Thursday, March 10, 2011
A "Reasonable" Argument for Believing in God
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-adam-jacobs/a-reasonable-argument-for_b_831185.html
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Monday, August 27, 2007
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
More on Women in Science
Matt's right, this is in it's final days. Here are my parting shots:
Women in Science
by: Philip Greenspun
February 2006
http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science
Why does anyone think science is a good job?
The average trajectory for a successful scientist is the following:
1. age 18-22: paying high tuition fees at an undergraduate college
2. age 22-30: graduate school, possibly with a bit of work, living on a stipend of $1800 per month
3. age 30-35: working as a post-doc for $30,000 to $35,000 per year
4. age 36-43: professor at a good, but not great, university for $65,000 per year
5. age 44: with young children at home (if lucky), fired by the university ("denied tenure" is the more polite term for the folks that universities discard), begins searching for a job in a market where employers primarily wish to hire folks in their early 30s
This is how things are likely to go for the smartest kid you sat next to in college. He got into Stanford for graduate school. He got a postdoc at MIT. His experiment worked out and he was therefore fortunate to land a job at University of California, Irvine. But at the end of the day, his research wasn't quite interesting or topical enough that the university wanted to commit to paying him a salary for the rest of his life. He is now 44 years old, with a family to feed, and looking for job with a "second rate has-been" label on his forehead.
Is There Anything Good About Men?
by: Roy F. Baumeister
American Psychological Association, Invited Address, 2007
http://www.psy.fsu.edu/~baumeistertice/goodaboutmen.htm
When I say I am researching how culture exploits men, the first reaction is usually “How can you say culture exploits men, when men are in charge of everything?” This is a fair objection and needs to be taken seriously. It invokes the feminist critique of society. This critique started when some women systematically looked up at the top of society and saw men everywhere: most world rulers, presidents, prime ministers, most members of Congress and parliaments, most CEOs of major corporations, and so forth — these are mostly men.
Seeing all this, the feminists thought, wow, men dominate everything, so society is set up to favor men. It must be great to be a man.
The mistake in that way of thinking is to look only at the top. If one were to look downward to the bottom of society instead, one finds mostly men there too. Who’s in prison, all over the world, as criminals or political prisoners? The population on Death Row has never approached 51% female. Who’s homeless? Again, mostly men. Whom does society use for bad or dangerous jobs? US Department of Labor statistics report that 93% of the people killed on the job are men. Likewise, who gets killed in battle? Even in today’s American army, which has made much of integrating the sexes and putting women into combat, the risks aren’t equal. This year we passed the milestone of 3,000 deaths in Iraq, and of those, 2,938 were men, 62 were women.
Women in Science
by: Philip Greenspun
February 2006
http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science
Why does anyone think science is a good job?
The average trajectory for a successful scientist is the following:
1. age 18-22: paying high tuition fees at an undergraduate college
2. age 22-30: graduate school, possibly with a bit of work, living on a stipend of $1800 per month
3. age 30-35: working as a post-doc for $30,000 to $35,000 per year
4. age 36-43: professor at a good, but not great, university for $65,000 per year
5. age 44: with young children at home (if lucky), fired by the university ("denied tenure" is the more polite term for the folks that universities discard), begins searching for a job in a market where employers primarily wish to hire folks in their early 30s
This is how things are likely to go for the smartest kid you sat next to in college. He got into Stanford for graduate school. He got a postdoc at MIT. His experiment worked out and he was therefore fortunate to land a job at University of California, Irvine. But at the end of the day, his research wasn't quite interesting or topical enough that the university wanted to commit to paying him a salary for the rest of his life. He is now 44 years old, with a family to feed, and looking for job with a "second rate has-been" label on his forehead.
Is There Anything Good About Men?
by: Roy F. Baumeister
American Psychological Association, Invited Address, 2007
http://www.psy.fsu.edu/~baumeistertice/goodaboutmen.htm
When I say I am researching how culture exploits men, the first reaction is usually “How can you say culture exploits men, when men are in charge of everything?” This is a fair objection and needs to be taken seriously. It invokes the feminist critique of society. This critique started when some women systematically looked up at the top of society and saw men everywhere: most world rulers, presidents, prime ministers, most members of Congress and parliaments, most CEOs of major corporations, and so forth — these are mostly men.
Seeing all this, the feminists thought, wow, men dominate everything, so society is set up to favor men. It must be great to be a man.
