Binding Energy

The most tightly bound of the nuclei is ⁶²Ni, a case made convincingly by M. P. Fewell in an article in the American Journal of Physics. Though the championship of nuclear binding energy is often attributed to ⁵⁶Fe, it actually comes in a close third…

The high binding energy of the group of elements around A=60, typically called "the iron group" by astrophysicists, is significant in the understanding of the synthesis of heavy elements in the stars. It is curious that the abundance of ⁵⁶Fe is an order of magnitude higher than that of ⁶²Ni. Fewell discusses this point, and indicates that the reason lies with the greater photodisintegration rate for ⁶²Ni in stellar interiors.
--The Most Tightly Bound Nuclei

When I was eight, and cute as a bug, I spent several months selling candy door to door, to finance my way to YMCA summer camp. The camp’s name was Widjiwagan, some sort of Indian name that is at least superior to Sissimanunu (from the Dick Van Dyke Show episode "The Brave and the Backache").

That first year I sold enough mints to pay for the whole thing, something I never did again, I suspect because they kept lowering the price (and quality) of the sweets, first to mint cookies, then to some other kind of cookie (peanut butter?) as I recall. Every year I sold about the same number of units, but the unit price declined, and so did my sales figures.

My camp councilor that first year was James “Cookie” Cook, whose nickname was sometimes pronounced “Kooky” after the TV character on “77 Sunset Strip.” One story that he told was about his appendectomy surgery, which was funny as all get-out to hear him tell it. He did also say that his physicians were surprised at the speed of his recovery, and his surgeon had mentioned something about how many people get all anxious and tense before surgery, and that can be seen in the internal organs themselves, which “try to hide” as it were, under stress. His, Cookie said, were pretty well displayed, so the surgeon said it was an easy surgery.

I have no idea of the veracity of all this, of course. But I like Cookie a lot, which is why I was anything but a happy camper the next year, when I learned that he’d died in a car crash the previous spring.

I read the Norman Cousins book Anatomy of an Illness when it first came out, after seeing Cousins on the Dick Cavett Show. By then I was well along the path to becoming the raging skeptic that stands before you today, but I don’t think I saw much harm in telling sick people to take what enjoyment they could from life; hey, it probably doesn’t hurt and it might do some good. And Cousins book was specifically about laughter, which I do revere. But over time I saw the simple and basic prescription transmogrify into, at least in some cases, yet another way of blaming the victim. You can get well if you just have the right attitude, so your being sick is obviously because you can’t control your attitude. Suck it up.

Anecdotally, well, I’ve known what seems to be more than my share of people who died, enough for the Jim Carroll song to resonate pretty strongly. Some of them had terminal illnesses and plenty of warning. I’ve also known a fair number of people who had what might have been fatal illnesses who nevertheless survived. In one period in the late 70s and early 80s, I specifically remember four people who developed pretty serious cancers. The two who had really positive and optimistic attitudes died; the two gloomy depressives lived.

Sure, sure, anecdotes aren’t statistics, but the statistics are just as suspect. Certainly being ill makes people anxious and depressed, so you start out with the obvious correlation that sick people are inevitably going to be less “positive and optimistic” than people who aren’t sick. The studies that attempt to assess “attitude” attempt to correct for this by objectively assessing people’s prognosis, then seeing if those with a “positive attitude” have better results. The real problem there is that people may subjectively have some information about their own health that doesn’t show up in the objective prognosis. If that is the case, then all the “positive attitude” does is to include that subjective judgment into the mix. In other words, optimism may well be an effect, not a cause.

Still, physicians are human, and nobody really likes dealing with gloomy people all the time. So if the “positive attitude” prescription is more for the benefit of the physician than the patient, it still might make the situation better for the patient if it improves the attitude of the physician. That explanation is less harsh than to say that it’s just more victim blaming, and I’ll take the incremental improvement. Blaming the physician is seldom any more productive than blaming the patient.

In 1989, my Dad was diagnosed with cancer, first liver cancer, then someone else thought it was lung. Both had abysmal prognoses. Some family connections got him into the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, where they re-diagnosed him as having a carcinoid tumor, an intestinal tumor that was producing substantial amounts of serotonin, which accounted for some of his mood swings in the years preceding.

