Science Literacy

Recently there has been quite a bit of talk about science literacy. As most of us know, Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum, of The Intersection, have recently written a book entitled Unscientific America where they discuss this phenomenon. Two questions immediately spring to mind. The first, what is science literacy, was discussed over at More Grumbine Science not too long ago in two blog posts here and here. The second question then (in two parts) is as follows: 1) who is responsible for science literacy; and 2) how do we effectively increase science literacy?

Over at More Grumbine Science I left the following comment:

1. What is scientific literacy? Taken from the National Academy of Sciences: Scientific literacy means that a person can ask, find, or determine answers to questions derived from curiosity about everyday experiences. It means that a person has the ability to describe, explain, and predict natural phenomena. Scientific literacy entails being able to read with understanding articles about science in the popular press and to engage in social conversation about the validity of the conclusions. Scientific literacy implies that a person can identify scientific issues underlying national and local decisions and express positions that are scientifically and technologically informed. A literate citizen should be able to evaluate the quality of scientific information on the basis of its source and the methods used to generate it. Scientific literacy also implies the capacity to pose and evaluate arguments based on evidence and to apply conclusions from such arguments appropriately. (National Science Education Standards, page 22)

Given this definition, I believe that scientific literacy means that the individual is able to apply critical thinking skills to issues with a scientific bent. I believe that this means that we really need to get away from the rote memorization system of teaching, which IMO crushes critical thinking skills at an early age. People grow up thinking the correct answers are always going to be provided to them. Then when issues get politicized, they're sitting ducks.

2. How important is it for modern society to be scientifically literate?

Extremely important. This country was founded upon the ideas of people who could think for themselves. Just look at the countries that suppress critical thinking. I'd hardly call them "modern societies". There is a lot of blame to go around, and journalism (not science) should take the bulk of the blame. All the major networks, all the major newspapers and magazines ... all put their own political spin on everything. Where have the days gone where people give us the facts, and we make up our own minds?

However, I think that perhaps I'm in error when I say that the bulk of the blame should be journalism. Rather, I think the bulk of the blame probably resides with our educational system. I said as much in my response to #1 where I said, we really need to get away from the rote memorization system of teaching, which IMO crushes critical thinking skills at an early age.

Which brings me to my point for the day (other than the one at the top of my head). As I'm putting together my peer case, I'm going over the past presentations, interactions, etc that I have performed in the last few years of my career and I recalled an interaction I had with Dr. George Gopen (who I have made mention of a handful of times on the blogosphere). Yes, the Professor of Rhetoric at Duke University indeed has his own webpage.

At any rate, I recalled a discussion he presented about communication. I'm going to quote his paper Why So Many Bright Students and So Many Dull Papers?: Peer-Responded Journals as a Partial Solution to the Problem of the Fake Audience (PDF, 27 pages).

When a professional in any field writes, that person tends to be an expert. The expert writes so that those who do not know something may come to know it. Readers in the professional world read in order to find out what someone better or differently informed has to say. We have a technical term for this rhetorical relationship: We call it communication.

I would argue that it is fantasy to believe that students writing assigned papers for teachers are primarily engaged in the rhetorical act of communication. They do not think, having been two days at the library, that they have become the “experts” in this field and will now produce an essay in order to fill full the empty vial of teacher with the milk of human knowledge. Their belief takes them too far in the opposite direction: They tend to think that teacher knows 100% of what can be known about this subject. There is no perceived need for “communication”; instead, the rhetorical task at hand here is the duller, narrower, more burdensome one of “demonstration.” Students must demonstrate to teacher that they control a modest amount of that which teacher knows expertly.

Emphasis mine. Communication versus demonstration. Which one more effectively leads the student towards a better understanding of the subject material? I would contend that clearly, it's communication. Communication in the sense that the students need to understand the material, and vigorously defend it. I remember in college having to partake in debates, and defending some issues/points of view that I did not agree with. Those are the ones I remember most clearly, and those are the ones I took the most pride in (considering I successfully defended a position I would never personally hold). Are our children challenged in such a way in our educational system? If Hollywood is our judge, then the answer is obviously NO. If it were, movies such as The Dead Poets Society would not have been as popular as they are. Instead, rote memorization rules the day. Students and teachers need to meet quotas, and critical thinking does not fill quotas.

More on this later, but feel free to add your comments.

A small way to go green ...

... use a reel mower. If you think about it, if you have (or are considering) a gas push mower, or even a electric (charge or plug-in) push mower, getting a reel mower uses the same exact amount of effort to get around your yard. The benefit? No use of fossil fuels (directly or indirectly) to power it.

I'm buying the one linked to above in a couple of weeks.

My first real attempt ...

... at arboriculture.Texas Everbearing (Brown Turkey) Fig Tree
When I was on Ocracoke, I came across tons of figs. Several different varieties are grown all over the island; most of which are on private land. I never had eaten figs before ... at least figs which were not dehydrated. However once I tried them I was smitten.

Since I bought my house, I've toyed with the idea of having some sort of fruit trees on the property. However it seems to me (at least) that your standard fruit trees (apple and peach for example) are very labor intensive. I even considered a lemon tree, but what am I going to do with an overabundance of lemons?

At any rate, wanting to do something slightly out of the ordinary, I decided I'd try my hand at growing fig trees. I don't know anyone else who does it, and it seems like it might be fun. Well, I was at the local farmers market and I stopped in at one of the nurseries and they had the Brown Turkey variety of fig tree there. It's described as follows:

Texas Everbearing (Brown Turkey). Texas Everbearing is a medium-sized fig adapted to central and east Texas. It is the most common variety in central Texas. The tree is vigorous, very large and productive. The early crop ripens in May; the main crop ripens in late June and continues to ripen into August. The fruit has a short, plump stem and moderately closed eye which reduces fruit souring on the tree. The fruit is nearly seedless and has a mild sweet flavor. Early crop fruit is very large, sometimes 2 inches in diameter.

So, I bought one (pictured above). I'll probably transplant it sometime this week and maybe by next year I'll have a sizeable crop.

Currently ...

Reading

They raise them stupid ...

... down at Tortilla Tech. In an age of high unemployment and a withering economy, you'd think 10th pick money would satisfy a whole lot of people. It'd probably satisfy everyone in the US except for Michael Crabtree. Grow up, punk. Besides, you played in a system offense. When you get into the NFL you'll suck. You should take the money while you can.

Vacation

So I managed to use the GPS device. And overall it worked fairly well (I'll review it later, when I have some time). I ran into some problems with it, but once I got it all ironed out, geotagging my pictures took all of about 15 minutes when I got home. Here is the map (had to screen capture this) of our vacation. It doesn't look like it, but that's ~180 total pictures.The last picture should have made it crystal clear as to where we were, but if people have not figured it out by now, we stayed on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. About 90% of our time was spent on Ocracoke Island.

I'm back ...

... and I don't know if anyone ever guessed (or even tried) to figure out where I went on vacation. Here is the last hint:... yeah, it' a crummy picture, and out of focus. But if you can't tell what it is, you're probably blind and have other, more important things on your mind, than trying to read the writing on a beer mug. Overall, the vacation went well. Very, very relaxing. Now, it's back to the daily grind.

So ...

... if everything is going according to plan, I'll have a nice little map with my geotagged pictures on it by the end of my vacation. I didn't follow the advice of Epicanis at The Big Room (to get a Garmin) and wound up getting a Merax Photo Finder GPS instead. Here is to hoping it doesn't stink.

