What He Did, and What He Didn't Do

Steve Jobs died yesterday. I read an article that Malcolm Gladwell wrote earlier this year in the New Yorker about how Jobs had a reputation as a pure, Edison-esque inventor that he hadn't quite earned. Gladwell recounts Jobs' visit to a Xerox facility in the 1970s where engineers were building what would later come to be called a Personal Computer. And it had a mouse. Jobs would later perfect the idea, and the rest is history.

The article recounts a number of instances where companies were developing technologies but didn't realize their application, and let them fall to the cutting room floor. If it weren't for guys like Jobs, inventions like the mouse and the laser printer would have collected dust in a warehouse.

If you think about it, Jobs didn't invent the PC, or the touch screen, or the smartphone, or any of the things that we think of him as "inventing." What Jobs did was probably more difficult - he was able to package and present technologies in a way that impacted the way people lived.

Malcolm Gladwell - Creation Myth

Cliffhanger

I saw Cliff Lee pitch this week - he faced the minimum 27 Red Sox, giving up a couple of hits but getting as many double plays from his D. Complete game win, 29 straight scoreless innings. Turns out he is the 3rd starting pitcher in the last century to drive in more runs in a month (2) than he let up (1). Crazy shit.

He still is, statistically, the third best pitcher on his own team. According to Baseball Reference, up until this point in the season, Halladay's WRP (wins compared to replacement player aka WAR) is 4.6, Hamels' is 4.0 and Lee's is 3.8. I did an analysis on the "great rotations" of all time over on Just Sayin after the Lee acquisition. Here is a brief review:

1927 New York Yankees
Waite Hoyt (22-7, 2.63, 5.6)
Urban Shocker (18-6, 2.84, 2.7)
Herb Pennock (19-8, 3.00, 3.0
Dutch Ruether (13-6, 3.38, 1.6)
George Pipgras (10-3, 4.11, 1.3)
Avg WRP = 2.84
Total WRP = 14.2


1954 Cleveland Indians
Early Wynn (23-11, 2.73, 5.2)
Mike Garcia (19-8, 2.64, 5.1)
Bob Lemon (23-7, 2.72, 4.2)
Art Houtteman (15-7, 3.35, 1.3)
Bob Feller (13-3, 3.09, 1.7)
Avg WRP = 3.5
Total WRP = 17.5

1993 Atlanta Braves
Greg Maddux (20-10, 2.36, 6.2)
Tom Glavine (22-6, 3.20, 3.8)
Steve Avery (18-6, 2.94, 4.0)
John Smoltz (15-11, 3.62, 2.8)
Avg WRP = 4.2
Total WRP = 16.8
(Avg = 3.4, Tot = 17 with Pete Smith: 4-8, 4.37, 0.2)

1971 Baltimore Orioles
Mike Cueller (20-9, 3.08, 2.7)
Pat Dobson (20-8, 2.90, 3.1)
Jim Palmer (20-9, 2.68, 4.1)
Dave McNally (21-5, 2.68, 3.1)
Avg WRP = 3.25
Total WRP = 13

2003 Oakland A's
Barry Zito (14-12, 3.30, 4.9)
Tim Hudson (16-7, 2.70, 6.7)
Ted Lilly (12-10, 4.34, 2.0)
Mark Mulder (15-9, 3.13, 5.1)
Avg WRP = 4.675
Total WRP = 18.7

1998 Atlanta Braves
Greg Maddux (18-9, 2.22, 6.1)
Tom Glavine (20-6, 2.47, 5.6)
Denny Neagle (16-11, 3.55, 2.0)
Kevin Millwood (17-8, 4.08, 0.6)
John Smoltz (17-3, 2.90, 3.2)
Avg WRP = 3.5
Total WRP = 17.5

I used those averages just to balance out the 4 vs. 5 man rotations, but the WRP stat is cumulative (I think?), and at this point in the year, Roy/Cliff/Cole have accounted for 12.4 wins relative to a replacement (read- bargain) pitcher. The season is only half over. Toss an oft-injured Oswalt in there, with his 1.1 WRP, and spot starter Vance Worley with his 1.1 and you are talking about a rotation that has provided more value to its team over half a season (14.6 wins) than the entire rotation of the 1927 Yankees or 1971 Orioles did over the course of a whole year! If they keep up the pace, or even pitch half as well as they did in the first half, it will be the most valuable pitching staff in the modern history of baseball. Since the Phillies hit like shit now, the timing couldn't be better.

