Miscellany

Welcome to the Lucky Thirteenth edition of Tangled Bank! A carnival of bloggy excellence in which we collect some of the best science-oriented posts of the previous two weeks. (We have taken a loose interpretation of the “previous two weeks” requirement, to feature some worthy authors that don’t have a recent science post. As you will see, we have even taken a loose interpretation of the “science” requirement!)

The next Tangled Bank will be hosted by Prashant Mullick, and is scheduled to appear on October 20th. You can email your contribution directly to Prashant at mullickprashant@gmail.com, or to host@tangledbank.net. We are always looking for new hosts (it’s really not so hard); if you’re interested, email PZ Myers at pzmyers@pharyngula.org.

This edition’s nineteen (count ’em!) entries will be listed in apparently-random order, according to a convoluted algorithm known only to me.

From Richard Hoppe at The Panda’s Thumb we have an Introduction to Multiple Designers Theory. When advocates of the Intelligent Design movement claim to be thinking purely scientifically rather than theologically, what if they were telling the truth? What conclusions would they be drawn to?

Mainstream Intelligent Design is proving itself to be scientifically vacuous. While Dembski has his Explanatory Filter and Complex Specified Information and Specified Complexity, and Behe has his Irreducible Complexity, no actual research program utilizing those concepts has emerged from the mainstream Intelligent Design movement. Therefore a revolutionary change in the conception of ID is necessary to rouse it from its empirical and theoretical slumber and to provide appropriate material for school boards and legislatures who want an alternative to modern evolutionary theory to be taught in secondary schools. Multiple Designers Theory is that revolutionary change.

From Selva at The Scientific Indian we have The Story of Shit. No comment on this, I’m getting in enough trouble already.

I cooked up this story at a lighter moment (pun intended). Shit is second law of thermodynamics in action. Looking at feces from a thermodynamical perspective may somewhat unburden our mind from the inherent unpleasantness of the subject matter. Besides, I have been mulling over the second law of thermodynamics, evolution and human form for a while now. All these different ideas are connected in strange ways. As part of the story of shit I am going to explain the connections I see.

From Chris Clarke Creek Running North we have Puma, an essay on predation including a personal account of a puma encounter.

As I rounded yet another bend in the road, the wind picked up. The breeze off the ocean had been a little gusty that afternoon, more so as I got deeper into the ravines on the east side of the ridge. That’s the only way I can explain what happened next; that the wind was too loud for the puma to hear me walking down the road. It must not have known I was there. Why else would it have leapt the guardrail to cross the road at precisely the time I arrived at said guardrail?

From Samuel Conway we have PSA: Save a life while you sleep! It’s a personal story of bone marrow donation.

What is the first thing that pops into your mind when I say the words “bone marrow donation”?

I’ll tell you what it is: PAIN. That is what everyone always talks about. We read stories about donors, usually in places like Readers’ Digest, and we shudder and squirm at the thought of how agonizing it must be. My word, we say, aren’t these people heroic? The truth, however, is that the majority of donors experience only moderate discomfort, and some report feeling little or no pain at all. True, for some the procedure can be painful, but even those donors say that they would be ready to do it again in a heartbeat.

From George Wilkinson at Keats’ telescope we have Grab that glutamate, about the natural history of GLUD2.

This month’s Nature Genetics (subscription required) has a cool short communication by Fabien Burki and Henrik Kaessmann about a gene that is most likely only expressed in the brain, and is only found in humans and apes. This gene, GLUD2, and its more widespread relative, GLUD1, encode proteins which help break down glutamate. Glutamate is an important neurotransmitter in the brain, and can be released in large amounts during intense neural activity. However too much released glutamate can be toxic, and these two genes are important for control of glutamate levels.

From ema at The Well-Timed Period we have Womanhood and Menses. “Having a menstrual period does not make women inferior, nor does it empower them to rule the world.”

