This is the best we can do?

It’s hard to pick just one quote from this piece on TV pundits, politics, and orange juice:

There is no spin possible that turns “asking for orange juice” into an issue of elitism or snobbery: there is, in an infinite sea of alternate realities, not one in which asking for orange juice demonstrates an important negative aspect of character. It is stupid. It is aggressively stupid; it is soul-burrowingly stupid; it is mind-fuckingly stupid. It is the kind of stupid that seeps into the rug so that the entire building stinks of stupid for the next ten years whenever the air conditioning comes on. It is the kind of stupid that wounds all those who come into contact with it. It is a stupid that has been rendered physical: it leaves a scar.

. . .

It is difficult, after all, to do anything but just plain laugh at the political “experts” shoved in front of us, experts so incompetent and up their own esteemed asses, at this point, that they really can’t report on anything more substantial than orange juice stories. They can’t do it — it is not a matter of secret bias, they are just not capable. The top “pundits” of cable television weren’t hired for their smarts on the hard issues, they were hired to make ridiculous, off-the-cuff pronouncements on the petty trivialities of the day. They know no more about the concerns of small town Americans than they know about roping cattle or performing a colonoscopy, and yet they will sit on television, in suits costing more than some of the used cars the rest of us drive, and claim expertise on all three.

Read the whole damn thing, and then demand better.

Word of the day

Ghoti, which is pronounced “fish”

Turtles all the way down

Today I had to look up the origin of the phrase “Turtles all the way down. It’s rather amusing:

A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: “What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.” The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, “What is the tortoise standing on?” “You’re very clever, young man, very clever,” said the old lady. “But it’s turtles all the way down!”

Jim Watson Is At It Again

I don’t often find it necessary to put this disclaimer here, but let me reiterate that my views are mine alone and are not necessarily the views held by Baylor College of Medicine, the HGSC, or members of my lab. That clear? Okay, let’s dive into this mess

Let me start by saying that I respect the scientific contributions of Jim Watson. He and Francis Crick discovered the structure of DNA, which was one of the first steps that led us into the current era of genomics. I haven’t criticized him in the past because I also work in genomics, and as a junior scientist, I need to be careful about offending people who I may need a job from one day.

After his most recent comments, though, I’ve had it. Here’s what he had to say to the Sunday Times:

Dr Watson told The Sunday Times that he was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really”.

Wow, that’s going to piss some people off. But, wait! There’s more:

He said there was a natural desire that all human beings should be equal but “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true”.

These kinds of statements aren’t exactly new behavior for Watson either. During his talk at BCM a few months ago, he said some mildly offensive things about the Irish. He’s said some pretty controversial things about women and homosexuals too. And none of this even begins to delve into the complete disdain he’s shown for Rosalind Franklin. Not only does he refuse to acknowledge her full contribution to solving the structure of DNA, he ’s taken to calling her autistic. Seriously, Dr. Watson. She’s been dead for almost 50 years. Let this one go.

Whether he gets slack because he’s old or because he’s a Nobel prize winner doesn’t matter in my book. One seminal discovery doesn’t excuse your behavior for the rest of your life (and neither does being old and set in your ways).

There are plenty of other great minds in genetics that deserve to be giving lectures. Perhaps it’s time to start calling on them to serve as figureheads instead.

Update: edited slightly to remove some language that was perhaps overly harsh. It’s also worth noting that a London museum canceled his lecture after the uproar.

‘Tis Better to Give

Both my birthday and the holiday season are coming up soon, so I’ve updated my wishlist. (link in the sidebar). In addition to asking for books and video games this year, I thought I’d try something a little different. I’m asking you to help some underprivileged kids learn science.

Donors Choose is a site where teachers in low-income areas and underfunded schools submit proposals for what they’d like to do in their classroom. Today, I set up a challenge, and picked a few science-related projects that I liked.

Now I’m asking you to help by donating to one of these projects. I set a goal of 200 dollars, which is pretty modest. So skip your grande lattes for a week, click on the link below and donate 10 or 15 bucks to a pretty darn good cause. It’s heartbreaking to see how little most of these classrooms are asking for, and easy to see how many children’s lives can be affected by such a small amount of money.

And in case you needed more reason to donate, here’s my blurb from the challenge page:

In an era of increasing politicization and misrepresentation of science, it’s more important than ever to teach children about how the scientific method works. Science teachers are on the front lines of this culture war, and it’s important that they have the resources that they need.

Solutions like this are no substitute for adequate school funding, but we can’t wait around for that kind of education reform. Doing so would mean losing a whole generation of scientists. The potential to change the world is in these children’s minds. Let’s give these kids and their teachers the support that they deserve.

