Richard Feynman's 95th Birthday

Thank you Antra for the reminder!

Here are a few picks from the internet:

This video captures beautifully my thoughts on art and the endless arguments I have with artists about nature, science and art.

But Bloomsbury celebrates Feynman

what is science in 63 seconds

Feynman wiki

Gleick's fabulous biography

Feynman's video, and revisiting my own post, brought up some memories:

I'd once asked a fellow-scientist who was also an artist why she painted, and she responded with I believe a quote, that painting is an excuse to gaze upon nature. Not quite as terse as "because I can" nor "because it is there", but in the same space. I knew a painter in Madrid - Javier Fernandez Lizan, and on my first visit to his studio, at some point, after the above conversation, I asked Javier why he painted. Javier responded by taking me to a massive 8'X10' abstract still life with human figures, in oil, and showed me a 2 or 3 square inch area, and said "to capture this blue".

Why did I do science? Why do I analyse data now?
"Because it is there!"
"Because I can!"
"Because it is an excuse to gaze upon nature!"
"Beacuse I want to capture "this blue", which is in my head, and speaks to me, and I want to express it!"
"Because I am an instrument of "this blue"'s meme, and it expresses itself through me!"

So, I have never understood why it is that while most scientists find commonalities with artists ( my thoughts on art notwithstanding!), most artists keep trying to distance themselves from scientists! 

TwoRoadsDivergedTake2

I think this is a better take.

Two Roads Diverged

At Pirates' Cove

Probability and "Man from the South"

A few nights ago I read Roald Dahl's "Man from the South", which brings to mind Dahl (surely no relation of Borges' Dahlmann) as a combination of Poe, Borges and O. Henry, and surely no writer of children's books. A RocketFuel colleague, Ari, pointed out a Hitchcock movie based on the story, which I might get around to watching some nice and bright sunny Saturday morning. To tranquilize myself after reading the rather macabre tale at night, I fell to thinking about some rather interesting probability questions based on the events described.

I want to give you the chance to read the story first, and I really hope, post your own questions, before I raise my questions in a blog in a couple of days. Then, a few days later, I'll give my solutions, which, because of possible differing assumptions, may be different from yours. I'll also add the takes of people who talk to me about it.

Yet another RFI colleague, Jack, referred me to a wikipedia article and pointed out that I was not the first to start thinking about probability motivated by games of chance. Late by a whisker again, Jeeves, dash it all!

Postscript to "Nature in Art"

In response to various comments from both close friends and from people who've known me for a couple of hours, which were along the lines of
A not-so-young physicist, un Indio
Posted on his blog about VIBGYOR.
"The passion is clear,
The physics, 'No fear!',
But the tone, ahh that is a failure!"


After what RS, ARM, DST, SP, AP, SK, PSK, JB etc have put me through over the last few weeks in the "Home Truths Dept.", I think a Maoist re-education camp will be a piece of cake!


...


One of the above friends: "Do you acknowledge that you have been personally responsible for suppressing millions of hard-working peasants?"


RST: "Yes."


Same friend: "Wait, you've already self-confessed? I don't get to torture you?"


RST: "The other friends in the list above have said pretty much the same thing about me, so it must be true."


Some friend!: "So what are you going to do about it?"


RST: " 'Do about it?' ? What do you mean? That would require me to be different from what I am! ... Oh, I see your point!"


...

So here goes: I want that post to be seen as a learning opportunity about observing nature, not art criticism nor artist criticism. To be very very explicit: The artistic representations aren't incorrect representations of nature - they don't have to be, reality is not the only domain of art. They're just not realistic/scientific representations of nature. True, which doesn't prevent them from sometimes being spot-on in capturing some essence of nature.

In exchange, I would like acknowledgment that
1)  scientists can appreciate beauty in nature, in spite of "having an equation for it", and that
2)  scientists can appreciate art, in spite of being very analytical (Read any art reviews lately?).

In that post "wrong" should be interpreted not as a commentary on the moral nature of the artist, but rather as "observationally incorrect representation of nature, but of course the artist has artistic license to do what she or he wants, just use this as an excuse to step outside and look, really look, at a rainbow!"


A painter friend of mine in Madrid (Javier F L)  put it best when I asked him why he painted, "I paint because it gives me an excuse to gaze for long periods of time." I couldn't disagree less about why I do science, or data analytics for that matter. (This isn't helping me get a job, is it?)

OkupyCupid3: The Art of Seduction

Not because she doesn't have thumbs or fingers --
   but because he will not be her clay;
Not because he doesn't have brushes or paint --
   but because she will not be his canvas;
Not because I don't have pen or ink --  
   but because you will not be my paper;
Not because you don't have the moves or music --
   but because I will not be your space:
The art of seduction --
   is lost.

