David Byrne & Neil deGrasse Tyson Explain the Importance of an Arts Education (and How It Strengthens Science & Civilization)

in Art, Creativity, Education, Science | September 23rd, 2016

Unless you’re a pol­i­cy geek or an edu­ca­tor, you may nev­er have heard of the “STEM vs. STEAM” debate. STEM, of course, stands for the for­mu­la of “sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, engi­neer­ing, and math­e­mat­ics” as a base­line for edu­ca­tion­al cur­ricu­lum. STEAM argues for the neces­si­ty of the arts, which in pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary edu­ca­tion have waxed and waned depend­ing on pre­vail­ing the­o­ry and, per­haps more impor­tant­ly, polit­i­cal will. Andrew Carnegie may have donat­ed hand­some­ly to high­er edu­ca­tion, but he frowned on the study of “dead lan­guages” and oth­er use­less pur­suits. Indus­tri­al­ist Richard Teller Crane opined in 1911 that no one with “a taste for lit­er­a­ture has the right to be hap­py” because “the only men enti­tled to hap­pi­ness… are those who are use­ful.”

It’s a long way from think­ing of poets as “the unac­knowl­edged leg­is­la­tors of the world,” as Per­cy Shel­ley wrote in his “Defence of Poet­ry” 90 years ear­li­er, but Shelley’s essay shows that even then the arts need­ed defend­ing. By the time we get to STEM think­ing, the arts have dis­ap­peared entire­ly from the con­ver­sa­tion, become an after­thought, as ven­ture cap­i­tal­ists, rather than wealthy indus­tri­al­ists, decide to trim them away from pub­lic pol­i­cy and pri­vate invest­ment. The sit­u­a­tion may be improv­ing, as more edu­ca­tors embrace STEAM, but “there’s ten­sion,” as Neil DeGrasse Tyson says in the excerpt above from his StarTalk inter­view show on Nat Geo. In the kinds of fund­ing crises most school dis­tricts find them­selves in, “school boards are won­der­ing, do we cut the art, do we keep the sci­ence?”

The choice is a false one, argues for­mer Talk­ing Heads front­man and some­times Cas­san­dra-like cul­tur­al the­o­rist David Byrne. “In order to real­ly suc­ceed in what­ev­er… math and the sci­ences and engi­neer­ing and things like that,” Byrne tells Tyson above, “you have to be able to think out­side the box, and do cre­ative prob­lem solv­ing… the cre­ative think­ing is in the arts. A cer­tain amount of arts edu­ca­tion…” will help you “suc­ceed more and bring more to the world… bring­ing dif­fer­ent worlds togeth­er has def­i­nite tan­gi­ble ben­e­fits. To kind of cut one, or sep­a­rate them, is to injure them and crip­ple them.”

The idea goes back to Aris­to­tle, and to the cre­ation of uni­ver­si­ties, when medieval thinkers tout­ed the Lib­er­al Arts—the Triv­i­um (gram­mar, rhetoric, and log­ic) and Quadriv­i­um (arith­metic, geom­e­try, music, and astronomy)—as mod­els for a bal­anced edu­ca­tion. Tyson agrees that the arts and sci­ences should not be sev­ered: “Sup­pose they did that back in Renais­sance Europe? What would Europe be with­out the sup­port and inter­est in art?” He goes even fur­ther, say­ing, “We mea­sure the suc­cess of a civ­i­liza­tion by how well they treat their cre­ative peo­ple.”

It’s a bold state­ment that emerges from a longer con­ver­sa­tion Tyson has with Byrne, which you can hear in the StarTalk Radio pod­cast above. Tyson is joined by co-host Maeve Hig­gins and neu­ro­sci­en­tist and con­cert pianist Dr. Móni­ca López-González—and lat­er by Pro­fes­sor David Cope, who taught a com­put­er to write music, and Bill Nye. Byrne makes his case for the equal val­ue of the arts and sci­ences with per­son­al exam­ples from his ear­ly years in grade school and art col­lege, and by build­ing con­cep­tu­al bridges between the two ways of think­ing. One theme he returns to is the inter­re­la­tion­ship between archi­tec­ture and music as an exam­ple of how art and engi­neer­ing co-evolve (a sub­ject on which he pre­vi­ous­ly deliv­ered a fas­ci­nat­ing TED talk).

