The Adventures of Tobasco da Gama

I noticed an article in the Boston Globe, a copy of which was lying in a common area at work, about an education bill that had just passed through the Massachusetts House of Representatives. So I read the whole thing, which was a lot of quotes of people saying that they liked charter schools and descriptions of the marathon length of the midnight session and whatnot.

And then I realised that, having read the article, not once did it mention the number or even title of the bill, nor did it describe in concrete terms what the effects are. The bill apparently increases the number of charter schools the state will permit to exist, but doesn’t specify how many charter schools will be permitted if the bill passes the State Senate. It also “aims to overhaul the state’s worst schools”, but doesn’t say how.

Granted, the article does mention that “members plowed through about 150 amendments to the bill”, which is an interesting piece of information, and maybe does excuse a somewhat sketchily-detailed article. However, that doesn’t excuse the lack of any detail whatsoever. This follow-up, which appears to be a web-only article, and therefore one which won’t get as many views, reveals that the so-called “overhaul” of failing schools is actually just a conversion of those schools into charter schools. I’m not saying that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but it strikes me as something that’s pretty important when it comes to informing the public’s view of a bill’s effects.

Maybe this is just an indictment of one of the limitations of print journalism. With the pressure on to file a report on a big, breaking story like this in time for the presses to churn out enough copies for the morning edition, details necessarily fall through the cracks. And that’s ignoring situations like the infamous Dewey Defeats Truman headline, where the pressure to make it to press led to the printing of a blatantly counterfactual article before all the details came in.

The increasing prominence of blogging is a double-edged sword in these cases. You don’t face deadline pressure, but then you also have a sense of immediacy that leads to kicking out first impressions that end up becoming a final draft. Tesla knows I’ve fallen prey to that trap, but at least I’m just a lonely little fourth stringer who nobody looks to for advice. I’d be interested to know how many people read blogs via RSS versus going directly to webpages. Either way, though, it seems to me that the “time shift” effect encourages getting the story right over getting the story first, since you can’t count on your audience reading your post before someone else’s, even if you post first.

Either every climatologist on the planet is involved in a conspiracy to hide data manipulation, or some assholes with an agenda don’t know how to interpret jargon. Which do you think is more likely?

Apparently, we have degraded, as a society, to the point where a journalist actually has to go find an expert to explain this:

Scientists say ‘trick’ not just to mean deception. They mean it as a clever way of doing something – a short cut can be a trick.

STOP THE FUCKING PRESSES. Words can mean more than just one thing? And you can’t figure out which meaning is the relevant one without using context? And that some people are willing to quote other people out of context to support an ideological agenda?

I am shocked, shocked.

Further, we also need journalists to go track down scientists to explain exactly what they were thinking when they wrote a random e-mail ten years ago:

Australia’s Investigate magazine reports here that Phil Jones, head of the Climate Research Unit, says that he does not remember exactly what he meant 10 years ago when he wrote in an e-mail about the need to “hide the decline.” He argues, though, that he was not trying to mislead anyone, but rather had likely been discussing how to add “instrumental data” from recent years to “proxy data, going back further in time, a thousand years.”

Yes, sometimes scientists have problems with data calibration. They often need to apply adjustments when comparing data from two different sources. Again, this is not controversial, although I admit that a lot of people who haven’t done actual science might not be aware of this. I haven’t, either, of course, but I’m an engineer by training, so I know damned well that different instruments can have different biases that need correcting when using the data together. When you’re comparing not just data from different instruments but two completely different kinds of data, one from direct instrumentation and one representing historical inferences, the problem is only compounded.

None of this. None of any of this, these two phrases — and that’s all anybody is citing, just a couple of excerpts, not even entire e-mails –, “completed Mike’s Nature trick” or a Kevin Trenberth quote that I can find even less context on, indicates a conspiracy to hide climate data. It’s just normal chatter between scientists trying to make sure that they’re doing things correctly. But then doing things correctly is a concept alien to most conspiracy theorists and denialists.

Update: Real Climate has a post up that is interesting. They’ve spent some time going through the actual e-mails.

More interesting is what is not contained in the emails. There is no evidence of any worldwide conspiracy, no mention of George Soros nefariously funding climate research, no grand plan to ‘get rid of the MWP’, no admission that global warming is a hoax, no evidence of the falsifying of data, and no ‘marching orders’ from our socialist/communist/vegetarian overlords.

