Scientist Carrie

Calories in vs. calories out?

2011-07-11T12:58:00.001-05:00

Note: this post may be triggering to readers with eating disorders. I've put it behind the jump.

Also note: there is math talk, including differential equations, in this post. Don't panic. I've explained the math in English.
Over at Consumerist, commenter RecordStoreToughGuy_StarCommandSeasonOneisLive! writes:

I have an amazingly fool-proof weight loss plan that is GUARANTEED to work. I'll phrase it in the form of a simple Mathematical equation: E - C = WEIGHT LOSS*, where E is energy expended and C is calories. If you expend more energy than you take in, you'll lose weight.**
*I am not good at math, so this equation is probably expressed incorrectly, but I'm guessing you get the point.
**Energy levels vs. Caloric intake vary from individual to individual; some individuals may need to expend way more energy than they take in than others to achieve goals.

A lot of people say this when the subject of weight loss comes up. "It's simple math! Calories in vs. calories out!" But the math really isn't simple at all.

Weight loss is more accurately modeled as a system of differential equations: dW/dt = f(E,C), dE/dt = g(E,C, W) and dC/dt = h(E, C, W), where W is weight, E is energy expended, and C is calories taken in. f, g, and h are all probably nonlinear functions.

In English, the change in your weight depends on the difference between what you eat and how much energy you expend. But the energy you'll expend tomorrow, and the calories your body would naturally be hungry for tomorrow, change based on on how much you move and eat today, and on what you weigh today.

In even shorter English: weight loss is a moving target. Everything affects everything else.

The problem is that we don't know exactly what f, g, and h are. Or in English, we have no idea exactly how everything affects everything else.

You can hold C constant or near-constant. So you can make dC/dt zero, or at least fairly small. That takes care of h. In English, that means you can eat a fixed (or nearly fixed) number of calories every day, so the amount of calories you take in isn't affected by anything else. (At least in theory, or if you are in a medical study where your diet is rigidly controlled by others. In real life, good luck forcing yourself to eat an identical number of calories every day for any length of time.)

You can exercise -- but the amount of energy you actually burn during exercise is hard to actually measure. And your resting metabolic rate (RMR) -- how much energy your body uses just to stay alive -- is completely outside your direct control. There are certain ways of measuring RMR, which are fairly accurate. But it's expensive and somewhat difficult to make those measurements. And energy consumption is quite variable between individuals. Lean body mass affects it; body fat affects it; sex affects it; age affects it; the amount of exercise you usually do affects it. But even these factors don't explain all of the variability. Some of it is probably genetic.

People argue that f is simply E-C, or in English, that weight loss is simply burning more calories than you consume -- but that's not true. For one thing, water weight varies a lot depending on what you eat, how hydrated you are, and what your hormones are doing. But a bigger factor is how your body stores and accesses energy. And that's a really complicated topic. It depends in part on your body's secretion and breakdown of insulin and glucagon. People devote entire careers to teasing out some understanding of this. If we knew exactly how it worked, we'd have a magic weight loss pill.

There's plenty of empirical evidence to show what range of caloric intake and exercise amount is likely to result in a healthy weight. But it's not an exact science. At all.

Housekeeping

2011-07-01T13:03:00.000-05:00

A post on Feministe about when it's okay to dump someone turned, in the comments, into a discussion of housework and ability/disability. Specifically, depression and ADHD as the disabilities in question.

I have ADD¹ and while I certainly hope my house isn't a health hazard, I do struggle with housekeeping. I sat down this morning and wrote a list of all the chores I think I should be doing. (Really, they should get done no matter if I do them or my husband does. I wrote the list in preparation to sit down with my husband and create a chore schedule that fairly divides the work.) Here's the list (click to embiggen):

This is what housework looks like in my head -- except without even the divisions into Daily, Weekly, and Less Often. A huge, tangled list of things that I must do, should have already done, need to do all of right now.

Is it any wonder I just throw up my hands and don't do any of it? Well, I do the things absolutely necessary to life (like cooking and washing dishes to eat off of), and I do the other stuff when it's been ignored for so long that I can't live with it anymore. My threshold for this is below "actual health hazard" but well above "humiliated if anyone who doesn't live here walks in."

And yes, I have tried FlyLady. Multiple times. It doesn't work for me for a number of reasons. The concept of breaking things down into small steps is awesome. The underlying philosophy (and eye-rollingly cutesy presentation) is what I can't get along with. I quickly grow to resent the idea that housekeeping is all my responsibility -- Flylady gives no guidance on how to divide up tasks fairly. Even if I ask my husband to do things, that means it's still ultimately my job -- I'm just delegating it. And I really grow to resent the idea of "blessing" my husband by keeping things clean and tidy. I'm not the angel of the frackin' house.

And fundamentally? Shining my kitchen sink? Before I can do that, I have to do the following:

Call to get an appointment to get the dishwasher fixed (it's refusing to drain again)
Put away everything on the countertops in preparation for step 3, because right now there is no room on the countertops for the dishes
Move dishes out of dishwasher and sink onto countertops
Find the stupid dishwashing gloves
If I can't find them, go to Target and buy another set, oh and while I'm there, get my prescriptions refilled. Actually those gloves are old and nasty, I should just get a new set anyway.
Enter spending from Target into budget software
Throw out old nasty sponges
Find new clean sponges under sink
Actually, you know what, why don't I just buy a pack of microfiber dishcloths at Target while I'm there, and forget the stupid sponges altogether
Handwash, rinse, dry, and put away dishes from dishwasher, dishes that piled up while dishwasher hasn't worked, and large awkward or small fragile dishes that always require handwashing
Bail out disgusting un-drained water from dishwasher using red plastic cup
NOW I can shine my sink

A similar process is required before I can "swish and swipe" the bathroom in the morning.

So yeah. Today I am looking at my house and thinking "I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."

So, yeah. Any ADD-friendly, feminist, practical guides to keeping up with housework expected of a normal adult are welcome. But for today, I just don't even.

For the record, while writing this post, I have boiled the same pot dry twice. And I still have not made poached eggs for breakfast as I intended, nor indeed have I yet eaten any food at all. I'm brilliant.

¹I leave out the H in ADHD because I have inattentive-type, not hyperactive-type.

Dialogue with games

2011-06-06T15:32:00.000-05:00

Currently reading Reality is Broken by Jane McGonigal -- a book about how people experience games, what about games makes them more satisfying than the "real world," and how we can make the "real world" more like games to make it better. It's an awesome book so far.

But I keep stumbling over things that don't quite jibe with my experience of video games, and wanting to dive more into why I react so differently.

For example, in a chapter on why the "work" of games feels so much more productive and satisfying than "real work", McGonigal writes:

In our real lives, hard work is something we do because we have to do it…to meet someone else's expectations. […] We resent that kind of work. It stresses us out. […] It comes with too much criticism. We're afraid of failing.

When we don't choose hard work for ourselves, it's usually not the right work, at the right time, for the right person. […] Hard work that someone else requires us to do just doesn't activate our happiness systems the same way. It all too often doesn't absorb us, doesn't make us optimistic, and doesn't invigorate us.

These paragraphs socked me right in the chest, because this is how I've almost always felt about video games. I'm afraid of failing, because I'm afraid of the negative judgment of people watching me play. It stresses me out. I'm struggling and I feel overwhelmed. So I avoid it. Why would I choose to feel that way?

But McGonigal is describing "real work" in order to contrast it with video games. Games aren't supposed to feel that way. So why do they for me?

Well, I've almost always picked up a video game at the urging of someone else: brother, male friend, boyfriend. In every case it's been someone who has already spent a lot of time playing the game and gotten very good at it. He (it's always a he) enjoys it, and he thinks I would enjoy it too, and maybe we could enjoy playing it together. Great!

So he talks me into giving it a try, hands me the controller, and sits there watching me play. I make the obvious initial mistakes that everyone makes at first. I also usually struggle to master the control scheme. I'll struggle to figure out some puzzle that he didn't have much trouble with.

But the other person really wants me to succeed at this game! So he peppers me with advice. "No, go that way. You need to get into a smooth rhythm of running and jumping, you can't keep stopping like that. If you go over here, you can pick up [item/ability]."

A couple of chapters after the quote above, McGonigal talks about this -- but from the perspective of the person giving the advice. She calls it "naches" -- a Yiddish word for that feeling of bursting with vicarious pride at the success of your child or student. And she says

If we aren't actively contributing to the achievement with our support, then our emotional systems don't register vicarious pride. […]

Game researchers who study industry trends report that, increasingly, one person will play a game while another, or others, watch, encourage, and advise. […]

[Regarding the game Braid] Players seem absolutely tickled to watch friends and family work out the a-ha moment for each puzzle, lending their advice and positive morale in the face of the game's frustrating mental challenges.

McGonigal hails this as an opportunity for positive mentoring interactions, which people don't get enough of in "real life." Maybe. But how do the players' family and friends feel about their contributions?

Maybe the guy watching me was getting a kick of vicarious pride, but it just felt intimidating and belittling on my end. With the constant suggestions and corrections, I was hyper-aware of every misstep. And when I did succeed at something, I felt like it wasn't my victory at all. It belonged to him.

I felt like a child trying to play ball with a parent constantly yelling "No, not that hand! Use your other hand! Choke up on the bat! Not that far up! Okay, it's going to be a curveball, get ready! You're swinging way too wide! Pay attention, it's coming! Now run, run, you have to get to second! Faster! No, stay there!" Pressured, nervous, terrified of failing and letting them down, resentful of having my agency taken away. Just play the damn game yourself if you can't handle letting me mess up and learn, okay? (N.B. My parents did not do this to me.)

Basically, the other person wasn't showing any belief that I could succeed. That killed my optimism about my ability to succeed. But he clearly wanted me to do this, so I felt like failure would make him like me less. So, something I had to do for someone else, that I didn't think I could do well at. Work, not fun. So I'm not really sure about this game-mentoring vicarious-pride business. I'd need to hear from more people to figure out if it's really positive for both parties, and if it is, what makes it different from my negative experiences with game advice.

Reality is Broken doesn't delve into gender differences in how we interact with games (at least so far). And as I wrote in my previous post "Why don't girls play video games? or, a fail blog," I think the particular experience with games I'm describing is really gender-linked. I only have anecdotes; I wonder whether serious research has been done about it. If so, I want to see what it says. If not -- I want to do it!

It sounds like I'm really whacking away at this book with criticism. In fact, I love the book. I suddenly understand so much of what I'm struggling with in my "real work", in light of McGonigal's insights about how people work with games. I've even gotten some great ideas about tactics I can use to give "real work" the fun, addictive qualities of a game I want to play. Although I don't have a lot of peak "flow" experiences with video games, I do recognize the feeling from other games: Scrabble, Encore, kierki, other board and card games. And I have felt it playing Rock Band (especially Beatles Rock Band). McGonigal gets to the heart of what, exactly, is fun about those games.

So I definitely recommend the book. I wouldn't be writing about my responses and questions if I wasn't having a great time engaging with it!

A weird grammar thought

2011-05-26T16:37:00.000-05:00

When I tell someone "Exchange A for B," I mean that they currently have A, and they should get rid of A and instead get B. In other words, replace A with B.

I frequently see people who use the same word order, but mean the exact opposite. By "Exchange A for B," they mean replace B with A.

For example, this post at Get Rich Slowly includes the sentence "An easier solution is to schedule a résumé update every few months and edit as you go, swapping more impressive accomplishments for résumé filler." Clearly, they mean "replace filler with accomplishments." But I have trouble understanding it that way

Using "Exchange A for B" to mean "replace B with A" only works if you think it means "[Receive] A [In Exchange] for [Giving] B."

That seems a terribly circuitous and backwards construction to me. When I think of an exchange, I think of first giving someone an item, then receiving another item from them. Since giving comes first in the sequence, and A comes first in the sentence, I naturally think of giving A and receiving B.

But really, it's no less logical to think of an exchange as first receiving an item from someone, then giving them another item. Since receiving comes first in that sequence, you'd naturally think of receiving A and giving B. But for some reason, thinking of an exchange that way feels backwards and unnatural to me.

I wonder why.

Storytime: My STEM roots, part 3

2011-05-20T09:00:00.134-05:00

Inspired by reading Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing, I'm telling the story of how I got into science & technology. Today's piece of the story goes through high school. See Part One and Part Two.

In the first couple years of high school I took the expected advanced math and science track -- the next classes in sequence. Algebra II, Advanced Biology, Pre-Calculus, Advanced Chemistry, AP Calculus, Advanced Physics. My math teachers were great, and my biology teacher was pretty good too. My chemistry teacher was completely terrible and I got nothing out of that class. My pre-calc teacher was also the AP Computer Science teacher, and sometimes the kids in that class would be working at the computers during our math class, or chatting with him before or after our class. He talked to them like equals -- they all seemed to be experts already -- and I remember them all being guys.

At least one of the group of boys from my fourth-grade class was in AP Computer Science in high school. I heard stories that he had figured out how to solve a programming contest problem in a single line of code, and that one day in class he'd gotten bored and written his own programming language. I heard my friends talking about all the various programming languages they knew, and just felt intimidated. When I thought of a programming language, I vaguely envisioned something like machine language -- something really arcane, really obscure, that you had to be a particular kind of genius to grok. Like you had to be able to directly read the 1's and 0's or something. I hadn't seen any code since those snippets of BASIC back in elementary school, and I had found that pretty obscure and arcane then -- so all this more complicated stuff must be incredibly arcane.

I had a boyfriend in high school who told me that once you learn one programming language, the rest are easy. I believed him, but I had no idea how to go about learning my first language. It kind of seemed like you just had to know already. I had no idea how he, or any of the guys in CS classes, had gotten started. I heard him talking about C++ with his friends, discussing how pointers could cause the whole machine to crash. I knew pointers had something to do with memory; I formed the vague impression that you had to manually assign memory addresses when you coded in C++. That just sounded painful to me.

Throughout high school, when I wasn't doing homework, reading, or writing, my priority was communicating with my friends. Like all teenagers since the phone was invented, I spent a lot of time on the phone (landline back then!) -- but I also used the computer to talk to my friends, by email and instant messages. I learned to touch-type at age 15 because I started IMing, and suddenly I was spending hours typing, and trying to type as fast as I could because it was so important to communicate my thoughts. That much intense practice will teach you to touch-type very fast.

Meanwhile, I was on fire for ideas in the form of literature and philosophy. I read and wrote endlessly, blowing my English classes out of the water. I definitely took the lead in those classes. That was where I could be a star. I got compliments from all my teachers and near-perfect grades. It all came to me so naturally. I felt like that was where I belonged: in the world of words and ideas expressed in words.

My high school was full of very, very smart, talented kids. In my social circle, you got status for being a genius at something academic or artistic. The more you knew or the better you were at something, the more respected you were. I found out pretty quickly that I wasn't a massively gifted actor, and while I could sing, I had practically zero musical training -- so I wasn't among the top musicians. But I destroyed when it came to writing. That was the source of my status. Taking advanced math and science courses was just the expected baseline among my friends; it didn't make me particularly smart or special. Not taking those courses would have marked me as probably not very smart.

I would have had to start at the raw beginning with programming, and I would have been ashamed not to be "advanced" at something. I definitely had the sense that if I couldn't instantly excel at something, I shouldn't embarrass myself by trying. It would take away from my value as a smart person who succeeded at things. Especially since many of the guys in my social circle were very advanced and experienced when it came to programming -- I would be compared to them, and end up looking like a wannabe.

Particularly, I'd be compared to my boyfriend. I was already the "student" to his "expert" in so many things -- building PCs, playing computer games. I was already subordinating most of my opinions, thoughts, philosophies, to his; he was confident, assertive, and forceful about what he thought, and I wanted to be the person he wanted me to be, to prove that I was his perfect match. But part of being that person was showing how smart and competent I was (like a Heinlein heroine). Programming would have been something where he always had the answers and I was dependent on him for guidance. I was uncomfortable with that idea.