Any advice on software (after I've downloaded the GPS log) to use would be nice. I don't think Photoshop Elements is going to work.

National Parks

Mike at the Big Stick blogs about a new upcoming PBS series on National Parks directed by Ken Burns. PBS' website for the series can be found here. The series will debut at the end of September. If there is ever a case to be made for conservation, this is one of them.

h/t The Big Stick.

Sapien's Cain to Neanderthal's Abel?

NOTE: Still out on vacay, but leaving some timed posts behind so people (all two of you) who stop on by have something to read.

It's being hypothesized that Shanidar 3, the skeleton of a Neanderthal, was felled by a weapon fabricated by a Homo sapien. An article on MSNBC can be found here.

"What we've got is a rib injury, with any number of scenarios that could explain it," said study researcher Steven Churchill, an associate professor of evolutionary anthropology at Duke University in North Carolina. "We're not suggesting there was a blitzkrieg, with modern humans marching across the land and executing the Neandertals [a.k.a. Neanderthals]. I want to say that loud and clear."

But he added, "We think the best explanation for this injury is a projectile weapon, and given who had those and who didn't, that implies at least one act of inter-species aggression."

So who did have those weapons? Homo sapiens, as you could have guessed by the title to this blog entry.

As for the spear, since modern humans had developed projectile hunting weapons and Neanderthals hadn't, the researchers deduced the probable suspect — a modern human.

So, we were killers from the very get-go it seems. It also appears that the Neanderthal population in Europe was extremely small, averaging about 3,500 females. So competition with Homo sapiens would have been extremely difficult. Then again, perhaps they were not forced out/killed off, but instead just mingled into the dominant Homo sapien population. There, their genetic material was incorporated and diluted out over time.

h/t: The History Blog

Greg LeMond - Twirp

NOTE: I'm out on vacation but have prepared some small blog entries to keep people coming back!

Greg LeMond has become the proverbial boil on the buttocks of cycling. Not able to leave well enough alone, he's all but flat out accused Alberto Contador of doping.

"The charge to Alberto Contador is to prove that he is physically capable of achieving this prowess without falling back to the use of performance enhancing products. Because of the recent history of our sport, doubt is rigorous. It should lead us to question extraordinary performances. That is why the sceptic I have become wants to ask Alberto Contador to convince us."

You know Mr. LeMond, you used to be a well-respected figure. Now you look like an old, jealous, washed-up, has been. Get a life. First you dogged Armstrong, now Contador. Granted, I'm not a Contador fan by a long shot ... I was pulling for Armstrong. But sheesh, this is over the top. Get a life Greg.

We Are The Same

NOTE: I'm actually on vacation, but I'm going to give people something to read anyways while I am away (as if there are a lot of people who read this blog?).

A few days ago I noticed that the Tragically Hip, only the greatest band ever, are commencing their United States Tour. They're actually coming within driving distance to me several times, so I figured it was high time that I purchased their new album. Was pretty miffed that the company that they were doing their online pre-ordering sales with was charging a crazy amount to ship the CD. Well, the CD has arrived and it's pretty damn good.

Don't know how many people in the US (at least outside of the northern parts of the country) have ever heard of the Hip. In my current neck of the woods, it doesn't seem like a whole lot. However when you go to college in Buffalo, like I did, you hear about them a lot. Anyways, if you haven't heard (of) them, I'd heartily recommend that you check them out. They give a really good concert, and they're a pretty cerebral band. Their lyrics have always been deep and meaningful, and this album is no different.

We Are The Same has received a number of positive reviews. A couple can be found here, and here. It isn't their best album, that is IMNSHO reserved for Music At Work, but it's solid fare.

Anyways, just a blog entry to plug one of my favorite bands. Like I said ... check them out.

Ode To My Peer Reviews

AKA: The Manuscript Tracker Lament

O my dear Peer Reviews,
There you are! I can see you!
I logged on, and glanced inside,
And despite your efforts to hide,
I can see the dates within,
Next to each as they turned you in.
Since then, three long days have passed,
And yet, still nothing, so I ask.

What's taking so darn long?!?

Alas, I cannot help but continuously look.
Hour after hour, I return, but still forsook.
For me, now an obsession, an unsatiable drive,
My need to know your status, eating me alive!
Please lovely peer reviews, arrive at last.
Fly through the intertubes, pronto! Fast!
Give me respite, knowledge that my work is approved.
That what gave you birth is true, behooved.

Humane Societies

Saw this blog post over at Golden Thoughts (gotta love the name).

Part of Michael Vick’s restitution is working on a dog fighting prevention program with the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). HSUS is not the human society in your community; it is primarily a national organization that seeks to eliminate animal use for food, research, and recreation (pets, hunting, etc). Most of its budget is used for lobbying and publicity, not to save dogs and cats in communities. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is also quoted in the NPR piece. This is another group with extreme views, promoting humane live insect traps after Obama swatted a housefly on television.

Pascale ends by asking the ten thousand dollar question:

How do you fight a machine?

I've blogged before about how HSUS stinks. So how do we keep getting the message out? We keep blogging about it, we write to people (like the judge who may have ordered Vick to work with HSUS) about how HSUS stinks, and we promote the organizations which really do deserve our dollars. Like the ASPCA.

Whew!

Whirlwind final three days at work prior to my vacay. Trying to wrap up the last of the reviewer comments for my 100+ day peer-review manuscript. Why must they suggest removing the most difficult figures/tables to replicate in the text? They're big because they condense a lot of information into a single figure/table! Like they say, a picture says a million words (or a million data points as the case may be), no? Of course, that's the worst of the review, so I should be thankful. Here is hoping this is accepted by the time I return from my lighthouse gazing! Then received a rough draft of a paper I'm doing with a collaborator in which my lab performed a fair number of RISA's. It was the first time we used this particular RISA protocol, and we're publishing results done with the protocol a couple of times this year, but I have to admit ... despite my reasons to use RISA over T-RFLP to begin with, we're switching to T-RFLP, which seems a whole lot cleaner. I'm sure my lab appreciates me having them perfect this RISA protocol over three or so months only to change directions nine months later. Besides, using a designed pair of ligated linker ends, getting sequence on these fragments is now possible. That sort of eliminates RISAs main "pro". Anyways, have to modify a couple of my figures, which is no biggie now that I've finally managed to nail down Photoshop Elements (thanks confocal microscopy class!). Good thing I saved the TIFs with their prospective documenting layers.

And I want to do the Isis transcript meme! I just need to find a copy of my undergrad transcripts. Wonder if HR will give me a copy.

Currently ...

Listening To

The X-Files brought to life?

Weird. Just got done watching the latest X-Files movie and then came across this article. Life imitating fiction?

Levy Izhak Rosenbaum called himself a "matchmaker," but his business wasn't romance. Instead, authorities say, he brokered the sale of black-market kidneys, buying organs from vulnerable people from Israel for $10,000 and selling them to desperate patients in the U.S. for as much as $160,000.

Very disturbing.

Scarcity ...

... for the next few weeks my blog posting is probably going to be a bit more sporadic than usual. There are a couple of reasons for it. The first is that I'm going on vacation. Not going to tell anyone where, but this picture I took the last time I was there should serve as a hint:

Caption: Guess where I'm going!

The second is because ... I'm coming up for tenure by the end of the year! This means that I need to get my packet together and sent to my review committee by the middle of September. Obviously, for me it's a big todo, and along with trying to get two papers revised, and another written, I've got to buckle down.

