"This was the voice of moderation until 13 Sept, 2025"
by Doctor Science Not that we had much of a January freeze, mind you. Sir Thomas More, by Hans Holbein. Because he has such great links. Hardiness Zone Changes — good tool to show how the USDA has re-calibrated the hardiness zones used by farmers and gardeners. My town has moved from 6b to 7a … Read more
by liberal japonicus
I'm not trying to get a rise out of anyone, but in the thread that turned into a copyright discussion, one person (and I'm not going to go back and check who it is, cause it's not really important) posited a situation where iirc a plumber breaks into your house and fixes your pipes. What should pop up but this article, with a story that about some horologists breaking into a place and fixing a clock. The story awaits below the fold
by Doctor Science … publish in Elsevier journals. Two years ago, Henry Farrell at Crooked Timber decided that he would no longer referee for, or publish in, journals published by Elsevier. Now Fields Medal-winning mathematician Tim Gowers has reached the end of his patience. He took the no-Elsevier pledge, and there is now a website … Read more
by liberal japonicus This Guardian piece and the accompanying video is well worth your attention. Garzón was the judge who issued an international arrest warrant for Augusto Pinochet for his role in torturing and executing Spanish citizenship, followed by obtaining pursuing two Argentinian generals for the crime of genocide during the Argentinian dictatorship. No slap … Read more
by Doctor Science N.J. Senate committee advances gay marriage bill. Sprog the Elder and I did *not* make it down to Trenton, as we had hoped, but despite the lack of testimony from me the bill advanced out of committee on an 8-4 party line vote. If I had gotten my head and act together, … Read more
–by Sebastian You may or may not have been aware that the US government was pushing the Supreme Court to allow warrantless placement of GPS tracking devices with unlimited monitoring. But it was. United States v. Antoine Jones The Supreme Court was about to hand down the decision so I was gearing up to write … Read more
by liberal japonicus
Haley Barbour, the outgoing governor of the state I used to call home, (who apparently had seriously entertained pursuing a presidential campaign but thought better of it) decided to distribute some of that compassionate conservatism that I keep hearing about, and pardoned 221 as he was out the door. Not precisely sure about how it breaks down, but some observe that certain crimes seem to draw more compassion than others. It was apparently a particularly ham handed move, hitting the 67% constituency (the percentage of Mississippians who voted to keep the Confederate battle flag as part of the state flag) rather hard and poorly executed, because a number of the prisoners did not post public notice of their pardon requests, a state requirement, leading a judge to halt some of the releases. Whoops. And surprise, surprise, the process seems to demonstrate some racial disparaties. Who'da thunk it?
So, when Count-me-in and Russell both mentioned Louis CK in the copyright thread, this (definitely not safe for work) riff of his came to mind.
by Doctor Science
The current issue of Christian Century has several articles about dating, sex, and relationships. One is about College chaplains on the hookup culture, with commentary by six chaplains from across the spectrum of American colleges: state schools, Ivy League, Christian, small, and large.
What really astounded me was how resolutely all the ministers ignore men. Some of them mentioned the attitudes or difficulties of male students, but only in passing. *All* of the anecdotes about particular students they have counseled involve women. They talk about the problems “hookup culture”, promiscuity, or objectification makes for *women*, but as far as men are concerned their ministry seems to be “boys will be boys”.
TRIGGER WARNING: discussion of rape and rape culture in post and comments.
by liberal japonicus This should have been your friday open thread, but the blog gods blinded me to it until just a little bit ago. Eagle-eyed watchers spotted a marijuana leaf on Yu Darvish's t-shirt as he landed in Dallas today for his official introduction with the Texas Rangers. The "explanation," at least in the … Read more
–by Sebastian
I was recently having a discussion with a friend, and she wondered why abortion remained such a big deal in politics in the United States while its political valence in Europe was nearly zero. It seemed to me that it was because European restrictions on abortion tend to be much more restrictive than those in the US, and thus much more in line with most people's intuitions about a fetus having a protectable interest as it became close to becoming a separate child. She thought that was crazy because she thought that abortion laws were much more permissive in Europe than in the United States.
It isn't true. A very large number of European states (and most of the large ones) have much more restrictive abortions laws than even the very most restrictive states in the US. I think most left leaning people in the US imagine that you can't have a progressive state with dramatically tighter abortion restrictions. Here is evidence to the contrary. (Largely though not entirely culled from here) Significant abortion restrictions in the States do not kick in until week 24 (if at all).
Sweden
Gestational limit: 18 weeks
Conditions: Between 12 and 18 weeks of gestation, the women must discuss the procedure with a social worker. After 18 weeks, permission must be obtained from the National Board of Health and Welfare.
France
Generally available only in the first 12 weeks. After that, two physicians must separately certify that the abortion will be done to prevent grave permanent injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman; a risk to the life of the pregnant woman; or that the child will suffer from a particularly severe illness recognized as incurable. A multi-disciplinary diagnostic center is required to certify if relying on the birth defect exemption.[more beyond the fold]
by Doctor Science
Wednesday evening we did something I haven’t done for decades: listened to world-class live music with no electronic component, not even microphones. Music was in the air, and only in the air.
YouTube link.
