Reed's Ruminations: A Blog by Dan Reed

Livin’ Large on Three Cents a Bale

In the halls of academe, there is much talk of the need to impart financial literacy to our students, whether via formal education or informal tutelage. Avoid excessive student debt; understand credit card interest rates; plan and save for the future. These are all important lessons.

As a professor, I know that much can be taught and much can be learned in the classroom. I also know that some of the most valuable lessons are the practical ones, best learned experientially.

A dollar is not just an economics class lesson: medium of exchange, unit of account, and store of value – it can also be backbreaking labor in the hot sun, work done by fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, to provide for themselves and their families.

I learned this in the farm fields as a boy. It was a lesson beyond price, one for which I am thankful to this day.

Ozarks Childhood

I grew up in the northern Arkansas foothills of the Ozarks. There were red clay, dirt roads on three sides of my childhood house, only one room was heated, and I remember the family joy when we first got hot water. Even though I could see cows from the back porch, I was a "city boy," living in the incorporated environs, on streets with real names rather than just numbers, in a community with about 900 other souls.

Then, as now, about a third of the region's population lived below the Federal poverty line. There were few summer jobs available to enterprising teenage boys, because there were precious few jobs of any kind. Any fulltime jobs rightfully went to heads of households, even at (or below) the minimum wage, which rose from $1.60/hour to $2.00/hour in 1974. I knew many families living on the munificence of such a weekly paycheck, and even on the best of days, my family was not far from that sad state itself. A summer garden was not an organic, fresh produce luxury; it was a necessity. (See Just a Taste of Sherbet.) Health insurance, well, for most folks, that was a dream beyond imagining.

In the summers, I made a bit of money mowing lawns, but few in the community had the discretionary income to indulge in such an extravagance. Otherwise, I spent time with my grandfather, fishing for "red bellies" (sunfish) and rainbow trout and listening to the St. Louis Cardinals baseball games on the radio. During both, he would regale me with stories, all of which he remembered as true, and some of which actually were. Among them were tales of working on the farm for two bits a day, from "can to cain't" (from dawn until too dark to see). (See What Really Matters.)

Hauling Hay

Like my grandfather, my father grew up as a sharecropper, but by the time I was born, there were no row crops left in northern Arkansas. The land was too poor, and agricultural mechanization had rendered it unprofitable. Instead, timber was cleared from the hills, and those fortunate enough to own land now raised livestock on permanent pasture. Those cattle had to be fed in winter, and every summer, someone had to help the famers put hay away. As I got older, this created a new income opportunity – hauling baled hay from fields to barns.

Let's set the stage. It is 95-105 degrees Fahrenheit, with the sun shining and the humidity hovering near, oh, let's just call it southern outrageous. In other words, it was nothing special, just a typical Ozarks summer day. The hay cutting has already been windrowed for baling, and there are five of us at work. The farmer is driving the tractor, which powers and pulls the baler, ejecting two-string bales every fifteen feet or so. The farmer's wife is driving the two ton, flatbed truck, a teenaged stacker sits in the back, and two other teenaged boys are walking behind.

I can still see myself in my mind's eye. I am wearing heavy work gloves to keep the two-string bales, each of which weighs 40-75 pounds, depending on the type of hay, from cutting my hands to pieces. My job is to walk from bale to bale, pick them up, and lift them onto the truck bed for stacking. This was economic efficiency manifest – at three cents a bale, teenaged boys are far cheaper than a front loader.

Because I was not strong enough to lift the bales all day without touching my chest, I wore a long sleeved work shirt, which, despite the heat, was buttoned tightly to keep the hay from slicing my chest and arms. (At day's end, I discovered that the skin in the gap between my gloves and shirt was raw from repeated cuts.)

Each time the truck was filled, we drove from the field to the barn and began unloading. While tossing bales onto the growing tiers for stacking by my partner, I realized it was well over 110 degrees Fahrenheit in the barn loft, and I yearned for the breeze and the relative coolness of the open fields. During the rides to the barn, I grabbed my one-gallon plastic milk bottle and chugged ice water, thankful for the brief respite.

With sunset approaching, and after the last bale had been stacked in the barn, the farmer drove me home in his pickup truck and paid me in cash. I remember climbing slowly, painfully out of the truck, clutching my hard-earned six dollars.

That night, I could not sleep. It hurt every time I moved, and I coughed hay dust from my lungs, remembering how it had swirled in the barn's shadows all afternoon. In this world, respirators or masks were figments of an OSHA-fueled imagination.

I had thought I was in good physical condition for a teenaged boy, and I was. I had stacked lumber at the sawmill, working with grown men. I could play three hours of full court basketball in an un-air-conditioned gym, and not give it a second thought.

I was young and fit, and I thought hauling hay would be easy money; I was wrong.

Nevertheless, when another farmer came calling a few days later, I grabbed my work gloves and headed out the door. I needed the money, they needed help, and it paid three cents a bale.

