Indulging my Inner Geek (Fantasy Edition)

Speaking of beloved fantasy novels made into movies, I am unduly excited by the upcoming version of The Golden Compass, the first in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. Here's the trailer:

From this clip, it looks promising indeed. The filmmakers seem to have grasped the proper tone for the film adaptation (sinister, yet wondrous). The kid playing Lyra looks the part, and Nicole Kidman is just about perfect for Mrs. Coulter. Daniel Craig is pretty good too, although in my mind, Lord Asriel ought to have a long, black cloak at all times. One worry: the trailer seems pretty thin on the characters having daemons (in the book, all humans have talking animal companions who are manifestations of their soul), although IMDB assures me that Lyra will not be separated from her Pantalaimon. Best not to mess with the daemons.

In contrast, this trailer completely misses the tone of the book in question (Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising):


I guess you never can tell if a trailer will be an accurate representation of the movie, but this looks quite a bit like sacrilege. I want to know what marketing moron decided it would be a good idea transplant the story from England to, um, America and to give Will Stanton some sitcom-level girl problems. Seriously? It's a great book, so why would they want to make it just like a thousand other "teen" movie clones. I'm still holding out hope that this will be decent, but sheesh.

To cleanse the palatte, the movie version of Neil Gaiman's Stardust looks pretty good too:

15 Minutes of Someone Else's Infamy

In case you were wondering... yep, I saw it, but thanks to everyone who alerted me to the stories. Apparently I'm about to be charged by the FBI with betting on basketball games that I officiated and for consorting with organized crime.

NBA Referee Under Investigation

Law enforcement officials are investigating allegations that the veteran referee Tim Donaghy influenced the outcome of N.B.A. games on which he or others wagered, two people familiar with the inquiry said on Friday.

I'm not a huge enough basketball fan to know his rep as a ref, but I've vaguely followed his career over the years if only because there aren't very many people with my exact name, and he's the only one who is remotely famous. Somewhere I have a newspaper clipping of him confronting a visibly angered Dennis Rodman, who is being held back by Jordan and Pippen. It's a funny picture because from behind he looks enough like me to make you blink.

Of course it's not funny that he's gotten himself into trouble for allegedly betting on games that he officiated. From what I read it sounds like the guy's got a gambling problem and perhaps some anger management issues. For his sake, I hope it isn't true.

But, still, I have to say it's kind of a trip to enter my name into Google News and see stories with titles like Open Season on Tim Donaghy or This Isn't Tim Donaghy's First Unfortunate Brush With Fame. There's even a wikipedia page.

Harry Potter & the Grumpy Old Men

In honor of the release of the final Harry Potter book this Friday, and because everyone loves making fun of snobs, I couldn't resist linking to Harold Bloom's infamous crusade against J.K. Rowling's gazillion-selling series (here in 2000, here again in 2003 where he also takes a shot at Stephen King, and yet again in 2005).

I suppose it's actually fairly hard to find to find a true, blue-blooded snob these days outside of certain east-coast boarding schools and elite country clubs (hipster snobs are another story). Still, every once in a while they crawl blinking into the sunlight, smoking-jacketed and sherry-glassed, to tell us that we're all cretins and low-lifes. Bloom, of course, hates the Potter books, thinks they're dreadfully written and, worse, represent the inevitable dumbing-down of western culture. (I can only assume from this that Prof. Bloom has never watched My Super Sweet 16).

I don't have much to say about Bloom's articles -- the wrongness of it all should be readily apparent to the billions of kids and grown-ups who have read and loved the Potter books. My favorite bit, by far, is in the second article where he goes out of his way to mention how he bought his copy of the Sorcerer's Stone at the Yale bookstore (as if we thought he might have picked it up at Wal-Mart?) and mentions how he kept a running tally of cliches as he read (presumably cross-referenced against Bloom's Big Book of Cliches?). Good times. Anyway, read 'em and laugh. Or weep. Or scream. Or shake your head bemusedly.

On the other end of the spectrum, Roger Ebert doesn't much like the latest Potter movie, but for the opposite reasons. Where Bloom bemoans the un-seriousness of the stories, Ebert laments the loss of innocence, "magic" and whimsy as the movies have progressed into adolescence and addressed the weighty themes of death and puberty. As much as I love the Potter movies, I don't think I could have sat through a fifth movie with nothing except Quidditch and school-boy pranks to sustain me. Even by the second installment the stench of diminishing returns on the original formula was pretty prevalent. Rowling's decision to launch the series into the more complicated adult world is the main reason why I love the books so much -- they grow up as the characters do.

Ebert also just doesn't seem to get major parts of the movie, including the early scene where Harry is almost expelled from Hogwarts for using magic to defend himself and his Muggle cousin against Dementors. He asks if Harry is just supposed to "fall over passively and get Demented?" Well, no, Roger, the patent unfairness of Harry's expulsion isn't a mark against the story, it's actually the major theme of the movie.

Oh well. Critics will criticize -- these two are just wrong. The rest of us know what we'll be doing this weekend.

windmill

This guy is cool. At age 14 William Kamkwamba built a wind turbine to supply power to his home and village. He built it out of wood, scrap plastic, a bicycle and other random stuff after having read about the design in a book. Click the link -- he has a blog, which he updates by phone, apparently. Now he's working on a solar-powered irrigation pump. Someone needs to give this man a grant.

Of course, if this story is too uplifting, you can always read about the man-eating badgers.

night light

Last night as I was falling asleep I was visited by a (menacing, ominous) flashy green flying thing hovering at the end of my bed. In my half-awake state and in the dark room my mind automatically interpreted the little light as -- naturally -- someone standing at the end of my bed waving a green laser pointer at me. I'll admit it sounds a little crazy in the light of day, but at the time I swear my brain filled in the shadowy outline of a laser-pointered intruder. Creepy.

Naturally I freaked (a little).

My waking brain did the whole fight-or-flight thing before finally deciding that the sinister laser-pointer was actually just a firefly that had wriggled its way through the screen in the open window and couldn't get back out. And I have to say, sharing a closed, dark space with a firefly is actually kind of cool -- they're very bright. I opened the screen a bit and eventually its light went out, so I assume it returned to its firefly home.

