5 questions you had better know the answer to...

...if you want me to take you seriously as a scientist. This if from an article in the Guardian, about scientific illiteracy. Here are the questions:

Q: Why does salt dissolve in water?
Q: Roughly how old is the earth?
Q: What happens when you turn on a light?
Q: Is a clone the same as a twin?
Q: Why is the sky blue?
Q: What is the Second Law of Thermodynamics?

Now, I say 5 questions because that last one is totally bogus. You could have been very good at science for years and completely understand the basics of thermodynamics yet not remember which law is which.

I have no problem answering all these questions (in fact, the very article described above does a piss-poor job of answering some of them [and they are wrong about the twin one!]), but anyone who works in science should really have some kind of understanding of what the right answer is to each of these.

At the very least your answer better be better than some of the people they interviewed for this article (on ions):

Kirsty Wark Because it's less dense.

Daisy Goodwin It forms
another compound. The only reason I know any of this
is because I've been
testing my daughter on her GCSEs.

Uh, your daughter is failing! But hey, Daisy Goodwin works on poetry anthologies and Kirsty Wark is a newscaster. Check out the reply of Robert Winston, who is a "Human fertility expert and science TV presenter" (a former medical researcher):

It's to do with ions isn't it? Let me just work it out. It's to do with the way
sodium and chloride ions, um. Do you know, I'm not sure I can really explain it.
I can't remember now from my physics years ago.

Yeah, you work on biology. Even more, you work on physiology (of a particular organism). You're telling me you don't understand how water dissolves things? You do realize that your organism of study is 80-odd percent water?

How about these replies:

(Age of the earth)

Susan Greenfield Oh blimey. Well, I know that human beings have been going for
about a million and a half years, so ... I'm just grasping here. Something like
60 billion years or something like that, but that's a grasp. I'm not a physical
scientist and it shows. I'm probably not scientifically literate.

(why is the sky blue)

John O'Farrell My daughter explained this to me the other day. She is in
Year Seven. It's to do with blue being the dominant colour in the colour
spectrum.

Kirsty Wark Because it's a reflection of the oceans on the planet. No idea
apart from that. I think the sky is blue because... the rain clouds obscure the blue, and the blue is a reflection... because of the sunshine. Fuck! I don't know! Why is the sky blue?

Seriously? People don't know this stuff? And John, your child is probably failing too.

Ok, first of all. My friend M and his wife L (and their baby C) got me what is, to this point, pretty much the most amazing baby gift we have recieved. Little Alton has a shirt that contains the answer to the question: "Why is the sky blue?" courtesy of M, L, and C (have I sent you guys a thank you yet? Gosh, I hope so! THANK YOU!!). I'll admit, as I have previously, that this is exactly the kind of question that I'm worried could throw me off my guard when my own child is asking me for the first time. However, these people are being asked by an adult, given some time to think, and that's the best they could come up with? Reflection off the ocean? I've lived in Kansas, and I can assure you the sky is blue there.

Secondly, I hate to hold people up to ridicule, but this is exactly what is wrong with western civilization and, indeed, the world. We are all idiots. 90% of people I've met in my life only know how to do a handful of things. Even 'jack-of-all-trades' people who do mechanical odd-jobs often don't seem to have the faintest clue why something works. Scientists seem to be among the majority here. Are we really being served well in society by producing engineers that can't understand any biology? Or biologists who literally can't do 1st year calculus?

Anyway, it is late and I'm tired and a little intoxicated so I should probably stop here. But seriously, from now on, if you can't answer basic questions about the world, then I'm not counting you as a real scientist.

Seriously? More rain?

This is just getting ridiculous. The Lake Texoma flood control pool is 24.41% full. That may not sound like a lot, but it has been raining for days. And I'm not talking about a light, gentle rain, I'm talking about a rain that sweeps children from their mother's arms and we end up with 4 missing people! This is the kind of rain that has little animals lining up two-by-two next to the boathouse.

And right now what's happening outside my window? If you guessed "The kind of rain that prevents you from seeing more than 10 feet in any direction", you win a piece of candy.

Happiness...quantified.

So in light of my earlier post about the nature of happiness, I found this study by British researchers to be interesting. Essentially they figured out the money-relationships-happiness equation. As in, to have Y happiness you need X money or Z relationships.

Weird huh?

Webcomic Revue: HandRooster

Let's see if we can do this.

Handrooster is written by Mark and Steph Adams. The artwork is stick-figure, and so the comic shares a long and storied tradition with other internet artwork. Right now the strip is in its infancy, having apparently started in March. The strip that first caught my attention was the fantastic I'm a Bot. This is actually why I like webcomics in general. Unlike newspaper strips, webcomics tend to turn the conventional perspective on its head.

Some criticism of this comic has come because some people think it is a knock-off of xkcd. While it is true that the stick figures, and the stick figure with a hat, is also in xkcd, the similarity ends there. Handrooster seems to be following closely the Holy Trinity of Webcomics, violence, randomness, and videogames. In fact, they sometimes all happen in the same strip (as in Alpha Geek).