Lessons Learned

Those days hauling hay as a teenager may have been among the most important educational lessons I have ever received, almost as important as understanding the power of plum jelly, and I carry them with me still.

I looked at my father with newfound respect; he worked hard at the sawmill in that hot sun every day to provide for us, and he never complained. He did what was right, not what was easy. I appreciated in a new and visceral way that there is dignity in honest work, no matter how difficult, and respect is due.

To this day, when I hold a dollar bill in my hands, I know it represents the fruits of real labor – three cents a bale – and I think carefully whether an item is really worth thirty bales. It is an emotional measure, another, personal medium of exchange.

Most importantly, I am thankful for the blessings I have received in this life and what so many have done for me. (See Transforming Lives Via Public Higher Education.)

I learned a lot, livin' large on three cents a bale.

Nature Cannot Be Fooled

If today's social media apps were wired to an old-fashioned audio VU meter, they would undoubtedly be pegged, deep in the red zone, the place where permanent hearing damage is imminent. (Insert obligatory image of an aging heavy metal rocker with hearing loss and artificial knees.) When coupled with the 24 hour news cycle, an amazing number of rumors, innuendos, retorts, memes, and yes, sometimes actual facts, buttressed by real evidence, echo and reverberate across the infosphere.

And in the "you can't make this stuff up" category, George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four is now on Amazon's best seller list. One of my academic colleagues remarked wanly that he hoped it was selling as literature (doubleplusgood) and not as an instruction manual (doubleplusungood). I hope he is right.

The cacophony is enough to make one yearn for the good old days, when Uncle Walter and Huntley-Brinkley reported the news every night, and reputed Elvis and Bigfoot sightings were just supermarket tabloid fodder. D. B. Cooper and Mrs. Robinson, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you. And for those of you too young to remember either Elvis or D. B. sightings, think of them as an inside joke we played on ourselves, and take a stroll down memory lane. (See Elvis, D.B., and the Red Caddy.) Thank you, thank you very much!

Broadband Communications

Now where was I, before my shrinking attention span was seized by another shiny object? Ah yes, I was about to opine that the declining signal to noise ratio haunting our public discourse is a deeply worrisome trend that endangers us all. Narrowcasting ideas to like-minded individuals simply reinforces predispositions and stereotypes. Broadband communication, with rich information content and diverse perspectives, requires – wait for it -- broad bands. (See Contemplative Reflection and Instantaneous Communication for other thoughts on this.) More generally, the purpose of new information is to make one think, even if in my case it leads to the sound of grinding gears and the unsavory smell of burning rubber.

Complex, wicked problems are, by definition, not amenable to simple, stereotypical solutions and 15 second sound bites, no matter what anyone may tell you. Nature has a way of punishing hubris. That brings me to the parable in this little essay.

On O-Rings and the Facts

After the space shuttle Challenger exploded during launch, President Reagan convened the Rogers commission to determine the cause of the catastrophe, which had killed the crew, including a schoolteacher, on live television. It was quickly apparent that a solid rocket booster (SRB) failure was to blame, with the flexible O-rings joining the SRB sections being the primary culprit. The questions were obvious – how and why did this happen?

Ultimately, the commission determined that the risks of catastrophic failure for each space shuttle mission were much higher than initially believed; the space shuttle was not a "space truck," as had been hyped and advertised, but a complex, delicate instrument. When coupled with management problems and "go fever," mission failure and loss of life were inevitable.

The commission, as these things always do, included several notables in aerospace, engineering and management; one of them was the Nobel Prize winning Caltech physicist, Richard Feynman. Dick drove home the O-ring failure in his own, inimitable way. First, he placed a piece of the O-ring in a glass of ice water; then he waited. After the O-ring had chilled, he pulled it from the water and showed that it had lost flexibility, which would create a porous seal for the hot gases of the SRB. (Watch him explain it here.) In a classic understatement, he said this might have "some significance" for the problem.

Dick later observed, "Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." I have never forgotten this message, and the Rogers Commission report still sits on my bookshelf as a reminder.

It's a simple, but powerful lesson – the facts do matter, and no obfuscation or doublespeak can change that. This is especially true in science and engineering. In the end, there is no spin; there is no truthiness; and there are no alternative facts. There are just the facts, something Joe Friday understood. Nature is pretty particular about that.

And one more thing – Elvis has left the building, no matter what Twitter or the tabloids may suggest.

Seeing the Invisible: The Consilience of Knowledge

In a recent meeting, I was asked a rhetorical and hypothetical question, "If I could choose a superpower, what would it be?" It is the type of question intended to illicit insight into one's personality and life perspective, much like the {im}famous interview question, "Why are street utility covers round?" (There are, by the way, many good reasons why utility covers are round, grounded in practicality, geometry and physics.)