On Yesterday's Events

In the wake of last night's news that Osama Bin Laden was killed by American special forces in Pakistan, some scattered thoughts, some of which are distilled from conversations I have had over the last 12-14 hours:

-I don't think it's appropriate to rejoice over the deaths of others, even if they were very bad people. Bin Laden had this coming, but dancing on his grave is wrong. At a Passover Seder, you remove a drop of wine from your glass for each one of the ten plagues as a reminder not to take joy in the suffering of your enemies. It's important not to lose your humanity in the moments when extreme circumstances force a resort to violence.

In mentioning this sentiment, I've had a few people say this is somehow a sympathetic viewpoint, which is ridiculous. I believe that our greatest potential asset in combating violent extremism is exerting a goodness of character and comporting ourselves in a way that suggests that using violence is something that we do not enjoy or wish to do willingly except under the most grave circumstances.

-I think that it is unclear whether this diminishes the operational capacity of Al-Qaeda or changes the political momentum in favor of the United States, but it is most certainly a better outcome than NOT killing Bin Laden and it provides some closure. Al-Qaeda is designed to be decentralized, and I can't help but think that although political events since 9/11 may have lionized Bin Laden in the Arab world, they may have made him less relevant because of the other, similar organizations that coalesced around American military intervention and detention policies.

-Conspiracy theorists are boring. I'm not saying that politicians don't hide things or offer misdirection from time to time, but I don't have time for people who think that grand orchestrations like fake moon landings, inside-job 9/11s or fake Bin Laden assassinations are worth the time or risk. Why would you fake killing Bin Laden, only to have him pop up later and make you look really really really bad? Impeachably bad. Dumbasses.

I really wonder about the folks that distrust anything that an "authority figure" says, but offer near blanket acceptance of pretty much any jerk who writes a book about how the symbols on currency imply some sort of cabal to poison you with MSG and cell phone brain rays.

Bout It Roll Call

COPPED:




21: The Illustrated Journal of Outsider Baseball
Issue 1 - Jewish Baseball Pioneers and Stars

Looking forward to Issue 2, which is apparently a 1933 Pittsburgh Crawfords yearbook.

DROPPED:



John Legend - Rolling In The Deep (DJ Apt One Remix) by DJ Apt One

WATCHED:
>

Hennessy Youngman's Art Thoughtz rolls on, into the woods.

Don't Drink The Water?

There was a story in a number of media outlets today about high levels of radioactive isotopes of Iodine in Philadelphia drinking water detected last week - amounts as high as 2.2 pCi/L (picoCuries per liter of water). The EPA's limit is 3.0 pCi/L Obviously, the first thing that comes to mind is the Fukishima nuclear disaster in Japan, which has just been upgraded to a level of severity on par with Chernobyl.

In a number of the articles I have read, experts are saying that the amount of radiation measured in Philly's water is not a big deal, and somebody is always quoted as saying the opposite "for balance." With trust in government at quite a low in the last 40 years, skepticism is natural, but with a lot of my friends wondering if the water is safe (myself included), I think it's a good idea to break down some of what we know and figure out what this means for public health.

Disclaimer - I am not a chemist, physicist or public health expert, merely a guy with an ecology degree and a blog, so I welcome anybody to correct any errors I may make or add to my comments.

First off - there are several kinds of radiation measures, a number of which you have probably heard on the news. These measures can tell you the radioactivity of a substance, the amount of dosage a human has absorbed or several other things. The Curie (Ci) is a non-metric measurement of radioactivity. Although I strongly prefer metric units, the Philly Water Dept measured in Ci, so let's talk in Curies to make life simple.

Second - all objects continuously emit electromagnetic radiaton, even human beings. This is how we're able to date archaeological objects - by measuring the decay of radioactive isotopes of carbon in formerly living objects.

