"History is just people doing things"

THE ABQ CORRESPONDENT

ISSN 1087-2302 Online Edition Number 148......May 2008
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DOING LUNCH
Last month’s commentary on using microorganisms to produce aspirin and nanotubes commercially in fermentation processes prompted a note from Kate McManus pointing to the recent announcement that hundreds of strains of bacteria in the wild happily eat natural and artificially produced antibiotics as a regular part of their diet. This comes as an unsettling surprise to many people (Congress will presumably legislate against such behavior by the bugs), but not to anybody who has tried to make living things behave in a certain way. Iben Browning used to point out that any material containing energy is likely to become food for microorganisms, which, on discovering such stuff, shout “Whoopee, a new niche for us!” and begin to chow down vigorously. One of his examples of an attractive material to eat was polyvinyl chloride...of which pipes and electrical insulation are made. As long ago as the 1960s, a strain of pseudomonas (if memory serves) was found to be munching on pvc. Those bugs haven’t yet chewed through the pipes, or started fires by baring wires, as far as we know, but be patient; the bugs are certainly patient. Similarly, some people are now greatly distressed to hear that enormous masses of plastic bags, bottles, and other detritus are rotating in the oceans, forming artificial Sargasso Seas of a new sort. The news is certainly unwelcome, because it represents change, and any change, human-produced or natural, is considered immoral. The dreadful masses of stuff do not threaten the eradication of life, of course; they are simply new niches in which living things from micro to macro will thrive in new ways. The critters with new attitudes that arise in this new environment may or may not be attractive and useful to us, but we shall see. Patience, patience. By the way, we commented that we didn’t know what the nanotube-excreting bugs eat. Joel Fentin suggests Coors Lite. Well, maybe. The Lord moves in strange ways, his wonders to perform.

PUBLIC ART
Good old Edmund Scientific is offering handsome Lichtenberg Figures in its current catalog, calling to mind Bob Leeman’s specialty in the fifties and sixties when he was a tech working on high energy accelerators at the Lawrence Radiation Lab (LRL)in Berkeley, the Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory (NRDL) at San Francisco’s Hunter’s Point, then at the Stanford Linear AcceleratorCenter (SLAC). He was much bemused that some of his paid time, thus the taxpayer’s money, went into production of objects of art. The activity was informal, but the demand was constant, and Bob was the resident expert in his time at the various labs. The scenario was this: somebody would place blocks of clear plastic right in the beam of the accelerator. The blocks I saw ranged in size from about 2x2x2 inches to 3x8x12 inches. They’d build up enormous static charges as the electrons or protons poured into them. Then someone, usually Bob, would carry them carefully to a workbench, and put them down on a non-conducting surface. A wire was attached firmly to ground next to the bench. The other end of the wire was wrapped around a large nail with a good, sharp tip. Picking up the nail very cautiously with a rag to insulate him from it, Bob placed the tip of the nail just above a surface of the plastic block, not quite in contact, and gave the nail a sharp tap with a small hammer. As the nail made contact with the block, all those extra particles in it eagerly rushed toward ground, seeking to balance the block’s charge with that of the earth. The effect was spectacular, creating “frozen lightning” in many forms, often with a beautiful filigree of fibers etched inside the block, all leading to the point where the nail made its small contact. More than once, a beautiful filigree of fibers was created inside Bob’s hand as the insulating rag slipped, and the lightning jumped through him. He’d stagger back from the bench, groaning, while others rushed to see what lovely object he’d created. The blocks made stunningly handsome paperweights or decorations for the shelves of Important People in the labs. Of course, every visiting dignitary, especially congressional representatives who voted appropriations for the labs, admired these objets d’art, and many were presented with examples. Wonderful. At least these things were tangible products, unlike the graphs and columns of figures that were the more important, and less fetching real products of the labs. I never knew they were called Lichtenberg Figures. I don't know if Bob knew that.

NELS MUSES
Item:
Much was made recently of a report that SWORDS “robots,” small, tracked vehicles carrying light machine guns, had been yanked from service in Iraq after one or more had turned their weapons toward their own troops. Worriers shared their visions of out-of-control creatures avenging themselves on their masters in a robot rebellion. Well, the report was incorrect, the things are apparently still in use, and there were no incidents of misdirected fire...though some broken connections raised reliability concerns that have been addressed. What’s most interesting is a military spokesman’s clear, firm statement that these are not autonomous critters, making up their own minds about what to shoot at, but remotely controlled devices operated by people on site. This just highlights again our silly habit of calling remotely controlled systems “robots.” There are no real robots. There will be, but we’re not there yet, fellers. The fun is yet to come.

