kinselection

Ich know nat whethre Ich shold be joyfull or sad.

2007-01-25T00:16:00.000-08:00

Ye are 52% proficient in medievale trivia.

A fayre shewing. Ye are ful of much wisdam. Sans doute, ye rede a good deal of bokes concernynge the middel ages. Peraventure ye haue much oothir knowlech of straunge thinges as wel.

The Gret Quizz of Medievale Trivia
Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

Woooo!

2006-11-10T19:11:00.000-08:00

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Inland North You may think you speak "Standard English straight out of the dictionary" but when you step away from the Great Lakes you get asked annoying questions like "Are you from Wisconsin?" or "Are you from Chicago?" Chances are you call carbonated drinks "pop."
The Midland
The Northeast
Philadelphia
The South
The West
Boston
North Central
What American accent do you have? Take More Quizzes

2006-07-15T21:50:00.000-07:00

C'mon, Tycho.

The idea that saying something makes it so isn't too new - it's pretty much the engine that drives postmodern American politics. Global warming is real? It makes no difference; deny it anyway, and the he said/she said format of news will credit your shills with just as much authority as people whose lives and passions are climate science. This is why we hear that reporters who mention that we surveille terror suspects are derided as traitors; by mentioning that the executive branch of the government couldn't give a rat's ass about the Bill of Rights, they have created the problem.

There's actually a term for the kind of people this kind of message targets, "low information voters". You tell them something that reinforces their prejudices, and they never bother to find out whether it's really true.

Cross-posted to Coherent Thought & Irony Hour with Billy Faulkner.

Tails Beta Testing

2006-04-26T05:53:00.000-07:00

I had recently been looking for a good bug tracker, in the run up to working on a couple code projects, a freelance e-commerce project, and a couple other miscellaneous projects. And while I've used trac and bugzilla before, and heard good things about collaboa, I'm really not all that terribly interested in bugtrackers, and as a result have very little interest in actually administering one. I'm lazy, and would much rather be looking up information on other things (like cocoa, which I've recently become interested in), rather than digging through bugtracker manuals.

Turns out, just through my random wanderings through the interweb, a casual acquaintance of mine from a message board I frequent fortuitously happened to be in the final stages prior to a beta launch of a bugtracker his company was building. So, as a result, I managed to get into the initial beta test of Tails, which purports (and seems to live up to) effortless bug tracking.

First things first. Tails is a hosted app. This is good for someone like me, who's not interested in having to deal with all the administrivia of setting up a bug tracker, and probably bad for people who are total (read: needless) control freaks, or extremely paranoid with their data. But, hosted applications aren't a new development, and given that Dan, the guy working on the app, is a good guy, I don't have any serious qualms with using Tails (more on privacy later). The picts below come from Dan's flickr account, and it might be handy to check out the notes that go with each image there.

Tails, being a bug tracker, does all the things that you'd want it to do, you can create projects, file bugs, request features, assign bugs to particular project members, etc., etc., etc. So now that we know it actually is a bug tracker, what's neat about it? Well, in terms of cool things for a linguistics/categorization geek, like me, it allows you to tag features/bugs/projects/the like. Now, before you cram any lead pipes down my throat for uttering a web 2.0 buzzword, remember that this is a good use of keyword searching. Since I (or you) control who's got access to a project, and who's tagging bugs, you don't get the collective cognitive dissonance that site-wide flickr searches produce, because you don't have people who are trying to whore their bug reports to as many people as possible.

Now, on privacy. Your tails projects can be set to either public or private. So, in private mode, really you've got full control over who can see your private information (however much you'd like to put up into tails), and of course in public mode, anyone on the site can see your stuff. That said, there is no public index of projects at this stage, and i'm not sure one is to come. So, Tails still serves as a personal bugtracker, and nobody else will find it (or stumble across other people's random projects) unless you want them to, even if you keep your projects set to public. In either mode, you can invite guests to your project to come, tool around, report bugs, request features, again, all the normal bug tracking things. Guests also don't count as users, in terms of the level of account you have. And accounts come in 4 flavors; Free, Basic, Pro, Unlimited. (seen below)

What screen shots don't illustrate is the usability of the site. Why is that? Because it's got a lot of dynamic interaction. Most text and options related to your project is easily editable via a JS/ajax interface. Click, an overlay will popup (see below) and you're ready to go (and what's better, all editable items give you indications that they are editable). This is the thing that's really great about the site. It's hosted, but it's also lovely to simply use.