So, keeping my job is pretty important ... at least to me. More important than blogging. So, while I'll probably blow off steam here and there and make a post or two, I will probably be more scarce than present until things settle down.

A two foot long, folding knife?

Seriously. Why do they even make those things? What's the utility to them?

In the video, which was posted Tuesday, the Republican governor is sitting at his desk in the Capitol admiring a 2-foot-long folding knife before looking up to thank followers for their budget-balancing ideas.

I think the over-reaction to the video is silly (lighten up folks!) but I'm still amazed about the knife. I mean really ... wtf can you use it for?

I've been tagged with a Book Meme ...

... I thought I had dodged this meme over at VWXYNot? but then DuWayne Brayton sic'd the meme on me anyways. So, here goes:

The Rules: List fifteen books that had the most profound impact on you - ones you can think of in fifteen minutes or less.

1. The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander - Ok, so this is really a five book series, but I loved them as a child. These books were my Harry Potter growing up. These books, along with the series I'll mention in number two, were responsible for instilling in me an eagerness to read and a fondness for collecting books.

2. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle - The first three books of this series were also books I read, multiple times, growing up. By the time the fourth book was published I was already moving up to larger fare (see book #3) so it didn't factor as heavily in instilling in me a desire to read everything I came across.

3. Shogun by James Clavell - Believe it or not, I first read this book back in fifth grade at the age of ten. This book was responsible for giving me the "history bug". I've always been a fan of other cultures and this historical fiction book helped cultivate that. I have yet to get to Japan, but my agency does work over there, so I am hoping that one day I will get there.

4. The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe - Read this book in high school for a report I need to do on "frontiersmen". Most of the kids did reports on Lewis and Clark and the like, I decided to steal a line from Star Trek and do my report on space, the final frontier. Got an "A" of course, both for originality and also for writing a damn fine paper. I think I still have that paper around somewhere. It's also the first (and last) time I ever used a typewriter! It planted one of the first early seeds of interest in Astronomy for me, and it's now my #1 hobby.

5. 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke - I've got to admit, it took me awhile to get into this novel, but once I did, I was hooked. It got me interested in space and science, which always looked like glamorous places to visit or do. I still dream that one day I can get up into space and do some experiments.

6. The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton - I like a number of Michael Crichton's books, but this one and Eater's of the Dead are my favorites. This first turned me on to microbiology as a career possibility, and I actually keep it on my shelf at work along with my other microbiology-related texts and books.

7. The Coming Plague by Laurie Garrett - I read this book when I was doing my first M.S. degree in Clinical Laboratory Sciences. I think this book played a role in legitimizing my decision to pursue a Ph.D. in Microbiology (actually I was sorta thinking Virology at the time, but that changed soon enough).

8. The Great Divorce by CS Lewis - This book showed me, in a very dark time in my life, that we make our own hell, and then we lock ourselves into it.

9. Dare We Hope "That All Might Be Saved"?: With a Short Discourse on Hell by Hans Urs Von Balthasar - This book helped form my Catholic faith as it is now, and while I was never in danger of becoming a raving fundie this book showed me the dangers of the "We are good and heaven-bound, they are bad and hell-bound." line of thinking and why it needs to be combated vigorously. It is this mentality which lies at the root of a lot of our problems today (IMO).

10. Expectations: Teaching Writing from the Reader's Perspective by George Gopen - This book has changed the way I approach writing manuscripts. I take great joy in getting back reviews (and acceptance letters!) which say that the manuscript was extremely easy to read. This book is part of the reason why.

11. Where Eagles Dare by Alistair MacLean - While the list is in great part, in chronological order, I'm now trying to recollect some additional works to add to the list. This book historical fiction book spurred my early interest (7th or 8th grade) on WWII history. I can't say I'm a huge history buff today, as other things have occupied my time, but if I'm going to grab a history book, I'll go for the WWII stuff first. This book is part of the reason why.

12. Barney Beagle Plays Baseball by Jean Bethell - The first book I ever remember reading. It probably helped set me down the road to literacy.

Others which make the list, but I'm not going to describe in detail:

13. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
14. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
15. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

Whew! Done! I tag ... anyone who wants to do this meme.

Dirt! The Movie - Additional Info

It appears that the website for Dirt! The Movie has been retooled. I know at least one person asked about screenings of the movie, and I'm happy to announce that they do have some screenings at a few locations lined up through the first week of August. Check them out here. Basically it's restricted to Los Angeles, CA and Woodshole, MA. Then again, the DVD arrives in September 2009, so you won't have to wait too long to buy it, or get it from Netflix.

Universal Health Coverage - Part Deux

And this article out of FoxNEWS is what I don't care for in Obama's health care plan.

America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 would create a public health insurance alternative and require coverage for most Americans and from most employers

Bold emphasis mine. I'm already on record with being agreeable to requiring people to have health insurance. What I'm not ok with is the need for the United States government getting into the business of health insurance. Medicare and Medicaid are already total messes (I'm purposely avoiding profanity in describing them, but it's apt, and you get my point when I say they're totally FUBAR'd). Why the need to come up with competition to the already existing insurance companies? It makes no sense. To pull a quote from the article:

"The government takeover of the practice of medicine will destroy the private health insurance companies, and will result in rationing, long lines, and loss of access to physicians in the patient hour of need ..."

... and ...

The Mayo Clinic, a non-profit organization and internationally renowned medical practice group, took issue with patient care quality that will result if the president's bill becomes law:

"Although there are some positive provisions in the current House Tri-Committee bill -- including insurance for all and payment reform demonstration projects -- the proposed legislation misses the opportunity to help create higher-quality, more affordable health care for patients."

So, mandate everyone have health insurance? Sure thing. Create more bureaucracy to undercut legitimate businesses? Heck no.

So, am I off base? Am I missing something?

Universal Health Coverage

This article on MSNBC has, I think, a very good article explaining the basis for the proposed health care plan. If these ideas are what is being discussed through the House and Senate, I can get on board with it. Here are some reasons why:

Just as drivers must purchase auto insurance, the medical system of the future would put responsibility for health coverage first and foremost on every adult.

This analogy seems pretty reasonable to me. Auto insurance doesn't just protect me from other drivers, it protects other drivers from me. I can safely go out on the road knowing that I won't be driven into bankruptcy because some uninsured yahoo crashes into me. Yes, there is still a risk, but it is decreased greatly. Likewise, if everyone buys into health care coverage, not only will it help them, but it helps me. Here is how:

Nearly one-third of the uninsured in the United States in 2007 were between the ages of 19 and 29, and 42 percent were between 30 and 54, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. A fair number of young, healthy workers choose not to purchase insurance, believing they do not need it.

Advocates of universal coverage want to lure that group into the insurance pool because they tend to use fewer medical services and help keep premiums down. If only the sick buy coverage, premiums will be high. And visits to emergency rooms by uninsured patients increase premiums for the insured — by $1,000 per person per year, according to some estimates.

The last figure mentioned, the $1,000 increase in premiums for the uninsured visiting ER's. That's a pretty powerful figure. I hear horror stories, all the time, from my friends who remain in the medical profession, about people who go to the ER for all sorts of non-ER related issues ... because they don't have health care. That sort of wastefulness needs to stop. Perhaps this can help.

Another reason to think this is workable is that there is precedent:

The concept is modeled after a requirement instituted in Massachusetts three years ago as part of that state's broad health-care overhaul. And like the Massachusetts law, the individual mandate proposed by congressional Democrats would be paired with a much more controversial new requirement that nearly every employer contribute to the total cost of care.

