Nils Andersson's Blog, page 3

Gatekeeping

This last week I read a newspaper article saying that 20% of all e-books sold in the UK in 2012 were by indie authors. For those of you that don’t know, this means authors that are not signed by publishers so put out their books under their own steam. The article went on to provide a couple of colourful quotes from the industry, basically lamenting the changing publishing landscape. The suggestion seemed to be that indies are both corrupt and illiterate (great combination!), and that the traditional gatekeepers are needed to protect unsuspecting readers from the horrors of self-published dross.            I have to confess from the outset that I am a bit partial here (having published two small books myself, an interesting and gratifying experience), but I still thought it would be interesting to consider the arguments.            Let’s start with the corruption case. The argument seemed to be that indies resort to pretty much anything to flog their flawed goods, including paying for friendship on social media. This is not something I would fancy doing myself, but how unreasonable is it? You won’t sell anything unless people hear of the product, and if you are unlikely to be invited to talk about your writings on breakfast TV then what are you supposed to do? Exposure is everything. Besides, is it not the case that traditional publishers spend a fair bit of money advertising their products?            Move on to the gatekeeping issue, which I find much more entertaining; It may well be true that, some years ago, the major publishing houses provided real quality. In some cases their main focus may even have been literature, rather than profit. Is this still the case? I’m afraid I doubt this very much. Current publishing seems obsessed with getting on whatever the most recent bandwagon may be. In the last couple of years we have gone from magic and wizardry (thanks Harry!) to vampires and most recently 50 shades of everything apart from the apostles. Is this idea of “more of the same, please, that’s what people want” really compatible with the notion of gatekeeping?            Whatever you think about that question... The nail in the coffin of quality control must surely be the endless list of books supposedly written by celebrities. You can almost see the scene in the publisher’s office. “Ah, but you’re famous... Why don’t you write a book? We’ll get you a ghostwriter, you don’t have to do anything.”            I rest my case.            Now let’s consider the growing indie scene, where authors remain responsible for the entire process, from idea to typing to editing, spell checking, cover design and publicity. Daunting list, and you can’t be surprised if there are very few individuals that can excel in all the required skills. It makes sense that self-published books are of variable quality. With the hurdle to publishing being so incredibly low at the moment (mainly because Amazon wanted to market their Kindle and were intent on world domination, as well) that anyone can put out pretty much anything there will inevitably be huge amounts of very poor quality stuff out there. Do readers need publishers to protect them from this undergrowth of the e-book universe? I think not. People aren’t stupid (no comments, please!). In most cases you only need to read the book blurb to decide if the product is even remotely worth considering.            We are moving into an era where the readers are the gatekeepers. That’s just as it should be. Most people will remain faithful to the bestseller list, and struggle through the stilted grammar of the latest Dan Brown or the like. Others will shop around. Just like in the world of music, they may find exciting things on the indie scene. In this new era budding authors have an opportunity to go it alone and take full control of their work. In exceptional cases they may become successful this way, but this will only happen if they take the job seriously and work very hard.            One thing I think is absolutely certain. We have come far from the days of “vanity publishing”. There are indie books out there that are just as good as anything from the big publishers. This is really exciting and it makes it much more fun to look for the next great read.

