Science, meet God

The incoming email queue this morning included a note from the Encyclopedia Britannica folks [1] reminding me that today is the anniversary of the initiation of the Scopes trial. [Link] This was the classic litigation where the state of Tennessee was demonstrated to an uninterested world to be mystical and medieval. This was no great shakes. Most of the old Confederacy was and is that way. Everyone likes the ‘comfort food’ of the mind and religious mysticism is often cotton candy and heart attack rolled into one.

Anyway I note this because I also got an article from the Scientific American folks [Link] mumbling about a recent PEW poll that science is moribund in Amerika. Realizing that the SA folks were self-serving in this matter, pushing a podcast, and recognizing how rotten and decrepit they are these days, I was not too upset. Besides, I already had the poll results in hand.[2] [Link] The results are a mixed bag. First, some overall ratings

The 0.84 of the sample population thinking science is good is refreshing, but it still seems to be mental comfort food. The rankings of good to society is a bit meatier even though it is again irrationality and mystical. I find that soldiers coming in first is a clarion for the volunteer army but I am a bit disappointed about teachers coming in number two. I guess baby sitting is a higher calling than I thought. I also have to assume ‘doctors’ means physicians since most scientists are doctors, after all. But the most telling piece was that while Amerikan scientists think they are hot stuff, probably the academics, the general population just thinks they are above average, which is more than I suspect they deserve.

The other part of the report is much more damning,

In the last ten years science has dropped by > 0.4 while civil rights have tripled. Not an unworthy endeavor and I would not want to take it back, but it tells us a lot about that mental comfort food.

It is not clear if these samples mean much of anything except the nature of the population itself. I noted last week an article [Link] that falls into the genre of “The End of Science”. The tenor of the article was one of the interviewees declaiming that scientific understanding of reality is complete in terms of framework if not all the details. Two thoughts appertained. The first was the claims at this point in the last century that all that needed be done in physics was measured the fundamental constants of the universe more accurately. The other was that Sir Arthur C. Clarke article about the computer eliterating the ten thousand names of the deity and the universe quietly ceasing to exist because humanity had served their purpose.

I should perhaps comment that some of those constants are no longer considered to be constants. I would not belittle the work of others, even if they are hot house academics, but anyone who tells me something is complete about our understanding of reality reminds me of the old adage “trust but verify”. So until the whole thing has been verified, I await developments.

I have also commented earlier about the sorry state an organization gets into once it has so many rules that any activity is forbidden and punishable. Part of our difficulty is that this has become somewhat the situation with science. The body of knowledge has become so vast and complicated that more and more people are needed to work on smaller and smaller pieces of it with less and less result, and more and more of that result is redundant.[3] This is reflected in the attitudes of the consumerate. The activity of science has always been viewed by the general run of humanity as unproductive and irrelevant to the basic, lower level Maslovian demands. In absence of any striking perception it seems unsurprising that the same fraction of students study science as theology. But more critically, science is itself actually drowning in a plethora of minutiae.

[1]  Part of their advertising. They keep sending me emails offering to sell me all sorts of stuff ranging from the ant coprolites to elephant chittlins. They seem quite oblivious to the idea that anyone would use any OS other that Windows. I like their encyclopedia on a DVD, after all, even old retired flatulent nerds need to look things up some times, and it saves me having to stumble about my study or go visit the Greater Metropolitan Arab library, which is always closed when I need it. This eEncyclopedia is indeed one of the primary reasons I keep a Windows machine around, besides FD SCP and her sewing software.
[2]  One of the things that never ceases to amaze and amuse about journalists is how slime moldish they take their readership to be. Evidently in addition to being unable to write articles and understand science simultaneously, and opting almost universally for the former over the latter, they are also unable to comprehend technology. This latter descends to the most basic of levels. The SA folks have subscription email announcements and they have an RSS feed. Other people including the PEW folks have one or both of these. So how is it that SA readers, based on the behavior of their journalists, have the have the interactive neuronage to subscribe to one or both of the SA services but none of the others? The World Wonders.
[3]  The poll folks hate it when you ask how many redundant samples they had in a poll. This is a natural consequence of any stochastic sampling but one hidden from view by the pollsters, for quite obvious reasons. The same increasingly also applies to science.

science, poll, management, humans, journalism

Analytical Management

Last night I note an Op-Ed piece on Robert McNamarra in the New Yawk Times. [Link] This grabbed my attention span for a couple of reasons, not the same as those of the author who sometimes gives the perception of having been ruined at an early age by the perversions of American politics.