The tumor had metastasized to his liver, and there was the rub. Surgery could remove the colon tumors, but the liver tumors were inoperable, as such. But the Mayo boys had developed a life extending surgery that involved cutting the arterial blood supply to the liver. The liver can still live (albeit, not happily) on venous blood, and removing the arterial blood supply would starve the liver tumors and give an estimated 2-5 years of added life. Not the best result, but a lot of things can happen in 5 years including better treatments.

While we were visiting him prior to surgery, one of his doctors made a visit and made some remark about how important “attitude” was. As I’ve said before, I don’t have much of a poker face, so after he’d left, Dad said, “You looked pretty skeptical there when he said that.”

I said, “I don’t really think that attitude is that important. I think you’ll be okay because you have a healthy heart and good constitution, and I’m fine with that.” Dad nodded. Maybe he was getting tired of acting chipper all the time. Maybe he was relieved that I’d told him that I wasn’t going to blame his attitude if the outcome wasn’t as good as we hoped.

He survived the longer-than-expected four hours of surgery, then died in the recovery room, before he regained consciousness. The subsequent autopsy revealed that he had over 90% blockage in one of his coronary arteries, an absolutely “silent” condition, possibly because the serotonin had masked any chest pains he might have had.

Being right in the abstract and wrong in the particulars is seldom any solace. Things do not always work out for the best, unless your idea of “best” is that everybody dies, but life still goes on. I’m also none too keen on this unintentional irony business, so I try not to think of it too often. Yet there it is, emblazoned above my words, for the world to see.

If a person who indulges in gluttony is a glutton, and a person who commits a felony is a felon, then God is an iron. – Spider Robinson

Ironophilic

When you're a hammer, everything looks like a thumb. Edward Teller had a hammer, and every problem he encountered, his first thought was, "How could I use a thermonuclear weapon to solve this?"

Teller once proposed to map out all the dangerous asteroids in the solar system, the ones that might someday cause major damage to Earth. He suggested that a thermonuclear explosion on the far side of the Moon could generate an electromagnetic pulse that could be used as a radar pulse, with returning echoes showing even small asteroids.

In "The Day of the Dove," on Star Trek, The Original Series (as it is now known), an alien entity sets up the Enterprise as it's own personal negative emotion larder, pitting humans against Klingons in an eternal battle, meant to supply it with "negative emotions" which the alien eats. Hey, this was as good as it got on Third Season Star Trek. One interesting point in it was that the alien healed the wounds of anyone injured in the battle, making the entire endeavor a lot like the legend of Valhalla. The Klingons, at least, should have dug the setup, but apparently didn't like being manipulated, the ingrates.

If a single starship's worth of humans with negative emotions was enough for one of the creatures, imagine how many there are floating about Earth. One can only imagine what ancient atrocity sent a big enough pulse of brutality and pain out into the void, announcing our presence to that particular race.

Still, fear and anger aren't the only foodstocks, I expect. We have such a variety here. As time went on, I imagine that either the aliens developed other, more refined tastes, or different aliens, with different needs, came upon our little emotion laden treasure trove.

I'm not sure if irony is an emotion, but there is little doubt in my mind that the irony eating aliens are here. Perhaps we first came to the attention of the sarcasm lovers, sarcasm being the most fragrant form of intentional irony. I would expect that those guys showed up sometime during the height of the British Empire, the British being such masters of sarcasm. Irony, of course, is more subtle, but potentially more nutritious, if prepared correctly.

The most essential form is Unintentional Irony, of course. If we had not already come to the attention of the UI connoisseurs, I am sure that the giant pulse of it that occurred with the award of the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize to Henry Kissinger alerted them to the rich lands awaiting their arrival.

So, without further ado, here you go guys. Chow down.

Enlightenment is not a Competitive Sport

One of the post-Firesign Theater “rock and roll comedy” groups was The Conception Corporation. They put out two albums, A Pause in the Disaster, and Conceptionland. Both were good for Progessive Radio play in the 60s, which is to say the early 70s. (As I understand it, there is a third, live album now available as well).