Reality shows

It is interesting to see (actually not interesting, rather annoying) how the fashion for TV reality shows is spilling over into every-day life. Maybe you don’t agree, but I have had my fill of people desperate to have their talents voted on by more or less competent judges. I don’t really need this in my everyday existence, although… perhaps it would be fun to give family and/or work colleagues score cards to hold up at appropriate times when I have either excelled or failed miserably.             Anyway, having sometimes joked about what it will be like when this fad hits science, I was absolutely astonished when this actually happened a couple of weeks ago. You may have seen the story already, but let me recap nevertheless. Apparently, a person that left academia a long time ago (appropriately for the story with a name very close to Einstein…) has been toiling away on his solution to the big problem of life, the Universe and everything. We obviously all know already that the answer must be 42, but now… after 20 years this individual seems to have found the question. More specifically, and less flippantly, he claims to have come up with a geometric theory that joins the standard model of particle physics to gravity.  Or something like that, who knows? The reason no one really knows is that the detailed work has not been written up yet. This would not be a problem, if it weren’t for the fact that a rather astonishing publicity machine appears to have tripped into action. A bold write-up in a British newspaper suggested that the work is the best contribution to our understanding of things since…  indeed… Einstein completed his decade-long toil on his theory of gravity almost a century ago. A talk was given at a leading University, although it was immediately suggested that the only local experts that could judge the claims were conveniently not invited. Ah well… What I find most intriguing with this story is the apparent disregard shown for the scientific process. Basically, the scientific principle (at least as I understand it) says that any work should testable by experiment (in some speculative areas we may have ventured a bit far for this, but…). Add to this the expectation that your work must be presented to the community before you have what one might call bragging rights. This is the idea of peer review (not at all perfect, but it is the best we have at the moment), where colleagues take a closer look at your work and then decide if it is any good or not. You may argue that peer review brings personal bias into the game (absolutely true) and that some experts may not be prepared to take anything too “far out” seriously (also true). Still, this is the way things are done (or at least, have been until now). While we are waiting for the actual paper that will tell us how geometry saves everything and resolves a hundred years worth of questions… let us consider where we appear to be going. We seem to be heading at full tilt towards judging the quality of science by the media attention gained and the personalities involved. Should we be comfortable with this? Really? Do we want our to see best scientists flaunting shiny smiles and sharing their cleverness on TV chat shows, or do we want them locked away in the lab solving problems? Once popularity determines research funding then this is where we will end up. I’m not sure I like the idea. I get enough of my colleagues at work, thank you very much, I don’t need to see them on TV as well.

Quantum rules

I thought I would have a go at explaining something hard using only the kind of words people use the most often. This is not easy, but let us have a go anyway.          The idea I am thinking of comes from the world of the very small. If something is really really small, then you can not know both where it is and how fast it is moving at the same time.          You can know exactly where it is, but then you have no idea how fast it may be moving. On the other hand, if you know how fast it is moving then you will not know where it is.          I really like this idea because you can have a lot of fun with it.         What would the world be like if this was how larger things worked as well? What would it do to driving? When you are driving, it is important to know both where you are and how fast you are going.          You need to know where you are in order to know that you are going the right way and you need to know how fast you are going in order not to get into trouble with the police.          Now.          Suppose this was not possible. Suppose that you would lose track of where you were the moment you figured out how fast you were going. You could avoid the police stopping you, but you would get totally lost. The other way around is no better. You might find out where you are, but you would not be able to control how fast you were moving. That would not seem very safe.          What do we learn from this?          It is probably good that the really really small does not decide how things work in our every day life. It would be serious trouble!
Written using the up-goerfive text editor, using only the ten hundred most common words. Why don’t you have a go?

Childhood pleasures

Having written a number of short stories involving a slightly misguided inventor I feel compelled to ask: Where do all these mad ideas come from?             It can’t be that they emerge out of nowhere - just like that - popping in from some extra dimension or something, can it?            I need to know because they keep bothering me. Once they sneak into the brain they grab hold and refuse to let go, and I am spending far too much time on this.            I may have had a clue to the mystery quite recently. There I was thinking about some invention or other, and then... all of a sudden I remembered.            When I was little, probably back in the days when TV was black and white, one of my favourite programmes was a cartoon about a great inventor, Professor Balthazar. I had completely forgotten about that funny little man in his bowler hat, but suddenly he was back.            Did an internet search to satisfy my curiosity.            Indeed, three series of adventures were made, starting in the late 1960s, in that powerhouse of animation; Croatia. Broadcasted in a number of countries, including Sweden, to general acclaim.            At this point I, quite naturally (uhh?), ended up on YouTube where a few of the Professor’s adventures can be found (hint!). Watched them with our then 7-year old and discovered that the stories were still great. The animation is certainly not CGI, but much better off for it. Suddenly the household had a craving for more.             More inventions.             More madness.            Fortunately for us, an Italian company had taken upon themselves to digitally remaster all the old Balthazar episodes. So... we ordered the box set (not cheap, but the best things in life are not always free) and now all our Professorial needs have been satisfied.            More than satisfied, perhaps, as we can’t help humming the theme tune over and over…            The Professor’s inventions tend to be on the remarkable side of spectacular. A problem arises, he pushes a lever on his inventing machine, an umbrella opens and shuts a few times and out of a spout drips a few drops of red liquid. These precious red drops have the most amazing ability to create pretty much anything you want, from flying shoes to doorways to other realities where people can live out their fantasies.             Excellent!            If, at some point in the future, my daughter decides to start writing stories about an inventive Professor involving more or less reasonable ideas... perhaps she will trace the idea back to this Croatian brilliance of Professor Balthazar. It would be tricky to make such a legacy worthy, but it would certainly be worth trying.

