Archive for July, 2006
July 27, 2006 at 12:27 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Seen syncronicitously at Structure+Strangeness: Models, errors and the culture of science.:
In other words, critical discourse is a form of logical jousting, in which you can only disparage the assumptions of your opponent (thus undercutting their entire theory) while championing your own. Marshaling anecdotal evidence in support of your assumptions is to pseudo-science, I think, what stereotyping is to racism. So, since critical discourse is the normal practice outside of science, is it any wonder that when non-scientists attack science, they use the only form of criticism they understand? This observation, of course, leads me to be extremely depressed about the current state of science education in this country, and about the possibility of politicians ever learning from their mistakes.
July 27, 2006 at 10:52 am · Filed under Uncategorized
So I’m drafting a long, semi-scholarly post and paper about the nature of online communities for lay involvement in scientific and engineering research, as a follow-on to my Erdös Number auction gag two years ago.
One of the important things to come from that experience was an understanding of the desire of laymen, or more specifically experienced and intelligent professionals outside the Academy, to participate in the dialog of science and more general research. It would be a good thing—on that basis alone—to break down the barriers to entry into the technical research process and somehow involve these folks in generating and pursuing research projects.
At the same time, over the same period we’ve come to realize that we live in a time of what might be summarized as unprecedented kookiness: not just among the Religious Right, but also among anti-vaccinationists and others scattered all over the sociopolitical landscape. People find it easier, these Internetty days, to say dumb things. Worse, they say dumb things in ways that are essentially undifferentiable by the rest of the lay public. Intelligent Design can thrive not because the scientific community is too lax in persecuting them, but rather because they adopt so well the semblance of what the lay political public (who is their real audience) perceives as correct and “fair” behavior. They play a media game (politics and religion), using words from a non-media culture (science). It would be a bad thing—on the basis of all these cranks and crackpots alone—to admit more specious work into the canon of discussion, without stringent checks and stops in place to point out their fallacies succinctly.
It’s a puzzle. It frames itself around a core of deeper philosophical puzzles: What is a crackpot? What harm can a crackpot do? What is a scientist? What good might a scientist do? What are the expected (and potential) costs and benefits of re-opening the world of basic research to the lay public?
And then this morning I am presented, at Crooked Timber itself, with this entry on the Maharishi Effect.
Watching the comments there will be an interesting exercise. How many who do research within the Academy even understand what it is? What is the implication of reactionary and revolutionary thought in this context, when so little culture is shared among those who practice science and those who watch it?
What do we choose, when we become real scientists, real researchers, even (in a weaker sense) real engineers? Do we choose a career? Or do we choose a culture?
July 26, 2006 at 11:47 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
From a book just acquired, of which more in a bit.
“After Many Days”
“I really am obliged to you for bringing back my book,
It moves me much to look whereon I thought no more to look;
It ‘minds me of the early time when it was lent to you,
When life was young and hope was fair, and this old book was new.
“How well does memory recall the gilt that on it shone
The day I saw it, coveted, and bought it for my own;
And vividly I recollect you called around that day,
Admired it, then borrowed it, and carried it away!
“And now it comes to me again across the lapse of time,
Wearing the somewhat battered look of those beyond their prime.
Old book, you need a rest—but ere you’re laid upon the shelf,
Just try and hang together till I read you through myself.”
— Anonymous, from Book-Song: An Anthology of Poems of Books and Bookmen from Modern Authors, 1893. ed. Gleeson White.
July 26, 2006 at 7:09 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
An econo-geek meme. My answers in comments at Quantum of Wantum.
July 26, 2006 at 11:16 am · Filed under Uncategorized
A telling info-graphic from The Independent: at 3quarksdaily.
July 26, 2006 at 11:02 am · Filed under Uncategorized
Somehow the slogan gets all the more strength by re-visioning. At Free Range Librarian: “I Love ALA…”. Be sure to check out the other versions in the accompanying Flickr stream, particularly the one holding the comment quoted above.
[via Barbara]
July 26, 2006 at 10:20 am · Filed under Uncategorized
I am reminded of Lakatos, and a long-ago discussion with my Philosophy of Science professors when I read: Easier trumps harder at Stumbling and Mumbling:
Not only has this basket out-performed the market. In the last six months it’s easily out-performed every fund in Trustnet’s database of all companies unit trusts. In fact, similar baskets of defensives have out-performed almost all funds ever since 1999.
We keep looking forward sometimes because we refuse to look back.
July 24, 2006 at 10:37 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Tonight’s True and Correct futurist utterance (just you wait and see), offered with no interfering explanation:
Very soon now, instead of a career you will have a culture.
‘Nuff said.
July 24, 2006 at 10:35 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
or, I’m not pomo. I’m just drawn out that way.
So it’s a warm summer night. We’ve had a very salty, but not too bad dinner out on the west side at the new(ish) Carlyle restaurant, and we’re driving back into Ann Arbor along Jackson.
At each stoplight, another late-stage Boomer is driving another well-used minivan, windows down, radio blaring. Boomer #1: “Born to Run”. Boomer #2: Johnny Cash.
This provokes the sort of conversation we normally reserve for Muzak: “Well, crap. Now that’ll be stuck in my head for days.”
We muse a bit, about the summer night, the wild-oats instincts (get it? Wild Oats? like, you know, the store?) of the late-stage Boomer, and I realize that the music I would most likely be blaring from my minivan radio with the windows open would be… well, difficult Thirteener Shoegazer/proto-Goth/post-techno music. Sisters. Medicine (and ohmigod! I love YouTube: my favoritest causative deafness agent of all “Aruca”. God, I wore the bits off that CD….). Lords of Acid. Lush. God Lives Underwater. Skinny Puppy. Einstürzende Neubaten.
You know. Good music. Music you can not only feel in your bones, but which hurts those bones (especially the little hammer and anvil-shaped ones I broke into dust many years back). Not like that pabulum kids listen to today, with musical instruments and words and crap. In my day, you hit shit and that was music. You didn’t talk, you moaned and screamed. Kids.
But (as has been the case since this music’s release), nobody in my family could stand to be within earshot of the car if I played My Medicine at the correct and proper volume. Which is, of course, 13….
At any rate, as these conversations go, we meander. What I want to hear, tonight? Goth Polka.
Barbara provides a sample. [Minor key] Oomp…thud-PA! Oomp… paaaaahhh. Enter accordions of doom. Begin the slow two-step to the grave. Black posies and polka-dots. A misery of harmony and bleak frivolity.
But that’s all we’ll get, I’m afraid. The hint of a possibility. I remain unfulfilled. My radio must blare the nostalgic speaker-damaging music of my youth.
I have merely to await the wonder of the Social Internet to flesh in the details, and tell me where I could find this wonder.
July 23, 2006 at 9:01 am · Filed under Uncategorized
Go read it. And do something..
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