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April 16th, 2008
11:57 pm - Evolutionary Psychology
So I ger very annoyed by evolutionary psychology. I see it pretty regularly, sometimes in jest thankfully, but more often than not completely serious. As far as I have seen, the field is completely unscientific, and primarily exists to spout conservative politics. Some recent examples would be in Mighty Ponygirl's "Science explains why men like games more than women" or Jonathan Tweet's "gender and gaming".
Just to be clear: there is no psychological data on the ancestors of humanity. So instead, evolutionary psychologists make up evolutionary explanations for observed psychological trends in modern humans. Essentially, this means picking trends that they like, and then spinning them as genetically essential rather than environmental or cultural. For that matter, nearly all of the studies cited aren't even cross-cultural. In practice, it is vanishingly rare for a psychological study to be done in different countries at all, let alone in significantly different cultures.
What is particularly notable is that despite massive and obvious cultural differences between men and women -- such as clothing, make-up, and body language -- any subtle difference that can only be seen through extensive statistics is spun to be purely genetic. So if, say, female college students show a statistical difference in how they talk or how they write from male counterparts, it is taken to be a revelation calling for a purely genetic explanation.
The "Hunting Instinct"
As one example of evolutionary logic, I regularly hear about how "hunting instincts" differentiate men from women. For example, Jonathan Tweet's recent blog post suggested that men were "evolved to enjoy hunting and warfare". Similarly, this mega-thread on theRPGsite featured someone claiming that gender differences were explained by men being "bred for hunting and lifting".
In general, modern humans do not seem well adapted to hunting. Up through Homo Habilis, there is no evidence that we hunted at all. Homo Habilis was prey to larger predators, and they had tools for cutting meat but not for stabbing or clubbing prey. There are few indications of physical adaptations for hunting after Homo Habilis. So it is questionable to me how much mental adaptation for hunting we have -- i.e. how deeply ingrained our "hunting instincts" are.
Further, if hunting were a primary point of the male/female split, we might expect to see sexual dimorphism increase after we started hunting. However, actually the opposite happens. The sexes became more similar in size after we begin hunting (around the time of Homo Erectus, approximately 1.8 million years ago).
So while some hunting instincts are within possibility, I think the tendency to assume them is overblown.
The Moving Bar
Anti-feminists throughout the past decades have constantly pointing to whatever the current conditions are as a genetically-determined reality. For example, the lack of women authors and doctors was often cited as evidence that women were genetically unfit for those professions. These days, that is rarely held.
Now, of course, there are real genetic differences between men and women. Some are obvious, and some are less so. However, no one actually grows up under scientifically controlled conditions, and the population differences are subject to a host of environmental and/or cultural influences.
I certainly believe that there are a host of genetic differences between men and women, and I believe in evolution. However, I don't think that any specific difference between modern men and women is "proven" to be purely genetic by supplying an unproveable evolutionary explanation.
P.S. For some more evolutionary psychology annoyances, here are some articles that have galled me over time:
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April 9th, 2008
02:54 pm - Solmukohta 2008
So I'm back from my trip to Finland, where I was attending Solmukohta, an international larp convention with a focus on analysis and discussion. I'll give a detailed report on the gaming side of things in my role-playing journal, ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) jhkimrpg -- right now I just want to give the social report.
First of all, the Finnish reputation for drinking is now confirmed in my mind. I drank more during that week than I had for several months prior. Unfortunately, I think I am becoming more of a loud drunk, and I did some foolish things. Though for the record, when I ran naked up the apartment building stairs in response to a dare, I wasn't very drunk at all. That's just me.
