“Don't give up, don't ever give up.”

Thanks to Marc Sabin for sending this letter from Lieutenant Colonel Joe Repya.

“I'm Tired. Two weeks ago, as I was starting my sixth month of duty in Iraq, I was forced to return to the USA for surgery for an injury I sustained prior to my deployment. With luck, I'll return to Iraq to finish my tour. I left Baghdad and a war that has every indication that we are winning, to return to a demoralized country much like the one I returned to in 1971 after my tour in Vietnam. Maybe it's because I'll turn 60 years old injust four months, but I'm tired:

I'm tired of spineless politicians, both Democrat and Republican who lack the courage, fortitude, and character to see these difficult tasks through.

I'm tired of the hypocrisy of politicians who want to rewrite history when the going gets tough.

I'm tired of the disingenuous clamor from those that claim they Support the Troops by wanting them to Cut and Run before victory is achieved.

I'm tired of a mainstream media that can only focus on car bombs and casualty reports because they are too afraid to leave the safety of their hotels to report on the courage and success our brave men and women are having on the battlefield.

I'm tired that so many Americans think you can rebuild a dictatorship into a democracy over night.

I'm tired that so many ignore the bravery of the Iraqi people to go to the voting booth and freely elect a Constitution and soon a permanent Parliament.

I'm tired of the so called 'Elite Left' that prolongs this war by givingaid and comfort to our enemy, just as they did during the Vietnam War.

I'm tired of antiwar protesters showing up at the funerals of our fallen soldiers. A family whose loved ones gave their life in a just and noble cause, only to be cruelly tormented on the funeral day by cowardly protesters is beyond shameful.

I'm tired that my generation, the Baby Boom -- Vietnam generation, who have such a weak backbone that they can't stomach seeing the difficult tasks through to victory.

I'm tired that some are more concerned about the treatment of captives than they are the slaughter and beheading of our citizens and allies.

I'm tired that when we find mass graves it is seldom reported by thepress, but mistreat a prisoner and it is front page news.

Mostly, I'm tired that the people of this great nation didn't learn from history that there is no substitute for Victory.”

Sincerely,

Joe Repya

U. S. Army, 101st Airborne

You've got to love the Army Airborne. The picture at the top is my grandson's base in Mosul. John is with the 82nd Airborne and is a Kiowa helicopter mechanic. He says the mortar and rocket fire is particularly loud lately, and it is hard to distinguish the incoming and outgoing.

Revolutions in Physics

It was the turn of the twentieth century and the bear prowled the market for physicists. Max Planck’s sympathetic professor had urged the bright young man to find work in another field, say the design of advanced horse-drawn carriages, something useful. Even Albert Einstein could not find employment in his chosen profession. Why not? Well it was simple supply and demand, with demand scarce when there was almost nothing left to do.

After the giants Newton and Maxwell (and a few others) had made all the big discoveries, it was generally believed that there was precious little left for the few extant physicists to work on. Lord Kelvin, the fellow associated with “absolute zero,” identified the two remaining big problems -- why light travels at a constant speed? -- what causes the particular spectral radiation from hot objects? -- to be the “twin clouds in the otherwise clear sky of knowledge.” If Kelvin assigned one physicist to each problem and gave him a ten year contract, surely those two inconsequential problems would yield solutions.

Then everything changed. Albert Einstein, still unable to find a physics job, was employed as a Swiss patent examiner. In his spare time, Einstein worked on the two remaining big problems, and joined with friends to create a weekly discussion club on science and philosophy (which they grandly named “The Olympia Academy.”) The group studied a variety of thinkers such as the polymath Poincare, and the logical positivist philosophers Hume and Mach.

In the fateful year of 1905, young Al published three seminal papers that essentially solved the light speed problem and explained the mystery of the hot body spectrum, while founding two new fields of study. Relativity and quantum mechanics were (partially) born in the Bern patent office.

Einstein’s 1905 paper “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies” modified Galileo's principle of relativity, that all uniform motion was relative. Thus a person on the deck of a ship may be at rest in his opinion, but someone observing from the shore would say that he was moving. Einstein postulated that all observers will always measure the speed of light to be the same, no matter what their state of uniform linear motion is.

Thus if you are a stationary observer and you measure the speed of a light wave you will obtain c = 186,000 miles per second. If you are travelling on a fast plane and measure the light speed you again obtain c, not just a little bit less. And if you are on a warp drive space ship moving at 0.9 c, you will again measure the speed of light to be… c. It is a mystery, as no other wave behaves like that.

The public responded giddily to the new relativity. Positivists (see Auguste Comte) who believed that the only authentic knowledge is scientific knowledge welcomed the triumph of rationality. Relativists claimed that Einstein’s theory showed that culture and morality are relative, i.e., dependent on one’s perspective. It is too bad that Einstein did not choose a title such as the theory of Invariance rather than Relativity.

In 1905 Einstein also addressed the theory of the photo-electric effect whereby a light beam impinges on a metal surface and an electron is emitted. He used a concept due to Max Planck that treated the light as not a wave but as a beam of discrete energetic particles, now called photons. Planck had used the construct of discrete energy states of matter and discrete photon energies to explain the hot body spectrum, ie unsolved problem number two. He considered that the quantization was only “a purely formal assumption.” Einstein showed that the photons were real and that light has a dual character, sometimes wave, sometimes particle.

Before long, Bohr, Schrodinger, Heisenberg, Pauli and others had developed the detailed formalism of quantum physics that could be used to make predictions of nature on the atomic scale. The theory was, however, strange, even compared to Relativity. There were quantized energies; wave-particle duality; the Uncertainty Principle; and the probability interpretation of events, whereby the result of an experiment could be predicted with only statistical certainty. The quantum mechanical wave function in this so-called Copenhagen interpretation was viewed as describing the behavior of an ensemble of identical systems that individually may sometimes behave one way, sometimes another.

But what happened to causality? To determinacy? Must one abandon conceptual clarity to get at the answers? Einstein rejected the theory, refusing to believe in a God who “plays dice with the universe.” Many physicists clung to a belief in hidden variables, under the surface of events, that control the output in a deterministic way, but which we cannot see. Others simply said that there must be underlying physical laws that we do not yet understand.

However, the mainstream interpretation has remained much as the Coppenhagen school defined it, with quantum mechanics seen as a way to calculate the output of experiments in all their statistical glory, without regard to any underlying intuition. That formalism has been the most magnificient scientific edifice ever seen, decribing the microscopic behavior of systems with astounding accuracy, and encompassing the full quantum electrodynamic behavior of light and matter and the weak and strong nuclear forces. Only gravity remains outside the unified theory, and it is handled by Einstein’s (that fellow again!) theory of General Relativity.