So, what's the final verdict? For me? Definitely. It serves all the purposes that I have for it, as a small/lone developer, and hands me some functionality that I wouldn't otherwise have. Finally I don't have to worry about maintaining it, and because it is a commercial project (thankfully that also has free accounts), I'm not terribly concerned about suddenly being left holding the bag, having to support my own bug tracker.

Casual Commentary: Palestine, Posturing, and Politics

2006-01-26T19:38:00.000-08:00

My view of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict can be summed up very succinctly with one catch phrase:

"Two wrongs do not make a right."

The arguments on both sides of the division come down to two things, a sense of entitlement, as to what each side is owed, and a sense that each side is in dire and immediate danger from their opponents in the other nation. The irony is that these two sets of feelings cycle and reinforce each other. The sense of entitlement each side has, and the commentaries to that effect are used by the other side to justify why they must continue their struggle, which only serves to fuel their opponent's paranoia that they are an immediate and unending threat.

Personality disorders a go-go!

2005-12-20T20:06:00.000-08:00

Personality Disorder Test Results

Paranoid	\|\|\|\|\|\|	30%
Schizoid	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	42%
Schizotypal	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	34%
Antisocial	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	46%
Borderline	\|\|\|\|\|\|	26%
Histrionic	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	38%
Narcissistic	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	46%
Avoidant	\|\|\|\|\|\|	26%
Dependent	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	42%
Obsessive-Compulsive	\|\|\|\|\|\|	30%

Take Free Personality Disorder Test
personality tests by similarminds.com

Also, somber, sweet, and sour Jane; it's my aeroplane.

Bloggity blog blog atheism.

2005-11-14T17:20:00.000-08:00

Not sure I entirely agree with this - I submit that it's most important for everybody to be happy, not just me. NB: fictions about the measurable, physical reality we all inhabit don't count as real happiness.

Haymaker

You are one of life’s enjoyers, determined to get the most you can out of your brief spell on Earth. Probably what first attracted you to atheism was the prospect of liberation from the Ten Commandments, few of which are compatible with a life of pleasure. You play hard and work quite hard, have a strong sense of loyalty and a relaxed but consistent approach to your philosophy.

You can’t see the point of abstract principles and probably wouldn’t lay down your life for a concept though you might for a friend. Something of a champagne humanist, you admire George Bernard Shaw for his cheerful agnosticism and pursuit of sensual rewards and your Hollywood hero is Marlon Brando, who was beautiful, irascible and aimed for goodness in his own tortured way.

Sometimes you might be tempted to allow your own pleasures to take precedence over your ethics. But everyone is striving for that elusive balance between the good and the happy life. You’d probably open another bottle and say there’s no contest.

What kind of humanist are you? Click here to find out.

In Vitro Fertilization is Murder

2005-11-06T17:01:00.000-08:00

A first and possible final draft of an editorial for a paper I'm involved with. Prease feel free to comment.

It’s time to revisit a controversy that, like so many others, shouldn’t be. In particular, the morality of embryonic stem cell research. It’s of obvious practical use, promising many medical advances (repairing damaged or malfunctioning tissue, etc., as caused by diseases like Parkinson’s, diabetes, and other diseases), and it’s not as though our refusal to do life-saving research will stop others (e.g. the South Koreans, who have recently made great, well-publicized strides).

There are three major arguments against research using embryonic cells: first, it is unnecessary, since stem cells can be obtained from adult donors; second, we already have stem cell lines for research; third it is immoral regardless, since it entails the murder of human beings. The first claim is half true – stem cells can be obtained from adult donors, but they are substantially different from embryonic cells, and do not have the same potential to develop into any cell type given the right stimuli. Meanwhile, existing cell lines are degrading with age and their already limited usefulness will eventually come to an end, so arguments that creation of new cell lines by extracting stem cells from embryos is unnecessary are misinformed at best and disingenuous at worst.