You won’t find much debate here among the par­tic­i­pants. Every­one seems to read­i­ly agree with each oth­er, and I can’t say I’m sur­prised. Speak­ing anec­do­tal­ly, all of the sci­en­tists I know affirm the val­ue of the arts, and a high per­cent­age have a cre­ative avo­ca­tion. Like­wise, I’ve rarely met an artist who doesn’t val­ue sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy.  We find exam­ple after exam­ple of scientist-artists—from Albert Ein­stein to astro­physi­cist Stephon Alexan­der, who sees physics in Coltrane. The cen­tral ques­tion may not be whether artists and sci­en­tists can mutu­al­ly appre­ci­ate each other—they gen­er­al­ly already do—but whether school boards, politi­cians, vot­ers, and investors can see things their way.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Byrne: How Archi­tec­ture Helped Music Evolve

An Ani­mat­ed Neil deGrasse Tyson Gives an Elo­quent Defense of Sci­ence in 272 Words, the Same Length as The Get­tys­burg Address

The Secret Link Between Jazz and Physics: How Ein­stein & Coltrane Shared Impro­vi­sa­tion and Intu­ition in Com­mon

The Musi­cal Mind of Albert Ein­stein: Great Physi­cist, Ama­teur Vio­lin­ist and Devo­tee of Mozart

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Carl Sagan & the Dalai Lama Meet in 1991 and Discuss When Science Can Answer Big Questions Better Than Religion

in Religion, Science | September 14th, 2016

sagan-dalai-lama

Images via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

In a 1997 essay in Nat­ur­al His­to­ry, Stephen Jay Gould (in)famously called the realms of reli­gion and sci­ence “Nonover­lap­ping Mag­is­te­ria”—a phrase that acknowl­edges both endeav­ors as equal­ly pow­er­ful and impor­tant to human life. His the­o­ry entails “respect­ful dis­course” and “con­stant input from both mag­is­te­ria toward the com­mon goal of wis­dom.” Many par­ti­sans then and now have found the idea hope­less­ly naïve or mis­guid­ed, and Gould did describe a rather specif­i­cal­ly enlight­ened exam­ple of the posi­tion: a per­son seek­ing “a more spir­i­tu­al view of nature” who also acknowl­edges “the fac­tu­al­i­ty of evo­lu­tion and oth­er phe­nom­e­na.” An edu­cat­ed skep­tic, with mys­ti­cal and poet­ic sen­si­bil­i­ties.

The major­i­ty of reli­gious believ­ers do not fit this descrip­tion. But some do. So too did Carl Sagan, to whom Gould ded­i­cat­ed his essay in a post­script. Sagan “shared my con­cern for fruit­ful coop­er­a­tion between the dif­fer­ent but vital realms of sci­ence and reli­gion.” How­ev­er, like Gould, Sagan gave the sci­en­tif­ic method the over­ride, and stren­u­ous­ly advo­cat­ed that we all do like­wise or become eas­i­ly duped by char­la­tans or by our own flawed per­cep­tions. Sagan acknowl­edged the cos­mos as a great mystery—one he want­ed to under­stand, not wor­ship. And he spoke of the nat­ur­al world with the kind of lyri­cal awe and rev­er­ence often reserved for the super­nat­ur­al.

Sagan, in fact, orga­nized and attend­ed the meet­ing at the Vat­i­can that occa­sioned Gould’s essay. He also found him­self, in the ear­ly 1990s, con­nect­ing deeply with anoth­er world reli­gious leader, the Dalai Lama. The exiled Tibetan Bud­dhist and the astro­physi­cist first met in Itha­ca in 1991, sit­ting down for the dis­cus­sion record­ed in the video above. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the pro­duc­tion qual­i­ty ren­ders this record­ing near­ly unwatch­able. Their con­ver­sion is audi­ble but they both dis­ap­pear into a pix­e­lat­ed blue blur. That said, the con­ver­sa­tion mer­its preser­va­tion in any form (you can also read a tran­script of their talk here).

