Michael Shermer's Blog, page 19

UFOs, UAPs and CRAPs

Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) offer a lesson on the residue problem in science

ONE MORNING SEVERAL YEARS AGO a black triangular-shaped object flew over my home in the San Gabriel Mountains in southern California. It was almost completely silent, made rapid turns and accelerations, and was so nonreflective it looked like a hole in the sky, almost otherworldly. It was, in fact, the B-2 Stealth Bomber, looping around to make another run over the Pasadena Rose Parade on January 1, an annual tradition. But had I not known what it was and seen it first, say, out in the desert at dusk, I might easily have thought it a UFO.

For decades black triangularshaped objects have been labeled UFOs. Now a cohort of military, aviation and political observers would like to change the label to a less pejorative phrasing—Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP)— and their efforts to be taken seriously have resulted in a new book by investigative journalist Leslie Kean entitled UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officals Go on the Record (Crown, 2010). Kean asks readers to consider that such sightings represent "a solid, physical phenomenon that appears to be under intelligent control and is capable of speeds, maneuverability, and luminosity beyond current known technology," that the "government routinely ignores UFOs and, when pressed, issues false explanations," and that the "hypothesis that UFOs are of extraterrestrial or interdimensional origin is a rational one and must be taken into account."

How much data do we have, and can they help us distinguish between UAPs and what I call Completely Ridiculous Alien Piffle (CRAP), such as crop circles and cattle mutilations, alien abductions and anal probes, and human-alien hybrids? According to Kean, "roughly 90 to 95 percent of UFO sightings can be explained" as "weather balloons, flares, sky lanterns, planes flying in formation, secret military aircraft, birds reflecting the sun, planes reflecting the sun, blimps, helicopters, the planet Venus or Mars, meteors or meteorites, space junk, satellites, sundogs, ball lightning, ice crystals, reflected light off clouds, lights on the ground or lights reflected on a cockpit window," and more. So the entire extraterrestrial hypothesis is based on the residue of data after the above list has been exhausted. What's left? Not much.

For example, Kean opens her exploration "on very solid ground, with a Major General's firsthand chronicle of one of the most vivid and well-documented UFO cases ever"—the UFO wave over Belgium in 1989–1990. Here is Major General Wilfried De Brouwer's recounting of the first night of sightings: "Hundreds of people saw a majestic triangular craft with a span of approximately a hundred and twenty feet and powerful beaming spotlights, moving very slowly without making any significant noise but, in several cases, accelerating to very high speeds." Even seemingly unexplainable sightings such as De Brouwer's, however, could simply have been an early experimental model of a stealth bomber (U.S., Soviet, or otherwise) that secretkeeping military agencies were understandably loath to reveal.

In any case, compare De Brouwer's narrative with Kean's summary of the same incident: "Common sense tells us that if a government had developed huge craft that can hover motionless only a few hundred feet up, and then speed off in the blink of an eye—all without making a sound—such technology would have revolutionized both air travel and modern warfare, and probably physics as well." Note how a 120-foot craft becomes "huge," how "moving very slowly" changes to "can hover motionless," how "without making any significant noise" shifts to "without making a sound," and how "accelerating to very high speeds" transforms into "speed off in the blink of an eye." This language transmutation is common in UFO narratives, making it harder for scientists to provide natural explanations.

In all fields of science there is a residue of anomalies unexplained by the dominant theory. That does not mean the prevailing theory is wrong or that alternative theories are right. It just means that more work needs to be done to bring those anomalies into the accepted paradigm. In the meantime, it is okay to live with the uncertainty that not everything has an explanation.

SkepticBlog Has a New Blogger: Donald Prothero

We are thrilled to announce that Skepticblog has added a new regular blogger, Dr. Donald Prothero, a world class geologist and paleontologist who teaches at both Occidental College and Caltech. Don is one of the most respected scientists in his field having won the award for the best geologist under 40 (the same award won by Stephen Jay Gould), and one of the most popular science writers today, having just penned the incredibly timely book Catastrophes: Earthquakes, Tsunamis, Tornadoes, and other Earth-Shattering Disasters, which found him on numerous television news shows the day after the Japanese disaster. Dr. Prothero is on the scientific board of advisors for the Skeptics Society and Skeptic magazine, lectures regularly for the Skeptics Society's Distinguished Science Lecture Series at Caltech, leads the society's wildly popular field trips, and writes and reviews for Skeptic regularly as one of the world's expert debunkers of creationism and Intelligent Design. Don's bio is a stunning tribute to his erudition and productivity as a scientist and public intellectual. We are fortunate to have him in our pantheon.

READ Prothero's first post on SkepticBlog.

Shermer Spam Scammers Scam

Every week I receive invitations to speak at various venues around the world. On March 15, 2011, I received the following invitation to speak in London. As I was running out the door to go on my morning bike ride, I missed the obvious cues that this was a scam:

Dear Michael Shermer,

My Name is Prof. Peter Kopelman from the London Youth Community Here in London UK. We want you to be our guest speaker at this Year ST' GEORGE UNIVERSITY , which will take place here in UK. We are writing to invite and confirm your booking to be our Guest Speaker at these year ST' GEORGE UNIVERSITY Event.

The Venue as follows:

VENUE: St George's University of London,

Cranmer Terrace, London, SW17 0RE.

Email:stgeorgeuniversityoflondon@gmail.com

Expected audience: 500 people

Duration of speech per speaker: 7PM-8PM

Name of Organization: ST'GEORGE UNIVERSITY

Topic:MEDICAL

Date: Wednesday 30 March 2011.

We came across your profile on http://www.amazingmeeting.com/speakers and we say it's up to standard and we will be very glad to have such an outstanding personality in our mist for these overwhelming gathering. With your multi talented speech more lives will come close , Sorry about our late invitation it is due to the fact that our Speaker had back out because of her sudden illness.

Arrangements to welcome you here will be discussed as soon as you honor our invitation. If you have any more publicity material, please do not hesitate to contact me. A formal Letter of invitation would be sent to you as soon as you honor our invitation. We are taking care of your traveling and Hotel Accommodation expenses including your Speaking fees.

Remain Blessed

Prof. Peter Kopelman

stgeorgeuniversityoflondon@gmail.com

ST'GEORGE UNIVERSITY.

Ofice(+44) 702-401-8034

I responded that I wanted $5000 with partial payment up front and a first-class or business-class flight, plus hotel. Only later in the day did I look carefully at the email and notice this guy's spelling and grammar was pretty bad for a university professor, plus the fact that his university uses a gmail account! His March 16 response to my request reads (and by "mist" does he mean the famous London fog?!):

Respected Michael Shermer,

Thanks for indicating your interest to be our Guest Speaker at this year ST' GEORGE UNIVERSITY. We are  very excited and happy to have such a wonderful personality in our mist. We the event organizing committee had a meeting earlier today to deliberate on getting you available here within a short period of time. We believe we serve the lord of possibilities.Arrangements are stated below.

