Archimedes’ Hot Tub

Will Obamacare — the Affordable Care Act — alleviate or exacerbate shortages in primary care doctors? That was the question The Boston Globe Sunday Magazine asked me to explore. I wrote this piece, Why is it so hard to find a doctor? Doctor shortages stem from multiple factors, making it a complex problem to solve. But the ACA clearly could help, especially with more doctors like Asaf Bitton.
As an aside, I find it odd that as a country we should be decrying universal health care, given that what we have in the U.S. underperforms nationalized healthcare systems elsewhere, despite spending far more. We are not getting the bang for our buck. The one exception to that truism would be catastrophic illness. The U.S. health care system is very good at keeping people alive when they by rights should be dead.

Reza Aslan is probably the only religious scholar ever to become hip, thanks in part to to his encounter with Fox News’ Lauren Green.

I interviewed Aslan both before and after his appearance on Fox News. That interview, In Search of the Real Jesus, ran in the Boston Globe Ideas section today, Sunday. I enjoyed reading his book, it’s one of the best historical narratives I’ve read in years. The second interview was largely because my editor wanted a few follow-up questions, a couple to make the interview a bit more fun (the Monty Python question in the interview was his; I missed “The Life of Brian”), and a couple to fill in gaps that I couldn’t get to the first time. But it was also to ask about the Fox News flare-up.

I know Green has been excoriated, though Buzzfeed’s claim that this is the worst interview ever felt like click bait. Green did lose control of the interview, and asked some unfortunate questions that did not get at the question she seemed to really mean to ask, the legit one of how his Islamic faith might influence his interpretation of Jesus (I agree that journalism schools may teach this interview for years to come). But I’m not going to throw stones at her. Disclosure: I met Green at a dinner once and found her pleasant and modest (someone else had to tell me that she’s an accomplished pianist and a former beauty queen), and I am also a Christian. But those reasons aren’t why I’m not throwing stones. It’s because I thought back to my first interview with Reza.

Our first 12 minutes were spent mostly discussing the arbitrary labels of religious identity that ended with me asking “how would you like to be described? My editor is certainly going to ask what kind of Islam you practice.” That got me a lecture on using adjectives like “practicing,” which climaxed with “it’s none of anyone’s business how I practice my faith,” followed by a denouement on the absurdity of putting value judgments on individual faith.

Had that particular 12 minutes been on air, I can only imagine people mocking me for asking him what type of Islam he practices (the terrorist type?), as well as for failing to do anything interesting in ten minutes. As it happened, I had an entire hour with him and thought our conversation was a good one. But if we’d had just 10 minutes, the whole thing might have felt prickly.

At the same time, his reaction to Green might not have started with the point about his credentials as a scholar. As he said to me, “I firmly believe you can be a follower of Jesus without being a Christian.” Had he given an answer like that to Green, it might — it should — have been a very different interview.
Of course, if all she (and her producer) really wanted to was make a point that Muslim zealots are now associated with terrorism, and Jesus was not a terrorist, it might have gone the same way, though I think Reza would have something really interesting to say about that.

She might also have noted that Islam does not think Jesus was divine. Aslan doesn’t himself say flat out that Jesus is not divine, but the book at one point reminded me of the Atheists for Jesus column Richard Dawkins wrote a few years’ back (minus the screed in the middle). Clearly, you can be an admirer of Jesus and not believe Jesus is God. And Reza does weave in some of the Gospel verses that any reasonable Christian needs to ponder and pray over. There are verses in the Gospel that can be seeds of doubt, like “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:6), or Luke 9:27, “some standing here will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God.”

But the debate over Jesus’ divinity is a very old one, officially resolved for Christians at the Council of Nicaea in 325, 245 years before Mohammed was born. In a way, the debate seems less warranted in the age of quantum mechanics: Jesus as God and Jesus as Holy Spirit have a quantum dynamic.
I ended up asking only one question about the Fox News event in our follow-up, and I lumped it in with what I felt was a more damning comment from someone who called him an amateur. It was, in retrospect, a mistake. I wanted to try to get past the news, and I probably outsmarted myself. Glad that wasn’t on air, either.

