Does this mean I’m geeky?

This really has made me laugh all week.

Source.

An Epistemic Question

A friend of mine from the Physics and Astronomy Department let me read his response to list-serve post where someone derided the doomsayers of the Hadron Collider, a 17 mile long particle accelerator on the Swiss/French border, where scientist hope to create small black holes.  As I understand it the doomsayers worry that it might literally end the world.  I post it below as I think it is an interesting discussion of how we decide we know things.

* * * *

An epistemic question:  Why such trust of the scientists?  If they were priests of another, more religious, sort and were engaged in a large, expensive, bureaucratic endeavor, and some ignorant folks claimed that said endeavor would end in bad things and should be stopped and if those in power assured everyone that such a concern was nothing to worry about, would there be any suspicion of motives, talk of power plays, etc?

When is it okay to trust the experts?

a) Only when they have Ph.D.s because the academy instills virtue, so those who have advanced degrees are trustworthy.

b) Only when they have a proven track record of being right.  Scientists have always been right (e.g., Ptolemy before Kepler, Newton before Einstein, Becher before Lavoisier); therefore, we should trust them regarding the physics of small black holes created in energy regimes never before attained in the laboratory.

c)  Only when we can evaluate the evidence that they put forth.  I understand general relativity and particle physics well enough to evaluate this evidence and have found it convincing.

d)  Only when they’re on “my” side, as in, “I trust scientists because they’re against the hordes of ignorant people, including religious zealots, and so am I,” or, “I trust Sarah Palin because she’s against the damn liberal elites, and so am I.”

e)  It is never okay to trust the experts.  I don’t believe anything I haven’t proven to myself.  My world
is thus very small and uninteresting.

f)  Other.  Please specify.

(Check one)

The Medieval Mind

So for a little fun reading when I have a few minutes I’ve picked up A World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance by William Manchester. I don’t know squat about medieval history and I thought a book by Manchester would be a nice place to start. Manchester is the author of the fabulous Last Lion series of biographies about Winston Churchill which I loved.

I thought I’d blog this passage as it’s a pretty mind bending point of view about what life was like for medievil peasants.

In the medieval mind there was also no awareness of time, which is even more difficult to grasp.

Inhabitants of the twentieth century are instinctively aware of past, present, and future. At any given moment most can quickly identify where they are on this temporal scale – the year, usually the date or day of the week, and frequently, by glancing at their wrists, the time of day.

Medieval men were rarely aware of which century they were living in. There was no reason they should have been. There are great differences between every day life in 1791 and 1991, but there were very few between 791 and 991. Life then revolved around passing of the seasons and such cyclical events as religious holidays, harvest time, and local fetes.

In all of Christendom there was no such thing as a watch, a clock, or apart from a copy of the Easter tables in the nearest church or monastery, anything resembling a calendar.

Generations succeeded one another in a meaningless, timeless blur. In the whole of Europe, which was the world as they knew it, very little happened. Popes, emperors, and kings died and were succeeded by new popes, emperors, and kings; wars were fought, spoils divided; communities suffered, then recovered from, natural disasters. But the impact on the masses was negligible.

This lockstep continued for a period of time roughly corresponding in length to the time between the Norman conquest of England, in 1066, an the end of the twentieth century

Wow.

A Zinger from Wendell

Yesterday I picked up Home Economics by Wendell Berry to begin my alternative readings in economics series.  I flipped to the essay titled “A Defense of the Family Farm” in which he gives a particular variety of professors this stinging rebuke,

Perhaps (the bad advice of experts) could be dismissed as human frailty or inevitable bureaucratic blundering – except that the result is damage, caused by people who probably would not have given such advice if they were themselves in a position to suffer from it.

Serious responsibilities are undertaken by public givers of advice, and serious wrong is done when the advice is bad. Surely a kind of monstrosity is involved when tenured professors with protected incomes recommend or even tolerate Darwinian economic policies for farmers, or announce (as one university economist after another has done) that the failure of so-called inefficient farmers is good for agriculture and good for the country.

They see no inconsistency, apparently, between their own protectionist economy and the “free market” economy that they recommend to their supposed constituents, to whom the “free market” has proved, time and again, to be fatal.

