Science/Technology blog

Just ask 1st Lt. Ehren Watada who’s second court martial is coming up. He’s refused to be deployed to Iraq and made (GASP!) critical statements of Bush and the war.

Watada has acknowledged making public statements criticizing the war and Bush. He has said deploying to Baghdad last year with the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division would have made him guilty of war crimes by participating in an illegal war.

How DARE he???

He’s being court-martialed for missing movement and for conduct unbecoming an officer. If convicted, Watada could get six years in prison and be dishonorably discharged.

I’m torn over this. On the one hand, joining the military in the USA is pretty much like checking your conscience and free will at the door, and they make that fact well-known. Orders are orders, and orders are to be followed. On the other, if someone wants speak up about what they think is a senseless war (especially those forced to DO the dirty work) and doesn’t want to participate, can we blame them? I am certain that those that have serious qualms with killing in Iraq might be made use of elsewhere. But, it could be argued that once you make an exception for one, many other “conscientious objectors” start popping up and no one wants to go to Iraq.

Which I’m not certain is a bad thing.

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By now most people know that feathers are no longer unique to birds. Thanks mostly to a series of wonderful fossils from the Lower Cretaceous Yixian Formation of Liaoning Province, China, we now know that feathers first appeared in non-avian theropods, and were - later on - inherited by early birds…

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Prologue: The act begins with the gang leitmotifs established musically. The curtain rises. A conflict between two rival gangs, the Lobstermen and the Fishermen , is enacted through dance. The tension between the gangs is quite visible. The men are struggling for control of selling lobster.  When you are a Jet, your Jet!

Seriously, some turf wars are occuring in Maine over whether fisherman can sell their lobster bycatch from trawling for cod, haddock, and other groundfish.  Things are not going to be pretty next week when all this goes before the Maine Legislature.  The current law, and the only one like it, in the U.S. is that it is illegal land lobster not caught in traps.  Best quote…

“They ruined their fishery totally,” David Cousens, president of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association, said of the groundfishermen. “Now they’re looking to us to bail them out, and it’s just not going to happen. No way. There are 6,400 lobstermen that will go nuts if they even consider it.”

The response from the other gang…

“Bug pickers,” Lendall Alexander, 47, a third-generation fisherman from Harpswell, Me., said of the lobstermen. “They’ve got all that lobster to themselves.”

The only real question is whether two starry eyed lovers from opposite sides of the track will be able to bring peace to Maine.

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Moselio Schaechter, former American Society of Microbiology president, has a blog, Small Things Considered. It’s pretty good. But the promo letter ASM sent around had one annoying thing (italics mine):

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Red Letter Day rounds up the six City Commission candidates’ statements on the proposed registry. The three progressives are for it, the two growth-for-growth’s sake candidates are wishy-washy, and the pastor is predictably less wishy than washy. Given the demographics involved, it would be bad mojo for even a Southern Baptist minister to be entirely against it.

Bear in mind that all the city would be doing is providing a central repository for companies to refer to in executing their own decisions about granting domestic partner benefits. The registry would not conflict with state law as it stands, and the candidates worried about cost are haggling over the price of a notebook to write down names in, and a little staff time to enter names in the book or look them up on behalf of companies.

Mike thinks that Dever and Chestnut could be convinced to back the registry, guaranteeing that it will retain strong support no matter what happens. Those two candidates pulled the most votes in the nine-way primary, and are likely to do well in the April election. Getting them to stand up for all citizens by backing the registry will be key.

The next step will be getting them to think about transportation solutions other than the South Lawrence Trafficway. It’s a boondoggle. The popularity of KU’s shuttle to the Edwards campus suggests that regular commuter bus service during rush hour could really improve quality of life. I know that a light rail proposal wouldn’t get anywhere, but I think there’s probably a case to be made for a commuter line from Topeka, through Lawrence, and into KC. It would never happen, of course.

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When I started talking about this with friends and colleagues several months ago they thought I was quite crazy. But then they’ve thought that for a long time. It’s mainly a source of amusement. I hope. Anyway. What I was talking about is using the online virtual world, Second Life, for public health purposes. Second Life (SL) is a “3D online digital world imagined, created and owned by its residents.” Over 1.3 million have logged on in the last 60 days. You participate by constructing a 3D representation of yourself called an avatar. If you are an old geezer like me, there is a pretty steep learning curve just to figure out how to alter the appearance of your avatar and move around, but my offspring picked it up very fast. Sigh.

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• Two new articles tackle the issue of whether most research is false… Which raises the question: how do we know whether this research is true? Or whether any of the links which follow are true? Undaunted, I’ll continue…
• Chris of Mixing Memory has a thoughtful article discussing research suggesting religion can have harmful effects.
• When it comes to piloting planes, older pilots are generally better.
• Subliminal messages found in Canadian slot machines. Really. Even though they probably don’t work.
• Come to think of it, it’s odd that they’d need to. After all, money is the best incentive.
• Completely unrelated: A treatment for “phantom limb” pain.
• Somewhat related: Has the procedure for deciding what research is ethical gone too far?
• Still haven’t had your fill of psychology / neuroscience links? Visit this week’s Encephalon, matey!

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On Abel’s post on conscience clauses, Bob Koepp left this comment:

It’s a pretty warped understanding of professionalism that would require professionals to violate their own sincere ethical beliefs. After all, someone lacking personal integrity probably isn’t going to be much concerned with professional integrity. “You can trust me because I lack the strength of my convictions.”

I think the connection between personal integrity and professional integrity is an important one, so here are some preliminary thoughts on it.

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Updated, ~16:00h EST 28 Feb. I somehow managed to post this without the “below the fold” material. I’ve added the missing remainder of the post, and adjusted the timestamp to match.

PZ Myers, Kevin Beck, and a host of others have weighed in on the reprehensible conduct of one Dr. Gary Merrill. The good doctor, who is a pediatrician, declined to care for a child with an ear infection because her mother has tattoos. The doctor claims to simply be following “standards Merrill has set based upon his Christian faith.” In this particular case, though, I don’t think we can blame his Christian faith.

Let’s face it. It doesn’t take much familiarity with the Gospels to figure out that Merrill’s conduct would only have been featured there as an example of what not to do. The man clearly has not in any way, shape, or form internalized any of Jesus’ teachings. He might call himself a Christian, but turning away a sick child because of their parent’s appearance is as absolutely unChristian as one could conceivably get. If I remember my bible correctly, Jesus healed the child of a Roman officer, said things like, “suffer not the little children,” and gave us the term “good Samaritan.” Merrill, on the other hand, wouldn’t heal the child of a tattooed woman, let a child suffer overnight, and basically acted like the Bad Levite in the Good Samaritan story. If I thought it would do any good, I’d suggest tattooing “What Would Jesus Do, You Idiot?” on the guy’s hand, but it really won’t.

I’ve got a feeling that it’s really his personality that’s responsible, not his religion. Every society, every culture, has jerks like this. You know the type - tinpot tyrants in their own mind, keen to impose their morality on everyone they come into contact with. In the United States, he’s a Christian schmuck. In Afghanistan, he’d be Taliban. In Spain, back in the day, he’d have found gainful employment with the inquisition. But in a place where religion was frowned upon, he’d still manage to descend to his current low - in Germany in the late 1930s, he’d be a brown shirt, and in the USSR he’d be your unfriendly neighborhood third-rate party hack/KGB snitch.

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Multiple people have written to me, after seeing yesterday’s algorithms basics post, asking me to say more about sorting algorithms. I have to say that it’s not my favorite topic - sorting is one of those old bugaboos that you can’t avoid, but which gets really dull after a while. But there is a kernel of interest to it - sorting can be used to demonstrate a lot of interesting ideas aboutcomputational complexity.

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