ideonexus.com

LOL Steve Milloy

Steve “JunkScience” Milloy, who in addition to his Faux News paycheck, receives hundreds of thousands of dollars from the tobacco industry to assure Faux viewers that second-hand smoke is a myth and cancer links to cigarettes are overblown, has issued an Ultimate Global Warming Challenge. $125,000 will be awarded to the first person to disprove the hypotheses that human greenhouse emissions are not significantly warming the Earth’s surface while cooling the stratosphere and disprove that the benefits of global warming will equal or outweigh the costs of fighting it by the year 2100, “when all global social, economic and environmental effects are considered.”

I’m sure this challenge has nothing to do with the hundreds of thousands of dollars Exxon/Mobil “donates” to Milloy’s non-profit think tanks, but let’s play anyway. This should be pretty easy to win, all we have to do is reference the 928 Peer-Reviewed Articles published in Scientific Journals showing that Global Warming is happening and we are causing it, and then top it off with the 2007 IPCC Report on Climate Change. That cool $125k is as good as ours. Right?

Not so fast, please see the fine print. Specifically #5 in the rules:

5. All entries must represent the original work of an entrant that has been produced specifically for the UGWC.

Hmmm… Okay. So we can’t go to the thousands upon thousands of scientists, Nobel laureates, private citizens and their mountains of evidence supporting Anthropogenic Global Warming Theory. We have to come up with something completely spontaneous and novel. Telling people they can’t stand upon the shoulders of giants isn’t good science, but let’s play. Everyday there’s a new story in the news about some new unanticipated effect of global warming, so we can make do. Right?

Hold on. Please see Rule #2:

2. Entrants acknowledge that the concepts and terms mentioned and referred to in the UGWC hypotheses are inherently and necessarily vague, and involve subjective judgment. JunkScience.com reserves the exclusive right to determine the meaning and application of such concepts and terms in order to facilitate the purpose of the contest.

So we’re dealing with very subjective criteria and a judging body (Steve Milloy), who will ultimately define that criteria supposedly at some later date, since he won’t set specifics now. Milloy is very busy accepting checks from Big Tobacco, Big Oil, and Faux News, so we can’t expect him to figure out those pesky details of his own unpublished hypotheses right away. That’s okay, because we all know Milloy is an honest and trustworthy soul who has no other agenda than defending us against those greedy environmentalists.

In fact, those treehugging econazis have so little evidence for their Global Warming hysteria that, as the JunkScience Website blares:

“The prize has gone unclaimed for 80 days!”

Knowing how much those Scientists love their money (It’s the only reason they go into the lucrative field of Academia.), the fact that not one has claimed the prize in three months proves the unsupportable character of their stance. Right?

Well… Not quite. See Rule #10:

10. The results of the UGWC will be announced on February 1, 2009.

So nobody’s won the prize in 80 days, but the prize won’t be awarded (if awarded at all, see Rule #4) for a whole ‘nother year. So by 02/01/2009, the JunkScience web page will be bragging:

“The prize has gone unclaimed for 540 days!”

Okay, so maybe Milloy isn’t the most trustworthy of people. Maybe he’s a bit of a snake oil salesman. That’s okay, because we’re going to take him on anyway! The contest website says:

“entries - we’ll post ‘em when we get ‘em!”

No entries? Well that’s about to change!

It took me awhile to figure out how to submit my entry. You see, Milloy’s site isn’t Section 508 Compliant, meaning it’s unnavigable to people with disabilities, lousy internet connections, and content filters (I fall into this last category when I’m at work).

So reviewing the submission instructions, we must first read the rules (check), then go the JunkScience gift shop and… um… buy something? Then we e-mail Milloy our entry in MSWord or PDF format and show him our receipt for our purchase.

To assure us all of this is 100 percent legitimate, Milloy will send us a free t-shirt making fun of us for believing in Anthropogenic Global Warming! Yay!!!

IN SUMMARY:

To have a chance to win Steve Milloy’s contest, you must disprove his twin, extremely nebulous hypotheses that people aren’t causing global warming and that global warming is a good thing. The money is coming out of Milloy’s pocket, he’s is the judge of all entries, and he doesn’t have to choose a winner.

You must reject the scientific virtue of building on your peers’ research for your submission, your submission may be manipulated and used for whatever propaganda Milloy sees fit, and you may not sue him.

