The Glassmaker Who Sparked Astrophysics...

The Glassmaker Who Sparked Astrophysics...  A great article on another fascinating bit of science history.  It's features characters (especially Joseph Fraunhofer) whom I thought I knew well, but about whom I clearly have much to learn (that's a frequently repeated theme in my life :). 

Wherein I rant about the decline of writing skills...

Wherein I rant about the decline of writing skills...  Here's a headline I happened upon this morning:

Assassin bug uses a 'slight of leg' to deceive and subdue physically superior prey

I'm sure the clever headline writer actually meant to say “sleight of leg” – but just wasn't clever enough to spell it correctly.

As recently as 10 or 15 years ago, finding such an obvious error on the pages of a commercial publication was a rare event.  Today it seems to happen nearly every day.  It may simply be that the failures of American public education are now making it into the “professional” workplace.  Whatever the cause, it makes me crazy – my eyes jump right to the error, and my brain has to worker harder (and I'm lazy, dammit!) to understand it.

Like so many times before, I fired off a complaining email.  Only rarely have these complaints been answered by an actual human.  Once (with Scientific American) my complaint netted me a free one year extension on the magazine – which was nice, but then the magazine turned into a lefty mouthpiece and I dropped my subscription, free or not.  So really all my ranting and complaining has achieved nothing at all.

Maybe I should just give up :(

Geek: Cryptographic “right answers”...

Geek: Cryptographic “right answers”...  This is a series of common questions about using cryptography with direct answers that are briefly explained.  Though it was written (by Colin Percival, a well-known guy in the security world) over four years ago, it still looks like good advice to me, jibing with more modern advice I've read.  This post is referenced from hundreds of web sites, but somehow I've never stumbled across it before...

America has a corruption problem...

America has a corruption problem...  It's not as blatant as the corruption in Russia, China, India, or even Italy.  But it's there, it's insidious, and it's affecting American innovation.

Corruption:  Perversion or destruction of integrity in the discharge of public duties by bribery or favour; the use or existence of corrupt practices, especially in a state, public corporation, etc.

For quite a few years now, I've been paying more attention to historians, economists, and political scientists who theorize that systems of government inevitably accumulate the elements of corruption over time, eventually becoming so dysfunctional, evil, or sclerotic that they are conquered or overthrown.  I am becoming increasingly convinced that they are correct about inevitability, and that even the grand experiment that is America will eventually succumb.  The only thing that gives me hope of escaping this fate is that it is at least theoretically possible for Americans to have a peaceful revolution through the ballot box.  The 2012 election cycle just about wiped out that hope for me.  The 2014 cycle is looking a bit better, but then the 2012 cycle looked pretty good 9 months before the election, too.  If the 2016 election cycle fails to look even remotely like a revolution, then I think the last vestiges of my hope will have been stomped into the ground.

And if the American experiment is doomed to fail, what then for someone living in these times?

Stagnant toilet of pseudo-justice...

Stagnant toilet of pseudo-justice...  Ah, that Mark Steyn certainly has a gift for a turn of phrase.  In a single post, he lampoons the American systems of criminal and civil justice, and the “over-lawyerization” of foreign policy and national security.  And somehow makes you grin while he delivers the bitter verdict!

If you'd like to support Mark Steyn's one man war on the Mann, he's got some ways to do it that are more amusing than simply dropping a few bills on him (though I'm sure he wouldn't mind that, either!)...

Obamacare bites prominent leftie...

Obamacare bites prominent leftie...  Will Pitt is a notorious flaming liberal of the activist variety.  His resume includes such things as a stint as Press Secretary for perennial presidential hopeful Dennis Kucinich, membership in Progressive Democrats of America, and columnist at TruthOut.  In other words, he's a certifiable loony leftist.  Here's what he has to say about Obamacare, in a post on Democratic Underground:

What I've learned after a three-month war with these fiends: the ACA says the insurance companies cannot deny coverage to those with pre-existing conditions, which is true as far as it goes. But they can deny coverage for the life-saving medications necessary to treat those conditions. The insurance company I signed up with through the ACA exchange just denied coverage of my wife's multiple sclerosis medication. We're "covered," to the tune of $700 a month...just not for what she really needs.

A cozy loophole, that.

Fuck you, insurance industry.

Fuck you, Mr. President, you piece of shit used-car salesman.

From my heart and soul, fuck you.

Then in the comments to that post, he says:

I helped, in my own small way, to promote this thing, because of the pre-existing conditions aspect that would benefit my wife. I feel like a fucking dupe.

On edit: I AM a fucking dupe. Last time that happens.

On the whole, that doesn't sound like someone still enchanted with his former hero, Barack Hussein Obama.  Much more from Mr. Pitt here.

Being a dyed-in-the-wool leftie, his solution of choice is a government-run single-payer system.  Like his fellow lefties, he completely ignores the conspicuous lack of a successful example of such a system anywhere in the world, at any time in history.  It will be right when we do it, they say.  But at least he's woken up to the disaster otherwise known as Obamacare...

The race to absolute zero...

The race to absolute zero...  A fascinating tale of science history in Victorian times...

A crack in the hockey stick?

A crack in the hockey stick?  All over the warmist world, heads are exploding because of the news that the American Physical Society has decided to conduct a high-level review of its position on anthropomorphic global warming (AGW) – and the six member committee appointed to do the review includes three prominent AGW skeptics (including a favorite scientist of mine, Judith Curry).

For some reason, the mainstream media isn't trumpeting this story.  But you can read all about it here, there, and (with actually exploding heads) over here.

Russia and Estonia...

Russia and Estonia...  Estonian President Toomas Hendrick Ilves: “Era of peace is over.”  The article makes it clear that he and other Eastern European leaders are deeply worried about the wimpy NATO and EU response to Putin's Ukraine incursion...

Obama & Putin phone call...

Obama & Putin phone call...  “In Russia, we have word for this...”

Erythronium revolutum...

Erythronium revolutum...  Also known as the pink fawn-lily.  We've seen these growing in small meadows within a forest, in very dense groups.  At a distance they can look like small ponds nestled in the lowest part of a meadow.  Via BPOD, of course...

Chicken from hell...

Chicken from hell...

