Marc Siegel is a doctor, so he talks about disease, but the logic is universal.

America has its killer bugs, but Americans don't, as a rule, express great concern about them: Pneumonia, which killed 63,000 Americans in 2000, draws little public comment. Until 2003, when the flu deaths of 20 U.S. children early in the season were widely publicized, Americans didn't worry much about influenza either, despite the tens of thousands of deaths attributed to that disease each year.

In comparison, relatively minor threats are widely feared.

We live temperature-controlled, largely disease-controlled lives.

And yet, we worry more than ever before. The natural dangers are no longer there, but the response mechanisms are turned on much of the time. We implode, turning our adaptive fear mechanism into a maladaptive panicked response.

One wonders if Turner will be sued for the medical expenses of Boston-area residents who suffered traumatic stress at the hands of the Mooninites.

At a time in history when true scourges are quite rare, the population is controlled by fear. Rather than enjoy the safety that our technological advances have provided us, we feel uncertain.

Worry about the wrong things puts us at greater risk of the diseases that should be concerning us in the first place.

For more recent coverage specifically on the ATHF case:

In the statute, "hoax device" is defined as an object that someone could "reasonably" believe to be an "infernal machine" intended to cause death, injury, or property damage by "fire or explosion." Assistant Attorney General John Grossman argues that the devices resembled bombs, and that this constitutes intent. The men face up to five years in prison if convicted.

However, Dr. Marc Siegel, an associate professor at the NYU School of Medicine and author of "False Alarm: The Truth About the Epidemic of Fear," warns that the word "reasonably" may be close to meaningless in this context.

While the "hoax device" argument might not hold up in court, TBS is still open to a civil case ...

"We need to realize that emotion is running amok here. The risk of terrorism is not zero, so it makes sense that we have a system in place for reacting to perceived threats. However, this kind of event makes it necessary to assess if we over-react routinely," Siegel says, "and what it costs us psychologically and financially." For one thing, he adds, "you can put a lot more effort into identifying the risk before you shut down the city."

Boston Mayor Thomas Menino isn't deterred.

In 2005, Siegel's book on fear, False Alarm: The Truth about the Epidemic of Fear, was adapted for... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

The Irony of Fear

The Royal Society recently provided access to an archive of papers published in the scientific academy's prestigious journal. Some 25 thousand scholarly works date from 1665 to the present day. Many notable scientific advancements are included in the archive, including, for example, Watson and Crick's discovery of DNA. This interesting data set was ripe for some visual tinkering. The database I used was put together by Brian Amento and Mike Yang of AT&T Labs.

The Author Distribution visualization displays papers chronologically. Paper titles radiate downward from the vertical midpoint at a 45 degree angle. Within a single year, papers are sorted alphabetically. The year a volume was published is shown, centered among it's respective block of papers. The size varies linearly by the number of number of papers published during that year's volume. Authors are shown radiating upwards from the vertical midpoint at a 45 degree angle. Their positions are computed by calculating the average position of the papers they authored. The size of the author's name reflects how prolific they were (linear relationship). Essentially, author names are "centered" above the time period they were active.

It's really interesting to explore these images! For example, the first section (1665-1710) has Edmond Halley (of Halley Comet fame), Isaac Newton, Antony van Leeuwenhoek (inventor of the microscope) and other famous scholars.

The Word Distribution visualization has the same visual characteristics as the author distribution (above). However, instead of authors, this visualization explores the distribution of words in publication titles. Word size is determined with a square root function, which helps dampen extremely common words (i.e. 'the' and 'of'). Only words used three or more times are shown. It's interesting to see how words evolve and fields like photography and electronics emerge.

Chris Harrison - Visualizing the Royal Society Archive

Almost two decades after the appearance of most of the classical texts on the subject, this book's fresh introduction to Graph Theory offers a reassessment of what are the theory's main fields, methods and results today. Viewed as a branch of pure mathematics, the theory of finite graphs is developed as a coherent subject in its own right, with its own unifying questions and methods. The book thus seeks to complement, not replace, the existing more algorithmic treatments of the subject.

This book can be used at various different levels. It contains all the standard basic material to be taught in a first undergraduate course, complete with detailed proofs and numerous illustrations. To help with the planning of such a course, it includes precise information on the logical dependence of results, including forward referencing.

Intended Audience:

For a graduate course, the book offers proofs of several more advanced results, most of which thus appear in a book for the first time. These proofs are described with as much care and detail as their simpler counterparts, often with an informal discussion of their underlying ideas complementing their rigorous step-by-step account.

