.. dotted and undotted dotterings ..

Random Friday Fun(k)

pieceful — Fri, 25 May 2007 22:32:34 +0000

If you didn’t already think DJ Q-bert was one of the best turntablists around, this fantastic video — in which Mr. Q-bert sports a fashionable karate/lamb get-up and sips tea during his set — just might convince you. Maybe someday he’ll reunite the Invisbl Skratch Piklz, but until then, the video’ll have to sustain us.

a bookish play-like essay-song

pieceful — Sun, 13 May 2007 00:02:25 +0000

The sublimely postmodern style of The Books has had me hooked literally since I first heard them at my friend Josh’s apartment. We were having a fun and spirited philosophical discussion, which had a momentary lull. That allowed me the opportunity to experience The Books for the first time, which, previously in the background of our conversation, jumped to the foreground in an almost seamless manner continuing on as a veritable and formidable third party to our colloquy. Since then they have remained the first thing I think of whenever someone mentions either “music” or “postmodernism.” Postmodern in the sense that their music is a contestable whole comprised of seemingly random spoken word samples, their own guitar and cello snipets, etc. This patchwork structure gives the music a feeling of a composed instigation, rather like the feeling one gets from reading a good essay. Rather than pontificate further on the subject, I’d prefer to illustrate the point by simply quoting one of their songs at length in a play format. That is, I will introduce each “voice” in the song as a character and add additional narratorial comments in italics to indicate that they do not actually appear in the song itself. The song is, “Be good to them always,” from their 2005 album “Lost and Safe.”

_________________

A middle-aged British man: “Here we are. Here we are… We are antici… There it is! There it is. That’s the picture.”

(A record plays an electric cello. The record skips repeatedly throughout the scene.)

A middle-aged British man: “You see.. see it for yourself. There it is. It’s a man… There it is. With… uh…”

Narrator (in a tone of increasing depth): “Be good to them always.”

Zammuto: “You know, I simply cannot understand people. Oh, how sadly we mortals are deceived by our own imagination. This is not real life. This is for us aleatoric television.”

Zammuto and de Jong (playing cello) in unison: “A mixed consort of soft instruments.”

Zammuto and Ted Koppel in unison: “I can hear a collective rumbling in America.”

Zammuto and strangely accented European woman wearing too much make-up (in unison): “I’ve lost my house. You’ve lost your house.”

Zammuto and small British child in unison: “I don’t suppose it matters which way we go.”

Zammuto and other Britsh man in unison: “This great society is going smash.”

(Cello comes hesitatingly into the sonic foreground.)

Zammuto and deep voiced woman (shaking her head) in unison: “Oh he’s in the middle of putting himself together, and organizing himself.”

Zammuto and banker from the 1920s in unison: “You do not need to stand on one foot.”

Zammuto and Dan Rathers (looking directly at audience) in unison: “The modern town hardly knows silence.”

Zammuto and British classics professor (in uplifted tone) in unison: “You… are something that the whole world is doing.”

Zammuto and English barkeep (as he wipes up spilled beer) in unison: “You know… I simply cannot understand people.”

Zammuto and mysterious cigarette-smoking woman in the window of a cafe in unison: “Oh, how sadly we mortals are deceived by our own imagination.”

Zammuto and quirky homeless man in unison: “This is not real life. This is for us aleatoric television.”

Zammuto and de Jong (playing cello) in unison: “A mixed consort of soft instruments.”

Zammuto and Scottish taxi driver in unison: “A culture is no better than it’s woods.”

Zammuto and Henry David Thoreau (staring off into distance) in unison: “A feeling of being connected with the past.”

Zammuto and London-born Louisianna craps dealer (looking directly at each other) in unison: “Look at it this way: you may fall and break your leg.”

Zammuto and concerned father in unison: “And so one leg is shorter than the other. Can nothing more be done?”

(Blackout. Record stops.)

End of scene.

A pad thai western

pieceful — Sat, 05 May 2007 23:51:17 +0000

I had the distinct pleasure of seeing a wonderfully strange Thai take on the classic Spaghetti Western genre yesterday: Tears of Black Tiger (Thai: ฟ้าทะลายโจร, or Fah talai jone, literally, “the heavens strike the thief”). It’s a very odd mix of standard melodramatic romantic elements, with a generous sprinkling of Tarantino-esque comic violence, all suffused in a billowing cloud of hyperreal tobacco-chewing, six-shooter dueling, 10 gallon hat wearing Western cliches. Check out the trailer here:

The geometry of politics

pieceful — Wed, 02 May 2007 03:26:36 +0000

The stale mediocrity of the traditional left-right dichotomy was probably apparent the moment it was first uttered. Luckily there are many great alternative ways to view the geometry of the political. My favorite of these is a very simple extension of the left-right division made by Political Compass. Instead of a simple line, the geometry to which Political Compass assigns your endlessly unique belief is a plane in which the horizontal axis encodes your economic beliefs (collectivism vs. laissez-faire capitalism) and the vertical axis encodes your social beliefs (libertarianism vs. authoritarianism).

