Due to the Federal Government shutdown, NOAA.gov and most associated web sites are unavailable. However, because the information this site provides is necessary to protect life and property, it will be updated and maintained during the Federal Government shutdown.

I’m genuinely grateful that they’re continuing to provide weather updates. It’s certainly damned unlikely that severe weather will be kind enough to take a break while the loonies are holding the proper functioning of the government hostage. This is a great example of how important government function and services can be, and the value our tax dollars generate.

I hope the voters will hold the Republican nut jobs responsible for all the damage this shutdown is causing.

Last week I saw “42” at the movie theatre here in Morris. It’s a powerful portrayal of Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey’s breaking of the color barrier in Major League Baseball, an important early step in a historical arc that runs within living memory from the service of blacks in WWII through school desegregation, the Civil Rights Act, and the election of Barack Obama as President.

The arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice. — Martin Luther King

Growing up in Texas in the 60s & 70s, gays were almost completely invisible, even more invisible than than the black maids that came across from the other side of town in the morning, and disappeared back in the evening. Our son grew up in the 90s and 00s here in Minnesota with numerous openly gay friends; another arc is playing out across the social and political landscape. And like the arc Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson helped bend towards justice, this new arc will play out over time. Just as women eventually won the right to vote, and a black man was elected President, we will eventually decide that the secular, legal idea of marriage is more about love and commitment than it is about gender.

So the question is, what role do you want to play when that movie is made? When our children and grand-children look back at this moment, will they see you on the right side of that arc, or as a supporter of the frightened, shrill, bitter voices that are the contemporary version of those hurling insults at Robinson?

You are our elected leader, and the history books will record your name next to that vote, not mine. You will certainly have to explain your vote in the months to come, but you also have to explain it in the decades hence. As the arc continues to bend, a vote for humanity and inclusion is going to be a lot easier to explain, and probably a lot easier to live with.

I most earnestly urge you to vote in favor of expanding the legal right to marriage, and wish you the best in your deliberations.

Sincerely,

Nic McPhee

I think this is actually remarkably informative (and depressing). It’s easy to assume that “most people are sensible” because the people around you are (to some degree) sensible, and I know I often fall into that trap. Data like this is closer to some version of “objective” because to a significant degree Google’s just reflecting what’s “out there” without any awareness of an agenda. My results were slightly different than these, but definitely similar in spirit. The #4 hit for “women should” was “be silent”. Luckily I’m surrounded by feisty women who are full participants the world around them, but what does a result like this tell a young woman trying navigate the complex terrain of identity and place?

And to cut off those who will argue that somehow these data are “meaningless”, it’s exactly this kind of data about what people are searching for that people are using to track flu outbreaks and spending lots of money to try to influence for marketing purposes. Sure, this doesn’t tell us anything about who searched for the silence of women or why they were searching for it. But it tells us that people are searching for that phrase and that it comes up with some frequency on-line, i.e., the silence of women is in some meaningful way an important part of our collective conversation. And in case you’re optimistically inclined to think that this reflects some positive conversation on the subject, if you actually do the search, the top results are almost entirely tied up in Bible quotes saying that indeed the ladies should remain mum.

Sigh.

I think I should go listen to WeatherGrrrl being clever for a while to cleanse my mental palate.

Looking back, it can be hard to imagine why people in the past just didn’t get it. Why they thought women shouldn’t be allowed to vote, and why blacks and whites couldn’t use the same restroom, or the same school.

The people that voted to supported these old ideas were not all Bad People going out of their way to work against the rights of others. I know some where my relatives, and I’ll bet that some were yours. Certainly, there were plenty of small-minded, mean-spirited people leading the charge, but they depended crucially on the passive support of numerous well-meaning folk who mostly just didn’t want to rock the boat or weren’t very comfortable with change.

Tomorrow in Minnesota we get a chance to vote on whether our state constitution should be amended in an attempt to block all future efforts to allow gays the human & civil rights of marriage, & the legal protections it affords. As you consider this amendment, it might help to ask yourself: How do I wish to be remembered? As someone who quietly stood with those who would limit the freedoms of those different from themselves, or with those who believe in liberty and justice for all?

And let us be clear: This is a human rights issue.

Sue & I have been married for over 20 years and she has been a full, equal, & wonderful partner in building our shared life. Her creativity and passion flows through our child, our home, and the experiences we’ve shared. I would hope that our community would recognize this and support her associated rights, which include critical things such as health coverage, our pension, and her right to speak for me regarding medical treatment. If, however, someone didn’t recognize her rights, she would have the legal backing of the state of Minnesota, which ensures the human and civil rights of a spouse in numerous ways.

Why should any committed couple be denied these same rights, regardless of their genders?

