Not post-racial, and I can't figure out why anyone thought it might be

Tonight, Keith Olbermann had, what was in my opinion, a very insightful closing piece about racism and the Tea Party. It was something that I commented on almost immediately last year, when I saw the first rally on April 15 and on through the summer: they are almost entirely white people. Now, this doesn't automatically mean that they are racist. However, their signage continued an annoyingly nearly-obvious racism that was conducted through the campaign: that of painting Obama as some "scary black man" out to destroy America.


I heard, time and again, throughout the summer of 2009 about how this wasn't this woman's or that man's America anymore, and that it had been changed beyond all recognition. While I might not be out in the world as much as I would like, I didn't really see any major differences between the time Obama was inaugurated toward the end of January 2009 and the major Tea Party protests of July and August of that year. The only major difference was the man at the top wasn't a Republican, and that the man had a funny sounding name. Oh, and that he was black.

What I did see, though (especially during the summer), was a lot of older (middle-aged or older) white people, usually overweight, yelling at someone (either singly or en masse) about how "Obamacare" would completely destroy this country. And there were also some people making naive calls for a return to a simpler time. On this last topic, the Daily Show did some really insightful reporting:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Even Better Than the Real Thing
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

Still, though, no one heard overt racist statements - at least on the national media (well, unless you include the statements made by Glenn Beck about Obama hating "white people" and "white culture"). You heard things like, "he's arrogant" or, "he's uppity" -- terms that I've now come to learn are code words with racist overtones. (True, a person can be arrogant and uppity, but accusing that person of these qualities when he does nothing to deserve it allows this double meaning to peek through more readily.)

More recently, you can hear people saying that the only reason Obama got elected was because of guilty Whites (can we say racial purity tests?) and minorities (why is this not racist?), and at the recent Tea Party Convention, the lead speaker - Tom Tancredo - even called for a "civics literacy test for people to vote in this country" and that "people who could not even spell the word 'vote' or say it in English put ... in the White House ... Barack Hussein Obama). For those of you not familiar with "literacy tests" for the purpose of voting, you can either consult the Oracle of Wiki about the subject, or you can try to answer some questions that were used in such tests in the South during the mid-20th Century (remember that these tests were almost exclusively aimed at black voters). No, the point was not to test the person's literacy (i.e., their ability to read what was on the paper). Nor was it to test the person's knowledge of state and federal civics. It was to test - using the cover of civics and literacy testing - the person's ability to answer such arcane trivia, so as to make it next to impossible for the person to actually vote.

As usual, I have gone in a tangential direction, so let me conclude by jumping back to the point I started with: when a group composed almost entirely of white people say they are not racist, then one might raise an eyebrow; the group you are seeing could be from a predominantly white area, after all. However, when that same group starts to use imagery and statements that target the very first black president, calling him every negative name under the sun (e.g., fascist, communist, socialist, anti-Christ, Nazi, etc.), labeling him with terms that are veiled-racist take-downs, and - when amongst themselves - openly call for things that are tied strongly with a racist past, the credibility of the "we're not racist" response wears ever thinner. When the group of people claim to represent the people of the United States, but actually only represent a very specific portion of the country (in this case the white part), then, when added to the previous evidence, it starts to get a little bit more putrid.

For me, when the Tea Party showed up on my radar, I pegged it as likely being a racist group. True, they might not have actively sought out to be whites-only, but their attitude, their politics, and their purity tests have almost guaranteed that they will remain a nearly pearly-white party that therefore cannot speak to the wider audience that is America; that lives in the real world of international relations and having to work together.

By the way, perhaps it's this last thing that is what many of these pasty-faced American protesters felt they lost: the naive sense that America was the best thing in all ways in the world and would always be so, no matter what anyone in the world did. Perhaps the election of a bi-racial president who lived in other countries and had a foreign national as a father - and an African one at that - who also was able to excel at Harvard Law School and was willing to talk to the rest of the world as if they were significant -- in other words, the working reality of the world -- was what had changed about "their America." If that's the case, I say tough cookies.

Polar bear club

Today was the Grizzly Peak's special "Polar Bear" Mug Club Monday, where the beer was 25 cents each, and the appetizers and pizza were half price. Who could really say no? Well, I wasn't the only one. Officially starting at 4PM, I arrived at 4:05PM to find the entire outdoor seating area completely filled, and a line already starting to form.


Without any open seat at 4:05, I decided to wait for someone in the original group to take off early. Almost an hour later, the first seat opened up, and I jumped at it, not being a member of a group. However, about 30 minutes later, I still hadn't had the opportunity to order anything - much like my recollection from last year's event. As I sat there, slowly cooling down and seated at the brisk and breezy Ashley Street-end of the long table, I thrummed my gloved fingers on the table. Eventually, I got a beer - a warm-up ale - and put in an order for some pizzas. By the time I got some porter, the pizzas came, quickly cooling, in front of me.

After finishing my two pizzas and polishing off my ever-colder porter, I walked shakingly into the Peak to warm up with a properly warm beer. Sitting at the bar with feeling slowly trickling into my toes, I ended up chatting with a few older regulars about commuting in town on a bike, and we determined that cycling in Ann Arbor is actually not too bad, since Ann Arbor drivers expect to actually see bikes on the roads, and therefore know to drive slowly around us and - thankfully - not hit us.

Anyway, after finishing up a dark coffee beer, I worked up the warmth to cycle back home.

The problem with "Teach the Controversy"

A nice little animation of the problem of the phrase "Teach the Controversy."



Via Pharyngula

Local weather versus global climate

According to Treehugger: The Utah House of Representatives just officially called Anthropogenic Climate Change a conspiracy. From their page:

It (obviously) continues further, but it's all in an effort to try and persuade the USEPA to not regulate carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas.... because officially calling a duck an eagle - and making laws to ensure that this happens - doesn't change the "duckness" nature of the now-eagle (if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it's an eagle in Utah).

This seems to be a general movement that is taking place on the political "right" - Global Warming isn't happening, and where is Al Gore to eat humble pie? Luckily (and happily for me), MSNBC's Rachel Maddow brought on Bill Nye "the Science Guy" to explain why lots of snow in DC is actually what AGW predicts, and why a local phenomenon cannot be extrapolated to the world:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I like how the usually calm and jovial Bill Nye get's really angry at AGW denialists who (I thinke) he believes are actively and cynically lying to people and calls them unpatriotic and treasonous.

However, if you can't watch the clip, then basically, the science that Bill Nye discusses is that two things are happening this year: 2009 was globally one of the warmest years on record. This means that oceans are warmer (i.e., they have more thermal energy). Due to their higher thermal energy, more water is able to evaporate from the oceans, leading to greater amounts of humidity in the air, which leads to heavier snows. Add to that the El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) effect - 2009 was an ENSO year - that normally plays havoc with North American winter weather, and it's not unexpected that the East Coast is suffering from snows. All the calls of "tell your congressman how many inches of global warming you've received" is actually accurate: AGW can cause more snow. If the temperatures during the winter remained above freezing, then it would have been a lot of rain, but guess what? A couple of degrees of warming isn't going to push winter temperatures in DC above freezing all too often, so those storms are gonna (due to phase shift) come down as frozen water: snow!