Neither question is as fraught with existential ennui as the hoary, "Why did the chicken cross the road?" I struggled with variants of the latter in high school, when I was sometimes challenged to explain the putative motivations of literary characters. Sometimes there is no ethical conflict, deep seated neurosis or early trauma haunting the chicken; it's a chicken after all, an animal not known for self-awareness. Other times, the chicken is but a leaf, buffeted by the vicissitudes of the spring wind. But I digress …

When asked about superpowers, I was immediately tempted to respond with "flight," as the challenges of commuter airlines, weather delays and hub connections at O'Hare test the equanimity and sangfroid of even the most experienced traveler. (There are indeed neuroses and trauma associated with arriving at the gate, wheezing and breathless, only to be told the boarding door had been closed just a minute earlier.)

But I then realized that high-speed flight in a costume was unlikely to be comfortable, especially in adverse weather. There would be no "leaping tall buildings at a single bound" for me. And X-ray vision, that's dangerous stuff, exposing those nearby to potentially lethal radiation doses. Nor was I particularly enamored of Wolverine-like retractable claws – rather awkward and embarrassing in a business suit. Just what superpower would match my secret identity as a Balding Computer Geek™? And why are glasses sufficient to hide Clark Kent's identity? (See Comic Book Heroes and Secret Identities.) These are vexing questions.

After this momentary and whimsical reverie, I reassumed my academic mien and offered a serious response to this gedanken question. I said that I wished we all had the power to see the invisible web of intellectual connectedness that binds as a community of scholars. This consilient web of knowledge connects us across the ever widening chasm of disciplinary isolation, bifurcating intellectual cultures, and ontological divergence. It is the warp and woof of transdisciplinary unity and discovery that is both our origin story and our future.

Like talismans, objects, events, individuals and contexts are all imbued with a web of connections and referents, pregnant with intellectual opportunities – if we can only see them. Even a humble doorway speaks of the Castle Doctrine, privacy and the rule of law, and the door itself whispers the history of trade and commerce; cryptography, mathematics, and security; metallurgy, alchemy and chemistry; mechanical advantage, engineering and physics; craftsmanship, art and design; and culture, history and sociology.

The web is here, there, everywhere, if we pause to see it. That insight is the first step in finding new cliques in the great web of the known and knowable, of uniting scholars in shared quests, and building our future. That's a superpower worth having!

I Can’t Do Much, But I Can Do This

N.B. I have changed Mrs. Wilson's name to shield her family's identity.

Some of life’s smallest events, in circumstances least expected, teach its biggest lessons.  A homemade cherry pie, made by an elderly woman, taught me more about honor and respect – the basic human need to contribute and be valued – than any learned teacher ever could.  

Let me take you back to a simpler place and time, when I just a young boy living in a tiny town, nestled in the hills of the Arkansas Ozarks. It was an era of un-air-conditioned country churches, where elderly women who smelled faintly of lavender, fanned themselves with funeral home fans, and young boys dangled their legs from wooden church benches, sang “Jesus Loves Me,” and daydreamed during the long winded sermon about the upcoming Sunday dinner, that noontime, southern repast not to be confused with supper, the evening meal.

My mother was a member of our small town church’s “food committee,” now a fading tradition from a different era. Composed of wives and mothers, the group mobilized each time an aging member of the congregation passed away.  As the extended family of the departed loved one gathered to grieve, usually at the family home, the food committee contacted other members of the congregation to prepare food for the family.

I never gave it much thought; it was a deep and unquestioned part of life, as natural as fishing with my grandfather or playing in the woodpile. Then, when I was seven, my beloved grandmother died. (See What Really Matters.) Within hours, the small kitchen table of my grandparent’s house was heaped and groaning with food – fried chicken, ham, potato salad, green beans, cakes, and homemade pies.

As sad as I was that grandma would never kiss me again, it was the first time I ever had the chance to compare fried chicken recipes! I also saw some foods totally alien to me, ones far beyond our budget and economic reach. It was an extraordinary outpouring of support, made more noteworthy by the poverty of our small town community. 

A few years later, it was my mother’s turn to chair the church’s food committee.  On a cold winter day, we drove slowly from house to house in our aging AMC Rambler, picking up food, usually at the back door.  At a time when seatbelts were largely unknown, and would have been ignored anyway, my job was to sit in the back seat and make sure the food did not spill or slide.

My father loved that two door Rambler, because beneath its humble exterior hid a 390 cubic inch V8 engine, and he took delight in the surprise on the faces of other drivers when he pulled out to pass their larger and seemingly more powerful vehicles.  I suspect it was a poor man’s small way of saying, “I am more than I may seem.”  (See A Taste of Sherbet.)

As I was musing on my mother’s frequent admonitions to my father that he should slow down when driving, she eased the car to a stop at a dilapidated old house. I blinked in surprise because I knew that the widow who lived in the house was almost eighty and nearly blind.  She was too infirm to attend church, a shut-in in our southern vernacular, and I could barely remember the last time I had seen her. Leaning forward in the back seat toward my mama, I asked why we were stopping here.