Quite.

Oh, and specifically on the Trenberth quote that’s getting passed around:

[Response: Trenberth is talking about our inability to be able to measure the net radiation balance at the top of the atmosphere to the requisite precision to be able to say on short time scales what the energy budget is doing. The observations are inadequate for that - not sure who is saying otherwise. - gavin]

‘What ho!’ I said.
‘What ho!’ said Motty.
‘What ho! What ho!’
‘What ho! What ho! What ho!’
After that it seemed rather difficult to go on with the conversation.

So, those of you who follow me on Twitter might have noticed me referring to a trip to Washington DC and hinting at some crazy plan I wanted to enact when I got there. Well, today is the day I go out and do it, so rather than keep everybody in suspense until I get back to Boston and upload today’s photos, I’ll just reveal things now.

I’ve been a fan of the Fallout games since the very first one, and of course recently a brand-new game in the series, Fallout 3, was released by Bethesda, makers of the Elder Scrolls RPGs. Fallout 3 moved the action from a devastated, post-apocalyptic California to a devastated, post-apocalyptic DC known in-game as The Capital Wasteland. See where I’m going with this?

Fallout 3 uses a number of well-known DC landmarks as significant spots in the game. The Jefferson Memorial becomes Project Purity, the focus of the game’s main quest. The Washington Monument is home to Galaxy News Radio‘s (“This is Three Dog! Awoooo!”) broadcast relay. Other spots like Dupont Circle, the Willard Hotel (subject of several of my hints), and many of the DC Metro stations, have cameo appearances in the game.

So, what’s a nerd to do? Obviously, dress up as the game’s main character and wander the city asking random passerby to take pictures of him. Obviously.

I had the idea for all of this last Saturday, so I had to rush things. My pal James helped out with the jumpsuit, sewing on the yellow trim and the big 101 on the back. (The game’s advertising tends to use the Armored Jumpsuit, but we went for the plain Vault Jumpsuit instead.) He also loaned me a bit of Sculpey, which I used to mold a Pip-Boy 3000. I made a sleeve for the Pip-Boy from posterboard and some foam I had lying around, then I painted both.

For four days of work, I was pretty damned impressed with what I managed to pull off. A lot of the details are off from the game, but in broad strokes I think it looks awesome. (Again, muchos kudos to James for helping on the jumpsuit.) So here are the photos of it on Flickr! I’ll get photos from my actual DC trip up as soon as I can, which probably won’t be until Monday.

I report, you decide.

I didn’t create this “Questions” post category to not use it. Anyway, today’s question comes from Matt Lauer:

Is it worse if some of this opposition to President Obama is fueled by outright racism, or is it worse if some liberals, in an attempt to defend President Obama and his plans, invoke the charge of racism to discredit the critics?

The former, Matt. Being racist is worse than pointing out when other people are acting like racists. (Incidentally, this is exactly what his guest says.)

Thanks for playing, folks! See you next time, when the question will be, “Is it worse if Hitler exterminates a shitload of Jews, or is it worse if some guy calls Godwin’s Law in an argument?”

For my birthday on Sunday, Jared of Boston Skeptics got me a Slap Chop™. As I said at the time, it makes a great gift, because it has the perfect combination of being frickin’ hilarious and potentially at least somewhat useful. But just how useful is it?

Well, at the birthday party, I used it to chop up some macadamia nuts. And, yes, everybody loved my nuts. It actually did work reasonably well on the nuts; however, there were a few large chunks that didn’t get chopped as finely as the rest.

So today, I decided to use my Slap Chop™ to make a stir fry. I slapped and chopped some garlic, onions, and bell peppers. It certainly did what it said on the tin. The problem is, I had to prep everything before putting it into the Slap Chop™. The onion and the bell pepper were too big to go in as one piece, so I had to quarter them. The garlic had green stems that I also had to remove with a knife. Furthermore, the skin on the bell pepper was rather resistant to the blades of the Slap Chop™, so I had to do some knife-work anyway. And, again, just like the nuts, there were a few large chunks mixed in with the finer pieces.