One quirk of reporting that the best stories you get when interviewing people often don’t fit the story you’re writing. I had that happen recently, as I reported a piece on the potential quantum computing cluster emerging in Waterloo, Ontario. Near the end of an interview with Raymond Laflamme, the director of the Institute for Quantum Computing, he started talking about the vibrant community in the Waterloo area, and how that helped him in recruiting. Little things like how he was able to circumvent Waterloo’s physician shortage because his doctor found out what he did, and told him to just send over any of his quantum team, and he’d see them. How 600 people show up for a theoretical physics lecture once a month.

My favorite involves his meeting with the conductor of the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, who wanted to do something with the IQC. The two brainstormed and decided to do a quantum concert, or really the history of physics in music.

“If you look at the history of science and music, they are concepts that seem to appear roughly at the same time, seem to be related,” Laflamme said. Newton, for instance, and Mozart were contemporaries. “They are well-defined, you can predict what’s going to happen.” But, when the 20^th century arrives, music was in upheaval, and the same was true for science. Later, the randomness of quantum mechanics will emerge at about the same time as John Cage.

Fun as it was, I couldn’t work it into a 750-word piece. So I’m writing it here.

Here’s the program for the quantum concert:

Quantum: Music at the Frontier of Science  

 

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 - 1791)  

Symphony No.29 in A major, K.201 (186a) *  

 

I. Allegro moderato

10:00

 

 

Anton Webern (1883 - 1945) / Transcribed by Gerard Schwarz, from an early work for string quartet.

Langsamer Satz     

9:00

 

Charles Ives (1874 - 1954)  

The Unanswered Question, S.50     

6:00

 

Anton Webern (1883 - 1945)  

Excerpt from Symphony, op.21  

 I.  Ruhig schreiten  II.  Variationen

10:00

 

John Cage (1912 - 1992)  

Atlas eclipticalis

 

Henry Brant (b. 1913)  

On the Nature of Things (After Lucretius)  

14:00

 

Yannis Xenakis (1922 - 2001)  

ST/48—1,240162

11:00

 

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 - 1791)

Symphony No.29 in A major, K.201 (186a) *

I. Allegro moderato

10:00

 

John Cage (1912 - 1992)

Atlas eclipticalis– will be performed simultaneously with Mozart Symphony 29   

I don’t know quite about that last bit, with the reprisal of the Mozart and the Cage, only played simultaneously. I guess that’s quantum superpositioning, orchestra-style.
Here’s a blog with some video of the concert.

Laflamme told me as we were parting that when he was in high school, he’d been able to spend a day with Zenakis, and it was one of the highlights of his life. Gotta love that!

Over the last five weeks I published a five-part series on disaster preparedness, with CNHI Newspapers, a chain of about 140 dailies and weeklies in 23 states. I was waiting for the whole series to be done before linking to it (bad social media management, yes, but those five stories were a lot of work on top of the other work I’m doing).

Here they are:
Are we ready? Disasters prove more costly as people move into storm-prone areas

Disaster dollars: Money spent beforehand blunts the impact of disasters

Lessons learned: Tornado veterans balance preparedness, practicality

Warning signs: Technology speeds disaster alerts, response
The Big One: Preparing for a Mid-America earthquake
One of those stories, Disaster dollars, featured comments from Gayland Kitch, the head of emergency management in Moore, Oklahoma, talking about how the town had come back from the massive tornado that hit in 1999. It was stunning to hear that Moore had been hammered again by a major tornado. NPR’s OnPoint found one of my pieces and asked me to come on air as part of a show it was doing on preparedness.

So I went over to its studios today to watch Tom Ashbrook do his thing, and talk about preparedness. An F5 tornado like the ones that have hit Moore will do major damage no matter how much preparation you do, but there are steps we can take as individuals and communities to prepare. The OnPoint team covers a lot of ground in the 46-minute report at the link above; I was impressed (my segment starts at about 19:20).

Disaster preparedness is enormously complex. It involves getting dozens of government and private organizations to cooperate and collaborate, in challenging environments. Communities have pressing spending needs, from schools to public safety to infrastructure, all real and constant, versus the chance of a disaster.

My hope was and is that my articles can boost community attention to disaster preparedness, and help towns and cities make better-informed decisions about how to prepare.

In 2010, Britain’s chief rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, said in response to Hawking and his mind of God comment that

Science takes things apart to see how they work. Religion puts things together to see what they mean. They are different intellectual enterprises. They even occupy different hemispheres of the brain. Science – linear, atomistic, analytical – is a typical left-brain activity. Religion – integrative, holistic, relational – is supremely a work of the right-brain.

