Greate quote: Exploring the unknown requires tolerating uncertainty.
October 26, 2006 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR; The Universe on a String: "
String theory continues to offer profound breadth and enormous potential to explain matter’s fundamental constituents…."
Brian Greene, a professor of physics and mathematics at Columbia, is the author of “The Elegant Universe” and “The Fabric of the Cosmos.”
String theory offers a new perspective on matter’s fundamental constituents. Once viewed as point-like dots of virtually no size, particles in string theory are minuscule, vibrating, string-like filaments. And much as different vibrations of a violin string produce different musical notes, different vibrations of the theory’s strings produce different kinds of particles. An electron is a tiny string vibrating in one pattern, a quark is a string vibrating in a different pattern. Particles like the photon that convey nature’s forces in the quantum realm are strings vibrating in yet other patterns.
There are, however, features of the theory that may be open to examination even with our incomplete understanding. We may be able to test the theory’s predictions of particular new particle species, of dimensions of space beyond the three we can directly see, and even its prediction that microscopic black holes may be produced through highly energetic particle collisions. Without the exact equations, our ability to describe these attributes with precision is limited, but the theory gives enough direction for the Large Hadron Collider, a gigantic particle accelerator now being built in Geneva and scheduled to begin full operation in 2008, to search for supporting evidence by the end of the decade.
String theory continues to offer profound breadth and enormous potential. It has the capacity to complete the Einsteinian revolution and could very well be the concluding chapter in our species’ age-old quest to understand the deepest workings of the cosmos.
Will we ever reach that goal? I don’t know. But that’s both the wonder and the angst of a life in science. Exploring the unknown requires tolerating uncertainty.
(Via NYT > Contributors.)
The forward-looking campaign - not in the Mass. gov. election
October 19, 2006 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off
Here’s a political example of the importance of have the correct slogan (message, tag line etc).
The article made me think about the Massachusetts governor’s race that got increasingly odious in the past few weeks as Rep. Kerry Healey’s ads insinuated that Dem. Deval Patrick sympathized with rapists and cop-killers. I’m not impressed with Patrick or Healey on the issues, but the creepy Healey attack ads make it a lot harder for me to vote for her.
But then Patrick responded, defending himself and attacking Healey, and I felt so sad to see him do so. So I’ve been thinking about my psychological reaction to Patrick’s response. Simplistically, its the proverbial "don’t stoop to their level". I wish he had not. I so badly wanted him to ignore it, to not react, to be progressive and ballsy and just say what he stands for and say it simply.. maybe with a touch of defiance and humor and populist-style one-liners like Kinky Friedman’s statement: I’M NOT LIKE THEM.
I could picture it…a different 10 sec. ad every night for a week with a defiant Patrick:
I’m Deval Patrick and I uphold the constitution…NOT LIKE THEM.
I’m Deval Patrick and I do the job the taxpayers pay me to do…NOT LIKE THEM.
I’m Deval Patrick and I stand for change and progress…NOT LIKE THEM.
No clarifications, no explanations…let the media fill it in any way they want. Give the voters a list of your pros and cons and an idea or two of how you will pull it off.
Kinky promises big changes. He’ll legalize casino gambling and use the proceeds to fund public schools — "slots for tots." He’s the only candidate in the race — or maybe anywhere — who supports both school prayer and gay marriage. ("They have a right to be as miserable as the rest of us," he explains.) He’ll clamp down on illegal immigration. And he’ll run the state’s school buses on the biodiesel fuel that Willie Nelson uses to propel his tour bus.
"We can make Texas number one in renewable fuels — which is a helluva lot better than being number one in executions, toll roads, property taxes and dropouts!"
The learning for me: think out of the box when hiring your political (or business, or personal) advisors. Be different, be bold with your slogan (unlike Patrick’s wimpy "together we can"). If you’re too safe, too conservative, or trying to be something (or someone) you are really not… you’ll end up looking JUST LIKE THEM.
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR; Running With Blinders: "Looking to the 2008 presidential race, there is still time to for progressive candidates to consider a fresh approach to running for office…."
To level the playing field, and restore clarity to progressive values, I propose “the forward-looking campaign.”
The rules are simple. Never mention the opponent. Don’t talk about the opponent’s policies. Don’t question the opponent’s character. Don’t talk about votes the opponent may have cast last week, last year or even 10 years ago. Refuse to run against anything or characterize any group; choose instead to run for something. Rather than engaging the opposition, the forward-looking candidate will engage the American people in a conversation about our future, keeping the focus on what we can accomplish as a nation and as individuals.
