Thinking clearly

Life is simple, really:

1. try to live by a consistent moral code
2. Knowledge has diminishing marginal returns, as does preparation, but they usually diminish well past the stopping point of most people.prepare as much as possible by learning as much as possible. Plan.
3. looks, charisma, charm and leadership matter tremendously - cultivate these.
4. be a good judge of character
5. The healthy mind needs a healthy body.
6. A belief in genetic determinism will hold you back. Use environmental determinism to your advantage.
7. Some questions have no answer, or no good answers.

I'll add to these later. But these are a good place to start.

The Arecibo Question

I've had some interest in space politics for quite some time. An excellent source can be found at www.spacepolitics.com. Jeff Foust is a graduate of MIT in Planetary Science and is now employed at the Futron Corporation. In addition to spacepolitics.com, he runs the Space Review, a free online space policy newsletter.

For those of you that don't know, Arecibo Observatory has been identified in the Senior Review as a target of the budgetary axe. Its operating budget of 10.5 million dollars will be reduced to 8 million for FY 2007, with a further reduction to 4 million in 2011. Funding of 4 million per year is actually contingent on matching funds secured from non-NSF sources.

There are other complicating factors: 5 million for paint loaned by Cornell to NSF, which NSF will repay over the next few years; 1 million that is dedicated to the radar program; new instrument upgrades; appeals for international funding; the consultation (if any) between NSF-AST and NSF-ATM, the latter of which contributes some funding to Arecibo; China's desire to build an Arecibo+active surface observatory.... I will edit this post later with more specific budgetary information.

The key question is the following: what options are available for Cornell/NAIC to fight the Senior Review recommendation? I have identified the following:

1. Stop the Senior Review from becoming NSF policy

Cornell/NAIC is attempting this as I write. They sent a document criticizing inconsistencies in mandate and factual information in the Senior Review to Wayne Van Citters, the head of NSF's Astronomy Division. In addition to incorrectly claiming that surveys would be done by 2011 (the actual date is closer to 2015), the Senior Review exceeded its mandate (identify $30 million in assets that might be reallocated) by making specific recommendations for facility closure. One reason why the Senior Review members may have done this? Well, a number of the members have affiliations with proposed projects (e.g. LSST, TMT) that will require funding.
Either this is done on a purely factual basis (i.e., you screwed up the info we gave you), or intrapolitical stuff will fall out. (How significant is it that Wayne Van Citters has not visited Arecibo? Will my former college president, Jon Strauss, a member of the National Science Board, be in a position to decide/steer NSF's ultimate decision on the Senior Review? Should Cornell send Michael Crosby a bunch of Godiva candy, given my personal experience that he likes chocolate?)
Needless to say, this is messy, especially since NASA will invariably be dragged into this mess. NASA and NSF have played football with the funding for the radar program for some time; it's unclear whether the handoff will take place, or if there will be a fumble. Cornell has drawn the line in the sand, stating that without additional funding, the radar program will be cut.

2. Appeal to Congress to save Arecibo Observatory

I call this approach the "Hubble gambit". This approach is bad for a number of reasons.

The Hubble Gambit succeeded for the following reasons:
a. Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) made it a high priority for NASA to make sure ST-9 (the servicing mission to Hubble) by threatening to withold funding from NASA. I imagine that she was influenced in part because Goddard Space Flight Center is located in her state, and the end of Hubble meant the end of the Space Telescope Science Institute and quite a few jobs.

b. Hubble makes beautiful pictures that were widely distributed to the public. Many of the Astronomy Pictures of the Day (APOD) are taken with Hubble. Optical instrumentation is considerably more developed than infrared, and as such can detect a great deal of beautiful structure in astrophysical phenomena.

c. University of Colorado - Boulder, the Southwestern Research Institute, and Ball Aerospace had spent $60 million to build the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph. When I visited Boulder, this was identified as the single most expensive museum piece this side of the Mississippi. Not completely sure if that's true (where is Blue Boy?) but I got the point.

How does Arecibo measure on these points?
a. Arecibo Observatory is located in Puerto Rico, which has no voting representation in Congress. The non-voting member can lobby, but since PR depends heavily on subsidies (and enjoys tax-free status), he has little clout and motivation to push too hard.

b. Pretty pictures are nice. Radio does not make pretty pictures. It creates wonderful science, but the images I see tend to be reddish orange blobs. These images are somewhat more difficult to interpret.

c. There are new instruments that are being installed at Arecibo. However, these instruments do not require delivery and maintenance by a special launch vehicle or a crew, which for political reasons, need to go into space and do something- anything- until 2010.

In addition, it's probably a bad idea to try to lobby Congress. The politicization of science has received a fair amount of press, especially in - but not limited to - this administration. The Republican War on Science, by Chris Mooney, is on my bookshelf, waiting to be read.

Brian Dewhurst at the National Academy of Sciences, sitting on the Space Studies Board, points out in a Space Review article the many reasons why the Decadal Survey is good for both Congress and science. (The Decadal Survey is conducted every 10 years in the astronomical community, and identifies the best projects to support.) In short, Congress and the science community appreciate the process because both feel the money is being well spent, without insidious influence.

The Hubble gambit harmed this relationship, and it is probably for this reason that NASA Administrator Mike Griffin has not reinstated the scientific advisory committees that were decommissioned during a reorganization following the departure of Administrator Sean O'Keefe. Doing so for Arecibo would probably rip the breach further, frustrate politicians, and invite the scientific community to join political camps.