Interestingly (or maybe strangely), the right-wing zealotry over the message of "it's snowing a shedload over the Eastern United States, therefore AGW doesn't exist" actually got The Daily Show to cover it (well, that an the fact that it's based in NYC, where there was a shedload of snow):

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Unusually Large Snowstorm
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

I really like how the Best F*cking Weather Team is able to show - through sarcastic satire - how disingenuous is extrapolation of local and short-term conditions (i.e., your weather outside your window) to global and long-term conditions (i.e., global climate). I also wrote about the difference between climate and weather and short-term versus long-term, but not with anywhere near as much pizazz as The Daily Show or Rachel Maddow.

Why isn't the IOC studying the impacts of climate change?

I went over to the IOC website and found nothing with the searches of "Global Warming" and "Climate Change". If the IOC wants to actually continue existing (especially wrt the Winter Olympics) they should at minimum be doing some investigations of the impacts that climate change will have on the future of outdoor sports.

Even IF climate change isn't happening, no one can argue that winter and summer weather in the past few years has been "odd" in many places around the world. These "oddities" will have knock-on impacts on how the Olympics will be and can be hosted, and as a sporting organization based on outdoor sports (i.e., only a relatively few number of events are indoor), it is strange that they aren't doing any research into this possible [near-]future issue.

We think about the lack of snow in Vancouver this year, but what about increased summer temperatures? Remember the problems with heat during the past summer Olympic games? Being too hot during the summer can be as detrimental as being too warm in the winter.

Snow on the roads

Lots of snow currently falling - and has been falling throughout the day. Not big flakes, but enough to constantly dust the roads. Happily, people are driving slowly and (appear) to be calm in their driving manner.

Sometimes something comes across your desktop...

that really makes you go... "waitaminute..." Apparently Ben Affleck looks a LOT like a young Boris Yeltsin:

Via CopyRanter

Spray-on glass = glass insulator?

I just read about a new product that is spray-on glass. (Yes, glass that you spray onto a surface.) It supposedly resists heat (among many other things), which makes me wonder if that product will work for effective insulation on existing single-pane windows.

Snow

Monday morning. No snow yet, but the forecasts all call for snow starting tomorrow (2-4 inches) followed by more snow tomorrow night (5-7 inches). I saw this following YouTube video on another site, and it made me realize a few things:

1. Keeping the trains going is a hard thing when there's a lot of snow.
2. I never got to see such snowstorms while living in the UK, and
3. Considering the state of British Rail when I was living there, I think that #2 is a good thing.

At times, I really do wish that there was a trolley option to get into town; a trolley going down Liberty Road all the way to the Meijer on Zeeb (or further west) would not be something that I would complain about, especially if it would allow me to get into town with much less fuss on days like Wednesday is likely to become.



Via ScreenOnline:

Snow was Geoffrey Jones' first film for British Transport Films (BTF) but it owes its existence to a happy twist of fate. In September 1962 Jones began his research for a film about design for the British Railways Board. Armed with a 16mm camera, he travelled throughout the country, shooting film 'notes' of anything he found particularly interesting.

Time-lapse of Vancouver

Watch it on the highest definition that you can manage (based on bandwidth or your monitor).

When the Opposite is True

Thanks to Andrew Sullivan for posting this video that was sent along to him by "MR".

Response to a post at SocImages

Below is a compiled response to a posting over at SocImages about Barbie and G.I.Joe. In it, gwen outlines an argument made by Attfield that Barbie and G.I.Joe imbues into these two product lines what society feels is proper about male and female roles. Female roles = dressing up and modeling fashion; being passive. Male roles = posable; being active.

My response:

Okay... the argument is a good outline, but what does Attfield say about all those StarWars and He-Man "action figures" that were manufactured in the early 1980s, at the same time as GIJoe? For those of you not familiar with theme, the StarWars and He-Man figures were as "posable" as Barbie - although some of the He-Man figures did have the ability to turn at the waist, or do "special action moves". The StarWars figures of the 1980s were the same scale as the GIJoe figures of the time, and the He-Man figures were larger.

I would argue that the He-Man toys were marketed primarily to boys, and would argue that the StarWars figures were similarly marketed primarily to boys (although I'm less certain on this point). If you take these two points as generally true, then GIJoe could actually be an anomaly: marketing itself as being able to be in "action" whereas all the other figures of the time (up until quite recently) were walking around with as much flexibility as a Legomen.

All I can say to the point of Barbie vs. GIJoe is that as a boy in the early-mid 1980s, I preferred GIJoe over Barbie, not because GIJoe was more "action-posable" but because "Barbie was for girls." (Also, GIJoes were not referred to as "dolls," as in "Barbie-dolls" or "Cabbage Patch dolls", etc.) I probably would have felt the same way about an "action-figure" Barbie, because I definitely didn't buy the Scarlett or The Baroness, because to my 8-year-old boy's mind, these action figures were "girly." (Yes, but we generally do grow up.)

Similarly, although I liked the StarWars movies, and had collections of many StarWars-related things (as many kids did back then), I had only two or three figures, and these were given to me by others, and weren't my choice for purchase. I thought of them as being inferior to the GIJoes, because they didn't have elbow and knee joints and couldn't have backpacks put on them (which GIJoe figures could do). I didn't like the He-Man figures for similar reasons, but also because they were too "comical" for my tastes (to me, the more human-proportioned GIJoe figures were more interesting), stood funny (like they were perpetually bow-legged), and were just too big (you couldn't fit three or four of them in your pocket, like you could with GIJoes).

You say that Attfield asserts that, “while doll lines aimed at boys include “bad” characters that serve as the enemies of the protagonists, those marketed to girls, such as Barbie, have yet to include “bad” characters. There’s no evil Barbie who tries to steal Ken away.”

Just out of curiosity, who were the nemeses of ActionMan? I’ve looked around and couldn’t find any… True, the 1980s GIJoe fought against Cobra, He-Man fought against Skeletor, the Thundercats againt MumRa, etc. But I can’t figure out who was ActionMan’s nemesis/es.

Also, as another person in the comments points out , there were some girls’-doll lines that did have antagonists. Even if these antagonisms were based on (what some of us might now consider) shallow motivations, they do provide “bad girls” as antagonists. Quite likely, though, this wasn’t part of the general trend in girls’ dolls, but I’m not familiar with it. Of course, the lack of a designated “enemy” doesn’t preclude the creation of one, and just because Mattel didn’t make any doll be the one to try and take Ken away from Barbie doesn’t mean that girls didn’t/don’t play with their dolls with this in mind.

One could indeed make the argument that boys’ toys – with their definite “antagonist” groups – limit the breadth of scenarios that can be told between figures; something underlying the reason why, when SnakeEyes switched sides from Cobra to GIJoe, it was AWESOME! I mean who would have even thought that a “bad guy” could even think of doing such a thing? “Bad guys are bad guys. They fight against the good guys. GIJoe are the good guys and don’t work with the bad guys.” See how limiting the storylines are when one forces the presence of always-antagonistic forces?

Musings while seated at the NorthSide

I just picked up a new pair of glasses at the Kellogg Eye Center. They feel great - very light and the prescription works perfectly for my eye sight. They actually feel better on my head than my previous pair of glasses - ones that I have worn for three years.


On my way out of the center, I noticed that the building that had been standing between Maiden Lane and Wall Street - a house or apartment with a drive-through driveway that connected the two streets - had been recently torn down; the rubble being slowly removed by digger and bulldozer. My initial reaction was one of interest tinged with regret. Regret because it was such a unique structure - one doesn't normally see a building that straddles two streets that has a driveway that connects the two - and interest because the whole "Lower Town" area seems to be undergoing a major renovation. Truth be told, the actual execution of the project (when it was created) could have been done with a greater amount of grace - the edifice stood like a lump of a building, "elegant" being a word that no one would likely have given it - but the concept of having an apartments (or a house) that sits atop a garage that also acts as a driveway and a pull-through - is an interesting one to me. Still, I am perhaps giving this lost building too much obsessive thought.

