Blurb: Nick Lomb’s Transit of Venus

Nick Lomb’s Transit of Venus 1631 to the Present is the best illustrated astronomy book for general readers since Terence Dickinson and Alan Dyer’s The Backyard Astronomer’s Guide.  Everything about Lomb’s book from its eye seizing cover, rarely seen historic photographs and charming well researched commentary is first class. Transit is the type of work you steal[1] from and frankly, there is no better endorsement than that.  I’m not the only reader to reach this conclusion check out this and this and this.

When prowling our few remaining bookstores I often skip illustrated works. Usually they’re dumbed-down rehashes of familiar material but, in Transit’s case, I learned something on my first randomly browsed page. The chapter introduction for Venus of the South Seas reads:

Sometimes scientific expeditions have unintended consequences. The desirability of observing the 1769 transit from the South Seas began a chain of events that would lead to the founding of the colony of New South Wales by the British in January 1788. In effect, modern Australia owes its existence to a celestial event.

How about that history haters. I knew why astronomers cared about transits of Venus. In 1677 Edmond Halley, of Halley’s Comet fame, described a method for calculating the astronomical unit from transit of Venus timings. Venus is close enough to the Earth that its track over the Sun differs for widely separated terrestrial observers. This is the familiar parallax effect.  From this small difference you can determine the astronomical unit and if you know the astronomical unit Kepler’s third law tells you the distance of every planet in the solar system.  This was a huge payoff for 17^th, 18^th and early 19^th century astronomers. This is what got Cook out in the Pacific. It’s a great story and Lomb’s telling is the best you will find.

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[1] I’ve picked up a few page design ideas.

1421: The Crank History of Gavin Menzies

Crank history is big business and it’s getting bigger. For reasons that infuriate skeptics there is a never-ending parade of pseudo-historians spouting rubbish that is eagerly devoured by a credulous pig ignorant public. Gavin Menzies’ ludicrous tome, 1421: The Year China Discovered America, (also titled 1421: The Year China Discovered the World), is the finest example of delusional sophistry I’ve encountered since Graham Hancock’s insane Finger Prints of the Gods.

About  the only thing you can say for Gavin’s fantasy is that, (unlike Hancock’s Finger Prints — the “science” behind the movie 2012), 1421 is remotely plausible. It’s to bad that remotely plausible does not make your case! Skeptics are hard-asses we demand rigorous and repeatedly verified evidence before deeming suppositions possibly not crap!  By this standard Gavin falls way short. I’m not going to catalog Gavin’s many errors, omissions and deceptions. That task has already been done by an army of critics. You can look here and here and here and here. In particular Bill Hartz’s exhaustive demolition is a bracing tonic for Gavin’s numbing elixir.

To get the gist of Gavin’s arguments let’s look at one of his claims. On page 241, (paperback edition), Gavin first mentions the Sacramento Junk. The Sacramento Junk is allegedly the remains of a large wooden ship entombed under a sand bank in the Sacramento river of California. Ok, so far so good! We have a wooden wreck in a river. The Chinese junks Gavin imagined sailing around the world had unique characteristics that would easily distinguish them from plain old Pacific west coast wrecks. For example:

1. They had 15th century teak hulls.
2. Metal bins bolted hull compartments together.
3. They used silk sails.
4. They often carried porcelain, seeds and trade goods.

If the Sacramento Junk is the remains of a 15th century junk it looks like identifying it would be an archaeological no-brainer! All we have to do is sample the site, collect some 15th century teak wood for carbon dating, and bingo the case for the Chinese reaching the west coast of the America’s before Columbus is looking promising.  Gavin describes drilling into the sand bank, extracting some wood and carbon dating it to 1410.  Isn’t science wonderful?

Here are a few questions.

• Where the hell is the Sacramento Junk?

Your impressive end-notes mention collecting samples in 2002 and 2003. I believe GPS was up and running. Could we have exact coordinates please?

• Was the wood teak?

If you’re looking for teak ships you might want to consult a wood expert. Teak, even old rotting teak, is easily identified. Look into it.

• How many samples were carbon dated?
• Where the hell are the lab reports, sample photographs  and other documents?
• Did you notify the historic relic Nazi’s of your amazing Chinese wreck?

You almost need a permit to weed your own damn garden in California for fear of disturbing native artifacts yet somehow you pillaged an ultra-historic wreck without the save our culture weenies whining —  yeah I once lived in California. With so many simple facts omitted you wonder if the Sacramento Junk is a figment of Gavin’s lurid imagination.