We have agreed to buy your flight ticket and to pay your Hotel accommodation expenses . Also your Speaking fee is amounted to $5,000(USD), Three Thousand (USD) deposit is to be paid as soon as you procure all relevant travel documents  so as to avoid any disappointment.You are informed to get across your CERTIFICATE to us so your deposit can be approved according to our mandated rules and regulation.

You are advised by the Event Organizing committee to immediately contact the BRITISH EMBASSY to procure your ANTI-TERRORIST CERTIFICATE as soon as possible

This will enable us to proceed with all arrangements to welcome you here in London. Contact the BRITISH EMBASSY information below.

BRITISH EMBASSY CONTACT

Name: Dr Alex Alfred

British Email: britishembassyservice@gmail.com

Please confirm to us the closest Airport to your location so we can start making arrangements to buy your flight tickets .Understand that you need to expedite action because of the short notice. Feel free to ask any question.

We have attached a formal Letter of Invitation  and contract agreement.Please reconfirm to us your office Address for our perusal and further action.Note you are meant to arrive a day before the commencement of the event.

Please return a signed copy of the contract agreement for proper documentation.

We await your earliest response

Remain Blessed

Prof. Peter Kopelman

stgeorgeuniversityoflondon@gmail.com

ST' GEORGE UNIVERSITY.

+44 702 401 8034

Ofice(+44) 702-401-8034

Um, strange, "Alex" at the British Embassy also has a gmail account. And I wondered what this "anti-terrorism certificate" was all about, which I was quick to find out when I received this letter from the British Embassy Service:

ATTN CLIENT,

YOU ARE HEREBY ADVISED BY THE UK BORDER AGENCY TO IMMEDIATELY OBTAIN AN ANTI-TERRORIST CERTIFICATE IN ORDER TO BE GIVEN THE PERMIT WITHOUT ANY DELAY.THESE VITAL DOCUMENT WILL ONLY COST YOU ONLY 1000POUNDS,YOU CAN IMMEDIATELY SEND THE MONEY TO THE UK BORDER AGENT IN CHARGE OF YOUR PROCUREMENT VIA THE INFORMATION BELOW THROUGH WESTERN UNION.

UK BORDER AGENCY.

NAME:MRS KELLY CONMAN

ADDRESS: 114 ROMFORD ROAD LONDON,UNITED KINGDOM.

POSTCODE E12 6PY

AS SOON AS I RECEIVE THE WESTERN UNION MONEY TRANSFER RECEIPT I WILL TAKE THE PAYMENT RECEIPT TO THE OFFICIAL AT THE AGENCY,SO SHE CAN PROCEED ON PROCURING THE ANTI TERRORIST CERTIFICATE WHICH IS VALID FOR 3YEARS.ATTACHED BELOW IS THE ANTI-TERRORSIT CERTIFICATE APPLICATION FORM PRINT AND FILL IN THE INFORMATION BLOCK,REATTACH AND RESEND IT TO ME ALONG SIDE WITH YOUR WESTERN UNION MONEY TRANSFER RECEIPT.

IN YOUR SERVICE,

DR ALEX ALFRED

BRITISH EMBASSY SERVICE.

So the British Embassy now sends letters out in ALL CAPS with no stationary? And "Mrs. Kelly Conman"? I think I know her husband, "Lefty Conman." I replied:

Peter,

I just got an email from Alex at the British Embassy. I'm afraid that I cannot afford the 1,000 pounds. I do not have any money in my account as I have just paid my taxes. If you can wire transfer the U.S. $3000 advance per my instructions in the previous email then I can take care of this.

Michael

"Prof Peter" replied:

Let me know how much you can afford then we can add to you from the university. I will be waiting to hear from you .

Wow, so the British Embassy is willing to negotiate the price of this certificate, depending on how much someone can afford. I responded:

Peter,

As for what I can afford, as I said I have no money in the account I sent you as I just paid my taxes. So I will need you to wire transfer $3000, then I can pay the $1000 anti-terrorist certificate. I have alerted my bank to expect a wire transfer from you, and I gave them all your personal information, so they are expecting a wire transfer from you today. When that transaction is complete then I will take care of the anti-terrorist certificate.

Michael

"Prof Peter" then wrote:

This is the form for you to fill out for me so we can transfer you the deposit as soon as possible. I will be waiting to hear from you.

NAME ON THE CARD:

BILLING ADDRESS:

CARD NUMBER:

EXP DATE:

CCV:

CARD LIMIT:

AMOUNT OWING:

BANK NAME AND ADDRESS:

BANK TOLL FREE NUMBER:

DATE OF BIRTH:

MOTHER MAIDEN NAME:

SSN:

CELL PHONE NUMBER:

HOME PHONE:

DEBIT AND PREPAID CARD ARE NOT ACCEPTED

Um, credit card information? It was time to up the ante in this little game. So, I wrote:

Hello Peter,

I am very excited about coming to your university. And to tell you the truth I really need the money because, as I told you, I'm flat broke after paying my taxes. I gave you the information for transferring money into my account so when receipt of the $3000 is confirmed then I will follow the instructions from the British Embassy to send 1,000 pounds to them in order to get my anti-terrorist certificate. Otherwise I cannot pay the 1,000 pound fee and will not be able to come to London. That would be very sad.

In the meantime, I have a favor to ask of you. Would you please take a picture of yourself with a copy of my magazine, Skeptic magazine, in front of St. George University? I want to know what you look like so that when we meet in London I can find you at the airport.

Michael Shermer

The morning of March 17 I received the following email and photographs:

Dear Michael,

Good morning to your , have just got your mail and is nice hearing from you . Attach is the some of the photos of the university compound, the staff my photo of myself as well also the inside of the conference , am also standing in front of the university glass. Also as soon as you have procure the ANTI-TERRORIST CERTIFICATE, the hotel confirmation will be send to you as soon as possible.

Also get me aware as soon as you have send your payment to Dr Ales , so i can start up with the bookings of both the Flight and Hotel

I will be waiting to hear back from you as soon as possible ..

Remain Blessed,

Prof Peter

Golly, that photo of Prof Peter standing in the doorway is so real looking! Time to get crazy with this loon:

Dear Professor Peter,

Thank you ever so much for the confirmation letter and photographs. I was wondering if you know the woman in the photograph next to the university sign? She is beautiful. I was wondering if you could fix me up on a date with her when I get there. I am single and am looking for a wife and have always loved English women. I love their accents, don't you? Can you tell me her name and give me her email address so that I may introduce myself?

