Andrew Jaffe: Leaves on the Line

I would like to think that the passing of one Scooter — Phil Rizzuto, Yankees Shortstop and broadcaster — was of greater cultural significance than the pardonning of the other one (since they didn’t manage to indict the likely mastermind behind the plot before he could resign. Probably not.

Flooding cripples New York subway system:

Flooding from torrential overnight rains crippled the New York City subway system this morning. Delays of at least 30 minutes were reported on all subway lines, and customers were urged to forgo the subways entirely and take buses if possible. The thunderstorm caused havoc across the region, forcing thousands of people, like the pedestrians who crowded the Manhattan Bridge in both directions, to walk to work or work from home.

Of course, Bangladesh, India and Nepal have been struggling under far worse flood conditions caused by the monsoon, as they do almost every year.

My thoughts and sympathy go out to the residents of my old neighborhood, Osney Island, in Oxford, where it’s just started to flood before the waters peak (we hope) later today. Good luck to all the residents — stay strong, stay dry!

Once again, my Union, the University and College Union, has sort-of voted to boycott Israeli academics. It’s only “sort of”, because, like last time, the decision comes about from a vote of activists present at the UCU annual conference, not of the membership at large. Indeed, the vote has been opposed by the General Secretary of the Union, not to mention the British and Israeli governments, the not particularly pro-Israel Observer newspaper, and even the New York Times. No matter what your feelings about the present Israeli government and its actions with respect to the Palestinians, such a boycott is, at best, an empty gesture. At worst, it actively works against progressive causes espoused by the many Israeli academics who are among the vocal critics of their own government. And, of course, it is bad for scholarship, which, we often say, should at least endeavor to rise above politics.

A few weeks ago, the UK’s National Union of Journalists made a similar gesture, one that will likely have even more repercussions for me and other physicists. Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg was slated to give a plenary address at the coming PASCOS meeting at Imperial next month. Unfortunately, and rather bizarrely, Weinberg has decided to use the NUJ’s decision (this was before the UCU’s meetings) as a reason to back out of his engagement, citing this as an example of “a widespread anti-Israel and anti-Semitic current of British opinion, especially in the intellectual establishment.” The crucial word in that sentence is, of course, that meek connective “and”. An anti-Israel bias is pretty evident here, but whether or not this translates into actual anti-semitism remains unclear. (The US, for example, has plenty of pro-Israel anti-semitism in the form of fundamentalist Christians hastening the coming of their rapture/apocalypse, for which a strong Israel seems to be required in a perverse reading of Revelations.) Alas, Weinberg’s not-quite-empty gesture is certainly bad for scholarship at best, and at worst deprives him of an actual pulpit from which he could have propounded his views.

A beautiful but frightening picture of the fire burning near the Griffith Park Observatory in Los Angeles. Evidence that we were probably never meant to live in that part of the world? (Photo courtesy Monica Almeida/New York Times)

…they are part of an an ancient Jewish conspiracy, and so it pisses off the anti-semites…

Neil Tyson of New York’s Museum of Natural History had an excellent appearance on The Daily Show where he reminds us that “Astrophysicists are a simple people”. John Stewart flipped between slack-jawed incomprehension and good jokes. Better science than most of the real news.

Speaking of the media and science, I spent Tuesday night boozing it up at the Royal Society’s annual “Scientists Meet the Media” party, sponsored by Novartis and the Daily Telegraph. Martin Rees, astrophysicist and Royal Society president, couldn’t help but dis the editor of the (famously right-wing) Telegraph for its politics in a room full of (mostly lefty) Guardian readers for its somehow managing passable science coverage despite its dodgy politics. Scientists and journalists both manage a healthy egotism, and it was amusing to see both groups hawking their wares while pouring free champagne down their throats. OK, our throats — I certainly can’t claim disinterest. If my own experience is a guide, I expect that the supposedly high-powered corridors of scientific power were a bit wobbly in the aftermath.

Update: The Telegraph has got a long article covering the party, studded with science-celebrity gossip (and not much else).

I somehow scored an invitation to a talk by the Prime Minister sponsored by The Royal Society on “Our Nation’s Future”, specifically, on Science Policy.

(Personally, I was pleased to see an extremely large contingent from Imperial present, including Dame Julia Higgins (Principal of our Faculty of Engineering, and Foreign Secretary [!] of the Royal Society), sharing the rostrum with Martin Rees, President of the Royal Society, and the PM.)

