The SmartS Club

You’ve probably come across phrases like "we have measured for the first time..." in almost every one of her papers, or the classic line "Since the discovery of high-Tc superconductivity..."—those staples that have been hanging around forever. And don’t get me started on the closing paragraph, where co-workers and anyone with even the slightest influence on the research get a repetitive shout-out. If you were to run this through a plagiarism checker, you’d definitely get a list of red flags. But is it really plagiarism? Or is it that fancy term, "self-plagiarism"? Hold on a second. When you’re doing experimental physics, there’s the hands-on work in the lab, the data analysis, the modeling… and then comes the writing. The awkward English? That’s just the packaging. The science? It’s there, buried under the prose—sometimes clear, sometimes not, but the writing itself isn’t the science. That’s a whole different game in the humanities, though. In fields like ...

Plagiarism is The thing these days. Powerful software sifts through scientific work of everybody (who has some visibility), it seems. And the software finds huge chunks of copied/re-used text and discovered quite a few rascals in the community and many examples of shady behavior. And there are consequences for the authors of many a scientific thesis. This is good. Now there are voices promoting some exception from scrutiny when writing a PhD thesis. They call it 'modular writing'. It would allow you to re-use existing text (from textbooks, published papers, news-articles...) in, e.g., the introduction, the paragraph on scientific background, etc. The argument is that those parts aren't scientifically original anyway, english isn't the native language for many PhD students and requiring them to wirte original text supposedly puts some unneccessary burden on them.  Well. No.  A PhD-thesis is *not* just another certificate you frame and hang over the TV to have something t...

Artificial Intelligence is a misnomer. Does anybody have an idea of what human intelligence (the non-artificial one) is? Over here in Germany Intelligenz is absolutely not the same thing as intelligence represented with a capital I in CIA, for example. That CIA-one was most probably the intelligence that was meant to be artificially emulated in the 50s, 60s, 70s... And quite successfully so. Today, AI is widely perceived to be an imitation, a parallel realization, or even a substitute of the human intelligence that suposedly sets us apart from every other rock. Remember the times when your science-inclined parents explained to you how the behavior of snails is nothing more than the output of a hardwired machine? Same for the canary, the turtle under you bed, and the dog. (It was hard to believe how the malevolent fits of my cat were hardwired and not real, genuine evil. But it was.) Intelligence was nicely reserved for us humans. That appears to get questioned. The definition of intell...

My son is 15 years old. He asked me what a FAX-machine was. He get's the strange concept of CDs because there is a rack full with them next to the bookshelf, which contains tons of paper bound together in colorful bundles, called 'books'. He still accepts that some screens don't react to you punching your fingers on them. He repeatedly asks why my 'car' (he speaks the quotation marks) is powered by 'rotten dinosaurs'. At the same time he writes an email to Elon Musks Neuralink asking for an apprenticeship and sets up discord-servers for don't-ask-me-what. And slowly I am learning that it is a very good thing to be detached from historic technology, as you don't try to preserve an outdated concept while aiming to innovate. The optimized light-bulb would be an a wee bit more efficient, tiny light-bulb. But not a LED. An optimized FAX would probably handle paper differently - it would not be a file-transfer-system. Hyper-modern CDs might have tenf...

Whoever has been there knows it: every day you try harder to understand what a malignant narcissist is doing to you. And then you try all night, too. You warp your brain, wrench your soul. You fail.  Why? Because you can't. There is no way to understand morally corrupt people which have the whole universe centered around their defective ego. This trying to do so at some point consumes all of your brain-power and it hurts, it starts consuming you. But once you got rid of them there is an enormous freedom and a new love for the good that is in most people. The windows swing open, fresh air comes in, you see the sun or smell the warm rain. The whole world appears to smile. One malignant narcissist will start to lose his grip on us. Tomorrow.

The air is clear and warm. No artificial lights anywhere. The moon is lingering lazily in the trees lining the river. Some fireflies are having a good time, switching their glow on and off rather randomly - in one group they seem to synchronize but then it is random again. It reappears: a few bugs are flashing simultaneously at first, then more of them join in, and then even more until a huge cloud of insects is flashing in tune. Are they doing this on purpose? Do they even know that they are glowing? Do they have a will to turn their light on and off?  Obviously they do communicate. But why? How do they do it?  Or don’t they? 