Reviewing this comic may be premature. The style of the strip is still evolving, both artistically and scripting. There are recurring characters, and there is some nerd humor, but the whole thing feels like it could go in a lot of different directions. Considering the huge number of strips that are being produced every day, the ones that have some potential ought to be embraced early. The strip will sink or swim based on the jokes and character development, but right now, the jokes are just mediocre.

Writing/Plot: 2.5/5. Well, the jokes are often lame, but the ones that are funny are very funny. I'm optimistic that things are improving through time.
Artwork: 3/5. I think this is just about the maximum I can give for a comic employing stick figures. I really think the artwork is as good as can be expected, and serves the written part of the strip well.
Website Presentation: 2.5/5. So I really don't like this website design. You are always on either the blog or comic half of the site, and the individual strips don't appear to be linked to the blog posts accompanying them. Am I missing something? Also, the archive is not searchable, and breaks apart by month.

Overall: 3.5/5. Despite the fact that I didn't give this high of a rating in any category, I genuinely enjoy this strip. Maybe it has to do with first impressions (that I am a Bot strip is great!), but this feels like one that could be really good.

Weekend fun

I'll try to get pictures up later, but this was a pretty fun weekend. The in-laws were down, and we went out fossil hunting and blueberry picking.

The fossil hunting was more fun.

Let's see, what did we find? A couple of smallish trilobites, a couple of gastropods, some sharks teeth, and a couple of geodes. We also saw some lizards, and we caused a kill-deer to 'break it's wing' to distract us from a nest (which we avoided).

Mostly I just had fun climbing up a hill. The view was amazing. The southern part of the Arbuckles are just unbelievably gorgeous right now. They are green and beautiful.

The blueberry hunting was fun as well, I'm just not very good at it. Turns out really dark red and really dark blue blue-berries look pretty similar to me. Oh well. We also bought some squash pickles (tasty!).

And I couldn't sleep worth crap last night, so I can't think of anything else to write.

What is happiness?

For the last several months I have wrestled with defining happiness. I don't know when I realized that I didn't know what happiness was, but it has been lurking in the back of my brain for awhile.

Consider, I've always been seeking happiness, but I don't know if I've ever understood why certain things made me happy, and other things made me unhappy, over a long-term basis.

A number of things appeared to be causing me unhappiness over the past few years. Mostly, a sense of disenfranchisement, snow, rain, and having no money. But getting away from those things doesn't necessarily cause me to be happy, it just causes me to be less unhappy.

So what is happiness?

I think it is interpersonal relationships. Friendships. Companionship. Playing videogames is entertaining, but playing videogames with a friend is genuinely fun. Exciting even. Makes me happy.

The same is true for cooking. I like to cook, but I really like to cook when I'm around friends. I like sharing a kitchen while figuring out the best way to prepare tilapia.

Even stupid stuff, like going to a grocery store or sitting around TV is ultimately far more fulfilling when you're doing it with friends.

I'm not sure this definition applies to everyone, but it seems to apply to everyone I know. Marriages are mostly about a particular interpersonal relationship that two people feel like fostering essentially forever. Family gatherings are often, cynically, described as opportunities to get together and eat, but what they really are is opportunities to get together and interact. Similarly, parties are usually not about anything beyond interacting with other people. The internet, for all its fantastic information, has become infinitely more popular thanks to social networking sites like MySpace, YouTube, Reddit, and blogs in general.

Furthermore, what do people spend their time talking about? Usually it is other people. People seem to talk almost entirely about other people, usually people you all know. In fact, you can often piss everyone off by trying to change the subject to something other than people.

So I think I'm on to something when I say that happiness is about relationships with other people. I think the happiness of most people is tied, directly, to amount and quality of their social interactions.

Drugs, sickness and the Webcomic Revue

First of all, I have a sore throat. One of those really painful, I don't want to talk or breath kind of sore throats. If you were expecting a phone call from me today, you're not getting. In lieu of that:

Happy Father's Day Dad and Grandpa! I really wish I could talk.

Secondly, let's start a new feature entitled Webcomic Revue.

I'd like to take a moment to introduce you to Simulated Comic Product. The author identifies himself as 'Kevin', and the strip has been running for at least a couple of years. This isn't a strip with recurring characters or continuous story-lines. Most strips are full-color and stretch across far more page than you'd expect from a traditional comic strip. Remember, the holy trinity of webcomic memes are violence, randomness, and video games. Simulated Comic Product makes heavy use of the randomness and violence part of the trinity.

For instance, this example of SCP goodness shows the full-color, size, and wackiness of the strip. Although, I do have to wonder just what is spraying in panel 5. The other recurring theme of SCP is a dark hook. That is, the last panel often recasts all the trivial or friendly material from the earlier panels into a different, darker light. As in this strip entitled Hospitality or this very recent one entitled Eager Recruits. Occasionally this can get really confusing, as in the strip Labour Relations. Other times, the strips are just plain dark.

