Accretions

Eclipse in Hangzhou - totality!

2009-07-25T00:21:54Z

Eclipse in Hangzhou - totality!
Originally uploaded by morganya

We managed to outrun the weather and see totality! More later ...

Cheap tricks by Microsoft, again

2009-06-18T01:32:28Z

The Micro$oft homepage today says:

"You'll never find it with old Firefox. So get rid of it, or get lost. ... Ditch the web browser you're using. ... Download Microsoft's best ever browser ... Use the clues and your brilliance ..." -- does this strike anyone else as ridiculously gimmicky and cheap?

"It's not as stupid as it sounds." Ha.

on lingering, time, and digital media

2009-06-17T02:04:42Z

I recently encountered this passage in an online journal (ironic, given its content), and found that it stuck in my mind for days afterward. In the article as a whole, the author (somewhat snarkily) muses on what has become of attention and time in our digital world. Without veering into technological determinism, he addresses the fact that using digital media isn't just a matter of choosing to do so -- there is an element of compulsion, of "domestication," possibly even of a lack of discipline (which I know I'm guilty of at times). I've been thinking a lot about this recently, both in research and in my personal life, so perhaps it resonated with me because of that. Here are the opening two paragraphs (for those of us -- me included, usually -- who don't have the time to click through ;~)). I may want to find that Proust passage to include in my own research ...

The pages in Proust's long novel describing a first-ever telephone call are often admired for their rare sensitivity to the experience of a new technology. The narrator is speaking, across the miles of cable, to his grandmother. More than speak, he listens. The telephone separates previously united aspects of his grandmother—her voice and physical presence—and through isolating the voice reveals something that the narrator had missed in the flesh: "having [her voice] alone beside me, seen without the mask of her face, I noticed in it for the first time the sorrows that had cracked it in the course of a lifetime."

Proust's passage has no equivalent in any contemporary fiction I know when it comes to an account of a first email read, or first social networking profile posted. Even so, it can't tell us much about what we may really wish to know about technology: never mind losing your virginity—what is it like to live with someone? Proust seems to have recognized that domestication, as the technologists call it, was harder to describe than initiation. In a later volume, he refers in passing to the telephone as "a supernatural instrument before whose miracles we used to stand amazed, and which we now employ without giving it a thought, to summon our tailor or order an ice cream."

no-content post: 88 lines about 44 presidents

2009-01-22T09:27:18Z

What an awesome poem. :~)

http://thewronghands.livejournal.com/723760.html

Punish supporters and Mormon church, but not Utah, for Prop. 8

2008-11-11T22:10:00Z

Like many, I'm ashamed of the very slim California majority who voted Proposition 8, which amends the California constitution to discriminate against same-sex couples in not allowing them to marry. Similar propositions were passed in Florida and Arizona, and anemone has told me about a new law in Arkansas that prevents same-sex couples from fostering or adopting children (and the group in favor has the hubris to claim that it doesn't discriminate because non-married hetero couples also can't foster, never mind that same-sex couples don't have a *way* of marrying in Arkansas!).

And like many, I'm angered by the Mormon Church's large and heavy-handed role in the "Yes on 8" campaign and other similar discrimination campaigns around the country. The Mormon Church has done these sorts of things for years in Utah politics, and I grew up often feeling helpless frustration as the church "unofficially" encouraged their members to prop up intolerant policies or support bigoted, closed-minded politicians. So I'm so happy that the church is finally being called to task for it on a large scale, and support both calls to challenge their legal standing in getting involved in political campaigns as a church and nonprofit (though they've been rebuffing these arguments for years) and their moral and ethical right meddling with topics that arguably don't really concern them. I encourage challenges or boycotts of the Yes on 8 donors. As the bloggers at Bitch, PhD put it,

Their protestations that they are within their "right" to participate in the Democratic process just infuriates more. Of course they are within their rights. That's not the point. The point is that they nakedly used the people they lead, people who put trust and love in them, to further a political goal that is hateful. In an organization that talks about love more than any other I've ever known.

But I adamantly don't support a boycott of the entire state of Utah. One reason is that boycotting Utah tourism would ironically most hurt the most liberal parts of Utah, particularly Utah's three primary tourist destinations: Salt Lake City (Utah's capital and the gateway to most of Utah's ski resorts), Park City (the site of many ski resorts and of Sundance Film Festival, which the Mormon church would probably be happy to see fail), and Moab (the town just outside of Arches National Park). Salt Lake City had one of the most liberal mayors in the country, Rocky Anderson, from 1999 to 2007 (and he probably would have been re-elected had he decided to run for a third term). Rocky has come to the anti-war protests (including one for which I was in town) and has been consistent in his criticism of the Bush administration (and support for impeachment of Bush). He supports the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, and gay marriage rights. And he was supported by the majority of Salt Lake City residents. I don't know as much about the politics of Park City or Moab, but I know they support liberal policies and politicians when voting, just like Salt Lake City does. And so I ask the boycotters, is this really what you want to be punishing?

By boycotting Utah, you'll hurt the most liberal parts of Utah much worse than the Mormon church. Boycott the actual Proposition 8 supporters (or support the detractors), put political and moral pressure on the Mormon Church, and, of course, work to ensure that Proposition 8 gets thrown out as the discrimination that it is, but don't misguidedly boycott the tourist destinations -- which are also the most liberal areas -- of an entire state.

