Working out

So, I've been taking workouts so far on Wednesdays (cardioblast), Thursdays (pump 'n' jump), and Fridays (yoga). Tomorrow I'll be going to my first Total Body Workout. If it is like the other cardio classes, it will kick by arse, but I expect it to work me out quite nicely, helping me take down my weight further. I've already lost ~10lbs over one week.

True, the first week back to working out is the one in which you lose the most weight, but it is nice to be under 250lbs again. Let's just see how much I weigh after another month. Of course, I'm not doing it for the weight loss, per se, but because I'm wanting to just work on becoming more aerobically fit.

Ann Arbor Climate Change

A little while ago, I posted a link to the UK meteorological office which had a report with a nifty little graphic showing how average annual temperature ranges have shifted warmer over the past 100+ years. I thought I could replicate it for Ann Arbor. Luckily, the University has been keeping records of daily temperatures since 1882, meaning that I can look at temperature changes over the past 125 years!

So, what have I found? Well, to be brief, the temperature of the city has increased over the past 125 years, and five of the ten hottest years were in the period of 1997-2007. What does this all mean? Well, some of the temperature increase could be attributed to the urban heat island effect, and not to local impacts of global warming, but I don't think that all of the observed temperature increase could be. However, I don't have any good data to support this assertion. Of course, I could try and find temperature data for locations near Ann Arbor (say, within 25 miles of the University) and do a comparative analysis of the overlapping years. Of course, that is a different sort of analysis, taking more time and effort. I can do it, but right now, I'll just leave you with the pretty graph that took me about a week to complete. Enjoy!

IMPORTANT NOTICE (Feb 11, 2008): The values shown below are not for Ann Arbor. I accidentally used the wrong label for these charts. I will repost the correct charts for Ann Arbor once I fix them (don't worry, they still show positive slopes).

Ann Arbor annual mean and median temperatures have increased from roughly 45 F to roughly 54 F in the past 125 years.

The yearly mean temperature in Ann Arbor increased from roughly 46F to roughly 55F over the past 125 years. One can see an oscillating "sine-wave" function with a periodicity of roughly thirty years. This may be due to the ~30 year Great Lakes water level oscillations.

The yearly median temperature in Ann Arbor increased from roughly 46.5F to roughly 56F over the past 125 years.

The ranked mean annual temperatures for Ann Arbor from 1881 to 2006. The lowest rank (1) is given to the year with the coldest mean annual temperature (1882). The highest rank (125) was given to the year with the warmest mean annual temperature (1998). In the 10-year period of 1997-2006, five years were in the top ten warmest years (1998, 1999, 2001, 2002, 2006). There is a strong positive correlation (R2=0.72) between year and annual temperature rank. With such a high correlation, one shouldn't be surprised to see more high-rank temperatures in the years to come.

More photos later.

Everyone - I'm sorry that I've not been posting photos recently. Trust me, I've been taking them! But, I've also been a slacker recently when it comes to uploading photos. (Crazy, I know.) However, once I get around to it, there will be photos of:

• My crazy new hair.
• Winter in Ann Arbor.

In the mean-time, you can check out some of the blogs and websites that I've been reading in the past couple of days:

• 24FightingChickens - A ruthlessly honest portrayal of martial arts practice and practitioners (specifically Shotokan Karate).
  
• Dispatches from the Culture Wars - A daily-updated blog on Scienceblogs that discusses domestic (usually political) issues from a POV I generally agree with (since Brayton tends toward the devastating employment of consistent logic).
• Treehugger - An article-submission site that includes all topics "enviro-friendly" (thus the name). Nice thing is that it is constantly updated.

Other than that, I've got to start really sitting down and writing out the second and third sections of my research proposal, complete an online Institutional Review Board (IRB) application to do social research, read up on water law in Michigan (for a possible Michigan Law Review article), re-edit my paper on river habitat impacts due to groundwater pumping, revise my Master's thesis (finally) into three (or four) different papers for publication, and figure out how to best represent the collate-able data for the English Language Institute. (At least I don't have paper grading to do on top of all of this other stuff.)

As you can see, I have a few things on my plate right now. Of course, I just got an invitation to a German-style Karnival celebration next weekend (a little early for Carnival, but having it on a Saturday helps, I suppose; plus I'm not Catholic, at least), so there is an additional requirement for me to figure out what I will dress up as (assuming that I go). I also thought that I might offer cooking up some pancakes for a Shrove Tuesday celebration for the ELI (or maybe not if I can't find someone who can lend me an electric griddle before I propose this to the ELI administrators). Alternatively, there is the option of doing a Shrove "Tuesday" breakfast at my house on the Sunday prior... Logistically much simpler, methinks.

