Ruminations, Haunts, and Errors

• Last weekend’s Trib had a good article about the need for the city to work with architects and developers to ensure a proper sense of aesthetics is maintained, and I saw a good example of its lack today. On a stroll to the bank, I noticed that the stretch of Wacker across from the Merc is now dominated by four consecutive glass-and-metal towers. (Um, yeah, I’ve worked in one of them for several years and the remainder have been up for at least several months now. It’s not really news. Just you nevermind that.) Individually, each one is fine: all but 111 S Wacker have setbacks and/or curvilinear profiles, and they all have decent landscaping and atria at ground level. Yet it struck me today how overwhelming it is to have a two-block wall of polished metal and glass, it’s a bit much. Okay, so I’m biased in that I strongly prefer masonry, matte metal, and window divisions to the glass-box look, I’m sure there are those who really like the shiny-streetwall effect. But it’s hard to argue that variety is good, and it just seems a shame that the builders plunge forth with their vision without really considering how it will connect with it surroundings. Ever notice that the renderings for the next great skyscraper, office tower, or condo block always show the structure with little else but a few trees and cars about? Maybe that’s plausible downstate or in the sprawling west, but urban developers should be a bit more honest.
• Found some impressive imagery over at Antonia Cidadao’s Lunar and Planetary Time-lapse Animations page. Definitely check out the one entitled Lunation–definitely gives the sense that the Moon is an entity, a place, not just a light in the sky.
• More economists like this, please:
  

  the link between cause and effect is often not easy or obvious. Economies are constantly being affected by a myriad of economic forces, both external and domestic. As such, it is dangerous to casually say that any one particular economic force must be causing any one particular economic outcome. The world is extremely complicated, and there’s no reason to think that economic relationships are anything but extremely complicated as well.

  Is it foolish to hope we’ll every get to the point when people will stop believing the pol who claims that propserity was caused–or will be restored–by the amazing grace of policy X?
• Seven Warning Signs of Bogus Science

Time to clear out some links I thought might be worthy of commentary…

• Blue Ball Machine Stupid and pointless, but oddly mesmerizing. Just like much of the world wide web.
• Tinfoil hats attract mind-control signals, boffins learn Uh…the title is quite enough.
• Screwcap Savvy. On one level I’m perfectly aware that good screwcaps are no longer an indicator of cheap wine, but I do remember being momentarily suprised during our Sydney vacation when waiters in a couple of restaurants opened our bottles with a twist of the wrist rather than a corkscrew. However, the reason I posted this link was that it’s the first time I’ve seen wine and light sabers discussed in the same story.
• History’s Worst Software Bugs; Some Technologies Will Annoy. Evidence against the movement towards all-wired, all-in-one, always-connected technology. As if incessant cellphones and inexplicable ‘check engine’ lihts weren’t enough of a reminder.
• Gravity-Powered Asteroid Tractor Proposed to Thwart Impact. The realities of astronautical physics and technology aren’t nearly as slick as the movies, but it’s still impressive that we’ve got a plausible method for redirecting an asteroid. Too bad that promising glitz and glam, rather than the slower plod of reality, is the better way to get decent science funding.
• NASA Axes Space Station Research. Yep, to be effective ISS needs to be safe. (And, well, completing the damn thing wouldn’t hurt either.) Yet it seemed obvious to me back in the late ’80s that, despite the promises, ISS would be so expensive to build and maintain that it wouldn’t be cost-effective as a platform for cutting-edge science and technology. And now here we are.
• Repairing Journalism. Sydney H. Schanberg suggests that journalists should consider promises of anonymity null and void upon discovery that the source was disingenous. Good idea. We need to go further into a wider examination–for journalism, law, and politics–regarding the proper conditions for putting names and statements out of public view.
• Pump Some Seriousness Into Energy Policy Wow, I never thought I’d read such a staunch conservative advocating higher taxes on anything, let alone the gasoline. His arguments for ANWR drilling don’t persuade me, but some of the others aren’t half bad.

However, in looking over post on the subject, I found the following comment in the discussion

Science, evidence, reason, these things mean less than nothing to a fundie. They are active evils to be exterminated. It’s the wide and crooked path away from salvation. They truck in authority…

In my understanding, evidence is true unless and until it can be shown to have been obtained in error (instrument glitches, transcription errors, selection effects, etc.) and the authority granted to any theory is weighted by how well it explains all appropriate evidence; similarly, the authority of an ‘expert’ is determined by how often, and how well, he or she can analyze and interperet both evidence and theory to keep everything consistent. In contrast, the other viewpoint holds that authority attaches to a theory (or being) a priori and thus evidence that doesn’t conform must be wrong. The latter viewpoint has a very serious problem, however, in that it is not properly self-contained and self-validating; thus independent, evidence-based attempts to (gasp!) challenge or disprove a theory or expert become essentially impossible.

Hmm, don’t know if this will really help me too much in a practical sense, but perhaps being able to recognize the mindset will allow me to better walk away from unwinnable debates.

