Anyway, first thing that jumps out at me and that I’m embarrassed to realize is that Karen is also very much into finding ways to reconnect academic life to public life. I had no idea. Now - in retrospect - as I look back at her courses, it becomes obvious. But I suppose I took for granted as an undergrad that the fruits of academia were supposed to have some sort of connection with the hoi polloi and so never noticed this as something that drove her reading selections. Ah, for the idealism and naivete of youth.

At any rate. Blah blah blah. The article.

The most interesting thing about the article (at least as far as I’m concerned, the article just said a bunch of stuff I agree with…that’s never particularly interesting) is actually in the responses to it. And in this, I think, lies its strength - it makes many of its own points in the reaction to it!

Reaction 1

Fuck those arrogant bitches for saying that history is better than science and that scientists are arrogant bitches. Who do these two think they are, anyway?!

Actually, they said nothing of the sort, but it’s fascinating that all the responses so far believe they did. What R&P actually said was that all specialists are arrogant bitches, whether scientists or historians. As a remedy to this, they propose studying and understanding reactions to one’s work - both reactions from other academic disciplines as well as reactions from the general public.

But the telling bit is in the reaction. Why did everyone misread this? In setting up a hostility between science and the humanities that doesn’t actually exist in the article, are the scientists doing the reading in fact speaking truth to such a hostility? Does the fact that all the reactions also reference each other while making this same mistake mean that the respondents are simply copying each other’s reactions? Do closed communities perpetuate mistakes? Would opening up a closed community to outside eyes alleviate such errors? And if that were the case…would….would that mean that R&P are correct to call for outside insight?!

Indeed, I can’t help but suspect that this reaction more than any other proves Rader & Pandora just might be on to something.

Reaction 1a

They were incorrect to state that science and history don’t get along. I can cite many examples of cross-referencing between these two disciplines.

They didn’t state that science and history don’t get along, nor did they state that the two don’t collaborate. They stated that the two have much to offer one another. The difference is subtle but important. See response to reaction 1.

That said, it is a bit ironic that all the examples put forth as bastions of science reaching out to the public and not being insular are all part of the same Science Blogs community. Science Blogs, in my experience, is ridiculously tightknit and chummy. And insular. Which is precisely what R&P warn against in their article. Again, I feel that the reaction proves the article might be worth listening to, even if it does not say anything especially “new” or “groundbreaking.”

Reaction 2

This article does not say anything new or groundbreaking.

No, it doesn’t, which is a bit disappointing, I must agree. And yet the reactions to it indicate that it has hit a nerve, and the reactions to it are informative and provide insight in their own right. Which means that it might not be a “sexy” article, but it is clearly useful and necessary.

Reaction 3

Why the fuck were they blathering on about museums?! Museums are actually a place where scientists reach out to the public.

Yes, exactly, Einstein. Studying a place where science and the public interact is a very good way to study how science and the public interact.

Actually, though, this section is very much the heart of the paper, and it actually puts forward a ton of interesting thoughtlets that could be pursued endlessly (presumably Karen doesn’t want to blow her wad in this paper and is saving them for her museum book?). But many of the questions left hanging here, even though unanswered, are at the heart of the rest of the article.

Most importantly…What is the purpose of science interacting with the public? Seriously. Ask yourself this question. What is the purpose? What does science gain by interacting with the public? Do they get future scientists? An informed populace? Better public policy? A warm fuzzy feeling? Are they simply doing their part as decent human beings? Will they get useful and informative feedback? New scientific knowledge? Understanding the goal is crucial in designing the best mode of interaction, and it certainly shouldn’t be a stretch to think analyzing a place and time period where these questions have already been grappled with would be useful.

Reaction 4

OMFG, they didn’t talk about my field’s existing body of knowledge in this matter.

That’s because they are not part of your field. The whole point of the article was that all fields have something to add to one another. Their example, because it is their field, is that historians of science have something to add to science. That does not preclude the reverse scenario, nor does it preclude some other field having something useful to bring to some other table.

Reaction 5

Rader and Pandora do not propose adding anything to scientific knowledge.

No, they didn’t. It’s too bad they didn’t have the balls to, either, because it wouldn’t be much of a stretch to have done so, and it’s the one thing that would have most improved the article. R&P would posit doing their part as decent human beings and getting useful feedback as the reason for bridging the gap between science and the public. Personally, I would add new scientific knowledge to that. Recognizing where people understand - and, more importantly, misunderstand - science holds the key to identifying holes in scientific knowledge. You don’t learn the most interesting things by repeating the same things over and over. You learn new things by finding anomalies. Errors. The unexpected. Seeing where the reaction doesn’t match what you expected it to be.