Writing/Plot: 4/5. The numerous scenarios created by the author are usually quite entertaining and often thought-provoking as well. They definitely illustrate the rather limited way we often see the world.
Artwork: 4/5. The style has evolved, but is now quite flexible. The artwork creates the idea without having a lot of details, making the details that are important subtle. Full-color is worth bonus points in my book.
Website Presentation: 2.5/5. Standard layout for most webcomic sites. Strips are shown one at a time. There aren't a lot of bells and whistles, and apparently there are no books or t-shirts available. Advertising is unobtrusive.

Overall: I give this webcomic a 4 out of 5. I try to keep up-to-date on it, and I frequently browse through the archives.

The Upside to living at a Biostation

The roller coaster has upswings.

Tonight was one of them.

In actuality, this whole week has been one of them. I interviewed for a job that would pay great, and get me out of the academic muck. But beyond that, tonight was a fish-fry.

The maintenance manager at the station is an Oklahoma good-ole' boy. Except that he's cool and amazing. He caught 25 catfish last week when he could have been working (screw that!) and tonight he fried us up a feast of venison, catfish, gar, hush puppies, tater tots, and drunken chicken. Plus he had some 'drunken onions' which were, I think, marinated in vinegar and maybe alcohol.

The onions were amazing. The chicken was amazing. The hush puppies were terrible, don't eat them. I'll eat them for you (this is my way of saying that they were so good I want them all to myself). The beer was good (2 kinds of home-brew). The company was astounding. All good people.

I almost want to cry it was so much fun.

Tot means dead in german, so tater-tot is 'potato dead'...which seems appropriate.

There were other German words I learned, but I can't remember them.

Did I mention I'm drunk? Off a combination of tequila, wheat beer and home-brew. I haven't felt this relaxed in quite a while.

The facilities manager down here is one of the most amazing people I've ever met. He's honest, loud, friendly, guitar-playing, cooking fiend, etc. Reminds me of my buddy B from grad school. I miss the grad school field station. I feel like going back, because that was some really good times, but this field station in Oklahoma is pretty good too.

Less card games, more tequila, but damn. This is why I like field stations.

There are upsides to this whole profession!!

Writing and blogging and something

So I'm trying to not write so much about depressing stuff. Someone recently referred to my blog as an "emotional roller coaster". Frankly, I don't know what to think about that, but I'd like to hear this blog described as "moderately informative" and "not suicide-inducing."

Which is why I now share with you the sum total of the positive, work-related feedback that I've received during the past few weeks (since, say, April). You know, to demonstrate that I'm not a complete failure.

Dear Dr. XXXXXX,

Thank you very much for your review of manuscript "XXXXX".

We greatly appreciate your assistance.

With kind regards,
Journals Editorial Office
Springer

Hmm. Roller coaster probably isn't the right word is it?

Other stuff:

- For some utterly incomprehensible reason, I've been playing this game about an hour a day. In fact, after finding that link I was 'forced' to play it for about twenty minutes just now.

- I went fishing this weekend. I should set this up a little better:
When I was a kid (grade-school, middle school) I was, in all humbleness, the greatest fisherman I knew. I could damn near catch anything with any kind of bait. I mean it. I caught carp, catfish, crappie, bluegill, green sunfish, walleye, largemouth bass, white bass, whiper (striped bass, white bass hybrid), and smallmouth bass using a little yellow jig from a lake that no one knew even had walleye and smallmouth. All in one summer. From the shoreline.
As I've gotten older, I've gotten worse. In my freshman year of high-school Star Trek 'Next Generation' went off the air, so I began having a social life that didn't revolve around Tasha Yar and Wesley Crusher. That social life meant that I spent more time going to movies and chasing girls than fishing.
But all I had to do was pick up a pole and I'd still be able to at least catch some fish.
This weekend I went back to the very lake that was the site of so many of my fishing conquests. What happened?
I caught 1 fish.
1.
Uno.
Singular.
I'm going to have to figure out how to fish again, aren't I?

- Want to drive yourself insane? Try this 'impossible' quiz. I have to admit, I failed miserably.

- The NBA Finals: Really? The excellence that was the Western Conference playoffs has lead to this pathetic show? If I were, in any way, associated with the NBA, I'd be looking for a new job.

What's going on?

So.

The NBA Finals don't start until Thursday.

THURSDAY!!!

How the hell am I supposed to make it until THURSDAY!

Other stuff:

- Webcomics: I just found a really cutesy, cat-oriented webcomic called Mows (it is a flash site, which I hate, but..). I didn't even know 'cute' was a term you could associate with webcomics. I mean, really...a 'cute' webcomic? What planet am I living on?

- Friday's a big day. In a week or two I'll mention why.

- For some reason I am experiencing extremely low self-esteem lately. I wonder why? Oh maybe because I suck at everything I do. Of course, that's never bothered me before...

- We have a baby shower this weekend. And apparently there might be windsurfing. I don't think these are related.

- I have to go back to the lab now...moo.

Sometimes...

...I feel like an fish sometimes.