More recently, the unease with the statistical nature of quantum mechanics has resurfaced in two arenas. In the “Many Worlds Interpretation”(MWI) held by such eminent physicists as Stephen Hawking and Steven Weinberg, at every instant when a quantum measurement is made, the universe splits into two or more universes, each corresponding to a possible future. Everything that can happen at each juncture happens. Some, like Hawking, take these parallel universes as no more than abstract mathematical entities -- worlds that could have formed but didn't. In this interpretation the MWI becomes little more than a whimsical language for talking about QM.

However some physicists actually believe that the new universes are “out there,” in some sort of vast super-space-time. David Deutsch, head of the quantum computer group at Oxford University has become the top booster of the MWI in this form. (Check out the Oxford Centre for Quantum Computation's Web site at www.Qubit.org.)

Another weird concept is that of a “multiverse” proposed by Andrei Linde and Martin Rees. In the multiverse, every now and then a quantum fluctuation precipitates a Big Bang and a new universe springs into existence with randomly selected values for its fundamental physical constants. In most of these universes those values will not permit the formation of stars and life. However, in a unique universe the constants will be just right to allow creatures like you and me to evolve. We are here not because of any overhead intelligent planning (i.e. God) but simply because we happen by chance to be in the universe properly tuned to allow life to get started.

Martin Gardiner has written about all these interpretations in a fascinating article called “ Multiverses and Blackberries.” He concludes:

“Surely the conjecture that there is just one universe and its Creator is infinitely simpler and easier to believe than that there are countless billions upon billions of worlds, constantly increasing in number and created by nobody. I can only marvel at the low state to which today's philosophy of science has fallen.”

Cultural Optimism: Is it Justified?

In my post “Lunch with Friends” of Jan 16, 2007, I mentioned “The Two Cultures” popularized by British novelist C. P. Snow. The phrase referred to a rift—“a matter of incomprehension tinged with hostility”—that had grown up between scientists and literary intellectuals.

Recently I came across an organization chartered to uphold the scientific side of the debate. The Edge Foundation was established in 1988 with “a mandate to promote inquiry into and discussion of intellectual, philosophical, artistic, and literary issues, as well as to work for the intellectual and social achievement of society.” The Edge Third Culture is a group of “scientists and other empirical thinkers who, through their work and expository writing, are rendering visible the deeper meanings of our lives, redefining who and what we are.”

Edge believes that “traditional American intellectuals are increasingly reactionary, and quite often ignorant of the truly significant intellectual accomplishments of our time. The Edge Foundation is attempting to restore scientific intellectuals to their rightful place at the table.” I had no idea that things were so bad among scientific and literary types.

But I found the Edge web site, populated with writings from the Third Culturists, to be fascinating. For example, to mark the 10th anniversary of Edge, the site presented answers to the 2007 Edge Question: What Are You Optimistic About? Why? I’ve picked out excerpts from a few notables for the fun of it. Let me know what you think about the Edge question (Are you optimistic?) and about these responses. The categories are my own.

My Favorite

Max Tegmark: When gazing up on a clear night, it's easy to feel insignificant. For starters, we're smaller than we thought, living on an insignificant planet near an ordinary star, one of a hundred billion in our galaxy in a universe of a hundred billion galaxies. Darwin taught us that we're animals and Freud taught us that we're irrational, and cosmologists have found that we're not even made out of the majority substance. Yet I've come to believe that advanced evolved life is very rare, yet has huge growth potential, making our place in space and time remarkably significant. Moreover, this brief century of ours is arguably the most significant one in the history of our universe: the one when its meaningful future gets decided. We'll have the technology to either self-destruct or to seed our cosmos with life.

Dreamers

Steven Kosslyn: I am optimistic that human intelligence can be increased, and can be increased dramatically in the near future. First, the fruits of cognitive neuroscience and related fields have identified a host of distinct neural systems in the human brain, and each system can be made more efficient by targeted training. Second, I am optimistic that understanding the nature of such group interactions will increase human intelligence. Third, the distinction between what goes on in the head and what relies on external devices (my PDA, for example) is becoming more subtle and nuanced, and in so doing human intelligence is being extended.

Seth Lloyd: I am wildly optimistic about the future of scientific ideas. Wherever I travel in the world — first, second, or third — I meet young scientists whose ideas blow me away. The internet distributes cutting edge scientific work much more widely and cheaply than ever before. As a result, the fundamental intellectual equality of human beings is asserting itself in a remarkable way: people are just as smart in Peru and Pakistan as they are in London and Los Angeles, and those people can now participate in scientific inquiry with far greater effectiveness than ever before. Human beings are humanity's greatest resource, and when those humans start becoming scientists, watch out!

Lawrence Krauss: I am optimistic that after almost 30 years of sensory deprivation in the field of particle physics, during which much hallucination (eg. string theory) has occurred by theorists, within 3 years, following the commissioning next year of the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, we will finally obtain empirical data that will drive forward our understanding of the fundamental structure of nature, its forces, and of space and time.

Physics for Poets (I once taught such a course)

Jerry Adler: I am optimistic that sometime in the twenty-first century I will understand twentieth-century physics. What I'm up against here is a problem in translation; the laws of nature are written in equations, but I read only English. I have the same problem with anything written in French. Someday I will understand not just the epiphenomena of physics, the trains and the slits and the cats in boxes, but their mathematical essence. Their metaphysics. I'm optimistic. Really.

Problem Solvers

Freeman Dyson: I am generally optimistic because our human heritage seems to have equipped us very well for dealing with challenges, from ice-ages and cave-bears to diseases and over-population. I am especially optimistic just now because of a seminal discovery made recently by comparing genomes of different species. A small patch of DNA called Human Accelerated Region 1 is found in the genomes of mouse, rat, chicken and chimpanzee. The same patch, modified with eighteen mutations, is in the human genome, which means that it must have changed its function in the last six million years from the common ancestor of chimps and humans to modern humans. That little patch of DNA expresses an essential difference between humans and other mammals.

David Gelernter: I am optimistic about the future of software, because more and more people are coming out of the closet every month — admitting in public that they hate their computers. Technologists who blandly assume that hardware will (somehow) keep getting better while software stays frozen in time (circa 1984) are looking wronger every month. In the near future, your information assets have all been bundled-up, encrypted and launched into geosynchronous orbit in the Cybersphere; computers are interchangeable devices for tuning in information. And instead of expanding into a higher-and-higher-entropy mess, the Web will implode into a blue hole: a single high-energy information beam that holds all the world's digital assets.

