To Keith Barnes, May You Rest In A Soft Bed Made of RNA Polymerase

On the first day of class, Mr. Barnes handed me (and everyone else in the class) an 11X17" sheet of paper outlining the entire metabolic pathway of glucose in vertebrates. My life has not been the same since. The secrets - the dark, clandestine, unknowable secrets - were actually light, wondrous, and knowable. Mr. Barnes showed us the way. He had irrevocably changed my life in one day. I only signed up for his class, "college biology," because a few years earlier my sister had taken it and had rave reviews.

Oh, Mr. Barnes, I wish you were still alive. I wish I could find you like I did, one more time, volunteering at the Nelson, like the last time I found you, and tell you that you were the most important teacher I ever had. I wish I could tell you that your personality was every bit as important as the content of your class. I wish I could tell you...so much. How I had gone on to college to major in bioengineering. How I would say to myself "when I grow up, I want to be Mr. Barnes." How science seemed such an impossibly difficult topic until you opened it up for me.

Is electrophoresis a normal thing to have had high school students do in the 90's? Because we did it. We extracted DNA. And we injected chicks with chorionic gonadotropin. Then we euthanized them and inspected their testicles. And we thought. Oh, how we thought. Which was this strange, wonderful thing to be doing. I spent my days, that one glorious 5 months of my whole life, thinking.

It is no suprise to me that ten years after that class, with my artist/wife in hand, I found you volunteering at The Nelson Atkins Museum of Art. Of course the incredible Mr. Barnes would retire from a career teaching science to volunteer at an art museum.

Oh, Mr. Barnes, how I wept when I read your obituary. I openly wept and hid from my wife while I did it. Because how do you explain it to someone who didn't know you? How do you explain that a piece of the world has been ripped away...a piece that was good?
I weep now as I write this. Not as much because of your death, but because I am too late to say it to your face. If there is one regret in my life...maybe in the life of all people...it is that we are mortal and so is everyone else, and when we realize the things we should tell people it often is just too late.
Sayeth the wise:

Loretta Wood, a friend and colleague said about his ability to inspire and motivate, “Our older son, Garrett, was a “Barnes grad,” and often returned from KU for those famous Thanksgiving dinners at Olathe South, where the alumni line was 40 deep. Our younger son, Cullen, deployed with his Marine Intel unit, waited hours in line at Camp Fallujah, Iraq, to call “the old man” and wish him a happy birthday. Such is his legacy…”

Cullen was in my class. Mr. Barnes...why did you die? The mortality of life never felt so unfair to me. I miss you. I work hard because of people like you.

Every time I think about Mr. Barnes I start crying. I pray there is an afterlife...not for myself, but because I want to believe Mr. Barnes is enjoying it.


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In homage to my high school english teachers, Ms. Kohl and Mrs. Williams

In the interests of disclosure I must admit this: I am 80% of the way through a bottle of 'Two Buck Chuck.' They just opened a Trader Joe's here in town, and I admit I am partaking in their unexpectedly tasty wine selection.

Carol Williams. Vicki Kohl. While these names may not be immortalized in the annals of greatness, the fact that more than a decade after I had them as teachers I remember their names should alone stand as a to testament them. The women were, among other greater things, my junior and senior year English teachers. Here's the rub: I don't remember a damn thing they taught me.
Well, that's not entirely true. I remember sitting in Mrs. Williams class my junior year, reading through "Our Town" by Thornton Wilder. At the time it was all pomp and rote. I was there because science class wasn't for another hour. Yet a year later I'd land the lead, "George Gibbs", when the school put on the play. And without portraying George in the school play, would I have as much self-confidence? "Listen Emily, I'm going to tell you why I'm not going to Agriculture School. I think when you've found a person you're fond of..."
As for Ms. Kohl (senior year, AP English), I still remember her fateful words. The scene was thus: having just had my front tooth replaced (again) I was feeling a little antsy. At some point my (borderline ADD) self stood up and gesticulated...God only knows what. Ms. Kohl, with the voice like a harpy snapped "SIT DOWN, YOU HYPERACTIVE WEIRDO! QUIT ACTING LIKE A MAD BANSHEE!"
Ms. Kohl, you prophetess. A decade later I am still the same weirdo, and my daughter shows more than a little likeness for the familial trait of being a "mad banshee." If you do not retire soon, you may have to face her.
It would be seven years later, after I escaped those two women, that I'd sit down and write a 140 page master's thesis. Another four years, and I would make a name for myself at work as "an engineer who can actually write." My boss, at my promotion, would tell me to "expect to spend at least 20% of your time writing proposals, because you are a damn good writer."