Scientists have discovered a freakish, birdlike species of dinosaur — 11 feet long, 500 pounds, with a beak, no teeth, a bony crest atop its head, murderous claws, prize-fighter arms, spindly legs, a thin tail and feathers sprouting all over the place. Officially, it’s a member of a group of dinosaurs called oviraptorosaurs.

Unofficially, it’s the Chicken From Hell.

Wouldn't want to meet that thing in a dark alley!

What languages fix...

What languages fix...  Paul Graham on a different way to describe various programming languages:

Kevin Kelleher suggested an interesting way to compare programming languages: to describe each in terms of the problem it fixes. The surprising thing is how many, and how well, languages can be described this way.

Then he posts a bunch of examples. Here's just one:

Java: C++ is a kludge. And Microsoft is going to crush us.

Hah! And he's right – these make surprisingly good descriptions for quite a number of programming languages...

Russia and Estonia...

Russia and Estonia...  Longtime readers know that I have visited the little country of Estonia many times, and know it well.  So yesterday when I read this article, I was quite worried.  The gist of the article:

Russia signaled concern on Wednesday at Estonia's treatment of its large ethnic Russian minority, comparing language policy in the Baltic state with what it said was a call in Ukraine to prevent the use of Russian.

Russia has defended its annexation of Ukraine's Crimea peninsula by arguing it has the right to protect Russian-speakers outside its borders, so the reference to linguistic tensions in another former Soviet republic comes at a highly sensitive moment.

This prompted me to write an old friend in Estonia, to see what his take on the situation was.  He told me:

In short – yes, the majority of people are worried (polls say 70% or so) but that applies to Estonians. I am ashamed to say that many local Russians think that Putin does the right thing :(  What is the proportion of pro-Putin and anti-Putin local Russians nobody knows for sure and this understandingly just increases the anxiety among the Estonians. In Russia itself the support for Crimea annexation is overwhelming, even many Putin critics now support him. And that is I think one of the root causes for his actions -- earlier many people we're increasingly dissatisfied with his reign but now everyone who is unhappy about corruption or economy decline will be considered a traitor of the nation by the majority of the society. There is not even need for repressions for such protests (but rest assured we will see repressions anyway).

That doesn't sound good at all! He went on:

I'd say we are looking at something resembling Nazi Germany A.D. 1938. There is good news too, however -- unlike Germany, Russia is very ineffective and depends on outside world economically very much. For example, as much as 60% of beef and pork consumed are imports, majority of civil aircraft are Boeings and Airbuses, etc. Thus well targeted economic sanctions would quickly make Russians think again is Putin such a good ruler indeed. I would start with banning luxury cars and their spares export to Russia. The Russian officials may damn the West day in and day out but their rides are exclusively Mercedes, BMW and Audi. For them having to ride in anything else will be deeply humiliating :) And of course visa bans have to be widespread. I would cancel US and Schengen visas for everyone who works for the Russian govt. These people can be very patriotic in their speeches but are very used to their skiing vacations in the Alps, shopping tours to NYC and London, etc. Explaining to your wife why she will from now on only shop in extremely overpriced Moscow shops which often sell you Chinese replicas instead of originals is slightly more challenging than explaining to the masses why everything Western is evil :)

So if you want to help us and the Russians in Russia to get over it with the least possible damage, write to your congressman an demand swift and well targeted action. Trying to calm down a dictator with strong worded condemnations never works. If the Western democracies acted resolutely about Hitler's annexation of the Sudet region of Czechoslovakia in 1938 (also carried out to 'protect' the German minority), the WWII would probably not even started.

The Nazi comparisons he cites have been widely echoed.  His belief in the effectiveness of sanctions exceed mine – but here's one case where I sincerely hope that I am wrong, and that Obama wakes up from his Progressive reverie quickly and takes strong action on them.  I've already written my Senators (worthless weasels they are) and Congressman (a member of a more hopeful species).  

His name is Brad...

His name is Brad...  And he's an addict.  And a toaster...

Some day, I will be proud of my kitchen appliances.  But today is not that day...

Aurora borealis...

Aurora borealis...  Via reader Simi L.  You'll want to make this one full screen...

The Republican Advantage, 2014...

The Republican Advantage, 2014...  Via friend and reader Simon M.:

That isn't quite what you'd hear from me, but the attitude is certainly right: anything but a Democrat!

The Confession...

The Confession...  Via my lovely bride:

A man walked into a Washington D.C. Catholic Church Confessional.  He tells the priest: "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. Last night, I killed a Congressman."

The Priest responds: "My son, I'm here to forgive your sins, not discuss your community service!"

“Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.”

“Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.”  So said my hero Richard Feynman, in a delicious quote I'd not heard before.  Now a group of scientists, including several Nobel laureates, have written a letter in which they invoked Feynman as an example of the kind of scientific maverick they'd like to see more of.

For some reason, climatology came right to mind – with a little fantasy of Richard Feynman meeting Michael Mann.  I'm pretty sure that only Feynman would leave that meeting with his ego intact :)

Quote of the day...

Quote of the day...  Goes to Mark Steyn, writing about his legal battle with Mr.-Aren't-I-Wonderful? Michael Mann:

After a year and a half ensnared by poisonous fecal tendrils in the unpumped toxic septic tank of DC "justice", I don't think "broken" quite covers it. To any non-American, this system is utterly repulsive. In England, trial by jury replaced trial by ordeal. Somehow America has managed to turn trial by jury into a mere postscript to trial by ordeal. I think it ought to be possible to litigate a 270-word blog post in under 270 weeks. So let's get on with it.

The wonderfully descriptive phrase “poisonous fecal tendrils” appears to be Mr. Steyn's unique invention.  Google found only four references to it just now, and all four are derived from Steyn's post...

By brotherly demand...

By brotherly demand...  My brother saw this Bill Whittle Afterburner video, apparently for the first time, and said:

You MUST put this on your blog, bro!

Yeah, he really talks like that.  He's never left New Jersey, and the place has apparently soaked his neurons in what passes for the “culture” in that sad and intellectually desolate place.  But he did pick one of Bill Whittle's best, so despite the fact that I posted this just a few months ago, here's a replay to make my brother happy.

At the end, Bill says “Don’t mess with Texas!”  I'd like to add to that: “Don’t mess with Utah!”  If Utah gets Californicated, I'm not sure where we could run to.

Oh, and a note to my brother: you live in one of the few places on earth that can make California look well-managed.  Escape while you can!