• No matter how Scooter Libby’s trial turns out, that enough evidence exists for one indictment (if not more) shows that the administration either intentionally misued information with national-security ramifications or else was insufficiently careful in safeguarding it. This should be worrisome, especially given all the other indications that it was an example of a pattern rather than an anomaly. Yet the media, despite their self-proclaimed role to reveal such problems in support of the public good, haven’t made much of this, instead focusing on what every political side might be able to gain or lose. What’s worse is that I forsee missing the more important point in favor of the spectacle of a public scandal. Sad.
• From FEMA to the FAA and TSA, conflicting agendas and an appalling lack of comprehensive analysis continually subject us to ever-more burdensome security and disaster-management practices that don’t really improve anything.
• The release of classified information regaring possible secret CIA prisons prompted Congressional leaders to call for an investigation of the leakers before one into the more objectively serious issue.
• The administration has now taken to insisting that their Iraq war decision is beyond reproach because plenty of people believed the justifications given at the time, utterly ignoring not only the flaws in the war-making process, how easily intelligence can be manipulated or distorted (even somewhat innocently) but also everything we’ve learned since then.
• The spectacle of Dubya saying that we do not use torture while Darth Cheney is simultaneously lobbying to exempt the CIA from anti-torture legislation working its way through Congress would make Orwell proud. Among the many things they’re not getting here are:
  • Torture’s an unreliable method for getting good information. (Hell, Iraqi instigators like Ahmed Chalabi fed the neocons what they wanted to hear while under no duress whatsoever.)
  • Personal conscience and assessement of the facts guides behavior, not laws. (Think of how much would could save on police and armies if we could simply legislate away bad behavior.) An anti-torture law will not stop an interrogator who is absolutely convinced that a bit more roughing up will provide information that will save lives, and if he turns out to be right he’d probably consider sacrificing his career (or some prison term) for crossing the line an acceptable trade. But the very presence of a law will reduce people from playing bad hunches.
  • Ultimately as Senator McCain said, it’s not about who they are, and whether they deserve good treatment, but about who we are, about saying that there are some things we simply will not do even when they might be to our benefit. As Micheal Kinsley puts it
    

    It could be that all these developments are constitutional […b]ut the Constitution is not supposed to be just an obstacle course for officials who are trying to get around it. It ought to inspire policy even when it doesn’t impose policy. Ditto the Geneva Conventions. Why would you even want to be clever about reasons it might not apply here or there?

Now President Bush must do something that for him, it seems, is the most difficult task: admit a mistake. […]More important, President Bush should follow the ultimate rule of White House damage control: the buck stops here. He should admit that this entire mess could have been avoided had the White House, including the vice president, criticized Ambassador Joseph Wilson openly and directly, rather than whispering “on background” into the ears of certain reporters…The best result of this latest scandal, and the hypocrisy and finger-pointing exhibited on both sides, would be for voters to say, “A pox on both your houses,” reject the scandal culture and gotcha politics of both parties and seek new politics of common cause, collegiality and the public interest. The alternative is that most people will conclude that in American politics today the only standard is the double standard, and the cycles of conflict and rancor will continue.

But just when it seemed that some sanity had been restored by several ID supporters making some fools of themselves in the Dover school-district trial, by the Vatican speaking up to support science, and the urgent need to fight a possible bird-flu pandemic (hmm, it would be sadly ironic if millions of flu deaths were to provide a solid case in support of ongoing natural selection through random mutations.), out comes an attack on fundamental physics. Apparently a Harvard medic is claiming not just a breakthrough in power-generating technology but also that in doing so he’s disproven basic quantum theory. Now, maybe there’s no disputing that his contraption works, and if so that’s great. Perhaps it is coming from a heretofore unknown aspect of physics not properly described by current theory. But that’s a long way from destroying a major underpinning of modern physics, especially given his flimsy reasoning in that direction:

• This result is impossible given current theory. Well, it wouldn’t be the first time a major theory of science required an adjustment in one area to explain an observation, that doesn’t mean the theory is completely wrong (hell, even some staunch ID campaigners don’t go that far). It might also be that someone made some computational or analytical mistakes, which also wouldn’t be a first.
• I don’t have years of training in this area, so I’m an outsider who can look at things in a fresh way. Wow, nice bit of sophistry to turn the concept of an ‘expert’ on its ear. By this line of thinking, we would be best served if most people started working in any and all areas except for ones in which they’ve had years of training and experience! Certainly an outsider is helpful to prod people to look anew at topics dismissed in the past as ‘obvious’ or ‘uninteresting’, but that doesn’t seem to apply here as it’s not a qualitiative aspect that is under scrutiny. I can say from experience that even the basic quantum theory of the hydrogen atom is arcane and mathematically complex (there’s a reason it doesn’t usually come up until a junior/senior level physics course), so I’m really skeptical that anyone other than an absolute mathematical savant could suddenly come on the scene and calculate a value that has escaped a century’s worth of theoreticians and empiricists.
• The entrenched scientists are only interested in protecting their pet theories. Ooh, this one’s a doozy. Certainly, physicsts at that level can sometimes be a petty lot, jealous of their star status as crafters of Important Theories. But ultimately they are interested in knowing the truth of nature. In contrast, this challenge to established quantum theory is coming from a group (filled with business types, not trained scientists, mind you) who want to make money of the technology and thus have every economic incentive to make it appear as if they have some new, profound understanding of the universe. Who do you think might be more worried about prestige and image? Didn’t the Cold Fusion debacle of the late 80’s teach anyone that science is more effective when done by scientists in controlled labs rather than via press release and VC prospectus?

