Category Archives: culture

biology, culture, science

Happy 99th Birthday, Alan Turing

1 Comment

So, today (June 23, 2011) marks the 99th anniversary of the birth of Alan Turing, British supergenius who played a critical role in winning World War II and is one of the founding fathers of computer science.

He was also gay, which was illegal Britain at the time. In 1952 he was prosecuted under the same law that had sent Oscar Wilde to gaol. He chose to undergo chemical castration (in the form of treatment with feminizing hormones) as an alternative to prison.

In 1954 he committed suicide in dramatic fashion. He died of cyanide poisoning, and was found lying in his bed with a half-eaten apple beside him. The speculation is that he had laced the apple with cyanide and was reenacting the apple scene from Snow White.

When Alan Turing was found on June 8, 1954, he had been dead for one day, and he looked exactly like this. Snow White by *VinRoc on deviantART

Turing’s earliest major contribution was the hypothetical Turing machine, which consisted of a very long piece of tape and a set of rules for manipulating the symbols on that tape. Turing showed that such a machine was, in principle, capable of performing any mathematical computation that can be represented as an algorithm. The Universal Turing Machine (a Turing machine capable of simulating any other Turing machine) provided a sort of proof-of-principle for the idea of general-purpose computers, and the tape-and-manipulator structure of the Turing machine is often cited as the prototype of the separation-of-hardware-and-software structure that pervades our computer lives today.

A Turing machine consists of a tape with symbols on it and a machine with a set of rules for reading and manipulating those symbols. And a bell.

During World War II, Turing worked as a cryptanalyst and made major contributions to cracking the “Enigma” codes used by the German military. The success of Turing and his colleagues throughout the war gave the Allies a critical advantage, particularly during the early parts of the war, when the Germans had a significant military advantage.

After World War II, he introduced what we now call the “Turing test” for artificial intelligence. The idea is that a computer can be said to have achieved genuine intelligence if a human having a conversation with it could not tell that it was a computer. For the next forty-some years, this was considered to be the gold standard for the demonstration of human intelligence. Then came a flood of reality television, which demonstrated that many humans would not actually pass it.

During the last few years of his life, Turing turned his attention to certain problems in mathematical biology, including the curious fact that many plants seem to grow in patterns governed by the Fibonacci sequence. The whole phyto-Fibonacci thing is a weird and interesting phenomenon that will get its own dedicated post sometime soon.

In the meantime, happy birthday Alan Turing, and RIP.

Turing, A. M. (1950). Computing Machinery and Intelligence Mind, 59 (236), 433-460

culture, Darwin Eats Cake

The Wrath of Douchebert

Leave a comment

So, here’s the second in what should be a short series of Darwin Eats Cake strips featuring Douchebert, the round peg who is compelled by some sort of biological determinism to attempt to insert himself into any square holes he sees.

Best URL for sharing: http://www.darwineatscake.com/?id=37
Permanent URL for hotlinking or embedding: http://www.darwineatscake.com/img/comic/37.jpg

Before you comment, yes, I do know that Spock was fixing the warp drive, not plugging a hole in a reactor core. If it makes you feel better, think of this as a poor-taste mash-up of Star Trek II and Fukushima.

culture, Darwin Eats Cake

Darwin Eats Cake: Douchebert

Leave a comment

So, here’s a thing

Best URL for sharing: http://www.darwineatscake.com/?id=36
Permanent image URL for hotlinking or embedding: http://www.darwineatscake.com/img/comic/36.jpg

Adams’s blog can be found here. His spirited defense of Gwyneth is in this post, and was covered by Gawker. His new post was covered by Jezebel.

Now, to be fair, what I have done here (as has much of the media coverage), is to take part of Adams’s post out of context. In my case, it is for (attempted) comic effect. In fact, I intend to take further license in future strips, introducing a new character, “Douchebert,” who will embody the idea that we have certain innate (biologically determined) impulses, and that we have no capacity to overcome those impulses.

If all you do is read the stories written about his posts, you’ll come away with the impression that Adams is a racist rape apologist. That’s actually unfair. In both cases, Adams has some legitimate and interesting points. He has perhaps made the indelicately — using language that lends itself to being taken out of context. But, come on, he’s a comic-strip writer. If he worried about ruffling people’s feathers, Dilbert would be boring as hell.

In summary, what I have done here is completely unfair to Scott Adams. I will continue to be unfair to him in the future for as long as it seems useful to do so. Hopefully that can lead to something that is informative and/or entertaining about other topics. However, if you are interested in what Adams actually has to say, avoid the second-hand media coverage, and go check out his original posts.

