Miscellany

Carson and Sagan

James Wolcott raises an interesting point about Johnny Carson:

In retirement, Carson became appalled by the degeneration of cable news coverage and political discourse post 9/11. I received a wonderful note from him a few years ago–a note from Johnny Carson! I’ve never opened an envelope more gingerly–in which he lamented the dying out of voices of reason such as astronomer Carl Sagan, a frequent guest on his show. An astronomy buff himself, Carson prized science and reason. In his latter years he must have felt even more estranged from a country embracing its own hysteria.

David Letterman, of course, does occasionally have scientists on; Brian Greene did a yeomanlike job trying to explain string theory, and Sir Martin Rees was spectacular at talking about astronomy. But Letterman is ultimately too nihilistic to care too obviously about the state of the public discourse or any such thing. In that sense, the closest we have to Carson’s true heir is probably Jon Stewart.

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Iggles!

Congratulations to the handsome and powerful Philadelphia Eagles, who vanquished some pretenders from Atlanta to win the NFC Championship (after three straight unsuccessful tries) and book their tickets to the Super Bowl. There they will face the New England Patriots, who will be favored by about a touchdown. Which will make the ultimate victory by our men in green all the more sweet. I’m calling it 24-13 for the Iggles. (Lost in the fuss about receiver Terrell Owens’ injury and coach Andy Reid’s decision to sit all the starters in meaningless games at the end of the season is the fact that the Eagles’ defense has become scary good.) No doubt Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts will enjoy eating cheesesteaks after his team’s inevitable defeat.

As a nice sidelight to the story, the Eagles are led by Irish-American quarterback Donovan McNabb, pictured at right. In previous years, certain misguided pundits have questioned whether athletes of Irish extraction had the necessary mental abilities (to go along with their obvious physical gifts) to lead a football team to ultimate success. Happily, by now Irish quarterbacks have become so commonplace that only the most Neanderthal of commentators continue to question their effectiveness.

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It would be funny if it weren’t

If it weren’t, you know, important. So, the Second Inaugural Address was the “freedom speech,” in which the President harped on the theme of spreading freedom throughout the world. (Some transcripts, in the hands of trained readers, came out differently.) Much tough talk about democracy being good, tyranny being bad, stuff like that.

Of course, the educated blog-reading public understands that it’s all hypocritical nonsense. The President is supposed to say things like that; what’s he going to say, that our support for repressive dictatorships will be strictly limited to those cases when it seems to serve our immediate interests? But apparently some nervous folks in faraway lands actually thought he might be serious about cracking down on tyranny. Hysterical, no? So an aide was trotted out (anonymously, of course — this isn’t a gig you want on your resume) to explain to the innocent foreigners that the speech didn’t actually represent a policy of the United States — at least, not in the sense that the actual words in the speech were to be taken at face value. It was just business as usual, a little pep talk for the brave 51% that gave our President his mandate. Next thing you know, someone will actually think that tax cuts are the best way to eliminate the budget deficit.

Update: Apparently Giblets made the same mistake. We have to watch what we say, people.

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White House kills Hubble servicing plans

In yet another example where the Administration ignores the advice of the National Academy of Sciences, the 2006 budget request will apparently not include any funds to service the Hubble Space Telescope.

WASHINGTON – The White House has eliminated funding for a mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope from its 2006 budget request and directed NASA to focus solely on de-orbiting the popular spacecraft at the end of its life, according to government and industry sources.

NASA is debating when and how to announce the change of plans. Sources told Space News that outgoing NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe likely will make the announcement Feb. 7 during the public presentation of the U.S. space agency’s 2006 budget request.

That budget request, according to government and industry sources, will not include any money for Hubble servicing but will include some money for a mission to attach a propulsion module to Hubble needed to safely de-orbit the spacecraft with a controlled re-entry into the Pacific Ocean. NASA would not need to launch such a mission before the end of the decade to guide the massive telescope safely into the ocean.

The decision came as a surprise to astronomers, who had been hopeful that a servicing mission would be launched.


Of course, the ultimate budget decision is in the hands of Congress, not the White House; it might be time for some letters to your Senators and Representatives.

Update: Here’s the National Academy study, if you’re interested: summary, full report.

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Seven hundred billion dollars

Take all of the money currently in circulation in any given currency, and add it all up. You’d probably imagine that the currency with the greatest value is the US dollar, although the Euro is catching up. But now the dollar has been surpassed! But not by the Euro, after all. Can you guess?

The currency with the greatest value in circulation in the world today is — frequent flyer miles. About seven hundred billion dollars. They are often sold to credit-card companies at a valuation of two cents per mile. Perhaps not surprising to me, as I certainly have greater value in my miles than in actual cash money, but I didn’t think I was typical. Hopefully United won’t go out of business and leave me in the poor house. (Thanks to Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me.)

