Many thanks to Joseph Hewitt at Ataraxia Theatre, who has immortalised me and many other sciencebloggers in comic form. Finally my work is done.

I'm especially happy that Joseph has drawn in me in a classy mesh number, as worn by the baddest of all badasses, Bennett from Commando:

I think it's time to go shopping for chain mail!

Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Collective Imagination

North Carolina Sea Grant fisheries specialist Scott Baker talks about "RECTEXT" -- a system that lets tournament anglers report catch data via cell phone text messaging.

Fisheries managers often meet hurdles in collecting recreational fishing data, but RECTEXT has the potential to provide valuable information for gamefish population research. Learn more at www.rectext.org.

Baker demonstrated RECTEXT at the ScienceOnline2010 conference on Jan. 15, 2010. Filmed at Sigma Xi in Research Triangle Park, NC. Flipcam donated by a ScienceOnline sponsor.

Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Collective Imagination

The discussion of education in the U.S. typically is very weird: it's one of the few areas where advocates routinely claim how poorly they're doing. Some of that is an attempt to gain additional funding and support, but a lot of it seems to be propaganda that has taken on a life of its own (and, with the rise of the for-profit school industry, there is also a financial incentive in some quarters). Consider this snippet from a Boston Phoenix editorial reviewing Governor Deval Patrick's accomplishments:

The sweeping education-reform act Patrick shepherded through the legislature is a real accomplishment. It is a practical investment in the future that gives communities and school administrators most of the tools they need to repair an underperforming educational system.

Massachusetts' collegiate system is underperforming (although it has some pretty stiff competition). But K-12 education?

Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Collective Imagination

Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Collective Imagination

tags: birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz

Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification.

Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Collective Imagination

First of all, may I ask which New York Times editor was responsible for permitting the coinage "femivore" to pass into language. Talk about illiterate (linguistically a "femivore" would be someone who ate women) and uneuphonious - yes, yes, I get that you want to get a Michael Pollan reference in there somehow, but come on... any writer worth her salt could do better than that.

Now to the meat of the thing - the essay, which profiles Shannon Hayes's book _Radical Homemakers_ attempts to argue that focusing on food has given women a new set of choices.

Hayes pointed out that the original "problem that had no name" was as much spiritual as economic: a malaise that overtook middle-class housewives trapped in a life of schlepping and shopping. A generation and many lawsuits later, some women found meaning and power through paid employment. Others merely found a new source of alienation. What to do? The wages of housewifery had not changed -- an increased risk of depression, a niggling purposelessness, economic dependence on your husband -- only now, bearing them was considered a "choice": if you felt stuck, it was your own fault. What's more, though today's soccer moms may argue, quite rightly, that caretaking is undervalued in a society that measures success by a paycheck, their role is made possible by the size of their husband's. In that way, they've been more of a pendulum swing than true game changers.

Femivorism is grounded in the very principles of self-sufficiency, autonomy and personal fulfillment that drove women into the work force in the first place. Given how conscious (not to say obsessive) everyone has become about the source of their food -- who these days can't wax poetic about compost? -- it also confers instant legitimacy. Rather than embodying the limits of one movement, femivores expand those of another: feeding their families clean, flavorful food; reducing their carbon footprints; producing sustainably instead of consuming rampantly. What could be more vital, more gratifying, more morally defensible?

You'd think I'd love this, wouldn't you ;-)? And in some ways I do, but I'm troubled by it too. It may well be that Peggy Orenstein's (the Times article's author) "friends with coops" are taking the first steps in a radical disconnect from their culture of affluence, but it is more likely that they are getting chickens so that their lucky kids won't have to eat factory farmed eggs. This, in and of itself is not totally trivial - every contribution to reducing the number of CAFOs in this country is a good one - but without larger context, it isn't an answer to the problem that women have rotten choices. It isn't a third way if it is only viable for affluent women. Nor is it a third way unless it represents the accomplishment of something meaningful - if it establishes the possibility that others could have the same set of choices.

Orenstein uses the word "precious" here - and I think it may be in her community. Contrast that, however, with the women that Hayes is writing about in her book (full disclosure, Hayes once contacted me about interviewing me for the book, but from one thing and another it never happened) - most of them with household incomes under 40,000 dollars, most of them engaged collectively (with extended family or partners) in a project where everyone, male and female, does a lot of domestic labor. Hayes' work is about rejecting consumer culture and the assumptions about the "housewifization" of economic activity that make invisible domestic labor, that translate into valuelessness. She focuses on women in _Radical Homemakers_ but finds that the most successful households are the ones that have the highest degree of egalitarianism - that is, what's radical about it is that everyone involved is working to expand the household informal economy and limit the control exercised by the formal economy. All of this may be true of the women Orenstein knows - but there's no indication of it in the article.

I have often argued that the version of American feminism that largely succeeded - the one in which freedom was framed in the terms money and the right to work 60 hours a week for someone who times your bathroom breaks - succeeded because it was so very profitable for industrial capitalism. Besides the enormous pool of new workers, it offered new consumers, and created a large market for households to purchase services once done for free by women.

