Broken

I don't like to apologize for being dull on the internet. However, I briefly thought of berating you, Dearest Reader, for being dull and avoiding the spout box. And I apologize for such dreadful thoughts!

It seems the spout box is broken. If you've sent me something via web-form in the past month or two, I'm not snubbing you, I just haven't gotten it.

I'll have a look-see about fixing it.

yami · 21:51 · 29 Dec 2020 · #
Filed under: Announcements

Sweet Overtones of Vegemite

A wine-snobbery technique I'd never heard of: put Vegemite in a glass of cheap sparkling wine. Via Professor Bainbridge.

yami · 9:10 · 29 Dec 2020 · #
Filed under: Food

Christmas Poll

This card was sent to my office by the Geo Monkey Geo Company.
some employees on an american flag surfboard, with christmas decorations

(Poll removed indefinitely. I will maybe eventually get around to figuring out why it all of a sudden breaks everything.)

I'm going to Iowa tomorrow, which won't change my blogging habits or lack thereof one bit. Happy Yuletide to all y'alls, every ones.

yami · 20:59 · 23 Dec 2020 · #
Filed under: Uncategorized, Crap

One List

  1. The Benefits of Singing Christmas Carols To Yourself While Driving
    1. Nobody objects when you change keys in the middle of "O Holy Night".
    2. Similarly, nobody objects when you change languages in the middle of a carol, or tries to tell you that "wie zauber zoom om winterzheit" isn't perfect German. You may assert with perfect impunity that Greensleeves is, in fact, the child laid to rest on Mary's lap.
    3. Requests for "Gloucestershire Wassail" will never be met with a rousing rendition of "Here We Come A-Wassailing".
    4. Nobody ever gets sick of singing two-and-a-half verses of "Gloucestershire Wassail" repeated nonstop for twenty minutes and asks to do "the Twelve Days of Christmas" instead, hurrah! I am now very certain of the colors of my ale and toast.
yami · 9:54 · 23 Dec 2020 · #
Filed under: Music

Demographic Uplift

Well, well. It seems that the American Family Association has a little poll about "families", which they claim they will use in future """pro""-""fa"m"ily""" activist work (sorry about all those scare quotes, but I need them to preserve my tenuous grasp on the English language). It would sure be a shame if the results of their poll failed to reflect the distressingly intolerant nature of their organization, wouldn't it?

yami · 20:39 · 16 Dec 2020 · #
Filed under: Gay Rights

No Demons Without Monkeys

In the midst of
an otherwise cogent analysis of Speed Racer cosmogeny
:

There is never going to be a time when a mortal is going to say, "Your drugs, cash, and sex nearly convinced me. The pleasures of material existence almost justify turning away from the light of God---but I don't have a monkey. So I'm going to go become a demon-rejecting priest."

We insist that such times are upon us now! And as an unproven corollary, that all times are times in which monkeys (and the havingness thereof) are the driving force behind man's moral decisions.

Also, the Speed Racer theme song reveals one more piece of information: the demon Speed Racer is only dangerous to the dead (he's gainin on you / so you'd better look alive). This points us towards a more fluid and Dantean approach to Western demonology, rather than the strict Faustian ontology explored by Rebecca.

One must then ask: is Speed Racer a Malebranche? We think so; it would certainly explain the rotary saws installed on the Mach 5. But then, we also think we need a shower, so you can see how pointed and relevant our opinions are tonight.

yami · 22:25 · 15 Dec 2020 · #
Filed under: Monkeys

Carda yo mamma

If we believe the L.A. Times food section, cardamom is the new black and can be indiscriminately used in place of cinnamon.

A story about cardamom in holiday baking that doesn't mention Scandinavia until the fourth paragraph ought not to be trusted, but I occasionally have faith in the basic human urges that produce wacky food trends. I put cardamom on my candied yams. It wasn't a complete disaster, but the cardamom somehow managed to bowl over both yam and nutmeg flavors on the way across my tongue. It was like getting Vegas-style blinky Christmas lights when you were expecting a small arrangement of evergreen boughs.

I suppose the moral of the story is to use a measuring spoon. Meh.

yami · 16:55 · 13 Dec 2020 · #
Filed under: Food

Peer Review II

Been thinkin' about this problem of government peer review (though the monsterpost hasn't been pushed beyond Tuesday's edition, alas) and my intuition just flipflopped. Maybe industrial peer review is actually a good idea, sort of.

The fundamental problem with peer review is that reviewers are lazy. It's easy to read a paper, do a few back-of-the-envelope calculations, and nod your head when the methods used seem reasonable. It's much harder to actually pick through all the calculations, tinker with critical parameters, etc etc. If there are devils in the details, many reviewers will let them lie. Perhaps even most - but I'm just operating on anecdotal observations from people in my office and don't want to overgeneralize.

I'm not sure that existing "reputational" incentives are strong enough to prevent this. A reputation for good peer reviews just gets you more peer reviews, which are neither glorious nor superly-duperly lucrative. And there's variously imposed deadlines and cash-conscious funding agencies to consider, too, so Ye Olde Dysinteressed Reviewer can't always be trusted to pick apart all the things that need picking.

Someone with a vested interest in picking apart a study, on the other hand, can always be trusted to pick it apart to the fullest extent possible. Which is great if you're a scientist trying to improve your study, and you have the perspective necessary to see which criticisms are important and which are absurd. Not so great if you're Senator Joe Blow who can't tell relative error from earwax. Vested interests are big on earwax.

Which leaves us with fundamentally the same problem of finding able, disinterested parties to sort the errors from the earwax... or possibly producing a population of Super Expert Citizens who are able to use scientific common sense, which is also a popular fantasy.

yami · 14:05 · 11 Dec 2020 · #
Filed under: Science, USian Politics

Snekaos i L.A.?

It's time once again to bring the joys of snow to poor inner-city children and city councilpersons:

Last time, Reyes and his staff tried to make their own [snowman], but it turned into a disaster because none of the Southern Californians knew how to build one, said Reyes spokesman Tony Perez.

"We don't have a lot of experience with the snow," said Perez, who added that he has never actually seen it fall from the sky.

Sir! If you cannot build a snowman from first principles, you are clearly unfit to run the city. I suggest a sabbatical in Sweden or Minnesota.

yami · 8:35 · 9 Dec 2020 · #
Filed under: Links, Local Politics

Peer Review the Asbestos Way

Hi. This is a slowly conglomerating monsterpost jumping off of some OMB peer review regulations that are apparently really trendy right now (ref: Chris Mooney, Calpundit). Why? Because they rule out peer review of government research by anyone who wants or has a research grant from the agency to be peer reviewed, narrowing the pool of potential peer reviewers to people who get their money from industry, more or less. And we can all guess what kind of high quality objective science comes out of industry when there's regulatory capture on the line (yes, kids, tobacco is good for you!).

This is not so much an issue in hydrogeology. There are lots of little consulting firms (like the one I work for) that do business with an assortment of local governments, development companies and medium-sized private land owners, that could easily be called in to peer review the Forest Service or the EPA or whoever. But in that respect, it's kind of a unique field - local governments don't pay for cancer research.
(more...)

yami · 13:25 · 8 Dec 2020 · #
Filed under: Science, USian Politics