Proposition 8 insanity

2008-10-16T01:02:39Z

I wrote about the danger of California's Proposition 8 to ban same-sex marriage last May, shortly after the California Supreme Court rightfully threw out Proposition 20 from 2000. Well, it seems that after initially being against it, a majority Californians are coming around to support Proposition 8, in part because of an ad campaign (that got about half its money from the famously homophobic Mormon Church, which is incidentally also one of the main reasons the Boy Scouts are so homophobic) that is not only prejudiced but outright false, at least as discussed on Forum this morning.

For one, the ad campaign is claiming that children will be "forced" to learn about all kinds of marriage, including same-sex marriage, in schools. Apparently marriage is discussed in kids' sex-ed classes, and the argument that the proponent of Proposition 8 made was that if Proposition 8 passed, it would be "discriminatory" to talk about heterosexual marriage and not homosexual marriage (so he'd rather be discriminatory in defining marriage so narrowly?!). But parents have always had the option to opt their kids out of sex ed, so if they felt that strongly about it, they could do that. (Hell, they may even be required to sign a waiver before their kid is allowed in to sex ed -- that's how Utah works, anyway.) Also, this is such a red herring argument -- it isn't central to the issue at all.

The second argument is also both a red herring and false. The Prop. 8 proponent argued that churches that refused to perform same-sex marriages could lose their federal funding. The opponent said that there was no way for this to happen.

One of the callers mentioned the parallels between this and the fight for legalizing interracial marriage, which was "against the will of the people" in the 1950s. The proponent for Prop. 8 said that that case was completely different because interracial marriage is still "in support of families and children." (He skirted various questions around heterosexual couples who wanted to marry but didn't plan to have kids, and around homosexual couples who did have kids and wanted the legal standing to best support them that is provided through marriage.) There are also other parallels promoting various forms of segregation that were also "against the will of the people": it was equally "against the will of the [majority of] people" to do away with slavery and to integrate schools and public services in the 1950s. The rule (a.k.a. tyranny) of the majority can be dangerous: the "will of the people" isn't necessarily right, fair, or just. The California Supreme Court rightly recognized the historical and logical flaws in this argument and ruled that the civil and legal institution of marriage, or whatever you want to call it, has to have not only the same rights and benefits but the same name for all. But now that right is threatened.

So California US-citizen friends, make sure you vote NO on Proposition 8. And for everyone, Californian or no, please please please consider donating to the "No On Proposition 8" campaign to help them fight the lies.

random find: cool yarn creatures

2008-10-14T03:51:43Z

I know certain friends who would appreciate these awesome kitted and crocheted creatures. It's almost enough to make me want to try it again ... almost.

http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2008/10/strange-knits-and-yarn-monsters.html

I especially like the sea creatures. For corpsefairy, a knitted cuttlefish!

She'd probably appreciate the nudibranch, squids, and octopi, too.

There's also a heart, a digestive system, a uterus/fallopian tubes, some variations on Cthulu, and some amazing chain link fence art:

pottery and other updates

2008-10-06T10:12:51Z

Last Wednesday, I played with a pottery wheel for the first time in 10 years. In high school, pottery was one of my respites from hectic days full of AP classes, along with orchestra, print-making, and (even) auto mechanics. I found wheel-throwing particularly meditative, with its paradoxical combinations of muscle tone and gentle movements, extreme focus and sensory awareness, planning and improvisation, exercise (kicking the wheel) and stillness. The feeling was addictive. I've since found similar paradoxes elsewhere, particularly in karate, sewing, and partner dancing, but I've still longed to find the time to go back to pottery again. So a few weeks ago, I looked around for a class nearby that hadn't started yet -- and, after ruling out many options, found one in Sunnyvale that met once a week. Sold! First class was last Wednesday, and I found that I still had the muscle memory for throwing off the wheel. I threw three cylinders, two of which I sliced to make sure my walls were even, and one medium-sized bowl. I have lots of ideas for other things I want to do. I'm so excited to be back. And soon, Stanford will have its own brand-new studio up and running!

Having the time for this was predicated on a few other big changes that I haven't mentioned here yet. For instance, I'm no longer dancing competitively. Through the first half of the year, my partner and I were practicing maybe two times a week, with no coaching, while he juggled being a new father of twins and work commitments. In mid-summer, we talked about ramping up to our usual practice schedule of practicing four or five times a week, plus having coaching, training, or competitions on the weekends, and I balked. I've done it for years now, and there is a lot I love about ballroom dancing, but I just don't have time for 15-20 hours/week of it anymore. I've still been social dancing, I'm still teaching ballroom to kids (though high school kids this year) once a week, and I've continued my yoga practice, but I haven't been practicing ballroom since before all of my traveling in August. I miss it, but it really is for the best. It's funny that I find myself fidgeting in dance steps more than ever before, though.

I'm also taking a quarter off from school to finish up a project at Nokia Research and to be able to make more time to tackle my ever-growing reading list. More on this and other research directions later.