Coming up the road to the Northside Grill, I noticed that the doors to an older four-unit apartment building had large "WARNING" signs affixed to the doors. Looking closely, they informed passers-by of the fact that they were closed (and likely sealed) due to asbestos. Now, knowing the little that I do about asbestos law, the only reasons that the building would be shut down due to asbestos are the following:

• Tearing the building down
• Massive structural work
• The owners want to do remediation
• Change in ownership (and the new owners want to do remediation)

Based on what seems to be going on along Wall Street (Ann Arbor, that is), I placed "tearing the building down" at the top of my list because it seems - to me - to be the most likely based on several trends (in addition to the visible clearing of the above building).

1. The Kellogg Eye Center likely needs more parking due to its recent expansion, and this property is immediately across the street from the expansion and (other than a storm drain) contiguous with an existing surface parking lot.
2. The seeming trend of Ann Arbor landlords (aka "slumlords") to do as little as possible to structural issues on student accommodation (until it costs them an armload to actually do repairs), which means that they are unlikely to do anything that would warrant taking care of asbestos (and then may decide to sell the property instead of having to deal with the costs and liability themselves).
3. The tendency of the University of acquiring more property when they have an opportunity to do so - especially in areas that are contiguous with existing property (and I seem to recall hearing about a "Vision Care Campus" being developed in the future), and the property values around here seem to me to be likely to be lower than next to the Central and Medical Campuses (and likely the North Campus too).
4. And of course, there is the perceived vision (by myself perhaps) of the entire Lowertown area undergoing a major face-change (I wouldn't say "face-lift" quite yet - things haven't yet been decided) and the (to my point-of-view) relatively fast razing and condemning of older structures in the area.

Yet, all this doesn't necessarily mean what I think it will mean. And who knows? Perhaps the apartment building is undergoing a renovation to get rid of the asbestos. Perhaps the building will eventually make its way onto a list of local historic buildings that - although they look as rundown as Broadway party store - are actually of some important historical worth to mark the heritage of the city. (Still, though, due to the reasons listed above, and multiplied by the inertia of a seemingly ever-expanding university, it seems unlikely that this building will last into the 2020s.)

As I wrote this entry, I managed to finish the NorthSide's "Morning Eggdition" sandwich - a hearty breakfast sandwich with scrambled egg, Swiss cheese, diced ham & tomatoes, and black-pepper mayonnaise all on multigrain bread - and about half of the hash browns (which just didn't sit well with me today). Immediately after I sat down, two Japanese women came in and sat down at a booth opposite me and started talking. I cannot help but listen to what people say (I don't mean to, but I can't help do mental processing of voices I hear around me, or at least try to), which is part of the reason why I started typing. However, I noticed that they were joined by a third woman, and then moved to the booth behind me in order to ensure that the high-chair was brought out wouldn't block traffic. Then the tree women - minus the one bringing the baby - went through the process of ordering. It seemed to me that they had never been to the NorthSide, and possibly hadn't been to too many American diners, either, since they asked questions about kind of "standard" terminology, like "short stack" vs. "full stack" and "sausage vs. "sausage gravy." Who knows, though, they could have just been going through the process of ordering and felt a need to ask questions instead of just jumping to the order (although this seems more obtuse-than-necessary to even me).

Eventually, they were joined by the fourth woman - with her baby - and they are all now sitting behind me, talking in hushed-followed-by-elevated tones. The interesting thing to me is to listed to the tones and pacing of their voices; the rhythms falling into a pattern that is common of Japanese talk-and-respond and of an age (and possibly maternal) hierarchy into which their tones and interactions fall. The youngest takes on the tones of a girl - higher and tittering - apologizing for showing up after the initial two (older-than-her) women. The mother (although apparently no older than the original two women) was given more social leeway with her 30-minute delay in showing up, and (as far as my passive eavesdropping could tell) was given no behind-her-back disparagement. Too, her baby received a lot of fawning as she put up his and her coats and sat down. Of the four, she seems also to be the most acculturated to the United States - she ordered easily off the menu with no questions and in a more close-to-Midwest accent - and (if this indication is true) may (in addition to her obvious motherhood) be senior to the other in this condition as well.

This whole thing - Japanese social hierarchy - is something that I am sure has been studied through anthropological and sociological lenses in academia. I'm sure, too, that the concepts do not translate into the American English usage and mental framings that so define "everyone's" day-to-day lives, because not would a lexicon be necessary, but also a cultural frame-of-mind, and a grammar and conversational structure that allows (or encourages) such social interactions.

But now - after a fulfilling amount of coffee and a stomach full on breakfast sandwich - I must get to work.

Chopping wood

A few days ago, I wrote about a massage I got a day after chopping wood in the forest. This is the fruit of my labor (and, no, the wheelbarrow isn't miniature-sized; the log was about 5 feet long):

Bing doesn't see this blog...

I just found out something interesting. Doing a search for "Umlud" on Bing doesn't come up with this blog. It comes up with comments (and commentary about my comments) in other blogs, but apparently - at least for right now - blogspot blogs don't show up (I found the same lack of a link to my Saginaw Forest blog).


Even when I put in Umlud blogspot you don't get my blog:


Even when I put in umlud.blogspot.com (the fricken' URL itself!) you don't get my blog; you get NOTHING!:


Is this a giant conspiracy on Bing's part, since blogspot is owned by Google, one of Bing's big competitors? Just to see if this was an "anti-blog" thing (at least against free blog sites), I went to wordpress.com, found the (at the time) lead blog (Shizuoka Gourmet), and did a search for it ... and found, well, not the actual main page, but at least it exists:

So... how is Bing supposed to be a better search engine than Google (let alone a competitive one)?

UPDATE: According to a friend of mine who knows more about these things than I do, it's more likely that Bing just hasn't found this blog yet. (Boo~!) Other blogspot blogs that have more traffic to them seem to be visible in Bing (although the use of blogspot as a search term doesn't actually help), and obscure wordpress blogs aren't necessarily on Bing. I suppose that if I wanted to do a comparison of the rather obscure Umlud, I should go to a site that does side-by-side comparisons.

Sore muscles and a wonderful massage

My log-chopping activities from yesterday meant that I was going around today with a sore back. I suppose one lesson here is that I should be more careful about how I conduct strenuous physical activities, in terms of how much work I take up, the pace of that work, and the physicality of that work. For example, if I took two hours yesterday instead of one hour, the pace of the work would have been a lot more easy-going and think that my back wouldn't have been so bad.

Luckily I was in town, and luckily, too, I was able to walk into the Relax Station massage parlor and get a 30 minute back masage. And ... mmmm! Delicious, on the edge of pain at times, but after 30 minutes, I felt completely rejuvenated, and ready to chop up some more fallen timber (as silly as that might sound).

Sometimes you just want to do something

All the news coverage on the tragedy in Port Au Prince, Haiti makes me want to do something to help. I've given money already, but that seems a little like it's not enough. A part of me wants to go there and help directly. However, I cannot find an easy way to manage that.

Sometimes waiting, watching, and trusting that the little help that you can (or systematically are allowed) to give will be enough.

