I say to you that we are full of chemicals which require us to belong to folk societies, or failing that, to feel lousy all the time. We are chemically engineered to live in folk societies, just as fish are chemically engineered to live in clean water—and there aren’t any folk societies for us anymore. (Kurt Vonnegut)
Wolfgang Pauli apparently once said of a student’s work: “This isn’t right. This isn’t even wrong.”, to deride it for being unfalsifiable. Grad school isn’t quite that bad. We’re all running the experiment together every day. We can tell whether or not it’s working, at least in theory. But only if we’re willing to look. I’m looking; I say it’s not working, at least not for graduate students, not on average (mean or median, pick your poison).
I was recently asked to do peer review of a paper in the Elsevier journal Icarus. Here’s what I said. I encourage you to say something in the same vein:
Thank you for your invitation to participate in the peer review process which is so vital to the progress of scientific knowledge. However, I unwilling to contribute any review or editorial work to publications which do not satisfy very liberal Open Access criteria as set out by, for example, the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing from 2003, or the Creative Commons Attribution license used by the Public Library of Science Journals. I look forward to a day hopefully not too far off when Elsevier decides to support free access to scientific knowledge (PDF) for all, and especially for scientific knowledge which was gained in part through publicly funded research.
Peer review is only one necessary ingredient for science to work. Open access and systemic transparency are others. All of them need work.
Science is a strange kind of reality worship. We want to know what really is, out there in the physical world, independent of the vagaries of our internal experience. We try to find what’s true for everyone, all the time. It’s easy for me to forget that there are some contexts in which what is actually happening, in a measurable sense, is not what matters most. Sometimes, it hardly seems to matter at all. Corporate PR hacks, religious proselytizers and other propagandists understand this intuitively. If you tell people a story they want to believe, often they will go ahead and believe it, regardless of any countervailing evidence. They will thank Big Brother for increasing the chocolate ration from 30 grams to 20 grams per week. But this kind of disconnection of external from internal reality isn’t always sinister. Sometimes it isn’t even a disconnection so much as it is an orthogonality. Disconnection suggests that the two were once connected, or are intended to be one, but our internal experience is just not the same thing as external reality. They are related, but separated, by warm vitreous pools of light and hairy waveguides. There is some part of us which is intrinsic, or such a distant and distorted echo of the outside world as to be unrecognizable.
I feel the way I did that morning in the hostel in Juneau, when Becky and I were starting our kayaking trip in Alaska in May of the year 2000, almost exactly 10 years ago. I feel that way, but on a different time scale. I woke up in the bunk, and didn’t know where I was. I’m sure that feeling has a name, but I don’t know what it is. I was temporarily misplaced. The most recent bits of history, which had gotten me there, were lost in my mind somewhere. An episode of micro-amnesia. Where am I? And then in a wrenching mental gyration, it all comes back. Like looking at a map and a compass, and suddenly realizing you’ve gotten turned around. It’s not that peak, it’s this one. That means we’re here, not there. And fuck, we’re out of water too. Now what?
Two days ago I was leaning towards California’s Area of Bays, but now I’m on the other side of the Rockies. Trying to imagine, what would I do out there? How would I get to know people? Who would I meet? And even just looking at the organizations I know about already, I’m finding it’s pretty hard to imagine not making friends in Boulder. Again. I think part of me has been resistant to the idea, because it reeks of the path of least resistance. Somehow it feels like running back to Caltech when I don’t know what to do next, and that has historically resulted in a lot of psychological trauma. As the saying goes… “Never again”. But moving to Boulder was much more intentional than coming to Caltech the first time around. I tried to put my head in Boulder last night. I tried to imagine, what would I be doing now, if I were there? How would I meet people? The main strength that the Bay Area has in my mind is that there are more people there that I know than in Boulder, and that all else being equal, it’s likely that that will continue to be the case going forward, as it seems to be a fairly deep potential well for the types of folks that have passed through my life. It’s a bigger place too, in terms of people and economy. It would have more variety in both. More opportunity. But at what expense? And is more really better in this context? Living there is much more expensive (incredibly… since Boulder isn’t exactly cheap). The wilderness is harder to get to by bike. I love the idea of cities but for historical reasons, I am a creature of town and country. There are other paths I might have taken that would have led me to large urban centers, but it’s unclear whether it’s worth my exploring those paths at this point.
I need a sense of community, and a local culture I can feel a part of. I need some strategic long term flexibility in job opportunities. I need wilderness. I need a place that loves bicycles. I need some social seed crystals.