So, the real objection is that extracting stem cells from embryos, a process which does kill any embryo involved, is the murder of innocent human beings. This is also the point where “pro-life” activists try to sow as much confusion as possible. Very few people object to in-vitro fertilization, yet for each child born via in-vitro fertilization, roughly 16 other embryos are discarded, put into storage indefinitely, donated to research, or (rarely) given to other couples. However, storage is expensive and implanting thawed embryos is relatively ineffective and often involves overcoming emotional blocks, so the vast majority of embryos are discarded. American Medical News reported in 2003 that there were probably around 400,000 stored embryos at that time, which gives us some idea of the number of embryos that must be discarded as medical waste.

Now, if one believes that embryos are human beings, deserving of most if not all rights a human being should have, then one should oppose in-vitro fertilization even more than one opposes stem cell research or abortion – each and every in-vitro fertilization means not one dead baby, but more than a dozen! This is without even mentioning the hundreds of thousands of spontaneous abortions (i.e. miscarriages) that occur every year; a quick Google search turns up no results for research to end them under normal circumstances (it’s true that people are researching, for example, the effects of pesticide exposure and incidence of spontaneous abortion). It is distressing indeed that so many deaths seem to have escaped the notice of “pro-life” activists.

The reason that in-vitro fertilization is not illegal is because destroying embryos is not morally or legally equivalent to killing a human being, and the reason that “pro-lifers” oppose embryonic stem cell research is that the same arguments used to undermine it can be used to undermine womens’ reproductive rights. In an effort to keep women from having control over their bodies, people like Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito are perfectly willing to argue that women of any age ought to have no more rights than 13 year old girls. It’s sad and unsurprising that they’d be willing to sacrifice the sick and dying as well.

Meme First & The Gimme Gimmemes

2005-11-06T13:04:00.000-08:00

Yeah, I was thinking of changing the blog title to "Al's House o' Memes". Sue me.

You Are a Little Scary

You've got a nice edge to you. Use it.

How Scary Are You?

Blogfilial Memery

2005-10-26T10:08:00.000-07:00

I wonder how many awkward non-words like "blogfilial" I can come up with. Dr. Myers at Pharyngula demands that his meming continue on others' blogs, and so here I am.

1. Of all the books that you have eventually finished after many starts & stops, which one took you the longest and how long did it eventually take?

If I'm going to finish a book, I generally read it in one to three sittings, which means that I have a distressingly large number of books I need to finish. Alternately, I read the D&D Player's handbook in bits and pieces as needed over the course of many months.

2. What great band (or album or song) have you heard so often, you wouldn?t mind never hearing again even though you still think the band (or album or song) is great?

Hmmmm. I'll listen to a single song on repeat for several hours at a time, so I'm maybe not the best person to ask.

3. Which cliché or often cited quote needs to be placed in quarantine for a few decades?

How about "your mom" jokes? Seriously, how many of those can a person take per day?

4. During the 1990s "Compassion Fatigue" received a lot of press, now the media is giddy with "Donation Fatigue". What will be the next trendy fatigue?

Metal fatigue. It's why paperclips break!

5. What percentage of respondents will answer ~~"meme fatigue"~~ surrealism to question #4?

A fish!

Juxtaposition

2005-09-07T06:26:00.000-07:00

Juxtaposition:

A spokeswoman for Mr. Schwarzenegger, Margita Thompson, said after the vote that the governor believed that the issue of same-sex marriage should be settled by the courts, not legislators, but she did not indicate whether that meant he would veto the legislation. The bill did not pass with enough votes to override a veto. (from the new york times)

“Activist judges . . . have begun redefining marriage by court order, without regard for the will of the people and their elected representatives. On an issue of such great consequence, the people's voice must be heard. If judges insist on forcing their arbitrary will upon the people, the only alternative left to the people would be the constitutional process.”- George W. Bush, January 20, 2004 (from town hall)

Yes, republicans. The big tent party. The big contradiction party.

