07.10.08
Posted in Adventure, Turtles all the way down, behind the curtain at 1:45 am by CMonster
As my schedule for a busy July month sorts itself out, it’s time to look ahead to August, and plan a trip for the summer.
This is an idea that I first began to float last year, and it’s become more pressing as I’ve watched a good friend finish her seven-year quest for the PhD: I’ve set a specific goal of seeing at least one new thing every month, and at least one bigger trip in the area each year.
There’s a big disconnect at work here, though: grad school isn’t something that encourages broadening your horizons beyond the bounds of the office, and when we travel, we go far (as for conferences). The result is a set of people who might have packed across most of the world, without ever seeing much of the neighborhood near their home of so many years.
And for me, that misses the point of travel. “Tourist” spots have never really held much excitement for me, and when I go somewhere new, I try to live it, not just visit. Sometimes that means sneaking through back alleys to unusual ethnic restaurants, and other times it means kicking my shoes off in a little corner of parkland paradise in the late evening, before an outdoor concert. If I do end up in a tourist attraction, it’s usually something with a twist- like sneaking through the back ways at Ellis Island, or calling a friend to make sure that I line up exactly the same shot to compare to a photo they’d taken, six months earlier.
(The latter is partly a way to see a favorite spot change with the seasons- but there’s also something very intriguing about matching footprints with those of someone I otherwise may not have seen in years)
So- the point? Oftentimes, it’s all too easy to seek the exotic with the help of a plane ticket. But especially as travel becomes more expensive, I think it’s important to realize just how much fun can be had by playing the tourist in one’s own home. I may never live in this part of the country again- but I will be able to see that I’ve actually done more than just pass through. And as I keep looking for the little things, it’s a real treat to bring those around me along for the ride, and to see that wonder of discovery all over again.
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06.12.08
Posted in Politics, Turtles all the way down at 10:41 am by CMonster
From the Wall Street Journal’s health blog comes this shining gem:
FDA Budget Swells as Administration Bows to Congress
In a nutshell, the FDA is the federal agency responsible for regulating the quality and safety of a variety of products. As more manufacturing of drugs has moved overseas, this job has become harder- and a few notable disasters (like the issue with contaminated heparin from China) have highlighted the issues with regulating plants in another country.
One of those issues is simply financial- it’s hard to project a government agency’s influence onto another continent without establishing a real presence there. Yet until now, the FDA hasn’t asked for more money in congressional testimony.
And that’s when the story came out: OMB rules forbid officials from doing so.
“Witnesses will avoid volunteering personal opinions that reflect positions inconsistent with the President’s program or appropriation request.”
There’s been a lot of talk about government officials being muzzled before, but in some ways, this is worse- partly because it’s an explicit rule, and partly because the normal process of debate is losing the feedback of the people in the best position to assess their own needs.
Hence if the administration screws up getting out of bed in the morning the budget, that’s too bad- we’re out more more cog in the system of checks and balances. Ugh.
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06.06.08
Posted in Not just a theorist, Turtles all the way down at 2:50 am by CMonster
I like Flickr. It’s a wonderful photo hosting service, and a few of the semi-pro photographers that I know use it to show off their latest work.
One of the features that the site offers, unfortunately, is a way to prevent people from saving a picture (for example, if you’re planning to sell your photos, and want to keep people from stealing).
That sounds like a good thing, but it’s really pretty awful, because it lulls people into a false sense of security. Just as Flickr warns their users, the web was designed to be open: you can download any “protected” flickr photo in less than ten seconds. Here’s how: (Directions are for people using the Firefox web browser)
First, you should know that the web was designed so that any time you look at a web site, it’s easy to find all the parts that make it up. That’s not a good start for locking something down, especially when you’re dangling the item in question in front of someone!
So to get at that protected photo:
1. Click the “view” menu, and select the option near the bottom (”Page source”)
2. A new window full of gibberish comes up. Search for the word “reflect“- this will come at the end of a chunk of text enclosed in < > symbols. In that same block is a bit labeled “src=http://site.flickr.com/URLofthephoto”- copy the part starting with http into your browser address bar.
3. There’s the photo! Save it as you normally would.
Read the rest of this entry »
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05.26.08
Posted in Hug a tree, Turtles all the way down, behind the curtain at 6:47 pm by CMonster
Gas prices have gone up by something like 40 cents in the past few weeks here, so perhaps it’s appropriate that the station down the road from me has installed a new digital sign, capable of updating prices in real-time.
I’m very fortunate to live in a city with mass transit, during a season when any sort of outdoor travel is a joy- not just a way to save money. By contrast, my mother lives in a town that wasn’t even on the map until recently (here’s a photo of the downtown area), and even the simplest of errands requires some fifty miles of driving at best. She also drives an SUV.
This made for an interesting phone conversation, because to tell the truth, my feelings on gas prices are very mixed. For those living on fixed incomes, trapped in an economy where selling one’s house and moving isn’t an option- well, this is indeed tragic and wretched.
But at the same time, far rural housing developments like my mother’s were constructed as Arizona’s sprawl peaked a few years ago, and the mere existence of such subdivisions was based on the assumption that fuel was cheap and limitless. Hence the positive aspects (peace, quiet, and cleaner air) outweighed the negative traits (like the requirement for a commute that verges on the masochistic, even by Phoenix standards).
I’ll be curious to see how this plays out, and whether continued high fuel prices in the coming years force us to re-focus and live closer together- to become more accepting of apartments, and to live in a concentration that makes mass transit feasible for the shuttling of office workers to their desks every day. The stereotypical American dream of a house, lawn, and 2.1 children isn’t that old, but it certainly is ingrained.