The mistake in that way of thinking is to look only at the top. If one were to look downward to the bottom of society instead, one finds mostly men there too. Who’s in prison, all over the world, as criminals or political prisoners? The population on Death Row has never approached 51% female. Who’s homeless? Again, mostly men. Whom does society use for bad or dangerous jobs? US Department of Labor statistics report that 93% of the people killed on the job are men. Likewise, who gets killed in battle? Even in today’s American army, which has made much of integrating the sexes and putting women into combat, the risks aren’t equal. This year we passed the milestone of 3,000 deaths in Iraq, and of those, 2,938 were men, 62 were women.
Sunday, August 12, 2007
The Road to Clarity
Joshua Yaffa writes in the NYT Magazine this week:
The Federal Highway Administration granted Clearview interim approval in 2004, meaning that individual states are free to begin using it in all their road signs. More than 20 states have already adopted the typeface, replacing existing signs one by one as old ones wear out. Some places have been quicker to make the switch — much of Route I-80 in western Pennsylvania is marked by signs in Clearview, as are the roads around Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport — but it will very likely take decades for the rest of the country to finish the roadside makeover. It is a slow, almost imperceptible process. But eventually the entire country could be looking at Clearview.
Some comparisons between Highway Gothic Series E and Clearview are given here:
NYT slideshow accompanying the article
typographic.org
clearviewhwy.com
The Federal Highway Administration granted Clearview interim approval in 2004, meaning that individual states are free to begin using it in all their road signs. More than 20 states have already adopted the typeface, replacing existing signs one by one as old ones wear out. Some places have been quicker to make the switch — much of Route I-80 in western Pennsylvania is marked by signs in Clearview, as are the roads around Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport — but it will very likely take decades for the rest of the country to finish the roadside makeover. It is a slow, almost imperceptible process. But eventually the entire country could be looking at Clearview.
Some comparisons between Highway Gothic Series E and Clearview are given here:
NYT slideshow accompanying the article
typographic.org
clearviewhwy.com
Thursday, August 9, 2007
Earthquake Fun
For those of you who don't know, I'm in LA this week. I arrived tonight and as I was going to sleep, i felt this! Almost as fun as a thunderstorm :-) I hadn't gotten to sleep yet but Elise was awoken by it so it was pretty substantial.
Woohooo! Good stuff!
Woohooo! Good stuff!
Guitarist for Queen to get PhD in Astrophysics
A buddy of mine passed this along to me: I'm actually not kidding...it took him over 30 yrs!
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
Barry Bonds' Other Advantage
Rich sent me this article about the advantage Bonds gets from wearing his colossal arm guard. According this the author, it's much more that just reducing the fear of getting hit, including physically keeping his arm in the correct plane and allowing him greater leverage at impact. I'm not sure I agree with all the arguments, but it's interesting to think about.
Sunday, August 5, 2007
If you're in LA in Aug or Sept this year...
...then try to check out the Florian Maier-Aichen exhibit at the Pacific Design Center. He takes photographs and then digitally alters them to make pretty pictures. "Long Beach" is my favorite. You can read more about him in the Summer 2007 Aperture Magazine (flash required).
Why I hardly ever post to this thing
From the number of updates there have been recently, it seems like this blog experiment is in it's last clutches of life. Perhaps that's just because it's summer and Alan and Dave have better things to do now that the weather is nice. I've wondered why I don't post to the blog very often, and figured since no else is either, I would list my reasons and everyone else could list theirs and that would increase content, at least briefly. So, here goes:
1) It's painfully slow for me. I am an extremely deliberative writer, for better or worse (probably worse). Practically, this means that it takes me between one and two hours to produce any typical entry. It just doesn't really seem worth the effort to me. Of course, this entry is typed straight in and is not deliberate in any way, so will take a total of about 5 minutes (I'm a decent enough typist).
2) I don't really have much interesting to say. The information that I choose to access is generally either too specialized (for work), too dated (I mostly read big old books on history), or too commonplace (cnn, bbc, espn, etc.) to be worthwhile in a post format. I don't really run across much in the way of truly interesting internet articles, at least what I would consider interesting to a wider audience. In my opinion, this leaves two serious options for things I would post about if I were to post on a regular basis--carefully researched opinion articles on a topic that strikes my interest and general, under-informed rants. I don't really see the point in either of those.
Those are my excuses for not posting much. Does anyone even care? If anyone have their own reasons for not posting here much (other blog/ interesting life/ etc.), it would be interesting (to me, at least) to read.
1) It's painfully slow for me. I am an extremely deliberative writer, for better or worse (probably worse). Practically, this means that it takes me between one and two hours to produce any typical entry. It just doesn't really seem worth the effort to me. Of course, this entry is typed straight in and is not deliberate in any way, so will take a total of about 5 minutes (I'm a decent enough typist).