My argument has never been that women alone should have continued to provide these services for free, but rather that it is no accident that parts of the feminist vision that would have been less profitable, like state subsidized childcare, or a truly egalitarian distribution of domestic work did not succeed. It was far more profitable to send everyone to work and privatize the making of meals, the cutting of lawns, the tending of children - and to shift the labor onto the poorest and often least white folks around. Since only the most affluent of us can afford to pay nannies and house cleaners fairly, the equity that affluent women and men achieve often is built on the backs of poorer people who take on the labor that they escaped.

Housewifization of labor renders the household economy invisible, and things that are invisible can be infinitely exploited. Reclaiming the household economy, then, is a radical act. Making the case for the economic and social value of household labor, and making it the valued territory of both men and women does make a major shift in the culture. Refusing to exploit other people - only using the labor of others when you can pay them fairly is a radical act. Reducing your dependence on the industrial economy, your vulnerability, and having a measure of resilience in the face of economic instability is radical. But it only works if what you are doing isn't precious - if you aren't just making sure your lucky kids have clean food and contact with clean ground, but that others do as well. It only works if what you are doing is not the recreation of a simulacrum of a household economy - rather like Marie Antoinette's farm, where she milked cows on a silver stool - but an actual household economy, where domestic work produces a meaningful part of your household economy. And that requires fundamental shifts in how you view your home, your family, your economic and social culture. Otherwise, it is just precious - and empty.

The chicken coop can be a symbol - it takes a service that has been done exploitatively and destructively, and says "I can do this myself, non-destructively and without exploitation." But it works as a symbol only when you recognize the larger context of the act - the industrial chicken is a legacy of our desire not to know what price is laid on others and on nature to meet our desires, it is a legacy of our sense that the household economy doesn't have value, it is a legacy of our sense that ordinary and everyday things aren't important - it is an enormously powerful symbol if you are aware of what underlies it, and live your life in accordance with what it symbolizes. But if all it is is a coop, a way out of the conversation that begins "Oh, do you work?" well, it just doesn't work.

Sharon

Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Collective Imagination

It's a big basketball weekend, of course, as we prepare for March Madness and the NCAA tournament. And John Beilein, the coach of the Michigan Wolverines, should be fired for one of the worst coaching decisions I've ever seen in the game against Ohio State on Friday.

With 2.2 seconds left and his team up by two, Ohio State was taking the ball out on the far end of the court. Everyone in the arena knows that Ohio State wants to get the ball to Evan Turner, their all-American guard. So what does Michigan do? They sit at the other end of the court in a 1-3-1 zone defense, allowing Turner to catch the ball at full speed and sprint across half court to take a 3 pointer - which he made, of course.

Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Collective Imagination

Remember the idiot cop who got out and started brandishing a gun around at a peaceful snowball fight a couple months ago? The internal affairs panel that looked at his case has apparently recommended a 10 day suspension for his actions. The police union plans to appeal the ruling if and when it comes down. Because cops never do anything wrong, of course, even when it happens on video.

Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Collective Imagination

If you liked Glenn Beck's amusing interpretations of the symbolism in artwork found at the Rockefeller Center in Manhattan, you're going to love his brilliant analysis of the lyrics found in rock music. He's discovered - gasp - that Bruce Springsteen is - shhhhhh - a liberal.

Beck and crew call Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A." "anti-American." On Beck's radio show, co-host Pat Gray stated: "How many of us go to the Fourth of July fireworks display, we see the fireworks blasting, exploding in the air, and we hear 'Born in the U.S.A.' by Bruce Springsteen, and we're like, 'Yeah, "Born in the U.S.A." ' And you get filled with patriotic pride, and then you find out that Bruce Springsteen's 'Born in the U.S.A.' is anti-American." After Beck read the lyrics of the song, Gray said, "That's what it's all about. That's what America's about, according to Bruce Springsteen." Beck responded: "See, here's the thing that I don't think people understand yet -- I think you do -- that it is time for us to wake up out of our dream state, wake up out of the propaganda."

Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Collective Imagination

We've already documented many of the ways the Republicans in Congress have shown rank hypocrisy over the health care reform bill. Their latest meme is that the Democrats are trying to "shove health care reform down the throats of the American people" by arm-twisting their own party and giving away favors to get people to vote for it. Ezra Klein looks at how the Republicans managed to pass the Medicare drug prescription benefit -- a totally unfunded mandate that ballooned the deficit, pushed through by a Republican president whose party was in control of both houses of Congress -- in 2003.

Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Collective Imagination

Over at the mainsplaining thread, you can read literally hundreds of hilarious, annoying, frustrating, heartbreaking stories of how women are constantly subjected to intrusive, incessant, insensitive, inane mainsplaining. Interspersed you will also find comments from d00dly d00ds whinging away about how awful it is that women are talking so MEAN about men, and their mainsplanations about how mainsplaining doesn't exist. Then some douche tried to coin the phrase femsplaining.

Femsplaining, as best I can tell, is a phenomenon that arises in the following manner:

Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Collective Imagination

From Rush Limbaugh, promising to leave the country if health care reform passes:

I'll just tell you this, if this passes and it's five years from now and all that stuff gets implemented -- I am leaving the country. I'll go to Costa Rica.