Happy Burns Day

While at university in Scotland, we would celebrate Robbie Burns Day every year on the 25th of January. Before supper, we would all stand at table and, as one, toast to the memory of the great Scottish poet, and recite the following short "grace" before sitting back down.

"Some hae meat and canna eat,
And some wad eat that want it;
But we hae meat, and we can eat,
And sae the Lord be thankit."

Enjoy your Robbie Burns Day.

Hair coloring

Bleached my hair. It is now corn-yellow. Yay.

Yearly temperature ranking

A while ago, I tried to look at a means of looking at temperature trends by ranking them. I was not highly successful, since I was trying to see if a day in a month was "characteristic" of the long-term average. However, over at Only in it for the Gold, there is a story about a nice graphic put out by the UKMO that ranks yearly temperature ranges. The trend is amazing.

Cool YouTube video

Yes, I like cdk007's videos. I'm posting another one here about all the things that you don't believe in if you believe in [Young Earth] Creationism.

Regarding the use of "As [it] is the nature of"

What follows is a response to a question about the difference between the opening clause, "As is the nature of..." and, "As it is the nature of...".

"AS" has two meanings in this case depending on context:
1) "As it is the nature" = a clause setting up a cause/effect relationship between a characteristic that is fundamental to the item with an effect that is not fundamental. (See below.)
2) "As is the nature" = a clause defining the fundamental nature of the item in question.

Let's abstract a model-form sentence starting with "As it is the nature": "As it is the nature of A1 [to be in a condition of] X1 , Y1 happens." Here, "it" refers to the implied condition of X1 upon A1, which results in a further condition, Y1.

In this case, X1 is a condition related to the nature of A1, but Y1 is not related directly to the nature of A1. Y1, however, is a condition related to X1. Therefore, the statement "As it is the nature..." in this case sets up a clause that refers to the nature of A1 to X1 with the expected further relation to a nature Y1, but does not say anything about the relationship between A1 and Y1.

Now, let's abstract the other clause: "As is the nature of A2, Y2 happens." Here, Y2 happens because of the fundamental nature of A2. In this case, the fundamental nature of A2 results in Y2. Removing the "it" in the statement removes the implied condition (X1) seen in the previous example, and extends the fundamental definition of the subject (A2) to include the above implied condition (X1) within it.

In other words, A2 = A1 + X1.

Let's look at an example of the use of "As it is the nature of..." I'm quoting here from David Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature.

• "As it is the nature of doubt to cause a variation in the thought, and transport us suddenly from one idea to another, it must of consequence be the occasion of pain."

Abstracting this sentence we get: "As it is the nature of A1 to cause X1, it must do Y1." Here, the condition of X1 ("variation in the thought, and transport us suddenly from one idea to another") upon A1 ("doubt") leads to the consequence of Y1 ("be the occasion of pain").

We can, of course, change the sentence to the "As is the nature..." form by integrating the former condition X1 with the former object A1 thusly:

• "As is the nature of doubt-caused variation in thought transporting us suddenly from one idea to another, pain must be the consequence."

While this is not the best re-rendering, I hope it will illustrate the example. Here, the abstracted sentence structure becomes: "As is the nature of A2, Y2 happens." Here,the fundamental nature of A2 ("doubt-caused variation in thought transporting us suddenly from one idea to another") causes Y2 (pain).

Hope that helps you understand what it's all about.

Gym

I've been feeling under the weather recently: moody, withdrawn, and tired. True, I've been recovering from a cold of some sort; the type I always seem to get when it's getting near to the New Year. However, I have also not been heating as healthily as I could and should - I mean, I'm 30 for heaven's sake, what am I doing still eating like I'm 18? - and with the recent heavy snow and rain, I haven't been cycling to-and-from home (nor around Argo Pond). Part of my lethargy is - at least the romantic part of my mind insists it is - likely due to not being near the sea. The smell of salt air, the feel of the stiff breeze, and the call of sea birds are a combination of sensory inputs that I remember as being invigorating. However, since an extended trip to such a place whenever I'm feeling lethargic is not likely to happen, I must work off some of that lethargy through good old motion and sweat.