2) I don't really have much interesting to say. The information that I choose to access is generally either too specialized (for work), too dated (I mostly read big old books on history), or too commonplace (cnn, bbc, espn, etc.) to be worthwhile in a post format. I don't really run across much in the way of truly interesting internet articles, at least what I would consider interesting to a wider audience. In my opinion, this leaves two serious options for things I would post about if I were to post on a regular basis--carefully researched opinion articles on a topic that strikes my interest and general, under-informed rants. I don't really see the point in either of those.
Those are my excuses for not posting much. Does anyone even care? If anyone have their own reasons for not posting here much (other blog/ interesting life/ etc.), it would be interesting (to me, at least) to read.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Four Books, each of which you can read in an afternoon
I don't have a TV or the internets in my new apartment, so i've been forced to read alot and sleep early:
The Driver's Seat by Muriel Spark
A single woman takes a vacation from her job as an accountant.
A friend of mine has been talking about Muriel Spark since she (Spark) passed away a year ago. Running out of ways to avoid doing work, I finally borrowed the aforementioned book. It's written in a detached style that manages to hold your interest and then totally messes with you at the end. Spark is imaginative and doesn't give you the hollywood ending that you think she is leading you to. After you read it once, you'll want to read it again to see how you could have missed it. Spark is the kind of writer you think that you can be, if only you had any good ideas. Needless to say, I'm now hooked. The next book by Spark that I'm reading is called Memento Mori. It's about the various responses to a prank phone call a group of different people receive reminding them that they will die one day.
On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
How a couple (both virgins) spent their awkward wedding night together
I kept hearing about *this* guy and *this* book. Once I realized how short it was, I caved in. Don't read the reviews for this book, they give too much away! I thought it was mostly hilarious and then you get hit with a bad case of "Carpe Diem" at the end. This book is the fancy literary analogue to the movie "American Pie." Be sure to keep track of the number of times that he uses the phrase "a sign of maturity." McEwan is the kind of writer that makes you realize that, even if you had a good idea, you couldn't ever come close to his writing ability.
The Little Book of Plagiarism by Richard A. Posner
Similar topics as my earlier post, but more coherent & incisive, using fewer but bigger words
Posner is a judge who is famous for, among other things, his contributions to law and economics. He defines plagiarism as "unauthorized copying that the copier claims is original with him." In addition, this claim *must* cause the copier's audience "to behave otherwise than it would if it knew the truth." One thing that I learned was that judges are, at most, simply editors of their opinions which are actually written by their clerks. I don't know if this is also true for the supremes. One final point: Posner argues that originality and creativity are two related but very different things (perhaps a future post).
The Big Book of Irony by Jon Winokur
What Irony is and isn't, Who does it well, and Why some people don't like it and why
This little book is funny yet thought-provoking. Winokur is a master quote collector and it shows. He frequently refers to Douglas Coupland, who coined the term Generation-X, and a very bright but strange guy named Jedediah Purdy. Purdy wrote a book in his early twenties lamenting the widespread use of ironic detachment in his peers (people our age).
The Driver's Seat by Muriel Spark
A single woman takes a vacation from her job as an accountant.
A friend of mine has been talking about Muriel Spark since she (Spark) passed away a year ago. Running out of ways to avoid doing work, I finally borrowed the aforementioned book. It's written in a detached style that manages to hold your interest and then totally messes with you at the end. Spark is imaginative and doesn't give you the hollywood ending that you think she is leading you to. After you read it once, you'll want to read it again to see how you could have missed it. Spark is the kind of writer you think that you can be, if only you had any good ideas. Needless to say, I'm now hooked. The next book by Spark that I'm reading is called Memento Mori. It's about the various responses to a prank phone call a group of different people receive reminding them that they will die one day.
On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
How a couple (both virgins) spent their awkward wedding night together
I kept hearing about *this* guy and *this* book. Once I realized how short it was, I caved in. Don't read the reviews for this book, they give too much away! I thought it was mostly hilarious and then you get hit with a bad case of "Carpe Diem" at the end. This book is the fancy literary analogue to the movie "American Pie." Be sure to keep track of the number of times that he uses the phrase "a sign of maturity." McEwan is the kind of writer that makes you realize that, even if you had a good idea, you couldn't ever come close to his writing ability.
The Little Book of Plagiarism by Richard A. Posner
Similar topics as my earlier post, but more coherent & incisive, using fewer but bigger words
Posner is a judge who is famous for, among other things, his contributions to law and economics. He defines plagiarism as "unauthorized copying that the copier claims is original with him." In addition, this claim *must* cause the copier's audience "to behave otherwise than it would if it knew the truth." One thing that I learned was that judges are, at most, simply editors of their opinions which are actually written by their clerks. I don't know if this is also true for the supremes. One final point: Posner argues that originality and creativity are two related but very different things (perhaps a future post).
