A congress of legends

In 1911, Belgian chemist and industrialist Ernest Solvay organized a meeting of world-renowned scientists to discuss current problems in Physics and encourage debate to give way to the elucidation of questions regarding the foremost theories of the day.  This congress, called the Solvay Conference, was attended by more than 20 participants from both sides of the Atlantic.  It was followed by many other Solvay Conferences over the years, yet the most famous of these were conducted in 1911 and 1927 (the First and Fifth Solvay Conferences, respectively).  It was here where Albert Einstein, who in 1911 was the youngest of the attendees, demonstrated his opposition to quantum mechanics, beginning a legendary debate with its Danish proponent, Niels Bohr.

"The more success the quantum physics has, the sillier it looks. ... I think that a 'particle' must have a separate reality independent of the measurements. That is an electron has spin, location and so forth even when it is not being measured. I like to think that the moon is there even if I am not looking at it. ... God does not play dice with the universe," said Einstein at one point of the debate.

"Einstein, don't tell God what to do. Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum physics cannot possibly have understood it. .... When it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry. The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images. It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how Nature is. Physics concerns what we say about Nature," responded Bohr.

Forty-five physicists, mathematicians, chemists, meteorologists, and inventors attended the 1911 and 1927 conferences combined, 23 of which were Nobel laureates or were future Nobel Prize laureates. The following picture was taken during the 1927 conference, where the theme was about electrons and photons.

Front row: Irving Lagmuir, Max Planck, Madame Marie Curie, Henrik Lorentz, Albert Einstein, Paul Langevin, Charles-Eugene Guye, C. T. R. Wilson, Sir Owen Richardson

Middle Row: Peter Debye, Martin Hans Christian Knudsen, Sir William Lawrence Bragg, Hendrik Kramers, Paul Dirac, Arthur Compton, Louis de Broglie, Max Born, Niels Bohr

Back Row: Auguste Piccard, Emile Henriot, Paul Ehrenfest, Edouard Herzen, Theopile de Donder, Erwin Schrödinger, Jules Emile Verschaffelt, Wolfgang Pauli, Werner Heisenberg, Sir Ralph Howard Fowler, Leon Nicolas Brillouin

Unfootbally ours?

In his column in the Philippine Daily Inquirer Rigoberto Tiglao stated exactly what I wanted to say for many years. It partly takes on Filipino US-centrism that shut us from two-thirds of the rest of the planet. Our fanaticism to all things American and to all dreams American has made us indifferent to other global affairs which have far greater import. Among these affairs is the World Cup, the global celebration of the game that for decades has played a great part in the unification of the world even during the difficult times of the two World Wars – football.

Football (or association football, to distinguish it from the more violent American counterpart) is the national game of many nations, and even in many countries in Asia (except the Philippines), it has been a fixed part of the curriculum in physical education. Here in the Philippines, that role is given to basketball, which is among the most enduring of all American influences.

At first I find it hard to understand why it is difficult for our nation to embrace football, until I discovered that a major part of this impossibility is attributed to the reluctance of big media companies to promote the sport due to commercial reasons themselves. The following are some of Tiglao’s takes regarding that matter:

The popularity of basketball is a case study of how capitalism molds a cultural phenomenon and, in the Philippines, its unbridled power.

First, it was US-style, profit-driven television that boosted basketball and practically killed football in the country starting in the 1960s. The 48-minute game was divided into four quarters, with a 15-minute, half-time break and 12 one-minute time outs. It was almost designed for TV advertising—for inserting soap, beer and soft drink song-and-dance commercials. Football took so long, and running at least 90 minutes, with only one half-time break, and no time-out, TV advertising in that game was difficult. (FIFA, the world soccer federation, learned to commercially use television for the World Cup only in the 1990s.) Philippine capitalism strived for every second of basketball fans’ attention to be on their product and so they organized professional basketball and named the teams after the corporate entity and their flagship products: Crispa, Toyota, San Miguel, Ginebra, Purefoods, Sta. Lucia Realtors, Talk ’N Text. (In the US, teams were organized by cities, creating some sense of community. But Beermen?)

Second, the Araneta Coliseum (“The Biggest Covered Coliseum in the World”) was built in 1959, a deft business move by the Aranetas to move the center of commercial activity from downtown Manila to the family’s estate in the then suburban Quezon City. Following the if-you-build-it-they-will-come logic, the Coliseum fast became the site of more and more professional basketball tournaments and, with television coverage, made it more popular than ever. (With the huge crowds at every basketball game, the Aranetas built the first mall in the country, Ali Mall, and its success undoubtedly inspired Henry Sy to change his business model from huge department stores to malls that have now created one of the most mall-dotted metropolises in the world. So thank basketball for our mall culture.)

 Well said.

It is uncertain to conclude that change has come

Noynoy Aquino and Jejomar Binay’s elections usher in a new period of hope for most Filipinos, though not in the same degree as that brought by the election of America’s Barack. Our hope is the hope of someone who suffered a decade-long thirst for genuine change.  Sometimes it was desperate, oftentimes it was frustrated.  Since Cory’s time we have been looking forward for such change, only to be disappointed by stubborn corruption and violation of human rights, things which, because of their repetition have sooner been accepted as part of our culture.

The fact that the Arroyo administration left a demoralized country in the wake of debt and distrust heightened the people’s impulsive cries for a hero. Those are the dark times when the people were looking for someone to uplift their hearts and their lives. If there was none, then they felt it imperative to create one that they think at least approximates the character of someone who in the past had embodied the people’s description of heroism. This was when Noynoy, then completely unknown outside the elitist circle, made his entry point goaded by kingmakers who told the people that Cory’s image lives in him. Indeed the people saw Cory’s image on him, and accepted him in absence of any other appropriate candidate.

Vice President Jojo Binay, the true self-made man, is indeed the best outcome of the 2010 elections. Having been trailing to LP’s Roxas in the pre-election surveys, he is a come-from-behind stunner, one who has brought to his side even the difficult South to secure a narrow victory. It may be that until now I doubt everything of his platforms, but testaments of his strategy, character and humanity as mayor of industrial Makati are enough to consider him deserving of support for the attainment of his goals.

The day is not yet ripe for assessing what Noynoy and Binay could do. It is rash to conclude once again that the recent election is “historic” in the sense that we have elected a Lincoln or an Obama (which the press has been doing ever since the beginning). It is even very premature to come up with a 68-page magazine feature of anyone of the two.

Green blunder hands U.S. draw with England

A shocking schoolboy howler from England goalkeeper Robert Green gifted the United States a goal as the two sides tipped to qualify from Group C battled to a 1-1 stalemate at the Royal Bafokeng Stadium on Saturday.  

Green, 29, winning only his 11th England cap after being preferred to the vastly more experienced David James, will be haunted for the rest of his career by the mistake when he failed to routinely stop a low, bouncing 25-meter shot from Clint Dempsey after 40 minutes.[read more]