stop the slaughter!

What happened to the word mispronounce? Whenever anyone is afraid of mispronouncing someone's name, they say that they don't want to "slaughter" the name. Why "slaughter"? I guess it's supposed to be funny, or clever. It is neither.

some thoughts on dirt

I recently picked the last tomato from my garden for the season. This was a better year than last year for tomatoes. One reason is that this is the first year I used composted soil. I turned old leaves, grass clippings, and other unwanted things into dark, rich soil. Which then became beautiful fruits and vegetables in my garden.

Growing up, my father always had an active composting program. One year he asked me to cut down and mulch a large, nasty bush called a firethorn. It had extremely sharp thorns that were about 1 1/2 inches long. Even with protection over my arms and legs, I had minor cuts all over. But I eventually got the whole thing cut up, and I fed it through a shredder into the compost. With much satisfaction.

I checked on the compost and the mulched firethorn a few months later. The thorns were all still there, but they were getting softer. I checked back about a year later, and the firethorn was still identifiable, but the thorns weren't sharp at all. About 2 1/2 years after the initial composting, that awful bush was rich, organic soil. It was really satisfying.

That sold me on composting, both as a gardening practice and as a metaphor for life: Awful experiences can become tremendously beneficial, with effort, pain, and a lot of time.

two fewer things to complain about

A couple of months ago I asked a colleague/friend about the undergraduate students he advises. His response has stayed with me. He said "I fancy myself busy, and I find that I don't give them adequate time and attention".

This is one of the most productive people I have ever met. Yet he was unwilling to say that he IS busy, only that he "fancies himself busy." In addition to being extraordinarily productive, he is also deeply humble. To say that he IS busy would be to suggest that he is important, and that's not a sentiment he is comfortable with. Lately when I think about how busy I am, I remember his humble response. And I chill out a bit. Busyness is often not an unfortunate condition of life, but self-flattery.

He continued about his students: "I have found that if I make my expectations clear, they will rise to the occasion. Most of the time when they don't meet my expectations, it is because I have not made my expectations clear."

He's right about this too. I love to blame things on my research assistants, but the truth is that if I make expectations clear, they really do step up and do what they are asked. Often what I think of as their failings are really mine.

One brief conversation with this man and I find that I'm not really comfortable complaining about how busy I am or the mistakes my research assistants make.

statistics

An understanding of statistics is an absolutely essential part of science. Not only that, but being familiar with rigorous statistical testing actually makes people better thinkers. Research has shown that people familiar with stats are less prone to certain kinds of judgment errors.

Having said that, statistics is the most poorly taught subject of any I’m familiar with. Chiefly to blame is the fact that the worst writers on the planet write statistics books. If the lecture is too boring (and it will be) or hard to understand (and it might be), good luck getting it from the book. I think the reason the books suck is that stats teachers don’t write for an audience of students wanting to learn statistics. They write for fellow PhD statisticians. Which is why each technique is P A I N S T A K I N G L Y buttressed by theory, proofs, and derivations.

It seems like the writers of most stats books would rather be seen as extremely rigorous than extremely helpful.

hiking sucks

I know that "cool" guys love to hike (and kayak, rappel, surf, etc). I don't. I'm not even a fan of walking. And I'm really not a fan of walking up a hill. Why would people intentionally set out to walk for an extended period of time...up a mountain or trail?

"Take a hike" is an insult for a reason. Hiking sucks.

free will and determinism part II

I haven't reached any conclusion about whether free will exists. (Or, rather, whether I think free will exists). But one thing has been tilting me back in favor of free will lately. I was falling asleep and I got a muscle twitch in my leg that woke me up. It was completely involuntary. How did I know? Because I know what it feels like to voluntarily move my leg, and it wasn't that. If free will entails volitional action, and I think it does, then this suggests that some actions are freer than others.

Also, I've noticed that sometimes I get out of bed without ever deciding to get out of bed. The important thing is that this is in contrast with another experience, that of deciding to get out of bed. If free will is an illusion, why is it just an illusion some of the time?

should he play?

So Michael Vick is going to play for the Eagles. Ideally, the NFL, and every other facet of life, would be populated by saints and poets. But it turns out that people have flaws and people need jobs. Hence imperfect people populate all jobs, including the NFL. The NFL has very carefully crafted an image of itself as being a group of very upstanding and professional men. It's not. In fact you have a lot nastier characters in the NFL than in most lines of work. These are tough, violent men. What Vick did was wrong, but he is not an outlier. Dogfighting, bullfighting, and cockfighting have long histories. He shouldn't teach elementary school, but he should be able to play a violent sport.