Third - the water measurement was in pCi/L, picoCuries per liter of water. The prefix "pico" denotes a 1 in a Trillion multiplier (1/1,000,000,000,000 or 1x10^-12)). This is important because there are lots of radioactive objects and substances that would be useful as points of comparison. Many every-day radioactive objects have levels of radiation measured on different orders of magnitude: nano (1/1,000,000,000), micro (or milliCuries per weight or volume. At the risk of being insulting, this is worth explaining a bit. This chart gives a little rundown - keep in mind that these prefixes denote immense changes in magnitude of ONE THOUSAND. A centimeter is less than an inch, a meter is a few feet, a kilometer is a few blocks, a megameter is twice the width of Pennsylvania.



Now based some figures from various health departments and universities (links provided), here are the equivalents in water volume from the Queen's Lane facility:

1 Coffee = 12.27 nCi/lb
One pound of coffee has the same radioactive content as 5335 Liters of Philadelphia water.

Animals, plants = 6 pCi/g
One gram of any living animal or plant has the same radioactive content as 2.6 Liters of Philadelphia water. That means that a one pound steak has approximately the same amount of radiation as 73.8 Liters of Philadelphia water.
Beer (dry weight) = 390 pCi/kg
One kg of the solids left by dehydrating beer (which is probably equivalent to about 10 kg of beer by wet weight, not sure of the volume because I don't know beer's density) has the same radioactive content as 170 Liters of Philadelphia drinking water.

So I guess these levels of radioactivity in Philly water are not really that high, and the EPA standards seem awfully strict. Apparently, in August there were elevated levels of radioactivity in Philly's reservoirs but this went more or less without comment. I would be interested to see how much radioactive Iodine from Fukishima is being deposited in the Delaware watershed relative to elsewhere. I don't know how high the radioactive particles ride in the air across the Pacific, because my expectation would be that much of the radioactivity will condense over the western mountain ranges and fall as rain in the West or Midwest before it reaches here.



Anyways, I hope this was helpful, I'm gonna go get a drink.

The Philadelphia Experiment

"I ain't talkin bout chicken and gravy mang"

My homie Drew Lazor wrote a piece in a recent Grid issue (which is not available online yet) profiling "The Minimalist," Mark Bittman. In the interview, Bittman revealed (to me at least), that he was about to move from writing about cooking to writing about food politics. In his new role, and possibly as a result of his conversation with Drew or perusal of the Grid "Food Issue" that contained his interview, he developed an awareness of Philly's attempts to improve access to healthy food. His most recent entry is a glowing recounting of Philadelphia's nascent efforts to localize its food systems and discourage economic discrimination that is manifested by food-related health consequences.

As most know, Philadelphia has large swaths of concentrated poverty, even after decades of relatively impressive and innovative experiments with mixed income housing, transitional housing and public housing redevelopment. Most of these areas are defined by their relatively poor access to jobs, services and goods, including healthy food, which generally costs more than processed food. This arrangement is not a coincidence - decades of neglectful and racially or economically discriminatory policies by business and municipalities combined with market forces that created "food deserts."

Over the last several years, working a sort of consigliere to my fiancee's career efforts in community garden organizing, urban agriculture and sustainable food systems, I have gained an appreciation for the momentum this movement has in Philadelphia, and it's nice to see recognition from a national news outlet.

All in all, there have been some great accomplishments that I have personally witnessed, big and small. I've helped build two gardens, one of which is a community farm where young men and women from West Philly learn about food systems and business skills. Mainly through these efforts, and meeting my fiancee's acquaintances in this field, I have met a lot of people from a broad range of backgrounds who have come together because they care about food with an intensity equivalent to its importance in each of our daily lives. Alex Mulcahy, publisher of Grid, deserves a lot of credit for creating a well-produced publication that has communicated much of what I already knew to a broad audience.

I could list the accomplishments of the fine Philadelphians in this field in this space - new supermarkets deep in the ghetto, farms and farmstands and green roofs - but instead, I'll just direct you to some choice links at the bottom and let you explore some of what's going on in the 215.