To that end, I've enrolled in four (buy three get the fourth free) courses with the University's U-Move fitness program. Two are "cardio" classes, one is a mix of cardio and weights, and the last one is yoga. (As a tangent topic, the yoga mat I purchased was an orange one, and I've decided that orange is a color that I like. I already have orange shirts, with an orange winter coat on the way. Why not, therefore, have an orange yoga mat?) Hopefully, these classes banish my lethargy while simultaneously reviving my desire to exercise at the Central Campus Rec Building (which is not the most uplifting of places to work out - think "breeze block building").

In response to an opinion about global warming and global conspiracy

Urgh. I can't tell if Greenwald is attempting farce or attempting to shove his face in his arse. (Face + Arse = Farce? No, too easy.)

If he is not trying to be an arse, then he does not make a good scientific argument. Where does any statement say that "Western" industrialization is the culprit of global warming? If he were to read the scientific literature, he would find that industrialization, primarily from the West (due, of course, to the much longer time frame of industrialization IN the "West") is pointed to as the culprit.

However, Mr Greenwald starts off by making the first wrong assumption: that all Lefties are Global Warming enthusiasts (and that a "Lefty" publication might print something that isn't from a "lefty"). The rest of his argument depends on this assumption. This is like saying all Jews are Zionists, all British have bad teeth, all Germans are Nazis, all Indians love curry, all Americans are Indian killers, all French are arrogant, etc. If I were to judge Mr. Greenwald's state of mind on anything alone, it must start at his first premise - which is as shallow as the connections I made in the previous sentence. Continuing on, the only Google mentions of the Dr. David Whitehouse who wrote the article, show him to be a climate change skeptic, presumably with a degree in astophysics (since the majority of his discussions of science over on the BBC pages deal with outer space and - interestingly - science fictiony type things, like teleportation). That a person with a science degree in the effects of physics OUTSIDE the purview of the Earth has any equivalent credential to state anything credible on the status of science looking at the effects of physics INSIDE the atmosphere, is like saying that Jerry Falwell is a good interpreter of the Torah (after all, Falwell's bible and the Jewish bible are based on the same thing, right?). These two reasons are why I don't hold Dr. Whitehouse scientific credentials as highly as Mr. Greenwald, but to continue to state that Dr. Whitehouse's time as the online science editor for the BBC somehow makes him more credible than Gore is also a stupid argument to make. Gore has a whole team of people working with and for him and is wrapped up in global warming science and education - trust me, I met the man, and the former Whitehouse (President's mansion on Pennsylvania Blvd this time, not some self-aggrandizing former editor for the BBC) science adviser who worked for him - and know first hand (as opposed to Mr. Greenwald's who-knows-how-many hand) how committed to obtaining more information he (Gore) is on this subject (global warming). So, to sum up this lengthy, rambling paragraph:

1. Not all Lefties agree with the idea of anthropogenic global warming (AGW), or are anti-Western/US.
2. AGW not caused by THE WEST, but by industrialization, which is primarily found (by weight of history) in the West. (Sorry, no evil anti-Western/corporatist conspiracy here, unless Mr. Greenwald is trying to tell us that industrialization didn't have a major history in the West!)
   
3. Dr. Whitehouse is not an expert on atmospheric physics (for the basic physical science of AGW), economics, public health, ecology, biology, virology, or any other "ology" that might relate to impacts on the ground resulting from AGW. Dr. Whitehouse appears to be an ASTROphysicist.
   
4. Mr. Gore deals every day with the issue of AGW, and if not "every day", then a damn sight more time than Dr. Whitehouse's "illustrious" career at the BBC allowed him to do.
   

But let me continue to the next paragraph. "For starters, the anti-Western trend in left wing thought is all-encompassing." What? I'm a "Lefty". Does that mean that I am "anti-Western"? Let Mr. Greenwald tell me to my face and we shall have to engage in a duel of honor! But seriously, this is characteristic of a starting sentence of a diatribe. What makes him think that anything he has to tell me after this point I won't take with such a large bucket-full of salt that I will find even the thought of digesting what he has written unpalatable? Admittedly, I am writing (in my reply to you) in a very sour tone, but I don't expect Mr Greenwald or anyone else to read this, nor am I trying and pick apart his argument to anyone else but you (or anyone else with an understanding of my own thought processes and appreciation of my sarcastic sensibilities who may be reading this over your shoulder). But if my mental digression was bad then what is this?:

"It's easy to point to the slave trade and colonial rule, and make a sound moral determination in the non-West's favor. Deeper digging produces some compelling counter-arguments, but if you're looking for a go-to stance then "the West is evil" is a lay-up. In regards to global warming, the logic proceeds as follows: atmospheric warming is caused by CO2 emissions; CO2 emissions are the result of industrialization; industry is synonymous with the West. Thus, global warming is caused by the West, (the U.S. in particular.)"

