Random Traffic Statements

I'm not a big traffic nazi, but there are some things that bug me, so I thought I'd share some advice.

In most cars, there is a small stick coming off the left of the steering shaft. You might be familiar with it as it is often the control for the headlights. But it does have another function. It's called a turn signal. I suggest you learn how to use it. When I am trying to cross a busy street, it would be nice if that car that is slowing down is going to turn, giving me a chance to cross, or not. It is also nice when you go cruising across three lanes of traffic right in front of me as I drive down the highway.

When I am driving down the highway at 5 over the limit, it is probably not a good idea to be within ten feet of my rear bumper. If some idiot slides in front of me without signaling, I might tap my brake and then we all die. So back off a bit.

You might see occasionally a octagonal red sign with the letters STOP. This is called a stop sign. It means you are supposed to stop before continuing. Now if it is the middle of the night and no one is around, it might seem ok to not stop completely, I get that. But it is the middle of the day and there is traffic and possibly pedestrians, you might consider not trying to kill us.

There are also lights that hang over the street. When the light turns red, you are supposed to stop and NOT continue through the intersection. It does not matter that the light turned red just before you got there, you really should stop, before, say, running me over because I stupidly thought I could go while my light is green.

Also, please try to pay some attention to the road more often you pay attention to your phone and just so you know, the rear view mirror while driving down the highway is not a good time and place to apply makeup or shave.

Please try to wait and hold your coffee klatches at some point when you are not blocking traffic, ok? If it is really that important that you chat, pull off the road and let other people use the road.

But it's ok, all you have to do is flash your lights and not worry. Wait, lights? It is bad enough when civilians do it, but when police do it, it is much worse. Hardly a day goes by that I don't see a policeman blatantly ignoring the most basic traffic laws or even common sense. You should realize that any time a policeman breaks the law that he is supposed to be upholding, you make your job harder. You tell everyone who sees you that you have no respect for the law, so when you punish people for breaking the law, you are being a hypocrite and give us the impression you are nothing more than a thug with a badge who likes to harass people. If you don't respect the law, why should anyone else? When we get punished for breaking the law, we are told that we are not in trouble for breaking the law, we are only in trouble for being caught. The law is not something to protect us and guide good behavior, it is simply a tool of torture for our capricious leaders. You tell us that it is ok to be a criminal, the law doesn't matter, just don't do it in public. So is beating your wife ok, just so long you don't make a public scene out of it? You can't expect a law-abiding society when those enforcing the laws are also criminals.

I should note here that I have only talked about traffic laws, but that is only because the traffic violations are things that a lot of people do and they are visible to people everywhere. But I have seen much worse. Police that steal, physically assault people, and commit many other crimes are not uncommon. According to the Harper Index, prostitutes are only slightly more likely to be arrested by police as they are to be forced to provide services. If police can't be trusted, we can't trust much about our society and we have no reason to pay attention to the laws. And that means our society is a failure as a just society, that we are not going toward a society we can be proud of, but away from it.

Do Not Let the Nazis Win

The journal Science had two articles by Heather Pringle in the July 16, 2010 issue (vol. 329, issue 5989) concerning the anatomical samples and illustrations derived from executed Nazi prisoners. Ms. Pringle (pp. 274-275) reported on Pernkopf's Atlas, a premier anatomical atlas that used illustrations from the prisoners and in a more general article discussed the other tissues samples and studies. The general consensus, even though the topic is hotly debated, seems to be that we shouldn't use them anymore because they came from Nazis and to use them shows a disrespect for the victims and possibly can be seen as condoning the actions of the Nazis, thereby making anyone who uses the material accomplices to their murder. This is exemplified by the 2003 actions of the German Medical Council, who recommended that German universities remove from their collections all specimens that came from Nazi victims and bury all human remains.

While I understand their feelings and their wanting to show respect for the victims, I disagree. The anatomists that collected the samples and made the illustrations did not cause the deaths of any of the victims, they merely received the corpses that were made available. These people would have been killed anyway, and more importantly, would have been lost and forgotten about. Yes, some of the anatomists were Nazis and had no problems with the executions. Nevertheless, they created a useful legacy from a pointless, cruel, and unwarranted death. The researchers and students that are using the material now were certainly guiltless in the collections of the samples. Should our society be punished by denying any good that can come from a tragedy, by not allowing use of the knowledge gained from such bloodshed as would have happened anyway?