I will print out the anti-terrorist certificate form today per your instructions and send it to the British Embassy. I lost the email that Alex sent me, but I have the address of the British Embassy and will send the form and money to them. When they send me back the certified form I will email it to you.

Thank you,

Michael

"Prof Peter" Replied:

Dear Michael,

Thanks for your mail , the woman you are talking about is one of the student and she is just 29 yrs old , there is no problem about that, I will hook you up with her when you get here . Also send your payment to Dr Alex to the address he gave to you , you can mail him if they can receive credit card.

I will be waiting for the signed copy of the contract agreement.

Remain blessed.

Well, if he's willing to bless me and fix me up on a date with one of his students, how bad could this guy be? Let's find out…

Dear Prof Peter:

My friend with money to lend me tells me that there are a lot of fraudsters out there and to be careful. If you or one of your associates or students will make a sign that says "I'm Skeptical" and stand in front of Buckingham Palace and take a picture of it and send it to me, I promise that I will send you the money. I need some sort of proof. Anyone could have pulled those photographs of St. George's University off the web page. I need something personalized as proof, and the "I'm Skeptical" sign will do it. I promise.

Oh, also, my friend with the money wants to come with me. Will he need an anti-terrorist certificate as well? Is it the same price, or can we purchase two at the same time for a discounted price? Also, as I asked before, can we pay by credit card? I was wondering if we authorized $1500 for two certificates would that be acceptable? Please check with Alex at the British Embassy and let me know.

Michael

I then received this March 18 reply from Prof Peter:

Dear Michael,

Thanks for your mail , i did not have any prove after all you ask me to get a photographer of myself at the front of the university and

have done that , i  have show you some prove , i have never deal with such a speaker like you before you are making this issue long. Also

the woman you are talking about , i have see her yesterday and i have discuss with her , she can not also wait to see you.

Well i have conclude with the Committee organization and they have agree with you opinion , paying the 1500usd for both of you, and the

university has agreed to pay the remaining of the payment for the certificate .

As you can see that we did not have much time to waste on this , and again do not disappoint us , because the university can't wait to have

you in our mist event the woman .

The name of the woman is MARIA BRETT, and you can get in touch with her on the following email address … mariabrett28@yahoo.com.

Make the payment to Dr Alex as soon as possible , then try and call me on +44 702 401 8034 as soon as you have send the payment to him , so i can start up with the Flight Booking and Hotel accommodation.

I will be waiting to hear back from you as soon as you receive my mail

Remain blessed.;

Prof Peter.

Time to get crazy with "Maria" (who, of course, is just this dude with a different email address):

Dear Maria,

My name is Michael. I believe that Professor Peter Kopelman from your school has mentioned me to you. I am coming to London on March 30 to speak at St. George's University. Professor Peter sent me a picture of the school and I asked him about you as you are in the picture. I would like to meet you when I am in town and maybe go out on a date. Would you like to have tea with me? Isn't that a very British thing to do? Please tell me a little more about you, plus send me some photographs of you. I very much want to see what you look like before we meet.

Blessed be to you,

Michael

Then I wrote to Peter:

Maria has written me back. I am even more excited about coming to London, now just 13 days away! We are going to go out on a date!!

I finally have the money together for the anti-terrorism certificate and will take care of that today. But FIRST, Peter, you must provide me with personalized PROOF that I am really dealing with you and not some scammer. I need you to get one of your students to hold up a sign that says in big letters "I'm Skeptical". If you do not do this then I am not going to send the payment today. If you go do this right now then I will go straight away to the office and send Alex the money. I have $1500 to wire to him today. If you want the $1500 you will make me the proof sign. If you don't make the sign, I will not send you the $1500.

Michael

Then, amazingly, "Maria" writes back:

Is not that i did not want to send it , but i want you to come to Uk first then we can meet ..And again , Prof Peter told me that you will be coming to UK  soon that you have not procure the certificate , make it as soon as possible so we can meet . I will be waiting to hear from you . Also i will be waiting to receive your lecture here in UK  as well .

  

Maria

I responded:

Dear Maria, 

I finally got the money today to get my anti-terrorism certificate. I am going to take care of that today, but I have asked Peter for proof that this is not some internet scam. You know you can't be too careful these days. You never know who you are talking to online, right? That's why I am asking you for a picture. I need proof that I am actually writing a real person, a woman named Maria. You could be anyone. 

So, please send me a picture of you holding a sign that says "I'm Skeptical" and then I will have proof and will send my money.

Michael

The reply from Prof Peter finally came:

Dear Michael,

Have just taken a photographer which you requested for we are trying to best just for you to know that this is a real event coming up. As soon as you have send the payment to Dr Alex, send me the copy of the certificate, also the signed copy of the contract am still expecting it .

I will be waiting to hear back from you as soon as possible, I will also love to have a coffee with you when you get here.

Remain blessed,

Prof Peter.

And from "Maria":

Dear Michael,

You are right , but i will have to confused you that am also happy that this event is coming up and i will love if you can understand . I know how you feel but i also want to know you as well . See my photo and i hope you will like them those are my new photo . also send me yours as

well . And again , i will be waiting for you in UK to meet you first before anything .

Bye for now

Maria

Time to get tough with Prof Peter … I wrote:

That's not what I requested. This is just a photoshopped picture. Obviously you are not serious. I have $1500 in my bank account and I was going to go down to the Western Union office and wire it to Alex today, but I see no need to continue to waste my time and money when you cannot agree to my requirements, goodbye.

Prof Peter decided to get tough back … He wrote:

Dear Michael,

We did not have time to waste and let me know if you are not interesting any more .

Bye.

Time to play my trump card—the "anti-terrorism" certificate, constructed for me by Pat Linse, the Art Director of Skeptic magazine!

Dear Professor Peter and Dr. Alex,

I have very good news! I decided to trust you and so this afternoon I went down to the British Counsulate-General in Los Angeles and I wire transferred $1500 from my bank account with Washington Mutual (account #666-42-1999) to the British Embassy through Western Union. Did you get it? They gave me a confirmation number to give you:

Western Union Wire Transfer Confirmation #419-2011-1984

They also gave me the Anti-Terrorist Certificate, which they signed and told me to scan and to send to you. I have attached it below. 

So, please, book my airline reservation and hotel and send me the confirmation numbers right away. I can't wait to come to London and speak at your university. My friend with the money is coming with me. He will pay for his own flight and will book it himself once you tell me what flight you have booked me on. 

Blessed be to you,

Michael

I also wrote to Maria:

Maria,

I am writing to tell you the good news that this afternoon I went down to the British Counsulate-General in Los Angeles and I wire transferred $1500 from my bank account to the British Embassy through Western Union.

They gave me the Anti-Terrorist Certificate, which I have attached it below. 