Related:

Mark Bittman "Better Food in Philadelphia"
Grid Magazine
Philly Rooted
Farm to Philly
Philadelphia Orchard Project
The Food Trust

Worthy Causes

So micro-fundraising has seen a huge surge in popularity the last few years. I remember talking to Skinny about setting up a Kickstarter for some record label projects a few years back and it just seemed way to novel to get anybody interested. Now it's pretty normal, and that's a great thing.

The last few weeks I've been hipped to three different micro-fundraising projects that I think are worthy of your attention.

Apologies for the wonky video embedding:



Philly Rooted is working with UC Green and the Philadelphia Orchard Project to plant lots of fruit and nut trees along the West Philadelphia streetscape. In exchange for donations, you can get all kinds of gift certificates and coupons to local businesses.

Link: UC Green Kickstarter



Nic Esposito is my fiancee's business partner. Together with Nic, Erica and I have started two gardens in West Philadelphia - a community garden in the Woodlands Cemetery and a grower's co-op and community farm behind the 46th Street El station. Erica and Nic have conspired to become quite the big-wigs in the Philly gardening and sustainability scene the last few years.

Nic is writing a book, in which Erica and I are characters - he's self-publishing and he's asking for donations to finance the printing. In return he's offering various benefits - from a copy of the book to a storytelling salon at your house.

Link: Nic Esposito Kickstarter



Mariposa Co-Op - My neighborhood food Co-op is moving from it's teeny-tiny, members only location into a big space in what used to be a church, just down the block at 49th and Baltimore. The new Marioposa will be much more like a full-service supermarket offering lots of healthy, organic and/or local food options to a neighborhood underserved in all said commodities.

Link: Mariposa IndieGoGo Campaign

Video Roundup

I'm playing in Vegas for a few days, and while I'm gestating on some ideas for long-form stuff in this space, here's a roundup of videos to amuse you b/w infuriate you:

The Daily Show - Crisis in Dairyland - For Richer and Poorer - Teachers and Wall Street
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

A classic John Stewart "gotcha" on double-talking talking-heads. This one compares defense of high-paid bankers during the crisis points of the last few years to attacks on (relatively) low-paid teachers as fat cats.



If you wanna throw up in your mouth a little bit, go to the youtube page hosting this video and read the comments. Wonderful.

State Properties

I'm kind of an American history buff, and I've been following the NYT series on the 150th anniversary of the war. Today marks the 150th anniversary of the other emancipation proclamation - the emancipation of Russia's 23 million serfs by Alexander II. This was somewhat of a political blow to the south, because they were able to point at Russia as being another major western society with a codified social order of servitude.

In recent years, I've been amazed at the way in which America has been unable to resolve some of the disputes over our nation's philosophical and political framework which have persisted since 1776. Although slavery is in the rearview mirror, the recent healthcare debate has sparked calls for "nullification" of Federal statutes by the states - an issue at the heart of the debates over states rights in the context of slavery. If the greatest catastrophe in the nation's history can't put that one to bed, who knows what can?

Hello, is this thing on?

I've decided that in the interest of keeping my mostly career-focused Facebook page and Philadelphyinz.com free of stuff that requires serious thinking, I should probably start updating this space with my "thoughts in excess of a paragraph." As a self-employed, quasi-public figure in the entertainment industry it's bad business to go airing your opinions on complicated matters through the channels you've set up specifically to tell people how they should patronize you.

I'm going to start using this site to post more than just science stuff from here on out. Instead it's going to take the place of Just Sayin for lots of stuff - random thoughts about science, politics, sports and music. Basically my willy-nilly mindspray. So, apologies in advance, and happy reading.

I Stagger in the Gathering

OK, first off, let me apologize for not updating this blog for almost 2 years. If you'll notice, the previous post is an analysis of the climate policies in a GW Bush state of the union address. So yeah, it's been a while both temporally and substantively. Oh, yeah, and I kind of dropped out of that Ph.D ecology program and became a DJ and music producer on a full time basis. Things changed. If you care to delve deeper into that stuff, go to philadelphyinz.com and read about how I'm trading my hearing for money and having fun doing it.