This has worked before, in Massachusetts, a law that was put into effect during the governorship of Republican Mitt Romney. Say what you want about the man, but I think he's demonstrated that he has been a shrewd business man, and I've got to think that he thought this would make good financial sense otherwise he would have opposed it. Currently, only about 3% of the citizens of Massachusetts are uninsured. I'm not sure how closely the new plan matches up with what was presented in Massachusetts, but hopefully Congress is smart enough to take a working model and use that as their template.

Why are we debating this?

Congress wants to keep producing the F-22. To purchase 7 more planes will cost the taxpayer 1.8 billion dollars. That's a hefty chunk of change. The question is, is the plane obsolete in this day of modern warfare where the battlefield isn't so much a field as it is an urban setting?

Seems to me that if we're going to produce any warplanes, perhaps we should revive the A-10 Thunderbolt which has played an integral role in both Iraq and Afghanistan. For some reason, I don't think we'll be going to war with Russia or China in the near future, and we really should focus on our more immediate needs. For comparison, the A-10 costs ~$11 million per plane, the F-22 costs $135 million per plane. So we save (even majorly perhaps) by providing planes which have an immediate practical use ... and then we bank the savings to pay down the debt. And we keep jobs because we're still manufacturing warplanes.

Of course, I may be oversimplifying things, and initial startup costs will be expensive ... oh whatever, just cancel all the damn projects. And if China invades ... Wolverines!

If Franken ...

... is going to keep doing things like this, I have no beef with him.

Franken wrote in an opinion published Monday in the Star Tribune that his proposed pilot program will train "a statistically significant number of dogs" to measure the benefits to veterans living with devastating injuries sustained on the battlefield.

The dogs' companionship, Franken said, provides invaluable health benefits -- both physical and emotional -- to veterans suffering from debilitating injuries and psychological disorders. The service dogs will help "reduce the suicide rate among veterans, decrease the number of hospitalizations, and lower the cost of medications and human care," he said.

Manuscript Tracker

It's such a groovy thing. So two of the three reviewers have already finished their reviews of my latest submitted manuscript. Turnaround time of less than 20 days. So now we're waiting on reviewer #3. This is a pretty cool process, the only problem is ... I'm now probably going to drive myself mad watching that third reviewer to see when it is turned in!

Carl Sagan

The Lab Lemming ponders on whether Carl Sagan was really "all that". He fails to see it, and so do I. I grew up watching NOVA, Nature, and Wild Kingdom, not so with Cosmos. I opined as follows:

I'm not sure there will ever be one single individual who will be universally cited for inspiring a generation to seriously consider scientific pursuits.

Interestingly enough, today the US is celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the moon. One would think that projects such as this, and not single individuals, would be more suited as inspirational devices.

The problem is, when will we have our next "scientific revolution"? The economy and political state of the world, clearly seem to be hampering such endeavors at the present time.

So, do we need an "individual" or is the "project" more important? To me it seems that projects can capture the countries/worlds imagination more aptly than any single individual can.

The Eagle Has Landed!

Today is the 40th Anniversary of one of the greatest achievements in all of human history. On this day 40 years ago, Neil Armstrong became the first man to step on the moon. Caption: Picture of Buzz Aldrin standing next to the US flag planted on the moon.

To celebrate this outstanding scientific achievement, here is some link goodness celebrating it:

1. Apollo 11 Fast Facts (FoxNews)

2. Phil Plait writes what Apollo 11 meant to him (Bad Astronomy Blog)

3. A 10 year old played a role in getting Apollo 11 home (CNN)

4. Remembering Apollo 11 - The Big Picture (Boston Globe)

5. NASA's 30th Anniversary Page for Apollo 11 (NASA)

6. NASA's 40th Anniversary Page for Apollo 11 (NASA)

7. Wired Science Article on next 40 years for NASA (Wired Science)

8. A list of the Apollo 11 Science Experiments (LPI)

9. A PDF to the Apollo 11 Preliminary Science Report (NASA)

And no linkage list is complete without a link to a Top Ten List:
10. Ten Things You Didn't Know About Apollo 11 (Popular Science)

Enjoy!

Public outreach ...

... so there is a huge hubbub occurring amongst quite a number of science blogs across the internets lately. As part of their focus on the state of science in the United States of America, Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum, the bloggers on The Intersection, speak to the issue of better outreach to the public by the scientific community. The question is, what form should that outreach take?

Obviously this is not an either/or type of question ... there are any number of things that can be done, and some of them should obviously be done in concert with others. As a government scientist, I am always being asked to present my ideas in a manner which would be accessible to a non-scientist. They're called "interpretative summaries". Over at DrugMonkey, neurolover mentioned that PLoS Biology has a similar concept which is called "author summary", and is defined thusly:

Distinct from the scientific abstract, the author summary is included in the article to make findings accessible to an audience of both scientists and non-scientists. Ideally aimed to a level of understanding of an undergraduate student, the significance of the work should be presented simply, objectively, and without exaggeration.

I see no reason why NIH could not make this a mandatory component of scientifically published manuscripts. Then, these "author summaries" are made available on PubMed, Scopus, Google Scholar and the like. So when people look for scientific information and are led to PubMed, instead of an abstract filled with technical jargon, they get an easy to read summary.

Granted, it is not a "cure all" for the problems we have, but it is a supremely simple thing to implement and IMO, every little bit helps.

So ...

... I changed my template again. Hope the colors aren't glaringly annoying.

No doubt the boy named Sue ...

... wound up in jail.

Writing in Social Science Quarterly, Shippensburg University professor David Kalist says giving newborn males oddball, girly or strange first names may just help land them in jail.

Sue wasn't exactly on the list, but if you're named Alec, Ernest, Garland, Ivan, Kareem, Luke, Malcolm, Preston, Tyrell, or Walter, you have the deck stacked against you.

Of course, I always thought Luke was on the right/light side of the Force ...

Currently ...

Reading

Listening To

So that's who to blame!

For everyone who hated, with a white-hot, searing passion ... the movie Titanic, it seems that our loathing should be directed at the TV show Growing Pains. The last two slides explains it all.

Alaska attacked!

Brower said it wouldn't necessarily surprise him if the substance turns out to be some sort of naturally occurring phenomenon, but the borough is waiting until it gets the analysis back from the samples before officials say anything more than they're not sure what it is.

"From the air it looks brownish with some sheen, but when you get close and put it up on the ice and in the bucket, it's kind of blackish stuff ... (and) has hairy strands on it."

Hairy strands? Oh no, it's the Morgellon Monster!

UPDATE (07/20/09): It appears to be simple marine algae. Bummer.

"We got the results back from the lab today," Ed Meggert of the state Department of Environmental Conservation told the Anchorage Daily News late last week. "It was marine algae."

Say what?!?!?

NASA plans on dumping the ISS into the Pacific Ocean in 2016.

Well, there's another portion of our tax dollars completely wasted. I'm not sure the cost ($100 billion dollars when everything is counted up) will be recouped in the next six years or so. Surely the ISS needs to remain in orbit well beyond 2016.

Medium Rare? Perhaps Not For Much Longer

MRSA in our food supply? The article cites a study done by Tara Smith, who blogs on Aetiology.