If I decide to pursue research on One Laptop Per Child for my dissertation, I'll need to re-learn Spanish, and I've been wanting to anyway. I was originally planning to take a refresher course through Foothill community college, but the first class session brought back all the horrors of high-school syllabi and petty grading systems, so I scurried home and bought a whole slew of teach-yourself-Spanish books instead. I'm hoping it will come back relatively quickly, with some practice, and that I can start conversational classes at Stanford in the winter. I still understand decently; I just can't remember many words or any conjugations. Pues, necesito practicar!

I'll be traveling this fall, as well! I'll be in Europe in late October, and in San Diego for the CSCW conference November 8-12 (participating in a workshop on family communication). Anyone else going?

Burning Man 2008

2008-09-06T00:33:48Z

Burning Man 2008 costumes
Originally uploaded by morganya

Burning Man was, as I expected, intense. Not being much of a wild partier, I found some aspects somewhat unpleasant, particularly the incessant thumping music (especially bad right next to Center Camp, where we were staying -- though the music was much more diverse than the techno techno and more techno I had been led to expect!) and the hordes of obnoxious partygoers (often drunk and/or high) hollering stupid things, defacing things, pissing on the playa, littering, etc. (Ruth noted that this year, for the first time, there was more MOOP than she and Saryn could pick up on the way to the port-a-potties in the morning.) There were parts that didn't bother me, but didn't attract me either: the casual sex, the public nudity (I don't mind nudity per se but I didn't want to participate in the weird gender implications that I'll get into more later), the smoking and drugs. But there were aspects of the experience that were just incredible.

I knew I'd love the art, and indeed, it was mind-blowing to see (and interact with) it in person rather than just through photographs and videos, as I had in previous years. The general consensus seemed to be that there weren't as many really great art pieces but that there were more art cars this year than previously. But even so, this was my favorite part.

I was surprised (though perhaps I shouldn't have been, given all that I've heard) at the friendliness and openness of some of the people there: I have noticed that the friendliness that I grew up with and used to take for granted in Salt Lake City is often either absent or viewed with suspicion in the Bay Area, and I do miss it (though there are some reasons for it -- such as the cultural and religious homogeneity -- that I'm happy to be away from). I especially enjoyed interacting with camp-mates; even though a few members of the camp said that the group seemed less cohesive than in previous years, I really enjoyed getting to know such a diverse but consistently interesting group.

Finally, throughout my week at Burning Man, I was thinking about the interviews I did last spring on Second Life and on my research interests in the role of fantasy worlds in our lives more generally. Many at Burning Man, like in Second Life, seemed to like that there is some separation between that fantasy world and the "real" world. (Other online spaces, like Facebook, are much more contiguous with everyday life -- "online" is hardly monolithic.) And Burning Man, like Second Life and like the MUDs and MOOs so heavily researched in the 1990s, largely appeals to a fringe community (call them "early adopters" if you will, though the label isn't accurate). However, both also feel the stresses of becoming more mainstream, and there is discussion among "old-timers" about the changes. Both also reflect a certain idealization, and distortion, of societal norms and ideals. The "freedom" to create your own avatar in Second Life means you have the freedom to make her/him conform perfectly to social ideals (and the ostracism for "choosing" not to do so is surprisingly vehement and ubiquitous). The "freedom" at Burning Man to express sexuality or other aspects of one's personality generally not done elsewhere means that, for some, sexual stereotypes can be realized even more fully and publicly. There are other spaces, both online and off, that exhibit some of these characteristics, but I was especially struck with the similarities between these two. I'll be following up on the Second Life interviews soon, so expect more musings in that direction.

Overall, Burning Man felt very familiar. (I had even camped in the area before with parts of my mom's family, who are also known for their "radical self-expression," though not so much in technological terms. They were on my mind throughout the week.)

These last three weeks (the week-long Values in Design research workshop, the week of backpacking, and then Burning Man), though at times socially or emotionally exhausting, ultimately gave me the time, space, and mental quietness to reconsider my current direction in research and in life. I dragged my feet through the end of the OLPC research project because I had lost my sense of purpose in it, and for me, having a strong idea of why I'm doing what I'm doing, and why it's important to the world, is crucial for keeping my motivation. Now that I've finished up a solid first draft of the OLPC work and passed my Major Project, I'm at a good place to step back, consider my path, and make sure that who I am (and who I want to be) is clear in it. That's my goal for the next part of my life. In the last year and a half of my life (maybe even longer), I had lost my sense of who I was an what was important to me, and I had somehow lost faith in myself to be able to figure it out. But that is so far from the person I've always wanted to be, and the person I know I can be -- and I need to make sure to have enough time, space, and mental quietness in my day-to-day life to not lose myself again. Wish me luck.

