Doctor Science

Is Parliament Burning?

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by Doctor Science This is a thread for our UK friends. It’s going up later than I hoped because I’ve been watching live-blogs of our own Constitutional crisis. Perhaps the most distressing part is that Republican members of the Judiciary Committee are laughing during the markup hearing. I suppose this is tactical, to convey that … Read more

Sodom and Sarcasm

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by Doctor Science

I don’t seem to have talked about it here before, but last year (5779) I leveled up significantly in my Jewish practice by reading the Torah portion (Parsha) every week, and discussing it on Twitter under the #ParshaChat hashtag (usually on Wednesday evenings, though it was on Thursday last week).

Last week’s parsha was Vayeira (Genesis 18:1 – 22:24) , which includes the destruction of Sodom. In thinking about Vayeira last year, I realized that there’s an interpretation in which everyone’s behavior makes a lot more sense and is more relatable than in the interpretations that have been standard for, um, well, thousands of years. Despite the incredible weight of tradition that’s against me, I kind of think I’m right:

The men of Sodom are asking for ID, and Lot replies with a sarcastic pun. Nothing in this is actually about sex, it’s about immigration, about how you treat outsiders.

Note: the following includes discussions of rape, abuse, and homophobia. Take care of yourself.

521px-Henry_Ossawa_Tanner_-_Sodom_and_Gomorrha

Sodom and Gomorrah (1920) by Henry Ossawa Tanner, the first African-American artist to achieve international fame. (image source)

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Fifty Years Ago Today

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by Doctor Science I was twelve. It was the day we arrived back to our house in Illinois after a year in Dijon, France, where my father had an exchange professorship. We rode down the familiar streets, but it was almost like a dream or a Twilight Zone episode, because there was almost zero traffic. … Read more

Breaking the Dictionary

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by Doctor Science The Scripps National Spelling Bee Thursday night ended in an 8-way tie, when the competition ran out of sufficiently challenging words. “We’re throwing the dictionary at you. And so far, you are showing this dictionary who is boss,” they told the contestants. The eight final-round words were: auslaut, erysipelas, bougainvillea, aiguillette, pendeloque, … Read more

A first-hand description of a dragon

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by Doctor Science There’s a lot of good stuff in The Retreat of the Elephants: An Environmental History of China by Mark Elvin, which I just finished reading, but I want to pull out one especially notable passage: Elvin’s translation of a first-hand description of a dragon. Part of the 1244 C.E. scroll Nine Dragons, … Read more

Paris burning

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by Doctor Science Notre Dame de Paris, one of the greatest artworks and religious monuments of European culture, is in flames as I write. None of my words are adequate. In the first campaign of the web D&D series Critical Role, Percy (a human aristocrat and fighter) is asked by an elf how long he’ll … Read more

In the beginning: some Bereshit parsha thoughts

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by Doctor Science My Jewish New Year’s Intention is to try to read the weekly Torah portion or parsha. I’m getting a big push from the twitter group #ParshaChat, which discusses topics selected by the moderators every Wednesday evening (Eastern time). Coincidentally, Mr Dr Science teaches fencing classes on Wednesday evening, so I can participate … Read more

A Good Cat

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by Doctor Science Sneakers September 1999 – June 15, 2018 We had to say good-bye to Sneakers on Friday. He’d clearly reached the end of the line, he wasn’t eating and was down to skin and bones. He had a really good run: more than 18 1/2 years is a full life for a cat, … Read more

Wednesday books: fic and non

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by Doctor Science I just engulfed & devoured the new book in “James S. A. Corey” (Daniel Abraham & Ty Franck)’s Expanse series, Persepolis Rising. This work begins the final three volumes of the series, and may possibly be self-contained enough to read if you haven’t read the previous volumes; I’m a poor judge. The … Read more

A collection of enjoyable books

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by Doctor Science Trying to get back into the swing of Wednesday book reviewing, here are some books I’ve read recently that are *enjoyable*, that made me happy and not like I’m living in a satiric dystopia. I heard about Harry Connolly’s A Key, an Egg, an Unfortunate Remark on File770, but by the time … Read more

Slavery and the Southern roots of conservative economics

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by Doctor Science I’ve been reading a lot of books about slavery and antebellum America over the past few years, and I keep noticing how many current “conservative”, Republican economic principles were already held by Southern enslavers and their politicians. “Low taxes” was always their watchword. They were doubtful about infrastructure spending (then called “improvements”) … Read more

Your national ritual open thread

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by Doctor Science   This video of wild turkeys circling a dead cat went viral in March, but I feel it summarizes Thanksgiving 2017 perfectly. We’re up at my parents’ house in northeastern Connecticut, preparing to go out to dinner at a restaurant. I think I’m going to have the salmon, because I *know* the … Read more

Rape and sexual abuse are too common to be crimes

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by Doctor Science

American society can’t yet treat rape, sexual abuse, and sexual harassment as crimes, because they are too common. We have to make them rare first: only then will going through the legal system be anything other than selective enforcement.

