Jaköbische Rants

Do Something Real for #NotFunnyFacebook

2011-11-02T08:25:00.004-04:00

When I heard about the Twitter campaign against Facebook's rape joke pages my first thought was, "come on, Internet, seriously? This is why we can't have nice things!". I mean, don't get me wrong, my generation is the Web 2.0 generation and most of the time I loves me the intertubes, but this is the kind of totally ineffective action that gets the whole internet generation dismissed as irrelevant. #notfunnyfacebook may raise awareness about Facebook's fucked up obscenity standards (rape jokes = hilarious, breastfeeding = BANNED!) in some places, but not among the people whose opinions matter to Facebook.

Because here's the thing. People expect a company to care how their customers feel about their service. But people need to realize that on Facebook we are not the customers, we are the product. And companies really don't care how their product feels about anything. What we need to do is hit Facebook where it hurts: in the advertisers. So here's what I recommend. It's more work than just tweeting a hashtag, but I think it's much more likely to be effective.

Step 1:
- Go to one of these pages of rape jokes. They can be hard to find because most articles about them decline (understandably) to link to them. I've so far found two, here and here. (It should go without saying, but trigger warning for sexual violence on those two pages.)

Step 2:
- Make sure you can see the ads. If you use AdBlocker Plus like I do, you need to set it to "disable everywhere" and reload the page.

Step 3:
- Hover your mouse over an ad and a little blue/grey x will appear in the top right corner. Click it.

Step 4:
- A drop down menu will appear with two options. Select "Hide all ads from [this provider]". Then Facebook will ask you why. Select "Other" and type "Supports a page that endorses rape".

Step 5:
- repeat steps 3 and 4 until all the ads on that page are hidden. Then reload the page and go back to step 3.

I don't know for sure if this will work. I don't know if anyone reads the comments when you block an ad for "Other" reasons. But I do know this: The only thing, and I mean ONLY thing, Facebook cares about is their advertisers. And if enough people start to do this, in a regular and sustained way, it should cause a blip in either Facebook's or the advertisers' analytics and someone might pay attention.

Tweeting a hashtag is great, but it's only ever step one. To be effective, we need to move on to step two.

The Danger of Smart Algorithms

2011-09-21T09:46:00.002-04:00

The question came up today, why are marginal effects, in multi-variable statistics, called marginal? So I googled the phrase (without quotes) "etymology marginal effect regression".

The second hit, highlighting in the original result, was
constant forces the regression line to pass through the origin! ... linear specifications (of

Summer means time for a drink

2011-05-21T11:21:00.004-04:00

Because this is Southern Ontario, and we can go from rainy and miserably cold to sunny and miserably hot in 48 hours, it's all of a sudden time for my awesome and refreshing ginger lemonade. It's so easy it's kind of silly:

Ingredients:
ginger
water
sugar
lemons

Proportions are all approximate, as are cooking times. Feel free to tinker.

I took a 2" piece of ginger and grated it directly into a pot. It was a smallish saucepan, holding 2.5 quarts (or so it says on the bottom). Any stringy bits or chunks that got too small to grate just went straight into the pot too. Don't be picky. I filled the pot about 2/3 - 3/4 with water and let it boil, uncovered, for about half an hour or so. When I got tired of supervising it I turned it down to low, and eventually all the way off, but I let the ginger sit in the hot water for a total of about 1.5 - 2 hours while we had dinner and stuff.

Strain the ginger water into a jar or other good storage container. I did this by putting a coffee filter in a funnel, and then pouring the ginger water through it. It takes for fucking ever though, so you might want to use a tea strainer or something. Put the jar in the fridge for when you want to make ginger lemonade.

To actually make the drink, you basically make regular lemonade, but use the ginger water instead of plain water. For two people I use about 1.5 tsp sugar, the juice of one lemon, and enough ginger water to make up the volume of 1.5 cups. I take two smallish glasses, fill them with ice, and pour the stirred mixture over the ice. If you want to have booze in yours, pour it over the ice before adding the lemonade. Dave had his with a shot of Screech rum, which combination I can't recommend but he seemed to like it. I like mine with a half a shot of Bushmill's.

December 6, 1989

2010-12-06T13:03:00.003-05:00

Geneviève Bergeron
Hélène Colgan
Nathalie Croteau
Barbara Daigneault
Anne-Marie Edward
Maud Haviernick
Maryse Laganière
Maryse Leclair
Anne-Marie Lemay
Sonia Pelletier
Michèle Richard
Anne St-Arneault
Annie Turcotte
Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz

This is what I'm talking about

2010-11-27T11:07:00.003-05:00

The Hyperbole and a Half girl is me. I mean, except for all the ways in which she is not me, she's totally me.

No Offense

2010-11-12T22:24:00.003-05:00

Recently a girl in my new lab said to me, "you can tell me if you find my jokes offensive. I know I tend to joke about a lot of crazy stuff, so you should tell me if it bothers you." She had just made a slightly off-colour (and not very funny) joke. Doesn't matter what it was.

I smiled blandly at her and returned to the actual conversation. At the time I thought that I was deciding not to say anything about her somewhat offensive joke because I didn't want to take the time to explain that the reason I found the joke offensive was not the reason she thought someone might find it offensive. Like explaining to someone that when they call your shirt "gay" you aren't offended because they didn't like your shirt. It wasn't that, but it was somewhat analogous. And I just didn't want to get into it.

I mean, it's true. I didn't want to get into that with her. But as I let more and more stupid little things from her slide, and I had absolutely no interest in mentioning any of them, I realized there was more going on. So here's the thing.

It's not about my feelings. First of all, my feelings don't get particularly hurt when someone makes derogatory remarks about a group I'm a member of. It's pretty simple: if someone is that much of a bigot then their opinion doesn't matter to me, and if their opinion doesn't matter, then nothing they say can hurt me. Really. My primary emotional response is boredom. But that's an aside, and here's the more important point: when it comes to my relationships, I don't want someone to refrain from making certain jokes or using certain language because I find it offensive. I want them to refrain from doing those things because *they* find it offensive. I want them to have thought critically about the assumptions that underlie their jokes and about the effect their language has on others. And if they are someone who does not do that kind of thinking, well, I want them to wear that fact on their sleeve.

Just one thing I do have to get off my chest, though: If you want to have a career studying sexually transmitted infections, then by the time you're in grad school you should be able to talk about sex without needing to crack terrible jokes to assuage your discomfort. Seriously.

Porridge Breakfast

2010-04-30T10:42:00.002-04:00

I've settled on a new breakfast. For a while I was sort of lost on the breakfast front, after musli got boring and I didn't want to go back to the very expensive smoothies. I started buying regular cereal, but that was insufficiently nutritious on the fat and protein front, and pretty boring besides. I'm not sure what else I did. Probably had eggs a little more often than I should have, occasional toast and peanut butter, although I don't really like those things. Anyway, inspired by my dad and sister, I've come up with an awesome new breakfast: Porridge with Treats and Goodness!

Porridge with Treats and Goodness is my delicious answer to the nastiness that is oatmeal. God, I've always hated oatmeal. Cooked with milk it's gluey and just way too milky, cooked with water it tastes like grass. There's just nothing good about oatmeal. You have to be careful when making this porridge that it doesn't end up tasting like oatmeal. Here's how you make Porridge with Treats and Goodness.

Start with a multigrain hot cereal. The grains should be rolled, not cut, but not quick-cooking either. This is important because cut grains give a gluey texture and quick-cooking oats just turn to mush. I generally buy either Country Choice Multigrain Hot Cereal or Bob's Red Mill 5 Grain Rolled Cereal. These cereals both have fairly thick-rolled grains, which will provide the proper texture.

The next vital thing is to undercook the porridge. If you use the amount of water and cooking time recommended on the box, you will end up with mush. You don't want mush. Or, at least, *I* don't want mush. So.

Pour a generous half cup of of dry cereal into a bowl and add just under a third of a cup of water. The water should just be visible peaking up around the edges of the cereal, but certainly not be covering it. This way you ensure that the individual grains will still be discrete objects after cooking, and the whole dish with have a nice, chewy, non-gooey texture. Now it's time for the Treats and Goodness.

Treats:
Before cooking, add

about a third of a cup of frozen blueberries.

If you don't have frozen fruit you can skip this step, but then you might should add a little more water. Cover the bowl with a saucer and microwave for two minutes. Once the porridge is cooked,
add a handful of walnuts
and one sliced banana

Feel free to replace or supplement the above with other fruits, nuts, seeds, etc. as you desire, but keep in mind that acidic fruit like strawberries¹ will curdle the milk you're adding later. Not necessarily the end of the world, but you should be aware.

Goodness:
Over the above, drizzle

a couple teaspoons, maybe a tablespoon, of extra virgin olive oil and
an equal amount of maple syrup.

Cover the whole kit & caboodle with
a small amount of milk (maybe a third of a cup)

and mix with your spoon. It will be delicious.

1. Not actually berries. Strawberries are technically swollen receptacles.

Should I start doing weeks in review again?

2010-04-24T14:32:00.002-04:00

I was first doing weeks in review in order to go over my school work. It was effectively a study tool. Now that I'm finished all the requirements for my B.Sc. (hey, did I mention I'm FINISHED ALL THE REQUIREMENTS FOR MY B. SC.?), and I'm sort of taking the summer off before starting grad school next year, I'm thinking maybe I should review my weeks in order to make sure I do *something* this summer.

My first week after a semester ends is always a wash, and this one was no exception. Monday was my last day of school. I wrote an exam, had an extremely unpleasant conversation with my supervisor, where I told him I was too burned out to work on a research project this summer, and then had a nice dinner out with my family to celebrate having finished all the requirements for my B. Sc. (did I mention that?). Tuesday through Friday I mostly slept. I did laundry, cleaned the kitchen, did a bit of shopping, and updated and re-jailbroke an old iPhone so I could install my new alarm clock on it, but I didn't get out of bed before noon once. It's been nice, but I'm starting to get bored. Next week is shaping up to be a little more exciting, but I'll tell you about it then. For now I have to pack, buy bus tickets, and mail off my NSERC acceptance form.

Since it was almost midnight, and I had nothing better to do...

2010-04-13T01:54:00.002-04:00

I mean, the bed was stripped anyway, from when I was doing laundry earlier, and I did have to fold all the dry clothes that were piled on top of it. So I decided to do all the stuff I had been putting off because it would have involved stripping the bed. First we finished folding all the dry laundry and putting it away. Then I picked up all the dirty clothes off the bedroom floor and put them in the hamper. Oh look, it's full again.

Then we stood the mattress and box spring on their ends. This is more complicated than it sounds, because the mattress and box spring are together encased in a single allergen-barrier mattress cover, so they have to be moved as a single unit, but you can't use the cover as a handle because it will probably rip. So. Stood the mattress cover and box spring on end to get them out from under the ceiling fan. Then, while Dave held them so they wouldn't tip over, I set up the ladder in the middle of the bed frame (on the floor) and got an old shirt out of the rag pile. I tore pieces off the shirt and used them to remove the truly astonishing caterpillars of dust from the ceiling fan. I may have sneezed a couple times. Got rid of the dirty rags, folded up the ladder, vacuumed under the bed (since I was there), and prepared to put the mattress/box spring back on the frame. Again complicated, this time also because we wanted to make sure the slack in the mattress cover (it's a big mattress cover) didn't end up all trapped on the underside of the box spring. We needed it available so we can tuck sheets under the mattress. Anyway, we got the bed put back together and tucked the cover slack between the mattress and box spring. Then I vacuumed the top of the mattress to get rid of any bits of whatever it may have picked up in its travels. Then we put fitted sheet and top sheet on the bed, vacuumed the pillows and blanket and finished making the bed. To look around my bedroom, you would never guess two people just spent two hours cleaning in it: there's still crap everywhere and the rest of the floor is decidedly unvacuumed, but I'm going to sleep a little more comfortably now that I'm on clean sheets and not worrying that enormous, nasty, dust-worms are going to fall of the fan and rain down upon my head as I sleep.

So that's good.

Damn Buggers

2010-02-18T08:11:00.001-05:00

Spent less than two hours at the Centre for Vector Biology yesterday, so of course I now have a mosquito bite in the middle of February.

New Template

2010-02-17T08:37:00.003-05:00

A bunch of stuff is missing from the sidebar now, and I don't know if/when I'll have time to fix it, but at least commenting is enabled again. Unfortunately I don't have time to figure out how to import the old haloscan comments. I still have them all in a file on my hard drive, so if anyone knows a quick and easy way, please let me know, but for now we're starting from scratch.