Then in 2008, a new source and strain of MRSA emerged in the United States. Researcher Tara Smith, PhD, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of Iowa, studied two large Midwestern hog farms and found the strain, ST398, in 45 percent of farmers and 49 percent of pigs. The startling discovery — and the close connection between animal health and our own that it implied — caused widespread publicity and much official hand-wringing. To date, though, the government has yet to put a comprehensive MRSA inspection process in place, let alone fix our problematic meat-production system.

This is pretty disturbing news, and cooking food properly is only half the battle. Handling of raw meat is the time when individuals will be most exposed, and it requires that proper sanitation methods be utilized to clean up food prep areas after the meat has been prepped.

If you ask me, when I'm done with a cutting board, I'd soak all the utensils which came in contact with the meat, and the cutting board itself in a 10% bleach solution for at least 10 to 15 minutes. Only then would I thoroughly clean them with soap and water. As for cooking meat, the FSIS (Food Safety and Inspection Service) has a handy chart listing their minimal recommended temperatures. Oh, and always wash your thermometer between temp takings!

Dirt! The Movie

So as I mentioned in my last blog post one of the filmmakers of Dirt! The Movie, Gene Rosow, attended the annual SWCS meeting to preview the movie for us. It was recently shown to the Sundance Film Festival and is still being worked on, but we got to see a mostly finished product (If I recall correctly, I think they're extending it a bit for release to the public).

I'm sure the use of the word "dirt*" annoyed a fair number of the soil scientists in the room, however in defense, the movie is inspired by the book Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth by the journalist William Bryant Logan.

So with popcorn in one hand, and a beer in the other, we settled into the Hyatt's Grand Ballroom to watch the movie. As I said earlier, the trailer was a bit off-putting, giving us an anthropomorphic earth, talking to us about all the good times and then the bad times that he and humans have shared, and getting really angry when humans started doing things like strip mining ... going all postal with volcano eruptions and the like. I hope they don't keep using that trailer. If I recall correctly, they do use the anthropomorphic ploy in the movie, but it's less over the top, and only occurs in the very beginning. NOTE: I did have to skip out to use the restroom once during the film, and if the volcano stuff was used during that period, I missed it ... but I don't think it was. The movie is narrated by Jamie Lee Curtis, though it's not a heavily narrated film.

The film is, instead, largely full of interviews with various experts and people who are otherwise involved in awareness and conservation. Some of the interviews include:

Bill Logan - Author of the book which inspired the movie.
Andy Lipkis - Founder of TreePeople
Dr. Vandana Shiva - Physicist, Environmental Activist
Wangari Maathai - Nobel Laureate and Founder, Green Belt Movement
Miguel Altieri - Professor of Agroecology, UC Berkeley
Peter Girguis - Assistant Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University

This is a very short list of the people interviewed for the movie, the rest you can see by clicking on the link above. The interviews are all well done, and except for one gratuitous f-bomb (it's not necessary at all and that part of the interview is sort of pointless) by one of the interviewee's it is a movie which can be seen by the entire family. For demonstrative purposes when explaining microbial processes, the authors rely on cartoons shorts which are rather cute if simplistic. At this point I should note, if you're looking for a scientific treatise here, you're not going to get it. For example, while the word "soil" is used a handful of times, people (even the scientists) do play along by calling it "dirt". Things are presented in broad terms and concepts, but I think they're presented in such a way as to be easy to comprehend, which will most definitely appeal to a much wider audience.

In addition to the science, the film also spends time highlighting conservation efforts such as TreePeople, The Edible Schoolyard, The Greenhouse Project at Rikers Island, and Sustainable South Bronx, all grassroot efforts to increase awareness of our most important natural resource, soil. As Secretary Vilsack said in his speech given earlier that day, there is a great need to bring understanding to the public, especially those in urban areas, that our food does not come from the grocery store. He spoke to the plight of "food deserts", and how not only does it highlight a need for better nutrition, which in turn will result in better health (lower obesity rates as one example) but hopefully greater public awareness and enhanced conservation efforts. I think this movie, though it does not (as far as I can remember) mention food deserts directly, can help in this effort.

Overall, the movie was very well done. As a documentary I think it does an excellent job in raising awareness and understanding of an area where they is very little knowledge by the public. If this movie can reach a wide audience I think it will do a lot of good, and overall I think it was received quite favorably by those who attended the showing. Personally, I will be purchasing a copy, and if it does not contain the f-bomb, I will be sending it to my sister who show to her science classes. I certainly hope the filmmakers have success with this movie, and hopefully this will open doors for further awareness projects along these lines.

As a documentary, I give this film 4.75 out of 5 stars. The only detraction really is the single gratuitous curse-word, which will hurt the ability of teachers to show this movie to their science classes. If that can be removed, I think this becomes an extremely valuable tool in the hand of conservationists.


*I've made the mistake of calling it "dirt" a couple of times (still trying to get the medical microbiology out of my veins) only to be rejoined with glares and looks of major disapproval.

Dirt! The Preview

So I'm here at the Soil and Water Conservation Society annual meeting. Listened to the Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, give the opening lecture. The meeting organizers then mentioned that tonight there will be a screening of the new documentary Dirt! The Movie, which was shown at the Sundance Film Festival. They showed a two minute clip, probably to generate interest. I'm a bit conflicted (I know it's based on a book, also named Dirt!, but couldn't they name it Soil! The Movie ???) but I'm going to watch it. It clocks in at about 80 minutes in its current version. The final version will not be released until next year, from what I gathered.

At any rate, I may blog about it later.

Lego Star Wars

This game totally rocks.

Total play time: 20 hours
% of game completed: 30%

Definitely worth the $20 price tag.

It's shaping up to be ...

... another disappointing year to be a Mets fan.

Boo hoo

Not to be outdone in the histrionics category, P.Z. Myers gets his nose bent out of sorts because he didn't get a copy of Chris Mooney's new book as quickly as some others had. Oh noes!

I received Chris Mooney's last two books as review copies, before the simple folk could get theirs, and I also gave them positive (and sincere!) reviews. I'd noticed that he's got a new book out, but strangely, I hadn't been sent a copy this time. I was wondering what was up with that ...

Oh, I don't know ... maybe Chris thought it was time you actually paid for your damn copy? Of course the complaining resulted in his being sent a copy, so all is well in Myers world now, we suppose. At least until he reads all the chapters, because then he may "... have to be brutal." in his review. Oh good Lord, what will we do then?

Summer Camp!

Here we have free-thinker Richard Dawkins, who is so supportive of free-thought that he wants to indoctrinate children to think exactly as he does. Of course, he also argues that teaching children religion amounts to child abuse. Atheism is, of course, just fine and dandy, and it's the sort of indoctrination which is, I presume according to him, not child abuse. There is nothing hypocritical here folks, not at all. Move along.

Of course, Dawkins jumped the shark years ago with his horribly researched book* The God Delusion, which was summarily destroyed by Alister E. McGrath.

*Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds, and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology. - Terry Eagleton

What the?

So my collaborator on a recent co-first-authored paper informed me that they received their reviews back today. Sweet Jimminy! It took exactly 30 days for the submission and return of the reviews. Here in agriculture-review-land, I had to wait over 100 days for the reviews of my submission to be returned to me (which I now need to address). My current submission has been in for 8 days. Wonder if I'll hear anything back in the next 22?