Synthesis: Science Education as the New Wedge

2005-08-30T06:46:00.000-07:00

Even prior to the first Bush Administration, it was clear to me that the Born-Again NeoCon Republican party takes actions solely for their political gain. As early as the republican primaries demonstrated the lengths to which NeoRepublicans would go to discredit those who oppose them, as demonstrated by push polling directed at John McCain. Late 1999 began with the Bush campaign attempting to placate some environmental concerns... pretenses which were quickly abandoned once the election was over. The next several years were not representative of what the Bush Admin was destined to be, due to a horrific assault on New York City. But behind the mask of patriotism and rallying around the president, the Republican Party was still functioning in the same cynical fashion.

Nothing demonstrated their modus operandi more clearly than the 2004 presidential campaign. Of course, the standard Roveian tactic - spreading lies and rumors about one's opponent - was still in play, but, although these tactics sent the Democrats reeling, they were not what the press (nor i) attributed the small but significant margin by which Bush won (discussion of disenfranchising voters aside). What put Bush over the top were issues of religious faith. What did that mean in 2004? Bans on homosexual marriage. Most notably in locals such as my home state of Ohio, the state which delivered Bush a second term. Why is this a cynical tactic? Well, nationally, for all the rhetoric Republicans spew, commentators conservative and liberal alike note the significant absence of any substantive legislative gains for the Religious Right. Abortion is still legal, and nobody is jumping for a federal homosexual marriage ban (seems Bush spent all his political capital on getting electrocuted by the 3rd rail of politics, Social Security).

So what's that got to do with today? Well, having played the homosexuality card in 2004, Republicans need a new social rallying cry for the 2006 midterm elections. So, the question is, what are conservatives ramping up the noise machine for today?

Science bloggers know. Comments this August from the President himself have started a steadily growing resurgence of anti-science controversy aimed at evolutionary theory. The press has picked up on the comments, which have set crank tanks such as the Discovery Institute into full gear, repeating specious and untrue claims to whoever will publish them, whether it's the NYTimes, or sports commentators. This news is disturbing enough for scientifically minded Americans, but doesn't give one a view of what is afoot. Having legitimized "teaching the controversy" over evolution in the presses, states like Florida appear to be prepping to install controversy into their school systems, and have taken their first step with their choice of k-12 Chancellor.

This issue is going to be just as hard, if not harder to fight than issues of homosexual unions, as explained by an article published today in the NYTimes (in a fit of irony) on Jon D. Miller, a political scientist at Northwestern. His conclusions are summed up very succinctly by this paragraph:

While scientific literacy has doubled over the past two decades, only 20 to 25 percent of Americans are "scientifically savvy and alert," he said in an interview. Most of the rest "don't have a clue." At a time when science permeates debates on everything from global warming to stem cell research, he said, people's inability to understand basic scientific concepts undermines their ability to take part in the democratic process.

And, if i'm right, and the current racket is a precursor to the din of the 2006 election, it won't just be Democrats who'll be hung out to dry, but scientists, and America's very future. By turning evolution into a political football, conservative politicians are denying America's children the education they need to keep America as the pillar of intellectual thought that it is today.

Impossibly Complex Distictions for a Sports Commentator

2005-08-29T11:52:00.000-07:00

There is a huuuuuge and unescapable irony in that journalists rant about bloggers not having credibility to comment on pressworth issues, yet columnists like this one seem to think that they're capable of doing justice to questions about evolutionary theory (linked via Atrios). An excerpt:

First, let's get rid of the idea that ID (intelligent design) is a form of sly creationism. It isn't. ID is unfairly confused with the movement to teach creationism in public schools. The most serious ID proponents are complexity theorists, legitimate scientists among them, who believe that strict Darwinism and especially neo-Darwinism (the notion that all of our qualities are the product of random mutation) is inadequate to explain the high level of organization at work in the world. Creationists are attracted to ID, and one of its founding fathers, University of California law professor Phillip Johnson, is a devout Presbyterian.

::Howl of Intellectual Pain::

Complexity Theory is not what Intelligent Design Creationists are doing. Computational Complexity Theory is about classifying problems based on how difficult they are to solve. IDCers aren't interested in solving problems (which is what classifying problems requires), they're only interested in creating problems .
Most (i'd venture nearly all) supporters of Intelligent Design are in fact Creationists. More importantly, these people support ID because they are creationists, and justify their support on theological grounds.
Please note, "ID proponents ... legitimate scientists among them, who believe that strict Darwinism and especially neo-Darwinism ... is inadequate to explain the high level of organization at work in the world." No mention of actual proof of the assertations they make, just that "legitimate scientists" believe it. Legitimate according to who one might ask?

