, and Russell pointed out how belief systems did not contribute much to better the life of people. He was a great writer, very convincing and unconventional. I knew then that Russell was a mathematician and philosopher, who had deep thoughts about the foundations of Mathematics and who fought for pacifism and free love.

So I was surprised to receive as a gift “Logicomix”, a graphic novel  with Russell as the hero of logics. I was very sceptical: How could the authors, three greek men, translate the ideas, some of them really abstract, which are so central to Russell’s life? Would they just show the action?

Not at all. The ideas are in the center and we do follow Russel’s mental evolution. Nevertheless, the story is full of drama, even horror, as the little Bertrand, an early orphan, grows up in a castle with his great parents and lots of religious boundaries, full of fear. Especially fear for loosing his mind, being punished by a vengeful god.

This may be why Russell had to fight so vigorously against religious convictions, and why he was so desperately seeking certainty in logic. And he did come very far, nearly to the foundations. Only Kurt Gödel’s theorem of incompleteness was putting an end to his aspirations.

The authors of this graphic novel have great merit: for research of the facts, for creative and very refined storytelling, for dramatic architecture and beautiful and accurate drawings. You will find stories inside the framing story, the world wars, Ludwig Wittgenstein, the educational debate and the struggle of the team of artists, how to get the stories right.  I greatly recommend this book!

 

Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth von Apostolos Doxiadis, Christos Papadimitriou und Alecos Papadatos

Slaves of today: Work habits in science might be a major reason, why broader minds opt out

From my years in the lab, I remember these crazy work habits, reported now in Nature, 31 August 2011 by Heidi Ledford. This is not a new phenomenon: also when I was a student, many colleagues dwelled night and day motionless in front of their computer screens, sometimes playing, sometimes working. For me, it was a mystery how they could sacrifice “real life” for slave labour. In spite of their enormous investment and total sacrifice of a life outside the lab, only very few of them have become creative scientists now. Others had breakdowns and serious psychological problems, and most of them ended like me in a medium demanding job, but maybe more frustrated and with less experience in other domains of life.

Maybe I was not bright enough to get so deeply involved. Maybe these guys do find an intrinsic reward into diving deeply into some science problem. But there might be very bright minds as well, being repelled by the slave labour and monastic life, asked for by science directors like the one reported in Nature.

Heidi Ledford does report about the work habits in the lab of neurosurgeon Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. The author approached nearly a dozen overworked top scientist, but he was the only one who did not mind to talk to her frankly about his enormous expectations towards his team members. And he lives what he preaches. He works relentlessly, sleeps few hours and eats mostly fast food on the move. Nevertheless he has managed to get a wife and kids. I wonder how and when? They can spend some quality time with him in the car and may even talk to him, if he is not busy on the phone, which is most of the time. He is absolutely convinced that it is quantity which matters: “It’s just a matter of volume,” he says. “The key is we submit a couple of dozen grant applications a year, and we learn from our mistakes.”

I did enjoy reading the report of Ledford very much, but it made me uneasy as well. Maybe Quiñones-Hinojosa is right in fields of science, where an enormous amount of ant’s work might get the heap any higher. And also breakthrough ideas and even big art do not come to lazy people but to the “prepared mind”. But never to the slaves, only to the masters! And the “prepared mind” might get some good ideas even when cooking a meal for the kids. Fortunately his work habits are not the only option, productive scientists have.

to the nature-article about a 24/7 lab

Honesty along Cash Daddy’s philosophy

“Is she your sister?” “No.”

“Is she your cousin?” “No.”

“Is she from your village?” No.”

“So why are you swallowing Panadol for another person’s headache?”

“Cash Daddy”, I persisted, “the woman borrowed the money she’s been using to pay her bills. Her life is going to be ruined.”

He laughed. “Kings, with all the school you went, you still don’t know anything.”

These sentences are quoted from  “I do not come to you by chance”, first novel of the nigerian writer Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani. I was deeply hooked while reading, and am still fascinated and inspired to think about honesty, duty, responsibilities. To me, this young Nigerian woman has written something light on the surface,a story about creative internet fraudsters in Nigeria, who are in the scamming business. Pretending to have illegal funds and needing help of a trustworthy foreigner to access them, they build onto the greed of their victims, who are delighted at the prospect of easy millions as their share. No pity there.

Cash Daddy is a person of baroque style and character: most picturesque, he reminds me of the era of absolutism in Europe. He can throne on the toilet while giving audience to his underlings. Decency, he does not need it. Nor education. He is shrewd, not educated, and he can buy the degrees if needed any time .

But he is not evil, he is only archaic in his understanding of morality, and maybe much more adapted to the circumstances in Nigeria. And thus more able to changing the life of people for the better maybe than the honest and educated part of his family, who did reject him due to his bad tricks long ago.  It is the eldest son of his sister, Kingsley, who gets in between the value systems: Cash Daddy versus Honesty and the belief, that merits will be acknowledged some time in the future. Kingsley is sent for seeking his support when the family is in utter need of money. And Cash Daddy helps, generously.