Updating Saginaw Forest blog

I just finished updating some past entries at the Saginaw Forest blog from the caretakers' log: 1990 is completed, as is 1991.

It's interesting to see what previous caretakers (from 20 years ago) were having to deal with.

My comment (on another blog) about obesity, BMI, and "blame"

Over at Sociological Images, there is a post showing a 1967 public service announcement (PSA) called "To Cure a Fat Child is not a Simple Matter".

One of the commenters there - attentie - wrote the following:

I think the focus should lie on promoting a healthier life style rather than thinner bodies at any costs. The real epidemic is not the fact that people are getting less atractive according to the modern beauty ideal (thin= beautiful) but that people are less active and eat more junk food and candy. Unhealthy diets or excercise routines (too much excercise can be very bad for your joints etc) are no solution. Little things, like walking or taking the bike to work instead of the car or eating vegetables and fruits every day, it all helps to stay healthier. If you lose some weight doing that, that is great, but it should not be the focus point IMHO.

What follows is my response to that comment (and, to a lesser degree, the issue of who is to blame about a fat child).

IMHO, too. Metrics of “thinness” don’t work for me; even though I might think of myself as not being “obese”, that is what I am medically classified as being (6′3″, 243 lbs = 30.4 BMI). (But then again, many athletes have very high BMIs: when he was still in pro-wrestling Dwayne Johnson – aka “The Rock” – was billed as being 6′5″, 275 lbs = 32.6 BMI.)

I was – a year ago – feeling that I was getting a little too chunky for my jeans (was up at ~260lbs), and so (instead of buying new jeans), I bought a new bike, and started cycling my commute instead of busing. I’ve not gone to the gym, except to do yoga (but stopped doing that about 5 months ago), and the only thing I do for “exercise” is ride my bike and go for walks.

I also changed up my diet, and eat out less often than before, but still enjoy a weekly beer night with my friends (don’t worry — I have one or two beers over four hours and never cycle home if I don’t feel safe). The eating out less has not only saved my budget (letting me pay off my bike a lot sooner), but it (I believe) helped slim me down, since I don’t make the heavy cream sauces that I am so partial to when dining out. In addition, since I make a lot of my own food, I am very critical about what goes into meals, and try to be more balanced with my ingredients.

Technically, I’m still “obese,” and in order to move all the way down through “overweight”, I have to either become shorter (not likely happening) or I have to get down to 200 lbs (something that didn’t happen, even when I was in peak physical condition in my early 20s). Despite all of this, however, I still feel that I am “healthy.” I am physically able to do a lot of the things that I like doing, I don’t have to wait several minutes to catch my breath after exertion, and I am happy with my own body image.

Why all that discussion? Well, I wrote up a blog entry about BMI a little while ago, looking at what its implications really mean, and came out with the conclusion that I don’t fit inside the general population parameters for which the BMI works: I’m either too tall (I am much taller than the original subject population from which the BMI was derived), of the wrong body proportions (I have an Asian build of a relatively longer torso and relatively shorter legs, meaning that my weight distribution is different than the original subject population), or more athletic (I’m not really a sedentary person, but tend toward athletic).

Furthermore, although the BMI seems a “scientific” and “objective” measure of obesity because it produces a number (and we tend to have social relationships with numbers that imbue them with an air of objectivity), it really isn’t. It’s based on a generalized trend of height and weight seen among sedentary male Belgians from the mid-19th Century. In addition, that relationship is a description of the general trend of that population, and not a predictive statement about any one person who is either in that population or not in that population.

The BMI still persists, though. Why? Well, because population trends that have a predictive ability at the population level tend to be useful (and BMI still is a good population-level predictor of health risk). It’s also useful because it is easy to calculate, requiring very little in terms of time and money to collect the data (as opposed to lipid panels, %fat calculations, etc.). And (perhaps most annoyingly) it remains a standard, and is thus something that is difficult to overturn.

What does YOUR BMI calculation mean, though? It could be spot-on (e.g., if you are over 30, you may well be obese), or it may be highly deviant (as in the case with Dwayne Johnson). This is called variability, and is one of the reasons why back-calculating population-level statistics to an individual is a statistical no-no (no matter how often we do it).

At the end of the day, is my mother to blame for me being 6′3″ and 243lbs? Well… since I’ve not been living at home for over 14 years, I would say… no. Also, since I’ve (hopefully) shown that BMI categories are socially constructed and have very statistical relevance when assigned to an individual, then I would say that even when I was 18 and going off to college (all 246 lbs of me), she still wasn’t “at fault” for making me “obese.”

UPDATE (11/17/2011 @ 11:28PM): The property of "objectivity" is a little difficult in the case of BMI. BMI is an objective measurement that it isn't subject to personal feelings, interpretations, or prejudice. The measurement of height and weight (if taken properly) is objective. The calculation of BMI (using the formula) is also objective. The collation of height, weight, and BMI data from large groups of people is also objective. The analysis of BMI data as population data is also objective. However, the interpretation of the the population level metric to that of the individual (which is what I'm talking about here) isn't objective, specifically because it is subject to personal feelings, interpretations, and prejudice.

Cold snap in Florida helps with invasive species management

Who woulda thought that cold temperatures would actually be a good thing for Florida's ecosystems? Well, with temperatures reaching freezing, invasive iguanas are falling off of trees, their blood slowed in their veins, and pythons are moving out from their hiding places in the Everglades to sun themselves in an effort to keep warm -- only to be easy pickings for game wardens. (Via PhysOrg:)

Iguanas and other tropical wildlife are bearing the brunt of the severe Arctic weather in Florida, where Miami's subtropical beaches have been left all but deserted this week with temperatures plummeting to around 32 F (zero degrees Celsius).

"Cold weather impacts iguanas severely and many are killed," said Gabriella Ferraro, spokeswoman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC).

"That is not a bad thing. It's a good thing, because iguanas are an exotic animal, they don't belong to Florida. This seasonal kill helps us to manage the population."
Travelers from Mexico, Central and South America originally introduced the creatures to Florida in the 1960s.

Although suffering from the cold, python snakes, which abound in particularly large numbers in Florida's Everglades swamp reserve, can survive in cooler temperatures.

"The good thing is that the cold weather brings the pythons out of the vegetation. They need warmer bodies and they come out to get some sun and so it is easier for hunters to find them," Ferraro explained to AFP.

Of course, this weather doesn't help the manatees and sea turtles which are also negatively affected by these temperatures, too.

Heavy snows

Just rode home through the relatively heavy snow that's been falling this afternoon. With my spiked tires, it's been helping keep me on the road. Actually, once I got west of Liberty and Stadium, the quality of the snow-plowing had gone down a bit, the cars (many of which didn't seem to have snow/winter tires) slowed down, and I was able to cycle with the flow of traffic.

(click to continue)

Plowed road in the winter evening

The snowplow came out to Saginaw Forest, cutting a path through trampled-down snow and laying down a good layer of sand on top of it. Although a brown-and-white roadway doesn't make for a pristine photo of Saginaw Forest, the comfortable feeling of having a well-plowed road down to the cabin, combined with the rather picturesque winter evening sky, made for a good photo.

Google Trends indicates that ipods are for Christmas, while yoga, weight loss, pilates, and exercise are for New Years.

I was shown the coolness of Google Trends a while ago on a posting over at Sociological Images (Weekends Are for Porn).