My time is measured in assignments

2010-01-17T18:15:00.003-05:00

For all that I've been in school basically my whole life, I've never really measured time like this. Certainly for the past three years of doing this biology degree I measured my time in the normal units: days, weeks, months, occasionally semesters. But now that I'm in my last semester I find my time is measured in assignments:

Am I done being an undergrad yet? No, I still have that presentation for Maydianne's class.

Will I be done after that? No, then I have two presentations for Mark's class.

So, if I do that can I stop? No, then I have to write a paper for the Plagues course.

And then will I be done? Uh uh, then I have to write mock grant proposals for both Maydianne and Mark.

Oh, well will I be done after that? Nope, I have to write up my research project.

And then I'll be done? Well, no I still have to present my research project.

And then? Well, then I'll be done with classes, but don't get too excited because I still have to spend four months hauling ass out to my stupid horrible no good very bad suburban campus for a research project. Pretend it's still undergrad or I won't be able to make myself do it.

And then? And then I'm done.

I have no idea what week it is

2009-10-03T23:07:00.004-04:00

Seriously. Between funding applications, grad school applications, actual school work, and stressing about the fact that I'm not doing anything to prepare for the GRE's (yes, plural, general and subject), blogging just isn't happening. Maybe next semester. Or next summer. Or once I've finished my Ph.D., found a job, got tenure, and am nearing retirement. Bah.

Fall '09: Week 1 in Review

2009-09-13T13:32:00.004-04:00

Week 1 was a short week. Technically classes started on Thursday, but I went in Wednesday to talk to my new supervisor about what my research project was going to be about, and do various other administrative things.

So, here's the review:

Supervised study

Read the grant proposal for the project I'll be working on (invasion mechanisms of Salmonella
Found out which aspect I'll be working on
Signed and turned in all necessary forms and got approved for the course
Got a look at the confocal microscope I'll be working on. Confocal microscopes are really cool. You take a cell that has some proteins that have been marked with fluorescent markers, and it uses a laser to excite the markers in thin slices covering the whole cell, and then it uses the slices to build a 3-D image that you can then look at. *Very* exciting.
Was given two papers to read. Read the first and most of the second.

Animal Development

Going to be looking at morphological and molecular aspects of development
Prof acts like a teenybopper, anthropomorphises and makes cutesy statements about how chicks are easy model organisms for developments, "but I hope there aren't too many 'easy chicks' in here!"
Some history of the field
250 people in this class, taught in one of the less comfortable auditoriums
Pretty sure I'm going to drop this one

Molecular Aspects of Plant Development

Prof is actually a grown-up, and expects us to be
About 30 people in the class
Learned about tools to track molecular events in cell at three levels:
- Gene expression: take the promoter for the gene of interest, put a marker after it instead of the gene, put that complex in a vector and transfect the cell, scan for the marker. Marker is something that will fluoresce, like GFP, or GUS, which has an easy histochemical assay. Need to find out what "histochemical" means.
- mRNA localization: take tissue, fix it in an RNA-preserving fixative, make labeled probes for the mRNA in question, marinate, wash, scan. Probes show up where the mRNA is.
- Protein localization: There are two ways to do this.
  1. Immunolocalization: Fix tissue, make antibodies for the protein in question, marinate, wash. Then take other antibodies that bind to the conserved section of teh first antibodies and are tagged. Marinate, wash, scan. The tagged antibodies will show up where the protein is.
  2. Tagging: take the promoter/gene complex for the gene in question, stick the gene for a marker like GFP or GUS after it. Transfect the cell, scan for the marker. The marker will be attached to the protein and will show you where the protein is (unless the marker has interfered with folding or function of the protein).
Was assigned two papers for next class. Total of 33 pages of reading. Yeep!

And that's all the classes for this week. Because it was a short week I didn't have any classes for Community Ecology and Evolutionary Biology or Intro to Health Studies: Plagues and Peoples. I'll tell you all about it next week.

I'm also devising some good systems for organizing my life. I started a new major knitting project to bring to class with me, and I've realized that I'm going to be doing a buttload of article-reading this semester, and that's just as easy to do on a treadmill as at a desk, so maybe I'll spend less time sitting. We'll see.

No helicopters in my stomach

2009-08-28T09:48:00.001-04:00

Just inflammation. Losec 20mg od for 45 days.

Something You Can Do

2009-08-22T09:18:00.002-04:00

Via Bitch, PhD, we see that anti-choice organization Operation Rescue will holding protests outside abortion clinics all over the US and in a few Canadian cities for 40 days starting /september 23rd. You can check their website to see if a clinic in your area is being targeted, and if so, get in touch with them and ask how you can help.

Please do contact the clinic first, and don't just show up to yell at the protesters. The point here is to help protect the clinic's staff and patients from harassment, not to make life just outside their doors even more noisy and tense.

Four Months and Two Days Early, the Message is the Same

2009-08-07T15:28:00.003-04:00

George Sodini was certainly disturbed. Healthy, well-adjusted people don't go into fitness clubs and shoot up aerobics classes. Nor do they enter universities and shoot students sitting in class and walking in the halls. Marc Lépine was also crazy. But to therefore conclude that nothing about society can be learned from their actions, that nothing can be generalized from their self-stated motivations, is preposterous.

It is possible, even likely, that in a society free of patriarchy, Sodini and Lépine would still have gone on murderous rampages. These two men both felt they had failed in some aspect of their lives. For Sodini it was sex and romance, for Lépine the failure was more general, I think. He was rejected by the army, had difficulty making friends, and generally wasn't happy with his life. It seems likely to me that these failures would still have happened in a patriarchy-free society. Sodini and Lépine both blamed others for their failures, not taking any responsibility on themselves. This strikes me as equally likely to have been true even in a patriarchy-free society.

What strikes me as considerably less likely is that in an egalitarian society, they would have chosen to blame for their failures, and therefore kill, the same groups of people they did.

Even lunatics need context from which to draw their ideas. Sodini didn't shoot up an aerobics class, he shot up a women's aerobics class. Lépine didn't kill students, he killed female students. And the stories they told are familiar as hell. Any woman trying to make headway in a male-dominated field, hell, anyone with regular social contact with a large number of men has heard these stories before. Amanda Marcotte gets it exactly right when she says that women are put down, beaten, or killed for being insufficiently compliant. From refusing to be sexually available to a man to daring to succeed where a man has failed, the crime for which women are continually punished is that of acting like competent, self-reliant, independent adults, and it is exactly this behaviour that George Sodini and Marc Lépine blamed their failures on. It is for these reasons that Sodini and Lépine killed women and not some other group.

Contrary to what Naomi Lakritz seems to think in the above-linked article, I am not blaming men (all men or any particular men, or men as a group) for Sodini and Lépine's behaviour. I don't believe that all men have a little Marc Lépine in them, or that men as a class can be hanged on George Sodini's actions. What I do believe is that the choices these men made were not conceived in a vacuum. Like the choices many other men make, to beat or rape their wives and girlfriends, to mistreat the women in their office, to pass over their female employees for promotion, and to dismiss their female friends in conversation, Sodini and Lépine's choices of who to kill are symptoms of a common cause. Of attitudes prevalent in our society, and many other societies, about how women are or should be versus how men are or should be. These attitudes are held and perpetuated by both men and women and it's less a question of blame than it is one of effect and remedy.

In effect, if not intention, these massacres are acts of terrorism against women. That they were killing women because they were women means that I, and all the other women who weren't in those rooms, am still alive only by an accident of time and place. That knowledge breeds fear. It disinclines women to do things, go places, participate fully in society.

So what's the remedy? I'm not sure. But I would say that, contrary to what Ms. Lakritz would like, the first step is talking about it.

Beware the Spinal Trap

2009-07-29T18:58:00.003-04:00

Via Pharyngula, Simon Singh's original supposedly-libelous article:

Some practitioners claim it is a cure-all, but the research suggests chiropractic therapy has mixed results - and can even be lethal, says Simon Singh.

You might be surprised to know that the founder of chiropractic therapy, Daniel David Palmer, wrote that "99% of all diseases are caused by displaced vertebrae". In the 1860s, Palmer began to develop his theory that the spine was involved in almost every illness because the spinal cord connects the brain to the rest of the body. Therefore any misalignment could cause a problem in distant parts of the body.

In fact, Palmer's first chiropractic intervention supposedly cured a man who had been profoundly deaf for 17 years. His second treatment was equally strange, because he claimed that he treated a patient with heart trouble by correcting a displaced vertebra.

You might think that modern chiropractors restrict themselves to treating back problems, but in fact some still possess quite wacky ideas. The fundamentalists argue that they can cure anything, including helping treat children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying - even though there is not a jot of evidence.

I can confidently label these assertions as utter nonsense because I have co-authored a book about alternative medicine with the world's first professor of complementary medicine, Edzard Ernst. He learned chiropractic techniques himself and used them as a doctor. This is when he began to see the need for some critical evaluation. Among other projects, he examined the evidence from 70 trials exploring the benefits of chiropractic therapy in conditions unrelated to the back. He found no evidence to suggest that chiropractors could treat any such conditions.

But what about chiropractic in the context of treating back problems? Manipulating the spine can cure some problems, but results are mixed. To be fair, conventional approaches, such as physiotherapy, also struggle to treat back problems with any consistency. Nevertheless, conventional therapy is still preferable because of the serious dangers associated with chiropractic.

In 2001, a systematic review of five studies revealed that roughly half of all chiropractic patients experience temporary adverse effects, such as pain, numbness, stiffness, dizziness and headaches. These are relatively minor effects, but the frequency is very high, and this has to be weighed against the limited benefit offered by chiropractors.

More worryingly, the hallmark technique of the chiropractor, known as high-velocity, low-amplitude thrust, carries much more significant risks. This involves pushing joints beyond their natural range of motion by applying a short, sharp force. Although this is a safe procedure for most patients, others can suffer dislocations and fractures.

Worse still, manipulation of the neck can damage the vertebral arteries, which supply blood to the brain. So-called vertebral dissection can ultimately cut off the blood supply, which in turn can lead to a stroke and even death. Because there is usually a delay between the vertebral dissection and the blockage of blood to the brain, the link between chiropractic and strokes went unnoticed for many years. Recently, however, it has been possible to identify cases where spinal manipulation has certainly been the cause of vertebral dissection.

Laurie Mathiason was a 20-year-old Canadian waitress who visited a chiropractor 21 times between 1997 and 1998 to relieve her low-back pain. On her penultimate visit she complained of stiffness in her neck. That evening she began dropping plates at the restaurant, so she returned to the chiropractor. As the chiropractor manipulated her neck, Mathiason began to cry, her eyes started to roll, she foamed at the mouth and her body began to convulse. She was rushed to hospital, slipped into a coma and died three days later. At the inquest, the coroner declared: "Laurie died of a ruptured vertebral artery, which occurred in association with a chiropractic manipulation of the neck."

This case is not unique. In Canada alone there have been several other women who have died after receiving chiropractic therapy, and Edzard Ernst has identified about 700 cases of serious complications among the medical literature. This should be a major concern for health officials, particularly as under-reporting will mean that the actual number of cases is much higher.

If spinal manipulation were a drug with such serious adverse effects and so little demonstrable benefit, then it would almost certainly have been taken off the market.

Simon Singh is a science writer in London and the co-author, with Edzard Ernst, of Trick or Treatment? Alternative Medicine on Trial. This is an edited version of an article published in The Guardian for which Singh is being personally sued for libel by the British Chiropractic Association.

Since Facebook is a Little Confused about Privacy

2009-07-27T22:08:00.004-04:00

You need to opt out of them using your picture in ads. Carl Zimmer explains how:

Facebook lets 3rd party advertisers use your posted photos without your permission. To opt out: Click on SETTINGS (located on top of page in blue bar, next to logout); Select PRIVACY SETTINGS; Select NEWS FEEDS and WALL; Select the TAB that reads Facebook Ads. There will be a drop down box; Select NO ONE. Save your changes & then pass this on. [Thanks to Virginia Postrel]

NB: I use AdBlock Plus and I needed to temporarily disable it in order to see the drop-down menu.

Via Greg Laden

My Badges

2009-06-15T20:23:00.002-04:00

I'm a science scout

This is what I've done:

Language Pet Peeve: Sorbet

2009-04-11T19:10:00.003-04:00

People who spell it sherbet are wrong. People who pronounce it sor-BAY are wrong and pretentious. People who spell OR pronounce it sherbert should be slapped.

That is all.

Kind of an Awesome Lunch

2009-03-27T12:06:00.004-04:00

I haven't food-blogged in a while. Hokay, here's what I'm having for lunch this week:

Start with this recipe. Completely disregard all quantities called for and just use whatever seems right. I didn't even look at the quantities. Replace the canned tomatoes with fresh. Add mushrooms (cut chunky), zucchini, chickpeas, and dandelion greens. Use rotini for the pasta because the spiralliness is excellent.