One of the cuts on Conceptionland was “Rock and Roll Classroom,” another “What if Freaks Ran Things?” idea (see also “Returned for Re-Grooving,” by Firesign Theater). In this case, what if high school were really hip, or at least trying to be?

In one bit, gym class is taught by “Fizz Ed” who announces to the class in a drill instructor voice, “Today, we’re going to learn to meditate! On three, one, two, meditate! One, two, meditate! You! Over in the corner, you’re not meditiating!”

In short, it was a lot like a Pilates class.

A fair number of Aikido practitioners also practice zazen, meditating in seiza, the standard Japanese sitting posture, knees and feet on the floor, buttocks resting on the feet (feet tops flat on the floor). Seiza is a natural and comfortable posture—provided you have been sitting that way since you were a child. For us Westerners, it can rapidly become torture; our bones, ligaments, and blood vessels did not grow into seiza as we matured, so at the very least, our legs tend to fall asleep, not to mention the cramps, aches, etc. that also accompany extended periods in seiza.

In zazen, a zafu, a small circular cushion, is often used to alleviate the seiza problem, but many students don’t use them, or they don’t use enough of a cushion to straighten the legs enough to really make the thing less of an ordeal. So then we get all sorts of rationalizations about “letting go of the pain,” etc.

It’s quite true that meditation is often used as a way of alleviating chronic pain, but pain isn’t actually the point of meditation. Meditation itself isn’t supposed to hurt, nor is the posture you’re in supposed to hurt. Actually, being in a painful posture during meditation is dangerous, since you are then basically ignoring an important message from your body, and you can cause or exacerbate an injury by doing so.

But, of course, “letting go of the pain” feels like such an accomplishment.

At a college reunion many years ago, one of my freshman buddies was there with his wife, and they were explaining their study of kundalini yoga. The posture in which you begin meditation is supposed to cause some group of muscles to stretch, though not to anything approaching pain. Then, as meditation progresses, the stretched muscles relax, releasing kundalini energy. The reason why advanced students wind up tying themselves into knots, so to speak, is that it becomes more and more difficult to give your muscles that necessary stretch, because the practitioner becomes more and more limber. But the limberness is not the point of it, the kundalini is.

“Kundalini energy” sounds like woo-woo Asian mystical mumbo jumbo, but actually, all of the related concepts, prana, ki, gi, chi, and all the related “energies” are fairly easy to perceive if you put a bit of work into the matter. As for the “woo-woo” part of it, one can just as easily talk about dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, and any of the other myriad neurotransmitters that have been discovered and studied. If freeing up kundalini energy went with an increase in dopamine levels, what then? Does that “explain” the matter, or just make it more palatable to a mechanistic world view?

In any case, the question becomes, what is all that energy for? In the martial arts, of course, we have one explanation: it makes you stronger, more able to practice the art, and, if necessary, win the fight. But there are other answers, some more prosaic, some downright cosmic. Meditation becomes yet another tool, whatever your goal, be it better health or a doorway into infinity. Whatever floats your boat.

It is noteworthy, however, that so much energy is expended in oneupsmanship. “I’m more enlightened than you” seems to be, on examination, a self-canceling statement. To have it issued (albeit usually indirectly) by someone who has achieved that state by spending hours staring at a wall and literally doing nothing, well, that just makes the leap into paradox, doesn’t it? But then, zen thrives on paradox, and art thrives on irony, even the unintentional sort.

Skip Williamson Has a Blog

That about says it all for me:

http://skipwilliamson.blogspot.com/

Slan: A Critique

A substantive impetus for my consideration of the demographic analysis of science fiction readers and fans came from some discussions that I’ve had with Ben Sano about the nature of Creationism and the Intelligent Design “theory.” Considering ID as just another idea of speculative fiction is not an unreasonable thing to do, and that led me to an informal review of how science fiction has treated evolution and mutation. Yes, these are “just stories”, but how and why stories strike a spark in an audience can tell a lot about the audience.

