Breakfast Smoothies

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

IDiots do something massively stupid and hypocritical.

Sciencey bloggosphere acts surprised

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lack of Blogging

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

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

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

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

Olive oil works quite well for removing bubblegum from glasses.

That is all.

You May Now Stop Chilling Out

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,

Please stop trying to kill our species.

Thanks,

Jake

Bakson. Bizy. Bakson

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

It's A Tiddly Pom Kind of Day

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

Not about Aqsa's Hijab

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!

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

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

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!