The past month or more has been horrific for many of my friends, who are being constantly reminded of their traumatic experiences with rape, abuse, and the dismissive way they’re treated. This is what “trigger warnings” are for: to give survivors a chance to control what they have to deal with. And that’s why I’m cutting here, with a plea to my friends to take care of yourselves in this very stressful time.

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Why I need maps in fantasy novels

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by Doctor Science I’ve always loved maps for real or unreal places: there was one Christmas back in the 80s where my mother and I gave each other assortments of atlases, because we like looking at maps so much. Two books I recently read made me realize that I don’t just like maps, they’re part … Read more

What Hurricane Sandy taught me about libraries

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by Doctor Science The first Ballot Question NJ will vote on tomorrow[1] is the NJ Library Construction Bond Act, authorizing $125M for public library construction projects (including ADA compliance) and technology upgrades. I urge my fellow NJans to vote YES on this question. I would probably be saying this anyway, because I’ve always loved libraries. … Read more

Voting the Party Line

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by Doctor Science The rest of New Jersey is going to the polls on Tuesday for state and local elections: Governor (& Lieutenant Gov. running mate), legislature (one state Senator and two Assemblypeople per district), county Board of Chosen Freeholders and Sheriff, and township Committee. There are also School Board elections, which are explicitly non-partisan, … Read more

Helping Puerto Rico and the other islands

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by Doctor Science Here’s something you can do to help Puerto Rico right now: process satellite images to map where the damage is. The Planetary Response Network at the Zooniverse just put up a new batch of low-resolution images for wide-scale mapping. Tomnod is using high-resolution images to pinpoint damage. I’ve been working on both … Read more

Bridge and Troubled Waters

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by Doctor Science I drove back to NJ from New England on Saturday, and unexpectedly found myself one of the first 100,000 or so people to cross the new Tappan Zee Bridge. Right now, only the westbound lanes are open; eastbound is scheduled to open in June 2018. My report: As bridges go, not bad![1] … Read more

E Day

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by Doctor Science I’m spending E-Day in Connecticut, where there weather is decent but the eclipse only so-so. I am so consumed with envy for totality-watchers (including Mr Dr Science, who’s road-tripping to NC) I’ve been dreaming I was one of you. The other night I dreamed I was trying to map the totality path … Read more

Last-Minute Hugo Homework

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by Doctor Science (sorry for stepping on your post, lj, but I wanted to get this up before voting closes.)

Due to an ongoing family medical crisis, I just barely finished voting for the Hugo Awards. I’ve been rushing to finish what reading/viewing I can before the deadline (2am Eastern Sunday morning). Here’s what I’ve decided.

Best Series. You can tell my household includes Typical Hugo Voters, because of the six series nominated we have complete runs of *four*, mostly in hardcover. I had very little reading to do for this category. My ballot, in reverse order:

7. Seanan McGuire, October Daye: I read the first one and it didn’t work for me. Nor do I find it on a level with the other nominees.

6. No Award.

5. Ben Aaronovitch, Rivers of London. An excellent urban fantasy, but doesn’t quite open up the world for me the way the other nominees do (it’s a tough field!)

4. James S.A. Corey, The Expanse. Another excellent series, only knocked down so low because

3. Naomi Novik, Temeraire is by a friend. Also dragons+Age of Sail, perfect together! I suspect it reads better to me than it might to other people because I know Naomi’s writing well enough to know what she means even when she doesn’t actually say it.

2. Max Gladstone, The Craft Sequence. Not merely an excellent series, it’s actually doing something new: an alternate magical history with capitalist gods. I just wish there was a map!

1. Lois Bujold, Vorkosigan. By far the longest & most varied of the nominees. It’s the one that has been growing with me for decades, parts of which I’ve re-read many times, so it’s hard to separate my love of the series from my life. Just as important for my decision is that it has periods of lightness, humor, and grace: fantasy of manners. Complexity and darkness are all very well, but comedy is REALLY hard. And in these difficult, Interesting Times, it’s more necessary than ever to have something that can give a feeling of light-hearted joy – while reminding us to honor “Persons before principles.”

Cut for length.

