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| Monday, July 13th, 2009 | | 6:41 pm |
Whales Are Doing It For Themselves
Go whales: He showed me an extraordinary video of sperm whales pilfering catch from fishermen’s lines in Alaska, 50-foot-long, massive-jawed behemoths delicately snatching a single black cod from a longline’s dangling hook, like an hors d’oeuvre from a cocktail toothpick. Fishermen are currently losing 5 to 10 percent of their yearly haul and fear the problem could become worse because whales who have mastered the technique are busily teaching it to others. The news seems to be rapidly spreading, as reports of similar fish-snatching are coming in from fishermen all over the world. The whole article has some very nice stuff about grey whales, too. Save the whales: It was right in the 1970s, and it's right now. | | 1:03 pm |
A View on the Science Education/Atheism Divide
Via PZ, a summary of the two positions. It is one-sided in its framing*, but not inaccurately so. Also it is implicitly mean to people of faith, even the nice liberal ones who don't think stupid shit about evolution**. *This is an inside joke of sorts. **I know many nice sincere people of faith, and I apologize for all the times that I have and will offend you, such as by linking approvingly to a post that calls you names. | | Friday, July 10th, 2009 | | 1:03 pm |
Do Me Do Me DOMA
Massachusetts is suing to overturn the federal DOMA. As Prof. Carpenter notes, there are some strong arguments here, based on federalism. Historically, the "conservative" wing of SCOTUS is more or less in favor of reducing federal power; and the "liberal" wing of SCOTUS is more or less in favor of expansive federal power. Both have shown eager willingness to pitch their theories overboard and embrace the opposite when it suits them; the "conservative" wing thinks that the drug war justifies unlimited federal power, and the "liberal" wing cranks back on federal power whenever it impacts a subset of civil rights (but not property rights). It will be interesting to see if teh gay causes a typical federalism theory flip. | | 8:53 am |
| | Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 | | 10:51 am |
| | 8:33 am |
You Say Divertiticulitis, I Say Diverticulitis, Let's Call the Whole Thing Off
I am pretty sure that the commercial I heard on the way in, seeking patients for a drug trial, pronounced it dih-VER-tee-tick-you-light-iss, with an extra -tee- and second syllable stress. And I think it's DIE-ver-tick-you-light-iss. (Both of us agree on the secondary stress, on -tick- and -light-, which also explains why the second-syllable stress version inserted the extra -tee-, to provide an unstressed syllable in between the two stressed syllable.) Radio announcers not knowing how to pronounce a big long word? I am not surprised. | | Monday, July 6th, 2009 | | 11:29 am |
A Few Words on Uprisings
I was asked -- who knows why -- whether I thought the Iranian uprisings would accomplish anything. My off-the-cuff answer was, no, this is Tiananmen; the soldiers are already shooting. Upon further reflection, this, I think, is generalizable: "An uprising will not succeed unless the local troops refuse to shoot." "Local" because of the American revolution and the independence movement of India. If the local troops are part of the uprising -- e.g. the October Revolution -- the condition is satisfied automatically, and one may more properly refer to the uprising as a revolution, rebellion, or coup. Cf. Honduras, in which an uprising is opposing a coup. "Refuse to shoot" is satisfied if the general staff or line officers do not give orders to shoot. Probably this is both obvious and grandiose. | | 9:13 am |
| | Friday, July 3rd, 2009 | | 5:28 pm |
| | Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 | | 10:54 am |
Malevola strikes
Sigh. Just got hit with a big load of malware. Something in flash or js, I'd guess; hit through Opera while I had a number of windows open. Letting the anti-malware kit do its job. Nice to have a competent and active IT guy! | | 10:29 am |
| | 9:01 am |
Language Finds a Way
There is a way in a language to express what you are trying to communicate. The ways are not always mappable one-to-one, but why would you expect them to be, and does that really say anything about anything? ( Read more... ) | | Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 | | 1:47 pm |
| | 1:39 pm |
A Brief Note About A Band
Why do you suppose Bad English wasn't as good as they should have been, considering their personnel? | | 12:56 pm |
| | Monday, June 29th, 2009 | | 9:22 am |
Today's Word
Flehmen. I do not recall having encountered this word before; I found it in a brief article on tiger enrichment. Why, would you ask, was I at a page on tiger enrichment? Because I read an article in which a melon was fed to a crocodile. Duh. | | 8:34 am |
A Somewhat Random Thought
Recognizing the emotions and mannerisms of dogs and chimps is no great trick; they're closely related to us and facial development is quite conservative in mammals, so they tend to have the same muscles wired up the same way for the same expressions. So that tells us nothing about whether we'd be able to empathize and relate in the same kind of way to aliens, whose emotions and mannerisms have no evolutionary commonality. The worry is that humans inherited their expressions and the ability to recognize and interpret them from non-sapient ancestors and that this hardcoding limits our ability to deal with anything that doesn't share the same basic behaviors. We recognize a happy dog, in this analysis, because the signs are closely related to the signs of a happy person; perhaps we cannot recognize a happy Barnard's Starrite. Instead, I'm going to suggest that the closest analogue to aliens we may have on earth would be parrots. Parrots are intelligent and social, and so necessarily possess the ability to expose their state of mind and read the state of mind of others. Although they're tetrapods, the divergence was very long ago (two ages ago in the Permian at the latest), mammalian facial structures were finalized long after the tetrapods diverged, so they don't share those with us, and birds are highly derived, which should also help "alienate" their social behaviors. So, if humans are able to correctly read the mood of their parrot friends and interact with them with mutual emotional comprehension, that suggests that we are flexible enough and not so bound by our evolutionary background and concomitant mental hardcoding that when we encounter social intelligent aliens that we will be able to learn to functionally interact with them. Q.E.D. | | 7:54 am |
A Few Words On Mays
If your loved one bumps their head, and then insists that they're fine, and then sometime later complains of not feeling well in a fairly nonspecific manner, call 911. They might be bleeding into their brain. | | Friday, June 26th, 2009 | | 3:56 pm |
A Few Words on Meaning
Concerning the meaning of "important" in the upstream discussion: My working definition of "superhero" is "any character similar enough to other superheroes". Recursive definitions with vague limits are good models for how humans actually think about complex things. An eagle is a bird because there are few things more like a bird. An ostrich is a bird because it's enough like a bird. A kiwi is a bird, but no wings, stringy feathers, really it's not very much of one, is it? What is an important album? It's an album that's like the things that come to mind when we think of important things. You can't make that objective; things that come to mind when you think of important things inevitably contain things that are personally important as well as those which are more generally important. | | 8:52 am |
A Few Words on Sales
I consider sales to be part of the metric for importance. They're by no means the end of the examination. The Velvet Underground sold almost nothing, but as has been said, everybody who bought it went out and started a band. That's importance. But "Hybrid Theory" sold gazillions, and despite its lack of critical appreciation, let me assure you that A&R guys were told, go out and get me more acts like Linkin Park. Sales mean influence, because sales make a difference in who gets the next major label contract. There would be no Madonna without Thriller, because people were looking for video-ready solo stars. And, of course, sales contribute to importance because it means that millions of people like the music. Which is the point. Or at least one of them.* I'm surprised I have to explain this. *I am perhaps too influenced by Dragonsinger in this, in particular when Robinton reassures Menolly as she compares her music to Domick's. I am a creature of influences. |
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