Gavin repeats this pattern of building a case for the Chinese Stopped Here over and over again and, without exception, always omits basic information that would lend credence to his claims. You need to set your bullshit detector on maximum when sailing with Gavin!

Open Source Hilbert for the Kindle

David Hilbert

While searching for free Kindle books I found Project Gutenberg. Project Gutenberg offers free Kindle books but they also have something better! Would you believe source code for some mathematical classics.

The best book I’ve found so far is an English translation of David Hilbert’s Foundations of Geometry. Hilbert’s Foundations exposed some flaws in the ancient treatment of Euclidean geometry and recast the subject with modern axioms. Because it is relatively easy to follow, compared to Hilbert’s more recondite publications, this little book exercised disproportionate influence on 20th century mathematics. We still see its style aped, but rarely matched, in mathematics texts today.

I couldn’t resist the temptation of compiling a mathematical classic so I eagerly downloaded the source and ran it through .  Foundations compiled without problems and generated a nice letter-sized PDF. Letter-size is fine but I was looking for free Kindle books! I decided to invest a little energy modifying the source to produce a Kindle version. Project Gutenberg makes it clear that we are free to modify the source. Isn’t open source wonderful!

Converting Foundations was simple. The main file included 52 *.png illustrations with hard-coded widths in \includegraphics commands. I wrote a J script that converted all these fixed widths to relative \textwidth‘s. This lets automatically resize images for arbitrary page geometries. When compiled with Kindle page dimensions this fixed most of the illustrations. I had to tweak a few wragfig‘s to better typeset images surrounded by text. The result is a very readable Kindle oriented PDF version of Hilbert’s book. There are still a few problems. The Table of Contents is a plain tabular that does not wrap well and one table rolls off the right Kindle margin. Neither of these deficiencies seriously impair the readability of the text.  If these defects annoy you download the Project Gutenberg source with my modifications and build your own version.

This little experiment convinced me that providing free classic books, in source code form, is a service to mankind.  Not only does it allow you to “publish” classics on new media it also fundamentally changes your attitude toward books. Hilbert was one of the great mathematical geniuses of the 19th and 20th century. It’s hard to suppress we are not worthy moments and maintain a sharp critical eye when reading his “printed” works.  You don’t get the same vibe when reading raw .  Source code puts you in a, it’s just another bug infested program, frame of mind. You expect errors in code and you typically find them. This is exactly the hard-nosed attitude you need when reading mathematics.

The UN Space Treaty is Holding Us Back!

Apollo Earthrise

2011 marks the 42’nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.  42 idiot infested years have passed since that glorious day and nothing that has happened since comes within a nautical league of matching it.  My vile boomer generation has downplayed the significance of space exploration for decades.  I remember getting a shrill lecture from my left leaning fifth grade teacher about what a waste of money the space program was.  Being a self-assured child so I told my teacher he was preening unimaginative Neanderthal. This landed me in detention but I refused to apologize.

Manned space flight has been in a depressing, decades long, holding pattern. The real advances in space exploration have come exclusively from unmanned probes and robots.  While astronauts have been going round and round in that orbiting boondoggle known as the International Space Station the Voyagers are on the brink of interstellar space, probes are on their way to Pluto and Mercury, Cassini is orbiting Saturn, a small armada of orbiters and crawlers are exploring Mars, low-budget missions discovered water on the moon, space telescopes like Chandra, Hubble and Spitzer have shown us wonder after wonder and, capping it all off,  WMAP determined the age of the entire frigging universe.  Compare these awesome achievements to ISS astronauts unplugging zero-G toilets.

Why has so little been accomplished? I can think of two good reasons.

1. Exclusive government control
2. The UN Space Treaty

Until recently only governments could afford space programs.  In the early days of space exploration government control made sense but that era is coming to an end.  In a few decades private entities will be able to mount manned Mars expeditions and send robots anywhere in the solar system and beyond.  The technology is coming along nicely but I am afraid the politics will soon be a gigantic millstone around our necks. The millstone takes the form of the absurd UN Space Treaty.

Green: UN Space Treaty nations

The UN space treaty is another sorry artifact of the 1960′s.   It reads like a bunch of unwashed socialist hippies got together and decided to ban capitalism in space. There is no other way to explain ridiculous terms like:

1. The exploration and use of outer space shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries and shall be the province of all mankind.
2. Outer space is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.
3. States shall be responsible for national space activities whether carried out by governmental or non-governmental activities.
4. States shall be liable for damage caused by their space objects.
5. States shall avoid harmful contamination of space and celestial bodies.