Then, in my senior year, I took AP Physics. I'd already had a year of calculus with an absolutely fantastic teacher, who made everything intuitive and clear. And the AP Physics teacher was just as fantastic -- explaining the physical meaning of every piece of math we did. All of a sudden, I understood how you could use math to break down, understand, and predict how things behaved in real life. That did light up my imagination.

Physics made me feel like everything suddenly made sense. Like I never had to feel confused and frustrated again; I could start from simple first principles, rules everything in the world followed, and figure out exactly what was happening. It gave me the same sense of calm clarity as writing a sonnet. When I wrote a sonnet, I was able to put a big, nebulous, subtle, emotional concept into a simply structured form -- figure out how to state its essence in sixteen rhyming lines of ten syllables each. When I solved a physics problem, I was able to take a non-intuitive phenomenon that seemed totally unpredictable, and figure out the simple structure of rules governing it. It gave me control over a world that seemed overwhelming sometimes.

And it seemed to really impress people that I enjoyed and was good at physics. I got a rush from that. It made me feel like the academically successful, intellectually impressive person I was supposed to be -- even though sometimes I had to struggle to understand something in physics, and didn't feel like I was a natural genius at it compared to a couple of the guys in the class. Just studying it seemed to give me intellectual status; I didn't have to be the star pupil to feel like I was doing well.

Even in that fantastic physics class, we occasionally used computers, but only to employ an application someone else had already written. Everything in my life just involved using computers. I had no experience with programming them, nor any real idea why you would want or need to. It seemed to be a hobby for some people, like making model airplanes. Guys in my physics class programmed little games on their graphing calculators; my boyfriend made an animated birthday card for me in Visual Basic. But I didn't connect these things with the tools I used on the computer -- word processors, spreadsheets, web browsers, instant messaging.

I was a very knowledgeable user of Windows -- I knew where everything was, what settings usually needed changing, how to accomplish various tasks, how to fix common problems. But I was a user, not a maker. I wanted to write a story or talk with my friends, and I just wanted those tools to be there. I didn't want to make them myself. It seemed like reinventing the wheel for no reason.

To be continued…

Storytime: My STEM roots, part 2

2011-05-19T09:05:00.001-05:00

This is the second part of my story of how I got into STEM -- with particular attention to computers. I was inspired by reading Unlocking the Clubhouse. See Part One, the story through elementary school. This is the story through middle school.

I'm not even sure what computer science courses were available at my middle school. We had a couple of days of required "computer class" but it mainly consisted of things I already knew -- "this is a keyboard, this is a monitor" -- and touch-typing exercises. At that time I was crummy at touch-typing and felt slow and clumsy. The concept of programming, making my own things rather than just using the computer, wasn't even on my radar screen. I don't think it was ever mentioned by my teachers. I was much more into the arts -- singing, literature, writing. I was in the very good, very advanced school chorus, and in the school musicals, and on the school lit mag, and went to the county-wide spelling bee.

I enjoyed the parts of science class where we got to do experiments, but a lot of time I wasn't sure what we were exactly supposed to be getting out of them. In sixth grade we had projects like building a submarine that would descend and surface, and building a container that would let us drop an egg from two stories up without it breaking. But I don't remember getting any guidance on what principles to use in designing these things -- and definitely no guidance on the idea that we should experiment, fail, and iterate. I remember assuming that the rules of the game were that you couldn't try it out until the big day in class -- you had to just build it and hope. And afterwards there wasn't any class discussion of why some designs worked better than others. From this, I got the impression that science was something you either could do or you couldn't. You just had to know how to do it somehow.

I took an anatomy elective where we dissected raw chicken wings -- pretty neat. And we did one experiment whose point I totally understood: tested the efficacy of various antacids using beakers of dilute HCl and a color pH indicator solution.

In eighth grade, I remember struggling a lot with poorly written science books. Some of their experiments were impossible to perform as written, or much more complicated than they thought. One asked us to find the surface area of an M&M. Good luck with that in eighth grade. I don't think I learned the calculus to do that until I was a senior in high school.

In eighth grade we also covered evolution. I don't remember much of what we learned, but I do remember our science teacher -- who was generally great -- saying over and over again that she was not talking about her personal beliefs and we would not hear about her personal beliefs. No one made a scene in class about learning evolution. I didn't find out until later that sometimes people do. The curriculum made a distinction between "microevolution" and "macroevolution," as though they were two different things.

I was in the most advanced math classes -- algebra in seventh grade, geometry in eighth -- but for some reason I still didn't view myself as "a math person." Reading and writing came with perfect ease to me -- I could excel effortlessly there -- but I sometimes got things wrong in math class, or had trouble understanding a concept. So I figured I wasn't that good at math. And while I got decent grades (A's and B's), nothing in math really lit up my imagination. It just seemed like artificial problems. It certainly wasn't creative. I didn't understand why some kids said math was their favorite subject; I figured they must just not have much imagination, or they must not be able to read very well. Why would you pick doing a worksheet over writing a story?

I remember those math classes being fairly evenly split between girls and boys. I had a few female friends there. And they were the only classes where I could be sure no one would bully me. So I enjoyed those math classes. But I wasn't the star of the class, so I didn't see myself pursuing it for the rest of my life.

To be continued…

Storytime: my STEM roots

2011-05-18T12:04:00.000-05:00

I just finished reading Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing. The authors (Jane Margolis and Allan Fisher) interviewed students enrolled in Carnegie-Mellon's computer science department, and qualitatively examined how the stories of women and men differed. It's a fascinating and enlightening read. And it's moved me to share my own story.

In the first chapter, the authors examine stories of how women and men got into computing. Here's the first part of mine -- through elementary school. I'll also talk about my story of getting into science.

Q. Can you tell me the story about you and computing?

We had a computer in the house at least since I was four or five. Back then, it was an IBM XT with a green monochrome screen. I remember using a few programs, including a piano program that either played pre-programmed tunes, or let you play your own. My dad showed me the basic commands to navigate in DOS. So I could use a computer pretty early. But I didn't really program it.

We then got a newer IBM machine -- I think a PS/2 -- with a color screen. It still booted to the DOS command line, but you could invoke DOS Shell, which was a primitive GUI. DOS Shell was navigable with a mouse, but I usually just used the arrow keys. My younger brother and I had fun changing the color scheme of DOS Shell multiple times a day. I liked that it made the computer more discoverable; I could explore and see what was there, rather than having to just know what command to type.

The computer was always in a public location -- in the den, and when the den was being redone, it lived in the kitchen for a couple of years. It had a boot password, so my brother and I had to ask Mom or Dad if we wanted to use it, though I don't remember either of them saying no very often. It was definitely not my personal property, so I didn't do anything that might have permanent effects. I don't have specific memories of arguing with my brother over who got to use it, though I'm sure that happened. I remember using it by myself pretty often.

Around this time my brother learned some BASIC. I'm not sure where he learned it and why I didn't. We had a subscription to a kids' magazine that occasionally printed short BASIC programs for little games you could code and then play. It seemed like connect-the-dots or color-by-numbers to me -- type it in, then find out what it did. I remember trying to do one of them; I couldn't get it to work as written and couldn't figure out why. The magazine didn't provide an intro to BASIC, so I was just typing exactly what I saw without really understanding the syntax. I certainly wouldn't have understood how to come up with a program on my own. With that program, my brother didn't understand what was wrong either, but somewhere along the way he must have found some introduction. Maybe he had an elective in elementary school? I remember that he programmed the computer in his classroom during Parents' Night with an infinite loop in BASIC to keep printing some silly/rude sentence.

Both my brother and I also loved playing the Hugo games -- you controlled the character with text commands and moving with the arrow keys. You know, ye olde "take $item," "use $item" sort of thing. Between us we eventually beat "Hugo's House of Horrors," but we never did figure out how to beat "Whodunit?" We'd each sometimes play the games alone, and sometimes together. I loved those games because I could try any command I could think of to solve the puzzle. It was always thrilling when I tried a command I thought was crazy, and it actually worked!

But during childhood, I was mostly interested in reading fiction and writing my own stories. Teachers were always impressed with my reading level and my ability with written words; I was always in the advanced reading group, took reading tests several grade levels above mine and always scored in the 99th percentile. But I only took math tests a couple grade levels above mine, and usually scored in the 90th percentile or so. Sometimes I found my math homework a bit difficult. From this I concluded that I wasn't great at math.

I particularly compared myself to a small group of boys in my fourth-grade class who were extremely advanced in math, science, and computer science. They got to do things like experiment with circuit-building, while the rest of us read the grade-level science book. I figured those boys were what being good at math and science looked like, and since I hadn't been invited to be part of that group and didn't already know everything they knew, I figured what they did just wasn't really for me. And that included programming.

We had a regular computer class, but it consisted of playing Oregon Trail (the 1985 version, which I'm convinced was unwinnable), math games, typing games, and occasionally typing stories or poems. We didn't learn any programming. The teacher was a middle-aged Southern lady who always said "Mash Return." I didn't see her as a computer expert. All of the machines were old; they had to boot from 5 1/4 floppies. Some of them were literally hooked up to old televisions in lieu of monitors. There was one new machine that was actually connected to Prodigy -- an early online service (like AOL or CompuServe, but I think earlier than either). The same group of boys made a lot of use of that computer. I occasionally got to try looking things up on Prodigy, but I found that the online encyclopedia wasn't much good -- I got better information from the print encyclopedias in the school library. Likewise with the online news; stories were so brief as to be almost useless. I didn't see much point.

We got CompuServe at home when I was about 12 or 13. I got into email and the forums in a big way, and then I saw the point of online services -- communicating with other people! The news and encyclopedia were still useless, but I wasn't there for pre-slugged content like that. I spent a lot of time on the Beatles forum, talking to people who treated me like an intelligent adult with interesting things to say, and loved it.

I never really got into the BBS scene -- one kid on my bus was, and everybody teased him for "downloading porn." We all knew he wasn't really, but that was the only thing we knew about online services. I knew what BBS stood for but not really what one was. The idea of dialing into another computer seemed vaguely illicit to me, like prank-calling a stranger. And I figured it would cost a lot of money in long-distance charges, which my parents were very vocal about avoiding. Sometimes our main local CompuServe access number wouldn't respond, and my brother would try another one on the list, which ended up charging for a long distance call, and my parents got mad. So I was wary of doing anything online that might accidentally cost money.

To be continued...

Why don't girls play video games? or, a fail blog

2011-04-26T14:58:00.000-05:00

Why don't girls play video games as much as guys do?

This has been discussed in various places: Hugo Schwyzer's blog, Pandagon. Hugo and Pandagon both focus on women spending much more time on housework, paying jobs, and volunteering -- leaving them less time for leisure activities like playing video games. They discuss the pressure on women to be superwomen, so that they feel like they have to do much more.

I think perfectionism is a big issue -- but it may not be all about free time. Girls learn at a very early age that failure is not okay. And enjoying video games is all about failing. But the solution is in the problem: video games can teach you to fail.

In an article titled "The Trouble With Bright Girls," Dr. Heidi Grant Halvorson talks about girls' reaction to failure:

What makes smart girls more vulnerable and less confident when they should be the most confident kids in the room? […] The only difference was how bright boys and girls interpreted difficulty -- what it meant to them when material seemed hard to learn. Bright Girls were much quicker to doubt their ability, to lose confidence and to become less effective learners as a result. [bold emphasis added]

Halvorson gives a suggestion for why this happens:

Girls, who develop self-control earlier and are better able to follow instructions, are often […] told that we are "so smart," "so clever, " or "such a good student." This kind of praise implies that traits like smartness, cleverness and goodness are qualities you either have or you don't.

[O]n the other hand, […] just trying to get boys to sit still and pay attention is a real challenge for any parent or teacher. As a result, boys are given a lot more feedback that emphasizes effort (e.g., "If you would just pay attention you could learn this," "If you would just try a little harder you could get it right.") The net result: When learning something new is truly difficult, girls take it as sign that they aren't "good" and "smart," and boys take it as a sign to pay attention and try harder. [bold emphasis added]

What does this have to do with video games? Very simply: Most video games require failure. The whole idea is that you try a new level, fail at it, learn from your mistake, and try again. In fact, that's often the fun of it: the sense of accomplishment when you finally get through a tricky level. Nicole Lazzaro, president of XEODesign Inc. and expert in player experience design, calls this "hard fun." [PDF link] In one interview, Lazzaro said:

In fact you have to feel frustrated, and so frustrated you’re about ready to throw the controller through the window. If then at that point you win that’s when you get that feeling like yes, we really did it. Very, very powerful emotion and players will play hours of games, both hardcore and casual gamers will play hours to get that kind of feeling.

But for many girls, "hard fun" isn't fun. If you've internalized the message that not immediately mastering something means you aren't "good" and "smart" -- that tricky level is just miserable and demoralizing. Even if you finally manage it, it feels like a hollow victory. Your repeated failures just prove how stupid you are and how terrible you are at this game. After all, if you were any good at it, you would have beaten the level on the first try -- right?

It doesn't help that often, a girl is playing video games in front of a brother, guy friend, or boyfriend, who's constantly giving "helpful advice." ("No, do this, jump here, now run across that.") That just confirms her perception that her mistakes are really stupid, and she's not very good at this game. As Amanda Marcotte wrote, "I didn’t realize I like video games until I was given a chance to play without a dude up in my shit explaining it to me." (See comment #13 at the linked post.)

Or, as morningface wrote at comment #48 under that post,

Whenever I have picked up a controller with other people present, there is usually a lot of input from the peanut gallery on what I am supposed to be doing, what buttons I should press, etc. It makes doing something I am unfamiliar with even more confusing and pressure-filled and less enjoyable. I would expect that many women have less experience playing video games than the men in their lives, and having a backseat driver harass you while you are trying to do something fun just isn’t worth it. [bold emphasis added]

Most guys I've known specifically will not offer advice when another guy is playing. They explain that would be insulting and belittling -- as though they thought he was too stupid to figure it out. Well, yeah.

So when people say "Women just aren't interested in video games," there's a tiny grain of truth. Most people mean certain kinds of games, where enjoyment primarily comes from succeeding after repeated failures. Since girls learn early that failure means you're just not smart, of course many of them won't be interested. If you always felt stupid and incompetent while doing something, would you be very interested?

But here's the other side of the coin: Video games can teach girls how to fail without feeling like failures.

Penny Arcade did a relevant comic, and Tycho gave some insightful commentary:

I am trained - intensely trained - to fail and select retry, that is to say, to iterate. […] Approaching actual problems as interesting, eminently achievable, potentially fun exercises with a confidence borne of past successes is a pretty good way to travel. [bold emphasis added]

The associated comic makes clear that video games teach you that you can handle any problem by trying and retrying. It's okay to mess up. You'll get another try. Boys are learning these real-life problem-solving skills, and the self-confidence to use them. When girls don't play video games, they miss out on this training.

Jane McGonigal addresses failure in her book Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better And How They Can Change The World. As she writes in a February 2011 column at the Huffington Post,

When we play a good game, we get to practice being the best version of ourselves: We become more optimistic, more creative, more focused, more likely to set ambitious goals, and more resilient in the face of failure. [bold emphasis added]

In fact, the best-designed games actually reward failure by making it entertaining. The M.I.N.D. Labs in Helsinki, Finland, studied how people felt while playing Super Monkey Ball 2 -- and found that every time they failed, they registered pleasure. Why? Because when you fail, the monkey goes flying off into space, hilariously. Not only is it funny to watch, but it also reinforces the player's sense of agency: you flung the monkey!

With that "active failure," your brain is primed to respond to failure with excitement, optimism, and a desire to try it again. Maybe playing games can actually re-train how you respond emotionally to failure.

Girls stay away from video games in part because they've been taught that it's not okay to fail. But video games can teach them that it is okay to fail -- that things can be more fun if you have to make several tries. Maybe if girls start gaming young, they'll be better equipped to push back against perfectionistic social conditioning. Maybe they'll be better able to stay self-confident.