People are going to expect him to do some do-gooder kind of stuff. I hope he doesn't pick a pro-animal cause. It would just be too transparent. He's obviously not sensitive to the suffering of animals. It would be like asking the guy who works in the slaughterhouse to act like he is concerned about a cow's feelings. And a person hardly comes out of prison softened. Vick should pick a human charity that he really does care about. The more miserable the people he tries to help, the more sincere his attempt at redemption will be. It will also marginalize the PETA crowd. He should help starving children in Africa or something. That would look much more genuine and would embarrass PETA for protesting him when he finally does play again.

Thoughts on Facebook

I have been on Facebook for a couple of months. It's totally fun. I think the best thing has been to connect with long-lost friends. The second best thing is having friends with funny or smart status updates. FB also makes staying in touch with friends and family easy. Horray Facebook.

Here are my Facebook pet peeves:

1) Why is the default setting such that you can't see a person's profile? Why don't people change the default setting so that people can see their status? Are people really that afraid of someone seeing their face? "I got a Facebook profile, but I'll be damned if anyone is going to see it." It's not that I'm really dying to see anyone's profile, I just think Americans have an exaggerated fear of cyberspace. There is this perception that evil is just around the corner if you are on the internet. I think it's silly. No one is going to stalk you...in a malicious way. If someone is bothering you, just block them.

2) It's not a place for religion and politics. Obviously I have political opinions, but FB isn't the place to air them out. That's why God invented Blogs. I hide the feed of people who constantly post partisan rants; ditto religious manifestos.

3) It's not the place to talk about private matters. If your child ran away from home, don't post that on FB. In fact, that's a sign maybe your need to spend less time on the internet and more time with your child. (Yes, this was recently posted by a FB friend). If you or your child has an illness, don't cram as many symptoms as possible into your status. Eww.

4) 1,000,000 strong for (insert lame cause here).

5) Why does everyone hold an alcoholic beverage in profile pictures? I think the message is: "No really, I'm fun. Just look!"

Why am i buying your car?

"Cash for clunkers" is the kind of thing the media and politians love. It seemingly only has benefits: It stimulates the economy, people use less gas, etc. It's easy to see the benefits when the costs are hidden. The hidden cost is that everyone who is not buying a car under this program is paying for people who do buy a car. It's really, really unfair.



I watch the News Hour with Jim Lehrer on PBS because it is the best news on TV. They did a totally uncritical piece on it with two proponents of the plan. Not a hint of criticism. Not a question about whether it's fair to force some people to buy cars for other people under the guise of stimulating the economy. and some crap about saving the planet.



I can't afford to buy myself a new car, but, apparently, I can afford to buy you one. You're welcome.

market volatility = down with america!

It is amazing to hear people talk about the recent economic problems as evidence that free markets don't work. worse, they seem to act as if it's OBVIOUS that free markets are terribly flawed.

how about some context?

One hundred years ago life expectancy in the US was 47, 14% of homes had a bathtub, and 8% of homes had a phone. The average wage was $.22 per hour, but a 3-minute phone call from Denver to New York was $11.00. Six percent of the population had graduated from high school, and the population of Las Vegas was 30. it seems to me that free markets have been very good to this country.

but the stock market dips, and people conclude that the system is irredeemable. that's pretty short-sighted.

health care is sooooo boring. but here's a blog about it

what could be worse than blogging about healthcare reform? nothing. here goes nothing.

those TV infomercials that advertise the "jazzy" are pretty much all you need to know about healthcare. how many people with electric wheelchairs really need them? when the government pays, we will never know. i'm not against electric wheelchairs. i'd kind of like one. i'm against giving them for free to whoever says they need them.

i love double whoppers with cheese. if i had a heart attack today, i'd want one tomorrow. i'd rather continue to eat whoppers and take a subsidized cholesterol drug than eat a salad. if i were paying for the cholesterol drug, i could probably choke down something leafy.

the point is that when there is no individual cost, there is no need for the individual to change behavior.

the other point--one that i can't believe no one is making--is that the american lifestle has a HUGE impact on health. We eat terrible foods and are fat. That's at least part of the reason we are on the low end of cross-national medical studies.

Coming Soon: Floss Force

Today it became illegal in Florida to be in a car without a seatbelt. It’s a primary offense, which is to say you can be pulled over if an officer sees you without a seatbelt. The reasoning seems to be as follows: Seatbelts are good, therefore we need a law to ensure that people wear seatbelts. Or: Transfats are bad, therefore we need to outlaw transfats.


And this got me thinking. Flossing is also good …so we need a law to ensure that people are flossing. We also need a way of enforcing flossing law, to make sure people don’t do things to their teeth of which the government does not approve. The enforcers of this law can be called Floss Force.

Not only would Floss Force perform a valuable service, but forcing taxpayers to pay their salaries would stimulate the economy!!! Yeah!!! Somebody get Nancy Pelosi on the horn.

