Intellectual narcissism, woos, whack jobs, protesters and reptilian corporations

These two internet “broadsides” made me chuckle:

Note: the upper picture is about the recent IRS scandal of targeting groups that had “conservative sounding names”. While what the IRS did was wrong, I think that no political group should have tax-exempt status, and that includes groups that I like (such as Priorities USA).

The lower photo lampoons the louder, more scientifically ignorant anti-GMO protesters by playing upon this true incident in which Christine O’Donnell said that US companies were “cross breeding humans and animals” and breeding mice with “fully functional human brains” (in reality, the companies grew a human “progenitor cell” into a mouse where it developed into a fully functional MOUSE BRAIN CELL.)

This reminded me of two incidents a long time ago.
The first occurred at a mathematics conference. Some mathematics professors asked me if I’d sign a petition protesting a female mathematics professor not geting tenure at the University of California, Berkeley. I declined to sign and gave the following reasons:
1. Her field of research was NOT mine and
2. I am in no way qualified to judge scholarship at such a level. Any objective search committee would throw out my CV well before any “short list” was made for a job opening at that institution.

So, absent some sort of evidence that said “she is qualified but she is getting turned down due to her sex”, I couldn’t sign such a petition. That does NOT mean that the petitioners weren’t right; they might have been!

The second incident occurred at a Unitarian Universalist church camp. Some teenager had a “clipboard” petition asking the government to devote “more money to….” (AIDS research, I think).

So I asked: “what is the current funding level, why would that be optimal, and what do you proposed be cut in its stead, or how would we raise the money?” The person holding the clipboard gave me a look of astonishment…as if “why would these be pertinent questions?” Frankly, I would have settled for an answer of the following type: “this was budgeted by the President but the House cut this and added X instead” or “Senator X proposed this but the GOP filibustered due to pressure from….” or even “I don’t know the details but Scientific American has a good article on why this research is currently underfunded…”. But of course, I got NONE of that.

And so it goes with Monsanto and anti-GMO protesters. I am NOT saying that there aren’t issues with Monsanto’s business practices (I’d like to educate myself on these). I am not saying that there aren’t GMO-crop related issues (such as such crops needing more pesticides due to their sending out stronger pollination signals, or due to the POSSIBLE rushing into new technologies before they’ve been conservatively tested).

But one has to be careful as to how one educates themselves. For one: mainstream outlets are notorious for being fooled (example) Yes, it sometimes happens that a non-renowned scientist/mathematician comes up with a genuine groundbreaking result (example) but in this case, the results were submitted to and verified by the editors and referees at Annals of Mathematics, the top journal in mathematics.

And frankly, much of the “science” that comes from the mouths of the loudest activists is either gibberish, or unfounded opinions or fears. It is almost as if people of this sort think that their confidence in their own opinion constitutes “evidence”.

I’ve seen this “from the other side”, so to speak.

Back in the early 1980′s, I was in the nuclear Navy. We did class room training, and then had training at prototype nuclear reactors. Outside of these reactor complexes, you had protestors (sometimes Catholic nuns) passing out leaflets which were designed to…well…I guess convince us that what we were doing was dangerous, wrong or harmful.

So I was polite and I took them. I read them. And they were hilariously wrong; it was clear that whoever wrote those had no understanding of science or engineering.

This is NOT to say there aren’t legitimate issues concerning nuclear power (storage of waste, mining, possibility of natural disasters (Fukushima), antiquated plants and designs (Fukushima again), industries taking money saving safety shortcuts, regulation (those who know most about nuclear power and are most qualified to oversee it are those who worked in it…huge potential for conflict of interest).

But I have no interest in listening to someone who has no better qualifications than confidence in their own opinions and in their own abilities to digest pop-level science.

This is why I followed the Fukushima incident via Scientific American and via the MIT nuclear science and engineering sites.

The same applies to the GMO stuff. There are science issues, and I don’t trust large corporations to properly balance public safety with the pursuit of maximum profit. I am for educating myself, but listening to some “activist” website or listening to some woo rant, rave and make bad analogies isn’t education. It is an irritating waste of time.

There are times when I grumble about there being “no difference between liberals and conservatives” when it comes to uninformed people trying to obtain a captive audience for their quackery and being offended when they are blown off.

But there is one difference: on the whole, liberals have a bit more freedom to say “ok, in this instance, most conservatives are saying X and they are right on this issue”; conservatives who do the same tend to be labeled as “no longer being conservative” (e. g., think of a conservative who admits that there is human caused or human aggravated climate change; how do other conservatives react to that person?)

Wake up people…er sheeple

Epic Chart to deal with Conspiracy Theories and Woo…

(click for larger)

Some science wonders and some personal reflection

Injury notes The heel pain appears to be gone…though my left Achilles tendon is a tiny bit sore; it has “the minor scrunch”. I feel it around the ankle and the calf is tight; I had better be careful. Fortunately I’ll have lots of rest between workouts and the workouts will be varied. I’ve got 6 miles planned for tomorrow, day off, 10K plus special adventure Saturday and Sunday, then a couple of easy runs the next week prior to the Heights Half Marathon.