P.S. It's interesting to note that Angry Birds players are a much more gender-balanced group -- even though Angry Birds definitely involves a lot of "hard fun." Lots of possible factors, but I think "active failure" has a lot to do with it. Even when you don't squish all the pigs, you make something happen. Instant sense of agency and control. When the act of failing itself proves that you can accomplish something, it's a lot easier to keep your self-confidence and feel excited about your ability to succeed if you try it just one more time…

Pain scales

2011-04-08T19:22:00.000-05:00

Today's xkcd made me think about pain scales. I've had three significantly different pain scales defined to me:

10 is the worst pain you've ever felt
10 is surgery without anesthesia
10 is the worst pain you can imagine

Much like the guy in xkcd, I can imagine a whole lot worse pain than I've ever felt.

Allie Brosh (of Hyperbole and a Half) also had a great comic about pain scales. She proposed a better one. It goes to 11.

I feel like there should be more than 10 numbers between "I feel totally awesome" and "I have been stung by a platypus." Or at least they should give some more guidance in between. Less than 4 seems like it shouldn't deserve notice, but anything over about 6 feels like I'm being dramatic. Because after all, if I'm conscious and able to respond to your question, I can't be in all that much pain in the grand scheme of things, right?

And do most medical professionals mentally re-scale on the assumption that patients are always dramatic? Do they expect that most people thinking "DAMN THIS HURTS" will immediately claim to be 10/10, and therefore anything much less than that means "I pricked my finger"? I should ask my MD/Ph.D buddy.

Today's favorite macro

2011-04-06T21:54:00.000-05:00

I saw this the day I rode in an Insight for the first time.

(h/t Stuff Christian Culture Likes)

SYSTEM FAILURE

2011-04-06T10:04:00.000-05:00

I am currently heading towards the SYSTEM FAILURE phase of Allie Brosh's Productivity vs. Level of Responsibility graph.

Sadly, I still have things to do.

You should absolutely click on that link and read the comic. One of the comments says "This isn't funny. This is just my life. sigh. A.D.D." -- but it is funny because it is just my life.

(I'm oddly comforted by all the comments from people with kids who say they're still like this. It makes me feel like maybe, having ADD doesn't totally disqualify me from parenthood.)

Play the game, everybody play the game

2011-04-05T17:00:00.000-05:00

My car got rear-ended two weeks ago, and declared a total loss last week. The body shop called and warned me in advance that the car was probably going to be totaled. So I went and looked up similar cars to my own, on cars.com and autotrader.com, to see what I could expect to get for it. I looked up Kelley Blue Book values and Edmunds.com True Market Values.

Then I looked up some advice on what to expect out of the process -- and ran smack up against people talking about the insurance company offering them much less than the car was worth. I realized that I was going to have to negotiate with the insurance adjuster over the cash value of my car.

Here's the thing. I'd never negotiated anything financial before. And negotiation terrified me.
Like many women in my culture and society, I grew up with the knowledge that my job was to make other people happy and not cause trouble*. Moreover, I grew up knowing that it's rude and greedy to respond to someone's offer by asking for more. So negotiating felt like purposefully being rude, purposefully making someone unhappy or angry, purposefully making someone else's life more difficult. It felt like being a real jerk. Or, to use the gendered term -- being a bitch.

In the Asimov short story "Cal," the titular robot is forced to contend with the idea of harming a human being (against the First Law of Robotics). In response, he says, "I felt my positronic brain-paths go rough." That's how I felt -- like a robot whose positronic brain-paths go rough to prevent it violating its programming.

But rough positronic brain-paths or no, I was going to have to replace my car. To do that, I was going to need money. And I wanted to maximize that money more than I wanted to avoid the conflict.

So when the adjuster called, and offered me $1000 less than the median price I'd seen in all my research…I negotiated. And while I was nervous, I didn't feel my positronic brain-paths go rough. I found myself naturally framing the negotiation as a matter of objective evidence. It was the same style of conversation I'd have with a colleague who disagreed with me on a point of science. He presented his number, $X; I hemmed polite disagreement and said "Well, I've been doing research, and the prices I'm seeing are about $Y" (where $Y was the approximate median value I'd seen in my research). He explained the "policy" justifications for their numbers -- "Our policy is to look at Blue Book private party value. We don't give replacement value, just market value."

I then explained the sources of my numbers, and pointed out that since I was looking at cars for sale, the numbers I'd seen had by definition taken market conditions into account. "Apparently," I said, "local market conditions are such that cars like that one are selling for a bit more -- probably because it's a gas-efficient car and gas prices are rising."

He said "All right, I'm pulling up autotrader.com here…let's see." He did exactly the same search I had, and found exactly the same results I had (which he read aloud). After that, he revised his number upwards to a number much closer to the approximate median value I'd found. Success!

Afterwards I felt exhausted and shaky, as though I'd just had a fight. At least I never have to talk to this guy again, I thought, so it doesn't matter if he thinks I'm a bitch for being so stubborn about this.

And then I had to talk to him again. One of the guys at the body shop wanted to buy my wrecked car for himself, so I had to call the adjuster back and tell him I wanted to keep the car as salvage. I steeled myself to deal with someone who probably hated me now, and called him first thing in the morning.

…At which point, while putting together the new paperwork for me, he cheerfully chatted with me about the weekend, how he'd taken his son to the park, and how bizarre it was that it had been so beautiful all weekend but was going to snow that night. Yes, small talk, but his tone and demeanor were genuinely friendly.

And then I got it. It was a game. It didn't affect our interactions outside the negotiation, any more than you'd stay mad at a friend who blocked your shot in a pickup basketball game. The negotiation was an expected game, with defined and understood rules. By asking for more and sticking with my position, I was just playing according to the rules; he was doing the same. Our actions in the game were understood to be separate from the rest of life. Once the game was over, we could metaphorically shake hands and buy each other a beer.

I've often heard and read people say that. I never understood how it could be true. How could you possibly disregard an argument you'd just had? How could you possibly not be angry at each other? How could you treat it like a game where nothing matters?

Now, suddenly, I get it. It's not a real argument. No one's actually angry. It's a game played out in the guise of a verbal disagreement. It's a ritual argument. When you make a display of anger or offense, you expect that the other person will understand it just to mean "I'm going to push back," not think that you are truly personally offended.

I still think it's a jerk move to start playing this game in a context where the other person doesn't understand that this is a ritual argument and not a real one. It's dishonest and manipulative to take advantage of someone who reacts to your ritual display of offense by thinking they've truly said something wrong, using their apology and guilt to win the game when they didn't even know they were playing.

But in certain contexts, in this culture, negotiation is an expected game. Buying a car or a house; getting a job or a raise; other business and financial contexts. In other situations, it's possible to learn and pick up on the signals that this is a ritual argument -- that you're playing a game. And in those situations, I now see how the game can actually be fun.

Warning: Scammers preying on the elderly

2011-02-22T17:24:00.000-05:00

A scammer or group of scammers is currently active in Brunswick County, North Carolina (United States).

Here's how they operate: They telephone people whose landlines are listed in the phone book, and tell them they've won a sweepstakes -- a million dollars and a new car. Even if the target says "I know this is a scam, stop calling me," they will keep calling. They will call repeatedly and unrelentingly, 5 times a day or more.

If the target engages them at all, they will ask (and pressure) the target to buy a $300 Visa gift card and mail it to a P.O. Box address.

A relative of mine recently lost $300 to this scam. Although she knew it was a scam, she believed that if she sent the $300, the scammers would stop the unceasing phone calls. In this case, upon receiving the $300, the scammers called back and told my relative to leave the garage door open so they could deliver the car she'd "won." She did not do so.

Details of the situation have already been reported to local law enforcement. The police department says these scammers move around, mostly in locations where there are many retired and elderly people. They use disposable, prepaid cell phones to make their calls, and change P.O. boxes frequently. They especially prey on people who may be suffering from the early stages of Alzheimer's or other dementia, who are easily confused.

The police did not think the scammers would come to their victims' homes, despite the "leave the garage door open" portion of the spiel. To me, it sounds like they might be considering branching out into burglary.

So if you, a relative, or a friend lives in an area with a high population of retirees, be aware of this scam. Be especially aware if you know your friend or relative is easily confused.

Tell people you care about, if they ever get a call where someone is asking them to send any money or give any personal information, they can call you for advice. And tell them if anyone pressures or threatens them to get them to send money, they can and should report it to the police. If anyone keeps calling them many times a day after being told to stop, they should also report that to the police.

If they start getting a lot of unwanted phone calls, help them get in touch with their phone company. They may be able to set up a whitelist of people that can contact them (friends, family, church, doctor, etc.), and block all other calls.

Scammers are always despicable. But those who prey on the elderly, who manipulate people because they know they're easily confused -- they get a special place in hell.

Other irritations

2010-12-17T12:14:00.000-05:00

The word "murse" (man-purse). AAARGH on so many levels.

This NYTimes article about how to carry your iPad keeps using that word. In fact, that article irritates me anyway. You would think no guy ever had to carry a notebook, a sketchpad, a laptop, or a book before. Seriously, have these men never gone to work or school?

It's a solved problem. You carry a briefcase if you're a businessman, a messenger bag or backpack if you're a student or otherwise casual. You do not need a "World War II-era Swiss ammunition case."

And the New York Freakin' Times does not need to do an entire article on it.

Yes, I'm grumpy today, how are you?

Video killed the blog star

2010-12-17T12:05:00.000-05:00

You know what I am grumpy about? Video blogs.

I can read faster than people can talk. Unless video is actually crucial to your content, just write your blog. Don't read it to me.

Or at least post a transcript under your video. In fact, you should do that anyway, for accessibility.

In which I am not a lawyer

2010-12-08T14:47:00.000-05:00

I did a little bit of reading about the legal basis for searching airplane passengers, and for searching passengers of other kinds of mass transit (trains, subways, buses).

Here's a link to what I read (from Ferdico, Fratella, and Totten, Criminal Procedure for the Criminal Justice Professional, 2009): on airport searches; on public transit searches.

Here's what I understand as a total non-lawyer:

These kinds of searches are considered "administrative searches." Administrative searches are performed to see whether you're in compliance with some statute or regulation, not to gather evidence for criminal charges. So they have much less stringent Fourth Amendment restrictions. For example, the fire marshal doesn't need a search warrant in order to inspect a business to see whether they comply with fire code.

If the government has some important "special need" that outweighs the privacy invasion, they can perform warrantless searches. This has been upheld by the Supreme Court.

Of course, even in searches performed as part of a criminal investigation, you don't need a warrant if the subject consents to a search.

At airports, the government can be considered to have a "special need" to ensure safety. But more often, the passenger is legally considered to have given implied consent for a search of their bags and their person by choosing to fly.

On public transit, the courts have said warrantless searches are legal because of the government's compelling interest in ensuring public safety. They've reasoned that the privacy intrusion is minimal compared to the potential efficacy of random searches at stopping a terrorist attack. (This was specifically about bag searches, not searches of anyone's person.)

Again, I'm not a lawyer, so take my opinion with a few grains of salt. But to me, this sounds like a pretty slippery slope. Terrorism is fundamentally a criminal activity. You could argue that lots of other criminal activities harm the public safety, too. Why not just start searching everyone on the street? After all, muggings are bad for the public safety. So is the drug trade. Doesn't the importance of preventing those crimes outweigh the minor loss of privacy in getting patted down? And then you can just scratch out the Fourth Amendment.

And if the TSA takes upon itself the right to start scanning and patting down all train passengers, bus passengers, and subway passengers, why not argue that those passengers consented to the search when they chose to use that form of transportation? Why not argue that drivers consented to having their cars searched when they chose to drive on a public highway? After all, terrorists drive cars. Some of them even use cars as bombs. Doesn't the government have a compelling interest in preventing car bombings?

It really sounds to me like "terrorism" is some magic word of power. Everyone is so terrified that all you have to do is say "We're doing it to prevent terrorism!" and the Constitution no longer applies.

More on TSA scanners and patdowns

2010-11-30T15:43:00.000-05:00

One popular response to people worried about the scanners is to say "Come on, you're not that hot, no one's going to save your picture. No one wants to look at you naked anyway."

Leaving aside everything else wrong with this -- come on, haven't you seen enough of the internet to know better? It's just as likely -- probably more likely -- for someone to start a collection of "ugly," "fat," or "freaks" scanner images. Think People of Walmart, except naked. And most people, even people who look pretty normal on the outside, could potentially end up looking really weird on the scanner.

Another popular line is to say "Why are you so ashamed of your body? It's just a body. Why should you be so embarrassed if someone else sees it?"

Privacy is not the same thing as shame. Being comfortable with your body doesn't mean you give away all control over it. In fact, having control over your own body is a huge part of being comfortable with it. If you want to let someone to see or touch your body, you can. If you don't like the way someone's going to look at you or touch you, you don't have to let them -- because it's your body.

The scanners and pat-downs take that control away. It's not about worrying whether the TSA will like your body. It's about the TSA saying that while you're at the security checkpoint, you have absolutely no say about who gets to look at your body, who gets to touch your body, or how they do those things.

The only other places this happens: when someone is arrested, and when someone is in prison. In both those cases, the primary intent may be to find weapons, but a major secondary effect is asserting control over the person -- and police and guards know that.

Also: Most people reading this will be cis. Consider for a moment people who are trans, whose private parts may look or feel significantly different than the TSO expects. Both the scanner and the pat-down will out these passengers to the TSOs. A pat-down done in public could potentially out these passengers to everyone else in line, too, depending on what the TSO says or does.

Now consider how many people become angry, abusive, even physically violent, towards someone who's outed as trans. There's more at stake than just embarrassment.

The power of positive writing?

2010-11-30T10:24:00.000-05:00

Via Geek Feminism:

A new study, performed by Dr. Akira Miyake at UC-Boulder, shows the power of removing stereotype threat for women in physics. A simple 15-minute writing exercise completely closed the gap between women and men on a standard test of basic physics concepts.

Even though I majored in physics, and even though I'm now in a much more gender-balanced STEM field, and even though I have struggled with self-confidence and stereotypes, I'm still always stunned by just how strong stereotype threat can be. Studies like this -- and the others referenced in that article -- show that it's a huge effect.

Gizmodo: TSA says saving images is impossible

2010-11-23T14:11:00.000-05:00

Joel Johnson, over at Gizmodo, asked the Department of Homeland Security's public affairs office directly whether it is impossible for body scanner machines to save images.

They replied:

The machines in airports do not have the capability to save, print or store images. New software and hardware would need to be installed in order for this to be possible.

This doesn't square at all with the technical specifications described and partially reproduced in the EPIC memo from January (PDF link). Those stated that the machines were actually required to have the hardware and software to save and export images.

So what gives?

Personally I suspect weasel wording. Notice that they added "print" to the list (when they were asked about saving). The machines probably don't have printers, so it's technically true that new hardware and software would have to be installed for them to print the images.

Maybe I'm too cynical. But I doubt it.

Tech specs and privacy of whole body scanners

2010-11-22T15:30:00.000-05:00

An EPIC memo with more technical details about the X-ray backscatter machines can be found here (PDF link).

Biggest things I did not know: The damn things run Windows XP. And they are required to have Ethernet connections.

Naked pictures on a Windows box connected to the internet? I bet you a dollar they're already hacked.

The machines are also set up with a "Level Z" user, which is essentially an administrative user. Level Z users can access test mode (where images can be saved), export raw image files, and enable or disable privacy filters applied to images. The Level Z user also seems to be the only person who can create and modify accounts and change passwords.

TSA documents say the following people are Level Z users: people at TSA headquarters, contractor maintenance techs, and "super users." No details on who these "super users" are.

The machines also are required to be able to upload and download data to an internal hard drive, and to external USB drives. It is therefore not at all true that they "cannot" save images, as the TSA has claimed.

Knowing these technical details, I'm even less convinced of the TSA's ability to protect passenger privacy with these scanners than I was before. All it takes to save raw scanner images to a thumb drive is the password to the "Level Z" account? Please tell me that's not just a Windows XP admin account, because anyone with Google can learn how to get around that in 10 seconds.

