Flying Saucer

It is actually four pages, but the fourth page is different combinations of beer found on the first three pages. So I guess it doesn't count.

The Engines of Our Ingenuity

http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi2294.htm

by John H. Lienhard

Click here for audio of Episode 2294.

Today, I'll contaminate the Internet. The University of Houston's College of Engineering presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them.

The other day, a friend showed me his program for the Tom Stoppard play, Arcadia, which he'd just seen. The play has a lot in it about early 19th-century science and technology. It's hailed as a kind of meeting ground for C. P. Snow's two cultures, the sciences and the humanities. The program notes made much of that and said that the play incorporates Newton's second law of thermodynamics. So I Googled Newton's second law of thermodynamics and got 3270 hits. Now, when I post this script, there'll be even more.

In any case, my friend was rightly appalled. For this is right up there with the flat earth and denials of evolution. When Newton wrote his second law of motion, he completely altered the way we deal with our world. But the subject of thermodynamics would not arise for another century and a half.

Newton's second law says that to accelerate any body we have to apply a force equal to its mass times the rate of acceleration. The much later second law of thermodynamics says that the potential of energy for doing useful work is constantly degraded by irreversible events. That knowledge was also destined to radically alter our world view.

The two laws are completely unrelated. Irreversibility is unknown in the world of Newton's laws. Stoppard's actors recognize that fact. One character says, flat out, that the newly formulated laws of heat flow threaten Newton's determinism.

So a blunder was made in the program notes. No big deal by itself; we all make mistakes. But this one was so quotable that it echoes down through the Internet's corridors. The Internet leaves an indelible record, and too few people know enough to question it.

Just this morning, a newspaper feature on scientific illiteracy listed ten things we should all know and gave a brief explanation of each -- stuff like DNA, evolution, relativity, the big bang, quantum mechanics. It was all good stuff, but it did not include the older -- and still essential -- laws of physics.

It did include statistics, where so many of us trip, but what about handling simple numbers? I just went to the web and typed in "Joan of Arc, Noah's wife." I got fifteen thousand hits. Article after article reported the fraction of Americans who thought that Joan of Arc was Noah's wife. Some said six percent, others ten, twelve, twenty -- I even saw sixty percent.

That shows pretty low respect for numerical accuracy from the very people concerned with illiteracy. It also gives me pause. As I do my dance in favor of technological literacy, how much mischief do I sow among people listening with half an ear? Well, I've really done it this time -- by posting this script, I've created one more citation to Newton's non-existent second law of thermodynamics on that un-erasable mirror that we call the Internet.

I'm John Lienhard, at the University of Houston, where we're interested in the way inventive minds work.

(Theme music)

---

T. Stoppard, Arcadia. (Faber & Faber, 1994.)

C. Cookson, Numbers + Symbols = Confusion. Life & Arts, Financial Times, Sunday, Nov. 25, 2007, pp. 1-2

I am grateful to Charlie Dalton, UH Mechanical Engineering Dept. for showing me the "Newton's second law of thermodynamics" blunder.

Thanksgiving at the grocery

I never thought I would want to promote families going to Luby's, Boston Market, or to a steakhouse for Thanksgiving dinner.  Today I do.  I went to the store today to pick up three items (Sam had graciously gone last night at 11PM, but I forgot to ask for, didn't think about, and he couldn't find these three things).  I left the museum early even to avoid any rush.  Still there were couples blindly wondering the baking aisle looking for stuffing.  There were parents piloting their grown children.  There was even a couple with a bag of pecans and a pie shell arguing over what else was in a pecan pie.


Everything you need is in the front of the store folks.  Everything you could possibly need... unless you were me, looking for instant flour and parchment paper. 



In other news I have a second interview next Tuesday.  If you are the praying type pray, if you are another type think happy thoughts... one way or another, that I'll discern and fall my way to where I'm supposed to be. 

Pocket doors

A pocket door is a door that slides between the two sides of a wall.  I think sometimes they are called "recessed" but in any case there are two slits on either side of the door that papers and whatnot could be shoved in.  No G.I. Joes though. 

Huntsville

Yesterday I went to Huntsville to take my old students to visit some more of my old students.

I told my mom this before I left.  I got a blank stare before she started to as "what did they do?"

Oh... their at Sam Houston State, not prison. 

Fair enough, Mom, fair enough...

The little thief

I haven't lived in the house on Rosefield since I was a freshman in high school. 

In 1983, when I was two, before I could talk I used to play with my mom and my dad's wallet.  For some reason they let me take out all the credit cards and bang them together.  I guess for the same reason people two year olds are now playing with cell phones.  Whatever that is.  One day the credit cards went missing and I, being the only mobile child was the usual suspect. 

"Kate, where are Mommy's credit cards?"

To which I promptly walked to the pocket door in the kitchen and pointed. 

My parents tried in vain to fish them all out, failing to retrieve all but a few they reordered the credit cards, the loyalty cards, and anything else I hid and considered them all lost.  They expired and life moved on.  I don't know if I was allowed to play with the wallets anymore. 

Earlier this week the hardwood flooring company that worked on the house on Rosefield, the one that my dad works with, got a call.  They gave out my mom's number and she got a call.  The pocket door has been remodeled out of existence and the credit cards were found.  The woman that bought the house offered to return them, an offer my parents declined, though I wish they had accepted.  It is the only story of two year old Kate I know. 

She also still has the door frame that marks off our heights, completely unpainted.  Which is kinda weird. 

Web 2.0

Ok...
So I went to this continuing ed (ah, continuing ed when you're still in school!) thing on Saturday and they were talking about all that Web 2.0 stuff.  So I've resolved to go at it more systematically than just playing with the Internet every now and then.  Ill consider it a fourth class to take.  I've already done a lot of this stuff, but I figured I'd share this (the links here haven't been updated, it is still in progress cause it is actually a "class" people are taking... but you can work on it with the blog posts to the right)....

http://ihcpl2.blogspot.com/2007/08/23-things.html
and here is another that isn't in progress, but is slightly different...  http://plcmcl2-things.blogspot.com/

I'll even give Second Life another try...

Peace.

Request

So I've asked some of you to "be on this one" but I figured I'd share more generally.  I'm entering the "I'm looking for a job" stage of my little hiatus from the working world.  Grad school is almost over (I'm going to make a paper chain to count down the days tomorrow) and I feel like I should be able to turn that into a job.  Since that was one of the goals of grad school.  So pray for me please.  Think happy thoughts for me if you aren't the praying type.  I'll take it all. 

The First Annual Bake Off

Hirsch Library had its first annual bake off yesterday. It was quite a treat.

1st for taste - Kerri's cupcakes
1st for creativity - Sarah's lamb for the slaughter
1st for presentation - Kate's hayride