3. Lobby Congress for an overall increase in NSF's funding

I believe this approach is the best. The American Competitiveness Initiative proposes a doubling of funding for NSF by 2010. While NSF-AST's share won't quite be $30 million, it will be significant. Combined with international funding and a somewhat reduced program, it should be possible to keep Arecibo running well after 2011.

I think this approach also has merit in a broader sense. Astronomy is uniquely positioned to be an excellent way to introduce young children to science. If NASA and NSF-AST were willing to develop effective curricula and standards - incorporating some of the goals and recommendations outlined in various science ed reports from the American Association of Colleges and Universities, the National Academics, the National Science Foundation, and others - then we'd be well on our way of improving scientific education and training. This is timely, especially given that No Child Left Behind will begin testing for scientific competence. Once NCLB finds what everyone knows (America is pretty bad at science), the curriculum will have developed to meet the political/policy goal of repairing K-12 science education.

Under this broader framework, I think Cornell/NAIC can successfully point to their record and active programs (scientific and educational/public outreach) to say that Arecibo deserves to be saved. I'm fascinated by ALFALFA's organizational structure. I think Professors Haynes and Giovanelli have an excellent collaboration that promotes science not only at Research I institutes but also at liberal arts colleges. Such organization can and ought to be applied to other scientific programs that will promote earlier and more comprehensive entry of America's youth into the scientific process.

All this and I still have a paper to write...

Death of Hrant Dink

I have created this blog to discuss and refine my conceptions of the world, to "see the world as it is" as astronomer/international policy expert Chris Chyba once pleaded at a Cornell colloquium.

This may be an odd first post for my blog, but I think the death of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink is a worthy one. A brief bio appears on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hrant_Dink) and armeniapedia (http://www.armeniapedia.org/index.php?title=Hrant_Dink). There is also a facebook group discussing Mr. Dink's death (http://cornell.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2228814238&ref=nf).

I am neither Armenian nor Turkish. I am simply a man who by circumstance and education came to learn about Europe and appreciate the vision that took a continent asunder and built something more peaceful and humane.

I have been studying speeches for Toastmasters. In recognition of Martin Luther King's birthday, I read his sermon "I've Been To The Mountaintop", given the night before he was assassinated. In it he says that if the Almighty gave him the opportunity to live at any time, he would choose to live in his present, a few years past the midpoint of the 20th century.

"Now that's a strange statement to make because the world is all messed up. The nation is sick, trouble is in the land, confusion all around. That's a strange statement. But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars."

Even astronomers seek the end of night and greet dawn with passion.

The next day, Robert Kennedy was on his way to a political rally in Indianapolis when he heard about MLK's assassination. He ignored the warnings of his staffers and continued to the rally. When he looked out at the crowd of mostly poor urban African-Americans, he realized that they did not yet know that King was dead. He broke the news to them in halting, pained, impromptu remarks: (http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/rfkonmlkdeath.html; the linked page plays a piece of "Mad World" performed by Sacre for the Donnie Darko soundtrack.
). At one point he quotes Aeschylus, a Greek poet, by saying,

Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget
falls drop by drop upon the heart,
until, in our own despair,
against our will,
comes wisdom
through the awful grace of God.

I doubt Robert was thinking about the relevance of Aeschylus to this particular audience. I think that he forgot politics for a brief moment and betrayed his privileged upbringing. Yet he also revealed to that crowd his grief, his anguish, for a man with whom his relationship evolved from mutual distrust to deep friendship and shared vision.

This speech inevitably leads to an examination of the eulogy for Robert F. Kennedy, read by his brother Ted, but largely in his own words. The phrase from his speech to South African students on the Day of Affirmation is inscribed as his epitaph: "Every time a man strikes out against injustice, he brings forth a tiny ripple of hope..."

Hrant Dink was such a man. My knowledge of him started this evening, but in the coming days, through conversations and readings, I will come to know a man who studied science, then studied literature to find his calling, his voice, his mission in newsprint and nonviolent resistance to the burial of past unmourned, or rights promised, but unrealized.

In the coming days I may learn of his personal failing, of errors in judgment, of a lack of objectivity (though by all accounts it was his balanced editorials and deep desire for reconciliation, not retribution or reparation, for nations and peoples.

In the coming days analysts will explore the impact of his death on the prospects of the accession of Turkey to the European Union. Politicians within the European Parliament may well use this to further their own domestic agendas by using his death to reinforce reasons - reasonable and outlandish - why Turkey should not join Europe. In the coming days some will compare his assassination to that of Rafik Hariri, and pontificate on whether the event will similarly lead to the promise of democratic reforms and a peaceful revolution within Turkey, and to the extent that such a revolution would realize ultimate success.

I have neither the professional competence nor the appetite to speculate on the political and economic consequences of the death of one man. I will content myself with listening to more learned individuals, here and around the world, who grapple with greater grief and torment that I may share, much diluted, but can never fully understand.

I hope that the Turkish state, in recognition of his service to the people - if not the country - will permit Dink to be interred on Turkish soil, not to lay claim to him as the ruling elite's own, but instead to recognize that he belongs to the people, that out of his death - and especially his life - should come symbol and substance of contemplation and reform. It is one of many blessings of America that there is no law against insulting "Americanness" - our jails, I fear, are crowded enough. Those of us who love the freedom of the newsprint, who have had our hands dirtied by its filmy ink, who have defended the freedom of the press, even if only in the context of a high school paper, can perhaps appreciate this man and his heart, if not his politics.

My prayers to his family, to the Turkish and Armenian nations and peoples, and to others around the world who are touched by his death or life.