Copper vs. Orphan Black

I recently began watching the BBC America series Copper, which ran for two seasons from 2012 to 2013. The series is not without its flaws, including a somewhat slow start to its main story lines (as noted by a review in Variety published shortly after the series' initial release), but overall I found the series to be an excellent period piece, which does a better job than Scorsese's Gangs of New York in terms of presenting the actual history of the Five Points neighborhood during the Civil War (which is not to say that Scorsese's film is not excellent in many other respects!).

It is surprising or at least disappointing that Copper was cancelled and BBC America's other original series, Orphan Black, is still running strong. While the premise of Orphan Black is intriguing, the lead actress is fantastic, and the showrunners clearly know the tricks of their trade, I had to stop watching the show on account of the increasingly absurd, byzantine layers of conspiracy and melodrama, together with the sense that the main story line is becoming less plausible and less intelligible with each startling new revelation. And despite the fact that a PhD in evo devo was extensively consulted by the showrunners--they even based one of the main characters on her--whenever anything science-y shows up on screen, it always comes out either as clearly fallacious or as unintelligible gobbledigook. Sigh.

Five Points, Manhattan (George Catlin, 1827)

Psychology Replication Study

Many of you may have heard of the recent psychology replication study, published in Science, in which researchers attempted to replicate 100 hand-picked psychology studies, and were only able to successfully replicate 39 of them.

I am a huge fan of this study, among other things because it encourages other scientists to attempt replication (which everyone agrees is not done enough in the sciences). The result also opens up a bunch of cool interpretive questions about scientific method and statistical analysis.

One obvious mistake to avoid is concluding based on this study that only 39% of the original studies were "correct," in some sense of the word. Just as some of the initial 100 studies probably really were flawed and gave misleading results (which I believe can be thought of as "false positives" without being too misleading), this is also probably true of some of the failed replications as well (which can analogously be thought of as "false negatives").

But can we get more precise with the implications, even to a first approximation? I have an amateur interest in philosophy of science, but am wholly ignorant of experimental design and statistical analysis. So I could use a hand (hence this post).

Can we use Bayesian theory to get some clarity? Of course, we are going to have choose some semi-arbitrary numbers, like the probability that each of the initial findings is a false positive, the probability that each of the initial findings is a false negatives, and the probabilities that each of the attempted replications is a false positive or a false negative.

Apart from the general probability of false positives and false negatives with both the initial findings and the attempted replications, there are more particular factors to consider. One is the expertise of the experimenters; replication may be difficult, because specialized skills and practice may be necessary to successfully create the controlled conditions which will show the initial experimental result. There is also the obvious question of confirmation bias among the researchers who authored the initial studies. And so on.

Are Science Fiction and Fantasy Shockingly Offensive?

Liz Lutgendorff criticizes NPR's list of top 100 science fiction and fantasy novels for being "shockingly offensive" due to their misogyny.

I actually agree with Lutgendorff that there's a lot of sexism in the science fiction and fantasy genres. But is not aesthetically sound to judge an entire genre using a single moral or political principle. I also agree with Lutgendorff's implicit assumption that morality is relevant to aesthetic evaluation, but her article seems to imply that it is the only or the most important principle of aesthetic evaluation, which is false. 

Perhaps Lutgendorff is not making an aesthetic argument at all, but rather a moral or political argument about the badness of the science fiction and fantasy genres. In that case, her argument still seems rather tone-deaf to the aesthetic merit of some of the works she discusses (Terry Brooks' Shannara novels excluded, inter alia). This seems to be an example of a larger social trend to reduce all of moral, aesthetic, and spiritual evaluation to gender politics or to some other narrow (if nonetheless important) political principle.

The Flip Side of Critical Thinking

Have philosophy professors been neglecting half of their discipline? Jennifer M Morton, professor of philosophy at City College New York, argues that in addition to critical thinking, philosophy should be thought of as teaching "constructive imagination." 