Right now this sauce is still mostly sauerkraut (which is awesome, but I hear a meal of mostly salt is bad for me), but I bet I could rearrange things so it was just an ingredient and not the main point. Maybe more bitter greens.

The fruitflies from the spider lady's lab are attacking!

I have a friend staying with me this week. Yesterday we had lunch completely independently of each other, miles apart and without communicating. She had falafel and chocolate milk. I had falafel and chocolate soy milk. I think we may be soulmates.

Via @wilw

2009-03-26T22:20:00.001-04:00

Via Wil Wheaton's twitter feed, a cool new website that raises awareness about epilepsy: Talk About It.

What He Said

2009-03-26T19:15:00.001-04:00

Jesse at Pandagon does a very good job explaining why I don't think civilians should be allowed to carry guns.

Week 9 in Review

2009-03-15T17:53:00.003-04:00

Computer Science
- Assignment on files and dictionaries. First assignment where I've actually had some problems getting it right and needed to do a line-by-line debugging in several places.
- SQL requests in Python packages. Still working out the syntax.

Animal Behaviour
- Parental care and evolution of cooperative behaviour.
- Assignment posted: vague instructions, excessive freedom in topic. I am overwhelmed by choice and lack of a place to start. Damn.

Microbiology
- motility: mechanical and biochemical mechanisms, chemotaxis, run/rotate combinations leading to biased random walk
- quorum sensing: bacteria can only perform certain actions (e.g. bioluminscence) if there are a lot of them around. They tell when they've reached critical mass by all secreting a certain molecule. When they sense the concentration of that molecule reaches a threshold level, start action. Physiological mechanisms.

Lab
- Since dropping organic chemistry, I've taken on a bit of responsibility in the lab: I'm trying to keep a half-starved electric eel from dying, and also from killing me. It's fun. This electric eel doesn't like to eat minnows, but will happily eat earthworms. Also, it produces an enormous amount of nitrogenous waste. Tank smells like the tropical forest exhibit at the science centre.
- One of the other undergrads in the lab hit me in the face with her belt buckle. Have an invisible but fairly painful bruise on the side of my nose. She swears it was an accident.

Weeks 6 - 8 in brief Review

2009-03-06T23:02:00.003-05:00

So I've missed a few weeks here. Week 6 was right before reading week, and when it ended I was so excited about it being reading week that I forgot to do a review. Then there was reading week, which I spent catching up on Microbiology and Organic Chemistry. Week 7 was a whirlwind of exams and lab prep that ended, Sunday afternoon, with me deciding that, since I'm leaning more and more towards going to graduate school rather than medical school anyway, and since it wasn't required for me to graduate, and since it was just making me completely miserable and taking time away from courses I was actually interested in, that my attitude towards Organic Chemistry was Fuck That Noise. Dropped it. Whew. It wasn't until after I did that that I realized how precariously close I was (and am) to burning out. I spent all of reading week either studying or feeling guilty about not studying and therefore didn't get any real kind of break, and I've been in classes now for 18 months straight because I didn't take last summer off and I'm tired. I think even without org it will be all I can do to keep myself hanging on until the end of the semester. Fortunately I'm not taking any courses next summer, so I can probably get away with having my evenings and weekends largely to myself. *glee*.

Now, however, I have kind of an opposite problem, which is that only taking three courses leaves me with an enormous amount of unstructured time. I was spectacularly unproductive this week. I need to find some way to force some structure on that time. I'm thinking of forcing a four-day week on myself. I know this sounds incredibly spoiled, but it's a real problem. If I tell myself that I'm not allowed to go to campus or do any schoolwork on Tuesdays (when I no longer have class), then I'll have to make myself work the rest of the weekdays in order to get it all done. Which will mean I'll actually do it. Or that's the theory, anyway. Plus, it will give me an extra day off each week, which will help to ward off the burnout. I just need to give myself some structured recreation for Tuesdays, preferably physical activity, so I don't spend the whole day in bed or on the couch. Maybe I'll just spend the entire day at the gym, and when the weather gets warmer start biking around the city. Anyway, I'm open to suggestions for how I can structure my Tuesdays. Maybe I can do some baking.

So finally, this afternoon, the last two months of 5 - 6 hour nights caught up with me. I reached that point where I was so tired I wasn't really in control of my behaviour, and realized this when a friend had to pull me away before I started yelling at a bunch of idiot environmentalist hippies on campus who were making an arts and crafts project out of used coffee cups (because it's less wasteful if you glue your garbage together before throwing it away!). So I got home this evening, had a quick dinner, and went to bed around 7 pm. Which means that now it's 11:30 pm, and even though I'm still tired I can't get back to sleep. Hence, blogging. So now I give you Weeks 7 & 8 in Review:

Computer Science
- while loops
- dictionaries
- building dictionaries from files
- in
- nose

Microbiology
- gram positive vs. gram negative
- gram negative secretion systems: Sec, Tat, Secretion systems I through V. III is a needle that injects stuff into host cells. IV is used for conjugation and is aka "sex pilus".
- gram negative cell wall and outer membrane structure
- gram negative import systems; porins and transporters
- protection systems: capsules, slime, biofilms

Animal Behaviour
- Polygyny. Asked the prof why several systems where both males and females have multiple mates are nonetheless known as polygyny. She said she'd get back to me.
- Parental care. Cost (future reproductive potential) vs. benefit (current reproductive success). Optimize sum of the two curves. Benefit of different amounts of care to different offspring based on their sex: Better to care for the limiting sex (generally female) if you/your offspring are of lower quality. Better to gamble on the non-limiting sex (usually male) if you/your offspring are of higher quality.
- Inclusive fitness, parent-offspring conflict over amount of care, r * b > c
- Tragedy of the commons. Occurs when benefit of an individual using a resource goes entirely to that individual, but cost is distributed among all individuals using that resource. Short-term gain is therefore maximized by selfish behaviour, even at the long-term expense of the resource. One way species can evolve themselves into extinction.

And that's that. Any suggestions for Tuesdays?

Observation

2009-02-12T23:32:00.002-05:00

I always thought that programming would be like writing instructions, but it's much more like solving puzzles. I see now why so many smart people like it.

No Week 5 in Review

2009-02-10T20:57:00.001-05:00

Too busy drowning under midterms. Maybe next week.

In Case There Was Every Any Doubt That a Scientist's Politics and Assumptions Can Invade Their Work

2009-02-07T20:35:00.003-05:00

Observe the radically different descriptions of what is essentially the same behaviour in males and females, from Animal Behaviour 8th Ed. by John Alcock, page 369:

Male satin bowerbirds, as we saw in the previous chapter, are capable of copulating with dozens of females in a single breeding season, although they rarely have the good fortune to do so. In other words, males of this species have the capacity to be polygynous. In contrast, most female satin bowerbirds are monogamous, mating with just one male per nesting attempt. But the satin bowerbird's mating system (males potentially polygynous, females mostly monogamous)...

Because girls and boys is different, see...

Week 4 in Review

2009-01-31T12:04:00.003-05:00

Skipped week 3's review on account of birfday. Not going to try to go back unless absolutely necessary.

Computer Science for the Sciences
- Turned in assignment on creating functions and using if-statements. Felt very clever about two aspects of my assignment. Almost let a float/int error ruin everything.
- Learned about for loops, strings, and lists
- Lab didn't work. Need to redo.

Animal Behaviour
- Sexual selection: Intersexual selection and intrasexual selection
- Alternative strategies:
- Conditional strategies are not hereditary, environmentally determined. All individuals have the capacity for all strategies, use the best one for their given situation (can be behavioural or physiological)
- Distinct strategies are hereditarily determined. Each individual has capacity for only one strategy. Theory says multiple hereditary strategies should only be maintained if they all yield equal fitness. I feel like that's an oversimplification of the situation.

Organic Chemistry
- Studying alkenes:
- IUPAC names for alkenes
- Reactions involving alkenes: addition reactions
- Carbocation intermediates, and stability thereof
- 1,2-hydride or -alkyl shifts
- Bromonium and mercurium ions
- Solubility lab: identifying compounds by solubility and extracting components from mixtures using solubility. Four hours of nonstop stress ruining my whole week. I'm so glad I only have lab every other week.
- Markovnikov and anti-Markovnikov addition, stability of intermediate depends on more than just carbocation stability: steric strain

Microbiology
- History of tree of life: 5 Kingdoms to 8 Kingdoms to 3 Domains and no Kingdoms
- SSU rRNA as universal homologous trait for phylogeny of all living things (except viruses)
- Eucarya more closely related to Archaea than Bacteria, mitochondria and chloroplasts nested within Bacteria, prokaryotes are not living fossils
- Life originated in hydrothermal vents, thermophilia and hyperthermophilia is a less derived trait, not more derived. Cool. (Or, you know, hot).
- Life originated 3.85 bya. Not the most conservative estimate.
- Lab: identifying unknown organism. Gram stain worked perfectly (purple, +ve), acid-fast stain worked well enough to tell acid-fastness (pink, +ve), but smear was clumpy. Need to redo because slides are marked on quality of smear. Practiced endospore staining. Next week check for motility, endospore, and capsule, and redo acid-fast stain. This lab should really be an hour longer than it is.

Two Things

2009-01-29T16:43:00.003-05:00

1. Rachel Maddow is amazing. I know I say this at least once a month, but she just keeps topping herself. Her interview with Rod Blagojevich was a thing of beauty; she is completely fearless. I think every politician should be required to be interviewed by her before anyone can vote for or against them. You can watch the interview by clicking here and then clicking on "Previously" and choosing January 27th (it will be available for a week), or you can read the transcript here.

2. After seeing that interview, no politician to whom she is hostile will ever, ever agree to go on her show. Only someone who would still go on her show after she'd called them "coo-coo for cocopuffs" would subject themselves to that, and he already did. It's a damned shame.

Birfday

2009-01-25T09:47:00.003-05:00

Dinner the night before with my family, my name and age spelled out in M&Ms when I woke up, waffles for breakfast, 25 million birthday messages on my facebook page, and loot consisting of a pressure cooker, a kitchen scale, and a mortar and pestle. Being 26 ain't so bad.

Rachel Maddow is Awesome. Still.

2009-01-20T00:04:00.000-05:00

Week 2 in Review

2009-01-18T15:51:00.004-05:00

Animal Physiology
Dropped.

Computer Science for the Sciences
- booleans don't have xor: and, or, not
- basic structure of a program
- relational operators: <, >, ==, <=, >=, !
- raw_input is always a string
- if statements

Animal Behaviour
- behaviour as adaptation:

looking at convergent and divergent evolution to justify hypotheses
need for statistical rigour to avoid confirmation bias
need for skepticism: just because the evidence doesn't contradict an explanation doesn't mean the explanation is right

- History of study of animal behaviour:

instinct only
comparative psychology

Organic Chemistry
- IUPAC naming:

Parent (longest continuous string of C's):
- Number of C's: meth-, eth-, prop-, but-, pent-, hex-, hept-, oct-, non-, dec-
- Shape: if cyclic: cyclo-
Suffix:
- C-C bonds:
  - all single: alkane
  - double: alkene
  - triple: alkyne
- Functional group:
  - C-X (where X is a halogen): alkyl halide
  - C-OH: alcohol
  - C-NR²: amine
  - C-O-C: ether
  - O=C-OH: aldehyde
  - O=C: ketone
  - O=C-OH: carboxylic acid
  - O=C-O: ester
  - O=C-NR²: amide
Prefix (substituents):
- number carbons to give lowest numbers
- list substituents alphabetically

- Newman projections: staggered, eclipsed, gauche
- Conformational Stereoisomers: conformers, rotation around C-C bond
- Torsional strain, steric strain
- Energy profiles of conformers
- Cyclocalkanes:

angle strain and stability
torsional and steric strain, substituents
cyclohexane: chair and boat conformations, ring-flip
cis-/trans- isomerism
diaxial vs. diequatorial isomers

Microbiology: The bacterial cell
- Just history, invention of microscopes, agar plates, Pasteur's flask discovery, germ theory of disease, antiseptic technique, H. pylori,
- really hope I don't have to remember all these dates and names. That would be bullshit.
- Koch's postulates:

suspected pathogen should be present in all cases of disease and absent in all healthy individuals
suspected pathogen should be grown in pure culture
cells from pure culture should cause disease in healthy individual
pathogen should be reisolated and shown to be the same as original

- development of field of immunology, vaccines
- research driven by agriculture and industry, not medicine

Week 1 in Review

2009-01-09T23:26:00.003-05:00

Animal Physiology
- Nothing substantive. I'm probably going to drop this course anyway.

