i probably watch more TV than is good for me. certainly my DVR has more of a backlog at any given point than i can comfortably manage. if i were a different kind of person i’d blame my parents – a showbiz family who, as i was growing up, not only had a television set in every room (including their bathroom), but would sleep with the TV on, too. on several occasions i would attempt to turn it off after they fell asleep, but they’d just simply wake up, turn it back on and go to sleep again. eventually i had to settle for very carefully and subtly turning the volume down. my father claims that he can only fall asleep if there’s something on that he wants to watch.

this week, of course, the big TV news is that lost is finally over. yes, i am a die-hard lost fan. it covers absolutely everything i love about fantastical stories, and everything i hate about real life (i.e., camping, being stuck outdoors). nick warner is a theoretical physicist at USC, but you can find him on the DVD extras of lost’s fifth season, espousing on the physics of time travel. it’s something the producers put together called “lost university”. it consists of warner and a couple other physicists talking about some of the theoretical science that gets woven into the show.

so, is there real science on lost? eh. . .mostly not. just things stretched and used as plot devices or to make characters sound smart, or (my favorite reason) to show a sense of wonder that could come from actual things applied in a fantastical manner. for nick warner, i think that’s the point, too. they’re not discussing lost as a serious scientific treatise, but i think the hope is that the show (and the “lost university” DVD extras) might get people who would otherwise ignore such things to be interested in science. at the theoretical level, physics really could sound indistinguishable from magic to some of us.

warner says that the key factor in deciding whether he contributes to things like this (or anything involving the intersection of science and the entertainment industry) is the question: “will this make me look like an idiot?”

good advice. perhaps i should apply the same thinking to photography.

[and just in case any of you are paying attention and have become annoyed with the subject heading for this (and similar posts). . .yes, i am aware that i've hardly kept up the scientist posts weekly. in my defense it was entirely my intention to do so, and trust me, i've got a long, long backlog of scientist pictures to do it . . . but, you know. . .things get in the way. so they're not going to be weekly, of course, but i'm keeping the damn title. just because.]

steven pinker is a psychologist at harvard who specializes in the evolution of language. in an appearance on the colbert report he was asked to explain how the mind works in five words or less. his answer: brain cells fire in patterns.

he is a charter member of the luxuriant and flowing hair club for scientists. and yes, that’s a real thing, if not entirely serious.

you can see steven’s brain here.

you can see steve’s genome here.

buy steve’s books here.

most of us feel broken in some way. often this feeling is quiet and unseen, but even if we don’t admit it, even if it’s invisible, even if we’re totally wrong, in many of us there’s something that feels a bit incomplete. i don’t think this is bad. i think it builds character. it makes us strive for the things we need, even if we don’t really know what we need. it makes us look for the things that are broken in others and it brings us the capacity for compassion and empathy.

most of the time people feel incomplete in ways that would never occur to anyone but themselves, ways that would remain invisible (i.e., you feel unloved, you feel awkward, you feel clumsy). but sometimes there are very real physical manifestations. when something feels missing because it actually is missing, when it is plain to the world that something is missing, it can be a lot harder. most of us have only our own neuroses to contend with. when you have to contend with the questions and stares and reactions of strangers, that’s another thing entirely.

stefan knauss is a prosthetist. in the simplest terms he helps people to feel less broken, less incomplete. he builds artificial limbs; legs, arms, hands, feet, fingers, ears and eyes with such a degree of precision and beauty and accuracy that when i looked through his portfolio half the time i pegged the real leg for the fake one. stefan brings artfulness and dignity to us when we need it most. his work is equal parts function, art and compassion.

he made his first mechanical hand for a high school science fair twenty five years ago. it’s the one on the left (obviously) in the first picture above. to me that picture represents twenty five years of single minded effort, of striving to complete what feels incomplete.