OccupyEggs2

OccupyEggs1

Why she liked Hemingway, DWM, misogynist because of all the women he'd loved who hadn't loved him back the way the rivers and seas and mountains did, she couldn't even begin to explain why she liked Hemingway. She'd never read him in school, none of the girls from school had, only certain and very few geeky and wannabe macho guys she knew had read him in school. In the Women's Studies course in college, he was their first assignment, and it was painfully easy to do a feminist deconstruction, and it was all over in a few seconds. Yet there were certain passages that had become ingrained in her brain, and fried eggs were forever associated with Hemingway the way rainbows were forever associated with Rutherford.

She'd learned Rutherford's analysis and explanation of rainbows in her third year in college, in a new physics class she'd taken as an elective, after her women's studies phase and after she'd gone back to her geek roots. Her artsy friends spoke as if science and understanding ruined one's love of nature, but Rutherford had not ruined her appreciation of the beauty of rainbows. Like Hemingway had increased her appreciation of fried egg sandwiches, after Rutherford she now gazed at rainbows for longer, observed them in all their nuances, in their environment, looking for all the features they could have but only sometimes displayed, and always just-so, the order of the colors, the geometry, the astronomical atmospheric effects. What Rutherford had ruined for her was her appreciation of “rainbow art” - the meaningless paeans to the “beauty of the rainbow”, telling without showing, without knowing, and the landscapes with fanciful rainbows, most of which got wrong the most elementary observational facts about rainbows and which, to her, indicated a disdain towards nature on the part of the artists. But Hemingway had not analogously ruined fried eggs for her, nor even art, perhaps because artists didn't take on fried eggs on a plate in the way they took on fruit in a bowl or fish skeletons on a plate or a rainbow in the sky.

OccupyEggs3

LiveArtCinequest2012

On our way out from the Shorts3 collection, we saw 3 artists in the act. Both Maya and Elsa wanted to stay and watch, so we went in to see them.

Corey about to board the metro to school.

Sara's painting dedicated to International Working Women's Day - March 8, 2012.

"You accusing me of copying? I never even been to no fifteen or sixteen chapel!"

Joe talking about his work, right before I started to talk about his work!

Beneath those funky triangle symbols, there are 4 horizontal lines and Maxwell's silver hammer!

No! No! No! Gravity isn't a force!

 

Joe and myself, after we shared equations.

Joe had
F  = m a
Newton's law of gravitation
Maxwell's silver equations
Black Hole entropy
Informational entropy

I suggested the following:
G_ab = 8 Pi G T_ab (The Einstein equation)
[x,p] = i hbar I (The fundamental fact about Quantum Mechanics.)
The commutator between a simple loop and a trefoil knot with a "hand", representing Loop Quantum Gravity
and Maxwell's equations
d F = 0 (the EM 4-tensor is divergence free)
d *F = *j (the curl of its dual is the dual of the 4-current co-vector).

9 March update: Joe put in all those suggestions!

Ashtekar variables, and you can just about discern a loop commutator.

The Einstein Equation (Gravitation, or the E=mc^2 of General Relativity)

Joe also added my name next to Newton's Equation for Gravitation, I'll post that as soon as Rajesh Aji sends me a copy.

OccupyCrucifix

Crucifix for Green Christ

Fleeing Scottish terrier

Abstract, with face and shark

The Keeler needles, near mt Whitney in the High Sierra.

Abstract shape near Yosemite granite wall.

TurgenevReview

Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Gogol and "The Art of Kissing" were recommended to me at Leigh's Favorite Books, as was "Hugo Cabret".

Turgenev's 4th period seems to me to be characterized by lengthy passages describing the physical landscape and the "externality" of his characters. The two stories I've read from this period are "The Singers" and "Bezhin Meadow", representing the end of this period of his work. Both have lengthy descriptions of the physical landscape and observations of nature, and I'll comment on this aspect with excerpts from "Bezhin".

In both these stories Turgenev writes lengthy descriptions of all the characters, minor and major. In fact, it is difficult to identify the major characters based on the length of the description (In "Singers", the innkeeper, Booby, Blinker, the wild gentleman, the Turk and the contractor all get equal descriptive time, in Bezhin, there are no main characters.), they become major only due to the percentage of the narrative that develops with them or that they drive. The character descriptions while quite detailed, are mostly "as they are right now", with very little back story or development. So one does not understand how the characters came to be the way they are, nor what motivates them to act the way they do.

This is in compete contrast to the rest of the stories in "First Love and other tales": Mumu, Assya, First Love, Clara Milich. (I am leaving out "Living Relics" as it seems to me to belong stylistically with "Singers" and "Bezhin".) In these latter, and later stories, Turgenev has fewer characters, spends a lot of time with his principal characters, and gives us their development: not just what they are now, but how they came to be that way, why they react, act or behave the way they do in his stories, going back in many cases to their childhoods and formative incidents in their lives.