It seems to me that these samples and illustrations should be properly marked as to who they came from, so that their use will allow those people to continue to live on in a positive manner that will give their deaths more meaning than simply a statistic in the death counts. Are we to deny the victims this consolation? By removing everything that came from them and burying them, it seems to me that we are killing them again. Only this time, we are truly complicit with the Nazis because we are choosing to forget these people rather than honoring them by keeping them alive in the memories of new generations of students and researchers who can create better lives for people in the future. This seems to me the best way to deny the Nazis another victory, by ensuring that their deaths did not erase these people from memory as the Nazis intended.

Common Nonsensical Behavior: What is wrong with Sidewalks?

Short post today. On the way in to work this morning, I almost ran over several people who were walking in the street. What makes this very strange to me is that there was a nice, wide, well maintained sidewalk right next to them.

To all you people that refuse to use the perfectly good sidewalks and prefer to walk in the street where there are cars, WHY?! Why won't you use the sidewalks? The city spends a lot of money to give you a safe place to walk where you won't endanger yourself, where you won't endanger other people, where you won't cause traffic problems. What the hell is your problem?!

Really, please, someone explain this behavior to me. It seems completely nonsensical to me, very self-absorbed, self-centered, outright intentionally rude and inconsiderate, and rather stupid from a personal safety standpoint. Are you performing an experiment to see if people will really run you over? Are you trying to prove you are more important than anyone else trying to drive down the street where they actually have the right to do by doing something you don't have a good reason to do?

I could understand this behavior if the sidewalk was blocked, or was in such bad shape that it couldn't be walked on easily, or if it was too crowded to handle all the traffic. But tell me why people still do this when the sidewalk is perfectly good and no one else is using it.

What is so appealing about the road, where multi-ton vehicles are traveling, that make you people ignore the sidewalks where you are supposed to be walking? Why do we waste our money providing you with things that you ignore in favor of creating hazardous conditions for yourself and the people around you?

Do you have an answer? Are you just crazy? If you have a good, valid reason, I will gladly apologize, but right now, you people just seem crazy to me.

ADDENDUM: Someone gave me a couple of reasons for why they choose to walk in the street rather than the sidewalk, thank you. so I thought I'd share their reasons.

1. They don't like the up and down of going over the curbs at the side streets. This reason was given by some joggers. I thought I'd mention that because they are out there jogging on the streets for exercise, religiously pounding the pavement every morning. And yet they are unable to handle the up and down of 4" curbs. Oh, the horrors, the egregious unfair demands to actually raise their feet just slightly and get slightly more exercise.

2. They don't like having to stop at the sidestreets for other people. Their logic is that if they are running in the street, they have the right of way and people have to stop for them, but if they are running on the sidewalk, they have to stop for others. This of course is completely incorrrect from a legal perspective. Not only are they still supposed to stop, but they are committing a crime by running on the street in lieu of the sidewalk, so they are doubly wrong.

Congratulations, those who are running and walking in the streets have proven they are even more self-absorbed, egotistical, stupid and lazy than I thought before. After hearing the explanations of why these people are acting this way, my opinion of them is even lower than it was to begin with.

Seeing is NOT Believing

Everyone's heard of the phrase, "seeing is believing." Really? Are you sure?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20100713/sc_livescience/invisiblegorillatestshowshowlittlewenotice

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20100714/sc_livescience/languagecanmaketheinvisiblevisible

http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/080602-foresee-future.html

http://michaelbach.de/ot/index.html (a great catalog of visual illusions)

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100609083219.htm

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091006134823.htm

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100114143027.htm

http://www.illusionworks.com/

http://www.ted.com/talks/beau_lotto_optical_illusions_show_how_we_see.html

http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/amos/visualillusion.html

http://www.squidoo.com/optical-illusion-videos

http://www.cogsci.uci.edu/personnel/hoffman/illusions.html

http://www.dailyillusions.com/

And of course, no list of how screwed up our perceptions are without a mention of the truly incredible Derren Brown: http://www.channel4.com/programmes/derren-brown

If you haven't heard of Derren Brown, you should really, really, really watch some of his shows.