On a wonderful summer night you lie in the grass - gaze into the dark sky, and let your thoughts wander - that shiny thing over there is an airplane, this a distant star, ISS disappears in the earth’s shadow - what a tiny box to be in! - where are the planets, how far can I see? You observe falling stars that are whizzing through the atmosphere at a delightfully high rate.  Why are there so many of them that night? Why do comets return? When? What is this strange thing called infinity. And why does infinity only go one way - infinitely into the future, but not infinitely into the past; infinitely far away, but not infinitely close, infinitely hot, but not infinitely cold, infinitely loud, but not infinitely silent? Why do things never end but did start at a certain point?  Why? The air is clear and warm. No artificial lights anywhere. The moon is lingering lazily in the trees lining the river. Some fireflies are having a good time, switching their glow on and off ...

Have you ever been at the construction-site of a high-rise and experienced the sound-cocktail of machines, colliding materials, the blasting boom-boxes, shouting workers? And have you then returned to the same place years later; when the building is finished? Where are the echoes of these past sounds while you wait at the reception? What do you experience during an awkward elevator-ride? People with blank stares, no talking, maybe some music... but nothing, absolutely nothing audible from the past. Now have a closer look. See the scratches at the wall, maybe a sneaky footprint in the concrete behind an emergency-exit, a chipped wooden frame? Static traces from the past. Petrified life. And now imagine a new construction-technique being introduced. Let some walls be written by massive 3D-printers, 'writing' threads of concrete layer by layer in quick scanning motion with preprogrammed perfection. All neat, all nice. And then modify the 3D-printer. You pick up the sound of the...

Science-festivals are booming, open house events are packed and it looks like every science-institution of class has to have an artist in residence program.  At the same time ‚alternative facts‘ are part of a populist surge that globally shakes societies. What are we doing wrong? Conventional communication addresses those who are already interested in science. We are preaching to the converted. But if scientific knowledge is to show an effect for society ‚everybody‘ has to be reached - especially those who skip the science-part in the newspaper or wouldn’t lose sleep for a science-night. In order to reach those ‚non-believers‘ Paul-Drude-Institut has brought MTL (a concept developed by the greek organization SciCo) to Berlin, presenting science of nine Leibniz-institutes and DLR in 5 subway stations. This experiment during Berlin Science Week  was new to everybody involved. Mercedes Reischel (transfer-manager at PDI) found a wonderful partner in Berlins BVG, the Scien...

The artist Sadie Weis was shadowing some of the scientists at Paul-Drude-Institut (a research-institute for nanomaterials) for eight weeks, observing the way they work, how scientists communicate with eachother, how they explain stuff to an outsider. The result of this dialogue is a light-installation and - maybe more important for the scientists involved - a reflection of the scientists  and of the artist on the languages they use.  T his project of an artist in a fly-by-residency will be wrapped up on Saturday, November 10th with a p resentation by the artist Sadie Weis and a panel discussion on differences and similarities in the way artists and scientists communicate with the outside world                  November 10, 2018 from 14-18                 Paul-Drude-Institut für Festkörperelektronik   ...

Research can be relevant but ineffective One important difference between basic research and applied research is the time it takes for the generated knowledge to become effective in society. This effectiveness is generally measured in economic terms but is certainly much wider in scope. While it is obvious that application-driven research shows an effect in society much faster than fundamental research, the consequences of fundamental studies can be vastly bigger. The effects of application-oriented or application driven research tend to be rather incremental, while basic research has the potential to be truly disruptive. But then - The potential has to be 'activated' by knowledge transfer No matter on which end of the scientific scale your research is located - and definitely independent of your personal preferences - the potential societal impact of research can be extremely high but a real impact being totally absent. Obviously, the knowledge gained has to be activ...

I just had to endure another few minutes of Michio Kaku rambling about something he does not even start to understand: free will. Physics, he says, puts an end to the debate about free will . His reasoning? After lots of 'Einstein' and 'Heisenberg' iconography ('god does not play dice', 'there is uncertainty'), repeating the simple and wrong 'an electron is everywhere at the same time' he arrives at the oh-so mind-numbing and wrong banality that we have a free will because there is uncertainty dominating physics. This makes the act of a murderer unpredictable and really evil (as compared to the Newton-driven murderer whos actions are predisposed by Newtons laws. Everything would be deterministic from the beginning of time - everything could be calculated, nothing would be left to chance ... hey, Michio, there is more to the world than crude mechanics .... and therefore that fella would be guilt-free (talking of the physics-laws-driven killer, no...

One of my fellow smart_'sses just published a book! 😀 In german 😢 So, this is the moment to learn one of the less accessible languages on the planet. Or have your german-speaking friend make this book a huge success and it will be translated to any language you understand. Or english. Since the essays are a lot about dumbing-down mankind by drowning us in ubiquituous babbling, let me keep it short: Congratulations Daniel Rapoport, it's a book!

