I am … unhindered by talent

Preparing to fly, originally uploaded by Unhindered by Talent.

I’m off to Owatanna today with a couple of students to attend a college fair hosted by Federated Insurance. We’ve never been to their event before, but it looks like it should be fun. I probably won’t be posting for a few days as a result, though. Have fun without me!

Oh, and tomorrow (Friday, 13 April) is the annual Pride Week Drag Show. This is a total hoot if you’ve never been, and this year there’s the added bonus that Sub-Evil and I have been asked to do a command performance of his excellent “Taco man”! I had seriously hoped to do my part in a dress (WeatherGirl’s wedding dress in fact), but sadly none of them zip up on me, and with this Federated thing there’s really not time to explore lots of options. Sigh. So I think we’re just going to glam up some and go with that. The whole beard thing makes the androgynous Ziggy Stardust deal a bit tough, though.

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Remembering past lives, originally uploaded by Unhindered by Talent.

We lost both our cats last year (here and here), and since we’re going to be in the UK on sabbatical for a year starting this summer we didn’t want to get any new ones right away. We have been fostering cats for the local Humane Society, though, and our latest guest is this sweet demon named Paco.

Paco is an incredibly friendly cat who loves to be around people, but she’s also very clever and an amazing athlete, which means she’s into and on (top of) everything.

She also sits at the windows watching the spring birds, and you can tell that she remembers what to do if we’d only let her out :-). Those eyes and that look - there’s panther way back in there somewhere…

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A student in my “Ethical and social implications of technology” course pointed us to Citizendium, an upstart Wikipedia alternative/replacement. Their goal is to solve some of the vandalism, spam, and reliability issues Wikipedia has (mildly) suffered from by moving to a model somewhere between Wikipedia’s uber-egalitarian model and the somber-expert-author model of Encyclopedia Britannica.

There are a lot of issues here (we had a very nice discussion in class on the value, or lack thereof, of having a “real name” attached to an article), but it seems to me that the central issue for Citizendium’s growth and survival is whether they can attract good writers and editors.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Feathers, braids, and beads, originally uploaded by Unhindered by Talent.

On of my favorite shots from the powwow (or here) a few weeks ago. I’m still moving very slowly through those (and other photos), but now and then I find time to handle a few.

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In a recent-ish column John Naughton argues that “Google wants world domination”, and discusses how some of their recent business actions can be seen as an attempt to build and control a large, and perhaps controlling, share of tomorrow’s internet infrastructure.

Is it time to be nervous? Are there possible anti-trust issues at stake? Or is this simply bright, well-funded people making smart business decisions?

Read the rest of this entry »

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For the bored among you, I’ve posted the accounting or the Mutant Variety Show as a Google Doc.

I’m writing the checks to the two organizations as we speak, and we’ve raised (to date) a total of $748, or $374 for each organization (the Lance Armstrong Foundation (LAF) and the Cancer Kids Fund of the Children’s Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota).

People can continue to donate in our name to LAF via their Mutant Variety Show web site, and I’m sure that Cancer Kids wouldn’t argue if you sent them a check.

Thanks a zillion to all our wonderful performers and our incredibly generous audience!

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PeeZed has an excellent rant about how shallow the bulk of our traditional news sources our, and how blaming scientists for being “bad communicators” is really the wrong end of the stick. Huge numbers of scientists are professional communicators, and convey complex ideas to groups with varying backgrounds and interests several times a week. Sure, there are examples of all the sad stereotypes just as there are in any large, complex group, but I’m surrounded by people who are excellent communicators, and there are many thousands more like them waiting to help people understand important, complex issues.

But we get micro-second sound bites on FOX “news”.

And “American Idol”.

Because someone, somewhere, thinks that’s what we want (or has a vested interest in helping us believe that’s what we want).

The comment section has lots of discussion about how to make progress on this deeply thorny issue. One of the best ideas is from Olive:

I think there’s should be a holiday where everyone walks around wearing a sign that says something like:

“Hi! I am A BIOLOGY PHD.
Ask me about EVOLUTION.”

Everyone could participate.

“Hi! I am A FIVE-YEAR-OLD.
Ask me about DINOSAURS.”

