My ulterior motive

In case you’re wondering why I’m experimenting with video, there actually is an ulterior motive, and it’s the same one that got me into blogging in the first place: teaching. I’m teaching science at an undergraduate institution, and contrary to many people’s expectations, a bachelor’s degree does not confer a deep understanding of science, and it can’t. Students come out of high school with an ability to read and do basic math (at least the ones we admit to college!), and have wildly varying abilities in writing, analysis, and thinking. I think the undergraduate university’s role is more to deepen the student’s abilities in those general skills, and also to provide a broad knowledge base in a discipline of their choosing. We’re preparing students to go off and do science, if that’s what they want to do. I’ve done my job if my students go to graduate school competent and confident, ready to get to work and explore the natural world. Or if they choose not to follow a science career, they’re open to read and think about the world in a scientific way.

So there are a couple of things I do in my upper level lab courses. I take a hands-off approach: I teach students how to use the tools in my lab, give them a general idea of what would be cool to do or see, and turn them loose. If I see a combination of frustration (“I can’t get it to work! How do I get it to work?”) and play (“What if we do this?”), it’s a success. I have them blogging because it’s a sneaky way to get them to think about the subject of the class outside of class, and also to get them to blend their interests — which usually aren’t identical to mine! — with what I’m teaching.

And then there are presentations. Communicating your work is an important part of doing science, too. I try to get them to do that with the blogging, but also our university promotes a capstone experience, our senior seminars. Before a student can graduate, they have to do a one hour talk on some subject in their discipline, and it’s a big deal/ordeal to the students, and also a big deal/ordeal for us faculty in one of the largest majors on campus. Their quality varies all over the place, even though many of my colleagues and I do incorporate requirements for giving in-class presentations in our upper level courses, and we have a preparatory course on writing that includes giving presentations. There’s a limitation on doing that in class, though: you’ve got 20 students, you can’t chew up multiple class hours getting them all to do rehearsals and rehearsals under your supervision. We usually get an abstract and a promise and a conversation with them to help explain the data, and then boom, they do their talk to the class. It’s one shot and they’re done. That’s not the way to learn.

So I’ve had this idea…this is a generation that’s comfortable with their camera phones, that whiles away hours on facebook and youtube. What if I tried to combine that with doing presentations? What if, in one of my lab courses, I made the final project to be producing a short youtube video explaining some piece of data that they’d gotten in the lab? Put a micrograph or a chart or a time-lapse video on the screen and explain it with a voice-over, or stand in front of a camera while discussing some fine point of theory, or make a how-to video on how to use the microscope. It’s something they could tweak until it looks good, I’d be able to review work in progress fairly easily, and then what they put up for final evaluation might be a little more polished. This would be a useful skill for the future. I’m also rather impressed with how Casey Dunn has his students make creature features.

One catch: to have the students do it, I have to be able to do it. So in my spare time (hah!), I’ve been tinkering with ideas. I got some clamp lamps to play with lighting, I’ve got some cheap and simple backdrops to play with, I read Steve Stockman’s How to Shoot Video That Doesn’t Suck (which has a lot of damn good basic practical advice), and I’ve been doing some experimenting, most of which will never see the light of day. I’m learning stuff, which is always fun.

And it’s useful stuff, too. For instance, I’m a words and typing sort of guy, so my approach so far has been to write a script and then wrap video and images around it. That doesn’t work so well. I’m slowly learning that in this medium you start with video and images and wrap words around them. And that’s exactly what we do routinely in a science talk! You’ve got these chunks of data in the form of images and numbers, and what you do in a presentation is show them and add your verbal explanation on top. Man, I ought to know this stuff already. I just have to adapt.

So this summer you might be seeing more of my unphotogenic face in videos as I clumsily try to get some basic skills in this medium. The payoff, though, is that in a year or so I’ll be able to teach my students how to do it better, and then we’ll get a fine new crop of video stars who are comfortable explaining science in front of a camera.

But don’t worry, you don’t have to suffer through my struggles, just don’t watch me.

It’s Matthew Yglesias’ world: we just get blown up in it.

I haven’t had much use for The Lizard of K Street since he posted this sociopathic little gem in 2004:

Did the president really gut the Endangered Species Act yesterday while no one was paying attention? So I’ve heard, at any rate. If so, good riddance. You’ll all yell at me, I suppose, but really: Who cares? Species die, shit happens, get over it.

It is not exactly news that Matthew Yglesias is a tepid thinker. Poking holes in Yglesias’ vacuous, self-absorbed puffery has long been a popular pastime among bloggers from the progressive left to the hard right. He’s got himself a cushy gig these days, squirting out incontinent posts with no detectable logical or factual value, and as long as people give his outlets page views it’s all good. Eyeballs are eyeballs, and it doesn’t matter much if those eyeballs are rolling upward hard enough to burst blood vessels.