Sagan puts to the Dalai Lama the ques­tion he asked every major reli­gious leader he met with: “What hap­pens if the doc­trine of a religion—Buddhism let’s say—is con­tra­dict­ed by some find­ing, some discovery—in sci­ence, let’s say—what does a believ­er in Bud­dhism do in that case?” The answer below came very much as a sur­prise to Sagan, who lat­er said the Dalai Lama “replied as no tra­di­tion­al­ist or fun­da­men­tal­ist reli­gious lead­ers do.”

DL: ‘For Bud­dhists that is not a prob­lem. The Bud­dha him­self made clear that the impor­tant thing is your own inves­ti­ga­tion. You should know the real­i­ty, no mat­ter what the scrip­ture says. In case you find a contradiction—opposite of the scrip­tures’ explanation—you should rely on that find­ing, rather than scrip­ture.’

CS: ‘So, that is very much like sci­ence?’

DL: ‘Yes, that’s right. So I think that the basic Bud­dhist con­cept is that at the begin­ning it is worth­while or bet­ter to remain skep­ti­cal. Then car­ry out exper­i­ments through exter­nal means as well as inter­nal means. If through inves­ti­ga­tion things become clear and con­vinc­ing, then it is time to accept or believe. If, through sci­ence, there is proof that after death there is no con­ti­nu­ity of human mind, of life, then—theoretically speaking—Buddhists will have to accept that.’

Of course, many Bud­dhists may not find this sur­pris­ing at all. The prin­ci­ples the Dalai Lama out­lines are clear­ly out­lined in the Kala­ma Sut­ta, a sup­posed dis­course of the Bud­dha in which he issues a “Char­ter of Free Inquiry” as one inter­pre­ta­tion has it. It is indeed a unique fea­ture in world reli­gions, though the Dalai Lama did add—“mischievously,” said Sagan—that “it will be hard to dis­prove rein­car­na­tion!” In such areas where a propo­si­tion can­not be fal­si­fied, reli­gion and sci­ence may agree to disagree—civilly or otherwise—or change the sub­ject. In the course of their acquain­tance, Sagan and the Dalai Lama dis­agreed on very lit­tle.

When it comes to Bud­dhism, the Dalai Lama points out that the con­ver­sa­tion between sci­ence and reli­gion is hard­ly one-sided: “Some sci­en­tists also show a gen­uine and keen inter­est in Bud­dhist expla­na­tions…. One thing is quite clear: As far as men­tal sci­ences are con­cerned, Bud­dhism is very high­ly advanced.” The inter­est researchers and neu­ro­sci­en­tists have shown in Bud­dhist psy­chol­o­gy and med­i­ta­tive ther­a­py has only increased in the past twen­ty-five years, such that entire depart­ments devot­ed to mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tion have sprung up at ven­er­a­ble uni­ver­si­ties and respect­ed med­ical schools.

And since Sagan’s death in 1996, the Dalai Lama has con­tin­ued to reflect on the con­ver­gences between sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­ery and Bud­dhism in his books and talks. And Sagan’s wid­ow Ann Druyan has car­ried on Sagan’s lega­cy, shar­ing the awe and won­der of sci­ence with a pop­u­lar audi­ence through film, print, and tele­vi­sion. In 2007, Druyan appeared at Cor­nell to talk about the affini­ties between Sagan and the Dalai Lama dur­ing their first and sub­se­quent meet­ings. You can see her talk in full here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Carl Sagan Presents His “Baloney Detec­tion Kit”: 8 Tools for Skep­ti­cal Think­ing

Carl Sagan Issues a Chill­ing Warn­ing to Amer­i­ca in His Final Inter­view (1996)

The Dalai Lama on the Neu­ro­science of Com­pas­sion

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Prof. Brian Cox Has a Maddening Conversation with a Climate Science-Denying Politician

in Current Affairs, Environment, Science | August 22nd, 2016

Accord­ing to NASA’s God­dard Insti­tute for Space Stud­ies, July 2016 was the warmest month ever record­ed. 2016 will like­ly be the warmest year on record. And the decades ahead will only get worse, much worse.