I could go on and on and on and…, but at some point it becomes ridiculous. Eye witnesses are not accepted in courts without corroborating evidence because they are so unreliable. Photographs have been faked since the camera was invented. To boot, this only talks about visual tricks that show just how unreliable what we see really is. I didn't even go into all the ways that our religious, political, social, racial and other types of biases affect how we see the world, nor did I list any of the numerous ways our other senses lie to us on a regular basis, nor how our mood changes our perception, etc.

Can we please kill the "seeing is believing" crap? What we see is NOT what is actually going on. You can't trust your own senses. This is why scientists do not consider unsubstantiated observations as having any merit whatsoever. You can't trust your own eyes. If you could, magicians wouldn't exist. So just stop it.

I have to restrain myself mightily every time I hear someone utter this ridiculous fallacy. Humans are so easily manipulated it is seriously beyond belief. If you don't think you are, you really haven't been paying attention. No, I don't exclude myself from this, but at least I know this happens and can at least try to keep it in mind so I can cut down the number of times I am tricked, misled, deceived, or just led astray. But if you don't accept the possibility that the world is not what you think you see, you are an open target to every con man, politician, and marketer that comes your way and you will continue to believe you actually have any control over your life and thoughts when you are simply a tool for someone else.

ADDENDUM: A friend of mine, Abi, described this excellently, I think. Seeing is not believing, it is really believing is seeing. This is very true. People see what they want to see, what they expect to see. Children see the world for what it is, they have no expectations. Sadly, we quickly grow up and we lose the ability to perceive without judgment, without filtering everything. Reality is the cold, hard truth. Our perceptions of it though, are invariably shaped by our thoughts. In turn, our thoughts are shaped by what we perceive. One then has to ask, since this is so, is it even possible to view reality? I don't think so. This means that people who call themselves realists are either deluded or oversimplifying things. If you think you know what reality is, that you know anything for certain, you are simply fooling yourself. As the quantum physicists say, everything is a probability and even that is an illusion of our faulty perception.

Bureacracy Run Amok

I recently devised a very simple educational study I wanted to do at work. It involved nothing more than giving a class of students some educational study aids, asking them what they thought of it, and seeing how it affected their scores on their tests. It was all completely voluntary, no one was being forced to use the material. The whole time I really needed to spend on the study would be less than a day at work. Sound simple, right?

Before I am allowed to do the study, I had to get it approved by the Institutional Review Board because I was dealing with live human subjects. We wouldn't want anyone to be hurt by the study after all. This is a reasonable requirement for studies that, you know, could actually maybe hurt someone. So ok, I decide to go through the process.

Step one: ask the IRB if I need to have a formal review done. I fill out several pages of forms, which they then decide that I do need a review. Turns out that all the forms were unnecessary as they only thing they care about is if the study deals with people. Why they couldn't just ask that one question or even just put it on their website saying that, I have no idea. But no, I have to fill out a lot of paperwork to get that answer.

Step two: I am told that before I can even submit the proposal, I have to take a course on protecting patient health information. Even though I am not dealing with patients or health information, since the school has a hospital attached, everyone has to have this course. Then I have to take another course on treatment of human subjects in research studies to make sure that I am not mistreating anyone during the study. Ok, for a lot of medical studies this is important. My study? Not so much.

Step three: In the course, I am told that Federal regulations allow educational studies like this to be exempt from review. Makes sense as it involves research on teaching techniques that can't harm anyone and uses no personal information that might be used to harm anyone. Doesn't matter says the IRB. They demand to review everything. So I have to have a pointless review to determine that I need to have my proposal reviewed, during the course of which I am told that it doesn't need to be reviewed, but yes it does? Hello?

Step four: Because my school is attached to a hospital, it has to be reviewed by a clinical studies review board before it can be reviewed. But my study doesn't have anything to do with clinical research, I say. Doesn't matter they say, any research that takes place on campus has to go through them.