Why I won't fly if I can avoid it

2010-11-18T17:54:00.003-05:00

The new full-body X-ray backscatter scanners, and the "enhanced pat down" if you opt out of them, are humiliating and invasive.

(Long post after the jump.)
I'm not a prude or ashamed of my body. (That seems to be the go-to response to anyone who expresses discomfort.) But I'm really not comfortable with a naked picture being taken of me when I don't know who is looking at it and who else could look at it in the future.

The TSA claims the images "can't" be saved, but we already know that the scanners are required to be able to store and transmit images while in "test mode." There is no way for a passenger to be sure that the machine isn't in "test mode." And we already know that body-scanner images were saved at a courthouse in Florida, then made public under the Freedom of Information Act and published on Gizmodo. There's also no way to be sure that the TSA agent looking at the pictures doesn't have a cameraphone. Sure, they're not supposed to -- but they're not supposed to steal things out of passengers' bags either.

The image is supposed to be unidentifiable, with the person's face blurred out. However, reports indicate that the agent looking at the pictures is in radio contact with the agents sending people through the scanners. What's stopping them from repeating your name over the headset to the guy looking at your picture? Furthermore, that link goes to a report of the guy at the scanner sending a teenage girl towards the scanner, and saying over the radio to the guy looking at the pictures "Got a cutie for you." (Ew.) Which means it works the other way too: the guy looking at the pictures could be telling the guy standing next to me all the details. (Ew.)

Apart from the privacy concerns, some biophysicists have expressed concerns about the health effects of the X-rays used in these scanners. They say that since the radiation scatters off the skin, the dose should be computed for the skin, rather than being averaged over the whole body (which is what the currently reported dose numbers do). Other physicists think the health risk is really nonexistent, and the scientists who wrote that letter are engaging in bad science, thereby weakening the argument against these machines.

I'm not an expert in radiation dosimetry. My back-of-the-envelope calculations involving the ratio between total body weight and skin weight imply that the dose to your skin is about 20 times higher than the reported (whole-body) dose, but even the dose to your skin is pretty small. Jefferson Lab's yearly (whole-body) limit for radiation exposure for visitors to the lab (scroll down to section 7.3) is 250 times greater than my estimate of the skin dose, and 5,000 times greater than the computed whole body dose. Their yearly skin dose limit for radiation workers is 500,000 times greater than my estimate of the skin dose. So it probably only matters if you fly a lot. (I do wonder about how much exposure the TSA agents are getting, though, since they stand next to the scanners the whole time. How shielded are these scanners?)

The privacy issues are clearly bigger than the radiation exposure issues for the scanners. Either way, though, I'd like to opt-out. But if you opt-out, you get an "enhanced pat-down." This means the TSA agent rubs you with open palms. All over. And I do mean all over. Including your crotch, and if you're a woman, your breasts. They also feel inside your waistband, pull your waistband away from your body and look inside. In public, in front of everyone else in line at the security checkpoint.

This account almost made me cry. It's from a woman who had previously survived being raped -- who found herself getting one of the "enhanced pat-downs" and was very upset by the process. Despite the TSA's assurances that you only get patted down by someone of the same gender, she was patted down by a male TSA agent. Other women have reported being told that they would have to wait extra time for a female agent to become available (because there are fewer female agents), and encouraged to just let the male agent ~~feel them up~~ pat them down.

You are allowed to request that the pat-down be done in a private area, but at least one person has reported that they asked for a private area and were told that the wait would be several hours. Several hours. That means, if you want to travel, you have to let them grope you in public.

They will also perform the "enhanced pat-down" if you do go through the scanner and the image is blurred, or they see something that looks unusual or unclear. So it is not just a matter of choosing the scan over the groping. You could very well get both.

I don't mind my doctor or nurse seeing or touching me -- but that's because I have some kind of relationship and trust with them. I also have an expectation of professionalism and privacy. My previous experiences with the TSA do not lead me to believe I can trust them to be sensitive and professional about any of this. Some individual agents may be, but I seriously doubt that most will. Most will be treating travelers as though they're prisoners. Who cares if this person is embarrassed and uncomfortable? Who cares if this woman is having a flashback to her rape? We don't have a choice; we don't have any control over the situation. If we don't comply with whatever they do, they can cause us to miss our flight -- effectively fining us in time and money -- and they can even have us arrested. They don't even need the flimsiest of probable cause.

Going through security was annoying before this. Taking off my shoes was annoying, not being able to pack liquids in my carry-on was annoying, getting wanded was annoying. But up until now it hasn't been humiliating.

So now, I won't fly unless I have no other option. If I can drive, or take a bus or train, I will.

When I have to fly -- if I really need to go somewhere and have to get there within a short period of time -- I don't know what I'll do. I really don't.

To everything there is a season

2010-11-18T10:58:00.003-05:00

Things I will not buy, because they are running Christmas commercials and it is NOT CHRISTMAS YET:

Nissan cars
North Carolina lottery tickets
Biltmore House tickets
Glade candles
Anything from Walmart
Anything from Sears
Anything from JCPenney
A new Wii
Packaged cookie dough, not that I would buy that anyway

Look, I love Christmas. But I also love Halloween and Thanksgiving, and I would really like to celebrate them without having them completely erased by jingly bells.

I will accept Christmas commercials starting December 1. If you really insist, I'll accept them starting on Black Friday. But I started seeing them while watching the election returns on November 2. That is just uncalled for.

Learning to code

2010-10-05T11:44:00.003-05:00

Yesterday, I was teaching one of my students (I'm TAing a bioengineering course) about the Unix command line, and about some low-level I/O functions in Matlab. She looked at me and said "How do you know all this stuff?"

I told her I had just been working with it for a while. This is true. But I suddenly realized that I was her, not long ago at all -- and back then, I didn't know how people like the now-me knew all this stuff either.

So I told her the rest of the truth: I didn't know how to code at all until my senior year of college; I had barely touched the command line until then, too. But I took a programming course, found out I was pretty good at it, and then got a job where I did nothing but program for a year -- then came to grad school and did even more.

That's how I learned. I didn't grow up with it; I didn't always know how. I hope it gave her the idea that it's something she can learn, too.

There's been some discussion lately about how the culture of "I've been hacking my whole life" can drive women out of computer science, because women are less likely to have had access to a personal computer from a very young age.

I'm going to bounce off that discussion to talk about my own experience, which is a bit different, but yields a similar conclusion.

I didn't learn to code until my senior year of college (age 21). This, despite having attended one of the best public high schools in the country, which offered several courses in programming in various languages. This, despite having a software engineer father who brought computers into the house very early on. This, despite being friends with people, from elementary school on, who were programming at advanced levels.

Why? Why did it take me so long to take my first introductory course in programming?

I think it was actually because I knew guys who were coding by age 10. There was never a time when I felt like it was normal that I didn't already know how to code. I felt like, if I hadn't somehow already learned by now, it was too late to start. This, at age 15.

The thing is, I was surrounded by a lot of very, very smart, advanced kids in school. I was one of them, in a lot of arenas. In the culture of my school subgroup, you got respect by having an area of expertise and blowing everyone else out of the water, or being part of a small group of experts in an area who blew everyone else out of the water. It was very important to succeed wildly when you did something. Trying something that you weren't already sure you could succeed at? It was largely Not Done, not unless it was some required course. (That's what got me to take physics, for example -- I needed another science course.)

Programming was not a required course. It was understood to be offered for the guys who had been hacking since they were in diapers, for whom coding was their life. The idea of starting at the bottom, writing my first Hello World program, when I was surrounded by the kind of guys who invent their own programming language at age 15? I didn't even consider it.

I figured I just wasn't the right kind of person. If I was the right kind of person, then why wasn't I already awesome at it? People who are good at programming don't need to learn, they just already know, right?

So I was 21 before I decided to take a basic, 100-level C++ programming class. What the hell, I thought. It's an elective, I don't need it to graduate, none of my friends are taking it. I've got nothing to lose if it turns out I'm no good at it.

And it turned out to be something that normal people could learn and be good at. It turned out not to be something bizarre and arcane and obscure, something you'd have to have started as a child in order to ever grasp. It turned out that I enjoyed it and was good at it.

Then I learned FORTRAN because in my first job, I was handed a large existing program written in FORTRAN and told to modify it. I got a book, I used Google, I referred to Numerical Recipes, and I made it work. Then I learned C, which was about the same, just different syntax. Then a new hire suggested we should be working in Python, so I picked that up entirely from python.org. Then I went to grad school and used Matlab for the first time -- but it was more or less just like Python, so that was okay.

I've worried for a long time that I'm giving a false impression of knowing this stuff. I wasn't formally taught, so I don't know a lot of things like classic sorting algorithms, the kind of pop-quiz theory stuff a lot of software employers will ask at interviews. I just kind of hack it together until it does what I need it to do, figuring out the logic as best I can, looking up stuff along the way if I don't know it.

So there's still a feeling of being an impostor, being behind. I still sometimes feel like I'm not the kind of person who's really good at programming.

But really, that's not true. Because I don't already have to know everything in order to be allowed to learn. Somebody who never wrote a line of code until she was 21 can still be the kind of person who's really good at programming. Believe it.

2010-09-29T10:44:00.002-05:00

Via Skepchick:

Study about why women apologize more than men

Karina Schumann: "…When [men] think they've done something wrong they do apologize just as frequently as when women think they've done something wrong. It's just that they think they've done fewer things wrong.”

I was interested to see that this study looked at whether people thought they had actually committed an apology-worthy offense. Deborah Tannen has written about how women apologize as a ritualized social smoother (we say "Thank you" the same way), and we're shocked when someone takes it literally and accepts our apology when we didn't actually think we'd done anything wrong. This study seemed to be about when men and women feel they've actually done something wrong and should apologize.

Why do women feel they've committed more apology-worthy offenses? I'd hypothesize it's because women are socialized to please others and care for others much more than men are, so our threshold for feeling like we've wronged someone is much lower. I'd also hypothesize that, in situations where fault is ambiguous, women feel more responsibility for making peace.

Kona Coffee

2010-08-09T09:42:00.002-05:00

Today's announcement: Drink 100% Kona Coffee.

If you didn't know, the United States does have a coffee industry. Coffee is grown on the Kona Coast of Hawaii, where I visited this summer on my honeymoon. The climate is perfect -- sunny mornings, foggy afternoons, rain later -- and the volcanic soil is great for coffee. It's grown on small farms, usually family operations, picked by hand and processed in relatively small batches.

Because it's labor intensive -- and because workers are paid a fair wage and treated according to US labor laws -- it is expensive. It's usually about $25 per pound.

But you know where it came from and how the workers were treated. That's worth a lot. And when you consider that one workweek of going to Starbucks can cost $25, suddenly a pound of coffee that'll last a month or two doesn't seem so expensive.

Oh, and did I mention the most important part? It is the most delicious coffee you have ever put in your mouth. You will be spoiled for all other coffees after you drink it. This post came about because my coffee grinder broke this morning, so instead of Greenwell Farms medium-roast, I have reverted to some pre-ground Seattle's Best French roast, and even with cream and sugar I'm struggling.

I think it's best to buy direct from farms. That way you don't run into misleading labels claiming "Kona coffee" when only 10% of the coffee is actually Kona beans (hint: if it costs much less than $25/pound, it isn't real). You can find a list of farms here at the Kona Coffee Council website (on that page, just leave the form blank and click "Find farms and estates"). Since farms sell beans to each other, unless you buy their private reserve coffee, it's all about the same. (I can vouch that Greenwell Farms' private reserve is incredible, but so is their other coffee.)

This is one small way I can buy American and know I'm not supporting worker exploitation. And drink incredible coffee. I recommend it.

Sewing followup: blue jeans alterations

2010-07-27T08:56:00.001-05:00

So yesterday I did some googling and found some useful instructions for mending and altering jeans.

1. How to take in the waist on a pair of blue jeans.

2. How to hem jeans. This method preserves the factory hem so it's less obvious you hemmed them yourself.

3. How to repair a frayed hem on jeans. Essentially you make a casing out of denim scraps that match.

4. How to patch a small tear in jeans or other pants.

5. How to patch larger tears in jeans. And an alternate how-to.

Is it weird that I'm more excited to give these a try than to sew a new piece of clothing from scratch?

Sewing

2010-07-26T12:06:00.003-05:00

So I've gotten a wild idea that I should buy a sewing machine and really, properly learn to sew my own clothes -- and mend or alter store-bought clothes.

I took a sewing class 15 years ago. We made a drawstring laundry bag and a heart-shaped pillow. I've set up and used a sewing machine before, and sewn from a simple clothing pattern, though I'm very rusty on that.

My mother knows how to sew, and so does my MIL, so if one of them happens not to know something the other one might. My SIL sews professionally, though she doesn't live nearby, and sewing is one of those things that it's easier to show than to tell. But we do live in the future with video chat -- so she could demonstrate that way.

Last year I tried to re-learn, got to the cutting-out and pinning-together stage of a simple skirt pattern, but since I had to go over to my mother's house for use of a machine, I never finished.

Is this a completely crazy idea? Do I have time to pick this up as a hobby, or will the machine just collect dust?

I'm inclined to go for it. If nothing else, I really would like to learn some mending and alterations -- like hemming pants and skirts that are too long, patching jeans that have developed holes, taking a dress or top in at the shoulders and bust. Is there any way to fix a frayed hem on jeans that have been worn too long for a while?

Magazines

2010-07-12T10:15:00.002-05:00

Today's question:

Why can't I subscribe to magazines on my iPad?

There's a Wired app that lets me buy single issues -- at full cover price. I'll actually accept the full cover price part of that, because they've significantly enhanced the digital version with audio and video -- it's more than just a PDF version of the print magazine. But I still have to buy each issue from the app, rather than just paying for a subscription.

I can subscribe to Asimov's Science Fiction on a Kindle, but not on the Kindle app. I can theoretically subscribe to it with Fictionwise, too, but they don't have an iPad-native app and apparently have no plans to make one. I could get PDFs from Fictionwise on my computer and un-DRM them so they can be read by another reader, and maybe that's what I'll do.

But really. Why can't I just go to the iBook store, find a magazine subscription section, and subscribe for e-delivery of magazines? I'd love to do that. I think a lot of people would.

Beauty work costs money

2010-04-19T07:51:00.004-05:00

I'm going to warn you right now: If you are a woman who's engaged or might someday get married, the most annoying, unexpected cost of a wedding is all the incidental beauty work.

A spring dress for the bridal shower, because I didn't own any fancy dresses suitable for daytime parties, only dresses for evening events. A pair of shoes to go with that dress, because all my shoes are black and the dress is not. Another pair of shoes to go with a dress I already owned for the rehearsal, because the shoes I wore with it last year have worn out. Tailoring of a dress to wear to the bachelorette party, because my shoulders are narrow so any dress that fits in the waist and hips is huge on top. Hair cut and coloring -- not even counting the cost of hair styling, because my FSIL has kindly offered to do that for free. Manicures, pedicures, body hair removal. Makeup -- I'm not even paying for professional makeup application, but I own the absolute bare minimum of makeup and need different makeup to accomplish a wedding-appropriate look, as opposed to a work presentation or an evening out (currently the only times I wear makeup).

And I know bridesmaids have all this to contend with, too, as well as helping to finance showers and parties, and traveling to said showers and parties. (Transportation costs are rough for my bridesmaids. I am really touched and happy that two of them are able to come and party anyway, but I wouldn't blame them at all if the cost was just prohibitive, as it is for the third.)

I enjoy femmeing it up on occasion -- it's fun -- but since I don't usually, I don't have the costs for all this stuff already factored into my regular budget.

If all these items aren't already part of your monthly budget, plan and save up for them as a wedding expense. I brushed this all off with "Oh, I'll just pay for it out of my regular money." Yeah no. It's really hurting my wallet.

Beauty work: it takes a lot of money as well as time and energy.

