the good old days

Next year, I’m paying for grad school by participating in a program which puts graduate students in science or engineering (like me) in middle school classrooms every week, to do demonstrations which help translate often vague scientific concepts into a form that kids can understand. So I’ve been scouting around for ideas of how to present science in ways that are both fun and educational.

Here’s an example… Let’s look at the concept that “The Universe is Regular and Predictable”. This is very important to science, because it means when we discover something (such as the law of gravity), we know it will always work the same way. Stuff always falls down due to gravity; it doesn’t sometimes float, it doesn’t sometimes fly up to the ceiling, it always goes down at 9.5 meters per second squared. Science WORKS because things are predictable, as long as we can figure out HOW they are predictable.

Now, please watch this little video below, and tell me if it helps you understand that idea.

It’s all so much clearer, isn’t it?

The sad thing is, the Science Cheerleader wants to make science more relevant to public discussion and policy-making choices. That’s a goal I completely support, and something that is desperately needed — but this series of videos, even though they are posted at the Science Cheerleader blog with paragraphs describing the science concept, make science look dumb and desperate in addition to obscure and confusing. It should be able to succeed on its own merits — there are plenty of ways to make science sexy without resorting to cheerleaders. The many, many women in science and engineering are not going to like this, at all. Many (hopefully most) men in science aren’t going to like it. It doesn’t even teach anything about science. So WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY?

According to the site the Della can change a woman’s life. “Once you get beyond how cute they are, you’ll find that netbooks can do a lot more than check your e-mail.” Yes you can “find recipes online” and you can use them “to track calories, carbs and protein with ease, watch online fitness videos, map your running routes and more.” — Fudzilla

Wow. I totally can’t do that with my high-powered built-from-scratch non-Dell(a) computer. I better go alert my friend who’s head of tech support, because I bet her laptop totally doesn’t constantly stream online fitness videos and map her running routes for her. And wow they have a featured artist! Just what a girl needs.

Let me know when it babysits.

“We will call it Mexican flu. We won’t call it swine flu,” said Mr Litzman, who belongs to the ultra-religious United Torah Judaism party. — BBC

Look, if you don’t like the term “swine flu”, just call it H1N1, which is more accurate than “swine flu” anyway. Making up an alternative casual term is fairly silly (and, in this case, not terribly kind to Mexico who just happened to get stuck with the initial outbreak)… but it is also a telling statement of just how well-prepared you are to handle a potential pandemic.

(I also don’t really understand why you’d want to avoid naming diseases after a unclean animals anyway — is “Mexican Flu” somehow healthier?)

Via Writes Like She Talks, I learned of a cute bit of Stalin-esque photoshopping:

Two women serve in Israel’s new Cabinet, but some Israelis would rather not see them.

Newspapers aimed at ultra-Orthodox Jewish readers tampered with the inaugural photograph of the Cabinet, erasing ministers Limor Livnat and Sofa Landver.

Ultra-Orthodox newspapers consider it immodest to print images of women.

The daily Yated Neeman digitally changed the photo, moving two male ministers into the places formerly occupied by the women.

The weekly Shaa Tova simply blacked the women out, in a photo reprinted Friday by the mainstream daily Maariv. — Associated Press/Washington Post

The “ideal” solution would have been to not print the photo at all, rather than tamper with it; I suppose a black box saying “OMG WOMAN DO NOT LOOK!” is better than pretending somebody else was standing there, if I have to choose between the two. Censoring part of the picture escalates the insult.

I’d like to recommend a book I enjoy about this topic, The Commissar Vanishes, as background reading — it is an excellent overview of photographic manipulation during Stalin’s reign. There’s a website which covers the main points; frequently Soviet officials being removed from old pictures once they were decided to be unwelcome (any evidence of Stalin associating with them had to be removed). There’s one photo in the book (not on their site) in which four or five party officials leave the same photograph as it’s published over time, eventually leaving only Stalin and a couple others in the “group” shot.

While I’m impressed by the technical skill required to “fix” some of these shots (especially considering they were working on actual photographic negatives, not with Photoshop), the effect is pretty disturbing.

In general, it’s not a good idea to follow the lead of despotic regimes when choosing your editorial practices. It’s just bad journalism.

It should be simple math: when more people are unemployed, the total cost of unemployment benefits will be higher. Because you’re paying more people. And more people getting paid means you pay more money total.

Duh, right?

Instead:

South Carolina Commerce Secretary Joe Taylor has added a new wrinkle to the nation’s third-highest unemployment rate by saying drug use is keeping people from getting jobs. — The State

… yeah. The unemployment crisis is caused by all those drug users who can’t get jobs because they’re on drugs. By that logic, I couldn’t find a job for a year-and-a-half because I was on drugs. Or, at least, all those companies that got my resume never called me because they just assumed I would fail a drug test.

At least that’s a step better than Governor Mark Sanford, who said on NPR a few months ago that unemployment rates would be lower if people would just get up and go back to work. Wow, he’s right, why didn’t I think of that — I should just go somewhere and do work and that way I will get a paycheck! Silly me, assuming I had to be hired.

I know, I’ll work at the governor’s office… smacking him over the head with a CLUE STICK.