Well, if you do a search on Google Trends for "ipod", you get the following graph:

Apparently, ipods are only really of interest as a Christmas gift item... What's interesting is that for some reason (whether it was because of market saturation, the iphone or the economy), the number of searches for "ipod" declined in December 2008 from the apparently consistent highs of 2005, 2006, and 2007. Furthermore, the number of searches in December of 2009 was even lower than that of 2008.

What about New Year's resolutions, though? If you do a search for "yoga, weight loss, pilates, exercise" you get the following:

A definite uptick just in the last throes of the year, tailing off (with remarkable consistency) sometime toward the end of each year. If you do a search for "diet", you will see a very similar trend. However, the values for 2004 were anomalous. It was -- if memory serves -- at this time when there was increased backlash against the Atkins and the South Beach diets (both high-protein, low-carb diets). I think that this was possibly the reason why the values for "diet" in 2004 were so different than in all the other years. More New Years resolution-type search trends can be seen if you look for "fitness, gym, YMCA". I would show the picture, but it looks pretty similar to the one above.

Used Zipcar... loved it!

Today was my first opportunity to use Zipcar, and I loved it. I went online and was able to reserve a car only 20 minutes before I picked it up, and then I was able to go around and do all my shopping (Trader Joe's, TrueValue Hardware) and purchase so much stuff that I wouldn't have been able to do it all on my own on my bike, except for doing it over four or five trips, even with all four panniers. (The photo on the left was taken after my Trader Joe's shopping. I had yet to go to TrueValue to pick up 40 lbs of bird seed, a push-broom, and three boxes of fire-starter logs.)

... and I was also able to buy a push broom (something that I didn't really want to purchase and ride along while carrying it on my bike).

Then, while I was leaving the forest, I was able to haul out a bunch of trash: success! Although it added nearly $17 to my total shopping bill of the day, it was well worth it. Especially if I don't have to go out and purchase more stuff -- hopefully for the rest of this month (at least not in bulk).

The problem of not drinking coffee

Sometime near the start of December, I just stopped drinking coffee. I had worked myself up to drinking a whole pot of coffee in the morning -- and it not really affecting me. Today, I had two cups of coffee (one kinda shitty cup from the Fleetwood and another strong cup of Bolivian coffee from Sweetwaters) and now I'm just all jittery.

And from only TWO CUPS! I suppose I have two choices now: drink more coffee in order to regain my immunity to the caffeine or just moderate the amount of coffee that I drink. Hrm... I wonder which one I should do, because I really do like coffee, but I just can't be arsed with making it in the morning most days, and I don't want to spend up to $2.50 for 20 oz. of the stuff at cafes in town. (I need to figure out how much of a cost-savings it is to brew my own coffee...)

Blizzard at Saginaw Forest

Out here at Saginaw Forest, there was a short blizzard that fell across the landscape. I stepped out and took some photos. Brrr.... cold!

Photos from Saginaw Forest

Snow shadows -- the snow on the north side of the trees hasn't melted.




Walking around the Third Sister Lake, you get to see what slope aspect does to snowmelt.

Happy Holidays!

Christmas and New Year's greetings to you! As I just overheard in the cafe, "May the season make sense to you and yours." I like it, and I'm using it here!

Happy Solstice

Woke today at 6:30. Saw in the dawn.

There was a dusting of snow over last night that covered what we got over the rest of the weekend, refreshing the field with a new whiteness.

Public drunkenness during Christmas? Well, it happened, methinks.

Tis that time of year again when one hears lots of Christmas carols being sung. Usually the same ones over and over and over and over and over and over again. Sometimes, we are lucky, and get away with not having to hear more modern Christmas songs (although if you want to listen to depressing Christmas songs, that is also easily done). Sometimes, there are interesting non-standard takes on Christmas music, but what about some of those songs of the season that were less about Christmas - per se - and more about the merriment of the season, or of the warmth of human kindness?

Two songs come to mind: Good King Wenceslas and The Wassail Song. True, the first song - GKW - takes place on the day after Christmas (on Feast of Stephen - December 26). It makes references to God and the divine sanction by which they rule. Still, in a modern day, we can all be like King Wenceslas in our own way, and I think that such a song - one that doesn't directly call for the worship of God, but instead looks at the kindness of one man (a king) toward another (a poor man).

Lyrics (via Wikipedia):

Good King Wenceslas looked out, on the Feast of Stephen,
When the snow lay round about, deep and crisp and even;
Brightly shone the moon that night, tho' the frost was cruel,
When a poor man came in sight, gath'ring winter fuel.

"Hither, page, and stand by me, if thou know'st it, telling,
Yonder peasant, who is he? Where and what his dwelling?"
"Sire, he lives a good league hence, underneath the mountain;
Right against the forest fence, by Saint Agnes' fountain."

"Bring me flesh, and bring me wine, bring me pine logs hither:
Thou and I will see him dine, when we bear them thither."
Page and monarch, forth they went, forth they went together;
Through the rude wind's wild lament and the bitter weather.

"Sire, the night is darker now, and the wind blows stronger;
Fails my heart, I know not how; I can go no longer."
"Mark my footsteps, good my page. Tread thou in them boldly
Thou shalt find the winter's rage freeze thy blood less coldly."

In his master's steps he trod, where the snow lay dinted;
Heat was in the very sod which the saint had printed.
Therefore, Christian men, be sure, wealth or rank possessing,
Ye who now will bless the poor, shall yourselves find blessing.

The second song - The Wassail Song - is somewhat more interesting to me. It's a song about singing songs and getting paid (in beer and spirits) for singing those songs. It was written during the 17th Century, and looking at the definition of "wassail," we learn that it means drinking alcohol to wish one good health. The song - in more recent variations - has been re-named Here we come A-Caroling. Why is this, I wonder? Does it have anything to do with the major impact (on the US at least) of the temperance movement of the 1910s and 1920s (and which still continues to today)? Well, I can't say that it was that particular temperance movement, but it is clear (to me at least) that someone decided to "clean up" this song that is usually only sung around Christmas -- although it can be a good New Year song, too. Let me know what you think:



Lyrics (via Wikipedia):

Here we come a-wassailing
Among the leaves so green;
Here we come a-wand'ring
So fair to be seen.

REFRAIN
Love and joy come to you,
And to you your wassail too;
And God bless you and send you a Happy New Year
And God send you a Happy New Year.

Our wassail cup is made
Of the rosemary tree,
And so is your beer
Of the best barley.

REFRAIN

We are not daily beggars
That beg from door to door;
But we are neighbours' children,
Whom you have seen before.

REFRAIN

Call up the butler of this house,
Put on his golden ring.
Let him bring us up a glass of beer,
And better we shall sing.

REFRAIN

We have got a little purse
Of stretching leather skin;
We want a little of your money
To line it well within.

REFRAIN

Bring us out a table
And spread it with a cloth;
Bring us out a mouldy cheese,
And some of your Christmas loaf.

REFRAIN

God bless the master of this house
Likewise the mistress too,
And all the little children
That round the table go

REFRAIN

Good master and good mistress,
While you're sitting by the fire,
Pray think of us poor children
Who are wandering in the mire.

REFRAIN

Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett on religion and evolution:



I love his proof at the end to show that street lamps are more interesting than stars.

Now I've seen everything.

Ok... I'm stealing PZ Myers' title on this one, but it's quite pithy and smart. Enjoy!