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Derridean unification

An honest-to-God story at CNN, from archy:

Poll: Nation split on Bush as uniter or divider

Forty-nine percent of 1,007 adult Americans said in phone interviews they believe Bush is a “uniter,” according to the CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll released Wednesday. Another 49 percent called him a “divider,” and 2 percent had no opinion.

The results nearly match those of a poll taken in October 2004, which showed 48 percent considered Bush a “uniter” and 48 percent called him a “divider,” with 4 percent having no opinion.

Did a uniting actually happen?

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The Friends of Heraclitus

By Charles Simic.

Your friend has died, with whom

You roamed the streets,

At all hours, talking philosophy.

So, today you went alone,

Stopping often to change places

With your imaginary companion,

And argue back against yourself

On the subject of appearances:

The world we see in our heads

And the world we see daily,

So difficult to tell apart

When grief and sorrow bow us over.

You two often got so carried away

You found yourselves in strange neighborhoods

Lost among unfriendly folk,

Having to ask for directions

While on the verge of a supreme insight,

Repeating your question

To an old woman or a child

Both of whom may have been deaf and dumb.

What was that fragment of Heraclitus

You were trying to remember

As you stepped on the butcher’s cat?

Meantime, you yourself were lost

Between someone’s new black shoe

Left on the sidewalk

And the sudden terror and exhilaration

At the sight of a girl

Dressed up for a night of dancing

Speeding by on roller skates.

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Sex and science!

Hey, have you heard? Apparently Harvard President Lawrence Summers has made some sort of remarks about underrepresentation of women in science being attributable in part to innate cognitive differences, rather than some sort of discrimination. And it started a bit of a kerfuffle! Who would have guessed?

I mentioned the incident briefly, and others in the blogosphere have not been shy about offering their opinions: see Mark Graber, Bitch, Ph.D., Kriston, Unrequited Narcissism, Lubos Motl (don’t miss Ann Nelson’s comment), Michael Bérubé, Matthew Yglesias, Barb Mattson, Becky Stanek, Juan Non-Volokh, PZ Myers, Universal Acid, Kristy Elesko. A nice review of the actual research on cognitive differences is given by Mixing Memory. Summers has been scolded by the Harvard faculty, defended by Steven Pinker, corrected by the sociologists he quoted, and has issued a slightly more contrite apology than was originally squeezed out of him.

Perhaps more commentary isn’t really necessary. But it’s hard to miss the fact that Summers’ defenders and critics are mostly talking past each other. As one of the critics, I’m especially baffled/annoyed at the tack taken by most of the defenders. The basic line seems to be that Summers was simply offering a scientific hypothesis, one that is worth investigating, and if you are in any way offended you must be letting political correctness compromise your interest in finding the truth. This seems to miss the point entirely, so perhaps it’s worth just a little more blather on the subject.

Men and women are indeed different. I’ve noticed differences, anyway, and thank goodness. Biological differences are obvious, and I’m someone who believes that the mind is completely tied to the brain, which is part of the body, so it’s certainly possible in principle to imagine that there are innate cognitive differences. I know that some people disagree, and deny even the possibility of cognitive differences, but I think they are unreasonably extreme.

So, except for the fact that “scientific ability” is something hopelessly hard to quantify, I’m happy to contemplate the possibility that men have some tiny innate superiority to women when it comes to science. I am equally happy to contemplate the possibility that women have some tiny innate superiority to men when it comes to science. The point is that we have no strong evidence one way or another. It’s impossible, given the current state of the art, to reliably measure “innate ability” in a way that isn’t hopelessly noisy and compromised by cultural factors. It’s perfectly clear that the differences between individual people are typically much larger than the difference between some hypothetical average man and average woman, just as it is perfectly obvious that the expression of innate ability is tremendously affected by social and cultural factors.

Don’t these people read any history at all? Whenever some group is discriminated against by some other group, people inevitably suggest that the differences in situation can be traced to innate features distinguishing between the groups, and they are never right! If you would like to suggest that innate differences are responsible for some current discrepancies in people’s fortunes, the minimal burden you face is to acknowledge that such explanations have been spectacular failures in similar circumstances throughout history, and explain why we have compelling reasons to think the situation is different this time. Maybe it is, but the presumption is strongly against you.