Nor do they see any inconsistency, apparently, between the economy of a university, whose sources, like those of any tax-supported institution, are highly diversified, and the extremely specialized economies that they ahave recommeneded to their farmer-constituents.

These inconsistencies nevertheless exist, and they explain why, so far, there has been no epidemic of bankruptcies among professors of agricultural economics.

Whew! Don’t hold back Wendell!

Feeling Unfaithful

I once ask a friend if he was planning to get a new dog when his current dog died. We talked about it uncomfortably for few minutes and he finally said “Talking about this makes me feel . . . unfaithful.”

That’s about how I feel endorsing Google Reader over Bloglines. I’ve used Bloglines for many years now. It was a great invention when it started, allowing me to survey all the blogs I subscribed to at a glance and see who had posted without checking every single one. I’ve been very pleased with it but now Charity has started using Google Reader and . . . and . . . I’ve converted.

It’s set up to do all the same things as Bloglines except it has one great feature hidden under Settings then Goodies. When visiting this page you simply drag the Next » button onto your bookmarks.  From then on new posts are just a click away.  And the best part is that when you click on Next » button the blogs themselves appear, not just the text and pictures.  No more formating issues or missing pictures.

Not only do you get to read all the comments that other people have made but you also get to see the beautiful formats and designs of their websites.  Suddenly reading blogs is a very colorful experience!  I now read all my friend’s blogs this way and have been slowly feeling less “unfaithful” to a product that served me so well for so long.  Soon I’ll be ready to declare “Come!  Give your life and information to Google!  It’s better over here. “

(and I also really like it because when there are no more new entries to read it directs you to go read a book!)

Blown Pickup Line

This weekend over yet another fantastic brunch, we heard the story of two folks we know and how they’ve become a couple. Their relationship began with this line in the 6th grade from the fella to the new girl in class,

It’s synonym day and you’re stupid.

Of course what he meant was it’s antonym day. Oops. One word makes all the difference!

That’s made me laugh for two days.

How Big is the American Economy?

I don’t know if it’s 100% accurate but it’s definitely makes you think. Hat tip to Thomas Oatley.

You know you work with geeks when . . .

This week I got an email from someone who had the following signature

“There are only 10 kinds of people in the world:  those who understand binary and those who don’t.”

It took me a second but it made me smile all week.

Cleaning Out

The question is thus: in my cleaning out today, do I keep the Hewlett Packard 48G Series Graphing Calculator Quick Start Guide and accompanying Users Guide?   Sure I bought it in 1996 and just took the plastic wrapping off but hey, I’ve moved with it on 13 different occasions and with the calculator and accompanying full sized poster it kind of makes a set.

How Long Will I Live?

I recently read about the longevity game and decided to give it a quick whirl.  I thought the end shots were pretty funny.

This is me with my current lifestyle (cool headband eh?).

This is me if I did everything wrong.

I really like the details in this picture. (no comments please about which I actually look like)

My IMDB Connections

It’s late and after finishing a thriller of a novel and I decided to surf around the web a bit.  What should I find but one of my very best friend’s profiles on IMDB.  How cool is that?  Add that to the fact that we live across from the street from someone with a rather longer IMDB profile and we’re just swimming in Hollywood connections!

My First Ride

As my mother is cleaning out her filing cabinets and shedding the collected items of 30+ years of marriage and 29 years of motherhood. Occasionally she sends me items she thinks are funny or worth keeping.

I’m scoring this one in the funny category. This is the gleaming brochure for my first car which came off the factory line complete with bench seats, AM radio, and rear windows slits that swiveled open. The tagline on the inside reads “A great way to meet your family’s needs – and do it in style.” Let’s just say my great-grandmother had taste in cars.

By the time I got it the stereo had been upgraded to a tape deck/AM/FM radio and it had developed the ability to accelerate into 4th gear without the driver depressing the gas peddle in the mornings.

Not just any Clemson freshman could boast such a ride. Over the three years I drove it it garnered a history of stories like the time I blew the exhaust pipe in half by punching the gas too hard (nothing some temporary duct tape and a $10 welding job couldn’t fix).

When my grandmother gave me her car half-way through college (the car I still drive) this one was retired to the used car lot. Apparently it was safe enough for me to drive but not safe enough for my sister!