In other words, science has limits to what it can say, especially about human interaction based on human values. An earnest idea in an ironic age?

 

Scientists Jewish, Christian and Muslim once strived to bring greater glory to God through revealing things about His world. During the Enlightenment, the idea of natural theology developed, with God as designer of the marvelous world around us. Even after Darwin and Wallace and their theory of evolution destroyed the premise of natural theology, many scientists continued to pursue knowledge of the world and our universe to enhance the glory of God. Now most science seems to get done for the glory of science. Perhaps that’s an inevitable secular shift. Albert Schweitzer, medical missionary, gives way to secular non-profits. Mission schools and hospitals yield to professionalized institutions.

 

Now we can seek knowledge for the glory of ourselves, or its own sake. Both are easier to know and experience than God.

 

“Humans have this extraordinary capacity for propositional knowledge, objective knowledge and it’s enabled us to make huge advances,” says Fraser Watts, lecturer in theology and science at Cambridge University. “Our kind of excitement about that can distract us from knowing God.”

 

Is the rise of the left brain, analytic, incisive, a moral hazard for morals? Watts thinks so. He thinks the left brain “is not a good way of knowing God.”

 

He’s also worried that the left brain is subsuming the more expressionist right brain. He says art and religion are being distorted into left brain work. “Left-brain dominance that is a threat to our society and the human race,” he says.

 

Apocalyptic language, applied to religion itself. What will it mean for our morals?

Something to contemplate as we sit down to Easter supper. Perhaps at some point I’ll work on a piece that answers these questions.

 

Alyosha, the spiritual Karamazov brother in Dostoevsky’s 1880 novel, receives the following advice:

Remember always, young man, that science has become a great power in the last century, has analyzed everything divine handed down to us in the holy books. After this cruel analysis the learned of the world have nothing left of all that was sacred. But they have only analyzed the parts and not the whole, and indeed their blindness is marvelous.

Blind or not, science offers marvelous metaphors: the Big Bang, the theories of evolution and relativity. These are also things most of us cannot know – to really see them requires significant training needed to overcome the counter-intuitiveness of science. It takes real and consistent work for a scientific education to overwhelm our sense of intuition. Yet like moral ideas, scientific memes are powerful, and can offer neutral, non-judgmental ways of looking at the world around us and the people who live in it.

Wilde said, “in matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing.”

Victorian society disagreed about Wilde’s style; ours would shrug. Social stigma shifts. Things scandalous 50 years ago – psychotherapy, divorce, bankruptcy, having children outside of marriage, skipping worship – become unremarked, even civil rights.

 Does a loosening of Bible-driven conventions lead to a less judgmental, possibly more just world?

Discover magazine just sent me my contributor’s copy to its Year in Science issue, which reminds me that I haven’t posted anything on it.

I wrote two small pieces for this issue. Number 15, Self-driving cars hit the road, looks at the progress being made in driver-less cars. It built on a European project that brought the first ‘train’ of driver-less cars onto a Spanish highway last year.

The second was Number 58, Crowds train computer translators, looking at how the Hmong expatriate community worked with Microsoft to create an online translation engine for a dialect of Hmong.

I hadn’t written for Discover before, so it’s another new publication for me. It will be brand new in all but name the next time I write for it, too. The magazine just moved from New York to Waukesha, Wisconsin, outside of Milwaukee. My understanding is that all its editorial staff stayed behind. I thought it was an interesting dilemma: leave your national magazine in a time when the industry is shedding jobs, or leave New York. But the staff seemed to think the choice was clear.

Nice words from my editor at Technology Review: My story on Corning’s development of its Willow flexible glass, Glass that Bends the Rules of Manufacturing, has been the most-read story on Tech Review’s site for two days running. Clear sign of a burgeoning interest in improving American manufacturing.

Corning’s story would be even more impressive if it were a semiconductor company. Outside of Intel, these companies have ceded market after market to others, losing their supply chains with it (and even Intel had to give up on DRAM).
[Image of a Corning engineer working on Willow’s manufacturing process courtesy of Corning]

I had the new experience this Sunday of seeing a performance based on a script I had written.  It wasn’t in  a theater, but at church. I wrote the script for the Christmas pageant this year, acted out by our youth. I built it around the story of Jesus’ birth in Luke 1 and 2.