There is a tendency to infuse the menstrual period with all sorts of societal meanings of almost mythical proportions (e.g., the essence of womanhood, woman power, etc.). This is detrimental, especially when it comes to women making informed period-related health decisions. Why? Because, by definition, myths aren’t to be explained; they’re to be believed. This is a dangerous proposition when it comes to your health.

From Prashant Mullick we have Fibonacci Spiral Phyllotaxis. He must be reading the Da Vinci Code!

Phyllotaxis is the arrangement of leaves on a stem. There are several types of arrangements. One of them is a spiral pattern.

It turns out that among plants displaying spiral phyllotaxis about 92% of them have Fibonacci phyllotaxis – the number of visible spirals are two successive elements of the Fibonacci sequence.

From PZ Myers at Pharyngula we have PZ Myers’ Own Original, Cosmic, and Eccentric Analogy for How the Genome Works -OR- High Geekology. Is the genome a recipe, or a village of idiots? Nope, it’s a power spectrum.

I’m a long-time microscopy and image processing geek, and you know what that means: Fourier transforms (and if you don’t know what it means, I’m telling you now: Fourier transforms). I’m going to be kind and spare you all mathematics of any kind and do a simplified, operational summary of what they’re all about, but if bizarre transformations of images aren’t your thing, you can bail out now.

(By the way, a Fourier transform is just a change of basis in the space of functions, from one where the basis functions are delta-functions to one where they are sines and cosines. Clear now?)

From Charlie Wagner we have A Scientific Case for Intelligent Input. Not our usual Tangled Bank fare — it’s an apologia for intelligent design, included here in the spirit of the free market of ideas. (Without any implied promise to include pseudoscience posts in future editions!)

As you probably know, empirical data can be either observational or experimental. Observations usually come first, and hypotheses are developed. When a sufficient number of observations are collected, a pattern emerges and a theory is formulated. Additional experiments are then performed in an attempt to falsify the theory. After numerous attempts to falsify the theory, it may be elevated to the status of Law. Of course, any theory or law is subject to new data which may or may not overturn it. I have proposed Nelson’s Law and, so far as I can tell, it has not been falsified by any observational or experimental data and must be assumed to be highly likely to be true.

From Radagast at Rhosgobel we have a set of three connected posts — They’re not so little anymore, More Manduca Pictures: Spiracles and Tracheae, and Manduca Update: They’re Wandering! I have to admit, those caterpillars are pretty cute.

You may or may not know that insects are supposed to have three pairs of legs (six legs total), while spiders have four pairs of legs (eight legs total). Knowing this, let’s count the legs on the caterpillar pictured above. A quick count reveals that the caterpillar has sixteen legs (eight pairs), significantly more than the six it’s supposed to have. Are caterpillars not insects? Have we been wrong all along in believing that insects have six legs?

From Jenn at Invasive Species Weblog we have Invasive Species: The Newest Threat to Property…Rights? Science meets the pervasive phenomenon of annoying neighbors.

Invasive species, indeed any weedy species, don’t give a hoot about your property boundaries. Sometimes things that happen on your property affect others, and it’s not fair to say tough luck just because you own that plot of land. I’m sorry, but if someone notices that a bunch of trees on your property are infested with Asian longhorn beetles, I don’t think you have a right to not do anything about it. I also don’t think you should have to pay to remove the trees, and I would like to see the government help you out by maybe replanting or giving you some money. But unless you’re going to build a biodome over your land, this is about more than you and what you “own.”

From Stephen Brophy we have Meaning Well is No Excuse. Following Richard Dawkins, he argues that it’s not okay to make people feel better by giving them false hope.

So, the news that yet another Cancer remedy has been touted should really come as no surprise. Nevertheless, the sight of this article made my blood boil. The con-artist pushing this particular miracle cure seems to be claiming that “It works by creating an alkaline environment in which acidic cancer cells cannot survive” (So there you have it dear reader, curing cancer turns out to be one of the many uses of baking soda!). The individual making the above quoted claim is apparently a doctor. This is obscene, and the fool should be kept away from patients (It seems clear to me that his treatment represents a gross violation of his Hippopotamus Oath).

