Discouraged

Today, I met with a group of teachers that I'm taking on my summer road trip about Energy Issues along the Wasatch Front. (That was not the discouraging thing!) But while I was talking about my own biases, in the interests of full disclosure, I explained that as a scientist, I believe that data trump everything. And I believe this so strongly, it's such a deep part of my being, that I don't seem to be able to even imagine seeing the world any other way. So I had this in my head, and I was trying to imagine what it would be like to not believe in graphs.

And then, in the car, NPR had American Routes on, and sometimes I don't like to listen to that. So I flipped around the channels, and ran into KSL. Where some lunatic was talking about global warming and climate change, and how they don't exist. And he was saying that 15 years ago, everyone was predicting an ice age (which is false), and then he trotted out this thing that George Will said in his column, that there has been no warming in the last 12 years. But that's been shown to be false, and George Will just got his facts wrong, and the Washington Post just refused to correct it, even though they admitted it was incorrect. But here's this guy, carrying along this false idea because George Will said it. And the interviewer was just eagerly lapping it all up. Probably because the truth is so desperate?

And I was suddenly not only raging, but seriously discouraged. Because getting to work on this problem (and the related King Rat of all the other appalling problems facing us today) is so imperative, so crucial, and so obvious to me, that I can't even comprehend how someone could fail to see it, much less argue against it.

So I went and bought stuff to make home-brew beer and I came home. And I puttered around with my vegetable starts and checked on the asparagus bed. And I picked my dog's nose (poor Smokey and his pneumonia). And I turned on the radio, and it was the 'plague report' about the swine flu in Mexico. So I turned that off, and listened to DMB instead. But then it was the dodo song, and so I turned that off too. And I went out back and checked on my chickens. And then I came back in and I made a big chart on a big piece of newsprint of all the things I'm afraid of, and then I shredded it and put it in the chicken coop for them to shit on.

And now I feel better.

A little.

Something fast to say...

Much more deliberate thinking about the Republicans and their obstructiveness and despair-mongering has brought me to this thought:

It's not enough to have an opinion. You need to have an idea.

And so I'm now busily exploring my own mind, turning up rocks, looking under logs, pushing aside fronds, staring up into branches, to see how often I have only an opinion, not an idea.

This is the same, I suppose, as saying 'Everyone's a critic', except that's not an idea. It's just an opinion.

Oh. THIS is what hatred feels like.

Bastards. F*@#*$ing Republican bastard sh@#@#theads full of sh#$#$t.

Check this article from the Guardian.

Lemme just pull a few tidbits for you (emphasis added):

"The warnings were the first time Congress had been directly confronted with the growing evidence that the impact of climate change will be far more severe than revealed even in the UN's most recent report, in 2007.

The hearing was also the first time senators had been permitted to hear testimony about the dangers to human health from climate change. In 2007, the Bush administration censored testimony from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on the rise in asthma and other respiratory illnesses, as well as the increasing occurrence of "tropical" parasites."

Ok. So our government has been kept in ignorant darkness by Bush. We knew that already. (Never mind that I feel physically ill (!) at the thought of anyone censoring the CDC, ever, for any reason. Perhaps I'm irrational in my profound respect for the mission of this agency.) But the light of knowledge should be a beacon, right? But then my head exploded:

"Republicans argued that Barack Obama's proposed carbon cap legislation would be costly. "I will certainly oppose raising energy costs on suffering families and workers during an economic crisis when the science says our actions [to combat climate change] will be futile," said Kit Bond, a Republican senator from Missouri." (emphasis added)

f#$*@#%$*ing sh#$#$thead Republicans. Denial to despair in a single month. Exactly how much do they think widespread drought, death and destruction will cost? Hundreds of millions, even billions of people displaced? How can you put a price tag on 'uninhabitable cities'? Do they not know about the dust bowl? Are they really that ignorant? I hate them so much, the quitters. Losers. Whiners. Quitters, quitters, quitters. Who do they think they are? Do they even have a single ethical bone amongst them? Do they have any sense of how to TRY? At all? They should all be locked in a closet so I won't keep having these fearfully satisfying visions about driving an icepick into Boehner's eye. They should all be locked in a closet so they can't hurt us anymore. I howl inarticulately at them. Bastards. I hate them, I hate them, I hate them. Do they have no sense of responsibility at all? How can I ever forgive them for this? How will all the little kids I know ever forgive US for this? WE CAN NOT AFFORD DESPAIR. Republicans, we have no time for you to come to grips with the facts. Catch up on your own. We're not going back for you. We have no time for your despair or your willful ignorance. Get over it or get the hell out.