I deliberately kept out of most of the rehearsals, which probably isn’t how playwrights normally work. I wanted the youth to adapt the language of the play to their everyday use of language and phrasing (they made fun of me for using ‘dude’). They opted to film the dream scenes, rather than acting them out live. That allowed for some nice effects in the video editing.

I was pleased to have people laugh in some of the right places. A few things didn’t work quite the way I would have liked. I thought I had changed a couple of things in the script that were still there in the end, and didn’t quite fit with scripture.

Anybody who would like to adapt the script may feel free to do so. I pasted it in below, due to some uploading issues with my outdated version of Wordpress.

Do drop me a line if you use it, or have questions about it.

I’ll post a video from it when it’s ready.

A Dream of Christmas

A nativity pageant in one act

By Michael Fitzgerald

Cast:

Teen 1 –

Teen 2 –

Teen 3 –

Joseph –

Mary –

Innkeeper –

Shepherd 1 –

Shepherd 2 –

Shepherd 3 –

Shepherd 4 –

Shepherd 5 –

Shepherd 6 –

Assorted sheep

Angel of the Lord –

Other angels

Guest at the Inn

Wise man 1 –

Wise man 2 –

Wise man 3 –

Scene 1

[Three teens talking in a cafeteria or other environment]

Teen 1: You know, I don’t buy that story about how Jesus came to earth. If I were God, I would come in a flying chariot with a great sound system, and people would know who I was!

Teen 2: I don’t know. God tried that, and it didn’t work.

Teen 3. What do you mean? I don’t remember Bible stories involving God flying a chariot.

Teen 2:  Well, not exactly. But God parted the Red Sea, which is a pretty neat trick. And the Hebrews, they turned right around and created the Golden Calf. Lots of the Old Testament stories see God giving visible signs to the Hebrews, trying to get them to pay attention. Maybe God wants followers who want to follow, and not just because they think they better do it or else.

Teen 1: Maybe, but I think God went about it all wrong. Who wants a helpless baby as God?

Teen 2: We should talk about this some more at youth group; I have to go home and get ready for school tomorrow.

Teen 3: Me, too

Teen 1: Okay, see ya.

Scene 2

[We see Teen 1 at a desk, homework in front of her.]

Teen 1: Confirmation class is so much work! The pastor is making us memorize practically the entire Bible. I think I’ll take a nap…

Scene 3

[Outside of Bethlehem. A man stands next to a donkey carrying a pregnant woman. The man is poking at his cell phone. He gets increasingly agitated.]

Joseph [angry]: Aargh. Hotels.com says every hotel and inn in the area is booked.  How can this be?

Mary [sighs]: Joey, didn’t you book the room before we left?

Joseph: How was I supposed to know they’d fill up? Nobody goes to Bethlehem, honey. How many people could possibly need to come back for the census?

Mary: I keep telling you, that cell phone isn’t God. And even if it were, God doesn’t make rooms miraculously appear.

Joseph:  We’ll find something when we get there. Somebody’s bound to not show up.

Scene 4

[Wayfarer’s Inn. It’s dark. Joseph is banging on the door.]

Voice: Hey, keep it down out there!  We’re trying to sleep!

Joseph [ignores voice, keeps banging]: Innkeeper!  Hello?!

[Mary covers her eyes and shakes her head. Then she pulls out her ipad.]

Innkeeper: Dude! It’s really late. Didn’t you see the sign? We don’t have any rooms.

Joseph [pleading]: What’s up with that? We couldn’t even get in at the youth hostel.

Innkeeper: There’s a big game tomorrow. We’re playing the Philistines.

Joseph [smacks his head]: Oh, that’s right!  I forgot about that. What do you think our chances are?

Innkeeper. I don’t know. They’re pretty tough this year. Really, we haven’t had a good team since Samson cut his hair.

Joseph: Yeah, he was a great player! Remember that time he just crushed them?

Innkeeper: I sure do! Man, that rocked!

Mary: Ahem!

[Innkeeper and Joseph both look up, sheepish.]

Innkeeper [after awkward pause]. Anyway, I’m really sorry, but we’re full.

Joseph: But, dude, my wife is really pregnant! Look at her! I can’t have her just sleeping outside.