And yet, notes physi­cist Lawrence Krauss in The New York­er this week­end, we have the GOP’s Franken­stein try­ing to dem­a­gogue his way into the pres­i­den­cy by call­ing cli­mate sci­ence into ques­tion. Krauss writes:

In May, for instance, while speak­ing to an audi­ence of West Vir­ginia coal min­ers, Trump com­plained that reg­u­la­tions designed to pro­tect the ozone lay­er had com­pro­mised the qual­i­ty of his hair spray. Those reg­u­la­tions, he con­tin­ued, were mis­guid­ed, because hair spray is used main­ly indoors, and so can have no effect on the atmos­phere out­side.…

Often, Trump is sim­ply wrong about sci­ence, even though he should know bet­ter. Just as he was a per­sis­tent “birther” even after the evi­dence con­vinc­ing­ly showed that Pres­i­dent Oba­ma was born in the Unit­ed States, Trump now con­tin­ues to prop­a­gate the notion that vac­cines cause autism in spite of con­vinc­ing and wide­ly cit­ed evi­dence to the con­trary… In oth­er cas­es, Trump treats sci­en­tif­ic facts the way he treats oth­er facts—he ignores or dis­torts them when­ev­er it’s con­ve­nient. He has denied that cli­mate change is real, call­ing it pseu­do­science and advanc­ing a con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry that “the con­cept of glob­al warm­ing was cre­at­ed by and for the Chi­nese in order to make U.S. man­u­fac­tur­ing non­com­pet­i­tive.”

And way across the pond, we have anoth­er politi­cian, Aus­tralian Sen­a­tor Mal­colm Roberts, mak­ing his own kind of laugh­able claims. In a recent tele­vi­sion broad­cast, Roberts asks physi­cist Bri­an Cox for empir­i­cal proof that cli­mate change exists. Cox offers evi­dence gath­ered by NASA, to which Roberts responds, NASA’s “data has been cor­rupt­ed and manip­u­lat­ed.” Not good enough. If you reg­u­lar­ly read our site, you know that this is not the first time that NASA has been accused of manip­u­lat­ing data. Con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists have long accused NASA and Stan­ley Kubrick of fak­ing the moon land­ing in 1969. Roberts bris­tles at being asso­ci­at­ed with these loons. But frankly it’s an apt com­par­i­son. And if any­one should be both­ered by the com­par­i­son, it’s the moon land­ing con­spir­acists. How­ev­er strange their the­o­ries might be, no one doubts that they’re heart­felt, gen­uine, and seem­ing­ly free from the hint of polit­i­cal and finan­cial influ­ence.

In the mean­time, in a new video from NASA, you can see the Arc­tic ice lev­els retreat­ing to one of the low­est lev­els in record­ed his­to­ry. Call the video “cor­rupt­ed” and “manip­u­lat­ed” at your own per­il.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Glob­al Warm­ing: A Free Course from UChica­go Explains Cli­mate Change

Michio Kaku & Noam Chom­sky School Moon Land­ing and 9/11 Con­spir­a­cy The­o­rists

Carl Sagan Presents His “Baloney Detec­tion Kit”: 8 Tools for Skep­ti­cal Think­ing

Richard Feyn­man Cre­ates a Sim­ple Method for Telling Sci­ence From Pseu­do­science (1966)

Sal­ly Ride Warns Against Glob­al Warm­ing; Won­ders If Tech­nol­o­gy Can Save Us From Our­selves

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The CIA Puts Hundreds of Declassified Documents About UFO Sightings Online, Plus 10 Tips for Investigating Flying Saucers

in Sci Fi, Science, Television | August 17th, 2016

ufo-sightings

Let down by the X‑Files reboot? Maybe you nev­er real­ly dug the whole alien con­spir­a­cy thing with the bees and the black sludge in the first place. Maybe you didn’t need anoth­er con­vo­lut­ed, inscrutable, bonkers plot­line. Maybe you want­ed the truth. It’s out there. The CIA might know where it is.

In 1978, the agency known in some cir­cles for mas­ter­mind­ing near­ly every world event since its incep­tion declas­si­fied a vast num­ber of files, “hun­dreds of doc­u­ments… detail­ing the Agency’s inves­ti­ga­tions into Uniden­ti­fied Fly­ing Objects (UFOS). The doc­u­ments date pri­mar­i­ly from the late 1940s and 1950s.”