7/7/07 (strange things)

I'm not really sure how these things relate, or what they mean on a, you know, deeper level...

... but here are Boredoms live with 77 drummers under the Brooklyn Bridge on 7/7/07.

It's a pretty fascinating video -- makes me wish I was there to experience it in person. Here's another one, which I'm linking because it's so totally different than the first and strangely beautiful to watch.

To complement the drummer overload, we now add Spinal Tap (a band with drummer problems of their own) playing Live Earth on the very same day in England with every bassist in the known universe.

Speaking of Live Earth, I managed to arrive late to the cramped and hastily organized DC concert outside the National Museum of the American Indian, where I just missed seeing Al Gore talk and Garth Brooks sing. Instead I stood around and melted in the 145 degree heat and listened to a decent native American blues band that I could just barely see if I craned my neck. Not quite as cool as seeing the Police reunited but Oh well.

Free Trade Skepticism, Part 1

I find myself annoyed by smart people who summarily dismiss the scientific consenses supporting anthropogenic global warming or evolution because the science conflicts with their political beliefs. Yet I confess to being skeptical about the supposed benefits of unfettered free trade - a concept which commands a similarly broad consensus among economic experts (and among both political parties and the mainstram media). So what gives?

In the interest of self-critique and intellectual honesty (or at the very least, knowing thy enemy) I thought it would behoove me to learn some of the arguments behind free trade boosterism. Since this is an enormous topic I'll try to limit myself to understanding a narrower question: does trade liberalism lead to a "race to the bottom" in environmental and labor standards?

Thankfully the libertarian Cato Institute website freetrade.org has a helpful (if elderly) FAQ addressing just this very question:

Does free trade lead to a “race to the bottom” in global labor and environmental standards?
While this is a frequently heard complaint, there is no evidence of such a “race to the bottom.” In fact, the opposite is true: expanding trade and rising incomes tend to promote higher social standards. (continues)

Ah. So, um ... not initially very enlightening. What I really want is for someone to honestly engage with this common concern about globalization and lay out some evidence for why its misguided. It gets a little better if you read one of their many longer reports, for example WTO Report Card III (pdf) by Aaron Lukas, which fleshes out the argument a little bit more (p. 10).

"The most important result of trade and investment, however, is economic growth, which in turn leads to a better environment. That is true because, as incomes rise, the demand for improved environmental quality also rises. Numerous studies have confirmed that, in practice, trade and investment activities usually have a positive impact on the environment.

This is not to imply that a cleaner environment is the immediate result of economic development. Empirical studies have revealed the existence of an inverted U–shaped relationship, often called an “Environmental Kuznets Curve,” after the late American economist Simon Kuznets, between environmental degradation and income per capita."

So the initial impact of trade liberalization is in fact very likely to be environmental degradation and lowered labor standards. Nations often compete to attract foreign investment by setting up Export Processing Zones -- areas with lower tariff barriers and relaxed labor and environmental regulations. This is, of course, what free trade skeptics mean when they refer to the "race to the bottom" -- the first part of the "U".

The Cato-ites don't seem to deny that this occurs. What they argue that a competing force is actually more important in the long run, and they go on and on about how the environment in the U.S. and Europe has gotten cleaner and cleaner over the past 30 years, despite the fact that we've liberalized our trade policies.

However, this line of argument strikes me as completely disingenuous, however descriptive it might be. Trade policy didn't clean up the environment; government regulation did. The Clean Water Act. Banning leaded gasoline. Onerous burdens placed on the noble free market by meddling government agencies, or so sayeth libertarian Cato.

Anyway, there are numerous justice issues here that I won't go into, except to point out that the implied model of development here is for the poor in the developing world to suck it up and wait for their country to get over the hump -- if it ever does.

I will say that reading through Cato's reports clarified in my mind that many (but not all) of my objections to "free trade" aren't about trade policy per se, but are instead about the onerous structural adjustment programs imposed on developing nations as part of economic aid packages. Lowering tariffs is one thing, but privatizing water utilities and raising fees for school enrollment is entirely another.

In other words the solution for poverty and environmental degradation in developing countries is not necessarily trade protectionism -- although giving the finger to the IMF might actually help a lot. At any rate, the so-called Washington Consensus is much less of a sure thing among economists than the more vanilla free-trade arguments that Cato is talking about.

But these are all fine ideas for future posts, sorry this one was so long. And please feel free to tell me I'm wrong, or at least point me in the right direction...

a firecracker waiting to blow

Apparently Ryan Adams has sobered up after years of hard core drug abuse. I saw him play in late 2004 and I have to concur that the dude was seriously trying to kill himself. By the amount of alcohol he put away during his fairly short set, I was amazed he still had the eye-hand coordination to form chords with one hand and strum with the other. The concert itself was maddening: 15 minutes of giggling and drunken rambling between songs but when he bothered to actually play music he was genius. He played a version of "When The Stars Go Blue" that I've never forgotten.


Anyway, I'm glad he's decided pull himself out of his nosedive; he's clearly a very talented songwriter who could obviously benefit from a bit of clarity and focus. I always suspected that he has a masterpiece buried in him somewhere - maybe now he's got the chance to dig it out.


Apropos of nothing: the cheesy 80's song that was playing on my iPod yesterday morning? Oh yeah, that would be "Summer of '69." Ryan wouldn't approve, but still it's a fun song.

spring... (again)

Well, since spring is loitering around our front door, saying its last few goodbyes and reluctantly fading into summer, it seemed like a good time to celebrate with some pictures.

Early April found us down at the Tidal Basin to look at the cherry blossoms. It snowed a few days later.




Four Mile Run, near our house, after a storm in late April.


May flowers from the front yard. Dogwood perhaps? I wish I knew the first thing about plants...

Our Big Announcement

Laura Jean and I are expecting our first child. The due date is November 10, so in less than six months we'll be promoted into parenthood. Obviously we're extremely excited about this, and more than a little bit terrified.