Psst. Rush. Costa Rica has universal, nationalized health care too.

Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Collective Imagination

...about the internecine warfare that breaks out from time to time around ScienceBlogs. At times we do appear to be a lot like professional wrestling.

Can you find Orac in there?

Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Collective Imagination

Mark Crislip has a nice piece up at Science-Based Medicine about the battle against the medical "de-lightenment". In his post, he looks at some data about what sorts of criteria anti-vaccinationists use in their propaganda. Not surprisingly, appeals to emotion and to pre-existing beliefs are much more common than actual facts. The question then becomes, "Why bother?" We on the side of science-based medical humanism tend to believe that education is the best solution to problems such as implausible health claims, but since these things function more as belief systems than as opinions informed by facts, what's the use? Do we seriously think we can de-program the victim of a medical cult?

Certainly there are those who are nearly beyond our reach, but only nearly. As I allude to in my Quack Miranda Warning, there are a number of categories of people we need to reach. There will probably always be those who are quite beyond redemption, but my optimistic side believes (without too much data, granted) that there is a large group of those who, while not experts, and relying on their own interpretations of their own observations, are humble enough to be swayed by facts. I view the population as being in a dynamic equilibrium of sorts, with perhaps a core of unalterables, but a vast pool of those who might be swayed by fact or emotion into one camp or another. Our job is to help them favor the right side.  And their is a right side. It is not a matter of two paths to the same destination because some things make and keep people healthy, and some do not.

Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Collective Imagination

Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Collective Imagination

Scandinavians generally speak pretty good English. But every now and then you come across reminders that they are still very far from being native speakers. Witness this pail of wall-paper glue that I bought earlier today.

Dear Swedish glue-maker, "hernia" means brock and is defined as "the protrusion of an organ or the fascia of an organ through the wall of the cavity that normally contains it". Wikipedia continues, "By far the most common herniae develop in the abdomen, when a weakness in the abdominal wall evolves into a localized hole, or 'defect', through which adipose tissue, or abdominal organs covered with peritoneum, may protrude. Another common hernia involves the spinal discs and causes sciatica [ischias]."

I carried the pail with great care to avoid rupturing myself.

Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Collective Imagination

Convention is over! Gotta sleep! Just in case you were wondering who I've been hanging about with, here are some faces with familiar names.

That's Rorschach, Wowbagger, some yob who barged into the picture, Bride of Shrek, and Kel.

Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Collective Imagination

tags: Tommy Davis, scientology, religion, cults, mind control, Thetan, silly, offbeat, beliefs, Xenu, L Ron Hubbard, television, BBC, CBS, streaming video

This is an interview with Tommy Davis, international Scientology spokesman, regarding the tragic death of Jett Travolta due to the medical neglect that their cult demands from its adherents, including Jett's parents. Davis is very scummy because he never gives a straight answer to any question asked. I also have embedded some other videos of Davis, where he reveals his less than angelic side.

Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Collective Imagination

The US and Israel are near the top of the list in having citizens who believe in evolution -- at or near the top, that is, if you turn the list upside down. In international surveys the US ranks last and Israel 4th from last among 27 countries regarding belief in the proposition that "human beings developed from earlier species of animals" being definitely or probably true (US, 45%, Israel, 54%). There's another similarity. The US has fringe fundamentalist crazies in positions of authority (like the Texas State Board of Education) who deny evolution (and this just in: took The Enlightenment and Thomas Jefferson out of their textbooks, possibly because he was a Deist; but they put Thomas Aquinas in to make up for it!). And so does Israel. In fact Israel does the US one better, because the official is the chief scientist in Israel's ministry of education, Gavriel Avital:

Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Collective Imagination

The 88th Four Stone Hearth blog carnival will run at Ad Hominin on Wednesday. Submit great recent stuff to Ciarán, your own or somebody else's. Anything anthro or archaeo goes!

The next open hosting slot is on 12 May. If you're a blogger with an interest in the anthro/archaeo field, drop me a line! No need to be a pro.

Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Collective Imagination

tags: Sea Organization, Sea Org, Tommy Davis, scientology, religion, cults, mind control, Thetan, offbeat, beliefs, Xenu, L Ron Hubbard, television, Life after Scientology, ABC1, streaming video

Raised as Scientologists, Christie King Collbran and her husband, Chris, were recruited as teenagers to work for the elite corps of staff members who keep the Church of Scientology running, known as the Sea Organization, or Sea Org.

Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Collective Imagination

Via a comment, a site which you will love, or which will drive you insane, Complete Small Dogs Guide. I found this story about a chihuahua carried away by a large bird, only to return to its owner.

Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Collective Imagination

May you always live in interesting times.

- Chinese proverb

Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Collective Imagination

Back in 2007 a paper, Amazon Forests Green-Up During 2005 Drought, was published in Science:

Coupled climate-carbon cycle models suggest that Amazon forests are vulnerable to both long- and short-term droughts, but satellite observations showed a large-scale photosynthetic green-up in intact evergreen forests of the Amazon in response to a short, intense drought in 2005. These findings suggest that Amazon forests, although threatened by human-caused deforestation and fire and possibly by more severe long-term droughts, may be more resilient to climate changes than ecosystem models assume.