When you enter the contest, you will be given a t-shirt letting everyone around you know what a dumbass you are, which raises the catch-22 of this contest: You’d have to be a puke-drooling nimrod stupider than a cup of dirt to enter the contest in the first place. In other words, stupider than Steve Milloy (and that’s lowwwwww), who will continue bragging about how there are still no winners for a contest that will not even be announcing winners until February 2009.

The Ultimate Global Warming Challenge is ultimately a great big steaming pile of horse-patootey, and Steve Milloy isn’t so much a corporate “tool,” but more of a “Useful Idiot.” I wonder what that makes his audience?

Anyways, because of our concern for the intellectual climate in addition to the ecological climate, we truth-seeking empirically-minded scientific-method-adhering folks will continue to publish in peer-review journals, work with the legitimate media, and lobby the government in open forums, places where irrelevant dink-brains like Mr. Junkman are nowhere to be found.

My cell phone has been waking me up an hour early all week because it thinks that Daylight Savings Time (DST) began last weekend. I can’t change the time because it’s managed by Cingular, so it’s the fault of their systems. Several local banks in Elizabeth City are broadcasting the incorrect time as well.

This is because the American Government adjusted the beginning and end dates for DST for 2007. Microsoft and Sun have both experienced a plethora of software glitches thanks to the adjusted dates, as have a multitude of other softwares across the world. Many programmers suffering from the change have whined about it (also see comments on this thread), but it happened anyways.

I have to agree with Daniel Read, when he says the programming problems are purely the fault of the programmers, and not a problem with DST changing. It took us a few minutes to adjust DST in the software we work on for the Coast Guard, without so much as a blip in our functionality.

We do have an ongoing issue with flights that occur at the change-over moment at the beginning of DST. This is because the hour from two to three in the morning doesn’t exist, which fouls up our flight time calculations, but this is the fault of the way our Ingres Database calculates times and out of our control. So we live with it.

As for all those software developers who were hurt by the change in Daylight Savings Time, and are trying to scapegoat it off on American politicians, I’m sorry that you are crappy programmers, but thank you for posting your rants. It lets the rest of us know who was too stupid to program an adjustable DST into their softwares! Ha! Ha! Thpppt!!! You suck! Fart on you!!!*

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*Note: This does not apply to programmers who are suffering problems, but blame themselves. Don’t worry about it. Stuff happens. You can’t program the whole freaking world into your software. One day you will. Not today. Get your patches out and best of luck!

Note Note: Happy Halloween! Is it possible that DST has been extended into November because of pressure from the Candy Lobby?

Three Domain Tree of Life

Yet another reason to feel small and insignificant, check out the Three Domain Tree of Life.

The White House may have eviscerated the CDC’s report on the health effects of Global Warming, but, we can read the portions of Redacted Testimony of CDC Director Julie L. Gerberding.

Ada Byron wrote the world’s first computer program for Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, which would have calculated a series of Bernoulli Numbers. 100 years later, six young women programmed ENIAC, the first all-electronic programmable computer.

The bright side of peak oil (PDF)? Higher gas prices may combat obesity.

Plantoid Concept Robot

Interesting piece on a Plant Intelligence Lab that looks at the ways plants solve the problems of existing to produce solutions in robotics and telecommunications. The article never mentions it, but looking to nature for solutions in this manner is known as bionics.

I don’t know if this means I’m creative, or if I’m just lousy at math. See how you do on this test.

File this one under Guerilla Gardening, check out Moss Graffiti. Viva La Revolucion!!!

Being an optimist, but not an extreme optimist, is good for economic health.

Another reason to dread Hubble’s eventual demise, the telescope has recently photographed two galaxies dancing with one another:

heic0717

Food Science with Dr. Kiki Sanford

No wonder my mom says I’m cool.

Doctor Kirsten (”Kiki”) H. Sanford, Ph.D hosts this week in science radio show and podcast, authors The Bird’s Brain blog, co-created the Unicorn Museum website brilliantly parodying the Creation Museum, and stars in the totally ass-kicking anything-goes culinary ninja videoblog Food Science, where she blowtorches creme brulie, makes ice cream with liquid nitrogen, and uses infrared thermometers in a totally geektacular and scientiferifically entertaining way.

Oh yeah, and she’s also on twitter, which indicates a level of transhumanist wired-into-the-mainframe level of cybergeekdom that borders on the next step in human evolution. Okay, maybe twitter isn’t that far out there, but it does tip toe into dangerous post-human territory.