To all the narrow-minded doubters who say we can’t afford to make sure everyone flosses their teeth because were are trillions of dollars in debt, I say… We can’t afford NOT to do this. How can you argue with that logic?

no thanks to God

There was a moment of silence for Michael Jackson in the house of representatives.

Representative Jessee Jackson Jr had this to say: "I come to the floor today on behalf of a generation to thank God for letting all of us live in his generation and his era.'' I don't recall asking this clown to speak on my behalf.

I am in favor of the practice of speaking well of the dead. But let's not make Michael Jackson into a saint. If the world's greatest plumber died--and he also happened to be a pedophile--would politicians offer hyperbolic praise on his behalf?

Michael Jackson became a singer rather than a plumber, but that does not mean we are required to revere him and ignore the fact that he was something other than a gift from God to the young boys he encountered.

Freud on Michael Jackson

Freud’s view was that children progress through stages of psychosexual development. The progression is supposedly linear; 1 to 2, 2 to 3, etc. At each stage, children are “fixated” on something that gives them pleasure—hence oral, anal, and phallic stages.

A failure to progress past a given state in childhood causes a person to have problematic sexual urges (among other things) in adulthood. Which brings me to Michael Jackson.

Setting aside the specifics of Freud’s perspective, I think he is right about the effects of halted psychosexual development. Jackson is a great example of someone whose psychosexual development was stunted in childhood, perhaps by fame or his abusive father. As one would expect based on Freud's view, Jackson's sexual behavior was weirdly pedophilic. I don’t know if his “sleepovers” with children were a pretext for the worst forms of molestation, but, at the very least, it allowed him to be close to children in a way that hinted at sexuality.

He was a famous pop star, so he could have had "sleepovers" with whomever he wanted. He wanted sleepovers with children.

I think Jackson’s interest in children also reflected a desire to be as blameless and as irresponsible as a child. In conversation, he would affect a weirdly childish voice. He was as unmanly as it is possible to be. I think his surgeries were an attempt to look younger. The point seems to have been “Don’t blame me, I’m just a child!”

sinister sounds

I like heavy metal. I don't really LIKE the fact that I like it. In fact I've decided to stop listening to it 3 or 4 times. But "headbanger" is in my DNA, probably somewhere near "heterosexual" and "sucks at bowling". I think it was the Scorpions' "Rock me like a hurricane" that first hooked me.

A lot of people don't like metal, and that's part of the appeal. It can be hard to listen to, which I like. It takes some work to appreciate the best metal, a little bit like it takes some work to appreciate opera or modern dance. Except that metal sucks a lot less. It's more like the effort required to appreciate good scotch (not that I do).

When I was in high school, I was interviewed by a newspaper at the Heavy Metal Shop (http://www.heavymetalshop.com) about why I liked metal. I proclaimed the awesomeness of metal, and employed some vulgarity to emphasize said awesomeness. There was a big picture of me in the newspaper with my (censored) remarks accentuated in the margins. Kind of in the "look what our children have become" style.


My life has been downhill ever since.


Metal doesn't fulfill me spiritually or intellectually, so why do I like it? I guess it’s that metal is thoroughly anti-establishment, and I that appeals to me immensely.

free will

I have done a lot of research on belief in free will, all of it suggesting that belief in free will is good. Of course, whether believing in free will has some advantages (e.g., people who believe in free will work harder) has nothing to do with the question of its existence.

I think one has to at least acknowledge the possibility that free will does not exist--that our "choices" are illusory.

Having a child has tipped me more in the direction of a belief in determinism. Claire's actions are a function of A) how she came into this world, and B) the reinforcements and punishments she gets from the world around her.

Luckily, she came into this world a wonderfully sweet soul, and Deb and I shower her with affection. She is a very sensitive little thing, but it wasn't her choice.

Of course we are talking about a baby, not an adult. But what's the difference? Do we suddenly cease to be a function of genetic make-up and environmental reinforcements when we turn 18? When we turn 8? Nothing magical happens when a person turns 8 or 18 or 21. (Perhaps one gains free will slowly over time, but when does that initial act of volition occur? What does it feel like? Wouldn't you know you were acting on your own for the first time?)

On the other hand, in my own life I have the sense that I am making decisions. At no time is the feeling of choosing stronger than when I am in a spiritual or ethical dilemma.

I once read a children's book (by Ursula Le Guin) in which the main character, a wizard, says that the only choice people really have is to accept or reject destiny. I think there is something profound about that answer; we either become what we were created to be or we do not.

It could be that those who prefer the light gravitate to the light--and eventually become what they were created to be; and those who prefer the darkness gravitate to the darkness and become something less. Thus free will may just be one's preference for the light or the darkness.

Whatever the answer is, I don't think it is simple.