Now, for those of you who are surprised to be getting a ping from your RSS reader from good ol' Pour The Science, I'm posting not just to tell you that I'm still alive and in good health, but also because my buddy Sammy started a blog called DJs Against Climate Change - and I'm going to help him crunch numbers while we try to make the jetsetting DJ life more carbon neutral. In the spirit of the Copenhagen meetings, check it out and tell your friends.

And while you're at it, buy my record.

Things done changed

Remember back in the days, when niggaz had waves
Gazelle shades, and corn braids
Pitchin pennies, honies had the high top jellies
Shootin skelly, motherfuckers was all friendly

I watched the State of the Union address last night. The President said the following:

Let us fund new technologies that can generate coal power while capturing carbon emissions. Let us increase the use of renewable power and emissions-free nuclear power. Let us continue investing in advanced battery technology and renewable fuels to power the cars and trucks of the future. Let us create a new international clean technology fund, which will help developing nations like India and China make greater use of clean energy sources. And let us complete an international agreement that has the potential to slow, stop, and eventually reverse the growth of greenhouse gases....The United States is committed to strengthening our energy security and confronting global climate change.

Full text of speech here

Granted, there is a huge gulf between this type of rhetoric and actual policy on this issue- the United States has failed to participate in many international collective actions designed to reduce emissions, stalling and wasting precious time- almost a decade of lateral policy movement. Frankly, I don't have the time or energy to even get into it.

However, this stands in marked contrast to Dick Cheney's remarks (and the stance of the administration and Republican party) in 2001 when he rolled out the utterly absurd "National Energy Policy." He said "conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy."

Granted, the President's speech was that of an extremely lame duck. He spoke in oblique generalities and trumpeted easily cheered ideas. The speech was designed to keep Bush from hurting his party any worse than he already has. It was really nice to finally see over the mountain to a country without such a man who would roll out an energy policy characterized by Cheney's quote above, not to mention any number of the administrations absurd affronts to good environmental policy.

But one thing about highly conservative politicians, is that when they've finally changed their tune, you know that the winds of opinion have already changed. Apparently, it's political suicide for them to speculate in the oilmen's camp, at least publicly. Finally, they've acknowledged what people who have been paying attention have known with some certainty for quite a long time.

Climate Change has gone from political issue to political fact.

Eyes closed

So here's a weird one- Nike claims that the New Air Jordans (the XX3 for you sneaker heads) will be the first shoe made entirely with "sustainable materials." What that means, I have no fucking clue. Leather from a low impact animal like a buffalo? Recycled plastic bags? Locally grown produce? What? Does the shoe just last a long-assed time?

And what is the motivation for doing this? Is this kind of a bogus "organic as marketing gimmick" thing like you see with the big food companies? Does this mark a shift in the way multi-national corporations are thinking about their business practices or just their marketing? Was Pitchman-of-the-Century Michael Jordan involved in this? Is sustainability his new steez?

No, seriously, I want to know.

Also, does this mean that this particular Nike shoe is not made in a sweatshop somewhere in Southeast Asia? Frankly, I have too little information to do anything other than ask a long series of rhetorical questions.

If I can get some of these answered, then maybe I can finally get the lil' lady outfitted in some sustainable streetwear for her sustainable lifestyle.

[TMZ]: The New Air Jordan is finna be a green-assed shoe (with Photo)

Edit: Ask and you shall receive. I've been directed by a good semaritan to this page, which has the following specificiations:

Glue: Employs only water-based cements, reducing the amount of toxic solvents and wastes in the manufacturing process.

Red stitching: New "3-D" stitching fuses the midsole to the upper and an inner sock, reducing the need for glue while preserving comfort.

Side-panel stitching: Attaches outside leather layer to three internal layers, also reducing glue use.

Outsole: Rubber contains a more biodegradable additive and some recycled waste left over from the manufacturing of other footwear.

Inner bootie: Made partly of recycled polyester, reducing use of oil-based synthetics.

Chassis: Made from thermal plastic urethane, a recyclable plastic.

Manufacturing: Nike said it revamped its process of manufacturing the Air Jordan to reduce waste.

Apparently they've tried this before but the costs were about 25% higher than normal, so they incorporated these improvements into the Jordan, for which the consumer appeal is so high that price is almost irrelevant.

