Spaghettification and the problem of scientific jargon
Can’t use jargon, because people don’t understand it. It sounds like advertising mumbo-jumbo, so they don’t trust you. But if you explain the jargon, it sounds like you’re trying to con them.
Short version: damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
Short, short version: we’re effed.
I think it means we have to attack the problem from another direction — raise the level of scientific literacy. (Or if you’re James T Kirk, rig the system)
Nothing like a little scandal to perk one up.
Just got an email pointing me toward a “travesty” that is occurring, and hoping to enlist my aid in the fight. Somebody named Art Robinson is screaming about his kids being a victim of political retribution. I felt obligated to look into it, and found a WorldNet Daily article (no, this is not starting out well), written by Art Robinson himself (continuing along the path of not going well). I’d heard of him before, in the context of being a global warming denier extraordinaire, but there’s more, unless you think all of his bad press is conspiracy.
He ran for congress and lost, and is now accusing Oregon State University of kicking his kids out of the nuclear engineering program as retribution for running. There’s really no corroborating evidence and other than denial of the allegations, the university can’t comment on the details because the students’ privacy is protected by law. But after reading
OSU is a liberal socialist Democrat stronghold in Oregon
I wondered if the emailer realized that I went to grad school at OSU. I also can’t help but wonder why his kids would go there if it was such a horrible, nasty, smelly place.
More blips on my BS detector make me wonder how much of this is fabricated.
Democrat activist David Hamby and militant feminist and chairman of the nuclear engineering department Kathryn Higley are expelling four-year Ph.D. student Joshua Robinson from OSU at the end of the current academic quarter and turning over the prompt neutron activation analysis facility Joshua built for his thesis work and all of his work in progress to Higley’s husband, Steven Reese. Reese, an instructor in the department, has stated that he will use these things for his own professional gain.
Once you get past the smearing, what’s there? Any apparatus that is built by a graduate student belongs to the university, and would be controlled by the student’s advisor or the department. Of course they are going to use it for “professional gain,” i.e. further research. Grad school isn’t camp, where you make something in arts and crafts and take it home to give to the folks.
Lots more smearing and innuendo (it is also rumored that…) which may play to his audience but makes me tune out. If you have to lead off with ad hominem, I have to think you don’t have much in your hand.
Robinson also makes a point of revealing his kids’ GPAs (all around 3.9), but doesn’t mention that in grad school, any grade below a “B” is considered unacceptable. There is no curve, so a 3.9 GPA is not the indicator it is for undergraduates.
The department is now controlled by ideologues, most of whom do not have Ph.D.s in nuclear engineering.
Slander and misleading; it’s the department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Health Physics, so you might expect some radiation health physics-realted faculty as well, and the mix depends on what the department does. They all have PhD’s, and the claim is actually false as 7 of the 13 have PhDs in Nuclear Engineering. The last time I checked, more than 50% counts as “most.”
Forgive me if I don’t step up to fight alongside Mr. Robinson.
Added: (It occurs to me that if this is all a fabrication, OSU does nothing, and Robinson gets to claim victory. All because there is innuendo and no evidence.)
How “CSI:NY” Most Definitely Didn’t Steal My Story
When I first saw this, I was relieved it was not the original CSI, for that would have implicated my friend Naren (who is no longer with the show; rumor has it he’s working on a reboot of the Wild, Wild West TV series. That’s TV series, not movie. It also buffers the realization that the show has jumped the shark, which has become blatantly obvious in recent weeks)
The comparison to the Cooks Source plagiarism, and the whole “web is public domain” fiasco of an attitude resonates with me at some level. I’ve seen my cartoons show up on websites stripped of their attribution, and declarations of “reproduced by permission” when no such permission was requested. I have only registered some of my cartoons with the copyright office, so I have no real legal recourse for unregistered works — I can’t show monetary damage for cartoons I’m not selling to anyone. (Registering the copyright allows you to sue for statutory damages. Were I being ripped off more than epsilon of the time, I would be more diligent about registering)
But this case turns out to be different. I don’t have nearly as much sympathy for the author as I did from the set-up of the article, and here’s why: the material that was used was a hoax. That is, it was originally presented as being the truth, not a work of fiction, by an online publication that prints news stories. OK, it’s a tabloid, so “news” is Charlie Sheen and Lindsay Lohan, but the point stands. If the hoax were obvious it wouldn’t be much of a hoax, and by the accounting, it was pretty successful at taking people in.
Facts, as the article points out, aren’t copyrightable — they’re in the public domain. It seems to me the author is complaining that people were duped by the hoax, but it raises the question of whether you could sell the story in the first place, if nobody would be taken in by it. I don’t know what the legal standing would be, but it seems like the author wants both of those conflicting circumstances to be true.
Greed is good in NFL labor talks
Remember the scene in “Shawshank” when Andy tells the warden that he’s done with laundering money for him? The warden’s eyes narrow. He shakes his head. He looks at Andy as dismissively as one human being can regard another.
“Nothing stops,” he says. “Nothing.”