But this shit? This shit is inexcusable.

Bangladesh may or may not need tougher workplace safety rules, but it’s entirely appropriate for Bangladesh to have different—and, indeed, lower—workplace safety standards than the United States.

The reason is that while having a safe job is good, money is also good. Jobs that are unusually dangerous—in the contemporary United States that’s primarily fishing, logging, and trucking—pay a premium over other working-class occupations precisely because people are reluctant to risk death or maiming at work. And in a free society it’s good that different people are able to make different choices on the risk–reward spectrum.…

Bangladesh is a lot poorer than the United States, and there are very good reasons for Bangladeshi people to make different choices in this regard than Americans. That’s true whether you’re talking about an individual calculus or a collective calculus. Safety rules that are appropriate for the United States would be unnecessarily immiserating in much poorer Bangladesh. Rules that are appropriate in Bangladesh would be far too flimsy for the richer and more risk-averse United States. Split the difference and you’ll get rules that are appropriate for nobody.

There are three main problems with Yglesias’ argument.

  1. Yglesias’ argument is profoundly immoral. People are willing to take bigger risks to feed their families when they’re burdened by poverty, yes. But arguing that we should use that unfortunate fact as a basic design feature of global workplace safety regulations is vile.
  2. Yglesias’ argument is profoundly ahistorical as well. Workplace safety regulations — and environmental laws, and education for women, and all of the thousands of other social goods we fight for — don’t magically appear when societies’ wealth passes a certain threshold as a result of the airy  fapping of the invisible hand. Those regulations come into being because people fight for them, often dying in the process, against the opposition of the entrenched powers that make the regulations necessary in the first place.  And here Yglesias is on the side of the entrenched powers, willing to wave away yet another workplace disaster so that he can continue to enjoy the cheap cotton shorts, running shoes, and tablet computers he sees as his birthright.
  3. Yglesias’ argument is essentially plagiarized from a 1991 memo by Laurence Summers written when the latter was the chief economist at the World Bank. A salient sampling from that memo:

I’ve always thought that under-populated countries in Africa are vastly UNDER-polluted, their air quality is probably vastly inefficiently low compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City. … The concern over an agent that causes a one in a million change in the odds of prostrate[sic] cancer is obviously going to be much higher in a country where people survive to get prostrate[sic] cancer than in a country where under 5 mortality is 200 per thousand.

An individual human life is worth fewer U.S. dollars in Bangladesh, and so betting that lower-value life against the possibility that you might actually survive your $432 per annum minimum wage job just makes better sense there than it does here, eh Matt? Hell, if the typical Bengali minimum wage worker survives his or her job for three or four years before they get crushed to death by an unsafe building, they may actually have come out well ahead of the game!

It’s a repugnant argument.

Matthew Yglesias should be ashamed of himself.

Christina Amphlett has died

If you were ever into 80s pop, you’d know Christina Amphlett, the lead singer of the Australian band, the Divinyls. She’s had some rough years since, dealing with breast cancer and multiple sclerosis, which finally did her in this past weekend, at the too-young age of 53. (Cancer sucks, and so do progressive neurological disorders, and she suffered through both.)

Americans mainly know her for just one song, “I Touch Myself,” but she actually did a number of successful albums in her own country, so I thought rather than playing the most obvious one, I’d put up a different song.

Steubenville hasn’t learned a thing

The football coach who reportedly joked to his team members about the sexual assault on an unconscious girl, who the team trusted to cover up any problems their behavior might cause, who threatened a reporter and her family if they pursued the case, has had his coaching contract extended another two years.

Symbolic of this unholy marriage of jock culture and rape culture was the revered Big Red football coach Reno Saccoccia who didn’t seem to give a damn that his players could have treated a woman this way. Given Coach Saccoccia’s controversial behavior before and during the trial, which drew national scrutiny, many of us thought he at the very least would be shown the door after three decades of service. We all thought wrong. Today we learned that “Coach Sac”, as he is known, has been granted a two-year contract extension by the Steubenville school board. They made this decision despite the fact that a grand jury is meeting next week to assess whether he and others obstructed justice in the case. Saccoccia was legally required to report the sexual assault as soon as he was aware it took place. The grand jury will determine whether or not he in fact knew and tried to sweep it under the turf.

Two members of his team were convicted of rape and sent off to jail. You know, even if all anyone cared about was his win/loss record, this is not evidence of a good coach.

But maybe they should care about more. Isn’t it peculiar that many atheist and gay teachers are terrified to come out because they know it could cost them their job, yet a coach can facilitate a culture of rape with total impunity?