Mr. Greenwald now sound like a little Mr. Inhofe. In fact, in his next paragraph, he almost sounds like he's come up with a brilliant new formulation of the good Senator's statement of, "Global warming is the biggest hoax perpetrated on the American populace." Oooh, SIR!

Now, if Mr. Greenwald wanted to give me a scientific (or mathematical) discussion on how you can discern from an apparent 6-year trend (temps of 2001-2007) something that is somehow characteristic of a 30-year time frame (along which climate is supposed to be measured), then the point just prior to the paragraph above would have been the best place to catch me. Indeed, if he showed anything in his statement that would have shown me something other than data, it would have been good. However, he only later shows data (with no discussion). With no attribution. Data which has as much to do with a connection between CO2 emissions and AGW as the Pope does to the presence of heaven. Do you see what I'm getting at? Just by stating that Jesus gave Peter the keys to the kingdom of heaven does not prove that there is a heaven, that there are keys, or that the Catholic Church is their keeper. Similarly, all the numbers show is that countries did not conform to Kyoto, and is really more an illustration of the lack of enforcement mechanisms in the Protocol than proof of a non-connection between CO2 and AGW. (That the US's emissions only increased slightly in comparison to Europe is something for which I can refer Mr. Greenwald to Mr. Peter Gleick at the Pacific Institute.) That Mr. Greenwald does nothing in discussing the major jumps in CO2 emission from China and India, or the major decreases in world forests - especially the tropical rainforests; the deforestation of the Amazon alone caused a major spike in Brazil's CO2 and CO emissions - since 1990 is strange (or maybe this doesn't fit his own world view).

In the end, Occam's Razor (i.e., the idea of parsimony) is something that I have to go back to. Is this all a major conspiracy forged by the UN (an organization which has proven itself to be incapable of finesse and unilateralism on anything other than recent anti-Americanism) and lefties (that Mr. Greenwald never really provides good definition for)? Or is this the cumulative impact of 6 billion people living today, and the several billion that came before us? Along this line, I have to go with the second option.

The first option shows a humanity about it that makes it tempting to believe. In this scenario, there is a conspiracy being carried out by a cabal of "them" against "us". In such a scenario, "they" are either so all-powerful that "they" can do anything they want; are all-knowing that "they" can act independently (but in complete harmony with each other), even appearing to be at cross-purposes; or are so well-entrenched into the system that no one can get rid of "them." These are all cornerstones of any good (or bad) conspiracy theory. However, conspiracy theories require so many contingencies that they fall apart. (Of course, that they do fall apart only goes to show that the conspiracy is really true!) Mr. Greenwald might as well have said, "The Jews did it!" After all, this is a tried-and-tested conspiracy theory that has shown to hold traction over centuries. (Maybe Jewcy is the wrong forum, though.)

The second option is less viscerally tempting because it is so vast and (strangely) inhuman. In this scenario, the cumulative impact of an unimaginable number of actions (greater than any human mind can conceive on his/her own) has an unintended impact on everything. This is something that many rational people don't want to hear. We think our actions (on the whole) rational. We like to think these things. We like to hear of studies that show that a group is smarter than an individual. The idea that billions of small (or large) actions can lead to a bad cumulative impact that is not seen immediately baffles the brain. However, we've seen it countless times in the past: acid rain, ozone hole, fisheries collapse, radiation poisoning, environmentally-caused cancer, altered hydrology due to land-use change, groundwater pumping, etc. The longer the natural world's response to a collective and cumulative action, the less likely we are to accepting a connection. We aren't hard-wired to think in these terms. We are more likely to think in conspiracies, as Mr. Greenwald apparently does.

One final note. With an MA in general psychology, I'm surprised that Mr. Greenwald has fallen prey to the conspiracy frame of mind, and apparently being unable to tell that he is. Of course, this might be the difference between obtaining an MS and an MA in that field.

Day of the Ninja

Thanks to Tom Cruise's film, The Last Samurai, and some online ninja jokesters, today is (among other things) Day of the Ninja!

Just be warned... (You never know where they strike, you see.)