We've known for several months now, but have waited to make the general announcement until we had the chance to tell my two grandmothers in person, which we did this weekend. So the cat is out of the bag and the party has begun...

Stay tuned for updates.

To the Potomac!

I got in a nice long run today.

(Map courtesy gmap-pedometer.com; click for more)

Five miles to the Key Bridge and then took the Metro back. I wasn't feeling too speedy today since I've been lazy about running lately, but I got there eventually. And it was definitely a great day for a run: sunny and not too hot. Yay spring.

And now I shall collapse into bed.

the Closing of Tabs

I've had absolutely no time to blog lately, but here are a fistful of interesting things written by other people.

• Johann Hari outlines the real reasons why we should distrust the World Bank (and it's not because of Paul Wolfowitz). See also: Naomi Klein.

• Zadie Smith goes to Liberia. (via ILRF).
  

• A real-live economist questions the economic dogma of unlimited growth from an environmental perspective. (via Grist).
  

• A long (and, truth be told, fairly depressing) expose of the high rate of job deaths in the oil and gas industries. (via the Pump Handle).

• A gorgeous photo collection illustrating the evolution of life on earth.

• And lastly, two absolutely fabulous NY Times articles by Michael Pollan about nutrition and the consequences of our farm subsidies.

Step It Up

The cool thing about living in DC is it's damn convenient to protest the government. On April 14th, we participated in one of the nationwide National Day of Climate Action events. Our participation mostly consisted of being arranged into words and then photographed by a series of journalists. The message "80% by 2050" refers to the necessary cuts in greenhouse gas emissions over the next few decades. Congress is weighing several bills that would implement serious cuts in carbon emissions - although it's not clear if any of them will ever make it into law.

Laura Jean and I are on the lower right of the final "0" in "2050" -- click the image to see the full-res photo and you can sorta kinda make us out.

Information is Power

There are 1,243 currently listed Superfund sites in the United States and 61 proposed sites that haven't been listed yet. These sites represent the worst toxic waste disasters in the United States, and have thus been singled out for special attention. Since 1980, only 319 sites have been cleaned up sufficiently to be deleted from the Superfund list. The map below contains all 1,623 sites. New Jersey has the most with 115 current and 3 proposed sites.

The Center for Public Integrity has a great site where you can search the map above to easily find the sites in your neighborhood. For what its worth, the EPA website has two similar maps here and here that I found harder to use, but did cough up some more detailed information. For example, here are the four Superfund sites in my hometown of Fresno, CA.

According to the EPA, at least 114 Superfund sites pose immediate health risks to nearby residents -- makes me wonder how many of those people even know that they have a toxic waste site in their neighborhood?

The CPI report alleges that the rate of cleanup of superfund sites has slowed significantly under the Bush administration. Critics ascribe this slowdown to budget cuts and a "lack of political will" at the Bush EPA; in their defense, Bush officials claim this is because the remaining sites are the tough ones, and that the "low-hanging fruit" have already been cleaned-up. CPI also provides a run-down on the 100 worst offenders - including the federal government and infamous polluters like General Electric.

Anyway, good reading. Via the Pump Handle.

Sign of the Coming Apocalypse #2702

Ice sheet melting in Greenland has created a new island (dubbed Warming Island by its discoverer) out of what was previously thought to be a peninsula. Via Gristmill, and also check out a map and pretty picture of the island courtesy of the NY Times.

The 'Framing Science' Kerfluffle

Matthew Nisbet and Chris Mooney have set off quite a to-do in the science blogosphere with articles in Science (full text here, scroll down and link is on the left sidebar) and the Washington Post. They call on scientists to adopt new methods for communicating their results to the wider public -- namely strategic 'framing' of scientific issues. They are both interesting articles and worth the read - as are (some of) the billion tons of electrons that have been spilt in response.

A few thoughts:

• I confess when I saw Nisbet speak several months ago, my initial reaction was fairly negative. A first glance 'framing' sounds uncomfortably like 'spin.' Science is supposed to lay claim to a less-biased view of reality -- it slowly and methodically uncovers truths about our world and pushes them up to the surface. Should we really throw all that credibility and objectivity away just for the sake of convincing a few more people that evolution or global warming are really real? Does it make sense for scientists to descend to the level of the PR hack?

• Lately, I've mostly come around to their way of thinking. Like it or not, framing is something that scientists do constantly. We've all fielded The Question from intelligent non-experts: "So what do you study anyway?" It would be nice to be able to explain to them in the fullest of detail the intricacies of your thesis (and some people try!), but in the real world you only have about 5 minutes (and probably less). You would like them to walk away feeling like they learned something, so you simplify, and you try to find a way of making it meaningful and interesting to them. That's framing - it's not evil. Since we already do it, we might as well learn to do it well.

• Framing isn't a substitute for old-fashioned science education, but improving education will only yield results 20-30 years down the line. N&M's central point is that to impact public opinion about global warming (or evolution or stem cells or whatnot) over the next election cycle a communications game-plan is called for. This is essentially a political strategy (and hence the controversy), but I think the general point still holds. Framing happens whether we like it or not -- frame or be framed.

• Somewhat amusingly, N&M have prompted some visceral negative blog reactions from the vocal atheist web-community -- notably biologist PZ Myers (here and here). I suspect much of this has to do less with the abstract idea of framing rather than with some of the specific frames they propose. In particular, their criticism of Richard Dawkins doesn't seem to have won them any converts. However the notion that attempting to frame evolution to make it more palatable to the largely religious American public is an unforgivable appeasement of religion strikes me as fairly narrow and silly. But that's fodder for another post.

• Lastly: Can I just say that I find the entire field of communications research vaguely troubling? Are we all so uninformed and easily swayed by what we hear and read and see? Sadly it seems to be true, and the proof is that advertising works and works well. Our brains are apparently totally defenseless to suggestion and innuendo and, well, framing. Kinda terrifying, if you think about it.

