Science is a great career if you don’t mind waiting until age 87 to be recognized

by philg

The New York Times ran what seems intended to be an inspiring success story,“Myriam Sarachik Never Gave Up on Physics”:

The New York-based scientist overcame sexism and personal tragedy to make major contributions to the field, for which she received recognition this year.

The phenomenon is now known as the Kondo effect, after Jun Kondo, a Japanese physicist who successfully explained what was going on. The Kondo effect has turned out to be a central component needed to understand the behavior of electrons in solids.

But Dr. Kondo, as a theorist and not an experimentalist, was not the first to show that his supposition [that electrical resistance may increase as some metals are cooled] was correct.

That instead was Dr. Sarachik, 87, now retired after a career spanning more than a half-century as a professor of physics at the City College of New York.

The experiment was just one of the accomplishments for which Dr. Sarachik received this year’s Medal for Exceptional Achievement in Research, a top honor of the American Physical Society.

The article closes with some gender binarism:

“Women are no better and no worse at doing physics than men are,” she said. “They are, however, at least if they’re my age, more persistent. It’s tenacity. It’s the will not to be pushed out.”

What about people with the other 48 gender IDs? Are they persistent when it comes to physics?

As with a lot of articles in publications controlled by those who took their last science course in high school, I think one theme is promoting to young people the greatness of careers in science. But how many people would want to wait until age 87 to be recognized for a huge achievement?

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Tesla short pays off today: stock down to $500

by philg

My investment advice is almost as good as Nobel laureate Paul Krugman’s. On February 8, I implied that Tesla stock was overvalued. It was trading at around $700 then. Today it is only about $500. Now I can start an expensive subscription investment newsletter!

More seriously…. In a mostly static world where the average person has a car that will last another 15-50 years (depending on what travel and business restrictions his/her/zir/their state governor decides to order), how is this company worth $400 billion? Is it the incredible lameness of Tesla’s competitors? (Do any of them have Dog Mode yet? That was an obvious idea in 2003. Tesla introduced it in 2019.)

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Zoom should treat baldness electronically?

by philg

The highest-paying American employers celebrate diversity… so long as all of the diverse individuals are between 20 and 40 years of age. If interviews and work are virtual, though, could an older person slip in via the magic of image processing software?

In Achieve college student skin color diversity via image processing? I looked at whether Zoom could help colleges achieve the rainbow of skin tones that they seek. For interviews and long-term work, why not image processing to make an older person look reasonably young? Younger men are typically slimmer and have more hair than older men. Why not use image processing to bring the hairline back down towards the eyes and to slenderize the face, neck, and torso? For the righteous Silicon Valley employers, add skin tone to whatever the employers are seeking at the moment.

Readers: Is there any reason to show up to a job interview as a fat bald 60-year-old? Why not show up as a slim 35-year-old with luxuriant hair, like Brendan Fraser as the Colombian drug lord in Bedazzled:

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Why are we still out of paper towels and spray cleaner?

by philg

It has been six months since coronapanic started. Why is the local Target still out of paper towels, spray cleaners such as Formula 409, cleaning wipes, etc. People are actually using way more of these items? The Chinese can build a hospital for 5,000 patients in 10 days, but American factories can’t expand production in 6 months?

From August 26, 2020, the Target store in Watertown, Maskachusetts:

(shoppers were continuously reminded via the overhead audio system that wearing a mask was required, a bit like being at an airport and hearing warnings about unattended baggage over and over again)

Maybe AOC and Ed Markey are right? Capitalism is a failure?

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U.S. retail will have permanently shorter European-style hours as a result of coronapanic?

by philg

With tens of millions of Americans on the “$600 per week and chill” plan, a lot of retailers shortened their hours. In theory, things should be getting back to normal (it was a brief shutdown to “flatten the curve,” right?), but at least our local supermarkets seem to have kept their new shorter hours.

Are we on track to become more like Europe, where if you don’t want to conform to the standard hours you won’t be able to get meals, food, etc.? (walk around Paris and see if you can find a 24-hour CVS!)

Readers: What have you seen in your regions of the country? Are hours still curtailed?

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COVID-19 kills the malls

by philg

Some of our recent helicopter flying has been with a photographer tasked with getting pictures of shopping malls in the context of highways, cities, etc. What are these for? “Everything is for sale now,” he said. “They’re all going bankrupt.”

Is it actually too late for these spaces? If schools need more square footage to do in-person learning, why not rent the vast department stores to local school districts? Because the schools aren’t actually willing to pay? In Shanghai, a typical mall might have half the space devoted to after-school programs for children, e.g., dance or English-language instruction. Perhaps that can’t work in the U.S. because at any time a governor can make it illegal to operate the after-school program.

