Monday Morning Quotations

First day of the blog vacation. Here are your quotations to start off the week.

"The rich are the scum of the earth in every country."
"Bigotry may be roughly defined as the anger of men who have no opinions."
"Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead."
"All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change."
- G. K. Chesterton, English essayist, novelist, and poet, 1874-1936

"We first crush people to the earth, and then claim the right of trampling on them forever, because they are prostrate." - Lydia Maria Child, American abolitionist and suffragist, 1802-80

"Though by whim, envy, or resentment led,
They damn those authors whom they never read."
- Charles Churchill, English poet, 1731-64

Blog Vacation

I know it wasn't too long ago that I declared a blog vacation, but when it comes to this blog I am my own boss, so I am taking another one. It shall last two weeks.

I have a new job (well, two weeks old at this point, but it is keeping me pretty tired), some personal projects, and teacher training starting up on the weekends, so things are going to be pretty busy in the next couple of weeks. I will continue posting weekly quotations and, when something strikes my fancy, This Week on the Internet (TWOTI) posts (so be sure to still check back at least Monday and Friday, or just use the subscribe buttons), but other than that things should be pretty sparse (and Computing Intelligence will also be taking a break).

While you take a break from reading my blog, I invite you to ponder how the Dog Gone machine manages to avoid picking up dirt and other debris:

I'll go if you make him go too...

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is a monumental jackass when it comes to environmental policy. The environment ministers he has appointed during his time in office have been inept at best, counterproductive and actively against environmental protection at worst. Harper's statements on the upcoming Copenhagen conference were no better than anyone should at this point expect, but they were still disappointing:

“I have always been clear, if there is a meeting of all major leaders involving climate change, I will of course attend,” Stephen Harper told the House of Commons Wednesday.

The "I'll go if he goes" argument didn't fly in elementary school, it shouldn't fly in the House of Commons. If an issue is important and there is an international conference (that over sixty foreign leaders are already slated to attend), you bloody well go. Dragging your feet and saying, "Well, I'll go if everyone else is going to be there, but until we know everyone is going to be there I'm too cool to show up," basically just says you don't care one bit about the issue. Which, for Stephen Harper on the environment, is pretty much the case.

Edit: Apparently, he has decided to go after all. Although I still have fairly low expectations, it is certainly a start.

Book Review: Your Inner Fish

This past week I finished Neil Shubin's book Your Inner Fish. It was a book that I was highly looking forward to reading, as I had heard a lot about it and thought it was a really good idea. The basic premise of the book is to look at our present day physiology and trace aspects of it back through the fossil record using all the tools of modern evolutionary science (from the fossils themselves to comparative DNA studies and developmental biology).

I think my expectations may have originally been overly high, considering that the book combined many things that I am a big fan of: comparative anatomy and physiology, paleontology, and evolution. What I failed to realise was that this was a fairly short, well-written popular science book, and therefore did not go nearly into the detail that I wanted. Despite Shubin's general skirting of complex details in lieu of making general points, the latter half of the book I found to be highly engaging, as there were a number of fascinating factual gems and I felt he started to feel more comfortable expanding the detail of his discourse, given the basic knowledge set he had introduced in the first half.

Thus, my biggest criticism of the book is that it could easily have been longer and more detailed. As it stands, it is a well-written and easily accessible overview of how our bodies are shaped by our evolutionary history. It is interesting, being about a subject that we are all aware of (the human body), with an interesting perspective that not a lot of people acknowledge or think about. I hope every school library gets at least a copy or two, and I think biology teachers would do well to point them out to their students.

Edit: I just wanted to point out that the first half of the book was good too! I simply found the second half engaged me more, but I realise that my initial wording of this post made it seem like that was the only good part of the book.

Solution to Puzzle Number 10

I meant to post this yesterday, but I ended up getting delayed due to some unknown blogging error that would not let me upload images. Here is the solution to Puzzle Number 10: Tetris Shape Reconstruction. In the puzzle, I asked if there existed a unique colour assignment linking each of the given colours to one of the Tetris shapes for the following image:

To be entirely honest, I had originally intended there to be a solution. However, after posting the image I realised there was not, and the puzzle therefore ended up a little sneakier than I had originally intended. Robert and Scott both successfully spotted my sneakiness, while Paul fell for my (unintended) trap and successfully mapped all the shapes without realising that red could not be mapped to only the J or L shape. Sarah had intended to answer the puzzle, but I accidentally spoiled the answer for her before she even had a chance to give it a go.