…Which may explain my (deeply apolitical) mother’s response when I pointed out that high fuel costs were the downside of living so far in the middle of nowhere. Would this economic pressure finally make people put a premium on efficiency?, I asked.
“Don’t go all republican on me”, she said.
And I didn’t have the heart to mention the Kyoto protocol.
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05.09.08
Posted in Politics, Screechy monkeys, Such People, Turtles all the way down at 9:18 pm by CMonster
Here’s an interesting way to sideline a law you don’t care for: refuse to nominate leaders for the agency in charge of implementing it.
Yesterday, I learned that the Consumer Product Safety Commission had too few members on the panel to call a quorum: while it should have five members, it actually only clocks in at two right now. Apparently, agency rules require that at least three commissioners (a quorum) vote in favor of certain enforcement actions- like demanding a recall or issuing fines.
In the absence of a quorum, their power becomes pretty effectively (knee)capped- and of course, Bush gets to complain that Congress caused the problem by rejecting his last nominee for commissioner, a lobbyist for the manufacturing industry.
Today, I pulled up the NY Times for some light entertainment while working late, and found that the same stunt is being pulled over at the F.E.C. Has anyone done a study to find out how widespread this is?
—
And in other news, Congress will have some explaining to do come Mother’s day. Next up: a vote on Apple Pie!
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05.07.08
Posted in Turtles all the way down, technology at 1:51 pm by CMonster
When I first came to grad school and began to use our libraries, they still stamped the due date on a card inside every book.
I laughed at the time, but I also appreciated the wonderfully quaint tradition- a reminder of the days when a trip to the library was the highlight of my week (or month), and when mass-renewing meant talking to a person first.
They didn’t stamp my books today, and I find myself rather missing it. On my way out the door, I rifled through the old (index) card catalog- just in case.
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05.01.08
Posted in Looking Snazzy, Not just a theorist, Such People, Turtles all the way down at 4:39 pm by CMonster
Today is May Day, a holiday sometimes celebrated with marches and speeches in communist countries. (It’s also known as international worker’s day or labor day in some places)
There’s plenty of other things to celebrate. Some examples of sharing and caring today include:
- Our local bus line is offering free rides to anyone in town.
- The first program written in BASIC was run on this day in 1964- a time when computers were large, expensive mainframes staffed by experts. It was designed to make computing more accessible, and variants of the language are still in use even today.
- I’m told that Britain is holding elections today. (England? The U.K? Beats me.)
- Lab cleanup day (a strictly private celebration, of course!)
I’ve mostly been slaving away at the last one- my desk is once again visible, thanks in part to 50+ person hours of cleaning today. Whoo!
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04.27.08
Posted in Biology, Screechy monkeys, Turtles all the way down at 7:34 pm by CMonster
What is it about the evolution debate that turns normally rational, well-meaning scientists into kids in a sandbox? Seriously?
That’s the thought that’s been going through my head recently, with the release of a movie called “Expelled”. From everything I’ve heard, it’s a movie that thoroughly deserves to be panned- an argument in favor of teaching intelligent design that relies entirely on poor logic, vague emotional appeals, and the image of the “underdog”.
(My problems with the “intelligent design” movement- and the response of people like Richard Dawkins- would make a long post in themselves. Chad Orzel’s take on the issue is a good start, though.)
Back on topic. You see, the “Expelled” movie makes the argument that Darwinism is a straight stop on the Nazi express, and believing in evolution leads to all sorts of terrible things. As a result, I’ve had to physically stop reading quite a few science blogs: every !@#$%^&* time that someone from the bible belt thinks of Hitler, it gets blogged about.
“See! There’s a Nazi somewhere on their side- kiss the entire argument goodbye!”, goes the rallying cry. And criticism is met with some real gems- things like “They came for the biologists and I did not speak out for I wasn’t a biologist.
Not only is that annoying, but it’s sloppy. One of the things that makes evolution such a wonderful topic to study is the way that it presents a clear, reasonable, and generally consistent picture of the world, complete with clear and testable predictions. Keep what works, and discard the rest.
Give some of those same researchers and teachers an internet connection, though, and it degenerates into a carnival of mudslinging- where every emotional appeal is met with a slippery slope, and where people with names like “Stein” can be tarred with the Nazi brush for sharing a particular belief with a crackpot.
So what gives? I’ve certainly done my part to argue against intelligent design, but a lot of the science blogs I’ve seen on the debate offer the same devotion to emotional appeals, edge cases, and us-versus-them tactics that you’d expect from any lunatic. For a field that prides itself on clear, compelling logic, the scientific community could do much better.
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04.23.08
Posted in Turtles all the way down, entertainment at 5:26 am by CMonster
It’s almost time for graduation. Are your students looking for the next big thing?
Why not try a degree in pre-ninja?
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03.14.08
Posted in Politics, Turtles all the way down at 4:03 pm by CMonster
From the Chronicle of Higher Education comes one of the strangest true-crime stories I’ve heard yet:
What’s Up, Doc? German Law Bars American Ph.D.’s From Calling Themselves ‘Doctor’
Apparently, a nazi-era law prohibits the use of the honorific unless your degree was awarded in Germany. (Or possibly the EU; media coverage varies) Fortunately, several of the scientists charged happen to be directors at a highly prestigious research institute there; as a result of political pressure and an enlightened modern perspective,
…state education ministers met last week and decided to allow holders of degrees from designated American universities to call themselves “Doctor.”
I’m told that our system of university education has its roots in Germany, and I realize that nationalism has an amazing way of making idiots of people. Still, isn’t this taking pride just a bit far?
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