Step five: Now I have to get the proposal through their computer system. I fill out several online forms for them. Problem is that the forms are designed through FileMaker Pro, which despite the marketing spiel, was never designed for online use with multiple, simultaneous users and causes it to be buggy as hell. I finally get everything through, with the biggest problem being that the system completely fails if when you submit a revision of your study, you actually call it a revision. But finally, they conclude after much back and forth that my study has no clinical relevance and can be submitted to the IRB for review.

Step six: I can now finally actually submit my proposal to the IRB for review, yay! The IRB has an online form with eleven pages of questions, wherein I have to submit more documents. Several of the questions are highly repetitive. For example, I have to submit a document containing the full proposal, an abstract of the proposal, a lay abstract of the proposal, a scientific abstract of the proposal, and then detailed sections in multiple parts of each part of the proposal that I had to submit as a separate document. Does this sound just a tad bit redundant to you?

Step seven: Because the system is based on FileMaker Pro, the IT guys are not the brightest IT guys ever, and because no one really thought about the set up, it loses my data after it has been successfully submitted and I have to go back to the clinical studies review and have them reapprove my study so I can resubmit to the IRB.

Finally, everything is done and the project is now in review. The original proposal? It was highly detailed, got high marks as a well written and thorough proposal from the clinical review people. It was less than 3 pages, including the survey I planned on giving the students. All the paperwork involved? More than twenty pages and almost a month of time to get through the system for a project that will take less than a day.

I asked one of the administrators why the system was set up the way it was, considering that they have options in the forms that crash the system if they are used. They said they had just copied the system from somewhere else and they probably had a use for it. I wonder if I asked those people if they had simply copied over the system from somewhere else, what would they say?

There are plenty of studies that would require all these hoops. Some studies pose serious potential threats to the test subjects if the researchers are not exactingly careful. My study on the other hand could easily have been reviewed by five minutes on the phone with one of the staff. But no, I have to spend a huge amount of time jumping through bureaucratic hoops.

This is a great example of bureaucracy run amok. Everyone involved agree that the system is terrible. Yet no one is willing to try to fix it. This whole system is set up the way it is because no one who set it up bothered to really think through what they needed. They simply took something designed by someone else for their own particular needs and then tacked on things piecemeal to handle their specific requirements, creating a system that is a headache for everyone involved. The key goal it seems is to protect human subjects by making it so onerous to actually do anything that researchers give up and work on something else. Is this any way to advance human knowledge? I understand making sure the work is done safely, but a little thought can make this process much easier and far less costly. We are spending so much time and money on pointless paperwork that we are not getting work done. Is this really what we want as a society? We are creating excessive obstructions for no other purpose than to give people jobs and to obstruct actual progress in anything important and we are doing it because people are not thinking through what actually needs to be done.

Silly Spindoctors

I received a mailing from Qualchoice today. I found it patently ridiculous. I wonder if you do too.

"In mid-May Qualchoice announced that it will take steps to prevent a gap in coverage that could leave many young Arkansans uninsured as a result of provisions in the new health reform law."

Sounds like the new health reform law is mandating reduced coverage for young Arkansans and that Qualchoice, through the goodness of their generous hearts, are going to stop this terrible thing, right? But let's continue, shall we?

"We'll be extending health coverage to individuals who would historically no longer be eligible as dependents because of college graduation or age."

Sounds like Qualchoice is pretty great, right?

"Under the the new health reform law, the age for a child to stay on their parents' employer-offered or individual health plan is extended to age 26 for plan years beginning on or after September 23, 2010."

Wait, what? So the law actually requires coverage to be extended? So how precisely is Qualchoice helping here? Let's continue.

"Beginning June 1, 2010, Qualchoicewill work with its customers to eliminate the coverage gap young Arkansans may face before this health care reform provision takes place."

So basically, Qualchoice is NOT covering them right now, but the new law requires them to do so starting in September, so they are going to cover them a few months before the law requires them to do it and this is them covering a supposed gap created by the health reform? This is a blatant lie. The only gap in coverage is what they are already doing and the new health reform is whatis closing this gap, not Qualchoice. Who are they trying to kid?