Spoons are pretty amazing.

Balancing Act

I constantly hear that the lack of women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) is a huge problem that we must work to overcome. To a large degree, I support this view, but I always wonder if these rabid proponents think that it works both ways. Should we also be trying to increase the number of males in traditionally female-dominated professions, like Nursing?

Look at the facts: Nurses are in high demand and well-compensated, with median salaries around 45k, and specialists making much more than that. The lack of males in the field can, in large part, be attributed to societal pressures that say what jobs a man can and cannot do. This closely mirrors the situation with females in STEM fields. So where are the male-only recruiting scholarships in Nursing? Shouldn’t we be trying to break gender barriers in both directions?

I’m sure that this post is going to get me labeled misogynistic by some people, but I’m genuinely curious to hear responses.

Making a Difference

Whitelisting

The anti-spam movement has long known that blacklists aren’t a very effective way to fight spam. The spammer just registers a new email account, or spoofs the From address, and your blacklist is worthless. Thanks to networks of ‘zombie’ computers, blocking IP addresses is ineffective as well. What’s the only solution that eliminates all spam? Whitelists, of course.

Whitelists have a large number of drawbacks, though. Adhering to a strict whitelist means that users can’t receive email from people who aren’t on their list. That means you’ll miss the emails from that old classmate or new business associate unless you set up some kind of cumbersome authentication system. That’s generally more hassle that it’s worth.

I realized the other day that whitelists are making a comeback, though, in an unexpected way. It turns out that more and more youngsters aren’t using email at all. They prefer to message each other through Facebook.

Sure, the interfaces are clunky, it’s hard to find old messages, etc, but the spam count is almost zero, since you can only message your friends. In essence, the social network acts as a whitelist for communications.

Sadly, this approach doesn’t work well for adults. We communicate with people outside our immediate circle of friends quite a bit. We need to be able to shoot spreadsheets to our business contacts, or find that old email from our boss. For kids under the age of 18, though, none of that matters. They just talk to their limited group of friends, and for that kind of communication, social networks work pretty damn well.

Charting Crime

Houston Crime Trends. See if you can spot the influx of Katrina refugees.

Dunning-Kruger effect

Simply put, the Dunning-Kruger effect is that dumb people tend to think they’re much smarter than they actually are.

Across 4 studies, the authors found that participants scoring in the bottom quartile on tests of humor, grammar, and logic grossly overestimated their test performance and ability. Although test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd

Also notable is that truly competent people tend to underestimate how smart they are.

See also:
Grad school makes you dumber
Lake Wobegone Effect

Wedding Woes

In a recent Ask metafilter post, a guy had his panties all in a bunch because he had to buy an engagement ring for his girlfriend:

How can I get past my resentment at having to buy an engagement ring?

I love my girlfriend and want to marry her, but having to buy a wedding ring upsets me. My objections are nicely summed up in this recent piece in Slate: it’s a backwards, sexist, manufactured tradition that begins a relationship that should be based on equality with something that’s distinctly unequal. My girlfriend agrees with most of this but wants one anyway.

Thankfully, muddgirl came through with the perfect response:

If you’re getting this resentful about the very first crappy, antiquated, sexist tradition surrounding a marriage, I can’t wait until you two actually start planning the wedding!

(Love you honey!)

Revolt of the Diggers

As you may or may not know, the DRM scheme that protects HD-DVDs was recently cracked. This means that by using a 16-digit hex code, you can decrypt HD-DVDs and copy them, in the same way that DeCSS lets you copy current-generation DVDs.

Users over at Digg started spreading the news and publishing the code in posts and links as the story broke. Due to the fact that publishing the code is a likely violation of the DMCA, digg admins started deleting the posts and banning users that posted the code. The copy-left loving, techno-anarchist kids didn’t like that, and since then, Digg has been overwhelmed with submissions containing the code and derivatives thereof. As of right now, the first three pages solid are nothing but links to the decryption hex. As Matt Haughey points out, it’s always interesting to see what happens when a community revolts against it’s leaders.