So now I can come to London and we can go out on our date together. Where would you like to go? Do you think you can introduce me to Prince William? 

By the way, you look different in the photographs you sent me from that photograph in the university picture. You had much lighter skin in that photograph but darker skin now. Have you been out in the sun getting a tan?

Please send me some more photographs of yourself, and make me the "I'm Skeptical" sign.

Michael

Finally, on Sunday March 20, Prof Peter wrote back:

Dear Michael,

I did not understand you at all , and again i did not know what you mean about the confirmation you are talking about and again you hav

procure a wrong certificate this is not the certificate we issue and you are not to procure Los Aneles but UK certificate. i will advise

you to go back to them and collet your money back that you did not need that certificate again , then you send the payment to the address

Dr Alex gave you .

I will be wating to hear back from you as soon as you have receive my mail .

Remain Blessed,

Prof Peter.

I didn't respond for awhile, so Prof Peter wrote me with more "proof":

Dear Michael,

Maria brought this photo to me on my office and told me that this is what you have been requesting for , i hope you are satisfy now .

I will be waiting to hear back from you .

Warm Regards.

Okay, now it's time to get really crazy! So I wrote back:

Prof. Peter and Dr. Alex,

I'm shocked and very upset. Do you mean to tell me that I wasted $1500? Someone scammed me. I am going back down to that Los Angeles office and demand my money back tomorrow. I will keep you informed.

In the meantime, I have a wealthy donor who wants me to put together a scholarly book and he's willing to pay $20,000 for a book about why the last four American presidents have been in reality alien beings from another planet. Do you know anyone interested in contributing such a book, maybe some of the professors at your university? A sample article would need to be provided since this donor is very demanding – he is an eccentric Buddhist nudist who believes that public nudism is not only healthy but essential to world peace. Do you know any nudist professors in need of $20,000? I can bring the money with me next week when I come to London. Are travelers' checks ok? 

My wealthy donor sent me the picture below as proof of President Bush as an alien, and the alien who converted him.

Michael

Surely now the spam scammers will realize that they are being scammed! Apparently not, as this came in a day later:

Dear Michael ,

I got your mail and i was so sad because if you have listen to me this will not have happen and is because you did not following my word

and all you think is maybe we are trying to scam you . Well as you have stated in the mail , go back to them and collect your money back

, then send it to Dr Alex. As soon as you have send the payment to Dr Alex get back to me so i can start up with the Flight booking and

Hotel reservation and again the payment you are paying to Dr Alex will be payed back to you as soon as you come to London .

We can not wait to have you in our mist, also to have a coffee with you also Maria can not wait to go with a date with you .

I will be waiting to hear back from you as soon as you have read my mail.

As soon as you have get the payment back send it to Dr Alex , then when you get here we will talk about the Donor together with the staff here in the university.

I will be waiting to hear back from you .

Warm Regards

Prof Peter.

That brings us up to date to the present moment. I think I'll pull the plug on this silliness now and get back to work, but at least I wasted this guy's time and distracted him from possibly duping someone into actually sending in money. Oh, by the way, when I noticed that he said he got my name from The Amazing Meeting list of speakers, I queried the other speakers at TAM and, sure enough, they all received the same invitation to speak!

So much for scamming the spam scam scammers. It was worth a few laughs.

Egypt, Watson & the Future of Civilization

What does the democratic uprising in Egypt and other Arab nations have to do with IBM's Jeopardy champion Watson in determining the fate of civilization? Think bottom up, not top down; think exponential growth, not linear change; think crowd sourcing, not elite commanding; and think open access and transparency, not closed entree and secrecy. Under the influence of these four forces, such seemingly unconnected events are, in fact, connected at a deeper level when we pull back and examine the overall trajectory of the history of civilization.

Bottom up, not top down. Almost everything important that happens in both nature and in society happens from the bottom up, not the top down. Water is a bottom up, self-organized emergent property of hydrogen and oxygen. Life is a bottom up, self-organized emergent property of organic molecules that coalesced into protein chains through nothing more than the input of energy into the system of Earth's early environment. Evolution is a bottom up process of organisms just trying to make a living and get their genes into the next generation, and out of that simple process emerges the diverse array of complex life we see today. An economy is a self-organized bottom up emergent process of people just trying to make a living and get their genes into the next generation, and out of that simple process emerges the diverse array of products and services available to us today. And democracy is a bottom up emergent political system specifically designed to displace top down chiefdoms, kingdoms, theocracies, and dictatorships.
Exponential growth, not linear change. Science and technology have changed our world more in the past century than it changed in the previous hundred centuries—it took 10,000 years to get from the cart to the airplane, but only 66 years to get from powered flight to a lunar landing. Moore's Law of computer power doubling every eighteen months continues unabated and is now down to about a year. Computer scientists calculate that there have been thirty-two doublings since World War II, and that as early as 2030 we may encounter the Singularity—the point at which total computational power will rise to levels that are so far beyond anything that we can imagine that they will appear near infinite. And not just in raw number crunching power but in cognitive processing ability, as witnessed in the difference between IBM's Deep Blue chess playing master and IBM's Jeopardy champion.
Crowd sourcing, not elite commanding. Knowledge production has been one long trajectory of shifting not only from top down to bottom up, but from elite commanding to crowd sourcing. From ancient priests and medieval scholars, to academic professors and university publishers, to popular writers and trade publishing houses, to everyone their own writer and publisher online, the democratization of knowledge has struggled alongside the democratization of societies to free itself from the bondage of top down control. Compare the magisterial multi-volume encyclopedias of centuries past that held sway as the final authority for reliable knowledge, now displaced by individual encyclopedists employing wiki tools and making everyone their own expert.
Open access and transparency, not closed entrée and secrecy. The Internet is the ultimate bottom up self-organized emergent property of crowd sourcing millions of computer users in an open access and transparent exchange of language, knowledge, and data across servers; although there are some top-down controls involved—just as there are some in mostly bottom-up economic and political systems—the strength of digital freedom derives from the fact that no one is in charge.

For the past 10,000 years humanity has gradually but ineluctably transitioned from top down to bottom up, from linear change to exponential growth, from elite commanding to crowd sourcing, and from secrecy to transparency. Together these forces are driving us to Civilization 2.0 on a scale I derived for classifying the rich array of human societies throughout history:

Civilization 1.1: Fluid groups of hominids living in Africa. Technology consists of primitive stone tools. Intra-group conflicts are resolved through dominance hierarchy, and between-group violence is common.

Civilization 1.2: Bands of roaming hunter-gatherers that form kinship groups with a mostly horizontal political system and egalitarian economy and utilizing sophisticated tools to extract what they could from relatively resource poor environments.

