Unsightly Mental Blemishes

Skeptical Inquirer (March/April 2015) (of which I’m a subscriber of some 20+ years), in an unsigned article, covers a statement offered by the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry:

Proper skepticism promotes scientific inquiry, critical investigation, and the use of reason in examining controversial and extraordinary claims. It is foundational to the scientific method. Denial, on the other hand, is the a priori rejection of ideas without objective consideration.

This is worthwhile to know as sometimes climate change deniers characterize themselves as skeptics.  For those of us who don’t feel they have enough time in the world to know everything (sign me up for that crowd), we all look for those signs of reliability, or for the countersigns, when reading about subjects beyond our competence.  In the latter class, for example, having been in the telecommunications hobby for 30+ years, I think I’m a little more sensitive than the average person to the use of language as an indicator of either irrationality or deceit, as there seems to be a correlation in certain patterns of immature communication to irrational mindsets.  This can range from using certain adjectives repeatedly, to the classic improper use of punctuation, to feeling the information density of the missive is below a certain level.

For me, the proper use of scientific method is a sign that someone is at least being serious in attempting to evaluate an issue.  Yes, yes, they can be wrong – science is always contingent on the next development, on improper observation, invalid evaluations, even on the foibles of the scientists themselves.  In a sense, science never provides a final answer – but, from historical comparisons of scientific method with other methods of knowing the world, it comes out the clear winner.

What signs do you use?  Let me know.

On his feelings about being Pope: “I do not mind.“

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Hue

Here is an article (Archaeology, 9 Feb 2015) on the travails of being an archaeologist on an old battlefield … or a Marshall Islands inhabitant. It brings up the old questions of who’s responsible for what when old munitions are left behind.  There are a number of old shipwrecks from World War II that went down containing substantial amounts of oil and are reaching the point where a disastrous loss of containment may occur; and then there are the munitions, from bombs still being found in Berlin, London, and many other old targets, to shipwrecks (such as this frightening possibility) in shallow waters that are a formidable threat to nearby towns.  While admitting that it’s difficult to ask the losers (who were the aggressors) to clean up outside of their own borders, since they were financially devastated, or ask the winners, who were merely defending themselves, to clean up, in the end someone has to do it or the cost, in environmental degradation and lives lost or blighted, becomes intolerable.  While I have plenty of respect for the concept of war graves, at some point you have to look at what that leaking war grave is doing to the descendants of our honored dead and realize that they wouldn’t want this just to honor their sacrifice.

A new approach with mice:

After several weeks of treating mice that had been genetically altered to produce amyloid plaques, the scientists found the ultrasound almost completely cleared the plaques in 75% of the animals, without apparent damage to brain tissue.

While there is still some debate as to whether plaques are a cause or a symptom of Alzheimer’s, the experiment found that the treated mice had improved memory, as measured by three different tests, compared with untreated ones.

One of the few diseases that really frightens the hell out of me.

(h/t weinenkel @ The Daily Kos)

Katie Slocombe checks out chimp languages (paywall):

Katie Slocombe of the University of York, UK, and her team recorded vocalisations by a group of adult chimps from the Netherlands before and after their relocation to Edinburgh Zoo. Three years after the move, the Dutch chimps had picked up the pronunciation of their Scottish hosts.

So how hard can it be for you?

(NewScientist, 16 Feb 2015)

(Tomato buckets awaiting their occupants – courtesy Deb White, Arts Editor.)

Now for a little music and people dressed in primary colors…..

Color me surprised – I thought business would be in favor of Right To Work:

Hoffman said Monday night that the reason is twofold: he believes the right-to-work law will ultimately cost his company money, and he sees Minnesota’s proposal to increase transportation funding as offering greater business opportunities.

Right to Work boils down banning laws that force workers to join the union in force at a workplace. The general idea behind making people join a union is that if they don’t join the union, they will benefit from any gains negotiated (or gained through other means) by the union without paying for them. Such laws make the unions a little richer, and a little stronger. In general, American businesses often do not like unions, as they can disrupt the workplace and demand higher wages.

But as this article makes clear, unions can also help make the workplace a better place, from strengthening workplace safety to training to anything else they can find. This sort of development makes sense, so I think what really surprises me is seeing someone going beyond the traditional business view of a union to embrace them as a positive. Perhaps the union at Hoffman (International Union of Operating Engineers) is less disruptive and more interested in making the process at Hoffman run well.

(h/t triumph110 @ The Daily Kos)

A little less than three years ago, my old friend Kevin McLeod wrote an article that stuck in my brain, decrying for-profit prisons (courtesy the Way Back machine); since then Vicky Pelaez, Kevin Matthews, the FindLaw organization, and Katie Rose Quandt have addressed various facets of this little industry:

One of the most perverse incentives in a privately run prison system is that the more prisoners a company houses, the more it gets paid. This leads to a conflict of interest on the part of privately run prisons where they, in theory, are incentivized to not rehabilitate prisoners. If private prisons worked to reduce the number of repeat offenders, they would be in effect reducing the supply of profit-producing inmates.