This finding that the Amazon was more resilient than previously thought was reported in the London Times and the New York Times.

Now a new paper contradicting the previous paper, Amazon forests did not green-up during the 2005 drought has been published:

We find no evidence of large-scale greening of intact Amazon forests during the 2005 drought - approximately 11%-12% of these drought-stricken forests display greening, while, 28%-29% show browning or no-change, and for the rest, the data are not of sufficient quality to characterize any changes. These changes are also not unique - approximately similar changes are observed in non-drought years as well.

So how does this get reported? Here's Terence Corcoran in the National Post:

Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Collective Imagination

One of my colleagues from Scienceblogs.com.br contacted me a week or so ago to talk about creationists and global warming deniers, and I just checked and his story for Brazil's largest paper is online. Frankly, I think I gave him one of my juicier quotes:

"Dos negacionistas do aquecimento global, a maioria é motivada principalmente pelos negócios e pela política. Um número chocante de pessoas parece se opor à ideia porque não gostam de Al Gore. Muitos trabalham em empresas petrolíferas ou pertencem a indústrias que teriam de pagar pela mitigação do aquecimento", diz Rosenau. "Então, creio que é uma aliança entre conservadores religiosos e conservadores econômicos. Descobriram táticas que funcionam e compartilham-nas livremente."

"Of the deniers of global warming, most are motivated primarily by business and politics. A shocking number of people seem to oppose the idea because they do not like Al Gore. Many work in oil companies or belong to industries that would pay for mitigation warming, "says Rosenau. "So I think it is an alliance between religious conservatives and economic conservatives. Discovered tactics that work and share them freely."

Of the global warming deniers, most are motivated principally by business interest and politics. A shocking number of people seem to oppose global warming because they don't like Al Gore! And many either work for oil companies or are in industries that would be asked to pay for policies that would mitigate global warming, so they try to argue that there is no problem because that way they don't have to pay to solve it. … This is a social, cultural, economic, and ultimately political alliance between religious conservatives and economic conservatives. They've found some tactics that work, and share them freely.

Learn Portuguese and read it.

Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Collective Imagination

Það mælti mín móðir
að mér skildi kaupa
fley og fagrar árar
fara á brott með jeðum
standa upp í stafni
stýra dýrum X-vængi
halda svo til hafnar
höggva mann og annan

Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Collective Imagination

Recently, the Itawamba County School District, in Mississippi, canceled the high school prom because a lesbian student had asked if she could show up in drag and with her girlfriend. The school district officials stated that they hoped that a private group not bound by the same laws as a school district would hold an unofficial prom to replace the school prom. Apparently, this is actually going to happen.

But it is not going to be what they were thinking, exactly......

Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Collective Imagination

By Joseph Hewitt, who clearly understands the Sb atmosphere quite well.

Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Collective Imagination

A few days back, the phone rang and I stupidly answered it. I usually don't unless I know who it is, but lately I've been getting a lot of phone calls from health insurance adjusters and therapists and whatever-whatever, so I've taken to actually answering the damn thing sometimes.

Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Collective Imagination

Lots of interesting stuff this week, so I decided to put everything in a single post - makes it easier for everyone....

First, there was a very nice article in Columbia Journalism Review (which someone subscribed me to - I guess because my name appeared there the other week....someone is trying to remind me how it feels to read stuff written on actual paper!) about the beginning of a resurgence of science journalism in North Carolina. The article covers all the bases, focusing mostly on the new Monday science pages produced collaboratively by The Charlotte Observer and the Raleigh News & Observer, including the history of how the project came about (which I did not know until now). It also mentions ScienceOnline2010 and then delves some into the new online project ScienceInTheTriangle.org (the website of which is about to undergo some nice redesign and renewed activity soon):

Colin Schultz is writing an interesting blog about science journalism - check out his archives for older posts. But specifically, I want to draw your attention to the interviews he recently conducted with some of the interesting people in science journalism, especially with Carl Zimmer, David Dobbs and Ed Yong (only John Timmer is missing to have a complete 'Rebooting science journalism' panel from ScienceOnline2010).

Speaking of interviews, my Scio10 series of interviews with people interested in science communication from various angles is growing fast and strong (I already have two more lined up for next week).

I was also busy myself, with three provocative blog posts on the topic: Why it is important for media articles to link to scientific papers, Science blogs and public engagement with science and New science journalism ecosystem: new inter-species interactions, new niches, all three of which received quite a lot of response around the blogo/twitter-sphere (mostly, surprisingly, quite positive!). The last one, especially, appears to fit in this week's theme of The Future of Context.

NYTimes had a nice long feature about a mommyblogging conference, which is wonderful, but made me unhappy that a similar article never appeared in NYTimes for any of our four ScienceOnline conferences - don't tell me there is absolutely NO audience for that!?

I would like to go to The Online News Association meeting but for that to happen, you need to vote for and comment on my panel.

