Media Training Discussion

Ninety-three million miles they traveled at a speed of 186,000 miles per second. (I don’t need to look up these numbers. They have been in my head since I was 11 years old. Which also explains why I talk in miles.) Light behaves both as a stream of particles and as a wave. Were it not so, the sun’s energy could never travel through the vacuum of space – if light were just waves, like sound waves, they would stop dead when there is no longer something for them to pass through.

After such a long journey in a perfectly straight line (I know, I know – gravity bends the spacetime continuum, and who knows what a straight line really is in that context anyway?) at the final moment, just a few kilometres above my house, they hit atmosphere, and for the first time, change direction and speed. Some photons of certain wavelengths are scattered, contributing to the blueness of the sky and the red of the sunrise. Others hit water vapour or dust particles, and are absorbed – their journey cut short without warning or reason. Quadrillions of others hit pavement, rooftops, sidewalks and tennis courts.

Some of their energy is converted into heat and radiated back up into the air, creating temperature imbalances that cause breezes, evaporation, precipitation – in short, weather. Others hit plants and trees that, after billions of years of evolution, have developed the ability to convert this energy and power factories that create sugars and proteins, leaves and flowers, fruits and vegetables, grains and grasses, bone and flesh pulling this planet out of the realm of geology and into the land of the living.

Some photons bend through the upper atmosphere at just the right angle to strike my kitchen window. They change direction and velocity when they hit the denser pane of glass and change again as they exit the other side – 93 million miles and then zig-zag-zig. They hit the table and bounce off, this time at different wavelengths – the unique shades of light and dark brown that indicate this table is made from varnished wood. A tiny portion of these photons get refracted through the lenses of my eyes, and end their journey on my retinas, where they cause a message to shoot up my optic nerve and jangle millions of neurons and axons.

I do more than register that photons of a particular type have entered my visual system – I understand what I’m seeing. These photons, a tiny percent of a tiny percent of a tiny percent of the light exploding off the Sun every second – these particles whose journey was, to every possible means of understanding it, arbitrary – allow me to move around my house, spread out the paper, and wake up to the world.

This kind of narrative is not always at the front of my mind, but it is almost always at the back. It is why I began The Quantum List Project. Physics is everywhere. It has power and beauty. To call it massively useful would be an understatement.

In Virtual Dublin, noone can hear you scream in frustration.

Dear Friends,

I woke up in Dublin. I didn’t know how I got there. I was wearing a space suit.

As movie premises go, this would probably do for The Hangover Part VI. But this wasn’t the movies. This was the end of a long and frustrating attempt to visit Moonworld, a NASA-sponsored simulation in Second Life. I began this venture weeks ago, before I posted my first entry in the Virtual World Postcard Project.

Relevant facts about me: I have an enthusiasm for space travel more suitable to someone 30 years my junior. I’m also a huge fan of NASA’s public outreach programs. (I treasure the cookie cutters I picked up from the NASA booth at the last American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting: each one is shaped like a different famous telescope. Magnifilicious!) A virtual-world lunar simulator is right in my strike zone.

The first few times I visited, it was unfortunately during a full moon – other SLers filled all the mission slots and I wasn’t permitted to leave the avatar holding pen. Fair enough – can’t begrudge other lunar lovers. Plus, the instructions in the waiting area were daunting.

It was as though I had wandered into some sort of bemusement park.

Ultimately, Second Life redirected me to a website where I registered and received a mission code. (I believe the mission was to collect rocks, but even this was unclear.) This website also recommended adjusting my “sky settings” by installing the “Lunar Morning Theme” This is a 7 step process, step one of which reads, “On the SL viewer menu, select World, Environment Settings, then Environment Editor. (In SL viewer version 2.0 and later, you will find the Environment Editor by selecting World in the menu and then Sun)”

More relevant facts about me: I worked for years as a computer systems technician for newspaper and magazine companies. I wrote tech columns for the Montreal Gazette and cbc.ca. I was networking computers in my own home before networking computers in your own home was cool.

Point being: I’m no slouch in the computer department  – complex settings don’t generally flummox me.

I was flummoxed. Maybe there had been an SL client software upgrade, maybe it was a Mac vs. PC thing, or maybe it was some sort of dark joke, but NASA’s instructions bore only a passing resemblance to the actual software controls. (Made me feel better about never having become an astronaut.)

Things went from complicated to alienating. NASA and SL also wanted me to adjust my “water settings.” The menu options for water settings in the SL software client are:

Default
Glassy
Murky
Pond
Snake!!
Second Plague
Valdez

I just wanted to visit the moon simulator. Why was I contemplating what it might mean to adjust my water settings to “Valdez?” It’s hard not to feel unwelcome when the software seems to be snickering at you.

I persevered. The simulator demanded my avatar put on a jumpsuit. This came in more than a dozen components – shoes, pants, shirt, gloves, etc. – each of which had to be downloaded and donned. Then I had to do it all again with a spacesuit – even more pieces with the backpack, helmet, etc. I only have a regular computer, not a video-card enhanced, fibre-optic connected gaming machine. All of these downloads were painfully slow.

Finally, finally, finally, I was ready to go. The lunar module moved down to the surface. I think a door opened. Then, somehow my avatar got jammed in a corner, wedged between two walls. I couldn’t walk out, I couldn’t teleport out. I was just stuck.