One can quickly see that Green = I and Orange = T due to the isolated shapes in the bottom left. Likewise, it is clear that Purple = O and the blue at the top means Blue = J. Since I has already been mapped, one can rest assured that Yellow = Z, which leaves only two shapes and two colours. Cyan = S is a valid mapping, but Red needs to be both J and L in order to create the left-most red area. Due to the inconsistent chirality of the red shape, there is no possible mapping to the Tetris shapes.

Monday Morning Quotations

"Women deprived of the company of men pine, men deprived of the company of women become stupid."
"Love, friendship, respect do not unite people as much as common hatred for something."
- Anton Chekhov, Russian dramatist and short-story writer, 1860-1904

"Wear your learning, like your watch, in a private pocket: and do not pull it out and strike it, merely to show that you have one."
"Speak of the moderns without contempt, and of the ancients without idolatry."
"It is commonly said, and more particularly by Lord Shaftesbury, that ridicule is the best test of truth."
"Knowledge may give weight, but accomplishments give lustre, and many more people see than weigh."
- Lord Chesterfield (Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield), English writer and politician, 1694-1773

TWOTI: New Series, Jennings Update, and Something Just Plain Interesting

While last week was a pretty slow week for blogging (both in my own work and, seemingly, in the small sphere of the internet that I frequent), this week had numerous interesting articles prompting a return of my "This Week on the Internet" series. This week I will be discussing three posts, with two of the blogs being a repeat of those featured in the first TWOTI installment.

To start the week off, on Monday Neuroskeptic wrote a discussion of Desiree Jennings' case (the same case that Steve Novella gave a first rate summary and discussion of two weeks ago) in the context of her treatment at the hands of Dr. Buttar. If you don't recall, Jennings suffered from a psychogenic illness following her vaccination. Her case was trumpeted by the anti-vaccine people in numerous unsavoury ways, and she was ultimately treated by Buttar's mecury chelation quackery. I thought Neuroskeptic brought up some very interesting points about modern medicine's ability to deal with psychologically based disorders. Essentially, we are at an unfortunate cul-de-sac: we know enough about physiology and medicine to fairly accurately determine when a disorder is psychologically based, but we do not know enough about the fine workings of the brain to determine either what precisely has gone wrong, nor how to fix it.

On Tuesday, Jonah Lehrer at the Frontal Cortex produced an interesting post commenting on a recent statistical analysis of golf revealing that players function measurably worse when Tiger Woods is part of the tournament. Lehrer then discussed both the study's interpretation of the drop in performance (the contestants subconsciously decided it was not worth the effort to perform at their best since they figured they had already lost) and his own (over-analysis of their actions led to a drop in performance - an interesting psychological effect on motor control that Lehrer talks about quite often). While I am inclined to find Lehrer's interpretation more plausible and think it is likely closer to the truth, I think the discussion also helps display the difficulties in interpreting psychological studies. When you find an interesting psychological quirk, it is hard not to want to have a go at explaining why our brains function that way. However, it is very easy to come up with a reasonable-sounding explanation that has absolutely no bearing on the truth (which is why my psychology tag includes the word 'fanciful'), and the interpretation of psychological studies should be firmly treated as idle speculation unless carefully backed up with appropriate evidence (which is one of the reasons I am inclined to go with Lehrer's interpretation - a drop in performance following over-analysis of one's physical actions has been demonstrated with other studies). Of course, speculation or not, it is still fun and fascinating reading.

Finally, on Wednesday Dr. Steve Novella at Neurologica started what looks to be a very promising series on science-based medicine and the incorporation of evidence into medical practices. His opening post discusses the complex experimental relationship between correlation and causation. Future parts of the series promise to include what makes a study well-designed. For anyone interested in the practice of good medicine, concerned about telling the difference between well-supported medical practice and pseudoscience, or unsure of how to tell the difference between fear-mongering quackery and legitimate medical concern, I recommend reading what Dr. Novella has to say.