Guest post!

2010-04-06T17:39:00.002-05:00

Guys! I have a guest post up on my favorite wedding blog, A Practical Wedding!

It's about how I decided to propose to my fiancé, and what I learned from doing it.

So excited!

Paying for the news

2010-03-16T10:39:00.005-05:00

There's been lots of talk lately about how to get people to pay for news online.

Frankly, at this point, if you put your newspaper behind a pay wall, all that will happen is that people will stop reading it. Blogs will stop linking to it. Your newspaper will become irrelevant.

However, good news reporting does need to be rewarded. What would get people to pay for news?

I don't know about people in general, but I know what would make me pay for news.

Offline access to the electronic edition. Especially on mobile devices, such as a smartphone, netbook, or e-reader. This provides the portability and scannability of the paper version, without the paper clutter. (I subscribed to the physical newspaper for a while. After I read it, it just piled up and made a mess.)

This would require a well-designed, usable interface for reading. My hometown paper offers an electronic edition of the print version, but it's wrapped in a slow reader with a painful interface (ActivePaperDaily 4.0, from Olive Software). Check out the demo that Olive Software has on their website (not my hometown paper). I don't want to pay to struggle with it.

Ad-free browsing. If I read a paper frequently, it'll be worth it for me to pay in order not to see ads.

A membership model, rather than a subscriber model. I contribute to NPR because of this. I can listen to NPR all day for free, but I give them money every month because being a supporting member is important to my identity. Being an NPR listener means something. I know the station is largely listener-supported. They provide news, commentary, and interviews I find genuinely valuable. So I contribute to something I want to be a part of.

If the newspaper developed a clear, distinct identity, so that readers felt like it was part of their identity, they would be more likely to become paying members.

This one seems like the smartest way to go, to me. NPR and Fox News show that people will become very loyal to news outlets they trust.

I do think this would require papers to become smaller, independent local outfits, rather than being owned by mega-corporations. When people feel like the paper is really their own, they'll be much more likely to take ownership by becoming paying members.

The current line seems to be that freeloading online readers are the cancer that is killing the free press. The reality is that people aren't willing to pay just for access to headlines and wire stories. They're not willing to pay just to keep up with current events. That game has changed. Newspapers need to figure out what people are willing to pay for, and give it to them. I've floated some ideas here. Newspapers can do this. If they fail, it's not the online readers' fault.

Isolation

2010-03-08T12:55:00.003-05:00

I think the worst part of doing a Ph.D is the loneliness and isolation.

I see my advisor about once a week. She's the only person other than my fiancé that I regularly speak to in person. I have a couple of friends that I regularly chat with online. When they're not online, I get very lonely during the day.

I'm slowly taking steps to get more human interaction into my life.

I've joined a Meetup group, and I think I might join a photography group. The Meetup group's next meeting is a discussion on a topic I don't have much to say about, so I think I'll wait until the next meetup after that. But it might be a place to meet people. I also joined a workshop series given by the Career Center. So far it's been more lecture than discussion, so I haven't really met anyone; next meeting should be more discussion-based, though.

Last weekend we went out to lunch with new friends -- a couple we met through our wedding-ceremony location. (They're getting married the same day as us, a few hours before us, and asked the coordinator to put us in contact with them so we could split a chair rental. Since we're having about the same number of guests, in the same location, on the same day -- why not just rent one set of chairs and use it for both weddings, and each of us pay half?) They turned out to be very cool people, and I'm looking forward to getting to know them better.

My fiancé invited a couple he knows from work to watch the season premiere of Lost with us. That was a ton of fun and if we could keep the house presentable, I'd like to have them over every week. (The house is so not presentable right now.) I'd never met them before, but we were talking like old friends right away. I'd love to spend more time hanging out with them.

And I seek out conversation online. Facebook is a lifeline sometimes, and the few blogs whose commenters actually form a community -- Making Light chief among them, as well as A Practical Wedding -- help, too.

That's why I blog. Looking for connection and conversation. I know this blog doesn't have a lot of readers, but maybe someday it will. Until then, I'm writing to anyone who might be listening.

Pique-nique

2010-02-20T17:43:00.002-05:00

This list of salad recipes makes me want it to be summer.

A wedding-community poster just asked about food to serve at a picnic wedding in August. I brainstormed. Tell me this list doesn't make you fantasize about backyard picnics:

Corn on the cob
Grilled vegetables
Fresh vegetable crudités
Red-pepper and garlic hummus with fresh pita
Black bean salad, with corn, bell peppers, cilantro and avocados
Tabbouleh
White bean salad, with red onions and cucumbers
German potato salad
Cole slaw with dill

Mmmm.

The best resource for picnic ideas, though, is -- as always -- Mark Bittman. In summer 2008, he published a series of columns giving 101 20-minute picnic recipes (each column links to the next).

I'm so very ready for summer. It was 60 degrees and sunny today, for the first time in a long time. It'll be raining and cold again soon. But for today I could pretend it was spring.

No-Knead Bread

2010-02-18T16:57:00.003-05:00

Since I've acquired a stoneware covered baker, I decided to try No-Knead Bread for the first time. The idea is that you mix up flour, yeast, and water, ignore the lot for 14-20 hours, form it into a ball, let it rise for another 2 hours, then bake it at 450 degrees Fahrenheit in a covered ceramic or cast iron pot.

I started it about 4:30 PM yesterday, and let it sit until noon today. That's a good 19.5 hours. The dough expanded to mostly fill the bowl, and was covered in nice little bubbles, like the kind you get in pancake batter.

But it was very soft and sticky, and wholly incapable of being formed into a ball. I ended up setting the blob inside a loaf pan to rise (with the cotton towel under it). It rose and filled up the loaf pan. But when I transferred it into the covered baker, it just kind of blobbed out again. I tried to form it into a ball, but no luck.

The only apparent effect of this was that I got a flatter, oval loaf. The photo above was taken from one end, so it looks deceptively round (go go gadget foreshortening). It's still cooling; I'll find out soon whether it's delicious. It certainly looks delicious.

Next time I might try placing the loaf pan inside the covered baker and preheating the lot. That way I might get a loaf-shaped loaf.

Food photography: Nikon D200 with 50mm lens, natural window light, f/4.5, 1/1600 s, ISO 200.

We're not unreasonable. I mean, no one's gonna eat your eyes.

2010-02-03T07:52:00.002-05:00

*giggle*

CARL: From NPR and Chicago Public Radio, this is Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, the NPR news quiz. I'm Carl Kasell, and here's your host at the Chase Bank Auditorium in downtown Chicago: Peter Sagal!

PETER: Thanks, Carl! Hello, everyone! We're going to be cutting our show a little short today, because, as you may have heard, there's an apocalypse happening! But we didn't let the election of Barack Obama stop us, and we're not going to let the zombie hordes stop us either. After the show today, myself, Carl, and the panelists will be taking our families to the secret underground NPR bunker, and no, you can't come. I bet you wish you'd donated more during that last pledge drive!

(Via BoingBoing.)

Apple iPad

2010-02-02T14:26:00.004-05:00

Here's my deal on the Apple iPad.

It's a netbook. It's meant to be a stripped-down, most likely auxiliary device, not your main machine. It's not intended for any situation where you need heavy computing power. It's for situations where you need something ultra-portable and easy and reliable to use, for blogging, emails, and light office work.

Most importantly, it lets you do that stuff while standing and walking. Imagine doctors, nurses, realtors, home inspectors, factory supervisors and inspectors, insurance adjusters, IT support, researchers doing field work, journalists. Anyone who has to go walk around for their job, and take notes or data, put in orders, submit reports, while walking around. You don't have to awkwardly balance an open laptop on one arm, or take paper notes and transfer them to your computer later. You can carry this thing in the crook of one arm, like you'd carry a clipboard, and tap on it with your other hand.

That's its niche. That's what it's good for. That's what it does that other things don't do better.

If you don't see a situation in which that ability would be useful, then you probably don't need one. I don't particularly need one -- my work is currently desk-based and doesn't require me to go from place to place, and furthermore my work requires heavy computing power. But I can imagine situations in which it would be useful.

I'm actually hearing of tons of interest from the business community -- more from business owners than from consumers, honestly. It seems like it'd be a neat consumer gadget, but consumers have less need to be able to stand and walk with their computers -- that niche is well satisfied by smartphones. The real niche for the tablet netbook seems to be in business use.

Jo Walton on reading (and writing) SF

2010-01-19T11:00:00.005-05:00

Jo Walton writes about reading (and writing) science fiction, over at Tor.com.

SF is like a mystery where the world and the history of the world is what’s mysterious, and putting that all together in your mind is as interesting as the characters and the plot, if not more interesting. We talk about worldbuilding as something the writer does, but it’s also something the reader does, building the world from the clues. When you read that the clocks were striking thirteen, you think at first that something is terribly wrong before you work out that this is a world with twenty-four hour time—and something terribly wrong. Orwell economically sends a double signal with that.

Jo Walton is beyond amazing. Go read the whole thing. She and I have conversed over at Making Light (where I get to casually converse and rub shoulders with incredible SF and fantasy authors and editors, including Hugo nominees and winners -- they're fantastic people to talk to), and I've read her Small Change series (Farthing, Ha'Penny and Half a Crown), which I can recommend very highly. She writes often at Tor.com, on all kinds of subjects, and she's always fantastic.

Moff's Law

2010-01-19T10:55:00.002-05:00

Racialicious highlights a great comment by Moff from Annalee Newitz's fantastic io9 post on Avatar:

Of all the varieties of irritating comment out there, the absolute most annoying has to be “Why can’t you just watch the movie for what it is??? Why can’t you just enjoy it? Why do you have to analyze it???”

[…]

First of all, when we analyze art, when we look for deeper meaning in it, we are enjoying it for what it is. Because that is one of the things about art, be it highbrow, lowbrow, mainstream, or avant-garde: Some sort of thought went into its making — even if the thought was, “I’m going to do this as thoughtlessly as possible”! — and as a result, some sort of thought can be gotten from its reception. That is why, among other things, artists (including, for instance, James Cameron) really like to talk about their work.

AMEN. That is all I have to say to this. Go read the whole thing.

Santa tracking

2009-12-24T15:14:00.004-05:00

Why does NORAD track Santa?

Because Sears printed an ad for kids to call Santa, and accidentally printed NORAD's operations hotline number. Kids called, and the Director of Operations (Col. Harry Shoup) -- in a burst of good-natured Christmas genius -- decided to have his staff play along.

This is my new favorite piece of trivia for the day.

(Via Consumerist.)

A song for Advent

2009-12-18T21:20:00.003-05:00

Here's the thing I like about Stephen Colbert: a lot of times, he's funnier if you're Catholic.

I've been surprised lately at just how cultural Catholicism can be. Jokes, references, certain attitudes and conceptions of the world -- I never thought of them as specifically Catholic, but they are.

My relationship to being Catholic is complicated. It's a lot like Dan Savage talking about it, in Act 3 of this show of This American Life. (That's about the 37:00 mark.) But it's still part of me. Maybe I'll write a longer post about it at some point.

(If you're a liberal Catholic or were raised Catholic, do listen to that show. It made me cry, in a good way.)

For those who don't know -- my mom didn't know, even though she loves Colbert Report -- Stephen Colbert is a practicing Catholic. He even teaches CCD (Sunday School, for those non-Catholics out there. This is probably my favorite fact about him.

He also recites the Nicene Creed on his show. (Warning: video will autoplay. And then another video will autoplay after it. I don't know why Comedy Central sets up their website this way.)

Recommendation: Radio Paradise

2009-12-17T11:52:00.003-05:00

I don't think I've plugged my favorite internet radio station here. (I don't get anything for plugging them. I just like to recommend them because they're awesome.)

In my experience, Radio Paradise is absolutely the best radio station for lab work, coding, and writing. They play a chill mix of rock (indie and mainstream), folk, jazz, the occasional electronica. (By chill, I mean it's both mellow and cool.) You can see a list of some of their top music here, to see if it's stuff you'd enjoy listening to. They play a lot of stuff I recognize and a lot of stuff I don't, but I dig the stuff I don't know as much as the stuff I do.

I was introduced to Radio Paradise the day I interviewed for grad school here. It was playing in the lab while I was being shown around, and eventually I had to comment on how fantastic the music was. The prof interviewing me said it was his favorite radio station and gave me the details. I started listening to it while coding the very next day.

The energy level, while generally on the mellow side, changes through the day. It rocks a little more in the afternoon when you need some energy to get you through, and early mornings are quiet and dreamy. Despite the fact that they're based on the West Coast, the energy level seems to match up well with my East Coast schedule -- maybe they keep an earlier schedule than me, or maybe it's just in my head. (Rocking in the afternoon here is the same as rocking when you've just got to work there, and I can see needing some rock then too.) They do hand-mix the music (it's not just on shuffle), so the energy level changes are done thoughtfully. You can check out their recent playlist here.

Best of all: They're totally commercial-free. They depend on listener support, so if you find that you like them and listen a lot, consider tossing them a contribution. I contribute a small amount monthly because I'm a frequent listener.

So yeah. Radio Paradise. Check it out.

The U.S. gets a C+

2009-12-15T14:28:00.002-05:00

Flags of the world, graded.

I saw this a few years ago and thought it was the best thing ever. Sadly, the original page has been taken down, but archive.org saves the day.

The flags of the world are graded on design. Points are taken away for bad color, maps, guns, and plagiarism, and given for good color, simplicity of design, and originality. I love it.

Love it

2009-12-07T23:00:00.003-05:00

This post made me laugh my socks off this evening:

Things I learned from iPhone and Droid ads.

Despite being a dues-paying member of the Cult of Mac (Ia! Ia! Jobs fhtagn!!), I was interested in seeing the Droid phones. New shiny tech, yay!

And then they started marketing them squarely at insecure male nerds. Thanks, y'all. The "ZOMG those other smartphones are for giiiiiiiiiiirrrls, ew girl cooties!" was so totally necessary.

Geeks, meritocracy, and gender

2009-12-04T17:30:00.003-05:00

My partner, K, really likes this article, "The unspoken truth about managing geeks", by Jeff Ello.

Its central thesis is that in any geek-oriented field or department -- for example, IT -- self-organizes as a pure meritocracy. You're respected if you're competent. Your managerial and social skills or status don't matter. If you're a jerk who gets things done, you're respected. The quality of your work is all that matters.

There was something pinging at the back of my mind that didn't seem quite right about this thesis. Today, I found a post at Geek Feminism that discusses exactly what I don't like about it: "Questioning the merit of meritocracy."

Skud (aka Kirrily Robert) from Geek Feminism quotes Noirin Shirley from NerdChic.net:

On the surface, [meritocracy is] a completely fair, non-sexist, open concept. Anyone can get in, anyone can progress, as long as they’re good enough.

That’s very, very rarely true. Generally, at best, a meritocracy turns very quickly into a merit-and-confidence/pushiness-ocracy. Good work doesn’t win you influence – good work that’s pushed in others’ faces, or at the very least, good work of which others are regularly reminded – wins you influence. And that’s where women fall down.

Skud notes that "self-confidence is highly gendered." Girls are taught from a very early age to be modest, to be quiet, to be helpful, to do for others. They're taught that bragging and boasting will make them unlikeable; they're taught that telling other people what to do makes them bossy. (Deborah Tannen discusses the verbal patterns in children's play, and the responses of adults and other children, in her book Talking from 9 to 5.) In short, they learn to downplay their abilities and accomplishments -- even, maybe especially, to themselves. Female geeks got this programming, too. I did.

Jeff Ello says "While everyone would like to work for a nice person who is always right, IT pros will prefer a jerk who is always right over a nice person who is always wrong." I disagree with the first clause: being a jerk who gets things done will usually get you more respect than being a modest, quiet, helpful person who gets things done. Aggressiveness and arrogance are actually alpha qualities in geek society. Think Steve Jobs. Furthermore, these qualities are assumed to correlate with ability. If you can get away with being a jerk, you must be really, really good, right?