Snappy one-liners

Ever been in that situation where you see an attractive woman walking down the street, and you’re trying to think of something to shout out, and your mind just goes blank? Here’s a helpful collection of things you could say.

#radfem2013

Are you looking to be baffled this weekend? It’s another twitter war, this time under the hashtag #radfem2013, and it consists of a lot of very angry women who are making very weird claims. “Because every time you tell lesbians transwomen are women, you support corrective rape.” “WTF is up with assholes who insist on telling lesbians to fuck men.” “Because demanding that lesbians suck dick makes you not an ally.” “Transwomen are men: predatory men who demand access to women’s bodies.”

It’s bizarre. It’s feminism+transgender hatred.

The lead bigot is someone named Cathy Brennan, who has a rather deranged blog in which she insists her views are the only rational ones.

Radical Feminism is an Evidence-based philosophy. The Evidence suggests that there is a Class of Humans (Women) made subordinate by and to another Class of Humans (Men). The Evidence suggests that Men want to keep it this way, and employ tactics and establish systems to ensure it stays this way. The Evidence suggests that Men commit a disproportionate amount of Violence against Women (Male Violence).

A favorite tactic of Men’s Rights Activists and Trans Activists used to Silence Women who rely on Evidence to support assertions like Penis=Male, Male Violence against Women is an overwhelming problem and Trans Women are Men is the claim that Radical Feminists aren’t “Rational.”

I can sort of agree with parts of the first paragraph: men as a class (but let’s not expand that to all men as individuals) do those things in our culture. But the second paragraph makes a gigantic irrational leap. They are claiming a freakishly conservative sort of genital essentialism: if you have a penis, you are MAN, through and through, and if you have a vulva, you are WOMAN, entirely and completely. Am I the only one who finds this inconsistent and contradictory coming from a group of lesbians? It seems to me they are already expressing the view that their natural desires are not constrained by the behavioral assignments our culture already imposes by definition of the physical apparatus in our crotches.

Transwomen are women…and an even more oppressed subclass of women than these “radfems” are. Saying that does not in any way tell people that they must have sex with them, any more than saying I’m a cis heterosexual male means I’m required to have sex with all women, or any woman for that matter. No one is telling these radfems that they must carry out any particular sex act with any particular individual or class of individuals, yet they’re acting as if acknowledgment of the humanity and worth of trans individuals is a dictatorial smack in their faces.

They sound a lot like right-wing bigots, actually.

Another facet of this argument: the usual lackwits are making triumphant announcements.

ha ha, Rebecca and PZ have finally discovered the RadFem rad hate group after denying their existence for months.

Wrong. I haven’t denied the existence of a demented feminist fringe: what I have said is that the kooks who are constantly denouncing people like me and Rebecca Watson and Amanda Marcotte as “radical feminists” don’t have the slightest clue. The fact that we clearly oppose the weird radfem agenda of transphobic hatred ought to finally make that clear to them…but give ’em a day. They’ll be back to accusing FtB of being a hive of radical feminists again.

You want to see ugly? Here’s ugly. These kooks really hate trans people.

Occidental College President Jonathan Veitch must resign

Occidental College is a small school in northeastern Los Angeles. It’s got about 2,000 students at any one time. And it’s got a huge sexual assault problem: yesterday, 38 students and alumnae of Occidental filed a Title IX complaint with the Federal Department of Education claiming that the college violated civil rights law in its handling of reports of sexual assaults and rapes — which seem to happen on the Oxy campus with terrifying frequency.

Survivors of rape and sexual assault at Occidental report that administrators threatened them with unpleasant consequences when they enquired about the process of reporting a sexual assault. Survivors were warned that the hearings process was “long and arduous.” One survivor was told she’d be the one switching dorms rather than her assailant. When men were found in the course of college hearings to have indeed committed rapes of their fellow students, they were often merely suspended temporarily — and in at least two cases, those suspensions were lifted on appeal and the rapists “sentenced” to writing book reports instead.

Gloria Allred, who is providing the 38 plaintiffs with representation in their Title IX complaint, reports in the video embedded below that when Occidental President Jonathan Veitch was informed that an accused rapist was on the guest list for a social event at Veitch’s home, he responded by issuing a dis-invitation … to two members of the school’s sexual assault task force.

Here Allred speaks, along with several remarkably brave survivors and supportive faculty member Caroline Heldman, the school’s Politics Department chair.

