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Patterns and the Stock Market

It's one of the more annoying side-effects of the financial collapse: instant updates of the Dow Jones Industrial Average are suddenly everywhere, popping up in the corner of cable news shows, in between weather reports on the radio, highlighted on websites, etc. It's a bizarre form of financial melodrama, as the moods of the market seem to lurch and pivot for no good reason. Yesterday afternoon, on the same day a terrible unemployment report came out, the Dow swung upwards and closed 500 points higher. This morning, it's down 350 points, although nobody seems to know why. This chart…

Quarterbacks

Last week, I had a short article in Play, the NY Times sports magazine. It was on how quarterbacks make decisions and why the Wonderlic is such a waste of time: Three and a half seconds: that's how long, on average, a quarterback has to make a decision about where to throw the ball. So, how does he make sense of his options in such a short amount of time, while a swarm of humongous, angry men attempt to pancake him? (Imagine skeet shooting while running for your life, and you get a sense of what it's like to stand in the pocket during a blitz.) At first glance, the answer seems obvious: a…

Referee Bias

On the last day of every golf tournament, Tiger Woods insists on wearing a bright red polo shirt. Woods says the habit is merely superstition, but new research suggests that his fashion sense might actually come with athletic benefits. A paper published this month in Psychological Science reports that referees and umpires subconsciously favor competitors in red uniforms. The experiment was clever: the scientists showed 42 experienced tae kwon do referees video clips of five different male competitors. Each clip featured one athlete in red and another athlete in blue. At first, the referees…

The Reading Brain

Over at Mind Matters, the expert blog I curate at Scientific American, we've had some really good posts lately. The most recent post, by Maryanne Wolf (author of that other Proust book on neuroscience, Proust and the Squid), Mirit Barzillai and Elizabeth Norton, looks at the reading brain. They discuss a recent paper by Laurent Cohen, Stanislas Dehaene and colleagues. (Look here for a recent profile of Dehaene in the New Yorker.) The late, eminent cognitive scientist David Swinney of UCSD described how it is only in the acquisition of routines that later become automatic that we can see…

Comatose?

In the latest New Yorker, the always fascinating and fair Jerome Groopman* has an article on the recent Science paper documenting neural activity in vegetative patients: For four months, Kate Bainbridge had not spoken or responded to her family or her doctors, although her eyes were often open and roving. (A person in a coma appears to be asleep and is unaware of even painful stimulation; a person in a vegetative state has periods of wakefulness but shows no awareness of her environment and does not make purposeful movements.) Owen placed Bainbridge in a PET scanner, a machine that records…

I am so good at making Michael Ruse cry

Man, I must have smacked Michael Ruse really hard. Over and over, he repeats one simple, common phrase that I applied to him — it must have been painfully memorable. I have been called many things in my time, but I truly believe that "clueless gobshite" is a first. In a way, I am almost proud of this. After all, if you are in your seventieth year and someone feels so strongly about your ideas that they refer to you in this way, then you must be doing something right. Or if not exactly right, you must have ideas that others want to challenge so strongly that they pull out this kind of language…

The shoulders of giants & the fundamental attribution error

My two previous posts, Science is rational; scientists are not and its follow up Scientists are rational?, generated a lot of response. I would like to clarify and refine my thoughts and some of the arguments brought up in the comments. Some propositions: - A few scientists are responsible for most scientific advancement - The practice of science has varied as a function of time; e.g., the gentlemen scholar of the Victorian Age vs. the modern scientific-industrial complex which necessitates the grant-monkey - Even the brilliant scientists who are responsible for most productivity are…

Republicans discover sarcasm, don't like it much

I've been receiving a lot of mail lately urging me to pharyngulate the America Speaking Out site, but when I saw what it was about, I held off…I could tell what kind of self-screwing it was going to be. Here's the premise: the Republicans saw, in their remote and confused sort of way, that the internet (aka "series of tubes") had some real potential, and looked really smart, and maybe if they took advantage of it, they could look a little less yokely and rubish. Seriously. You can't make this stuff up. Lest you think Republicans are just discovering the Internet, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (…

My students are so smart!