Mary: Say, I see from your web page that you’ve got a good-sized stable. Is that full?

Joseph: Yo, M, you can’t sleep in the barn!

Mary: Joey, it will be fine.

Innkeeper: Well, there is a little area where servants sometimes sleep, and that is available. I’ll get you some fresh hay.

Scene 5

[Later that night, in the rural areas outside Bethlehem]

Shepherds with their flocks [some younger kids]. The shepherds stare at their phone or tablet apps

Shepherd 1: Ok, Sheep Detector Night Time Vision edition shows 13 sheep over by the fence, 15 sheep by the tree, and one moving at high speed off the screen…hey, wait – that’s a wolf with my lamb!

Shepherd 2: Dude, that’s your sheepdog.

Shepherd 1:  Oh. Right.

Angel appears: Have no fear! I bring good news!

Shepherds babble about Fruit Ninja scores.

[Angel looks around. Sighs. Clears throat.]

Angel [loudly]: Have no fear! I bring good news!

[Shepherds still don’t look up.]

[Angel stomps his feet, glowers.]

Angel: Kids this millennium! I swear.

[Takes out cell phone, taps on it. On screen flashes the words: “Check it: Christ the Savior=born! Go 2 manger in D’s Town!”

Shepherds’ phones buzz [with Hark The Herald Angels ring tone]. ]

Shepherd 2: Hey, the Savior is born! Awesome!

Shepherd 1: Savior? Why would the Savior need to be born?

Shepherd 2: I dunno. Let’s go check it out!

Shepherd 1: Well, I did just get a high score on Fruit Ninja. I guess I’ll go.

[interlude: A youth plays Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring or other appropriate piece on the piano. Alternatively, a youth choir could perform a song like Go Tell It on the Mountain]

Scene 6

[At the manger. Gathered are shepherds on one side, with some sheep. Angels. Joseph, Mary and a baby. ]

Mary:  My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my savior.

His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.

He has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.

He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly.

He has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.

[Enter Three wise men, bearing gifts.]

1st wise man: After you.

2^nd wise man: No, after you!

3^RDwise man: I am the oldest, I should go last.

[Glares.]

1^st wise man: All right, rock paper scissors.

[Game ensues.]

[Myrhh is brought forward.]

Joseph: Hey, that’s nice. My hands get rough in the winter.

[Mary makes a face.]

[Frankincense is brought forward.]

Joseph: We could’ve used some of that last night. It smells like a barn in here.

[Mary elbows him.]

[Gold is brought forward.]

Joseph: Hey, thanks – now we can send him to college!

[Mary rolls her eyes.]

[In the background, shepherds are shooting photos.]

Shepherd 4: Hey, the baby isn’t in focus. It looks like just bright light!

Shepherd 5: I’m having the same problem.

Shepherd 6: The angels told us that we would find here a child lying in a manger who is our Saviour. We did not believe, but we are amazed at what we see.

[Mary and Joseph smile.]

[Angels sing [insert song here from youth choir]]

Scene 7

[Teens gather again.]

Teen 1: You won’t believe this dream I had. There were angels, and shepherds, only the shepherds were using iPads and stuff. And Jesus, well, Jesus was this cute little baby. Only the baby just showed up in pictures like a bright light.

Teen 2:  It sounds glorious.

Teen 3:  Still think that was the wrong way for God to appear on Earth? Just the way we do?

Teen 1:  Nobody brought me college tuition when I was born.

Teen 2: What are you talking about?

Teen 1: In my dream, these guys brought presents, and one of them brought gold. Joseph thanked him for taking care of college tuition.

Teen 2: He did?

Teen 3: I think you’re dreaming about how you’re going to pay for college.

Teen 1: Well, it was pretty exciting in its own way, I guess.  And it does make sense to me that if God wanted to experience what it was like to be us, being a baby was the way to start. Say, I wonder if Jesus had to go through confirmation class.

Teen 2: That’s a whole different story.

THE END

Nieman Storyboard graciously allowed me to write about why I like Andrew Corsello’s “The Wronged Man.” I read this story years ago, and it shook me. I continue to think about that story and the mockery of justice it exposed.

Here’s what I wrote. Here’s my interview with Corsello about writing the piece.

Maybe some day I’ll write something half as good, and meaningful.