All this and a cirriculum vitae of dizzying awesomeness. It makes me look at my BA in English and get degree envy… degree inadequacy… I’m trying to work a Freudian/Academia metaphore/gag in here, but it’s–oh nevermind.

Dr. Kiki is a true honest-to-goodness exponent of science for the Information Age. Someone who deserves mad-props for really getting it, understanding how to use the wikinetionaries’ social networking and multimedia to communicate and promote science. Dr. Kiki harnesses the awesome power of the webbernets for good, unlike Steve Milloy, who uses it for evil, and Ira Flatow, who doesn’t use it at all.

Obviously, when the singularity comes to harvest all the brainiacs into nerd-rapture, Dr. Sanford will have front-row seating.

More creepiness for Halloween. A Nine-tentacled Octopus and an Encephalopod with Human-Like Teeth. Simultaneously fascinating and downright yucky.

Astronauts attached a new bus-sized addition to space station, which led me to USA Today’s cool Interactive Timeline of Space Station Construction. Swoosh! Put it together. Swoosh! Take it apart.

Discover magazine has announced the winner of their video contest, String Theory in Two Minutes. After watching this video, I still don’t get it, but I enjoyed not getting it.

Contrasting articles. The Pentagon robot challenge versus a 1934 claim by boxer Jack Dempsey “I Can Whip Any Mechanical Robot.”

According to the NYT article “Bright Scientists, Dim Notions, Watson is just the latest of a long line of award-winning scientists who’ve said stupid things. But scientists still have a better track record than other famous people, from a quick glance at the Top 87 Bad Predictions about the Future.

Continuing the bad prediction train of thought, a scientist is predicting the human race will ’split into two different species’, that part of our population will de-evolve. This is exactly the plot of H.G. Well’s The Time Machine, and it’s also bad science.

Science and Humor do mix: “An analysis of the medical care provided to the family of Homer J. Simpson (PDF).

“Doesn’t matter what I’m packing in my denim, it’s what’s in my genes,” as the Bloodhound Gang lyric goes. Score one for Nature in the Nature V. Nurture debate, as scientists have engineered lesbian worms…

…and score one for Nurture, as Playing video games reduces sex differences in spatial skills. So being gay is genetic, and male/female cognitive differences are cultural. Ain’t it great how reality has such a strong liberal-bias?

Geek-O-Lanterns!!!

Blackwater Satellite Photo: 36.27 N 76.12W

I live just 30 minutes south of the Blackwater Training Center, the company which has been in the news much of late for killing Iraqi civilians. Locals here in North Eastern North Carolina overwhelmingly support Blackwater, which is one of the area’s largest employers (600 locals), against the charges.

While I do feel Blackwater provides a valuable service training police officers and military personnel, I harbor a great deal of distrust toward the firm’s military operations in Iraq. I don’t like the idea of America hiring mercenaries to represent us overseas, and wrote a letter to the local paper about it:

I find it unsettling that we have a large den of mercenaries just a few day’s march to the north of us. U.S. Army infantry officer Robert Bateman described an encounter with Blackwater in Iraq, where a caravan of contractors ran cars off the road and sent Iraqi civilians diving for cover as they fired randomly into the air. Another Blackwater mercenary got drunk and murdered a bodyguard for the Iraqi vice president. He was sent home with a small fine.

How do these actions serve American efforts to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people? How does such deplorable behavior accomplish anything but generate more animosity towards Americans and spawn more insurgents? Blackwater is putting our soldiers in danger, and our government has a responsibility to hold them accountable.

The problem with contracting out our national defense is that mercenaries work outside of the military chain of command. We can’t court-martial them, throw them in the brig, or put them in front of a firing squad when they work against American military interests.

The Romans had a large mercenary army, and whenever the city could not meet its monetary demands, the soldiers sacked Rome, raiding and pillaging their payment by force. The American Government has paid Blackwater $1 billion so far for services in Iraq.

If we are going to contract out our Nation’s security to private firms, then these companies must be held accountable to Military law and subject to the chain of command. When their tactics endanger our troops, they should be immediately dismissed. When they murder, they should go to prison.

If Blackwater has American interest at heart, it will comply with the American Military’s honorable codes of conduct and rules of engagement.

- “Hold Blackwater to Military Codes,” The Daily Advance, 10/18/2008.