"Qualchoice presidentand CEO, Mike Stock, said, 'It has always been our goal to provide Arkansans with access to affordable, quality health care. We want college graduates and other dependents to be able to concentrate on finding employment in this competitive environment and not worry that they'll lose their existing coverage."

Give me a break, Mike. If you were really serious, you would ALREADY be giving them the coverage. The new health reform you are disparaging is what is making you provide this coverage. You aren't doing it because you want to. You are trying to make us believe that the health reform is a bad thing and you are saving us from its bad reforms, but it is clear who the real villian here is, and it is not the health reform. It is the lying insurance industry. It's really hard to defend against your own words. Do you really think we are that dumb? Obviously, you do,which makes what you are doing even worse.

Teaching methods

It is a common belief that if one changes the way one teaches, it equates to watering down the course. Many college professors will say they have too much material to cover to not do traditional lectures. Many secondary school teachers will say the same thing. This, however, is a logical fallacy, a mistake in critical thinking.

What you teach and how you teach it are two very different discussions and should never under any circumstances be done at the same time, because if you do, you quickly run into huge misunderstandings, confusion, and a general failure of education. The obvious thing to do is to decide what the students should be learning first, come up with clear ideas of what they should be getting out of the class. This will in turn inform exactly what material should be covered, what details to bring up, that will best accomplish those goals. If you are trying to teach someone about computers, you really don't need to discuss the physics of electricity. While using a computer does require electricity, it will not help a person operate a computer. Once you have that, then and only then should you really decide the best way to teach the material.

Unfortunately, most people start off with the idea that they need to prepare a lecture on a given topic. Then they decide all the interesting facts they want to include. If the students are lucky, the professor will then pare it down to what they can actually say in class. this is more of a problem than they realize.

The problem here is two-fold. One, practically every other teaching method takes more time than traditional lecture. On the plus side, practically every other teaching method works better. Lectures are about the most inefficient way to teach ever invented. But it is also the easiest, thus the most common. What few lecturers seem to appreciate is that their lectures are pointless if the students aren't learning. The lecture is mostly about telling the students what they need to learn, because they are unlikely to actually learn anything listening to the lecture.

The second problem is that many professors have decided that their students are too lazy to read and do outside work and so they have to cover everything in class. While it may be true that most students are lazy and unwilling to work outside of class, it is only because they have been taught that way, that it is acceptable and sufficient to pass. Students are are expected to work hard will do so. Admittedly, if you take a bunch of students who are used to being spoon-fed, most will fail at first. However, if you keep up the requirements, even they will begin to turn around. Given time, most people rise to the expectations.

So, if you have to cover everything in class and lecture is the only way to cover the amount of material fast enough, you will never try anything else. Course, this means that your students are being shortchanged, because they deserve teachers that are interested in teaching. Why don't they get it at most universities? Because for the most part, the professors aren't allowed to. To keep their jobs, they need to bring in grant money. Teaching quality is low down on the list for administrators, who only see the bottom line in terms of money. Teaching doesn't bring the school money, it costs money. Grans on the other hand do bring the school money. So even professors that would like to do better wind up not having the time to spend on improving their teaching.

Ok, that was a bit of a digression, back to the topic at hand. I find it odd that most science classes I've seen work under the above principles, yet most english and poly sci classes I've seen require the students to do a lot of outside reading and are expected to be familiar with the material whether or not it is mentioned in class. Shouldn't science classes expect as much from their students as these courses? Course, most people speak english (at least where I am) and most people have some idea of politics, whereas a lot of people are completely illiterate when it comes to science. Nevertheless, people should be expected to read.

Lectures are unlikely ever to go away completely and I am not proposing that. However, lectures should be more than just one person talking at a group of people. The students should be expected to cover the material outside of class and pointed to resources that will cover the basics. The lectures could then be used to tie major concepts together and put all the information into context, and to answer questions regarding the material. The students can learn the basic memory stuff on their own. Where they need help is the higher level abstract, conceptual training. If lectures were designed this way, they would be more effective training tools as well as allowing more material to be covered.