As she opened the car door, she said, “Because Mrs. Wilson called me and insisted that I come get her cherry pie.” She said she’d tried to convince Mrs. Wilson that there were plenty of younger cooks willing and happy to help, but Mrs. Wilson had pleaded, “Please; I’m old, there’s not much I can do anymore, but I can do this.” I sat dumbfounded amidst the fried chicken and three bean salad, watching my mother walk toward the backdoor of the ramshackle house.

After a long delay, an old woman appeared, her gray hair pulled back in a bun, exposing a face wizened by age and a lifetime of toil. Wearing a long apron, both her hands and her back were bent by arthritis, and she walked with an unsteady gait in antiquated leather shoes.  As she gently handed my mother the cherry pie, she unknowingly gave me something far more valuable, a life lesson that still echoes across the years, much like the lesson of plum jelly.

In my mind’s eye I can see her still, eyes dim, body bowed and battered, holding that cherry pie as an offering to the grieving, a sacrament to the future. Yet the indelible image is deeper, of a spirit uncertain but unbowed and strong in will.

To me, she was a small town hero, every bit Ulysses’ equal; she traveled little, but she left works of noble note – a family raised well in straitened circumstances. She strove to the end, and she did not yield to the vicissitudes of life. Alas, only I, no Tennyson, remain to tell her tale.

Not all heroes seek adventure in distant lands, nor are their stories chronicled in epic tales of ancient lore. Some hold cherry pies and wear tattered aprons flecked with flour.

The undying need for respect, to make a difference and to matter, regardless of circumstance, crosses cultures and generations. It was just a cherry pie, but it was much, much more. 

I can’t do much, but I can do this.  I’ll always remember and honor her memory. I hope you will too.

Reflections on Francois Jacob

In 1965, the French biologist, Francois Jacob, won the Nobel Prize in Medicine, along with Jacques Monod and André Lwoff, for work on the genetic control of enzyme and virus synthesis. Their deep insights into gene regulation (how cells switch genes on and off) continue to have deep and profound implications for post-genomic biology.

For most, a Nobel Prize would be the defining event of a lifetime. For Jacob, it was but one of many recognitions in an extraordinary life. Wounded while fighting to liberate France, he received France's highest World War II decoration, the Order of Liberation. However remarkable, all of that is a story for another day.

In the English translation of his 1988 memoir, The Statue Within: An Autobiography, Jacob wrote the following:

My obsession: a life that shrivels up, slowly rots, goes soft as a pulp. This worry about decline grabs me by the throat as I awake. In the brief interval between dream and waking, it flaunts before my eyes the frenzied dance of everything I would have liked to do, and did not do, and never will. As I turn over and over in my bed, the fear of the too-late, of the irreversible, propels me to the mirror to shave and get ready for the day. And that is the moment of truth. The moment for the old questions. What am I today? Am I capable of renewal? What are the chances I might still produce something I do not expect of myself? For my life unfolds mainly in the yet-to-come, and is based on waiting. Mine is a life of preparation. I enjoy the present only insofar as it is a promise of the future. I am looking for the Promised Land and listening to the music of my tomorrows. My food is anticipation. My drug is hope.

Since reading Jacob's memoir a decade ago, I have been pondering his poignant reflections on creativity and human motivations. What passions drive us to dream and imagine? What compulsion motivates us to sacrifice wealth, comfort and in some cases, even life and safety, to ask and understand, to pursue and create?

The questions are more than mere academic ennui. The impulses are universal, deep and primeval, common to all cultures and human endeavors, not just academic ones. As my colleagues in AI are fond of saying, we are all intelligent agents – autonomous goal-seeking entities. Aware of our own mortality, we seek meaning and validation, and we fear running out of that limited and most precious commodity – time.

Can we put aside our differences to embrace common truths? Can we do the difficult but worthy things, knowing that the act of trying defines us? Can we find collective happiness, as the plains writer Willa Cather once said, by being dissolved into something great? Or is dissipative balkanization our inevitable fate?

As I now look backward to the mean and median of the human lifetime distribution, I find Jacob's angst ever more relevant. Am I capable of renewal? Can I surprise myself? Can I yet mount a compelling story that would overcome, albeit briefly, the repulsive forces of 21^st intellectual reductionism to unite us in a shared academic endeavor for the common good? Can I still make a difference?

I am not prepared to abandon the fight. I still believe the future can be brighter than the past. Like Jacob, my food is anticipation; my drug is hope.

Schrödinger’s Gershwin

N.B. What follows is a humorous look at faculty recruiting, with just a bit of tongue-in-cheek perspective. And yes, the "Gershwin incident" really happened.