Values in Design

2008-08-16T23:32:58Z

I've spent the last week at a small workshop/institute on values in design at Santa Clara University, which has been a wonderful experience of collaboration, discussion, and fun with a whole room of people doing research like mine. When I'm so used to having to always promote and defend myself academically (especially true for academics at the intersections of fields, and also especially true for women), it's a luxury and an inspiration to be able to spend a whole week with like-minded folks who have been both intelligent and supportive. We started the week with a whole day of socializing -- a hike and then a barbecue dinner at the faculty hosts' house -- which was perfect for breaking the ice and getting us beyond the conference self-promotion practices. During the week we had guest lecturers discuss the value dimension in their work -- Paul Dourish on Monday, game researchers Mary Flanagan and Tracy Fullerton on Tuesday, Suzi Iacono (from NSF, who sponsored the workshop) on Wednesday, and my previous advisor Nancy Van House on Thursday. On Friday we took a field trip to data storage and retrieval company Zantaz, which let us discuss the value implications of an increasingly quantified, surveilled, searchable society. Today we had a day-long mini-conference where we presented projects that we had developed in groups throughout the week (I'll post on those later). At first I wished I could tie the workshop topics to my own research rather than developing a whole new project, but the exercise was actually a perfect way of thinking through the implications of values in design in a very practical, hands-on way, and also a great way of getting to know several of the workshop attendees very well (though I had discussions with almost everyone in the workshop throughout the week).

The discussions we've had have spurred me to reflect on what values drive my own research and shape my outlook on the world. I was surprised at how easily I was able to articulate my own values, and even more surprised at their implications. Even in my high-school activism days, I was committed to exploring, exposing, and publicizing alternatives to fallacious dominant paradigms, particularly ones that involve gender/ethnic inequity, in a way that makes us recognize the fallacies. This thread has been present, to varying degrees, through all of my research, and the more strongly it is there, the more passionate I feel about the issue. It's also surprisingly Marxist (where I mean that in the academic sense of focusing on interactions between the material/economic/political world, or the "base," and the social/ideological world, or the "superstructure") and not so surprisingly feminist (in both the academic sense of attending to power dynamics and silencing, and the popular sense of attending to gender inequalities). In blog posts, you have probably noticed that this often comes out in nature vs. nurture debates, discussions of the societal influence of behaviors we often take for granted, and attempts to summarize social science results that may be well-known in the academic world but haven't spread to the general public. Anyway, all of us come to our research with various agendas, and I think it's vitally important to recognize these agendas in order to understand their implications for our research.

On an unrelated note, my paper on hacker culture, Constructionism, and the One Laptop Per Child project has been accepted for my Major Project requirement! It'll need some revision before submitting it for publication, but I'm so happy about how far it has come, and so grateful to Fred for his help.

SAT scores and constraint vs. risk-taking

2008-08-16T17:48:43Z

ADDENDUM to the previous post on alleged gender differences (that I meant to post yesterday but didn't have time):

At bab5 eight days ago we also talked about a recent study finding that the gender difference in math SAT scores has all but disappeared, at least for the average, which I take as further evidence that the difference could well be due to social factors. Text of the article below for those who don't have BugMeNot.

Interestingly, the variance in scores is higher for boys, which reminded me of research done on how parents, teachers, and others tend to constrain and control girls' actions more than others, for a variety of reasons. For instance, boys are on average allowed to roam much farther from their parents at parks and playgrounds; are allowed out on their own at an earlier age and with fewer restrictions; and are generally allowed to be more boisterous and "take up more space" in the classroom and at home. This translates into a culture condoning more risk-taking for boys generally, in all areas of their lives, from academics to sports to "acting out" (I certainly knew many more boys who were class clowns or delinquents than girls). I'm only somewhat familiar with the literature on this but I really should be more familiar, and likely will be in the next couple of years.

I have a hunch that some of these constraints on girls relate to societal fears that are largely focused on girls. These fears follow the "security theater" model of overreacting to a highly publicized event involving an action (such as stranger abduction or sexual assault) that is actually exceedingly rare (most abductions and assaults are by family or acquaintances). Certainly the law is strongly geared toward these rare, but highly publicized, cases: child sexual assault parolees in California must wear a GPS tracker and must stay more than 2000 feet from schools, parks, and other places with children, even though most of those cases involved a known child and the tracking system does nothing to keep them away from the children of family members or friends (though, of course, the stigma of having a GPS tracker may well give the signal by itself). Paul Dourish and some of his students are doing research on the social and privacy implications of this GPS tracking of parolees, since it's one of the few places where surveillance has reached such invasive levels.

Also, as an aside, I know I tend to focus on "boys and girls" and don't include other sex options very well (though I try to be better about gender orientations). I've heard about the pitfalls of this, but at the same time, so much of my research and social commentary focuses around people's beliefs about the world, and the gender binary is certainly a strong societal norm (and one with actual basis in genetics, at least for mammals). I know I'm reinforcing these things by taking them for granted, but really, if I tried to write in a completely socially-aware way, I'd just never get around to writing because being thorough in that way is damn hard and very daunting. So sorry, but I'm afraid you'll just have to deal.

The SAT scores article:

By David Malakoff
ScienceNOW Daily News
24 July 2008

Zip. Zilch. Nada. There's no real difference between the scores of U.S. boys and girls on common math tests, according to a massive new study. Educators hope the finding will finally dispel lingering perceptions that girls don't measure up to boys when it comes to crunching numbers.

"This shows there's no issue of intellectual ability--and that's a message we still need to get out to some of our parents and teachers," says Henry "Hank" Kepner, president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics in Reston, Virginia.