Brainstorming

I recently had to explain to a Taiwanese student why an ecological modeling paper didn't include humans and human drivers. I had also had the problem of trying to explain to a Japanese student the difference between "natural resource management" and "environmental protection"; the two terms were nearly synonymous to him. That got me to thinking consciously about something that I had grown up understanding: Eastern and Western philosophy place Man (i.e., human beings) in different places in relation to nature. As a person who straddled the divide while I was growing up, this didn't seem to me to be such a problem in terms of reconciliation, but I suddenly could imagine how such differences could pose roadblocks to implicit understanding between peoples.

The term "natural resources" itself is an interesting one. After all, what is a resource in this case other than an "available source of wealth; a new or reserve supply that can be drawn upon when needed" (or something very similar to that notion) which happens to be supplied by nature? The term resource is implicitly a socially constructed idea that implies conscious action (such as accumulation of resources) and economic capital (wealth) in order to carry out a goal. In other words, it is a term that is based on the outcomes of human society.

However, what is, then a "natural" resource? If it is something that is drawn from nature, then isn't potentially everything a natural resource (including humans)? Well, that depends on what you consider "nature" and what you consider "non-nature". Based - I believe - on the famous Cogito ergo sum, the mind (the seat of the conscious rational self/the ego) is separated from the body (the unconscious emotional self). Eventually, the mind/body separation became analogized into a split with man/nature. Of course, this dichotomy of man and nature can be traced back to the Greeks, as well; one could argue that Descartes merely pushed it one step further. So if what is natural are those worldly things that are not "of man" (as opposed to the supernatural, which - presumably would be ascribed to God), then man is - by default - not a part of nature.

What does that mean as a consequence, though? That people can't live together with nature - and remain somehow "people" or something else? Hmmm... (I'm not trying to say that this is the way things are, just trying to figure out the implication of this point of view). Just some thoughts for now. Very rough.

Viral holiday cheer

High winds bring power lines down across I-94

On my ride home, I encountered very strong gusts of winds (possibly as high as 80 kph!). Right. In. My. Face.... Urgh... That's one thing that I don't like about my ride home -- uphill and usually into some wind. All that means there is a good chance that there will be powerlines brought down.

... and as I climbed up to the crest of the hill on Liberty Road, I noticed that the light at Stadium Blvd. was out. "Uh, oh..." Climbing slowly up Liberty Road toward Maple Road, I saw police cars with their lights on, blocking northward access. Pulling up to a police car, I asked the officer what was going on.

"Power lines are down," he yelled to me above the wind. "There are also lines across 94."

"Can I get to Kroger?" I asked. (Kroger being just north of the blocked intersection.

"No. The power's down all over the Westside."

"Do you know if it's out at Scio Township?"

Pause... "No. I don't know. Maybe."


With that, he suggested that I make my way home along the sidewalk, which I decided that I would do -- what with all the headwind that I would have to cycle in to. However, cycling up to the pedestrian crossing side of the bridge over I-94, I noticed traffic backed up both ways along I-94... headlights focused on a black cord lying across the four lanes; firefighters walking back and forth.

It turns out that there were more powerlines down on the west side of I-94, but looking even further up the road, I took heart after I saw lights on further toward Wagner. And sure enough, I arrive home, in the middle of the forest, and there -- in the middle of the forest, away from any house or subdivision -- is electricity.

Snow at Saginaw Forest

The snow this morning had turned mostly into slush underlying a thin top layer of white. However, it covered all the ground, with the trees remaining seemingly undisturbed by its entrance.

How are the 2009 Toronto Bluejays a good analogy for understanding what climate change is?

On November 11, 2009, I posted this entry, but without any graphics showing the baseball trends. I have republished it here with the baseball trend graphs (and removed the November 11th version).

Although the Bluejays won 9 of their final 13 games, this fact doesn't mean that they had any shot at being in the playoffs. Why? Because if you look at their season record, they won only 46.3% of their games, whereas the Yankees won 63.6% of their games (and went on to win the World Series). In other words, the long-term trend of the Bluejays in the 2009 season was of not being in the playoffs, let alone the World Series. Why does all this matter? Well, it's not because I'm a Bluejays fan, but because it's a good analogue of climate trends:

Even through annual temperatures may appear to have been stable or dropping in recent years, looking only at that short-term trend tells one as much about the direction of climate change (either of increasing temperature or decreasing temperature) as looking at the 69.2% winning trend of the Bluejays right before the end of the regular season: bupkis.

The winning trends of teams over 162 games of the 2009 regular MLB season is what determined which teams would go to the play-offs and eventually to the World Series. Therefore, if we look at a representative segment of the Blue Jays' and the Yankees' seasons, you will note that the Blue Jays had a strong downward (i.e., losing) trend over the last season (R^2=0.8236), while the Yankees had a strong upward (i.e., winning) trend over the last season (R^2=0.7743).

Note: For comparison purposes, I have presented the data of all games from 5/6/2009 (one month after the start of the 2009 regular season) to 10/4/2009 (the last game of the 2009 regular season). The percent-wins were calculated based on how many games each team had won since 4/6/2009 (the start of the 2009 regular season). However, the percent-win values for the first month were not included in the trendline calculation due to the strong effects that the starting percent-win values would have on the trendline (i.e., no team can start with a percent-win value of anything other than 0% or 100%, thus skewing the trendline calculation.) On 5/6/2009, the Blue Jays were playing their 30th game, and the Yankees were playing their 27th game.

In an analogous way, it is the long-term trends of temperature increases and decreases that determine how and how quickly climate is changing. If we look at the past ~150 years, we see the following yearly global temperature anomalies:

The trend seems to be in the upward direction: climate change is going in a positive anomalous direction. However, if you look at just the last few years of temperature data, you see something different:

Here, it looks like the overall trend is that of a temperature decline. However, like baseball, looking only at the last few cases (or games) does not tell you about that team's chances at making the playoffs (the Yankees 8 of their last 13, as opposed to the Bluejays winning 9 of their last 13). In the graphic to the left I have selectively chosen the data-frame, and I have not only selectively focused on only the end of the season for each team, but I have also not included the final three games played by the Blue Jays -- all of which they lost. In so doing, I highlight a short-term trend in which the not-going-to-the-playoffs Blue Jays appear to be much better than the definitely-going-to-the-playoffs Yankees. I even re-calculated the percentages (using the same ingenuous method for both teams) to make it look as if the Blue Jays would be a sure-thing for getting into the playoffs. I even get a much stronger trend than in the comparison above, with a whopping R^2=0.9964 for the Blue Jays (and a winning percentage of 90%!) and an equally impressively predictive R^2=0.9694 for the Yankees (who have a "mere" winning percentage of 64% over this same period). If these games were somehow the critical set of eight games that would determine the entirety of the season, then one would be justified in saying that these trends are significant predictors of the overall outcome. However, this small snapshot of a trend at the end of the 2009 season tells as much about the likelihood of either team reaching the World Series as looking at recent years' temperature data tells one about long-term climate change.

Therefore when a person who stayed in on February 4, 2009 in Ann Arbor, MI said, "See? It's -9 degrees outside! Global warming can't be happening!" That person is as incorrect about drawing a conclusion as the person who went to see the Bluejays beat the Red Sox on September 30 and says, "Did you see that win? We're going to go all the way this year!"