Learning to crawl

This weekend the baby in our house managed to figure out the mysteries of crawling. Can’t say that it has been easy. On the contrary, and there is still some way to go before the technique is perfected. At the moment it is mostly one move forwards and a couple backwards, but...             For the parents this means that we need to pay unexpected attention. The little person no longer stays where you put her down, and she is suddenly able to reach all sorts of unsuitable things. As soon as you turn your back on her. Put her down on a blanket outside and before you know it she is off the reservation... Eating grass. Good for the digestive system, I’m sure.            Watching the stubborn repetition is both entertaining and frustrating. The little crawler may get frustrated but at the same time she is absolutely determined to get there. And eventually she does.            Tells you quite a lot about the importance of persistence.            You also find out a few things about learning. As humans, we learn partly by repetition and partly by making mistakes. Mistakes teach us how not to do things, sometimes in a very painful way. This is important. Repetition leads to perfection in whatever the pursuit may be.            For small children this comes natural. The older you get, the harder it becomes to pick up new skills. There are many reasons for this. One may be lack of patience. While a crawling baby keeps getting up after falling over hundreds of times in a row, a grown-up often gives up after the first few attempts. Usually with some feeble excuse like “no more time for this nonsense, more important things to do...”            Is this the way of the world, or is there something you can do about it? Is there some way that a grown-up can emulate the child? Not by throwing tantrums, but by sticking at tasks that seem impossible until they are mastered.            What is the key to this?            Now that I think about it, I recognize that the answer could have to do with stupidity. Not being stupid, but rather not being afraid to look stupid. This never bothered any baby, but it holds back most adults.            If you want to make progress on something challenging, where mistakes are inevitable, then you must allow yourself to look, and likely feel, stupid.            You also need to be modest enough to ask for help when you need it. I know that the next step (no pun intended) for our baby will be walking. This will involve the poor parents breaking their backs by propping up a staggering pre-toddler for hours on end. We will look stupid, but see if the baby cares. She’s got walking to master, so can’t be bothered about how we feel about it.                         As a grown-up there are situations where you need similar support. This is true even for the best of us. In the world of science you see it all the time. Famously, Einstein needed someone to tell him about tensor calculus when he was trying to figure out his new theory of gravity. The trick is to find someone that is able to help, but also to be modest enough to accept that help is needed in the first place. And not be afraid to look stupid...             So there we are.            The road to success passes through both repetition and stupidity.            At least that’s what I keep telling myself...

Unbelievably cool

Absolute zero temperature, at 273 or so degrees below freezing, is supposed to be where things cease to happen. Basically, the temperature of any object is linked to the motion of the atoms of which is made. When averaged over to a larger scale, the energy of atom’s jiggling about becomes the object’s temperature. Absolute zero then, is when all the jiggling stops and pretty much nothing happens.          It has long been the case that some of the most exciting physics experiments are done at extremely low temperatures. In many cases the laboratory reaches far below the freezing conditions of outer space, which has a temperature of around three degrees above absolute zero due to remnant radiation from the Big Bang explosion that created the Universe.          At low temperatures funky things happen. Basically, Nature is left with two choices. Either a material freezes to form a solid, like water becoming ice. Or one ends up with a superfluid.         The classic example of a superfluid is Helium, which undergoes this transition at a temperature not too different from that of outer space. Experiments on this funky liquid have taught us a lot about quantum physics. The reason for this is that a superfluid can be thought of as a large scale quantum system. Usually the quantum regime is relevant on minute scales that are hard to probe, but in the case of a superfluid quantum aspects play a role at scales that can sometimes be seen by the human eye. Now that’s pretty cool.         In the last couple of decades many other superfluid systems have been discovered. Particularly exciting are the different cold atom gases, involving clouds of a few hundred atoms or so at fantastically low temperatures, where experiments with incredible precision can be carried out. This allows something that was never going to be possible in Helium; studies of much smaller systems where the quantum aspects can be much better resolved. Now that is seriously cool.         Talking about seriously cool, what says that you can’t go below absolute zero? Could it be that this is an artificial limit we (or rather, very clever people that came before us) have introduced, but in reality Nature does something else at that point? My inclination would be to say no. The notion of absolute zero is just that. Absolute. Perhaps the value we have set for it is wrong, for some reason, but the idea is difficult to argue with. If the temperature is associated with the motion of individual atoms then the zero point ought to be reached when all the motion stops. How can you possibly go beyond that?         Nevertheless, it was recently reported in the popular science press that experimenters had in fact gone beyond this point. Now, that would have been beyond cool...         In reality, closer inspection of the work involved shows that the experimenters never claimed such a breakthrough. It was just a typical mis-representation, probably because it sounded cool. It is still an interesting story, and highlights something you may not have thought about. We are all familiar with the feeling of hot and cold. Yet, our understanding of temperature is far from perfect. This is a cool problem to work on!