Dog Goldberg machine...

Dog Goldberg machine...  You'll want full screen for this one...

Only in England...

Only in England...  Can you imagine the feminista uproar were this to play on U.S. television?

Our narcissist-in-chief...

Our narcissist-in-chief...  Jeff Goldstein at Protein Wisdom is not amused:

And he wants you – and Ryan Seacrest — to know that, in point of fact, he looks really sharp in jeans, particularly when he’s not dressing in loose jeans on one specific occasion so that he can show off his canon while throwing out a first pitch without, you know, getting his giant balls all bound up and what not.

Good lord. What a fucking narcissist.

Does no one around this guy have the guts to tell him he looks ridiculous trying to fake the trappings of what society has come to look on (and Obama, as an academic, would vehemently reject, even as he so strives for it) as comfortable masculinity?

RTWT...

People are awesome 2013...

People are awesome 2013...  Or, as reader Simi L. said when he passed this along:

PEOPLE ARE INSANE 2013 strikes me as a better title. I wonder how many of these people are no longer with us in 2014?

Indeed...

If those two are my choices on the ballot, I’m writing in Nachos Supreme With Extra Cheese...

If those two are my choices on the ballot, I’m writing in Nachos Supreme With Extra Cheese...  Ah, Rachel, my morning isn't complete without your trenchant commentary.   I have to steal the whole thing because it's so short:

I can’t find the link now but this morning I was reading another (allegedly) serious news article which predicted that, in this (allegedly) advanced civilization that is supposed to contain a certain number of rational adults, the two main contenders for the (allegedly) most important job on Planet Earth in 2016 will likely be Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton. So either another Bush or another Clinton president.

That’s all. I’m just amazed we pretend to be a serious country anymore.

If those two are my choices on the ballot, I’m writing in Nachos Supreme With Extra Cheese.

Obama is not her hero any more...

Obama is not her hero any more...  This girl was a moony Obama hope 'n changer.  The past five years have brought her much disillusionment.  Now she pretty much loathes all politicians, of any stripe.  Her political philosophy is right out of the '60s flower children playbook, though that is obviously long before her time.  Still, it's nice to see that That One doesn't hold all the younger progressives in his thrall...

120 year old color photos of Ireland...

120 year old color photos of Ireland...  Many more like the one at right!

Hawk v. Squirrel...

Hawk v. Squirrel...  Nobody gets eaten, but there is some truly amazing cinematography on display here.  You'll want full screen on this one!  Via my mom...

Yosemite in HD time-lapse...

Yosemite in HD time-lapse...  Nice music, too.  I haven't been back to Yosemite in quite a few years – the ginormous crowds there put me off.  But seeing it on display here makes me want to go back!  You'll want this one full screen for sure...

This seems ... plausible...

This seems ... plausible...  The folks at The Onion nail it:

John Kerry Poses As Masseuse To Get Few Minutes With Putin

Maybe the satire business wasn't so hot, so they've crossed over into actual journalism?

Quote of the day...

Quote of the day...  Bret Stephens, in the Wall Street Journal:

We need a fat president.

That line was a humorous throw-away, but the rest of Mr. Stephen's commentary is serious.  Go read...

Hard physical labor...

Hard physical labor...  That's something I'm not used to :)  But ... I own a 20' x 60' steel building kit (story on that below), and it's not going to Utah with us.  The kit consists of a few thousand parts, including over one hundred formed steel panels, and it weighs nearly 4 tons altogether.  So I built a stand to display it nicely, and now I'm in the process of moving it from it's previous storage place, way out in the back of our yard, to the stand near our front gate.  Picture me – this terribly out-of-shape grey-bearded nerd, loading between a half ton and a ton of steel at a time onto the front of my tractor, then unloading it onto the stand.  Yikes!  I'm about a third done right now, and I'm feeling it in every muscle.  Probably by tomorrow evening I'll have it all nicely on display, and then I'll officially list it for sale.  I paid just over $12,000 for it ten years ago, and it looks like the prices haven't changed much...

The story behind that steel building kit: in 2004, just after the 2003 fires burned within a mile of our home, we decided to put up some fireproof storage.  What better than a steel building for fireproof?  So I cut-and-filled a pad in our back yard for a 20' x 60' building, and bought the kit.  Not long after the kit was delivered, and completely by coincidence, Debbie and I took a drive out to the end of Montiel Truck Trail, one of the areas that was devastated by those fires.  While we were driving around, I noticed that there was some wreckage of steel buildings visible.  I looked a little closer – and discovered that all the steel buildings had collapsed.  Every. Single. One. Of. Them.  What happened?  Well, it turns out that it's the same exact phenomenon that caused the collapse of the World Trade Center on 9/11.  Steel gets much weaker when heated by fire.  And these steel buildings aren't designed to be strong enough to stay standing when they are heated.  Later I talked with a fireman, and he told me that they really disliked the steel buildings, precisely because they were so prone to collapsing – and without much warning, either.

So we shelved the plans for that building.  Naturally, it wasn't returnable :)  And now I have a beautiful 1200 sq. ft. building kit available for someone who wants the work or storage space, or a barn, and who wasn't expecting it to be fireproof...

Finally: gravitational waves observed (indirectly)...

Finally: gravitational waves observed (indirectly)...  In the news this morning is the announcement by a team of scientists that they believe the BICEP2 telescope at the South Pole has observed evidence of gravitational waves. 

The hunt for gravitational waves was one of several scientific endeavors of the late '50s and early '60s that got me excited about science as a kid.  Back then, the state of the art in gravitational wave detection was direct observation via resonant aluminum cylinders weighing up to several tons, using piezoelectric sensors to detect the vibration.  These massive precision detectors really caught my fancy, and I read everything about them that I could get my hands on.  That search for gravitational waves has continued ever since, with incrementally more sophisticated and sensitive instruments being built in an effort to observe them.  Perhaps the most exotic were long baseline interferometers, of which several were built in the western U.S. 

And now, finally, it looks as if the scientists have succeeded...

Don't mess with the little old ladies...

Don't mess with the little old ladies...  This recording of a voice mail seems to surface every couple of years and go viral.  I suspect I've posted it before.  Doesn't matter; it's still funny as hell after listening to it multiple times this morning :)

It would be interesting to know if this is a prank (e.g., someone recorded it just to be funny), or if it's real.  Snopes looked into the question and decided they couldn't really tell – though they do name someone who claims to be the man heard on the recording.