Huh? (She must have slipped in from the literary side.)

Susan Blackmore: I am optimistic that our civilization will survive the coming climate catastrophe. I thought that the climate might just continue heating up but I now think it possible that the climate will shift into a new stable state. But there is another worry. Some people still maintain the fantasy that we humans are in charge and can still control the memes we have let loose. Yet it must be increasingly obvious that we can't; that they are in the driving seat. They are sucking up the planet's resources fast and, being selfish replicators, they have no foresight and don't care in the least what happens to us or the planet.

Nietzsche Award Winners

Daniel Dennett: I’m so optimistic that I expect to live to see the evaporation of the powerful mystique of religion. That’s the good news. The bad news is that we will need every morsel of this reasonable attitude to deal with such complex global problems as climate change, fresh water, and economic inequality in an effective way.

Martin Seligman: I am optimistic that God may come at the end. I've never been able to choke down the idea of a supernatural God who stands outside of time, a God who designs and creates the Universe. There is, however, an alternate notion of God relevant to the secular community, the skeptical, evidence-minded community that believes only in nature. Process theology gives up creation by claiming that the process of becoming more complex just goes on forever, and allows free will, but at the expense of omnipotence, omniscience, and creation. Let the mystery of creation be consigned to the branch of physics called cosmology. Good riddance.

Michael Shermer: I am optimistic that science is winning out over magic and superstition. Before Darwin, design theory (in the form of William Paley's natural theology, which gave us the "watchmaker" argument) was the only game in town so everyone believed that life was designed by God. Today less than half believe that in America, the most religious nation of the developed democracies, and in most other parts of the world virtually everyone accepts evolution without qualification. That's progress.

When I tell friends my at Saint John Fisher church about these Nietzscheists they find such views hard to believe. Shermer, Executive Director of the Skeptic Society is the guest speaker at an Omnilore Luncheon next week (Jan. 31 at Los Verdes Country Club). Shermer’s subject is derived from his book The Science of Good and Evil. I'll have an opportunity to ask him a question. What do you suggest?

Palos Verdes Geological History

“The Shape of Beauty”

What caused all the natural variation and beauty, from the rocky beaches and tide pools, to the steep cliffs, broad terraces, rolling hills, rugged canyons and crevices? What does the future hold?

My presentation to the Local History Club will address questions such as: What is responsible for the points and coves? What are the properties of the Palos Verdes fault? What areas should you avoid during an earthquake? What could Palos Verdes look like in 100,000 years?

I will begin with a picture tour of the Point Vicente Interpretive Center (picture above), Abalone Cove Shoreline Park, Forrestal Preserve and Ocean Trails. The Los Serenos de Point Vicente docents run the Interpretive Center and give tours for kids and adults at all four venues.

The talk is on Thursday 1/25 at 2:00 PM at the Malaga Cove Library, 2400 Via Campesina, Palos Verdes Estates.

All are welcome.

Dissecting Barack Obama

My last post about “Saint Obama” certainly generated some passionate comments. Thanks to you all.

Some, like Burt, think the report from Insight Magazine is another conspiracy from the vast right wing, but I believe that is far-fetched. After all, who has the most to gain from trashing Obama?

The completely obvious answer is Hillary and Bill and their pals to whom Obama’s candidacy is a genuine threat. Republicans, on the other hand, would love to run against him. SactoDan at the Sacramento Republicrat said “as Hillary gets desperate, look for her henchmen to pick through Obama's trash, and by the time they get through with him, he'll nostalgically remember when smoking and minimal experience were his only negatives.” Dan mentioned a GOP scheme to have us register as Dem’s in the primary in order to vote for Obama. I may do it.

No, I do not think that Obama is a threat to beat a Republican in 2008, but I do think he is charming and intelligent and hope he remains in the Senate.

So let’s take a more detailed look at what I do not like about Mr. Obama as president.

In his recent autobiography The Audacity of Hope, Obama says, “I was not raised in a religious household” but that his Kenyan father was “raised a Muslim, but by the time he met my mother he was a confirmed atheist....” He says his Indonesian stepfather was “skeptical” about religion and “saw religion as not particularly useful in the practical business of making one's way in the world ....”

This secular philosophy, rather than Islam, seems to have permeated the young Obama, and explains to my mind the radical attitudes he has about life. He voted against the “Induced Infant Liability Act.” That’s a dealbreaker for me.

I found a web site called On the Issues where each politician is rated on a liberal-conservative scale. This graphic describes the scale and Obama’s place on it (the red dot).

Here are the other items that are troubling to me. Obama,

> Opposed the Iraq war.

> Voted NO on extending the PATRIOT Act's wiretap provision.

> Stated that the US has never had so much power but so little influence to lead.

Obama is on the appeasement side of the war against Islamo-fascism.

> Voted NO on confirming John Roberts for Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

> Voted NO on confirming Samuel Alito as Supreme Court Justice.

He believes “activist judges should interpret the Constitution through a left-wing prism.”

> Voted YES on establishing a Guest Worker program.

> Voted YES on allowing illegal aliens to participate in Social Security.

> Would extend welfare and Medicaid to illegal immigrants.

Obama is an open borders advocate, more internationalist than American.

> Opposes the death penalty.

> Voted NO on constitutional ban of same-sex marriage.

> Voted NO on reforming bankruptcy to include means-testing & restrictions.

> Voted YES on banning drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

> Voted NO on prohibiting lawsuits against gun manufacturers.

> Believes health care is a right.

> Believes the Bush tax cuts did not create jobs.

> Would strengthen unions.

Obama is a light-weight socialist and a lover of government control. He is not my cup of tea for president of these United States.

Saint Obama

Starbucks this morning, Judy speaking: “I think it would be great to have a black president, like Barack Obama.” Sue: “He sure does have charisma.” Me: “But he has not accomplished very much.”

Judy, again: “He is older than John Kennedy was when he was elected.”

Joan Vennochi: “Barack Obama is making headway in presidential politics by following a formula John F. Kennedy would appreciate: promise change, ooze charisma, and downplay experience. While Obama has a good model to follow, he has a way to go before he deserves billing as the next JFK.”

And so it went.

People are just getting to know Obama, who has only been in the Senate for two years. The media treat him like a rock star and it’s nicely symbolic that Obama chose the day of the season premiere of “American Idol” to launch his presidential exploratory committee. To some secularists he is a saint; more on that later.