Computer Science for the Sciences
- Wow. I know *nothing* about programming. Eep.
- Math in Python: +, -, *, /, %
- Types in Python: str, int, float, long, bool
- Define a function: def function_name(x):
function
- Define a variable: variable_name=variable quantity
- I'm a clever little logic-problem solver

Organic Chemistry I
- Quick overview of Lewis structures, dipole moments, VSEPR, etc.
- Hybridization: single bonds, double bonds, and lone pairs count as "groups." The number of groups dictates the number of orbitals that hybridize.
- Lewis acids and bases are electron pair acceptors/donors
- Strength of an acid proportional to the stability of its conjugate base
- K_a = K_eq[H₂O]=[H⁺][A^-]/[HA]
- pK_a = -log(K_a)
- Factors that affect an acid's pK_a:

Electronegativity of atom bonded to the proton (more electronegative, stronger acid)
Size of atom bonded to the proton (the larger the atom, the more acidic the compound)
Substituents in the molecule (electronegative substituents increase acidity, the closer the substituent is to the proton's bond, the stronger the effect)
Electron delocalization (resonance in the conjugate base increases its stability)
Hybridization (brings orbitals closer to the nucleus, increasing stability of conjugate base)

- Quite possibly the course from hell.

Animal Behaviour
- Nothing substantive, looks like a lot of fun.
- T.A. is a grad student from the lab next door. Known feminist and all around good person.
- Tutorials will be discussion-based, talking about assigned readings, marks for participation. Wheee!

Microbiology: The Bacterial Cell
- They are going to be strict about the lab rules, wow.
- Light microscopy:

Bright field light microscope, image determined by:
- absorption
- refraction
- diffraction
- spreading
Dark field light microscope, image given by reflected and refracted light
Phase contrast microscope, image given by refracted light only
Fluoresence microscope, image given by light emitted by fluorochromes excited with UV light

- Magnification, basic optics, not even highschool level
- Resolution due to numerical aperture(=amount of light the lens gathers). Physical limitations due to refractive index of air. Use oil to get better resolution. R=λ/2NA
- Confocal microscopy: laser beam reflected off specimen creates image in thin slices, compiled by computer
- Electron microscopy:

Transmission electron microscopy: beam of electrons through specimen (dyed with electron-dense material), specimen scatters electrons, electrons that aren't scattered are detected. Optics very similar to bright field light microscopy but with electromagnets instead of lenses.
Scanning electron microscopy: beam of electrons reflected off surface (coated with heavy metals)

- Scanning probe microscopy (aka atomic force microscopy, AFM): needle maintains constant distance from speciment, laser reflected off needle detects needle movement.

I heart Conservapedia

2009-01-04T16:58:00.001-05:00

So much. So much! You just can't make this stuff up. God, I love Conservapedia.

Productive Couple of Weekends

2009-01-04T14:42:00.003-05:00

I was sick as a dog last weekend, so all I managed to accomplish was a few loads of laundry, but Dave tidied and vacuumed in the living room and kitchen and did a bunch of dishes. This weekend we managed to:

unpack completely from our trip to Montreal and put away the suitcase (I actually did this as soon as we got home!)
do meal planning for next week
go grocery shopping
make lunches for next week
make dinners for the next couple days
do a bunch more dishes
clean out the fridge of old nasty stuff
take down the garbage that had been sitting there waiting
fold the laundry that we left hanging to dry when we left for Montreal
organize some papers in the study
empty my binders from last semester and prepare my clipboard with blank lined looseleaf
tidy and dust in the bedroom
make the bed
do another load of laundry
vacuum and mop in the bedroom
scrub, vacuum, and mop both bathrooms
do a bunch of number theory problems (my contribution to that was mostly cheerleading)

Now Dave is doing yet more dishes (they just keep getting dirty again!) and I need to hang up the latest load of laundry, and the study is going to take a few more weekends like this before it's really usable, but I feel like I might be reasonably ready to start the new semester tomorrow.

Sinead's Most Excellent Hot Chocolate

2008-12-25T15:34:00.002-05:00

I made an adaptation of Sinead's amazing hot chocolate recipe for my family this christmas. It was a big hit. I'll put the recipe I used below. Please bear in mind that everywhere where my recipe is different from Sinead's is because I didn't have the ingredients or equipment available to me.* I make no claim that my modifications are improvements.

I don't have a soy milk maker so I just boiled 2 cups of ground almond in 8 cups of water while I mortar and pestled the spices, which were: 8 cloves, 2-3 tsp anisseed, 1/3 of a cinnamon stick. The almonds and water got extremely foamy and never really got to a rolling boil. I dumped the ground spices in and added one chopped vanilla bean and one dried chili pepper. I cooked this, stirring, for about five minutes and then let it sit about 12 hours in the cold garage. The next day I strained the liquid with cheesecloth and returned it to the pot. I heated it up on the stove while I broke up two bars of Green & Black's 70% and one bar of Terra Nostra's 73%. Then I dissolved about 3 tablespoons of cocoa powder and the chocolate in the liquid. Serve to suspicious relatives, some of whom will turn it down because it's "not healthy" (and never mind the Cinnamon Toast Crunch they have for breakfast).

*Except the cocoa, which I increased because I was doubling the recipe in my head as I went along and got mixed up.

Do Good and Get Your Money Back

2008-11-17T13:56:00.003-05:00

Dave and I have started lending through Kiva, a California-based charity that arranges microloans from private individuals who have money to private individuals who don't.

At the moment they don't charge any interest, so it's not a great place to invest a lot of your money or anything, but it's a great way to be able to keep doing good without going broke.

I heard about it on a fairly recent comments thread on Slacktivist.

What She Said

2008-11-09T20:17:00.001-05:00

This whole gleeful hate-on that so many people have for Sarah Palin has really been rubbing me the wrong way lately. Now Flea has explained why.

Thank you

2008-11-04T23:04:00.002-05:00

To MSNBC, for calling it this early, so I can get some sleep. And to all you voting Americans out there, for not being *quite* as stupid as you look.

Okay, I'm going to close my computer on MSNBC's 5th straight minute of shots of screaming crowds and get some shut eye before my 8am class tomorrow.

Heh

2008-11-03T11:31:00.001-05:00

Heh. "Squirty cream." Heh.

Via.

No One Actually Buys this Shit, Right?

2008-10-16T10:38:00.004-04:00

I wasn't going to blog about it, because it isn't even my country, but some of the things McCain said last night were insane. I mean I know a certain amount of insanity is needed to retain the RTC vote, but for the sake of my sanity I refuse to believe that *anyone* could be won over by these gems:

The idea that nuclear power should be safe is a radical environmentalist position

The use of airquotes when talking about how late-term abortion bans* shouldn't include exceptions for women's "health"

The idea that military personal, upon leaving the army, should be fast-tracked into teaching positions in public schools without needing to do any training or pass any certification exams or otherwise show that they, you know, can teach

He also completely cracked me up when claimed that his campaign couldn't be held responsible for Palin's "palling around with terrorists" smear because every rally has its fringe elements.

*As an aside, I am very angry at Obama right now for coming out in support of banning late-term abortions, and I don't care if he does think there should be exceptions for the life and health of the mother. These late term abortion arguments are a *huge* red herring in the abortion discussion and he should have called McCain out on that. Women don't up and decide, at 8 months gestation, that they'd rather not be pregnant after all, TYVM, bikini season is coming up so let's go have an abortion.** By including exceptions for life/health of the mother (and one assumes that this includes allowing the termination of fetuses that are dying and/or wouldn't survive out of the womb), the only abortions such a ban would prevent are those of women who have been trying to abort since their first trimester but couldn't because they lacked access, or those being considered by women whose social/economic/whatever situation has just changed dramatically, to the point where they no longer feel they can continue with the pregnancy. In addition, supporting late-term abortion bans while allowing earlier abortions pretty much always requires making what Amp calls the "woman, what woman?" argument. That is unfuckingacceptable and Obama should be ashamed of himself. Here's hoping that his enforced-childbirth support is really just pandering to that seeming majority that believe they support such positions only because they don't actually know much about it.

**Although I personally believe that if they did they should still be allowed to have one, because it's still their damn body.

Rachel Maddow: Full of Win

2008-09-25T11:45:00.002-04:00

Amanda Marcotte has up a YouTube video up wherein Rachel Maddow explains what happened to the US banks.

She's so awesome. *sigh*

Dammit!

2008-09-23T10:28:00.003-04:00

It's just not fair. All last week I felt like I was fighting off a cold. I got plenty of rest, drank tea, skipped some classes, and just generally took it easy. Last night I finally felt completely better. I even made dinner and did a bunch of dishes and only stayed up a little later than I probably should have. I was all like, yay! No more beginning-of-semester cold!

Then this morning, BAM! DEATH! Well, okay, not death, but big fucking head cold. It's just not fair. And because I skipped all those classes last week trying *not* to get sick, now that I am sick I have to just suck it up and go to class anyway. Goddammit!

Update

2008-09-05T21:04:00.003-04:00

For those who are interested:

- Moving into the new apartment went much smoother than I expected it to (and many thanks to those who helped!)
- We're about 90% unpacked, which is good (although that last 10% is always a bitch).
- The new apartment is smaller than the old one, but pretty much everything else about it is much, much better. It's in a complex with a multi-person custodial/managerial staff, all of whom seem to be sober when they're on duty. The attitude towards broken things seems to be to fix them rather than paint over them. The building itself is small enough that it probably isn't supporting a large population of cockroaches. We're in a real neighbourhood, with shops and people who walk and restaurants and *gasp* a subway stop. I could almost cry. The only thing I really don't like is that I'm now much too far from school to bike there. On the other hand, I'm biking distance from other things in the city, which is awesome. And because we're on the subway line, the commute to school by TTC is only about 10-15 minutes longer than it used to be.
- New address will go out to those whose business it is fairly soon. Phone number has not changed.
- Classes start on Monday. There is a >0 chance we'll have finished unpacking by then. Eek.
- After making us wait for the better part of a week, Primus has finally seen fit to provide us with phone and internet service, hence this post.

So It Turns Out...

2008-08-30T16:43:00.002-04:00

Greg Laden? Awesome on race. Awesome on science education. Kind of a sexist asshat.

It's really a shame. Come on people, there are so many good reasons why this woman shouldn't be VP. Having been a beauty queen isn't one of them.

I'm actually quite disappointed, because I'm usually a fan of Laden's. But I know that he was called out on the beauty queen thing in his first post on Palin, and he hasn't either stopped doing it, or explained why he thinks it's okay.

Bizarre

2008-08-28T21:19:00.002-04:00

So, I'm in the middle of packing to move apartments and yesterday I was going through the cabinet in the bathroom, packing stuff up or throwing it out, and I encountered a lipstick that I bought, probably in 2003. Now, most of my makeup has disappeared over the years, since every time I move it's been that much longer since I've worn any of it, so I throw more of it out, but I remembered really liking the colour of this lipstick, so I decided to put it on to see if I still liked it enough to hang on to it. And you know what? I totally suck at putting on lipstick.

I have no idea when that happened. I mean, I've never worn makeup regularly, but it used to be that the once or twice a year that I'd wear it for ballet performances, halloween, or Meow Mix was enough to keep me competent at applying it, and I actually kind of prided myself on staying decent at this skill I almost never used. Unfortunately, over the last few years I've stopped doing all those things and I think 2004 may have been the last time I put on any makeup at all. And now I totally suck at it. And it wasn't just that the final result was lopsided and funny-looking (although it was). I felt super awkward trying to put it on, like I just couldn't find the right angle for my wrist and forearm. I remember I used to feel that way when I first was learning to apply makeup, when I was 10 or 11. It was weird.

Despite the hatchet job I did on my lips, I decided the colour was nice enough that the lipstick was worth keeping. Maybe there will be a party in the next year or two worth wearing it for. And maybe I'll even relearn how to put it on.

I did, however, throw out a nail polish that had separated and a blush that was at least seven years old, which brings the makeup I own down to, um... one lipstick. I feel like this is an occasion that should be marked somehow. The official passing of the era of me pretending I'm someone who might wear makeup. If I didn't think my labmates would die of shock (and if I knew how to put it on) I'd wear the lipstick to work tomorrow.

Huh.

Food Meme

2008-08-23T00:37:00.001-04:00

Food meme, from Mark Chu-Carroll. Because it's really the most interesting thing I have time to say right now. Too tired, bored, cranky, and half-packed to actually think.