From Ted Woollet at Dark Energy2 we have The Anthropic Principle: Good Physics or Not?? With the surprising observational result that the universe is dominated by vacuum energy that has a much smaller value than it should, cosmologists have been tempted by the idea that our observable universe is just one of many.

According to these ideas, we exist in a “pocket universe” with a tiny (but non-zero) effective cosmological constant. Without the cosmological constant having a value in a small range around a tiny number, our variety of intelligent observers could not have evolved to a state like the present. The tiny non-zero value of the effective cosmological constant is hard to understand using traditional particle physics arguments.

From John Fleck at inkstain we have Extinction. Can major extinctions of 10,000 years ago be blamed on weather, or are they our fault?

One of the classic scientific debates, on a par with “nature vs. nurture,” albeit far more obscure, is the question of what caused the great megafaunal extinction at the end of the Pleistocene.

Pretty much everywhere you look, you find evidence of big critters roaming the earth – mastodons, mammoths, big camels, and my favorite, beavers the size of black bears. And then they “blink out,” to borrow a lovely phrase I heard a biologist use recently. In a very short period of time in geologic terms, they’re gone.

From me at Preposterous Universe we have What is this quintessence of dust? A needlessly showy quote from Hamlet, by way of introduction to different possibilities for what dark energy might be.

I think it was Tolstoy who said, “Cosmological constants are all alike; every model of dynamical dark energy is dynamical in its own way.” Tautological enough, but it points to an important feature of dynamical dark energy candidates — because they have more features than simply their energy density, there are more ways they could be detected and thus more parameters you need to fine-tune to explain why we haven’t noticed them yet.

From David Winter at Science and Sensibility we have the Plight of a Bumble Bee, Part One and Part Two. This is why other people can’t understand scientists — when confronted with a bumblebee infestation, they contemplate the essence of bees rather than just spraying them dead.

Over the last few weeks my flat has been beset by slow, confused looking bumble bees. Most days at least one gets itself stuck in the house, usually trying valiantly but ultimately futilely to fly through one of our closed windows. Of course I usually try and help these wayfarers out but I was too late for one, which I found dead in our living room. I have tried to get a photo of the unfortunate bumble bee for you but technology has conspired against me, so here is one of the same species.

From Mike at 10,000 Birds we have Flyways And Byways. Examining the remarkably well-defined migration corridors of North American birds.

You don’t need to be a birder to know that most birds fly from temperate northern climes to more tropical southern locales for the winter. Changes in light, temperature, and food availability trigger the instinct to migrate, an urge so powerful that only a really well-stocked backyard bird feeder can override it. Migratory birds follow a variety of routes, most of which are are far more complicated than just due south. Every species has its own path.

From Pyracantha at Electron Blue we have One of those little victories which keep me going. Pyracantha is an artist who is teaching herself math and physics.

The fireworks are out and it’s back to math. I’m working my way through lots of logarithm problems. As you may remember from last time, I spoke in a rather agricultural way about “raising” and “rooting” numbers. How would I describe a logarithm, then? It’s a number seed which when planted, both raises and roots at the same time.

From Wolverine Tom we have San Andreas Fault. I was only in an earthquake once, and it was a tiny one — as if the building was suddenly floating on water rather than anchored to dry land, and just as suddenly back again.

A few days ago, a 6.0 magnitude earthquake occurred in the San Andreas Fault out in California. For those people living in the area, this is a common occurance. But why is this area so prone to earthquakes? To understand this, the geologic of the area must be known.

Many thanks to everyone (most of whom I didn’t get a chance to thank individually) for contributing. And if I’ve left anyone out, it was just an email snafu, not a cold-hearted editorial decision — so please let me know.

October 5th is my birthday. So if you’ve been looking for an excuse to leave a comment about how terrific I am and how much you enjoy the blog, there you go.

