Perfectionism is the least of the behaviors that are encouraged in art but need to be set aside if the artist wants to be fully accepted in “polite society.” Artists need the obsessiveness to see a project through with little feedback (or despite feedback). They need enough pride to believe that their ideas are worth executing. They need to be mercurial enough to suit their thinking to a new and very different project from their last. They need to ask uncomfortable questions and set aside polite fictions. They need to be willing to upset people. They need to be willing to manipulate their audience.
Monthly Archives: March 2009
The Controversy of Richard Dawkins. Rather routine, don’t you think?
I had been having thoughts regarding the larger context of Richard Dawkins‘ visit to the University of Minnesota (in which he gave this talk), and the socio-political context of this visit, but had not decided if I would write about them. Then I read, at Pharyngula (the other Minnesota scienceblogs.com blog – you probably have not heard of it, but it’s pretty good) this post: Richard Dawkins: banned in Oklahoma? Indeed, a legislator of that wayward state is trying to ban the man from the U. As if.
What I was thinking about requires some historical background regarding Dawkins’ visit.
Some time back a discussion began among people here at the U, including the student atheist group CASH, myself, and a few other people. At that time, there was no prospect of getting Dawkins, or a least, little more than a hope, and to investigate one possibility, I spoke to top people at the College of Continuing Education, which brings in a lot of outside speaker. For instance, the CCE has a series called “Great Conversations” which has had Jared Diamond, Desmond Tutu, and others on stage. The idea with Great Conversations is that a U faculty person and a famous mucky-muck visitor sit around on comfy chairs on a stage with four thousand people watching, and they have a conversation. It actually workes out quite well (at least the one’s I’ve attended).
So I approached the people in charge at the CCE about Dawkins, and had a “great conversation” about the idea of having Dawkins visit. I was wondering in advance if the whole Godless Atheist thing would be an issue, or what. I also intended to mention that PZ Myers should be the faculty member talking to him. With Crackergate still echoing in the halls of this little corner or Academia, and PZ not being a faculty member on this campus, I wondered how that would go.
And I was quite surprised. It went something like this:
Continue reading The Controversy of Richard Dawkins. Rather routine, don’t you think?
Santeli Bails on Stewart
The curious case of penile vaginal intercourse and depression in women
I’m starting to worry that the last few Friday Weird Science write-ups by Scicurious (who seems, these days, to be the primary blogger at Neurotopia) have been of papers that I happen to have read. Just so you know: Thousands of papers are published per week across the diverse sciences, and although Scicurious tends to deal with life science and I tend to read life science, the chances of this particular harmonic convergence across bloggers regarding papers published over the last decade is statistically almost zero. More likely, Scicurious and I just have similar taste … or lack thereof.
The latest paper written up by Sci is on the relationship between certain kinds of sexual intercourse and reduction of depression in women, suggested by a study by Gordon Gallup and others.
Continue reading The curious case of penile vaginal intercourse and depression in women
Get Yer Evolution Blog Posts….
Carnival of Evolution # 9 is HERE.
This is how science should always be done
Open Source Musings
Putting Open Source to the Mom Test
I stumbled across Amber’s blog by accident today – she’s writing a series of posts that document her experience installing and using Linux distros and a variety of open source applications.
I hope open source developers are following along as stay-at-home-mom Amber shares her adventures in Linux and open source. She eloquently points out usability issues that make it hard for your average mom to race out and embrace open source. Developers: Take note. For that matter, publishers should take note – I hope Amber gets a book deal out of her blog series.
Open Source, it is not just for Linux anymore
I was involved in an email discussion the other day with a fellow Amateur Radio operator about a program called UI-View, a Windows-based application for the Automatic Position Reporting System. In the course of our discussion I inquired into the state of the source code, having pointed out that some of the interfaces should be reviewed to take advantage of some of the newer mapping tools. I was informed that the source code had been destroyed on the author’s death, at his request. This made me pause.
Wow. More here.
Fish Fight!
It turns out that Dolphin Safe Tuna is bad for sharks. And visa versa. More or less….
Let’s as BlogFish about it…
Who’s right depends on what you value more, dolphins or broader ocean ecosystem health. At least that’s the way I see it. We could protect dolphins totally during tuna fishing only if we’re willing to allow other animals like fish and sea turtles to suffer harm and become depleted (or further depleted).
Exploring the reef’s Twilight Zone
In this illuminating talk, Richard Pyle shows us thriving life on the cliffs of coral reefs and groundbreaking diving technologies he has pioneered to explore it. He and his team risk everything to reveal the secrets of undiscovered species.
Rachel Maddow on The View
Bonus video:
Continue reading Rachel Maddow on The View
Kepler Launches Tomorrow (Friday)
NASA’s planet-hunting space telescope Kepler is slated to launch the night of March 6 from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a mission to find Earth-sized planets that could have liquid water at the surface and potentially harbor life.
“It’s not just another science mission. This one has historical significance built into it,” said Ed Weiler of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA headquarters. “It very possibly could tell us that earths are very, very common, that we’ve got lots of neighbors out there. Or it could tell us that Earths are really, really, really rare.”
Gupta Turning Down SG Appointment?
Sanjay Gupta, CNN’s chief medical correspondent, will reportedly not leave his television career to become Surgeon General.
How Benjamin Button got his face
Ed Ulbrich, the digital-effects guru from Digital Domain, explains the Oscar-winning technology that allowed his team to digitally create the older versions of Brad Pitt’s face for “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.”
Is Horse Domestication Earlier than Previously Thought?
It is a long way from Kazakhstan to Kentucky, but the journey to the Derby may have started among a pastoral people on the Kazakh steppes who appear to have been the first to domesticate, bridle and perhaps ride horses — around 3500 B.C., a millennium earlier than previously thought.
Archaeologists say the discovery may revise thinking about the development of some preagricultural Eurasian societies and put an earlier date to their dispersal into Europe and elsewhere. These migrations are believed to have been associated with horse domestication and the spread of Indo-European languages….
Dawkins…. On Purpose
Dawkins gave a talk that could be criticized as not particularly new, in that his main idea is that human brains are too powerful and adaptable to continue to function primarily within an adaptive program serving as a proper adaptive organ. Instead, human brains think up all sorts of other, rather non-Darwinian things to do. This idea has been explored and talked about in many ways by many people. Kurt Vonegut Jr.’s character in Galapagos repeatedly, in a state of lament, quips “Thanks, Big Brain…” as evidence accumulates that our inevitable march towards extinction is primarily a function of that particular organ’s activities. People have talked about the brain as the outcome of runaway sexual selection. Evolutionary psychologists have talked about the evolution of strong preferences and desires, which in turn play out i a rather Frankensteinian fashion in a world where those desires can be met with ease instead of hard work and much time. Thus, we have evolved a yearning for rare nutrients such as salt and fat, and then we invented the ability to have unlimited access to salt and fat. So now, in a ‘civilized world’, it is the salt and fat that kills us incited of the predator or the con-specific competitor over access to some food or some sexual opportunity. (Thanks, Big Brain….)
Continue reading Dawkins…. On Purpose