I haven't been posting as much here this week as I'd like because I've been grading papers. You academic types know how much fun that is. But, the batch of papers I just finished with was reasonably enjoyable -- clear, persuasive, and containing some impressive insights. The question on the table was whether, by dint of society's investment in the training of scientists, people so trained might have an obligation to do scientific research. This is an especially relevant question for my students: many of them are, as we speak, being educated as scientists with public monies, and all of them…

An evolution the GOP likes

"The president says that the jury's out on evolution. Here in New Jersey, we're counting on it." –Bruce Springsteen, May 21, 2005  "Folks in Dover [PA] aren't sure about evolution. Here in New Jersey, we're counting on it." –Bruce Springsteen, August, 2005 "This issue [marriage equality] is in a state of evolution." –Hillary Clinton for Senate spokesperson Karen Dunn, July 3, 2003   "I have been to this point unwilling to sign on to same-sex marriage primarily because of my understandings of the traditional definitions of marriage. But I also think you’re right that attitudes evolve,…

Justice Scalia says Thomas Jefferson was irrational

The Denver Post reports on a talk by hyperconservative Justice Antonin Scalia at a religious conference: The 75-year-old Scalia said that today one can believe in a creator and the teachings of Jesus without being the brunt of too much ridicule, but that to hold traditional Christian beliefs that Jesus is God and He physically rose from the grave is to be derided as simple-minded by those considered leading intellectuals.... In Washington, Scalia said, the pundits and media couldn't believe in a miracle performed under their noses. "My point is not that reason and intellect need to be laid…

Calling out 'dickishness'

Steve Benen and Andrew Sullivan are discussing the dickishness of Republicans, and the value in calling out 'dickishness'. Sullivan notes: What we've observed these past two years is a political party that knows nothing but scorched earth tactics, cannot begin to see any merits in the other party's arguments, refuses to compromise one inch on anything, and has sought from the very beginning to do nothing but destroy the Obama presidency. I see no other coherent message or strategy since 2008. Just opposition to everything, zero support for a president grappling with a recession their own…

Creationism as postmodernism and Marxism

Those who follow creationism carefully know that after it became clear that Intelligent design would fail in court, the new strategy which took the field often simply called for "critical analysis" of evolution. The practical effect is the same as when creationism is forced into the curriculum, but the phrasing is more pleasant to the ear. I was reminded of this in reading a generally insipid conversation between Margaret Wente (bolded) and Camille Paglia: But in education today â even in primary-school education â all we hear about is âcritical thinking.â All the facts are available on the…

Capitalism beats creationism

At least in the movies. Michael Moore's Capitalism has passed Expelled as the fifth-top-grossing political documentary EVAR! It's showing on fewer screens and has earned over 2 million dollars more, to date, than Ben Stein's crapfest. This makes total sense. Michael Moore's movie is quite good, is based on real and well-documented events, and has genuinely thought-provoking arguments to make. What's the relationship between capitalism and democracy? When capitalism fails a society, can democracy save both the society and the economic system? These are hardly new questions. When Franklin…

More Biology amendments

Dunbar jumped in line, and is trying to reinsert a new 7(B), slightly varied from the one just stricken. "analyze and evaluate the sufficiency of scientific explanations concerning any data of sudden appearance, stasis, and the sequential nature of groups in the fossil record." Allen likes it better, but won't support it, because he hasn't had a chance to vet it with his experts. Mercer wants it, because he wants to talk about sudden appearance. Craig is generally supportive, but offers an amendment. Wants to strike "the sufficiency of." Dunbar supports the amendment, so this'll pass. Craig…

John McWhorter & Michael Behe bloggingheads.tv, 2

Just a quick follow-up to the previous post, as I finished watching the whole Behe-McWhorter exchange. Notes: 1) McWhorter is an atheist, and implies he's always been an atheist (or at least not a theist). 2) He's really impressed by Michael Behe's arguments, to the point where he might assent to Michael Behe being the Isaac Newton of evolutionary genetics (though his summation of some of the jaw-dropping talking points in The Edge of Evolution leaves me a bit skeptical as to McWhorter's deep knowledge of basic evolutionary ideas). 3) Part of the issue really has to do with the…