On Nomenclature:

2005-08-29T10:45:00.000-07:00

Proponents of evolutionary theory are not Darwinists, they are Evolutionaries. By comparison, believers in General Relativity are not Einstienians, they are cosmologists.

Useful Analogies: Guns & Drunk Driving

2005-08-29T10:42:00.000-07:00

Guns don't kill people, people kill people.

Well, clearly then, the NRA must be against drunk driving statues right?

After all,

Cars don't kill people, drunk drivers kill people.

Integral on D of divF dV

2005-08-24T13:07:00.000-07:00

Compute the outward flux of F = (xi+yj+zk)/(x^2+y^2+z^2) through the ellipsoid 4x^2+9y^2+6z^2=36.

Crap like this is why no one should ever, ever, ever volunteer for a take-home exam. Instead of a simpler problem that still requires demonstration of proper technique, you get an enormous pain in the ass.

Tom Lehrer has a bit where he makes fun of new math, but it occurs to me that maybe just teaching kids modular arithmetic (15 is not just a number, but is more sensibly represented as 10*1+1*5) would make more sense. I had a similar sort of instruction, but making explicit what this means and what other base counting systems mean might not be so hard. Any educators or, ahem, cognitive scientists who could comment out there?

Fact or Flak: Reality behind the Ebonics Debacle

2005-08-13T18:02:00.000-07:00

Language is a complicated issue. It's complicated because every human uses language. And because they use language, they believe themselves to all be experts on language. This is not the case. So please, abandon your preconceptions. For those of you unable to abandon your preconceptions, i will use short sentences and small words.

There are children. These children speak a dialect of english. This dialect of english is not the Standard American English (SAE) that is tested for by the SAT, ACT, GRE, or No Child Left Behind. If you were feeling generous, the current way of teaching children SAE might be called "sink or swim." These children only see SAE on television. They grow up in one of the many different cultures that make up the "American Melting Pot". They are brought to school, and expected to behave in a manner they are not familiar with, with minimal instruction.

One school board, decided that this was silly. Wouldn't it make more sense to first understand how their children really speak, and then explain how SAE works by connecting how they actually speak to how SAE works?

In fact, this is a proven methodology! Children of recent immigrants are taught with a good deal of success when you introduce English to them via their own language, rather than in spite of it. So this school board decided, "hey, this could work for us too, why don't we see whether we can qualify for the same funding as children who are learning english as a second language?"

Unfortunately, America did not understand. They though that by acknowledging that children of a particular subculture did not speak Standard American English (although, y'know, really, a lot of people don't. Guess what, you still understand them), that they were being asked to legitimize a dialect of English which is unpopular. They criticized this school board, so much, that all funding opportunities disappeared.

Ironically, thanks to the ignorance of others, children are still told to sink or swim. Through no fault of their own, because the way they speak is considered "ignorant" and "improper", they are not taught SAE effectively.

On Issues of Culture:

People often decry African American Vernacular English (the linguistic name for "ebonics") as simply being "improper" Standard American English. They often believe that people speak AAVE due to a lack of education. This is a misconception. Children essentially language sponges. From before they're born, up until puberty, childhood brains just soak up language. They soak up whatever language is around them. That's why british children speak with a british accent, and children from Georgia speak with a drawl and a twang. Likewise children who are born to parents who speak AAVE soak up AAVE. They do not speak AAVE because they have improperly soaked up Standard American English. They speak AAVE because that is what they know.

Next. AAVE is not an illegitimate way of speaking. AAVE is a dialect of English. It is like other dialects of english, for example British English, Appalachian, Bostonian or Brooklyn English. It is a way of communicating. Manners of communication are often associated with certain ways of behaving. The way you speak to your boss or the way you would speak to the president is different from the way you speak to your close friends, or to your significant other. In fact this is so universally the case, that people stereotype it. For instance, academics are often accused of being pedantic, or arrogant. That's because they occasionally speak in a way that is difficult to understand for people who are not familiar with the subject at hand. It is only arrogant if they refuse to explain the unclear points, or dismiss those who don't understand, because they are uninitiated.