Last night, Blackwater hosted an open house at its training center in Moyock, North Carolina, and I was able to attend. As this was a forum for local residents only, proof of local residency was required, and a Channel Three News van was forced to wait outside the premises. I was nervous about coming onto the compound as I was turned away a week earlier, but not before snapping this photo of the security gate:

Blackwater’s Intimidating Front Gate

My impression of the compound? Not Impressed. The airstrip was dinky, barely long enough to land a C130 on, and the three helicopters parked around the squat control tower were all non-military. The obstacle courses, firing ranges, and driving course were all ho hum. This wasn’t the “den of mercenaries” I had made it out to be. If Blackwater were ever to get out of line, the Coast Guard base where I work is more than capable of kicking their butts.

Blackwater is certainly not the “Deathfang’s Midnight Posse of Merciless Skull Warriors” the blogworld and Blackwater employees make it out to be.

There was free food at the forum, and President Gary Jackson reviewed the company history and fielded questions from local residents about the future of Blackwater and it’s relationship to the locality. Here were some notes of interest from the forum:

• Few people showed up, maybe 20 out of 300 seats allowed, as the wrong phone number was published in the Daily Advance. The DA blames Blackwater. Blackwater blames the DA. The DA did not publish the correct number when I figured it out and e-mailed them the correct one a week ago.
• The DA reported seven protesters arrested at Blackwater, but Jackson estimated there were at least 50 protesters total.
• The company has pulled requests for midnight shooting permits, which would allow Police officers in training to get their requirements in during peak daylight hours in the summer, and other permit requests to avoid generating controversy. Jackson noted that area residents had much worse to worry about with the Navy’s proposed OLF and NASA’s Shuttle Emergency Landing site both seeking residence in the area.
• When asked how the 2008 elections would affect Blackwater if the Democrats took control of the American government, Mr. Jackson pointed out that Blackwater won its first government contract under Bill Clinton, and that the American Military is overstretched and exhausted; therefore, outsourcing would continue. He said that Hillary Clinton was the next president of the United States, and that it would have no impact on Blackwater’s business.
• Blackwater’s contracts are with the Department of State, not Department of Defense. This is an important distinction we in the media need to keep in mind.
• Mr. Jackson believes all Americans should be required to serve in either the Military or Peace Corps for three years following High School.
• Mr. Jackson, for the most part, avoided expressing his personal political leanings, regularly stating that he had to watch what he said for fear of the press, and that he was sure, “someone in this room has a tape recorder.” He also asked that person to “Be gentle.”
• After the presentation, I picked up a business card from Director of Operations, Tamara Stocks, to follow up on receiving charity support from Blackwater for Port Discover Children’s Science Center.
• When I got to meet Mr. Jackson, I found out that I was the person he thought had the tape recorder, and asked me if I was with the press. A coworker from the Coast Guard base explained who I was, and when he learned that I wrote Aviation Logistics Software, told me to send him my resume.

Overall, the open discussion and chance to see the big bad Blackwater wasn’t all that impressive did much to improve my opinion of the company. Their business focus is still training our soldiers and training our law enforcement. That being said, I remain critical of the company’s services in Iraq for (1) Blackwater’s working outside the chain of command without oversight and (2) that one Blackwater contractor in Iraq ($600 a day) costs the same as seven US Soldiers ($85 a day). This money would be better spent increasing the number of troops in Iraq or increasing our soldier’s salaries and benefits, but this is an issue for DoS and DoD to take the heat for.

You might wonder why I didn’t grab the opportunity to confront President Gary Jackson about these two issues and learn his opinion on them. Well, for one thing, the forum was for the local community and local concerns. Not the time and place for some great big political debate occurring on the International Scene. For another thing, I was far too enamored with my NEW OFFICIAL BLACKWATER T-SHIRT AND HAT!!!

YEE-HAW!!! Go Blackwater!

A company that gives away free t-shirts and hats can’t be all-bad. Of course, I might get riled up again should Blackwater carry through with its plans to change its logo, but that’s a future blogpost.

Howtoons: The Possibilities Are Endless!

A great gift for young inventors Howtoons: The Possibilities Are Endless! book is now on sale, filling the spot on my wish list opened when I dropped Watson’s book.

Discovery links with space station, China Sends First Probe to the Moon, and is mutual suspicion between China, India, and Japan fueling the Asian Space Race?