It won't be a new message. Nearly 20 years ago, a large-scale study led by psychologist Janet Hyde of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, found a "trivial" gap in math test scores between boys and girls in elementary and middle school. But it did suggest that boys were better at solving more complex problems by the time they got to high school.

Now, even that small gap has disappeared, Hyde reports in tomorrow's issue of Science. Her team sifted through scores from standardized tests taken in 2005, 2006, and 2007 by nearly 7 million students in 10 states. Overall, the researchers found "no gender difference" in scores among children in grades two through 11. Among students with the highest test scores, the team did find that white boys outnumbered white girls by about two to one. Among Asians, however, that result was nearly reversed. Hyde says that suggests that cultural and social factors, not gender alone, influence how well students perform on tests.

Another portion of the study did confirm that boys still tend to outscore girls on the mathematics section of the SAT test taken by 1.5 million students interested in attending college. In 2007, for instance, boys' scores were about 7% higher on average than girls'. But Hyde's team argues that the gap is a statistical illusion, created by the fact that more girls take the test. "You're dipping farther down into the distribution of female talent, which brings down the score," Hyde says. It's not clear that statisticians at the College Board, which produces the SAT, will agree with that explanation. But Hyde says it's good news, because it means the test isn't biased against girls.

The study's most disturbing finding, the authors say, is that neither boys nor girls get many tough math questions on state tests now required to measure a school district's progress under the 2002 federal No Child Left Behind law. Using a four-level rating scale, with level one being easiest, the authors said that they found no challenging level-three or -four questions on most state tests. The authors worry that means that teachers may start dropping harder math from their curriculums, because "more teachers are gearing their instruction to the test."

The results "essentially confirm" earlier studies--and they should finally put to rest the idea that girls aren't going into technical fields because they can't do the math, says Ann Gallagher, a psychologist who studies testing at the Law School Admission Council in Newtown, Pennsylvania. But she still thinks there may be cultural or psychological reasons for why girls still tend to lag behind boys on high-stakes tests such as the SAT. Among students she's observed, she says "the boys tend to be a little more idiosyncratic in solving problems, the girls more conservative in following what they've been taught."

innate vs. learned intelligence

2008-08-15T16:55:06Z

At bab5 last week I had a long discussion with Rebecca and Greg about the plasticity of the human mind and the false essentialization of brain structure (as if it can't change). While this has many implications for various aspects of identity that come up a lot in my research (and we did discuss gender at length, particularly some alternative meanings behind the so-called differences in brain structure between men and women that tend to be over-essentialized in the news and in badly-researched books like The Female Brain, torn apart in the news [also here and here] and blogs a while ago now), we also talked around the essentialization of intelligence -- the assumption that if you do smart things, that means you're (naturally) smart, not that you've worked hard to learn how to do smart things.

I mentioned research on the Western tendency toward the fundamental attribution error, which likely affects this bias, and research on stereotype threat and other factors that affect intellectual performance. I also mentioned research on the performance effects of believing in innate vs. learned intelligence (longer article here) (which unfortunately lacks a nice buzzword ... c'mon, social science, don't fail me now!). In short, one study found that kids told that they did well on a task because they were smart were less likely to try a harder task subsequently and scored lower on the next test they did take, while kids told that they did well because they worked hard were more likely to try a harder task subsequently and do well on it. I've read a couple of other studies along these lines with similar results.

Fortuitously, another friend independently discovered several links related to this topic (embedded above) in the last week and sent them to me, so I figured it was time to actually try to put these ideas and links together into a post.

"Friend" clusters on Facebook

2008-08-14T18:36:59Z

"Friend" clusters on Facebook
Originally uploaded by morganya

Though we all know that Facebook "friends" != actual friends, I still found it interesting that various groups in my life who are represented on Facebook (and visualized with the Nexus app) are noticeably distinct based on the number of within-group vs. between-group links. I manually overlaid category names on these groups (though they all have fuzzy boundaries and could be subcategorized or classified differently).

It's also interesting that there's no sense of time here -- my Berkeley I-school connections are 2-3 years old, but those connections appear much more substantial (and central) than my (current) Stanford Communication connections or my brand-new Values in Design connections. Similarly, my UCBD links appear more extensive and central than my connections to other dance communities, though those connections are generally at least three years old. And I haven't seen most of my high-school "friends" since high school, and I wasn't even close with many of them then. There's also no sense of the type of connection -- professional contacts vs. social contacts (e.g. dancers) vs. close friends, for instance.

This also attests to the small-world nature of the Bay Area, which I generally rediscover at any reasonably heterogeneous Bay Area party. While the links aren't as dense as the within-group links, there's still substantial overlap between these various groups, particularly the dancers (upper leftish), bab5 (appropriately central), and the sociotechnical researchers (lower left). It is also interesting to me that there's actually some overlap between my high school friends and other contacts, largely because of visits I've made there or visits friends have made to me.

Cultural Studies 101 (ala Jorge Cham)

2008-08-05T09:08:22Z

Is 4 a.m. the new midnight?

2008-08-01T11:11:03Z

Conspiracy theories always sound best at ...