while i was at stefan’s i met leslie. leslie lost her left leg to cancer eight years ago. some time later stefan made her a new one. after years of wearing long pants and boots to cover up the obvious prosethetic she used to have, leslie now wears skirts and sandals frequently. a casual observer would never know. even though the fact of being able to wear skirts and sandals might seem trivial, the result is huge. sometimes it’s a luxury to be able to keep to ourselves the things that feel broken.

last week i was contacted by a woman named hilary gooding. hilary is a textile artist working on a project involving quilts of prominent scientists with the aim of displaying them in museums in the UK next year. hilary wanted to use one of my 2006 photographs of james d. watson (nobel laureate (with francis crick) for the discovery of the structure of DNA) in her project. it was such an odd request i really had no choice but to say yes, and i admit i’m very curious to see how the finished project will end up.

hilary sent me photos of the result (below). the other people pictured are marie curie, charles babbage, michael faraday and francis crick.

i was raised in an atheist jewish household in two of the biggest (and most liberal) cities in the country. my brother and i never even went to hebrew school. i like to say that we’re more jew-ish than jewish. we love matzo ball soup. we’re expert complainers. but no bar mitzvahs. i have no idea when passover is, no idea if yom kippur happens before rosh hashonah, or which days you get to take off of school. we never went to temple, though there was a temple across the street from our house. my brother, genius that he was, discovered that there was a day camp in the temple where they had arcade games that didn’t require quarters. we snuck in one day, barely making it through one game of pac man before the rabbis discovered us and kicked us out. that was pretty much the extent of our exposure to religion. we tried hannukah one year, but the family collectively decided that doing anything for eight days straight was way too much of a pain in the ass. worrier that i was, i felt that candles were a fire hazard. we mostly celebrated christmas as it was over in one day and everything else was closed, anyway.

as someone who was raised in an environment where nobody at all was religious, where reason and responsibility were valued, it was very shocking to me to encounter religious america as i got older.

ken miller is a professor at brown university, and gained some amount of fame as a key witness in the dover school  board intelligent design trial. he was an especially damning witness against the creationists as he actually wrote the evolution textbook that they were trying to ban. on top of that he is a roman catholic.

ken lectures often to conferences and has been very involved with the promotion of science in education. he’s a great speaker, very funny and very smart. he’s all over youtube, one example of which is embedded below. i’m a total geek for these kinds of videos. i find them fascinating and can watch them all day.

find out more about the dover school board trial here.

see books by ken miller here.

FAQs about evolution here at the national center for science education.

searching through my various geeky news feeds today i was delighted to see that the 2009 nobel prize in chemistry went to venkatraman “venki” ramakrishnan, for his work in mapping the structure of the ribosome.

in late may i went to a symposium on evolutionary biology at cold spring harbor laboratory where i was lucky enough to photograph many smart people from many places. it was a very busy week with a hectic schedule and it went by way too fast. still, it reminds me of what i love about photography. even though my knowledge of real biology is weak at best, i know enough to follow basic descriptions of complex things, and all the scientists were very gracious with their knowledge. there’s always something good to be gained from talking to someone of a thing that they care very much about.

i photographed venki on the first day there, and would see him walking around the rest of the week. he always stopped and said hello, and seemed genuinely friendly, curious and obviously very bright.

congratulations, venki, and thanks!

[and my thanks to audrey at crossroads who taught me AP biology in 1991, so that many years later i don't feel like a complete idiot talking to real scientists]

see more about his nobel win here.

i met vic one day by accident. i was taking pictures at the research lab where she works, it was the summer, it was hot, and i was lugging my gear around by myself. she was standing outside smoking a cigarette. i had a long list of subjects i was supposed to shoot that week, but i forgot all about them. she wasn’t on my list. i started moving equipment slower, hoping to strike up a conversation. she said hello, and i said hello, and then – as i have many times since – i found myself speechless. so i did what dumb guys do, and smiled and tried not to trip over my own feet.