Turgenev's approach to his characters in his 4th period may initially strike one as lazy. However, there is I think a higher principle at work, that of Truth. He, as the narrator, meets people for only a few hours, in situations that are mostly unusual and unfamiliar to the narrator, in which he also meets a lot of other people. He cannot honestly know which people will play narratively important roles in the future and become characters. He cannot "interview" the characters for their back story without dishonestly exploiting the situation in which he is casually meeting them for the first, and possibly last time. He can only listen when they tell him fragmented bits of their past that they deem important or worth sharing. He has to allow the conversation to flow, the lived events to transpire, tell them about himself, and himself be an actor in the situation.

Furthermore, he cannot honestly invent a fanciful, explanatory backstory for them. The rest of the backstory he could have made up made up is unknowable to him and would be the equivalent of untestable hypotheses. As a natural philosopher, as a scientist and observer of nature,  Turgenev gives us what he sees, that which he can reasonably deduce and defend, and little more.

In the end, Turgenev doesn't develop his characters for his readers, but he remains honest to the people he meets, who after all do not see themselves as characters in a Turgenev story.  Yes, I am in total sympathy with this Turgenev the writer, and for obvious reasons.

Observations of Nature by Turgenev

Observations of Nature in Art

May 23rd 2012, Please read this DISCLAIMER before proceeding. Today's edits are in red.

RAINBOWS:

A. What is wrong with this picture?

(Thanks to Shailesh S for motivating the following.) 

Have you ever seen an elliptical rainbow? No? Let's ask ourselves why not? Imagine looking at a circle, a child's hula, or a hoop-earring in a 3/4 profile photo of a beautiful woman looking out over a seascape (just saying!). The hula-hoop appears as a circle only from one particular angle, out of 2 Pi steradians. To anyone else looking at it, it appears as an ellipse. This becomes clear when they are as far to one side of you as you are from the hula-hoop. Now imagine that there is a big evening rainfront about 20 miles to your East, and you see a rainbow (in the East, why?), and your friend who lives 20 miles to your North texts you, "i c byu t ful rnbo, do u?". You respond, "Yes, i c it 2, as circle, so u must c it as ellipse." She txts bak, "No way, mine is circle 2! ;-?"

Now, the only way the same real object can appear as a circle to all viewers is if it is a ... sphere! Let's accept that a rainbow is not a sphere (in four dimensional space, it would be! Isn't just that a reason one would wish String Theory to be true?). Then we have to conclude that a rainbow is not real! What one means by "not real" is that you can't project it on a screen. Such images are called "virtual images", like the image you see through a magnifying glass. 

We see the rainbow, because the lens of our eye collects the light reflected and refracted from all the raindrops and projects a real image onto our retina. If we consider "seeing an object" to mean sensory perception of light emanating or reflected or otherwise having interacted with that object, then what we are seeing when we "see a rainbow" is all the raindrops!

So the only real image of the rainbow is the one that is projected onto your retina and which is then processed by your brain. Now since that is just as true for your friend as it is for you, what that means is that each and every person has their own personal rainbow, and she or he is at the center of it!   That is a pretty good analogy for consciousness of the universe.

You'll never see a rainbow as an ellipse, less so as co-axial elliptical bands. If we insist on imagining what it would look like to another observer far to the left of us, it would still not look like the above where the red arc remains on the left edge and the blue arc remains on the right edge. The colors form concentric annular discs, so the red arc should be imagined to stay on the outside edge of the elliptical form, and the blue arc on the inside edge.

B. What is wrong with this picture?

 The three rainbows have three different centers, implying three sources of light! On a planet with three or more spectrally identical suns, this landscape is possible. However, since rainbows are virtual images, they would not obscure one another.

Ignoring the rainbow on the right, non-concentric double rainbows are in principle possible. The lower one (whose center is the shadow of your head and is below the horizon) is the normal one formed by light from the sun refracting and reflecting off the raindrops. The upper rainbow, with its center above the horizon, is formed by sunlight which is first reflected by the body of water in the foreground, and then impinges at an upward angle on the raindrops! The center of the reflection rainbow is where the shadow of your head would appear to be after reflection from (a continuation of) the expanse of water. Because of the landforms, the upper rainbow should be incomplete except where there is water directly below the lower rainbow. What a thought-provoking painting!

Now, just as we can see multiple shadows due to multiple lights, for example at night in an illuminated parking lot, with some luck and lots of practice with a hose spraying water, one might be able to see three rainbows as well. 

C. What is wrong with this picture?

The sun is under the rainbow? Whatever the artist is smoking, I want some! This was seen by some of my readers as being derisive towards the artist. By no means! I really really do want some! A rather prosaic way of achieving the same effect would be to have a filtered mirror in front and just to the side of you while looking at the rainbow. By the way, even if the sun was above the rainbow it would still be wrong. Here is an excerpt from the page of an observant artist : "On a showery day, one may be blessed with the appearance of a rainbow. It is visible in an area of the sky opposite the light source."