Fortunately, I can say that I took a walk through Battleground God and came through it with the assurance that I view and analyze the world in ways that are at least consistent and rational. Would that I weren’t in the minority in that regard.

the celebration […] was electric and the turnout incredible.
Made me wonder where all these people are on Tuesday nights in April when the Sox are in town, because they certainly aren’t at the Cell. […]
I spent the preceding weeks on the defensive about being a Cubs fan and grew increasingly annoyed at the constant slights from Sox fans and the news media, who merrily joined in (lazily regurgitating myths and cliches about Cubdom).
[I] had great appreciation for the way the 2005 team played. And I wanted to cheer for them, I really did. Insufferable Sox fans, however, made it impossible.

South Siders have something wonderful to celebrate all on their own, but we probably have a better chance of finding an affordable 3BR bungalow in Lakeview than we do of seeing Sox fans stop viewing things in terms of the Cubs and their fans. As I sat irritated and brooding while the Sox were about to clinch the pennant, Liz asked why I got so worked up…weren’t the Cardinals more hated? I had to explain the personal nature of the Cubs-Sox rivalry (especially for a Cubs fan who grew up in the south suburbs where the split is near even). A victory by one side in a Cubs-Cardinals game (or season series) results in “Ha, my team’s better and they just proved it”, whereas Sox victories along with Cub losses often resulted in the additional sentiment of “…which shows once again how stupid you are.” (Moreover, this attitude could result from minor leaguers scratching out a victroy in an exhibition Crosstown Classic, or even game results when the teams weren’t even playing each other.)

On the night the Sox clinched the pennant I was lying in bed watching the post-game celebration when the phone rang, which was odd because it was 11:30 on a Sunday. I answered, and here’s how the conversation went:
Me: “Hello.”
Caller: “WOO-HOOOO! WHITE SOX, BABY! WE’RE GOIN’ TO THE SERIES!”
It didn’t sound like anyone I knew or anything one of my Sox fan friends would do. Then …
Caller: “BURN WRIGLEY TO THE GROUND, BABY!”
Sox fans’ hatred of the Cubs is well-documented, but I was amazed that even during their moment of greatest glory it always seemed to come back to the Cubs.

Another article noted how Sox fandom was passed down from generation to generation, while following the Cubs was something one just picked up on a whim, when the weather was right, I guess. For the record, the Cubs have been around since 1876, 25 years longer than the Sox, and have a fan base that’s probably double the Sox.
The irony in most of the arguments was obvious, considering many Sox fans aren’t even motivated enough to actually, you know, attend their team’s games on a consistent basis. One contention is that Wrigley Field is a “playground” for the young and drunk where no one pays attention to the game. Of course, there is that element at Wrigley, more so than on the South Side, but if you take a look around Wrigley it’s easily apparent they are a distinct minority.
In fact, it’s the Cell where the distractions abound: exploding scoreboard, idiotic races on the big screen between innings, blaring rock music that makes it virtually impossible to talk baseball even if you want to, doggie day at the park. If you listen to Sox fans and the media you’d think some of those dogs know how to keep score.
Another argument is that Cubs fans are casual in their loyalty, only following the team when the weather is nice and because the park is only a short stroll from their Wrigleyville apartments. This one is probably the most ludicrous. Are the people who pile off those buses–having traveled from Iowa, Wisconsin and Downstate Illinois–casual fans? Yuppies maybe? How about all of the Cubs fans you see in the stands at games in Atlanta, Los Angeles, Miami and Milwaukee? Or for that matter, the Cell during cross-town games, when it seems almost half the fans are cheering for the men in blue? Not true fans, I guess.

I’d like to see some surveys next year to analyze the demographics of team loyalty, baseball knowledge, motivations for coming to the ballpark, etc. at both Wrigley and U.S. Comiskular, not that actual evidence has ever really been relevant to the South Siders’ rants anyway. I’m guessing the new wrinkle this year will be discussions whether this all will spur the Cubs ownership to strive for a winner rather than a cash cow. (Because of course it never occurred to their corporate overlords that a World Series victory might bring in even more gobs of money than they already print.)

Ah…I’ve been meaning to let that fly for a couple weeks now. On to the Hot Stove League!