You can take a quiz online here to determine your place on the Political Compass. As I expected, my own beliefs placed me in the anarcho-communist quadrant, in pleasant company with The Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela, and thankfully quite far from both Hitler and the current occupant of the White House. In the above picture the libertarian-capitalist quadrant is strangely absent of any examples. Some extreme historical examples include Milton Friedman and Robert Nozick, while less extreme and more current examples include anyone in the American Libertarian party.

This geometerization of political thought made me wonder if there was an obvious third axis we could add to make the diagram three-dimensional. I can’t think of any good ones off the bat, but let me know if you do, or alternatively if the existing axes should be replaced with something more apt.

Reason # 509 Kurt Vonnegut will be missed

pieceful — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 03:15:53 +0000

As you probably know by now, Dresden bombing survivor and towering literary genius of the later 20th century Kurt Vonnegut died earlier week after suffering a fall. You’ve undoubtedly heard a lot about Vonnegut in the past few days, but here’s something you probably haven’t seen before:

The postcard was sent to Mr. Gregory after he “sent him [Vonnegut] a graduation announcement, with a silly note saying something to the effect that I would not have made it [to graduation] without him.” Besides writing wonderfully quirky novels bathed in dark wit, Vonnegut a generally hilarious human being. Here are some samples of things you may not have known about the Mark Twain of the 20th century:

- In an interview in 2003 with In These Times Vonnegut was asked if he had any ideas for a really scary reality TV show. To which he replied: “‘C-students from Yale.’ It would stand your hair on end.”
- (From Wikipedia): Vonnegut reportedly smoked Pall Mall cigarettes, unfiltered, which he claimed is a “classy way to commit suicide.”
- Cat’s Cradle was accepted as Vonnegut’s thesis earning him a Master of the Arts in Anthropology from the University of Chicago.
- (From Wikipedia): In Chapter 18 of his book Palm Sunday “The Sexual Revolution,” Vonnegut grades his own works. He states that the grades “do not place me in literary history” and that he is comparing “myself with myself.” The grades are as follows:
- Player Piano: B
- The Sirens of Titan: A
- Mother Night: A
- Cat’s Cradle: A-plus
- God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater: A
- Slaughterhouse-Five: A-plus
- Welcome to the Monkey House: B-minus
- Happy Birthday, Wanda June: D
- Breakfast of Champions: C
- Slapstick: D
- Jailbird: A
- Palm Sunday: C
- And last but certainly not least is one of my favorite Vonnegut quotes, which is quite apropos: “I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you different.“

Is surgery a placebo?

pieceful — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 05:30:17 +0000

From Martin Hutchison in BBC News:

In the early days of medicine, physicians might diagnose patients using bumps on their head, or dispense a couple of leeches to draw off “ill humours”.
Yet a medieval doctor might give a more confident response than his modern equivalent if a patient asked for the evidence to support their treatment.
These days, it seems many of our “tried and tested” approaches to disease are nothing of the kind.

Researchers writing recently in the British Journal of Surgery concluded the practice of daubing patients with a disinfectant skin gel prior to operations made little or no difference to the rate of infections they suffered afterwards. Simple soap and water was just as effective.

However, despite this, it’s more than likely that, in future, waking up after your operation in many British hospitals, you’ll have that tell-tale orange stain around your wound. You’ll have been given a treatment that doesn’t work.

Read more here. The article goes on to describe a study by Andrew Booth at the School of Health and Related Research in Sheffield that found that 15-20% of health care facilities in Britain used treatments that “did not have a shred of worthwhile evidence to support their use.” There are of course, many unfortunate consequences of this. The first is that patients often aren’t getting the treatment that they need. Second some of the ill-informed treatments are actually harmful. One example mentioned by the piece is the test for prostate specific antigen (PSA) which is done as a screening test for prostate cancer despite the fact that those who have the test performed are just as likely to die from prostate cancer as though who don’t. Moreover the use of the test may end causing someone to have an unnecessary surgery performed.