Kingsley is the real hero of the book. An earnest, warmhearted and desperate young man, unemployed despite very good grades, being left for lack of money by his beloved girlfriend Ola, he evolutes  into the right hand of Cash Daddy and takes really care of his family. His aim: to fulfill the dreams of his parents (best education for all kids) with the methods of his uncle (fraud). Not easy, because his siblings lose  patience in learning by watching too much nollywood movies, shopping designer items and travelling. In the end Kingsley comes up with a perfect solution which makes everybody happy, maybe except himself.

Alchemistry versus Chemistry

Literature for kids and teenagers is full of magic creatures with magic powers. It is no accident that Harry Potters curriculum at Hogwarts includes magic potions but no chemistry, and that he fights against dark forces but is not harassed by simple physics. Magic means a shortcut to understanding and conquering a really complicated world. No wonder that young people love stories whose heroes have magic powers. Magic is exclusive, the hero is gifted with that talent, often by birth.

Science in contrast to magic is accessible by everybody who is willing to invest some time. No special power nor ancestry is required to become a physicist or chemist; only tolerance of frustration, since in the real world, it all boils down to tedious work. That is often boring. To write an entertaining and dramatic novel about it is requiring much more art than most writers dispose of.

It will be difficult to change this and maybe it is not really needed. Because I doubt that fantasy stories do real damage in the minds of the young. All kids and teens I know, who greatly enjoy diving into these  hastily composed and stereotypic magic novels like Harry Potter or Percy Jackson – are quite reasonable and curious in real life. They take these books for entertainment only, not expecting to solve real problems by magic means.

I got aware of this when working for my next radio-feature for kids about the birth of modern chemistry. It is born out of the kitchens and dark laboratories of alchemists, who did believe in mystical theories. In searching for the philosopher’s stone (which is mentioned in the first Harry Potter as well), they developed many of the tools and techniques which revealed to be very useful for real purposes as well. The alchemists believed that the seven metals they knew were somehow linked to the seven known planets, which should have great influence on the destiny of men. Since they kept their ideas in closed circles they could shield them from too much testing. Their notations were written in cryptographic style and they did not share easily nor honestly their recipes.

Nobody did do the transmutation wonder, but some of them found something else instead of gold: In 1669, alchemist Henning Brand in Hamburg  had spent all of his wife’s money for his lab equipment and needed urgently some results. And why should God not have used some gold to construct the crown of his creation? Since urine looks golden, the idea seemed quite logical to search there. Brand collected around 50 buckets full, in the neighborhood probably, and set it onto the stove to heat it up. The smell did certainly invade the house. But the resulting powder was not golden, it was white. And quite miraculously shining in the dark and burning brighter than the sun. Brand did find white Phosphor.

I told this story to some kids, 10 or 11 years old, and asked them whether they believed that some philosopher’s stone can be found in the future. None of them thought so. They could fantasize about magic potions and about desirable properties they would like to acquire just by drinking a bit of it, but they did not believe a minute that it can be done. And they always searched for explanations when I did show them some small kitchen wonder experiment like transforming blackened silver cutlery back into shiny white silver. (It requires just hot water, aluminium foil and salt. And it smells!).

So, either kids today are quite reasonable or they just did not believe that I myself do have magic powers.

 

Carbon or Lego? The metaphor for working with knowledge

When I wrote about meta work some days ago I argued that  Meta Work will transform the tiny bits of knowledge into Lego bricks, which can be composed into more complex structures.

I did not really like this metaphor, because I do not appreciate Lego so very much. To my eyes, the Lego structures are much too square edged, with huge units or pixels, which allow only restricted constructions. And no surprise.

Possibly I just found a much better metaphor for working with knowledge: simple elements, which can combine into chaos or something quite complex: highly magnetic neodymium balls. I just acquired 216 of them, they combine into a cube of six. Each of it has a north and  south pole, thus depending on their orientation, they attract or repulse each other, really strong. An ear-ring, made of it, does hurt too much. And it is absolutely not advisable to eat two of them.

I can lose any time playing with them. They demonstrate the perfection of mathematical symmetry, they can form perfect hexagonal plates, nanotubes, possibly bucky balls, and of course, the cube – but very easily, by a slight shift, defect introduce, grain boundaries do grow, chaos and disorder reign. It reminds me of carbon, the atom of life. And it is maybe similar with knowledge bits.

Cumbersome but essential: Meta Work

I like working in the knowledge industry. But I do not like to organise the results. Having completed one task, I am already curious for the next one, reading already the next essay or book, writing the next text, searching for new information concerning the next problem. And it is a real ordeal for me to spend time with what I would call Meta Work: thinking about the work process, organising it carefully in advance, documenting what I have done, tagging and filing the acquired result in order to make it easily retrievable and then reflecting the whole process again in order to improve it further.

In fact I do not know why I consider this such a cumbersome task. It is so very useful to do the Meta Work: Unorganised knowledge is like a heap of pebbles, whereas organised knowledge is like Lego bricks allowing the construction of complex structures.