And since this past Jan­u­ary the pub­lic has had full and open access to all of those doc­u­ments on the inter­net. To cel­e­brate the seri­ous­ness of this archive’s wide­spread avail­abil­i­ty, the Agency made two lists of five dif­fer­ent doc­u­ments each, to “high­light a few doc­u­ments both skep­tics and believ­ers will find inter­est­ing.”

Who do you think they picked for their mod­el skep­tic and believ­er? “The truth is out there,” as the CIA is appar­ent­ly fond of say­ing, “click on the links to find it.”

The Mul­der and Scul­ly lists serve as light­heart­ed intro­duc­tions to the some­times bewil­der­ing array of doc­u­ments in the CIA’s Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act (FOIA) Elec­tron­ic Read­ing Room, which hosts those sev­er­al hun­dred reports, mem­os, etc., some­times redact­ed or writ­ten in Agency code.

Then, of course, there’s this pre­cious eye­wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny, from Mulder’s list, tak­en from a man in East Ger­many in 1952:

Now, the side of the object on which the holes had been opened began to glit­ter. Its col­or seemed green but lat­er turned to red. At the same time I began to hear a slight hum. While the bright­ness and hum increased, the con­i­cal tow­er began to slide down into the cen­ter of the object. The whole object then began to rise slow­ly from the ground and rotate like a top.

If you’re see­ing a descrip­tion from a clas­sic sci-fi radio dra­ma or pulp mag­a­zine, read on. The craft becomes “sur­round­ed by a ring of flames,” ris­es, and flies away. And, of course, the man had ear­li­er wit­nessed men “dressed in some shiny metal­lic cloth­ing.” It all sounds very sil­ly except that many oth­er unre­lat­ed peo­ple in the small town report­ed see­ing some­thing very strange in the sky that night. One wit­ness­es’ over­ac­tive imag­i­na­tion does not inval­i­date the tes­ti­mo­ny of the oth­ers.

Or does it?

We’ve had many sight­ings of UFOs from astro­nauts and pilots in the last few decades (most­ly debunked), and ordi­nary peo­ple on the ground have nev­er stopped see­ing lights in the sky. So we might won­der why all of the CIA doc­u­ments on the site come from the 1960s and before? Is this a sign of increased activ­i­ty in the years after the sup­posed Roswell event? Per­haps the alien conspiracy’s fever­ish, devi­ous start?

Or, as Geek­Wire writes, was the CIA “wor­ried about the poten­tial threat that UFOs posed to nation­al secu­ri­ty… they assumed that the UFOs might be part of a Sovi­et weapons test pro­gram.” With the grad­ual warm­ing of rela­tions, then glas­nost, the spies lost inter­est… (Or…?) … but we might won­der why the Agency used the new X‑Files debut to draw atten­tion to itself. Your con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry is prob­a­bly as good as any oth­er.

If CIA did stop inves­ti­gat­ing alien inva­sions, you don’t have to. The Agency has left it in your capa­ble hands, pub­lish­ing “10 Tips When Inves­ti­gat­ing a Fly­ing Saucer” to guide you in your quest for the truth. Be warned: it’s a very skep­tic-friend­ly set of guide­lines; one that—were every­one to fol­low it—might vir­tu­al­ly elim­i­nate every report­ed UFO sight­ing. Curi­ous that. What are they hid­ing?

Find the list below, and see the com­plete expla­na­tion of each tip (such times we live in) at the CIA’s web­site.

1. Estab­lish a group to inves­ti­gate and eval­u­ate sight­ings
2. Deter­mine the objec­tives of your inves­ti­ga­tion
3. Con­sult with experts
4. Cre­ate a report­ing sys­tem to orga­nize incom­ing cas­es
5. Elim­i­nate false pos­i­tives
6. Devel­op method­ol­o­gy to iden­ti­fy air­craft and oth­er aer­i­al phe­nom­e­na often mis­tak­en for UFOs
7. Exam­ine wit­ness doc­u­men­ta­tion
8. Con­duct con­trolled exper­i­ments
9. Gath­er and test phys­i­cal and foren­sic evi­dence
10. Dis­cour­age false report­ing