A long time ago in an academic institution far, far away, I was a frequent participant in that annual rite of spring known as faculty recruiting, where academic units compete for new faculty, both freshly minted graduates and more senior, established faculty from other institutions who are seeking new and more hospitable intellectual climes. It is sometimes stressful and often frenzied, but it is always emotionally and physically enervating for all involved. The outcomes shape the professional future of the applicants, the stature and reputation of the units, and the education and future prospects of the unit's graduates.

A Bit of Courtship

Like all courtship and mating rituals, faculty recruiting has its own mores and Darwinian spectacles. It includes the bright plumage and courtship display of the candidates, the by turns demure and affected disinterest of the units, then the active pursuit and ardent courtship when the candidate is found intellectually desirable. The ultimate probability of a pair bond is determined by perceived compatibility, but also by the academic pedigree of the candidate, the reputation and ranking of the unit, and the relative plethora or scarcity of candidates with respect to job openings. Population dynamics rule, and speciation can occur when new disciplines emerge.

In most traditional variants of the recruiting ritual, there is a public research presentation by the candidate, where he or she attempts to impress with extraordinary erudition and insight. This is either preceded or followed by one-on-one meetings with the faculty, who attempt to sway and awe with their own accomplishments and prestige. In between, there are one or more meals involving the candidate and selected faculty, where they break bread and continue courtship.

Just a Jingle

At one among many such events, I found myself sitting in a restaurant with a colleague and a candidate, making small talk while awaiting the arrival of our dinner party's final member. As in many restaurants, recorded music played softly in the background, a subliminal counterpoint to the murmured conversations and the syncopated clink of silverware. Finally, a burst of winter air heralded the belated arrival of our final dinner guest. As my tardy colleague doffed his winter coat and voiced vague apologies, he cocked his head toward the ceiling. Looking at the three of us with some bewilderment, he asked, "Why are they playing the United Airlines theme song in the restaurant?"

In a scene worthy of The Matrix, I felt time slow to a fractal crawl. In the Planck time separating what was and what could be, I considered the Hamiltonian and its myriad possibilities. Was our candidate the embodied apotheosis of cultural bifurcation, also blissfully unaware that Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue was an icon of the American songbook, a fusion of classical and jazz, with a touch of 1920s ebullience? Were C. P. Snow's mournful words on the cloven nature of The Two Cultures – the sciences and the literary arts – both prescient and sadly understated? Or, was there hope that The School of Athens still echoed across the years, yielding scholars and polymaths equally facile in natural philosophy, the humanities and the arts? Meanwhile, in my mind, the spirit of Gershwin emitted an anguished and uncertain wail.

Wave Function Collapse

I could only wonder, did objectivist reality and the many-worlds interpretation of quantum theory hold? Were there worlds and timelines where Gershwin was only an airline jingle writer, created at the instant of my colleague's question, and destined to evolve independently? Or, in the Copenhagen interpretation, would the wave function truly collapse on my observation of Gershwin's role in American musical culture? There in Schrödinger's box sat Gershwin's legacy, indeterminate, awaiting my response.

With a weary sigh, I looked at my colleague. "It's Gershwin," I said. As that single eigenstate materialized, then wafted away like a clarinet glissando, somewhere, Charlie Parker and Dave Brubeck smiled.

We lost the faculty candidate to another institution.

Transforming Lives via Public Higher Education

Another set of newly matriculated students, fresh from secondary school commencements and summer adventures, has arrived on our college and university campuses. Some are scions of wealth and privilege; others are sons of immigrants and daughters of the poor. Filled with hope and aspiration, yet harboring fears and uncertainty, each student is a tabula rasa of potentialities yet unrealized.

In a world of increasing change, their higher education matters as never before. It is a transformative experience, this transcription of knowledge, ideas, culture, friendship and opportunity onto each generation of young students. It is also a sacred trust, a societal compact older even than Chaucer's tales of the clerk who would gladly learn and gladly teach. On this, I speak from experience, for education profoundly changed my life, as it has so many others.

The Price

In my final year of high school, I had a long conversation with the high school counselor about my future. In this regard, I was not unique. Such conversations are commonplace in U.S. high schools as students make sometimes uncertain and stumbling plans for the transition from school to adulthood.

As a high school student, I was uncertain of many things, but my next step was clear and unambiguous. I was definitely college bound, and I had known this for almost as long as polysyllabic memory allowed. My parents repeated the college mantra with almost messianic zeal and desperation; there was neither uncertainty in their conviction nor doubt in their belief. My college education was not a possibility; it was a future certainty in an extended family where high school was the apex of educational attainment. I was my parents' only child; I would attend college; and I would secure a better economic future than had been their lot.

I learned the emotional appeal and pragmatic importance of this lesson early, born of my parents' quiet desperation and unrequited yearning, of their own educational hopes lost and economic dreams deferred. We weren't middle class; we weren't lower middle class; we were Ozarks and Appalachian poor. (See A Taste of Sherbet.) It was not the genteel poverty of personal choice, but the old-fashioned kind that leaves one awake at night worrying whether the old car will get to work on threadbare tires, whether the garden will produce enough food for canning to last the winter, and whether the last dregs of the too small paycheck will stretch to the next.