D. What is wrong with this picture?

The order of the colors is inverted, as the artist could have ascertained by umm ...  looking. But hey! Why look at nature when you can do an art project? Or go online to check whether it is raining? What I think bothers me here is that young children, even when they see a rainbow, are perhaps missing the time with an adult who could help them look at the rainbow. By which I mean observe and mindfulness, which is a first step towards both science and art.

The angles for the first maximum, or the primary rainbow, are proportional to the wavelength. A rainbow, or anything else with a spectrum, requires dispersion, i.e. wavelength dependence of the relative refractive index of the material of the drops (water) in the atmosphere (air). In water, shorter wavelengths (blue) are dispersed more than longer wavelengths (red). Hence one might expect that red be on the inside and blue be on the outside, as in the above painting.  However, the light is also reflected from the back wall of the droplet and purely due to the geometry of this reflection, the colors cross each other and are inverted. See the wikipedia rainbow article.

E. What is wrong with this picture?

This is more subtle! Again, all the artist need have done is look! From inside to outside, the colors in the secondary rainbow go from red to blue! The secondary rainbow is formed when the light is reflected inside the rainbow twice! This causes the order of the colors to be inverted yet again and back to the original "blue is dispersed more". I'll confess that I haven't figured out the geometry of this, and neither has wikipedia.

F. What is i) right and ii) wrong with this picture?

i) The two rainbows are concentric, and the shadows cast by objects are consistent with the position of the sun. That is, the line joining the observer to the center of the rainbow is parallel to the lines joining objects to their shadows.
ii) However, I would have expected to see the shadow of the artist's head at the geometric center of the rainbow, near the bottom, but by my reckoning within the frame of the painting. This is a minor quibble.

G. In contrast, what is right with this picture?

The order of the colors of the secondary rainbow. An artist actually looked at nature! (Okay, the last sentence is unneccesary.)

G. What are two things wrong with this picture?

First, the only way the rainbow can be seen in front of the background trees is if there is rain or mist between the artist and the trees, which, from the clarity of appearance of the sheep and houses near the "pot-of-gold" point, does not appear to be the case. Second, from the artist's viewpoint one can see close to 180 degrees worth of the rainbow, implying that the sun is at the horizon. This is inconsistent with the rather short length of the children's shadows, which indicate the sun to be about halfway to the zenith, or about 45 degrees above the horizon, in which case the rainbow shouldn't be visible at all! (The sun has to be less than 42 degrees above the horizon, since that is the outer conical angle of the rainbow.)

 SNOWFLAKES: The next time I see non-C6 symmetry snowflakes I'll scream.

Scream 1

Scream 2

Scream 3

The USPS, which tends not to be particularly science friendly, did use actual photos of snowflakes for their stamps.

To which one can only say,
"Naught immortal hand nor eye
  could frame thy C6 symmetry"

Next up: descriptions of nature in Turgenev.

5.10c - to the tune of Lemon Tree

5.10c (Five Ten C), to the tune of "Lemon Tree" by "Peter, Paul and Mary"




5.10c (Five Ten C) to the tune of “Lemon Tree” by “Peter, Paul and Mary”

When I was just leading ten, the Hardman said to me,
"Come here and take a lesson from the lovely 5.10c"
"Don't put your faith in cams nor Friends", Hardman said to me,
"I fear you'll find no protection on this lovely 5.10c."

5.10c very cruxy and the fingers find their jams
But the flares of the thin seam are impossible for cams.
5.10c very cruxy and the pockets are on the face
But the cams or the poor Friends are impossible to place.

One day beneath the 5.10c, belayer and I did lie
A grigri so tight that when it locked my nuts almost did die
We passed that summer hangdogging that bloody 5.10c
The music of jangling gear hid that Hardman's words from me:

5.10c very cruxy and the fingers find their jams
But the flares of the thin seam are impossible for cams.
5.10c very cruxy and the pockets are on the face
But the cams or the poor Friends are impossible to place.

One day I tried, without a hang, to get back the fun.
But the crack I had dogged and whined, it knew what I had done.
One after another, when I fell, my Friends it spat and threw.
A sadder man but lamer now I sing these words to you:

5.10c very cruxy and the fingers find their jams
But the flares of the thin seam are impossible for cams.
5.10c very cruxy and the pockets are on the face
But the cams or the poor Friends are impossible to place.

5.10c

5.10c

5.10c

420

For the PG version 5.10b

Lyrics © Ranjeet S. Tate 2012

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi Berra

"When you come to a fork, take it!"

Visual poetry.

I saw a fork,

came to it

and took the one unseen.

I looked back,

... and wondered...