Her article is a little wordy, and I'm not sure she sufficiently expounds and expands upon the promise of this notion, but it is indeed promising. I sense a new movement just around the corner for "Constructive Imagination" in liberal arts courses. Just please, could we avoid the frenzied use of buzzwords and self-congratulatory smarm, this one time? Morton's idea is too important to be gradually smothered through the usual academic mechanisms and machinations.

Via Daily Nous.

Bee-lieve It or Not

We can thank the beekeepers for maintaining the honeybee colony population in the face of colony collapse disorder.

The blog post doesn't discuss the fact that the number of bee colonies is still way down from a 1989 high, nor the ecosystem effects (if any) of beekeepers' more rigorous application of the traditional methods for replacing lost colonies. It does discuss the increase in the price of honey which seems to have been caused by these efforts.

I still feel some more context is needed to understand the full story of what is happening with the honeybees and CCD. While I am a believer in the free market, WHICH IS MAGIC just as the blog post says, something is missing (or several somethings).

THEESatisfaction

This duo has single-handedly restored my faith in MODERN MUSIC and TODAY'S YOUTH.

Here's the official video for their song "QueenS," from their first album AwE NaturallE (2012, on the Sub Pop label):

And here they are channeling Sun Ra (and so much more!) from their second album, EarthEE (2015, also on Sub Pop):

Of Lions and Poachers

Brent Stapelkamp, the UK researcher who has been tracking Cecil (and other lions) for years in Zimbabwe, does not want a ban on lion hunting. From the article:

"Hunting can be a valuable component to conservation. If a property has a hunting quota and that money comes back from hunting into the management of the land, it's not going to be at risk," he said. 

"So we have to be careful. The world reaction might polarise things and hunting might be banned outright. 

"I think we have to be very cautious about how this momentum can be used."

Many people have claimed that sport hunting can actually help conservation efforts, in large part because it gives landowners an economic incentive to try to protect and preserve populations of game animals, but it's interesting to hear similar thoughts being expressed by a researcher on the ground who was actually working with Cecil.

"An Honest Liar" (2015)

Not only is this film a layered look at the role of truth and deception in The Amazing Randi's own life, it gives evidence of the stubbornness of people's will to believe in the paranormal and the supernatural, even in the face of decisive refutation. 

Uri Geller, who has been exposed as a fraud repeatedly over the years, both by Randi and by others, still makes a living doing his tricks--even though he stopped referring to himself as a psychic, and now denies that he has psychic powers. It's pretty frightening that even exposed, admitted frauds can still find people to support their flim-flam, and make millions of dollars in so doing. As the film points out, people WANT to believe, and they will, even when the person deceiving them no longer bothers to hide the deception. That's powerful stuff. 

Update Regarding Ed Burger's "One Mind"

Edward A. Burger's forthcoming documentary "One Mind" has finished filming and is now in post-production. The film examines life in a Chinese Chan (Zen) monastery. 

Mr. Burger's previous work includes the film "Amongst White Clouds," which provided an introduction to the Chinese Buddhist hermit tradition.

These film projects were inspired in large part by Bill Porter's book Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits, which chronicled Porter's travels searching for Buddhist and Daoist hermits in the Zhongnan Mountains. More recently, he wrote a book called Zen Baggage, which chronicled his pilgrimage to sites associated with the earliest Zen Patriarchs. Porter is most well-known as a translator of Chinese Buddhist texts under the nomme de plume Red Pine. 

Same Study, Different Headlines (Bonus: POTUS Sips a Cuppa in the Land of its Origin)

This is what a cup of coffee looks like, in case you were wondering.

Compare: 

1. "Here's more evidence that coffee is good for your brain." 

Vs.:

2. "High coffee intake can increase risk of cognitive impairment."

Opposing or even opposite headlines about the very same study seems to be a common problem with the media's reporting on scientific research. In this case, there seems to be a relatively simple explanation for the disparity (in other cases of this sort, it often takes some digging to figure out what explains the opposing headlines). To wit: the study found an association between low coffee consumption and cognitive impairment, and between increasing coffee consumption and cognitive impairment, but not between high coffee consumption and cognitive impairment. 

