The Pleasure of Finding Things Out

The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman is a collection of essays, interviews, and transcribed speeches from the well-known scientist, popularizer of physics, and polymath Richard Feynman (1918-1988). Feynman won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965 (jointly with two other scientists) for his work in quantum physics, but his list of accomplishments doesn’t stop there. He also worked on the development of the atomic bomb. He helped usher in the field of nanotechnology with a seminal 1959 lecture There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom (included in this collection). He was also an accomplished juggler, safecracker, and bongo player to just list a few of his diverse interests.

The name of the collection of works takes its name from the first essay which is a transcription of a 1981 BBC/Horizon (Nova in the U.S.) television program. The collection revolves around the themes of curiosity and the drive to find things out, how Feynman’s father was instrumental in cultivating that drive in him, and the essentialness of doubt in science. The last theme resonated the strongest for me many times throughout the collection. For example, in Chapter 4, The Role of Scientific Culture in Modern Society (a talk given at the Galileo Symposium in Italy in 1964), Feynman says:

“We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and there is no learning. There is no learning without having to pose a question. And a question requires doubt. People search for certainty. But there is no certainty. People are terrified – how can you live and not know?”

Later in Chapter 6, The Value of Science, Feynman says similarly:

“It is our responsibility as scientists, knowing the great progress and the great value of a satisfactory philosophy of ignorance, the great progress that is the fruit of freedom of thought, to proclaim the value of this freedom, to teach how doubt is not to be feared but welcomed and discussed, and to demand this freedom as our duty to all coming generations.”

Sadly, this point of view finds so little traction these days. To doubt is to be weak. To be certain – even with provably wrong ideas – is strength.

The part of the collection that dragged the most for me was the Minority Report to the Space Shuttle Challenger Inquiry. An important piece of work in the history of science and spaceflight for sure, I just couldn’t grasp it that easily. One could easy skip this piece and not miss the spirit of the collection in my opinion. The rest of the collection reads fairly easily and enjoyably. I hadn’t read much before from or about Feynman. I had watched a couple of lectures (the Messenger Series courtesy of Microsoft Research and Project Tuva) and had Feynman’s voice and mannerisms in my mind as I read which I think helped.

Please, Easter Bunny: Theo Toasted Coconut For Me

I just tasted the “easter” bar from Theo: Toasted Coconut. It's excellent. If, like me, before you were chocolate-enlightened, you did enjoy Mounds, then this new Theo bar is for you. It’s less cloying because the percentage of chocolate is greater, 70%, and it’s toasted coconut. I haven’t put an easter basket out for 25 or so years, but this year, I’m going to get a basket with some of that fake, plastic grass inside and hope for the best.

Smith Tower: The Chinese Room

We never had been up to the Chinese Room on the 35th floor of the Smith Tower, so it was time. It’s a nice view I’ll give it that, especially on a clear day when you can see the Olympics and Rainier. But, be prepared, once up there you realize how many hard expanses of cement and buildings are all around. What did I expect, it is a city after all? To the east is I-5, to the west Route 99 and the water. To the north, the rest of the city, and to the south Seattle's industrial section.

The Smith Tower was built by the Smith family that made their name in the manufacture of small arms (much like Remington & Sons) and went on to produce the Smith Corona typewriter. In 1909, Lyman Cornelius (L.C.) Smith, a New York tycoon, for some reason (expansion of his company?) planned for 14-story building to be built in Seattle. Eventually, with the urging of his son, the plans morphed into the present day structure. When the Smith Tower opened on July 4, 1914 it was the fourth tallest building in the world at 522 feet and remained in this position for 50 years. Of particular interest is the Chinese Room located on the 35th floor. The interior of the room was a gift to L.C. Smith from Empress Cixi, the last Empress of China. The gift was in response to a gift of L.C. Smith rifles and Smith-Corona typewriters that Smith brought with him on a trade mission to China. The Chinese Room can be rented for your special occasion.

View from Smith Tower looking Northwest toward the Harbor.


View of Smith Tower from the South, on the Ground.


Chinese Room Ceiling Detail.

Percy Jackson & The Olympians

 

What possessed us to see this movie? We are still scratching our heads on that question. I’m sure there are those who will like the movie Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightening Thief, which is based on the book of the same name by Rick Riordan. The usual suspects in movie plotline were present: the road trip / quest, unfairly framed-person-as-a-fugitive-on-the-nightly-news, dysfunctional family dynamics, Las Vegas, the end of the world, and a diabolical plan that doesn’t make sense. 

