my students

Here are Sabrine (left) and Christine (right), my two Science Chicks, sitting on a bench outside of Bonefish Grill in Centreville, Virginia, while we waited for Christine's mother to come pick her daughter up:


Sabrine's off to MIT, and Christine, if she tries very, very hard, might be off to TJHSST, our local "magnet" school, and one of the top science/tech high schools in the country.

Dinner at Bonefish Grill was quite good, despite the lack of decent air conditioning. All three of us ate fish: baked salmon for me, grilled trout for Sabrine, and grilled tilapia for Christine. We talked a bit about what sort of interaction there had been between Christine and Sabrine in my absence; I was surprised to find out that tonight was the first night that Christine and Sabrine had met face-to-face. I had originally paired these two young ladies together in the hopes of kick-starting Christine's drive to study science—a requisite for studying at TJ.

During dinner, Sabrine played the Big Sis and peppered Christine with some science-related questions, asking about Christine's areas of interest (genetics and computer programming) and talking about her own areas of interest (biology, prosthetics, etc.). We also talked about what lay ahead for Sabrine as she contemplated MIT. Sabrine told me about MIT's Byzantine dorm-assignment system, which involves a series of lotteries. She also had more immediate concerns: her opera recital on Saturday, and her upcoming speech to her graduating class as its valedictorian (literally "goodbye-sayer" in Latin; vale = goodbye, and dicere = to say/tell). I have no worries for Sabrine's future; she's got a strong personality and is blessed with drive and direction. Good for her. I joked that I expected to be reading some of her published work in the years ahead.

Dessert was a massive brownie shared by the girls, while I went for my usual crème brûlée. Sabrine couldn't understand how anyone could possibly like crème brûlée; I explained my love of the textural contrast. We talked a bit about French food; Sabrine, who had been to France, wasn't all that impressed with French haute cuisine; a lot of it came off as flavorless and pretentious to her, although she enjoyed French onion soup. I'm not a fan of French onion soup, but I agreed with Sabrine in principle; my own experience with good, rib-sticking French cooking had come courtesy of my time with my buddy Dominique's family in Carquefou. Maman and Papa were proud of their jardin potager, from which came most, or all, of the vegetables that ended up on our dinner table. Their cuisine wasn't anything like hoity-toity haute cuisine; it was simple, unadorned, unpretentious, and delicious.

Eventually, conversation slowed to a halt, at which point the girls whipped out their cell phones. We adjourned to wait outside for Christine's mom; while we waited, I took the above picture, which was a second attempt: the first pic mortified Sabrine, who complained that her bangs were all over the place, thus necessitating a re-take. Christine's mom showed up; Christine's little sister hid in the back of Mom's car; I waved at her and she waved back, an amiable shadow. Christine gave me a $15 Starbucks gift card; she and I had actually met earlier at the Starbucks about an hour before our appointed 6:30PM rendezvous: Christine's sister had been engaged in a piano lesson, so Christine and her mom had nothing to do but retreat to Starbucks to get out of the 90-plus-degree heat.

Parting was sweet sorrow: I knew that the three of us would never have the opportunity to meet like this again. Sabrine will be off to MIT before we know it; Christine will spend her summer doing whatever it is that little Christines do; and if I get my dream job at a Korean university, I'll be gone from my current job by the end of the summer.

But that's life, right? Every present moment is a window into the future, a future with many branching possibilities. It felt good to see both Sabrine and Christine today—Sabrine on the cusp of moving to the much larger world of MIT and a Bostonian life, Christine perhaps on the verge of entering a prestigious magnet school. I'm older, forty-three years old, so my own horizon has narrowed and my own set of possibilities is no longer quite so limitless, but even I stare hopefully into my own future.


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do you have free will?

Sam Harris, speaking at Cal Tech, thinks you don't.

Harris's points seem almost to be grounded in Indian philosophy:

• Consciousness is the one thing that can't be illusory.
• The self, meanwhile, is an illusion.*
• Decisions, being based on previous states of affairs that include both previous decisions and random factors, cannot be parsed in such a way as to reveal free will at any point in the decision-making process.

There's more going on in this talk-- much more. If you find yourself with about 80 minutes to spare, I highly recommend watching Harris's spiel and the brief Q&A period that follows it.