A couple of pieces of the writing however, grabbed despite the Red Queen futility aspects:
“Robert McNamara went to the Pentagon to reform it, to rationalize its decision-making and systematize analysis. From the outset he was unpopular with many high-ranking officers who were more comfortable with the institutionalized cross-purposes of the defense establishment and the educated intuition of experienced military personnel”
and
“There are some who have recently expressed contempt for Robert McNamara.”

The first says more to me than the second, but the sentiment is strangely appropriate. I had occasion to deal with the progeny of Robert McNamarra, the operations researchers and the systems analysts of the ‘Five Sided Fool Farm of the Fatomic” as one of my colleagues described the edifice and its organizational disculture. My biggest complaints about them was that they were, all too often, toadying hacks pretending to being scientists while applying hackneyed, often irrelevant, methodologies to inadequate data to support preconceived answers of senior management. Categorical of this was an unassailable assumption that every time-dependent activity they might study was always at equilibrium, regardless of the characteristic time to reach equilibrium.

Of course what they were competing against was a hierarchial system that was probably in place before Mesopotamia had its first walled city, a group of senior military officers in a small room choked with the fumes of ethanol and other chemicals making decisions based on microscosmic combat experience and political maneuvering. Scant wonder that what McNamarra brought was an improvement; scant wonder that the system has returned to its original ways and form. Such things have the weight of centuries as well as a mystical distrust of the technical.

So no, I have no contempt for McNamarra. He did the best he could to make things better. No, I only have sympathy for the nation.

Force over distance

This is rather a strange summer. I speak here of the teacher taliban. One of the blessing of the summer is rather a sort of reverse of Thomas Paine’s writings about the ’sunshine patriot’. In this case it is the shul session exerciser. Most of the members of the teacher taliban don’t come to gym when shul is not in session. This incidentally also tends to make holidays cheerier as well. There are a few who come all the time, but most of these I have noted are the members of the teacher taliban who had been elevated (?) to administration, principals and the like. But this summer even they have been in less presence.

For example, this morning there was only one other besides myself waiting for the arrival of the morning proctor (kindness in that exaggeration) whereas during session Wednesday is as busy as Monday or busier, one of the two being the busiest day of the week. I was half way through my hour of pant before any of the teacher taliban appeared and they were never other than a sparse majority, as opposed to the autarkic majority during session.

I also started listening to a new (to me) but concluded series done by the CBC on “How to Think About Science”, originally pushed out in 2007-8.[Link] Splendid piece that I may comment on later. For now however, I want to consider an article in the current issue of the student newspaper of the campus of the Boneyard. [Link] The article is about a particular commercial for a particular (so-called) energy beverage. I was attracted to it because of the inundation at the gym of incessant info-porn at the time I frequent. This inundation is also why calling the asentience of the gym “proctor” a kindness. I personally find it humorous that a gym associated with a hospital complex would be tacitly (by its inaction) endorsing patent concoctions for penile and mammary inflation.

Of course the same can be observed of so-called energy drinks, which used to be a hallmark of the local MalWart until Greater Metropolitan Arab had prohibition repealed. We may still be arguing over whether the horses in the christmas parade should be required to wear diapers but bootlegging is now history. And, of course, the energy drinks have been replaced by beer, which I fear is still a better, more healthful beverage than most carbonated sodas.

The sticking point of the article and the commercial is the stereotypes that are used to sell products. The one here seems to me some mislaid mutation of Maynard G. Krebbs goes to California. Even I, with my association only with nerd students, have yet to see anyone skateboarding to class. Skateboarding – yes, but for recreation. Anyone who asks for that much room on the sidewalk is going to get elbowed and trodden and who risks using the street treaded and bumpered. I do remind myself that this is the same firm whose spokesperson is the driver of a NASCAR automobile. The marketing mentality is constant, invariant, adamantine in its misdirection.