Dragging Delayed

So my first experience with physics research was with the Gravity Probe B project, where I worked part-time for my first few years in college. GPB is a satellite mission, 40 years in the making, designed to measure frame-dragging -- a fairly subtle prediction of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. GPB also amounted to a full-employment program for physics undergrads - at any rate, they allowed me to play around with physics experiments without a lot of pressure to churn out hard results. It was pretty cool introduction to physics research, but ultimately not the sort of project I was really interested in, so I eventually moved on to other stuff.

After going to grad school I realized that many astrophysicists actually held a rather dim view of GPB for a lot of different reasons. Dan Holz has an excellent post that explains the science behind the project, and some of the discontent.

Anyway, after 40 years of planning they finally launched the sucker in 2004 and were planning to unveil their Big Result this past weekend when suddenly ... they decided they needed more time to finish the exam. I guess what's a few more months of waiting after 40 years.

Mexico City

Here are a handful of my pictures from my late-November trip to Mexico City -- posted for your pleasure a mere 4 months late. The rest of the pics can be found here (snapfish login required).


The trip was a ton of fun and Mexico City is an amazing, endless city -- both beautiful and real at the same time. (Above are skeletons from the Frida Kahlo "Blue House" museum.)



Flying into Mexico City we could see Popocatepetl and Iztaccíhuatl, the legendary twin volcanoes overlooking the Valley of Mexico...


... however, most of the city was covered in a thick layer of brown haze. The metropolitan area has nearly 20 million people (3rd largest in the world behind Seoul and Tokyo) and a terrible air pollution problem.


My old college roommate, Julie who has been living in Mexico for six years now, met me at the airport and we had lunch overlooking the Zocalo, the central square of the city. Here, within yards of each other, you can find the city's Aztec past at the Templo Mayor, the legacy of Spanish colonialism in the Metropolitan Cathedral, and the National Palace, the hub of modern Mexico's government. In other words, tourist central.


Julie, overseeing the hubbub below.


A peaceful courtyard at the National Palace.


Julie riding the subway with a really awesome clown.


Here's the Metropolitan Cathedral, looming over some Communist flags (yep that's Marx in Stalin in the photos) and peacock feathers used by a group of traditional dancers.


The Zocalo is also home to all manner of political protests, and Mexican politics have been pretty interesting lately. Protest encampments lined the streets to draw attention to a variety of issues: from the bitterly disputed 2006 presidential election to the current uprising in Oaxaca to the continuing relevance of the Zapatista movement in Mexican politics.


Thousands of street vendors selling anything you could want.


Bustling street life, outdoor markets selling to tourists and locals alike.


The reason for the trip is that Starflight, the 3-d astronomy museum exhibit I helped pull together, was being shown at the Laboratorio Arte Alameda, and we were all invited down to help with the installation and attend the opening.


Here we have Starflight in action. The highlight of the trip for me was speaking (in my halting Spanish and their halting English) with the folks who came to opening. People generally thought it was pretty cool and we had some fun conversations -- there's nothing quite like describing abstract astronomical concepts in a second language to a group of artists.


One great thing about Mexico are the literally hundreds of gorgeous Diego Rivera murals dotting the city. Above is El Arsenal, prominently featuring Frida Kahlo as a worker...


... while this is Man, Controller of the Universe, mostly famous because the original was supposed to have been painted at the Rockefeller Center in New York, but was destroyed by John Rockefeller because of its explicit pro-Communist message (which was the subject of the movie, Cradle Will Rock).


By far the coolest things I saw in Mexico were the pyramids at the pre-Aztec city of Teotihuacan. Keith and I grabbed an early morning bus out to the site (about an hour outside of D.F.) and we mostly had the pyramids to ourselves for several hours. This is Keith descending the Pyramid of the Sun.


The smaller, but more ornate, Pyramid of the Moon.


Me on top of the Pyramid of the Moon.


A beautiful (if smoggy) sunset from my hotel room.


Behold! A winged cow!


Sadly, I only had a few hours to zoom through the fabulous National Museum of Anthropology, when I bet you really need a few months to do it justice.


These guys are Totonac indians performing the voladores rite, which is a really cool, if trippy, native tradition where they hang upside down and rotate around while playing music. The rumor I heard was that the Spaniards brutally stamped out many aspects of Aztec culture, but they let this one survive because they incorrectly thought it wasn't religious.

And lastly, I have to say D.F. has a subway system that is both one of the most extensive I've ever seen (outside NYC) and completely overwhelmed by the number of people who use it daily.

Can't wait to go back...

Burning Bright

I just had to pass on these three videos. Dark, very dark (as they say) - but also strangely beautiful. The second is my favorite.

Papillon D'Amour (Butterfly of Love)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOE73vrTGQ8

Tyger
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LsMoUtBlDk

Rabbit
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4Yf-7Z_6PE

(via Neil Gaiman.)

The three silliest things I've read lately...

A pinch of bureaucrat-ese, a smidgen of imprecise language and some garden-variety human foolishness...

• In the 2006-2011 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Strategic Plan (pdf, page 22) I found the following institutional goal:
  

  "By 2165, reduce the incidence of melanoma skin cancer to 14 new skin cancer cases avoided per 100,000 people from the 1990 baseline of 13.8 cases avoided per 100,000 people."

  The report gives no context for this statement so it's hard to know exactly what they're talking about or how they plan to achieve this goal, but still... I don't know whether to be impressed that they're thinking so far ahead or depressed that they set their sights so low. I mean, what are the odds we'll still even have an EPA in 2165? Unless the EPA starts doing their job on climate change melanoma will be the least of our problems by then.
  

• Then we have a vague warning from a book on household and office health hazards:

  "Other studies suggest computers might be a source of electromagnetic radiation."

  Gee, you think? Apart from the fact that the primary purpose of a computer monitor is to emit electromagnetic radiation (i.e. light), I suspect they might be missing a modifier here. It's certainly conceivable that computers might be a source of harmful high-energy electromagnetic radiation (I honestly have no idea) -- but, as written, the sentence would seem to implicate every lump of normal matter in the known universe.
  