Either way, it's a hoot!

Compression = intelligence?

Compression = intelligence?  The Hutter Prize is intended to encourage research in Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) by offering (currently) a 50,000€ (about $70,000) prize for solving a specific problem.  The general idea is along the lines of the X prize: by offering a modest prize, one can provoke research that would cost much more than that – along with generating lots of passion, enthusiasm, and competition.  All good.

The challenge with AGI is what one would award a prize for.  So far the achievements of AGI are esoteric, certainly not accessible to anyone other than specialists in the field.  Furthermore, there is legitimate debate about whether even AGI's successes are anything more than trivialities wrapped up in complicated software and fancy words.  Nobody has yet done anything actually useful (or even entertaining) with AGI yet.

So what kind of a goal would be worth a prize? 

The Hutter Prize folks chose lossless data compression of a specific English text file, and I don't know whether to laugh ... or laugh.  Their premise is that solving compression problems is equivalent in some way to general intelligence.  I know a little bit about data compression, and I know some people who are genuinely experts.  I know much less about AGI.  I don't recall ever talking with them about the Hutter Prize, but I'm pretty sure I can predict their reaction: the act of writing a data compression program might require intelligence (it certainly requires persistence!), but the resulting data compression program isn't going to be “intelligent” by any definition of that word!

But if you're into data compression, especially if you're a starving student, maybe that Hutter Prize will spur you into developing the next best data compression algorithm!

Schadenfreude moment...

Schadenfreude moment...  This morning I read these words in the middle of a much longer article:

Most Democrats up for re-election are trying to put some distance between themselves and the president, choosing surrogates such as Mr. Clinton to campaign for them, particularly in the South and parts of the West.

Asked whether Mr. Obama is a liability, Representative Ami Bera, Democrat of California, demurred. “We haven’t really focused much on the president,” he said. “We’re focused on Sacramento County and the folks that are there.”

Other Democrats are openly critical of the health care law in their advertisements. In one ad promoting Representative Ann Kirkpatrick, Democrat of Arizona, the narrator says she “blew the whistle on the disastrous health care website, calling it ‘stunning ineptitude,’ and worked to fix it.”

But that's not what brought on the delicious, soul-warming schadenfreude.  This is: I read those words in the New York Times, the paper of progressive-mongering.  Bwaahahahaha!

Things that make you go “Hmmmm...”

Things that make you go “Hmmmm...”  My mom forwarded this to me, with approval.  There are a lot of people like my mom.  Maybe the progressives should be concerned about more than the 2014 elections???

Honest slogans for college majors...

Honest slogans for college majors...  Via friend and former colleague Aleck L.  An example (one of many):

Latin: because useful is overrated.

Ha!

Awkwardly sleeping dogs...

Awkwardly sleeping dogs...  Bunches of them, via friend and former colleague Aleck L...

An artist amongst us...

An artist amongst us...  Reader, former colleague, friend, and now budding artist Larry Enger writes to tell me that some of his paintings and drawings will be hanging in a gallery starting later today:

Coastal Artisan Galleria
427 South Coast Highway
Oceanside, CA  92054

I've posted a couple of his works here.  Many of them are of desert scenes that could be right out of landscapes that Debbie and I have seen in our travels...

Nothing new under the sun...

Nothing new under the sun...  Neighbor and reader Marisa S. sends along this little poem.  It would be current today, describing That One and his progressive administration – but look closely (click on the thumbnail to embiggen) and you'll see that this poem was written all the way back in 1949.

Oh, my...

Nice swing...

Nice swing...  These people are insane!

Terrifying close calls...

Terrifying close calls...  Nobody (and no animals) get hurt in any of the incidents in this video – but there are many unbelievably close calls...

California leads the way...

California leads the way ... in inept, inefficient, money-wasting bureaucracies.  I'd weep for my state, but I've mentally already moved to Utah.  Which, of course, doesn't have this problem ... or many other similar ones...

Spazzo dog...

Spazzo dog...  Via “Rachel Lucas”...

First sniff...

First sniff...  Via “Rachel Lucas”...

Can science ever be “settled?”

Can science ever be “settled?”  Great post by Ethan Siegel...

Top ten scientists of the thirteenth century...

Top ten scientists of the thirteenth century...  I had only heard of four of these men, and only two of them did I know much about – and reading about the history of science is one of my favorite things!  So much to learn...

Nothing important has happened since 1970...

Nothing important has happened since 1970...  Well, not in software systems, any way.  So says David Dalrymple, who concludes:

I find that all the significant concepts in software systems were invented/discovered in the 15 years between 1955 and 1970. What have we been doing since then? Mostly making things faster, cheaper, more memory-consuming, smaller, cheaper, dramatically less efficient, more secure, and worryingly glitchy. And we’ve been rehashing the same ideas over and over again. 

He also asserts that there were just 8 significant developments in software systems, and all happened between 1955 and 1970.  It's an intriguing list:

1. The programming language
2. The operating system
3. Interactivity
4. Transactions
5. Garbage collection
6. Virtualization
7. Hypermedia
8. Internetworking

Being ancient and venerable, I've worked on several of the original systems he cites, and several more early exemplars.  For quite a few years now, it's been a challenge for me to understand the context that younger software engineers operate in.  In my last few jobs, nearly all my colleagues started engineering (actually, were born) after all eight of these had been discovered and had permeated the engineering development environments.  Most of them, for instance, have never seen a computer without an operating system that virtualizes at least memory, or one that doesn't include networking capability.

He also makes the point that the same ideas keep resurfacing as if new, with just the packaging changed – something I've noted myself...

An insider's view of a dysfunctional Federal bureaucracy...

An insider's view of a dysfunctional Federal bureaucracy...  David Wright was, until last month, the Director of the Office of Research Integrity, part of the Department of Health and Human Services.  Here's his resignation letter, which pulls no punches at all:

2/25

Dr. Howard Koh, M.D.