1. Venison: No, haven't had any game meats
2. Nettle tea: No. Nettles hurt. For all that I understand the tea doesn't sting you, I'm prejudiced against nettles
3. Huevos rancheros: Don't think so
4. Steak tartare: Nope
5. Crocodile: Nope
6. Black pudding: No
7. Cheese fondue: Yes
8. Carp: Don't know. Probably not. I didn't really keep track of which fish I ate as a kid, it was sort of all the same to me.
9. Borscht: For all that I, like MarkCC, am an Ashkenazi Jew, I don't think I've ever had borscht
10. Baba ghanoush: Yep. I like it best when it's really just hummus with eggplant.
11. Calamari: Yeah, couple times. Not as good as Chinese barbequed squid, but edible.
12. Pho: Nope.
13. PB&J sandwich: Yes, of course, and repeatedly. But I'm not a big fan.
14. Aloo gobi: Potatoes and cauliflower. What's not to love?
15. Hot dog from a street cart: I think I've only ever had the vegetarian kind. I don't think I ever ate streetmeat before I became vegetarian.
16. Epoisses: Nope, never even heard of it. I gather it's cheese.
17. Black truffle: No, for all that truffles come highly recommended, I'm always suspicious of non-button mushrooms because I tend not to like them. Their texture icks me out.
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes: Nope
19. Steamed pork buns: Nope
20. Pistachio ice cream: Yeah. It's okay I guess, I've never been a big ice cream fan.
21. Heirloom tomatoes: Don't think so, but I'd love to.
22. Fresh wild berries: Yup.
23. Foie gras: No, ew.
24. Rice and beans: Of course
25. Brawn, or head cheese: No
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper: Not yet!
27. Dulce de leche: Yeah
28. Oysters: again, ew.
29. Baklava: Uh huh.
30. Bagna cauda: I don't know it by name, but looking at Wiki's description of the dish, I think I've had it or something very like it. It's certainly familiar.
31. Wasabi peas: Yes, unimpressed.
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl: Well, I've had clam chowder and I've certainly had sourdough, but not in that combination.
33. Salted lassi: Yes. Seriously overrated, at least by my dad.
34. Sauerkraut: Yum!
35. Root beer float: Yeah. Waaaayyy too much sugar.
36. Cognac with a fat cigar: No. Cigars are gross. And I don't think I've actually had cognac
37. Clotted cream tea: Once, in England, with the Bear. It was very rich, but also nummy.
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O: Once, I think. I avoid jello shots. I prefer my booze in liquid form.
39. Gumbo: As in the vegetable, okra, unfortunately yes. As in the specific kind of stew made from okra, no.
40. Oxtail: No
41. Curried goat: No. My meat-eating days and my curry-eating days didn't really overlap.
42. Whole insects: Ugh, no. Arthropods are gross and not meant to be eaten.
43. Phaal: Not under that name. Probably not.
44. Goat's milk: I don't think so. I've certainly had goat's cheese and possibly yogurt, but I don't think I've ever just drunk the milk.
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$130 or more: No.
46. Fugu: No. Like with curry, my willingness to be adventurous with food didn't develop until long after I stopped eating meat.
47. Chicken tikka masala: No. See above re: goat curry
48. Eel: No. See above re: fugu.
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut: Meh. Very mushy, sugary donut. Seriously don't see what the big deal is.
50. Sea urchin: No. See above re: fugu, eel.
51. Prickly pear: If this is the same as a cactus pear then yes. And yum!
52. Umeboshi: No, I'd never heard of them
53. Abalone: No. I haven't eaten a lot of shellfish.
54. Paneer: Yeah. It's bland.
55. McDonald's Big Mac Meal: Ugh, no. McDonald's hamburgers are so disgusting.
56. Spaetzle: I'm not 100% sure but, again, the Wiki description looks very familiar, so probably.
57. Dirty gin martini: No, but I'd be willing to try.
58. Beer above 8% ABV: Yeah. These are popular in Montreal. One of the Unibroue ones like Maudite or Fin du Monde. Tasted like olives. Blech.
59. Poutine: If it's 3 am and you've got the drunken munchies it's awesome. Otherwise, ugh.
60. Carob chips: bleh. also meh. Something that's meant to take the place of chocolate shouldn't invoke those responses.
61. S'mores: Surprisingly, only the microwave kind. I haven't done a lot of campfires in my life.
62. Sweetbreads: No.
63. Kaolin:The only meaning I know for this is a kind of clay so, um, no.
64. Currywurst: Huh. Pork sausage with curry sauce. Nope.
65. Durian: Not yet, but I will...
66. Frogs' legs: Um... I think I may have tasted them off someone else's plate at some point. But maybe not.
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake: aka queue de castor? Yes. I spent two weeks making them, which was enough time for the oil on the floor to cause my rubber soles to dissolve. I still get nauseous at the smell of frying batter.
68. Haggis: I've been in the same room as it....
69. Fried plantain: Yum!
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette: That's fucking gross.
71. Gazpacho: Yeah, a few times. Kind of meh.
72. Caviar and blini: Um.. I've had each element, but not together.
73. Louche absinthe: No, but I probably wouldn't turn it down.
74. Gjetost, or brunost: No. Apparently it's a variety of cheese
75. Roadkill: No, but Dave has.
76. Baijiu: No.
77. Hostess Fruit Pie: Never heard of it. This must be an American thing.
78. Snail: Once, when I was little. I remember loving it.
79. Lapsang souchong: Some kind of tea, right? I don't think so.
80. Bellini: No, but again, wouldn't turn it down.
81. Tom yum: This can be hard to find vegetarian. I don't think so.
82. Eggs Benedict: Once, maybe. Or something like it. Eggs with a heavy, creamy sauce. No meat.
83. Pocky: Yeah. I'm a fan of chocolate-covered pretzel objects, so I liked it.
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant: No.
85. Kobe beef: Don't think so.
86. Hare: Nope.
87. Goulash: Since the person who did all the cooking when I was growing up was Hungarian, I'm inclined to say probably, but I don't remember it.
88. Flowers: A few times.
89. Horse: No.
90. Criollo chocolate: Don't know. I don't really pay attention to if/how fancy my chocolate is. I'm not as excited about chocolate as some people.
91. Spam: Ew, no. Fuckin gross, man.
92. Soft shell crab: No. See above re: insects.
93. Rose harissa: don't think so.
94. Catfish: Nope.
95. Mole poblano: Surprisingly, no. But I will.
96. Bagel and lox: I grew up half Jewish in Toronto. I don't think it would have been avoidable.
97. Lobster Thermidor: See above re: insects.
98. Polenta: Yes, repeatedly, but only willingly once.
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee: No. I stopped drinking coffee in my teens, when it started making me sick.
100. Snake: Nope.

The Rev also added a few extras.

1. Elk: No.
2. Ostrich: No.
3. Moose: No.
4. Whole hog BBQ: I've been at one, but I was already vegetarian, so I didn't partake.
5. Wine @ >$400/bottle.: God no. I have better things to do with 400$
6. Home made bacon/sausage: I'm assuming that buying strips of bacon at the grocery store and then cooking them at home doesn't count. I'll say no. Update: I've been reminded that the woman who took care of me when I was between 1 and 2 years old used to make home made sausage, and that I loved it. So I revise my answer to yes.
7. Chocolate and chilis: No, but I plan to try it soon,
8. Chittlins: Didn't we already do this one? No and ew.
9. Moonshine: No.
10. Quail eggs: Once. It was raw. I slurped and swallowed without really tasting, and was very proud of myself that I managed even that much.

And Mark added some more:

1. Monkfish liver: No
2. Live scallop: No.
3. Fried chicken giblets: No.
4. Duck cracklings: No.
5. Grappa: Um... I've spent enough time drinking booze on the Italy/Austria border that I'm inclined to think so, but I don't remember specifically.

And in the spirit of adding things, I've had:

kolrabi
cream off the top of non-homogenized milk
dosa

Codes are Cool

2008-08-13T00:09:00.002-04:00

Mark Chu-Carroll of Good Math, Bad Math is doing an interesting and accessible (so far) series of posts about encryption. He started out explaining why encryption is relevant even to little folks like you and me, then he went on to explain how simple encryption like substitution ciphers work, and his latest is an explanation of rotating ciphers. It's fun stuff, go read it.

Latest Breakfast: Homemade Musli

2008-08-11T00:52:00.004-04:00

I have a few requirements for breakfast. Breakfast must be reasonably low in sugar. If I have a high sugar breakfast I crash by 10 am. Breakfast must also contain at least some protein, for the same reason. Breakfast must not require any brain power, time, or effort to prepare.

For a while I was very into eggs for breakfast, often just having the whites to avoid excessive cholesterol, but cooking before I've had my tea is never a good idea, I wasn't too into having fried stuff every morning, and I wanted a change. So then we had smoothies for a while, but the ingredients were pretty pricey and it was keeping our weekly grocery cost just a little too high. So now we're trying something new. I'm making musli. It goes like this:

1 big bag (~1.5kg) quick oats
1 big bag raisins
1 container dried apricots, cut in eighths
1 medium bag currants
1 smallish bag slivered almonds
1 smallish bag chopped pecans
1 large amount shelled, unsalted sunflower seeds
1/2 cup oat bran
a medium amount of flax meal

Mix in a big bowl and store in a closeable hard plastic or glass container. Serve with vanilla soy milk or, you know, whatever makes you happy. The above recipe made enough to keep the two of us in breakfasts for two weeks.

Cuz He's Just That Kind of Guy

2008-08-10T20:32:00.002-04:00

Focus on the Patriarchy asks their daddy to pee on Obama's birthday cake.

Not that they're petty or anything.

Open Letter to Every Driver in Scarborough

2008-07-26T22:13:00.001-04:00

Pay attention, fuckheads.

Via my dad.

Hold Nothing Sacred

2008-07-24T21:36:00.004-04:00

and lift your glass to P.Z. Myers. He stood up with grace, wit, and courage, to say "I am Spartacus," in the face of overwhelming insanity. I salute him.

You have 12 hours

2008-07-20T11:55:00.002-04:00

Before Joss Whedon's Supervillian musical in three acts disappears from the freeform internets and you have to download it from iTunes or wait for the DVD. So go. Watch it now.

LINEs, SINEs, and the Design Inference

2008-07-14T21:19:00.004-04:00

Transposons are wacky little genes, and really kind of cool. You can see Wikipedia's explanation of transposons here, but I'll give you the short version. What I'm describing here are what Wikipedia calls Class II transposons.

A transposon is a sequence of DNA that can move around in your genome. It comes in long and short versions, and copies of it are found interspersed throughout the genome. The long ones (Long INterspersed Elements, or LINEs) encode one protein, a transposase. What the transposase does is it cleaves the transposon from its current location and inserts it elsewhere in the genome. And that's ALL it does. SINEs (Short INterspersed Elements) do even less. What they do is be sequences that the LINEs' transposases recognize, and therefore transpose. And that's fucking IT.

Transposons are quite possibly the wackiest things I've encountered all week. They don't DO anything. By which I mean, they have no influence on an organism's life cycle. They just hang out in your genome, moving around and taking up space.

I like things like transposons because they really drive the point home that we're just something that happened. When you're studying stuff in the natural world, especially biology, it can be really easy to start anthropomorphizing and attributing purpose without even realizing you're doing it. So much of biology is so fucking complex and often really quite good at what it does, and it's in all the language that we use, talking about what a given enzyme is "for," or "why" a given trait evolved, sometimes you can slip into thinking that we actually mean those things. And then you see something like a transposon, and it's obvious that it's not "for" anything. It has no purpose, no raison d'être. It does nothing but be there. And once you realize that it becomes obvious once again that that's equally true of us.

And for all that the design inference died 150 years ago with Darwin's work, it's crap like this that really makes it implausible to me. I mean, this is exactly the kind of random, pointless genomic drivel that one might expect to show up in a system of random changes that can get passed along, but a ~~god~~ designer would have to be some fucked up kind of surrealist to create something like this. I mean seriously. WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?!? Why? It's strange and off-putting.

Well, okay. There is one thing that transposons do. Transposons can cause non-silent mutations. There are two main ways that they can do this, both at the insertion stage. The first way is, when they cut the DNA to insert themselves, they cut the different strands at different points, creating an overhang and a gap on each side. Then, while they're inserting, the gaps are filled in with sequences complementary to the overhangs (and therefore identical to the opposite overhangs), so when the process is complete you have two copies of the sequence, one on either side of the transposon. If this sequence was something your cell was using, well, now it has two of them.

The other way a transposon can have an effect is by inserting itself right into a gene (or promoter region of a gene, or whatever) that you were using, thereby breaking it. This is apparently the sort of mutation that caused hemophilia in the European royal families. A transposon inserted itself into the gene for a protein involved in blood clotting and bam! No more blood clots; sucks to be them.

But for all that that's an effect of transposons, it's only a real effect in the context of evolution. What would be the point of that in something that was designed?