(I would not ordinarily be so shameless as to volunteer such information, except that Michael Bérubé did it, and he is my blog role model.)

The 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to David Gross of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at UC Santa Barbara, David Politzer of Caltech, and Frank Wilczek of MIT, for their work on asymptotic freedom in quantum chromodynamics (QCD). It was predicted by Peter Woit and many others; the most obvious response is “it’s about time.”

QCD is the theory of the strong interactions, in which quarks possess a certain “color” (purely metaphorical, of course) and are bound together in protons and neutrons by massless particles called gluons. It’s extremely similar to how protons and electrons possess a quantity called “charge” and are bound together in an atom by photons. But there is also a crucial difference — you can pull an electron apart from an atom (and thank goodness, since TV and other necessities would otherwise be impossible), but you can’t pull quarks out of protons and neutrons. The basic reason why is asymptotic freedom — the remarkable quality that the QCD force gets weaker at higher energies (short distances) and stronger at low energies (large distances). In the early ’70s physicists were struggling to understand new data on the structure of protons and neutrons from “deep inelastic scattering” experiments at the Stanford Linear Accelerator (SLAC) and elsewhere, in which high-energy electrons were fired at these heavier nuclear particles. It all snapped into place once Gross, Politzer and Wilczek discovered asymptotic freedom (through some heroic calculations) and immediately applied it to make sense of the data — the quarks were becoming free (non-interacting) asymptotically (as the energies were increased). Bjorken and others had discussed the possibility of asymptotic freedom, but it was Gross, Politzer and Wilczek who actually demonstrated that QCD (a non-abelian Yang-Mills theory, to be specific) would have that property. These days QCD is a phenomenally successful theory, and forms a crucial part of the Standard Model of particle physics. This is a Nobel Prize that is long overdue and well deserved.

Update: Let me add a few notes to the hurried description given above. First, both Wilczek and Politzer were graduate students at the time this research was done; Gross was an assistant professor at Princeton and Wilczek’s advisor, while Politzer was advised by Sidney Coleman at Harvard. Great ideas in theoretical physics are often (always?) originated by the young. Second, both Gross and Wilczek have at different times been kind enough to write letters of recommendation for me or support me in other ways, for which I’m sincerely grateful. I recall clearly my senior year as an undergraduate at Villanova, wandering around Jadwin hall at Princeton and knocking on David Gross’s door unannounced, and how he chatted with me about what it was really like to be a theoretical physicist. At the time I had no clue who he was; now I know. Finally, Frank Wilczek was an undergraduate here at Chicago, getting his degree in math in 1970. You may ask, does that mean the UofC will count him as yet another Chicago Nobelist? Don’t be silly; of course we will. That makes 29 Nobel Prizes in the physical sciences, and counting.

One of the many benefits of being a member of the American Astronomical Society is automatic subscription to the AAS Newsletter, which is filled with such wonderful things that the current issue is not put online, so that only official members may read it. This month’s issue contained a column by new AAS president Robert Kirshner, who talked about the new (as of this summer) NASA Mission Statement. Some of Kirshner’s comments:

… it would be a mistake to lose sight of even bigger changes taking place at NASA. NASA’s new focus on solar system exploration is expressed in their mission statement and a new set of “Level 0” requirements (even more fundamental than Level 1!) articulated by the NASA Executive Council. You can read them for yourself [here]. You might find it odd, as I did,that there is no mention of the kind of science that has proved so successful for NASA in exploring the universe beyond the solar system, with HST and smaller but fantastically important missions like WMAP. These basic requirements don’t suggest that studying black holes, gravitational waves, dark energy, or even the assembly of galaxies at the dawn of time must be part of NASA’s portfolio.

[…]

But these requirements are aimed quite sharply at something else: “extending human presence across the solar system and beyond.” Many AAS members will see themselves as part of that presence, but having so much astronomy compressed into “and beyond” makes me wonder if the ground has not shifted beneath our feet. The whole elaborate process of Decadal reports, followed by careful working out of roadmaps with lots of community input through a vigorous advisory mechanism has been a good thing for the astronomical community, and a good thing for NASA. This new change in direction doesn’t seem to involve any of those sources of wise counsel. I think we should pay attention to this, talk to our colleagues at NASA, and try to understand what is happening. We live in interesting times.