Assistant Secretary for Health

Dear Howard:

I am writing to resign my position as Director, Office of Research Integrity, ORI/OASH/DHHS

This has been at once the best and worst job I’ve ever had. The best part of it has been the opportunity to lead ORI intellectually and professionally in helping research institutions better handle allegations of research misconduct, provide in-service training for institutional Research Integrity Officers (RIOs), and develop programming to promote the Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR). Working with members of the research community, particularly RIOs, and the brilliant scientist-investigators in ORI has been one of the great pleasures of my long career. Unfortunately, and to my great surprise, it turned out to be only about 35% of the job.

The rest of my role as ORI Director has been the very worst job I have ever had and it occupies up to 65% of my time. That part of the job is spent navigating the remarkably dysfunctional HHS bureaucracy to secure resources and, yes, get permission for ORI to serve the research community. I knew coming into this job about the bureaucratic limitations of the federal government, but I had no idea how stifling it would be. What I was able to do in a day or two as an academic administrator takes weeks or months in the federal government, our precinct of which is OASH.

I believe there are a number of reasons for this. First, whereas in most organizations the front-line agencies that do the actual work, in our case protecting the integrity of millions of dollars of PHS-funded research, command the administrative support services to get the job done. In OASH it’s the exact opposite. The Op-Divs, as the front-line offices are called, get our budgets and then have to go hat-in-hand to the administrative support people in the “immediate office” of OASH to spend it, almost item by item. These people who are generally poorly informed about what ORI is and does decide whether our requests are “mission critical.”

On one occasion, I was invited to give a talk on research integrity and misconduct to a large group of AAAS fellows. I needed to spend $35 to convert some old cassette tapes to CDs for use in the presentation. The immediate office denied my request after a couple of days of noodling. A university did the conversion for me in twenty minutes, and refused payment when I told them it was for an educational purpose.

Second, the organizational culture of OASH’s immediate office is seriously flawed, in my opinion. The academic literature over the last twenty-five years on successful organizations highlights several characteristics: transparency, power-sharing or shared decision-making and accountability. If you invert these principles, you have an organization (OASH in this instance), which is secretive, autocratic and unaccountable.

In one instance, by way of illustration, I urgently needed to fill a vacancy for an ORI division director. I asked the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health (your deputy) when I could proceed. She said there was a priority list. I asked where ORI’s request was on that list. She said the list was secret and that we weren’t on the top, but we weren’t on the bottom either. Sixteen months later we still don’t have a division director on board.

On another occasion I asked your deputy why you didn’t conduct an evaluation by the Op-Divs of the immediate office administrative services to try to improve them. She responded that that had been tried a few years ago and the results were so negative that no further evaluations have been conducted.

Third, there is the nature of the federal bureaucracy itself. The sociologist Max Weber observed in the early 20th century that while bureaucracy is in some instances an optimal organizational mode for a rationalized, industrial society, it has drawbacks. One is that public bureaucracies quit being about serving the public and focus instead on perpetuating themselves. This is exactly my experience with OASH. We spend exorbitant amounts of time in meetings and in generating repetitive and often meaningless data and reports to make our precinct of the bureaucracy look productive. None of this renders the slightest bit of assistance to ORI in handling allegations of misconduct or in promoting the responsible conduct of research. Instead, it sucks away time and resources that we might better use to meet our mission. Since I’ve been here I’ve been advised by my superiors that I had “to make my bosses look good.” I’ve been admonished: “Dave, you are a visionary leader but what we need here are team players.” Recently, I was advised that if I wanted to be happy in government service, I had to “lower my expectations.” The one thing no one in OASH leadership has said to me in two years is ‘how can we help ORI better serve the research community?’ Not once.

Finally, there is another important organizational question that deserves mention: Is OASH the proper home for a regulatory agency such as ORI? OASH is a collection of important public health offices that have agendas significantly different from the regulatory roles of ORI and OHRP. You’ve observed that OASH operates in an “intensely political environment.” I agree and have observed that in this environment decisions are often made on the basis of political expediency and to obtain favorable “optics.” There is often a lack of procedural rigor in this environment. I discovered recently, for example, that OASH operates a grievance procedure for employees that has no due process protections of any kind for respondents to those grievances. Indeed, there are no written rules or procedures for the OASH grievance process regarding the rights and responsibilities of respondents. By contrast, agencies such as ORI are bound by regulation to make principled decisions on the basis of clearly articulated procedures that protect the rights of all involved. Our decisions must be supported by the weight of factual evidence. ORI’s decisions may be and frequently are tested in court. There are members of the press and the research community who don’t believe ORI belongs in an agency such as OASH and I, reluctantly, have come to agree.

In closing, these twenty-six months of service as the Director of ORI have been a remarkable experience. As I wrote earlier in this letter, working with the research community and the remarkable scientist-investigators at ORI has been the best job I’ve ever had. As for the rest, I’m offended as an American taxpayer that the federal bureaucracy—at least the part I’ve labored in—is so profoundly dysfunctional. I’m hardly the first person to have made that discovery, but I’m saddened by the fact that there is so little discussion, much less outrage, regarding the problem. To promote healthy and productive discussion, I intend to publish a version of the daily log I’ve kept as ORI Director in order to share my experience and observations with my colleagues in government and with members of the regulated research community.

I plan to work through Tuesday March 4, 2014 and then use vacation or sick days until Thursday March 27 (by which time I will have re-established health care through my university) and then end my federal government service.

Sincerely,

Christie caves to lobbyists...

Christie caves to lobbyists...  You may have heard this story already, though probably with a different headline.  Earlier this week, Governor Chris Christie signed a bill that forbids Tesla Motors from selling their cars direct to consumers, without a dealer being involved.  The proffered reason is risible: that it was for consumer protection.  The real reason is obvious to all: the dealers didn't want to be cut out of the action, and the dealer's association is a very powerful and wealthy lobby.  Essentially, they bought their desired outcome – and they will benefit, not New Jersey's consumers.

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors, has posted a characteristically excellent explanation of all this in the form of an open letter to the people of New Jersey.

One can't help but admire the libertarian underpinnings of Elon Musk's letter.  I agree with all of it.  But I will note something here that Mr. Musk does not: there is a whiff of hypocrisy about the tone of his explanation, and I don't mean because his company is negatively affected here.  Mr. Musk is basically complaining about the government intervening on behalf of his adversaries (the dealers) in this case – but he fails to mention that the profit of his company (Tesla Motors) is completely dependent on another form of government intervention in the marketplace, with his company as the beneficiary.  How?  There's a good explanation here of one form which provided 12% of Tesla's gross revenues last year, and Tesla's own web site lists the direct (tax credits) incentives provided by both the federal and state governments.