My family was not special, nor is any sympathy retrospectively sought or warranted; there were others with more severe financial constraints. These were simply hard economic truths, misery still shared by far too many on the 50^th anniversary of President Johnson's War on Poverty. In my case, they were a consequence of my father's own roughly fifth grade education and a hardscrabble rural Arkansas economy incapable of sustaining more, no matter how hard or how long he worked.

In their passion, my parents were like millions of other families who saw higher education as economic prestidigitation, a spira mirabilis in their child's path to a better life. They were unquestionably correct, for education is the highest probability mechanism for jumping multiple economic classes in a single generation.

Even today, I marvel at the steely determination with which my parents approached their objective. When I entered the first grade, my parents began saving money for my college education. On my father's $40/week income, this was no small task. With a dollar here and there, they slowly began buying $25 U.S. Savings Bonds, earmarked for my college education. As a boy, I distinctly remember my mother proudly showing me the bond certificates, where I was listed as a co-owner. With that love and sacrifice, I knew I could not let them down.

I became a bibliophile, ravenously devouring almost anything within the reach and collection of a small town library, for reading was transport to vistas scarcely imagined. (Bibliophile, it is such an evocative and passionate word, far more than the English calque – a book lover). Like those in the allegory of Plato's Cave, I discovered a deeper truth, that knowledge was itself a precious thing, that ideas themselves had power. At age nine, I found science, which has remained the abiding passion of my academic and professional life. Oh, I was definitely going to college, but not just for the reasons my parents imagined. (See Eudora, You Got the Love?)

The Opportunity

Years later, blessedly supported by academic scholarships and need-based financial aid, I found myself ensconced in college. Physically, I luxuriated in the newfound joy of hot showers and central heat, and I marveled at new and interesting cafeteria foods. Intellectually, the warp and woof of history and culture inspired me; the art filled my soul with wonder, and science and computing were joys of my life.

Despite the intellectual and cultural cornucopia of university life, I remained plagued by uncertainty and fear for multiple years. Did I belong here? Could I really make it? What if I failed? How could I face my family and myself if I did? Was I a mere poser, soon to be exposed and ejected as unworthy? In retrospect, these were just one manifestation of imposter syndrome, all too common for young students. As with many others, elements of that early fear remain, a reminder of the past.

Beyond the fears and uncertainty, the unrelenting barrage of new experiences was dazzling and confusing. My parents and family could neither comfort nor advise me, for I was far outside their realm of experience. I was excited but alone, gripped in the throes of quiet desperation, albeit not of Thoreau's type.

I now know this sense of isolation and inchoate fear is a common experience for first-generation college attendees, many of whom lack, as I did, both a social safety net and cultural referents. The commonplace to some can be frighteningly new and intimidating to others who carry emotional and social burdens unseen. Being a young adult is difficult enough in any circumstance, but braving a new world alone is often terrifying. Thus, it is especially important that universities nurture and support first year students, whether from the cities and communities of Iowa or the global village that is planet Earth.

Lessons Learned

My parents were right; a college education was and is a path to a brighter economic future. Unlike them, I was fortunate never to face an economic Hobson's choice; via the knowledge of science, engineering and computing I acquired in college and graduate school, I have been economically fortunate and secure. I have also been blessed to pursue my intellectual passions in collaboration with likeminded colleagues around the world. For this, I am extraordinarily grateful for both the belief and sacrifice of my parents and for the patience and dedication of those who taught and encouraged me.

As I have learned from personal experience, education at a public research university provides so much more than the opportunity to leap economic barriers. It is a gateway to a different Weltanschauung, an appreciation of diverse cultures, history and perspectives; a recognition of the transformative power of ideas; and an understanding that the preservation and creation of knowledge are noble things. In the crucible that is public higher education, we share our passion for the world of ideas,create new knowledge, transfer insights to a new generation, unlock waking dreams of the future, and, yes, create new economic opportunities.

It is why I have been proud and humbled to be part of great public research universities such as Iowa. I pay a debt forward from my parents sacrifice. Come, let us gladly learn and gladly teach.

A Question to Ponder

I speak to groups large and small on an almost weekly basis. Some of these are technical presentations; others address global policy issues; and still others are public events for a popular audience. If you were to see me speak on related topics in semi-contiguous weeks, you might assume that the presentations never change. It is true that I have a series of standard "stump speeches," but I also add new content to each of these, allowing them to evolve as I develop new ideas and understand what topics resonate with the audience.