Let’s take a look at the guy. Barack Hussein Obama Jr. (Yep, his middle name is the same as Saddam’s last name.) was born of a white mother from Kansas and a black father from Kenya. Media people call Barack “black” or “African American” for several reasons (See Judy above for one.), including his own preference for those labels.

Black author Debra Dickerson called “the swooning from white people” about Obama “a paroxysm of self-congratulation.” We good!

But black activists are not so sure. Harry Belafonte, who called Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice “house slaves” on the Bush plantation, says America needs to be “careful” about Obama, according to the London Times: Hmmm.

One of Barack’s problems is …… (hushed tones) … He smokes. “The party that reveres the memory of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who jauntily flaunted his smokes in a fancy little cigarette holder, now is the first to exile those who pollute their own lungs. Senator, snuff it out!” Is he going to be in trouble for subjecting his little girl children to second-hand smoke?

Another problem, this I have on good authority, is that he is NOT Hillary. That’s right -- the Hollywood libs who paved the way for the female (Hillary) presidency with a Gina Davis preview, now have a BIG problem.

DreamWorks moguls Steven Spielberg and David Geffen and actor-ivists George Clooney and Barbra Streisand, forked over $2 grand each to Obama's Senate campaign, and Clooney proclaimed an Obama presidential bid “would be the most electrifying thing to happen to the Democratic Party since Kennedy.” But all of these Hollywood intellectuals also donated to Clinton's Senate bids, so it's unclear which way they'll go. It surely portends trouble in liberal city.

On a more serious note, there is the matter of Obama’s position on human life. Occasionally an aborted baby lives and, under the care of compassionate doctors and nurses, grows to be a healthy child. Such disregard for the intent of the woman is, of course, anathema to NOW and not to be allowed. Thus when the Illinois Legislature voted on a bill (the “Induced Infant Liability Act”) to make sure that doctors provide care to such unusual babies, some women’s groups opposed vehemently, and Senator Obama voted with them. It was important to him to let the babies die.

Obama’s radical stance on abortion puts him further to the left than even NARAL Pro-Choice America. That same year a similar federal law, the “Born Alive Infant Protection Act,” was signed by President Bush. Only 15 members of the U.S. House opposed it, and it passed the Senate unanimously. When the federal bill was being debated, NARAL released a statement that said, “NARAL does not oppose passage of the “Born Alive Infants Protection Act” ... since floor debate served to clarify the bill’s intent and assure us that it is not targeted at Roe v. Wade or a woman’s right to choose.”

This is a troubling issue, that is for sure.

Is Obama one of the liberal elitists who have used the courts to ram social change down our throats without regard to the democratic process. Does he believe activist judges should interpret the Constitution through a left-wing prism and the people should have no say in such matters? Most liberals believe so.

And is Obama tough enough? A president must have the credentials and the worldview to be a credible leader. He must be respected, even feared, by those who want to destroy America. Will he be like “Hillary's co-president, Bill, who lavished a Michael Jordan-autographed basketball on Kim Jong Il -- in hopes of keeping North Korea away from nukes?” Will Putin eat him for breakfast?

Lunch with Friends

We met for lunch at Cego's on Deep Valley Drive just down the hill from the Library. Along with a delicious lunch and some jokes by the Cego's owner (“Gov. Arnold broke his leg by… leaning too far to the left.”) the conversation with Don and Ted Wynne and Pat Hart was stimulating.

The Wynne brothers are developing a new condominium building just a few steps from Cego's and the concrete has been flowing. I had a chance to see the building plans and it looks like a place where I’d like to live: brand new, upscale and a short walk to the shops and restaurants, the Library and The Avenue of the Peninsula.

I sent a letter of support to the Rolling Hills Estates City Council. If you like the idea of the new Peninsula Village in the Deep Valley area, send a note of support to nikic@ci.rolling-hills-estates.ca.us. If not, well… never mind.

Pat told us about the upcoming Ralph McInerny Banquet and conference on the “Philosophical Foundations of Human Dignity” (March 8 in Washington DC). Dr. Robert George of Princeton is the keynote speaker. Again this year, Pat is buying a table at the banquet. He also mentioned a conference at the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture in October. Pat thinks “The Two Cultures” conference is about the potential (inevitable?) collision of Islam and Christianity. He suggested that I submit a paper.

The phrase “The Two Cultures” was popularized by British novelist, civil servant and minor scientist Sir Charles Percy Snow. The phrase referred to a rift—“a matter of incomprehension tinged with hostility”—that has grown up between scientists and literary intellectuals in the modern world. The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution, [ref] was the title of Snow’s 1959 Rede Lecture at Cambridge University which was subsequently printed in Encounter magazine. The Two Cultures became infamous a year later when the critic F. R. Leavis published his “Two Cultures? The Significance of C. P. Snow,” in The Spectator magazine. Leavis’ article is a “devastating rhetorical fusillade. It’s not just that no two stones of Snow’s argument are left standing: each and every pebble is pulverized; the fields are salted; and the entire population is sold into slavery.”

Roger Kimball noted in The New Criterion (Feb. 1994) that “this year marks the thirty-fifth anniversary of Snow’s essay. As we look around the cultural landscape today, we see the debris of a civilization seemingly bent on cultural suicide: the triumph of pop culture in nearly every sphere of artistic endeavor, the glorification of mindless sensationalism, the attack on the very idea of permanent cultural achievement -- in the West, anyway, the final years of the twentieth century are years of unprecedented material wealth coupled with profound cultural and intellectual degradation. C. P. Snow is hardly to blame for all this. He is merely a canary in the mine.”

Snow wrote: “I came to Cambridge and did a bit of research here at a time of major scientific activity. I was privileged to have a ringside view of one of the most wonderful creative periods in all physics. And it happened through the flukes of war -- that I was able, and indeed morally forced, to keep that ringside view ever since.” …

“I believe the intellectual life of the whole of western society is increasingly being split into two polar groups: at one pole the literary intellectuals, who incidentally, while no one was looking, took to referring to themselves as 'intellectuals' as though there were no others. I remember G. H. Hardy once remarking to me in mild puzzlement, some time in the 1930's: ‘Have you noticed how the word intellectual is used nowadays? There seems to be a new definition which certainly doesn't include Rutherford or Eddington or Dirac or Adrian or me. It does seem rather odd, don't y' know.’”