Truthfully, I think the article didn’t go far enough. The main point is that alternative sources of information are useful because they can bridge the divide between science and the populace, but as far as I’m concerned it should have also said that alternative sources of information can rectify blindspots with a discipline. Perhaps this was implicit. Perhaps not. But I wish they would have had the balls to have said it outright. Yes, I absolutely agree with the article that as human beings and functioning members of society, academics owe it to their fellow citizen to engage with them and show them a level of respect - if not as peer specialists, as peer human beings. But I also believe that this lack of respect blinds academics to errors in their own thinking. They begin to take certain facts for granted, when it would only take a listen to different quarters to realize the error. Diversity is not vital merely because it is the right thing to do (which, granted, is damn important). But it also has important practical implications in that it can help overcome shortcomings within a field. IMHO, any academic that does not look outside the field for sources of inspiration should be considered both negligent and incompetent as a practitioner.

Reaction 6

(My reaction)The article does not actually bridge the gap between science and the public.

Ironically, the article proposes to bridge a gap, but fails to speak to either scientists or the public in their own language. Technically speaking, the article’s propositions are sound (which I hope perhaps I’ve shown a bit above). But it doesn’t quite manage to sell itself. Since it seems to be trying to sell itself to the scientist at this point, I think that Reaction 5 is the most damning. They aren’t proposing to add anything new to science. Which, to the scientist, apparently, is all that matters?

The response to reaction 5 was telling because it indicates where scientists’ priorities lie. At least one reaction actually belittled R&P for being so provincial as to give a shit about being decent citizens. “Fuck that silly nonsense,” the respondent might as well have said. “Scientists just want something that’ll matter in a lab.”

Indeed. Perhaps that was the most telling response of all. Fuck the public, those stupid twats. And fuck you, you useless historian. You have not increased my specialized knowledge of science, and so you have just wasted the 30 minutes of my time that it took to read your article. (To be fair, this is not literally what he said. I am putting a lot of subtext here. He also appears to be a historian putting himself on shaky ground by speaking for scientists, instead of actually being a scientist? Nonetheless, based on the response, scientists either do have this attitude or other people believe they do…and there’s something interesting to be gleaned from either scenario.)

In the end, the article was technically right on all counts. But it failed at least partially in its stated goal because it either forgot its audience or misjudged their reaction badly. Apparently, talking about science is not enough for the historian to do. They must also sell it back to the scientist. At this point, learning from the reactions might be the most useful thing R&P could do.

At any rate, my mind jumped back to our conversation just now as I was reading The Theory of the Leisure Class. I’m only barely into it, but the second chapter (”Pecuniary Emulation”) essentially ends with the observation that men acquire shit not to satisfy physical needs but out of a sense of social competition (”race for reputability”). And this tied in nicely with some scientific/sociological study I heard a while back, god knows where…maybe the BBC site(?), that basically said that men do not actually want to be equal and that if there is a small element of inequality between people they are actually happier than if there is no inequality between them. When the inequality is too large or too small, however, they become unhappy. But as long as there is a realistic sense of possibility for improvement and competition, and a few folks to look down on and up to, people are generally satisfied.

When I initially came across the study, I remember thinking that perhaps that’s what caused Communism to fail. And when I came across this bit in TotLC, I thought back to our conversation on the hypocrisy of the Right (which, at the Castle, we identified as being that they claim to want freedom from being interfered with in their personal lives, but seem to have no compunction in interfering with other people’s lives), and realized that perhaps the hypocrisy stems from people taking the Right’s claims at face value. Let me elaborate a bit….

So, it seems to me that the Republican platform is inherently pessimistic about human nature, in that it recognizes that, given too much power, people will abuse it. Therefore, we need to prevent any one person or entity from achieving too much power over other people - hence why man should be given the freedom to live his own life. Okay. Sounds fine so far. The weakness with this position is that it therefore requires the individual to take personal responsibility for their own actions and do their utmost to not infringe on another’s freedom through those actions. Otherwise the tyranny of the government is simply replaced by the tyranny of the popular crowd. Now, don’t get me wrong - all positions have a weakness. The trick to taking any position is being aware of that weakness and and trying to avoid it. This is why I suggest that the Republican party is currently facing a crisis in paradox. Because, by taking the small-government sentiment at face value but failing to appreciate the reason behind the sentiment, and thus failing to recognize its weakness, Republicans are guilty of doing the very thing the party is predicated on avoiding - infringing on people’s freedom.

Anyway, to pull it back to TotLC, I got to thinking that this might be the problem at the heart of the matter when thinking about whether man is doomed to feel the need to compete.