Yeah right. People without money hear that all the time. Don't touch my sportscar! James Altucher got that straight by completing the phrase. "Money does not solve all your problems - but it solves your money-problems" Which is a lot. And a driving force behind his extremely successful blog, Altucher Confidential. And he is part of the the '10 easy steps to...', '10 things to take when you go to Mars' - advice columns that infest the net. I once wrote so - mildly critical - spotting the now legendary (and then half-legendary) guy close to this bunch of click-baiters (here) . He was personally offended and posted quite a nice reply - he saw himself as actually helping people (what he did). Got close to Yoga (through personal experience). And his writing was really fast and great. It just sometimes smelled like there was a business-idea somewhere in the machine-room. And indeed, we now get these never-ending videos where you are strung along ('wa...

It is magic. Every day at 1 pm straight Smart-S gets hit by a little click-storm. Nothing dangerous - far from a DOS attack. It actually warms my heart to know that somebody has made some code crawl this little-known dusty corner of the net to see what has been deposited there. Some empathetic robot silently weeping when things get rough in the world of the smart-ss's (does it ever?) and chuckling about the shallow jokes (are there any?). Cute. After observing this for a few months, though, I start to wonder whether that little lump of bytes couldn't be extended a bit so it is able to leave some, umm, comments? Maybe? Hello?! Some feedback (supportive, controversial or otherwise) would be nice for once! What good is a silent empathetic reader, ultimately - be it a machine or humanoid? It is like that ever-loving mother who listens to the crap you do in your childhood, the annoying stuff you call freedom while growing up, your self-pity when you fail just another rela...

What made America greater than this: Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame With conquering limbs astride from land to land Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. „Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!“ cries she With silent lips. „Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me: I lift my lamp beside the golden door. Emma Lazarus, 1883  Statue of Liberty

Sometimes you are alive. Sometimes you are dead. Well, you feel like it. Which is strange. Because, I suppose, when you are dead - how does it feel? Deadish? I thought the whole concept of being dead is that all that conscious stuff - and very much so the 'feeling'-thingy - vanishes. Exactly what you sometimes yearn for. When you are too destroyed to get up, for example. New-Years' morning, when you feel like you are dead. Well. We talked about it. So. My blog was dead. When I had to renew my payment-details I got trapped in some super-smart login loop, that always told me to renew my payment-details before I could log-in to go to... you got the idea. Now I got some reanimation done and there we go again. Life looks much better now. Even though some things look very non-ok. But let's not talk politics. Or emotional, private stuff. thanx.

Every now and then a memory from my early coding-years pops up in my mind. When I had acquired my Atari 1040F (1MB RAM, 100MB external harddrive), I was of course hex-dumping the OS and as the programmers obviously never had worked with that much space before (I believe my first Apple ][ had 8kB) they just bumbled around wasting Bits - in the middle of all the tech-stuff there was the line "Dave Staugas loves Bea Habling". Just so. In the ROM. It never got out of my brain again. And it popped up again right now. I  believe I can only lay it at rest if I know: ... did they eventually get together?  Can you please tell me? (thanks)

The discussion about reputation-metrics in science is dragging on. By now everybody knows the standard indicators (publications, impact-factor, citations,...), everybody uses them, everybody criticises them - and everybody ignores them if necessary. It has become a ritual to do metrics-bashing (while boasting about the own Hirsch-factor). Something has to happen.  Now.  (It won't.) While researching new metrics can earn you a living, the output, quite frankly, can bore you to tears. The same folks that were unable to show how scientific excellence maps onto numbers, now open the floodgates. They  spread their concept of 'excellence by Excel' from research to knowledge-transfer to impact on society - expanding the food-chain to be tagged.  Get real!  What societal impact does a scientific result have? The discovery of superconductivity? Research on linguistics of micro-languages? Any result: societal impact? Good luck! The science-community is feeli...

Last weekend I was reading about microbial fuel-cells that are able to convert sewage-waste to electrical energy ( Nature) . The authors' carefully phrased result ('Mutually complementary substrates may take advantage of substrate interaction in the cell metabolism, and generate a total effect greater than the sum of the individual contribution of single substrate for electricity generation.') will definitely be more streamlined for the 'dumb public' to 'make it more accessible' leading to something like 'energy-problem solved by using synergy'. Want to bet? It will happen. The researchers found that two different processes for the generation of electrical energy by microbial fuel-cells can interact synergetically - enhancing the efficiency (in terms of total Coulombs as well as conversion rate) above the added efficiency of both individual processes (as interesting as it is, I am always a bit nervous when looking at the error-bars. But that ...