• I've blogged before about Fish & Wildlife Service political appointee Julie MacDonald who has a history of arbitrarily over-ruling (and verbally abusing) FWS scientists in order to avoid placing animals on the endangered list. This week the Inspector General's office of the Dept. of the Interior released it's report (pdf) on Ms. MacDonald's malfeasance. The report is full of damning interviews with her colleagues and evidence that she leaked sensitive documents to law firms fighting the Endangered Species Act. However, our intern Meredith found a hilarious passage buried on page 21 involving internet role-playing games. TMP Muckraker also noticed the passage and has the details. Pretty funny.
  

smile

Power to the Peaceful

We saw Michael Franti & Spearhead Friday night at the 9:30 Club -- a show which was partially a benefit for Iraq Veterans Against the War.

If you're not familiar with his music, he's a great hodgepodge of reggae, funk, hip-hop, soul and rock -- and an endless fount of danceable protest songs (listen here).

Anyway, it was a great and uplifting show. Sometimes you just need to jump up and down to a blast of goofy, end-the-war, music-will-set-us-free idealism. My only complaint is that for the last 4-5 songs of the set there was a breakdown somewhere along the singer's voice to soundsystem to eardrum pathway, and some unpleasant feedbacks along the way knocked the sound mix out of wack.

Sound system problems aside, you've got to love a guy who can follow-up a Bob Marley cover with the theme from Sesame Street. Pretty awesome.

winter into spring

Before I left Chicago I fell into the habit of taking a picture of the streetcorner outside our apartment each morning before I went to work. I collected 118 images from February 9 through July 4, 2006 (meaning there were 28 days that I forgot, or was out of town). Here they are wrapped into a short movie.



The pictures aren't perfectly aligned (although I might try to make panotools do the alignment someday...) but it's still kind of neat to see the slow change of the seasons and the way the light changes from day to day. Still, it seems like it needs a soundtrack somehow -- although YouTube would probably nix that eventually. George Winston seems an obvious choice, but I was also thinking Mos Def's "May-December" would work nicely. Any other thoughts?

(For the record, I got this idea from watching Paul Auster and Wayne Wang's charmingly unusual film Smoke). Enjoy!

The new Bob Dylan album

Bob returns to his musical roots with a series of songs adapted from a beloved American poet: Dylan Hears A Who. In addition to being pretty durn funny, the tunes are actually surprisingly good (and very very Dylan-esque). And it all makes a twisted sort of sense if you think about.

If I Had A Hammer...

When all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.

When it comes to foreign policy, George Bush only has one tool: the largest, shiniest, most expensive hammer the world has ever seen. A hammer so powerful that no nail has ever been able to withstand its force. Unfortunately, he keeps trying to use this hammer to reprogram computers -- with predictable results.

Consider: Iraq is a huge mess. Our invasion and occupation has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths, touched off a civil war, destabilized the region and utterly alienated most of the world. But I have a great idea, why don't we ... keep doing the exact same thing as before but with more troops! We'll call it a surge! That should work great!

Consider: Iran is (maybe) trying to create nuclear weapons and is (maybe) supplying arms to Shia militias in Iraq. That sure sucks! (Now we don't actually have any hard evidence of this, but, hey that's never stopped us before...) I know, why don't we ... drop some bombs on them! I'm sure that won't backfire and create more hatred towards the US! What could possibly go wrong?

Sarcasm aside, military might almost never triumphs over committed popular resistance (just ask any former colonial power). Our involvement is not just self-interested and destructive, it's also making things worse with each passing day. Of course, there are some things that we Americans could do to help create a better future there -- but they're long term stuff like (1) stop buying oil, (2) push for a serious solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, (3) fund grassroots programs to improve educational and health access for women, and (4) I don't know, maybe stop supporting horrible dictators in the first place. This is the work of a generation.

In the short term: the time has come to leave. Our troops simply shouldn't be policing a civil war and it is time to bring them home. The American people support troop withdrawals -- heck even active duty soldiers are skeptical of the surge -- and the Democrats are searching for ways to make it happen. The fate of the Middle East ultimately rests in the hands of the people who live there -- they'll figure it out much faster than Bush will.


This picture is from last month's anti-war rally here in DC. The four-year anniversary of the war is coming up this month...

Freakonomics

I finally got around to reading Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner's Freakonomics; it's a quick and interesting read with lots of fascinating case studies, although frustratingly inconsistent. I think the main takeaway point is that a lot of "conventional wisdom" floating around out there in the ether is either plain wrong or grossly simplified. To which I say: fair enough.

The weird thing is that Levitt is portrayed as some dis-interested oracle of pure truth, slaying the sacred cows and dispelling common misperceptions. The book makes almost no mention of the fact that many of the ideas Levitt debunks are the product of ongoing social science research, not just the uninformed opinions of pundits and taste-makers. He's clearly a talented and original thinker who has written a number of surprising and influential papers -- but I doubt he's written the final word on such complicated sociological puzzles like the causes of crime or the black-white testing gap. There is also a lack of explanatory power in some of the ideas presented; Freakonomics often seems far better at debunking old ideas than it is in backing up its clever, simplistic alternatives or forging connections between its disparate topics.

The big controversial finding presented in the book is of course Levitt's assertion that the precipitous drop in crime during the early 1990s is best explained by the advent of Roe v. Wade twenty years earlier, and not by any of the dozen more common explanations (the boom economy, gun laws, better policing, etc.). The idea here being that mothers often make decisions about abortion based on their personal and financial ability to raise the child at that time in their life, and apparently that such factors are also strong predictors of 'criminal behavior' in the child. This is the book in a nutshell: bold, clever, unexpected, disturbing ... but true?

It is a somewhat troubling assertion no matter your stance on abortion. But even ignoring for now the merits of the argument it doesn't seem to fit with the rest of the book. Levitt is fundamentally asserting that a child's nurturing environment (or lack thereof) is key in predicting that child's outcome later in life (at least with regards to crime). So it's puzzling that a big chunk of the book is devoted to arguing that parenting style (i.e. reading to your child or taking them to museums or letting them watch TV) has essentially no impact on how well a child does in school. I'm probably missing some obvious unstated argument here, but this seems like a fairly big disconnect to me. Or maybe I'm hoping for a larger theory or organizing principal of human behavior that just isn't there.