This last issue, unnecessary surgery, made me wonder. Just how scientific are surgeries in general? After all it’s not so easy to give someone the sugar-pill equivalent of a surgery to really “subtract out” the placebo effect in the standard double-blind fashion. To really test the efficacy of a given surgical procedure you’d have to give some group of people a scar and tell them you’ve actually performed the surgery, and since this enters an ethically gray area (to say the least), it hasn’t to my knowledge, been done. Furthermore if the placebo effect really does have something to do with “the power of suggestion” then one would expect the placebo effect to be extremely high in the case of surgeries since one is literally removing a tumor or repairing a malfunctioning organ, in a very dramatic and immediate fashion. In fact, saline injections are very useful in burn victims when they are told that they’re being given a very strong painkiller. So the invaseiveness of a procedure seems to increase the placebo effect. Another important factor is the niceness of the doctor prescribing the treatment, which also increases the effect of the placebo.

So sometimes placebos are useful. But not all of the time of course. A Danish study of placebos found that 48% of general practitioners had prescribed a placebo in the last year. The placebo prescriptions range from vitamins for fatigue, to antibiotics for viral infections (even though antibiotics only kill bacteria, not viruses) which is certainly not a good thing since natural selection will give rise to ever nastier antibiotic resistant super-bacteria! So I’m more or less on the pro-placebo side of the debate, but only if those Danish doctors switch to a more inert placebo for viral infections. So Danes, if you’re reading, here are some suggestions for harmless placebos: vitamins(!), eat more vegetables, vote for Bill Richardson for President, comment on ..dotted and undotted dotterings.., and of course more ice cream from Scoops!

From funny to nerdy in 2.5 zeptoseconds

pieceful — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 05:57:22 +0000

So I’ll spare the blogosphere any additional, ill-formed pontifications for the day and simply share with you my top seven physics cartoons. Why seven you ask, as opposed to the canonical 10? Well the short answer is, I couldn’t find 10 that were notable enough. The long answer is too long, but suffice it to say that seven has lots of nice features. Not only has its glyph stayed relatively constant since it was first used by the Hindus, but it’s also the number of spots found on a common ladybug.

___________________________________________________________________________________

The solution to failing schools…?

How (more than) half of all theoretical high-energy particle physicists end up:

In typically Gary Larson fashion, this one speaks for itself:

Yet another reason why not to trust an experimentalist with a cat (or anything else that breathes):

Alex Kusenko ended his talk at UC Irvine on sterile neutrinos with this very apropos cartoon:

And of course, a very elegant and general method for solving any physics problem:

Okay, the last one isn’t really a cartoon, but it’s just too amusing not to put on the list. Someone actually put that on an exam! Zero points is a little harsh though. They should get a a point or two at least for having such an elegant and creative solution.

Science as a Cultural System: the institutionalization of revolution

pieceful — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 00:02:28 +0000

I tend to view science in terms of the larger cultural context of human institutions. As I wrote in an earlier post, I think culture is best understood as a complex network of symbols. I’m not pretending that this is an especially unique perspective, since it’s largely borrowed from the preeminent cultural anthropologist of the late 20th century, Clifford Geertz, who, incidentally borrowed it from Max Weber. For example, Weber was famous for saying that man was caught in “webs of significance that he himself has spun.” Symbols are, in a sense, the units out of which culture is built. Viewing culture as symbol is nice, because it encompases an important aspect of human interaction: it is fundamentally interpretational. Is my wink an indication of a secret understanding between the two of us, or is it a half-joking bursleque wink? Or am I pretending it to be a half-joking burlesque wink? As Geertz himself put it, culture is a series of “winks, upon winks, upon winks!” Symbols, and subsequently culture, are contested territories of meaning. The realm of the beaten path of meanings constitutes the mainstream of a given culture. Why do we as a species gravitate to a unified, shared system of meanings? Well the honest answer is, yeah right! no one knows. A more exciting, and therefore probably wrong answer, is that we strive for consistency of intepretation because it simplifies matters. The behavior of humans, to far higher degree than probably any other animal, are not as dependent on their genes. When we are faced with a difficult decision, be it behavorial or interpretational, we filter it through a culural complex of meaning to arrive at the conclusion.