He was full of pro-science platitudes, how it keeps the UK competitive, and how it is needed, frankly, to save the planet. The major themes were the need for the UK to remain economically competitive, and, in the wake of the Stern Review, of science’s crucial role alongside political will in fighting climate change.

He was fairly explicit in his preference for investment in applied science (i.e., stuff that can make money) over the curiosity-driven, blue-skies (i.e., useless) stuff that, for example, I do for a living (as does the President of the Royal Society, who chaired and introduced the event.) He emphasized science as a career (and tried to seduce the sixth-form students in the audience into believing it could be a reasonable moneymaking proposition). And he admitted, in so many words, that present-day science education wasn’t doing its job. Despite all of this, there didn’t seem to be any new, concrete policy announcements, just a (still welcome) restatement of his government’s (and, presumably, Gordon Brown’s) commitment to supporting — and funding — science.

There was some irony that the talk was given in the Kings’ Centre in Oxford, “an apostolic centre — that is, a regional base for sending trained and committed workers to serve God in this nation and abroad.” Blair himself said that he didn’t think Science and Religion were necessarily in conflict, although I expect many in the audience would disagree. Further irony was provided by the fact that, contrary to the usual order of things, the building that was now a church of sorts had previously been used for science: MRI had been developed there.

He specifically railed against the “anti-science brigade” and in that location I was therefore disappointed that I didn’t get a chance to ask about his Government’s financial support for at least a few schools that teach their students the blatant crypto-religious falsehoods of Intelligent Design, under the auspices of the ‘City Academy’ programme which, to be blunt, lets rich people decide what’s taught in schools.

By now you’ve heard that NASA has changed its mind and decided to send a mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble has been an amazing instrument, its pictures seen and marvelled at by people literally around the world.

The most amazing thing about NASA’s decision is that it’s front page news for the premier reporting organisations in the world, CNN, the New York Times, and the BBC. This interest should be humbling to those of who make our living in the world of astronomy.

Right now, however, NASA is strapped for cash: most of its budget is going to keeping the Shuttle running, putting the Space Station together and planning for Bush’s pipe-dream trip to Mars. The small amount left over for doing science is being directed toward a few high-profile (and expensive) projects such as the James Webb Space Telescope (touted as Hubble’s successor), which at present seems to be squeezing out equally-worthy projects such as the “Beyond Einstein” program. As some have already noted, including Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal and head of the Royal Society, the worry with a Hubble Servicing mission is that it will take yet more money from NASA’s dwindling science budget, keeping a wonderful but ageing piece of hardware going after its sell-by date. We can hope that science funding isn’t a zero-sum game, that this may result in more money overall going to exciting scientific projects. But we shouldn’t be greedy…

Moreover, of course, missions like this are dangerous — the Shuttle itself is creaky, and fixing Hubble will require five separate spacewalks. Astronauts have repeatedly expressed their enthusiasm for this mission, and we comparatively lazy and cowardly earthbound astronomers should be honored and, again, humbled.

We learned yesterday that President Bush has a bit of a potty mouth (at least when he’s abroad; I bet Cheney makes him wash his mouth out with soap when he talks dirty back home) and a not particularly nuanced view of foreign policy:

Bush: What they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit, and it’s over.

Blair: Syria.
Bush: Why?
Blair: Because I think this is all part of the same thing.
Bush: Yeah.
Blair: What does he think? He thinks if Lebanon turns out fine, if we get a solution in Israel and Palestine, Iraq goes in the right way…
Bush: Yeah, yeah, he is sweet.
Blair: He is honey. And that’s what the whole thing is about. It’s the same with Iraq.
Bush: I felt like telling Kofi to call, to get on the phone to Bashad [Bashir Assad] and make something happen.

(Surprisingly, a number of US media outlets were willing to reproduce the exchange in full, including what may be the first ever use of “shit” in the New York Times. The BBC had no qualms, of course, at least out of the so-called “watershed”.)

It happens that I watched the last-ever episode of The West Wing last night. Pretty much void of dramatic tension, the contrast between the real world and a Foucault-reading, lefty, peace-in-the-middle-east-sponsoring president in a world without 9/11 and 7/7 still made me want to retreat to a safe, fictional burrow somewhere deep underground.