What is appropriate I fear is the impact of the beverage on people. That fits with the garishness and clangor of the commercials. Also why so many students who use the beverages get to continue using them as they embark on careers in the restaurant industry. If you are that hyper you can’t think, which is a detriment when taking tests but evidently a boon when you are frying pom frits.

marketing, behavior, people,

Management Health

While I am mumbling about management, or its negation, this morning I may as well continue with a few other tidbits. First, courtesy of U di Catania researchers we have research that seems to validate the Peter Principle. [Link] This latter is a statement by a Canadian psychologist that members of an organization are promoted based on their performance in the present job. The upside of this is that excellence seems to be rewarded; the downside is that once they land in a job they can’t do, they become stuck and the organization rots.

I can propose a correlary to this, which is even more damning to the organization. That is, the best person for a position is never selected; he/she would be too much of a danger. In effect it is the first part of the Peter Principle that is misconstructed and thereby actually tempers the second.

On the bright side, courtesy of the Scotsman, we find out that vegetarians are significantly less at risk of getting cancer than meat eaters, [Link] and drinking five cups of coffee a day counters Alzheimer’s disease.[Link]  So if you work for one of those medicre folks who got promoted because they aren’t dangerous, make sure they get plenty of meat but no coffee.

No word on either hideously sweet confections or whisky. Which reminds me that when I was at the campus of the Boneyard I would sometimes spend Saturday nights, after labbing and studying, with a bottle of cheap blended whisky and a package of fig newtons, both of which I shared with my border collie. My neighbors wouldn’t let me make haggis, and besides, it doesn’t do well in the winter in Illinois.

Shmendrik Manager

Yesterday I ran across an article [Link] in the Huntsville Times feed that caught my attention span:

“HUNTSVILLE, Ala. – Milwaukee assistant general manager Gord Ash says the Brewers have sent plenty of talented minor-leaguers to Double-A Huntsville, but the fan support hasn’t been reciprocated.

“This is a very apathetic baseball town, and something’s going to have to change,” said Ash, scanning Sunday’s sparse crowd of 660 fans at Joe Davis Stadium. “They’re going to be sorry in a couple of years when they don’t have baseball.”

The Stars’ attendance ranks last in the 10-team Southern League this season after ranking ninth the past two years.”

Assuming this to not be some clumsily contrived attempt at humor by the journalism staff, I immediately though of what might be thought of as

A Short List Of Rules For Shmendricks Who Would Be Managers

• Never give an order you know won’t be obeyed, else every order becomes discretionary
• Never threaten, defined punishments are much less terrifying and may even provoke laughter
• Guilt only works if it actually exists, and anyone cares
• Never offer to do yourself a harm, cooperation will be exuberant

I shall refrain from considering whether Mr. Ash is more in need of a brain transplant or a diuretic. Although a bit of reflection leads to the suspicion that his alimentary canal empties into his brain pan rather than the normal place

I shall comment that this may indicate why the folks in Milwaukee can’t brew decent beer. Also why I found the coaches in the public shuls to be balagoleh.

Preferences

Blah morning. The gym was dusty and a bit baked this morning after the long holiday weekend. Not sure I understand a gym giving its staff both the holiday and the day before off. Looks seriously like a case of monopoly arrogance obliterating any inkling of customer service.

The podcasts this morning were little better. The CBC Ideas episode was an interview with some Dante scholar from Stanford that exponentially decayed into incoherence in about five minutes. Just glad I was not subjected to that drek when I was an undergraduate. About all I got out of the blather – short term, at least – was an appreciation for why people tend to enjoy the science fiction of their age best. And that age seems increasingly to be childhood rather that adolescence.

I first noticed this when I bought my last automobile. It came with a satellite wireless receiver and under the prodding of FD SCP I subscribed to the service. Presented with all of this audio information – some of it entertainment, which is the root of this – I find that I concentrate my attention primarily on the channels devoted to the 1950’s and folk music. What is intriguing here is that I went to high shul in the ’60’s, so if I were actually influenced by the music of that decade that is the channel I should listen to. Likewise, folk was past its campus prime when I was an undergraduate. For some reason the popular music of the ’60’s is unattractive to me, as much so as later music.