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/rives_on_4_a_m.html

PCBs, girls, and vegetarianism

2008-07-30T21:42:05Z

As some of you know, my mom's side of the family has consisted of quite a few more girl babies than boys for several generations back now. My sister and cousins have all had girls (five daughters between my sister and four cousins). My mom and aunts all had girls (six of us). My grandmother had five girls, and though I don't have the records, I've been told that her twelve siblings had several times more girls than boys. In her generation, there were five girls before the first boy, and in my grandpa's family, there were also a number of girls born before the first son (which I think was him, the youngest).

I've always figured my family was just a statistical anomaly. My sister has looked into various chemistry or dietary reasons for this (wanting to have a boy next), but the research I've seen on this has generally been pretty sketchy and incomplete, so I've decided to chalk it up to chance -- at least, until I see compelling evidence otherwise.

Well, I read an interesting article today that seems to indicate that there are some chemicals out there that do noticeably tip the scales. I've long known that the benzene and other chemicals in sunscreens mimic estrogen, shifting the sex of fish toward the "default" female, even during an individual fish's life, and having similar effects in rats and other animals. I have blogged about the cosmetics safety database listing the safety of sunscreens. (It looks like the famous "wear sunscreen" column, in which the author said the only sure advice she could give was to wear sunscreen, might have been wrong after all.) I had also heard that PCBs, common in flame retardants and coolants, and other chemicals had documented effects on development, especially sexual development. But this is the first I've heard of the chemicals actually causing a shift in sex ratios at birth.

According to the article, the Arctic populations that the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program studied had imbalances that were particularly pronounced (twice as many girls as boys, where before the ratio was 1.1 boys for every girl) because of their reliance on marine meat, which is high on the food chain and thus had heavy concentrations of these chemicals.

Though it's doubtful that anything like this has caused the generations-long surplus of girls in my family, it does make me reconsider my "just-chance" stance on the trend. It also places even more importance on one of my main reasons for being vegetarian for 9 or so years through my youth and into college. Inspired by Diet for a Small Planet, I wanted to be vegetarian because with every step up the food chain, a large amount of energy and resources are wasted (it varies by type of meat, but the general rule of thumb was 10 pounds of vegetable matter and up to 100 gallons of water for each pound of meat, plus a fair amount of pollution of various kinds), and the concentration of toxins and other fat-soluble chemicals (such as PCBs) goes up. Hence, these Arctic populations who were eating fatty Arctic carnivores were about as high as one can go on the food chain and are bearing the brunt of the effects of the poorly-studied chemicals we've been spewing out.

In the Diet for a Small Planet sense of vegetarianism, almost no meat was almost the same as no meat, while my animal-rights-activist friends saw a huge difference between those. Though I don't eat a lot of meat even now, I've been considering going back to having it only once or twice a month, rather than the one to three times a week I've been doing lately. Environmentally, socially, and health-wise, it just makes sense.

3^3 and patriotism

2008-07-04T08:00:23Z

Today at 11:37am I will enter my 28th year (EDIT: meaning I've now lived 27 years, hence the 3^3), and the country in which I was born will enter its 233rd (by some definitions of a country's beginning, anyway). I've had an uneasy relationship with patriotism for much of my life, and it's not because I share my birthday with my country's, though perhaps that has made me think more about it than I might have otherwise. In some ways I'm deeply patriotic in that I agree with many of the tenets of freedom and equality on which our government is theoretically built, though I am and have long been critical of the various instantiations of our government and its role in both the lives of its citizens and in the affairs of other countries. In my mind, the best patriot is not blind to her country's problems but works to address them. Also, there is another, more concrete, aspect of patriotism that is important to me, but in lieu of explaining it myself, I'll quote a poem I remember from high school that I think expresses it well. It was originally written in Spanish, but I'll post both that version and the English translation.

High treason
by José Emilio Pacheco

I do not love my country. Its abstract splendor
is beyond my grasp.
But (although it sounds bad) I would give my life
for ten places in it, for certain people,
seaports, pinewoods, fortresses,
a run-down city, gray, grotesque,
various figures from its history
mountains
(and three or four rivers).

Alta traición

No amo mi Patria. Su fulgor abstracto
es inasible.
Pero (aunque suene mal) daría la vida
por diez lugares suyos, cierta gente,
puertos, bosques de pinos, fortalezas,
una ciudad deshecha, gris, monstruosa,
varias figuras de su historia,
montañas
(y tres o cuatro ríos).

Stanford/Nokia study on kids, communication, and technology -- seeking participants!

2008-06-29T08:49:17Z

As some of you know, I am interning this summer with the IDEA team at Nokia Research Center in Palo Alto, where we working on a research project focused on children, families, and communication. We are looking for participants for a study that will take place this summer, and would greatly appreciate your help. Please share the following message with friends, organizations, mailing lists, bulletin boards, or anyone who may be interested. Thank you!

--------------------------------------

Dear Parents,

As a part of a project with Stanford University and Nokia Research Center, we are studying how families with kids in early elementary school communicate, both with one another and with remote family members, and how technologies and kids' toys are a part of this. For help with our research, we are looking to hear from the perspective of families with children aged 5-9 years.

We ultimately hope to develop age-appropriate technologies to help children develop and maintain relationships with loved ones (e.g. grandparents, parents, siblings, and friends).