To the professional mathematician, finally, the book affords an overview of graph theory as it stands today: with its typical questions and methods, its classic results, and some of those developments that have made this subject such an exciting area in recent years.

Graph Theory, Third Edition, by Reinhard Diestel

Some say that one of the main differences between science and philosophy is that science makes progress while philosophers go round in circles endlessly discussing the same questions.

Is Philosophy Progressive?

Five years ago, Steven Pinker ignited an academic firestorm with the best-selling book The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, which argued that innate behavioural differences exist among individuals and between men and women.

The 52-year-old cognitive scientist is again challenging conventional wisdom with The Stuff of Thought, a book about language due out in September. He'll deliver a lecture in Toronto on the topic Wednesday, as part of 15th anniversary celebrations for the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research.

You know it's big when the book tour starts nine months in advance. He'll be at UCSB on February 2. He was in Toronto last night.

See also:

10 questions for Steven Pinker
How Steven Pinker Works

Of thought and metaphor

Books are overrated, says one librarian.

Literacy today is defined less by how English departments or a librarian might teach Wordsworth or Faulkner than by how we find our way through the digital forest of information overload.

A Librarian's Lament: Books Are a Hard Sell

Publishers Weekly review:

Twenty years after The Society of Mind, where he introduced the concept that "minds are what brains do," Minsky probes deeper into the question of natural intelligence. Don't look for simple explanations: he believes "we need to find more complicated ways to explain our most familiar mental events"; we need to break our thought processes down into the most precise steps possible. In fact, in order to truly understand the human mind, Minsky suggests, we'll probably need to reverse-engineer a machine that can replicate those functions so we can study it. Thus, he rejects the idea of consciousness as a unitary "Self" in favor of "a decentralized cloud" of more than 20 distinct mental processes. In this view, emotional states like love and shame are not the opposite of rational cogitation; both, Minsky says, are ways of thinking. This is not a book to be read casually; Minsky builds his argument with constant reference to earlier and later sections, imagining objections from a variety of philosophical positions and refuting them. A steady stream of diagrams helps clarify matters, but readers will be forced to dig for the "aha!" moments: they're worth the effort.

The Emotion Machine: Commonsense Thinking, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of the Human Mind, by Marvin Minsky

Check this out.

Publishers Weekly Starred Review. In an eclectic but deeply satisfying collection, Dyson, a Nobel Prize–winning physicist and prolific author (Weapons and Hope), presents 33 previously published book reviews, essays and speeches (15 from the New York Review of Books). Dyson expresses his precise thinking in prose of crystal clarity, and readers will be absolutely enthralled by his breadth, his almost uncanny ability to tie diverse topics together and his many provocative statements. In the title essay, Dyson writes, "Science is an alliance of free spirits in all cultures rebelling against" the tyranny of their local cultures. In a 2006 review of Daniel Dennett's book, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, Dyson, himself a man of faith, takes issue with Dennett's quoting of physicist Stephen Weinberg that "for good people to do bad things—that takes religion." The converse is also true, says Dyson: "for bad people to do good things—that takes religion."

Three of the best chapters (reprinted from Weapons and Hope) deal with the politics of the cold war. And his writings on Einstein, Teller, Newton, Oppenheimer, Norbert Wiener and Feynman will amuse while presenting deep insights into the nature of science and humanity. Virtually every chapter deserves to be savored.

I suggest pairing this with A Jacques Barzun Reader:

Taken as a whole, these more than six dozen essays constitute one of the great critical collections of recent times and amply showcase one of the outstanding scholarly intellects of the last century.

The Scientist as Rebel, by Freeman Dyson

Dr. Smith warned against getting ahead of the day’s announcement and envisioning the disappearing Romulan warbirds of “Star Trek” on the horizon.

“It could easily take years to figure out what the stuff is really good for from a practical, pragmatic standpoint. But, boy, it sure is really cool from a short-term standpoint.”

I should have posted this next to the editorial on space policy, as Trekkies may recall The Treaty of Algeron:

The treaty stated that the Federation would refrain from researching or implementing cloaking technology. However, an amendment added later allowed the Federation to install a Romulan cloaking device on one ship, the Defiant, for use only in the Gamma Quadrant and under the supervision of a Romulan officer, and under the condition that the Federation would share its intelligence on the Dominion.

See also the articles, [2] at Memory Alpha. (In reviewing these links, I am reminded of the incredible geekiness (and perhaps wonkiness) of Star Trek.)

Scientists Take Step Toward Invisibility

Lately, string theory has come in for considerable criticism. And so, this is an auspicious moment to reflect on the state of the art.

Brian Greene defends string theory against its detractors.

The Universe on a String