As Noirin Shirley says, "Aggressive behaviour, while less common amongst those 'higher up' in any given community, is nonetheless relatively common in the open source community. This can result in women 'failing' before they start, because of lack of knowledge of the true hierarchy, and lack of confidence in their technical abilities." She's specifically discussing the open source community, but it applies to any community of geeks. It's true in science and engineering. It's definitely true in IT.

Jeff Ello, talking about managing geeks, says

Ego, as it plays out in IT, is an essential confidence combined with a not-so-subtle cynicism.

[…]

Strong IT groups view correctness as a virtue, and certitude as a delivery method. Meek IT groups, beaten down by inconsistent policies and a lack of structural support, are simply ineffective at driving change and creating efficiencies, getting mowed over by the clients, the management or both at every turn.

I don't think the choice of "meek" as an antonym for "strong" was coincidental. Meekness — modest self-effacement — is ineffective, and doesn't garner respect. If you can't "drive" change, if you "get mowed over" — in short, if you're not pushy enough — you lose in the meritocracy. And women are taught to be meek. In fact, women who try to talk and act more assertively get judged negatively, both by men and by other women (Deborah Tannen gives a good discussion of this).

Skud also notes that gender bias affects how merit is judged, even if everything else is equal. Quoting Shirley at NerdChic again:

The final problem with meritocracy is that even after all the noises of “it’s all about the quality of contributions”, women very often aren’t judged on the same basis as men. […] People listen or pay attention to women, or don’t, based on the fact that they’re female – not based on the merit or otherwise of their contributions.

Skud points to the example of blind auditions. When orchestra auditions were face-to-face, men were chosen much more often. When the musician played behind a screen, so the listener can't see them but can only hear their playing, women have a much greater success rate.

There's also the example of publications. A 2008 study of papers submitted and published to the peer-reviewed journal Behavioral Ecology showed that when the reviewers didn't know the author's identity, papers authored by women were published significantly more often. (There's a good summary at Living the Scientific Life; the study itself may be found here.)

An earlier study, done in 1970, asked department chairs to read CVs and rate the candidates' desireability, indicating what faculty position they would deserve. The CVs were identical except for the names attached. CVs with feminine names attached were considered less desireable, and were offered lower positions. (Study here.)

When gender affects perceived merit, the meritocracy isn't really so pure.

Ello says "IT pros always and without fail, quietly self-organize around those who make the work easier, while shunning those who make the work harder, independent of the organizational chart." I think that's true. Unfortunately, the simple fact of being a woman too often means that male geeks think you "make the work harder." So they shun you. That's no meritocracy.

It's satire, right?

2009-11-07T11:50:00.003-05:00

OpenOffice mouse.

"You can do far more with this mouse than most people are likely to realize at first," said mouse designer Theodore Beale. "You can launch applications from the desktop, and in your browser you can fire up a specific Internet site with one button, then close it with a double-click on the same button. In Writer and Calc, you can have your most powerful and complicated macros on one row of buttons and simple functions like Bold, Undo, and Format Cell on another. It's very useful in games like World of Warcraft, because even without taking the joystick into account, you've got 16 commands within one click, 40 within two, and all 72 icons on the six action pages within just two double-clicks or less."

I congratulate the OpenOffice developers for a subtle, cutting, and hilarious satire of the user interface design problems in much open-source software.

(Please tell me it's satire.)

On "calling out"

2009-10-14T09:54:00.003-05:00

One thing I really wish would change, or at least get examined, in the activist/progressive blogosphere is the use of the phrase "calling someone out." It's used as "I'm calling you out for your sexist language."

I don't know exactly where the phrase started being used for this purpose. The thing is, to call someone out means to challenge them to a duel or at least a fight. It means that someone has made a grave insult to your honor as a gentleman, and you are demanding satisfaction.

Consider for a moment the social structure and assumptions all tied into that.

While people who use this phrase don't literally expect pistols at dawn, the connotations of "honor, insult, violent challenge" are definitely there. And, as with dueling, the only ways to answer the challenge of being "called out" for something are to fight, or to apologize.

I am aware that this is not the only place "to call out" is now used to mean, or try to mean, "identify/expose." A quick Google will tell you that much. The thing is, it also always means a personal challenge.

This is not a "tone" argument -- "You should be nicer and then you would educate people!" But I am questioning the framing of the interaction as "insult to honor - challenge - fight." I think it partakes of a whole host of other things that aren't cool.

On Heaven

2009-10-10T12:19:00.001-05:00

I am pretty sure I don't want to go to Halo when I die, because I don't want to spend eternity with frat boys.

Equine, feline…

2009-07-11T13:43:00.004-05:00

I use Feline Pine litter for my two cats. It does a really good job of neutralizing the urine odor that is usually the worst part of cat ownership. I've actually had people comment on how the bathroom, which contains the litter box, doesn't smell like cat pee.

Then I learned, from a comment on this kitty litter post at Lifehacker, that Feline Pine is exactly the same thing as pine horse bedding, which is significantly cheaper. I googled it, and darned if it isn't true. Google implies it'd be about $5 for a 40 pound bag, vs. $25 for a 40 pound bag of the cat litter.

Now all I need to do is find a horse supply store nearby.

Parking

2009-07-10T16:09:00.002-05:00

Though I don't live in Washington, my new favorite urban planning-related blog is Greater Greater Washington.

This post about parking policy made me think. I used to live in Greensboro, NC. Greensboro has had a lot of success in the past 10 years revitalizing its downtown area. One of the things that encouraged people to come downtown was the fact that city parking decks are free on nights and weekends. Yet this blog post argues that free parking is a bad idea.

The difference is whether there are any alternative methods of getting downtown. In Greensboro, there aren't. Buses don't run late at night, and they never run frequently or very reliably. There is no subway or train. And most people live a fair bit out of downtown anyway, in a city built on a car-centric, sprawling plan. If you don't provide copious free parking, people will simply not come downtown to eat, drink, attend movies, concerts, or plays. They'll go elsewhere in the suburbs where it's easy to park.

I agree that alternative transportation is ideal. Walkable planning is what more and more people want these days, and building cities for cars is incompatible with walkability. Acres of parking lots do end up killing downtowns, as do poorly placed parking garages. But in cities with no alternatives to the car, you do need parking. It's easy to say "Well, just create a transit system then," but the Triangle has been working on this for decades. I think it's better to get people downtown by making parking a bit easier. It's certainly stimulated motion on the transit front in Raleigh, which now has a free downtown circulator bus.

Dodie Smith

2009-05-15T14:06:00.003-05:00

New literary enjoyment: Dodie Smith.

Think Jane Austen, combined with Charlotte Brontë, with a bit of L.M. Montgomery -- Anne Shirley when she's not being too florid.

I was pointed to Smith by Jo Walton's review of I Capture The Castle at Tor.com. (Incidentally, you should also read Jo Walton. Her Farthing is a compelling mystery story that slips in strange detail upon strange detail, until suddenly the truth of things bursts upon you.)

But Dodie Smith. I've read I Capture The Castle, and just finished The New Moon With The Old. Her characters are romantics, placed in the encroaching, brutal reality of poverty -- as it comes on eccentric, previously comfortable English families who aren't ready to admit it. But the romance wins, as it did for Anne Shirley.

Things aren't as neat as in Austen, and not quite as gothic as in Brontë -- and not so full of golden nostalgia as the Anne books. But if you liked any of the above, let me highly recommend Dodie Smith.

Four things that are overrated

2009-05-09T19:57:00.001-05:00

Overrated List, via Kate Harding.

My list:

1. The blogosphere
2. Literary fiction
3. Radical politics
4. Wolverine

Also-rans:

5. New York City
6. Graduate school
7. Unshakable self-confidence
8. Skepticism
9. Coca-Cola
10. McDonald's
11. Snack cakes
12. Summertime

Things that are not overrated:

1. Paris
2. Sushi
3. The movie Independence Day
4. Empathy

School lunch

2009-05-02T21:44:00.004-05:00

The best website ever today:

In the grand tradition of the Weight Watchers recipe cards, I bring you Harrisonburg City Schools Lunch Choices.

(Courtesy of mimi smartypants, who I want to be. Not when I grow up; now. I have been reading her blog, which I haven't done in a while. Hence the headings in this entry.)

I have purchased some earthy crunchy hippie solid shampoo and solid conditioner from Lush. They also sent a sample of patchouli deodorant, which smells funky in a kinda bad way before I put it on, but I really like the way it smells when I actually use it. In general, I smell like one of those hippie Buddhist-item gift shops in Asheville. I like this.

Grad school, which I am ostensibly blogging about:

Well, there is a reason I haven't blogged about it. I don't know how socially acceptable this is, or whether it will make me completely unemployable forever, but I just don't even know what I'm doing anymore. My project seems meaningless and I find myself avoiding working on it. I'm really ready to move on, but because of lots of tedious reasons I don't even want to talk about, I'm farther behind than I would like. I haven't prelimed yet, which I am way behind on because I was supposed to do that in my third year, and I'm sort of finishing my fourth year now. Another Ph.D-ing friend of mine and I have decided to form a support group of two, and try to shame each other into productivity.

My mother keeps saying "But you like it, right? You're happy with grad school? You don't want to quit or anything, right?" I finally told her the truth, which is "I don't know. Maybe I do, but what would I do if I quit?" She wasn't too happy, although she hid it well. She's very proud of the fact that I'm getting a Ph.D in a hard science field. Well, I am too. There's a lot of self-image wrapped up in that. I'm cool because I'm smart and hardcore and a woman in science!

I really did want to get a Ph.D for what people told me were the right reasons: ability to be independent, to take the lead in research, rather than just being someone else's technician. I'm just not sure I picked the right field, or whether a Ph.D was the best way to go about that, rather than working my way up in industry. Or whether I picked the wrong lab. If I'd gone elsewhere, would I be in this slump? Maybe I needed more of a slavedriving advisor who would crack the whip and make me work 90-hour weeks.

I don't know. At this point I just want to be done. I was told, by a friend I respect highly who works in interaction design, that I should finish my Ph.D because it would help in that field. So I am. But I'm ready to try something new.

Seriously?

2009-03-09T19:46:00.003-05:00

Seriously, guys? A dictionary password for encryption of military documents?

I don't even have a dictionary password for Facebook. I don't even have a dictionary password for online pizza ordering. Come on now.

Optica Normal

2009-03-09T14:59:00.004-05:00

Well, this is frustrating. I can't read this at all. It's like a Magic Eye. I keep leaning backwards and forwards, tilting my laptop screen back and forth, and trying to cross and uncross my eyes, and it's just giving me a headache. I can sort of see that there are letters in there. I can't tell what they are.

(I only ever saw one Magic Eye thing in my life, and it took a good 30 minutes. It wasn't worth it.)

Here are some more samples, via Making Light, which calls it "Weird but cool."
Sample 1.
Sample 2.

I really do wonder what the correlation between seeing Magic Eye pictures and being able to read this font is. I also wonder what, physically, causes me to be unable to see Magic Eye pictures. I'm terribly nearsighted, significantly more in one eye than the other, but shouldn't my glasses correct for that?

What the devil?

2009-02-28T23:33:00.002-05:00

http://www.pomegranatephone.com/

Go with it for a little while. You'll soon see why it's making me go "buh?"

TV…in space!

2009-02-28T15:25:00.002-05:00

!!!!

Netflix now has Monty Python's Flying Circus available to instantly watch!

And CBS has released their TV.com iPhone/iPod touch app that lets you stream CBS content, including full episodes of some shows, to your phone. Do you realize what this means? Oh, yeah. Star Trek. On my phone.

I love living in the future.

(There's something oddly self-referential about watching a past conception of the future on a very futuristic device.)

You be da man now, dog

2009-02-27T22:32:00.002-05:00

Funniest comment I've read today, from Ta-Nehisi Coates's place, regarding Michele Bachman and Michael Steele:

TNC, you should petition the Atlantic for a monthly language column dedicated to answering readers' questions about proper ebonics. You could be the next William Safire.
Dear TNC,
Despite my earnest entreaties, my Congresswoman insists on saying "you be da man" to indicate that someone is the man. She insists that she is using the idiom correctly, but I tell her that "you be da man" is in the second person infinitive translating to "you are being the man." She says I'm not the man. Please settle this dispute for us once and for all.--Signed, Mixed Up in Minnesota
Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein | February 27, 2009 12:06 PM

I'm really, really white and even I twitched a little bit at "You be da man." That's…not how it works.

Free speech

2009-02-19T16:32:00.004-05:00

Melissa McEwan, today, clarifies what kind of free speech laws she would like. On a post celebrating the fact that Fred Phelps has been banned from going to Britain, she writes "That's what a free speech policy that recognizes the fundamental difference between speech and incitement to hatred looks like."

Melissa is one of the best bloggers out there, and I generally respect and value her thoughts. But on this one I genuinely think she's wrong.

Glenn Greenwald does the best job of explaining my reasoning:

For those unable to think past the (well-deserved) animosity one has for the specific targets in question here, all one needs to do instead is imagine these proceedings directed at opinions and groups that one likes. If Muslim groups can trigger government investigations due to commentary they find offensive, so, too, can conservative Christian or right-wing Jewish groups, or conservative or neoconservative groups, or any other political faction seeking to restrict and punish speech it dislikes.

Down that ugly path lies people like Newt Gingrich, openly advocating that the First Amendment be narrowed considerably to exclude advocacy of "radical Islam" as a means of combating terrorism. People who favor and seek to exploit Canadian and European hate speech laws are but opposite sides of the same tyrannical coin as Gingrich and his allies who are eager to restrict political expression here.

In comments to her post, Melissa says "I am a free speech absolutist, too. I just don't believe that incitement to hatred is free speech." I think that, by definition, that makes you not a free speech absolutist.

Of course, the First Amendment isn't absolute either. You don't have the right to incite violence. I think that's a good line to draw.

Fred Phelps is probably the foulest human being I can think of, and the things he says are equally foul. But I do think he should have the right to say them. (And the Patriot Guard Riders should have the right to form a line and rev their motorcycles to drown him out when he tries to say them at soldiers' funerals -- and the rest of us should have the right to shout him down at any other time.)

DO WANT.

2009-02-15T19:34:00.001-05:00

Cocktail Chemistry Set from ThinkGeek.com.

London by night

2009-02-01T15:36:00.005-05:00

Where there's hardly no day, and there's hardly no night,
there's things half in shadow, and halfway in light.
On the rooftops of London -- coo, what a sight...

(Picture by Jason Hawkes. More at that link.)

Quick thought

2009-01-14T15:57:00.003-05:00

I Do But I Don't, by Kamy Wicoff, attempts feminist self-conscious critique, but ends up playing out the status quo.

At every turn, Wicoff agonizes about following tradition -- and then follows it. She agonizes about wanting the big romantic proposal from her boyfriend -- and waits until he does it. She agonizes about having a traditional big diamond engagement ring -- and gets one big enough that another woman thinks she's showing off. She agonizes about wearing a white princess gown -- and ends up with a poofy Vera Wang.

Meanwhile, I agonized over wanting a proposal -- and ended up proposing to him myself (in a pretty romantic way, if I do say so myself), making both of us very happy. I bought him a ring. I thought about wanting a diamond, and the ethics and marketing involved -- and ended up asking for a created sapphire and recycled gold ring, since he wanted to buy me a ring at all.

I'm a far cry from Super-Feminist, but the book really made me wonder -- what is the point in agonizing about the status quo if you just go and follow it every time?

(And yes -- this is my way of announcing here that I'm engaged.)

And turn out the lights behind you

2009-01-07T11:58:00.004-05:00

Everybody go home. Physics is over. They've found the Grand Unified Theory, and all that experimental evidence for quantum physics is so much bunk.

(I always love these companies. One seems to pop up every year or two.)

I guess you're just what I needed; I needed someone to feed

2008-12-22T16:27:00.004-05:00

I haven't baked in a long time.