Again, to dig deep­er into the CIA’s fas­ci­nat­ing archive of UFO sight­ings, vis­it its FOIA UFO col­lec­tion. True believ­ers may want to know more, and they can, if they’re will­ing to fol­low the Byzan­tine research instruc­tions on the UFO collection’s main page to find an Agency arti­cle about the “CIA’s Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947–1990.” Or they could just click here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read the CIA’s Sim­ple Sab­o­tage Field Man­u­al: A Time­less, Kafkaesque Guide to Sub­vert­ing Any Orga­ni­za­tion with “Pur­pose­ful Stu­pid­i­ty” (1944)

The C.I.A.’s “Bes­tiary of Intel­li­gence Writ­ing” Sat­i­rizes Spook Jar­gon with Mau­rice Sendak-Style Draw­ings

Carl Jung’s Fas­ci­nat­ing 1957 Let­ter on UFOs

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Michio Kaku on Why Immigrants Are America’s Secret Weapon: They Compensate for Our Mediocre STEM Education & Keep Prosperity Going

in Politics, Science | August 3rd, 2016

Amer­i­cans have often found them­selves caught up in pan­ics about immi­gra­tion, like that now dri­ving the cam­paign to build a wall between us and our third largest trad­ing partner—when more Mex­i­cans are leav­ing the U.S. than arriv­ing. Then we have the talk of ban­ning an entire world reli­gion, though, of course, we’ve seen this before, lest we for­get that the Klan resurged in large part as an anti-Catholic group. All of this mis­in­for­ma­tion, mis­trust, and out­right con­tempt comes at a high cost, includ­ing that of any real under­stand­ing of how immi­gra­tion works, and why it works, no mat­ter how vehe­ment­ly cer­tain orga­ni­za­tions fight against it.

The fact is that the U.S. might be a dynamo for cap­i­tal but not when it comes to what econ­o­mists crude­ly call “human cap­i­tal.” The point applies not only to immi­grant work­ers who do jobs Amer­i­cans won’t, but also those who do jobs Amer­i­cans can’t, because, as physi­cist Michio Kaku argues above, “the Unit­ed States has the worst edu­ca­tion­al sys­tem known to sci­ence.” Were it sole­ly up to U.S. grad­u­ates, the sci­en­tif­ic estab­lish­ment and tech econ­o­my would col­lapse, he says, “for­get about Google, for­get about Sil­i­con Val­ley. There would be no Sil­i­con Val­ley.” Instead, U.S. sci­ence and tech thrive because of immi­grants who come on H‑1B visas, “America’s secret weapon… the genius visa.”

Kaku goes on to press his case with daunt­ing sta­tis­tics about the num­ber of for­eign-born Ph.D. grad­u­ates, though he doesn’t say that all of those grads have H‑1Bs. In fact, his posi­tion is a high­ly con­tro­ver­sial one. Reli­able stud­ies show that many com­pa­nies abuse the spe­cial­ized work visa to out­source jobs Amer­i­cans are ful­ly qual­i­fied to do, and to cre­ate a class of immi­grant work­ers who earn less than their U.S. coun­ter­parts and work under a mod­i­fied form of inden­tured servi­tude. The visa is, after all, “a non-immi­grant visa,” points out one crit­ic, “and so has noth­ing at all to do with stay­ing in the USA, becom­ing a cit­i­zen, or start­ing a busi­ness.” It is, more or less, a guest work­er pro­gram.

Kaku’s tone can also seem grat­ing, a smarmy reminder of what David H. Freed­man calls in The Atlantic “open sea­son on the non­s­mart.” Call­ing Amer­i­can grads “stu­pid” will not like­ly endear many of them to his posi­tion. Nonethe­less, when it comes to sci­ence edu­ca­tion, it’s hard to argue with his assess­ments, and with his case for allow­ing the best minds in the world to come work for Amer­i­can com­pa­nies (under more equi­table con­di­tions). In the Big Think video above, Kaku again press­es his argu­ment for the H‑1B as instru­men­tal to a “brain drain” into the Unit­ed States, feed­ing its sci­ence and tech indus­tries with fresh minds and fresh ideas con­stant­ly. His ideas about mer­i­toc­ra­cy may seem blithe, espe­cial­ly giv­en the mate­r­i­al advan­tages so many guest work­ers already have before arriv­ing in the States. But in pure­ly descrip­tive terms, the best U.S. grad­u­ates just sim­ply can­not com­pete with many of their for­eign-born col­leagues.