Some other Notes:

• My favorite representation so far is the avatar image that this user made, using the hex codes to represent shades of grey. This sort of creative art has a precedent, including this DeCSS algorithm haiku that gives poetic instructions on how to decrypt DVDs without actually publishing the code.
• When are manufacturers going to learn that DRM doesn’t work? The way to be profitable in the new millennium is to sell quality products that are easy to buy, fairly priced, and DRM-free. Many artists are doing quite well by following that formula, but it threatens the stranglehold that the big corporations have on the marketplace. They’ve been spiraling into obsolescence since the days of Napster.
• What we’re witnessing here is the democratization of culture. It’s chaotic, and even frightening at times, but it’s always a lot of fun, and it’s paving the way towards a new era of collaborative culture.
• Bonus reading: Most anything by Cory Doctrow or Lawrence Lessig

April Fools

As seen on Waxy.org

Internet Jackass Day 2007 is in full effect

I’m sitting this one out.

Too bad the rest of teh intarwebs are going nucking futs…

Generation Gap

“We have to recognize that kids are different from us. We watch TV, they make TV. It is technology that has made them different.”

–Larry Lessig

Collegiate Culture

Tonight, I took a little trip down memory lane and read some of the old posts on my college fraternity’s message board. As I remembered old friends and acquaintances, I was struck by how different my social circle is now than it was in college. In college, I hung out with a few science majors, but I had even more friends who studied the arts, literature, history, and politics. Thanks mostly to my involvement in Phi Sigma Pi, I was surrounded by one of the brightest and most diverse groups of people that I’ve every had the privilege to know.

Things are a bit different now. My friends are every bit as intelligent, but they’re also almost entirely from the graduate school at BCM, which is anything but a diverse institution. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great place to do science, but it’s a research institution, not a college campus. It’s very much a monoculture of highly rational and highly focused individuals. People are here to focus their time and energies on research in one very specific subdiscipline, and as a result, they tend to experience tunnel-vision.

After 18 months of immersion in this culture, I sometimes feel like I’m losing my ability to zoom out and see the world through from different angles. I miss talking philosophy over lunch and then catching a crazy play in the evening. I miss walking through the art gallery while arguing about the inherent flaws in communism. Mainly, I miss talking with people who provided an alternative perspective to my own, and thus complimented my talents. That circle of friends was really a place where our whole was greater than the sum of our parts.

I try to fill these holes by reading on diverse topics and hitting up the occasional jazz concert or art show, but doesn’t even come close to replacing the ubiquitous diversity that you find on liberal arts campus. I’m beginning to realize that I took much of my time in undergrad for granted, and beginning to understand how fortunate I was.

All bemoaning aside, this really has two effects on me. The first is that it makes me realize that I need to work harder to seek out more diverse events and people here in Houston. The second is that it really strengthens my desire to get back on a small campus, in a teaching role this time. Tier I research schools are great for funding and great for research, but I need more than this culture can offer.

Stirring up Trouble

The Boy Scouts of America is a great organization, but their current leadership leaves a lot to be desired. I am an Eagle scout, and I’ve written about their discriminatory policies before. (Atheists and homosexuals need not apply).

This controversy is well documented on Wikipedia, but I noticed that the Eagle Scout page lacked any mention of the many Eagle Scouts who have returned their badges in protest. I added a sentence or two about it, and cited my sources well to prove that I wasn’t just another vandal. I’m still willing to bet that some uptight bastard will remove the text.

I hate edit wars, but I believe this is a notable piece of information that deserves to be included in the article. Here’s hoping some others agree with me.

Mind the Gap!

Google Lab’s new tool, the Gapminder is the coolest thing I’ve played with in a while. It’s got a ton of demographic data from around the world, and allows you to make all sorts of interesting and informative graphs. You can even track the changes per time.

Here’s an example: This graph lets you see how Income, life-expectancy, and internet usage relate. Cool.

What I’ve Learned

A few of my favorites from the Esquire “What I’ve Learned” series. (via Metafilter)

In my next life, I want to come back as either a proctologist, so I can deal with all the assholes I meet, or as a matador, so I can deal with all the bullshit.
– Phil Spector

Nowadays they say you need to get a special chip to put in the TV so the kids can’t watch this and that. In my day, we didn’t need that. My mom was the chip. End of story.

- Ray Charles

The ancient Greeks had a word for people who weren’t interested in public affairs: idiotes.

-Arianna Huffington

You trust your mother. But you cut the cards anyway.

- Dan Rather

Sweating (to the Oldies?)

In the second annual Top 100 Sweatiest Summer City rankings, Houston ranked number 2, behind only Phoenix. To this I say bullshit. Yes, it gets hotter there, and yes, you probably perspire more. However, with the dry air inthe desert, that perspiration doesn’t hang around for very long. It evaporates and you stay bone dry.

In Houston, though, the lovely gulf coast humidity keeps that sweat dripping down. Pit stains, swamp-ass - you name a sweat-related phenomenon, and you’ll get it here. Only three hellish months of summer left…