Civilization 1.3: Tribes of individuals linked through kinship but with a more settled and agrarian lifestyle with the beginnings of a political hierarchy and a primitive economic division of labor and employing mostly animal and human labor.

Civilization 1.4: Chiefdoms consisting of a coalition of tribes into a single hierarchical political unit with a dominant leader at the top, and with the beginnings of significant economic inequalities and a division of labor in which lower-class members produce food and other products consumed by non-producing upper-class members.

Civilization 1.5: The state as a political coalition with jurisdiction over a well-defined geographical territory and its corresponding inhabitants, with a mercantile economy that seeks a favorable balance of trade in a win-lose game against other states.

Civilization 1.6: Empires that extend their control over peoples who are not culturally, ethnically or geographically within their normal jurisdiction, with a goal of economic dominance over rival empires.

Civilization 1.7: Democracies that divide power over several institutions, which are run by elected officials voted for by a limited number of citizens as defined by race, gender, and class, with the beginnings of a market economy.

Civilization 1.8: Liberal democracies that give the vote to all adult citizens regardless of race, class, or gender, and utilizing markets that begin to embrace a nonzero, win-win economic game through free trade with other states.

Civilization 1.9: Democratic capitalism, the blending of liberal democracy and free markets, now spreading across the globe through democratic movements in developing nations and broad trading blocs such as the European Union.

Civilization 2.0: Globalization that includes worldwide wireless Internet access, with all knowledge digitized and available to everyone, a completely global economy with free markets in which anyone can trade with anyone else without interference from states or governments. A planet where all states are democracies in which everyone has the franchise.

Reaching Civilization 2.0 is not inevitable. As we are witnessing in Arab countries this month, resistance by nondemocratic states to turning power over to the people is considerable, especially in theocracies whose leaders would prefer we all revert to Civilization 1.4 chiefdoms. But by spreading liberal democracy and free trade, science and technology and the open access to knowledge through computers via the Internet will, in the words on a plaque posted at the Suez Canal: Aperire Terram Gentibus—To Open the World to All People.

Men in Black at the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History

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On Saturday, February 5, 2011, my audio book producer John Wagner and I took a break from endless hours of my reading aloud (with John editing out my countless mistakes) my next book, The Believing Brain, which ironically includes chapters on UFOs, aliens, and conspiracy theories. Ironic because for this break John and I took what we thought would be an uneventful tour of the beautiful new National Museum of Nuclear Science and History in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

This is definitely a museum well worth visiting for a comprehensive tour of all things atomic. It was originally opened in 1969 as the Sandia Atomic Museum, but then changed in 1973 to the National Atomic Museum to include a broader history of the peaceful use of nuclear energy, and finally morphed into the new building that now houses the collection, which includes replicas of the Fat Man and Little Boy bombs (see photograph), along with a B-29, a B-52, an F-105, an A-7, an Atomic Cannon, a Titan II Rocket, a Minuteman Missile, a Jupiter Missile, a Thor Missile, and hundreds more smaller items inside the museum building itself, including these two amusing early uses of atomic energy for "health" purposes:

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1. The Spectro-Chrome Device, "invented around 1911, was used in the practice of Spectro-Chrome therapy. The inventors believed that every element exhibits a certain color. Ninety-seven percent of a human body is made up of four main elements: oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen and carbon. The color waves of these elements were thought to be blue, red, green, and yellow respectively. Illness was thought to occur when one or more of these colors became out of balance, either too dim or too brilliant. The Spectro-Chrome Device treated the afflicted part of the body with the proper amount of color and light to restore balance in the body. Once balance occurred, the patient should recover." The operative word here is "should".

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2. The Revigator: "This large pottery crock was lined with Radium ore. Instructions on the jar suggest that you fill it every night with water and drink an average of six or more glasses daily. After its discovery by Pierre and Marie Curie in 1898, Radium was considered a 'cure-all' until the early 1920s." The operative word here is "crock".

We were also quite impressed with the array of nuclear-tipped missiles, including these two (see below), one of which had been in space and survived the reentry. Can you tell which one?

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Then something really weird happened. As John and I were strolling along the exhibits talking about this and that, I wondered out loud if they had any examples of the sand that was turned into glass in the Trinity atomic bomb test explosion on July 16, 1945 at White Sands, New Mexico. Just then the museum docent who had kindly joined us to offer more detailed narratives to accompany the printed plaques, explained that they did, indeed, have a display of said sand-to-glass fusion, and there it was, beautiful in its horrific creation. We chatted it up with the docent for a time, at which point I asked if it is possible to go to White Sands and see the glass in situ. She said, "no, it has all been taken away." I said, "who took it away, and where is it?" She responded rhetorically: "Right, who took it, where, and why?" I repeated the question and she repeated the rhetorical answer.

"Uh, what are you saying? Someone secreted it away?" "Yes, right, it's gone and no one knows where," she explained unhelpfully. "But someone must know," I pleaded.

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At this point she hinted that there are many government secrets still surrounding nuclear weapons. Of this I am quite certain, since governments do keep secrets in the interests of national security, but she seemed to be speaking of a different sort of secret. I probed for more examples of such secrets. "When you go outside," she offered, "you will see a B-29 bomber, like the one that dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Look at the serial number on the tail. It says 451748. But if you go inside the cockpit and look behind the pilot seat you will find another serial number for that plane: 451749."

"Okay, so someone messed up," I suggested. "After all, the people who spray paint numbers on planes are probably not the engineers who design and build planes for Boeing. So what?"

"Well, I looked into that matter myself when I was restoring the plane," she continued breathlessly, "and it turns out that plane number 451749 disappeared over the South China Sea in a mysterious explosion in the early 1950s. Supposedly one of the bombs armed itself inside the B-29 and then detonated itself."

"Is that possible?" I queried, wondering just where this story was going but suspecting it was about to take a dramatic turn into conspiratorial waters.

"Have you ever heard of a bomb arming itself and then detonating itself?" she queried. I had to admit that I hadn't, but I also signaled to her that I didn't know much at all about bombs and what they are capable of doing, but then suggested that I could certainly imagine how the same people who spray paint the wrong serial number on the tail of a plane could easily screw up while arming a bomb and cause it to explode. Human error happens not infrequently in operating complex machinery.

"Well, I'll tell you—that doesn't happen," she countered my feeble objections. "That plane was shot down or intentionally destroyed." Okay, shot down. Intentionally destroyed. By whom, enemy fighter planes or an anti-aircraft missile over enemy territory? "No, it was destroyed by our own government." Why? "Because the crew saw something." What? What did they see? "Remember, this was not long after Roswell…."