The value of science

In these days of austerity, with the next budget cut more severe than the previous one, it seems that everything that does not have an immediate impact on “the economy” stands the risk of being trimmed. The short-term thinking associated with this is terrifying in many ways. It may take generations to build a decent society, but it appears that things can be demolished at a surprising rate.I am not going to rant about basic social values and how it is the responsibility of those that are well off to help those that are less fortunate. There should be no need for that, since the morality ought to be obvious (although... many of today’s politicians still seem incapable of understanding). What I want to raise are a few simple points concerning the value of basic science, where progress is often slow and where the tangible products may be few and far between. If it is the case that research needs to have immediate and measurable impact outside the hallowed halls of the Academy in order to be worthy of support, then most blue sky thinking and “simple” furthering of knowledge will surely starve. Entire disciplines will have to be abandoned.Maybe this is right and proper? Who needs these areas of research anyway? If they don’t contribute, get rid of them! Tradition? What kind of argument is that?Let’s try to put value on a couple of things that we might consider giving up. How about Astronomy? Do we really need to understand our place in the Universe? Does it matter if we don’t know how stars are born, evolve and die? Who cares about black holes and such crazy things, anyway? Uh... Quite a lot of people, it seems. Astronomy research may not contribute much to economic prosperity, but... it certainly provides “entertainment” and stimulates debate and discussion among experts and excited amateurs. I personally think that, if you were to ask a typical person in the street if issues involving space are worth exploring then you would likely get an answer in the affirmative. If you consider the wow factor, then surely the spectacular images from the Hubble space telescope (and other missions) have immense value.In a related area, let’s consider an example from history; Albert Einstein and his wonky-space theory of gravity from 1915. Completely useless, right? Exciting and thought provoking, but contributing to the economy? You must be having a laugh! Certainly, the impact of Einstein’s theory of relativity was rather less than immediate. But... and I think this is a really big but, it has been considerable. You may not need to worry about the details, but... if it were not for the corrections from general relativity then the Global Positioning System (GPS) would quickly lose accuracy. In today’s world of automatic navigation this could lead to chaos. It may have taken almost a century for this impact to be realized but it cannot be ignored today. Of course, if he had been assessed according to today’s rules then poor Albert would probably not have been given the chance to complete his theory.Let’s see… another example of scientific blue sky thinking and playing around without particular thought of impact... The internet. Now... What’s the actual monetary value of that?I could go on with this, but let’s consider a contrasting case instead. Why not take a look at some science that has had obvious and immediate impact on society? How about the economy work that politicians like to use as motivation for the current climate of austerity? The main idea is that you can get an economy back on track by cutting back, a bit like you give the trees in an orchard renewed life by a severe trim every now and then. Surely, this work was worth supporting? Indeed, it had immense impact on society (I can see it in my bank account!), and a pretty direct one at that. Funny thing though; It may be that this piece of work was flawed. Apparently the two economists made a basic error in a spreadsheet, which meant that they did not consider all the relevant data. If you fix this, then the conclusions could point in a slightly different direction. So there we are. I’m not sure what the take home message is. Perhaps we learn that research not having direct impact on society could be a good thing?At the end of the day, we need to worry about what we are doing to the next generation(s). If we teach them that efforts are only useful if they lead to an immediate return, what kind of society are they going to build (for us to retire in)? We must allow our kids to dream and think big (sometimes wild and a bit crazy), not necessarily be realistic and down to Earth all the time. This is a perfect job for science. We need to keep looking beyond what happens tomorrow. Otherwise tomorrow might never come.