Which brings us back to the question: How do we wish to be remembered? Do we want to be remembered as supporting a last, desparete gasp of a group attempting to deny yet another group a basic human and civil right? Or do we want to be on the right side of history tomorrow, knowing, win or lose, that we voted to treat our fellow travellers humanely, with courage & justice?

So I urge you to Vote No. It’s a vote your grandchildren can be proud of.

I would also strenuously encourage you, for many of the same underlying reasons, to vote no on the proposed Voter ID amendment. I recommend that you check out Guante’s excellent video on the Voter ID amendment if you wish to learn more:

You might also want to check out MPR’s nice video on the huge amount of vagueness and uncertainty there is in the proposed Voter ID amendment:

So go vote tomorrow. It matters. I know that the weird math of the electoral college can make it seem like voting for president doesn’t matter unless you live in Ohio or Pennsylvania or Florida. And it can seem like incumbents have a lock on everything. But on either of these amendments, it could literally come down to a few votes. So don’t say your voice doesn’t matter. Don’t say you don’t have time. Don’t say no one cares. Instead be a voice, however small, for a more humane world.

Vote No on both proposed amendments.

In just over a week the voting populous in the state of Minnesota will have the opportunity to vote on two vicious and mean-spirited amendments to the state constitution. One purports to “defend” marriage by amending the state constitution to preemptively disallow legalization of gay marriage, something that isn’t actually legal in Minnesota at the moment. The other is a remarkably restrictive “voter ID” amendment that purports to “solve” a fraud problem in a state with some of the cleanest election record in the U.S., while in fact disenfranchising numerous of the elderly, low-income citizens, young people, the disabled, and citizens of color. (See The League of Women Voters for details.)

If these issues concern you, if gays kind of creep you out or you’re worried about voter fraud, that’s fine – we can agree to disagree. But do you really believe your concerns warrant amending the state constitution? The people driving both these proposals are the philosophical descendants of those who fought (and, sadly, still fight) to limit the rights of those who aren’t “like us”. Is that how you wish to be remembered?

How, in fact, do we wish to be remembered?

The top image is from Wikipedia and the bottom is from the Library of Congress. The middle photo is mine, taken here in Morris, Minnesota.

You’re obviously welcome to distribute this freely in whatever fashion seems appropriate.

In short, we’re being played, peeps. A small number of very wealthy folks have rigged the system in their favor and trashed the economy in the process. The amazing thing is how thoroughly they’ve convinced the middle class to support them as they’ve smashed up the family china. They have only a few votes, and their power rests ultimately in their ability to buy and bully ours.

Sadly, a culture that values sound bites more than data and rational discussion is ripe for this kind of abuse. It’s probably no accident that these people are so intent of gutting our schools, as it just serves their short term goals. Ultimately, though, they need a solid middle class to buy their toys, so this can’t be a good long-term strategy for anyone.

Always so nice to hear sense spoken in Congress. Repubs force a vote to break a filibuster on a nominee that then passes 99-0?!? This isn’t principle or debate, it’s just nonsense, and it really needs to stop.

To whit: A few days ago, I was on campus just as the football team (who come to campus early) was leaving after breakfast. While most of the team headed towards the halls, a group of four were walking abreast towards us, occupying almost all of the one lane road.

And one was sporting a shirt sharing the assurrance

Don’t worry – I’ll pull out

Charmed.

I’m sure.

As Jess Larson has observed, university students are a bit like unfinished furniture. While some really just need some sanding and finish, others have major structural issues. I’m thinking that wandering campus displaying openly misogynist sentiments probably falls in the latter category.

Sigh.

I should make it clear that our students are generally very cool, & most of the guys are quite non-obnoxious. The unusual nature of this example of oafishness makes it all the more depressing & frustrating. I also don’t want to paint all our football players or student athletes with this brush; our athletes also tend to be very together peeps. Teams (& other groups) do need to be aware, however, that when they’re together in a context that identifies them as The Team, people are prone to overgeneralization. Know thyselves, folks; it’s in your own best interest.

Today, 24 March, is Ada Lovelace Day, honoring the remarkable woman that is arguably the first computer programmer, working a full century before the construction of the first electronic machines that we would typically recognize as modern computers. In honor of her work and the crucial but typically underreported contributions of women in technology, over 1,700 are writing today “about a woman in technology whom I admire”. This is my contribution.

When Charles Darwin published his landmark Origin of species 150 years ago, he played a critical role in transforming biology from an exercise in bug collecting and guesswork to a science, with testable hypotheses that could give meaning to all the data people were collecting in the field, and tie down some of the more wild-eyed speculations. One of the huge holes (a gap Darwin freely acknowledged) was the how of inheritance. That inheritance existed was empirically obvious, but the mechanism by which it occurred was a complete mystery. In subsequent years, the work of Mendel and others shed crucial light on the properties of that mechanism, but still left open the key question of how exactly it happened.