Readers: What else can be done with these spaces? If retail and most other forms of gathering are outlawed, what is the value of a lot of climate-controlled space?

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Forgeries in the reopened art museums?

by philg

Today is the day that our biggest art museum, the Metropolitan, will supposedly reopen. I wonder if art museums will survive given that people now have to (a) book in advance, (b) show up at a precise time, and (c) wear a mask. It might be more pleasant to stay home and walk unmasked around the neighborhood and/or be entertained with a screen.

If you want to get back into the art world, let me recommend this Washington Post article on Gaugin forgeries.

It is possible that a real Gaugin is more offensive than a fake one:

And yet, today more than ever, Gauguin is a highly divisive figure.

To his admirers, he was one of the last great romantic adventurers, a former stockbroker who sloughed off bourgeois conventions and voyaged across the world to live out a dream. He was, they say, a visionary artist who was determined to learn from other cultures, and who used his expanded awareness to make some of the most ambitious, original works of the modern era.

To others, however, he was a scoundrel who traveled to French Polynesia and shamelessly stole creative ideas from cultures he barely knew. These critics also see a man who abandoned his wife and family to father children with teenage girls in the South Seas, relationships that he got away with due to his colonial prestige but that can clearly be seen as more sinister today.

Eating organic food and breathing unpolluted air nearly killed Gaugin and he was sick and weak before dying at age 54, but there are a fair number of works attributed to the artist in the year before he died.

A school group at the National Gallery of Art back in 2016. They won’t have to endure this kind of excursion now that they’re all fully virtual!

A sculpture that might have to be canceled:

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Banksy can sell anything except migrants

by philg

The British artist Banksy can sell almost anything, including a more-than-$1-million work that shreds itself as soon as purchased. We are informed that low-skill immigration makes a country richer and yet Banksy cannot sell the migrants that he has collected. See “Banksy’s migrant rescue boat stranded at sea with more than 200 on board” (Reuters):

A rescue boat funded by British street artist Banksy has issued urgent calls for help, saying it is stranded in the Mediterranean and overloaded with migrants who it has been unable to bring ashore.

The Louise Michel, named after a French feminist anarchist, started operating last week. It is trying to find a safe port for the 219 migrants it has picked up off the coast of Libya since Thursday.

Another said the boat was unable to move and “no longer the master of her own destiny” due to her overcrowded deck and a life raft deployed at her side, “but above all due to Europe ignoring our emergency calls for immediate assistance.”

The 30-metre long Louise Michel, a former French Navy boat daubed in pink and white, was bought with proceeds from the sale of Banksy artwork.

From designboom:

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If voting is more difficult, e.g., due to USPS shutdown, shouldn’t that favor the Democrats?

by philg

My Facebook feed remains alive with those who are convinced that Donald J. Trump will win the election via making it more difficult to vote, e.g., by shutting down the U.S. Post Office and/or discouraging voting by mail. Donald Trump is literally Hitler and nobody will vote against him unless voting is extremely convenient.

Some New York Times articles:

In other words, Trump is the biggest danger to the U.S. in the history of U.S. politics. But if lines at the polling station are longer than usual, Democrats, who are smart enough to recognize Trump as the dictator he is, will simply walk away. “Yes, Trump is a dictator and the U.S. is turning into Nazi Germany, but I can’t spare a whole hour or take a 1 in 100,000 risk of contracting coronaplague to save democracy.”

(Conundrum: if masks work, why is there any risk at all in masked adults gathering in a wide-open polling place? if masks don’t work, why are we demanding that elementary school children wear them?)

At least for the moment, I am not interested in the truth of these propositions. I am just fascinated by how it is possible for people to believe that (1) a second term for Trump will cement a U.S. descent into a dictatorship, and (2) the people who recognize this will not bother to vote against the dictator if there is any obstacle in their path.

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Richard Jewell movie

by philg

Who has enjoyed Richard Jewell, a Clint Eastwood movie streaming on HBO?

It is a great example of how to make a compelling movie even when the outcome is known in advance. (The story concerns the bombing at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996 and the security guard who found a suspicious backpack. Richard Jewell’s actions might have saved 100 lives. He quickly went from hero to main suspect as a team of 20+ FBI agents pursued the “look for the keys under the street light” method.)

For pilots and anyone else who has to make decisions with incomplete information, it is an interesting demonstration of our human ability to convince ourselves and to fit new information into our existing way of explaining an event. The FBI was hugely over-committed to their theory that Jewell, whose personality quirk of zealotry-in-law-enforcement was both the thing that motivated him to notice the backpack and also the thing that made him seem like a possible unhinged murderer.

Recommended.

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