That’s me. I’m the warden. Nothing stops. I will make more money than I did last year, and I will continue to regard employees and readers as disposable pawns. This isn’t about common sense, dignity, relationships, long-term plans, or even preserving the fragile relationship between a customer and a provider. It’s about generating more money in Years 5 through 8 than I made in Years 1 through 4. That’s it. Oh, and steamrolling anyone who gets in my way. I forgot that part.
One of the benefits of having a background in science is that it tends to enhance your BS detector. One can take information and make a try at assessing the veracity of it — is it consistent with things that I know to be true? Does it follow valid models of how things behave? You can’t accept or reject all information this way, because some of it will be outside of your experience or ability, but it’s a first cut at the problem. One of the major stumbling blocks is that “things I know to be true” can’t be “things I want to be true;” we have to keep ideology out of the process.
Take as an example the ongoing political unpleasantness (in many cases, this phrase is redundant) regarding budgets. I keep hearing that reducing the budget is reeeeaaaally important, and moves are being taken to reduce spending. But if moves are being taken that don’t actually reduce the deficit, our model breaks down — either the proponents have some other agenda, or they’re bad at math, or stupid, or some combination of those things.
We find out that cutting spending on poison control centers will actually cost money. I don’t see what the possible hidden agenda is there; this is just plain stupid. Rachel Maddow points out (at about 19:00; the segment starts at about 17:30) a dollar spent trying to find tax cheats nets more than ten dollars in revenue; as long as a dollar spent results in more than a dollar’s worth of revenue, you should be increasing the budget, because it pays for itself! I don’t see how the standard GOP line of loving America plays here. Regardless of where you’ve drawn the line of what the tax rate actually is, cheating on your taxes is not what I would call patriotic. And going after high-income people who are cheating is where the money is, so proposing cuts means its more important to let tax cheats go, which goes along the lines of letting them pay fewer taxes in the first place. Jon Stewart reminds us of the hypocrisy of calling a ~$50k salary too large, making the de-facto 10-20% salary cuts justifiable, while claiming that $250k is not a lot of money when faced with a 3% tax increase. Something is not adding up.
On the topic of Wisconsin teacher salaries, I’ve seen it compared to the state average salary. Once again, let’s use the BS meter. Different jobs have different requirements, and as we require more in the way of qualification, the pay generally goes up. Part of that is simple supply and demand. To be a teacher, you are generally required to have at least a Bachelor’s degree. The most recent statistics I could find were from the 2000 census, when less than 25% of adult Wisconsinites had college degrees. So why wouldn’t a person with a college degree be expected to earn more than the state average? Bachelor’s degree holders earned a median salary of just above $40k back then; if we allow just a 2% per year increase for inflation, that brings us to $50k for this year. Teachers make, on average, about what you’d expect someone of their training to make, without allowing for the ones who have even higher education levels, who might be expected to make even more money. They make more than average, because your average Wisconsinite doesn’t have a college degree.
Sunday (Settled) Science: Is that woman really your mother?
You think that the woman you regard as your mother gave birth to you. But it’s an open question; there’s still debate, and it’s definitely not an open and shut case. Right?
No, no, I’m not being silly. I mean it. You need to prove to me that she’s your mother. You’ve got a birth certificate? Just a bit of paper. You look like her? Coincidence. DNA test? Useful, but not 100% accurate. She’ll swear that it’s true? Well, she might be lying, or was duped at the hospital. A photo of her holding you as a baby? Doctored. You don’t have a leg to stand on!
In the absence of conclusive evidence that she’s your mother, you should suspend contact immediately, examine the evidence more carefully and make a decision about whether you continue the relationship at a later date. By investing in a relationship with your supposed ‘mother’ now, you’re wasting time and energy that could be better spent earning money or having fun.
Image of the Day: 2 Billion-Year-Old Nuclear Reactor Fossil!
The remnants of nuclear reactors nearly two billion years old were found in the 1970s in Gabon, Africa. These reactors are thought to have occurred naturally. No natural reactors exist today, as the relative density of fissile uranium has now decayed below that needed for a sustainable reaction.
U-235 has a shorter half-life than U-238 so the relative abundance goes down over time even without fission. The low natural abundance is why reactors either need enriched uranium or heavy water as a moderator.
The room is also decked out with a rope bridge that connects the pirate ship to the top of a jail cell, and a rope suspended from the ship’s hull provides drop-in access to the closet. There’s also a completely hidden spiral slide, that lets you travel downstairs in a more adventurous way.
OK, so it puts a bookcase door to shame, but it’s professionally designed and built and probably cost beaucoup bucks.
Researchers Crack the Mystery of the Spotless Sun
Oh, sorry. Did I overstate the findings in the title? There’s a better model, and we have a better understanding of the issue.
For years, solar physicists have recognized the importance of the sun’s “Great Conveyor Belt.” A vast system of plasma currents called ‘meridional flows’ (akin to ocean currents on Earth) travel along the sun’s surface, plunge inward around the poles, and pop up again near the sun’s equator. These looping currents play a key role in the 11-year solar cycle. When sunspots begin to decay, surface currents sweep up their magnetic remains and pull them down inside the star; 300,000 km below the surface, the sun’s magnetic dynamo amplifies the decaying magnetic fields. Re-animated sunspots become buoyant and bob up to the surface like a cork in water—voila! A new solar cycle is born.