I'm not a player I just crush a lot

Andrew C. Revkin, science writer for the New York Times and (reportedly) former ghostwriter for Ma$e and Puffy Combs is now writing a blog over there at the Times called Dot Earth. Here's his description of the blog:

By 2050 or so, the world population is expected to reach nine billion, essentially adding two Chinas to the number of people alive today. Those billions will be seeking food, water and other resources on a planet where, scientists say, humans are already shaping climate and the web of life. In Dot Earth, reporter Andrew C. Revkin examines efforts to balance human affairs with the planet’s limits. Supported in part by a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, Mr. Revkin tracks relevant news from suburbia to Siberia, and conducts an interactive exploration of trends and ideas with readers and experts.

Good blog, sharp dude. Turns out he also looks like a really nerdy version of NFL commentator and former Bengals wideout Chris Collinsworth. I've added it to the sidebar here and I have subscribed to the RSS feed, and I suggest you do the same.

Rappers are in danger

There is a lot that can be said about the catastrophic wildfires that burnt Southern California up like a dry spliff of Mexican shwag. For a long time, fire-control policies were geared towards the management of wild areas. There was constant friction amongst the logging-related interests, conservationists and preservationists. Fire is an absolutely necessary and inevitable component of terrestrial ecosystems. Some systems have evolved to incorporate fire as an integral element of life cycle processes of key species. Many conifers require fire to germinate, for example. However, there is general disagreement on how to manage systems with regard to fire. If untended or unburnt, some systems build up huge fuel loads and explode into catastrophic fires. But this debate has become increasingly complicated due to the huge expansion in the urban/suburban-wildland interface.

A few years ago I had the pleasure of a seminar and talk with Michael Dombeck, former head of the US Forest Service and former Acting Director of the Bureau of Land Managment. This is an excerpt from his speech:

In the wake of sprawl and fragmentation comes concern about fire, especially at what is termed today the “urban-wildland interface,” a fancy term that tells us people are living in places that are half-wild, half-Wal-Mart.

Fire has long been on our minds. The Smokey Bear campaign was perhaps the most successful public education campaign in our history. In 1968, more people in America knew who Smokey was than could name the President. Smokey was the second most popular character in the United States. Santa Claus was number one.

Some consider it heresy to say this, but the challenge today is to help people understand that while fire is always dangerous, all fire is not bad. Like wind and water, fire is one of nature’s cleansing agents.

Unhealthy forests today are due to a combination of past timber management practices, exotic and off-site species and the cumulative effects of 100 years of fire suppression. We are good at fighting fire. We have the best firefighters in the world. During several of the past few years, we have spent over one billion dollars fighting fire.

Contrary to media reports, Oregon’s half-million acre Biscuit Fire did not “destroy” the entire landscape. The fire burned at various intensities, leaving some patches of forest scorched but other areas completely untouched. The result was a classic mosaic pattern of burning on the landscape, which benefits many ecosystem functions and restores habitat diversity. According to Forest Service estimates, approximately 16% of the area burned at high severity, 23% at moderate, 41% at low severity, and 20% was unburned. The costs of such massive firefighting efforts are tremendous, over $40 million on this fire in just one day. In the long run, fire will occur one way or another. How fire returns to fire-adapted ecosystems is the question.

The challenge is to put fire back on the land. And do it in a way that doesn’t harm people. Forests evolved with fire and are adapted to withstand fire. If they weren’t, there would be no forests. Our houses and communities adjacent to the forests are the new additions. The development and sprawl are occurring all over the country, and are especially problematic in high fire frequency areas.

The urban-wildland interface is now spread over millions of acres. The millions of dollars that we pour into wildland fire fighting may not save your house. Structural firefighting requires very different skills than fighting forest fires. The most important things you can do to prevent your house from burning as a result of a forest fire are within 200 feet of your house: clear away flammable fuels that carry fire close to your buildings, keep stacks of firewood well away from structures, use fire-resistant roofing and siding materials, and maintain a perimeter of non-flammable material around the house to serve as a firebreak.