Apparently the plot for the movie was quite different from the book; maybe they should have stuck to the book. The one, minor plotline we will call out is the one where Percy’s protector, a satyr named Grover, gets his horns – that is, sort of graduates from junior protector. In the movie, he spent a sumptuous night in hell with Persephone and then came back with horns. What did we tell you about the over-used plotlines?

Got Nordic Heritage?

On a sunny Seattle Sunday morning jog from the Locks to Golden Gardens we came upon the Leif Erikson statue at Shilshole. The statue is an impressive 17 feet tall in an equally impressive setting of runes. The statue is a tribute to the Scandinavian (Danes, Finns, Icelanders, Norwegians, and Swedes) immigrants to this area, particular Ballard, unveiled originally in 1962 for the World’s Fair. The recent refurb was the brainchild of the Leif Erikson International Foundation (LEIF). For more of the story (saga is appropriate here) see the LEIF website. Leif Erikson (c. 970 – c. 1020) was a Norse explorer considered the first European to set foot in North America. Who first set foot in North America seems to be an open question. However, LEIF’s promotion of Leif has got legs, much as the statue does.

EMP: Homeworld

To beat some Saturday mid winter blues we headed to the Experience Music Project (EMP) Science Fiction (SF) Museum (empsfm.org). I have to say we were pleasantly surprised at the Science Fiction Museum. The SF part is very book-centric which wasn’t what we were expecting, but we appreciated it. The EMP presentation “style” - memorabilia behind glass cases – is largely how the SF part is set up as well. In particular, in the exhibit called Homeworld books have the main stage. You literally walk through and get a sense of several dozen or more key science fiction works. The works are grouped together by theme and short information plaques describe each work in a nutshell. After this, you go to the lower floor for the exhibit called Fantastic Voyages where books are less key, but still featured. After going through through these exhibits I wrote down a list of a dozen or so books that looked interesting that I’d never heard of before.

On this particular visit we also caught the fun exhibit Gelatine Lux (November 21, 2009 – April 11, 2010) featuring Italian glass artist Maria Grazia Rosin. In this exhibit, glass, sound, light, and video come together in 20 suspended sculptures reassembling marine and microscopic life.

Gelatine Lux

The Year of the FLAC

“She comes out of the sun in a silk dress running like a watercolour in the rain. Don’t bother asking for explanations, she’ll just tell you that she came, in the year of the cat.” Al Stewart.

What does that have to do with this post? Nothing really, other than I think in lyrics too much and this post is about FLAC and I think of 2010 as the year of the FLAC. FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec. FLAC is a format for storing music digitally that does not lose any of the quality of the music. FLAC is a mathematically lossless format. Most common formats (like MP3s you buy at Amazon) are such that some of the audio quality of the recording is lost. With MP3s we tradeoff a little music quality for smaller file sizes. Most users of digital music don’t mind the tradeoff or won’t be able to tell, especially if playback devices (like computers speakers or an iPod with so-so headphones) are not that great. But, for others the loss of audio quality is annoying and they may want to store music digitally in a format that is the same quality as the audio CD. FLAC can do this.

The FLAC format naturally requires more storage than the common formats (like MP3 or WMA) but still less than what full CD track would. For example, the track by Klaatu Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft stored as WMA (Windows Media Audio) at 128kbs (average quality) takes up 6.9 MB. The same track stored in FLAC format is 49.6 MB or about 8 times bigger. But hey, it’s just storage. The real goal is to have all these FLAC tracks available for our friend Sonos.

So far we are about 500+ CDs into a 3,000 CD chore. We are using dBpoweramp to help. Uh, can we just buy these again? At the current rate it will really take a year and it is rightly so the year of the FLAC.

Update 2010-10-12: the conclusion of the project is discussed here.

Valentine’s Day – The Movie

 

We were prepared to sit back (in our plushy seats at Gold Class Cinemas) and hate this movie last night, but, we ended up liking it. It helped that we went with friends (a birthday celebration of sorts) and food and drink were involved – as is always the case. The movie in a nutshell follows the intertwined stories of old, new, and spurned lovers in Los Angeles with a happy ending for all. Afterwards, we headed west, back over the bridge, to Sambar for pommes frites and cocktails. Now, that is an even happier ending.