Monthly Archives: June 2009

Physics, To A Dog (A poem)

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To a dog, a balloon is a rock that floats.
To a dog, a lever is a perch for stoats.

To a dog, particle decay1 is not about nooks
To a dog, gravity is just another way to puke.

To a dog, a quantum is a kibble
To a dog, a quark is to nibble.

To a dog, where the yard ends begins the cosmos
To a dog, periodic tables2 iz a no-nos.

To a dog, dark matter is what cats must do
To a dog, string theory is for cats too.

To a dog, it is better to sleep
To a dog, don’t tickle the heap.3

Notes
1Bone munching
2Do not take food off the table. Periodically.
3A veiled reference to “tickling the dragon’s tail” during early A-bomb research. Dogs prefer if you tickle their stomach instead.

Why this poem?

On a Mission from God

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Lately I’ve been reading the 19th and early 20th century traveler’s accounts of what is now known as the Western Rift Valley and the Ituri Forest, Congo. Some are written by the famous ‘explorers’ such as H.M. Stanley, others written by scientists on expeditions in the area, and still others by missionaries. Reading these accounts puts me in mind of my own experiences, as a scientist working in that same area, with the missionaries that live and work, or sometimes just visit, there.

So, a few missionary stories are in order.
Continue reading On a Mission from God →

I feel just like Carla Gugino in that movie…

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… where she‘s the scientist attending the crazy Sci Fi conference where everyone is dressed as Star Wars characters. That’s because I’ll be doing something at Skepchickcon Convergence Skeptics Track 2009

All the cool bloggers and some cool non-bloggers will be there, including Pamela Gay, PZ Myers, Rebecca Watson, Masala Skeptic, Bug Girl, Elyse, Carr2d2, and Moi.

There will be excellent skeptical programming and a few parties as well.

The details are here.

King Leopold’s Soliloquy

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Through the filter of time … a repost that may still be interesting to you from two years ago.

I’m reminded of this work of literature owing to a recent discussion on another post. I like to point this text out whenever I get a chance, and since I’ve got a blog, this is an excellent chance!

The text is here.

I first became aware of, and read, King Leopold’s Soliloquy while in the ex-Belgian Congo, where the point of the story takes place. I lived in an area that was at one time a plantation area, but the plantations were long gone. The “road” through this area was passable only with a very tenaceoius four wheel drive vehicle (we had a Land Rover) and grew worse every year. But the road used to be excellent. I knew a guy, an older Efe Pygmy man, with one leg. He had been bitten by a full grown Gabon Viper. The Gabon Viper is one of the scariest of snakes. It’s head is huge, it’s body very stout, and it’s venom is the richest venom known in a snake, both neurotoxic and haemotoxic.

When my friend was bitten by the snake, he was driven by someone to a hospital, to have is leg cut off to save his life. In the days I lived there, this drive required many many hours (or a day or two) to reach, and would beat the hell out of the truck. But in those days, they were able to drive him there in a few hours. At 120 kpm, it would have been a two or three hour drive.

But the reason that the road was so good is because of the sort of policy satirized in Mark Twain’s text on Leopold. In those days, a Belgian Colonial Administrator would drive a vehicle at 100 kilometers per hour down this road with a glass of water on his dashboard. Wherever water spilled form his full glass, he would stop, and his agents would beat and/or maim the nearest villagers. This encouraged the villagers to keep the dirt road in perfect condition.

Eventually, the revolution came, in it’s own way, and the Belgians, guilty of a decades-long holocaust, got their due. They were burned to death in the buildings they hid in, they were shot, strangled, and drowned, and a few got away.

At a later time, I stayed in one of King Leopold’s mansions. Well, not really. We kept some of our stuff in the mansion. The mansion had no roof, and was filled with birds and bats, and their guano. Better to stay in a tent, outside, even though one would risk being trampled by a hippo or hassled by a hyena. This was Ishango, known locally as “The Most Beautiful Place on the Earth.” It is. But they should really tear down those old mansions (Two stood there side by side) and neaten the place up just a little. But no pressure, really.

Class Action Status for Race Discrimination Suit Against Eli Lilly

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The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is seeking class action status for a 2006 federal lawsuit that accuses drug manufacturer Eli Lilly of discrimination against African-American employees. The plaintiffs include nine current and former employees who allege that the drug manufacturer engaged in pay and promotion discrimination on the basis of race. An amended complaint filed last week with the US District Court for the Southern District of Indiana includes allegations of discrimination from 106 additional current and former employees, reported Business Week. If the court grants class action status, approximately 2,000 more employees could join the suit.


Details here.

Flight 103 from Frankfurt

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Through the filter of time … a repost that may still be interesting to you from two years ago.

Scene: Berkeley, California, April 1986. A bar. Five conference attendees, myself included, grabbing a hamburger and a beer in a fern-bar on or near Telegraph.