I had a lot of fun in the four larps of the week -- run by Santtu, Andreas, Marthe & Martine, and J. Tuomas. There weren't enough larps for everyone who was there at AWiF, but then really I should have volunteered to run one. I'd have to pick a depressing one to fit in with the mood: one about suicide, one about refugees fleeing Croatia after their village was destroyed, one about a future world war where we were asked about whether to lower the draft age from 16 to 14. The fourth by J. Tuomas was the brightest -- it was just about hungover people who may have killed someone being mean to each other. I think this is telling me something about Finnish psychology. :-)
My pattern for the week was sightseeing in the mornings (mostly by myself), larps in the afternoon, parties in the evening. A lot of thanks to the people organizing. At the parties, I got to hang out more with people I knew from earlier conventions like Claus, Sofia, Martine, and Marthe -- and I got to know some better like Trine and Janetta -- and I got to know new people like Nathan, Santtu, and Brett.
Still, I think my favorite times were the quieter times. I enjoyed a lot going out to the "end of the world" country house following the sauna party -- with interesting discussions that night with Itamar and Trine, along with an unexpectedly nice walk to the lake after being woken up by a fire alarm in the morning. It was very nice countryside, but I'm very glad I didn't have to hike out there every night.
It was only at the hotel on Friday that I got to see the whole crowd. In general, the crowd was now more international than two years ago in Sweden -- big blocks of guys from Germany and Israel, a scattering of Eastern Europeans, and a handful of others. Also, probably not coincidentally, the average was a little older, with more men. I had estimated a little over one-third women at Knutpunkt 2006 (fifty-something out of 147), while it seemed under a third this time.
I enjoyed all the talks and workshops I went to -- props to lots of people here: Malik & Matthijs on educational role-playing, Agnese & Diana on larp in Latvia, Anna-Karin's workshop excellent as always (plus her meta-technique talk), Tor and Even's fascinating split-identity workshop/larp, Anna's workshop on management, and the whole panel on Eastern Europe (though I had trouble focusing Sunday morning).
I enjoyed the evenings there, too. There was a nice impromptu singing session in the stairwell Friday night - kudos to all the singers there. The retro-futurist gala dinner was fine and had a nice show, though I came dangerously close to a wardrobe malfunction as my old metallic grey rubber shirt started to split at the shoulder. And afterwards, dancing the pornapolka with a huge crowd and contributing to the ancient German punch ritual, along with a bit of karaoke. I was starting to get sick by this time, though.
Sunday was a bit of a haze as I was low on sleep and starting to get sick. And mostly there were a lot of goodbyes.
Advice to myself for next time: pick a few times to wander about drinking, dancing, flirting, and singing -- but set aside more time for reflective conversations with people (which may involve a certain amount of alcohol as well).
(Again, more role-playing-specific thoughts will show up on jhkimrpg.)
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March 27th, 2008
10:37 am - Prison and Safety Nets
badgerbag's recent post on drawing the line made me think about safety nets in society. Sadly, in the U.S. it seems that our main safety net is in our prisons -- we actually have the highest per-capita rate of prisoners in the world. The U.K. Reports on Prisons has a World Prison Population list. It summarizes:
• The United States has the highest prison population rate in the world, some 701 per 100,000 of the national population, followed by Russia (606), Belarus (554), Kazakhstan and the U.S. Virgin Islands (both 522), the Cayman Islands (501), Turkmenistan (489), Belize (459), Bermuda (447), Suriname (437), Dominica (420) and Ukraine (415).
• 50 However, more than three fifths of countries (60.5%) have rates below 150 per 100,000. (The United Kingdom’s rate of 141 per 100,000 of the national population places it above the mid-point in the World List; it is the highest among countries of the European Union.)
What I'd be curious would be a comparison of the cost of Europe's (usually more extensive) social programs versus the cost of the U.S.'s massive prison program. It seems to me that the anti-socialist stance of trying to minimize our safety net (i.e. "making them pay their own way") may actually be costing us more money, let alone improving the quality of life.
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March 12th, 2008
10:08 pm - RCSD Budget Crisis
Speaking of education...
I'm writing to my governor and state representatives about school funding. Below is an overview my local the Redwood City School District's page on their Budget Crisis Information 2008-09.