“Hi! I am A CHEF.
Ask me about NON-STICK PANS.”

“Hi! I am CARTOONIST.
Ask me about INTELLIGENT DESIGN.”

And everyone would have to have conversations with anyone who asked them about their topic. I think it would be good for community, too. The nation could spend the day in coffee shops and bars.

I may have to make a few different signs, and change as the day goes on. What to wear, what to wear…

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Making pancakes for the family and catching up on Brainwashed podcasts, I caught a deeply fun tune. The opening track on Podcast 102 (and someone’s apparently posting them to archive.org now) is “Party Crashers Unite” by Bullets 4 Brunch and it’s a blast. Sonically it reminds me a lot of the excellent Elvis Vs. JXL remix of “A little less conversation”, but this time the reference point is 60’s Motown soul. The material is also much more heavily deconstructed, to the point that there really is no original song structure left, only colors and ideas. It’s a danceable monster, though, and way too much fun to ignore, even if you’re trying to get brunch going.

It’s apparently from a new Tigerbeat6 12″ entitled The final crackdown. No idea what the rest of it sounds like, but I’m tempted to order a copy for that song alone :-).

Oh, and the rest of the podcast was pretty cool, too. Check it out.

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I’ve been wading through tons of backed up e-mail and listening to the fine Rage Against The Machine album which Sub-Evil Boy and I bought last week. The album ended, and the next thing in iTunes happened to be a Science on Guardian podcast that I hadn’t gotten around to. They open with a clip from an earlier podcast (which I missed at the time) with a wonderful rant from Lewis Wolpert about philosophy of science. Their interviewer starts by suggesting that scientific methodology is very unclear, arguing that there’s a “big debate in … the philosophy of science” and suggests that they should start by examining those issues. Wolpert immediately smacks that idea down:

Certainly not. No. Please keep away from the philosophy of science. No, no sensible scientist that I know pays the slightest attention to it. … [Science is] quite a complicated process about which the philosophy of science teaches us nothing.

My experience is the vast majority of scientists really don’t pay any attention to philosophy of science largely, I suspect, because they don’t perceive that such philosophy provides any practical advantage. Scientists are, among many other things, highly prone to pragmatism (for better and worse), and if a particular field or idea doesn’t appear to provide clear value, then it tends to be ignored or discarded.

After the clip they discuss Wolpert’s comments with philsopher AC Grayling, where he argues for the importance of philosophy in the sciences. Grayling argues (and I agree) that people like Bacon and Popper have had a significant effect; I found Popper very helpful in clarifying the issues of truth and falsifiability, for example. I think, however, one could argue that those are in fact the exceptions that prove the rule. Scientists buy into what people like Bacon and Popper say (to the degree that they do), because Bacon and Popper say things that makes sense to them and seem consistent with their experience as scientists. Sadly most other writing on the subject comes from people that have at best a dim understanding of what it is to do science, and thus their ideas acquire little traction. Consequently the vast majority of scientists in the field (myself included) are largely unaware of and unaffected by whatever noise and fury is currently going on among the philosophers of science.

While I may not agree with Grayling on this issue of philosphy of science, his subsequent comments on ID and the absurd resistance to the evidence regarding global climate change are excellent and highly recommended.

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OK, now I’m officially exhausted. The Mutant Variety Show is done, and all the wonderful folks that came were amazingly generous! I just finished counting out the donation jars, and we raised nearly $450 tonight which, along with the (currently) $253 donated on-line at our Lance Armstrong Foundation site, makes a total just a hair short of $700!

You all rock!!!

It was a whole lot of fun. Our many guest performers were really wonderful, and the audience was splendid, singing along, dancing, and generous with their support and applause. We had a bit over a 100 folks in attendance, mostly UMM students, along with staff, faculty, and members of the Morris community. We should have audio and video recordings of the event soon, so those of you who missed it may have an opportunity to check it out later. Stay tuned!

Sub-Evil Boy did a great job, and I was totally proud of him. Well done sir! His great “Taco Man” was a well deserved hit. (There are rumors of another performance of “Taco Man” at this year’s Pride Week Drag Show…)

A final reminder that you can still donate on-line at our LAF site. Thanks a ton to everyone!

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