On the other hand, there is something just sort of sad about defending Gwyneth Paltrow.

culture, Well Thank God for THAT

Well Thank God for THAT: Booty Pillow

Leave a comment

So, have you been having a hard time getting your booty rest? Maybe the problem is that you’ve been sleeping on normal pillow like a schmuck.

Lucky for you, someone has invented the booty pillow, which, according to the website,

The Booty PillowTM is the world’s first male comfort pillow.  While it is a male comfort pillow, the ladies love it too! The pillow is made to replicate the feeling of laying on a woman’s backside. Cause really, who doesn’t love laying on nature’s pillow???

Men and women love the Booty Pillow — especially while playing virtual twister over the internet using their new kinect. 
Although . . . it seems that men love it more than women — so much, in fact, that their wives/girlfriends are forced to turn to lesbianism.

The Booty Pillow is shaped and styled like a woman’s back — at least if the woman is a thong-wearing quintuple amputee.

It comes in a variety of colors, including (left to right in the top picture) cheetah, caramel, burgundy, and chocolate, as well as (not pictured) “Amsterdaaamn,” snow leopard, and two collegiate colors (crimson and purple) for your recent grad.

Hat tip to Jeremy Van Cleve, who sits on an enormous ovary pillow when he is working at his desk, which explains both his rock-hard abs and his stone-cold evolutionary theory.

culture, science

White Rock paint core

17 Comments

So, I grew up in the science town of Los Alamos, New Mexico, which is actually sort of two towns: Los Alamos and White Rock. The two towns share a lot of things, including a Sonic, a middle school, a high school, and a love of very large bombs.

Well, at the entrance to White Rock (right next to the quickie mart) is the eponymous rock. The white rock is only sometimes white, as it is a long-standing tradition to paint it in different colors an patterns.

Well, apparently Mouser NerdBot (who is, I assume, based on the name, a Palin relation), was curious just how thick the paint was and took a core sample, discovering that it was five and a half inches thick.

Here’s a small version of the composite picture, but you should really check out the full-size image here.

via kottke.org

Five and a half inches!?! That’s like twice the size of my . . . um . . . pet hamster?
culture, video

Chewbacca as Axl Rose

Leave a comment

So, here’s something that will make you yearn for a simpler time, when a Sasparilla cost two bits, everybody knew their neighbors, and wookies still had a sense of dignity.

Warning: if you love Star Wars, this will hurt your soul.

If you love the Star Wars prequels, you will probably enjoy this video in a non-ironic way. Also, you should get that checked.

via Geekologie.

culture, media, video

Let’s Voltron

1 Comment

So, by all indications, the rapture seems not to have happened this weekend. The leading theory seems to be that Macho Man Randy Savage stopped it in dramatic fashion.

Of course, the alternative is that Voltron intervened. After all, he is the Defender of the Universe.

Which leads me to our next video. Apparently, this summer Nicktoons is launching Voltron Force, based on the 1980s-era Voltron. I saw a lot of Voltron back in grad school junior high. Personally, I would be much more excited for a remake of Robotech, and not just because Lisa Hayes is much hotter than Princess Allura.

Perhaps I’m oversharing.

Anyway, here’s the theme song from the new Voltron Force, which is just sort of, well, something.

culture, Politics, religion

You know what, "God," I don’t negotiate with terrorists

5 Comments

So, do you know what caused the rash of tornadoes across the southern United States at the end of april? Something about temperature inversions and wind shear, you say?

Wrong!

According to the folks over at Faith2Action (via Wonkette), the problem is the trifecta of insufficient forced birth, insufficient sexual bigotry, and insufficient shitting on Palestinians:

Is God trying to get our attention?

The worst tornado outbreak in American history has left hundreds dead.   Mississippi flooding has not been this bad in 80 years.  Wildfires have swept through millions of acres in Texas and Oklahoma. 

There are a number of things that could give God reason to at least partially lift His protective Hand from America, including the millions of abortions done here each year, the flaunting of sexual sin, and our recent treatment of Israel.

Any support that the U.S. provides for dividing the Holy Land risks God’s wrath against us.  Rabbi Aryeh Spero says that a division could displace 400,000 Jews from their homes and more Christian holy sites would fall under Muslim control.

Pray that this will not happen and that many Americans will give their undivided attention to God.

Of course, this type of statement is not really news. Every time anything bad happens, from tornadoes to 9/11, there are always religious leaders who come forward to claim responsibility that “God” is punishing us for something or other.

Two things.

First, it’s interesting that “God” always seems to be punishing us for something that just so happens to be a current hot-button political issue.

Second, the punishment almost always seems to come in the form of killing a whole bunch of people who have no connection to the relevant policy decisions.