This puzzle was solved in the 1950’s, with a central breakthrough being the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA. The fact that DNA is composed of two strands bound together, each carrying essentially the same information, meant that it can be split and copied, allowed the genetic code to be copied and transmitted from one cell to another in cell division, and ultimately from one individual to another in reproduction.

It is hard to overstate the impact of this achievement, which totally revolutionized the methods and approach of biology, ultimately leading to modern molecular biology, gene sequencing (including the Human Genome Project), reconstruction of phylogenetic trees, gene therapies, genetically modified organisms, and new medical diagnostic tools. All of this depends crucially on the discovery of the role and structure of DNA, firmly placing those discoveries among the most important of modern science.

But who then do we credit for this remarkable achievement? The names that readily come to mind are Watson and Crick, that dynamic duo at Cambridge immortalized in Watson’s The double helix (I recommend the Norton Critical Edition). If one looks to the Nobel Committee for guidance, a less well known name is added to those of Watson and Crick: Maurice Wilkins. Wilkins worked at King’s College London, where empirical data was collected that was vital to Watson and Crick’s ability to build the celebrated double helix model. The three were jointly awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, “for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material”.

Missing from this pantheon, however, is Rosalind Franklin: the person who painstakingly collected and analyzed that empirical data, including X-ray crystallography described by J. D. Bernal as “among the most beautiful X-ray photographs of any substance every taken”. It was her methodical study of DNA (which was already widely believed to be crucial in the transmission of genetic information due to the Avery-MacLeod-McCarty experiment) that led to the key insights into DNA’s structure. She herself understood well in advance of Watson and Crick’s breakthrough that what she called the B Form of DNA almost certainly had a double helix structure, but chose to complete her analysis of the A Form (where there was still uncertainty regarding the structure) before engaging in what she considered the speculative business of building models before all the data was in.

Yet while she methodically collected and studied, the impatient boys up the road gained indirect access to her images and measurements, data that was crucial to their model building, apparently without Franklin every knowing how much they’d obtained, and how important it had been. Franklin worked under Wilkins at King’s but was barely on speaking terms with him, and there is no evidence that she knew that Wilkins had shared some of her key data with Watson, or that a UK Medical Research Council review process gave Watson indirect access to detailed summaries of her work. Her untimely death five years later due to cancer was almost a decade before Watson’s book first publicly discussed the back channels he’d used to access her data. It seems likely, then, that she never fully understood how important her own work was to their achievements, and Watson’s deprecating portrayal of Franklin both as a person and as a scientist in his book did little to improve her reputation.

In fact, however, Franklin was clearly a gifted and dedicated scientist who made numerous valuable contributions in her short life in areas such the structure of coals, the structure of viruses, and the structure of DNA. Her work on DNA, for example, included the design and application of new imaging equipment, the collection of numerous of images from different angles, and the laborious hand calculations needed to extract quantitative measurements from those images. At the time of Watson and Crick’s famous model building, Franklin was trying to finish up her work at King’s so she could start a new position at Birkbeck, a move already delayed several months. Would she have developed the double helix model on her own if she’d been better supported at King’s, less distracted by the move? We’ll never know. It is clear, however, that her data was vital to Watson and Crick’s success, providing the empirical foundation for their theoretical leap.

Why, then, was she not recognized by the Nobel committee in 1962, alongside Watson, Crick, and Wilkins? The short, simple answer is that she was dead by then, and there are no posthumous Nobel Prizes. Less clear, though, is whether she would have gotten the award if she’d still been alive. As well as prohibiting posthumous awards, the Nobel rules also limit the number of co-recipients to three, and Watson, Crick, and Wilkins formed a full set. It would be pretty hard to justify bumping either Watson or Crick from the podium, since their paper contained the key theoretical breakthrough and would likely have the most significant long-term impact. Wilkins, on the other hand, was a different matter. He’d done little to contribute to Franklin’s work, and his own work had been far less significant to Watson and Crick’s insight. He was, however, her boss and a senior scientist, while she was effectively just a scientific hired hand at King’s, serving a two year position and moving on. And, of course, she was a woman, and the Nobels have not been kind to women, especially in the sciences. We can obviously never know what would have happened had she still been alive in 1962, but it seems naive to feel any certainty that she would have been recognized in Stockholm if she had lived.

For people looking to learn more there’s lots on-line, with all the associated pros and cons. Brenda Maddox’s Rosalind Franklin: The dark lady of DNA is a very nice biography and certainly helped a great deal in writing this. The epilogue to that work makes a nice antidote to the not entirely convincing epilogue to Watson’s The double helix.