Bottom line: Dudes, knives are not that hard to use. In practice, you’re probably gonna have to pick up a knife to prep your stuff for the Slap Chop™ anyway, so why not just do all your chopping with a knife? You’ll get more consistent results that way, anyway.

From Bostonist’s police blotter for today:

What began as your run-of-the-mill New Bedford fistfight ended in flames and death. A fight broke out early Wednesday morning between James Donnelly and, 20 of New Bedford, and Michael Raposo, 26 of Dartmouth, outside of a New Bedford Chinese joint. Raposo allegedly attacked Donnelly with a crowbar during the altercation, which did little good against the presumably gifted pugilist, who absconded with Donnelly’s keys and his pickup truck. Not to be outdone, Donnelly allegedly leaped into the back of the truck, crowbar flying, as Raposo sped away. Donnelly’s crowbar attack proved to be a suicidally fatal distraction when Raposo lost control of the pickup, which flipped over, throwing Donnelly to the pavement and killing him.

Emphasis mine. Somebody had fun with this.

If there’s one thing the world needs more of, apart from free baklava dispensers on every corner, it’s cheap Freudian pop psychoanalysis. Thankfully, Dr. Stephen Bergman, evidently a local author of some note, is here with precisely that.

I’m not about to question Dr. Bergman’s credentials. He got his MD from Harvard Medical School, where he’s now a professor, and was a Rhodes Scholar. I’m willing to grant that the dude knows what he’s talking about.

But credentials only get you so far, and they certainly don’t excuse you from writing crap op-eds. Even if the claims is based on the strongest of scientific evidence, what Dr. Bergman gives us are just anecdotes. Well, anecdotes and an off-hand reference to “work leading gender dialogues between thousands of men and women, boys and girls”. I bet there’s interesting research to be done there, but you won’t hear about it in this article. No, the methods here come straight from the “Austrian witch-doctor”, as Nabokov called him.

Step one: Take an anecdote from a patient.

When he was 6, he had been beaten up at school. He wasn’t hurt physically, but felt terrible. He walked home up the railroad tracks through the woods so no one would see him crying, and couldn’t wait to tell his mother. [...] She turned around, saw the tears, and with concern asked, “What’s wrong, dear?’’ Despite wanting to tell her, he said, “Nothing,’’ turned away and walked back out.

Step two: Generalise like a motherfucker.

Although we all – boys and girls – come into the world with a primary desire for connection, there is an early fork in the path.

Step three: Find a way to work mothers in somehow.

Many boys are pushed by the culture to disconnect from their relationship with mother in order to grow, and become less valued for their relationships and more valued for themselves [...]

Step four: ???

Step five: Profit! By which I mean collect a paycheck from the Boston Globe.

This is a guy who has, in his fiction books and in other op-eds, stressed the idea that patients are individuals and much be approached as such. Yet here he is painting with a broad brush and declaring that men — all men — have difficulty opening up in relationships because boys — all boys — are pushed by some magical force to not develop deep connections with their mothers. And you should trust him when he says so, because he has a story from a patient to prove it.

Cross-posted from Boston Skeptics.

From Amanda Marcotte‘s Twitter feed, this:

If you like the Post Office and the Department of Motor Vehicles and you think they’re run well, just wait till you see Medicare, Medicaid and health care done by the government.

Ok, yes. So the obvious mistake is that, well… MEDICARE AND MEDICAID ARE ALREADY RUN BY THE GOVERNMENT. But if you’re anybody other than Arthur Laffer — yes, the economic genius whose greatest accomplishment is a curvy line on a chart that he pulled out of his ass one day — you knew that already.

“But wait,” the ghost of Billy Mays’ beard says, “there’s more!”

The DMV, maligned as it is, is run by the state governments. You can’t just blithely generalise a state-run office to a federal project like the health care public option. After all, the federal government has established some efficient, well-run, and beneficial agencies in its time. Like, you know, the United States Postal Service. When was the last time you lost any mail sent by USPS? Can you even remember? Sure, the price of stamps keeps going up, but so does the price of everything else. The biggest problem with the USPS is that they continue to deliver unsolicited bulk mail, but anti-regulation asshats like Laffer would consider that capitalism at work.

So, yeah, if Obama’s health care works as well as the USPS, I say bring it the fuck on.