This may be the first time in history that the dominant party is still in opposition. I hate Republicans more than ever before. I'm even angrier than before. I want to fight them even harder than before. Even though they are rapidly becoming so pathetic that you almost feel sorry for them. (Palin? Jindal? Is that the best they've got? Really?)

Get 'em out. Get 'em all out. They lie. They steal. They cheat. They have no credibility. They have no morals. They have no ideas. They are standing in the way, and they can ALL go. We have work to do.

I've had it. I'm going out to hug a tree.

Ok. Nobody move. I mean it.

This has been a winter of one thing after another, after another, after another. Death and disease in my little circle of friends, and wider collapses of various kinds. Drought and fire and floods and more death and disease. Economic disaster and war and starvation and governments falling in Europe. It's a little overwhelming.

And I find myself with this odd, visceral reaction of wanting everyone to just sit very still. I seem to have an almost superstitious, almost un-articulated, almost belief that if everyone just sits very quietly with their head down, then nothing else bad can happen.

Come to think of it, that makes perfect sense, if it was wolves who were going to eat us. Too bad. I know what to do about wolves. Whack them on their noses with a stick, and then climb a tree. Maybe I'll just go climb a tree. Maybe that will help.

What is UP with...

scientists who are also programmers? (apologies to J, who is not this type...)

Here's the gist of a recent conversation:

Me: Does this widget graph the sum or the average?

Him: Average, but it doesn't matter.

Me: Yes it does.

Him: The only difference is that you divide by the number of pixels. It's a constant. It doesn't matter.

Me: But most of my pixels contain only noise. So the average doesn't tell me what I need to know. The average tells me there's nothing there, because on average, there isn't.

Him: You're just off by a constant.

Me: Sort of. But not really. I'm really beating down the signal, by averaging over all the noise. If I sum, I know how much signal I have, but if I average, I know some kind of signal per pixel, which is really, really tiny, because I'm looking at emission in a really tiny area. That's not what I want it to do. I want to see a graph of the signal, and I can't do that if I've just averaged it to zero.

Him: So just multiply by the number of pixels.

Me: But the way the widget works, I get there by drawing a box with the mouse around the object, and the widget doesn't tell me how many pixels it has. And anyway, how am I supposed to do a multiplication in the widget, so I get a graph of what I want?

Him: So just make a one pixel box.

Me: But that's a huge pain. Why should I have to go and make a bunch of one pixel boxes, when if I could just get the sum, it wouldn't be a problem? And how is that going to help anyway, because I don't have a way to add the pixels together again?

Him (condescendingly): You're not making any sense. It's just a constant offset, and it doesn't matter. I mean, come on. It's basic arithmetic. If you divide, and then you multiply, that's the same as not doing anything at all.

Me: (sigh. Rapid silent search for compromise...) Can you humor me, and make it so I can choose if it will sum or average? Some people might want one or the other.

Him: (walking away from me...) That doesn't make any sense. No. It averages. That's what it does.

Me: (grumble, grumble, grumble)

Now I am trying to figure out a way to sum, but not average.

Grumble, grumble...

The problem with problems... part II.

I got this response to 'the problem with problems' from a friend in 'industry':

Yes, the problem with the Problems -- what I would suggest you look into. . . How are the Project teams, -- and the Management of the project teams -- being rewarded. . . . if those two teams had the same set of rewards (bonus pools, targets. . ) would that bring cohesion to the group.

which was eye-opening. This is so interesting. So, we don't really do this in academia/science centers. I don't know anyone who's EVER gotten a bonus! I never really thought about it, but I guess it's expected that everyone is so invested in what they are doing, and so aware of how many people are relying on them, that we don't really have a 'reward structure' as such. Of course, you can be denied tenure, or promotion if you do a bad job, but that's a stick and not a carrot... much less effective, generally.

Even raises don't necessarily go with merit, an idea that would probably make my industry friend cringe. This is because the institutions are so strapped for cash that they often don't even make CoL increases, much less have extra for merit. In Utah, it's not uncommon for the legislature, year after year, to cut state university budgets, no matter what we do. This has, in the past, resulted in multiple consecutive years of no raises at all, and occasionally even pay cuts for faculty. This, while the institutions were growing in enrollment by leaps and bounds.

It's an interesting problem, because it leaves people feeling like they have no control, and are not valued. They can meet all their 'targets', increase enrollment, recruit new students, get more grants, do more research, publish more papers, and still see an effective pay cut. They can grow the University and it's reputation, produce a 'better product' that clearly people want to 'buy', and still, they see no reward for going above and beyond.