Transposons are cool.

Don't Worry, He's Got it Covered.

2008-06-25T23:12:00.003-04:00

Aren't we all glad that God is on the job? Ray Comfort, that banana-lovin' fiend, reassures us that, despite appearances to the contrary, God is properly punishing California for legalising same-sex marriage. In fact, God is so damn good, he preemptively punished California last year, to whit:

We are having the worst drought in our recorded history. Last year 1,155 homes were destroyed.

Via.

George Carlin is Not in Heaven

2008-06-23T08:05:00.005-04:00

But only because there's no such thing, and you know he wouldn't thank us for pretending. His passing marks a sad day for intelligent people everywhere. He may not have been a Mary Ann or a Molly Ivins, but his voice added a refreshing and needed dose of sanity and perspective to the prevaling North American discourse and he will certainly be missed.

Via.

Done

2008-06-02T20:31:00.000-04:00

The pigeon situation has been dealt with. In case you were wondering.

Dammit!

2008-05-25T18:52:00.002-04:00

A pigeon has laid two eggs in the flowerpot I was going to put my strawberry plant in, and is sitting on them. It stared at me the whole time I took down the drying racks, which I have brought inside pending our decision about what to do about the family growing on our balcony.

On the one hand, it does seem unfair to kick a pigeon out of its home and kill its children-to-be when, as my sister said, I didn't have a sign up or anything. But on the other hand, pigeons are creepy and poo on your laundry and the balcony isn't really big enough for the both of us.

Grumble grumble.

Thoughts on Commuting by Bike in the Suburbs

2008-05-23T20:06:00.004-04:00

1.  Distances in the suburbs are longer.
No matter how you slice it, 12.5 km (not including the vertical components, which are considerable) is a long way to go twice a day. When you expect everyone to get everywhere by car, or even bus, such distances are unremarkable, but on a bike it's a serious commitment

2.  Overall vertical vector matters.
However hilly the road may be, if there's an overall downhill trend going one way, and a corresponding overall uphill trend the other way, you'll notice. If you live in the Ferrel cell and your downhill-trending leg is eastward, so you have the wind at your back going downhill, and in your face coming uphill, you notice that too.

From this, I have developed what I think should be every cyclist's motto: Always live uphill from where you spend your days. The reason for this is that if your trip out in the morning is going to be downhill, it's fairly easy to choose to ride your bike. And then in the evening, when both you and your bike have to get home, you just have to suck it up and ride uphill. I have had the excellent sense to live uphill from my various school/work for the past seven years and it has served me well.

3.  Desolation is not a cyclist's friend.
Seriously. If your bike breaks down on the side of a major suburban road, ain't no one there to help you. Not that I needed help, or would have accepted had it been offered, a mis-shifted chain is a fairly easy fix, but if it had been something more major I would have been royally screwed.

4.  Other suburban cyclists are completely fucking insane.
In downtown Toronto you rarely see a car doing more than about 50 km/h; there's just too much traffic. I'd estimate roughly 30% of the downtown cyclists wear helmets. On the major street I ride along out here, although the speed limit is 60, people regularly do 70 - 90 km/h. On the way out in the morning I didn't see a lot of other cyclists, but coming home this evening I saw several, only one looked over 25 and he was also the only one other than me wearing a helmet. And a lot of these helmetless kids rode on the street.*

5.  Bikes are asshole magnets.
Apparently there's nothing like a sweaty woman on a bicycle, red-faced and grimacing, wearing incredibly unflattering gym clothes and an enormous backpack complete with waist strap to really bring out the catcalling urge in jackasses.

Okay, I don't honestly think that what I look like has anything to do with it. I think the driver/cyclist and pedestrian/cyclist dynamic just lends itself really well to that kind of jackassery. One of you is whizzing by the other at high relative speed, which adds to the anonymity, and a person on a bicycle is less maneuverable and less able to respond verbally or manually, and therefore less able to meaningfully object than a person on foot. I think a lot of this is also true of the driver/pedestrian dynamic but since we don't do a lot of walking out here in the Grey Wasteland, I haven't been catcalled in a long time. It's been nice.

6.  People in the suburbs drive while unconscious.
It's the only explanation I can think of for how someone turning right, or stopping at an intersection, or pulling out of a gas station, can completely fail to notice the bicycle that is about to be RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEM. Seriously. Downtown drivers have this problem to, but not nearly to the same extent. If you ride in the suburbs, invest in the loudest bell you can find; you'll need it.

And those are my observations on suburban cycling. I biked 25 km today and I'm tired. I also think I could use a shower.

*I ride on the sidewalk. Not only because, as mentioned, people drive way too fast, but also because, this being the suburbs, nobody actually walks anywhere.

Why I Love My Job

2008-05-20T15:52:00.003-04:00

Conversation between me and one of the grad students in the lab today:

Me: Why are there fish from the grocery store in the freezer?
Grad Student: This is a fish lab.
m: uh huh...
gs: They're silversides.
m: and...
gs: But they're selling them as smelt, which is not even the same family! And they claim to have caught them in an area where you don't find silversides. So I figured I'd bring them back here, sequence their DNA, and find out what they really are.
m: you know you're the world's biggest geek, right?
gs: No, this is sweet. It's forensic ichthyology!

While We're At It

2008-05-15T23:28:00.002-04:00

Continuing in the vein of posting links while not providing any of my own content (slated to continue until I have something interesting to say and school lets up enough for me to say it), I received a link today to a new buddy blog. Sinead, my old friend from Montreal, evolutionary biologist extraordinaire, and all-around good potato, has a food-focused blog called Kitchen Dancing.

I had forgotten what an amazing writer Sinead is, and how exquisitely quirky she can be. I hadn't forgotten what an amazing cook she is though, and I have spent much of the afternoon and evening salivating over the blog's archives. If she and I don't end up in the same city some time soon I may find myself trying to swim across the Atlantic.

Olbermann Tells Bush to "Shut the Hell Up"

2008-05-15T21:40:00.003-04:00

But only because you can't say fuck on television.

Seriously, if Olbermann has a stroke I think he'll be able to sue Dubya over it; he's getting into some serious neck vein territory here and not without cause.

If you want to see Olbermann's angriest Special Comment yet, go click that link.

Links

2008-05-09T08:16:00.003-04:00

Amanda at Pandagon does an excellent job explaining why virginity makes a lousy asset.

Also, via Crooks and Liars, I learned about Hasan Elahi, a man who, having had his civil rights violated by the FBI, decides to just give them all up. While I can understand the practical appeal of having a constant alibi, the fact that sources like Wired and C&L are treating this as a cool and innovative way of dealing with civil rights violations, instead of an understandable but tragic capitulation to an oppressive regime is seriously problematic.

Happy First of May!

2008-05-01T12:03:00.004-04:00

Forget National Day of Prayer; you know what to do. I encourage everyone to enjoy May to the fullest.

On Alternatives and Language

2008-04-27T23:45:00.003-04:00

I'd like to riff off Andrea for a minute, if you don't mind. She's written a couple of posts lately that have gotten me thinking about language and subcultures.

As you can see in the comments of that first post, we got into a conversation about the accuracy of the word power in reference to a consensual relationship. In my lexicon, power and consent are to at least some extent mutually exclusive, so, while I can see using it in a scene context, where it's understood that it's make-believe, the word just doesn't work for me in the context of a 24/7-type relationship.

In the second above-linked post, Andrea talks about not wanting to use the word slave to describe her bois, while blithely referring to them as her property. I find this especially jarring to my lexicon because the conceptual distance between my (white, female, affluent, Western) life and the reality of slavery is much farther than the distance between my life and the reality of people-as-property. If one of those two words is going to be available for me to redefine away the cultural baggage, it ain't gonna be property. But Andrea's lexicon is different, and that's fine.

These two posts, though, got me to thinking. What's going on is that we have a set of phenomena (inflicting pain, subservience, the control of one person's life by another) that are for all but a vanishingly small proportion of the population thought of exclusively as non-consensual.¹ What this is going to mean is that, for the majority of people, even people who experience these phenomena consensually on a regular basis, the words themselves are going to carry a lot of connotative baggage of non consensuality.

So what are you going to do about it?
It seems to me that there are three options available. First, you can always describe your relationships in multi-sentence terms, referring to your partner as "the person over whom I have been given authority in the matters of X, Y, and Z (and B to a lesser extent), always contingent, of course, on his consent and subject to renegotiation when desired by either of us." Some people will try this option, but it never lasts. Languages evolve not just over generations, but fairly quickly and repeatedly within one speaker's lifetime, and one of the selective forces on language is efficiency. People don't like using multiple sentences to express what they can say with one word. So people will look for a word. Which brings me to option two: neologism. You can just make up a word to describe the kind of power/authority that is contingent on consent. You can call it glogan, and have one partner be the gloganee, and the other the gloganer, or whatever. This eliminates the problem of efficiency found in solution 1, and the problem of connotation found in solution 3 (we'll get to that), but it brings with it its own host of problems. While it's true that languages evolve, they kind of resist deliberate change. People feel uncomfortable and awkward deliberately using invented words.

This leaves solution 3: reclaim, reinvent, and redefine. And this is what people are doing. It is easier for a speaker to take an existing word and alter its connotations slightly than to invent a new one, and the words people choose to apply in these new contexts will depend hugely on the individual's experiences with them, and the connotations they've acquired, and that's fine.

What this doesn't mean, however, is that people get to throw words around willy-nilly, uncritically redefining and re-redefining on a whim, without ever making their meanings explicit or acknowledging that the cultural consensus about what that word means is being violated. That sort of behaviour only leads to the post-modern bullshit known as philosophy, and makes intelligent conversation impossible. It's important, first of all, to have a sufficiently large vocabulary that, if a word already exists to describe whatever it is you're doing, you know about it and, second, if you do have to redefine, to do it explicitly and transparently so that people can still converse meaningfully with you.

What I guess I'm trying to say with this is that, contra Andrea, I think redefinition is a necessary and inevitable aspect of trying to talk about things like BDSM and, in fact, I think she's doing it.

1. Yes, I'm aware that pain and power play make it into the sex lives of many, if not most, people who would call themselves vanilla, but since they don't tend to think of their sex lives that way, my point stands. back

Another Book Meme

2008-04-27T01:12:00.003-04:00

Via Pharyngula, I came across this list of supposedly pretentious books. That is, the 106 books most often marked unread on LibraryThing. I've started reading 17 of them (italics), and completed 10 (bold):

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary* (this I started and failed to finish both in the original French and in the English translation)
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre*
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations*
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New world
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels (I read an abridged children's version of this when I was little, but I hardly think that counts)
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners

The Unbearable Lightness of Being*
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed^
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything (seriously overrated. If you didn't already know that correlation != causation then you might give it a look, but otherwise it gets a resounding "meh".)
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

*books that I was required to read for school. It's amazing how few I managed to get through!
^this one isn't in the abandoned pile yet. I had to put it down because I don't really have time to read nonfiction during the school year, but I fully intend to pick it up again over the summer.

Rachel Maddow is My Fucking Hero

2008-04-17T23:22:00.003-04:00

I've mentioned Maddow on the blog before; I like her a lot. She doesn't giggle or pull punches or defer, like so many women on news-like TV. She always makes her point eloquently and accessibly, and she's always right. So I've liked her.

But today she became my hero.

Seriously. Check her out in this clip from Crooks and Liars. On TV, in the middle of a heated discussion, being condescended to by an asshole older man who obviously doesn't respect her, and she manages to:
1) keep her cool, stay cogent and articulate, and make her point,
2) shut him the fuck up long enough to do that, and
3) in the heat of the discussion, without missing a beat, eloquently call him out on his condescending bullshit, to whit: "Let me make my point and then you can dismiss me."

What I wouldn't give to have her superpowers. Where do we sign up for the Rachel Maddow lessons?

You Have Got To Be Fucking Kidding Me

2008-04-16T11:03:00.005-04:00

Seriously. I can't even bring myself to wonder what the justification is. I'm sure all manner of mirth and hilarity will ensue once it goes to trial.

UPDATE:
It's been pointed out to me that not everybody has the same wacky obsessions that I do, and some context might be useful. Here it is:

Premise Media is the production company behind the ID creationism movie Expelled. XVIVO is an animation company that created a rendition of some intracellular processes for Harvard University. ERV has the whole nasty story, but basically Expelled uses a copy (as in forgery, not as in Xerox) of the XVIVO/Harvard animation. XVIVO's lawyers sent Premise a don't-do-that letter and have filed a lawsuit. Now, according to the first link up there, Premise is suing them back, on what twisted pretext I can't even imagine. Hence the hilarity. (I'm fresh out of outrage. These guys aren't competent enough to warrant it.)

