Category: People’s History of Science

For today’s entry of The Celestial Monochord, my heartfelt thanks to Minneapolis poet Jennifer L. Willoughby. Her first book of poems, Beautiful Zero, was published by Milkweed Editions in 2015.

The Monochord has also published her poem “Thank You Mr. Sagan.”

This is the eleventh installment in my mission to post one entry to The Celestial Monochord every day for the month of February.

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YOUR WIFE AS KRAKATOA, 1883

Did you hear that ravishing blast?
That was your wife.
Her explosion shocked even the smallest Australian sheep
eating green turf over 3000 miles away.

At Western festivities
languid relatives patted her head,
thinking she was pretty and backwards,
thinking she was alcoholic and strange.

Did you see wings of independence bobbing in her shoals,
did you see infants listening while she sang about England?

She being tame as cocoa,
a little armchair nation stationed next to Java.
Gentlemen whispered, inferred frigidity.

She being a slow colonial outpost
of the spice islands, shanghaied and traded,
her pepper and cloves seasoning putrefying meat.

Your wife was the kind of woman
who wore silk and went bare foot,
plumes of juniper spiking her hair.
Pye-dogs, the wandering mutts of Asia,
followed her whistles, lapped her salty knees.

She could tell time with a shadow & a pin.
She was good at falling in love with the peacock generation.

She had a fling with the Wallace Line,
raising eyebrows over glasses of gin.
They got down to business
with the poison flowers,
the strangling weeds,
the scavenging avians.

Your wife was either a shrew or a shrewd captive of nature.

In one day,
your wife destroyed life as she knew it,
went cackling madwoman, breaking the stone gates
of her oceanic laboratory, boiling down your horded annual capital
to a glutinous stew of paper boats, torn orchids and molten bones.

No one could hold her.
The shock wave of your wife traveled the earth seven times.
Her ashes sat in the lungs of merchants in Singapore like black milk.
She hotwired barometers from Bogota to DC and flung her aerosol spray
of sapphire and emerald suns to tango with the equator.

Your wife killed 36,417 people.
Your wife sent corpses sailing to Africa on pyres of steaming pumice.
Your wife was 10,000 times as strong as Hiroshima’s atomic bomb.
Your wife was the mother of it all.

Some future tourist scouring the beach
for chambered shells or shiny tiki treasures
might know nothing about your wife.

Scientists have added your wife to their alphabetical jars
of formaldehyde, saline and amber. Etched her face on a fossil.

She fooled honest men in New York and New Haven.
They drove fire trucks to quench hallucinatory afterglows
as she rouged the sedate evening with mirrors of flame.

Forget your wife.
She was not beloved.
Her unusual sunsets continued for years.

      
William A. Higinbotham, Bernice Brode, and Richard Feynman

While in Los Alamos this Christmas, I picked up Tales of Los Alamos: Life on the Mesa, 1943-1945, by Bernice Brode. It turned out to be a book in which music plays a central role.

Tales of Los Alamos is a light-hearted portrait of life as one of the Manhattan Project's young newlyweds, who lived somewhat like prisoners of war. For Brode and her colleagues, Los Alamos was like college or the military is for a lot of people — a golden time to work like hell and then explosively blow off steam. It was a safe place to get a little practice at being an adult. Really, the designers of the first atomic bomb were horny young party animals.

The average age of a Los Alamos resident was 26, according to Brode ("The Day after Trinity" says 29). The military brass tried (without success) to limit the number of babies were being born, while the single GI's on the mesa defended (with success) a prostitution ring against efforts to shut it down. Pure laboratory alcohol spiked the punchbowls.

Brode writes:

We had a good deal of music at Los Alamos, organized and unorganized. Walking along the roads in the evening, we heard the strains of Bach or Mozart that filled the air. High up in the mountains, radio reception was poor, but we had our own radio station in the last year. [The station used records from the collections of residents] and our otherwise quiet mesa was soon saturated with the world's best music.