Now don't you wish you weren't so happy to conform to pirate speech on Talk-Like-a-Pirate Day?

End-of-Prohibition Day

On this day in 1933, the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified. For those of you who don't know (and don't want to read the whole Wikipedia page), the important part of that amendment was the following:

"The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed."

Ooh. Such a well-crafted sentence that leaves nothing to doubt. No wiggle-room. Of course, article 3 of the amendment required that a requisite number of states ratify the amendment within seven years. Surprisingly, the majority of states that ratified Amendment 18 also ended up ratifying Amendment 21. Only South Carolina stuck to its original pro-Prohibition vote by being the only state to reject the 21st Amendment in 1933. (Similarly, Connecticut and Rhode Island rejected the 18th Amendment while voting for the 21st.)

So, go out and enjoy the repeal of the 18th Amendment and the return to states the power to set alcohol production, sale, and consumption laws! (Responsibly, of course.)

The role of decoration

The role of decoration in the lifestyle of people is always exploited in commercials, and no more than at Christmas - aka 'shopping time'. Is it naive of me to wonder how we got to the point we are at, with Christmas advertising starting earlier each year? The blatantly consumption-ist crapmercials have started and one knows the tackiness of certain items are their only draw. Why else would a major lumber/hardware big-box store (Lowes) only focus their commercials on the ditzy hausfrau asking the sickeningly cheerful young store clerk where silly "seasonal" such as the dancing holiday turkey, a giant inflatable snowglobe, and other crappy lawn and home "ornaments" that will likely be of shoddy construction material and quality? The irony of going to a home improvement store that supposedly takes pride in its quality - "Let's build something together" - to buy poor quality tacky crap. (Urgh.)

Living in the US, one expects it, though, no matter how one might cringe at the incessant blare of consumerist drivel, made even more sickening thanks to fundamentalist nutters' (who have a microphone in the form of Bill "O, Really") "War on Christmas" awareness campaigns, as well as greater exhortations for greater consumption to help (in some unknown and unproven way) the troops. In such ways we celebrate the birth of Jesus/the end of the year/the winter solstice/winter. Again, urgh.

Beowulf (in 3D)

I just watched the new film Beowulf (in 3D). The film was quite a good one - creating an easy means to access the much more difficult to read translated book. However, to people who haven't read the book, this film is not (surprise, surprise) a faithful translation of the original Old English "classic" epic poem. (For example, in the book, Grendel's mother wasn't a gold-tinged Angelina Jolie look-alike with - strangely - high heels and tail.)

The major drawback (in my opinion) was the diminution of the role of the hero in epic poetry and ancient societies. Having watched Troy in recent days, the parallels between the heroic characters Achilles and Beowulf become clear. Having recently watched Troy has also shown me how apparently shallow the hero theme (fighting for glory and immortality) was explored in Beowulf (yes, they talk about being sung for eternity, but it wasn't pressed to the same extent as in Troy). I feel this theme was altered slightly to try and show Beowulf as a human being with his own failings culminating in a desire to (in the last act) redeem himself by righting the wrongs he helped create as a young man. True, in the original Beowulf, the character (to my recollection) wasn't really trying to redeem himself of any wrong, but ended trying to die a glorious death in combat. The women in his life were mentioned only secondarily in the text (again, if I recall correctly). Although this type of character is alien to the modern viewer, I don't feel that the way to mainstream the film is to alter (some might say "explore") the character, but be explicit that it is set in a context of heroism and (like in Troy) possibly show the dichotomy of the heroic and the politic.

If you want to watch an action film, then this isn't the film for you. The action sequences (although bloody and hair-raising) are only quick blasts of action spritzed sparingly in the rest of the film.

No, the plot changes and plot twists that aren't in the original text (at least in the copy I recall reading) weren't really a bad thing, in my opinion. In fact, they possibly lent more continuity to the storyline. Of course, how the director decided to show this new script did have a negative outcome on the role of the hero (see above), however, since I feel that the plot changes did not force the diminution mentioned above, I'm not going to say the changes were all bad.

The film is very enjoyable in 3D, and if it wasn't for watching it in that format, I would say that the whole thing might not really be worth it... The fight scenes are all well choreographed, and when Beowulf strips down completely, the animators took great pains to make sure his (erm) penis wasn't showing. (Still, a little beefcake for those interested in that sort of thing.) However, for being a "bear of a man," Beowulf wasn't really rendered as being really "bear-like" (not hirsute or brawny enough to really be called "bear").