Unfortunately, Snow was also a communist sympathizer who thought that the Soviet Union was way ahead of the West, partly because the Russians have a “passionate belief in education,” and also because they have a “deeper insight into the scientific revolution than we have, or than the Americans have.” He was convinced that the Reds would resolve the “three menaces” of nuclear war, overpopulation, and the gap between rich and poor. One wonders what he thought of the Soviets when he passed away in 1980.

The Two Cultures debate has continued, spirited and sometimes funny. In 1996 physicist Alan Sokal published an article in the humanities journal Social Text which Sokal, himself, revealed to be a hoax in a second article (in Lingua Franca May/June 1996). Sokal wished to call attention to “an apparent decline in the standards of intellectual rigor in certain precincts of the American academic humanities.” Sokal's articles triggered a barrage of accusatory publications by scientists and non-scientists alike. What fun!

Returning to Notre Dame, their Ethics and Culture web site has a podcast by Professor Thomas Hibbs of Baylor University on “Nihilism and American Popular Culture.” Hibbs takes the description of nihilism from Nietzsche who accepted no distinction between right and wrong, between noble and base; who advocated a life without standards, only preferences, and no God. He traces this decline of culture to a perversion of liberalism from the ideals of Kant to the current respect for hedonism, the absurdly trivial, even the demonic. Sounds like Roger Kimball. It is worth a listen.

Ted mentioned a minor concern he has about his son’s education. The young man is studying in San Francisco and Ted’s concern relates to the exposure to radical secularism all college students experience at the hands of their liberal professors. My post on “Phallologocentrism and Queer Musicology” (1/10/07) was mildly upsetting. Well, never fear, Jeffrey Tobin, associate professor in Occidental College's department of critical theory and social justice cleared up matters in the pages of the LA times last Sunday.

Tobin’s course “The Phallus” examines phallologocentrism and the lesbian phallus, the Jewish phallus, the Latino phallus because, as Tobin explains, “for French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, the phallus is a symbol of power and privilege that is associated with patriarchal authority but which no individual man, or woman, ever fully embodies.” The Prof. then asks the pregnant question: “What, then, separates courses that have ‘actual academic content’ from those that do not? We have the great books and battles of Western civilization on one side. We have feminism, queer theory, critical race theory and other theories meant to explain white-male oppression on the other.”

What separates those??? Somebody pays this guy!

Do you know what your children are learning?

String Theory for My Friends

I’m always delighted when friends make requests for specific PVBlogs. This morning at Starbucks Mark asked for a white paper on string theory. Now, I have the greatest respect for Mark for that magical day in 1955 when he went head-to-head against Jim Brown in a lacrosse match. Some don’t know that Brown was an All-American in lacrosse at Syracuse as well as football. He outweighed Mark by 40-50 pounds of muscle, but Mark made up for it by being … ummm…. slower. Mark is one brave guy. Anyway, in honor of that RPI versus Syracuse lacrosse match, here is a bit of string theory for Mark and the rest of the Starbuckers.

String was invented by the Egyptians back around 4000 B.C. as a thin, flexible version of rope which may be used to tie, bind, or hang other objects. String can be made from a variety of fibres including date palms, flax, grass, papyrus, leather, water reeds or animal hair. The use of the rope version pulled by thousands of workers allowed the Egyptians to move the heavy stones required to build their monuments. (ref. Wikipedia)

Ropes and strings can also be used as flogging device with widely different impact depending on length, weight, number of strands and the presence or absensce of knots. Thus aboard ships, a rope's end or starter was frequently used to administer the lightest discipline to sailors, while the fearsome cat o' nine tails was used for more severe punishment. Mark may have some experience with cats from his days in the navy.

The mathematics of strings began with Euclid who noticed that strings may form a variety of geometrical shapes. Here is a question for the reader: Given a length of string, how many squares may be constructed? How many rectangles?

A few centuries later, Georg Riemann, a student of Carl Gauss, noticed that a string laid on the surface of a sphere can no longer be formed into a perfect square. This seminal discovery led immediately to the invention of non-Euclidian differential geometry and the theory of complex manifolds utilizing the Riemann curvature tensor.

This was a very good thing because, when Einstein derived his theory of General Relativity, in 1915, he needed a mathematical formulation of curved spaces. Einstein rejected the Newtonian theory of gravitational forces believing instead that the Earth sucks. (Sorry…. just a little joke.) No, Einsten believed that matter and energy bend space into a spherical shape and that matter and energy in turn move along the surface of the sphere, like following the piece of string. John Wheeler described it by saying that “matter tells space-time how to curve, and space-time tells matter how to move.” So-long to straight line motion unless there is no mass around.

Once the field equations of General Relativity were in place, Einstein became aware of some disturbing features. He first realized that the presence of matter in the universe meant that a static universe is impossible; it would ultimately collapse. (That sucked!) This was a real philosophical problem for any scientist, even a radical like Einstein, who was raised with Aristotle’s model of an unchanging universe. Einstein was so disturbed by his collapsing universe solution that he concluded the equations needed another term to counteract the attractive force of gravity. He invented the “cosmological constant” term that acted like anti-gravity and allowed the universe to be permanently static.

Not long after, in 1922, the Russian Alexander Friedmann showed that Einstein’s equations also admitted a solution corresponding to an expanding universe and by 1927 Georges Lemaitre had worked out the details. Einstein rejected the solution as un-physical although mathematically correct. But only two years later Edwin Hubble published data showing that stars and galaxies are all receeding, leading to the obvious conclusion that sometime in the past the universe must have burst on the scene from a miniscule point. Lemaitre called it a cosmic egg; Fred Hoyle called it, dismissively, the “Big Bang.” Einstein figuratively kicked himself in the butt for insisting on the cosmological constant and a static universe.

Now what about that Big Bang? Physicists have concluded that at the instant after the bang, the universe must have been so dense and filled with energy to such a degree that gravity had quantum properties. Unfortunately a quantum theory of gravity does not exist. Enter string theory. Underlying the fundamental particles (quarks, etc), string theory assumes there are more fundamental entities having some properties of strings.

The basic strings are mighty small, with a length equal to the “Planck length” (about 10 to the negative 33-power centimeters). Like a violin string under tension, the quantum strings support standing waves, and the fundamental particles of matter are thought to correspond to different vibration frequencies. This is not such an unusual idea as it is related to the wave-particle duality of quantum physics. We do not “see” the stringiness in experiments because its dimension is so very small.

The mass-frequency relationship is easily derived. The Planck-Einstein photo-electric effect showed that energy is related to frequency by the simple relation E = hf, where h is Planck’s constant and f is the frequency. Add to this Einstein’s mass-energy relationship, E = mcc, and we obtain an equation that defines particle mass from the string frequency: m = hf/cc. For the electron, the wave frequency is about 10 to the 21-power cycles/sec, and the proton frequency is about 1840 times higher.