What’s been the response of Occidental College president Jonathan Veitch to the issue? Browbeating sexual assault survivors in the campus press when they dare suggest he’s sitting with his thumbs up his ass:

I’m dismayed that having agreed to that conversation, a number of well-intentioned people have chosen to cast our motives into doubt; vilify dedicated, hard-working members of Student Affairs; question the sincerity of our response; and actively sought to embarrass the College on the evening news. That is their choice, and there is very little I can do about it. I can say that it reflects poorly on their commitment to this conversation and to the broader education that must take place if we are to change a culture we all find repugnant. The repugnance of sexual assault is not open to question; but the policies and procedures that guide our response to those incidents is something about which reasonable people can disagree. I’m sure there are those who feel that confrontation is necessary to exert pressure on the College to do the right thing. But there is a point where confrontation becomes an end in itself—satisfying, no doubt, but counter-productive with regard to our shared aims. When it crosses that threshold and descends into name-calling, vilification and misrepresentation, it undermines the trust and good will of everyone involved. And worst of all, it does not lead to progress on this important issue.

That letter to the campus paper was published March 5. Veitch has since walked it back some, saying that his letter may have “alienated people who care about sexual assault” and clarifying that his intent was to object to “the implication–reported in the media — that the College is not serious about the issue of sexual assault. We are very serious.”

Serious enough to have brought in, just this week, experienced sexual assault prosecutors as consultants to help the school assess and overhaul its enforcement policy. That’s a smart and sensible move.

It’s just too bad that Veitch waited until campus anti-rape activists lit a bonfire under his doubly enthumbed ass, complete with an appeal to the Department of Education to lift the school’s federal funding, before taking a step he should have taken on Day One. Veitch has been president at Occidental since 2009. That means all the students in the video linked above were raped on Veitch’s watch. All the administrative obstacles to survivors reporting assaults against them mentioned here happened on Veitch’s watch. All the stories relayed in the video above: On Veitch’s watch. All the assigned book reports and community service sentences for acts that should have brought jail time and sex offender registry? On Veitch’s watch.

Not that Veitch’s resigning would fix Occidental College’s rape problem: it sounds as though there are a few other administrators with serious culpability who ought to be examined as well.

But it would be a good start.

Oh god yes yes

Oliver Knevitt has compiled his Top 5 Most Irritating Terms In Evolution Reporting. Read it, science journalists! They are:

  1. “Survival of the fittest.” Up yours, Herbert Spencer!

  2. “Living fossil.” What does that even mean? Do you really think modern coelacanths look anything like the ones from 100 million years ago?

  3. “Missing link.” It assumes a chain, and implies it’s broken. And worse, it’s always getting used when a scientist discovers a new transitional form!

  4. “More evolved/less evolved.” Darwin himself rejected this view, and it’s also one that makes no sense. A clam is as “evolved” as I am.

  5. “Adaptation.” Ooh, interesting choice. Adaptation is real and important, but journalists do tend to overuse it and apply it inappropriately. There are people who’d call male impotence an adaptation.

I’d add “Darwinism”. We aren’t using Darwin’s model anymore; he had no accurate notion of how inheritance worked, for instance — genes and alleles, the stuff of most modern theory, are not present anywhere in his works.

“Darwinian” is also problematic. It does have a specific, technical meaning, but it’s often applied thoughtlessly to every process in evolution.

Let’s also add the usual yellow journalistic trait of turning everything into a “revolution” or a complete disproof of all that has gone before. Asking the question, “Was Darwin Wrong?” is stupid and misleading. Claiming that evo-devo or epigenetics or genomics or molecular biology will completely “revolutionize” or overturn antiquated notions or throw the entire field of evolutionary biology into complete chaos are also nonsense — so far those sub-disciplines have reinforced and modified appropriately an understanding of evolution that was forged in the 1930s. If something really revolutionary comes up, you’ll know it because the mobs of excited scientists flocking to the new idea and turning it into significant advances in our understanding will make it obvious.

Do you want to be like El Salvador?

El Salvador has an absolute prohibition on all abortions — they can’t even be done to save the life of the mother (it’s a very Catholic country, are you surprised?) Now a situation has made the news that exposes the villainy of that policy.

A young woman named Beatriz is petitioning El Salvador’s supreme court to be allowed to get an abortion. Why? There’s a couple of really good reasons.

The four-month fetus is acephalic — no brain has formed. It’s doomed. It will never be viable. At best, it will be born, live a few days as a vegetable on life support, and die.

The mother is suffering from complications from lupus and kidney disease. The fetus won’t even get to the point of being born — the mother will be killed by this pregnancy first.

The heartless, amoral, religiously-based rules of that society are condemning this woman to death. In addition, if any doctor honors their Hippocratic oath and helps her live, they can be prosecuted and sentenced to long terms in prison for it.

Beatriz has been refused a necessary and simple medical procedure because the demented fuckwits of the Catholic Church have prioritized dogma over human life. She has to beg authorities, right up to the highest levels of government, for the right to live.

All because some old assholes believe god has told them that the dying lump of meat in her belly is more precious than a woman’s life.