My taste in science fiction is much the same. I dislike the pre-war fiction by and large, as well as the fiction past my undergraduate days. Increasingly the popular science fiction of the day is unreadable.

So my question is, is this normal, or nerdish? Or what? I know the people I went to high and undergraduate shul with have nostalgia, even affection, for the music of that period, but I do not. But given the phenomenon, what can one say about a Danteist?

Sunday Shrinking

This is a second try. Somehow Firefox + Scribefire managed to eat my blot. No assistance from Arab Power.

Scots sheep shrinking. Sounds like some tabloid headline that some street arab (Holmesian sense here) would be hawking at an intersection. Rather, the evidence is that Scots sheep are shrinking and according to the sassenachs at Imperial C it is because of global climate change – read WARMING! [Link] Now if we get past the whole mistrust thing here, after all, they are sassenachs and thus beyond description in any polite assemblage or trust by anyone lacking a noosed rope around his neck, but if we do for the nonce accept their claim we have to admit that it does make a bit of sense.

AFter all, if an animal lives in an environment where heat transfer from the animal to environment can be dangerous, then Nature tends to find ways to reduce that heat loss. One way of doing this is to adjust the ratio of surface area to volume of the animal. So as much as this is not that old joke with the tag line “Assume a spherical sheep,” [1] that is how you minimize the ratio. [2] And the bigger the temperature difference between the animal and its environment, the bigger the animal needs to be to preserve internal temperature. So, if the temperature of the environment goes up, the animal gets smaller.

And no, I am not going to prat about human obesity now.

While we are prattling about masses of things, it seems that a middle weight gravitational singularity has been observed. [Link] This ‘black hole’, HLX-1, which sounds like the title for a bad (redundant) Disney science fiction movie, has a mass of about 500 Sols. This gives us a solitary data point in the middle of what has previously been a bimodal distribution.

I shall refrain from commenting that the illustrative photograph bears a starling resemblance to the spaceship of a recurrent television/movie SF series,

if a bit asymmetrically and achromatically.

While on such deviations, it seems that the recently touted ‘Ida’ as a missing link has been challenged if not devalued. [Link] Researchers from Pittsburgh claim that Ida has been replaced, superseded?, by Ganlea. More pointedly, the whole geographic thing has been complicated again. Now, instead of all primates radiated from Africa, it’s now from Africa to ASia to Africa and out again, or some such.

The attention catching thing here was the metaphors. One has to wonder about mixing up the whole tree thing with a chain thing. Shouldn’t we talk about a missing branch or, at least, branching, rather than a link? I see very few links in the tress in Nawth Alibam, and the ones I do are always the result of a some human wrapping a chain about a tree and forgetting about it and the tree growing about the chain. Of course, maybe that is what is happening here as well?

On which note, the folks at the campus of the Boneyard have done a research that indicates that humans ignore information given them that conflicts with their beliefs. [Link] I have to admit this comes as a great surprise to me living here in Greater Metropolitan Arab where there are more churches than businesses and none of them permit any thought or criticism – except of each other. It is, however, comforting to know that what we have known here in Alibam for a couple of hundred years has been scientifically demonstrated. But then, the people on campus did get a bit strange in the summer. Had something to do with the heat and too large a radius.

On which note, the folks at a cosmetics company have had a competition for ‘most famous female scientist.’ [Link] The first place taker is Marie Skodowsky Curie, who certainly seems to deserve the designation, although we have to wonder what being a female nerd has to do with cosmetics? This is not to say that I have not known female nerds who have and have not used appearance altering palliatives, and that some of both would not have had their appearance enhanced by switching their want, but why? Is this some diabolical scheme to convince female consumers that using their paint and powder will enhance their mental capacities?

I could comment on who my choices would have been, but you wouldn’t know them.