Couldn’t have said it better myself (and I have tried). It’s worth taking a look at those “requirements” in the mission statement — not a single reference to the universe outside the solar system. When I give colloquia, I like to say that the 1990’s will go down in human history as the decade in which we figured out what the universe was made of, pinning down the cosmic inventory of ordinary matter, dark matter, and dark energy. Those determinations were due in large part to observations by NASA missions of galaxies, supernovae, and the cosmic microwave background. Think that stuff is interesting? Hope you enjoyed it, since we might not get any more.

When Sean O’Keefe became the new NASA administrator, scientists were cautiously optimistic — he was not a scientist himself, but had a reputation as a manager and a results-oriented kind of guy, and astrophysics was the one thing at NASA that consistently got great results (as opposed to, let’s just say, the International Space Station). We were wrong. And as Kirshner says, there is a frustrating move away from a system of rigorous study and sensitivity to community input — a move which, if nothing else, fits in well with the overarching philosophy of the current administration.

I’m not sure if it’s too late to stop NASA from completely abandoning astrophysics. But any time you get the chance, make noise about it to people who matter. It would be a shame if this decade went down in human history as the one in which we stopped caring about what the universe is made of.

Don’t forget that the next edition of Tangled Bank is due to appear here this Thursday, October 6th. So if you have any especially interesting science posts on your blog, or know of any lurking out there, just send an email my way (carroll@theory.uchicago.edu).

In unrelated news, today is Von Freeman‘s 82nd birthday. (And The Great Divide is getting incredible reviews.) Happy birthday Vonski!

I just got back from a jaunt to the University of Arizona, so I missed out on the happy blogospherical wallowing in the aftermath of the Presidential debate. By now the consensus has hardened into a permanent shape — Bush was scared and slouchy, but did manage to repeat his three talking points over and over with eerie consistency, while Kerry was straight-backed and Presidential, and managed to say some very clear things about why the war in Iraq was a bad idea, coming out the overall winner. And I basically agree.

Still, far be it from me to deprive the Kerry campaign of my insights, especially as I understand they are running low on free advice from bloggers. So here are a couple of quotes I would love to see Kerry use in the debates:

“The President has asked what kind of message my positions send to our troops. Let me just say this: the troops know what is going on. Don’t underestimate the men and women of our armed forces. They know when a military operation is a boondoggle, and when the situation on the ground has become a quagmire. They also know when a statesman is standing up for their rights, and when a politician is just blowing smoke. They understand that we live in a free country, and that there is a difference between criticizing the troops and criticizing the failed policies of this Administration.”

“For a long time, Republicans have had a reputation as the party of small government. But this administration has changed all that. The new slogan of the Republican party is ‘Trust us — we’re the government, we know what’s best for you.’ Under this administration, the government has increased spending, made it a policy to violate our personal privacy, inserted itself into bedrooms and private lives, and given itself the right to arrest and detain American citizens without any right to talk to a personal lawyer. If you believe in getting the government off of people’s backs, you must vote Democratic this November.”

“Harry Truman had a motto — ‘The Buck Stops Here.’ George W. Bush also has a motto — ‘Don’t Blame Me.’ No matter what goes wrong with our policies, there is always a senior member of the Bush administration ready to step up and say ‘Not our fault.’ This administration has been in total control — the Republican-dominated congress hasn’t passed a single bill the President has wanted to veto. Yet, in the face of any problem, from the economy to the prisons of Iraq, they feel completely free of blame. It’s time we had a President who will take responsibility for his actions.”

“The President likes to tell us that his job is hard work, and that he never expected that he would have to send troops into combat. Of course it’s hard work, and sending troops into combat is part of the job description. It’s time we had someone in the Oval Office who has a better grasp on what it really means to be the President.”