A lot of physicists and their wives were classically trained musicians, so there were many recitals and an annual chorus Handel's "Messiah." Edward Teller's piano playing was particularly brutal on everyone's sleep cycle, with its odd hours, workmanlike style, and inclusive repertoire.

But the men and women of Los Alamos were generally too young and stressed out for much serious music. Besides, Brode writes, residents had "an instinctive knowledge that vigorous gaiety must be our tenor, and that we perhaps could not afford much emotional content and contemplation."

The mesa had a barber shop quartet and a jazz band, and the children mounted several ambitious musical revues. For one such revue, new words were set to the tune of the Marine's Hymn:

From the East Coast, from the West Coast
And the land that lies between
We arrived here at Los Alamos
Queerest city ever seen

Oh, we love our mountain stronghold
And our homes among the stars
It's the strangest story ever told
This mesa town of ours

From the plains of neighbor Texas
And the sidewalks of New York
We arrived here at Los Alamos
To learn, to play, to work

We have vision strong to guide us
Proud form of Liberty
Whatever is denied us
Is all for Liberty

When Los Alamos residents wanted to really cut loose and break a sweat, there was always square dancing. Its popularity on the mesa isn't surprising given that the dance style had been consciously popularized throughout the 1930's and 1940's by the likes of Lloyd Shaw, Benjamin Lovett, and Henry Ford. Online histories cite 1948 as the peak year of a square dancing fad in America. Apparently, the twenty-somethings of Los Alamos were only very slightly ahead of the curve.

"Calling" the square dances was initially handled by George Hillhouse, chief butcher at the Los Alamos commissary. Eventually, the job was taken over by accordion player and leader of the Electronics Division, William A. Higinbotham. His accordion playing was intensely energizing ("electric sparks went over the Lodge," writes Brode), but his square dance calling was even more compelling:

The time came when we could squeeze no more squares into the Lodge, and we reluctantly moved to the Mess Hall, a much larger floor space … It became increasing hard for George [the butcher] to keep order in so many squares, but Willie could out-shout any disorder. He said the bigger the mob, the better he liked it.

Brode once tried to calm the nerves of a British couple who'd been having trouble adjusting to the pace of Los Alamos. She took them to the quiet ruins of Bandelier National Monument, but was surprised to find 200 members of the Electronics Division square dancing among the ruins, driven by Higinbotham.

On occasion, when strangers visited, the residents of Los Alamos staged square dance demonstrations as a symbol of their group identity, an illustration of who and what they were. A few months after Nagasaki, the mesa's Tesuque Native Americans invited a group of Los Alamos residents to visit their pueblo for a celebration. The leader of the Tesuque contingent was Popovi Da (also known as "Po"), who was also an Army technician in the lab's Technical Area.

Next, Po called on us to put on a demonstration of square dances. We formed four squares, which we had practiced … we used our most experienced dancers to give a smooth performance and make the best impression. Most Indians had never seen square dancing before, but after we finished we asked Po to invite everyone to join in with us … They were natural dancers.

[Afterwards, the Tesuque dancers gave a demonstration] and took hold of some of us, indicating we should shuffle around with them. Po shouted in Tewa the directions, which we gathered were for a sort of serpentine style dance game … We formed circles and did any number of very fast movements, and, believe me, we had to keep our wits about us. The drummers went faster and faster. It seemed to be an endurance test so none of us dared give out. At the height of this excitement, with yells and shouts, Montoya [a Tesuque who oversaw care of the main Los Alamos dorm] got up on a chair and shouted above the din, "This is the Atomic Age! This is the Atomic Age!"

The stories of Richard Feynman's and Enrico Fermi's attempts to square dance at Los Alamos are fairly well known.

Feynman was the kind of physicist who could amuse classrooms by solving two complex math problems on the board simultaneously — one with the right hand, one with the left. Nevertheless, he was utterly defeated in his attempts to learn to square dance. "It's too hard, much too hard, I can't learn, I'll never learn," he said.

