Dibs » Science

Before It Washes Up on the Beach

Anneli Rufus — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 22:53:48 +0000

Beachcombing feels romantic and random. But actual science applies to beachcombing, as it does to nearly everything. In his new book Flotsametrics: How One Man’s Obsession with Runaway Sneakers and Rubber Ducks Revolutionized Ocean Science, oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer and maritime writer Eric Scigliano detail Ebbesmeyer’s research on currents and “gyres,” the circular patterns that objects follow in water as they travel as many as several thousand miles. Ebbesmeyer hosts “Flotsam Hour,” a program on Puget Sound’s public-radio station, KUOW-FM.

“It all began with sneakers,” we read in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. “A cargo ship bound from South Korea to Los Angeles hit a storm in May 1990, losing 78,932 Nike shoes, which proved to be excellent ocean-going travelers. Using a program called the Ocean Surface Current Simulator, the author and colleague Jim Ingraham were able to predict where and when the sneakers would wash up with remarkable accuracy. They repeated the trick with 28,800 bathtub toys lost in a storm in the North Pacific in 1992.”

Ebbesmeyer has also tracked eight of the world’s notorious “garbage islands,” aka oceanic trash heaps, “which together cover an area more than twice the size of the United States. He reports on a spot in Hawaii dubbed ‘Junk Beach,’ where there is so much plastic that the ‘sand’ is now made of it.” Eeew! Talk about a crime against nature.

Sixty Books About Bovines

Anneli Rufus — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 23:05:15 +0000

I’ve always admired authors who have specialties: they’re experts; they’re the go-to guys and gals on their given subjects, and they devote their lives to studying, experiencing, and writing about this one little facet of the world. New Zealand veterinarian Graham Meadows is one of those. He has co-authored more than sixty books for children and several for adults. His topic? All things bovine. His latest work, the Pocket Guide to Cattle Breeds of New Zealand, includes thousands of details about those familiar four-legged creatures, including the following: Cows are not color-blind. “They can recognise different people by their clothing or shape, they can count, and can associate more than one person or a person appearing in, say, green overalls with the stress of forced handling or injection,” we learn in the Taranaki Daily News. “Tame cattle really do enjoy being stroked and patted by the people they know well, and that’s because cattle have sensitive skin.” Who knew?!

UNDERWATER TO GET OUT OF THE RAIN, by Trevor Norton (Da Capo, $25; release date June 1, 2006)

Anneli Rufus — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 15:11:04 +0000

Defying all apparent indicators of dorkdom — the author is a middle-aged professor; the book’s title is “A Love Affair with the Sea” — this memoir by a British marine biologist recounting his research and adventures around the world is limned with joltingly gorgeous writing and hilarious observations that will leave you flopping and panting like — well, like a grounded ocean creature: “I saw … a blur swilling below me, and a fuzzy cloud as a flatfish fled…. Then two seaweeds closed around my neck with the soft hands of a strangler.” Vivid descriptions mix with light science and personal memory: Norton was a failing student, the worst in his school, until that first adolescent dip under the waves gave him a reason to care. Talk about perfect beach reading!

Grade: A

INTELLIGENT THOUGHT: Science Versus the Intelligent Design Movement, edited by John Brockman (Vintage, $14; release date May 9, 2006)

Anneli Rufus — Wed, 17 May 2006 20:22:57 +0000

The “debate” (and even that term is overly kind) between evolution and the repackaged creationism known as “intelligent design” has been played out on local school boards and in the editorial offices of textbook publishers across the country for almost a decade now. (And for over a century before that under different euphemisms as well.) But there is no debate in the scientific community, where 100% of rational scientists acknowledge evolution as the only viable theory to explain the development of life. Yet this certainty in the halls of academe seems to have little effect on the rough-and-tumble playground of public discourse, where religious fundamentalists and decision-makers with agendas have succeeded in reframing the dispute as a battle of competing ideas. Which of course it isn’t — it’s the battle of an idea versus the absence of an idea. Up until now, the scientific world has purposely refrained from even addressing the absurd claims of the “intelligent design” movement, refusing to grant them legitimacy by so doing. But the strategy has backfired: with no one fighting back, the IDers have actually managed to get evolution out of some schools and textbooks.