I hope the Bush Administration’s ‘Healthy Forests Initiative’ is as intent on implementing an ecologically-balanced fire management plan as it is on rolling back mining regulations, water quality standards and roadless policies. If the wildland fire plan turns into little more than accelerated commercial logging program, it will quickly become a controversial “black hat” program, just like the infamous “salvage rider” did after the bad 1994 fire season when it was dubbed “logging without laws”.

The full text of this speech, given in Bryn Mawr, PA in November, 2004, can be found here. More on Mike Dombeck at his website.

Don't call it a comeback, I been here for years

The big news today was that Al Gore and the IPCC won the Nobel Peace Prize for their work on global climate change. I find Al Gore to be a really facsinating bol, and maybe this Nobel will bring some awareness to the media age devaluation of politics which Gore has come to represent. In a nutshell, Gore, after being millimeters away from the presidency, said "fuck it" and decided that he could make more impact free of the restraints and ethical compromises inherant in politics. Many have understood that politics isn't the sole arena of power in this country, but few have been able to speak from outside the political realm with the authority that Gore can, only because of his former position of power. I still haven't formulated any real statement as to the nature and effectiveness, generally speaking, of this "insider-outsider" thing he's been doing, but no matter what the circumstances, he'll be bustin' at y'all daily for some time to come.

Bong bong bong your head went rung rung rung

If you're up for some (relatively) heavy reading, take a look at Scientific American's analysis of the potential problems and solutions inherent in the task of creating a carbon market.

But what that article really reminded me of was Kool Keith alter-ego Sinister 6000.

Age: 7999
Birthplace: Iceland
Likes: Warm, Cuddly Woman
Dislikes: Democracy, Carbon
Quote: "Sinster 6000 / new styles I be housing."

Not destroyed, merely melted

Sorry about the protracted hiatus- I've been really busy with making music and writing about non-sciency things.

While I get my shit together so's I can conjure some of the irreverantly nerdy informationalizing that makes this blog so damn special, here are some things to keep you busy:

-Economists are stunned (for the millionth time) as blind altruism and trust of strangers often trumps the selfishness of homo economicus. This shouldn't come as much of a surprise, because cooperation (e.g. the sublimation of selfishness for group goals) has long been understood as the foundation of complex society. It's ironic, I deal in ecology because I think people are such assholes, but somehow I have more faith in the goodness of the human race than economists, who are the oracles of the market age. [Scientific American]

-Holler at this bad-ass vulture who can take in oxygen at 23,000 feet. It's endangered, so holler at it gently. [Endangered Ugly Things]

-Ian Hart of the The Pacific Institute's Integrity of Science blog has made his last post. Go and read over some of his work so you can practice up for spotting bullshit in the press. [Integrity of Science]

Beef

Suck it or not- the fecudity anthem

For some time now, I have had passing discussions with a friend about the rift between Richard Dawkins and his "Selfish Gene" gene-selection theories and Stephen Jay Gould and his emphasis on organism/population selection. Quite often I hear of how Dawkins was somehow "discredited" some time after The Selfish Gene was published, but that the ideas were valuable insomuch as they were premature and published on the precipace of a great revolution in genetics and biotechnology. I attempted to argue this viewpoint and make generalizations about levels of selection for and in organisms but found myself talking in circles. So here is my blow-by-blow of the debate between two of the titans of evolutionary biology:



Dawkins- fetishizer of late model foreign sedans

The Selfish Gene put forward a gene-centric view of evolution, one which describes genes, rather than organisms as the unit of selection. In short, Dawkins says that a gene, the material which gives an organism a particular characteristic (phenotype), is responsible for driving evolution. The gene, through random chance and its ability to confer preferential fitness to its vessel, survives. Although the genes themselves do not "behave", the gene level is the level of organization where selection acts. Organisms are merely "survival machines" for genes.

This explaination became particularly popular because it made sense of a number of oberved but until-then counter-intuitive phenomena, namely kin selection. Preferrential and protective treatment by siblings seems to fly in the face of an organism-based selection theory but makes a great deal of sense when you explain such behavior as a protectiveness for genes. After all, your genome is more similar to your siblings than it is to any body else's. Essentially, Dawkins describes such behavior as being the natural consequence of genes building machines to protect like genes.