The cinematography was well drawn and directed. The characters were still somewhat plasticky in their look - many of them were (while being well rendered) were not realistic looking (interestingly, Beowulf was significantly more real-looking than any other character in the film). However, the inorganic items (the pebble beach, the flames, the castles, the cliffs, etc) were really great.

One last gripe and I'll be done: the thing is a period piece - taking place sometime after the fall of Rome, but not too much - and as such, one would like to see some realism along that vein, but in some interesting respects Beowulf falls down on this. Hrothgar's castle keep (while never entered in the film) is a major tower built along a scale that would never be seen until the Crusades. At the end of the film, the keep has expanded to massive tower proportions, and the stoutness of the castle walls would have made the castle builders of the 16th century envious. Additionally, Beowulf is seen wearing what looks to be plate armor. Where did he get it? That technology wasn't going to be around for another few centuries. (One might argue that it was colored leather, but it seemed to me to be rather shiny for leather.)

See the film (if you can see it, in 3D). It makes a good part of a collection alongside 300 and Troy.

Scientists as Policy Advisers

One of the greatest problems of having scientists serving as policy advisers is that scientists are trained in an area that is NOT policy advising, and unless they are lucky, their advice should not be taken, except with a major grain of salt. Part of this reaction stems from (I believe) mainly two points. First was the age of planning that peaked in the 20th Century, to which many people are still reacting to, and basing their viewpoints on. The second is the understanding that stakeholder engagement is becoming more feasible, even with possibly complex scientific issues.

The first issue (the spectre of the age of planning) is important because it is the major legacy with which we (as members of society in the US) focus our lens on the science adviser. From a 1955 publication entitled Natural Resources and the Political Struggle (Wengert, 1955), the roles of science and planning are outlined thusly:

In the field of resource policy, there has been a pronounced effort to rationalize programs and proposals in scientific terms and to city the authority of science as justification for particular policies. In no other field is the role of the expert more significant for particular policies. In no other field is the role of the expert more significant, and concomitantly the tendency to abdicate private, lay judgment in favor of the specialist more evident.

...

The history of resource policy is the history of science and technology in the service of the nation. The political struggle marking that history has involved scientists and intellectuals whose object largely has been to convert the public and the politician to a recognition of the importance and significance of the results of science. The struggle represents the deliberate attempt of intelligence to subdue and control the environment.

...

Another significant characteristic of the political process in its dealing with resource policy is the extent to which planning has been an important factor in reaching decisions. ... To the question of how the planning job can best be carried out there is and can be no single or simple answer.

Perhaps because resource policy has been intimately related to science and the use of research data and because scientifically trained men have been leaders in the resource policy field, planning techniques have been emphasized as means for identifying resource problems and preparing solutions for them. ... The issue today in the field of resource policy is not whether there shall be planning, but rather who shall plan and to what ends.

I hope this illustrates that planning was considered important in conducting policy advice (usually by people who knew the physical system - the scientist). Taking a quote from John Wilkinson (1964) - apparently mis-attributed to Charles de Gaul - "generals are always fighting the last war, and educators ... are always instructing the last generation." Here I mean that many of those in the policy arena are learning from those who grew up in the paradigm of planning; it colors their viewpoints and attitudes toward the "correct" role of science. (A possibly interesting discussion would be the role of planning in policy and how it differs from science.)

The second point - greater possibility for useful stakeholder engagement - is being proven with increased ability to disseminate technical information (especially those affecting natural resource use/extraction) spatially through the use of GIS and terrain viewing programs, both of which can be altered to show potential policy futures. In areas where visualization in terms of maps and computer wire models are less useful, the various models (both procedural and statistical) underlying most forms of scientific forecasting can be tweaked to produce output that are more amenable to the consumption of different stakeholders. With the understanding that stakeholder engagement is a requisite quality for robust "good" policy, use of science in illustrating the most likely (i.e., conservative estimate) impact of the major factors of interest to each stakeholder can be input to a model. In more sophisticated models, such factors can even be taken synergistically to illustrate the impact of more fine-tuned policy decisions.

Because of the continually growing strength of scientific understandings of how discrete (i.e., disciplinary) systems operate more accurate predictions are able to be made within a single system. This lends itself to being able to plan the impacts of a policy decision within the boundary conditions of that system. However, like a piece of science fiction depicting a possible not-too-distant-future, the change of only one (or a few) variables on an otherwise unchanged world-of-today makes for relatively easy writing, but does not provide a plausible future. Who would have guessed the massive synergistic impact of the internet on the totality of life in the West, including e-mail communication; increasing connection speeds; search engines; increased web page complexity; flash programming; YouTube; online databases; Google Earth; etc. The lesson here is to understand the impacts of synergy on a network of systems.