While I can credit (justifiably) my mother with my ability to read...I must give credit where credit's due for my ability to write. And that skill was turned from clumsy to "language art" by those two women. Even now, with my head swimming admirably (mom probably does not find my swimming head admirable), I can write with a gusto and skill that many people lack. Is it because I am unusually gifted? Or is it because I was blessed with two especially amazing teachers, who subtly and successfully prodded into my brain the intricacies of the English language, and then made me practice it, essay after essay? I humbly submit it is because of the latter.

Ms. Kohl. Mrs. Williams. I never thanked you for the obviously underrated education you gave me at the time, because I was a sniveling teenager who saw no value in it. Believe me, I see it now. So thank you. Thank you for giving me C's on things. Thank you for challenging me. Thank you for doing your job. Thank you for doing it well. And please forgive any grammar mistakes I have made in this post.


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Question of the Day

If your God-given talent happened to be "the incredible ability to recreate scientific research that has been recently published in peer-reviewed journals and prove that it is junk," would you feel blessed by this or cursed?

Surely you perform a great benefit to society by casting a clear light on dubious research...but on the other hand the scientific community almost certainly will despise you.


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City Planets

I really like this Robin Hanson post about human (or other) population at a galactic level. His point:

If Earth were paved over with a city the density of Manhattan today (1.6 million in 60 square kilometers), Earth would have a population of 14 thousand billion. Since Manhattan now has an average building height of 25 meters, a two kilometer deep version could hold a million billion people, and a two thousand kilometer deep version (Earth’s radius is 6400km) could hold a billion billion people.

And his thesis:

Most science fiction seems to vastly underestimate the population that a single planet or star can hold, and the strength of the economic pressures to keep an economy close together, rather than spread across vast distances.

Before we get into this, let's just dismiss the "two thousand kilometer deep version" because 2,000km deep into the Earth it is between 3,000 and 5,000 degrees F and humans living there is pretty implausible. If he means building up into the sky 2,000 km, well...putting up buildings high enough to reach the ISS is just as implausible.
But a 2 km deep society is somewhat plausible, assuming you had engineering techniques to move the Earth that deep (you could dump it into the oceans to backfill them and make more land for building) and pump fresh air that deep. Or that you had the resources to build Burj Khalifa/Taipei 101 all over the place. So let's assume that Hanson's estimate of a world population of a million billion people (1,000 trillion aka 1 quadrillion) is a fair maximum. In that society, the average person needs 2,000 calories a day to stay healthy.
Now as I was getting wound up to go into some math about the natural resources required to sustain exawatts of calorie consumption, I noticed Hanson add the following update to his blog (as though to cut my argument off at the knees before I even wrote it!):

Even an unmodified sun radiates enough energy to cover the calorie consumption of over a hundred “galaxies” of humans, and far more ems.

But what he doesn't get after is what's to be done with the "waste heat" produced by our bodies. An oversimplified average amount of heat produced by a human body is 100 watts. So multiply that by the million billion people and you have a CRAPLOAD of waste heat...simply from the humans. Add in our bevy of electronic devices and you've essentially turned the surface of the Earth into a kiln.