Behaviors or charicteristics that cannot be classified as strictly phenotype-derived are put under the classification of "memes"- info genes- where units of information are culturally transmitted.



Gould- thug denizen of bus station fashion

Gould was a paleontologist and curse-era Red Sox fan, so naturally he took the long view on biological issues. He believed that Dawkins was using a sort of "Darwinian fundamentalism" that was not unlike Social Darwinism and Genetic Determinism of times past. Even though Dawkins makes biological/mathematical justifications of pacifism in The Selfish Gene, Gould dismissed these examples as retrofittings of theory to conform to existing society as viewed through the Dawkins' own disposition. Furthermore, Gould's broad based view of cladistics (the science of biological classification) over geological history led him to believe that the expansive cascades of interactions (in life and in development) between broad groups of species or organisms within a species could not be explained so simply without empirical evidence. Furthermore, Gould felt that Dawkins did little to explain the herky-jerky stops and starts of species (and gene) proliferation at varying rates through geologic time. Dawkins really presents very little empirical evidence for his theorizing in The Selfish Gene, written before the modern era of genetic biotechnology.

In short, Gould felt that Dawkins was making a mistake by ignoring (as he saw it) the vast complexity of biological interactions in favor of a more unifying, dogmatic view of evolution wrapped in appealing and sexy rhetoric.



My take- makin peace like Tookie

Dawkins theory is sexy, Gould's theory is not, by virtue of its age. However, it's hard to assign (in my mind) too much agency to genes. Genes are the agents of evolution, phenotypes are the agents of selection. However, genes are pretty passive actors- they are subject to random mutation and crossing over during meiosis. It's kind of a chicken and egg argument in my mind- do genotypes passively control the preservation of phenotypes or do phenotypes actively control the preservation of genotypes? Without one, there is no other.

I understand Gould's concern about the retrofitting of a theory to confirm observed social phenomena and the potential distortion that could be wrought by those who seek to use "Darwinism" to confirm social beliefs. However, that point is largely moot- social liberalism, although admirable in my mind, cannot be used as a scientific defense, only empirical evidence can.

I'm pretty rusty on my evolutionary theory, so if anybody has any corrections or opinions they'd like to offer, have at it. I need to get my brains back in shape for when I return to school, and this is as good a forum as any.

It's been a long time, I shouldn't have left you

Without a strong rhyme to step to

I've been kind of neglecting this here blog for the last few weeks- other tubes have been keeping me all distracted. Here are some good links I've come across of late that will help me (and you) get back in the swing of things.

-St. Louis (where I just spent a weekend) has seen very high levels of development in its flood plain since the catastrophic flood of 1993. I remember flying over the Mississippi/Missouri confluence during that flood- it was like a small ocean- insane. People are obviously getting more attuned to coastal and riparian development since Katrina.

-One of the best blogs I've seen in a while- Endangered Ugly Things. Their tagline encapsulates the blog perfectly: "Sure, they're not cute. But they're at least as important as your fuzzy thing." I'm adding it to the blogroll as soon as I post this.



The Southern Cassowaries got their eye on the gold chain

-There was a scary fire in Philly a few weeks ago- a salvage yard in South Philly caught fire and spread disgusting smoke over most of the city. I was in Center City that night, several miles away from the fire, and I could barely breathe. Sometimes you forget how close we are to extreme catastrophes. Many remember or are familiar with the 1984 Bhopal disaster, when a poisonous cloud from a Union Carbide chemical plant in Bhopal, India killed 3,000 instantly and at least 15,000 afterwards. Apparently, there have been numerous incidents of this magnitude in the United States which didn't cause nearly this level of carnage due to dumb luck- a change in wind direction or a holiday parade causing a town to empty out entirely (sorry, but I couldn't find a citation on the internet, but this was told to me by a university researcher).

This sort of thing can happen almost any time for any number of reasons- it's frightening. It makes you hope that the government takes it's responsibility as the executor of the public trust seriously. In China, where the government seems to only give a fuck arbitrarily, there was an 80 km long benzene slick in 2005. 2005! For decades chemists have been avoiding working with benzene because of its well-known carcinogenic properties- but it is most certainly in use in factories near where you or I live.