Mr. Musk is having it both ways: on the one hand, he wants the government to butt out of his sales process – and on the other hand, he's happily accepting the (substantial) cash benefits that government policies about electric cars provide.  He's a libertarian of convenience, at best...

Stenotype machines...

Stenotype machines...  Some 30+ years ago, I worked for a company (Xscribe, now defunct) in San Diego that made specialized computer systems to automate the job of a court stenographer.  I learned a lot about stenography in the course of working there.

The basis for stenography is that it records phonemes (sounds) instead of words.  The stenographer learns to transcribe the sounds of language rather than the words, and turns those recorded sounds into actual words in a second phase of the process.  That second phase occurs back in the office, outside the courtroom – what you see in the courtroom is just the first phase, wherein the sounds of the courtroom proceedings are recorded.

The machine that the stenographer uses is called a stenotype machine.  You can think of it as a kind of specialized typewriter that records phonemes rather than letters and words.  It is optimized for speed and reliability, as the court reporter must be able to keep up with even the fastest speaker, and you certainly don't want the machine to break down in the middle of proceedings.

One thing I learned at Xscribe is that court reporters make extensive use of shorthand “codes” – strokes (recorded phonemes) that don't actually reflect any sound heard in the courtroom, but rather are special symbols that only the court reporter knows that represent some piece of information.  One of the most common uses for this is to make a short code that represents a long and complicated name.  Some codes might be used by a particular court reporter in every one of their cases; others are made up on the fly for a particular case.  These codes are always very personal to each particular court reporter.  Much of what Xscribe's software did was to automate the process of turning these special codes into words, something that saved a vast amount of time for a court reporter.  The loved Xscribe's products, and it was easy to see why.

These days, with the much more powerful computers that are available, the court reporting software just runs on ordinary PCs.  I haven't talked with a court reporter for many years, but I'd bet they have trouble even imagining doing their job without a computer now...

Putin acts, the West talks...

Putin acts, the West talks...  And the West isn't even talking very persuasively.

I don't know enough about the situation in Ukraine to even propose a solution.  However, it does seem clear that just standing around yakking while Putin grabs territory in Europe is a very bad idea.  Anyone with even the slightest knowledge of history will note the parallels to events in Europe just 90 years ago, when Adolf Hitler started occupying European countries on the slimmest of manufactured pretexts.  That didn't end well, and neither will allowing Putin free reign.

The current context is more complex than the situation with Hitler.  In today's globally-connected economy, there are more tools available with which to pressure Russia – but the inverse is also true.  Russia supplies about 25% of Europe's energy, and that's a pretty big stick with which to prod the Europeans.  Then there's that other little inconvenient fact: that Russia is sitting on (numerically) the world's largest collection of nuclear weapons.  This fact colors the consideration of every possible military response.

I don't have answers, but I can look at the current response and say with confidence: it seems very unlikely that this leads to a good outcome...

Imagine...

Imagine...  For just a moment, suppress your vomit reflex and imagine that you are a budget wonk in the Obama administration.  You're deciding which government programs to chop out of the FY 2015 budget that you're helping write.  Do you look for (a) expensive, wasteful government programs, or (b) cheap, effective government programs to chop?

Why, (b) of course!  Those idiots in That One's budget office are proposing cutting one of the most effective science programs the federal government funds.  It's also a cheap, low-risk program.

If you've been reading this blog for even a few months, you can guess what's coming: they want to terminate one of the least expensive and most productive unmanned space programs (the Mars Opportunity rover).  And of course, they want to expand one of the most expensive and least productive programs: the International Space Station.

There will come a day when I am proud of my country's government.  But today is not that day...

I dare you!

)

I dare you!  My mom sent this along with a note: “I dare you to watch this with your mouth closed!”  It's pretty amazing, all right...

Liberal Logic...

Liberal Logic...  Via my mom, who sent along quite a few examples along these lines.  Warning: the web site referenced in the photos is on malware blacklists – don't visit it with any computer you care about...

Smart jokes?

Smart jokes?  Friend and reader Simon M. passes along these “20 Jokes That Only Intellectuals Will Understand”.  That's more than a little pretentious, but there are some funny ones in the collection.  One oldie-but-goodie that's geek-friendly:

Why do engineers confuse Halloween and Christmas?
Because Oct 31 = Dec 25.

Translation: 31 base 8 (OCTal) equals 25 base 10 (DECimal).
Here's one I hadn't seen before:

Entropy isn't what it used to be.

Ha!

Perspective...

Perspective...  Acquiring a little perspective (aka “wisdom”) may be the main benefit of getting older.  I've been a working engineer long enough to see several engineering management fads come and go.  These are all about managing the process of engineering, rather than doing the actual engineering work itself.  The broadest need for such processes these days is for software engineering, which often has large teams of engineers working on the same product (or parts of it).

All of these processes have the same objective: to reduce the process of engineering to something predictable, measurable, and manageable.  So far as I can tell, all of them can be successful when used by a gifted manager, of which there are approximately 3 in the world at any given time.  The rest just impede the engineers' work, frustrate both the engineers and their managers, and provide fodder for Scott Adams (Mr. Dilbert).  Meanwhile, so far as I can tell, most successful engineering management is driven by one of three things: the teams are small and cohesive (so process is much less needed), there's a gifted leader of the team who holds the whole effort together single-handedly, or the team had a run of amazingly good luck.  I've never – not once – seen an engineering methodology actually work well myself.

The last company I worked for was in the throes of kind of, sort of, but not really adopting “agile” methodologies when I retired.  This post could have been written about them...

Story of the day...

Story of the day...  Via ScrappleFace:

Reports from the International Space Station (ISS) indicate that Russia has effectively annexed several modules of the orbiting laboratory, allegedly at the invitation of a Russian-speaking scientist aboard.

President Vladimir Putin said his forces moved in “peacefully and are committed to protecting the interests of pro-Russian persons on the ISS” — which currently comprises cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin, who felt threatened by some laboratory rodents run amok. 

Scott Ott cracks me up :)

AGW skepticism is going mainstream...

AGW skepticism is going mainstream...  Here's an article in Forbes, reporting something as news that was actually reported by several AGW skeptics (Steve McIntyre, Anthony Watts, Jo Nova) well over a year ago.  To me, the most interesting thing here is that this quite skeptical view is being reported credulously as straight-up news...

At-will out-of-body experiences...

At-will out-of-body experiences...  Seems that out-of-body experiences are explainable after all, and without invoking magic, deities, or hallucinations.  This is another in a large set of examples where a single human (or occasionally, an animal) has provided the means to study and explain a phenomenon that was previously completely mysterious...

Progressive racism?

Progressive racism?  Some of these are a stretch, but there's enough that's plausible to make a thought-provoking read...

Older than dirt, part II...

Older than dirt, part II...  Via reader and friend Doug W., whose daughter sent this to him:

Newspapers: In days before everyone had computers at home and in their pockets, printing presses made paper versions of websites. People would then drive around and throw them on your lawn.

Awesome!

Gotcha! Well, really, got me!

Gotcha!  Well, really, got me!  A friend who shall remain unnamed told me today that he was looking for work outside his current employer.  I texted to him:

I hope you know that you can feel free to use me as a reference, professional or character.

He replied:

No... They're not gonna listen to some hermit who lives in the mountains.

I think I damaged something by laughing too hard :)

Older than dirt...

Older than dirt...  Via my mom, who really is older than dirt!

'Someone asked the other day, 'What was your favorite fast food when you were growing up?'

'We didn't have fast food when I was growing up,' I informed him.  'All the food was slow.'

'C'mon, seriously. Where did you eat?'

'It was a place called 'at home,'' I explained.  'Mom cooked every day and when Dad got home from work, we sat down together at the dining room table, and if I didn't like what she put on my plate I was allowed to sit there until I did like it.'

By this time, the kid was laughing so hard I was afraid he was going to suffer serious internal damage, so I didn't tell him the part about how I had to have permission to leave the table.

But here are some other things I would have told him about my childhood if I figured his system could have handled it :

Some parents NEVER owned their own house, never wore Levis, never set foot on a golf course, never traveled out of the country or had a credit card.

In their later years they had something called a revolving charge card. The card was good only at Sears Roebuck. Or maybe it was Sears & Roebuck.

Either way, there is no Roebuck anymore. Maybe he died.

My parents never drove me to soccer practice. This was mostly because we never had heard of soccer.

I had a bicycle that weighed probably 50 pounds, and only had one speed (slow).

We had a television in our house.  It was, of course, black and white, and the station went off the air at midnight, after playing the national anthem and a poem about God; it came back on the air at about 6 a.m. and there was usually a locally produced news and farm show on, featuring local people.

I was 21 before I tasted my first pizza, it was called 'pizza pie.' When I bit into it, I burned the roof of my mouth and the cheese slid off, swung down, plastered itself against my chin and burned that, too. It's still the best pizza I ever had.

I never had a telephone in my room. The only phone in the house was in the living room and it was on a party line. Before you could dial, you had to listen and make sure some people you didn't know weren't already using the line.

Pizzas were not delivered to our home But milk was.

All newspapers were delivered by boys and all boys delivered newspapers-- my brother delivered a newspaper, six days a week. It cost 7 cents a paper, of which he got to keep 2 cents. He had to get up at 6AM every morning.

On Saturday, he had to collect the 42 cents from his customers. His favorite customers were the ones who gave him 50 cents and told him to keep the change. His least favorite customers were the ones who seemed to never be home on collection day.

Movie stars kissed with their mouths shut. At least, they did in the movies. There were no movie ratings because all movies were responsibly produced for everyone to enjoy viewing, without profanity or violence or most anything offensive.

If you grew up in a generation before there was fast food, you may want to share some of these memories with your children or grandchildren

Just don't blame me if they bust a gut laughing.

Growing up isn't what it used to be, is it?

MEMORIES from a friend :

My Dad is cleaning out my grandmother's house (she died in December) and he brought me an old Royal Crown Cola bottle. In the bottle top was a stopper with a bunch of holes in it.. I knew immediately what it was, but my daughter had no idea. She thought they had tried to make it a salt shaker or something. I knew it as the bottle that sat on the end of the ironing board to 'sprinkle' clothes with because we didn't have steam irons. Man, I am old.

How many of these do you remember?

• Head lights dimmer switches on the floor.
• Ignition switches on the dashboard.
• Heaters mounted on the inside of the fire wall.
• Real ice boxes.
• Pant leg clips for bicycles without chain guards.
• Soldering irons you heat on a gas burner.

Last week, while I was up in Utah, I visited the home of one of our new neighbors.  This fellow happens to be an electrical engineer, and he looks like he's probably in his late 30s.  We talked shop a little bit, and he asked me what the first project I ever worked on was.  When I told him about the vacuum tube transmitter I once designed, he looked at me and said:

“What’s a vacuum tube?”

Dirt is starting to look young to me...

Always ask, never assume...

Always ask, never assume...  Via my lovely bride:

His request approved, the CNN News photographer quickly used a cell phone to call the local airport to charter a flight. He was told a twin-engine plane would be waiting for him at the airport. Arriving at the airfield, he spotted a plane warming up outside a hanger. He jumped in with his bag, slammed the door shut, and shouted, “Let's go!” 

The pilot taxied out, swung the plane into the wind and took off. Once in the air, the photographer instructed the pilot, “Fly over the valley and make low passes so I can take pictures of the fires on the hillsides.”

“Why?”  asked the pilot.

“Because I'm a photographer for CNN,” he responded, “and I need to get some close up shots.”

The pilot was strangely silent for a moment, finally he stammered “So, what you're telling me is ... you're not my flight instructor?”

Global warming skepticism for dummies..

Global warming skepticism for dummies...  Roy Spencer is a climatologist, with university degrees to suit and publications in peer-reviewed journals.  He used to work for NASA as a Senior Scientist for Climate Studies.  He's also skeptical about anthropogenic global warming.  Even better: he can write about it for a non-scientist audience.  Go read!

The family will be weeping...

The family will be weeping...  Me too...  Via reader and friend Simon M...

Seven year old singing a Billie Holiday number...

Seven year old singing a Billie Holiday number...  Even with some of her teeth missing.  Awesome!  Something tells me we'll be hearing more from Angelina Jordan...

A hole in Mars...

A hole in Mars...  Crater exposes a Martian cavern, which would be a very likely place for any life on Mars to be hiding out.  Via APOD, of course...