Now what does this have to do with good ol’ hard-nosed science? Science, it is (perhaps) often said, is above the relatively banal matters of culture. In it’s most arrogant formulation it is said that science is trans-cultural. Poppycock. Science is another cultural system in just the sense discussed above. True, science does cherish falsifiability and predictability, but these are just particular ideals that a subculture of Western civilization has chosen to venerate, albeit ideals that I happen to enjoy. That being said, science is indeed unique as a cultural form. It has enjoyed unparalleled success in its application to technological improvement and the expansion of a falsifiable system of knowledge. Certainly, all cultures are dynamic, ever-changing institutions, but only in science I think is change the name of the game. As far as I know, science is the only cultural form to paradoxically, institutionalize revolution. This leads to what I’d offer as the natural definition of science (see the earlier post on definitions too):

A particular cultural form which has uniquely institutionalized revolution. The status of these revolutions are formalized by experimental confirmation of a parsimonious theory.

In science, all knowledge is built on sand, and the whole goal is knock down the previously exisiting sand castle and build one that’s more stable!

I know definitions usually come at the beginning rather than the end, but hey, every exit is an entrance and versa vice, right?

Rudeness vs. science?

pieceful — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 16:12:58 +0000

There’s an interesting discussion going on over at Cosmic Variance on what constitutes a scientific archnemesis. In the ensuing discussion however, an interesting side topic arose: does blatant rudeness –a common accompanying trait along with numerous other unfortunate qualities of an archnemesis– violate the norms of scientific conduct? As the discussion at CV indicates, not all scientists think that flagrant and intentional harshness in discourse steps outside the bounds of what science is. And I think I actually agree with that. Rudeness might be unnecessary and even counterproductive, but it can often have a sobering effect as well, acting as the veritable “kick in the pants.” Probably the most famous example of this, in physics at least, is Wolfgang Pauli’s infamous remark that some such proposal was “not even wrong.” The individual at whom this attack was directed may have thought of it as an unjustified personal attack on their intelligence. There is however another interpretation, which the Wikipedia article points out. Something could be said to be not even wrong in the sense that it does not rise to the level of falsifiability and is therefore not a scientific hypothesis. So at least some of what one might call rude can also be useful as it acts as a wake-up call. Furthermore many people use combative language simply as a provocation, so as to stimulate/instigate discussion. After all, healthy competition often leads to some of the best work. There is also of course the really nasty, hurtful kind of rudeness that serves no purpose other than to make you feel tiny and distract you from real work. This is certainly an impediment to science, but I don’t think it’s more than that.

To really address the question though we’d need to spend some time really problemetizing “rudeness” and “science” to see if they actually are in conflict, but at first glance they don’t seem to be. This really seems like a problem best addressed by philosophers or anthropologists, but I think a lot of what constitutes rudeness comes about from a fundamental lack of congruence in what the expected social norms are. So while rudeness may be personally unpalatable, I don’t think it’s in direct conflict with actually carrying out one’s job.

Definitions are having a party. maybe you’ll be invited.

pieceful — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 20:31:22 +0000

As a prelude to systematic analysis or discussion it’s often useful to set up some agreed upon definitions. Otherwise people usually just end up speaking past one other. That being said, definitions are also quite slippery. This is especially true when you venture outside of the mathematico-scientific realm and into the socio-cultural domain as every definition becomes contentious since it’s much more difficult to cleanly separate definition from conclusion-commentary. In short, definitions are at once problematic and inevitable. Thus in an effort to stimulate some discussion I offer the following definitions I find interesting (but don’t necessarily subscribe to), so as to incite, excite and cajole you into commenting. Some serious, some not so serious, but all dottering along magnificently.

(1) Life (see here): a self-replicating system in homeostasis with its environment.

(2) Conclusion: What one does when tired of thinking.

(3) Culture: A complex system of symbols.

(4) Feudalism: A system of government in which your Count votes.

(5) Science: A particular cultural form (see 3 above) which is distinguished by the institutionalization of revolution, and where the revolution in thought (symbols) is made complete by experimental verification.

(6) Haecceity (see this): Thisness; the essence that makes something the kind of thing it is and makes it different from any other.

(7) Religion (Clifford Geertz’s five-part definition): “(1) a system of symbols which acts to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men (sic) by (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.” (Geertz 1985: 4).

(8) Gleek (from UrbanDictionary.com): Building up saliva in the salivary glands using some stimulus, like sour food or yawning, and then pressing the tongue upon the glands, causing the saliva to shoot out, usually at an impressive distance.

(9) State: A group of thugs with an army and navy. Or equivalently Max Weber’s definition was something like an organization with a “monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force in a given territory.”

(10) Walnuts: 2008 Republican Presidential Nominee John McCain. See for example here and here.

…

(∞) Definition: … ?