But none have really considered taking the next step in their criticisms: abstracting from the immediate situation to attempt to understand how to prevent such mistakes in the future.

Let’s consider something else that can get my knickers in a knot – the businessman who decides to run for office and repeatedly offers up his businessman experience, his acumen, as his credentials that makes him qualified for office – H. Ross Perot being the best known example in my lifetime (“I just want to get under the hood and fix things.”).  So what’s wrong with this picture?

What we’re forgetting is that the goal of business – commerce – is NOT the goal of the government. I’m finding it a little hard to articulate the goals of government that are not objectionable to someone out there, so I’ll suggest that, if only currently, the goals of government are to protect society from outside intervention; and regulate the internal interactions of society, individually and collectively, such that, well, colloquially, everyone is equally unhappy; or that everyone is justly, according to their actions, treated.

As the one is not the other, it seems reasonable to propose a simple principle by which we can avoid future mistakes: those activities, supporting the goals of government, which may reasonably be undertaken by government, should always be taken care of by government. It is not a necessity that government be absolutely lean; showing a profit at the end of the year is not a requirement, although certainly a large deficit can be a drag on the economy. When the principle is abrogated, we find such distasteful activities as companies lobbying for longer prison sentences solely to inflate their bottom line.

And even when the principle is technically not abrogated, we still find such problems: simply consider the Military-Industrial Complex.

You learn new things from movie reviews, especially in science magazines:

… patrons with cloth napkins draped over their heads eat ortolan (Emberiza hortulana), a yellow-throated bunting that migrates between northern Europe and West Africa. The napkins are said to help capture the bird’s aroma, yet also make the ghastly indulgence seem all the more macabre.

Hate to have someone take a picture of me. Maybe I’ll pass.

The movie, Emptying the Skies, covers the illegal practice of killing songbirds as they migrate, en masse, between Europe and Africa.  Up to 10,000 birds can be captured and killed using a single mist net.  (NewScientist, 16 Feb 2015)

We call him … Orange Kitty.  We kicked him out of the house at least four times yesterday.

(March 13, 2015. Courtesy Arts Editor Deb White)

Just how important is your GI tract? [paywall]

Colleen Kelly, a gastroenterologist at the Miriam Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island, has carried out around 200 faecal transplants for people with C. difficile infections. In 2010, he gave a transplant to a 32-year-old woman whose teenage daughter was the donor. The girl was borderline obese, says Kelly, but otherwise healthy. The transplant was a success and cleared up the woman’s C. difficile infection.

Around a year later the woman returned, complaining of massive weight gain. She had always been a normal weight, but had become obese despite diet and exercise regimes – even a medically supervised liquid protein diet. “She said she felt like there was a switch inside her body,” says Kelly. “No matter how much she ate or exercised, she couldn’t take the weight off. She’s still overweight now, and she’s very frustrated.”

A single incident is not a scientific study, but it is fascinating, especially having a spouse who is overweight – the despair of failure, despite all of her efforts, including surgery, is frustrating to watch. Is it possible to just … ummmm … offer her some shit and watch her finally win?

The article even talks about anecdotal evidence of mental health issues disappearing after a transplant. Again, the lack of science makes it impossible to come to any conclusions – but it may be the first echo of an amazing advance!  (NewScientist, 16 Feb 2015)

Applying computer programming techniques to government:

By bringing together political scientists, technologists, designers, lawyers, organizational psychologists, and lawmakers, #Hack4Congress will help foster new digital tools, policy innovations, and other technology innovations to address the growing dysfunction in Congress.  Help fix Congress! Join political scientists and policy experts,  technologists, architects, and designers at #Hack4Congress at Harvard Kennedy School of Government to help identify ideas and innovations to overcome the dysfunction gripping much of Congress. “Hacking” is not just for technologists. “Hacks” include innovations in policy, architecture, organizational process, art and design, and educational materials, as well as new software and technologies…

“Hacking” is not just for technologists. “Hacks” include innovations in policy, architecture, organizational process, art and design, and educational materials, as well as new software and technologies.

An innovative way to fix government, or computer programmer hubris finding a new venue? I suppose it’s what we used to call a brainstorming session with a lot of expertise crossover. Still, they really seem to think this is an operational problem, and not a problem with ideological rigidity, which seems to me to be the heart of the problem – along with a lack of seriousness about the problem of responsible governance.

Officer finds rare pearl in stew worth thousands.

Well, I suppose it might be….