For popular audiences, I occasionally open by jokingly opining that some members of the audience, for reasons both baffling and befuddling, may find my erudite and insightful presentation, though delivered with elegance, verve and panache, rather turgid and opaque. In that rare and extraordinary event, I humbly offer an alternate question for them to ponder while the dismal proceedings that are my prepared remarks meander interminably toward their much-anticipated conclusion.

That self-deprecating opening usually makes people smile, albeit weakly. What follows, though, is a very simple, though serious question. I simply ask, "What probability of successful return would you accept to be the first human to set foot on Mars?"

Walking on Mars

Superficially, this is the quintessential geek question, conjuring images of mighty rockets like the old Saturn V, complex orbital dynamics, spacesuits and EVAs, and ultimately, the an adventure on the red planet itself. On reflection, though, the question is more subtle, morphing into something deeper that makes the audience think carefully about themselves and the nature of the human condition.

Let us begin with the geek part, probability and statistics. There are many possible answers to the question, only one of which is categorically wrong. Anyone who says, "Why probability one, of course!" has failed to consider that nothing in life – other than death – is certain. Notwithstanding the popular claim, even taxes can be changed. One need only recall the old astronaut joke about sitting atop millions of pounds of fuel and thousands of parts, all produced by the lowest bidder. Hence, unless one's answer is, "I have no interest in going," any answer involves accepting some degree of risk.

The technically inclined among the audience inevitably then begin considering possible failure modes and probabilities, including mechanical, electronic, biological, chemical, environmental and social ones. In the mind's eye, one sees rockets exploding on the launch pad, solar storms creating lethal radiation during the long flight, failed entry in the thin Martian atmosphere, and a host of other deadly scenarios. The process reminds us that everything is fraught with some risk, and that we habitually and instinctively calculate risk-reward ratios every day. It is only the extraordinary risks that we consciously contemplate, and even then only rarely.

Risk and Remembrance

The question also illuminates two other salient issues. The first is one's personal risk-reward ratio. For a very few, perhaps the most reckless and thrill seeking among us, probability zero is an acceptable answer. For others, the adventuresome and the explorers, those with the putative "right stuff," almost any carefully quantified, non-zero probability is acceptable, for it offers the hope, even if improbable, of safe return. Many opt for an answer where the prospects of success exceed those for failure, for they value their lives.

The second aspect cuts to the centrality of our humanity, our insatiable curiosity and our hope to be remembered for having done something new, for having made a difference. To set foot Mars offers a chance to answer some deeply intriguing and vexing scientific questions about planetary formation and history and about the possibility of life on Mars, past or present. To be the first offers something else, the opportunity to be remembered, at least in the brief span of recorded human history, for having done something extraordinary.

What Is Your Answer?

It is an interesting and thought provoking question. It is a presentation unto itself. What probability of successful return would you accept?

As for me, as John Glenn once said, if there were a bird on the pad and they offered me a ride, I would be on it. I would have calculated the risks with the engineers, worked with the scientists and made an informed choice. Beyond that, the science, the technology, the curiosity, the opportunity – I feel their call.

Science: It’s About the Wide-Eyed Wonder

The end of year holidays are a time filled with travel, food and family. Like many of you, I spent time with family and friends, socializing, discussing life events and sharing stories. Among the most memorable of those experiences was the time spent with my nieces' children, all of whom are between the ages of one and four. Because I do not spend much time with small children these days, I was able to observe them and their behavior from a fresh perspective.

Yes, there was the frenetic pace and seemingly boundless energy of the young, followed immediately by exhaustion and serene sleep. There was also the complex and sometimes daunting logistics of feeding, travel and entertainment that all parents manage daily. Neither of those, though, was what I found most fascinating. Rather, it was the wide-eyed wonder with which the young greet new things.

A one-year old fascinated by musical tones, a two-year old enthralled by the tensile strength of a spring, or a four-year old pondering the statics and dynamics of a pile of blocks, these are the wonders of science experienced firsthand.

In turn, this caused me to reflect on the nature of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education and the nature of scientific and engineering research. After all, the fundamental and unbridled curiosity of a child is the birthmother of all of science and engineering.

Science Education

I am no expert in educational pedagogy, far from it. Nevertheless, after spending over forty years in schools, colleges and universities, one does learn a few things. At the very least, I once carried the title of professor and was granted license to claim to know.

In reality, science and engineering, and even abstract mathematics, are about experiential learning – one gains insights and appreciation by doing rather than merely observing. It is why we conduct experiments to test hypotheses, build computational models to bring our theories to life, and build new devices that embody engineering knowledge. We want to see and experience, demonstrate and validate.

Yet so much of our K-12 science education remains driven by a dry recitation of facts that expunges all the experiential joy of science, leaving only a dried husk of knowledge. Too frequently, we insist on conformity, when the practice of science and engineering has always been critically dependent on the iconoclasts who question the current orthodoxy. Indeed, that questioning is at the very foundation of the social and technical process we call science. I believe we must nurture that curiosity throughout the educational system, letting students see how they can ask and answer questions that make a difference in our world.