The Big Book of Irony by Jon Winokur
What Irony is and isn't, Who does it well, and Why some people don't like it and why
This little book is funny yet thought-provoking. Winokur is a master quote collector and it shows. He frequently refers to Douglas Coupland, who coined the term Generation-X, and a very bright but strange guy named Jedediah Purdy. Purdy wrote a book in his early twenties lamenting the widespread use of ironic detachment in his peers (people our age).
Wednesday, July 4, 2007
Happy Independence Day
A great day for barbeque, baseball, and remembering one of the most significant documents in history. I've seen a few references this year to the rough draft of the Declaration which among other things contains a remarkable attack on slavery:
Pretty amazing. I'd also like to echo a point made by a commenter on Volokh that we were not Americans fighting the British. We were British, and we were fighting our own people and our own government. I cannot imagine what courage and principle it took to sign one's name to such a document, but we owe a lot to them and part of what we owe is to preserve what they fought for.he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating
it's most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of
a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying
them to slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable
death in their transportations thither. this piratical warfare,
the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian
king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where MEN
should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for
suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain
this excrable commerce
Monday, July 2, 2007
More than Meets the Eye... Really?
I was discussing this Saturday night at a party and thought it would make for a good first post. This is a cautionary tale.
There are many things that I have always wanted to do, and as it so happened recently, several things aligned in a way that allowed me to do one of those things. Like any person who has "sold" out to industry, my easy job (by CalTech standards) gives me plenty of disposable cash and quite a bit of free time on the weekends. Add to that a Hollywood marketing juggernaut, and I quickly found myself longing to complete this specific quest once and for all.
I suppose this particular desire originated sometime around 1985 but has been largely dormant since that time. There was a brief stint when I tried to accomplish it during 1998-9. Jaideep joined me for a while, but alas the zeal for our adventure faded away quite rapidly... until this month.
I am, of course, talking about watching the entire Transformers Generation One Cartoon Series.
By my calculations, this would be a relatively easy task for someone who routinely watches seasons of TV shows (all 5 seasons of 24, Veronica Mars, Lost, etc) in 24 hour chunks. There are 98 original episodes and one animated feature film. Clocking in at 22 minutes an episode, that's only ((98*22)+120)/60 = 38 hrs -> easily manageable as a two weekend event.
So, I blocked off my calendar, invited others who may have been excited by the premise, and got down to business. 51 episodes in, here is what it is like:
Episode begins with Decepticons attacking some sort of hydroelectric dam/oil rig/nuclear plant/energy source. Autobots, notified by their all-knowing computer Teletraan I, go to defend humans. Battle ensues. Everyone shoots at everyone but no one hits anyone. Starscream mocks Megatron's leadership abilities. Decepticons are somehow defeated and escape.
Repeat 51 times.
Granted this was a cartoon series designed to push a toy line, but watching the episodes back to back unexpectedly highlights the obvious redundancy in the first two seasons. My expected glee at reliving my childhood is slowly being replaced by the dreaded realization that my 10-year-old self was easily entertained and possibly stupid.
Nevertheless, I march on, hoping that my memories of a deeper mythology will be justified in upcoming episodes. Indeed, the last few story lines have taken place on other planets and have begun to flashback to the Cybertronian past of these robots in disguise. All the while I keep watching, anticipating the moment when the series will reveal its grand story and show me once again that this cartoon truly was more than meets the eye.
There are many things that I have always wanted to do, and as it so happened recently, several things aligned in a way that allowed me to do one of those things. Like any person who has "sold" out to industry, my easy job (by CalTech standards) gives me plenty of disposable cash and quite a bit of free time on the weekends. Add to that a Hollywood marketing juggernaut, and I quickly found myself longing to complete this specific quest once and for all.
I suppose this particular desire originated sometime around 1985 but has been largely dormant since that time. There was a brief stint when I tried to accomplish it during 1998-9. Jaideep joined me for a while, but alas the zeal for our adventure faded away quite rapidly... until this month.
I am, of course, talking about watching the entire Transformers Generation One Cartoon Series.
By my calculations, this would be a relatively easy task for someone who routinely watches seasons of TV shows (all 5 seasons of 24, Veronica Mars, Lost, etc) in 24 hour chunks. There are 98 original episodes and one animated feature film. Clocking in at 22 minutes an episode, that's only ((98*22)+120)/60 = 38 hrs -> easily manageable as a two weekend event.