“A lot of detailed negotiations went into setting up the format of these debates. One of the things that the President’s negotiator insisted on was that we couldn’t use charts and graphs as visual aids. Why not? Because if I could show you a simple chart of the budget deficit, you would be shocked and scared. This administration has turned a record surplus into a record deficit in record time. George W. Bush is the first President to have a degree in business administration, but it’s hard to know what he learned at Harvard Business School. As a businessman he drove companies into the ground, and now he’s doing the same for the Federal treasury. Because of his mismanagement, important programs are going to have to be cut, but he won’t tell us which ones — will it be Social Security? Medicare? Education? National defense? Homeland security? Right now, the nation can’t afford to be governed by someone who doesn’t know how to balance the books.”

These are gems, people! Free of charge! Normally I wouldn’t give away wisdom like this so cheaply, but these are desperate times.

Last night I went with a friend to the Harvard Film Archive to see Painters Painting, a 1972 documentary by Emile de Antonio. (The Archive’s film copy of the movie had been ruined and they were forced to show it from 80’s-era laser disk, as a result of which embarrassment the showing was offered for free). The subject was American painters, focusing on the Abstract Expressionists and their Pop-Art and Color-Field successors. Many of the artists who were alive at the time were featured in interviews (Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock, of course, had each died violently before the movie was made). Interesting to see how this tight-knit group of people interacted with each other, with the dealers and collectors, and with the outside world.

What stuck me, ungenerous soul that I am, was what terrible theorists the painters all were. By which I mean, they had very strong ideas about what they are doing and what other people should be doing and what kinds of art are good and bad, but these ideas are all visceral and impressionistic (as it were), rather than flowing from some set of basic axioms about what art should be. They would offer various opinions in the guise of fundamental principles, of course, but the principles were often incoherent and never really fundamental, in the sense that they could be reasonably applied to a wide variety of aesthetic moments. Instead, they were rules of thumb that happened to serve this particular person well in their particular set of circumstances. You were as likely to hear, for example, about how it was absolutely necessary to make your brushstrokes vivid and recognizable, as you were to hear that brushstrokes should always be completely imperceptible. I can imagine perfectly good reasons for either position, but these stances were offered as self-evident truths, rather than as flowing from some deeper theory.

And I don’t blame the artists in particular; the few critics that were featured (Clement Greenberg and Hilton Kramer) didn’t do much better. Again, they had strong opinions justified by appeals to comprehensive-sounding statements, but although their sentences were longer and more complex they didn’t seem to come any closer to possessing a set of fundamental axioms from which we could begin to derive their specific judgments. Nor do I by any means think that one needs to be a good theorist to be a good artist; the empirical evidence might argue for the converse. The one artist who seemed to have a full-blown theory was Frank Stella, who spoke convincingly about why the appropriate response to gestural painting was to move toward geometric forms and liberation from the rectangular canvas. Unfortunately, at the level of a personal reaction, I found his actual paintings to be the most lifeless and least beautiful of the bunch. The poor guy couldn’t seem to understand why the same people who found his work cold and uninviting were so taken with that Rothko fellow.

This is also not to say that the artists were in any way unintelligent or even inarticulate (although some were); many were very interesting to listen to. Willem de Kooning had provocative things to say about the “lightness” of American culture in contrast with that of Europe, and Jasper Johns and Barnett Newman made enlightening remarks about their use of texture and space. But you nevertheless got the feeling that they wouldn’t be able to offer a good reason why, for example, it was interesting to eliminate color entirely from a deeply textured representation of the American flag; only that it seemed to work (which is a fine reason, just not a theory).