Note to self: Oh, for crap’s sake, you forgot that freedom and equality are actually mutually exclusive and that those two things are the only real difference between the left (equality) and right (freedom), and now you’re trying to conflate the two somehow. Shit. You’ll need a little more work on this one.

Sorry. Whatever it is that’s niggling and making me think there’s a link between the two things (freedom -> the impossibility of inequality) is still a bit tenuous in my mind, so apologies for the rather disjointed post. I created the scratchpad as a way to mind dump notes to myself. This one is a bit more “dumpy” than usual.

It almost goes without saying that I rarely have the patience to read a full book - certainly not non-fiction, though I love it and buy it all the time. I do love learning and reading, yet I rarely have the staying power to see the author through to the end. My guilty secret is that I absolutely adore magazines, because they expose me to something new and then leave me with just enough info to tease me, to leave me thinking about the ideas, chewing them, worrying them, playing with them and turning them this way and that and coming up with my own. Just enough to whet my appetite but leave me hungry for more.

Okay, I’ll admit it. I like to be teased more than anything in the world. There’s something sumptuous about magazines that books don’t necessarily have. If not just the fact that they are overflowing with different positions and perspectives - as if it weren’t enough to have a hundred ideas in the course of 4 hours, or the serendipity of finding a new voice you’d have never found otherwise - magazines have a tactility that’s oddly missing in books. I especially love magazines with matte paper that soaks up the ink. The images become super saturated and acheive a lushness and depth (god the depth, you feel like you could fall into the page) that books rarely have. Each page brings a new image, a new writer, a new idea, a new font and layout. All but the best books are ossified in their presentation, formulas, and ideas, and it’s easy to put out a shit book. But putting out a magazine consistently is expensive and risky, which ends up meaning the signal to noise ratio in the magazine world is a lot more favorable. I have a small collection of magazines that I have bought simply because they are so damn beautiful I couldn’t pass them up. I purchased them thinking that someday I might create my own magazine, and I keep them for inspiration.

Just a few fantastic magazines I have been drawn to, whether beautiful, insightful, novel, intriguing, brilliant, necessary, or just plain good:

Cabinet, Coupe, American Scholar, Gagarin, Canteen (beautiful but notably sorry reading), Foreign Affairs, Polar Inertia, Farimani, Dumbo Feather, The Economist, Texas Monthly, Brick, Leonardo

Here’s the error:


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Whole query: INSERT INTO userdetails (application, datetime, sex, birthday, country) VALUES ('friendwheel','2008-07-04 14:04:40','female','197x-0x-0x','United States')
Mysql said:Too many connections


Basically what this says is that this application - which only needs access to my name, friend list, and a list of which friends each of them is connected to - is also writing my sex, birth date, country, and time that I accessed the application to a database and is saving that for later use. Presumably some sort of metrics. But for what? Why do the application developers need this info?

Leaking information, indeed.

In the Smashing mag contest, most of the switchers changed the background of the site they were placed on. But I’m thinking, what about completely changing the layout of the site altogether? In this way, users could choose not just a color scheme that they find pleasing, but an actual structure that is logical and intuitive. Since each user will find something slightly different to be intuitive, the possibilities are endless. Even more so if you allow users to upload their own skin (a bit like the good ol’ CSS Zen Garden, but done so that the user’s choice of stylesheet sticks with them throughout the entire site) or choose from an entire library of uploaded skins. Skins could even be shared across similar types of site, so, for example, if there was a consortium of libraries involved, they could coordinate their markup and share the skin library so that researchers could get data laid out in the same way from site to site.

254 _ Unlimited Power of the Majority in the United States, and Its Consequences
257 _ How the omnipotence of the majority increases, in America, the instability of legislation and administration inherent in democracy
258 _ Tyranny of the majority
262 _ Effects of the omnipotence of the majority upon the arbitrary authority of American public officers
263 _ Power exercised by the majority in America upon opinion
265 _ Effects of the tyranny of the majority upon the national character of the Americans. - The courtier spirit in the United States
268 _ The greatest dangers of the American republics proceed from the omnipotence of the majority

The amount of information contained in each headline here is boggling to me, used, as I am, to terse and non-helpful subsections (if they exist at all) in modern book-length works. In essence, the table of contents here is what we now consider an outline - something to be done in prewriting stages but never actually shown to the reader in the completed work. And yet as shown here it makes the structure of the document, its theses and points and major themes, immediately obvious to the reader. As a designer…as a reader…as an impatient bitch…I fucking love this with every fiber of my tiny being.