In other coffee news:

Quoth the president of the United States, during a state visit to Ethiopia:

Of the many contributions Ethiopia has made to the world over the centuries, I’m certain that Americans want to thank you for one in particular, discovering something that sustains people around the world, day and night, and many people in the White House, and that is coffee. Thank you, Ethiopia. We are large consumers of coffee in the White House.

I thought coffee was invented in Yemen. (Addendum: According to the ever-useful WIKIPEDIA, coffee is definitely native to Ethiopia, but there seems to be some uncertainty and some dispute about where and when it was first used by people as a stimulant, and about where and when where it was first domesticated.) Either way, Ethiopian coffee is truly excellent. (As is Ethiopian cuisine, music, art, architecture, etc.)

Bullying as Aphrodisiac?

Jennifer Wong of Simon Fraser University

A disturbing new study shows that high school bullies have higher status, more self-esteem, less depression, and even have more sex than non-bullies. In addition, the usual interventions to stop bullying are ineffective, but the researchers have identified one that works: give bullies a putatively high status job, such as being a door-greeter at their school, and the bullying decreases.

Beware the Internet Mob

"Justice for Cecil."

The shaming of Walter Palmer strongly resembles a witch hunt. Who among us would survive such scrutiny? Even if we haven't killed a lion, most of us have done some stupid or immoral things. Sometimes repeatedly. "He who is without sin, throw the first stone." (Right?)

Clarificatory update: I actually agree that it was wrong to kill the lion for sport, that the wrongness was made worse by the fact that lions are endangered, and was also made worse because of the role this particular lion was playing in the ongoing research on how to protect the endangered lion populations. So I agree with many of the grounds that people are citing to justify their criticism of and use of social sanctions against Mr. Palmer. But the response to Palmer seems excessive in the light of his actual moral error, and is yet another example of the angry internet mob's frightening power. You could be next!

Second clarificatory update: Lots of people cross moral lines and should be punished, whether through the criminal justice system or through social sanctions. I am not opposed to using social sanctions against people who commit moral crimes, or against people who break the law. We should shame murderers, rapists, and thieves, for example, and Palmer also deserves a certain amount of social censure. But we also have a duty to make judgments about what legal punishments or social sanctions are justified in a calm, rational manner, lest we inadvertently make moral errors ourselves through disproportionate responses to others' immoral actions. Anger, hatred, scorn, and the other passions associated with moral outrage have a way of burning unchecked. It's not that we should forgive everything and punish nothing, but we owe it to ourselves to be careful in how we go about judging and punishing others. I fear that the internet is enabling and encouraging us to give into crude vigilantism and a mob mentality (even in cases where someone really did do something morally wrong). The short of it is, you can't reduce considered moral judgment to instant, unchecked outrage. I don't like where this is going, and I fear it will not end well for our society.

Third clarificatory update, now with more Reason: Three points worth bearing in mind: First, even if outrage is sometimes morally permissible or obligatory, what seems to be happening is people are equally outraged by all immoral actions, regardless of the severity of the immorality. For example, people seem just as outraged against Palmer (or even moreso) as they would be if he had killed a person, or 20 people, or 200 people.

Second, even if it is correct to be just as outraged against Palmer as many people are, there is still something troubling about the way the Internet and social media are causing people to focus excessively and obsessively on the particular day's cause celebre, and ignore everything all of the other crimes that are going on in the world. This excessive, obsessive focus is feeding our lack of proportion and perspective, and is leading to the harassment, firing, bankruptcy, etc. of people around the world (sometimes people who have legitimately done something wrong, but don't necessarily deserve the level of harassment they receive, occasionally people who don't seem to have actually done anything wrong in the first place, and therefore don't deserve any level of sanction or harassment).

Third, there is a case to be made that outrage in general is not morally permissible, at least if 'outrage' entails burning anger or hatred. As the Dhammapada puts it: "Hatred is never appeased by hatred in this world. By non-hatred alone is hatred appeased. This is a law eternal." (Dhp I.5).

Addendum: It seems others have been writing about this as well. 