Anyway, there's a lot to like in the book -- the chapter on the economics of drug dealing is really cool and their occasional column in the NY Times is also great -- but take it with a grain of salt. Provocative ideas are not always the full story.

1100100

Hey- this is my 100th blog post!

More on Global Warming

A few more random thoughts about the recent global warming Congressional hearings and the attendant media coverage.

• Firstly, our report was mentioned (albeit briefly and not by name) on the Colbert Report -- video can be found here. Seriously, how cool is that?
• There's a great interview with Dr. Drew Shindell (the NASA scientist who testified before Waxman) where he talks about political interference with his work, the danger of cutting funding for this type of research and global warming science in general.
  
• A lot of people get the sense that there has been a sea change on global warming just in the past few months, culminating with this latest round of media coverage on the hearings and the IPCC 4AR report. Prominent skeptics have recanted (although not Sen. James "Hoax" Inhofe), oil companies are unveiling significant voluntary programs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (although not Exxon "$10,000" Mobil), and most significantly, the "center" of the debate has shifted. The media seems less likely to frame the very existence of anthropogenic global warming in terms of a "false balance" or a debate between "scientists" and has instead turned to the equally contentious problem of "what to do now."
• So: what to do now? The interesting policy questions are: what will the Democrats try to pass in this Congress and will President Bush veto it? There are several (bipartisan) options out there, some of which are authored by various presidential contenders. An excellent discussion of the many schools of thought on this can be found here. A lot of people seem to be saying that a serious national plan to address global warming will realistically have to wait for the next president to take office.
  
• On the Scientific Integrity front, we'll be pushing for legislation that addresses the rights of government scientists to do their work and communicate their findings free of fear. Wish us luck.

Well said

A co-worker passed on this quote today. It seemed like a fitting epitaph for a funny and inspiring writer - thought I would share.

"So keep fightin' for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don't you forget to have fun doin' it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin' ass and celebratin' the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was."

-Molly Ivins (1944-2007)

Testify!

Yesterday was the first hearing by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee under the new Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA). The topic of the hearing was political interference in the work of government climate change scientists -- the exact subject of the scientist survey and report we've been frantically working on for the past several months. Since my boss was called as one of the four witnesses, we took the opportunity to release our report and call for an end to interference in the work government scientists.

We only found out about the hearing last Monday, so basically my life for the past 9 days has been completely consumed by the tasks of (1) finishing the report, (2) getting it designed and printed, (3) taking care of the 637 billion other things needed for a successful hearing and report release. So after all those long hours, it's nice that the hearing was a success. The Democrats on the committee were all strong supporters of our position on this issue, and most of the handful of Republicans who showed up were fairly moderate.

I say 'most' because Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) led off with an ad hominem attack on UCS and followed that up with a weak attempt to discredit the methodology of our survey. The National Review decided to repeat this critique in a blog post labeling us the "Union of Junk Scientists." Heh. I would rebut this argument, but Chris Mooney has already hit the nail on the head as to why this attack entirely misses the point (see here and here). So goes the political theater.

Anyway, the report and the hearing got a ton of media coverage -- most of it pretty positive. Apparently my face appeared on CNN for a few seconds, wahoo! The story got picked up by AP, Washington Post, New York Times, LA Times, US News and World Report, San Francisco Chronicle, and Chicago Tribune among others. Michael, Francesca and Tarek also did interviews for several local TV affiliates.

You can see the video of the entire hearing by clicking here. That's me sitting behind Francesca and occassionally passing her notes - you have to scroll ahead for a long time to see me since there were over 70 minutes of opening statements. And beware: it goes on for almost 4 hours. There's also a few snippets up on You Tube. A few interesting blog reactions about hurricanes and cherry-picking can be found from Roger Pielke Jr. (the 4th witness suggested by the Republican side) and Real Climate. If you're interested in reading the report (titled Atmosphere of Pressure and co-authored by the Government Accountability Project) it can be downloaded here along with more information of the investigation and other incidents of political interference in science.

I'll post more about the actual content of the hearing at some point, but for starters it's a huge step in the right direction that it happened at all. Waxman appears to be a great ally on the issue of scientific integrity. The next step is definitely to push for actual reforms at federal agencies that protect scientists basic rights and let them get back to the job we're paying them to do.

cinema vs. celebrity

We went to the movies the other night and the price for a regular ticket was $10! No attempt to paper over the fact that you're being totally screwed: $10 straight up. Unsurprisingly the enormous theatre was almost empty. Totally ridiculous -- and it's too bad because I really love seeing good movies on the big screen. Chicago had an awesome student-run film series and we would buy passes and go almost weekly to see second-run blockbusters, art films, foreign films, cult classics, you name it. Cut the price of a movie ticket in half and I for one would go to the movies more than twice as often.

What's more, there are definitely certain movies that you really do want to see on the big screen, and others that you might as well wait for on Netflix. This most recent shakedown reminded me that not only should a movie be pretty good to warrant ten bucks, it should also have a certain cinematic quality that's lost when seeing it on your 12" TV. I've talked before about how I have a soft spot in my heart for intrinsically cinematic movies -- films with that rush of moving image excitement you just can't get from the printed word or even a stage play. By this I don't specifically mean action movies with explosions, or even 'tasteful' costume design or 'lush' cinematography. It's more intangible than that: Lord of the Rings, Lawrence of Arabia, even the original Star Wars ... stuff like that.

Can I also gripe for a minute about the ascendancy of the biopic? By this I mean a movie primarily about the life of a celebrity. Over the last few years Hollywood has provided us with impressive documentation of the lives of the famous and name-worthy. To mention a few (Oscar contenders all): Ray, Walk The Line (which is the exact same movie as Ray), Capote, the Aviator, Finding Neverland, Kinsey, the Motorcycle Diaries, the Hours, Frida, A Beautiful Mind, Ali, Iris, Before Night Falls, Pollock, Quills, the Hurricane, Malcolm X, Nixon, Gandhi to name just a few. This year brings us several more biopics (The Queen and The Last King of Scotland) that are at the top of everyone's Oscar lists. Apparently the highest accolades accrue to movie stars playing yet another famous person.