Chris Brodie's class on Explaining Science to the Public (introduced here) has posted several interesting blog posts analyzing three long newspaper articles by Carl Zimmer.

Dennis Meredith, author of the excellent Explaining Research book, has a new press release - Cultural Flaw Hampers Scientists in Public Battles, Says New Book. He was also a guest of Ernie Hood (current chair of SCONC) on his weekly science radio show Radio In Vivo and wrote a new blog post - Communicating Research in 3-D Virtual Worlds.

Also listen to the interview with Andrew Revkin - The Death of Science Writing, and the Future of Catastrophe.

Finally, Chris Perrien took that board (remember?) everyone signed at the end of ScienceOnline2010 and framed it. Yesterday he presented it to us during lunch at RTP and everyone pulled out the iPhones and took pictures - here is one (you can see more on my Facebook profile....):

Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Collective Imagination

As the deadline for the 2010 Pi Day Pie Bake-Off approaches, the entries are stacking up. In addition to the pies we've already posted here on Page 3.14, three of our own ScienceBloggers have thrown their hats in the ring. It's a good thing we don't actually have the pies here at ScienceBlogs headquarters to judge, because we'd be running out of counter space for them.

Wait a second, what are we saying? We can definitely find space for them if you want to send them to us...

In this next batch we have a One-Hundred-Digit berry pie from Claudette, a Banana Cream pie from Brendan Jinnohara, and an Ordered Pear pie from Deena Prichep. So much fruit pie in one post! Let's have a look, shall we?

Claudette's amazing One-Hundred-Digit pie is made with cherries and four different kinds of berries: raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, and strawberries. The filling and dough are both pretty standard, but Claudette's pie becomes a standout with the addition at the end of one hundred digits of pi cut out of pie crust! This might have to become part of next year's bake-off campaign.

Brendan Jinnohara's Banana Cream pie entry is a serious contender in the Most Photogenic prize category. It's so pretty we can't really imagine eating it. Though, we would still like to. He calls his crust a "No Fear Pie Crust," which sounds encouraging, like we could actually make it. The banana filling contains cinnamon...okay, Brendan, we're intrigued.

Mostly Foodstuffs blogger Deena Prichep's Ordered Pear pie features a fractal pattern of pears atop a custardy frangipane filling. Deepa will be the first to point out this might actually be more of a tart than a pie, but as she says, "Pi Day is not about divisions -- its about bringing us together around a love of math. And pie." Well said.

Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Collective Imagination

Do you have an iPhone? I have an iPod Touch. Do you use vectors? Do you think RPN calculators are the bomb? Here is a RPN calculator for the iPhone that supports vector notation. VCalc by Silicon Prairie Ventures Inc. Oh - it is free. Here is a screen shot.

I played with it some, the only thing that would be cool would be a landscape mode.

Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Collective Imagination

There are only a couple things I would change.

1) Add Arnie. And Oracs pup. That would have been funny :D (But Orac is hysterical as is)

2) Add me saying "hehehehehe" in my first panel. Plus, one additional panel with me jumping up and down, clapping my hands saying "YAAAY!" over Nisbets unconscious body Nisbets Theory of Framing.

**giddy clapping** YAAAY!!

I might have to change my 'Douchbaggery!' category to 'EXTREME RANDOM VIOLENCE!"

Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Collective Imagination

This comment from Chris is interesting:

I would speculate that the the massive productivity gains were due to a massive resorting of American society along cognitive lines; from 1940 to 1970 a large number of high ability people who were previously locked into agriculture and industry were able to sort themselves into more innovative positions. This would lead to a massive burst of innovation, which led to increases in productivity, as previously unlocked talent was put to use.

From 1970 to 1990 this resorting was mostly winding down and productivity in the economy was heavily constrained by the population due to people still being necessary for most tasks and most of the potential innovation overhang being used up from 1940 to 1970.

Although computers were increasingly able to challenge people on some tasks during the 1970's, their effect was small (although increasingly noticeable in how long it took employment to rebound after recessions from 1980 on). From 1995 on productivity gains began to accelerate due to computers hitting a tipping point and their increasing ability to replace or augment people in areas across the economy.

Wages remain stagnant post-2000, because a growing number of people are being displaced at the lower levels of economic activity and competing for jobs that are ultimately constrained by the population, services (this would have happened earlier, but was masked by the initial burst of innovation following the cost of information falling to zero). Most of those displaced do not have the cognitive ability to perform economically useful innovation due to the sorting during the 1940-70 period and are unable to take advantage of the jobs on the high end of the income scale. An income gap forms and begins to accelerate.

There's a huge literature on this topic, so don't take the speculation here as the last word, but food for thought.

In Farewell to Alms Greg Clark asserts that the main beneficiaries of the regime of perpetual economic growth since 1800 have been the unskilled workers, who closed the wage gap with skilled workers up until 1970. At that point, the wage gap between the skilled and unskilled started to open up again. Also remember that though it is conventional wisdom to bemoan the increase in inequality in the modern capitalist economies, every civilized society before 1800 was far less egalitarian in the distribution of wealth and power than modern economies (in contrast to "savages," who had egalitarianism because of the lack of a very wealthy class; everyone was poor more or less).

Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Collective Imagination

One of the fun surprises of the Global Atheist Convention is that, after a long day of shrill talks from rabidly militant atheists (…and a few accommodationists, shock horror), the evening sessions are all about the humor. So last night we got The Chasers, and I also got to meet Nonstampcollector, who showed this video to the group.

In case you're wondering what he looks like, it's kind of amazing: Nonstampcollector has a face that is a perfect circle, two tiny eyes, and only two expressions. So don't knock the crude animation style, that's simply an accurate rendition of his people.

Oh, and after the official events, I stayed up way too late with Bride of Shrek, Rorschach, Kel, Wowbagger, Chris Nedin, and a rotating cast of other convention attendees. I'm getting way too old for this.

Pictures of these mysterious rascals will follow. Some of the photographers in the group looked like they'd had far too much Australian ambrosia last night, and although they promised to send me pictures, they haven't come through just yet.

Oh, also: we're sharing the convention space with a meeting of body-builders. It is a little surreal to stroll by all the protein supplements and people with giant necks and bulky bodies to join my fellow nerds. I'm tempted to taunt them with math problems, but I'd rather not get wedgied and swirlied.

Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Collective Imagination

FORMATION of a memory is widely believed to leave a 'trace' in the brain - a fleeting pattern of electrical activity which strengthens the connections within a widely distributed network of neurons, and which re-emerges when the memory is recalled. The concept of the memory trace was first proposed nearly a century ago, but the nature of the trace, its precise location in the brain and the underlying neural mechanisms all remain elusive. A new study by researchers from University College London now shows that functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) can be used to decode individual memory traces and to predict which of three recently encoded memories is being recalled.

The study, led by Eleanor Maguire of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, builds on earlier work which demonstrates that fMRI can be used to predict simple mental states from brain activity. Last year, Maguire and her colleagues showed that it is possible to predict an individual's position in a virtual reality environment from patterns of activity in the hippocampus, and researchers from Vanderbilt University showed that activity in the visual cortex could be decoded to predict which of several simple images was being retained in working memory. Even more remarkably, Japanese researchers have reconstructed visual images from brain activity, including novel ones that their participants had never seen before.

Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Collective Imagination

In Hard Times, Lured Into Trade School and Debt:

At institutions that train students for careers in areas like health care, computers and food service, enrollments are soaring as people anxious about weak job prospects borrow aggressively to pay tuition exceeding $30,000 a year.

...

The Apollo Group -- which owns the for-profit University of Phoenix -- derived 86 percent of its revenue from federal student aid last fiscal year, according to BMO. Two years earlier, it was 69 percent.

For-profit schools have proved adept at capturing Pell grants, which are a centerpiece of the Obama administration's efforts to make higher education more affordable. The administration increased financing for Pell grants by $17 billion for 2009 and 2010 as part of its $787 billion stimulus package.

Two years ago, students at for-profit trade schools received $3.2 billion in Pell grants, according to the Department of Education, less than went to students at two-year public institutions. By the 2011-12 school year, the administration now estimates, students at for-profit schools should receive more than $10 billion in Pell grants, more than their public counterparts. (Those anticipated increases may shrink, depending on the outcome of wrangling in Congress over health care and student lending.)

The market works; the for-profit schools are good at what they do, increase their student enrollments. Arguably they're better than many conventional institutions of higher education because they utilize modern mass marketing techniques which hook into cognitive biases. If you're a halfway intelligent student and you see an advertisement for an institution of higher education on a subway, you know to take that as a signal that that institution is definitely one to avoid (this could be turned into a Chris Rock joke). Those who lack the requisite class savvy and are less intelligent don't take the same lesson, and in fact are the ones who may make an impulsive decision to matriculate based on an advertisement.

But problem here is the fact that these institutions receive massive public subsidies. Grants are a direct subsidy, but subsidized student loans also come with a cost, students can't discharge them in bankruptcy (the lower interest rates naturally have to have trade offs or the loans would not be forthcoming to 18 year olds). The ultimate aim of providing public funds toward higher education are the presumed investments that this makes in human capital, which earns returns in greater tax receipts through economic growth driven by innovation and increased labor productivity. The theoretical spillover effects are presumably large. But in this case the main beneficiaries are likely the intermediaries, the for-profit institutions which provide trivial marginal utility to many students while charging for nearly worthless credentials. The downside risk of failure to repay the loans are taken up by the students (there is no way that the largest Pell Grants can cover the tuitions which are the norm at these institutions).

The bigger issue which is masked by the fixation on subsidizing higher education are the failings in primary and secondary education. A disproportionate segment of the students who matriculate at for-profit institutions seem to academically weak, and a bit low on the totem pole in the ability to plan far into the future (high real time preference*). The profit motive ideally drives firms toward excellence and efficiency, but in this case it seems quite likely that the excellence and efficiency is not educating students but coupling gullible individuals with massive debt obligations which they have no liability obligations toward. In other words, maximizing individual firm utility at the expense of the aggregate. The costs are distributed broadly, the gains more locally.