Likewise, people who demand, and expect children who speak AAVE to suddenly flip a switch and begin speaking SAE are in a similar situation. They are dismissing AAVE speakers out of hand, without giving them a chance to become acclimated to SAE.

Broils

2005-08-13T15:20:00.000-07:00

I am now going to recommend a Cultural Practice that my friends and I have dubbed the 'Meat Party'. No bathhouses involved, thank you.

Step 1. Buy 5-15 pounds of steak.

Step 2. Marinate/baste steak.

Step 3. Grill steak.

Step 4. Eat steak.

That's the basic outline. You can throw in other things like Southern Comfort and Dungeons and Dragons (at the same time, woo!) if you want. Some of you might call this a "cookout" or "barbeque". You are sadly mistaken.

Peter Singer raises the question, "what about cows makes them morally edible?" Long story short, his argument can be summarized

1. One's abilities (strength, speed, coloration, intelligence, etc.) are morally irrelevant - all things able to suffer are equally worthy of moral consideration.
2. Cows are able to suffer.
3. Cows would probably not choose to be eaten.
4. Since cows are worthy of moral consideration and would rather not be eaten, eating them is not just.

This is how I, at least, read it. This kind of upsets me, because I have 4 steaks in the 'fridge waiting to be turned into sandwiches. So what to do? The important claim here is that anything able to suffer is worthy of moral consideration - if we don't have something of equal moral worth to offer to justify wronging a creature, then we shouldn't wrong that creature. So, is it true (leaving out things like what creatures deserve - I think we can agree that factory farmed cows haven't had much chance to do things deserving of punishment) that cows are worthy of equal moral consideration? In other words, what makes people so damn special, anyway?

The first thing I want to push on is the idea that intelligence is morally irrelevant. Is it really? After all, it is 'cruel and unusual' to sentence the mentally handicapped to death... However, that only really applies to moral culpability, so it doesn't say too much about whether or not we can count a stupid creature's desires as necessarily less important than an intelligent one's.

I don't really have an answer, and this question bothers me. Why are people so damn special, anyway?

*Winning entry justifies me eating steak. No purchase necessary.

Currently Plugged Into: The Cyberiad

2005-08-13T10:28:00.000-07:00

An excerpt from: The First Sally (A) or Trurl's Electronic Bard of the Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem, translated by Michael Kandel (yes, this is a -translation-, i can only imagine what the original was like).

"Very well. Let's have a love poem, lyrical, pastoral and expressed in the language of pure mathematics. Tensor algebra mainly, with a little topology and higher calculus, if need be. But with feeling you understand, in the cybernetic spirit."

"Love and tensor algebra? Have you taken leave of your sense?" Trurl began, but stopped for his electronic bard was already declaiming:

Come, let us hasten to a higher plane,
Where dyads tread the fairy fields of Venn,
Their indices bedecked from one to n,
Commingled in an endless Markov chain!

Come, every frustum longs to be a cone,
And every vector dreams of matrices.
Hark to the gental gradient of the breeze:
It whispers of a more ergodic zone.

In Riemann, Hilbert or in Banach space
Let superscripts and subscripts go their ways.
Our asymptotes no longer out of phase,
We shall encounter, counting, face to face.

I'll grant thee random access to my heart,
Thou'lt tell me all the constants of thy love;
And so we two shall all love's lemmas prove,
And in our bound partition never part.

For what did Cauchy know, or Christoffel,
Or Fourier, or any Boole or Euler,
Wielding their compasses, their pens and rulers,
Of thy supernal sinusoidal spell?

Cancel me not - for what then shall remain?
Abscissas, some mantissas, modules, modes,
A root or two, a torus and a node:
The inverse of my verse, a null domain.

Ellipse of bliss, converge, O lips divine!
The product of our scalars is defined!
Cyberiad draws nigh, and the skew mind
Cuts capers like a happy haversine.

I see the eigenvalue in thine eye,
I hear the tender tensor in thy sigh.
Bern oulli would have been content to die,
Had he but know such a^2 cosine(2*phi)!