Of course, if you did have 2,000 km high buildings, which Hanson suggested but I rejected, they'd essentially be going into LEO (low earth orbit) and you could use them (when they were on the night side of Earth) as massive heat sinks.

Nevertheless, I think the fundamental problem with Hanson's thesis that "science fiction authors consistently underestimate the population potential of a planet" is that Hanson is not cynical enough. With a mere 7 billion people, our planet is a torrid, violent, disease-ridden, famine-plagued, caste-driven, unsustainable mess. Multiply the human population by 1,000 and you multiply the problems, as well.


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Global Warming Happening Much Slower Than Expected?

Back in 2010, President Obama suggested NASA refocus its energies a little bit on using satellites to observe Earth's weather and gather more data on climate change.

Well apparently they did, and boy is it surprising:

NASA satellite data from the years 2000 through 2011 show the Earth's atmosphere is allowing far more heat to be released into space than alarmist computer models have predicted, reports a new study in the peer-reviewed science journal Remote Sensing. The study indicates far less future global warming will occur than United Nations computer models have predicted, and supports prior studies indicating increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide trap far less heat than alarmists have claimed.

Well, I for one am actually glad of this. It should relieve my ancestors to know that their reckless industrialism may not have destroyed the future as quickly as feared. The extreme weather of the last few years is simply that: an extreme. Not the new normal. Or at least, the if the new normal is hot, it isn't as likely caused by humans as it is the natural sway and variation of the Earth itself.

However, even if we can breathe a (cool) sigh of relief about global temperatures, it does not mean humans aren't absolutely destroying the Earth. Here, I point to harvested fish biomass reductions and a beautiful (though apocalyptic) graphic by David McCandless:

Global temperatures have little or nothing to do with the way we are fishing the oceans. Or the way we are causing (through agriculture and hunting/harvesting) the most massive extinction event in 75million years.

But at least when aliens visit our lifeless blue marble in a few thousand years, having traveled here with utmost speed, excited to meet us, after receiving our first radio transmissions into deep space in the 1940's...and they arrive here only to exhume the ruins of our long gone and mostly eroded civilizations...at least then the weather will be nice.


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White Roofs

Sullivan starts a thread on white roofs. This Duke University prof confuses me by arguing that white roofs are so good at cooling that in the winter (anything can be argued true when you can point to a somewhat-related scientific study!) you'll have to provide extra heat to offset the lack of sun heating the normally black roof. This extra heating is greater than (the article and Dr. Chameides argue) the decrease in cooling needed during the summer, therefore white roofs are a plague on the world and cause increased carbon dioxide production.

I'm no NOAA scientist running calculations and I have to give them credit, but something here seems really fishy to me. And I think the problem is that they've de-regionalized a sustainability solution. On a global scale, they argue (and admit the limitation of the argument) that white roofs are a net negative. But they also concede that air conditioning isn't available in many places, nor are Energy Star appliances.

This leads me back to what I've been arguing for quite some time: in order for sustainability to work it needs to be regionalized. Although water conservation in general is a good idea (or rather wasting water is a bad idea), it doesn't make sense for an architect designing a building in Missouri to put in low-flow toilets when that architect could save money on normal toilets and use that money instead on better wall and attic insulation. In New Mexico, it makes more sense to focus on solar installation and water conservation. In Minnesota focus on better insulation for homes.
Look, sustainability is important, and as TPI once smartly pointed out: its easy and the technology is readily available to decrease our carbon consumption through efficiency gains rather than futuristic clean energy concepts like fusion. But sustainability cannot be applied with a broad brush. Especially when climates vary, societal pressures vary, etc.

So while white roofs put on every roof on the planet might not be a net gain...its still a really good idea for a lot of areas.


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Competing Headlines Battle It Out!

MSNBC: Fewer people buy homes, but prices rise.
CNN: Home Prices dip 4.5%

Amazingly, both these articles have the same content.


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