Ain’t that the cutest little thing

nomad

I really do like Apple products, but there’s one thing about them that really annoys me: the ever-shifting arrangement of connectors. Every Mac device seems to have a slightly different array of ports, and you need different cables with every one. I’ve got four different video adapters in my travel bag. On my last trip, I brought the charging cable for my iPad…which doesn’t work with my iPhone, so my phone was dead on the second day. I can’t even use the power brick from my wife’s laptop on mine, and vice versa. So I’m always on the lookout for relatively cheap, non-Apple adapters of various sorts.

I like this one, from Nomad. It fits on my keychain! It’s tiny! I’ll have a connector for my iPad everywhere I go! Also, they sent it to me free on trial, so even better.

Of course, now watch: the next time I get a new laptop, it’ll have even more different cables. What I’m going to need is the Swiss Army Knife of cable adapters.

Say Rush Holt isn’t retiring, please

One of our precious rare godless representatives is retiring from office. And unsurprisingly, it turns out that he speaks with the voice of reason on his way out the door. He has an interview on Salon in which he exhibits an appropriate on science.

I am not saying that scientists are smarter or wiser than other folks. But there are habits of mind: you know, a deep appreciation of evidence; an ability to deal with probability and statistics, to be alert to cognitive biases and tricks that our minds play on ourselves; … a willingness to accept tentative conclusions and accept … the uncertainty of these scientific conclusions — not as reason for inaction, but a way of finding the best path forward …

You know, if we had a few hundred Rush Holts scrambling for high office, rather than a mob of incompetent teabaggin’ idjits getting elected, I’d have a lot more optimism for this country and humanity in general. But instead we get Ted Cruz, Steve King, Paul Broun, Rand Paul, Michele Bachmann, Tom Coburn, Louie Gohmert, Eric Cantor…jebus, stop me before I die of terminal cynicism.

How delusional can climate change denialists get?

The CEO of Apple, Tim Cook, was confronted by climate change denialists in a shareholders’ meeting; they demanded that he focus on return on investment and stop making changes to reduce emissions. MORE MONEY, please, and SCREW THE ENVIRONMENT. Cook made the right response.

What ensued was the only time I can recall seeing Tim Cook angry, and he categorically rejected the worldview behind the NCPPR’s advocacy. He said that there are many things Apple does because they are right and just, and that a return on investment (ROI) was not the primary consideration on such issues.

“When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind,” he said, “I don’t consider the bloody ROI.” He said that the same thing about environmental issues, worker safety, and other areas where Apple is a leader.

Nice words, but I’ll be happier when I see less exploitation of foreign workers, and let’s not have any illusions that tech corporations are friends to the planet. But I’ll acknowledge that at least Apple is taking a few steps in the right direction.

If you’re cynical enough, you could also wave away Cook’s response as self-promoting PR. But if you want a fun read, you should see the denialist’s counter-response. The National Center for Public Policy Research has issued an angry denunciation. I think they’re trying to persuade me to buy Apple stock.

“Although the National Center’s proposal did not receive the required votes to pass, millions of Apple shareholders now know that the company is involved with organizations that don’t appear to have the best interest of Apple’s investors in mind,” said Danhof. “Too often investors look at short-term returns and are unaware of corporate policy decisions that may affect long-term financial prospects. After today’s meeting, investors can be certain that Apple is wasting untold amounts of shareholder money to combat so-called climate change. The only remaining question is: how much?”

Wait…so the people who are all about profits now are complaining that Apple, by making some minimal efforts to address climate change, is failing to consider long term prospects? Madness. If that’s their question, I’ll just answer it with “Not enough.”

“Rather than opting for transparency, Apple opposed the National Center’s resolution,” noted Danhof. “Apple’s actions, from hiring of President Obama’s former head of the Environmental Protection Agency Lisa Jackson, to its investments in supposedly 100 percent renewable data centers, to Cook’s antics at today’s meeting, appear to be geared more towards combating so-called climate change rather than developing new and innovative phones and computers.”

Whoa. The NCPPR is making Apple sound like a completely green company. Are we sure this isn’t just a PR front for Apple?

You know, I really like Apple products, and I have a fine collection of widgets with the Apple logo on them, but I have no illusions: Apple is first and foremost a company that makes lots and lots of money. Quarterly revenue of $38 billion and quarterly profit of $8 billion sorta says that they are rather focused on selling phones and computers. That the denialists would even think to argue otherwise is a testimonial to how delusional they are.