Pictures of People Dressing Up as a Mummified Girl from the Nordic Bronze Age

The remains of a teenage girl from the Nordic Bronze Age were discovered near Egtved, Denmark in 1921, and nicknamed "Egtved Girl". 

A google image search revealed that, for some reason, lots of people have dressed up as her over the years. Here are some of them.

The Original Meaning of "Know Thyself"

The famous saying inscribed over the south entrance of Eno Hall at Princeton University.

"Know your place" is perhaps a fitting motto for the Ivy League.

According to this piece by Elizabeth Cady, the original meaning of the famous Greek saying gnothi seauthon was actually "Know your place," and it was intended to warn entrants of the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi to avoid the sin of hubris. Socrates seems to have imaginatively reinterpreted the motto when he used it to express the ideal of the examined life.

In Decline: Today's Libraries

The stacks are being downsized or eliminated, and to add insult to injury, more acquisition funds are being spent on fewer e-books because of current pricing models:

In evolving, librarians are steering tight acquisition budgets to e-books, which are more expensive than print because, among other reasons, publishers fear large databases of free e-books will hurt their business.

Also, as a disappointed library user, I have noticed that most e-books' user interface sucks compared to print books. No doubt one day it will all be fixed, but how many years will we have to wait for the publishers and libraries to get their acts together?

Soul and Sorcery

News to me: an American black author named Charles R. Saunders is generally regarded as the inventor of the "soul and sorcery" subgenre of fantasy fiction. Starting in the late 1970s, Saunders wrote fantasy adventure stories used African myth and history as his inspiration, to provide an alternative to the more familiar swords and sorcery inspired by Western myth and history--the early examples of which often contained frankly racist and ignorant portrayals of Africans and pseudo-Africans.

New Evidence on the History and Ancestry of Europeans

New DNA evidence for a large-scale Bronze Age migration of the Yamnaya people from southern Russia into Central and Northern Europe. They brought with them genes for lactose tolerance and innovations in material culture.

This evidence also bears on the debate about the early spread of Indo-European languages. Some say it shows that Indo-European languages spread from the Russian steppes to Europe, but another possibility is that there were two waves and two routes of transmission: one from the Near East, through Anatolia, and another via the southern Russian steppe.

The Connection between Over- and Under-Policing

An article in New York Magazine discusses the making of a documentary film about "Grim Sleeper" serial killer Lonnie Franklin, Jr. The end of this article is noteworthy, for it raises the issue of the connection between over- and under-policing. Apparently, a lot of black neighborhoods are victims of both; police are overly zealous when it comes to handing out revenue-generating tickets for speeding and other infractions, but insufficiently zealous in investigating murders of low-status members of the community.

Blacks in the U.S.: 50 Years after the Moynihan Report

A recent piece in The Economist discusses persistent U.S. racial inequalities, 50 years after Daniel Patrick Moynihan's famous (infamous?) 1965 report. Among other things, blacks in the U.S. have much lower life expectancy, much greater rates of homicide and incarceration, and much less social mobility than do whites.

Fifty years later, black America still fares badly on many of the predictors of success and signals of distress that concerned Moynihan. If it were a separate country, it would have a worse life expectancy than Mexico, a worse homicide rate than Ivory Coast and a higher proportion of its citizens behind bars than anywhere on earth (see interactive). This is despite the fact that, overall, America is home to the richest, most successful population of black African descent that the world has ever seen.

The above graph shows the rise in both black and white out of wedlock births since 1965. The chart below shows how blacks have much less "social mobility" (specifically, mobility between income quintiles) than do whites:

Not from a Pulp Magazine: Indian Temple Gold Edition

1. An ancient temple in India has treasure vaults filled with gold and gems, and is popularly believed to be protected by snakes and a god's curse.

2. The government in India is encouraging temples to deposit their gold in banks, so that it can be lent out at interest and help the economy by expanding credit.

3. Unfortunately, the rumored snake guardians and divine protection were not enough to prevent the theft of 266 kg of gold from Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple in Kerala.

Addendum: Video with pictures of some of the treasures housed in the Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple.