Orange Orange (category:books)

Two more gems from The Best American Scientific Writing 2007, both about molecular biology being applied to something unexpected, and both from Discover Magazine.

First, molecular paleontologist Mary Schweitzer uncovers soft tissue in 65-million year-old T-rex fossils. You can imagine the huge uproar the media raised, running the gamut from whimsical (”Now we can create Jurassic Park!”) to the crazy (”Now we know the Earth is only 6000 years old!”). Craziest thing, though, is that when Schweitzer injected the tissue into lab animals their blood raised antibodies active against turkey proteins. There you have it — definitive proof that God exists, and intends for us to eat stuffed T-rex next Thanksgiving dinner. Please, NSF, fund this woman so our gastronomical dreams come true.

Speaking of which, molecular gastronomy is the next hot thing among techno-savvy chefs in Europe, and apparently, a well-funded field of scientific endeavor in France (maybe Mary Schweitzer should try to get funding from the French for potentially growing dinosaur steaks). How could you refuse a grant to these researchers, after hearing the following mouthwatering description of the coagulating proteins responsible for an egg’s texture?

when an egg cooks, its proteins first unwind and then link to form a rigidifying mesh. But not all its proteins solidify at the same temperature. Ovotransferrin, the first of the egg-white proteins to uncoil, begins to set at around 61 degrees Celsius, or 142°F. Ovalbumin, the most abundant egg-white protein, coagulates at 184°F. Yolk proteins generally fall in between, with most starting to solidify when they approach 158°F. Thus, cooking an egg at 158°F or so should achieve both a firmed-up yolk and still-tender whites, since at that low temperature only some of the egg-white proteins will have coagulated.

“Cooking eggs is really a question of temperature, not time,” says This. To make the point, he switches on a small oven, sets the thermostat at 65°C, or 149°F, takes four eggs straight from the box, and unceremoniously places them inside. “I use an oven in the lab; it’s easier. But if the oven in your kitchen is not accurate, cook eggs in plenty of water, using a good thermometer.” About an hour later—timing isn’t critical, and the eggs can stay in the oven for hours or even overnight—he retrieves the first egg and carefully shells it. “The 65-degree egg!” he announces. The egg is unlike any I’ve eaten. The white is as delicately set and smooth as custard, and the yolk is still orange and soft. It’s not hard to see why l’oeuf à soixante-cinq degrés is becoming the rage with chefs in France. (Salmonella can’t survive more than a few minutes at 60°C, or 140°F, so a 65-degree egg cooked for an hour should be quite safe.)

["Cooking for Eggheads" by Patricia Gadsby]

Did you know that even though one egg white can only yield half a pint of meringue, simply by adding water you can extend this limit several-fold? This is because the egg-white proteins hold air bubbles in a matrix containing water molecules, and the limiting reagent normally is water. I know. I’m moving to France.

Ran across a New Yorker writeup on the story of how Grigory Perelman proved the Poincaré Conjecture, a math problem that has been unsolved for about a century, and is something like this decade’s Fermat’s Last Theorem. This article was in a book–Best American Science Writing of 2007–that I randomly plucked off the bookshelf of a friend. Naturally, being the Internet addict that I am, the first thing I do after reading the article is look it up online, and lo and behold, it has an entire Wikipedia entry devoted to it. Why? Turns out, the piece attracted quite a bit of controversy for the soap opera-esque tale of cat-fighting mathematicians and intellectual dishonesty it covered. The New Yorker was even at one point threatened with legal action by a Chinese mathematician who claimed to have been defamed in the piece, although that has since blown over.

Academic politics and drama notwithstanding, the upshot is, now we have three incredibly interesting–and impeccably written–pieces on the fascinating field of topology from my favorite news sources: National Public Radio, The New York Times, and the article linked to above (and below) in the New Yorker.

Best part of article is when Perelman explains why he refused the Fields Medal for his discovery, and subsequently withdrew completely from professional mathematics. (the Fields is the mathematical equivalent of the Nobel Prize, and had never been refused since it was first awarded in 1936):

“As long as I was not conspicuous, I had a choice,” Perelman explained. “Either to make some ugly thing”—a fuss about the math community’s lack of integrity—“or, if I didn’t do this kind of thing, to be treated as a pet. Now, when I become a very conspicuous person, I cannot stay a pet and say nothing. That is why I had to quit.”