“Tim Cook, like every other American, is entitled to his own political views and to be an activist of any legal sort he likes on his own time,” said Amy Ridenour, chairman of the National Center for Public Policy Research. “And if Tim Cook, private citizen, does not care that over 95 percent of all climate models have over-forecast the extent of predicted global warming, and wishes to use those faulty models to lobby for government policies that raise prices, kill jobs and retard economic growth and extended lifespans in the Third World, he has a right to lobby as he likes. But as the CEO of a publicly-held corporation, Tim Cook has a responsibility to, consistent with the law, to make money for his investors. If he’d rather be CEO of the Sierra Club or Greenpeace, he should apply.”

Interesting. I remember when the denialists would argue that the planet wasn’t warming (oh, they still do, sometimes); now they’re reduced to complaining that we’re pumping more energy into the atmosphere, but it’s simply not quite as much as the models predicted. That’s progress, I suppose.

I still don’t see how they can argue that climate change won’t be economically disruptive, or that it is imprudent to try and deal with long-term environmental changes before they actually demolish the markets they love so much.

A commenter has pointed out an article about that odd 95% claim. It turns out that if a scientist publishes a prediction with an upper and lower bound, and the reality turns out to be pretty darned close to the center of the distribution, you can just point at the upper bound and claim he exaggerated. Brilliantly dishonest.

Marthe Gautier, another woman scientist trivialized

tri21

I had known that Jérôme Lejeune was the fellow who had discovered that Down Syndrome was caused by trisomy of chromosome 21, but it seems there were many other things about him I had not known — he was just a name. But there were a few things that set me aback.

Lejeune became not just a renowned researcher but the darling of the French Catholic right-to-life movement.  You can read long flattering Wikipedia biographies in both French and English. He was showered with awards and given a prestigious Chair of Human Genetics at the Paris School of Medicine, bypassing the usual competition.

When prenatal diagnosis became available Lejeune campaigned against it on religious grounds. He became a friend of Pope John Paul II and was appointed President of the Pontifical Academy for Life (Wikipedia), the Catholic think-tank for medical ethics.  He died in 1994.  The Fondation Jerome-Lejeune was established in his honour; there’s an American branch too.  This foundation provides funds for research into Down syndrome and support for families and patients, but only in the context of very strong opposition to abortion.  They’re also campaigning to have Lejeune beatified by the Vatican.

Uh, OK. Ick. One of those Catholics. I am entertained by the thought that if you do good science and happen to be Catholic, though, the church will try to get you beatified.

But then I learned something that really kind of pisses me off. He’s not the guy who discovered trisomy 21. He’s the guy who stole credit for discovering trisomy 21 (sleazy behavior like that may have just fast-tracked him to Catholic sainthood now).

The real discoverer was a woman, Marthe Gautier, who had done all the cell work that led to the identification of the chromosome abnormalities. She got a bit of space and some rudimentary equipment, and cultured cells using serum derived from her own blood. Man, we’ve got it easy nowadays.

For this work she was given a disused laboratory with a fridge, a centrifuge, and a poor quality microscope, but no funding. And of course she still had her other responsibilities. But she was keen and resourceful, so she took out a personal loan to buy glassware, kept a live cockerel as a source of serum, and used her own blood when she needed human serum.

So she set up normal human cells, prepped them for the chromosome squashes, grew Down syndrome cells and did likewise, and was held up by her primitive gear at that point…when Jérôme Lejeune showed up and whisked all of her data away to get it photographed. And then went off to a conference where he announced that he had discovered the cause of Down syndrome, and then published the story with Gautier’s name as a middle author — a paper she did not get to see and knew nothing about until the day before publication.

Lejeune is dead now, but the sleaze continues in his name. There was to be an award ceremony for Gautier — she’s 88 now — at the French Federation of Human Genetics’ (FFGH) seventh biennial congress on human and medical genetics in Bordeaux. Guess who is trying to intimidate the attendees by having a bailiff sent to film the proceedings? Fondation Jérôme Lejeune, of course, because Gautier was intending to give a speech that would affect the memory of Pr. Jérôme Lejeune. I think his foundation is doing a fine job of that already.

It’s very nice that Lejeune at least gave credit to Gautier in the authorship of the original paper, but if you browse the Foundation web page, you discover that (in the creepy mix of pro-Catholic and anti-abortion sentiment mingled with worthy appeals for care and tolerance for Down syndrome people), they repeatedly state that Lejeune is the “discoverer of Down syndrome” — so much so that it’s clear that they attach a great deal of importance on the identity of the discoverer. They don’t seem to attach much importance to the fact that he appropriated the hard work of a woman laboring away under primitive conditions, and do think it very important that she be denied recognition. Lejeune also thought the discovery was worthy of a Nobel prize (no, he didn’t get one), so…Very Big Deal. But not big enough to demand honesty and integrity in its appreciation of who did the work.