Here Kaku’s argu­ment takes a turn in both these videos and shows how the “secret weapon” is one we’ve point­ed at our­selves. We can’t con­tin­ue to depend on “genius­es” from oth­er coun­tries, he says, to prop up our sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy sec­tors, espe­cial­ly since the brain drains back out, with H1‑B visa hold­ers fre­quent­ly leav­ing, giv­en their tem­po­rary sta­tus, and estab­lish­ing com­pa­nies in their home coun­tries. “In real­i­ty,” wrote Moth­er Jones in 2013, “most of today’s H‑1B work­ers don’t stick around to become the next Albert Ein­stein or Sergey Brin.” That year, “the top 10 users of H‑1B visas… were all off­shore out­sourc­ing firms… that hired near­ly half near­ly half of H1‑B work­ers.” As one expert explained, “The H‑1B work­er learns the job and then rotates back to the home coun­try and takes the work with him.”

It’s like­ly large num­bers of those work­ers feel less and less wel­come in the U.S. But it’s also true, as Kaku says, that Amer­i­cans con­tin­ue to fall far behind in math and sci­ence. There may indeed be few Amer­i­cans who can fill many of those jobs or con­tin­ue to push tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion for­ward in the U.S.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Math Cours­es

Michio Kaku Explains the Physics Behind Absolute­ly Every­thing

Col­or­ful Ani­ma­tion Visu­al­izes 200 Years of Immi­gra­tion to the U.S. (1820-Present)

Por­traits of Ellis Island Immi­grants Arriv­ing on America’s Wel­com­ing Shores Cir­ca 1907

Noam Chom­sky Defines What It Means to Be a Tru­ly Edu­cat­ed Per­son

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Watch Carl Sagan’s “A Glorious Dawn” Become the First Vinyl Record Played in Space, Courtesy of Jack White

in Music, Science, Technology | August 1st, 2016

Third Man Records, the record label cre­at­ed by The White Stripes’ Jack White, announced Sat­ur­day that they’ve made his­to­ry by launch­ing a “space-proof” turntable into space (near space, to be pre­cise), using a high-alti­tude bal­loon to reach a peak alti­tude of 94,413 feet. Their goal was to “send a vinyl record up as high as pos­si­ble and doc­u­ment it being played there.” And that they did.

Accord­ing to their press release, for “the entire hour and twen­ty min­utes of ascen­sion, the Icarus turntable faith­ful­ly played Carl Sagan’s “A Glo­ri­ous Dawn” (from “Cos­mos” by Sym­pho­ny of Sci­ence com­pos­er John Boswell) on repeat, using an impres­sive­ly stur­dy phono car­tridge and sty­lus as well as an onboard flight com­put­er pro­grammed with a few dif­fer­ent actions to keep the record play­ing while it was safe to do so.” Even­tu­al­ly, when the bal­loon popped (around the 83rd minute), the turntable went into “tur­bu­lence mode” and safe­ly sur­vived the descent back down to earth. You can watch the entire his­toric voyage–all two hours of it–in the video above.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch His­toric Footage of Joseph Kittinger’s 102,800 Jump from Space (1960)

How Vinyl Records Are Made: A Primer from 1956

How to Clean Your Vinyl Records with Wood Glue

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Watch the Beautiful Chemical Reactions Captured in Stunning Microphotography

in Science | July 28th, 2016

You don’t have to know your Zn(NO3)2 from your CuSO4 to appre­ci­ate these absolute­ly beau­ti­ful videos of chem­i­cal reac­tions cre­at­ed for a site called Beau­ti­ful Chem­istry.

Pro­fes­sor Yan Liang of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy of Chi­na, along with co-cre­ators Xian­gang Tao and Wei Huang, and in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Tsinghua Uni­ver­si­ty Press, are all behind the project, which focus­es a hi-def micro­scop­ic cam­era on chem­i­cal reac­tions like bub­bling, met­al dis­place­ment, crys­tal­liza­tion, smoke and liq­uids.