The Hamburg Symphony Orchestra is touring the US, and the Sprogs and I went to see them at the NJ State Theatre. We only thought to go because one of our closest friends has a brother-in-law in the orchestra, so there was a group expedition.
by liberal japonicus It's the time in the school year when I'm finished classes and trying to make sure that the students who have fallen behind catch up and start to think about what to do in my classes next year to avoid this predicament. (university education in Japan is akin to grape-nuts, in that … Read more
While browsing the interwebs today, I noticed that a wide variety of companies and websites are engaged in a protest regarding the atrocious Stop Online Piracy Act. The most elegant one is Google's: The recent campaign against the SOPA strikes me as both good and necessary. But I immediately wondered how it fit with recent … Read more
by Doctor Science
Now *that*’s a phrase to strike fear into every heart. And that’s what I’ve been dealing with for much of the past week — a virus that even pros thought an “interesting case”. The lovely & talented people at geekstogo came to my rescue, and after about two and a half days of work I am finally clean. It was a lot of this:
only *much* less cool.
by russell Today, we celebrate the birthday of Martin Luther King. Some folks do so enthusiastically, some less so. Some not at all. It's been almost 45 years since the man was shot dead in Memphis. How far have we come? about 40% of the US prison population are black men two-thirds of black kids … Read more
by liberal japonicus Dr. Science wrote earlier about Google maps and I've always loved maps. So I thought that this was pretty cool: American mapmaking’s most prestigious honor is the “Best of Show” award at the annual competition of the Cartography and Geographic Information Society. The five most recent winners were all maps designed by large, well-known institutions: … Read more
by liberal japonicus
(Alternative title: Hooray for Holyrood?)
My understanding of parliamentary government is a lot like my understanding of centigrade (or celsius, I guess). I can get a rough idea of the temperature outside when I see a temperature with a ℃ after it, but I don't understand it in my bones, the way I do Farenheit. Losing a vote gets you kicked out of office, figuring out when to call an election is something important (rather than schedule it on a Tuesday when everyone is at work like we do), forming an alliance with some bat-shit crazy party, going for a year and a half without actually forming a government, having a shadow minister as a real job, where these are things that seem really strange to me, but probably merit not even a blink of an eye if you grew up with it. This and this and this, while in English, sure seems a lot more lively than C-span. And when we get to those Asian ones, we have this and this and this.** More on one of those funny parliamentary maneuvers below:
by Doctor Science
Andrew Sullivan pointed to DJ Earworm’s year-end Mashup, United State of Pop 2011 (World Go Boom):
At YouTube
Now, I admit I am a fogey, and I don’t necessarily understand Kids These Days and Their Wacky Music on My Lawn. I watched the video — which I think is extremely cleverly edited — in part to see how many of the riffs and singers I would even recognize. Results: … some? I am not completely ignorant!
But since I am *substantially* ignorant, a number of things about the mashup — and thus about the most popular songs of the day — really jumped out at me.
The big thing is how many of the voices are very similar: they are women’s voices, or, if male, they are tenors. The two voices that really stick out as *different*, tonally, are Lady Gaga’s and Adele’s. It may be that what I’m hearing is really a sea of Autotune, out of which Adele’s voice naturally sticks out like a lighthouse. Gaga’s voice is gritty and naturalistic (if not natural) enough that it, too, sticks out of the humming uniformity.
The fact that so many of the voices are women’s was not what I was expecting, for two reasons. First, the “classic rock” and other music-of-my-youth stations I usually listen to definitely have more male voices than female ones. Second, I remembered a multi-part discussion from much more music-savvy people than I on TigerBeatDown, about how many (white) males — including critics — see nothing wrong with saying they “don’t like women’s singing.” (Also see TBB’s recent satire of how music critics write about male and female artists.)
So both my expectations and logic predicted that the voices of popular music would be male. And yet, that’s not how it seems from the mashup. My immediate reaction: It’s Time for SCIENCE! Or more specifically, data.
by von (retired) A vote has been taken, and the following is at least seven (7) times awesome. Seriously, this is one of the better covers that I've seen — and I'm a pretty harsh judge, since I was maybe a drink away from getting a four F's tatoo (Jawbreaker fans will understand). In other … Read more
by liberal japonicus
I love the fact that 'I am resolved to the fact' gets the word resolved away from the notion of being resolute, and doing whatever it takes to get something done, to a "well, I guess there's nothing that can be done", which sort of exemplifies my policy on New Year's resolutions.
Here in Japan, they aren't much on resolutions, but New Year's cleaning is rather big, which is a good thing, except that I hate cleaning up when it's cold. But, in the spirit of the post, below the fold are of my resolutions
by liberal japonicus While there is no intention to turn this into a legal blog, questions of law are particularly ripe fruit for blog discussion because of the way they both channel and expand the discussion. Channel by giving some definitive context and expand by letting folks point out how these things can impact a … Read more
by Doctor Science
Delaware license plates boast that DE is “The First State”, the first to ratify the Constitution.
But that’s not what I’m talking about. I think Delaware should be the first state on the Presidential primary calendar.
Juan Cole posted about the Iowa Caucuses as the Conservative White People’s Primary, because the population of Iowa is so much whiter than the national average. He is not the first to point out that Iowa (and New Hampshire) are not necessarily the best choices for lead-off Presidential Primaries, because they’re so demographically unlike most of the country.
So I started to wonder, what state(s) *would* be good choices? I collected data and analyzed it; you can follow along in the Googledocs spreadsheet I created. I tried to do it in Tableau, but I ended up in a maze of twisty passageways and eventually gave up. If any of you can show me how to use Tableau, please chime in.
by liberal japonicus For the new year, going to try for a midweek post about some recent news that I hope will give folks something to talk about. As with all new year resolutions, I don't hold out much hope, but here goes. The recent UK conviction of Gary Dobson and David Norris for the murder of … Read more
by Doctor Science I am surrounded by incomplete posts, too many open tabs, and a couple of work projects, so I give you: tab dump! The Genuinely Difficult Cases — Hillary Bok, writing about the Institute of Medicine Report saying that chimpanzees should not be used for research except under exceptional circumstances. Guys Aren’t Always … Read more