(Okay, I'm rehashing the analogy that Keith Olbermann read on one of his shows in early October - a story from ThinkProgress.org - but it was a good analogy, so I am repeating it here... but with no mention of the horrible Op-Ed by George Will, and no mention of the complete blindness with which he answered the assertion laid out above. However, you can go read the ThinkProgress story and have a chuckle if you'd like.)

Tire-change!

Tonight, there is SNOW!!! What that means is that I had to work on changing out my road-type tires for studded tires. The work took about an hour, because I couldn't figure out how to remove the back tire because the Alfine's internal gearshifting cable assembly thingy was not as easy to remove as I was shown at the bike store. (Not that they didn't show me how to do it -- they did -- but I was just too silly to realize that I wasn't paying enough attention to what was going on.)

Anyway, after the removal of the wheels, putting the tires on was not too difficult. I say not too difficult, because the tires -- being well oversized -- were a little difficult to actually fit over each wheel. It wasn't because it was too tight, but it was actually awkward to fit the really large tires over wheels that were on the small end of what they were meant to fit. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy that I got it done without too much difficulty, but I wasn't expecting it to be so difficult to do. However, I'm not an expert bike mechanic (not even an amateur one), so it's a good thing that I did this tonight, instead of tomorrow morning before I had to leave for work. (I can only imagine how much stress I would have trying to get this done in the one hour that I normally allow myself between waking up and leaving for work in the morning.)

The end result is quite nice. Of course, with much thicker tires, I'm sitting about an inch-and-one-half higher than I was with the road tires. I'll have to stop in at the bike shop to lower that seat just a tad so that I can ride with a little more peace-of-mind than riding so high on icy roads. (Of course, it will mean that I will likely be riding with a less-efficient ergonomic layup, but I wonder how bad that would be.)

If the traction of these tires are as good as the ones I had for my last bike, then this will make my travel to and from campus more secure. However, I will also have to be aware of drivers who don't have such traction on their cars; just because I can stop on a dime on ice doesn't mean that I am necessarily safe, especially if people might still be driving around on summer tires or (even if they are on winter or all-weather tires) don't recognize that they are driving on ice.

The funniest thing I saw today

As I was watching Kina Grannis' cover of Fireflies, I saw this shoutout at the end of the video:

"to australia - thank you
for always being there.
[love] from Guam"

As a person born on Guam, I just found this quite funny for some reason. I normally don't watch the shout-outs and birthday announcements, but for some reason, I decided to watch them this time. ... and I suppose that it's a good thing, because (as the title says it) it was the funniest thing that I saw today.

Another response to climategate

In another response to "climategate" we have this editorial cartoon from the Houston Chronicle that seems to sum up at least what I'm feeling and thinking about this whole thing:

I suppose the adage of "not being able to see the forest for the trees" wouldn't really have reinforced the message of global warming...

Sticking with the visual media responses to climategate, I also saw this video from Greenman3610:

Will put on studded tires tonight!

Based on the expectation of snow, sleet, and rain tonight and tomorrow morning -- and possibly through Thursday -- I'm going to put on my studded tires tonight. I've been told that the carbide steel studs would hold up quite well over the season, being harder than the asphalt on which I'll be riding. Although I can purchase new studs for later replacement, I hope that I won't have to do it for a while.

I'm looking forward to doing that change-over, but am a little concerned that I might screw up the replacement of the rear tire and Alfine internally geared hub. Since it's a horizontal bracket with a disk brake, I will have to be careful to align the wheel properly after I put tension on the chain. If it doesn't happen, the people at Great Lakes have said that they will help me out, but I want to make sure that I can do it myself.

Wooden green "supercar" from Japan

When some people think about cars, Japan is one of the places that come to mind, what with its large international car companies like Toyota, Honda, Mazda, and Subaru as well as smaller companies like Isuzu and Mitsubishi. However, apart from the Toyota Prius, many people don't know about the different types of green cars that are coming out of Japan.

Recently, a Japanese wood furniture company made a "green" trike with a wooden frame:



Cool!

via Inhabitat

Hulu's putting up cancelled shows?

Okay, I know that some of the shows on Hulu have not been on the air for years, but this weekend, I learned that What About Brian was canceled back in 2007, just as I was getting into what I had thought were merely back-episodes. Oh, well, life goes on.

New tires postponed

Although I purchased two new Nokian studded winter bike tires and tubes for a price of $300, they haven't gone on the bike yet. I thought that it wouldn't be proper yet to put them on, since there isn't enough ice on the roads to warrant their studded use.

Hulu: bane or benefit?

I'll admit that I have a problem with Internet addition. I like to read things and see things and the Internet is therefore so much more of a drug to me than TV -- especially since there are so many options for free streaming media these days. That brings me to Hulu.

I started using Hulu last year at some point after I moved out to Saginaw Forest, and have subscribed to a number of different shows. Of course, since I can watch these shows at any time I want, I am freed of the normal scheduling strictures that I would have to follow if I were to watch them on cable -- but at the cost of waiting a day before watching the show. Oh, well, so I don't get to vote for Dancing with the Stars, and I don't get to see The Daily Show on the same day as it was recorded. I instead get to watch them on the pop-out screen as I do work.

Of course, that's also a problem, since it is always there -- calling for my attention. And now I just started watching What About Brian. Well, "started" is an understatement -- I just watched the entire first season last night. Well, it played through an episode or two as I caught some shut-eye at around 5am. See? Dangerous!

So... benefit is that I don't have to pay for cable. The bane is that it feeds an addition. I could just quit it all together... (except that the programming is just so easy to watch).

Arse.

Going to get some winter tires for the bike

With the small flurry of snow last night -- and the ice on the roads over the long Thanksgiving weekend -- has made me realize that I need to finally bite the bullet and get some studded tires, since even a warm winter in Michigan will be below freezing. Therefore, I ordered some winter tires for my bike: nice studded tires to help grip the ice and packed snow. Unfortunately, one of the companies that manufactures studded 29" wide tires has stopped making them, so I'm forced to go with a much more expensive (but supposedly far superior) brand. I'll see how it goes.

How to deal with sign-carrying people you don't agree with

Via BoingBoing.

Why don't Conservatives want to conserve?

I read this over at Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish:

I have never understood why it is conservative to take an attitude toward the natural world of how best to exploit and use it entirely for short term benefit. (My first ever publication was a paper for Thatcher called "Greening The Tories"). The conservative, it seems to me, will not be averse to using the planet to improve our lot, and will not be hostile to the forces of capitalism and self-interest that have generated such amazing wealth and abundance in the last three hundred years.

But a conservative will surely also want to be sure that he conserves this inheritance, for its own sake and also for his future use. He will want to husband the natural world, not rape it and throw it away. He will see the abandonment of all values to that of immediate gratification as a form of insanity, if not evil.

I found this interesting for several reasons because I had a discussion with a South Korean labmate about what is "conservation" as an idea (i.e., something different than "enviornmentalism" or "preservationism"). Andrew's connection between political conservativism and conservation of natural resources seems non-relatable, at least in the modern era.

The current Michigan Department of Natural Resources (MDNR) used to be called the Michigan Department of Conservation (MDC). What was it that they were trying to conserve? Trees, rivers, and natural places? Ummm.... Not so much. More like they were in charge of conserving the ability to continue to hunt (deer and fowl) and fish. In conserving these abilities, one had to maintain natural areas, however, it was in the end done to maintain human use of these places.