This is not just a commitment to be positive. Many candidates have tried that and failed. I was one of them. In 1992, I ran what many would consider a positive congressional campaign; my advertising never mentioned my opponent. But during a debate, I read statements she had made about me, noting that they were inaccurate. I made the corrections and moved on, doing so — I thought — without venom.
The next day’s newspapers, however, described my actions as a personal assault, suggesting that sparks flew when I “stood up to attack.” Any luster I had gained from being positive had been tarnished.
I should have known then what is now quite obvious: one person’s “clarification” is another person’s “brutal attack.” This is why the forward-looking candidate commits to avoiding any mention of the opposition, focusing instead on those whom he seeks to serve. It is a campaign promise that can be kept before a single vote is cast.
(Via NYT > Contributors.)
For the entrepreneur’s strategy arsenal: economic rent
October 19, 2006 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off
Disruption and convergence are major change drivers but business often thinks of it only in terms of new technology. But now we are seeing new models for business, and even ‘old guard’ industries, and a critical underlying principle is 150 years old. If you believe, like I do, in the Blue Ocean Strategy approach "Don’t Compete with Rivals—Make Them Irrelevant", don’t neglect the concept of economic rent in your strategic planning.
Economic Scene: Why Old Media and Tom Cruise Should Worry About Cheaper Technology: "As technology advances, more creative and inexpensive content will be available via the Internet, vying for people’s attention."
I had committed the cardinal sin of using economics jargon. But economic rent is such a useful and important concept that it is sometimes hard to avoid.
David Ricardo, who lived from 1772 to 1823, developed the theory of economic rent in his essays opposing the 19th-century English Corn Laws. These were tariffs ostensibly intended to protect British farmers from cheap foreign grain.
Ricardo observed that the tariffs had two effects: the obvious effect of raising the price of grain and the more subtle effect of pushing up the rent of land suitable for growing grain.
From the viewpoint of an individual tenant farmer, the rent he paid to the aristocratic landlord was a cost of production. But for the system as a whole, the land rent did not really determine the price of grain. It was the other way around: the price of grain determined land rent. So the real beneficiaries of the Corn Laws were not the tenant farmers, but the aristocrats who owned the land.
And so it is with Mr. Cruise. His salary, as that of other Hollywood stars, depends on the fact that large numbers of people will pay to see his movies. If, in the future, these people spend more time on YouTube and less time going to movies, Mr. Cruise’s compensation will probably fall.
(Via NYT > Business.)
Change, and leadership
October 19, 2006 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off
I regularly read David Brooks but usually disagree with his conservative views. So this column grabbed my attention and I think its beautifully written as well as a portend of the future of U.S., and even world, politics…someday. What bothers, and maybe its my own blind spot, is how he contrast Obama’s view to those of the current "baby boom" politicians. I’m sorry. I don’t consider Rumsfield, Cheney or any of the current old guard Republicans who have had a grip on power for decades "baby boomers".
[TS] Op-Ed Columnist: Run, Barack, Run: "Whether you’re liberal or conservative, you should hope Senator Barack Obama runs for president."
He should run first for the good of his party.
The next Democratic nominee should either be Barack Obama or should have the stature that would come from defeating Barack Obama.
Second, he should run because of his age.
He notes that it’s time to move beyond the political style of the baby boom generation. This is a style, he said in an interview late Tuesday, that is highly moralistic and personal, dividing people between who is good and who is bad.
Obama himself has a mentality formed by globalization, not the S.D.S. With his multiethnic family and his globe-spanning childhood, there is a little piece of everything in Obama. He is perpetually engaged in an internal discussion between different pieces of his hybrid self — Kenya with Harvard, Kansas with the South Side of Chicago — and he takes that conversation outward into the world.“Politics, like science, depends on our ability to persuade each other of common aims based on a common reality,” he writes in his book. He distrusts righteous anger and zeal.
During our talk, I reminded Obama that at some level politics is about power, not conversation. He pointed out that he’d risen from nothing to national prominence in a few years so he knew something about acquiring power, but he kept returning to his mode, which is conversation, deliberation and reconciliation.
The third reason Obama should run for president is his worldview.
In the book, he harks back to a Hamiltonian tradition that calls not for big government, but for limited yet energetic government to enhance social mobility. The contemporary guru he cites most is Warren Buffett.