All eyes are on the TV’s mounted over the bar, where we watch footage of an air strike against Libya. This is the retribution by Ronald Reagan against Insane African Leader Muammar al-Kadafi. The White House was issuing statements about al-Kadafi’s involvement in bombings in Europe, the OPEC oil ministry kidnapping, linkage to the infamous Jackal, and so on. Nikki, a friend and colleague, said something, and I remember asking her to repeat it. Nikki is a low-talkier. You’ve got to lean in really close. So I leaned in and heard her say, “Libya is the only country in Africa where the people get to share in the national wealth. They love Kadafi. Others should take a lesson from him.”
Continue reading Flight 103 from Frankfurt →

Subdue the Evolutionists

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Through the filter of time … a repost that may still be interesting to you from two years ago.

I had a dream last night that I was in the kitchen cooking Calamari, when several medium sized octopi crawled out of the pot and led me to the basement, beckoning me to come near the computer. They formed a stack, one on top of the other, and the top octopus took the mouse in one tentacle and opened a web browser. Then it typed in a URL and up came a post by PZ Myers extolling me to blog about an entry on the Chalcedon Foundation web site. I awoke in a cold sweat and tried to forget about the dream, but it kept haunting me all day long.

Never let it be said that I don’t know a sign from god when I see one.
Continue reading Subdue the Evolutionists →

Human Trafficking Report Issued by US State Department

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“The ninth annual Trafficking in Persons Report sheds light on the faces of modern-day slavery and on new facets of this global problem. The human trafficking phenomenon affects virtually every country, including the United States. In acknowledging America’s own struggle with modern-day slavery and slavery-related practices, we offer partnership. We call on every government to join us in working to build consensus and leverage resources to eliminate all forms of human trafficking.”
–Secretary Clinton, June 16, 2009

Highlights:

  • There were over 5000 prosecuted cases of trafficking globally last year.
  • Good news: That is a decrease from previous years.
  • The categories of trafficking identified in the report include: forced labor, bonded labor, debt bondage among migrant laborers, involuntary domestic servitude, forced child labor, child soldiers, sex trafficking, child sex trafficking and related abuses

More information and the report itself is available here.

Great White Sharks

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The only place I’ve ever seen Great White Sharks in the wild (I’m not a SCUBA diver!) is in South Africa, where you can see them from cliffs, swimming back and forth looking for penguins (and seals?). I’ve heard there were some recent attacks near Cape Town (False Bay) by great whites, but I think they generally don’t eat too many people there. That is probably because most South Africans either stay out of the water entirely or go all the way … in SCUBA gear, or otherwise just keep a careful eye out. I mean, these are BIG fish and hard to miss.

I’m reminded of my first time to the coast with a colleague, to whom I’ll refer as “G” (because his name has a G in it). G and I were staying with a dozen others in a place along the Garden Route, and one morning we decided to walk down to the ocean. G is local, and he knew that I would enjoy seeing this beach.

On the way down the hill, we walked through and around many back yards, on a winding path used mainly by the local kids. There was a particularly large and dangerous looking dog at one point held in by a weak fence that tried to get at us. Later, when we were down on the beach, the dog broke free of the fence and came running at us at high speed. So, I picked up a big piece of kelp-stem, waved it around, and tossed it into the huge, rolling and breaking surf, in which we could see breeding whales (and presumably the great whites roamed).

The dog immediately lost interest in us, headed for the ocean, dove into the surf to get the “stick” … and was not seen again.

…
Continue reading Great White Sharks →

More Babbling

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Through the filter of time … a repost that may still be interesting to you from two years ago.

Admit it. Once you discovered Alta Vista’s Babel software you did this: You entered a phrase to translate from your native language to some other language, then translated it back again to see what would happen. Or, you translated it through several different languages.
Continue reading More Babbling →

Homicidal Fantasies

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Through the filter of time … a repost that may still be interesting to you from two years ago.

… are probably normal. I remember an HBES conference in which we were subjected to a very boring talk. It was not boring at first. The speaker, a well known evolutionary psychologist, started out by asking for a show of hands as to how many people had homicidal fantasies now and then. In the room of about 300, a dozen hands went up. Then the talk started.
Continue reading Homicidal Fantasies →

These two school administrators need to be driven into the swamp with torches and pitchforks.

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Check it out:

ATLANTA – A suburban Atlanta principal who resigned during an investigation into cheating on students’ standardized tests was arrested Friday and accused of altering public documents.

The school’s assistant principal also turned herself in to local police Thursday night in a case that the head of a state teacher’s group described as rare. School officials allege that the two changed answers on fifth-grade standardized tests to improve scores and help their school meet federal achievement standards

This sort of behavior (only alleged so far in this case, but whatever …) can not be tolerated at all, because we need less, rather than more, blindingly bureaucratic oversight in our schools. Accreditation should mean “doing a good job and we trust them” and not “no one has been arrested for any felonies lately.”

Jeesh.

Details here.