However, within certain constrained situations, science can still pull together forecasts with variables working in synergy. The requirement, though, with anything in modeling, is how much is constrained and how it is constrained. What this means, though, is that science can still inform planning, but it can now do so through stakeholders or committees including non-scientists as participating members. The role of the expert scientist becomes constrained more to the efficacy, reliability, and accuracy of the model, and not on their "Best Professional Judgment" of a situation, based on their own ingrained bias.

Science still is working in the form of "planning," but it becomes possibly multi-system in analysis, and usable by stakeholders in investigating possible futures based on policy inputs (with the understanding that the constraints and uncertainties are understood by all). By the simple (ha!) process of making the output of a policy scenario legible and accessible to non-experts (and allowing for possibly easy iterations of inputs from stakeholder representatives and outputs from expert scientists), decision makers are empowered by the science, rather than by the scientist. (True, scientists still have opportunities in manipulating the science behind the model - the meta-science - but in a complex system model operated by several different experts, the possibility of having major favorable outcomes without raising suspicion becomes exponentially more difficult, and I'm therefore discounting this possibility, at least for the near future.)

Yes, we have been here before - trusting models to solve our problems, forgetting that models have intrinsic uncertainty and various levels of external validity problems. However, we have also come a long way, being able to work strongly within disciplines to answer those difficult-to-solve problems of yesterday (at least to some extent). We are entering an age (I feel) where thinking of how to integrate knowledge across somewhat arbitrary disciplines (and subdisciplines) is becoming feasible and a new area of scientific interest; just how do you integrate economic factors with social factors, physical environmental factors, ecological factors, etc.

A useful website - I only wish it extended to Ann Arbor!

I found this website via another one: walkit.com. The reason it's so great is that it provides directions for people who don't drive (gasp!). Unfortunately, it currently only serves Birmingham, Edinburgh, and London. However, if you were visiting a friend in Edinburgh, and wanted to get from where they lived (arbitrarily selected as "St. Margarets Place") to Princes Street (where the upscale shops seem to be), then using standard mapping technology will not provide you with the best answer, especially if you are walking or cycling. (Additionally, since the traffic is limited on Princes Street to buses and taxis - which I still think is the case - using a standard mapping program will not provide you with an adequate answer.) The total distance using GoogleMaps is 2.5miles, and takes the walker/cyclist along Clerk St (A7) - a pretty busy road that isn't along the most direct path between points A and B. Is this the best way for a pedestrian/cyclist to go?

In steps walkit.com. Typing in the start and end points in this interface, you find out that the shortest walkable distance is 1.5 miles, and you can cut through the city parks and go through the castle district (such a great direct road!). Of course, this is merely the most direct path; no mention is made of the great vertical changes one encounters along this path (meaning that while it may be faster for a pedestrian, it might be easier for a cyclist to actually fight traffic on Clerk St than cycle up and down the castle hill to get to Princes Street beyond).

Still, cutting the walking distance by 1 mile is probably a good thing (in my book), plus offering the option of walking through the parks rather than sticking to the streets is also nice. And not having to worry about calculating in the one-way street systems one might find in a city center is yet another bonus.

Now if someone could do something similar to this for other cities. Maybe even tying it in with the public transport routes and schedules to provide a person just visiting a city with the best method of getting from A to B (especially if you are visiting NYC for the first time and need to integrate the subways and buses in your trip to make the most of your MTA card purchase).

If you know of something like this - where public transportation routes are included in providing directions - then please tell me about it.

The problem with scientists and language.

This is a topic that I touched on a few months ago, but I thought it would be good to get back to it again. (urgh.)

The topic is how scientists (and engineers) like to increase the precision and accuracy of their statements (when their statements are the written interpretation or verbalization of their painstaking scientific research). However, when these statements mix with the language of everyday life, it comes into contact with the common vernacular, and it becomes easy for the language of the scientist to be misunderstood or twisted to another end.