This concluded the poetic competition, since Klapaucius suddenly had to leave, saying he would return shortly with more topics for the machine; but he never did, afraid that in so doing, he might give Trurl more cause to boast.

What i really want out of the Sheehan conflict

2005-08-13T09:11:00.000-07:00

Unless you've been living in under a rock or deep space, you've heard about Cindy Sheehan and the controversy that's exploded around her.

Bush continues to decline to meet with her, citing the fact that he's aware of what she has to say. And he's right. Iraq policy isn't going to change. The US didn't go into Iraq with a plan, and it's going to be difficult to spin one out of the situtation that's developed now (unless we'd like to just hand Iraq to Iran).

So why should Bush meet with Sheehan?

Simple. To prove he's not an unrelenting bastard. A simple acknowledgement of the fact that things aren't going perfectly. To prove that he can communicate with Americans in a way that does not solely involve propagandistic motives.

Recent developments in the History of Science, a breif recap.

2005-08-13T02:17:00.000-07:00

It is my opinion that the cultural beating evolution has taken at the hand of in the past 30 years is symptomatic of a larger anti-scientific and anti-technological trend that has evolved out of disparate corners of American society.

First some historical perspective. Back around the turn of the previous century, there was a movement called Logical Positivism. During the high times of Modernism, philosophers and scientists pursued goals like the formalization of all mathematics. The problem, as demonstrated by Kurt Gödel's incompleteness theorems in the case of the Principia Mathematica, was that the Positivists were reaching for things that were in principle impossible. Regardless of the philosophical turmoil brewing the demands of WWII and post-war reconstruction made science and technology as the driving force in human civilization.

The problem was that Positivism's demise left a gaping void, with nothing to fill it (hard to accomplish the impossible). Postmodernist philosophy instead lead to attempts to reenvision reality, and included in that science and philosophy. Of these, the most influential was probably Thomas Kuhn's theory in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Disregarding other theories for the moment, Kuhn's basic insight was that scientific progress did not work solely via altruistic scientists who steadfastly developed theories by following where facts lead. Obviously, a serious furor developed. Scientists did not appreciate the accusation that scientific truth was merely a social construct, true only because we believed it to be so.

Disregarding Kuhn however is impossible. Kuhn was right in part. Science was and is a human endeavor. Humans aren't perfect, and as the adage "there are three kinds of lies -- lies, damned lies, and statistics" points out, research can be twisted for all sorts of purposes. Nor are the goals of research programs necessarily determined by scientists, as DARPA is well aware (Yes, of course a missile defense shield is possible!). Anyway, with the departure of the modernist dream, Kuhn drove the nails into its coffin by removing scientists from the seat of impartiality and neutral pursuit of Truth (note capital T).

That brings us up to modern day philosophically. What i've written thus far sounds pretty bleak, but science has made due. But remember, modern day scientists, don't claim to be perfect. However, a lack of perfection doesn't mean that scientists can't be, and don't strive to be, impartial. Because of this point Scientists don't tend to buy Kuhn. Most scientists fall into the philosophical tradition of Karl Popper, who's solution to the problems of verificationism was something called Falsificationism (where you test theories by trying to make them break).

So what's this got to do with anything? Kuhn opened the door to a new kind of relativism, relativism over the fundamental facts of science. Operations such as the Discovery Institute, and other efforts to undermine science, such as global warming deniers function by exploiting this belief that scientific conclusions are determined merely by what people believe.

Unfortunately the position of science today is more dire than just what i've described above. The present day first world is closely associated with all things technological. As such, technology and science bear the wrath of individuals in our society who are dissatisfied with society. Whether they are anti-evolution literal biblical creationists, anti-authoritarian hippies and/or libertarians, anti-urban sprawl ruralites, anti-pollution environmentalists, or those opposed to processed food, many view the failures of society as the result of forms of technological domination.

As a result, science is facing not only acute attacks by groups with particular agendas, but also a general malaise of distrust from the general public.

Later i'll post some on perspectives of science, and what i think needs to be done to rehabilitate the science of cool.