One thing to bear in mind is that there is substantial overlap between the demographic that supports science fiction (bright children of working class families) and the demographic of ID and creationism (working class families). Moreover, the actual players in the ID drama, the “experts” who provide its main arguments and writings tend to be similar to science fiction fans, e.g., engineers, academics at lower tier colleges, professionals in the “practical” sciences such as medicine, geology, etc.

Let’s just say that there is something about the demographic that makes us suckers for a good story.

So we come to Slan. It was one of the first evolution-in-SF stories I reviewed, because of its obvious importance to the field. An entire generation of sf fans had “Fans are Slans” as a slogan. The publication of Slan just before WWII launched A. E. van Vogt’s writing career, and much ink has been spilled on its behalf. Now it’s my turn, in part, because, despite my having what turned out to be a very good memory of the story, nevertheless, re-reading it and thinking about it gave me some surprising notions. So let’s review the story.

Slan is about slans, a race of mutant supermen, possessing greater than human intelligence, strength, speed, endurance, and resistance to disease. They are also telepathic, with golden “tendrils” in their hair; the tendrils serve as antennae for telepathy. We are not told, though it certainly seems to be the case, that slans are all physically attractive. We are told that slans are kinder, gentler, and more moral than humans, though some events in the tale suggest otherwise.

The protagonist of Slan is John Thomas Cross, “Jommy Cross” to his mother, who is killed by genocidal humans shortly after the novel begins. Cross is nine years old. His father is already dead, having heroically allowed his own murder, rather than turning his great invention (a form of controlled atomic power) on his attackers. We later see the invention, which is in the form of a gun, a curious design choice from such a pacifist.

Cross escapes from those who killed his mother, avoids the police, and finds refuge in the abode of “Granny” a larcenous old woman who expects Cross to use his mind-reading abilities to steal for her—which he does. He uses the time during his refuge with Granny to educate himself and to later (on his 16th birthday) recover the prototype of his father’s invention. At this time, he also discovers the existence of “tendril-less slans,” who possess many of the characteristics of slans (e.g., higher intelligence) without the obvious physical characteristics that mark them for attacks by humans. The tendril-less slans have a separate (and secret) society, where they prepare for world conquest and the probable extermination of humankind. They also hate tendrilled slans as much or more than they hate humans, so Cross has two groups against him. His only natural allies would seem to be the “true slans” but, with the exception of a single girl (Kathleen) that is killed almost as soon as he meets her, he can’t find any! So Cross spends the rest of the novel trying to find the true slans, solve the mystery of their origin, and, by the way, get to the Dictator of the World, Kier Grey, and kill him. This last one is a quest laid upon him by his mother, another interesting interpretation of what “kind, gentle, and moral,” means.

Cross’s search for a solution to the “mystery of the slans’ origin” drives much of the story. Slans were born of humans, and once, briefly, controlled the entire world. But slans “continued making more slans” according to one human in the book, i.e. the mutant births continued, and humans didn’t like having mutants as children. So humans initiated genocide, and killed most of the slans. Cross doesn’t believe the Intelligent Design hypothesis (that slans are originally the product of a mutation machine). He can’t believe that such kind and gentle people would do such a thing.

Finally, near the end of the book, all is explained, first by Joanna Hillory a sympathetic tendril-less slan woman (who had fallen in love with Cross on their first meeting, such is the power of super-human attractiveness), then by Kier Grey, the Dictator of the World. Slans are actually natural products of evolution; humans were stupid to ever think that they were created by a mutation machine. Tendril-less slans, on the other hand, were created by slans as a way of preserving the race. They were then persecuted by slans as an act of “tough love,” in preparation for the inevitable clash with humans. Furthermore, Kier Grey turns out to be a slan himself! And he was Kathleen’s father!! And she is still alive, resurrected with slan super-medicine!!!

So all ends well.

Now let’s consider a few things about the way evolution actually works.

Realize first that large morphological changes rarely occur within a single generation, and when they do, there is always a substantial physiological price to pay. Giantism, for example, leads to early death. Down’s syndrome is a mutation, but the affected individuals are sterile. And so forth.