Systematic biases against women in science are real. I’ve talked about this before, so didn’t think it was worth rehearsing, but apparently there are a lot of folks who don’t quite see it. They must not be looking. It might be better to refer to “systematic biases” rather than “discrimination,” because many of the pressures that work against women are brought to bear by men who have no idea that they are discriminating, and could even be said to have the best of intentions. The truth is that girls are dissuaded from pursuing science from almost the moment they are born, and the pressures are equally real at the university level. If the current differences in representation between men and women were due to innate differences, the U.S. wouldn’t have such low numbers compared to other countries, and the numbers wouldn’t actually be gradually but steadily increasing (as they are). There are very few role models for talented women students. There is a culture within science that stretches from offputting to downright misogynist. There are teachers in elementary and secondary schools that steer girls away from math and science. There are societal stereotypes that discourage women from pursuing scientific careers. There are many male professors who deep down just don’t think that women are cut out for the job. The list of biases goes on and on, and only someone willfully blind or extraordinarily simplistic could miss them.

Summers, of course, casually dismisses the idea that differences between the representation of men and women in science can be traced to systematic biases. His argument is based on rational markets: if there were a lot of talented women out there who were being discriminated against, a clever university could dominate the competition by hiring them all up, but this doesn’t happen. This is the kind of idea so dumb that it could only be entertained by a professional economist. By similar logic, shouldn’t smart baseball executives in the first half of the twentieth century been able to win multiple World Series by simply scooping up all of the African-American players that their racist colleagues were reluctant to hire? Somehow that didn’t happen. When the biases are widespread, subtle, and diffuse, they affect all institutions. This is especially true (and obvious) in the case of women scientists, where the pressures working against them stretch from preschool to university departments (and administrations!). No one person or institution can undo the damage, which is one of the reasons why it’s so important to acknowledge that the damage is real.

Entertaining hypotheses can, in context, be offensive. Summers’ own defense was that he was simply offering an hypothesis, and even hoped that he would be proven wrong. How can innocent scientific inquiry upset people so much? We should be devoted to the truth, right?

Okay, imagine you like to play chess, but the only person you know with a chess set is your friend (let’s call him “Larry”), so you have to play with him over and over. You believe that the two of you are evenly matched, so the games should be competitive. Except that, while you are an extremely polite and considerate player, Larry is consistently obnoxious. When it is your turn to move, Larry likes to take out his trumpet and practice scales (he’s a terrible trumpet player). Also, he tends to flick the light switch on and off while you are thinking. And he is consistently jiggling the chessboard slightly, so that the pieces are vibrating around. Occasionally, at crucial points during the game, he will poke you in the side with a sharp stick. And more than once, when it looked like you were about to win the game, he would “accidentally” spill his coffee on the board, knocking over the pieces, and declare the game a draw by forfeit.

You put up with this behavior (he does, after all, own the chess set), but you are only able to win about ten percent of the games. Eventually, in frustration, you complain that his behavior is unfair and he should cut it out. “Well,” says Larry, “let’s entertain the hypothesis that you usually lose because you just aren’t as good a chess player as I am. I suggest that you are just a sore loser with inferior cognitive capacity, although I’d love to be wrong about this.”

Perhaps he is correct — but in context, you have every right to slap him. Nobody should be against seeking the truth and exploring different hypotheses. But when systematic biases are widespread and perfectly obvious, and these biases are strongly affecting the representation of a group such as women, people have every right to be offended when the president of the most famous university in the world suggests that discrimination is imaginary, and it’s women’s own fault that there aren’t more female scientists. Of course psychologists and sociologists should continue to do research on all sorts of hypotheses, and perhaps some day we will have a playing field that is sufficiently level that any remaining differences in the numbers of working scientists can be plausibly attributed to innate capacities. But in the meantime, we should be focused on overcoming the ridiculous biases that plague our field, not in pretending that they don’t exist.

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Both sides now

One thing on which I’m sure we can all agree: there are too many damn blogs. Even if we stick with the ones that we actually think are good, there’s no way to keep up with them all. So forget about responsibly checking, for example, blogs on the other side of the political spectrum than where one places one’s self — maybe we spot-check a few here and there, but being a regular visitor is a job best left to masochists.

Fortunately, braver souls are out there to pick out the choicest cuts from either side of the political cow. Well, with a certain imbalance, I must admit. From the Right, we have TigerHawk presenting the Carnival of the Commies. Mildly amusing label notwithstanding, he actually makes a good-faith effort to identify what he thinks are interesting trends within the lefty blogosphere. Worth checking out.

In return, the forces of progressive goodness turn to The Poor Man, who dips his finger into the righty blogosphere to come up with Wingnut Butter. Equally edifying, although somewhat less of a — how should we put it? — good-faith effort.

We will plunge headlong into the spiritual wasteland of theocrats, crypto-fascists, asexuals, militiamen, torture apologists, Millenialists, Bush idolators, racists, Randians, flat Earthers, Likudniks, hypocrites, liars, and the many other sour, brittle old harpies and doughy, bowtied chronic masturbators of the Right, and return with such victuals as can be scrounged from this unforgiving soil.

Apparently the Editors were unable to identify all that many worthwhile strands over on the right side of web-land. Maybe next week?

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