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I don’t need to settle for “Stranger Things”

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by Doctor Science

I’m making the big push to read/view everything I need to make my Hugo Awards decisions, due no later than July 15. Right now I’m thinking about Best Dramatic Presentation: Long Form. “Long Form” means more than 90 minutes, “Short Form” less than 90 minutes, which usually translates to “Movies” versus “TV episodes” — but doesn’t have to. This year’s nominees are:

I’d already seen all but Deadpool and Stranger Things when the nominations list came out. I got Deadpool out of the public library and we watched it, but to watch Stranger Things we had to sign up for a free trial of Netflix.

We got to the end of the second episode and I realized I didn’t have to watch any more to make a decision. Maybe in a different year I would have kept going to see if it would be “good enough”, but this year I don’t have to settle for a work I find fundamentally annoying.

Cut for spoilers:

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Google’s Calico project may be alchemy

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by Doctor Science Vox reporter Julia Belluz wonders what’s going on with Google’s Calico project, launched in 2013 “to harness advanced technologies to increase our understanding of the biology that controls lifespan.” I recently started poking around in Silicon Valley and talking to researchers who study aging and mortality, and discovered that four years after … Read more

Springing up

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by Doctor Science It’s really been Spring here for the past week. I kind of melted down from medication-, Tax-, and Seder-related exhaustion last Monday, but within the last few days I’ve really perked up. And so has my yard! We have Goldfinches that come to the feeder all winter, but within the past few … Read more

Last Minute Hugo Artist Nominations

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by Doctor Science Just a few hours to go! Don’t forget you have to save each category individually! Check under your seat for any stray personal items! Best Professional Artist Kathleen Jennings Her illustrations are good, but her papercuts are *outstanding*. This is from “Tremontaine, Season 2”. Victo Ngai Cover of “Everfair” by Nisi Shawl. … Read more

Last Minute Hugo Nominations

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by Doctor Science I really dropped the ball on Hugo nominations this year. Or, to be fair to myself, the time and energy I had expected to spend on the Hugos turned out to be needed for historic levels of political action (and anxiety). Nominations will close on 2017-03-18 06:59 UTC (at 11:59 pm Pacific … Read more

A field guide to #TheResistance

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by Doctor Science If #TheResistance is a parade, some people are trying to jump in front of it and be called “leaders”. Michael Moore is the most egregious, but there are others, too. I’m the equivalent of the third piccolo player in this parade, which means I know enough to say where the movement came … Read more

The United States has no national security

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by Doctor Science

This is not a drill, and I am not speaking rhetorically. I think the evidence shows that, at the White House level, the United States has *no* functioning national security, as the national security and intelligence communities understand it.

Most of the talk, as in the previous post, about the growing conflict between Trump and NS/IC is about Trump and his associates’ ties to Russia, and the extent to which they may be acting as Russian assets.

This is obviously a very serious charge that has to be investigated, post-haste. But a lot of us have been screaming our fool heads off about this for *months* without NS/IC going this far, so why now? What took them this long?

I wonder if the reason this has broken out now was the apparent use of the Mar-a-Lago terrace as a Situation Room. At Mar-a-Lago Trump and his staff showed themselves incapable of acting as part of a national security system. The whole intelligence community, the national security apparatus, and the military now saw, publicly, that classified or sensitive material given to the Trump White House will not be treated as such. It’s not as specific as “this particular person is compromised by Russia”, it’s a general failure to acknowledge that national security issues have special significance.

I’m cutting here because this post is long and has embedded tweets and other slow-down factors.

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Hacking Trump’s Brain

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by Doctor Science A few days ago media guru Dan Pfeiffer tweeted: Trump might be the most predictable human on earth https://t.co/GmmtMlM4j6 — Dan Pfeiffer (@danpfeiffer) February 6, 2017 So-called President* Trump is also easily influenced (especially by the last person he spoke to), and is, of course, probably the most influential person in the … Read more

Blinding myself with science

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by Doctor Science I’m finding the news so depressing/enraging/flabbergasting these days that I’ve taken refuge in the pursuit of scientific knowledge. Specifically, helping citizen science projects at the Zooniverse. It’s been years since I talked about them, and I’m working on different projects these days. When I’m in the mood for picking a project, I … Read more

So far so good

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— as the man said as he fell past the 25th floor. by Doctor Science Welcome to 2017. Make sure your seat backs and tray tables are in their fully upright and locked position, we may experience some turbulence. As usual, we at Casa Science hosted a New Year’s Eve party. At about 11:50, Mr … Read more

Sundown Towns and Trump’s America

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by Doctor Science Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism by historian James Loewen is one of the two books I think are most necessary to understand the 2016 election results (the other, as I've said before, is Sady Doyle's Trainwreck: The Women We Love to Hate, Mock, and Fear… and Why). It's necessary … Read more