Suppose some daring entrepreneur decides to mount an asteroid mining expedition.  This is not as crazy as it sounds.  Asteroids are relatively easy to get to and very easy to get off of. They also contain mountains of valuable rare earths, platinum and gold. Eros alone holds well over 20 trillion dollars of metals.  You could pay off the US national debt by mining one dinky asteroid! One day, not very long from now, robot asteroid mining will make a compelling business case. To bad the UN Space Treaty outlaws it.

If you have to pay off all of mankind (#1, #2) your compelling business case evaporates.  Environmentalists, (yeah space environmentalists),  would complain that mining damages and contaminates a celestial body (#4, #5). Finally, even if the operation was 100% privately funded, various governments could legally ransom our daring entrepreneur or shut him down (#3).  These tactics have already been tried.  Remember the hysteria that preceded the launch of Cassini.  A pack of morons decided that the Plutonium powered RTG on Cassini posed a grave threat to all mankind and started citing the UN Space Treaty in hopes of blocking the launch.  Cassini was not a money-making operation so we ignored the loons. Asteroid mining will be another thing all together.  Everyone will want their cut.  With the UN in charge we’re going to feel like the probed subjects in this Kids in Hall video.

Soon we will all be Software Archeologists

One of my pet peeves is the ridiculously short lifetimes of digital media.  I remember 9 track mainframe tapes and 5.5 inch floppies: technologies that thrived in an ancient bygone epoch known as the Eighties. Good luck trying to read 9 track tapes or 5.5 inch floppies today! You will have better luck with older paper punch cards. Punch card readers are hard to find these days but you can see the damn card holes with your own eyes! In fact you don’t even need eyes to read punch cards. I once knew a blind mainframe programmer that banged out massive FORTRAN programs by feeling the holes on punch cards. Try that with a USB flash drive.

Of course I appreciate that you can stuff the data from an entire filing cabinet of 5.5 inch floppies onto one modern USB flash drive but I am disturbed by the fact that all those gigabytes will soon be more unreadable than cuneiform. I am not the first to worry about our distressed digital data. Kevin Kelly considers the word “storage” a dangerous misnomer and advocates the use of “movage” instead. You had better move your data from old to new formats or you will lose it!

Rosetta Ball

Movage is one of the reasons I have not jumped on the eReader bandwagon. Replacing myriagrams of books with one lightweight tablet is appealing but iPads and Kindles are not stable! High quality books have shelf lives measured in centuries.  With digital media you’re lucky to get through a decade.  It’s a good bet you won’t be able to read what’s on your eReaders in ten short years!  You poor dumb suckers will have to repurchase your library just like you repurchased your record and movie collections. It’s not in Amazon’s or Apple’s interest to worry too much about media durability. Fortunately some people do worry about media stability.  Check out The Long Now’s Rosetta project for what I consider a stable medium.

To belabor this point, while I was unpacking boxes of old-fashioned books, (we recently moved again),  I came across a notebook I put together for a poster I presented at the 1994 APL conference in Antwerp. My notebook contained a paper version, still eminently readable, and four 3.5 inch disks.  My oldest computer has a vestigial 3.5 inch disk drive so I tried copying these sixteen year old disks. Some of the disks were unreadable, (surprise surprise), but I was able to recover a directory containing my poster’s source. Some of these files were old Microsoft Word documents. Word 2007 could not read them! Even when bits survive changes in software can render them useless. Fortunately I loathed Word in 1994, a sentiment I still maintain, and wrote my poster in .

 source is dull ASCII text. Civilization will collapse before we lose the ability to read it! Of course , like Word, has changed since 1994 so, just for the hell of it, I decided to compile this old document with MikTeK 2.9.  It didn’t compile;  I was missing some old graphics macros and a key style file. It didn’t take me long to fix these problems. I replaced the graphics macros with standard \includegraphics{} commands and converted all the Windows *.bmp files to *.png files. Google even found the long-lost missing style file qqaaelba.sty in arxmliv. After making these trivial changes pdflatex.exe gobbled my poster source and moved Using FoxPro and DDE to Store J Words into the 21st century.

C. K. Raju: Genius or Crank (Part 1)

Euclid's first proposition

Lately I have been amusing myself by working through Euclid’s Elements. Despite studying mathematics in university, teaching it in high school and occasionally using it in my software-soaked day job I never got around to reading Euclid.