Come to think of it, this is probably the exact reason that so many 'government' projects come in late and over budget. There are actually effective penalties built into the system for coming in on-time and under budget.

But that doesn't mean it HAS to be that way. We're always being asked to run ourselves 'more like a business'. Presumably that would mean building in a reward structure, if that's the way it's done in business, right? Right?

I wonder what a reward structure in academia would look like? Does it really make sense to talk about year-end bonuses? That might be an effective, relatively low-cost way to improve faculty/staff retention, but on the other hand, depending on the criteria, it could put in pressures that we don't really want in the system... It never really occurred to me to wonder about the carrot before, because I was so busy worrying about the stick that I wasn't even looking for a carrot.

The SOC

Formerly known as the AOC... In any event, the building where I'm
working! Can I even begin to convey the excitement of working in a building that actually says 'National Science Foundation' on the outside?! I know the NSF has its bureaucratic issues, and sometimes it's hard to access them. But where would we be as a nation without the NSF? I mean, think about it. What a brilliant thing for a nation to do. To decide that knowing about the Universe is SO important that we'll pool our dollars, start a foundation, and then spend decades paying scientists to ask questions, seek answers, look at stuff and figure stuff out. Eventually, they come up with bio-markers that make it possible to fight disease. They discover an understanding of quarks and the fundamental structure of matter. They invent new ways of thinking, and new ways of knowing, and new ways of asking questions.

In this building, some people are trying to understand about outflows from black holes, and some are trying to understand about galaxy formation, and some are trying to understand about how stars are born. Some are 'just' trying to figure out how to make a better interferometer. And, yes, some of us even work really hard to try to understand the shaping mechanisms of dying stars. It's the little pieces that make up the big pieces that make up the sum total of human knowledge. This knowledge is a gift from our forebears, but it comes with an obligation---to add to this total, and to pass it on to the next generation, better than when we received it. That means BOTH doing the research, and telling about it. This is the whole point of having research institutions, teaching institutions, schools AND museums. To make sure that the knowledge gets passed, intact, down the line. It's redundant, with many ways of accomplishing the same goal. But it's not wasted effort. It just means that no one failure will destroy the whole system.

I don't think I ever saw that really, really big picture before. Or got the visceral sense of holding this gift in my hands, with an obligation to care for it, add to it, and pay it forward.

Take that, John McCain. Here, in this building, the American people have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on what you would probably call a 'radio' that makes pictures of the sky, for planetariums to show with an 'overhead projector'. There is no utility here---astronomy is a fundamentally un-useful thing to do. Paradoxically, it's also one of the most important things we do, as human beings. It fulfills a fundamental obligation that makes us, us.

ISU Physics is not as cool as we are.

Monday, I had the opportunity to give an invited talk at the Idaho State University Physics Department seminar---a department with the same number of faculty and undergrads that we have.

Every time I go someplace else, I re-affirm how outrageously good I have it here at WSU. This Department totally rocks. At ISU, five faculty attended the seminar, two of whom were not physics faculty. That means that three, count 'em THREE, of their thirteen faculty were at the colloquium. Apparently, this happens every time. The room was nearly full of students, but very few faculty were there to participate. This is really bad, imho. Why, you ask? I'll tell ya.

Science is a social endeavor, just like every other human endeavor, and students need to see scientists interacting with each other, especially across field lines, so that they can understand that their professors don't know everything. Why is that important? Because it means that it's ok that THEY (the students) don't know everything. And, it gives them a sense of scientists as life-long learners, who are open to new experiences. And, it helps them know what to expect when they give talks at conferences or job interviews. I can not even imagine how they are supposed to learn how to deal with the occasional hostile question if they've never seen it done. Nobody can ask hostile questions like a physics professor! ;)

It's also bad because of what it says about the culture of the department. In our department, if someone doesn't show up for seminar, we chase them down. We go knock on their door---'Coming to seminar today?' We check up on 'em to make sure they're all right, and not sick, or overburdened, or unhappy, or just grumpy. In a department this size, if you are not coming to seminar, there must be something wrong with you.

Seminar is a terrific opportunity to interact informally with the group---with your colleagues, and the students. It's a great opportunity to find out what people's interests are, and to recruit students to your research program!

Seminar is also, sometimes, a great opportunity to do some really wonderful doodling, or make an extensive list of things to do.

Finally, seminar is a really good opportunity to put yourself in your students' shoes. To attend a talk by someone you don't know, on a topic you don't necessarily understand, and probably don't particularly like. This keeps you humble when the role reverses, and you stand at the front of the room.