The basic idea is pretty simple, but the theory quickly becomes muy complex. Some of the fundamentals are unsettling (eg 10 dimensions of space) and some are contradictory (eg faster than light particles). But the major problem for string theory is that it has yet to make a testable prediction, and the current thinking is that the theory allows an astronomically large number of physical possibilities so it seems impossible to ever test it. Peter Woit has called the theory “Not Even Wrong,” the title of his recent book. Normally this situation would cause physicists to run for the exits, but string theorists seem to be a hardier lot, not easily frightened.

I’m skeptical.

Phallologocentrism and Queer Musicology

Do you have kids in college? Do you know what they are learning? Take a look and you might be appalled.

Southern California seems to have assumed the mantle of the politically correct nonsense curriculum, formerly the domain of the Ivy Leagues, with courses in “The Phallus” (Occidental College -- examines phallologocentrism and the lesbian phallus, the Jewish phallus, the Latino phallus) and “Queer Musicology” (UCLA -- an “unruly discourse explores how sexual difference and complex gender identities among musicians have incited productive consternation”) understood through the works of Cole Porter, Holly Near and Pussy Tourette.

The Young America’s Foundation (see pic above) has published “The Dirty Dozen: America’s Most Bizarre and Politically Correct College Courses.” The Occidental and UCLA courses mentioned above took the top two spots on the infamous list demonstrating that “professors still have an obsession with dividing people on the basis of their skin color, sexuality, and gender.” The Dirty Dozen are the “most bizarre and troubling instances of leftist activism supplanting traditional scholarship.”

Occidental College makes the list twice with “Blackness,” which elaborates on a “new blackness, critical blackness, post-blackness, and an unforgivable blackness,” which all combine to create a “feminist New Black Man.” This must be one lonely fellow.

In case you feel that blacks are being picked on at Oxy, never fear as there is also a course in “Whiteness” that examines “the construction of whiteness in the historic, legal and economic contexts which have allowed it to function as an enabling condition for privilege and race-based prejudice.” A passing grade in “Whiteness” is a prerequisite for taking “Blackness,” which is clearly a higher level course.

Even the Shakespeare course at Occidental focuses on “cultural anxieties over authority, race, colonialism and religion.”

Not to be outdone by the left coast, the Elite East offers “Taking Marx Seriously: Should Marx be given another chance?” (Amherst College -- inquires “if societies can gain new insights by returning to Marx’s texts.”) Students learn that Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot merely misapplied the concepts of Marxism and it deserves to be rescued from the “ash heap of history.”

In “The Adultery Novel” (U. Pennsylvania -- read adultery novels and watch adultery films) students learn to “place adultery into its aesthetic, social and cultural context, including: sociological descriptions of modernity, Marxist examinations of family as a social and economic institution and feminist work on the construction of gender.” They really like Marx and feminism.

Duke’s history course “American Dreams/American Realities” seeks to unearth “such myths as rags to riches, beacon to the world, and the frontier in defining the American character.” So much for the vision of America as “a city on a hill.” It’s the death of patriotism.

Charlotte Allen an editor at Beliefnet notes that “American higher education has lost any notion of what its students ought to know about the ideas and people and movements that created the civilization in which they live: Who Plato was or what happened at Appomattox.”

Occidental professor Jeffrey Tobin (“The Phallus”) reports that his course is sold out and there is a long waiting list.

How many Americans can name more than one of the five freedoms protected by the First Amendment? (25%) How many can name at least two family members of “The Simpsons.” (over 50%) The Washington Post reports that only 31% of college grads could read and comprehend complex books, while The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that 40% of college students need remedial work in math and English.

But the vast majority of college grads are indoctrinated in political correctness and a whole variety of nonsense - “isms.” We need to put our educational resources to better use!

Education of a Winter Conservative

When you come to conservatism after age 60, as I did, you have a lot of catching up to do. Someone, Churchill I think, famously said that when young if you are not liberal you have no heart (I’m OK there) but when grown up if you are not conservative you have no brain. Now, a succession of Sisters of St. Joseph testified to my having a brain: “Mr. Lama, if you used only half your brain,…” If you can’t believe a nun, who can you believe? The obvious conclusion is that I failed to grow up. I can accept that, but it is a bit embarrassing when your children grow up before you. I sheepishly remember when, just after the 2000 presidential election, both kids asked “You voted for WHOM???”

The question is: What went wrong? My grandfathers were independent businessmen and the grandmothers raised 15 kids between them. Conservatism was in their bones. My parents took over the family business and thought that Nixon was too liberal. Yet Lee and I were Kennedy liberals and we tried to pass on his philosophy to our children, who were named after the Kennedy kids. But when I voted for Gore the kids were appalled. Did the school system account for the radical oscillation from my parents to me to my children? That seems unlikely since our kids went to the same parochial schools we did, and all schools have been increasingly liberal for 50 years and more. Perhaps the conservative trend is a natural phenomenon as Churchill thought, and I was an aberration.

Since seeing the light – 9/11 was the trigger – I have read voraciously on the subject of liberalism vs. conservatism, and done a few blog posts on the subject. I’ve written before about liberal’s loss of faith in America’s goodness and in our use of military force against evil regimes. Today’s liberals are not Kennedy’s children.

The change in the Democratic Party stems from the end of the Vietnam War. Ann Coulter: “Three months after Nixon was gone, we got the Watergate Congress and with it, the new Democratic Party. In lieu of the old Democratic Party (Kennedy, Johnson), which lost wars out of incompetence and naivete, the new Democratic Party would lose wars on purpose. Just one month after the Watergate Congress was elected, North Vietnam attacked the South. President Ford pleaded repeatedly with the new Democratic Congress simply to authorize aid to South Vietnam — no troops, just money. But the Democrats turned their backs on South Vietnam, betrayed an ally and trashed America’s word.”

If you want to see the difference on display today, see who is uplifted by the report out of London that Israel is set to bomb the Iranian nuclear sites and who is railing about the Zionist over-reaction. That is reason enough to abandon the liberal side. New House Majority Leader, Democrat Steny Hoyer, said that preventing a nuclear-armed Iran had to be done through “discussions, negotiations, sanctions” working with the international community but that the use of force hadn't been taken off the table. Sure.