Okay, here we go, we're on my turf now! Aliens, UFOs, Roswell, New Mexico. The alien encounter in 1947. The crew, she said, probably had a UFO encounter of some sort, and they were silenced. "Wow, that's incredible," I enthused. "How can I look into this further?" At this point my erstwhile conspiratorialist grew quiet, warning me in a voice too fervent by half: "You can try but I wouldn't get my hopes up. I made some calls myself and finally got a hold of a two-star general, who told me 'I don't know what happened and you don't either.'"

"What did you take that to mean?," I pushed. "He was telling me that if I didn't drop my investigation of what really happened to plane number 451749, that Men-In-Black would come pay me a visit," she explained unhesitatingly and with enough dramatis that I would get the message myself.

So…there it is. That's all I know from my brief visit and having conducted no further investigations. If anyone reading this knows, or knows someone who knows…or who has a Friend-of-a-Friend who knows someone who knows what happened to B-29 plane number 451749, I would really like to know myself. And if there are any M.I.B. out there planning to come visit me, bring an extra pair of those cool black sunglasses for me.

Financial Flimflam

Why economic experts' predictions fail

IN DECEMBER 2010 I appeared on John Stossel's television special on skepticism on Fox Business News, during which I debunked numerous pseudoscientific beliefs. Stossel added his own skepticism of possible financial pseudoscience in the form of active investment fund managers who claim that they can consistently beat the market. In a dramatic visual demonstration, Stossel threw 30 darts into a page of stocks and compared their performance since January 1, 2010, with stock picks of the 10 largest managed funds. Results: Dartboard, a 31 percent increase; managed funds, a 9.5 percent increase.

Admitting that he got lucky because of his limited sample size, Stossel explained that had he thrown enough darts to fully represent the market he would have generated a 12 percent increase— the market average—a full 2.5 percentage points higher than the 10 largest managed funds average increase. As Princeton University economist Burton G. Malkiel elaborated on the show, over the past decade "more than two thirds of actively managed funds were beaten by a simple low-cost indexed fund [for example, a mutual fund invested in a large number of stocks], and the active funds that win in one period aren't the same ones who win in the next period."

Stossel cited a study in the journal Economics and Portfolio Strategy that tracked 452 managed funds from 1990 to 2009, finding that only 13 beat the market average. Equating managed fund directors to "snake-oil salesmen," Malkiel said that Wall Street is selling Main Street on the belief that experts can consistently time the market and make accurate predictions of when to buy and sell. They can't. No one can. Not even professional economists and not even for large-scale market indicators. As economics Nobel laureate Paul Samuelson long ago noted in a 1966 Newsweek column: "Commentators quote economic studies alleging that market downturns predicted four out of the last five recessions. That is an understatement. Wall Street indexes predicted nine out of the last five recessions!"

Even in a given tech area, where you might expect a greater level of specific expertise, economic forecasters fumble. On December 22, 2010, for example, the Wall Street Journal ran a piece on how the great hedge fund financier T. Boone Pickens (chair of BP Capital Management) just abandoned his "Pickens Plan" of investing in wind energy. Pickens invested $2 billion based on his prediction that the price of natural gas would stay high. It didn't, plummeting as the drilling industry's ability to unlock methane from shale beds improved, a turn of events even an expert such as Pickens failed to see.

Why are experts (along with us nonexperts) so bad at making predictions? The world is a messy, complex and contingent place with countless intervening variables and confounding factors, which our brains are not equipped to evaluate. We evolved the capacity to make snap decisions based on short-term predictions, not rational analysis about long-term investments, and so we deceive ourselves into thinking that experts can foresee the future. This self-deception among professional prognosticators was investigated by University of California, Berkeley, professor Philip E. Tetlock, as reported in his 2005 book Expert Political Judgment. After testing 284 experts in political science, economics, history and journalism in a staggering 82,361 predictions about the future, Tetlock concluded that they did little better than "a dart-throwing chimpanzee."

There was one significant factor in greater prediction success, however, and that was cognitive style: "foxes" who know a little about many things do better than "hedgehogs" who know a lot about one area of expertise. Low scorers, Tetlock wrote, were "thinkers who 'know one big thing,' aggressively extend the explanatory reach of that one big thing into new domains, display bristly impatience with those who 'do not get it,' and express considerable confidence that they are already pretty proficient forecasters." High scorers in the study were "thinkers who know many small things (tricks of their trade), are skeptical of grand schemes, see explanation and prediction not as deductive exercises but rather as exercises in flexible 'ad hocery' that require stitching together diverse sources of information, and are rather diffident about their own forecasting prowess."

Being deeply knowledgeable on one subject narrows focus and increases confidence but also blurs the value of dissenting views and transforms data collection into belief confirmation. One way to avoid being wrong is to be skeptical whenever you catch yourself making predictions based on reducing complex phenomena into one overarching scheme. This type of cognitive trap is why I don't make predictions and why I never will.

Contrasts and Craziness: Skeptics' Geology Tour Ends at Creationist Museum

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Over the three-day weekend of January 15–17, the Skeptics Society sponsored a geology tour organized and hosted by the Occidental College and Caltech paleontologist and geologist Donald Prothero and his Whittier College professor wife Teresa LeVelle. Around 50 skeptics departed Pasadena on a bus bound for our first stop, the Mt. Palomar observatory, home of the famous 200-inch Hale telescope, once the largest in the world and from which numerous important observations about the universe were made, including the discovery of quasars. No less an astronomical giant than Edwin Hubble was given the honor of being the first astronomer to use the telescope. They don't build 'em like this any longer: big and beefy!

In this limited space I cannot republish Prothero's 30-page geological guidebook. Suffice it to say that Prothero is a brilliant lecturer who in the course of days packed in a 14-week semester's worth of geological science as we wended our way around Southern California with it's countless faults, uplifts, basins, and ranges. I'll let a few photographs do the talking here, but this is no substitute for joining us on a future trip with Don Prothero, whom I call Protheropedia for his encyclopedic knowledge of seemingly everything under and including the sun. Join us, for example, on our next big trip to see the glaciers of Alaska.

Our three main locations on this trip, represented in the photographs below, after visiting and getting an inside tour of the Mt. Palomar telescope, were the Anza-Borrego badlands and surrounding areas, the Salton Sea, and the Joshua Tree National Park. All were spectacular sites for science, some of the most dramatic scenery to be found anywhere on the planet.

Click any photo below to view the entire gallery in larger format, with captions.

With considerable irony we ended the trip with a final stop along Interstate 10 west of Palm Springs (near Cabazon and the cluster of factory outlet stores just off the freeway), where you can't miss the two giant dinosaurs—a T-Rex and a Brontosaurus (now Apatosaurus)—originally built in the 1960s by Knott's Berry Farm sculptor and portrait artist Claude K. Bell (1897–1988) to attract customers to his Wheel Inn Café. They have been a California driving fixture ever since, and few people (including me!) realized that after Bell died his estate sold the property to an Orange County creationist who converted the site into a Young Earth Creationism park, teaching children that the entire world was created in six days around 6,000 years ago, around the same time that the Egyptians invented wine. The pictures below speak for themselves.