He has interesting things to say about the way culture and economics intertwine to create urban poverty. He, conceptually, welcomes free trade and thinks the U.S. may have no choice but to improvise and slog it out in Iraq.
(Via NYT > Opinion.)
New Planets Astound Astronomers in Speed and Distance
October 5, 2006 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off
If I start feeling anxious about the state of our world: politics, war, society, disease, economics, environment…reading about a new discovery in the cosmos shifts my perspective immediately.
New Planets Astound Astronomers in Speed and Distance: "Among a batch of new planets, found by the Hubble telescope on a small patch of sky in Sagittarius, are as many as five that orbit their home stars in less than a day."
One planet orbits its star, a so-called dwarf slightly smaller than the Sun, in only 10 hours, “the likes of which we had never seen before,” Kailash Sahu of the Space Telescope Science Institute, leader of the team that did the work, said, calling the results “a big surprise.”
By comparison, Mercury, swiftest in the our solar system, races around the Sun once every 88 days.
The new planets, all roughly the size of Jupiter, orbit so near their stars that they are heated to 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit, said Dr. Sahu, who noted that if their home stars were any bigger, the planets would simply evaporate. potential planets are found in increasing numbers, Dr. Boss said, the odds increase that planets and planetary systems like Earth’s would be found.
Mario Livio, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute and a member of Dr. Sahu’s team, said, “There are literally billions of planets in our galaxy.”
(Via NYT > Science.)
Aging stereotypes: don’t believe them, defy them, crank up the speed!
October 5, 2006 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off
I think one of the worst effects of the ‘dot-com/dot-bomb’ phenomena is leftover, nagging beliefs that younger people have the brains and energy and older people are slow, dull and out-of-touch. I should know. I was fired from one of those companies and for the year I was there, all of those negative stereotypes were continually thrown in my face - some subtly, some directly. It was 8 years ago and I can still remember how hard it was initially feeling beaten down by the ostracism I faced every day. I turned it around with defiance: towards others beliefs about me, to society’s beliefs about me, and most importantly - to my own beliefs about aging.
I thought of that year the other night while attending a Rolling Stones concert at Gillette Stadium. One of the supposedly ‘hip, flavor of the month’ new media reporters had circulated a newsletter that year about Mick Jagger wearing Depends. I was incensed, let the jerk know it, and made it a crusade to get as many people off his mailing list as possible. Watching Mick run the stage the other night I remembered that year, and renewed my vow to defy limiting age beliefs. As this study proves, believing that you are slower can literally ‘de-condition’ you and start a vicious cycle of weakening, slowing down, and frailty. So my advice - less emphasis on comfort, and more emphasis on speed.
That led to the next question. Could teaching people to walk farther and faster prevent their growing so weak they could hardly walk?
Dr. Jack Guralnik, acting chief of the laboratory of epidemiology, demography and biometry at the National Institute on Aging, hopes it can. A new pilot study that he helped direct found that, with training, people could walk faster, improve their balance and more easily rise from a chair. Now he wants to expand that study to explore whether such training helps people retain their ability to walk and improves their health.
Richard J. Hodes, director of the National Institute on Aging is intrigued.
“It would be an extremely expensive study,” Dr. Hodes said, adding that its costs have not been added up. But, he said, if training could keep just 10 percent to 20 percent more people mobile, “I’m sure billions would be saved.”
If anyone doubts it, read this article or visit a rowing club like mine and see what people are capable of, physically and mentally, into their 70’s, 80’s and 90’s. And for God’s sake - enough of the age jokes and put-down birthday greeting cards. I like sick humor, but they make me sick.
The New Age: Old but Not Frail: A Matter of Heart and Head: "A central issue only now being systematically addressed is why some people age well and others do not."
(Via NYT > Most E-mailed Articles.)
Rigorous studies are now showing that seeing, or hearing, gloomy nostrums about what it is like to be old can make people walk more slowly, hear and remember less well, and even affect their cardiovascular systems. Positive images of aging have the opposite effects. The constant message that old people are expected to be slow and weak and forgetful is not a reason for the full-blown frailty syndrome. But it may help push people along that path.
Still, it is a view that can lead to blaming the victim, and some scientists at first resisted it. Now, though, more and more say they have been won over by an accumulating body of evidence.
“I am changing my initially skeptical view,” says Richard Suzman, who is director of the office of behavioral and social research programs at the National Institute on Aging. “There is growing evidence that these subjective experiences might be more important than we thought.”