Our brave new world

Had an opportunity to introduce the 7-year old to a piece of ancient technology the other day. A typewriter. Manual, of course. For fun, we started writing a story about vampires. Had to xxx out a few words when we went wrong, but it generally went quite well. In fact, we had a great time. The comforting clatter of the letters as they hit the page, the joyful bing at the end of each line, and the simple fact that you had to apply a bit of force with each stroke. Not touch-typing exactly... you certainly get some exercise!         The mechanics of writing have changed beyond recognition in the last couple of decades. And with this the creative process. It used to be that you had to think through things very carefully before committing anything to paper. Otherwise you ended up having to do tedious and time-consuming rewrites of page after page. There was of course the original cut-and-paste, involving scissors and glue, but this was a sticky exercise and in the end you had to retype everything anyway. Writing may have been much slower in that era, but after numerous revisions the final product tended to be well crafted.         I am old enough to remember the transition to WYSIWYG, when computers were first able to show the writing on the screen exactly as it would appear on the printed paper. What a breakthrough! At the same time, this was the first subtle step away from the focus on the words. You suddenly had to worry about the font, the layout and other aspects that had been the typesetter's job in the olden days. This speeded up the step from writing to publishing enormously, and the ability to move swathes of text around at will certainly removed some of the agony of the creative process. No more messy rewrites. Of course, you had to remember to do regular backups on those funny floppy disks. I guess I still have some of those in a drawer somewhere... Not sure what to do with them now.         Fast forward another 20 years or so and you find yourself in the brave new era of the internet, facebook, twitter and mobile texting. The way we communicate has changed completely. Instant gratification is the order of the day. If I can't have it immediately, then I can't be bothered. Carefully crafted hand-written letters have been replaced by emails, often without either proper greeting or polite goodbye. Grammar is old hat and who can be bothered to edit? It’s all gone in an instant, anyway. The next status update is more important.         This is liberating and frustrating at the same time. Anyone can write and publish just about anything, and people can access it wherever they may be in the world more or less immediately. Great! But what happened to the craft? Proper story telling? Once you get used to life in 140 characters or less, why would you bother with War and Peace? I know I should not complain because I find much of this entertaining, but at the same time...          The weeds in the internet garden are growing rapidly and it is getting harder for the more interesting and unique plants to get any daylight. I’m not suggesting it is time for censorship or even selective weeding. It should be up to the individual to carry out the proper quality control. The problem is that this does not seem to happen at the moment. Hopefully, normal services will be resumed before too long.         In the meantime, you can have a laugh at my expense and perhaps the hypocrisy of this rant. My “epic masterpiece” Professor Kompressor is free from Amazon until 8 April. The book is aimed at kids of all ages and I think it is quite funny. Well worth the current price, at least!
Here's the download link:
http://authl.it/B009TQ73VK
Have to stop now, because I’ve been told to get back to work on the vampire story. On the typewriter, of course. How else would we do it?