Realizing that I might well lose all of my hard work, but facing no other choice, I logged off and logged on again. Still stuck.

Tried again the next day. Still stuck.

Waited a couple of days and logged on again. This time, somehow I was back in Dublin, my homebase. Not only was I still wearing the spacesuit, though, but somehow my avatar was still experiencing lunar gravity. I bounced in slow motion through the streets of Dublin like Neil Armstrong bounding across the lunar surface.

What is the point of this story? I want to get to know Second Life. I want to understand and even like Second Life. But Second Life seems to keep sending me messages that it isn’t interested in my participation. Is this just the reality? Am I crazy to think that virtual worlds like this one will one day have broad appeal and be as ubiquitous as Facebook. (I assure you that even if you find Facebook alienating and confusing, it’s nothing compared to Second Life.)

Maybe Linden Labs is perfectly happy to leave its virtual world in the hands of dedicated designers, programmers and others who are willing to make the huge investment in time and technology necessary to get something back. Maybe people like me don’t really matter to the business model – or don’t matter yet – and that’s why there is no apparent effort to make the interface welcoming or intuitive.

It’s well possible that SL mavens will read this story as an indicator that I am using my own ignorance as justification for petulance. I continue to work at it, though – my curiosity still drives me.

Perhaps, one day soon, I will master this technology, and then, straight to the moon simulator.

As a teen, I devoured chemistry and (especially) physics like a fiend – I had no doubt then that I would one day be a scientist. A double PhD in astrophysics and mathematics, I told people when they asked.

Then one year, I had a science teacher who had no specialization in science – she taught the required curriculum, but could not (I was sure) go beyond it. I was steamed. I challenged her continually in class. I’d hammer her with questions like, “Why are blue things blue?” and never be satisfied with her answers. I was not charming.

Things came to a head the day she told the class that glass was a solid, not a liquid.

“O-ho!” I thought. “She is so wrong.” I debated with her to the point where everyone started to get uncomfortable. The next day, I brought a book from home that stated that glass was a very, very thick liquid, which explains why old glass panes have ripples and seems to be thicker at the bottom than the top.

I won. She cried.

Two things about this story: First, don’t make your teachers cry. It’s mean and rude, and benefits nobody. I regret my behavior.

Second, I was wrong! Window glass is, in fact, an “amorphous solid,” not a liquid at all. Amorphous solids have a more ambiguous molecular structure than “traditional” solids. For instance, most solids will liquify at a certain temperature – ice melts into water, a solid cylinder of candle wax becomes a puddle. Amorphous solids don’t have a specific melting point, but just ease from solid to liquid and back their temperature changes. They blur the dividing lines between phases.

Amorphous solids are appealing, because they make the structure of the world more complicated. I was originally taught that matter existed in three phases only – solid, liquid and gas. Then someone threw plasma as a fourth amigo. Then I started hearing about Bose-Einstein condensates, superfluids, “mesophases” and “polymorphic phases.” It turns out the same molecule types can be configured in dozens of ways, each with its own properties and characteristics.

When a physics problem turns out to have nuance and ambiguity (which almost always happens) it’s difficult not to turn it into metaphor. For instance, I didn’t end up becoming a scientist. Neither, though, did I give up on a life of science. I became a science journalist, which, if you do it right, makes you kind of an amorphous scientist.

In a laboratory or on campus, I always feel a thrill of belonging. Temperamentally, intellectually, I feel at home. I’m among people who are asking the questions I’ve always wanted answered (like “Why are blue things blue?”)

When I’m in a newsroom, I get a different kind of rush that comes from being around people dedicated to storytelling and sharing information. In a very different way, I feel at home here too. It’s at the nexus of these two worlds where things get complicated and interesting.

It took me many years to find career equilibrium between science and storytelling. I’ve been at it a long time now, though, and I think I can safely say that for me, this state of existence is much more than just a phase.

[A note on this post: When I write about my past, I have a tendency that can generously be described as "remembering things in a way that makes them a better story." Caveat emptor.]

I got this cup at The Gabardine, a Toronto bistro with a grilled cheese sandwich whose deliciousness I think about for days after it’s gone. I see a woodpecker drilling into an ancient tree. The tree has a gnarled face showing a mix of wisdom and chagrin. (I was dining alone, so I had some time to stare at my cup.)

Blotte 2

This one was sent to me by journalist and all-around smart, funny person Kathy Vey. To me, it looks like an insect leg placed under a microscope. Fuzzy and creepy. And yet, it’s coffee, so it’s still appealing.

Blotte 3

This one looks like the moon reflected in rippling water near some sort of funky marina, all viewed from above. It comes from a cafe called Crema, whose coffee has a nice little hint of caramelization – not too rich, but just enough to set it apart from the norm. Crema has become my destination of choice when I want someone else to pull my espresso. (Bonus trivia: This yummy-looking drink is actually a flatte! Don’t you just want to go order one now?)

Blotte 4

Two words: Starship Enterprise.

Once again, for your convenience, here are thumbnails of this week’s blottes. As always, look deep into these cups, say what you see in the comments, and feel free to send me your own blotte creations.