So, I blocked off my calendar, invited others who may have been excited by the premise, and got down to business. 51 episodes in, here is what it is like:
Episode begins with Decepticons attacking some sort of hydroelectric dam/oil rig/nuclear plant/energy source. Autobots, notified by their all-knowing computer Teletraan I, go to defend humans. Battle ensues. Everyone shoots at everyone but no one hits anyone. Starscream mocks Megatron's leadership abilities. Decepticons are somehow defeated and escape.
Repeat 51 times.
Granted this was a cartoon series designed to push a toy line, but watching the episodes back to back unexpectedly highlights the obvious redundancy in the first two seasons. My expected glee at reliving my childhood is slowly being replaced by the dreaded realization that my 10-year-old self was easily entertained and possibly stupid.
Nevertheless, I march on, hoping that my memories of a deeper mythology will be justified in upcoming episodes. Indeed, the last few story lines have taken place on other planets and have begun to flashback to the Cybertronian past of these robots in disguise. All the while I keep watching, anticipating the moment when the series will reveal its grand story and show me once again that this cartoon truly was more than meets the eye.
Friday, June 22, 2007
A little bet...
Imagine someone offered you a bet - you pay $1 and pick an integer between 1 and 100. An integer in that range is randomly chosen, and if it matches your choice you win $200. Do you take it?
If you do, it's probably because you do this calculation in your head (whether you realize it or not): $200*(1/100)=$2. Since the expectation of the game is greater than $1, you're better off taking the bet.
Conversely, imagine someone offers you a $1, but if they pick the right number (again out of 100), you owe them $200. Would you take that bet instead (presumably no one thinks it makes sense that you would take both)? Well, towards what I thought was the end of a discussion about economics, a friend of mine did take that bet. Three years later we're still talking about it, so it's time to share it with all of you.
A rational person is expected to undertake any action in which the person believes the marginal benefit outweighs the marginal cost. If someone offers you $2 for something you value at $1, you'd be wise to sell it to them. However, how do you value things that are not definite, but instead have some probability of having a certain value? The conventional explanation is to calculate the expectation. It is the sum over all outcomes of the chance of that outcome happening times the value of that outcome happening.
My friend claims that it is not only the expectation, but also the distribution, that is important in determining what the actual value is. In this case, 99% of the time he wins money. The expectation is closely approached only over a large number of trials, so if he plays only once he is quite likely to come out ahead. Needless to say, since we've argued about this for some time, but I disagree with his reasoning. While I realize that the added information about the distribution may be valuable, I fail to see how. In the end you must make a yes/no decision, and there has to be some point at which your decision changes based on the particular probabilities and payouts. I claim that point is when the total expectation becomes negative. I think it's a significant point that expectation has all sorts of nice properties like additivity.
I think the problem here is a cognitive bias: treating a small probability as if it were zero. I bet the calculation goes: 1/100 is approximately zero, so 0*$200=$0 which is less than $1. So he takes the bet. I wonder if there is some way to test this - at the very least it seems like there are some psych experiments in here somewhere.
If you agree with him, here's the question I'd most like answered: you must go through some decision making process - what's the formula you use to determine whether to play or not?
If you do, it's probably because you do this calculation in your head (whether you realize it or not): $200*(1/100)=$2. Since the expectation of the game is greater than $1, you're better off taking the bet.
Conversely, imagine someone offers you a $1, but if they pick the right number (again out of 100), you owe them $200. Would you take that bet instead (presumably no one thinks it makes sense that you would take both)? Well, towards what I thought was the end of a discussion about economics, a friend of mine did take that bet. Three years later we're still talking about it, so it's time to share it with all of you.
A rational person is expected to undertake any action in which the person believes the marginal benefit outweighs the marginal cost. If someone offers you $2 for something you value at $1, you'd be wise to sell it to them. However, how do you value things that are not definite, but instead have some probability of having a certain value? The conventional explanation is to calculate the expectation. It is the sum over all outcomes of the chance of that outcome happening times the value of that outcome happening.
My friend claims that it is not only the expectation, but also the distribution, that is important in determining what the actual value is. In this case, 99% of the time he wins money. The expectation is closely approached only over a large number of trials, so if he plays only once he is quite likely to come out ahead. Needless to say, since we've argued about this for some time, but I disagree with his reasoning. While I realize that the added information about the distribution may be valuable, I fail to see how. In the end you must make a yes/no decision, and there has to be some point at which your decision changes based on the particular probabilities and payouts. I claim that point is when the total expectation becomes negative. I think it's a significant point that expectation has all sorts of nice properties like additivity.
I think the problem here is a cognitive bias: treating a small probability as if it were zero. I bet the calculation goes: 1/100 is approximately zero, so 0*$200=$0 which is less than $1. So he takes the bet. I wonder if there is some way to test this - at the very least it seems like there are some psych experiments in here somewhere.