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

Finished up statistics training this week. I swear, it's like the summer of lost productivity. Between meetings and training, I'm surprised anything is getting done! At any rate, we went through this statistics training. Blergh. When the instructor started getting into SAS, my mind turned to goop. Sure, I can do most of my stuff on Excel, but I'm afraid that when I write up in my M&M that I used Excel, I'll get laughed out of review. So, SAS it is (besides, it's provided to us for free). At any rate, if anyone knows of a good SAS book, drop me the tip in the comments, I'd be most appreciative.

So I'm putting together ...

... my opinions on the whole "science and religion" hullabaloo which has made the rounds across many blogs lately, most notably (by me at least) on the blogs of Chris Mooney and Jerry Coyne. I've tried to follow the main players as much as I could. This of course means I've completely ignored the hanger-ons, the ones who can be likened to those annoying kids who would shout "Yeah dude, take that!" after someone else did all the hard work (be it providing a beat down, insult, what have you). I always wondered what it took to become a well known science blogger, and after reading some of the tripe across the net lately, I've decided that it doesn't take much. Probably just kissing enough of the right posteriors. Anyways, look for the entry to be finished in the next few days. I'm trying to equally offend both sides of the issue, so I want to get enough sources* together to ensure I do it justice.

*I'm going to do some serious Richard Dawkins scholarship here. I'm looking up as many websites as I can.

I'll pass ...

... on visiting "The Ledge" at Sears Tower. I live thousands of miles away, with both feet firmly planted on the ground, and it still makes me uncomfortable.

Yeah, uh, ummm ...

... I may skip the Transformers movie. The review is totally friggin hilarious. One of the commenters sums it up best when they say: Wow. I wish I could not see this movie more than once.

Hear, hear!

Don't waste tax payer dollars to kill Iran democracy movement!

Obama can help this budding seed of hope for civil liberties even more emphatically by altogether cutting the budget "to promote democracy in Iran," evidently channeled through the U.S. Agency for International Development. Ken Dilanian of USA Today reports, "the Obama administration is moving forward with plans to fund groups that support Iranian dissidents."

This financial aid is not only a waste of taxpayer money under these severe economic circumstances, but is in fact the surest way to kill that inborn and grassroots movement.

It mostly will be abused by expatriate and entirely discredited opposition groups ranging from the monarchist supporters of Reza Pahlavi to the members of the Mojahedin Khalq Organization, and it will in turn strengthen the hand of the regime to denounce the Green Movement as funded by Americans.

I am never surprised at how our government wastes our tax dollars.

So my ASM General Meeting ...

... talks arrived in the mail today. If you attended the meeting and wanted to re-hear the oral presentations you could order them from Sound Images @ http://www.e-attend.com. I ordered them, and they arrived.

What a total cluster. Not only do I need to install a program to view the files, I need to open up ports in my firewall to give SI Mosaic access to the internet, and I need to install "Microsoft Silverlight". What the hell is up with that? Why these couldn't just be in a damn MP3/MP4/AVI/QT format is beyond me. Oh yah, probably because of "piracy". I'm sure most ASM microbiologists are going to throw these lectures up on PirateBay. Give me a freakin break. I need to jump through a million hoops just to listen to a couple of damn lectures, how pathetic is that?

Using Twitter to crush a revolution

According to Mark Shea, Iranian security forces are using Twitter to hunt down bloggers via location/timezone searches. He makes the following recommendation for those wishing to support those in Iran who wish to see democracy come to their country:

If you use Twitter, set your location to Tehran & your time zone to GMT +3.30. Iranian security forces are hunting for bloggers using location/timezone searches. The more people at this location, the more of a logjam it creates for forces trying to shut down Iranians' access to the internet. Cut & paste & pass it on.

Hopefully this will work/help.

h/t Mark Shea

Confocal Microscopy

My lab has a confocal microscope. Actually, we have a pretty damn good microscope. It's a Nikon Eclipse C1 Plus. We're in the process of ramping up experiments for the confocal. Our hope is that we'll be able to see microbial (both bacterial and fungal) interactions -- primarily physical associations for now -- in soil aggregates which may explain how soil aggregates form, and hopefully shed some light on how these organisms obtain nutrients (from both each other and from the nutrients in the soil).

Using a confocal microscope however is not like using your light microscope. There are a number of additional factors which must be taken into account when setting up your experiments.

A couple of issues to consider:
1. Does my sample autofluoresce? Plants are notoriously bad autofluorescers (I don't think that's even a word), especially in the 488 excitation range. You want to keep this in mind when using fluors such as Alexa-488, FITC, and GFP. Soil, and even animal tissues, also suffer from autofluorescence. Sometimes this can be helpful, but often times it can be problematic.

2. What are you going to do with your samples? Are they dead or alive? If they are alive, you may want to do your experiments on a spinning disk confocal microscope (if one is available) which are less damaging to live cells. Also, are you going to try to determine colocalization? If so, you really need to know what objective lens you are going to use for your imaging.

Why? Well, when fluors are excited, they emit light. When you are using more than one color fluor, these fluors are emitting light at different wavelengths. When they pass through the objective lens, if it is not corrected for those different wavelengths, some of the light will hit the confocal microscopes pinhole (iris) out of focus. This is known as chromatic aberration. So, for example, if you look at the image to the right, you see that when the blue wavelength comes into focus (when it comes to a point), if that is where your pinhole is, then your red and green light are out of focus. What this is means then is that when you're doing your Z-stack (3rd dimension), this will result in a "shift" of your image between your in focus light and your out of focus wavelengths. There are a couple of ways to correct for this shift if it occurs. You can compress your Z-stack (but you lose your 3rd dimension, and are stuck with only XY ... and the Z is part of the whole point of confocal microscopy in the first place), you can scan your fluors consecutively and then computationally merge the images (hard to do with live, moving cells, and is problematic for other purposes), or you can make sure you have the appropriate set of lenses.

Types of lenses:
1. Plan - these lenses are corrected to provide a flat field of view. Your objective lens should be plan lenses.

2. Achromats* - corrects chromatic aberrations for blue and red wavelengths. This means you can colocalize with blue and red fluors.

3. Fluorites* - Also corrects chromatic aberrations for blue and red wavelengths.

4. Apochromats* - corrects chromatic aberrations for blue, green, and red wavelengths. Newer apochromats can correct for up to 6 wavelengths, but they're extremely expensive.

So, if you're doing a colocalization experiment with a blue, green, and red fluor, you're obviously going to want to your scope to have an objective lens which is a plan apochromat. Not all of them need to be plan apochromats (seems overkill on the 20X if you're not collecting your data at 20X), but the one you collect your data with (be it 40X, 63X, or 100X depending upon your sample) should be.

*These lenses correct for chromatic aberration, and to some degree spherical aberration as well.

Resources
Microscopy Society of America
Nikon - Microscopy U
Olympus Microscopy Resource Center

Reference
Ying Li, Warren A. Dick, and Olli H. Tuovinen. 2003. Evaluation of fluorochromes for imaging bacteria in soil. Soil Biology and Biochemistry. 35: 737-744 (PDF, 8 pages)

Holy Cannoli!

Saw this "10 Things NOT TO DO in New York City" interactive and had to take a peek. Being a New York native I was interested in seeing what things I should never have done when in the city.

I can agree with eight. The two I disagree on:

1. There is absolutely nothing wrong with dirty-water dogs. Hell, the dirtier the water, the better the dog!

2. Nothing wrong with shopping at Macy's either, especially during the Christmas season. Their windows are the best of the bunch, and the entire top floor becomes Santa's Workshop.