Some gay people get married in Massachusetts, so you murder a whole bunch of people in Alabama? I’m sorry, but those are not the actions of some benevolent Universe-creating deity, those are the actions of an abusive psychopath.

Now I’m not claiming that Faith2Action caused the tornadoes, but their actions in the wake of the tragedy are no different from any group claiming responsibility for a terrorist act: “A bunch of people are dead, and if you don’t do what we want, a bunch more are going to die.”

In any other context, from an abusive marriage to a hostage situation, it is clear who the bad guy is. It is also clear what you should do. You have to tell Faith2Action’s “God” to go to hell (as it were), because otherwise they’ll just be back with more demands the next time a river floods or some lunatic carries a bomb into a marketplace, and the cycle of abuse with perpetuate itself.

That’s the first rule in these situations: we don’t negotiate with terrorists.

I have an impulse to apologize to anyone who was offended by this post, but I’m going to resist it. You see, there are a lot of religious people I know and respect, but I would hope that they all see the distinction between “God” and God.

If you’re irreligious, or believe in a hands-off type of God, you probably already share my view that it is disgusting when religious leaders exploit tragedy to push a political agenda.

If you believe in a God who is a more active participant in human affairs, I hope that you were not offended by my post, although you might well be offended by arrogance and blasphemy inherent in someone’s claiming to know why God allowed these tragedies to occur.

But what if you believe in a “God” who uses mass murder to push a political agenda, and you think that you’re the one who gets to tell everyone what that political agenda is? Well, you probably were offended by this post, but I also don’t apologize to terrorists.

biology, culture, evolution, science

More on Nowak et al at the Chronicle

Leave a comment

So, an article has just come out this morning in the Chronicle of Higher Education covering the controversy over the Nowak et al Nature paper attacking kin selection. I’ve written about the paper twice previously, once here, providing an xtranormal video dramatization of the issues, and once here, trying to provide some context to explain why so many people had gotten up in arms about this particular paper (as opposed to the hundreds of scientific papers published every year that are equally wrong).

Unfortunately, the article is behind the Chronicle’s paywall, so you may not be able to read it. (I don’t know if they permit the same sorts of work-arounds that the New York Times does.)

The thing that most strikes me in the article comes at the end:

Right now Mr. Nowak is working to understand the mathematics of cancer; previously, he has outlined the mathematics of viruses. It falls within his career mission to “provide a mathematical description where there is none,” he says, a goal at once modest and lofty. He would also like to write a book on the inter­section of religion and science, a publication that would no doubt further endear him to atheists.

He knows that the debate on kin selection is far from over, though he sees the ad hominem attacks as a good sign. “If the argument is now on this level,” he says, “I have won.”

along with this comment from Smayersu

Science is written in the language of mathematics. Why is it that the biologists cry “foul” when the mathematicians and physicists investigate the theory of evolution? The biological community should welcome the help of those who are trained to examine problems from a rigorous mathematical perspective.

Two things.

First, the criticism of Nowak had nothing to do with his providing a mathematical framework. In fact, most of the people who have criticized Nowak are, themselves, mathematical biologists. The issue is that the paper discounts and misrepresents a huge body of mathematical work. In fact, while Nowak has written a number of interesting and original papers, he has also written a number of papers in which he claims to “provide a mathematical description where there is none,” the problem being that in many cases, there actually is a mathematical description. Often quite an old one.

It is as if I were to write a paper that said, “You know who was wrong? Albert Einstein! Because, look, Special Relativity does not work when you incorporate gravity. So I’ve created a new thing that I call “Generalized Relativity.”

Second, it is absolutely true that ad hominem attacks do not constitute legitimate scientific criticism. However, the fact that some of the attacks on Nowak have been ad hominem certainly does not constitute evidence that he is right.

To my mind, the relevance of the ad hominem attacks is this. They reflect a deep sense of frustration on the part of the field towards Nowak and his career success. Nowak has repeatedly violated one of the basic principles of academic scholarship: that you give appropriate credit to previous work. And yet, the academic system has consistently rewarded him over other researchers who put more effort into making sure that they are doing original work and into making sure to credit their colleagues.

It is as if, after publishing my paper on Generalized Relativity, I were to be awarded tens of millions of dollars in grant money and a chair at Harvard, while the legions of physicists pointing out Einstein’s later work were ignored. I’m guessing that I might find myself the subject of some ad hominem attacks, but it would not mean that I was right.

As a colleague of mine commented this morning, “ah, Nowak thinks he’s won because of the ad hominem attacks. by that standard, Donald Trump must be a serious presidential candidate.”

Nowak, M., Tarnita, C., & Wilson, E. (2010). The evolution of eusociality Nature, 466 (7310), 1057-1062 DOI: 10.1038/nature09205