Fermi, on the other hand, refused to dance at all until he had spent many long hours staring intently at the steps of the dancers. Only after he had memorized even the slightest motion did he join in:

He offered to be head couple, which I thought most unwise for his first venture, but I could do nothing about it, and the music began. He led me out on the exact beat, knew exactly each move to make and when. He never made a mistake then or thereafter. I wouldn't say he enjoyed himself for he was so intent on not making a mistake, which the best of us did all the time.

After the war, square dance caller and accordionist Willie Higinbotham emerged as the leader of the segment of Manhattan Project scientists who wanted to aggressively use their new-found status for progressive politics. Their goals were to put atomic power under civilian control, prevent proliferation, and educate the public. Willie went to Washington to learn the art of lobbying. Brode writes:

By all reports, he had the Congressmen and newspapermen working so hard nights that he began to take along his "Stomach Steinway" and had them square dancing when they got tired of atoms. Willie later denied this, but those were the tales we heard [in Los Alamos] at the time.

(Incidentally, in 1958, Higinbotham created Tennis for Two, sometimes cited as the world's first video game.)

(science journalist Ira Flatow interviews penguins)

Set-up: How do you know that your son will grow up to be a scientist?

Punch-line: His first word is “So …”

The joke here, of course, is that quite a lot of scientists seem to always begin speaking with the word “So.” And not when they’re giving the conclusions to an argument — they aren’t using it to mean “therefore.”

They just start from a dead stop with “So … “. They seem to use it the way non-scientists might begin with “Um” or “Well”. (I’ve heard computer professionals use “So”, but I hear this as an attempt to sound more scientific.)

Because it’s very common, I hate to pick on anyone in particular. In the most recent edition of NPR’s Science Friday, 3 out of 5 scientists interviewed in the first hour used this kind of “So” at least once. Science journalist Ira Flatow and Dr. Tobias Brambrink had the following exchange:

Ira: Well then what goes wrong somewhere between the stem cells and the animal?

Tobias: Right, so, I think the most likely explanation lies in the mechanism of cloning. So, when you clone an embryo, what you do is you take a donor cell …

This tic, which I’ll call “The Scientist So,” seems to be a recent development. I’ve spent 35 years listening very closely to scientists, but I first noticed it about 4 or 5 years ago. It’s strange. I’d like to know why it happend, and why NOW.

And so, here are a few wild speculations:

Because it makes so little sense, The Scientist So reminds me that science is a subculture. Subcultures do develop funny tics that seem to have no practical purpose — handshakes or dreadlocks or backward baseball caps. Although such tics seem to simply exist to exist, they provide a way to identify and control membership in the group. They do a job, whether they make any sense in themselves or not. Maybe The Scientist So marks the speaker with a cultural affiliation — that of “Scientist.”

In a lot of ways, over the past few years, science has been dragged against its will into the Culture Wars. Scientists themselves must be more conscious of being members of the scientific subculture. Through the The Scientist So, perhaps scientists have found a way to “sound like scientists,” like an unconscious wearing of the tartan. Perhaps it’s even a circling of the wagons, part of a nascent Sci-Pride impulse, a science-shibboleth.

As I hear it, some scientists do manage to make The Scientist So convey an actual meaning. It almost makes sense when some scientists say it. By training, scientists like to start at the very beginning, with first principles, and then recostruct the reasoning behind things. But journalists and other civilians like to have the final conclusions right off the bat. Cut to the chase.

Thus, I can almost hear certain scientists thinking “I’m fast-forwarding very rapidly through a line of reasoning here.” They’re looking for a kind of off-ramp that’s near enough to the conclusion the listener is hoping for, and they want you to understand that.

In this sense, The So is an audible “therefore” at the end of an inaudible explanation that the scientist has to think through, but which he/she isn’t allowed enough time to share. The So tells the listener that something really important has been skipped for their convenience.

If The Scientist So were understood this way by the general public, I think it would be a useful reminder of what they’re NOT getting from their radios and TVs and newspapers.

If more scientists are having to trim their ideas down to very simple conclusions, it would make sense that the community would develop a verbal notation, or spoken emoticon, to reflect what they’re doing. Just maybe, therefore, the recent development of The Scientist So is a by-product of a positive trend — scientists are trying harder to share their findings and their methods with the news media, policy makers, and the general public.