Note: A concurrent issue is that of graduate educational debt (or, earnings f orgone in the case of those who are in programs where debt is not necessary). This highlights that the problem in decision making isn't just low individual intelligence, but he values and ideals which our society holds up. In particular, excessive optimism as to where any given person will lay on a distribution of outcomes. Most law school graduates will not work in "Big Law," and most people who enter Ph.D. programs will not gain a tenured position in academia.

* Someone willing to take up debt and forgo labor force participation obviously is willing to have a general notion of planning for the future. But it seems that many of those who are enticed by advertisements on television for "technical institutes" and the like are more attracted by the notion of large later paychecks in the future, and have only a poor grasp of what the probability distribution of real outcomes is going to be.

Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Collective Imagination

I predict this cartoon will be appearing all over the place here today.

I quite like Bob O'Hara's equivalent portrait of Nature Network, too.

Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Collective Imagination

It's a very Schlumpy Saturday here. Time for links. Sciencey stuff:

We're losing the rhetorical battle of global warming
Climate change makes birds shrink in North America
Your Chilean Sea Bass Dinner Deprives Killer Whales
Giant meat-eating plants prefer to eat tree shrew poo
Libel laws silenced me, says Francisco Lacerda, critic of lie detector system

Other:

Banning Abortion: The First Step Toward Theocracy
God Helps with Personal Decisions, Most Americans Say
An Epidemic of Laziness?
Jonathan Cohn Misaprehends the Sources of Opposition to Health Care Reform
The Empire Continues to Strike Back: Team Obama Propaganda Campaign Reaches Fever Pitch
Median Net Worth of Single Black Women in Prime Working Years: $5
Fawning Political Interviews Have Ruined American Politics
Indefensible Men

Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Collective Imagination

Longtime readers of this blog may remember last year's orgy of pies on the run-up to Pi Day (March 14th, or 3-14). This March at Casa Free-Ride, there's been less pie making, in large part due to the fact that I'm no longer on sabbatical (either from my job or from coaching soccer).

But the bake-off is on again, so I figured that I needed to feed you all one really good pie (or pie recipe, anyway).

This pie melds three flavors that play very well together: rich chocolate, tart cherries, and almonds. As a bonus, it puts those flavors together in a pie that is rich but not heavy, one that doesn't lean on eggs, or cream cheese, or butter, or milk.

I make this pie with a food processor, but if you don't have one, you can manage with a blender, a heavy rolling pin, and a knife and cutting board.

Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Collective Imagination

tags: PalmenGarten, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, PalmenGarten Blüte, flowers, nature, environment, image of the day

Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Collective Imagination

Yet another meta thingie for your meta amusement.

Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Collective Imagination

I love the work that Larry Witmer and his students do at Ohio University. Not only is it cutting-edge anatomical research that helps us better understand prehistoric organisms, but the Witmer lab is constantly sharing parts of their work via the web. They even have their own YouTube feed with lots of 3D renderings of fossil animals, including one of my favorite prehistoric mammals, Archaeotherium. The video below presents a view of its skull and brain cast, as well as a quick look at its jaws in action:

Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Collective Imagination

I'm not sure how good this is, but if you are a Star Wars Geek you are obligated to watch it and complain about it.

Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Collective Imagination

Accoring to Aubrea Wagner, the 17 year old winner of the Christian World View essay contest in which students were asked to write an essay on the following theme:

Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Collective Imagination

Either we set our oven temperature too high or the competition is heating up here in the 2010 Pi Day Pie Bake-Off.

Yesterday we posted Annie Wang's Archi-meaty pie, Leigh's Rabbiteye Blueberry Pie, and Stephanie's "Grown-Up" S'mores Pie with Guinness, and ScienceBloggers James Hrynyshyn and Pamela Ronald posted their own Strawbarb and Swiss chard-Gruyere pies, respectively.

Today we bring you three more: Mareena Wright's Cauchy's Coconut Cream Condensation Test Pie, Zinjanthropus's USO and Banana Pie with Anthropoid Bread Crust, and Nathan Lau's Chocolate Haupia Pie. We're starting to wish Pi Day came around more than once a year.

Mareena Wright, an avid reader of Casaubon's Book, made a coconut cream pie inspired by the Cauchy condensation test. Growing up, coconut cream pies were the standard unit of currency for bet-placing in my house, so all I have to say is, YUM.

Next up is Zinjanthropus's USO and Banana Pie with Anthropoid Bread Crust. Zinjanthropus studies (and blogs about) human and primate evolution, so it is fitting that this pie takes its inspiration from the foraging habits of early hominids. Zinjanthropus's post is seriously worth a read, but basically, the pie combines sweet potato and banana in an "anthropoid bread" crust (anthropoid bread is, obviously, a relative of monkey bread). Speaking as an extant primate, I think those foragers were onto something.

And last we have Nathan Lau's Chocolate Haupia pie. Haupia is a Hawaiian coconut-based dessert, somewhat like pudding. The haupia in this pie is combined with chocolate, which seems like a pretty reasonable way to make something even more delicious than it already sounds. It all gets poured into a macadamia-nut crust, as Nathan helpfully demonstrates with photos on his blog House of Annie.