By the way, you should read the Lejeune Foundation’s excuses. They are intrinsically horrible. They ask who profits from the dispute, and the answer is…anti-Catholic terrorists.

Is this an attempt at proving that Jérôme lejeune surely can’t have made a major scientific discovery, as he is opposed to abortion and is considered as an “intransigent catholic” (horresco referens)?

…

This ideological terrorism, currently very popular but whose origin is easily traceable, does not come as a surprise to anyone. The Foundation and the Pr. Lejeune will handle the matter the way it deserves to be handled.

Popular but…easily traceable? handle the matter the way it deserves to be handled? Paranoid persecution complex much?

Also, Gautier is an old woman and her claims are late and not trustworthy.

Friday Cephalopod: So, I failed the test, like, twice. Now what do I do?

sepia-officinalis

I tried to take the cephalopod intelligence test.

James Wood, a teuthologist (cephalopod scientist), imagined creating an intelligence test for humans, by an octopus:

“So the octopus thinks: ‘All right. I’m going to make an intelligence test for humans, because they show a little bit of promise, in a very few ways.’ And the first question the octopus comes up with is this: How many color patterns can your severed arm produce in one second?”

Turns out humans only get two tries, and now I have to type this out with my tongue. Awkward.

Mary’s Monday Metazoan: A topical topic

I had to go with bees because tomorrow, 6pm, at the Common Cup Coffeehouse in Morris, Minnesota, it’s time for Café Scientifique. Carrie Eberle, research agronomist post-doc at the North Central Soil Conservation Research Lab, will be talking about “The good, the bad, and the honey,” efforts to provide alternative forage crops to keep bees happy and healthy.

Gamifying and scientifying your sex life, badly

There’s a new app called Spreadsheets. This is not new; there are millions of apps, and 95% of them are crap. Spreadsheets purports to use the accelerometer and microphone in your smartphone to measure your sexual performance — a kind of fitbit for sex (do not tell my wife, she’s already slightly obsessed with her fitbit stats).

I find the whole idea a little weird, and have zero interest in the thing, but whatever floats your boat, ‘k? But here’s what I find offensive and stupid: calling the noise from these smartphone stats a study of sex duration in America. It’s basically a sex toy that will be used sporadically and idiosyncratically, and you’re not going to get anything that could be called “information” out of it. Case in point: look at the data on intercourse duration.

sexduration

That makes no sense. Why would you even expect variation to fall in the arbitrary boundary lines of the states? For instance, the part of Minnesota where I live is, culturally and geographically, very similar to the Dakotas, yet somehow I’m supposed to believe that there’s some kind of remarkable transition in sexual behavior over there? Why? Show me the variance in the data. Give me a somewhat finer grained breakdown. What these data show is that what they’re measuring is patternless and random.

The one message I take from that figure is this: dudes, your app doesn’t work.

Sean Carroll vs William Lane Craig

Right now! They’re battling it out on the nature of the universe in a God and Cosmology Debate.

The preliminaries started at 7, my time. You missed the opening prayer in which the officiant begged god to lead everyone to a deeper understanding of the truth, concluding with the declaration that Jesus is the truth. I think the deck is stacked.

Well, sort of. I expect Carroll to mop the floor with Craig, because he has the understanding, Craig just has the rote rhetoric.

We’re at the intermission. Here’s the short summary of the debate so far:

Craig: I’m going to pretend to be a physicist and use sciencey words to retrofit modern cosmology to my primitive, crude, vague theistic sensibilities, and religion explains the universe better than physics because I can make up any ol’ shit I want.

Carroll: No, you get everything wrong, you’ve quote-mined and misinterpreted all these papers you cite, and cosmological theories must be rigorous and describe details of the universe beyond simply “it started”.

Carroll is speaking with authority — he knows this stuff, and it shows. This is why qualified scientists with expertise in public communication are so important — they can talk about the real science with depth, and recognize when their opponent is spouting bafflegab.

Really, I don’t know this stuff. Except now I’m learning a lot from listening to Sean Carroll. It would be nicer if Craig would shut up, sit down, and try to learn something too, since he is so far out of his depth.

They’ve locked the video down and made it private. I’m sorry to see that; Carroll was extremely edifying and did a terrific job of exposing Craig’s pretenses. Maybe it will be made available later, or we’ll just have to keep reading Sean Carroll’s blog to learn what physics really says.