Record stores… duh. Camera film manufacturers… duh. Newspapers… duh. Telemarketing… WHA?!?! You’ll have to read the 10 businesses facing extinction in 10 years

Okay, so this interweb meme has officially jumped the shark: LOLStaphylococcus

Pink Tentacle has an article about an android acquiring nonverbal communication skills, but what I found most interesting is the article’s opening paragraph and its insights to the Japanese interest in robots:

As Japan’s population continues to age and shrink, more and more people are looking at robots as a way to improve productivity and support the nation’s changing lifestyles.

Does this mean a greater emphasis on robotics in Europe and America as our populations shrink in the coming decades?

SeaWiFS

The SeaWiFS satellite project has entered it’s second decade. It’s first ten years of data have clearly shown how the life in our Oceans is struggling to adapt to warmer seas.

Hip costume idea: Zombie Stephen Hawking.

A scientist has retracted his chemistry paper from 1955, because Creationists were abusing it as evidence for irreducible complexity, a key component for Intelligent Design.

Ohhhh… Pretty… Check out the Shell Wildlife Photographer of the Year.

The Dark Hedges by Bob McCallion

From My Recent Visit to Connecticut

Beluga Whale at the Mystic Aquarium

In addition to Penguin Contact, Ray Touch Pool, and Beluga Whale Contact programs, the Aquarium hosts an impressive Marine Animal Rescue Program, with Seal Rescue Clinic. The rays felt surprisingly silky when I got the opportunity to touch one, and the beluga whales and seals were rather personable too… must be a mammal thing. For more information, visit the aquarium website.

Haley Farm State Park in New London Connecticut.

Connecticut’s first governor, John Winthrop Jr., owned part of the farm in 1648, and subsequent owner Caleb Haley’s hobby of building stone walls to separate pastures out of surrounding boulders give this park a unique character. For more information, check out the park website.

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Jenny Eaton Demonstrates the Sugar Content of Sodas for Port Discover

Recent Events at Port Discover Children’s Science Center:

Knobbs Creek Safety Day

Port Discover volunteers spent the day at the Knobbs Creek Recreation Center, educating children about the sugar content of their favorite soft drinks. Using an electronic scale, volunteers had kids pick out their favorite soda and then measure out the amount of sugar on the nutrition label. Kids and parents were always surprised at how much sugar they had to pour into the bowl meet the label’s number of grams.

Take a Child Outside Week

Doctor Buckett of NC EcoTours took two separate groups of children on a tour of the foliage and wildlife within a one-block radius of the science center. He taught the children about the occurrence of fibonacci numbers in pine needles, leaves, and clovers, and taught them how to use bionoculars to observe wildlife at a distance.

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All photos posted to my ideonexus flickr account are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

The Truth is Out There

“What is Truth?” Pontius Pilate famously asked Jesus (John 18:38).

This is the Truth

Doing my part for the Truth Web Experiment. To which I’ve suggested adding:

Humans are Apes.

SoCal Fires

While the bloggyverse looks in stunned horror at satelite photos of the SoCal fires, which have forced 1/6th of San Diego residents to evacuate, conservative weasel Glenn Beck wants us to know the people loosing their homes are liberals who “hate America.” Real classy Glenn. <HYPOCRITE>I wish you had been a blow job </HYPOCRITE>.

CNN’s Planet in Peril aired tonight. The show has an awesomely interactive website, except for idiotically failing to broadcast the show online. Since I don’t own a TV, you’ll have to look elsewhere for a review.

Monkeys attacked a Delhi politician, which is not surprising. The monkeys attacked in a group, which is interesting. Also interesting is that the city trains bands of langur monkeys to battle the Rhesus macaques. Monkey Wars are ON LIKE DONKEY KONG!!! (HT Clint)

In an interview with Bill O’Rly?, Ben Stein calls Darwinism “a great, great relic of the age of imperialism in the 19th century,” while espousing that great great great great great great great great great relic of the Dark Ages, god.

Angela Gunn has seven very good reasons why it matters that the Discovery shuttle commander and current ISS commander are female.

The Machine from 1927’s Metropolis

Jay Keasling’s Microbes Produce low-cost Malaria Drugs, but he’s working without patents and royalties. Can such “open-source pharma,” succeed?

Mad props for including both the 1927 Metropolis and the 2001 Anime version on the Top 50 Dystopian Movies of All Time, which also gave me seven films to add to my Netflix (HT Clint).

Happy Mole Day!!!