Back home, for now...

Back home, for now...  I've returned from my latest adventure in Utah, and am back in our home in Jamul.  During the past 10 days I was very busy meeting with lawyers, water rights engineers, various government officials, inspectors, appraisers, realtors, insurance companies, construction companies, plumbers, and a variety of future neighbors – all in pursuit of due diligence on purchasing our new home there.  Well, the due diligence is finished, and we're on the way to closing on April 4th.  I'm going to be “camping” in the house for a few weeks while we get some repairs and changes done.  Then we move!

One big challenge we have is how to move our animals (4 dogs, 9 cats) 850 miles.  Anyone have experience with this, and advice?

Dr. Seuss, rewritten and read by Sarah Palin...

Dr. Seuss, rewritten and read by Sarah Palin...  Ted Geisel (the real name of the author of the Dr. Seuss books) was a liberal with some strange ideas, so I'm pretty sure he wouldn't like Sarah Palin's rewrite.  But I do!

This is big...

This is big: it's now legal to operate drones commercially in the U.S.  The decision...

Incredible flight story that I'd never seen before...

Incredible flight story that I'd never seen before: an F-15 lands sans it's right wing...

Petrea volubilis...

Petrea volubilis...  Via BPOD, of course...

Watch a modern musician make music...

Watch a modern musician make music...  One woman, a keyboard, and some electronics – and a healthy dose of talent.  Watch the results, and don't bail out too soon: you're watching an artist put something together, and in the beginning it's not all that pretty...

My friends in Estonia certainly see this...

My friends in Estonia certainly see this...

Wait – did someone think he would?

Wait – did someone think he would? 

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said there is “no way” he will recognize Israel as a Jewish state and accept a Palestinian capital in just a portion of Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, rejecting what some Palestinians believe will be key parts of a forthcoming U.S. peace proposal, the Associated Press reported on Friday.

Surely there can't be more than zero people surprised by this!  Via al Arabiya...

Corruption in science...

Corruption in science...  Probably not the kind you're imagining.  Consider these thoughts:

I think peer review is hindering science. In fact, I think it has become a completely corrupt system. It’s corrupt in many ways, in that scientists and academics have handed over to the editors of these journals the ability to make judgment on science and scientists. There are universities in America, and I’ve heard from many committees, that we won’t consider people’s publications in low impact factor journals.

Now I mean, people are trying to do something, but I think it’s not publish or perish, it’s publish in the okay places [or perish]. And this has assembled a most ridiculous group of people. I wrote a column for many years in the nineties, in a journal called Current Biology. In one article, “Hard Cases”, I campaigned against this [culture] because I think it is not only bad, it’s corrupt. In other words it puts the judgment in the hands of people who really have no reason to exercise judgment at all. And that’s all been done in the aid of commerce, because they are now giant organizations making money out of it.

The first thing I thought of were the scrupulously peer-reviewed publications of Michael Mann and the rest of the IPCC gang of climatologists.  They are a perfect example.

Oh, who wrote this rant?  Sydney Brenner, biologist, professor, and 2002 Nobel Laureate.  He knows a thing or two about this subject...

What makes him (Putin) so bold?

What makes him (Putin) so bold?  Rex Murphy explains...

Firefly freaks out...

Firefly freaks out...  Rachel (not her real name) Lucas' newest dog discovers that her new life is wonderful...  For the dog lovers out there...

Quote of the day...

Quote of the day...  This time from Eric Raymond (ESR), on the climatology models that are the basis for the IPCC's prediction of global warming:

It's junk science all the way down.

Indeed.  Don't miss the comments...

I can't decide...

I can't decide...  Are these people (a) having more fun than any human before them, or (b) the pathetic victims of a suicidal depression?

See like a bird...

See like a bird...  An awesome collection of aerial photography, via my mom...

Epic old man...

Epic old man...  I've seen this before, and I may even have posted it before.  But who cares?  It's great!  Via my mom, who cautions: “Put down your drink before viewing!”  Yes, indeed.  And embiggen it...

Downingia pulchella...

Downingia pulchella...  Fairly common in San Diego's mountains, though I've never seen large masses of it.  Sure would like to!  Via BPOD, of course, where there's a also nice closeup of a single blossom...

Pinus sylvestris...

Pinus sylvestris...  Common name: Scots pine.  Via BPOD, of course...

Another sad story of government ineptness...

Another sad story of government ineptness ... this time, it involves American veterans who were killed (or are still missing) in overseas wars.  Bottom lines: incredibly large amounts of money while obtaining almost no results.  That's a familiar pattern when the federal government is involved, but it's particularly sad and infuriating in a situation like this...

The foreign language effect...

The foreign language effect...  I've read about this several times before – another one of those peeks into how the human brain works that is very surprising.  At least I find it so!

A science mystery...

A science mystery ... leads to a fascinating discovery about simple, homogenous materials in motion.  It never ceases to amaze me how many things we don't know about the world we live in, and not all of those things are esoteric or obscure...

Geek: automated color detection...

Geek: automated color detection...  I've tried to do this myself, years ago, when trying various ways of compressing color spaces for a remote control product.  It's far more difficult than you might think...

I wonder why...

I wonder why ... Intel is producing a free open-source font?  What on earth does that have to do with their business?

Putin vs. That One, in one cartoon...

Putin vs. That One, in one cartoon:

Just watch...

Just watch...  You might want to grab a few tissues first, though...

Solar prominence...

Solar prominence ... with a photo of the Earth inserted for scale.  Via APOD, of course...

God help me, I do...

God help me, I do...  Jimmy, you insufferable and incompetent bastard, we need you!

Quote of the day...

Quote of the day... 

“We have created a leadership vacuum in the world, and it is being filled by the Putins of the world, by people without our values or our interest, and it’s to the detriment of the United States and our friends and allies around the world,” he said. “It is the United States that’s injected that instability into the world equation.”

Donald Rumsfeld.  I miss that guy...

Ukrainian-Russian Tensions Dividing U.S. Citizens Along Ignorant, Apathetic Lines...

Ukrainian-Russian Tensions Dividing U.S. Citizens Along Ignorant, Apathetic Lines...  The Onion nails it...

Cooper!

Cooper!  Just watch it, especially if you're a dog lover.  McDonald's should make this into an ad...