I’d been thinking that I’d float for the summer, traveling and visiting, but without any real roots. Without making a choice. And then in the fall, figure out where to go. But now I’m not so sure that’s the best way to go. Maybe instead it makes sense to go to a place and float there. Tread water, and see how it feels. This would put these summer months to good use. Still enjoyable, but with the deeper purpose of getting to know the place and the people. Or getting to know them again. Backpacking and bike riding. Potlucks and parties. Social networking for fun and profit.
And so it was that I re-acquainted myself with Community Cycles, which is a kind of combination Bike Oven and CICLE, rolled into one. I was especially moved by this wonderful five minute vignette:
It seems almost too good to be true. A town cris-crossed by bike paths, with a multi-branch bike culture organization that is apparently thriving and growing and able to support itself financially? That has an aggressively understanding DoT (compared to some places we could name). How could I not work with them?
I’m an emphatically utilitarian cyclist. My bike is my only ride. It is my way of going. It is point A to point B with a pile of stuff. But that’s not all it is, and sometimes I forget.
I started biking 20 years ago when I was 14 and living in Japan as an exchange student. It was how everyone got to school. Every morning was a flood of blue wool uniforms on classic bikes going clickety-click and ding-ding. Baskets, fenders, and not much in the way of gears. So it was utilitarian there too, but I also used my bike as an anti-depressant. I didn’t speak Japanese when I got there. My family didn’t speak English. All the other students were always busy with homework. I was lonely to the point of tears. Sometimes I’d ride around after school until dark. Sometimes beyond dark, in the rain and the wind. I discovered fireflies in a peace park one night. I let a typhoon blow me across the plain. I climbed hills and had crashes. It was a kind of love affair, it was something I could feel unabashedly good about, even if my host family thought I was crazy for staying out and getting drenched. It was deep rhythmic breathing and endorphins. It was still lonely, but at least I was focused. I felt free. When I came back to the US, I traded the circuitous hour and a half long school bus ride for an additional seventy nine minutes of sleep and an eleven minute bike ride each morning.
We watched a Long Now talk last night by Nils Gilman, entitled Deviant Globalization. I first ran across Gilman in a shorter talk from a couple of years ago about the global illicit economy — black markets. He describes deviant globalization somewhat differently. Trade can be perfectly legal, and still deviant. He used the example of US men arranging trysts with 14 year old girls in Canada… which amazingly could still be considered legal until 2008, since 14 was the nationwide age of consent. Sure, it was legal, but who really thought it was okay? So deviant globalization represents a kind of moral arbitrage. Demand exists for goods and services which are proscribed in different ways, to different degrees, in different places. Sometimes they’re socially taboo, and sometimes they’re outlawed, but in all cases there exists a kind of moral disequilibrium gradient that can be exploited.
What united all these extralegal commodity flows [...] was the unsanctioned circulation of goods and services that either because of the way they are produced or because of the way they are consumed violate someone’s ethical sensibilities.
One of his main points is that the steepness of that moral or regulatory gradient translates pretty directly into profit margins. Cocaine increases in value by 1400% when you bring it across the US border. This creates incredible incentives to get around the rules, even at great risk. This is why Prohibition rarely works as a policy. Any attempt at eradication financially empowers those who are willing to continue taking the risks you’re able to impose.
Note: this was originally written May 14th, 6 weeks ago.
I thought I wouldn’t have to do this again. Not alone. Build a future from scratch. Carve it out of a big block of nothing. It felt so comfortable. So safe. At least there will always be Michelle. That’s what I thought. Now I’m moving out. She’s kicking me out. Get out. Get out of my life. Go away. Tyler doesn’t live here anymore!
I’m going to live in the front house for six weeks, and we’re going to try to get to know each other again. I feel like I’m a burden on her. An emotional liability to be written off if possible. Hazardous psychological material. Who would want to get to know me? And so the thought of going off again, into the world, to try and make a place for myself alone, seems impossible. But at the same time, it seems like that’s what she’s trying to get me to do. Think about being apart. Dream about it, and hope it’s not just a nightmare.
David Montgomery‘s Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations reminded me a lot of When the Rivers Run Dry by Fred Pearce, except that instead of looking at how we have allocated our water resources globally, it focuses on the way humanity has husbanded (or not) its soil resources throughout history, through a vast array of case studies in what we got wrong. It also reminded me a little bit of Energy at the Crossroads, insofar as the last chapter or two, instead of being a concrete, level-headed outline of what we need to do if we actually want to solve the problem which has been presented, it devolves a little bit into a lament. You’ve convinced me there’s a problem. Clearly you have some idea of what the solution looks like. Please don’t be afraid to put that idea into words, even if you think the plausible solutions are so far removed from our current way of doing things that someone is going to think you’re crazy. I think a lot of the most credible solutions to our sustainability problems sound “crazy” to “normal” people these days… but that’s just the way it is. We still need to know what the available solutions look like, or at the very least, what characteristics one can sketch out which any available solution has to have.