My own sense that I have free will is both strong and undeniable, but Harris makes a pretty good case for the idea that a combination of deterministic and random factors can never be a recipe for freedom in the cherished philosophical sense, i.e., that I am somehow the "author" (Harris's term) of my actions. I wish he'd had more time to tease out the moral implications of this way of thinking. The talk heads, somewhat fuzzily, in the direction of emphasizing compassion and understanding-- especially regarding violent criminals-- as core values in this new, post-libertarian ethos, but Harris's spiel does little to unpack these concepts.

I approach these ideas with caution, partly because I'm extremely wary of attempts at social engineering. When people propose new moral paradigms, I feel as if I'm witnessing a sort of top-down attempt at restructuring human interaction. Of course, Harris isn't seriously proposing a thorough, comprehensive reparadigming; the lack of detail in his talk is enough to make that clear. But as a prominent author and respected neuroscientist, he's in a position to influence many people, and his facility for accessible explanations means he can insert his ideas into the pop-cultural nomos with ease. There is indeed a top-down dynamic at work here, and it's worrisome.

All of this has made me want to read more Herbert Fingarette. Fingarette has done a lot of work in the areas of freedom and responsibility, and I think he comes down on the side of moral agency: there is some sense in which we are morally responsible for what we do. He talks about two senses of the word "responsibility": (1) being the locus of action, and (2) being the locus of moral agency. In the first sense, being responsible means being the locus of a given action. In the second sense, it refers to being an accountable moral agent. The first sense applies when we think of, say, a bear attacking someone: no one seriously attributes malice to the bear. The second sense is more in line with how we approach premeditated murder: the killer is not only the enactor of the murder; he is also someone who can be held accountable for having done wrong.

Harris's way of thinking detracts nothing from sense (1), but it certainly complicates our evaluation of sense (2). I may watch this talk again soon. If I do, I'll likely have more to say on the matter.

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*This is somewhat unfortunately phrased, since the term "illusion" requires a self that grounds the perspective from which illusions can be perceived. Harris might have done better to say that the self doesn't exist.


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asking the cosmic questions

The Atlantic asks: What Happened Before the Big Bang?

Excerpt:

This question of accounting for what we call the "big bang state" -- the search for a physical explanation of it -- is probably the most important question within the philosophy of cosmology, and there are a couple different lines of thought about it. One that's becoming more and more prevalent in the physics community is the idea that the big bang state itself arose out of some previous condition, and that therefore there might be an explanation of it in terms of the previously existing dynamics by which it came about. There are other ideas, for instance that maybe there might be special sorts of laws, or special sorts of explanatory principles, that would apply uniquely to the initial state of the universe.

One common strategy for thinking about this is to suggest that what we used to call the whole universe is just a small part of everything there is, and that we live in a kind of bubble universe, a small region of something much larger. And the beginning of this region, what we call the big bang, came about by some physical process, from something before it, and that we happen to find ourselves in this region because this is a region that can support life. The idea being that there are lots of these bubble universes, maybe an infinite number of bubble universes, all very different from one another. Part of the explanation of what's called the anthropic principle says, "Well now, if that's the case, we as living beings will certainly find ourselves in one of those bubbles that happens to support living beings." That gives you a kind of account for why the universe we see around us has certain properties.

Fascinating and delightful. Be sure to read the whole thing.


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this is too cool for words

Here's an article (with video) about a superhydrophobic coating. Do be sure to watch that video-- it's amazing, especially when the guy pours chocolate syrup on a treated shoe.

Imagine the stuff you could waterproof with that product! Imagine the ridiculous new rain gear you could create-- or the (temporary) kitchenware, like bowls, made out of materials that you'd normally never use as bowls!

This is also a good opportunity to learn some vocab: Superhydrophobic breaks down to the roots super (Latin super, exceeding/above the norm), hydro (Greek hydros, water), and phobia (Greek phobos, fear or dread). Something that's superhydrophobic, then, is abnormally "afraid" of water. Obviously, in science, inanimate or abiotic objects aren't described as being literally fearful; the idea, in this case, is that a hydrophobic surface will repel any water that comes in contact with it. According to the video, superhydrophobic materials don't merely resist water: they shoot water away from themselves.

(Soft contact lenses, meanwhile, are described as hydrophilic. The Greek philia means "love.")


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