My gripe with these movies is not that they're bad: some are certainly tedious, but others I would rank among my faves. Rather, the problem is that they're a bit lazy. Your typical biopic often has (1) an eye-catching performance in the titular role, and (2) a lousy story. This is a simple consequence of the fact that the lives of famous people (even someone as nutty as Howard Hughes) are simply not interesting enough to warrant a full-length motion picture about their year-to-year existence.

The best of the bunch succeed in spite of the genre's limitations. Gandhi is really the story of the founding of modern India, Ray succeeds on the considerable strength of the music, and the Motorcycle Diaries is a story about personal awakening to injustice. But, even when watching your better biographies I often wonder whether these interesting themes could just as easily be the basis for telling a new story, rather than draping them across the mundane biographical outline of a real person's life.

For example, one of the most interesting movies I've seen recently was actually a fake biography: Velvet Goldmine (I've raved about the sweet soundtrack elsewhere). The movie takes the 70's glam-rock milieu of Roxy Music, Brian Eno and David Bowie and crafts a fictional story about a very Bowie-esque rock star. You gotta love any film the ties together Oscar Wilde, space aliens, talking Ken dolls and several tons of glitter make-up. Unlike the fictional John Slade, Bowie never faked his own death on stage, but it sorta seems like something he might have tried. And the stunt doubles as a great metaphor for glam-rock's death at the hands of 80s-pop, for Bowie's perpetual reinventions and for the end of a certain sexual idealism in our popular culture. VG isn't tied down by the tyrannies of fact and history, and that freedom seems to allow it to say something far more true and interesting.

To return to my earlier point, when you strip away the remakes of TV shows, biopics, adaptations of books, comics and extended SNL skits, is there anyone in Hollywood actually telling original stories in films? Or, put it another way, which movies need to be seen as films in order to truly capture their spirit. A few come to mind that you couldn't even begin to reproduce as a book, a TV show, a stage play, a comic book, a newscast: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, City of God, Mulholland Drive, 2046, Pulp Fiction, animation from Pixar, Miyazaki or Aardman. These types of films won't win Best Picture, but might garner an Original Screenplay nomination. These types of films I would pay $10 to see again and again.

Baby's First Protest

Here's Laura Jean holding our 2-year-old niece Grace, who was attending her first protest yesterday. In honor of Martin Luther King we came to the Save Darfur rally outside the Sudanese Embassy.


As I've said before, the Save Darfur movement sometimes strikes me as a little odd because its organizers and supporters are clearly passionate but often don't provide a deeper analysis as to why genocide occurs or what systematic things we can do to stop future atrocities. Which is not to say it's not a timely and deeply important cause to take up -- clearly, it's better to act than endlessly ponder political theories, especially when quick action can save lives. But it will be interesting to see where the energy goes once confronted with either victory or continued apathy.

And really, this particular rally was far better than others at drawing the important connections between war and racism and genocide. Several of the excellent speakers drew connections to Dr. King's radical rejection of the Vietnam war and Rep. Tom Lantos (the only living Holocaust survivor in Congress) announced plans to hold hearings on the issue. May they be heard.

Civil Liberties In Wartime

Hey- I wrote this:

Civil Liberties In Wartime

As part of my brief internship with Student Pugwash, I put together this summation of the state of civil liberties in our nation -- one of a series of science and society articles on their website. It was an fascinating (if distressing) exercise to pull together in one place the various ways civil liberties have been degraded since 9/11 -- secret surveillance, Guantanamo, extraordinary rendition, racial profiling and more. The plan was to provide at least a little balance in representing 'both sides' of the issue - although I suspect my views might shine through at bit. Anyway, hope you enjoy.

Bring me the head of St. Francis

Nostrils of Satan

More interesting (non) developments on the creationism front.

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) just put out a press release noting that the National Park Service has for the past 3 years carried in the Grand Canyon bookstores a book by Tom Vail that advocates the Canyon was carved by Noah's flood in the past few thousand years. The controversy started in 2003 when the park superintendent tried to stop the sale of the book at park stores and was overruled by NPS headquarters. After public outcry, NPS promised there would be a high-level policy review of the matter.

Turns out that was a lie. No review has been completed and the book is still on sale despite vigorous protest from NPS geologists and others.

As Steve Benen points out, having 'balance' in the NPS bookstores on this issue is probably seen by many people as 'fair' and raises interesting questions about what should and shouldn't be allowed in public spaces like parks. Of course, we don't allow creationism in the public schools and PEER correctly notes that the NPS bookstores are actually very selective (most proposed books are not approved for sale) and that park educational programs must be based upon science and not appear to endorse a particular religious perspective. Which would seem to put the kibosh on Vail's book, except that this is the Bush administration we're talking about. Sigh.

Anyway PEER has a reputation for writing hilariously quotable press-releases, and this one is no exception. Read down to the bottom and please please tell me where I can buy a book titled Geysers of Old Faithful: Nostrils of Satan. Awesome.

Sign of the Coming Apocalypse #1637

Can I just say that the temperature here in DC was 73 degrees Fahrenheit yesterday? On January 6th. Not that I'm complaining (actually I went for a very nice run), but still... t'aint natural.

The Top 6 in '06

Happy New Year 007! To commemorate the passing of aught-six here is my annual list of favorite books, movies and albums of the past year.

Music

• 6: Konono No. 1, Congotronics
  
• 5: Vienna Teng, Dreaming Through the Noise -- As a long-time fan I have to confess I was a little perplexed by this album at first listen. It seemed a little too ... tasteful? Restrained? Light-jazzy? But never fear: the beautiful vocal melodies and piano hooks we've come to expect from Vienna are still here, now wrapped in a sophisticated new production. A personal fave: "City Hall" is a sweet country-soul ode to San Francisco's gay marriage ceremonies.
  