As a matter of fact, if you must travel to NYC, do it during the Christmas season. Yes, it'll be a friggin zoo, but there are a few reasons to do so (a handful of them below).

1. The stink is less. I guess the cold air keeps that wet garbage smell away from the nostrils.

2. The entire city is lit up like a Christmas tree. The shops all have their windows decorated, Macy's has their Santa's Workshop up and going too.

3. Nothing like visiting FAO Schwarz during the holidays!

4. Rockefeller Center, Tree and Ice Rink.

5. The stink is less.

Oh, and Rocco's rocks!

One leaves, another one arrives ...

... so sent my manuscript out for review today.

Shortly afterwards, a request for the review of a manuscript arrives. Unfortunately, they were not asking me to review my own paper. Heh.

All told, this manuscript took me about 10 weeks from start to finish. If not for the bureaucratic red-tape, it would have taken closer to 7. Not sure if that's a good turn-around time from sitting down to write to getting it to the editors desk. All I know is that my next one needs to go out much quicker than that. But first, time to answer the reviewer comments from my last manuscript, which returned to me almost 4 months after it was sent out. There is no reason a review should take almost twice as long as it takes me to write the whole thing!

Citizen Doctors

It's sad when a teenager has to diagnose her own disease.

In her Advanced Placement high school science class, she was looking under the microscope at slides of her own intestinal tissue -- slides her pathologist had said were completely normal -- and spotted an area of inflamed tissue called a granuloma, a clear indication that she had Crohn's disease.

However, the fact that she had the proper tools available, and training, to make the discovery, gives me hope that our country will remain a leader in the sciences.

Celebrity Drama ...

... I'm sure everyone saw this coming. But come on ...

Kate said that the pressures of fame were not a cause of their marital problems. “I believe that it’s a chapter that probably would have played out had the world been watching or not.”

Perhaps, but perhaps not. When your dirty laundry is aired in public, it is much harder to reconcile. Everyone makes mistakes, everyone does stupid things, some even do things that they clearly should not have done. Part of the benefit of living a private life is that you are eventually (hopefully) able to put such things behind you. When you seek fame and fortune, your past tends to follow you wherever you go. That cannot make it easy to move beyond things.

On another note ... who the hell is Perez Hilton, and why do we give a crap about him? Another example of the famous for being famous crowd. And what a hypocrite to boot. He slams Carrie Prejean for her stumble on his gay rights question at the Miss America Beauty Pageant, and then he calls Will.I.Am a faggot? For real. What a tool.

Opportunities Lost

AKA: Why we need to protect the environment.

... this past weekend I was invited out to dinner. While there I was engaged in a very interesting discussion with some other people about the environment and alternative fuel sources. One person suggested that we dam up all the local rivers and use them for hydroelectric power. I commented that this would disrupt local ecosystems, which in turn would have a detrimental effect on a number of species in those locales, possibly resulting in extinction of more than a few of them. Some of which we may not even know exist.

The reply? If they can't manage to get around the dams, to hell with them.

This report is support for my own position. Once we start damaging ecosystems, we run the risk of losing species. When we do so, we may actually be reducing our own ability to identify and develop extremely useful treatments for our own medical benefit. That is supported by the data reported on in this manuscript.

In addition, there is a massive largely, currently untapped, repository of bacterial species, currently unclassified ... most not even known to exist ... which may carry defenses which we could develop for antimicrobial therapies. Metagenomics will eventually be able to identify such antimicrobials, but if we wipe out those environments before we ever get to test them ... it is an opportunity lost.

References
Mangoni, M., Maisetta, G., Di Luca, M., Gaddi, L., Esin, S., Florio, W., Brancatisano, F., Barra, D., Campa, M., & Batoni, G. (2007). Comparative Analysis of the Bactericidal Activities of Amphibian Peptide Analogues against Multidrug-Resistant Nosocomial Bacterial Strains Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, 52 (1), 85-91 DOI: 10.1128/AAC.00796-07

Okuyama-Nishida et al. Prevention of Death in Bacterium-Infected Mice by a Synthetic Antimicrobial Peptide, L5, through Activation of Host Immunity. Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, 2009; 53 (6): 2510 DOI: 10.1128/AAC.00863-08

I agree with Bork ...

... no habeas corpus to the Guantanamo detainees.

On another front, the court has decided three cases against the Bush administration on Guantanamo, the most recent one giving habeas corpus rights to supposed enemy combatants. What do you make of that whole line of cases?

It strikes me as preposterous to begin to extend rights to enemy combatants that we never extended to captured Germans, Italians and Japanese in World War II. It's also dangerous once we begin to judicialize the conduct of a war. It can only make our forces less effective. But something has changed in the attitude. I think it was the invasion of Grenada, when a commanding officer refused to let the press come to the front lines, and a reporter said "in World War II we were allowed in the front lines," and the commander said "in World War II you were on our side."

I know that the way wars are waged has changed since WW II, but an enemy combatant is still an enemy combatant. Millions of people a year struggle and strive to earn the benefits of living in this country, one of them being habeas corpus. Why this is now extended to people who wish to destroy our country, is beyond me. It's not about "being fair", because there are ways to be fair without extending enemies and non-citizens habeas corpus.

So I was away ...

... doing some technical training for the past week. Now, I am back, and will resume blogging on Monday. Hopefully.

When the irresistable force meets the immoveable object ...

So this conversation that has been going on over at The Intersection, and which I blogged on yesterday about this abhorrent Japanese game, got me thinking (imagine that). One of the commenters on the original thread, and which I reposted in the comment section of my own entry said:

The other issue with a game like this is that it appears that every rapist goes through an escalation process, mimicked in the game by the forced fondling prior to the rape. It seems to me fairly obvious that this game would serve as that escalation process. No “normal” man wants to rape. Therefore, anyone who buys this game already has rape fantasies that could escalate.

Which got me to thinking about the whole virtual child pornography issue because it seems that the two cover similar ground. I couldn't remember what the legal rulings were on it, so I googled and it turns out SCOTUS considered it protected "free speech". However, I came across an article (PDF, 6 pages) that discussed the issue and it seems that it is equally (if not more so) applicable in the issue we're discussing today.

The abstract for Neil Levy's paper reads as follows:

The United States Supreme Court has recently ruled that virtual child pornography is protected free speech, partly on the grounds that virtual pornography does not harm actual children. I review the evidence for the contention that virtual pornography might harm children, and find that it is, at best, inconclusive. Saying that virtual child pornography does not harm actual children is not to say that it is completely harmless, however. Child pornography, actual or virtual, necessarily eroticizes inequality; in a sexist society it therefore contributes to the subordination of women.

Bold emphasis mine. If you change the words "child pornography" with "rape" it reads: Rape, actual or virtual, necessarily eroticizes inequality; in a sexist society it therefore contributes to the subordination of women. Now, I'm not a lawyer, but could one reasonable argue then that protection of "free speech" in the cases of these software may come at the price of harming the equality of women? What would happen in such a case? Would free speech win out?

Onto some of the points made by the paper:

Though it is obvious that no child is harmed by the manufacture of virtual child pornography, supporters of the act typically maintain that it remains harmful to children, and ought to be prohibited for this reason. They advance several arguments, designed to show
that real children are harmed by virtual pornography:

(1) Child pornography causes child abuse;

(2) Virtual child pornography will be used to seduce actual children;

(3) Allowing virtual child pornography makes laws banning real child pornography unenforceable;

(4) Child pornography, actual or virtual, on the Internet allows isolated pedophiles and potential pedophiles to contact each other and reinforce each other’s desires. It thus increases the probability of offenses.