i’m glad to say that since then we’ve gotten past the initial awkwardness, and i’ve been lucky enough to get to know her quite well. she tells me about ordinary things in ways that makes them seem foreign and exciting and magical. she tells me about strange and incredible things in ways that make them seem comfortable and familiar and knowable. in one of the first conversations we had she told me about skinny dipping in bio-luminescent algae, and it took my brain 20 minutes to reset enough to form a coherent thought.

she does breast cancer research but prefers the word “tits”. she worked her ass off and suffered through the pettiness and discrimination of smaller minded people to earn a PhD. she cares deeply about her work, about the process of science and not only has great love for the grand discoveries of life but also for the small, microscopic daily trials and victories. she finds beauty on the cellular level. she shows me very small things i never knew existed, pictures that glow green and purple and bright. she explains technical things in a way that makes me want to know more and be smarter. she’s merciful to mice, patient with students, good to her friends, true to her family.

she puts words together in ways i’ve never thought of, gives magic to simple notions, lends simplicity and understanding to complexity, and makes me want to reread everything. vic kicks my ass so consistently at scrabble (in her non-native tongue, no less) that she’s sure i’m losing on purpose. sadly, i’m not.

she bakes fifty muffins at once, all different kinds. makes bread and truffles and exotic savory things. she’s undaunted. in baking, and in life, she measures carefully, kneads well, mixes thoroughly and licks the bowl clean when she’s done.

last week i had a shoot that took place in a zoological laboratory. i’m not sure if the place was really appropriate to the subject, or if it was just available and really cool to be in. maybe a mix of the two. it was more interesting than any of our other options at the time, that’s for sure. i’d never been in a zoology lab before so it was kind of fascinating. as usual i’m impressed and amazed at the level of organization that goes on in places like this. i wish scientists could come and organize my office, but with less dead things or radiation or advanced mathematics.

my deepest sincere thanks to dr. john hafner who runs this lab for being so gracious in allowing us inside. i hope no permanent damage was caused. i really love listening to scientists talk about what they do, and to some extent i really love listening to anyone who’s passionate about their work. i think i sometimes confuse scientists because i tend to fixate on elements that are, to them, somewhat incidental. for example in this zoology lab i was really taken with the little tags used to mark all the specimens. they’re all written out by hand in felt tip permanent marker, even in this age of printers and computers. everything written out by hand, and it lends an old-time sort of aesthetic that’s really appealing. also it makes it sometimes difficult to distinguish immediately between specimens collected recently and those that are eighty years old.

paul was very impressed by a different thing. this involved pointing and exclaiming the following phrase like a little girl: “pickled bats!” (see above).

here’s corporal bennett, sitting in for a test shot that isn’t anything like what we ended up doing. sometimes it’s a drag to have a great location that’s wrong for the subject.

ah, why is it that it always seems like my favorite shot from any given shoot is the one that’s almost guaranteed never to get published? well, i guess that’s where the glorious internet comes in. thanks, internet.

ken berry is an awfully nice guy with a giant garage full of robots and robot parts. unfortunately due to the requirements of the shoot we weren’t really able to spend our time using the robots to photographic effect. but really, i can listen to a guy talk about robots all day long. ken is a professor at cal state northridge where he teaches people how to use robots (and other technological marvels) in the classroom.

new scientist magazine in the UK used one of my photos of james watson in their october 20th issue. the deal went down before all of watson’s controversy in england last month, and i’m pleased to see that the article didn’t dwell on that. i’m not going to comment much on the hub-bub, except to say that i’ve shared a couple meals with the man and he certainly speaks his mind. i don’t put too much value on remaining absolutely PC all the time, so i’ve never been offended by anything he says. he’s undoubtedly a brilliant man, an important figure in the history of science and quite frankly he’s saved my ass. it’s because of watson that my hearts book is ever going to see the light of day, so i owe him many favors.

my thanks to adam goff at new scientist magazine for sending actual hardcopies of the issue as well as PDFs! it’s so rare that i actually get to see how these things turn out.