Not so heavy after all

Professor Bullfinch, with his constant companion, Dr Grimes, spent more and more time in the laboratory testing and analyzing the anti-gravity liquid. It became clear that whatever was painted with the liquid resisted gravity and would fly out away from earth.
From Danny Dunn and the anti-gravity paint
A while ago I tried to figure out how one would best control a small black hole. It was a thought experiment, of course, but thinking about it was quite interesting. I decided that what was required was a bit of antigravity, something that made gravity push instead of pull. Should be easy, right? At the end of the day, I figured that antigravity paint would be the perfect solution to my problem.         At first, this seemed quite far-fetched. Crazy enough that no one would have thought about it before? Not at all! In fact, the exact same idea formed the basis for the first in the series of Danny Dunn books I mentioned in an earlier post. This irked me a bit, because I (obviously) would have liked to claim the idea for myself. But, instead of writing to the patent office, I ended up ordering the out of print Danny Dunn book from 1959. Read it, enjoyed it and generally felt less grumpy about the whole thing.         The idea of a material that repels gravity, and which can be used to propel space rockets, is obviously much older. It famously goes back to the Victorian days and H.G. Wells’ 1901 masterpiece The first men in the moon. The key to that story is a gravity blocking substance called "Cavorite” after its inventor. A similar idea was exploited even earlier, in 1894, by J.J. Astor in his book A journey in other worlds. Astor was an interesting character. Extremely rich he died on the Titanic and his book (even though it is set in outer space) provides an interesting perspective on how people in that era viewed other civilizations and cultures.         So what exactly is antigravity? It's obviously just gravity with the sign wrong! The basic idea is to create an object that does not experience gravity. This might not seem too difficult, but gravity is quite special in that it always attracts. The basic reason is clear once you compare to electromagnetism. Electric charges come with different signs. Like signs repel, but opposites attract. In contrast, gravity only has one "charge", the mass of the object, and it is always positive. So... no repulsion. Unless you think creatively.         The scientific quest for antigravity has had intriguing twists and turns. An entertaining angle relates to the successful businessman Roger Babson who formed the so-called Gravity Research Foundation in 1948. The aim was to study ways to reduce the effects of gravity. From the view of mainstream science the efforts were initially on the cranky side of respectable, but at the same time the Foundation arranged various conferences that were attended by quite "reasonable" people. As time passed, the Foundation turned its attention to trying to understand gravity better rather than controlling it. The main activities stopped when Babson died in 1967, but the organization is still running an annual gravity essay contest. The stated aim remains to figure out antigravity, but most of the submitted "stories" negotiate a safer territory. The prize-winning essays are often entertaining and serious in equal measure. The aim is obviously not fiction, but the essay format (and perhaps the lack of peer review) suggests a looser reign than usual. In recent years the contributions have tended to present quite serious science and you will find top quality scientists (including a Nobel laureate) among the past winners.         I have mixed feeling about this gradual change. On the one hand, it is a positive sign that the serious side of science conquers the territory of wild speculation. At the same time, one has to be wary of group-think and the risk that everyone starts running in the same direction. Without creative thinking how do we discover the future? We had better not forget that the best ideas often seem just a bit absurd at first. I mean, think about the curved space and wonky time of Einstein's relativity. Weird and wonderful at the same time.         In that spirit, how about this?         Anti-gravity yoga!          At least it would be relaxing.

Listen to the Universe

“There’s no doubt about it,” the Professor decided. “No doubt, what-so-ever. I really need to build one of those things.”            Professor Kompressor had been following the story as it developed. With keen interest he had kept himself up to date as scientists tried to catch elusive gravity signals from outer space. He had shared their joy at the final breakthrough. This was the proof everyone had been waiting for. Space was indeed curved and time was wonky, just like Albert Einstein predicted all those years ago. The leaders of the effort had started out more than four decades earlier, fuelled by the enthusiasm of youth. Now they were old men, ready for retirement.            It was a fascinating story. As an inventor the Professor was particularly keen on the technical aspects. The instruments that had been designed represented an amazing achievement. The task had seemed completely unreasonable, yet science had prevailed. Now he wanted to be part of it, share the adventure.            Professor Kompressor went straight to the inventing studio and started putting his own device together. In principle, this was easy because he could follow the blueprints from the scientist’s instrument. In practice, it was almost impossible because the Professor worked on a tight budget. He had to make do with the materials that were available to him. This meant cutting corners and finding imaginative solutions, but this was just what Professor Kompressor was good at.            The final construction did not look like much, a chaotic birds nest of cables of many different colours connecting various monitors and odd-looking control panels. Green laser light bounced off a few mirrors, while sensors monitored the distance the light had travelled. That was pretty much it.            Without any real expectation that the device would work, the Professor flicked the power switch. He put on a pair of headphones to monitor the machine's output.            At first all he could hear was noise.            Then, all of a sudden... he started laughing.            At that point Maud walked into the room. She’d heard him working from next door and wanted to ask if he would like a cup of tea. Three lumps of sugar and a splash of milk, as usual. She was surprised to find the Professor wearing a massive pair of headphones and laughing like he had just been told the best joke ever.            “My goodness,” she started... “My dear Professor, what are you doing?”            “Oh Maud,” the Professor answered, “I’m listening.”            “I’m listening... to the Universe.”            "And it’s amazing...”