Introduction to Linear Regression

Suppose you've got a bunch of data. You believe that there's a linear relationship between two of the values in that data, and you want to find out whether that relationship really exists, and if so, what the properties of that relationship are. Once again, I'll use an example based on the first example that my father showed me. He was working on semiconductor manufacturing. One of the tests they did was to expose an integrated circuit to radiation, to determine how much radiation you could expect it to be exposed to before it failed. (These were circuits for satellites, which are exposed…

God Genes and Other Overblown Claims

One of the advantages of being at ScienceBlogs is that when confronted with idiocy like this NY Times article about the genetic basis of behavior, you can count on your fellow bloggers to tear it to shreds. Thankfully, Jonah and Dave do a wonderful job. It seems every so often this sort of sloppy genetic determinism graces the pages of the Grey Lady. The last time this happened Nicholas Kristof was expounding on the 'virtues' of The God Gene by Dean Hamer. Here's a post about that from the archives of the Mad Biologist; I think some of the points might be germane to the NY Times story. (…

Let's talk about...Sexual Selection

Update: Greg Laden has a post worth reading on tis topic. Sexual selection is an expansive topic. It is also one with a complicated history and fits messily into a rigorous empirical research program. I will base this post predominantly on the verbal exposition in R.A. Fisher's The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection. My reason is simple: though progress in formalization of sexual selection theory has been significant within the past 25 years, the major issues and concepts were sketched out by Fisher. Prior to Fisher sexual selection was discussed quite extensively by Charles Darwin, but…

The Vatican Workshop and Statement on The Human Right to Water

In late February 2017, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences hosted a workshop on the human right to water organized by the Cátedra del Diálogo y la Cultura del Encuentro of Argentina with several other organizations. With many colleagues from science, law, human rights, history, and religion, this workshop offered the opportunity to debate and discuss how to integrate the human right to water with public policies in water and sanitation management globally and regionally. Two days of intense discussion culminated in a declaration by Pope Francis and a formal statement (below) signed by the Pope…

Gerald Warner, death cultist

You never know what trivial incident will catalyze a strong reaction. Take the atheist bus campaign, for instance, which simply puts signs on buses that say "There is probably no god" — a few months ago, I would have said it was a good idea and that it should be done, to merely make the background existence of atheists a bit more apparent. I would not have predicted that it would so inflame many believers, or I would have been cheerleading even harder. Companies refused to run the ads in Australia, a smug Catholic cardinal squelches the ads in Italy, and an arrogant bus driver refuses to do…

Things that make creationists look stupid

Creationists do not like the idea of vestigial organs, no sir. That their divine creator might have slipped up and stuck in some tissue that is less than perfect is anathema to them, and so we often encounter bitter denunciations of the whole concept of vestigial organs — organs which have a modified or reduced function, and which are largely superfluous. The best example is the human appendix, which can be snipped out and thrown away with the patient no worse for the experience (other than, of course, the general consequences of surgery). You can find many examples of creationists insisting…

Cell tower worker fatalities continue: More than a dozen deaths since 2012

In 2012, a Frontline and Pro Publica investigation of the cell (or wireless) tower industry found that between 2003 and 2010 the average fatality rate for the US tower industry was more than 10 times greater than that of the construction industry. A January 6, 2014 story by KUOW reporter John Ryan about the death in January 2013 of tower climber Mike Rongey in Mount Vernon, Washington is a reminder that the industry remains extremely dangerous. It is also a reminder that the employers of the workers killed in these incidents may only be fined minimally and that the wireless service providers…

Carnival of the Elitist Bastards #3

This is supposed to be the Carnival of the Elitist Bastards, a celebration of excessive arrogance and bare-knuckle commentary, where smart-assed brutes with swords for tongues receive their rightful acknowledgment. I have received two dozen requests for inclusion in the rolls of the Elitist Bastards. Alas, not one has met my standards. This is the empty carnival, with nothing to celebrate. At least it makes for short work on my part, leaving more time to bounce the Trophy Wench on my knee and guzzle down a few pints with gusto. Now go away. I've got better things to do. But wait… What would a…

Beryllium: Science or Public Relations?