If you agree with him, here's the question I'd most like answered: you must go through some decision making process - what's the formula you use to determine whether to play or not?
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Genarlow Wilson ordered released
Before my highly anticipated post on the use of expectation in decision making, I thought I'd pass along what I think is some great news (if a bit old) - last week a Superior court judge ordered the release of Genarlow Wilson. For those of you who are not familiar, Wilson was sentenced to ten years in a Georgia prison for having consensual oral sex with a 15 year old girl when he was 17. After his trial, the Georgia legislature changed the penalty for his crime to a misdemeanor, and at the time consensual intercourse was also a misdemeanor. The law was applied so harshly in part because he was accused of raping another girl and refused to plea to that charge. He was aquitted of rape but convicted of statutory rape and the jury was not allowed to know that a mandatory 10 year sentence was required.
Understandably there was a great deal of outrage over this case, and he got coverage in ESPN, the New York Times and even from Mark Cuban. He is still in jail pending the Attorney General's appeal, but this decision is a big step towards his freedom. This Volkh Conspiracy post discusses the legal reasoning and chances of it being upheld on appeal.
Understandably there was a great deal of outrage over this case, and he got coverage in ESPN, the New York Times and even from Mark Cuban. He is still in jail pending the Attorney General's appeal, but this decision is a big step towards his freedom. This Volkh Conspiracy post discusses the legal reasoning and chances of it being upheld on appeal.
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Blatant self-promotion
As some of you know, I've decided to take the rest of the year off to travel. If you want to keep track of where I am and what I'm up to, take a look at my travel blog.
Hodgepodge
Some things I've seen in recent weeks that I found interesting but weren't blog-worthy
on their own:
Stopping Menstration with the Pill (Slate): One thing I found interesting was the argument that menstruation was actually somewhat unnatural because for much of human history women spent most of their fertile years either pregnant or breastfeeding.
Reverse Contact Lenses (The Independent): Lenses you wear at night which squish your eyes back to the right shape, restoring perfect vision for up to 48 hrs.
Living Streets (itofd.com): An interesting article (and a cool site by the way) about how to get people to drive carefully on residential streets. One neat idea is to make the street environment more vague, forcing the driver to slow down to figure out what's going on. I can't explain it as well as he can, so just read the article.
AT&T and the NSA (arstechnica.com): Recently published documents show that AT&T has installed sophisticated NSA equipment into its internet backbone which an expert claims has the capacity to filter through up to 10% of all traffic passing through it. I'm sure this isn't a shock to many, but it's pretty disturbing that there is now evidence.
on their own:
Stopping Menstration with the Pill (Slate): One thing I found interesting was the argument that menstruation was actually somewhat unnatural because for much of human history women spent most of their fertile years either pregnant or breastfeeding.
Reverse Contact Lenses (The Independent): Lenses you wear at night which squish your eyes back to the right shape, restoring perfect vision for up to 48 hrs.
Living Streets (itofd.com): An interesting article (and a cool site by the way) about how to get people to drive carefully on residential streets. One neat idea is to make the street environment more vague, forcing the driver to slow down to figure out what's going on. I can't explain it as well as he can, so just read the article.
AT&T and the NSA (arstechnica.com): Recently published documents show that AT&T has installed sophisticated NSA equipment into its internet backbone which an expert claims has the capacity to filter through up to 10% of all traffic passing through it. I'm sure this isn't a shock to many, but it's pretty disturbing that there is now evidence.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Avandia and the "New-Media Man"
In all honesty, I don't give a @$#@ (that's French for rat's ass) about the diabetes drug Avandia. While this article in the New York Times is ostensibly about the recent news that Avandia has been associated with an elevated risk of heart disease, the author spends much of his time discussing his research for the article. He refers* to himself as a "new-media man", meaning that rather than trust the headlines, he utilizes the "entire niche of blogs and digital news sources on relevant subjects — drug risks, Big Pharma, diabetes". I was pretty impressed. This guy was going to do a little digging and come up with a nice take-home message, empowering his reader to use the internet to look past the headlines and scrutinize what they are reading. So what was his take-home message?
"And here is what I found: everything, except insight."
What a disappointment! Maybe I should have guessed as much, after all the title of the article is "Call the Doctor". But this was a gimme! The take-home message is so simple, yet the author got caught up trying to weigh opinions of others when he would have been far better off just reading the study and forming his own. To me, the value of so-called "new-media" is unprecedented access to primary sources, allowing the people (as in "we the") to form their own opinions rather than simply selecting between those of politicians and journalists. (The Durham-In-Wonderland blog is a fantastic example, to which I've linked to multiple times before.)