Russian mathematician Mikhail Gromov then adds:

“To do great work, you have to have a pure mind. You can think only about the mathematics. Everything else is human weakness. Accepting prizes is showing weakness.” Others might view Perelman’s refusal to accept a Fields as arrogant, Gromov said, but his principles are admirable. “The ideal scientist does science and cares about nothing else,” he said. “He wants to live this ideal. Now, I don’t think he really lives on this ideal plane. But he wants to.”

["Manifold Destiny" via The New Yorker]

Another interesting article from the “Best Science Writing” collection (and also in the New Yorker): “The Score” by Atul Gawande, a fascinating history of obstetrics and the techno-ethical conundrum the field finds itself in today, in the age of industrialized childbirth and C-sections.

Came across some innovative new thoughts about street design when I was on The Bostonist this morning. The article talks about redesigning Boston’s streets to be more amenable to pedestrians, by applying some rather subtle psychological tricks, which is encapsulated in the “Shared Space” philosophy of street design:

The curb is a big enemy in the Shared Space philosophy, because the curb is a separator, dictating what belongs to the pedestrian and what belongs to the vehicle. There are other enemies as well: signs, lines on the road, even traffic lights. Pioneered by Dutch traffic engineer Hans Monderman, who died earlier this year at age 62, Shared Space gets the street naked, removes all physical and psychological barriers, and forces cars and pedestrians to share. The concept makes the street safe by making it dangerous to proceed without paying attention. We have some elements of Shared Space here; in Downtown Crossing, Winter and Summer streets have no curb and, in the mornings, commercial vehicles mix with pedestrians.

[via Boston Globe]

On an unrelated note, this type of unconventional, wholistic thinking reminds me of a passage in Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, which I’ve just now managed to jump on the bandwagon and read. The book has chapter after chapter of enlightening–and sometimes shocking–stories about food, farming, industry, etc, but one of the most remarkable sections was about a agricultural (and political) radical named Joel Salatin and his “beyond organic” approach to farming. After the jump: Why I almost want to be a farmer now, and another TED talk

Is my taste in books a thinly veiled form of academic posturing and approval-seeking? Is YOURS?

Not that this is what she was saying, but this is the question that pops into mind after seeing Ty’s comment on my list of “Books I’ve Never Finished Reading.”

On a related note, a friend has convinced me that there are no objective standards or qualities of beauty, except for those illusory ones projected onto works of art by self-satisfied critics or chain-smoking hipsters.

So what, then, makes a book, song, or film good? I can think of 3 reasons.

1. It makes you happy. Or sad. Or something. Things that are good in this way are apt to be described simply as “good” with no further explanation. Example: Atonement. More the movie than the book, but both fall under this category. Someone will say, “Oh! Atonement was SOO good!” This refers to the artistic merit the work gains from making your insides feel like they’ve twisted into a Klein bottle. In the case of Atonement, the feeling is an old literary standby: intense, crippling regret. Self loathing. The more desperate and hopeless the emotion, the more artistic. (This also explains why existentialism is so artsy.)

2. You can write a really long paper–or at least have a very long, one-sided conversation with a hapless friend–about it. These also have a tendency to fall under the no-questions-asked “good” category, the difference being that the circular reasoning might be concealed using a different word, or usually, with more words. Example: Heart of Darkness. “Joseph Conrad’s harrowing critique of colonialism wasn’t just good–it was masterful!” Note that anything that is a critique of something that used to be good but now is bad, like slavery or imperialism, should send strong signals to your art-dar. Which leads me to the 3rd reason…

3. It makes you feel like a good person. Example: novels about totalitarian or dystopian societies, novels written by people who can no longer legally reside in their country of birth, Schindler’s list. These stories are usually very depressing and might feature a lot of violence, but are actually meant to make you feel really good. This might seem counter-intuitive, until you realize that no, you don’t live in a fascist country, but if you did, yes, like Liam Neeson you would also risk death or torture to save other people and stick it to the man. Discovering your inner hero but still being able to enjoy democracy and freedom–it doesn’t get any better than that. Good words for describing works like this are “affirmation,” “humanistic,” and “deeply humanistic.”

So, getting back to the question at hand, do we only like the books that make us seem more intellectual? No, of course not. We like them because they’re an affirmation of our deeply humanistic values!

Oh, and also because they’re good. Can’t you see that?

[via The New York Times]