And lastly, on the matter of Potempkinism, a discourse on password hiding. [Link] It seems some information assurance/security pundits have decided that hiding passwords behind asterisks has negative effect. Boo Yah! I strongly agree. Except maybe where there are people standing behind one, like at an ATM or in a MalWart. In which case, why aren’t the keys covered from sight as well? But the whole password hiding thing should be a matter of individual choice and not Orwellian diktat.

[1]  The joke referred to shearing in Australia, as I recall.
[2]  The ratio of area to volume for a sphere is 3/radius. I leave the derivation as an exercise for the reader to shew.

government, commerce, humans, science

Announcement Anniversary

The glorious fourth of July. The day is arrived. Sadly however, it has become like other holidays not a period of remembrance and reflection, but a day of gratification and entertainment. I heard in the television news reading last evening how cancellation of fireworks displays across the nation has been prompted by the economic situation and I am not overly distressed, hoping that this curtailment of the principal symbol of the degradation of the holiday will give pause to some to reflect on more than their impecuniousness.

But given the general population of consumer-citizens I fear my hopes are in vain.

The thing, as well as idea, that we should be celebrating is the Declaration of Independence,[Link] a document of no small audacity and madness. It is a wonderful document, full of impractical ideas as well as magnificent wordings that demonstrate the general depravity of our current use of the language. And in that spirit, I reproduce here the list of charges contained in that document:
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

It might do us well to reflect on two points. First, how much commonality with that governance, similar and opposite, has our current government, and is such in need of lawful modification, and second, how much of the spirit of those drafters of this document, all substantial citizens who risked all, have we given up by our accepting existence?

government, independence, holiday, humans

Knitted History

Today is In Between day. Yesterday was the anniversary of the completion of the Declaration; tomorrow is the anniversary of the announcement of the Declaration. In that light it seems meet to spend some cognition cycles today reflecting on the Recent Unpleasantness, and in particular the entangled battles of Gettysburg and Vicksburg. Entangled in the sense of considering how their combination had such effect in making our present existence what it is.

College Conundrum

The other day I noticed an article [Link] “Is a college degree worthless?” by Jack Hough. I have been mulling this and yesterday noted Alexa Harrington, Educated Nation, had a blot on the article [Link]. This article is essentially an economic analysis that indicates one is economically better off to skip college, eneter the workforce, and save more of your pay than you can.  As usual, she has done a masterful job and I heartily recommend her words and ideas to your attention span.

Nonetheless, I am moved to float my own ideas, however poorly they will stand by comparison. Simply and summarily put, I find the article itself a moving argument against attending college.

I reach this assessment because of the total vacuity of the article. In effect, it is a paradigm of the philosophy that the only purpose humans have is to make money. And if money is the only reason that someone attends college, then that person should indeed not do so. In the terms of the old adage about teaching the jackass to sing, it has two faults – it wastes the teacher’s time and it infuriates the jackass. In this case, attendance of college by those whose only reason for life is money is a waste of their time and a degradation of the institution for those who may benefit from it.

I shall withhold any conjecture or observation that such people satisfy the Sturgeon-da Vinci criterion of doing nothing productive except produce crap, largely because I have not exhaustedly sampled the population of such people. There may be some who do something beside metabolizing.

One does not attend college for monetary gain although one may gain monetarily by attending college, but only derivatively. The idea that one benefits monetarily directly from attending college is one of the myths of college democratization. The actuality is that one attends college for change.

No, this is not a declamation for or against the current administration. Change is not the province of politicians although its appellation may be.

One attends college to change oneself, and , perhaps, if one is to fail the Sturgeon-da Vinci criterion, to change some aspect of the species. The personal gain involved is not a matter of the contemporary social construct of the market, but in one’s head. College is about gaining new ideas, and information substantiating and fulfilling those ideas, and methods of using and expanding those ideas, and even, for a few, of coming up with new ideas. And it may be that one can use that to propagate in the social construct and enrich oneself with money but that derives from what one becomes by attending college, not directly by doing so.

So yes, if all you want to do is have a large amount of money to consume with, college is a poor choice. If you want to fail the Sturgeon-da Vinci criterion and do something that matters, college may be for you.

education, finance, economy, college