Deborah Tannen is a sociolinguist at Georgetown University who studies “genderlects” — the speech and conversational patterns that exist both between women and men, and also within same-sex communications. She wrote You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation in 1990, and it explores an interesting way to interpret several types of common (often, explicitly stereotypical) misunderstandings that take place between men and women. Her idea is that generally in conversation women are trying (perhaps unconsciously) to facilitate intimacy, building relationships through social connectedness, whereas men are attempting (also perhaps unconsciously) to negotiate a social hierarchy.
America can always be counted on to do the right thing, after it has exhausted all other possibilities. — Winston Churchill
Incoming Memes
Twitterfeed
I think it's time to get out into that dusty, dusty Bat Country... 5 days ago
Just about packed... gonna nap until grocery and hardware stores open, or thereabouts. 5 days ago
Right. So I'm supposed to be all packed up and ready to go in 24 hours. Uh huh. We'll just have to see about that! 1 week ago
Thank goodness for coffee, waffles, dynamos and LEDs. Headed out to inspect 18km worth of bike lanes for @bouldergobldr on @burningman time. 1 week ago
Indulging in a little camouflage and para-aramid fiber lust, fashion bedamned! 1 week ago
How could I be anything but happy to have inspired someone else to go on a bicycle date? 1 week ago
Helping Kerry put up onions and tomatoes and other garden fruits for the long harsh winter. 1 week ago
Way up north it's the perfect temperature for moonbathing and stargazing with the crickets, cicadas, and toads. 1 week ago
Anybody up for another playa "training ride" tonight? Would it be absurd to try and ride to New Belgium and back by moonlight? 1 week ago
Biked on Boulder's paths all night with a mischievous girl in the moonlight and a waffle iron in my panniers. 1 week ago
Russia in color, a century ago2010/08/20 Incredible full color photos from all over the hinterlands of the Russian empire, around the year my grandmother was born. Just before it all disintegrated into chaos.
Profile: Viktor Bout2010/08/20 Viktor Bout, one of the arms dealers that served as a model for the protagonist in Lord of War, is set to be extradited from Thailand to the US. Russia is not pleased.
Poligraft | The Sunlight Foundation2010/08/18 Poligraft is an awesome tool from Sunlight for looking at the political influence and connections of people and organizations mentioned in news stories and press releases. A kind of digital political x-ray machine.
Federal R&D Agency Funding Profiles | Proposal Exponent2010/08/13 Good overview of where federal research dollars are spent. No surprise that it's dominated by DoD (more than half). And about half of the non-DoD funding goes to the NIH. The rest of us bicker over less than a quarter of it. Climate change? Renewable energy and efficiency measures? All in that quarter. Along with all geologic hazard research, the search for Earth crossing asteroids, habitable planets, life, and intelligence elsewhere in the Universe. All space exploration. All efforts to understand how ocean circulation works. All basic research into producing salt and drought tolerant crops, as well as soil and water conservation techniques. All archival sequencing of the world's extant species. All in that quarter. Eventually DoD will realize these things are security threats. Maybe they already have.
Cartoneros del Primer Mundo - lanacion.com2010/08/11 Box people of the first world? La Nacion, an Argentinian newspaper, wanted to use one of my dumpster diving pictures. Strange days.
Zoom into your Roof: Checking the Thermal Performance of Homes2010/08/11 Some cities in Belgium pooled resources to create a thermographic map of the buildings within their boundaries, for use as a resource to homeowners and building managers interested in doing attic insulation and infiltration retrofits. Awesome
With My Own Two Wheels2010/08/08 A documentary in progress, following various pedal powered projects around the world. With all the energy and technology we have access to in the US, it's easy to forget that for billions of people, access to this wonderfully simple 19th century contraption is still a bit step in the right direction. And actually... in many cases it would be for us too.
Deconstructing the groovy Bicilicuadora2010/08/08 Blender hooked up to a bike with a makeshift sidewall dynamo. Direct mechanical drive, and beautiful photos by Cass.
Clean Energy Action2010/08/03 Boulder may be deciding where its energy will come from for the next 20 years tomorrow... here's hoping we have the guts to do the right thing in a Long Now context. Rally at the Municipal Building 1777 Broadway, 5pm Tuesday 8/3!