• 4: The Hold Steady, Boys and Girls in America -- Craig Finn has done a lot of drugs (and seemingly can't write songs about much else), but at least he has given us some awesome music as a result. This album is cynical and sad about love and self-destruction, but it's also true and damn funny. Plus, the band rocks like an angry Bruce Springsteen.
  
• 3: Soundtrack to the movie Velvet Goldmine -- A terrific fake soundtrack for Todd Haynes' terrific fake David Bowie biopic. Since they couldn't get Bowie himself onboard or use his name or any of his music, the producers lined up a few friends (Thom Yorke, Sonic Youth, etc.) to cover some old 70's glam rock tunes and drafted some modern bands (Pulp, Shudder To Think, Grant Lee Buffalo) to write originals that channel the decadent spirit of the era. Somehow this mash-up works a million times better than almost any other movie soundtrack you can think of.
  
• 2: Common, Be -- When I moved to Chicago in 2000 everyone was lamenting the fact that the "capital of Black America" had yet to produce a bona fide hip-hop star. Six years later we have a least two, Kanye West and Common, and they've teamed up for this highly enjoyable album. Not as groundbreaking as Like Water For Chocolate, but Common's positive lyrics and Kanye's soulful productions make a powerful combination.
  
• 1: Neko Case, Fox Confessor Brings the Flood -- Neko's first few albums showcased her gorgeous voice and her skillful, if traditionalist, country song-writing. Her last few outings have taken a darker turn, chaneling Patsy Cline and Nick Cave in equal proportion. For Fox Confessor it all comes together as something original: Case sings murder ballads and love songs, gospel rockers and midnight confessions. The shimmery music draws you close and her lyrics twist the knife.
  

Other stuff I've been spinning: the White Stripes, Gillian Welch, The Smiths, Uncle Tupelo, Kanye West, Blur, the Jesus & Mary Chain, Gorillaz

[Top 6 Books and Movies can be found on the full post page. Click below.]

Books

• 6: To Say Nothing of the Dog, by Connie Willis -- Time-travelling Sci-Fi would seem to be a dry well by this point, but this book manages to find a clever new twist on the old hyperspace continuum. In this case the quantum physics and chaos theorizing come via a charming sojourn in Victorian-era Oxford. What what?
  
• 5: Field Notes From A Catastrophe, by Elizabeth Kolbert -- Real Climate named this the year's best popular science book on climate change. While I can't say I've read enough books to make that claim, this is definitely a quality introduction to the issue. Kolbert apparently gets the science right and she's an undeniably superb writer.
  
• 4: Trinity, by Leon Uris -- Ripping good historical fiction about the early days of the Irish Republican Brotherhood and their revolt against British occupation. Admittedly, Uris isn't the fanciest writer of the century -- his love scenes are pretty dorky, his female characters are entirely superfluous and he has a hard time writing anyone who's not a villain or hero. But there's something genuinely exciting about the hero Uris does create -- Conor Larkin, the peasant farmer who rises to become a leader and martyr for Irish independence.
  
• 3: Can't Stop, Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation, by Jeff Chang -- OK, so I'm only halfway through this one, but it would be higher on the list if I'd finished already. This is the history of hip-hop neither as dry musicology nor uncritical fan adoration, instead Chang makes a passionate case for the political and cultural importance of hip-hop. His thumbnail histories of the rise and fall of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, Jamaican reggae, white flight, urban neglect, Third World liberation, gang warfare in the Bronx and the economics of throwing a kickin' party all come together to make the emergence of hip-hop in late 1970's NYC seem inevitable, important and liberating. Like any great history you come away amazed that you could not have known this stuff before.
  
• 2: The Blind Assassin, by Margaret Atwood
  
• 1: Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson -- A book so good it's hard to say anything about it without sounding slightly over the top. The story of three generations of preachers in a small Iowa town takes the reader from the Civil War to the cusp of the Civil Rights movement. But rather than the sprawling epic such a narrative would seem to indicate, Gilead is a spare and focused tale about fathers and sons, with as much to say about facing death after a long life as it does about war and abolition.
  

Recommended Reading: Paladin of Souls, The Sandman, Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff

Movies

• 6: Serenity -- see here.
  
• 5: 2046 -- In a movie-world full of literary adaptations and TV-show spinoffs, I'm always impressed by films that are somehow intrinsically cinematic -- films that live or die on the strength of the moving images they create and that couldn't conceivably exist as books or stage plays. This gorgeous, romantic film from Wong Kar-Wai fits this bill perfectly. It doesn't always make sense, and WKW certainly doesn't spell out what he means by anything (particularly the sci-fi subplot) but it's easy to lose yourself in the atmosphere. And coherence is over-rated anyway.
  
• 4: Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story -- Partly a clever film adaptation of the world's first post-modern novel, partly a documentary on the making of said film which manages to skewer both modern celebrity culture and high art, partly a long series of dick jokes. Take from that what you will.
  
• 3: The Constant Gardener
  
• 2: The Departed -- Damn. Scorcese comes through with the best gangster movie since, well, Goodfellas. The cat-and-mouse game between two dueling under-cover moles makes this one of the most exciting movies I've ever seen. The buildup of tension and the sudden release of violence gives the film an intensity that every single action director is shooting for. Hope they were taking notes. I still need to see the original, though.
  
• 1: The Prestige -- Once again, Christopher Nolan and Christian Bale team up for my favorite movie of the year. The movie is about dueling magicians and is structured like a magic trick with several 'surprise' twists. Of course, these days the audience is already expecting a big 'Sixth Sense moment' so the fact that Nolan pulls off the misdirection like a seasoned three-card monte dealer is already pretty cool. Bonus points are earned for casting a very amused David Bowie as Nikolai Tesla. But here's the high praise: I was still thinking about this movie a week later and having revelations about what it all means.

Honorable Mention: Cache, Munich, United 93, Tsotsi, Paradise Now, The New World, The Decalogue, V for Vendetta, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Miller's Crossing, the Squid and the Whale, Whisky Galore