He then goes on to address each point. I think #4 is pertinent since these software games often include "inviting friends" to engage in the acts to win you further points in the game. To this effect Neil Levy states:

(4) I turn lastly to the argument that permitting child pornography on the Internet allows isolated pedophiles and potential pedophiles to contact one another, and thereby mutually reinforce each others’ pedophilic tendencies. This is a variant on the first argument, that child pornography causes child abuse, but it is worth treating separately, on the grounds that it gives the argument a new, Internet-focused, twist. Perhaps merely viewing pictures or films of (apparent) children engaged in sexual activity does not cause child abuse, but talking to other people who are engaged in, or who are considering, child abuse, can make this deviant activity seem quite normal. As Roger Darlington, chairman of the Internet Watch Foundation, notes,

On the net you gain access to a community that legitimises your views. If you are operating in the real world, then meeting other paedophiles will require some organisation and will be difficult, but online you’ll find hundreds of thousands of people who share your views worldwide.

This is but one aspect of a wider problem: the radicalization of people who meet and talk only to the likeminded, through the medium of the Internet. Carl Sunstein, whose book Republic.com is largely devoted to it and related problems, calls this the phenomenon of group polarization. Dicussion only with the likeminded encourages extremism and contempt for the opinions of others. Because the Internet enables and encourages such discussion, even for those with minority tastes who would otherwise be isolated from one another, it becomes a breeding ground for hate groups, political radicals – and pedophiles.

This of course leads to an interesting turn of the discussion in the paper:

If group polarization is a serious problem, it is a problem which arises largely out of speech; out of the discussions among the likeminded, and not significantly out of the viewing of images. If group polarization is a significant risk among those who have pedophilic desires, this gives us a reason to limit what they may say to each other, even to prevent them seeking one another out. This makes the problem more, not less, troubling, since it brings the right to freedom of speech into direct conflict with the right we all have to forestall clear and present dangers.

Which essentially is the point of this post. Which one would win? Would the burden be too much to prove that rape software presents a clear and present danger? Neil Levy essentially closes with the following:

Now, we have seen that the evidence that virtual child [pornography] harms actual children is weak. But we have good reason to believe that the eroticization of inequality harms women. Obtaining equal status for all women requires, inter alia, a new sexuality: a sexuality in which inequality is not a condition of sexual pleasure for men or women. It requires that sexual relations be conducted between equals. But since child pornography is necessarily an eroticization of inequality, allowing it undermines efforts to forge this new sexuality. Perhaps, then, it is because of harm to actual women, and not children, that virtual child pornography is objectionable.

One could reasonably, I presume, argue that virtual rape software likewise eroticizes inequality, and as such, actually harms women. Neil Levy does not discuss whether this harm is sufficient for banning virtual child pornography (or in this case, virtual rape software), but I think it warrants serious consideration.

Reference
Neil Levy (2002). Virtual child pornography: The eroticization of inequality Ethics and Information Technology, 4, 319-323

Another downside to the economic slump ...

... hospitals cutting back on nosocomial (hospital acquired) infection control.

But infection-control professionals say their ranks are being thinned and they are losing the resources they need to fight infections as part of cutbacks linked to the economic downturn.

In a survey released today, the Association for Professionals in Infection Control says that 41% of nearly 2,000 respondents reported cuts in their budgets, including money for technology, staff, education, products and equipment. Of those, nearly 40% had layoffs or reduced hours, and a third experienced hiring freezes. Nurses who staff many of the departments say they are being asked to take on extra duties that distract them from infection control.

I've always maintained that if you MUST stay in a hospital, stay for as short a period of time as you can. I think nowadays this is even more prudent advice to follow. Because honestly? The hospitals don't seem to care.

Another concern that surfaced in the survey: only one in five respondents said their hospitals are using data-mining programs –- electronic surveillance systems that identify clusters of infections in real time so hospital staffers can intervene quickly.

Hospitals are not about making sick people well, it's about making money. Of course they do that by making most sick people well, but don't think for a minute that you're more than just a number ... with a dollar sign appended to the front of that number ... to them. If you die, the insurance still pays out. Sure killing people isn't good for business, but a measure of people are expected to die in hospitals, so unless something really egregious* happens, your death via nosocomial infection won't matter much.

*I'd be willing to bet that it'd take dozens or more people dying from the same nosocomial outbreak to garner significant attention to cause the hospital to worry about its reputation, and subsequently it's ability to turn a hefty profit.

Has anyone asked Biden to spell ...

... potato yet? Biden suffers from verbal diarrhea again.

Currently ...

Reading
Listening To

Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.

If this is this where society is heading ... I want no part of it. To be further discouraged, Amazon only banned the game* AFTER people expressed outrage.

"We determined that we did not want to be selling this particular item," a spokeswoman said.

Baloney Amazon, you only pulled it once you realized this was going to cause a huge media backlash if you didn't.

The sad thing is that this game has been out since 2006, and we're only hearing about it now. There is an extremely seedy element to society, one that we're not often privy to. Women and children kidnapped and sold into sexual slavery? It happens more than we'd like to think. Abhorrent software such as the crud linked above? Obviously it exists, lurking just underneath the scum of the stagnant pool we call our society.

Isn't it time we had enough of such stuff, stood up, and demanded an end to it?

h/t: Sheril at the Intersection.

*I'm not even going to provide details here, go check out the link ... I don't want any traffic at my site for any idiots who are even considering this game.

Death by a thousand cuts ...

... and it's going to be long, very painful, and extremely unfair. All predicated on a lie too if it comes to pass.

Obama’s new openness to the idea stands in contrast to what he said six months ago as a presidential candidate, when he harshly criticized his Republican rival, Sen. John McCain, for proposing that employer-provided benefits should be taxed.

Scolding McCain in their debate on Oct. 15, Obama said, “This is your plan, John. For the first time in history, you will be taxing people's health-care benefits.”

Once again, why don't we consider spending less instead of spending more and figuring out how we're going to pay for it? Isn't that what got us into this mess in the first place?

Another Wii update ...

So I broke out Samba de Amigo last night. The game is a hoot. I'd give it a 9 out of 10 (the lost point because the remote doesn't get your hand positions correct -- typically when they're pointed in the same direction -- in some of the poses). If you want a party game, this is the one. It's also a two player game, and if you don't like the Wiimote + nunchuck combination for play, you can play with two Wiimotes together (so you'll need 4 Wiimotes if you're playing a two player game).

Oh, I also went to see Land of the Lost yesterday. I thought it was a waste of $6.50 (matinee). I guess it was my own damn vault* though.


*If you've seen the movie, you'll get that.

Eh?

The Grey's Anatomy Video Game for the Wii.

No, I did not buy it. I didn't even pick the case up. Indeed, I saw it and immediately said to myself: WTF? but that was about the extent of it. Well, that and blogging about it. If anyone actually buys this game ... they're a total homer.

On the other hand, I did totally buy Samba de Amigo along with the maraca attachment. I'm so going to get a kick out of watching my family play this game.

Yep, I'll get back to science blogging at some point.

What does it tell you ...

... when the average age of USA Senators is near the age of retirement? Is it that we really want wise individuals* in these positions, that the work really isn't all that demanding, that the jobs are so cushy that they don't want to let go of them when it comes time, or something else?


*Looking at some of the escapades of these guys -- past and present -- it makes you think hard about the idea of them being "wise".