Did Brush Wellman, the worldâs largest producer of beryllium products, hire Hill and Knowlton, the public relations giant behind Big Tobaccoâs campaign to fool the public about the hazards of smoking, to help Brush refute reports of berylliumâs toxicity? Brush says no, but we have the smoking guns -- memos and invoices -- that say otherwise. Keep reading for the details. Beryllium is a remarkable metal. It is stiffer than steel, lighter than aluminum, and causes lung disease at incredibly low levels of exposure. And it causes cancer in humans. This lightweight metal is has long been employed…

Blithering spiritualists

Palazzo has put me in a pissy mood, now. He's mentioned those pompous god-botherers at the Templeton Foundation, who awarded 1.4 million dollars to that credulous gasbag, John Barrow. When Selfish Gene author Richard Dawkins challenged physicist John Barrow on his formulation of the constants of nature at last summer's Templeton-Cambridge Journalism Fellowship lectures, Barrow laughed and said, "You have a problem with these ideas, Richard, because you're not really a scientist. You're a biologist." For Barrow, biology is little more than a branch of natural history. "Biologists have a…

Duesberg Strikes a blow for HIV/AIDS denialism

When Duesberg was recently given space in Scientific American I think the blogosphere was rightly chagrinned that they would give space to a crank whose crackpot ideas are thought to be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands. But it seemed at the time he had been keeping his denialism on the down low, maybe appearing to have given up on his crank view that HIV does not cause AIDS. Not so anymore. He's back, and has secured publication of a paper denying HIV/AIDS in an Italian Journal. The title, AIDS since 1984: No evidence for a new, viral epidemic - not even in Africa, seems…

Twitter-splained

Just wrapped up a meeting sponsored by the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics, and Policy and Princeton University's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Institute on the topic of antibiotic resistance at the animal-human interface. While I was there, I hopped on Twitter at a break after mingling and pumping--and got my ass Twitter-splained. I should note that i have no idea who Doc Ricky is--or if said Doc is a man or a woman, but either gender can be susceptible to doubting the expertise of women and relying on men to "set them straight" as it appears…

When bivalves attack (or: bivalves vs birds, the battle continues)

Regular readers will, hopefully, have shared my surprise on learning - firstly - that oystercatchers are sometimes 'captured' and killed by bivalves, and - secondly - that someone was clever enough to photograph such an occurrence and publish it (Baldwin 1946). Prior to seeing Baldwin's paper, I might well have imagined that such cases can occur occasionally, but I wasn't aware of anyone recording them. Today I'm very pleased to report that I'm now aware of numerous additional such occurrences: I owe a huge debt of thanks to Tet Zoo regular Dartian, who went ferreting through the…

A Tree Grows Up in Haskell: Building a Dictionary Type

Last time around, I walked through the implementation of a very simple binary search tree. The implementation that I showed was reasonable, if not great, but it had two major limitations. First, it uses equality testing for the search, so that the implementation is only really suitable for use as a set; and second, because it's such a trivial tree implementation, it's very easy for the tree to become highly unbalanced, resulting in poor performance. Today, we'll look at how to extend the implementation so that our BST becomes useful as a key/value dictionary type. We'll take two different…

Dembski on Non-Evolutionary Math

I've been taking a look at William Dembski's paper, "[Information as a Measure of Variation][imv]". It was recommended to me as a paper demonstrating Demsbki's skill as a mathematician that isn't aimed at evolution-bashing. I'm not going to go into too much detail about it; it's just not that good. If this is the best work he's done as a mathematician, well, that's pretty sad. The main problems with the paper are: 1. He either doesn't understand or misrepresents some of the fundamentals of the field he's allegedly discussing; 2. He presents many of the central ideas of the paper (that is,…

New and Exciting in PLoS this week

Monday night - the day when four of the PLoS journals publish new articles - here is a sample. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites: Wings, Horns, and Butterfly Eyespots: How Do Complex Traits Evolve?: Throughout their evolutionary history, organisms have evolved numerous complex morphological,…

New and Exciting in PLoS ONE

There are 19 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Mendeley, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites: Population Structure as Revealed by mtDNA and Microsatellites in Northern Fur Seals, Callorhinus ursinus, throughout Their Range: The northern fur seal (Callorhinus ursinus; NFS) is a widely distributed…

New and Exciting in PLoS ONE

There are 23 new articles in PLoS ONE published last Friday (sorry, I'm late....). As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Mendeley, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites: ARNTL (BMAL1) and NPAS2 Gene Variants Contribute to Fertility and Seasonality: Circadian clocks guide the metabolic, cell-division, sleep-wake, circadian and seasonal…