The time commitment required for participation is typically an afternoon or evening. We would like to interview and observe you and your family in your home in order to understand the methods your family uses to communicate and what values you have around the toys and technologies in your lives. Your child(ren) can also give us a "tour" of their toys and explain to us their thoughts on family and their favorite activities.

As a thank-you for participation, your family will receive a $100 gift certificate. You will also be invited to participate in a design workshop at Nokia Research Center in Palo Alto.

We are flexible with scheduling and will work around what is convenient for you.

If you are willing to participate or have any questions about this research, please contact me by email (kids_study@morganya.org) or phone at (510)387-2023.

Thanks,
Morgan Ames
Department of Communication
Stanford University

Ramblings on IQ and differences in variance

2008-06-24T04:26:33Z

I came across an interesting New Yorker article today by writer Malcolm Gladwell exploring the phenomenon of "IQ drift" over time -- there's a steady increase in IQ scores year to year, enough that the standard IQ test has to be re-normed every twenty years or so. The implications are that our great-grandparents all had IQs of 70 ... or that IQ isn't as rigid and hereditary, and testing isn't as accurate, as we are often led to believe. (He presents various evidence for the fluidity of intelligence; it's a good read.)

http://www.gladwell.com/2007/2007_12_17_c_iq.html

I also read another interesting piece, written over ten years earlier, on the connection between racial differences in sports and gender differences in math.

http://www.gladwell.com/1997/1997_05_19_a_sports.htm

It turns out that there are racial and gender differences in the variance of several heavily-contested skill distributions, though the means are the same. For instance, black athletes have higher variance in athletic abilities than white athletes, and boys have higher variance in math abilities than girls, which account for the preponderance of the former in upper echelons (as well as a preponderance of them at the lower end, but this isn't discussed as much). Thus, while the mean ability between the two groups is the same, the distribution is flattened for blacks regarding athletics and for boys regarding mathematics.

Gladwell then discusses how the factors affecting ability are both environmental, as evinced by the differences in populations with the same ethnic heritage but different environments (e.g. Jamaicans of Nigerian descent vs. Nigerians), and psychological, as he saw for himself when he ran track and encountered the black-athlete stereotype. But they are not genetic: the evidence for genetic differences breaks down when environmental factors, such as the training conditions for athletes, the dietary history of medical patients, or the scholastic expectations of students, are taken into account.

Part of the psychological component is one I've witnessed myself: believing that blacks are better at sports than whites, or boys are better at math than girls, becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy for all involved. Moreover, those (relatively) few whites who excel at sports or girls who excel at math are usually believed (both by themselves and by others) to excel because they work hard and not because they are innately talented (what Gladwell calls "learned helplessness"), while blacks who excel at sports or boys who excel at math are believed to do so because they are "innately" good at it. Another is an effect common in the hacker community as well as among athletes -- a particular kind of focus, often to the exclusion of many other things, on a narrow set of goals and values -- a difference among different groups regarding what one is allowed to care about or become obsessed with.

So there are certainly consequences of these differences in variance, but why does it happen in the first place? Could it be that the higher variance in men regarding intellectual abilities be attributed not to genetic factors, but to relative permissiveness toward boys and control toward girls? Further, would this explain well-documented effects such as the gender difference in attribution bias or vulnerability to stereotype threat? This control is exerted in thousands of small ways; for instance, studies have shown that girls aren't allowed to roam as freely or as far on playgrounds as boys when parents are watching, girls aren't allowed out alone as much as boys throughout their childhood and teenage years, and "girl" toys tend to be more passive and ritualized while "boy" toys are more active and flexible in use. Also, girls are told to sit quietly and take up as little space as possible, they tend to be praised for being pretty while boys are praised for being smart, and in junior high it seems like girls enter a labyrinth of social norms that boys seem to be able to more easily escape. (I could be wrong on that last one; I was a girl, not a boy.)

But of course, all this begs the question: where did these behaviors come from? Perhaps the restrictions on girls come from a (perhaps irrational, almost certainly self-fulfilling) fear about girls' safety. But then where does that come from? Is it turtles all the way down -- is it all one social construction after another?

While the "social construction" theories so popular in social science recently do reflect my own observations about the world fairly well, the idea that culture, gender, race, and myriad other things are "simply" socially constructed masks their indelible marks on us all. Sure, these things might be socially constructed, but that doesn't mean that we could feasibly wake up tomorrow and do it all differently. Patterns of social behavior become habit, and habit becomes something stronger -- a set of assumptions, or what French social philosopher Pierre Bourdieu would call "doxa" -- the background we all take for granted upon which we can define whatever "orthodoxies" and "heterodoxies" we want. (For instance, the abortion debate in the U.S. has the "doxa" that killing a person is wrong, and then goes off to argue about when a fetus becomes a person. In Japan, in contrast, people widely agree that fetus is a person, but also that abortion is acceptable. So after having an abortion, one is expected to build a shrine for the fetus's soul.) There are shifts in this "doxa," but if I've learned anything in my brief training as a social scientist, it's that social change is really hard. (For one, if it were easier, it would happen a lot more.) Sure, it happens, but it's generally very slow and full of resistance -- if Kuhn taught us anything, it's that the best way to achieve a consensus change in even scientific communities, committed to being as objective and rational as they can, is to just wait until those who resisted the new paradigm die off. So if higher variance among boys than girls is due (at least in part) to the relative freedom boys enjoy, and boys enjoy relative freedom because there is less fear for their safety, this could very well be due to one wave of social construction after another.