On the 23rd of October from 6:02 AM to 6:02 PM (6:02 10/23) is National Mole Day, a day of appreciation for chemistry and Avogadro’s Number (6.02 x 10^23), the basic measuring unit in chemistry. A Mole is simply an amount of substance, like a dozen. It is based on the number of atoms in 0.012 kilograms of carbon-12, currently empirically measured at 6.02214179(30)×10²³ mol^-1. It also has the property:

That quantity of a substance whose mass in grams is the same as its formula weight. For example, iron has an relative atomic mass of 55.845 u, so a mole of iron has a mass of 55.845 grams. This notation is very commonly used by chemists and physicists. (source)

Fun Facts (taken from yahoo answers)

• One mole of paper would make a stack that would reach to the moon more than 80 billion times
• A one liter bottle of water contains 55.5 moles of water.
• One mole of inches would be1,616,434 light years, or across our galaxy and back 8 times
• One mole of seconds is about 19 quadrillion years, 4,240,666 times the age of the earth, or 954,150 times the age of the universe itself
• One mole of cents could repay the United States National Debt 86 million times

The American Chemical Society also celebrates National Chemistry Week this week. Its 2007 Theme is The Many Faces of Chemistry, “Celebrating the diversity of the discipline and its practitioners.” They also have lots of activities for children interested in DIY chemistry.

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Mole Day may alternately be celebrated on June 2nd from 10:23 AM to 10:23 PM (6/02 10:23).

With melting ice caps opening new sea routes, the >US Coast Guard planning its first Arctic operating base. Also, Kansas Denies Plant Permit Because of Global Warming. Also, the Great Lakes Shrinking, costing shipping companies, which costs consumers. Also, the United States Responsible for One-Quarter of China’s CO₂ Emissions. Woof! Maybe I should just start a weekly Global Warming Links thread.

Why do Dittoheads believe Rush Dimbulb’s vocal skepticism of Global Warming over the mountain of scientific evidence confronting them? Because people are more persuaded by gossip than facts. Scary.

James Watson, part of the team who discovered the structure of DNA, is receiving a well-deserved backlash for his statement that blacks are “less intelligent”. This statement, like many of Watson’s uninformed assumptions about genetic determinism, is just plain wrong. As the American Anthropological Association has stated, there is no such thing as race in regards to humanity. Angela Gunn has the best observations yet on Watson’s chronic foot-in-mouth disease: “Smart doesn’t mean polymath doesn’t mean wise, let alone omniscient.” Taking the advice of it’s title, I’ve dropped his book Avoid Boring People from my amazon wish list.

Humor that makes you think. We cannot tickle ourselves, because tickling requires another person. So how about a Robot Tickler?

From friendly machines to evil ones: Robot cannon kills 9, wounds 14 because of an apparent software glitch. I worked for taxpayer parasite SAIC years ago and got to see a proposal for robot tanks. “They’re awesome,” the proposal writer told me, “Except they kill good guys too.”

Two bits of conceptual synchronicity following my post on the silliness of English (and other cultural standards), it appears that Heavily Used Words Evolve More Slowly. Additionally, Harvard Scientists have produced a mathematical model to predict the future use of past tense, for instance how quickly “wed” becomes “wedded” (HT Clint).

Why are Buhdist Monks so happy? Because they work at it. Just as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy says we all should be doing.

Ms Gillian McKeith

Unlike Ira Flatow, Doris Lessing gets it, since winning the Nobel Prize for Literature, her list of MySpace friends has jumped from 125 to 240.

More conclusive data will come in time, as the effects of Europe switching to cleaner fuels come to realization in a few years, but could Unleaded Gas Result in Lower Crime Rates?

Move over LOLCats, here comes LOLQuacks

Behold digital aromatic signs! Truly we live in an age of wonder.

Ira Flatow

Ira Flatow, host of NPR’s Science Friday has denied my request to be added as his friend on both MySpace and Facebook. That’s okay. I didn’t wanna be Ira Flatow’s friend anyhow. He’s a big stupid dummy head.

Ira’s new book is called Present at the Future. Phooey! Why would I read about the future by someone who doesn’t even know how to use a social networking site??? Huh? Huh?? Huh???

Ira Flatow probably brags in this book about how he meets all these hot chicks on the MySpace, and they’re all sending him links to naked photos of themselves in exchange for his Credit Card number. And how he’s met all these wealthy Treasury Czars from unpronounceable African countries, who he’s sent his bank account information to so they can transfer their country’s Gross National Product to him for safe keeping. Or how Amazon keeps losing his personal information, so they’re always e-mailing him to verify his password at “amorzorn.com,” which he figures is their sister site, and he can’t remember buying 3,000 copies of Ishstar for somebody in China, but oh well…

Why would I wanna be Ira Flatow’s friend?