Science

This is the value of some GMOs. So much of the opposition to them comes from the scientifically illiterate who just have emotional reasons (“it isn’t NATURAL”), etc. This, of course, doesn’t mean that there aren’t complications for some, or that the companies always act in an ethical way (they don’t) or that sometimes some modified crops are given heavy doses of pesticides that kill more than the intended targets. But it isn’t the genetic modification that is the problem in those cases.

Speaking of unnatural: how about artificially “grown” organs? It turns out that some human organs can be grown by cells put around a lattice that is made of sugar and printed out by a 3-d printer. The mould can then be washed away and the cells finish the rest of the job since they are in approximately the correct location and are programmed to react in a certain way, depending upon where they are. I read this in Scientific American; the article is behind a paywall.

Politics and the Media
Leave it to Fox News to truncate what President Obama says to its advantage. David Horsey lampoons this:

Personal Reflection

On Facebook, a friend put this as a status:

We all end up right where we need to be in life. Some of us just take the long winding road full of potholes.

I admit that I don’t think like this. For example, my friends who got cancer and died weren’t where “they needed to be”. Stuff happens, and sometimes it is bad.

I do think that there is a stratification process of sorts, which is a function of one’s natural talents and circumstances. For example, I wasn’t born with the genes to be an athlete; hence an NFL career was not in the cards for me. So I can say “that wasn’t meant to be”. But given that I found elementary calculus to be easy and that I was blessed to not be born into, say, crushing poverty or born in a war torn area and that I was blessed to have good schools to go to and parents who provided for me, I was able to eventually get the job that I did. But is this where I “need to be”? Probably not, though it isn’t a bad place for me. I had the “better weather but worse students” option and I had the “lie about my being more religious than I really was” option; I ended up going with the “be able to live a more honest life and teach decent students at the expense of brutal winter weather” option. Also, I could have been an engineer instead, had I gone down a different path.

She also said:

But I do believe we are meant to learn something from every experience whether it is good or bad.

I don’t believe this (e. g. I am not sure what someone who gets paralyzed by getting hit by a drunk driver is “meant” to learn anything) but I do believe that, sometimes, one CAN learn from failures or from bad experiences.

But for me, there is just no “meant to” about it; there is nothing guiding our lives or experiences.

These are almost ALL galaxies; each has at least 100 BILLION stars in it (most have more) and this is just one tiny “cone” of space. Still think that there is something guiding human lives? I can’t…not with a straight face.

My Past
I went to a high school that was called The Rebels and we had a confederate battle flag (ok, the Tennessee Battle flag that has been co-opted for the Confederate flag) and our school fight song was Dixie. We were the “old south” (the “new south” was the other, newer, high school in the south side of the city); we were the high school of “clapboard houses” of not-so-bright people with not-so-great prospects (according to the newspapers). We used that as motivation; note that my small calculus class sent students to Rice, Naval Academy, Stanford and the University of Texas; we had a minimum of 2 law degrees and 2 Ph. D.s from that half-dozen or so, as well as at least one P. E.

Since I was a school spirit kind of guy, I had crossed “Rebel Flags” on my bedroom wall.

It sickens me to remember that.

I was reminded of this when I saw the MSNBC article about Georgia’s “Confederate History Month”.

This sort of mixes the emotions in me. On one hand, I do have remnants of the “culture of honor” (that is why I take my failures personally, even if they are minor athletic failures); I’d still rather watch a football game with a southern crowd (they know more about it and get into the ACTUAL GAME; the Illinois fans…well, they are bad football fans. They leave when the team is down by 10 points in the 4′th quarter, or even down by 7 with 3 minutes to go). My ex wife and my current wife are southerners; I still have that attraction to the “southern mom” type. It is nuts.

On the other hand, I see this “Confederate flag” waving and my reaction:

“treason”. “racist” “backwards” “losers”. But mostly…it is “yuck”. Really, I could get on my high horse and demean the very wrong things that they did, but mostly my reaction is “eeeewwwwww……yuck…..”. This is kind of lampooned here

Is this Good or Bad?

I’ll help you out:

1. If these are white Republicans from a rural area or Southern State, then they are PATRIOTS. You might have to imagine the writing being misspelled and grammatically incorrect English.
2. But if they are Muslims, then they are evil extremists.

Any questions?

Memes, photos and some Colbert

Football season: kickoff for Illinois football is only 5 short months away.

I don’t recall football players looking this attractive.

Click to see the actual Colbert clip, which is about gay marriage. It is pretty good. But you KNOW that I liked the photo.

Yes, success, at least what modest success I’ve had, has NEVER been of the “straight line” variety. There are ALWAYS detours, false starts, and setbacks along the way. ALWAYS.

Hey, you had better register that MATLAB program (I know: “matrix laboratory” not “mathematics laboratory”). Or…Spell-check strikes again!

Remember those B-rated “horror” movies from 20-30 years ago (or make that 40-50 years ago)? I think that the creator of this poster for a Facebook page did a good job of capturing that feel:

Yes, “lesbain” is intentional.

No, Justice Scalia isn’t racist: he is a Republican.

I’d subscribe to this…

Political Conservatives: Kos’ Handy Guide

From here.

Ok, back to work for me.

I thought that Conservatives LIKED the “free market”?

Here is an idea: don’t go to movies.