A quick skim of the actual study in the New England Journal of Medicine given a pretty simple take-home message:
There is a 95% that the increase in risk of heart attack due to the use of Avandia for 24 months is between 3% and 98%, the best estimate being 43%. In other words, Avandia does seem to increase the risk of heart disease, but the studies have been small so the precise magnitude is unknown until larger studies are conducted. This result should be taken very seriously because Diabetics are at higher risk for heart disease to begin with, so even a relatively small percent increase in risk is significant, in the same way that doubling your chances of getting in a car accident is more significant than doubling your chances of being hit by lightning.
* in reference to Jaideep's comment, formerly "refferse"
"And here is what I found: everything, except insight."
What a disappointment! Maybe I should have guessed as much, after all the title of the article is "Call the Doctor". But this was a gimme! The take-home message is so simple, yet the author got caught up trying to weigh opinions of others when he would have been far better off just reading the study and forming his own. To me, the value of so-called "new-media" is unprecedented access to primary sources, allowing the people (as in "we the") to form their own opinions rather than simply selecting between those of politicians and journalists. (The Durham-In-Wonderland blog is a fantastic example, to which I've linked to multiple times before.)
A quick skim of the actual study in the New England Journal of Medicine given a pretty simple take-home message:
There is a 95% that the increase in risk of heart attack due to the use of Avandia for 24 months is between 3% and 98%, the best estimate being 43%. In other words, Avandia does seem to increase the risk of heart disease, but the studies have been small so the precise magnitude is unknown until larger studies are conducted. This result should be taken very seriously because Diabetics are at higher risk for heart disease to begin with, so even a relatively small percent increase in risk is significant, in the same way that doubling your chances of getting in a car accident is more significant than doubling your chances of being hit by lightning.
* in reference to Jaideep's comment, formerly "refferse"
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Choose Responsibility
Five years ago, near Charlottesville, a woman threw a birthday party for her son. To insure that none of the guests drove home drunk, she insisted that (1) the guests not drive to the party and (2) that they spend the night. No one at the party drank above the legal limit for driving and no one left the house as agreed...until the police showed up. For their good faith efforts, Elisa Kelly and her now ex-husband were sentenced to over 2 yrs in jail a piece on 9 counts of providing alcohol to a minor.
In fairness, Kelly definitely screwed up for "[misleading] parents who called to ask about alcohol [and for trying] to get the kids to cover it up after police got there." There are certainly different ways of looking at this case: Radley Balko of Reason (here) and Charlottesville's Daily Progress (here). Along these lines, Balko has also written about a group called Choose Responsibility headed by John McCardell, a former college president. As first reported in this article of the Chronicle of Higher Education, McCardell argues for a plan which would lower the drinking age to 18 with a "catch." People between the ages of 18 and 20 would be given a provisional license to drink alcohol, but it would be revoked if they screwed up. People under the age of 18 would lose access to the provisional license if they screwed up before turning 18. The idea is that this gives kids under 18 an incentive not to drink until they turned 18. It also gives people between 18 and 20 an incentive to drink responsibly. Some Q&A here.
In fairness, Kelly definitely screwed up for "[misleading] parents who called to ask about alcohol [and for trying] to get the kids to cover it up after police got there." There are certainly different ways of looking at this case: Radley Balko of Reason (here) and Charlottesville's Daily Progress (here). Along these lines, Balko has also written about a group called Choose Responsibility headed by John McCardell, a former college president. As first reported in this article of the Chronicle of Higher Education, McCardell argues for a plan which would lower the drinking age to 18 with a "catch." People between the ages of 18 and 20 would be given a provisional license to drink alcohol, but it would be revoked if they screwed up. People under the age of 18 would lose access to the provisional license if they screwed up before turning 18. The idea is that this gives kids under 18 an incentive not to drink until they turned 18. It also gives people between 18 and 20 an incentive to drink responsibly. Some Q&A here.
Monday, June 4, 2007
Test Your Ethics (or Lack Thereof)
Did I just plagiarize that title? Anyway, John Tierney at NYT has posted this about a survey on ethics administered by Carnegie-Mellon. It takes about 10 mins, so try it out if you want, and then read the rest of this post.