The more modern environmental movement - in contrast - sought to remove humans from nature and repair the damage caused by them. In some way, the environmental movement became aligned with the left-wing social movements of the time, and that political relationship has continued (in some manner) to today. Over the years, though, environmental science (especially ecology) has changed from one that excluded human activity to slowly incorporating the impacts that humans have caused and can cause, slowly moving itself from a viewpoint more in-line with environmentalism to one that is (now, from my point-of-view) somewhere between an understanding that there are human uses (more like conservation) and a desire to remove humans from nature (more like environmentalism).

Alongside this shifting in the science, as well as the continued political ties of environmental groups to the political left, has come - in fits and starts - an understanding of some conservation groups to side with environmental groups in calling for more protections on existing areas of low human impact (i.e., "natural places"). National conservation organizations - like Ducks Unlimited and Trout Unlimited - have come to understand that climate change and diminished habitat would have future consequences on hunting and fishing activities that so many of their members liked to pursue. Similarly, these groups didn't have any strong allegiance to the political right, even though hunter groups may have had more political alliances to the right due to association with the NRA (although this is speculative).

Moving against climate change legislation, however, made good political sense at the time for "national security" reasons (national coal is less dangerous than foreign oil), "economic" reasons (subsidized coal is cheaper than non-subsidized wind or solar), "job security" reasons (coal companies hire many people that would "suddenly" become unemployed if coal had to become ramped down), "nationalist" reasons (the UN and the IPCC isn't going to run our country), "anti-tax" reasons (cap-and-trade being called "cap-and-tax"), etc. It tied into anti-governmental-regulation (i.e., "mommy-state") sentiments that were supported by many right-wing groups at the time. Such a stance could be used to link anti-climate-change stances to being against abortion, gun control, taxes, and "big government" generally speaking. However, it moved, as Andrew stated, against some of the core values of what "conservation" stands for.

It moved against the idea of conserving that very thing that is most dear to us: our world. It is from that world that we receive everything from which we can build our lives and society. We derive not only food, water, clean air, and shelter from the world, but we also derive social and personal identity from it as well. These are the fundamental things that are necessary for success in life -- those things from which we can build the self-made man. Working against those things means that one is undercutting future generations' ability to make the most of themselves. These are values that Andrew lists:

These are deeply conservative instincts, humble in the face of nature, conscious of the need to preserve for the future, aware of the limits of exploitation. These conservatives aren't utopian tree-huggers. They do not worship Gaia or see no give and take with the natural world. They believe in the harvest but also in the need for fallow years and for care and husbandry of animals and plants and environments. And they love their home for its specificity and its beauty, and do not want to see its stability and future gambled away on the casino of greed.

I would argue that for the same reasons, conservatives should be in favor of public transportation, and there have been a few articles over at treehugger.com that also support this feeling. One particularly good one (in my opinion) was on November 16, 2009, showing a short film about the new book Moving Minds: Conservatives and Public Transportation by William Lind. In another example of how public transportation might actually align with conservative values was written on April 29, 2009, and it quotes extensively from Andrew's posts on the same topic at around the same time.

So... what's up with conservatives and conservative values? Especially when it comes to those things that conservatives should be lining up in support of? Is it that they are opposed to them because of propaganda from sources that they -- for one reason or another -- trust? If so, then when propaganda finally clashes with reality, there could be problems ahead. Chinua Achebe wrote - somewhere in Things Fall Apart - "The truth that is a lie is harder to accept than the lie that is the truth" (or something like that, I can't find it anywhere in internet searches).  However, I think this is where that ironic statement "reality has a well-known liberal bias" rings true: that for whatever reason, the justifications of conservatives against conservation for propaganda "conservative truths" will eventually have to deal with a reality that shows "liberal bias."

Why denialism is pernicious

This past weekend, while I was in Scottsdale, AZ, I was able to take some time off and thinking about stuff that I had been mulling over prior to getting to AZ. Most of this stuff has been about the role of science in directing policy-making. However, I realized something: that is wrong with the my thinking about this sort of thing. The thing that was wrong was the impact that out-and-out denialism of scientists and the institutions of science as well. Where did this come from? How did it arise? Why is it effective, and how effective is it? Can/has science denialism affect science-based policy implementation?

Surely part of this comes from a misunderstanding of the nature of what science is. That science has been conflated with some sort of religion has made it into a practice that has been attacked on it's religious grounds - with people saying that since science is a religion, one form or other of it cannot be supported by the state; the separation of church and state argument.

However, even if people don't equate science with religion writ large, the misunderstanding still has had the problem of drawing false equivalences. From the definition of "materialism" to the definition of "theory, law, and hypothesis", and the implication of falsifiability vs. provability, many definitions of terms used among scientists and members of society hold different meanings and implications. Still, the meanings of words matter to understanding, and if people can turn meaning on its head or against its original use, the perceptions done by others of it would be problematic at the minimum and cynical at the maximum.  ... and yet the misinterpretations between scientific and social understanding continues to be expanded, maintained, and [falsely] argued.

Another part of this denialist reaction likely comes from mistrust of scientists. In my mind, some of this mistrust comes from unethical activities that have been publicized in the media. However, why do people just assume that if geneticist Hwan Woo Suk was unethical, all geneticists are unethical? Is it because the work he fabricated results for was related to a series of topics that many people find problematic - stem-cells and (through them) cloning? It's as if the pillorying of this scientist was done because it fit a previously determined narrative in which people who do stem-cell research are unethical, and once one is found, that only proves (falsely) the narrative correct. The same sort of hew-and-cry with the recent "climategate" that erupted with the leaking of e-mails between climate scientists: there is some evidence of climate scientists were trying to hide something, which fits into the theory of some global conspiracy of climate scientists trying to get everyone to emit less carbon (for some strange reason).

Still, if people are mistrusting scientists, using these justifications to deny the science, what are the implications? Well, due to the nature of science -- that it describes and investigates the causes and effects of physical phenomena -- ignoring the results of scientific studies carries implications. Denying the existence of climate change due to a few e-mails is unlike denying the existence of the Easter Bunny due to a classmate saying he doesn't exist are two very different beasts. On the one hand, there is no evidence of the presence or absence of an Easter Bunny, or even the physical, measurable impacts of no Easter Bunny. (In fact, there are many parts of the world in which the Easter Bunny doesn't even exist, or has existed.) However, there are predicted and predicable impacts to natural systems that would come out of a changed climate. These predictable impacts have (slightly less) predictable impacts on biology and (even less) predictable impacts on human society. Would it make sense to act on the possible presence or absence of climate change? Without any evidence, sure. With evidence of only the physical impacts, possibly. With evidence of the physical and biological impacts, quite possibly a good idea. With evidence of the physical, biological, and social impacts, most definitely yes.

And yet... people work at trying to keep the status quo alive and well. People with invested interests. It hurts when your truth gets overturned. It hurt the Catholic Church when Galileo showed that the evidence pointed toward the Earth not being in the center of the Creation. Similarly, it will likely hurt those invested in carbon-based fuels if climate change action is taken, and it is the same in other endeavors, too. Those that have a lot to lose also probably have a lot of incentive to maintain their point of view, and are likely to make efforts to keep their version of reality the only one that is forwarded. Thus, we see lobbying efforts by coal companies against climate change legislation; tobacco companies against tobacco legislation; and health care insurance companies against health insurance legislation.

End result: denialism has consequences on social association with science, with the type of science being done, and with the policy reactions to the scientific (and non-scientific rational) findings that go against certain invested "truths." Eventually, the truth will out. Hopefully, though, it isn't after preventative action can be taken.