It may sound like an effects menu in a com­put­er ren­der­ing pro­gram, and indeed some of these videos look so beau­ti­ful in terms of light­ing and col­or that CGI could be sus­pect­ed. (Some com­menters have added the videos to their VFX/Computer Graph­ics view­ing lists.) But accord­ing to the site, this is not the case.

For an exam­ple of the beau­ty, just check out at the six-sec­ond mark when Cobalt Chlo­ride and Sodi­um Sil­i­cate meet, result­ing in bul­bous blue and pur­ple growths:

Or look at the win­try frac­tal forests that spawn when zinc meets sil­ver nitrate (AgNO3), cop­per sul­fate (CuSO4), and lead nitrate (Pb(NO3)2):

The Beau­ti­ful Chem­istry site has sev­er­al oth­er inter­est­ing series to check out for the sci­ence lover, includ­ing an ongo­ing intro­duc­tion to the ele­ments in car­toon form and a pho­to gallery of chem­istry instru­ments from his­to­ry. They are, as the site says, beau­ti­ful. More videos can be found on their Vimeo chan­nel.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Chem­istry Cours­es

Marie Curie’s Research Papers Are Still Radioac­tive 100+ Years Lat­er

The Peri­od­ic Table of Ele­ments Scaled to Show The Ele­ments’ Actu­al Abun­dance on Earth

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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In Touching Video, People with Alzheimer’s Tell Us Which Memories They Never Want to Forget

in Biology, Health, Life, Science | July 22nd, 2016

Direc­tor Hirokazu Kore-eda’s 1999 film After­life tasks its recent­ly deceased char­ac­ters with choos­ing a sin­gle mem­o­ry to take with them, as they move into the great unknown.

The sub­jects of “On Mem­o­ry,” above, are all very much alive, but they too, have great cause to sift through a life­time’s worth of mem­o­ries. All have been diag­nosed with Alzheimer’s dis­ease. They range in age from 48 to 70. Two have been liv­ing with their diag­noses for six years. The baby of the group received hers just last year.

Those who have no per­son­al con­nec­tion to Alzheimer’s are like­ly to have a clear­er pic­ture of the disease’s advanced stage than its ear­ly pre­sen­ta­tion. A few min­utes with Myr­i­am Mar­quez, Lon Cole, Frances Smersh, Irene Japha, Nan­cy John­son, and Bob Welling­ton should rem­e­dy that.

All six are able to recall and describe the sig­nif­i­cant events of their youth. At the interviewer’s request, they reflect on the pain of los­ing beloved par­ents and the plea­sure of first kiss­es. Their pow­ers of sen­so­ry recall bring back their ear­li­est mem­o­ries, includ­ing what the weath­er was like that day.

The recent past? Much hazier. At present, these indi­vid­u­als’ mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment resem­ble benign age-relat­ed mem­o­ry slips quite close­ly. Their diag­noses are what lends urgency to their answers. The prospect of for­get­ting chil­dren and spouse’s names is very real to them.

Knowl­edge of the inter­vie­wees’ diag­noses can’t but help sharp­en view­ers’ eyes for dis­tinct facial expres­sions, speech pat­terns, and indi­vid­ual tem­pera­ments. They share a com­mon diag­no­sis, but for now, there’s no dif­fi­cul­ty dis­tin­guish­ing between the six unique per­son­al­i­ties, each informed by a wealth of expe­ri­ence.

The video is a step up for viral video pro­duc­er Cut, cre­ator of such inter­net sen­sa­tions as the Truth or Drink series and Grand­mas Smok­ing Weed for the First Time. This video, which directs view­ers to the Alzheimer’s Asso­ci­a­tion for more infor­ma­tion, deserves an even wider audi­ence.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Exis­ten­tial­ist Psy­chol­o­gist Vik­tor Fran­kl Explains How to Find Mean­ing in Life, No Mat­ter What Chal­lenges You Face

Dai­ly Med­i­ta­tion Boosts & Revi­tal­izes the Brain and Reduces Stress, Har­vard Study Finds

Play­ing an Instru­ment Is a Great Work­out For Your Brain: New Ani­ma­tion Explains Why

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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