It also breaks the text up into tiny, digestible chunks (notice how none of these subsections is more than a few pages at most…some not even a full page) - if I turn to any of these pages in the book, each subsection actually begins with the headline given above and is set so as to obviously indicate the start of a new section. And this makes me think of a recent discussion on the AoIR listserv in which several participants cited an Atlantic Monthly article lamenting the death of reading (yes, yet another of those goddamned ‘reading is dead’ articles). The gist of the article this time was that the Internet has changed reading for the worse - instead of digging into a long, windy, excessive book with loving OCD, the author now finds himself impatient with verbose crap and just wants to get to the heart of things already.*

Now - assuming for a moment that people are, in fact, expressing more impatience with what they read - could it not be because what people read is being more poorly written? Not that people are becoming more impatient or changing “how” they read? I look at the outline form used above, and it seems to me that it actually makes reading longer works of nonfiction seem significantly speedier. The design of the work means that you are getting slapped upside the head with the point. There’s no hunting, wondering, head scratching, or going back to re-read. It’s written linearly (something rare in modern works), the main points are immediately obvious and accessible (again - rare in modern works), and it’s broken into smaller chunks that are more easily digestible.

In other words….older books are an awful lot like what is supposedly so terrible about reading on the web.

* Note: I adore reading and yet I have never enjoyed reading long winded bitches who fail to get to the point. It’s one thing to read a novel that circumnavigates the globe ten times, but I have never, ever had the patience to read a work of nonfiction that does that. Has this author actually enjoyed reading long nonfiction in the past? Or are they confusing reading novels for pleasure with reading reference for pleasure? Seriously. I’ve just gotta ask. Did this dude really enjoy that once upon a time when he walked uphill to school in the snow both ways? ‘Cause that would be really….’interesting.’

And have a happy Juneteenth, while you’re at it.

Unworkable contraption #8024:

I was tempted recently to learn to play the concertina I’ve had lying around (in response to the Hootenanny, actually, which I recall was the subject of my last ancient post). I find the fingering on the thing irritating and haven’t really gotten much of anywhere at all with it. Contraption #8024 is an upright reed and bellow instrument (yes…another one - S., I promise you I will finish yours one day…I still have the parts and plans and everything) that uses a keyboard layout for the fingering. Perhaps an actual old converted typewriter? The rods from inside pull away from a faceplate to draw air through the reeds? I could compose fakebooks for this that corresponded to the actual keys….the fingering of which I can already do in my sleep. Music could just be written out as ‘caiu yenlduand cnklijdiucu’ Bellows operated by foot. Or, half keyboard operation - one hand fingers, one hand pulls bellows.

Alexis: the hootenanny was pretty awesome, but I feel like hell right now
Alexis: too late for a school night!
L: did you just get into work?
Alexis: no, I’ve been here since normal time
Alexis: but I’m very tempted to leave early
L: it’s a great day to play hooky
L: (not that i’m doing that)
Alexis: apparently, megan’s taking the morning off herself
Alexis: lol
Alexis: she’s so tiny. lightweight
L: how late were you out?
L: and did any of you perform?
Alexis: well, between leaving there at about 1130 and the N sucking….2.00?
Alexis: we did not perform, although megan plucked her ukelele from her chair
L: she plays the ukelele?!?
Alexis: not really
Alexis: lol
L: still, i’m impressed with her initiative to learn as many skills as she can!
L: she is the personification of the term “gung-ho”!
Alexis: yeah, she’s cool
Alexis: anyway, it was a fun night, but definitely late
L: live it up!
L: there’s time enough in life to go to bed early
Alexis: btw, speaking of going out…when is chris moving? does he have a time for people to help him?
Alexis: I heard about a place I want to try for my birthday lunch
L: i didn’t know you were planning a lunch
Alexis: well, I wanted to do the crawfish fest but everyone was so unenthusiastic. and I can’t get out there by myself!
Alexis: so i’m just going to pick a day and whoever can come should come
L: that’s a good approach
L: so what’s the place that you’re thinking about?
Alexis: http://www.hillcountryny.com/
L: oh yeah, i’ve heard good things about that place!
Alexis: i just heard about it last night and got all excited
Alexis: they serve pickles, white bread, and raw onions with the barbeque, which is a good sign
L: i think katie and scott tried it — they went to every bbq place in the city last year to find their favorite
Alexis: well, they like vinegar bbq, so they’re crazy
L: so do i — i LOVE North Carolina style
Alexis: fuck that stuff man
L: the more things you love, the more fun you’ll have
Alexis: i’m not saying it’s bad. i’m just saying it’s a sad, pale comparison to a slice of actual heaven
Alexis: i mean, it’s kind of hard to compete with heaven
Alexis: so even if you’re tasty, it doesn’t matter. you will never measure up
L: fair enough
Alexis: now if I can just find a girl as good as texas bbq….
L: a tall order!
Alexis: i KNOW
Alexis: I’m trying though. it’s important to have goals in life