The other thing that strikes you (or me, as an underinformed amateur who is making this up as he goes along) is how reflective and tightly-coupled the painting world really is. So many of these works are simply baffling when viewed in isolation, but begin to make sense when viewed as pointed reactions to some specific innovation by some other painter. It gets even better when the artists are dragging each other to shows or even quasi-collaborating, as when Robert Rauschenberg thinks it would be fun to first draw something and then carefully erase it, but realizes that it’s no fun to erase his own drawings, so convinces de Kooning to donate one of his. For my next paper, I want to convince Ed Witten to donate an unpublished manuscript, from which I will delete all of the interesting parts — I think it would be a ground-breaking collaboration.

By James Fenton.

A nasty surprise in a sandwich,

A drawing-pin caught in your sock,

The limpest of shakes from a hand which

You’d thought would be firm as a rock,

A serious mistake in a nightie,

A grave disappointment all round

Is all that you’ll get from th’Almighty,

Is all that you’ll get underground.

Oh he said: ‘If you lay off the crumpet

I’ll see you alright in the end.

Just hang on until the last trumpet.

Have faith in me, chum-I’m your friend.’

But if you remind him, he’ll tell you:

‘I’m sorry, I must have been pissed-

Though your name rings a sort of a bell. You

Should have guessed that I do not exist.

‘I didn’t exist at Creation,

I didn’t exist at the Flood,

And I won’t be around for Salvation

To sort out the sheep from the cud-

‘Or whatever the phrase is. The fact is

In soteriological terms

I’m a crude existential malpractice

And you are a diet of worms.

‘You’re a nasty surprise in a sandwich.

You’re a drawing-pin caught in my sock.

You’re the limpest of shakes from a hand which

I’d have thought would be firm as a rock,

‘You’re a serious mistake in a nightie,

You’re a grave disappointment all round-

That’s all you are, ‘ says th’Almighty,

‘And that’s all that you’ll be underground.’

Please rest assured that Mr. Fenton is a Major Poet, even if the above example of his work does seem like something Eric Idle should be singing.

I am sitting in a friend’s apartment, a couple Negronis to the wind, in rejuvenation mode after my colloquium this afternoon at Brandeis (convincing the locals that the universe is accelerating, but that we don’t know why — not a hard sell, really). So I’m in no condition to comment on the mild kerfluffle that has broken out, ironically immediately after the announcement of 411blog, in response to Matthew Yglesias’ lament that there aren’t enough expert bloggers. But I was glad to see my honor (and, incidentally, the honor of some other people) defended by PZ Myers and other bloggy luminaries.

However, given my druthers, I’d prefer to have Fafblog exhort people to send me money. Flattery is nice, but it doesn’t pay the mortgage.

(Honestly, there’s a pretty basic fact here — by percentage, most people in the world are not experts. They’re not especially good writers, either. This is one of the first things you realize, I thought everyone knew, when you rambled around the internet — there’s a very good reason why magazines have editors, rather than just being first-come-first-published. The worthwhile stuff is there, but you do have to look for it a little.)

Here’s an idea: rather than waiting for mistakes to enter the mainstream media and subsequently be jumped on by the blogosphere, why not offer up the expertise of the bloggers (or some delicately selected subset thereof) as a resource to journalists as the stories are actually being written? This turns the standard picture of bloggers-as-manic-guardians-of-accuracy on its head, but the category of “bloggers” is so diverse as to be an overgeneralization almost by definition, so it might work.

That’s the notion, anyway, behind 411blog, a new venture set up by Andrew Cline of rhetorica.net and Jay Manifold of A Voyage to Arcturus. They are offering up a list of bloggers who have some credentials in various areas, primarily science-oriented, as a resource to journalists who would like a quick answer on some technical question.

We’ll see how it goes. Success will require both that journalists avail themselves of the service, and that the bloggers offer useful input. Most science journalists have their own private lists of trusted experts in the various areas they write about, but good ones are always looking to extend their horizons. Being a blogger doesn’t convey any special expertise in and of itself, but it may indicate a willingness to make an effort to reach out to a wider audience. Or, as in my case, it may just serve as a convenient outlet for one’s extravagant narcissism. But as long as we can channel our neuroses in socially useful directions, what more can we ask?