Today, I want to talk about another loss of faith by our liberal friends, a loss of faith in the very American way of life, in our capitalist economy. I’ll begin with a recent real-world example, from the “war on poverty.” There are two competing economic strategies thought to fight poverty. Liberals argue that government can reduce poverty by “redistributing” wealth through ever-more progressive taxation and through government spending. Conservatives, however, say the best way to reduce poverty is through stronger economic growth that creates more jobs, and that you build a stronger economy by reducing taxes.

A recent study, “How to Win the War on Poverty: An Analysis of State Poverty Trends,” tests these different theories by examining state poverty rates. States with the lowest tax rates from 1990 to 2000 enjoyed sizable decreases in poverty. For example, the 10 states with the lowest taxes saw an average poverty reduction of 13% while the 10 states with the highest taxes suffered an average increase in poverty of 3%. The lesson is clear: “Low tax rates lift up the lives of America's poor.” Unfortunately, liberals from California to New York to the Federal Congress don’t understand the lesson.

Liberals keep saying the rich should pay more taxes and complain bitterly about tax cuts. Yet, the IRS study of 2004 income tax data shows that Americans who earned more than $1 million paid about one-third more income taxes than they did in 2002, the year before the Bush cuts in marginal tax rates and dividend and capital gains rates.

The wealthiest 1% of tax filers paid a remarkable 35% of all individual income-taxes in 2004. In fact, the data reveal that there were more Americans filing taxes in every income category from $50,000 and up in 2004. Americans across income categories are making more money thanks to the buoyant economy spurred in part by the tax cuts. Meanwhile, the lowest 30% -- those with a family income of $30,000 or less -- pay no income tax at all. Yet liberals feel that this progressive tax is not progressive enough.

And by the way, capital gains taxes collected were roughly 50% higher in 2004 than before the capital gains tax rates were reduced. Right, lower tax rates, but more taxes collected by the government. It happens every time. Oh, I forgot, federal tax receipts increased about 15% in 2005 and another 12% in 2006, lowering the federal budget deficit to 1.8% of GDP -- lower than the average since 1980. If Nancy Pelosi wants to keep revenues flowing to pay for her liberal goodies, “the best thing she can do is leave the lower Bush tax rates alone to soak the rich some more.”

I’ve been stretching my mind trying to understand how liberals got so mixed up about basic tax policy. I think that I may have hit upon the reason in my conservative studies, from a seminal book by the great William F. Buckley Jr. Buckley wrote God and Man at Yale (Gamay) only months after graduating with a BA in 1950. “I propose, simply,” wrote Buckley, “to expose what I regard to be an extraordinarily irresponsible educational attitude that, under the protective label ‘educational freedom,’ has produced one of the most extraordinary incongruities of our time: the institution that derives its moral and financial support from Christian individualists and then addresses itself to the task of persuading the sons of these supporters to be atheistic socialists.” Golly, even at 24, that boy could write!

Gamay revealed the anti-religion bias and the anti-capitalism bias in the majority of departments at Yale from history, literature, philosophy and economics to the social sciences. Yale, the institution that Time magazine called “the citadel of triumphant of conservatism” was exposed by Buckley to be “agnostic as to religion, interventionist and Keynsian as to economics and collectivist as applied to the relation of the individual to society and government.”

Liberal (ie. hopelessly confused) economic policy crept into Yale under the guise of academic freedom and eventually corrupted the economics philosophy at colleges and universities far and wide. It’s probably a good thing that not very much of the Yale educational experience was absorbed by our President.

People Are So Darn Funny

One of the joys of blogging is getting to know people who find your site, make interesting comments and send you stuff. (This does not include two guys named Einstein and TC who are just rude!!) Today I’m relaying a collage of fun stuff that I’ve received from pals.

The first is from Ann. The Washington Post has published the winning submissions to its Annual Neologism Contest in which readers are asked to supply alternate meanings for common words. Here are some of my fav’s:

Flabbergasted (adj.) Appalled over how much weight you have gained.

Negligent (adj.) Describes a condition in which you absent-mindedlyanswer the door in your nightgown.

Lymph (v.) To walk with a lisp.

Testicle (n.) A humorous question on an exam.

Pokemon (n) A Rastafarian proctologist. ROFLMAO

Frisbeetarianism (n.) (back by popular demand): The belief that, when you die, your Soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there. (Roof = Heaven)

The Washington Post's Style Invitational once again asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition. Here are a few goodies:

Bozone (n.) The substance surrounding stupid people that stops brightideas from penetrating. The Bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little signof breaking down in the near future.

Sarchasm (n) The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the personwho doesn't get it. (Synonym: Liberal)

Dopelar effect (n) The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter whenthey come at you rapidly. Watch out for “fast talkers.”

Cashtration (n.) The act of buying a house which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period. In California replace “indefinite” with “infinite.”

Karmageddon (n) It's like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like a serious bummer. (You can replace “explodes” with “melts” if you fear global warming.)

The next funny comes from my son John who is roaming around SE Asia with only a backpack full of stuff. John writes: “Wow, the lack of common sense and basic economics knowledge in San Francisco never ceases to amaze me. I wonder what this guy's response would be if someone pointed out that his buying stuff allows some poor family in China to eat and send their children to school.” John is referring to an Associated Press article: “S.F. group enjoys shopping sabbatical.”

It began, as grand ideas often do, over a dinner — risotto, artisan cheese and wine. What would it be like, ten environmentally conscious friends wondered as they discussed the state of the planet, to go a year without buying anything new? Twelve months later, the results from their experiment in anti-consumption for 2006 are in.

“It started in a lighthearted way, but it is very serious,” said John Perry, 42, a father of two who works for a Silicon Valley technology company. “It is about being aware of the excesses of consumer culture and the fact we are drawing down our resources and making people miserable around the world.” (Like the poor family in China who get to eat because of our consumption.) Nearly 3,000 people have joined a user group Perry set up on Yahoo so participants could swap goods and tips.

In case you think this is a silly idea, be aware that there are radicals called “freegans” in several cities in the United States and Europe whose contempt for consumerism is so complete they eat food foraged from dumpsters whenever possible, hop trains and sleep in abandoned buildings on principle.

Now that the SF group knows they can do it, they are ready to extend the pledge into 2007. But first, they plan to give themselves a one-day reprieve to stock up on essentials - windshield wipers, bicycle brakes and tongue studs.

I’ve proposed this to my wife but it's not for me.

