Author Archives: Larry Franz

Getting Down to the Truly Nitty Gritty

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I live near one of the research centers that used to be known as Bell Labs, the place where scientists found evidence of the Big Bang; invented the transistor and the laser; and developed the UNIX operating system and C programming language. A friend once suggested that I try to get a job there, since they would always need janitors.

Nevertheless, even with my weak qualifications, I enjoy reading about theoretical physics. I didn’t understand much of the article below, but it’s good to know that physicists are trying to understand where space and time come from. You might think space and time are fundamental, but there appears to be more to the story.

If you follow the link to the article, you can click on this diagram and make it bigger (spatially, not temporally).

quantum-gravity-nature-online

http://www.nature.com/news/theoretical-physics-the-origins-of-space-and-time-1.13613

Little Hondas, the Record Business, Summer Fun and Advertising

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The Beach Boys recorded “Little Honda” in April 1964, when the Beatles occupied positions 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 on Billboard’s Hot 100 singles chart (something nobody else has ever done). Written by Brian Wilson and Mike Love, “Little Honda” was released on the Beach Boys’ All Summer Long album in the summer of ’64.

Gary Usher (who had earlier written “In My Room” and “409” with Brian Wilson) heard the album and decided to include “Little Honda” on an album of car songs, mostly written by him and Roger Christian (who had written “Don’t Worry Baby” and “Little Deuce Coupe” with Brian Wilson).

Usher hired some studio musicians and singers to make the album, although it was supposedly recorded by the Hondells, a group that didn’t exist yet. Usher made up a story for the album cover explaining how the fictional Hondells had gotten together. In order to release “Little Honda” as a single, however, he needed a group to tour and promote the record, so four young men, one of whom had sung backing vocals on the song, became the real-life Hondells.

“Little Honda” was the only hit record the Hondells ever had, rising to #9 on the Billboard chart. Brian Wilson and the other Beach Boys went on to other things.

Here’s the Beach Boys’ version of “Little Honda”. I think that’s the late Dennis Wilson yelling “Go!” at the beginning. (From the advertising pictures in the video, it appears that young women weren’t supposed to drive Hondas in 1964, although they were encouraged to have fun and hang on tight.)

In 1997, the “alternative” rock band Yo La Tengo released their own “Little Honda” on their I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One album. It’s unlikely that anyone in Yo La Tengo ever had fun riding a Honda, but it’s a cool, rather disturbing version of the song.

Responding to the Use of Chemical Weapons (3rd Edition)

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Getting killed or maimed by a chemical weapon isn’t necessarily worse than being killed or maimed by a bullet or high explosive. Being aware of their terrible effects, however, almost all countries have agreed not to use chemical weapons. And despite the fact that we’ve been lied to before by our political leaders (for example, regarding the Gulf of Tonkin incident and Iraq’s weapons program), it seems likely that President Obama is telling the truth and correctly interpreting the evidence that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons — to devastating effect.

Before the President spoke yesterday, I would have bet that he was going to tell the Navy to launch cruise missiles against targets in Syria. Other presidents have made similar decisions, without Congressional approval and certainly without a declaration of war. That can be the right thing for a President to do in extraordinary circumstances. Yet I was hoping that Obama would wait for the report of the U.N. inspectors and also seek approval from Congress. If it’s clear that the Syrian government launched this attack, there should be a response, but that response doesn’t need to be immediate. It should also be a response supported by Congress, since we’re supposed to be a democracy.

Now there will be a debate in Congress. as well as a continuing debate in the media. We’ll hear many good reasons why the United States shouldn’t do anything, and some very good reasons for doing something. Maybe this will be one of those cases in which the “wisdom of crowds” will result in a good decision, even an improvement on what the President wants to do. Unfortunately, Congress, especially this Congress, rarely does anything wise.

This is the third time I’ve written this post, after deleting it twice. There is a strong moral case for doing something to stop the Syrian government and other governments from using chemical weapons, even though that may be a difficult thing to do and there will be unforeseeable consequences. We can’t know yet whether those possible consequences tip the scale toward doing nothing. 

The truth is that I don’t know what I’d do if I were Obama or a member of Congress. What’s happening in Syria (and Egypt, Iraq, etc.) may be so sick and so irrational that there is nothing for the rest of us to do but watch, hoping that these people will get tired of hating and killing each other or that someone will eventually exert control over the situation. One of those things might happen, probably after we’re dead and gone.

A Murder of Quality by John le Carré

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George Smiley appears again in John le Carré’s second novel. This time he does a favor for an old friend and travels to a private school that sounds like Eton. The wife of a faculty member has written a letter stating that her husband plans to kill her. By the time Smiley arrives, she’s already dead. It’s not an espionage story, just a typical English murder mystery.

A Murder of Quality is worth reading for le Carre’s excellent prose and for his depiction of the mostly upper-class inhabitants of the school. My favorite part, however, was being able to spend time with the wonderful character of George Smiley. Whenever he spoke, I could almost hear the voice of Alec Guinness. 

Karl Marx: His Life and Environment by Isaiah Berlin

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Karl Marx was a monumental figure. I knew that he spent years doing research in the library of the British Museum and wrote several dense volumes, as well as the Communist Manifesto. I didn’t realize that he was personally involved in left-wing politics. He was the leading revolutionary of his time, moving from country to country, attending meetings, writing letters, advising other communists and socialists throughout Europe, Russia and even the United States (he was even a regular contributor to a New York newspaper).

This is the 4th edition of Isaiah Berlin’s well-written biography of Marx, first published in 1939. Berlin, the famous British philosopher and historian of ideas, presents Marx as a brilliant thinker but a difficult person who devoted his life to bringing about the downfall of capitalism.

What is especially striking is that Marx strongly believed in gathering mountains of evidence in support of his political and economic theories. In that regard, he was a social scientist and an empiricist. Yet he labored in support of an idealistic vision of a future after capitalism that seems terribly unrealistic.

It was conceivable that the proletariat would rise up against the capitalists and the bourgeoisie, especially if a group of revolutionaries could seize power, as they surprisingly did in Russia (of all places). But it was a tremendous leap to think that the state would eventually wither away and the workers would create a functioning communist society. “From each according to his ability; to each according to his need” is an ideal that sounds rational and even practical, but Marx doesn’t seem to have given enough thought to how such an ideal would be implemented. At least, Berlin never gives the impression that Marx spent much time thinking about the communist future. He was much too busy trying to overcome the capitalist present.