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