The questions are simple yet profound, and the shift from a child's question to our deepest unsolved queries is so very small. Mommy, why is the sky blue? (Answer: Rayleigh scattering, though simple, not easily explained to a child.) How does a flower grow? What is gravity and why is there mass? (Answer: These are some of the deepest questions at the frontier of science.)

Discovery's Passion

All too often, the process, politics and bureaucracy of science and engineering consume us. Whether writing the research proposals and the inevitable progress reports, crafting the papers under deadlines, or traveling to conferences and symposia, our time and energy can be frittered away. All these are necessary, but they are not sufficient. In truth, they are the detritus of innovation and discovery, the artifacts of our modern scientific enterprise.

Periodically, it is worth taking a step back, pausing for a moment to remember why each of us became scientists. It was not the research grant (necessary though it is), nor was it the publication (essential to disseminating a discovery). It was the curiosity, the passion, the amazement and the wonder. Those things make it the love and the labor of a lifetime.

The next time you see a small child, staring in wide eyed, open mouthed wonder at some action or object, remember and savor the experience. It is why you are a scientist or an engineer, asking questions and staring in amazement at the answers the experiments reveal, still a child at heart.

Why We Compute

N.B. I also write for the Communications of the ACM (CACM). The following essay recently appeared on the CACM blog.

Why do we, as researchers and practitioners, have this deep and abiding love of computing? Why do we compute? Superficially, the question seems as innocuous as asking why the sky is blue or the grass is green. However, like both of those childhood questions, the simplicity belies the subtlety beneath. Just ask someone about Rayleigh scattering or the quantum efficiency of photosynthesis if you doubt that simple questions can unearth complexity.

At its most basic, computing is simply automated symbol manipulation. Indeed, the abstract Turing machine does nothing more than manipulates symbols on a strip of tape using a table of rules. More deceptively, the rules seem simpler than some board games. Though vacuously true, the description misses the point that symbol manipulation under those rules captures what we now call the Church-Turing thesis.

However, as deep and as beautiful as the notion of computability really is, I doubt that is the only reason most of us are so endlessly fascinated by this malleable thing we call computing. Rather, I suspect it is a deeper, more primal yearning, one that underlies all of science and engineering and that unites us in a common cause. It is the insatiable desire to know and understand.

Lessons from Astronomy

When I recently I stood atop Mauna Kea, looking at the array of telescopes perched there, I was again struck by our innate curiosity. Operated by a diverse array of international partnerships and built on Mauna Kea at great expense, they are there because we care about some fundamental questions. What is the evolutionary history and future of the universe? What are dark matter and dark energy? Why is there anything at all?

Answers to these questions are not likely to address our current economic woes, improve health care or address our environmental challenges. We care about the answers, nevertheless.

As I pondered the gloaming sky, my thoughts turned to Edwin Hubble, who first showed that some of those faint smudges in the sky were "island universes" – galaxies like our own. The universe was a far bigger place than we had heretofore imagined. As Hubble observed about this age-old quest to understand:

From our home on the Earth, we look out into the distances and strive to imagine the sort of world into which we are born. Today we have reached far out into Space. Our immediate neighborhood we know rather intimately. But with increasing distance our knowledge fades, and fades rapidly, until at the last dim horizon we search among ghostly errors of observations for landmarks that are scarcely more substantial. The search will continue. The urge is older than history. It is not satisfied and it will not be suppressed.

Hubble's comment was about the observational difficulties of distance estimation and the challenges associated with identifying standard candles. However, it could just as easily have been a meditation on computing, for we are driven by our own insatiable desires for better algorithms, more flexible and reliable software, new sensors and data analytics tools, and by ever larger and more faster computers.

Computing the Future

Why do we compute? I suspect it is for at least two, related reasons, neither relating to publication counts, tenure, wealth or fame. The first is the ability to give life to the algorithmic instantiation of an idea, to see it dance and move across our displays and devices. We have all felt the exhilaration when the idea takes shape in code, then begins to execute, sometimes surprising us in its unexpected behavior and complexity. Computing's analog of deus ex machina brings psychic satisfaction.

The second reason is that computing is an intellectual amplifier, extending our nominal reach and abilities. I discussed the power of computing to enable and enhance exploration in another CACM blog. (See Intellectual Amplification via Computing.) It is why those of us in computational science continually seek better algorithms and faster computer systems. From terascale to petascale and the global race to exascale, it is a quest for greater fidelity, higher resolution and finer time scales. The same deep yearning drives astronomers to seek higher resolution detectors and larger telescope apertures. We are all chasing searching the ghostly signals for landmarks.

It is our ability to apply our ideas and their embodiment in code to a dizzying array of problems, from the prosaic to the profound, that attracts and compels us. It is why we compute.

Hubble was right. We compute because we want to know and understand. The urge is deep and unsatisfied. It cannot be denied.