New Discovery -- Curry in a Can

2008-04-12T23:13:00.003-04:00

Did you know that curry comes in a can? It's quite possibly the most exciting discovery I've made all year. Before now my sources of curry have been Indian restaurants and making it myself. I knew that you could get those carboard boxes of stuff that you add water to and heat, but they made me nervous because dry stuff you add water to is never any good.

But Dave and I discovered an Indian grocery store in our neighbourhood last week, and today when we were there, trying to decide what would be the most efficient, non-budget-breaking way to get meals during exams, we discovered that curry comes in cans! And it's yummy! And enough food (if you make rice) to feed two people for 1.99$. 1$/person is seriously not bad as meals go. I almost never average better than that even when cooking stuff from scratch.

This is Me

2008-04-08T12:26:00.002-04:00

I don't know why, but I feel a strong sense of identification with this cat.

I See You!

2008-04-05T22:06:00.003-04:00

Sitemeter tells me all about you. The two most interesting things it tells me are how you find me and whence you read me. Let's do the latter of those:

Of the last 100 visits to this site there were:

38 from Toronto, Ontario, Canada
5 from
- Montreal, Quebec, Canada
- Somervill, Massachusetts, USA
4 from
- Georgetown, Ontario, Canada
- Avon, Indiana, USA
3 from Jamaica, New York, USA
2 from
- Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
- Edison, New Jersey, USA
- Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA
- 60 N, 95 W (where the Nunavut/Manitoba border touches Hudson Bay)
- 38 N, 97 W (middle of nowhere, Kansas)
and 1 each from:
- Baltimore, Maryland, USA
- Detroit, Michigan, USA
- Mcallen, Texas, USA
- Avon, Indiana, USA
- Rainford, Lancashire, UK
- Richmond, Texas, UK
- Calgary, Alberta, Canada
- High Point, North Carolina, USA
- Brampton, Ontario, Canada
- Los Angeles, California, USA
- Village of Nagog Woods, Massachusetts, USA
- Tempe, Arizona, USA
- Providence, Rhode Islande, USA
- Oshawa, Ontario, Canada
- Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
- Louth, Louth, Ireland
- Delft, Zuid-Holland, Netherlands
- San Jose, Costa Rica
- Seattle, Washington, USA
- Berwick, Pennsylvania, USA
- Kuala Lumpur, Wilayah Persukutuan, Malaysia
- Chatham, Ontario, Canada
- Dublin, Ireland
- Kiev, Kyyivs'ka Oblast', Ukraine
- New York, New York, USA
- Mountain View, California, USA
- London, UK
- Joensuu, Eastern Finland, Finland
- Hillard, Ohio, USA
- Lafayette, Indiana, USA
- Helsinki, Southern Finland, Finland

Of course this all depends on none of you spoofing your IPs, and your ISPs telling the truth.

Breakfast Smoothies

2008-03-23T22:39:00.003-04:00

A recipe of my own invention. All amounts approximate. Vary proportions and ingredients with wild abandon.

400mL orange juice

75g (that's 1/4 of a 300g container) silken tofu

3 large spoonfuls plain yogurt

1 3/4 cup frozen fruit (last week we used strawberries and mango, this week it's mixed berries)

a generous half cup quick oats

2-3 tsp flax meal

1 banana

Combine all the ingredients in a large bowl. This can be done the night before if you prefer, and left in the fridge over night. In the morning, take a handblender and whrrrrrrrrrrrrr until the texture is quite liquid.

Makes a filling breakfast for 2.

I find this recipe to be a bit acidic. If you agree (and you're rich) feel free to substitute some or all of the oj with soy milk (or real milk if you have a high tolerance for dairy). I use orange juice only because it is the most cheaply available real juice.

The Word Dumb Has Long Ceased to Cover It

2008-03-21T19:00:00.005-04:00

IDiots do something massively stupid and hypocritical.

S c i e n c ey b l o g g o s p h e r e a c t s s u r p r i s e d

Well, no, not really. But now that I've interspersed all those letters with links, I'm not exactly inclined to go back and change my phrasing, so you're stuck with it.

Amazing

2008-03-19T11:03:00.004-04:00

Everyone needs to go watch this speech by Barack Obama.

I can't help it. I ought to know that every step in an election campaign is choreographed. That I should make no assumptions that a politician's words in any way reflect their beliefs. I know that, but I just can't help it. This speech gives me hope. Maybe it's just that I've never heard Obama speak before. I have heard that he's an excellent orator and it could be that that's all this is, but I don't think so.

I can't endorse the speech unqualifiedly -- there were three things in it that I found objectionable -- but three things in a 37 minute speech is not bad, and for the bulk of it I was amazed. Obama was saying things that are necessary, things that I think every American (and Canadian) needs to hear, but as important as the content of the speech is, more important is the fact that Obama delivered it, and delivered it now. He could have left it a desk drawer (or more likely a file on his computer), waiting for the day when he was retired and had nothing to lose.

I honestly didn't think I would live to see the day that a serious politician who has a real chance of winning the American presidential election would stand up and speak an uncomfortable truth to people who might not want to hear it, people who he hopes will nonetheless vote for him. It sets a heartening precedent. Obama's courage (and, one hopes, success) in delivering this speech opens the door to something resembling honest discussion about oppression. It makes room for women politicians to speak up about back-alley abortions and the necessity of reproductive rights. It makes room for gay and lesbian politicians to talk about the days before Stonewall and the ongoing oppressions they face.

I'm not so naive as to think that this is going to start happening regularly, or right away. But it's happened once, and that means it can happen again.

Update: Pam Spaulding at Pandagon has written a post saying much of what I was trying to say, and more, much more eloquently than I did. Just go read that.

It Just Seems to Me

2008-03-17T22:16:00.002-04:00

Without saying a word against the gentleman who was actually doing the job -- as far as I could tell his behaviour was completely professional and above reproach -- it just seems unlikely to me that the Athletics Department couldn't find a single woman with the skills to install an automatic opener on the door to the women's changeroom. I'm not sayin', just sayin'.

(Non) Naming NPs

2008-03-12T22:38:00.007-04:00

Looking back through Q. Pheevr's archives, I rediscovered his post about the naming of He Who Must Not Be Named. I think Q might not be entirely right about this.

While I'm not disputing the assertion that He Who Must Not Be Named is, in the Harry Potter books, actually a name, I don't think the invariant case is the reason.

When I check my own judgements, I find that I'm perfectly happy with, for example,

You'll have to get those numbers from she who approves the budget

even if "she who approves the budget" is a one-time innovation and not a common nickname for the accountant. On the other hand, I can't think of any context where I could use

*her who approves the budget

as a constituent NP.

In fact, it seems to me that nominative is the only acceptable case in definite descriptions that start with pronouns. Maybe this is required for the pronoun to govern¹ the rest of the NP?
Further, if the invariant case were simply a result of the description being a name then we would expect it to be possible to have a name/description with a different invariant case, for example

*Him who was thrown down a well came home today

but I don't think you can. There might be some sem/prag issues interfering here though. When you have Someone Who Cannot Be Named, usually it's because they hold some sort of power over the people who Cannot Name them, and such people tend to find themselves (or at least the NPs that refer to them) in agent positions in sentences.

So what do y'all think? Do people's judgements differ from mine?

1. Apologies if this is not the word I'm looking for. It's been four years since I've done any syntax, so I'm counting on the linguists in my readership to just kind of know what I mean. (back)

Evolution: Really Damn Cool

2008-03-09T20:45:00.002-04:00

Go check out this post by Abbie about what plasmids can do. You know what a plasmid is? Just DNA. C'est tout. I'm serious, go read Abbie's post and marvel.

Note to Self

2008-03-01T21:25:00.001-05:00

When you're manipulating objects in space, you actually have three dimensions to work in. Use them all.

Lack of Blogging

2008-03-01T11:26:00.003-05:00

Apologies to those who care that I'm not blogging. I've got four midterms and one assignment in a two-week period and I'm a little swamped. Other than a lovely dinner with Sex Geek and fam, my reading week consisted of, well, reading.

Have I mentioned that I hate psychology? With a fiery passion, I do. But five more weeks of classes, one final exam, and then I will never have to think about it again. This gives me a little bit of pleasure.

Well, time to do a major cleaning in the bedroom, since the new bed just arrived. And then back to the books.

On Peer Review

2008-02-07T20:43:00.000-05:00

Recently somebody goofed. Bad. The journal Proteomics (which I had never heard of but I understand was heretofore reputable) published (Epub, ahead of print) an article that, if Myers' excerpts are representative, has conclusions that not only don't follow from any data, but are in fact unfalsifiable. This is bad. It's not only bad for the journal and the authors, it's bad for science. It is the “one peer reviewed article” that we've been smugly demanding from IDiots all this time. Bad.

It is also being held up as a failure of the peer review process, and I can see why. But there's something important that's getting lost in the (justifiedly) panicked shuffle, and I want to talk about it. My intention is that this post be a reference that people can point to in the fight I know is coming. So here it is.

There are two things that peer review can mean. I'll call them peer review(S) and peer review(G). Peer review(S) is what people normally think of when we talk about peer review. It's the process whereby a journal sends articles to just a few experts in the field, and those experts read and evaluate the article to recommend whether it should be published and, if so, what changes should be made first. When a reviewer is reviewing an article, she is looking for two things. One, she is looking for good science: Is the methodology sound? Is the measure valid? Do the conclusions actually follow from the data? and so on. And two, she is looking for integrity: Is the methodology well enough described to be reproduced? Are potential sources of error disclosed? Do citations accurately represent their sources?

This is an incredibly important process. Whatever I may say later in this post, I want it understood that one cannot overstate the importance of this process. It serves several functions. Firstly, it keeps out the rifraff. Writings from the likes of John A. Davison don't generally make it as far as a reviewer, but some less gibbering nonscience will, and the reviewers can keep it from getting published. This is good, not only because it keeps the rest of the community from having to slog through mountains of nonsense, it also means that nonexperts reading the journals (such as science reporters) are less likely to come away from them believing the nonsense, which is good for everyone.

Secondly, it helps the editor to keep her biases from dictating what gets published. As important as it is to keep gibbering idiocy out of a journal, it's equally important to let legitimate disagreement in, and that's a big part of what peer review(S) is for.

But here's the thing. Not everything that has ever passed peer review(S) is still believed today, and the reason for that is what I'm calling peer review(G). The review process doesn't stop once the article is sent to a typesetter.

Once an article gets published, it doesn't just sit there in some sciencey archive, revealed truth to be believed from here on out. It gets tested. This is where the real strength of the scientific institution lies. Many more people will read the article than reviewed it. Most will read it with a critical eye, asking themselves if the conclusions follow from the given data. Some will check the sources to see if they say what they're claimed to say. And a few will check the results. They'll re-run the numbers, redo the experiments, do different experiments to check for convergence.

Peer review(G) is what allows someone (but not everyone) who publishes books rather than articles to still be taken seriously as a scientist. It's what decides how reliable a journal is.

As important as peer review(S) is (and dammit, it is) peer review(G) is more important. Peer review(G) is how hoaxes get identified. It's how knowledge moves forward. The real test of the strength of a conclusion is whether it stands the test of time and rigorous retesting, not whether it can make it past a couple reviewers.

So while I agree that what happened with Proteomics is an obscene failure of peer review(S), at best a truly embarrassing mistake and at worst an apalling miscarriage of the process, ultimately this is a success story for the peer review process. A process which "Mitochondria, the missing link between body and soul: Proteomic prospective evidence" is failing, by the way.

I Am So Old

2008-02-01T00:39:00.000-05:00

Life is not fair. Wikipedia just told me that the xkcd guy is almost two years younger than me. Why don't I have a talent?

This Week is Christ Awareness Week

2008-01-21T21:07:00.000-05:00

No, seriously. I anticipate next week will be Straight White Men Awareness Week.

When the fresh-faced girl first got up in front of my Chemistry class to announce it, and I later saw the people tabling with big posters and everything, I couldn't decide if they were just incredibly stupid and couldn't grasp the principle behind the culturally dominant group not getting its own week, or if they were intentionally antagonizing my school's large and vocal non-Christian (largely Muslim) population. Now that Google has informed me that this is an international phenomenon, I'm completely at a loss. Why did it start? What's the point? And does the Campus Crusade for Christ (I assume it's them since they're the only noisy Christian group on campus) really think that anyone at UofT doesn't know about Jesus?

In Case Anyone was Wondering

2008-01-13T13:27:00.000-05:00

Olive oil works quite well for removing bubblegum from glasses.

That is all.