Don't mind if we do...

Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Collective Imagination

North Carolina Sea Grant fisheries specialist Scott Baker talks about "RECTEXT" -- a system that lets tournament anglers report catch data via cell phone text messaging.

Fisheries managers often meet hurdles in collecting recreational fishing data, but RECTEXT has the potential to provide valuable information for gamefish population research. Learn more at www.rectext.org.

Baker demonstrated RECTEXT at the ScienceOnline2010 conference on Jan. 15, 2010. Filmed at Sigma Xi in Research Triangle Park, NC. Flipcam donated by a ScienceOnline sponsor.

Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Collective Imagination

Plastic in the oceans is probably a problem, but it is probably not the problem you think it is.

Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Collective Imagination

The most basic explanation of Pi is that it is the ratio of the circumference to the diameter for a circle. That seems simple enough, but it turns out that Pi is an irrational number - so you can't just write it down. Oh, I know that you are an uber-geek and you could recite the first 80 digits of Pi. But the question is - how many digits are enough?

In this post, I am going to assume that we don't know the true value of Pi (which is essentially true). I can then use propagation of error techniques to see how dependent different calculations are on the value of Pi.

Super Brief Intro to Uncertainty

I still can't believe I haven't put a post together on the basics of measurement and uncertainty. Add that to the todo list. The most important idea in measurements is that they are not exact values. Let me start with my favorite example. Suppose I have a table that I want to know the area of. To do this, I measure the length and the width. The value I come up with for the length is 133.2 cm. But what does this mean? Is this the exact length of the table? No. Two problems.

• The table doesn't have an exact length. What does the length mean for a table? Is it a perfect rectangle? No. Is it even straight on the edges - probably not.
• Even if it were a perfect table, would my measurement be perfect? No.

Maybe I measured this length a whole bunch of times and at different locations. This would give me an estimate of how the measurements are spread out. If I do the same for the width, I might get something like:

This means that the length of the table is almost certainly between 133.0 cm and 133.4 cm. If a similar thing can be said about the width, then this diagram could represent the area.

The point I would like to make - since the width and the length have uncertainty, the calculated area would have uncertainty. How do you determine this calculated uncertainty? I have three ways:

• Use the extreme values of length and width to calculate the extreme values of the area (in this case the smallest area uses the smallest length and width). This is the method I use for my algebra-based physics labs.
• Assume the error is small, linear, and normally distributed. In this case, you can use the partial derivatives of the functions to determine the relationship of the uncertainty for the measured stuff on the calculated stuff. Here is wikipedia's page on this, but I am not really going to go into the details.
• Assume that if you measure the stuff a whole bunch of times, the data would be normally distributed. Write a program that generates normal data and use that to calculate tons of times the calculated value. Look at the spread of all these calculations to determine the uncertainty. I am not going to do this right now.

Back to Pi

Archimedes used 96 sided polygons to estimate the value of Pi. He showed that Pi was greater than 3 and 10/71 and less than 3 and 1/7^th. This gives a decimal value from 3.14084507 to 3.142857143 (with no rounding). I could write this as an average and an uncertainty of about:

That is not too bad of a value. But what about pi = 3? Is that bad? First - according to Snopes, no state has ever proposed a law that would officially change Pi to 3. It is still a fun story. Anyway, in this case I could perhaps say:

I chose the uncertainty in this fictional Pi to be +/- 0.2 so that the range would cover the true value of Pi. Really, though you could in general write Pi as:

Where Delta pi is the uncertainty in pi.

Some uses of Pi

So what effect does the uncertainty in Pi have on different uses of Pi? Let me start with something practical - the speedometer in your car. Basically, your speedometer needs Pi to make the conversion between angular velocity and linear velocity using:

I know, there is no pi in that equation. But, how do you know the angular velocity (omega)? If this is measured in revolutions per second (or minute) then you have to convert units. Let me write this as:

Now, I will assume that omega, r, and pi all have uncertainty. Then the uncertainty in the velocity would be (using the max-min method from above for simplicity):

And I would do a similar thing for the minimum value. I could average the difference between average and the max and the average and the min. (I will put these calculations in a spreadsheet for you).

What about the volume of a sphere? This same thing is used for calculating things such as - the volume of the sun or the volume of a spherical cow. Here is the volume of a sphere:

These two uses of Pi seem boring - but really this is the basis for many applications of pi. There are tons of others, but they are maybe more abstract (but just as important). Now, on the to the spreadsheet. I will put in some values for the stuff, but you can change them if you like.

Note - I don't know how to change the number of digits presented in google docs. Also, I seem to have hit a creative wall with uses of pi. How about you list your favorite use of Pi in the comments?

Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Collective Imagination

Vaccines that contain a mercury-based preservative called thimerosal cannot cause autism on their own, a special U.S. court ruled on Friday, dealing one more blow to parents seeking to blame vaccines for their children's illness.

story

Also check out the featured ScienceBlog of the week: Collective Imagination