I can't believe they missed all that. Poor little chickens.

Encounters with the ArchEnemy

A day in which I feel like Edward Abbey... cranky at the 'system', beat down by 'the man'...

So, we have this beautiful trail system here. And sabbatical seems like a good time to take the ol' pup for a walk around the 3-mile exercise loop every single day, before she's too old to enjoy it!

Cassie is one of THOSE dogs. Everyone who sees her cries, 'What a GOOD dog!' She walks at my side when I ask her to, comes when I call, sits on command, and generally is interested in two things---me, (or John), and the bushes. Other dogs hold limited interest. People are not interesting at all. I have to call her over to get her to pay attention to them. Generally, if I see someone I've not seen before, I'll call her over, have her sit, and wait until they walk by. That way, they can recognize that she's not a threat to them, and that some dogs are good dogs.

Contrast this with the bulldog I saw today. I was sitting on the bench, looking out over the valley, after climbing a little bit of a hill. Cassie was lying down at my feet. Three women and the bulldog came up the hill. As soon as the bulldog saw Cassie, it started straining at the leash. At one point, it was walking on its hind legs, leaning against its collar, trying to get to us. Cassie just laid there and watched. The woman had to choke up on the leash so tightly that she was leaning back against the dog. 'It takes two to pull', said an old trainer of mine. They got by without incident, but that dog is a threat to himself, his owner, and the rest of the planet. He thinks he's supposed to be in charge, and it stresses him out.

And then there was the hound I saw on 26th. This poor woman had two dogs on the leash, the hound and a beagle, one in each hand. They were headed down the hill on the North side of the street, and we were headed up the hill, on the South side of the street. If you've never been to Utah, let me explain that this is one of THOSE streets, about six lanes wide. Wide enough to turn an ox-cart around, with a little room to spare. So they were pretty far away from us, actually. The hound sees Cassie, and starts straining at the leash. He's yanking the poor woman around, and so she yanks back. Then she kicks him. He glances at her, and keeps straining at the leash. (Somehow he's supposed to know that what's happening with his neck is connected to what's happening with her feet?) She kicked him again, and at that moment, when her foot was off the ground, he pulled a little harder. She didn't quite fall down, but it was a close thing. Meanwhile, Cassie (who happened to be on the leash because of the street) sniffed at the grass, and trotted by my side, completely ignoring the chaos across the street.

Don't even get me started about the border collie cross who actually hauls his owner off of her feet and DRAGS her body along the pavement.

So when Cassie and I ran into the animal control guy, and she was patiently trotting about six feet in front of me, and both of us were minding our own business, I was annoyed. I suppose I'm not really annoyed with the guy---he's just doing his job, and I really do think that those other dogs need to be under control. I guess I'm just annoyed that we so often do the easy thing because it's quantifiable, instead of doing the better thing, because it's not. It's so easy to ask, 'Is your dog on the leash?', because the answer is yes or no, and you can tell just by looking. That makes the animal control guy's job easy. It's much harder to ask 'Is your dog under control?', because the answer is often 'no', even when they are on the leash; and the answer is often 'yes', even when they are off the leash.

And, I suppose, I am mad at clueless dog owners. And a little bit sorry for them. And a little bit indignant that they all think Cassie was just born that way. She used to pull on the leash. She used to rush out the front door. She used to bark all the time, and tear up the furniture. Then we got a really good people-trainer (a.k.a. dog trainer!), to teach us how to behave around our dog. And now she is the paragon of respectability that everyone loves. (Except for that whole counter-surfing thing---if we really cared, we'd change that behavior too, but it makes for too many good stories!) And so I wish that everyone would put the time into their dog that the dog deserves. They don't like to lean on the leash any more than people do. They just don't think there's any other way, mostly because they think that they have to be in charge. Sigh.

So, for all you people out there with dogs that pull, and rush, and jump and bark. Get thee to a people-trainer. Take charge of your dog so that we can all have a pleasant day and the animal control man will leave us all alone.

Fortunately, I got off with a warning. Because I would have been really, really, REALLY mad if I got a ticket, for having my dog under voice control!

___________

In other news, I finished looking at one environmental physics book yesterday. Completely out of date for the course I have in mind, but it had some nice tables and charts that would be helpful.

I also planned out my talk for the DaVinci Academy next week. Now I just have to sit down and make up my slides. I have an idea for a concept map that I think will really help to get across the idea that all areas of science are connected together, and that if you want to throw out the dates of moon rocks, you also have to throw out nuclear power plants, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the radioactive pellets they use to treat cancer. Oh, and the SUN. Chuh.