Exciting Evenings

I was telling Charity the other day that even though the Mac commercials make me think that Mac is cool and PC nerdy they also make me want to buy a PC. So what if what I want out of a computer is a word processor and excel spreadsheet? Maybe being nerdy is simply accepting who I am!

And just to prove the point, what exciting Monday night activity might we be engaged in tonight? Excel spreadsheets and white boards with flow charts . . . about the FUTURE (imagine ominous music here).

Exciting times huh? Charity thinks so. Her stomach has been in knots as we look at projected cash flows over the next four years.

After expanding out a cash flow for 30 years and summing the difference between starting salaries I announced that one option would yield $_______ over 30 years. She seemed unimpressed. This exchange ensued:

Me:

“You seem unimpressed.”

Charity: (bored)

“Your assumption is that because we would have $_______ more over 30 years I would be happier.

Besides, your assumptions are wrong . . . (explains why)”

Me: (chastened)

“Oh.”

Charity: (with slightly haughty look)

“Also, you also have not calculated my indifference curve correctly.”

Me:

stunned silence.

* * *

Exciting evenings at anyone? We’ll bring the spreadsheets!

So you go to Europe, come back and blog about wild salmon?

I’ve been reading over this Europe trip and much of what I read was a series of essays by David James Duncan titled My Story as Told by Water. It was one of those books that got me agitated in a serious way especially about the issues addressed by this group: http://www.wildsalmon.org/

The gist of the issue is that there are 4 dams on the Snake River that are churning up wild salmon populations and driving them towards extinction. It’s not clear that building these dams were a good idea to begin with: yes they generate power, power boating recreation, and barge runs but the costs are enormous. Aside from flooding beautiful rivers to kayak and fish on, they are driving these salmon species towards extinction. (see the website for details) They also prevent a salmon fishing industry from existing and fish that could be thriving if the dams were removed.

The economic arguments for removal are sound but what really got me was Duncan’s quote from Genesis:

“And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creatures that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And God blessed them saying, Be fruitful, and multiply and fill the waters in the seas.”

So economic arguments to bring down the dams aside (and I think they are good ones) it seems to me that God thought creating these salmon was good. He thought that salmon had something good to say about who he is and what He’s about. Perhaps it’s the sacrificial act of the salmon’s runs, climbing all that way to one’s death to create life? Perhaps it’s God’s provision for us in the food and sport that comes swimming up out of the ocean to us? Perhaps that God loves beautiful and amazing sights and animals?

Whatever his reasons He saw fit to bring these fish into being. To countenance their extinction is to say to God that we think he’s wrong about having creating these species.

It seems to me that for whatever reason God made these fish I’m inclined to defer to his reasoning.

So I’m encouraging you to take a look and sign the petition online. I think it’s a good idea.

Quote of the Morning

Friday mornings are one of my favorite parts of the week. I drag myself out of bed at 7am and head down to Weaver Street Market for two whole grain blueberry pancakes, a cup of coffee and an orange, all for $5.14. Normally it’s a couple of graduate students, a professor and a database programmer.

What I like most about Friday mornings is the unstructured and interesting conversation. We’re not there with a grand purpose or vision. We’re just there to eat and yack. There is a lot of genuine love for each other and a lot of laughter; it’s something that I really enjoy.

Our conversation can be pretty varied. We usually talk about our lives (jobs, kids, vacations, grills) but as those include some random pursuits we’ve been known to watch videos of cell locomotion between our discussion and speculation on other topics. I think we safely qualify as pretty geeky as much of our conversation today was speculating about whether or not the data one guy received yesterday was generated by a random number generator, hearing stories about terrible college calculus experiences, and confessing that none of us really understand either Monte-Carlo simulations or hidden Markov Models.

Usually our programmer utters the most memorable line of the morning and I often wish for a tape recorder to catch it but today J took the prize. As he and I were driving back towards campus I was telling him about how Charity and I left our gas stove on overnight on Tuesday mistaking the stink of the gas for the stink of the fish we had just cooked. (Oops.)

After hearing about this, mutual speculation ensued about why Charity and I are alive. He then offered this pearl:

“I’d like to die with just enough dignity that people say it was a tragic accident and not a bone-headed mistake.”

What a fine line!