The survey presents certain actions in different scenarios and you're asked to specify (a) how ethical it is and (b) how often you do it. You're also given a chance to specify whether it is even an ethical issue at all. I found myself answering that, very generally speaking, most of the things listed were not ethical issues. (Though, there were some definite exceptions.) On the other hand, I also answered that I almost never do most of those things. This is profoundly confusing: "If those things aren't even ethical issues, then why don't I do more of those things?" At first I thought, "Oh, those aren't ethical issues, they're moral issues." But I don't feel comfortable with that distinction either. When taking the survey, my reasoning often went something like this:
For "big" situations, a person has probably thought about it beforehand. Therefore, their response has probably been orchestrated based on a personal "worldview." However, I suspect that, in the heat of the moment and in a split second, for scenarios that haven't been thought about ("small stuff"), one probably tries unconciously to minimize the future potential for feeling guilt. To do this well, one probably has to have some sense of whether a particular action will lead to guilt. If so, presumably one get "better" with time after accumulating more experience. Maybe it's like muscle memory? Does feeling guilt and/or regret have anything to do with things that are considered wrong/evil/not okay/etc.? Is there a relationship or mapping among right/wrong, good/evil, and okay/not okay?
Does the degree of an action even play a role in whether it's okay or not? For example, kicking one ugly, loud, obnoxious, anti-social, disfigured puppy into the middle of an empty road late at night when you're drunk can, from a certain point of view, be rather funny (i.e. it's okay). On the other hand, throwing a box of cute puppies into a busy intersection during rush hour is probably not cool (i.e. it's not okay). Maybe that's not the best example, but hopefully it gets the point across. (note: I don't kick dogs of any kind.) How much weight should be given to the motivation of an action versus the consequences of the action? What, if any, are the moral/ethical absolutes? (Never kick puppies...) In other words, is it always possible to cook up a realistic situation that presents mitigating circumstances for any kind of action? (...unless it's for self-defense) Personally, I can think of only one thing that you should never do under any realistic circumstances (which I'll leave unsaid to encourage discussion); but there could certainly be others. (I know, I know: define "realistic"...)
The survey presents certain actions in different scenarios and you're asked to specify (a) how ethical it is and (b) how often you do it. You're also given a chance to specify whether it is even an ethical issue at all. I found myself answering that, very generally speaking, most of the things listed were not ethical issues. (Though, there were some definite exceptions.) On the other hand, I also answered that I almost never do most of those things. This is profoundly confusing: "If those things aren't even ethical issues, then why don't I do more of those things?" At first I thought, "Oh, those aren't ethical issues, they're moral issues." But I don't feel comfortable with that distinction either. When taking the survey, my reasoning often went something like this:
Only a dick would do that and I'm usually not a dick, so I wouldn't do that/haven't done that....but it's not like it's a moral or ethical question. If I saw someone doing those things, I would think, "they're probably dicks, but you never know, maybe they're having a bad day."Since I probably don't know what they mean, I looked up morals and ethics in wikipedia. Even though the entries were different, I really can't tell the two apart. Is there any difference? If so, what it is? (This is straight out of Election.) For whatever reason, I associate morality with big (traditionally) religious questions of good and evil (should i steal/kill/etc.) and ethics with professional/business questions of right and wrong (should i give that person credit for their ideas/steal my work computer/etc.). Are these kinds of questions completely separate or are they different applications of one larger abstract fundamental concept? Is there a word for the "smalller" stuff? In other words, does there exist a concept for actions for which the consequences aren't really that big of a deal, but if you do it, you're a dick/douche/appropriate slang?
For "big" situations, a person has probably thought about it beforehand. Therefore, their response has probably been orchestrated based on a personal "worldview." However, I suspect that, in the heat of the moment and in a split second, for scenarios that haven't been thought about ("small stuff"), one probably tries unconciously to minimize the future potential for feeling guilt. To do this well, one probably has to have some sense of whether a particular action will lead to guilt. If so, presumably one get "better" with time after accumulating more experience. Maybe it's like muscle memory? Does feeling guilt and/or regret have anything to do with things that are considered wrong/evil/not okay/etc.? Is there a relationship or mapping among right/wrong, good/evil, and okay/not okay?
Does the degree of an action even play a role in whether it's okay or not? For example, kicking one ugly, loud, obnoxious, anti-social, disfigured puppy into the middle of an empty road late at night when you're drunk can, from a certain point of view, be rather funny (i.e. it's okay). On the other hand, throwing a box of cute puppies into a busy intersection during rush hour is probably not cool (i.e. it's not okay). Maybe that's not the best example, but hopefully it gets the point across. (note: I don't kick dogs of any kind.) How much weight should be given to the motivation of an action versus the consequences of the action? What, if any, are the moral/ethical absolutes? (Never kick puppies...) In other words, is it always possible to cook up a realistic situation that presents mitigating circumstances for any kind of action? (...unless it's for self-defense) Personally, I can think of only one thing that you should never do under any realistic circumstances (which I'll leave unsaid to encourage discussion); but there could certainly be others. (I know, I know: define "realistic"...)
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