In college, I used to make late-night yellow cakes and apple pies, and feed them to the entire floor. Once, I made an apple pie from several Red Delicious apples I'd liberated from the cafeteria. Around 11 PM, one of my college friends [that link may be NSFW; it's his blog] came into the basement kitchen as I was about to put the pie in the oven, and said "Well, aren't you the Happy Homemaker!" He was happy to eat some, though. (Red Delicious are not ideal for pie. But it wasn't terrible.)

As we speak, I am baking my first chocolate olive oil cake. I replaced half the sugar with Splenda, since I'm happier the less sugar I eat.

I don't bake much anymore because it's just myself and my boyfriend at home. I don't have people to bake for anymore. My college dorm was a close-knit community, rather like living with a 100-member extended family (with the associated drama and feuding -- but also with the communal meals and communal Walmart trips). My floor, in particular, stuck together. There was always a party in the hallway. That meant there was always someone to feed.

Before then, I used to bake during high school exams, and bring treats to the exam. Exams were usually half-days and half-party atmospheres; everyone was very excited about cookies. I made chocolate-coffee chewy cookies, which are still known to my mother as Exam Cookies. I'll pick up the recipe from home over Christmas, and post it here. I haven't been able to find it online and it's worth sharing.

I'd rather like to live semi-communally again. I need people to eat with, and feed.

This post brought to you by a discussion of breaking bread over at Making Light.

Robot bike butler

2008-12-15T14:43:00.003-05:00

In Japan, they have automatic bike storage. This is just amazing. There is this vast underground bicycle garage (well, sort of vast -- it stores ~~144 bikes, I believe~~ 9400 bikes -- that is pretty vast). It reminds me of the Matrix.

Via Geekologie -- go read their post.

Bike storage is not what keeps me from bicycling here. It's the lack of bike-safe roads and enormous suburban sprawl that make bicycling neither safe nor reasonable where I live. But in more bike-friendly cities, where the worry is storing/locking up your bike, this could be really useful. Especially since you can all too easily break a Kryptonite bike lock using a Bic:

Today's awesomeness

2008-12-10T20:25:00.002-05:00

CBS.com has all the episodes of ST:TOS for free online.

This is even better than the broccoli ocarina.

Brocarina

2008-12-10T13:17:00.001-05:00

No, really. This might be the best thing I've seen all week.

Superhero poses

2008-12-09T11:43:00.003-05:00

It's this one! I've been looking for this post forever!

Sorry. That's a link to a thread on the Girl-Wonder.org forums, wherein people sketch male superheroes in the common poses of their female counterparts. It CRACKS ME UP. (Also, that one of Superman? Is SO HOT. You'll know which one I mean.) But seriously, it points up how completely ridiculous the poses of female superheroes are.

The Girls Read Comics column also includes The Anti-Comics-Feminist Bingo Card. Also funny, because it's true.

Embloggery

2008-12-08T11:26:00.002-05:00

Embroidered blog posts.

The author embroiders every one of her blog posts. Like with needle and embroidery floss.

This is awesome and obsessive-compulsive enough to appeal to me.

(Via brandflakesforbreakfast.)

Real vampires don't sparkle

2008-11-21T10:15:00.002-05:00

Very funny refusal to review Twilight, from Craig Lindsey at the Raleigh News and Observer.

A taste:
Even though it's my job to give my take on the most anticipated movie that comes out every week, I just can't see myself slouched down in a theater seat and watching two hours of pale, bland, sexually ambiguous teenagers falling in love while flying all over the place. Besides, I already saw that a month ago -- it was called "High School Musical 3."

BURN.

In case you'd like to learn about the Twilight phenomenon through one of the internet's foremost parodists, here is the index to Cleolinda's Twilight posts. With quotes, plot summary, and a whole lot of snark.

Cleolinda Jones is responsible for Movies in Fifteen Minutes, which are always hilarious.

I would like to note, for the record, that I have my own guilty pleasures (see: late-career Heinlein) so while I mock, I mock with love.

Noise of a different color

2008-11-20T16:35:00.002-05:00

Simply Noise, for all your white, pink, and brown noise needs.

I'm listening to the Brown noise and am feeling suddenly super-chill. (It's so called because it can be generated by a simulation of Brownian motion. It has much more power in the lower frequencies compared to white noise.)

One of my friends says that something about the phrase "the best free white noise generator on the web" strikes him as very 2000. I agree, but I still like the noise.

Four words for you.

2008-11-18T20:17:00.002-05:00

Thomas Kinkade Christmas Movie.

Much like the Thomas Kinkade NASCAR painting, it is exactly what you think it is going to be.

The new news

2008-11-11T10:22:00.004-05:00

Q. Why haven't I posted in forever?

A. Because I wanted this to be a relatively non-political blog, and I have been pretty wrapped up in politics for the past month. Now that the election is over, it's likely I can start thinking about other things long enough to post about them.

I started Nanowrimo, but after a terrifically awful day of writing, got kind of gun-shy. I should have made a plan before starting. We'll see how it goes.

Today I'm finishing putting together a presentation of my research so far, to give to the lab group tomorrow morning. I saw some interesting and weird behavior, and have tried a couple of hypotheses to explain it, but so far they haven't panned out. I'd like to get my lab group's input and suggestions.

And with that, I'm off to work on this presentation. How I like making presentations in Keynote.

I Am Changing My Name to Fannie Mae

2008-10-14T12:15:00.001-05:00

An updated version of "I'm Changing My Name to Chrysler":

Bits and pieces

2008-10-03T11:16:00.003-05:00

I attended a great forum about the financial crisis this week. There's a story about it here. Five Duke professors -- from business, accounting, econ, law, and political science -- talked about what happened and what needs to happen.

And here is the video of the whole thing. It is long (1.5 hours) but I highly recommend it. You can also pause and come back to it, of course. I'm particularly interested in the opinions of Cam Harvey, the business professor, and Katherine Schipper, the accounting professor. They shed a lot of light on the business and accounting practices that led to this situation, and gave specific opinions on the best way to handle things.

If you have not yet seen FiveThirtyEight.com, go there now. Nate Silver, who runs the site, gathers all the polling data he can find, puts together a statistical state-by-state model based on a weighted average of the polls, then runs 10,000 Monte Carlo simulations of the election, each time he updates the site. From that he determines the probabilities of various outcomes. He makes histograms. It is awesome.

I trust his statistics on political polls more than anyone else out there. His methodology (particularly for how the weighting is done) is discussed in his FAQ.
And for those who, like me, thought Joe Biden fumbled a word when he referred to "Bosniaks" in last night's debate: look it up.

Not with a bang

2008-09-23T14:30:00.006-05:00

I'm having one of those real bogged-down, stuck-in-the-mud, not making any progress days.

Whenever I have these days, I start to recite T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men" to myself. You know --

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

That's how it feels. Like no matter what you do, you can't actually make anything happen. You have no agency at all.

It's a real bummer, and it kills your motivation to work, to say the least. Sometimes it kills your motivation to get out of bed at all.

But today I had a thought. It might be a breakthrough thought.

I'm feeling this way about my research. I had a big idea and now I'm tracking down leads, trying to understand what I'm observing. There's been motion and progress before. Why don't I trust that this is all part of the process, and is leading to more progress?

And the answer is: Because I've never done this before. I've done research before, to be sure -- but I've never done a self-directed, multi-year, original research project. That's the entire point of graduate school.

Because I've never done this before, I don't know how the process goes. I don't know its ebbs and flows. I don't know when to expect feeling stuck.

It's like the first time you drive somewhere. You don't quite know where you're going, and it seems to take forever. Then the second time you visit the same place, it seems to take no time at all.

Or it's like I was told by a friend of mine about running: The first five or so minutes of a run are always unpleasant and painful, even for experienced runners. It's after that rough beginning that you break through into the zone.

I'm not a runner, so I can't verify this for sure. I've tried Couch to 5k before, and gave up right around that five-minute mark, because I just felt so awful I figured I must be either doing it really wrong, or maybe there was something wrong with me. Hearing that has convinced me to try again -- to expect that 5 minute mark to be really, really unpleasant -- and to push through it, knowing that the feeling of pain and struggle doesn't mean I'm failing -- even though it feels just like I'm failing.

This feeling of stuckness in my research is like that. It doesn't mean I'm failing. It doesn't mean I'm on a dead-end road. It just means I don't know to expect this yet, because I've never done it before. I don't know what the road ahead will look like, and I'm naturally afraid I'm going to take the wrong turn. I don't know if that fork was the right one, or if that weird split-off is actually keeping me on the same road, or if this is actually supposed to be unpaved and muddy. I just have to trust my navigator (my advisor) and my own sense of direction. The second time I drive this route, it'll be more familiar and easier.

Since I expect to be undertaking a lot of stuff I've never done before in my life, this is a really useful realization to have.

I put it here because I thought it might also be useful to other people.

This post brought to you by The Pilgrim's Progress, The Odyssey, The Lord of the Rings, etc. I think now would be a good time to read some hero-journey lit.

Pathfinding, challenges, doing stuff

2008-09-21T15:42:00.004-05:00

I've been doing some contemplation lately. I needed to check in with myself again about where I am, where I want to be, and think about how to get there.

Today I read this article on surviving a day job with your creativity intact. It got me really thinking.

I've come up with a few ideas. I'm going to make myself a website, undertake a time challenge, and change my daily routine. Hit the cut for more.

What do you do to let loose that part of you that thrives on creative play, even when your day job or daily life seem like they're conspiring against creativity?

I'm going to make myself a website.

This will be my first real foray into web design. I've spent today reading at the CSS Zen Garden, along with reading the accompanying book. I'm about to sit down with a legal pad and sketch out what information I want there, figure out how it should flow, figure out what kind of design elements say what I want it to say. I'm not a graphic designer, so I expect there will be some collaboration with my boyfriend, who is one. But I want to do the seed of the design myself, and work through it myself, until I understand exactly what is going on.
I want to do some kind of time challenge.

There are several time-challenges out there: challenges that force you to undertake and finish a creative project without getting hung up on perfection. The point is to break through that internal editor and just make something.

48 Hour Film Project is one my boyfriend participates in every year. NaNoWriMo is something I've tried multiple times to participate in, only to be foiled by the fact that November is one of the worst months when you're in school (major final projects are usually due the first week of December, so November is crunch time). There's 24 Hour Comics. Jonathan Coulton rolled his own with Thing a Week.

One thing I've been rolling around in my mind is committing to posting one new image on Flickr every day for a month. The problem is that even if I try, I may not get an image good enough for public consumption every day, and I don't want to bring down overall quality by feeling like I have to put up junk. Yet changing it to "one new image every week" doesn't feel like enough pressure. It feels like the kind of thing I could forget about or put off.

On the other hand, when I was taking a photography class, the rule tended to be 3-5 images a week. Maybe that would be a good goal. I think it would be, actually.

I genuinely would like to participate in NaNoWriMo this year, too (now that I'm no longer taking classes). I used to do a lot of writing. Some of it was good. (Some of it was terrible, of course.) I haven't tried to write fiction in probably 3 years, and haven't written it with any kind of frequency in far longer than that. I never even attempted anything novel-length.

On the one hand, that makes it seem crazy to attempt NaNoWriMo -- like going out and trying to run a marathon when I barely made it past Week 3 of Couch to 5k. On the other hand, it feels like the kick I need: do something huge and crazy and stupid, and if you have to fake your way through, do it with style.
I'm going to change my daily routine.

I'd like to try getting up early for a month. Just one month, promising myself I can go back to my lie-in ways after the month is out if I'm miserable. In those early mornings I'd like to do some of the creative work I've outlined above. I'd also need to put together a worthwhile morning routine: something to get up for, rather than just another morning of waking up going "Oh, &^%&, another day full of stuff I don't want to do." Who'd want to get up early just to do more stuff she didn't want to do?

Also, the aforementioned boyfriend and I have agreed that we would really like to lay off blog-reading in the evenings. Instead, we'd like to watch a movie or an episode of a good TV show if we don't go out and do something. Movies give us something to think about and talk about. Even if the movie is terrible, it's a topic of conversation. And if it's good, it can inform and inspire. So I'm going to switch Netflix back to 3-at-a-time.

I think these will be good ways to prime the pump. When I'm doing things like this, it adjusts my mindset. Everything comes into better balance and better focus. Things start coming together and making more sense.

Teresa Nielsen Hayden

2008-09-15T08:26:00.005-05:00

The Nielsen Haydens are probably my favorite people on the internet. I've never met them in person, but would love to. Making Light -- which you will see over to the right, in the blogroll -- is a truly fantastic blog, one of the few to survive every feedreader cut I've made. If you don't read it, I highly recommend it. Teresa Nielsen Hayden also moderates comments over at BoingBoing.

And we come to the point: Teresa Nielsen Hayden had (what was most likely) a heart attack early Friday morning. She is generally okay now; they called 911 quickly and she was in the care of two very nice paramedics within 7 minutes, and then in the hospital. They are taking good care of her and more details will be forthcoming when/if she wants to share them on the internet. The important thing is that she is generally okay now, and is getting treatment.

Keep her and Patrick in your thoughts, prayers, intentions, or whatever you do at times like this, okay?

[Whenever an ambulance screamed by the office, my former boss would come into my office and say "We must work faster." (We were working on a method of early diagnosis of risk of heart attack.) Now I hear his voice in my ear: I must work faster!]

Comfort films

2008-09-11T19:30:00.003-05:00

This Slate article about movies we can't actually bring ourselves to watch made me think about the opposite: movies you can watch over and over again, movies you put in for comfort when you're tired or sick or sad and need a distraction.

For me, those are (with IMDB links):

What are yours?

(For interest's sake, the movie I had from Netflix the longest without watching it was probably Finding Neverland. I'm not sure why.)

Merlin Mann-ifesto

2008-09-10T19:48:00.002-05:00

Merlin Mann for the win.

Here’s the thing:
A notebook is basically the creative equivalent of the NFL jersey you picked up at Macy’s; unless you fill it with a lot of hard work and sacrifices, you’re just a dilettante with poor spending patterns. An aspiring something. A fan of the game. An existential cosplayer. And, that’s not what I want to help you to be. Even if you really love Moleskines or the Raiders, God love ‘em.

I need so much more of this in my life. This is fantastic. Less screwing around, more actual getting things done. Cool things.

The Large Hadron Collider is go!

2008-09-10T17:54:00.003-05:00

I am going to take this perfect excuse to quote my favorite piece of bad writing ever, from Angels and Demons by Dan Brown.

So CERN has a particle accelerator? Langdon thought, as the elevator dropped.

They do. They do indeed. And it is awesome.

Join the bone marrow registry

2008-09-09T14:59:00.002-05:00

Go read this terrific, moving post at Shakesville.

Then join the bone marrow registry.

I know what you're thinking -- "Doesn't donating bone marrow hurt a lot?" The answer is no -- you're under anesthesia, as with any other surgery. You'll probably have some pain during recovery, as with any surgery. But people have this image that they stick giant needles into your hipbones with no anesthesia, and this is so untrue.

In fact, most commonly you don't have to do that at all. Most commonly you'd be asked to do a peripheral blood stem cell donation, which is no harder than donating double red cells or platelets at the Red Cross.

The National Marrow Donor Program particularly needs people who are not of European ancestry to join -- although if you are of European ancestry, like me, they still want and need you!

Joining is not hard. You can order a kit online, or you can find a drive near you. The kit is fun -- you take four cheek swabs and send them in, so they can type your tissue.

Joining does cost money -- $52 at this point. They need to offset the costs of tissue typing. You can donate to help offset these costs, even if you are ineligible to join.

Please do it -- especially if you're from a group that's under-represented in their database.

Love it

2008-09-06T06:33:00.001-05:00

Best post ever, from Adventures in Ethics and Science.

It's what happens when you think too hard about the system of a classroom store.

