Jay-Z becomes a man (not in a good way)

“Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.” — George Orwell, Animal Farm

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The Oscars continue to make poor decisions

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has decided to increase the number of films that will receive nominations for Best Picture from 5 to 10. While this doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing, it will be. And this is because I doubt the Academy is smart enough to use weighted voting. If they don’t, then a film could win Best Picture with, in theory, only 10.1% percent of the vote. Although that extreme is unlikely, it is very easy to imagine 15% of the votes being enough to win. What they ought to do is implement a type of voting similar to that used for MVP voting in baseball, where a 1st place vote is worth 10 points, 2nd place worth 9, etc. This would at least ensure that the film most liked by most voters would actually win. Without such a system (and none has yet been announced) the odds of getting strange results are much higher.

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Who Madoff screwed

With the Madoff sentencing coming down today, one should consider the people he actually screwed over. This map site “Madoff Victim Map” plots his victims and the money he stole from them. It does lead one to wonder, though, how complicit these investors were in his scheme. I mean, the money they pumped in only built his myth further, and his targets tended toward the already-rich. Nevertheless, Madoff did screw over a lot of investors, even if they should have known better.

It leads one to wonder, though, why the SEC was busy putting the clamps on Martha Stewart, while Madoff was stealing billions.

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Vacation, again

Yeah, it’s like we don’t actually do any real work. But as it happens, I will be visiting Stendhal tomorrow (we are rarely in the same part of the country anymore) and staying through the weekend, so posting might be infrequent for the next few days.

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Translating basic research into direct medical benefits

It’s really, really hard to do. The newest issue of Science magazine has a perspective over cystic fibrosis (academic subscription required). It was 20 years ago that the gene responsible for the disease was discovered. Even more exciting, a particular mutation responsible for the disease was also identified at the time. Back then, it seemed like the breakthrough that everyone wanted, and greatly simplified what had been a mysterious disease. However, in the 20 years since, not a single therapy based on that gene and its mutations has emerged. More aggressive and earlier treatment have raised the median survival from 29 to 37, but progress has certainly been slower than researchers had expected or hoped.

I bring this up because it’s always worth remembering. On the spectrum of basic science to medical treatment, my own research is very far towards the basic research end. It has implications for cancer, and we mention that in every paper and every grant application, but the bottom line is we are lucky if any of our work ever benefits people at any distant point in the future.

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Wow… just wow…

Look, are they trying to be funny? Or are they serious?

I would have guessed that this was more along the lines of Denny Blaze and “It’s Rainin’ McCain.”

But now, it looks like these guys are serious, with an appearance with Mike Huckabee. And hilarious.

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Mannish Boy

(This is the second in a series of reflective posts about my first year teaching. The first can be found here.)

“I spell mmm, aaa child, nnn
That represents man
No B, O child, Y
That mean mannish boy”

— Muddy Waters, “Mannish Boy”

As a first year teacher straight out of college, I found myself not too far removed in age from my senior students but suddenly at a vast distance both socially and developmentally. I admit that I approached the year from a fear-based standpoint from the outset, and to some extent, I still approach the prospect with fear. That is not to say that I’m scared of going to school, but that the unknown always promotes some sense of fear in me. Seligman’s basic theory of preparedness suggests that some phobias are more universal than others, and the unknown future qualifies as one of the environmental threats that prompts this kind of fear-response. I remained, however, a “mannish boy” in the eyes of many — my students, my peers, and myself.

The developmental stages that every psychologist and theorist from Freud onward identifies are much more fluid than the convenient categories we assign. Some days, my responses to stimulus were boyish — using sarcasm with students to get a laugh, feeling an angry response to a petulant lipsmack by a student, looking for leadership rather than leading myself. To use Kohlberg’s definitions, I remained in a conventional mode — attempting to find social norms and be the “good guy.” Other days, I found myself in full adult mode, building social contracts with students and other adults, leading a classroom, ignoring behavior but addressing students. This spectrum of emotional responses could change daily, but a gradual change was setting into place.

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Baseball + charts = nerd heaven

MLB Ticket Prices - Copyright Craig Robinson 2009

If you can’t quite see the chart above, it shows the range of ticket prices of major league ballparks. (That’s the Yankees with the highest, natch.)

As a lover of infographics, I stumbled upon this site when taking a quiz on the shapes of ballparks (no peeking!), but found that the author, Craig Robinson, has a multitude of other wondrous graphics at his awesome website, Flip Flop Fly. Check it out.

My favorite is this box score from a super-fantasy baseball game between the Wu-Tang Clan and the E Street Band. (I know Springsteen’s the pitcher, but why bat him ninth? LaRussa that shit!)

http://www.flipflopflyin.com/flipflopflyball/info-majorleaguefields.html

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Yet more evidence for fraud

Previously, I had linked to and discussed evidence of fraud in Iran’s elections. These include precincts reporting over 100% turnout rates, an overall high turnout rate for an incumbent landslide, and inconsistent performance from the other candidates even in their home towns. From Balloon Juice, I just came across another argument to add to the pile.

If the election were truly fixed, then somewhere, some humans had to make up the fake numbers to release. And humans are bad at making up numbers. So in the Washington Post, a couple of political scientists examine the last digits of the vote tallies for the four candidates in each of the 29 provinces.They find deviations from expected distributions of last digits, and in the frequencies of non-adjacent last two digits (meaning: making up 71 is harder than making up 78, so they find too many 78’s).

Even though 116 numbers sounds like a small sample size, I am still pretty much sold on their methodology. From reading the comments, it seems many other sare not. But don’t forget, there is unlikely to be one incontrovertible piece of evidence that proves systemic election fraud. It’s more important to examine all the evidence and note the different types of inconsistencies. When you consider all the data, it is difficult to come to any other conclusion: the election was stolen.

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They’ve already lost

Today has been the most violent day in Iran since the stolen elections. If you are interested in it, there are really two places to check out now, the Huffington Post and Andrew Sullivan. Sullivan especially, as he is posting Tweets from Iran (this past week has forced me to reevaluate my thoughts on the usefulness of Twitter). Of course, the Tweets generally cannot be confirmed, but Sullivan is also posting gripping videos, and the picture you get from all this is that it has been a violent day and people have been murdered, but the regime is so far unwilling to slaughter masses of people. Let’s hope that does not change.

The title of this post is probably more confident than it should be. After all, the odds of anyone other than Ahmadinejad or Khamenei being the President and Supreme Leader, respectively, might not be that high right now, even though I am hopeful. But even still, though they might retain power, this is a staggering situation that will have repercussions for a long time.

I have to believe that the Iranian government, barring massive revolution, will lose their respect and power, possibly for good. It’s difficult to understand Iran’s unique theocracy, but I think the key concept here is that ordinarily, the Supreme Leader ordaining an election result would make it true, legitimate, and accepted. But the people aren’t buying it. And by not buying it, they are directly undermining the entire basis for the theocracy. It is obviously too soon to know what will happen, and I am sad yet certain that more people will die by the end of this. But the theocracy is on its way out.

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