Euclid is routinely lionized as the wellspring of axiomatic mathematics. Before The Elements mathematicians were clearly out of control!  They were running around developing useful methods, (counting, fractions, roots),  and – gasp — making unjustified assertions!

Fortunately, The Elements put an end to all that and ushered in the endless age of rigorous axiomatic mathematics. I admire mathematical rigor but my tiny brain can only take so much of it before an all-pervading fog of befuddlement sets in. When I’m all fogged up there are only a few options:

1. Reread and rework until the fog clears.
2. Press on and review later.
3. Give up and abase self.
4. Take a break.

I’m a lazy S.O.B. so option (4), take a break, comes up more often than it should.  One of my favorite ways to  break away from mathematics is to read about it’s long history.  While tracing the history of The Elements I came across the writings of C. K. Raju.

C. K. Raju has written a fascinating book: (the) Cultural Foundations of Mathematics: The Nature of Mathematical Proof and the Transmission of the Calculus from India to Europe in the 16th c. CE. Raju’s book is a bit hard to get your hands on.  It’s not on Amazon but you can use World Cat to find a copy near you.

Raju’s thesis consist of these major points:

1. Significant portions of the calculus developed in India long before Newton and Leibniz and Indian methods, particularly series expansions, came into Europe via 16th century Jesuit missionaries.
2. European notions of rigorous mathematical proof evolved from the needs of  the Catholic Church to convert Muslims with impressive iron-clad logical arguments.  The old baffle them with bullshit tactic.  Raju claims this theological attitude worked it’s way into mathematics and resulted in the bizarre western view that deduction is superior to observation, experience and induction.
3. The ultimate source of eastern secular knowledge, (mostly Arab and Indian), was systematically suppressed and “Hellenized” by the Catholic Church.  The church claimed  all the “good stuff” in Arab texts originated with the ancient Greeks and had been merely preserved by Arab copycats. It just wouldn’t do to credit hated, (remember the crusades),  enemies for their good ideas.
4. Insisting on rigorous proof when teaching mathematics, especially to children, is sterile and stupid.

All of this reads like a mathematical Dan Brown novel and oddly the Catholic Church is once again the villain.  I was enjoying Raju’s account until this passage about Kepler:

Why, after all, was Tycho so secretive about his papers, not even allowing his trusted assistant Kepler to see them?  In any case, on Tycho’s sudden death, Kepler obtained not just Tycho’s observations but also the rest of his papers which contained the underlying theory. Being inclined towards heliocentrism, Kepler transformed Nilakantha’s “Tychonic” orbits to a heliocentric frame (a simple transformation). This made Nilakantha’s variable epicycles come out as ellipses. Being a professional astrologer, Kepler was good at making up stories, and he made up the story about how he had arrived at his results using Tycho’s data.

In other words Kepler is a fraud and he ripped off one of the major discoveries in astronomy, the elliptical orbits of planets, from Indian astronomers. It’s one thing to spin plausible stories about how parts of calculus may have seeped into Europe from unacknowledged sources it’s another thing to posthumously accuse someone of fraud.

What would it take to make Raju’s case?  How about some hard evidence! What about Tycho’s secret papers, do any of these documents survive and do they contain references to Nilakantha?   Now that would be a smoking gun.  Of course we don’t know of any such papers but that doesn’t mean they didn’t exist. Proof by conspiracy is a very powerful inference rule — 9/11 troofers and ufologists swear by it!  What about the claim that the transformation from Nilakantha’s variable epicycle Earth centered system to a Sun centered elliptical orbit system is “a simple transformation.”   I rather doubt it’s as simple as claimed and even if the transformation was, to use the most abused word in mathematics — trivial, it still misses the point.  The major shift was to abandon all pretense of Earth centered systems no matter how mathematically sophisticated!  Before Kepler astronomers and mathematicians, in many cultures, toyed with the idea that planets orbit the sun.  After Kepler everyone had to grow up.  Planets do orbit the sun deal with it!

And it was precisely how Newton dealt with it that made calculus something worth fighting over.  Newton’s unprecedented and monumental proof that elliptical orbits are a mathematical consequence off the inverse square law of gravity is the dividing line between modern and early science.   Nothing like it had ever been done before and even today physics and mathematics students are given to chanting we are not worthy when presented with this brilliant argument. Without Newton’s use of the calculus nobody but a few anal mathematicians would give a rat’s ass about who invented calculus.

In a later post I will argue that Raju discounts the importance of independent and coequal mathematical discovery in his account.

This Herodotus is a Hoot!