This would not only create better educated students, but it would actually give the students their money's worth, which is what they aren't usually getting. The students who just want a grade (which is most of them) are shortchanging themselves and the people who helped pay for their education. It is the job of the educators not to let them do so. If the students want to hurt themselves, that is on their heads, but some people want that education and they should not be hampered by the faults of others. This can actually happen if we discuss education in a meaningful way, rather than the typical waste of time trying to lump the material and the teaching method into the same conversation.

The Gulf Oil Spill: We are ALL Responsible

I think I will start off this blog by commenting on something that is being discussed worldwide: the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Everyone seems to be screaming for the heads of BP on stakes. A lot of people are blaming Obama as if he personally swam down to the well and blew it up. This seems to me rather ridiculous.

Who really is responsible? We could blame Halliburton. After all, they are the ones that built the equipment that failed and the cementing around the well head, according to the LATimes and the Wall Street Journal, among others. As a result, they would seem to be the primary people at fault. Halliburton does not have the best reputation for honest business practices and have been accused of misappropriating and submitting phony charges to the tune of more than a a half billion dollars for their highly criticized work in Iraq. It seems to me they should be ponying up several billion to clean up the Gulf. And yet, the American people are not screaming for the heads of Cheney and the current CEO of Halliburton on pikes, or even asking them to consider paying anything.

But we can't just blame them. We should also blame Transocean Ltd. They are another American company that was actually in charge of operating the rig for BP. It was their people that were not following regulations and were not monitoring the the well like they were supposed to be doing. If they had followed regulations or were even paying attention, this could have been prevented. People's attention slips, accidents happen, that's human nature and not evil maliciousness, or even beyond normal work situations. Nevertheless, they are culpable for their mistakes. Yet I don't hear the American people screaming for them to go bankrupt to pay for the cleanup.

We could also blame the US government. It was the US regulators that turned their backs on their duty and let the oil companies get away with flagrantly disregarding the rules which led to this debacle. Robert Bea, an expert in system failures, recently gave an interview to Science News, in which he saidabout the government, "they're the parents in the family. Industry are the children. Here the children told the parents what to do." One could blame Obama, but those regulators were put in place by Bush and Cheney. Obama has some blame for not having them replaced, but there is only so much one can expect one person to handle. But we can't really just blame the Bush/Cheney administration. They were responsible for essentially removing the reins on the oil companies. But they didn't do it by themselves. The process was already well unerway during the Clinton years.

It should be noted that Presidents don't write laws. During all this time, the republican party controlled Congress. They hold a great deal of responsibility for this as well. Yet no one is screaming for them to pay up. The Democratic congress has had the opportunity to fix these problems, but they have been just as complicit by doing nothing.

People are also pretending like this is the only oil rig to have this problem. People only care now because it happened where Americans and Europeans like to go play tourist, because Americans are noticeably losing income, because oil and dead animals are washing up on American beaches. No one seems to know about or care about a leak in Australia that is just as bad. No one seems to care about the Nigerian spill which has been going on for much longer and is much worse. There have been dozens of major oil spills that have gone without complaint by the American public. Infoplease.com has a nice listing of major oil disasters since 1967. These are not all, just the major ones. And yet no one has been screaming about these spills. We still have people saying we shouldn't blow this one spill out of proportion, that we should continue drilling like everything is fine.

The Deepwater Horizon Gulf spill should never have happened. Not because one company screwed up, not because a regulator turned a blind eye to shady business practices, but because we as a nation turned our back on what was going on and let it happen. The evidence was out there for anyone to see. The oil companies have been playing fast and loose with the regulations for decades and we let them because we wanted cheap gas.

This is all of our faults. Time to pony up, the bill is coming due.

UPDATE: Seems the leaks in the Gulf are much more numerous than the public knew. Yahoo News reports that more than half of the 50,000 oil wells in the Gulf have been abandoned and there is no oversight to see if they were sealed correctly and if they are leaking. It turns out that yes indeed, a lot of them are leaking. But since no one is monitoring these wells, no one has any idea just how bad the problem is. All we know is that it's a lot worse than we have been told. So, do we just sit back and do nothing about it like usual, or do we do something about it?