Categories i plan on using

2005-08-11T09:19:00.000-07:00

Hello, to the non-existant audience who may be reading this (or for future readers).

I intend on using a couple recurring categories to track things that i find interesting or irritating, the list currently includes but is not limited to:

We do not live in a free society. (And other complaints about authoritarianism)
Fact or Flak? (Don't believe everything you see on TV)
Remember kids, details are important! (because reality doesn't work in soundbite sized chunks)
Currently plugged into... (media showcase!)
For future reference. (Recordings for posterity)

Outsize Cephalopods

2005-08-10T17:17:00.000-07:00

I am an enormous geek. More to the point, I am an enormous geek who needs to test this whole posting thing. So, D&D monster stats. Special price for you, my American friend.

OCTOPUS, GIANT LAND

	Huge Animal (Aquatic)
Hit Dice:	13d8+42 (100 hp)
Initiative:	+1
Speed:	20 ft. (4 squares), swim 30 ft.
Armor Class:	20 (–2 size, +2 Dex, +10 natural), touch 9, flat-footed 18
Base Attack/Grapple:	+9/+22
Attack:	Tentacle +13 melee (1d6+9)
Full Attack:	8 tentacles +16 melee (1d6+9) and bite +11 melee (2d6+4)
Space/Reach:	15 ft./15 ft. (25 ft. with tentacle)
Special Attacks:	Improved grab, constrict
Special Qualities:	Ink cloud, jet, low-light vision, mucus
Saves:	Fort +11, Ref +9, Will +5
Abilities:	Str 28, Dex 15, Con 17, Int 2, Wis 12, Cha 3
Skills:	Escape Artist +12, Hide +18, Listen +4, Spot +10, Swim +17
Feats:	Alertness, Skill Focus (Hide), Toughness, Combat Reflexes, Run
Environment:	Warm aquatic
Organization:	Solitary
Challenge Rating:	11
Advancement:	9–12 HD (Large); 13–24 HD (Huge)
Level Adjustment:	—

These creatures of Xen'Drik are aggressive and territorial hunters, with arms reaching 20 feet or more in length. Their tentacles are studded with barbs and sharp-edged suckers, and they live mostly on a diet of Hill Giants and dinosaurs.

Combat

An opponent can attack a giant land octopus’s tentacles with a sunder attempt as if they were weapons. A giant land octopus’s tentacles have 15 hit points each. If a giant land octopus is currently grappling a target with the tentacle that is being attacked, it usually uses another limb to make its attack of opportunity against the opponent making the sunder attempt. Severing one of a giant land octopus’s tentacles deals 5 points of damage to the creature. A giant land octopus usually withdraws from combat if it loses four tentacles. The creature regrows severed limbs in 1d10+10 days.

Mucus (Ex): A creature that is grappled by a giant land octopus must make a DC 15 reflex save (the DC is con-based) each round it is grappled or become entangled. Removing mucus is a full-round action that provokes attacks of opportunity.

Constrict (Ex): A giant land octopus deals 3d8+9 points of damage with a successful grapple check.

Improved Grab (Ex): To use this ability, a giant land octopus must hit an opponent of any size with a tentacle attack. It can then attempt to start a grapple as a free action without provoking an attack of opportunity. If it wins the grapple check, it establishes a hold and can constrict.

Ink Cloud (Ex): A giant land octopus can emit a cloud of acidic, jet-black ink in a 20-ft. cone once per day as a free action. Anyone in the cone takes 3d6 acid damage (Reflex for half). Anyone who fails the reflex save is blinded for 1 round, which the octopus normally uses to escape a losing fight.

Skills: A giant land octopus can change colors, giving it a +8 racial bonus on Hide checks. A giant land octopus also has highly developed eyes that grant it a +4 racial bonus on Spot checks. A giant land octopus also can squeeze and contort its body, giving it a +10 racial bonus on Escape Artist checks. A giant land octopus has a +8 racial bonus on any Swim check to perform some special action or avoid a hazard. It can always choose to take 10 on a Swim check, even if distracted or endangered. It can use the run action while swimming, provided it swims in a straight line.

Kin Selection

2005-08-10T17:07:00.000-07:00

ZOMG!!!11ONEONE11!!! First Post!