Houdini's Skeptical Advice

Before you say something is out of this world, first make sure that it is not in this world

SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE was the brilliant author of the wildly popular Sherlock Holmes detective stories, which celebrated the triumph of reason and logic over superstition and magical thinking. Unfortunately, the Scottish physician-turned-writer did not apply his creation's cognitive skills when it came to the blossoming spiritualism movement of the early 1900s: he fell blindly for the crude hoax of the Cottingley Fairies (read about it in Junior Skeptic issue 36) photographs and regularly attended séances to make contact with family members who had died in the First World War, especially his son Kingsley. Perhaps fittingly, Conan Doyle's fame brought him into company with the greatest magician of his age, Harry Houdini, who did not su!er fakes gladly.

In the spring of 1922 Conan Doyle visited Houdini in his New York City home, whereupon the magician set out to demonstrate that slate writing — a favorite method among mediums for receiving messages from the dead, who allegedly moved a piece of chalk across a slate — could be done by perfectly prosaic means. Houdini had Conan Doyle hang a slate from anywhere in the room so that it was free to swing in space. He presented the author with four cork balls, asking him to pick one and cut it open to prove that it had not been altered. He then had Conan Doyle pick another ball and dip it into a well of white ink. While it was soaking, Houdini asked his visitor to go down the street in any direction, take out a piece of paper and pencil, write a question or a sentence, put it back in his pocket and return to the house. Conan Doyle complied, scribbling, "Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin," a riddle from the Bible's Book of Daniel, meaning, "It has been counted and counted, weighed and divided."

How appropriate, for what happened next defied explanation, at least in Conan Doyle's mind. Houdini had him scoop up the ink-soaked ball in a spoon and place it against the slate, where it momentarily stuck before slowly rolling across the face, spelling out "M," "e," "n," "e," and so forth until the entire phrase was completed, at which point the ball dropped to the ground. According to William Kalush and Larry Sloman in their 2006 biography The Secret Life of Houdini (Atria Books), the Master Mystifier then dealt Conan Doyle the lesson that he — and by implication anyone impressed by such mysteries — needed to hear:

Sir Arthur, I have devoted a lot of time and thought to this illusion … I won't tell you how it was done, but I can assure you it was pure trickery. I did it by perfectly normal means. I devised it to show you what can be done along these lines. Now, I beg of you, Sir Arthur, do not jump to the conclusion that certain things you see are necessarily "supernatural," or the work of "spirits," just because you cannot explain them…

Lamentably, Sir Arthur continued to believe that Houdini had psychic powers and spiritual connections that he employed in his famous escapes.

This problem is called the argument from ignorance ("it must be true because it has not been proven false") or sometimes the argument from personal incredulity ("because I cannot imagine a natural explanation, there cannot be one"). Such fallacious reasoning comes up so often in my encounters with believers that I conclude it must be a product of a brain unsatisfied with doubt; as nature abhors a vacuum, so, too, does the brain abhor no explanation. It therefore fills in one, no matter how unlikely. Thus do normal anomalies become paranormal, natural phenomena become supernatural, unidentified flying objects become extraterrestrial spacecraft and chance events become conspiracies.

Houdini's principle states that just because something is unexplained does not mean that it is paranormal, supernatural, extraterrestrial or conspiratorial. Before you say something is out of this world, first make sure that it is not in this world, for science is grounded in naturalism, not supernaturalism, paranormalism or any other unnecessarily complicated explanations.

The Celebrity of Science Comes to Caltech

Stephen Hawking lectures on "My Brief History," packs the house

On Tuesday, January 18, 2011, physicist, cosmologist, writer, and science celebrity Stephen Hawking spoke in Caltech's Beckman Auditorium on the subject of "My Brief History," an autobiographical journey through the life of one of the most famous scientists in history.

Tickets were in such high demand that I had to go as a member of the press, writing for Scientific American, Skeptic, eSkeptic, and Skeptic.com, and even then it wasn't clear I was getting in to actually hear the lecture until after the press junket that afforded us a photo opportunity to pose with The Great One (see below).

Despite his handicap that prevents him from moving anything but a tiny cheek muscle, Hawking is fiercely independent and insists on writing his own speeches and delivering them sentence by sentence through a computer cursor command that he controls through twitching that one muscle, the movement of which is picked up by a small camera attached to his eye glasses (see close up photo below).

Propped up in his chair with his computer screen in front of him, Hawking delivers the lines of his speech sentence by sentence, which you can hear being commanded by a barely perceptible short buzzing sound that advances the already-written text line by line.

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Hawking's talk was a mix of anecdotes about his parents and upbringing, his schooling and early education, and his science—all of which have been outlined in countless articles, books, films, and biographies—but it was refreshing to hear it directly from the man himself, who rarely addresses the public about personal matters. Hawking was obviously gifted from early childhood, plus had the support of well-educated parents and opportunities for an excellent education. What he lacked, by his own admission, was motivation to achieve. In fact, Hawking noted that the whole point of going through higher education was to show how little effort was needed to succeed, and he took every advantage his genetics gave him for cognitive superiority to cruise through his courses while hardly lifting a finger.

All that changed when he was diagnosed with ALS, which jump-started his ambitions to roll up his sleeves and get to work on something significant to complete his Ph.D. and provide for his new family before…well, before his inevitable demise that is the prognosis of this disease. Four decades on Hawking remains paralyzed but very much alive, living life to the fullest that he can (Caltech cosmologist Kip Thorne, who hosted the event, recounted a trip to Antarctica that Hawking organized, as well as his well-publicized zero-gravity excursion in the "vomit comet" jet that flies through parabolic arcs that enable brief snippets of weightlessness. Apparently Hawking plans to be one of the first tourists into space aboard one of the developing private space flight companies.

Hawking also has a keen sense of humor, although it isn't clear that if any of his lines were delivered by anyone else that they would be found funny. His situation is so unique, and his mind so interesting, that audiences seem eager to respond to anything he says that isn't straight reportage about his life or science.

In previous talks that I have attended by Stephen the Q & A inevitably includes a god question, but in those days Hawking took questions from the floor, which took too long to answer so now he fields questions before the talk from Caltech students, who read them aloud to the audience, followed by Hawking's prepared answer. Here are the three questions and Hawking's answers:

Student question #1 from Marc Favata, a Caltech postdoc in physics: "As you well know, one of the major research efforts at Caltech concerns the detection of gravitational-radiation with LIGO (the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory). When the upgrades to LIGO are complete in the next 5 years or so, we expect to detect multiple gravitational-wave events from merging neutron stars or black holes. Considering the uncertainties in our understanding of the rates at which these mergers happen, are you optimistic or pessimistic about the prospects for LIGO to detect something? More importantly, could you speculate on what might be some of the 'big surprises' that could come from gravitational-wave observations?