Frustrated, and mystified by the eternal lure of this seemingly baseless anti-knowledge movement, the scientific world has decided to take the gloves off and punch back. Hard. This volume of sixteen new, previously unpublished essays by leading scientists utterly demolishes any credibility that “intelligent design” ever imagined it had. With a roster of leading lights like Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker, Lee Smolin, Tim White and a host of other world-class thinkers, Intelligent Thought tackles every aspect of the conflict, from the scientific evidence to the social rationale for trying to promote ignorance. Of course, no one in the ID movement will ever read this book, as they studiously avoid any stimuli that might upset their world view, but it stands alone as an admirable rebuttal of the obfuscatory claims of creationism.

Grade: A

STALKING THE RIEMANN HYPOTHESIS, by Dan Rockmore (Vintage, $14.95; release date May, 2006)

Anneli Rufus — Sun, 14 May 2006 17:14:35 +0000

This new paperback edition of Rockmore’s 2005 hardcover original re-introduces mathe-fanatics to the dizzying world of Bernhard Riemann, the genius behind the legendary Riemann Hypothesis. More famous to the general public as the man who developed the multi-dimensional geometry that opened the door to Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, Riemann also hypothesized a technique for predicting the occurrence of prime numbers. So — what’s the big deal? Some theorists feel that prime numbers — those unique, frustrating amounts like 17 and 31 which can’t be divided by anything else — are the key to everything in the known universe. The problem is that prime numbers seem to occur randomly, and no one has ever figured out a way to reliably predict which numbers will be prime, aside from laboriously calculating them out one by one. That is, until Reimann, who published his hypothesis in 1859 — the same year that Darwin published The Origin of Species. And just like with the Origin, lesser scientists have been trying to prove it ever since. But unlike evolution, which even a young student can grasp, the Riemann Hypothesis is so esoteric, and so incomprehensible to the average amateur enthusiast, that it can barely even be described in simplified terms, much less spelled out explicitly. But Rockmore does an admirable job in trying to draw the general reader into the dizzying heights of number theory: along the way you’ll encounter harmonic frequencies, the complex plane, and the dreaded “zeta zeroes,” which are the source of the still unproved mystery of the Riemann Hypothesis. In essence, Reimann concocted a counter-intuitive mathematical formula that produces a series of answers that almost exactly matches the apparently random sequence of prime numbers. What has driven mathematicians to distraction ever since is that no one can figure out why, or how a regular equation can magically predict a random series. A million-dollar prize awaits anyone who can prove the Riemann Hypothesis, a prize that — even after 150 years — remains unclaimed.

Grade: A-

THE MÖBIUS STRIP, by Clifford Pickover (Thunder’s Mouth, $24.95; release date May 15, 2006)

Anneli Rufus — Thu, 11 May 2006 21:49:16 +0000

A Möbius Strip is more than just a parlor trick or childhood toy; it’s a revolutionary topological discovery that has had profound effects on science and cosmology. Invented by otherwise-obscure 19th-century German mathematician August Möbius, this bizarre one-sided and one-edged miracle has a seemingly infinite number of astounding attributes and holds deep ramifications for how we conceive our universe to be structured. Scientist and puzzle-maestro Pickover has assembled the definitive compilation of all things Möbius, from the mathematics behind the topology, to art, to brain-teasers, to Möbius strips in higher dimensions. Best of all, this handy little volume is lavishly illustrated with dozens of illuminating diagrams and photos, without which the whole concept would be simply too much to grasp. The book is peculiar in that it is not intended to be read straight through, but is rather a somewhat hodgepodge assemblage of trivia and anecdotes. Knowing full well that few readers would be sufficiently interested in this topic to plow through 200 pages about the history of German mathematics, Pickover instead consciously created a high-end bathroom book, meant to be browsed and flipped through whenever the fancy strikes. The gimmick works, and curious readers will find themselves grasping esoteric topological concepts even while they’re enjoying the ride.

Grade: A-