On the European front is this funner from David: Political leaders attending a meeting of the European Socialist Party pledged that with the Democrats on the rise, strong ties could be renewed with the United States after years of cool relations with George W. Bush. “We are not anti-American, we want the real America, your America,” said Danish Prime Minister Nyrup Rasmussen, president of the European Socialist Party. “Europe needs an America that is back on track,” said Portuguese Socialist PM Jose Socrates. Socialists, or leftist governments, currently hold power in just over half of Europe.

“We need, today more than ever, to reinforce and renew the strategic alliance between the United States and Europe,” Socrates said. “Democrats should know that they can count on European Socialists.” Hmmm,… the strategic alliance? I wonder what that means.

On the political front there are so many funnies to choose from. Without mentioning Mr. Barak Obama by name, Mrs. Bill Clinton and her camp are already asserting that experience will be a key attribute for any successful candidate during difficult times. But it turns out that Barak got high “to put questions of who I was out of my mind” when a teenager. “I had learned not to care,” he wrote. “I blew a few smoke rings. Pot helped, and booze; maybe a little blow when you could afford it. Not smack, though.”

Barak’s candidacy reminds me of the “soft bigotry of low expectations.”

Will the Dem’s deliver? … asked Mario Cuomo. When House Democrats tried to unveil their lobbying reform package today, their press conference was drowned out by chants from anti-war activists who want Congress to stop funding the Iraq war before taking on other issues. Led by Cindy Sheehan, the protesters chanted “De-escalate, investigate, troops home now” as Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., began outlining the Democrats' plans to ban lobbyist-funded travel and institute other fabulous 100 hour propositions.

Finally there was this notification from my buddy Burt about a study showing that “liberals clearly sport higher IQ.” That’s the funniest one yet!!

My good buddy Rose noted that some noteworthy liberal achievements include the domestication of cats, the invention of group therapy, group hugs, and the concept of Democratic voting to decide how to divide the meat and beer that conservatives provided. That’s the story of how Humans originally existed as members of small bands of nomadic hunters (conservatives) and gatherers (liberals). Guess which group invented the wheel and beer?

The Day Without Yesterday

The year was 1929 and for many Americans it seemed like a day with no tomorrow. Hardly noticed in the midst of the socio-economic cataclysm was the work of an obscure Belgian priest-scientist who was making history of an altogether otherwordly sort. Georges-Henri Lemaitre’s new cosmology predicted “a day without yesterday.”

The story begins several years earlier when Albert Einsten, having already rocked the scientific world with his theory of Special Relativity, published a new theory that demolished Newton’s hugely successful 1687 law of Universal Gravitation.

In 1915, Einstein presented a series of lectures before the Prussian Academy of Sciences in which he described a new theory of gravity known as General Relativity wherein Einstein’s field equations replaced Newton's law of gravity. In General Relativity, gravity is no longer a force but is a consequence of the curvature of space-time that is in turn determined by mass and energy. Einstein’s equations written in compact form are

R - (1/2) R g = T,

where R is the Ricci tensor, R is the Ricci scalar, g is the metric tensor and T is the energy-momentum tensor. Suffice to say that the equations immediately predicted the observed but non-Newtonian precession of the planet Mercury. Then in 1919, during a solar eclipse, Arthur Eddington took measurements of the bending of star light as it passed close to the Sun, resulting in star positions appearing further away from the Sun. These observations also match the predictions of General Relativity.

But what else did the new General Relativity reveal? Since the field equations are non-linear, Einstein assumed that they were generally insoluble. Then in 1916 Karl Schwarzschild discovered an exact solution for the case of a spherically symmetric spacetime surrounding a massive object. Encouraged by that exact solution, in 1922, Alexander Friedmann found a solution in which the universe may expand or contract.

However, Einstein did not believe in a dynamic universe. After all, since Aristotle it had been thought that the universe was uniform and unchanging. Einstein was so sure that was the case that he mofified his field equations through the addition of a cosmological constant Lambda (L) that, with the correct value, yields a static universe. The modified equations read:

R - (1/2) R g + L g = T.

However, in addition to being an ad hoc assumption, the additional term made the equations unstable since the slightest deviation from an ideal state (a particular value of L) would still result in the universe expanding or contracting.

Then came the year of the stock market crash. But the other noteworthy event in 1929 was the publication by Edwin Hubble of convincing evidence for the idea that the universe is expanding. This resulted in Einstein dropping the cosmological constant L, referring to it as "the biggest blunder in my career".

What was not known in America at that time was that Fr. Georges Lemaitre had published a paper in 1927 in which he derived what became known as Hubble's Law, two years before Hubble.

In 1930, Eddington published an English translation of Lemaitre’s 1927 article with a long commentary. Fr. Lemaître was then invited to London in order to take part in a meeting of the British Association on the relation between the physical universe and spirituality. There he proposed an expanding universe which started with an initial singularity and the idea of the Primeval Atom which was later to be coined (by Fred Hoyle, a critic) as the Big Bang theory. Fr. Lemaître himself liked to describe his theory as the Cosmic Egg exploding at the moment of the creation.

In 1933, Fr. Lemaitre and Einstein traveled together to California for a series of seminars. After the Belgian detailed his theory, Einstein stood up, applauded, and is supposed to have said, This is the most beautiful and satisfactory explanation of creation to which I have ever listened.

But Lemaitre’s work was to have an even more profound impact on cosmology. He showed that for L slightly greater than the critical value Lc, the universe erupts from R = 0 at t = 0 but then slows down for a long time near R = 1/sqrt(Lc) before once again expanding at an accelerating rate. The period of slow expansion is now thought to be necessary for the creation of stars and planets.

Fr. Lemaitre died on June 20, 1966 shortly after having learned of the discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation, a remnant of the Big Bang and proof of his intuitions about the birth of the Universe.

In 1998, astronomers in Berkeley, California, made a startling discovery. They were observing supernovae — exploding stars visible over great distances — to see how fast the universe is expanding, expecting to find the rate to be decreasing. Instead they found it to be increasing — a discovery which has since “shaken astronomy to its core” (Astronomy, October 1999).

This discovery would have come as no surprise to Georges Lemaitre who described the beginning of the universe as a burst of fireworks, comparing galaxies to the burning embers spreading out in a growing sphere. He believed this burst of fireworks was the beginning of time, taking place on “a day without yesterday.” He argued that the Big Bang was a unique event and he predicted that the expansion would eventually begin to accelerate, just as the Berkeley astronomers had found.

Lemaitre was a “priest of the cosmos,” a first rate cosmologist and mathematician and a first rate Catholic priest. His story is told in book form for the first time in The Day Without Yesterday: Lemaitre, Einstein and the Birth of Modern Cosmology by John Farrell.