Rajeev’s Almanack

Bill Foster, the former Fermilab physicist, won the special election to replace Speaker Dennis Hastert in the House of Representatives for the next eleven months. There will be a regular election with the rest of the country in November, for a full term of two years. The margin of victory, 53-47, would be respectable anywhere, but is a stunning upset in a heavily Republican district: Foster ran as a Democrat.

Foster was the first political candidate endorsed by the Almanack. Science is at the core of so many national issues. Yet, so few in Congress display a scientific frame of mind. We cringe when otherwise responsible politicians deny evolution, get overly excited over climate change theories, or diagnose a neurological condition just by watching someone on TV. Even basic arithmetic is suspect, when miracles are preferred over mere mathematics.

Foster’s victory is not going to put an end to any of this. It was probably caused by larger political factors rather than any new enthusiasm for science. After all, Chicago is the epicenter of the Obama phenomenon and Foster had his support.

Nevertheless, we take joy in Foster’s victory and wish him well in the tougher contest he will face in November.

A parable, possibly of Buddhist origin:

The baker dangled the freshly made bread under the Bodhisatva’s nose. He knew it was overpriced, but the smell still enticed Him. So He breathed in deep. The baker, knowing he had lost the sale, said

“Hey, if you are enjoying the smell of my bread, you have to pay for it”

He shook the coins in his pockets:

“You can hear the sound of my coins in return for the smell of your bread”. And He walked away.

Only pay for what you have bought.

I am at my daughter’s birthday party the other day, chatting with the father of one of the girls.

“So, what do you do?”

” I teach at the U. of R.”

“What do you teach?”

“Physics”, expecting his eyes to glaze over.

“Oh, You must be smart”, unexpected response.

“I suppose so.” Not sure how to respond to that.

” So…Do you believe there is someone up there?” pointing to the sky.

“You mean God?”

“No..No way. UFOs man. You think there is someone looking down at us?”

“I don’t know. May be. …I have never seen one”

FermiLab (Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory) is the premier High Energy Physics research facility in the US. Located outside Chicago, it is named for the renowned Italian-American physicist Enrico Fermi. SLAC is the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, the second most important center in the US for High Energy Physics. Both institutions are in deep trouble due to budget cuts mandated by Congress. FermiLab is planning to lay off 100 `permanent’ PhDs, a total of 200 employees; those remaining will be subject to a `rolling furlough’, amounting to a 7% wage cut. SLAC will experience an RIF of 250 employees, which ought to hurt more as its total size is smaller.

Cutbacks at Argonne National Laboratory (also near Chicago) and to Fusion research are even more drastic. If the current proposals are to become law, the US will also default on commitments to international agreements to create the next fusion research reactor.

FermiLab is experiencing what Los Alamos went through about ten years ago. (more…)

Bill Foster: Businessman, Scientist, Democrat

Congress makes decisions that require scientific knowledge all the time. Yet very few Congressmen have a science background. So it is in all of our interests to have scientists run for Congress.

Bill Foster, a physicist with a distinguished career at Fermilab, is doing just that. (I know him only by reputation.) He is running for the seat vacated by the retirement of former Speaker Dennis Hastert. It turns out that Foster is a successful businessman as well! He and his brother started a company that is now one of the world’s largest manufacturers of lighting equipment for the theater. A rare combination of talents.

Sadly, the support of 22 Nobel Laureates probably won’t help much in the real world. But the Chicago Tribune endorsement ought to matter.

Contribute to his campaign. If you live in the 14th District of Illinois, ( in true Chicago Democrat tradition) Vote Early, Vote Often on primary election day, Feb 5th.

Actually, early voting began on Jan 9th. The `vote often’ bit is not entirely a joke either. You can vote twice for the same seat: once to pick the person who will fill out Hastert’s term and another for the full term in the next Congress.

Update Jan 26: The Daily Kos reports on the race.

Feb 6: It looks like Foster won the democratic primary narrowly. The district traditionally leans Republican by five points, but could be within reach this election year.

Feb14: The race is a dead heat. Remarkable, as this is a District previously represented by the Republican Speaker of the House. Foster has a real chance!

Feb 23: From the Robert Novak column:

McCain presided over a $1,000-a-ticket fund-raiser in Sugar Grove, Ill., for conservative dairy magnate Jim Oberweis. Although Hastert carried the district easily, Republican nominee Oberweis faces a serious battle against liberal Democratic physicist-businessman Bill Foster. Oberweis lost previous primary bids for governor and the U.S. Senate.

An analogy is often made between scientific research and exploration. In High Energy Physics, the accelerator physicists are the ship builders, the theoreticians the map makers, phenemenologists the navigators and the experimentalists are the sailors. The spokesman for the experimentalists is the captain of the ship, a dashing figure with power over life and death during the voyage. Ah, if only we were still in this romantic era..

Exploring in Canoes

The mega collaborations of thousands of physicists, that are being formed, are more like aircraft carriers. A good way of projecting power, but a bad instrument for exploration.

“But you can’t go exploring in a canoe”, I am told when I bring up this point.

Actually, you can. Canoes were exactly what the polynesians used to explore and settle the largest ocean on Earth, the Pacific. (more…)

Nano Nano
Nano has been a buzz word in physics for a while. Now it is also the name of a car, made by Tata Motors of India. It is cute, looking more like a toy car than a real one. It is small. I have seen potholes in Calcutta that are bigger. And most of all it is cheap. It costs less than the DVD player in the SUV that some of my neighbors drive. The Nano is unlikely to be another Yugo: India is not in danger of breaking up, destroying its supply chain. The dream is that will be the next Volkswagen Bug. More likely it will be the next Trabant. Not too bad.

Whether the Nano succeeds or not, it is part of a larger trend. This is what engineering for the masses will look like in the future. What the iPod did to the record industry and the arxiv did to costly journals is about to happen to many well-established businesses.

So what do the $2,500 car and the $200 laptop tell us? Driving and computing are not the only things that can be done much cheaper and smaller. (more…)

Read First: Longitude Zero

Indians call the bay between Africa and India the Arabian Sea. Throughout the medieval times it was controlled by Arab sailors. They established settlements down the East coast of Africa, as far down as Malindi in Kenya. (more…)

Continued in: Medieval Navigation in the Arabian Sea

One of the early achievements of Indian Mathematical Astronomy (jyotisha) was the system of latitude (aksha-amsa) and Longitude (rekha-amsa). The prime meridian passed through Ujjaini, the capital of the country of Avanti. (more…)

What is the date today? A simple question, but with a complex answer.

The story of calendars is the story of human civilization itself. The millenial ¹ article by Amartya Sen tries to disentangle fact from fantasy in the history of calendars. Never an easy task in history, especially hard in the keeping of time itself. (more…)

NASA claims that at The International Space Station (ISS) , “astronauts are working to improve life on Earth”. Originally supposed to cost under $10B, it has cost at least 30 billion of our tax dollars so far; maybe even $100B. It was given the go ahead even as the Superconduting SuperCollider (SSC) was shut down as too expensive. (more…)

Living in Rochester, one hears a lot about how science is done at Xerox and Kodak. Xerox was a little better at it, but their experience was still rather painful. It looks like the company has recovered from some of its stumbles and has posted a reasonable record in recent years.
(more…)