While this recursive answer is also not satisfying, it's about the best I have. Though I know I risk starting a flame war on this contentious subject, I still venture this question: what do you think?

I guess it's old buddy goodnight

2008-06-02T21:18:33Z

Folk singer and activist Utah Phillips passed away last Friday from heart disease at the tender age of 73. I was first introduced to his music to my dad, who sang Utah's song "Old Buddy Goodnight" as a lullaby to my sister and me (along with Joplin's "Mercedes Benz"). It's a rather dark, sad song for a lullaby, but I liked it. I learned a couple of his (many) songs about trains in elementary school.

I also got to see Utah in concert at Freight and Salvage, probably eight years ago now, with my uncle and aunt. My uncle told me of a time decades ago when he was sleeping on the floor in a cabin in the Sierras with Utah and a bunch of other hippies and got no sleep because Utah snored so loudly.

As an important figure in both folk music and labor rights, he'll surely be missed.

garden 05/24/2008

2008-05-28T03:50:07Z

garden 05/24/2008
Originally uploaded by morganya

Despite what I thought was pretty crappy soil, my garden has been growing with gusto. Even the lavender I thought I had killed has a sprig of life left in it after all. It appears that this "sunlight" concept that I couldn't manage in last year's garden (which, despite being in the sunniest place in the yard, only got a few hours of sunlight a day) is paying off this year.

The weeds have also been coming along happily -- and prolifically. I had just finished hoeing out the spaces between the rows before taking this picture, but before that they blanketed the whole garden with a green haze.

Weeds have also re-colonized the space along the side of the house that I was planning to seed with various kinds of mint. (I know mint is invasive, but better invasive mint than invasive other stuff, I figure.) I also wanted to put in a rosemary bush and a lavender bush, and maybe some squashes and cilantro (or devil weed to corpsefairy, carefully isolated from the parts of the garden she's interested in). Hopefully this will actually happen before the summer's over. I'm glad we have a very long growing season around here!

I'll have to stake out all of the stuff in this picture -- peas, beans, and tomatoes -- in the next few weeks before they start to fall over and choke themselves with their own curlicues. To the right of what's shown in the picture, the chives are also coming up, looking like timid grass amid the weeds, and the beet seedlings are tiny but dense, managing to crowd the weeds out. I still need to add more basil; the one transplant is doing great but I haven't had time to get more.

one laptop per kitten

2008-05-20T16:23:00Z

This morning, after showering, I found that Dot had contributed content to my research paper:

yu7777777777777777776ew8ggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggf kiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiivkwvjjj45cccccc

Yesterday she wrote her first twitter from starchy's computer.

What about a shadow?

2008-05-19T08:25:09Z

Gay Marriage redux

2008-05-16T03:40:00Z

Everyone's posted about the great news from the California Supreme Court today. There are two things about the story that I haven't heard discussed much, though.

The first is that there is likely to be a proposition to amend the California constitution on the ballot next November to reverse this decision. Since the arguments overturning the decision were based on close readings of the California constitution, I've read that the case is very unlikely to go to the Supreme Court, but opposition groups have vowed to get the issue put on the ballot. I figure most of my (California-based, US citizen) friends are planning to vote anyway, but let this be another reason. Such a proposition will certainly bring more opponents wanting to overturn this decision out of the woodwork, and such a possibility worries me, both for the future of this decision and about the election results more generally.

The second is just an observation about the ahistorical hubris of the opposition's "this goes against the will of the people" argument. This assertion of theirs is based on the results of a 2000 proposition, put on the ballot in a very small election, to define marriage in the usual narrow and bigoted way -- and it passed. But even aside from this narrow definition of the "people" as those (relatively) few who turned out for that election, I hate this "will of the people" argument. It was equally "against the will of the [majority of] people" to do away with slavery, to integrate schools and public services in the 1950s, to allow interracial marriage, and to enforce equal rights in various other arenas, but that doesn't mean the will of the people is right, fair, or just. The same "separate but equal" arguments have been applied in separating "marriage" and "civil union" as were used to legalize (continued) segregation. The California Supreme Court rightly recognized the historical and logical flaws in this argument and ruled that the civil and legal institution of marriage, or whatever you want to call it, has to have not only the same rights and benefits but the same name for all.

The carriage held but just ourselves and immortality ...

2008-05-12T22:08:57Z

corpsefairy, starchy, and I learned this afternoon that our foster kitten Wakko, who had been in the SPCA vet's office for over a week because of mysterious chronic pain, had been put to sleep over the weekend, unbeknownst to us. I'm sad and also angry -- even though we were still technically just the foster parents, we had grown very attached to her and were planning to adopt her. We didn't even get a chance to say goodbye, much less take her elsewhere for a second opinion on her "neurological condition." I know the SPCA is doing the best it can with limited resources, but it still sucks that they didn't call us before euthanizing her or even keep us updated on what tests they were running on her before that. Poor thing. At least she generally had a happy, if brief, life.