How To Have Sex as a Foster Parent

<I wrote this several years ago as a joke piece for a foster parent group I was on, and I've decided to publish it in case any of you enjoy it.  One of the harsher realities of having 9 kids is that it does cut into your private time, but even more, the psychological heft of foster parenting messes up relationships.  At the same time you desperately need time for one another and restore yourself, you also spend a lot of it obsessing about court dates and outcomes and therapies and meeting your children's needs.  It can be tough to find both mental and physical space for one another - and…

Dense breasts are not just an interesting attribute, wish I'd known the cancer risk

I feel dense for not knowing this important public health fact: women with extremely dense breast tissue are at least four times more likely to develop breast cancer. Over the years, I've had my routine screening mammograms with stellar results.  No evidence of cancer in my two mammary glands.  I've heard radiology technicians comment about my dense breasts, but I thought it was an interesting attribute like droopy breast, or perky breasts or double D breasts. In December 2011, just before my 50th birthday, I was overdue for my routine screening mammogram.  I felt a little guilty for putting…

Hans Zeiger's Scientific Ignorance

Good ol' Hans Zeiger's illogic appears to know no bounds at all. One wonders if he writes papers for his professors at Hillsdale that are as rife with irrational statements as those he writes for the Worldnutdaily. His latest column makes the ridiculous argument that because scientists have said false things in the past, we must dismiss any claims of science he doesn't like. After being informed by a biologist that his claims about "manliness" in a previous column were scientifically ignorant, he responds: I am aware of the science, and I am also aware that science cannot explain everything.…

Conservatives Against Republicans

Washington Monthly has an interesting set of essays by prominent conservatives on why they want the Republicans to lose in November. Joe Scarborough writes of the virtues of divided government during the 90s: The fact that both parties hated each another was healthy for our republic's bottom line. A Democratic president who hates a Republican appropriations chairman is less likely to sign off on funding for the Midland Maggot Festival being held in the chairman's home district. Soon, budget negotiations become nasty, brutish, and short and devolve into the legislative equivalent of Detroit,…

Notes Toward a User's Guide to Synthetic Chemistry Talks

Reading Dylan Stiles's blog yesterday reminded me of a post I wrote last summer about how to approach student talks about synthetic chemistry. Since evil spammers have forced us to turn off comments to the old site, I'll reproduce the original below the fold: Summer days are here again, which means the return of the annual summer student research seminar. There's a local tradition of having all the students doing on-campus research give 15-minute talks to all the other summer students. In principle, I think this is a very good idea, as it gives the students some practice at public speaking,…

Chess in Philadelphia

The World Open went well. I managed six points out of a possible nine. Sadly, you needed six and a half to win any money. Did manage to pick up a handful of rating points, however. My final tally was four wins, three draws, one loss, and one half-point bye, which I will explain in a moment. The full details are available here. I was playing in the three-day schedule, meaning I had to play my first five games in one day, at an accelerated time control of game in 45 minutes. If you use more than 45 minutes, you lose (with very few exceptions). Since I tend to be better at slower time…

Are Parallel Universes Real?

Farnsworth: "There is it. The edge of the Universe!" Fry: "Far out. So there's an infinite number of parallel Universes?" Farnsworth: "No, just the two." Fry: "Oh, well, I'm sure that's enough." Bender: "I'm sick of parallel Bender lording his cowboy hat over me!" -Futurama Our existence here in this Universe is something that we know is rare, special, beautiful, and full of wonder. Image credit: Kelly Montgomery. Some things happen with amazing regularity and predictability: the occurrence of days-and-nights, the tides, the seasons, the motion of the heavenly bodies, and so much more. The…

The Physicist's Dream Machine

"It is no good to try to stop knowledge from going forward. Ignorance is never better than knowledge." -Enrico Fermi As you probably know, the Large Hadron Collider -- site of discovery of the last fundamental particle in the Standard Model, the Higgs Boson -- is the most energetic particle accelerator in the history of humankind. When the upgrades it's currently undergoing are complete, it will reach collision energies of 14 TeV. Image credit: CERN / LHC, add-on created by http://www.panglosstech.com/. The way this happens is that protons are circulated in a giant ring, underground, that'…

Messier Monday: A baby open cluster in the galactic plane, M21

"New stars offer to the mind a phenomenon more surprising, and less explicable, than almost any other in the science of astronomy." -George Adams Welcome back to another Messier Monday here on Starts With A Bang! The Messier catalogue was the very first accurate deep-sky catalogue with over 100 objects, finally topping out with 110 in its final form today. Compiled in the 18th century by Charles Messier and his assistant Pierre Mechain, this collection of fixed, deep-sky objects contains 110 of the brightest, most easily found and most spectacular sight in the entire sky. Image credit: Tenho…

The Strong Force for Beginners

"I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way -- things I had no words for." -Georgia O'Keeffe When it comes to the Universe, it isn't just the stuff that's in it that's important. Image credit: 2MASS Extended Source Catalog (XSC). It's also how all that stuff interacts with itself and everything else. To the best of our knowledge, there are four fundamental forces in the Universe, and they're all essential to our existence. Image credit: Stichting Maharishi University of Management, the Netherlands. Some of them are familiar, like gravitation. On the…

Whom Should I Vote For: Clinton or Sanders?

You may be asking yourself the same question, especially if, like me, you vote on Tuesday, March 1st. For some of us, a related question is which of the two is likely to win the nomination. If one of the two is highly likely to win the nomination, then it may be smart to vote for that candidate in order to add to the momentum effect and, frankly, to end the internecine fighting and eating of young within the party sooner. If, however, one of the two is only somewhat likely to win the nomination, and your preference is for the one slightly more likely to lose, then you better vote for the…

The Future of Colliders: Beyond the LHC!

John Oliver: So, roughly speaking, what are the chances that the world is going to be destroyed? One-in-a-million? One-in-a-billion? Walter Wagner: Well, the best we can say right now is a one-in-two chance. John: 50-50? Walter: Yeah, 50-50... It's a chance, it's a 50-50 chance. John: You come back to this 50-50 thing, what is it Walter? Walter: Well, if you have something that can happen and something that won't necessarily happen, it's going to either happen or it's gonna not happen. And, so, it's kind of... best guess at this point. John: I'm... not sure that's how probability works,…

Once again, the Mystery of the Tsavo Lions Solved

I'll never forget my first lion. A colleague and I had just arrived in the Semliki Valley, in the Congo, to a part of that valley then known as the most predator-rich region of Africa, with loads of lions and heaps of hyenas. Lots of leopards too. We arrived at the main base camp for a large expedition that I was to join a year later (this was a brief visit) and were told to find the satellite camp, out in the bush. "Ten clicks that way, then a left on their road. Good luck finding the road." Good luck indeed. Took us forever. And, at one point, after night fell, we had the brilliant idea…

The reason Hillary Clinton has cinched the nomination

This is an excellent moment to revel in the complexity of life, and argument, and to appreciate the value of the honest conversation. A candidate is the presumed nominee when she or he obtains the required number of pledged delegates to be at 50% plus a fraction in the total pledged delegate count. This is because a candidate must have a true majority to win the nomination when the delegates are all counted up at the convention, and the pledged delegates are required to cast their lot with the candidate they are pledged to, assuming that candidate exists at the time of the convention.…

Taking down New Orleans' monuments: Not what you think

In The Day Freedom Died: The Colfax Massacre, the Supreme Court, and the Betrayal of Reconstruction, Charles Lane describes the events -- several years of events including the Civil War and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, though only briefly -- that led up to the Colfax Massacre. What happened was incredibly complex and only a very detailed description can do justice. But, I'll try to summarize it his way: A war was fought over slavery, and slave holders lost. A conflict then ensued between the new, victorious, anti-slavery government and the racist pigs of the Confederacy, who…

Covert Ops: Addressing Racism Long Term

I've been waiting for people to die before I told this story on my blog, but certain people seem to take forever to do that so I'm not waiting any more. Besides, it happened a long time ago. The story I'm telling you happened to me a long time ago (about 1990) and the thing that happened to me really amounted to someone telling me a story, which in turn happened a long time before that (about 1977). There had been some kind of thing, a barbecue, at the home of Scotty MacNeish. If you don't know who Scotty is, you should. He is the archaeologist who discovered and documented the origins of…