(This isn’t the cake-related stuff I mentioned earlier. I just got annoyed by Sanford. Again.)

Everyone who’s seen a medical drama is familiar with a defibrillator. It goes wheeeeEEEEEE as it powers up, somebody yells “CLEAR!“, there’s a brrrzap, and then beep-beep-beep as the patient’s heart starts up again. (In sadder dramas, there’s just a lot of brrrzaps until the doctor tosses the paddles aside in despair.)

Improvements in the technology mean that you too may someday have a chance to save a life through controlled application of electricity.

AEDs [automated external defibrillators] are designed to shock a heart that’s in ventricular fibrillation back into a healthy rhythm. The device is now so easy to use that even an untrained bystander can administer this time-critical and highly effective medical procedure. –IEEE Spectrum

That’s right — a defibrillator is almost as easy to find in public places as a first aid kit, and almost as simple to operate as a band-aid. (Well, a complicated electronic band-aid that costs $2000…) In one of those how-did-we-get-start-on-this conversations over the holidays, my EMT-certified brother mentioned that they were just as impressive as they sound.

Compare this modern technological marvel to the original defibrillator, first used on a human in 1947 (though various researchers were defibrillating animals as long ago as the 1890’s). It was literally two electrified spoons. Much of the development in the last 60 years appears to have been minor refinements in design to improve safety and efficacy (although using DC current rather than AC was a huge step in improving patient safety).

Via MedGadget.

As you recover from holiday indulgence, you may wish to consider this advice before hurrying to start a diet.

Why Fat Women Are the Happiest

Fat women, especially those in middle age, are usually happier than thin women because they are better equipped to withstand the nervous strain brought on by the active pace now required of middle age women, according to Dr. McPhedran, of Toronto.

Women of 40 and 50 are expected to manage the household, take an active part in club and civic affairs, and still be fresh for parties in the evening.

All this is contrary to nature, and a reasonable degree of plumpness cushions the body against physical shocks and strain.

I am guessing the authority for that tidbit is Dr. Alexander McPhedran, who pops up in various medical literature in the early twentieth century. He appears to have been a cardiologist. He was head of the Canadian Medical Association for a while.

He also appears to be unable to understand that fat doesn’t function as a pillow for the soul. I must admit, it’s one of the more intriguing argument against having women involved in “club and civic affairs”, at least the skinny ones… but it still comes down to “Ahhh, feeble women!!”

It’s interesting to see the gradual progression of how people stored written information. Clay tablets become lighter, flexible scrolls. Scrolls became codexs (books), increasing their capacity. Books became typeset rather than hand-copied, decreasing font size and increasing capacity. In the nineteenth century, microphotography was invented to miniaturize images even further.

A 1936 Modern Mechanix article, Canned Libraries Open New Vistas to Readers, commented on the spread of microfilm technology in libraries:

All of the reading material in the vast Library of Congress may be housed in a few small filing cabinets! To anyone who has seen the thousands of massive volumes in this great building, such a statement seems fantastic. But it remains a fact. Through recent developments in microphotography and the perfection of a new type of micro-grain film, the contents of two 10×15 inch pages can be reduced 400 times to occupy but three-fourths of a square inch of film….

Verneur Pratt, president of the International Filmbook Corporation, pioneers in the field of library microphotography, predicts that the filmbook will effect as big a change in the printing industry as the invention of movable type.

He points out that large telephone directories can be held in the palm of the hand, can be inserted in the machine in a moment, and with a few turns of a dial the desired number is brought to light. There is no thumbing of pages, and the pages cannot be torn out. In the same manner bulky catalogs, city directories, and dictionaries can be reduced.

One of the greatest advantages of film books is that small schools and libraries with limited space and money can afford to have all the material which is now available only in the large cities. Files of perishable newspapers can be photographed and thus preserved indefinitely. The cost of making film books will be much below that of printing regular books and their small size also eliminates the storage problem.

The last idea was a wee bit ambitious. While microfilm did become vital for archiving material, it certainly didn’t replace regular books. Can you imagine bringing a microfilm reader on the bus to read during your commute?

Nowadays, digital storage has enabled even more condensation of information. My current holiday wishlist includes an e-ink “digital book” (e-ink, unlike LCD screens, doesn’t cause much eye strain) which can download various text, PDF, or e-book files, putting thousands of documents in one small pamphlet-sized device. Continuing to increase compression of digital files and decrease memory size is basically the modern version of “smaller fonts”.

Dear photography studios,

Regards,
Jewish woman

Seriously, that menorah was ugly. It made me want to invent a different religion which involved a motorcycle, stuffed bear, and rocking chair, which were the most interesting props in the room.

This strikes me as quite an innovation in sustainable design. A car that you can eat at the end of your journey.

The “making of” video is almost cooler, because it proves they weren’t just pretending to build a car out of cake, they actually were building a car out of cake.

And they had an actual Home Economist on their team! How cool is that? In the few recruiting films I’ve seen, “edible car construction” was never listed as a possible occupation for home ec majors. I imagine the field might have gotten more students if they’d mentioned a job like this.

Found via Cake Wrecks.