Next, the formation of a new organ never happens in a single generation. This is the “irreducible complexity” so beloved of the Intelligent Design theorists. There are cases where such morphological jumps appear to occur (e.g. blind cave fish becoming sighted when reared in the light), but this is the activation of a vestigial (previously evolved) trait, not a new organ. So the likelihood of the slan’s “tendrils” occurring overnight is about zero.

Finally, something like generally enhance resistance to disease would be so universally beneficial that, if it were in the evolutionary cards, it would have happened already (and microbes would have evolved to counter it).

In short, if slans were to appear, modern biology would immediately ascribe them to “Intelligent Design.” Fundamentalists might look to a supernatural origin, but most biologists would assume that there was gene splicing behind it. In other words, a Mutation Machine.

Of course, what is actually suggested by Slan is a process of teleological evolution, evolution that has a purpose and a plan. Many people have believed in teleological evolution; there just aren’t any modern evolutionary biologists who do. One reason why teleological evolution is so appealing is that it fits a narrative rather better than does Darwinian natural selection. In any case, Slan is hardly the only example of teleological evolution in SF. Indeed, teleological evolution is probably the norm, if one includes Social Darwinism, which basically holds that natural selection has the purpose of advancing and maintaining a particular social hierarchy.

The implication here is that science fiction readers know little more about evolution by natural selection than creationists. The main difference between the two groups would be that creationists are against it, while science fiction readers are in favor of it. But I digress, and I’ll leave the question of why these two groups have such different reactions to what is essentially the same misunderstanding for another time.

Getting back to Slan, suppose we remove the scientific blunder of teleological evolution from the book’s context. Does that destroy the book, or merely change the reading?

Remarkably, Slan becomes a much more interesting book if read from the modern evolutionary perspective, i.e. if the “mystery of the slans” is answered the other way.

For one thing, it brings forth the idea that, while the protagonist, Cross, is a brilliant physical scientist, he knows little about evolutionary biology. That’s not hard to swallow, is it? I can certainly think of a few very bright fellows with that profile (e.g. William Shockley). Also, it would appear that Cross is entirely willing to believe things that he wants to believe, despite evidence to the contrary. He continues to believe that slans are all kind and gentle, even after he hears about how they brutalized the tendril-less slans (all for the greater good, of course). His mother tells him to kill Kier Grey (ditto), but he does not attribute this to so low an instinct as a thirst for vengence. Finally, he continues to believe in the essential morality of slans, even after learning that the brutal Dictator Kier Grey is a slan. That, it seems to me, requires some truly super-human rationalization. Fortunately, Cross is super-human, so it comes easily to him.

It also would appear that everyone is playing Cross for a sucker. “Give us the secret to controlled atomic power, nearly invulnerable steel, and telepathic hypnosis, and we’ll assure you that all slans are as good as your parents, and no one will get hurt.” And Cross, searching for a place to belong, falls for it.

But how can everyone be lying to Cross? He’s telepathic.

Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but maybe lying to a telepath is as easy as lying to yourself. It’s easy to see how Joanna Hillory, the tendril-less slan woman could lie to Cross; all that need happen is for her to believe what she’s saying, that is, she could be yet another pawn in the great game. As for Kier Grey, he’s older, more mature, in far better control of his mind. Couldn’t he be good enough to put on over on the youngster?

Still and all, it’s a happy ending. Lovers reunited and everything works out—provided you’re a slan. The outlook for mere human is more problematic. In any case, their fate is in the hands of the slans, not their own.

Historically, Slan is a wish-fulfillment fantasy that struck a chord with several generations of science fiction fans. Since their identification with the protagonist is great, they had little reason to pick at the flaws. What criticisms were made (Damon Knight, Alexi Panshin) went to the obvious holes in the plot, characterization, etc. or the general critique of the wish-fulfillment fantasy as a wish-fulfillment fantasy, not the sort of self-subversion that I’m describing here.

For me, however, the most interesting thing about Slan is that it can be read as a cautionary tale of how someone can be deceived, despite high intelligence and other advantages. As Tom Stoppard has his protagonist say in Professional Foul:” “You can convince a man of almost anything—provided he’s smart enough.”

I would add: provided he wants to believe it.