The Gulf warrior

"I was this conservative little girl from South Alabama," Casi Callaway recalls with a chuckle, "and my father was really horrified when I became interested in ecology and recycling." Photo by Tom Nugent.

Tom Nugent profiles Emory grad Casi Callaway in Emory Magazine. Since 1998, Callaway has served as executive director of Mobile Baykeeper, Alabama’s largest and most active environmental advocacy group. Under her leadership, the group has grown from a few hundred members to more than 4,000, and is currently contending with the oil spill. An excerpt from the article:

“This is a battleground no question,” Callaway says. “We’ve got hundreds of volunteers mobilized to fight the spill, all along the Alabama coast, and there isn’t a moment to lose. If we can’t stop this oil, we’re going to lose all our beaches and bays for at least a generation.”

Spend a few hours patrolling the shoreline with Callaway and you’ll soon discover why environmentalists across the country describe her as “relentless” in her quest to protect the waterways of Alabama. “I think I’m lucky because I seem to have a knack for dealing with pressure,” says Callaway, who was recently honored with a “Lifetime Celebrates Remarkable Women” citation from the Lifetime Television network.

Callaway double-majored in philosophy and ecology at Emory. “In many ways, I actually think it was studying Plato that has helped me the most in this job—because Plato teaches you how to argue,” she says. “After you’ve studied the dialectics of Socrates, you know how to ask the right questions during a debate, so you can make your case in the strongest possible terms. Studying philosophy also taught me how to analyze a situation. I’m not bragging on you . . . but if I have to, I feel like I can take an opponent apart in an argument, thanks to the preparation I got in those philosophy classes.”

But she also notes that her long study of Plato has helped her in another way: it taught her how to look for creative solutions to disputes. “A lot of people are surprised to hear that in the past 12 years, we’ve only filed five or six lawsuits against polluters in South Alabama," she says. "We’re willing to go into the courtroom, of course, and if you keep violating the [1972] Clean Water Act and other environmental laws, we will sue you. But in most situations, the courtroom is a last resort.

“Over the years I’ve learned that you can usually get where you need to go by using the tools of persuasion effectively. The key is the ability to think creatively, to think on your feet—and that’s what you learn when you study philosophy.”

Read the whole article.

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Oil spill may reshape environmental law
Gulf oil mess fuels interest in green energy
Both spill and clean-up pose health risks

When spheres go 'wild'

Did you know that math has pathological phenomena? Watch the video to see how a sphere that is behaving particularly badly can grow horns.

The demo of the Alexander Horned Sphere was created by Michael Rogers, associate professor of math at Emory's Oxford College, for the Wolfram Demonstrations Project. Click here to see more of Rogers' interactive visualizations, that can be downloaded for free.

The lighter side of physics

“I like light,” says Daniel Weiss, an applied physics major at Emory, who enjoys photography and working as a lighting designer on Emory theatrical productions. “I would probably go crazy if I didn’t have the ability to do art while doing all the optics courses and thermal physics. Everything I do has an artistic flair, including what I do in the physics department, and everything ties in to light.”

Watch the video to learn more about combining science and art at Emory.

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Computers breathe life into 'Toy Story'
Notes on the musical brain

Rootless professionals: The new normal

Knowledge@Emory interviewed Peter Kilborn about his book “Reloville: Life Inside America’s New Rootless Professional Class.” The term “Relos” refers to the growing group of American professionals who move every three or four years for a job. Kilborn researched the book during a fellowship with Emory’s Center for Myth and Ritual in American Life.

Q: Do Relos represent another rip in America’s social fabric?

Kilborn: They do, but in the greater Atlanta area, for example, the effect is limited to a small number of communities where Relos make up a sizeable part—arbitrarily, I’d say 20 percent or more—of the population. For Relos, communities are just places to sleep. So they demand little of the community, beyond good schools for their kids, but likewise contribute little. They’re part of a wider phenomenon that Robert Putnam cites in his book, "Bowling Alone." Americans are so busy with their personal lives that they can’t make time for the community, like participating in a bowling league. Relos are even more harried than Putnam’s Americans. Before they can become involved with a community—after finding homes, schools, doctors, churches, the mall—they’re gone.

Q: What does Relo culture say about our perception of “community?”

Kilborn: It says we have less community, if by community we mean places with interacting people. But Relos are also redefining community. Their community might not be a geographic spot on the map. It might consist of their cross-border links to others with similar interests. Electronics engineers, for example, might identify with other electronics engineers, all members of associations of engineers, across the globe. They interact on the Net and at group gatherings. Those of their children who have lived abroad often don’t identify with a place or even a country. They call themselves “third culture kids.” But many of them, too, engage with other kids via electronic links—Facebook, My Space, email, texting, and so on.

Read the full interview.

The math of rock climbing

By Carol Clark

Do you know your ape index? What’s it like to fall 40 feet down a sheer cliff face, while dangling from a rope hundreds of feet from the ground?

Watch the video of Emory mathematician Skip Garibaldi describing his rock climbing experiences on El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. He also explains some basic climbing math, such as the fall factor, used to reduce the risk of injury during a rope climb.

“Climbing has a lot of puzzles that have to be solved,” Garibaldi says. “It’s not just strength or skill. You really have to think about the different ways you can place your body.”
Photo by Craig Clarence.

The sport seems to attract mathematicians, he adds. “When I learned how to climb, in San Diego, Mike Freedman was a professor there. He has the Fields Medal for his work on the Poincaré conjecture, and he helped develop the San Diego climbing scene.”

One of Garibaldi’s collaborators, noted French mathematician Jean-Pierre Serre, “has bouldered at Fontainebleau, near Paris, for decades,” Garibaldi says. And mathematician John Gill, who went to high school in Atlanta, and graduated from the University of Georgia, is considered the father of modern bouldering by many climbers.

Atlanta has a thriving climbing scene, Garibaldi says. Check out the Emory Rock Climbing Arena.

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The math in card tricks, games and gambling