Broadcasting in Japan on the Olympic Games

Japanese athletes have been doing well in judo, team gymnastics, breaststroke swimming, etc. in the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens. Because of the time difference between Greece and Japan, we can watch live broadcasting of the Games mostly around the midnight. Many sports funs in this country are possibly spending daytime in a drowsy mood these weeks.

I notice however that the broadcasting of the Games by the public broadcasting company NHK is too nationalistic these days. They should more often show the scenes of good play by athletes from other countries. The Olympic Charter [1] says, "The Olympic Games are competitions between athletes in individual or team events and not between countries."

1. Full text is available as a PDF file from the web page: International Olympic Committee - Organization - Missions.

Arts and Impressive Experience

Those who once looked at the painting "the Scream" by Edvard Munch would not forget its scene of a man screaming with both hands on his ears under the blood-red sky. A group of researchers at Texas State University studied the origin of the twilight experience that inspired Munch to draw that sky.[1] Surveying an art historian's book, scientific reports and newspapers, they found that the unusual twilight glows had been the after effect of the Krakatoa eruption on August 27, 1883.

An impressive experience seems often to help making good art works. When I was a junior high school student, I began to wear spectacles for shortsightedness, and was surprised to know how much light and fine details the world was filled with. The watercolor painting I draw at that time won a golden prize.

These years my wife and I have joined group travels abroad. I have been much impressed by the beautiful scenery of other countries, and able to make better sketches than I draw in our own country.

1. D. W. Olson, R. L. Doescher and M. S. Olson, "The Blood-Red Sky of the Scream" APS News, Vol. 13, No. 5, p. 8 (2004); the complete version in Sky & Telescope (February 2004).

Scientists and Artists Are the Same ...

An interview report published in the Asahi-Shimbun [1] told the following story:

Three years ago the painter Fumiko Hori, almost 83 years old at that time, bought a microscope of such a type as used by scientists, i.e., a differential diffraction microscope, and eagerly observed plankton, etc. Wishing to record at least a little bit of her strong impression about elaborate forms and devices for propagation, she made the work "Living things in the microscopic world." She says, "Scientists and artists are the same in that they know the surprise and pleasure of finding something in this wonderful world."

We are apt to see differences between scientists and artists. The above words of Hori, however, give us a new standpoint of viewing similarity between the workers of the two disparate fields.

1. [1] Column "Are you doing science?" Asahi-Shimbun, Evening ed. (Osaka, June 19, 2004).

The Principle of NOMA

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.

--Albert Einstein
From The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations

On 11 August 1999, the Kansas Board of Education voted to delete virtually any mention of evolution as well as the Big-Bang theory from the state's science curriculum [1]. This move came as a most unpleasant shock to the science community [2]. I was just reading a book on the relation between science and religion written by Steven Jay Gould [3]. In the book the author explores the contemporary principle he calls NOMA (Non-Overlapping Magisteria; a magisterium represents a domain of authority in teaching). Gould summarizes the principle as follows:

The magisterium of science covers the empirical realm: what is the universe made of and why does it work this way. The magisterium of religion extends over questions of ultimate meaning and moral value. These two magisteria do not overlap.

This principle seems to me quite self-evident. This is possibly due to my non-Christian background. Anyway, Gould's elaboration of this concept is persuasive, covering the historical and psychological bases extensively. The majority members of the Kansas Board of Education should read this book!

The reason for which I read Gould's book was to aid my thinking about the question posed by a friend of mine on some descriptions of the Bible. It will be another story in this site.

1. "Kansas Votes to Delete Evolution From State's Science Curriculum," New York Times, Aug. 12 issue (1999).
2. J. Kumagai, "Scientists View Kansas Board's Decision as a Wake-Up Call," Physics Today Vol. 52, No. 11, pp. 59-60 (1999).
3. S. J. Gould, "Rocks of Ages" (Ballantine Publishing Group, New York, 1999).

Related Reading

• S. J. Gould, "Dorothy, It's Really Oz," Time Vol. 154, No. 8 (1999).

(A modified version of this essay is posted as tttabata's review of "Rocks of Ages" on the bying-info page of this book at Amazon.com.)

Einstein, the Person of the Millennium

Though the new (Christian, Gregorian) millennium and the New Century start at zero hours UTC (commonly known as GMT) on January 1st 2001 [1], mass media are busy these days in conducting polls to decide the top something of the millennium or the century.

On 17 December 1999, Reuters announced the results of its poll for the person of the millennium. Thirty-four important persons in the fields of politics, economics, art and culture from ten countries all over the world were asked to choose three persons who had most great effects on the world from the list of thirty-nine great persons lived in this millennium.

The physicist Albert Einstein was the top. The second was shared by the father of the independence of India Mahandas Karamchand Gandhi and the economist Karl Marx. The former Prime Minister of England Winston Churchill and the physicist Isaac Newton were the fourth. (Asahi-shimbun, 18 Dec 1999)

Physicists, be proud of this result and your calling! Shall we have another physicist as the person of the next millennium? Will the physicist who completes the Theory of Everything be nominated for that person? Will this Theory be completed anyway?

1. "The New Millennium," Special Information Leaflet No. 29, The Royal Observatory Greenwich (1999).

Related Reading

• S. Weinberg, "A Unified Physics by 2050?," Sci. Amer. Dec. 1999, pp. 36-43.

Note Added Later

Einstein was also chosen for the person of the century by the Time magazine [Vol. 154, No. 26 (1999)]. The choice of the person of the millennium as the person of the century is logically quite consistent. The "Person of the century" issue of Time includes the following articles:

• W. Isaacson, "Time's choice: Who mattered--and Why."
• F. Golden, "Albert Einstein: Person of the century."
• S. Hawking, "A brief history of relativity."
• J. M. Nash, "Unfinished symphony."
• R. Rosenblatt, "The age of Einstein."

Hawking's article, the title of which follows his best-selling book, is a very understandable description about the development of the theories of relativity, including some mild jokes peculiar to the author, a miraculous physicist himself. For example, "However, the tiny fraction of a second you gained (by flying to avail yourself of the time dilation predicted by the sepcial theory of relativity) would be more than offest by eating airline meals."

The article by Nash is related to the Theory of Everything I wrote in the main text. String theory is a prospective candidate for it (see an earlier story of this site). She concludes her article by writing, "It may in the end take an Einstein to complete Einstein's unfinished intellectual symphony." The article aptly includes the photograph of Einstein playing the violin, an instrument with strings.

Related Reading Added Later

• "Man of the Century: Albert Einstein," APS News, Vol. 9, No. 2
• "Einstein Revealed," PBS NOVA Online