You May Now Stop Chilling Out

2007-12-27T14:24:00.000-05:00

Some time ago I wrote a post about the controversy concerning Philip Pullman's book The Golden Compass at the Halton Catholic School Board. The book had been pulled from shelves at the request of (a) parent(s), pending review by a committee, and I said that this appeared to be a system that could work to keep legitimately offensive material out of the library while not practicing excessive censorship.

Well, it seems that I was right as far as the committee goes. It came back with a recommendation to move the book to the Young Adult section. Unfortunately, the board of trustees has decided to override the committee's recommendation and ban the book anyway on the grounds that it is "not in line with our governing values," that is, it doesn't adhere to the board's religious principles.

All that ire and condemnation that was inappropriate and jumping the gun a month ago is now fully appropriate and timely. Please proceed.

Dear Meat Industry and its Supporters,

2007-12-19T22:42:00.000-05:00

Please stop trying to kill our species.

Thanks,

Jake

Bakson. Bizy. Bakson

2007-12-18T11:54:00.000-05:00

Had my last exam yesterday. My plans for the next couple days:

It's A Tiddly Pom Kind of Day

2007-12-16T09:43:00.000-05:00

Any Torontonians who haven't yet, I suggest you look out your window.

Not about Aqsa's Hijab

2007-12-15T18:52:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure how I feel about the current coverage of the case of Aqsa Parvez, the Mississauga girl whose father beat her to death recently.

There has been a lot said about his killing her "because she refused to wear a hijab" and, I don't know, maybe he saw it that way. But the thing is that abusers will abuse their victims for any and no reason. No one seems to be blaming the victim, which is nice, but I'm not convinced that the blame can be placed at the feet of Islam much more convincingly.

It's just not that simple. On the one hand, there's no doubt that a society that condones the use of violence by men to keep their wives and children in line will contain more abuse than one that does not, and that officially or de facto theocratic societies are more likely to hold such attitudes, and, among individuals, I suspect that devout practice of a strongly patriarchal religion is at least somewhat correlated with increased willingness among men to beat their wives and children, but even if these correlations hold there's no reasonable way to claim to know the causal direction, if any.

Are Western Europe and Canada more progressive than some other countries because we are less religious, or are we less religious because we are more progressive? Could even the most devout of Muslim men, if he had no problems with power or anger management, possibly beat his daughter to death?

Abusers abuse for power, for kicks, because it makes them feel bigger and better than their victims, and while it's possible that religious teachings and social approval can allow some abusers to reach extremes they wouldn't otherwise, and while religiously motivated peer pressure can cause otherwise loving parents to behave abusively in limited ways, I just don't think, ultimately, that we can draw any conclusions about this case other than that Aqsa Parvez's father is a lowly, scum sucking child abuser and should rot in jail for the rest of his miserable life.

No Fair!

2007-12-09T00:20:00.000-05:00

How come Abbie gets to be "the most hateful, foul mouthed, frothing bitch in the biosphere?"

I work hard at being a foul mouthed, frothing bitch, and here Crazy Lady just hands over the title. Not that Abbie wouldn't qualify, mind, I just think there ought to have been a vote or something.

*pout*

Rachel Maddow Hits It out of the Park

2007-12-07T18:15:00.000-05:00

I've become familiar with Rachel Maddow through her frequent appearances on Keith Olbermann's Countdown show, which I watch through Crooks and Liars, and I'm a bit of a fan. At this Pandagon post we see Maddow going head to head with a crazy person who supports abstinence-only education, and she pulls no punches.

My favourite bit is towards the end:

Maddow: If abstinence programs are being used to substitute for programs that actually give people usable information about contraception, STDs and HIV, then they are killing people.

Thank you, Ms. Maddow.

It's also nice to see a host (in this case, Dan Abrams) who doesn't feel he has to be carefully neutral when faced with the choice between hard data and gibbering idiocy.

Still Funny

2007-11-27T22:02:00.000-05:00

I can't help it. I know that this has been around and back on the internets already, but I just can't stop finding it funny as hell.

That, in case anyone was wondering, was not a recycled screenshot. No, I took that screenshot my very own self around nine this evening. Let it be known that as of nine this evening, Conservapedia's Homosexuality page had received twenty thousand more hits than its main page. Freakin hilarious!

Melissa Wins

2007-11-27T21:41:00.000-05:00

Via Pandagon, Melissa McEwan of Shakesville has an excellent post up about the problem of disembodied girly bits.

If you can stomach the whole thing, I recommend going through it one at a time, if only to allow the effect of "okay, that's gotta be it. What?!? ANOTHER one?!?" to sink in. But if you really can't stomach it then at least scroll to the bottom and read what she actually has to say. My favourite bit?

I'm a girl with absolutely no interest in participating in my own subjugation, thank you very much.

This post was part of a so-far-ten-part series McEwan is doing on the appalling prevalence of bits-of-women novelty items available for sale, everything from rape-me pencil holders to vagina urinals. The tenth post here linked has links to the first nine. The above-linked exhaustive boobie list was number eight.

Controversial

2007-11-26T16:35:00.000-05:00

Misogynist pipsqueak, perpetual moron and Dembski minion Sal Cordova recently discovered that evolutionary biologist Joan Roughgarden is a trans woman, and he spent the first half of his post about her clutching his testicles crying "Oh noes! Do not be takin mah harbls!!!" About that there's not much to say that Myers at Pharyngula hasn't already said, so I'll just refer you to him, and then pick up where he left off.

After his flop sweat subsided, Cordova non sequitured his way bizarrely into a bloviation about how men are better leaders than women because... um... hrm.

Well, let's see. It would appear that Cordova is personally acquainted with a statistically significant proportion of beautiful 24-year-old girls, and that given the choice between

1. A male boss who has a lovely wife and family

2. A female boss who is 50 years old

[...]I’ve found that the beautiful 24-year-olds will generally realize an old female boss might have many hidden jealousies, the male boss will be more desirable in various ways

Of course this survey Cordy conducted* is flawed in a number of ways. For example, we're not given equivalent information about the two options. Does the female boss have a lovely wife and family? How old is the male boss? I'm disappointed that such a distinguished researcher as Cordova would make such an elementary mistake.

In an equally rigourous examination of "intelligent and ambitious" guys, Cordy finds that "a lot of guys would be inclined to think the man will be a better leader to lead them into battle."

Now, it's not clear to me what leading people into battle has to do with the sexist discrimination that Roughgarden encountered at Stanford after her transition, but I'm sure Cordova had excellent reasons for choosing that criterion.

There's just one small mistake Cordova made that I feel I should point out:

"I’m sure my statements are controversial..."

Listen, you moron. Parroting tired stereotypes does not qualify as making controversial statements. To make controversial statements you first have to have something resembling an original thought.

Jackass.

*And I'm sure he conducted a survey. How else would he have reached his conclusion?

Best. Sentence. Evar.

2007-11-24T18:58:00.000-05:00

From Pandagon's Amanda Marcotte:

To sane, normal people, the willingness to engage in slavery denialism is a sign that someone is both delusional and a rabid racist, but to the Discovery Institute, it no doubt showed a stellar willingness to stand up to the tyranny of reality.

Okay Everybody, Chill Out.

2007-11-23T18:57:00.001-05:00

There's apparently a big flutter (at least Pharyngula's all worked up) because the Halton Catholic school board has pulled a book authored by an atheist from the shelves. I think this is a little out of proportion, though. The parts of the article that I found most interesting, actually, were this:

Scott Millard, manager of library services with the board, told CTV.ca on Friday that the review has been board policy since 1990 and that "any community member has the right to request a re-examination of learning or library material."

and this

After reading the book, the committee will complete an evaluation form that examines a "wide variety of criteria" including grammar, plausibility, language, plot, etc.

It seems from the article that any parent can request an evaluation of any book, and that book will be pulled (not banned, mind, just pulled from public display but available on request) until a committee has made a decision. I don't think this is necessarily a bad policy. I tend to lean towards allowing lots of freedom in what literature should be available, but there's a valid argument to me be made against a school library carrying, for example, hate speech, and this policy could help weed that out, depending on the exact criteria the committee uses. Obviously there's plenty of room for the policy to be abused, as in this case, but if the committee evaluating the book is actually objective (and there's been no indication that they aren't), then the worst that can happen is the book will spend some time behind the counter and everyone's time will have been wasted. Maybe these abuses could be curbed by having a list of valid reasons why books should be reevaluated, and sticking to it.

Speaking of criteria, though, here's what I'm really wondering about: If a parent were to request an evaluation of the Bible, would it pass an unbiased committee? Obviously, finding that committee would be problematic, but if you could. I think it should be tried; at the very least it would be funny.

Snöfiskkaviar!

2007-11-22T08:05:00.000-05:00

yay! Woke up to white stuff on the ground and it's still falling. *glee*

I'm Not Sure

2007-11-21T19:22:00.001-05:00

But I think Seth may be right.

He says that the Intelligent Design assertion fails, not because that something looks designed shouldn't be taken as evidence that it is designed, but rather because

Living things don't look like they were designed. They don't look remotely designed, at any level, from super-macro to super-micro. From forests to molecules, the incredibly paucity of structures or systems that even vaguely resemble human creations is astonishing. Sure, we've copied natural features to supplement our terrible, inefficient, and ridiculous attempts at designing usefull things. But nothing that we do looks even a little like the inside of a cell, ccd chips don't look like retina, we can't build a decent sphincter and as for proteins... don't even get me started. We can't even model the mechanisms of protein folding, much less design something that works like one. Nothing designed looks or behaves anything like a protein.

I'm not sure, though. I'm not convinced that saying something is more complicated than anything we can design necessarily implies that it therefore doesn't look designed. And I think maybe Seth is misinterpreting Dawkins. I doubt very much that any biologist (well, except Behe), would say that living things look designed once they're examined properly. But I think it is the case that on first, uncritical glance, living structures can look designed. Once we understand how evolution works, of course, then that becomes a better explanation for what we see, because it accounts for inefficiencies and suboptimal configurations that intelligent design wouldn't bring about. So on more detailed examination living things don't look designed, because they instead look evolved.

Of course, this is all very fuzzy, because we talk about things that may or may not "look designed", but we never really say what 'looks designed' means. I think we need a specific definition for that term, but I'm not going to provide it because I'm tired.

And there are other, entirely sufficient reasons why ID is a non-starter. It makes no predictions. It has no explanatory power. It is therefore not falsifiable.
What more do we need?

So, yeah, I take it back. I think Seth is wrong.

Do Want!

2007-11-20T17:31:00.000-05:00

ZOMG!!

Jaköbische Rants

Do Something Real for #NotFunnyFacebook

The Danger of Smart Algorithms

Summer means time for a drink

December 6, 1989

This is what I'm talking about

No Offense

Porridge Breakfast

Should I start doing weeks in review again?

Since it was almost midnight, and I had nothing better to do...

Damn Buggers

New Template

My time is measured in assignments

I have no idea what week it is

Fall '09: Week 1 in Review

No helicopters in my stomach

Something You Can Do

Four Months and Two Days Early, the Message is the Same

Beware the Spinal Trap

Since Facebook is a Little Confused about Privacy

My Badges

Language Pet Peeve: Sorbet

Kind of an Awesome Lunch

Via @wilw

What He Said

Week 9 in Review

Weeks 6 - 8 in brief Review

Observation

No Week 5 in Review

In Case There Was Every Any Doubt That a Scientist's Politics and Assumptions Can Invade Their Work

Week 4 in Review

Two Things

Birfday

Rachel Maddow is Awesome. Still.

Week 2 in Review

Week 1 in Review

I *heart* Conservapedia

Productive Couple of Weekends

Sinead's Most Excellent Hot Chocolate

Do Good and Get Your Money Back

What She Said

Thank you

Heh

No One Actually Buys this Shit, Right?

Rachel Maddow: Full of Win

Dammit!

Update

So It Turns Out...

Bizarre

Food Meme

Codes are Cool

Latest Breakfast: Homemade Musli

Cuz He's Just That Kind of Guy

Open Letter to Every Driver in Scarborough

Hold Nothing Sacred

You have 12 hours

LINEs, SINEs, and the Design Inference

Don't Worry, He's Got it Covered.

George Carlin is Not in Heaven

Done

Dammit!

Thoughts on Commuting by Bike in the Suburbs

Why I Love My Job

While We're At It

Olbermann Tells Bush to "Shut the Hell Up"

Links

Happy First of May!

On Alternatives and Language

Another Book Meme

Rachel Maddow is My Fucking Hero

You Have Got To Be Fucking Kidding Me

New Discovery -- Curry in a Can

This is Me

I See You!

Breakfast Smoothies

The Word Dumb Has Long Ceased to Cover It

Amazing

It Just Seems to Me

(Non) Naming NPs

Evolution: Really Damn Cool

I heart Conservapedia