Hawking: "There is uncertainty in the rate of black hole or neutron star mergers. But after the upgrade, LIGO should be able to detect gravitational waves from neutron star binaries, and we know they exist. The most exciting result would be to find something we don't expect. I can't say what that might be, because then it wouldn't be a surprise."

Student question #2 from Shiri (Teresa) Liu, a Caltech physics sophomore: "In one of your TV series, you proved that time travel from the future to the past is impossible by holding a party for time travelers from the future. In your experiment, you planned to hold a party for the time travelers at noon on a specific day. You printed many copies of the invitations and counted on some of them to survive for thousands of years, so that time travelers living in the future will read the letter and use a time machine to come back to your party. However, nobody showed up at noon that day, so you concluded that time travel from the future to the past is impossible. Here is a paradox that I have encountered by changing your party plans: Suppose that time travel from the future to the past is, in fact, possible, and suppose that you have made a firm decision, before the party starts, to print and preserve the invitations forever. Suppose, you hold your party and time travelers do show up; but soon after your party you suddenly change your mind and destroy all the letters. What will happen? Will the time travelers who showed up at your party suddenly disappear into the future when you destroy the letters? If so, haven't you just changed the future in the past? And, by the way, I'm just curious; do you still have all the invitation letters?

Hawking: "Even if I destroyed all the invitations, the television program is on YouTube, so time travelers from the future, would know about the party. Of course, they would also know that nobody came. Maybe that's why they didn't turn up."

Student question #3, from Sirio Belli, a first-year grad student at Caltech in astrophysics: "The great Russian physicist Lev Landau, in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, ranked physicists on a logarithmic scale from 0 to 5 according to their productivity. He assigned the best score of 0 to Newton, 0.5 to Einstein, 1 to Paul Dirac and 2 to himself. What do you think would be your place on this scale? Many journalists have called you 'the new Einstein,' but I would like to know your opinion about the importance of your contributions to physics."

Hawking: "Landau was good, but not that good. People who rank themselves are losers."

A good time was had by all, and by all I mean the 1,100 people inside Beckman Auditorium, the additional 400 people in Remo Hall watching a video feed, and hundreds more on the lawn outside Beckman watching and listening on big screens and speakers. It is both rare and refreshing to see a scientist so popular that people were lined up to nab the handful of seats set aside for the general public as early as noon that day. Such is the nature of celebrity, even science celebrity.

Feynman's Vision

TEDxCaltech Celebrates the Vision of Richard Feynman

On Friday, January 14, 2011, the spirit of TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) was enacted as TEDxCaltech, one of many independent lecture series that have spontaneously emerged from the bottom up by what I call "ideas entrepreneurs," creative individuals who want to change the world by spreading ideas in the format modeled after the annual event now held in Long Beach (albeit at a fraction of the cost: $85 versus $6000). The theme of TEDxCaltech was "Feynman's Vision: The Next 50 Years," celebrating Richard Feynman's famous 1959 lecture, "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom," which helped launch the field of nanotechnology. As Feynman said, "Our imagination is stretched to the utmost, not, as in fiction, to imagine things which are not really there, but just to comprehend those things which are there."

Feynman was famous for telling stories, so first up on the morning program was Feynman's daughter Michelle, who recounted what it was like to hear bedtime stories from her famous father. Michelle then introduced Christopher Sykes, the British documentary film maker who cast Feynman's stories into filmic narrative in his famous film The Pleasure of Finding Things Out (the phrase inspired by a Feynman quip about why he does science—not to change the world or discover some grand unifying theory of everything, but just for the pleasure of finding things out). Sykes recounted how intimidating it was to initially approach the normally reclusive Feynman with the idea of sitting him down in front of a camera, but Feynman agreed, perhaps because he knew his life was coming to an end because of cancer, or perhaps because Sykes is such a warm and engaging man. Whatever the reason, the world is a better place with Feynman's voice still engaging us two decades after his death (you can watch excerpts from the film on YouTube).

The talks throughout the day were peppered by video clips of Feynman, plus musical performances inspired by Feynman's passion for drumming. But the meat of the day was in the lectures by scientists, grad students, and even undergrad students who have carried on Feynman's vision in various fields. To wit, Curtis Wong, a Principal Researcher in eScience at Microsoft introduced us to WorldWideTelescope.org, "a free interactive storytelling and virtual learning environment providing the highest resolution multispectral imagery of the universe." It is a 3D tour of the universe, inspired by Feynman's creative genius in visualizing data in a manner that enhances understanding.

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The afternoon sessions of heavy-duty science and technology talks were broken up with some seriously geeky humor when Caltech cosmologists Kip Thorne (whom I posed with in the picture) and John Preskill played a science-geek version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire, complete with the music, rotating spot lights between questions, and slides projecting the question and four-answer options on the screen. Since TEDxCaltech was a tribute to Feynman, all questions pertained to things that Feynman said or did, so of course the correct answer to every question was "Richard Feynman." Nevertheless, Thorne and Preskill could not seem to agree on an answer so they had to use their three lifelines: 50/50, poll-the-audience, and phone-a-friend. The first question was:

"Who said 'If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics.'?"

Answer choices:

George W. Bush
Lady Gaga
Albert Einstein
Richard Feynman

For this question Thorne and Preskill used their 50/50 lifeline and narrowed it down to Einstein or Feynman, and they correctly guess the latter because the former never fully accepted quantum mechanics, much less understood it.

The next two questions went the same way, forcing Thorne and Preskill to poll the audience (we got it right: "Richard Feynman") and, finally, to phone-a-friend. For the latter, Thorne and Preskill deduced that the answer was either Stephen Hawking or Richard Feynman, so they chose to phone no less an expert than Stephen Hawking, who not only answered his phone, but when Thorne asked him to please come to Caltech to answer the question, there he was, wheeling down the aisle of Beckman Auditorium at Caltech and up onto the stage, where he promptly answered, "Richard Feynman. That's my final answer."

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The day wrapped up with speakers discussing Feynman diagrams, the squiggly lines that help particle physicists visualize what interacting subatomic particles are doing when they collide in atom smashers. Even though Feynman diagrams are so useful that they appear on blackboards in physics departments around the world—and even on the side of Feynman's van—additional discussions noted how difficult it is to actually compute mathematically what is really happened in even the simplest of particle interactions depicted in such diagrams. Nonetheless, Feynman's vision, and his legacy lives on.