In a way, The Scientist So may be the sound of gears grinding — torque suddenly being applied — as scientists translate the way scientists think about information into the way journalists do.

Howard Dully before his lobotomy

The other day, I heard one of the best stories I’ve ever heard on NPR — one of those stories you think about for years.

I can’t say I really recommend it, since it’s extremely troubling and sad, and rather rage-inducing. But when a piece of art — such as a radio documentary — is very, very well done and needs to be done, it’s hard for me not to feel uplifted. Good work is rewarding, regardless.

The story is about Howard Dully, who had a transorbital lobotomy (also known as an “ice pick lobotomy”) in 1960 at the age of 12, at the hands of the procedure’s inventor, Dr. Walter Freeman. Howard leads the listener through his search to figure out what exactly happened, and why his father and stepmother had the procedure performed.

At one point in the documentary, Howard reads from his medical records, to which he has finally gained access:

HOWARD: It’s pretty much as I suspected … my stepmother hated me. I never understood why, but it was clear she’d do anything to get rid of me … Evidently she heard about Dr. Freeman and figured he could help.

DR. FREEMAN: Mrs. Dully called up to say that Howard has been unbelievably defiant with a savage look on his face and at times she is almost afraid. He doesn’t react either to love or to punishment. He objects to going to bed but then sleeps well. He does a good deal of daydreaming and when asked about it he says “I don’t know.” He turns the room’s lights on when there is broad sunlight outside. He hates to wash…

November 30th. Mrs. Dully came in for a talk about Howard. Things have gotten much worse and she can barely endure it. I explained to Mrs. Dully, that the family should consider the possibility of changing Howard’s personality by means of transorbital lobotomy. Mrs Dully said it was up to her husband, that I would have to talk with him and make it stick.

December 3 1960. Mr and Mrs Dully have apparently decided to have Howard operated on. I suggested them not tell Howard anything about it.

The documentary tells Freeman’s story too, and with much more sympathy than you’d expect — but with less sympathy than others seem to have. I think it’s good for the mind and the soul to try to embrace, for a little while, ideas you find abhorrent … and sympathy for Freeman is certainly a case to sharpen these skills.

Freeman did his work in a very trying era. Patients and families no longer thought of mental illness as some sort of demonic possession, or the like — they medicalized mental illness instead, which should have been a step in the right direction. But they did so before there were any real medical treatments for essentially any mental health problems. With doctors facing extremly ill patients and desparate families, and armed with virtually no treatments, the conditions were ripe for someone like Freeman to come along, with his pick and his mallet.

… well … no, it doesn’t really fly with me either …

My wife has just made me aware of a lost chapter of American history that is at once uplifting and downcasting, both inspiring and … sort of not inspiring.

A new documentary by Ken Burns (not really) tells the story of the old Negro space program, in large part through interviews with the original Blackstronauts themselves:

A lot of people today, they don’t think about it. They say “Oh, they’re putting a man on the moon” or “Oh, they’re putting up another space shuttle.” But you see, they don’t realize that in the early days of the space program, NASA was whites-only … It was it a different time, you understand. See, in 1957 if you were black — and if you were an astronaut — you were out of work.

You can watch the nearly 11-minute film (which was excluded from the Sundance Film Festival on the pretense that it was not submitted to the Sundance Film Festival) at www.negrospaceprogram.com.

My cats Georgia (top) and Henry (middle) enjoy their new toy, a small fishbowl. Georgia puts her head inside while also kicking and grabbing at other toys, while Henry’s more apt to just sit placidly with his head in the bowl, looking around. They stay there for long periods of time, Henry often for up to 45 minutes, his breath steaming up the glass.

I don’t know why.   And so, Houston, we have a problem:

Maybe they like the sonic environment it creates — a world where the only sound is their own breathing, like nursing with their mother. On the other hand, they don’t purr or knead when they do this (for a change — they are avid nursers).