Yesterday, while driving to the mall with my wife, I launched into a lecture on why the iPad and it’s Kindle’ly kindred will never replace books.  As you are reading this on a 21st century blog you can infer that I am not a technophobic Luddite.  Devices like the Kindle are another way to read and for many purposes, (textbooks anyone), such gadgets will be better than traditional books.  But, and this is one big butt-ugly but, when it comes to the book as a objet d’art the iPad is to a book like a bumper sticker is to the Sistine Chapel.

If you don’t see this I feel sorry for you; you have never read a real book.  It’s not your fault,  publishing,  like everything in this sad sorry world,  is subject to Sturgeon’s Law:  “Ninety percent of everything is crap!”  Most of the books you find on the shelves of big-box book stores are essentially paper turds  — the more current the topic, the more Oprah’ey the content, the greater the likelihood of turdhood.  Paper turds can be  great books.  In fact there is a thriving  niche industry that specializes in reissuing great classics as low-cost paper turds.  Here the medium is definitely not the message.

Most of the time we are drowning in a sea of paper turds but every now and then a book appears that literally restores your faith in mankind: The Landmark Herodotus is such a book.  The instant I opened the cover I knew I was dealing with something special.  Book design is a subtle art, when executed at the highest level on the best source material it can produce jaw-dropping results.  The design of The Landmark Herodotus is simply the best annotation scheme I have ever seen.  Somehow the editors have managed to include thousands of marginal notes, footnotes and elegant place maps that simultaneously elucidate the original and stay out-of-the-way.  I was completely taken by the end of the front matter.

My reactions are hardly unique. Panagiotis Polichronakis wrote in his we are not worthy review:

It’s a rude thing, the march of history. It disabuses us, and we must gracefully acquiesce. Every single aspect of The Landmark Herodotus – most certainly including the translation at the heart of it – is superior to anything else that’s ever been produced on behalf of the author.

So this is not only a good translation — it’s the best ever!  For a book that has been in circulation for over 2,400 years that’s a pretty extravagant claim but it’s probably true.

Last night I was sucked into Herodotus and managed to pull myself away at 3:00 am after reading the story of Cyrus the Great. Cyrus’s story offers up a tasty morsel.  Astyages, Cyrus’s grandfather, dreamed of a vine growing from his daughter’s genitals that grew to cover all of Asia.  Now that’s a bush!  Alarmed Astyages told his Magi about his dream and they told him that he would be deposed by a grandchild:  like duh!  Being the kingly king he was Astyages resolved to off any of his daughter’s offspring.  In time Mandane, Astyages daughter, bore a son named Cyrus.  Astyages charged his right hand man Harpagos with the task of terminating Cyrus.  Harpagos wanted to obey his king but he wussed out when he saw Cyrus’s cute little innocent baby eyes. He couldn’t kill Cyrus so he did what all government bureaucrats do when faced with a tough choice: he delegated.  Harpagos gave Cyrus to the herdsman Mitradates and told him to expose the child and bring back the body so he could be sure the kid was kaput. Mitradates knew he was Median toast if he didn’t obey.  He took Cyrus home to his pregnant wife and told her we are so screwed if we don’t kill Cyrus. Fortunately for Mitradates, his wife and Cyrus she had given birth while Mitradates was away.  Unfortunately,  for her baby,  it was a stillborn.  Mitradates’s wife suggested swapping her stillborn with baby Cyrus and raising Cyrus as their own son.  In this way Cyrus survived and grew up as the son of herdsman.

Despite this clever ruse Astyages eventually learned the truth about Cyrus and how his trusted man Harpagos had disobeyed him.  But Astyages was cool about being betrayed.  He forgave Harpagos and remarked that Cyrus, being alive and all, would need some playmates.  Astyages then told Harpagos why don’t you go home and tell your own boy to come over and keep Cyrus company.  He also invited Harpagos to diner.  When Harpagos’s son arrived Astyages had him killed, chopped up and boiled.  When Harpagos arrived for diner Astyages served him chunks of his own son.  Harpagos gulped his meat down.  Astyages asked Harpagos  if the meat was to his liking and added that if wanted more just look in this pot.  Harpagos looked in the pot and saw the boiled head, hands and feet of his son.

Stop me if you have heard this family diner story before.  Shakespeare severed up a version in Titus Andronicus,  South Park took a stab at it with Scott Tenorman Must Die  and Jeffery Dahmer seems to have confused this story with a recipe but,  no matter how you like your history served, The Landmark Herodotus is a magnificent hooting feast of a book.