A bit of a lull

2008-09-05T09:24:00.005-05:00

I apologize that the posting frequency, especially of interaction-design stuff or any thoughts more complicated than a quick quip, is going way down right now. I'm hot on the trail of something weird, interesting, and potentially very, very cool in my data -- something that, if it pans out, could be an incredible dissertation. I'm spending most of my time on that at present. The hazards of trying to move laterally into a new field, while still actively working in the first field.

Here are a few links to tide you over.

Google Chrome. I haven't had a chance to download and try it yet. Thoughts? Experiences?

Android. The rumor is that the first Android phone is coming out at the end of this month. I'm kind of an Apple fan girl, but I still can't wait. Apple needs the competition to keep them sharp -- and better choice in the market is better for everyone looking to buy one of these phones. The Samsung Instinct isn't exactly an iPhone killer. Apparently it handles like an ATM screen, according to two people I know personally who have tried it. It vibrates when you tap a button -- I'm not sure that is the best way to get into the metaphor of the virtual keyboard. Actual buttons don't vibrate when I tap them.

Spore. My household has been having enough fun with the Creature Creator alone. SimEvolution, which is what it essentially is, sounds like the greatest game ever. Can't wait for the creationist answer to it, she said cynically.

Via BoingBoing, a radio that's all user interface. I wish there were numbers on the tuner, though -- I find my radio stations by knowing their frequencies.

Science Debate 2008

2008-09-02T18:39:00.004-05:00

I don't generally get into politics on this blog, but I will just say that Obama's responses to these questions over at Science Debate 2008 made me very happy.

The design of their website, however, does not. What is with that banner? And text in bright blue? Really, guys?

(This reminds me that I recently attended the practice prelim of one of my colleagues. His advisor said "I guess I don't mind that black text on white background, physics look." I just laughed. I'd rather see black text on white background any day than yellow text on a blue-to-black gradient, physics or no physics. He passed his prelim, by the way.)

Press Pause

2008-08-29T11:08:00.003-05:00

Merlin Mann, over at 43 Folders, writes a great post titled Social Networks: The Case for a Pause Button.

I cannot tell you how much I agree with his assessment.

Technically, LiveJournal does have a way to do this. You can take someone off your Default View list, which means their posts won't show up in the feed of "friends" posts, but they'll still be "friended."

It would be great if other social-networking sites had this feature.

Garfield

2008-08-26T18:05:00.003-05:00

Garfield Minus Garfield.

The Garfield comic strip becomes a poignant, tension-filled, absurdist, existentialist art piece if you erase Garfield.

Like Snow, Glass, Apples, it's a mind-virus. I now cannot read Garfield without mentally subtracting Garfield. And it's so much better this way.

T-shirt bags

2008-08-24T17:09:00.003-05:00

Awesome:

Make your old t-shirts into reusable shopping bags

One straight seam and some cutting. That's it. If you have old tank tops, you can dispense with the cutting.

My only question is how strong they are. Probably as strong as a plastic grocery bag.

Handy use for all those X-Large promotional t-shirts you get from work, events, the Red Cross....

Scientists and Web 2.0

2008-08-21T13:36:00.003-05:00

Fantastic article about getting scientists to adopt web 2.0 technologies -- with an eye towards how much extra work users are actually willing to do (hint: the answer is none).

As I, and several other people, have said: Necessity may be the mother of invention, but laziness must be the father.

(Via A Blog Around the Clock.)

Conversation

2008-08-20T15:11:00.005-05:00

Just had a great half-hour conversation with John Pormann, who was the main developer of CardioWave.

He recommended Software Carpentry. It's an online intro course to software development for scientists. If, like me, you don't have a background in computer science, and what you know is limited to what you've had to hack together to accomplish your research -- this looks like it could be a good resource. It is very bullet-point oriented, which can be a little frustrating.

One interesting thing that came out of my conversation with John is that when you are developing for scientists, being able to hack away at the source code -- having to hack away at the source code -- is a feature, not a bug. My advisor always says, "Any program is guilty until proven innocent." You don't trust the results unless you understand every step in the computation.

The trouble comes when you are dealing with people who may really want to just use the tool and don't care about understanding every step -- and plenty of people do have that need. John used BLAST as an example, but Cardiowave itself can be an example: undergraduates (or even some graduate students) who simply want to use it to do a small project, and won't be particularly interested in modifying or verifying each element. People are willing to trust the verification that's been done by others, and are willing to accept that the program has been "proven innocent." For those users, accessibility is a primary concern.

These seem like mutually exclusive usability goals. (Cardiowave comes down on the side of hackability. The user interface consists of a Perl script that, at the command line, asks you to specify which of several lists of options you want to use, and generates a text file that you then feed to Cardiowave in order to run the simulation with the specified options.) I don't think they are mutually exclusive.

Memorable quotation (well, paraphrase from memory): "In retrospect it should have been obvious, but people seem mostly concerned about the input and output." John says that the Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute, at the University of Utah, has written some interface elements -- specifically visualization -- that hook into Cardiowave using their SCIRun framework. I'd like to see more about that.

I've been talking with my advisor about how to work these topics into my Ph.D. I'm excited.

(But right now I had better take The Visual Display of Quantitative Information back to the library before they put a hold on my registration because it's overdue.)

Turn on SSL in Gmail

2008-08-20T12:01:00.003-05:00

Your account is just too easy to hack without it. Here is another explanation of what's going on.

Here are step-by-step directions.

(Thanks, hazelsteapot.)

On signs?

2008-08-14T16:40:00.001-05:00

Ceci n'est pas Olympics Rings.

It's either a severely incompetent cake decorator, or a semiotician having a little joke.

Another rec: OmniFocus

2008-08-13T12:56:00.002-05:00

I've been looking for the perfect Getting Things Done implementation.

I love iGTD -- and if you're looking for a fantastic free solution, definitely grab iGTD, and donate something to Bartek. (It's Mac-only, like all the stuff in this post.) But iGTD doesn't sync with the iPhone, and since it's a free program that's a labor of love for one person, iPhone sync is not going to be a high priority.

I'd tried Things. Things has an iPhone app as well as a desktop app. But I don't like the fact that you can't group projects (i.e. I can't have a "Home repair" project, with sub-projects "Tile bathroom floor," "Fix cabinets," "Paint living room"). Also, iPhone sync is not yet up and running for Things.

So I checked out OmniFocus. It's significantly more expensive than either of the above -- $80 (I got it for $50 because I am a student), plus $20 for the iPhone app. But it's really, really nice. Adding and organizing tasks, projects, and contexts is completely transparent. It works smoothly, exactly as I'd expect it to, letting me focus on getting the stuff out of my head rather than struggling to input it correctly. It's terrifically flexible with grouping anything -- you can have sub-projects and sub-contexts.

And the best part is that iPhone sync works. It syncs wirelessly, either over MobileMe or over a WebDAV server you set up. Not only that, but it's location-aware. It can find the nearest grocery store and show you your grocery list. You can also add tasks by taking a picture or making a short voice note.

Essentially, these three applications are all great pieces of software. The deciding factor for me was working, wireless iPhone sync. If you don't have an iPhone (or an iPod touch) then I strongly recommend that you check out iGTD and Things. All three programs allow you to download and use a free trial, so you can test and see which one you like best.

Bonus listmaking rec: Zenbe Lists for the iPhone. If you have multiple people in a household who do grocery shopping, this is a killer app. You can share lists and remotely sync up. I can add some groceries to a list shared with my boyfriend. When he pushes "Sync," he'll see my additions. If he's going by the grocery store, he can pick some things up, and check them off the list. When I push "Sync," I'll see what he bought. No need to call each other and say "Hey, could you pick up some milk on the way home?" Kinda cool on the desktop, but truly killer for mobile devices since you can bring it with you to the grocery store and check things off as you put them in the cart. It is not a GTD app nor is it meant to be, but it's the best shopping-list app ever.

CVS

2008-08-13T08:24:00.004-05:00

Do you know what is awesome? CVS.

Not the drugstore. The Concurrent Versions System.

It's just me developing, but since I'm going through so many iterations of this little piece of software, CVS helps me keep track of what I tried before, what went wrong, and what I changed (and when). If you have more than one developer, it's good for that, too.

If you use Windows you'll need to use cygwin to use CVS; if you use Mac you can just easily use X11. Of course this implies that if you're using a Linux or Unix system, you're good to go.

Critical thinking

2008-08-12T09:52:00.004-05:00

The WaPo has an article about how "critical thinking skills" don't exist and can't be taught as a separate thing. I generally disagree -- more under the cut.

I went and got the 2007 American Educator article referenced in the WaPo article (the Willingham article, first at that link). It's an interesting theory. His main argument is this: "The processes of thinking are intertwined with the content of thought."

Another quote: "People who have sought to teach critical thinking have assumed that it is a skill, like riding a bicycle, and that, like other skills, once you learn it, you can apply it in any situation." He, of course, argues that both of these assumptions are false. Critical thinking is not a skill; it is a collection of "metacognitive strategies." And the metacognitive strategies you use to solve problems in one field are not very applicable to solving problems in another field -- unless you have a lot of experience with the first field. The argument is that you must learn to see the "deep structure" of a problem, and that takes a lot of practice.

I agree with him this far: you cannot teach the skills of critical thinking divorced from content. It's true; you can't teach the scientific method unless you teach science. (In fact, teaching science by leading students through the scientific method is highly effective -- it's a better way to learn the content as well as the thinking style.)

What I disagree with is the notion that cognitive thinking is not a skill. This may be semantic, but I disagree with the implication that it's not a skill that can be taught. Agreed, it is not a single skill, and no one seems to claim that it is. It is a collection of skills. But frankly, what is any skill but the knowledge and use of metacognitive strategies? He argues that "skill" implies that it is something you can always deploy once you have learned it, but sometimes people fail to think critically in some situations even if they are good at it in other situations. I don't like this definition of "skill." Certainly critical thinking is not the same kind of skill as riding a bicycle -- it's certainly a meta-skill. It's about learning how to analyze any given situation. And because it's a meta-skill, it may take a little while to figure out how to analyze a new situation. But there are some things that always work. The scientific method always works.

I also disagree with the notion that these skills -- or metacognitive strategies -- don't transfer because they don't give you the base knowledge. In a simplistic sense, this is true. Of course you don't magically learn history by studying science. However, I argue that you do learn how to learn. You've learned the strategies for identifying what's important, and you can do that even when you don't already have the background knowledge of a topic. And as with science education, those critical-thinking strategies help you to direct your own learning.

An example, from the paper.

For example, an important part of thinking like a historian is considering the source of a document—who wrote it, when, and why. But teaching students to ask that question, independent of subject matter knowledge, won’t do much good. Knowing that a letter was written by a Confederate private to his wife in New Orleans just after the Battle of Vicksburg won’t help the student interpret the letter unless he knows something of Civil War history.

Fair enough. But he now knows that each of those things is important, and he knows what he needs to find out to interpret the letter. I don't remember much Civil War history at all. I learned it in high school, but I couldn't tell you the significance of the Battle of Vicksburg, nor what was going on in New Orleans at the time. But handed a letter, and given those facts about it, I would apply the same strategy that I use to understand a paper in Circulation that tests several variables I know nothing about. I read the paper and make some inferences from context about what those variables might be. Then I search for each one, look it up and try to understand how it might influence the quantity measured in the paper. Then, not only do I understand the paper, but I have learned several new pieces of information. The letter is the same way.

So, fundamentally, critical thinking is the skill of learning how to learn. It's learning to bootstrap yourself by examining a situation, identifying your goal in that situation, and identifying what resources you might need to achieve it -- then either pulling them from your own memory, or looking them up elsewhere if you never learned them. In my career so far, I've been faced repeatedly with solving problems where I didn't have all the background knowledge. For example, building a setup to properly align and test a laser, when I didn't know what tools we had in the lab. I looked at the laser and the table, and said "I need a piece that can hold it like this" and went in search of one that looked like it was shaped correctly. And I found it.

And yes, agreed, this skill takes practice, and you have to practice on something -- it can't be taught in a vacuum. But in my opinion, the best thing is to teach content by critical thinking, as I've discussed above. You learn how to learn as you learn.

Trans feminism

2008-08-09T23:12:00.005-05:00

Julia Serano FTW. She writes an essay titled "Rethinking Sexism: How Trans Women Challenge Feminism."

DON'T read the comments. Just don't do it. You'll regret it. I mean it, don't read them, not even if you're curious.

I have a friend who wrote another great essay about this topic, but I'm not sure if it's been published yet in a place where I can link to it. I'll find out and get back to you.

DIY frosted glass

2008-08-09T16:41:00.002-05:00

Lifehacker posts something both cool and useful: Frost your window glass in a cheap, DIY, reversible way.

The secret is acrylic wall glaze. Painted on glass, it gives a great frosted effect, but is easily removable either by scraping, or by wetting and peeling off.

Maybe I'll do this with the two small side windows in my kitchen. Actually, I like this better than mini-blinds. And as an added bonus, my cats can't tear up frosted glass as they can tear up mini-blinds.

Nissan's ECO pedal

2008-08-06T13:47:00.004-05:00

Wired writes about Nissan's new invention: your car teaching you to hypermile.

If you accelerate too fast for good fuel economy, the gas pedal pushes back.

So simple. And yet so awesome.

(The first paragraph of the Wired article shows that Wired knows its readers all too well.)

Iteration

2008-08-06T13:05:00.002-05:00

Surfacing just long enough to say that I've been iterating the same data-analysis project all summer -- doing it, looking at the results, realizing I screwed up, repeat. Now I see the iterations starting to converge, which means that I may actually finish the data analysis and get to prepare for my prelim in the fall.

I would rather develop software in a team -- maybe another pair of eyes would have caught some of my mistakes earlier, saving iterations.

I'm trying to develop this custom data-analysis software so that it's easy for me to use. For example, I just hooked the script that runs nonlinear fits of the parameter of interest, onto the script that lets you view the original signal traces and extract the parameter of interest. That way, if I see the fit's all screwed up because of some weirdo outliers, I can immediately look at the trace and see if something is obviously wrong.

The trouble is that Matlab's ability to let you create GUIs is pretty clunky. I do my best.

Interface design in FOSS

2008-08-04T09:20:00.003-05:00

(FOSS stands for free and open source software.)

Here is a great article by Matthew Paul Thomas about why FOSS tends to have such poor usability, and how it could be helped.

This has been a huge issue for me. In science and engineering, everybody uses FOSS. *nix is the standard OS, and the vi/emacs debate still rages. There are certainly some major commercial software packages that are in standard use -- Maple, Mathematica, Matlab, SAS -- but everyone is writing their own custom software anyway, so most people are into open-source.

And frankly a lot of it is a huge pain to use. This is one of the main things open-source evangelists don't seem to understand. The point is that users can also be developers, but this often shades into expecting users to be developers. Most people are not interested in understanding what's going on under the hood, but lots of FOSS demands that you do. There's even a kind of macho disdain for making something easy to use -- the idea that if it's easy to learn and use, it must be dumbed-down and not very powerful. If you know enough to tinker with it and make it work, then you're good enough to use it. If not, well, you should learn. This is all well and good, but not everyone is interested in learning to program. And despite what some people think, that's okay.

Cynically, I suspect pushing for interface design to be a priority in FOSS is a losing battle -- because of #8 on the list linked above. People making FOSS are making it for themselves and people just like them, people who are willing to tinker. I don't know how you're going to get that to change.

There are exceptions. Firefox is a great piece of software. But it's also a big project, and most FOSS developers aren't interested in doing something to that scale.

So, I don't know. What do you think?

(Thanks to Bruce Cohen (SpeakertoManagers) over at Making Light. In fact, read that whole thread -- it starts out being about women in FOSS, and links to a really cool talk by Emma Jane Hogbin [Google video link] about the topic, and there is a really cool subthread about interface design.)

Trolls in the NYT

2008-08-01T12:24:00.003-05:00

The New York Times magazine writes about internet trolls.

The second guy interviewed in that article is the digital kid from American Gods. Car, conversation and all. Do you think he is doing it on purpose? Or did Neil Gaiman just nail it that hard to start with?