Item:
Steven Sester reports from the wilds of Illinois that he was recently “flipped sideways off the road by a semi. I am fine, but National will not be renting the car again any day soon. It turns out that the driver of the car ahead of the semi was leaning over the steering wheel and maneuvering it with the bottom of his arms while using his thumbs to play on his PlayStation. He said he must have been distracted, and accidentally tapped a pedal that turned the cruise control off. He didn't notice he was slowing rapidly on front of a big truck. There is a guy in my hood who plays his games while riding a unicycle. The bus I was riding the other day missed by about an inch a student in crosswalk who was texting. Once she got the iPod buds out of her ears so she could hear the horn, the student was surprised to see the light had turned red even as she stepped into traffic. Last year a grad student riding his bike was taken out by a young women downloading ringtones while driving.” Mr. Sester derives hope from these events. “If we encourage more such distractions we could do a lot to thin the population and finally answer the question as to why we still have opposable thumbs. In fairness, there are useful applications for texting. In Finland you need to text message to open the locks on public restrooms now.” It’s nice to have somebody looking after the philosophical aspects of this for us.
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ITEM FROM THE PAST
The government of Australia has recently apologized
formally to the aboriginal people who were displaced,
dominated, and scorned by incoming Europeans...and
later, Asians, Africans, Americans, and others attracted
or sent down under. The apology recalls this item from
December 2000.

THE GOOD OLD DAYS
Much commentary during Olympics coverage from Sydney dwelt on the awkward relationship between the aboriginal Australian people and the folks who have overwhelmed them. Amid the handwringing, one of the most-recently-living-away- from-civilization aboriginal gents commented wistfully that he missed the old tribal life...but he was rather glad to be free of the power of the shamans who could have him put to death for failure to conform with their views of what was proper. Bingo! There’s a key consideration: if you want to preserve the ancient cultures, can you succeed by preserving only the non-lethal parts? If people speak the old languages, eat the same foods, and sing the same songs...are you preserving the culture? The situation is not without embarrassing parallels here in New Mexico. Indeed, Southwest Airlines just decorated one of its 737s with an attractive big Zia symbol only after striking a monetary arrangement with the Zia Pueblo authorities, who insist that it’s exclusively theirs by tradition. Well no, the symbol isn’t copyrighted, and yes, it’s on the state flag and has been used in commercial logos, on letterheads, in jewelry, on clothes, cakes, license plates, and coffee cups, so often and so long that it’s virtually a generic symbol of the region. (One hears gossip that the Zia Pueblo helped the Spanish conquerors re-take the territory after the Pueblo Revolt in the late 1600's, and their symbol floating over all the state buildings is figuratively rubbing salt into the wounds of their numerous fellows here.) The airline’s gesture does not come without complications. Dr. Sophie Aberle (a distinguished figure with Conant, Bronk, and others on the National Science Board that created the National Science Foundation) once remarked to me that “preservation of the Indian cultures” became moot as soon as the tribal caciques lost their power to have people executed, which wasn’t really that long ago. That fundamental change destroyed the traditional structure of those societies. What’s left? We have no answers; merely point out the dilemma. Maybe cell phones and satellite TV will solve everything by blotting out all that has traditionally seemed important.

In our enthusiasm for making the world a better place
by initiating action to restore what we perceive as the
proper way of things, it’s difficult not to take sides
arbitrarily. Shall we protect the mangrove trees from
marine snails that are sucking the life out of them,
or support the snails that are bravely resisting the
depredations of the invading mangroves? Shall we
side with the polar bears whose territory is increasingly
being dominated by grizzlies, or encourage the long-
harassed grizzlies in their expansion to welcome new
habitats? ...and so on. Should life-or-death authority be
restored to the caciques and shamans? Does this tie go
with this suit? Simplicity does not seem to be a feature
of life.

Ancient Silver Birds is a warm recollection of the feeder airline business in the 1950's, when the DC3 was Queen of the Skies...written, narrated, and...well, lived...by Nels Winkless, with music and dogs by Jeff Winkless. Entertaining tales of a time fifty years gone by. Tailspin Tommy Harnish said “I expected a bunch of rowdy, thigh-slapping pilot stories, but this is Garrison Keillor material... great.” Now, instead of just sending off for the CD, you can download the whole album in MP3 format...and the distributor, CD Baby, may blessings on them fall, will send along a JPEG of the album cover and files of all the album notes. And the price (since we don’t have to copy, print, wrap, ship, and all that) is only $9.95 Go to www.cdbaby.com/winkless to look, listen, and order.