Ira Flatow’s MySpace Profile (Denied!)

I thought you were cool Ira. Pod casts of Science Friday… Interviews with Richard Dawkins… Carl Sagan… Ann Druyan… David Brin… Chris Mooney… Chris Mooney’s my friend on FaceBook, I guess Ira Flatow isn’t as cool as the guests he has on his show. Like that isn’t totally obvious. Harumph!

Remember Ira? It used to be about the science. What good is it to learn all about science and not share it with everybody? Huh? Oh sure, you do that every week on Science Friday and probably in your book too, but I’m talking about on MySpace and Facebook. You’re a science proponent celebrity, which might be an oxymoron, but celebrities don’t get private lives!

Fine. You know what. I’ll read Ira Flatow’s Present at the Future, but I won’t like it. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to put some Science Friday podcasts on, curl up in bed, and cry myself to sleep.

Querty VS Dvorak

Keyboard layouts… The Metric System… Base number systems… Where to sneeze… I’ve been wrestling with a lot of obsolete cultural artifacts in the last few weeks. All of these subjects are examples of society adhering to overly-complex, inefficient, or just plain wrong cultural standards.

We make life complicated for a our children because it was complicated for us. We invested the time and effort into learning Imperial Measurements, QWERTY, and the two-party political system; so rather than adapt to a simpler, intuitive system at some midpoint in life, we force the younger generations to adopt our stupidity.

In a bit of conceptual synchronicity, I stumbled across an Isaac Asimov article from 1982, “A Question of Spelling,” this week, where he blames America’s high illiteracy rates on the absurdity of the English language’s spelling and grammar. The fact that the words “‘through,’ ‘coo,’ ‘do,’ ‘true,’ ‘knew,’ and ‘queue’” all rhyme, and can be written phonetically as “‘throo,’ ‘koo,’ ‘doo,’ ‘troo,’ ‘nyoo,’ and ‘kyoo’” is pretty damning evidence against the nonsensical, haphazard complete lack of architecture behind our system for spelling.

“i” before “e” except after “c.” With the exceptions: caffeine, casein, codeine, phenolphthalein, phthalein, protein, ancied, policies, conscience, prescient, ancient, efficiency, deindustrialize, reignite, being, seeing, swingeing…

…and SCIENCE. Why are so many Americans illiterate? Because the English language sucks ass.

One of the most convincing arguments I’ve heard for why English will become the dominant world language is that Westerners are incapable or unwilling to learn another language. We’re lazy, we buy the most useless crap, and if anyone wants us to buy from them, they better speak our language. This is the sad reality of cultural norms: our lowest common denominators define them.

Don’t believe it? Go channel surf the non-cable channels for fifteen minutes and come back here. Now we’re on the same wavelength.

Society has a mini reboot switch built into it that prevents it from total stagnation: death and birth. New generations adapt completely to their environment, while the older, inflexible generations die and make room for growth; thus, civilization grows and matures. A civilization who’s members never die would itself croak on its obsolescence.

Things will get better, but first the stasis generation must relinquish control. They’ve really made a mess of things. National Debt, War, ridiculous social policies… but what could we expect from people who can’t program a VCR? There’s light at the end of the tunnel though, the First Baby Boomer filed for Social Security recently. Now we just need to herd the rest of them off to the old folks home (Sorry Mom and Dad).

The Baby Boomers are a wash, but there’s no reason Generation X can’t take up the cause of changing at least a few cultural standards. We lived through the cultural shock of migrating into the Information Age after all. Information Technology’s mercurial nature creates standards that are a moving target. We in the IT world (ie. “Your Betters”), must constantly adapt to new coding standards, new technologies, and new innovations. We know how to adapt.

It’s true the Millenials were born into a world of perpetual, fluidity. To them, change is the norm. As progress accelerates, future generations will become more adaptable. There’s hope for Dvorak, Metric, and Independent Political Parties.

In the meantime, Gen-Xers should prove that old dogs can learn new tricks. Let’s start with something simple, lazy, and true to our rebellious reputation.

Lik spelling theengs fonetically!

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“A Question of Spelling,” Isaac Asimov, appeared in Popular Computing, June 1982.