So I am thinking about how to change my attitude and to become a disciplined Meta Worker, producing Lego bricks instead of pebbles.

First I would need a clear idea how to structure the different fields of interest. Unfortunately there are plenty. They move and intersect, that makes it difficult to distinguidh them clearly.

Then I should reserve a certain amount of time, sort of overhead time, to documentation and maybe communication of the work done.

And third, I should spend time with the done work and projects, considering them as my box of Lego bricks, and try to create spectacular buildings.

Only that I was never really a fan of playing Lego, I preferred modelling clay. Maybe I should develop a new metaphor for Meta Work.

Treasure trove from England: 65 years of lives

Today I read (finally) the old nature magazine from march 3, 2011, which I used to carry around these last weeks without finding time. I kept it because of one article only, I wanted to read: about the longest running birth cohort study ever. This study runs in Great Britain since 1946. Right after world war II, more than 5.000 babies born in march 1946 have been followed up until 2011. Many times, the leading scientists had trouble getting finance, some times the leading questions did change and all the time, the scientists have been sending birthday cards to the participants to encourage them not to opt out of the cohort. The result is now a treasure trove of data, from birth to pension age and into old age now, because fortunately it can be continued. Now these women and men are celebrating their 65 birthday together with the scientists, who will organize five huge parties and finally meet for the first time personally. There is nearly no loss of people, except for death: The nature editor Helen Pearson, who wrote up the story, did talk to two of them, both claiming to be really proud of contributing to science wiht their blood, their genes and their willingness to fill out questionnaires about income, education and well-being.

Not all of the results are surprising, we already guessed that health is better in the rich and smart and that obesity is more widespread in poorer people. But a careful analysis did bring also startling correlations, for example between results of IQ-tests in childhood and onset of menopause later in life.

I hope to hear a bit more about this study, lead now by Diana Kuh, but am afraid of going to the library and reading the several volumes of results already available. How can we learn from this study about good conditions for kids and teenagers for education and health? What would slow down most efficiently mental and physical decline? Is there a most important factor? One-Dimensional? A small sentence in the article suggests: Physical exercise in middle age is a relevant factor. But how much is enough? Will my cycling to work already do?

Source: http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110301/full/471020a.html

There is a podcast from nature magazine about the 1946-Birth cohort study (from Minute 25:00 on)

Beauty of duty

It is late,  the whole evening I had to finish several smaller boring and tedious tasks and to clean up the place before leaving for some days. Now I feel completely relaxed, ready to go. In spite of having had a  boring evening: I did not read the essay in New Scientist about the question, whether wind energy is really renewable and I did not yet write about the  expert in charity communication, which made me wonder whether we tend to donate to the wrong organisations: famous actors are the cue, nobody or very few people will ask for hard evidence of sustainable success. The face of a prominent personality suggests the organisation is worthy of trust, we all know, that this is a shortcut too easy to be good.

From tomorrow on, I can take my time to read in the train. I am looking forward to it. All the duties done, and those, I have forgotten, far away.

Sound of Higgs and song of stars

Was it Phytagoras who conceived the universe as an instrument with different strings, producing the harmonic sounds of reality? It is not out of fashion, even today, physicists love these metaphors. And it is seducing to translate patterns and mathematical relations into audible perceptions, since our ears are much more subtle instruments than our visual system. For example, last summer, we could listen to the electric sounds of the hypothetical particles which the Large Hadron Collider at CERN is supposed to detect.

The Higgs Boson sounds and its harmonics have been created, not recorded of course. Here is the sound library, which CERN-physicists and artists did construct. They do have some ideas about the Higgs particle, its qualities and behavior. The Higgs boson is supposed to be the secret behind the mass of every other particle in the universe. Higgs hangs around the tiniest subatomic particle and makes it heavy, slows it down, gives some gravity. Maybe.

Physicists have some ideas about which data to  expect in the LHC. After some unplanned breaks, finally the machine shall be running soon at full power, providing chances of the birth of some single isolated Higgs particles.  Physicists expect then certain very subtle traces in the flood of data, which they could analyse, translating them into longitudinal density waves in between certain frequency ranges in a gaseous medium. And this is sound. Or even music.

This does not mean that the Higgs particle is playing a synthesizer. Along this translation process, everything does change: the medium, the dimensions, the magnitudes, just relations and patterns shall be conserved.

This idea can be used for anything. And it is nice and inspiring. But not necessarily very enlightening about nature. Especially when things go wild: I remember in the 1980s Ernst Joachim Behrendt, a Jazz musician and famous radio man. I was a teenager then and quite fascinated by his claims about the power of audition and the hidden harmonies in nature. But when he told the audience that the sun and its planets did practise overtone singing similar to Tibetan monks, I understood that he was  just telling a story without relation to reality.
When I was scrolling through BBC today, I had a similar encounter with badly understood metaphors of physics.  A short video clip was claiming that stars can be recognized on their musical harmonies (“sound of stars” at BBC). It is not true, they can be recognized through their electromagnetic spectra and these could be translated into sounds. But the stars themselves remain silent to our ears. All the music is in our minds.