Even communication between disciplines this happens. One example I will draw upon is the word "diameter." In a common vernacular, most people would mean the distance from one side of a roughly circular object or area to the other ("What is the diameter of the Capitol dome?"). In mathematics, the diameter is defined as being twice the radius, which is itself described as the straight-line distance from the center of a circle to its edge. When talking about modeling hydraulics, the diameter has been used interchangeably with width, especially when talking about pipes or culverts. However, there is another definition of "diameter" which has apparently nothing to do with any of these definitions (which all refer to a specific type of width measurement). This is the use of "diameter" in network theory. Here, the diameter refers to the minimum distance between two nodes. While it may still talk about a specialized idea of "length," it divorced from the idea of "circularity" to which most definitions of "diameter" refer. Without an understanding of this specialized definition of diameter, a discussion of its use in modeling river networks makes for a confusing ride, since one does not know whether the person is initially talking about the width of the river, or its "branchiness".

This example in mind, it becomes even more muddied when talking to people in the "real world." Take, for example, the two differing understandings of the word "THEORY." Conducting a definition search of the work on WordNet Search provides the following three definitions:

1. a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world; an organized system of accepted knowledge that applies in a variety of circumstances to explain a specific set of phenomena
2. a tentative insight into the natural world; a concept that is not yet verified but that if true would explain certain facts or phenomena
3. a belief that can guide behavior

The first definition is the one used primarily in science as the definition of "theory", but in the common vernacular is thought of as scientific "laws". The second is normally termed a "hypothesis" in science, but in the common vernacular it is this term that is most often called a theory. The last definition is more akin (imho) to a definition of faith, and I'm going to focus this section of discussion on the implications of the first two definitions.

The first definition of "theory" is complicated by scientists who have decided to elevate certain very well explained theories to "laws". However, a scientific "law" is still a scientific theory, coined as something immutable by either the scientist after whom the law is named, or by the community of scientists that study in the discipline. To the hoi polloi, however, this distinction is filtered through a lens of social understandings of science and law to mean that there must be some sort of progression from being a "theory" to becoming a "law":

theory ==> law

This is exacerbated by textbooks parroting this viewpoint, and extended to include a progression from a lowly hypothesis into (eventually if the hypothesis is close enough to the truth) a law:

hypothesis ==> theory ==> law

However, it is not accurate: the "law of gravity" is a theory. Newton's "Laws of Motion" are actually scientific theories. True, scientific laws are different from theories in that they have withstood the vast test of time and scrutiny. However, they are not immutable.

What the average non-scientist considers a "theory" is similar to what scientists would consider a "hypothesis": the stated assumption of physical cause and effect. However, this is the same thing as a "theory" in everyday use. A police investigator makes "theories" as to how a murder occurred. A lawyer makes a "theory" as to why the defendant made the decisions he made leading up to the murder. Indeed, to be generous, people may well place "scientific theory" at a level somewhere between "everyday theory" (aka "hypothesis") and "scientific law" (aka "tried-and-tested scientific theory"), meaning that - in a science context at least - the word "theory" is something a little more than a mere guess.

However, this muddle of language becomes a major point of contention when dealing with politics in science. The detractors will point to problems with a scientific theory well understood in the scientific community and use scientific uncertainties surrounding the mechanisms around which the system works to try and tear down the original theory. This is like stating that since we do not know how sub-atomic particles work, the Big Bang Theory is incorrect. Or stating that since we do no have evidence of speciation through the process of natural selection, Darwinist evolution is wrong. Or that since winters are still cold, the predictions of global climate change are wrong. To use a non-scientific example, it would be like making the argument that the Holocaust did not happen because the scale was too vast to possibly have occurred. This is is obviously nonsensical and patently false logic: we have overwhelming documentation of the Nazi atrocity; physical evidence of it; experts who study it; and people who lived through it (and its post-War impacts).

The language of science endeavors to be precise, however, the language of society tends to be generalized, especially the English language. Trying to pin down the meanings of what a string of words with a very specific scientific meaning in the context of a social exchange brings with it the problems of language usage on both parties. On the one hand, language flows from a group that tries to conserve the meaning of language to describe a very specific instance or instances, and on the other hand language is received by a group that attempts to assess the general meaning of a phrase. It is no wonder that miscommunication occurs.

How evolution isn't like a broken clock.

Here is a fantastic short video explaining away the strawman argument of ID/Creationism that a broken clock, shaken in a box will not create a working clock. (This argument is similar to another strawman argument of a tornado being unable to be reconstruct an airplane from its constituent parts.)


Anyway, I hope this doesn't come down from Youtube anytime soon.

Enjoy!