Maybe the glass distorts the room, making things look “weird” — and certainly, they like their world when it’s defamiliarized. Georgia, who often seems a little bored, likes touring the apartment atop my shoulders. On the other hand, she uses the bowl for shorter periods than Henry and does less “looking” while she’s there. Henry, who’s less bored with his surroundings, enjoys the view more.

Therefore, my pet theory (sorry for the pun) is that they’re pretending that they’re astronauts (e.g., John Glenn, also shown above for easy comparison). I believe they imagine themselves to be in Outer Space. They must appreciate this, as I do, as a metaphor for their status as The Other, as representatives from outside of language and discourse, emissaries from a place beyond history and culture.

It’s funny … somehow, I knew New Orleans was a lake waiting to happen, but Bush seems to feel nobody could have predicted it. I was also completely unconvinced that there were WMD in Iraq, but there was no way anybody could have predicted that there wasn’t. Maybe we’re being lied to, I guess, but I prefer to think that I’m just incredibly brilliant and far-sighted. Yeah, I like that. I’ll stick with that hypothesis …

I have another prediction. Very bad things will continue to happen now and then — things that only Government can do much about. And those things can’t be prevented, no matter how much Government is hated by … the, uh … current … Government.

I don’t intend to be alarmist, of course. This is only an example. But when was the last time anyone got warned about the great New Madrid earthquakes in Missouri and Arkansas? There were four quakes above magnitude 7.0 within the span of a few months, and some were powerful enough to break windows all the way over in the White House in Washington, D.C. (so maybe it got their attention). The quakes changed the course of the Mississippi River, which flowed backward for three days.

The point is that, you know, this is not a political game. Government really does have to take itself seriously, and tax people for whatever that seriousness costs. Here are a few other big earthquakes to think about:

Idaho
1983 Oct 28, Magnitude 7.0, Borah Peak

Montana
1959 Aug 18, Magnitude 7.3, Hebgen Lake

Nevada
1915 Oct 03, Magnitude 7.1, Pleasant Valley
1932 Dec 21, Magnitude 7.2, Cedar Mountain
1954 Dec 16, Magnitude 7.1, Fairview Peak

S. Carolina
1886 Sep 01, Magnitude 7.3, Charleston

There’s a place on the New Strip across from the Monte Carlo where you can get your picture taken with a big fat Elvis impersonator in front of a Model A Ford.

Why a Model A Ford? I don’t know. The whole of “The Past” occurred simultaneously, at least in Las Vegas, at least apparently.

On the other hand, if you go to Vegas with your critical faculties fully intact, you miss the whole experience entirely.

————

Inside the Luxor pyramid, there’s a booth where tourists have videos made of themselves riding a “magic carpet” in front of a bluescreen backdrop.

They sit on an oriental rug and are superimposed into a pre-taped video of a rocking, reeling ride down Las Vegas Boulevard, while employees shout instructions at them about how to look like they’re careening around and reacting to stuff. They get to take home a video putting it all together, with a soundtrack consisting of Steppenwolf’s “Magic Carpet Ride” (you know, “close your eyes, girl, look inside, girl … “).

All of this is entirely appropriate, of course, as you know, since there are pictographs inside the Grand Gallery of the Great Pyramid at Khufu in Egypt depicting tourists making a similar video.

————

What always amazes and attracts me about Vegas is that it’s a town devoted to a branch of mathematics — statistics.

The cold, objective, inescapable fact is that you will lose your money. It’s as hard and as mundane a fact as any in mathematics. So, the entire city grew up around this fact, like a pearl around a grain of sand.

All the lights, the sequins, the wedding chapels, the mythology and history of the place, the Brat Pack, Elvis impersonators, Elvis, Siegfried and Roy, the cheezy Waitsian low-rent romance, the fiberglass-hot-dog architecture, the access and denial-of-access to various VIP areas, the libido of the place, its boundless and peerless T&A — it’s all necessitated by the very rigor itself of the logic that demands that you will lose and the house will win.

So long as you’re dreaming, they know you’re asleep …