On January 10, Governor Schwarzenegger released a proposed State Budget for 2008-09 that cuts public school funding by $4+ billion in order to make up for a projected $14 billion deficit. If this budget goes through, the Redwood City School District Board of Education will need to find ways to cut programs and services, or find another source of revenue to offset this severe loss of funding to our schools, programs, and staff.
The Governor’s proposed budget cuts targets basic per student funding guaranteed by the State Constitution (Prop. 98 passed in 1988), as well as class size reduction subsidies, special education programs required under federal law, child development programs, child nutrition programs, before and after school grant programs, adult education, and facilities maintenance. In addition, the Governor’s Budget does not provide ‘equalization aid,’ the budget allocation that addresses inequities in school funding and attempts to bring ‘low-wealth’ school districts, such as Redwood City, closer to the state average in per student funding. Finally, the Governor’s Budget proposes to delay funding apportionments (the actual cash we receive to pay our bills) from July to September, and all but eliminates reimbursements the State gives school districts for providing specific required services (referred to as ‘Mandated Cost Reimbursements’).
California is in the lower half of states in per-pupil spending (cf. the Census Report for details). From the 2005 Census report, we seem to be #30 among the states in absolute per-pupil spending -- but that's not figuring in cost of living.
I think it is ridiculous, and about time to start some letter writing.
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10:03 am - Teaching Math
So I've been thinking a little more about education some, after some off-topic discussion on an RPG forum, "Fuzzy Math?".
My limited teaching experience is in some grading on the undergrad college level (math and physics), some physics laboratory instruction and help room supervision, a bit of substitute teaching of 5th-6th grade computer science, and a tiny bit of lecturing. I was a member of the American Association of Physics Teachers, and went to their 118th national meeting in Anaheim.
( Long discussion of math teaching )
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February 24th, 2008
10:19 am - Presidential Election History
I was sort of curious about this, after some comments about how the two American political parties have been matching the voters' interest. I didn't see it collected together in one place from a basic Google search, so I collected together some statistics from the ElectionsCentral pages at HistoryCentral.com.
The following is the popular presidential votes for the past 80 years.
1928: 17.5% - 58.3% vs 40.8% vs 0.9% - Hoover(R) vs Smith(D) vs Other
1932: 17.8% - 57.4% vs 39.6% vs 3.0% - Roosevelt(D) vs Hoover(R) vs Other
1936: 24.3% - 60.8% vs 36.5% vs 2.7% - Roosevelt(D) vs Landon(R) vs Other
1940: 9.9% - 54.7% vs 44.8% vs 0.4% - Roosevelt(D) vs Wilkie(R) vs Other
1944: 7.5% - 53.4% vs 45.9% vs 0.8% - Roosevelt(D) vs Dewey(R) vs Other
1948: 4.5% - 49.6% vs 45.1% vs 5.3% - Truman(D) vs Dewey(R) vs Other
1952: 10.7% - 55.1% vs 44.4% vs 0.4% - Eisenhower(R) vs Stevenson(D) vs Other
1956: 15.5% - 57.4% vs 41.9% vs 0.7% - Eisenhower(R) vs Stevenson(D) vs Other
1960: 0.2% - 49.7% vs 49.5% vs 0.8% - Kennedy(D) vs Nixon(R) vs Other
1964: 22.6% - 61.1% vs 38.5% vs 0.5% - Johnson(D) vs Goldwater(R) vs Other
1968: 0.7% - 43.4% vs 42.7% vs 13.5% - Nixon(R) vs Humphrey(D) vs Wallace(I)
1972: 23.2% - 60.7% vs 37.5% vs 1.8% - Nixon(R) vs McGovern(D) vs Other
1976: 1.9% - 50.1% vs 48.2% vs 0.7% - Carter(D) vs Ford(R) vs Other
1980: 9.7% - 50.7% vs 41.0% vs 6.6% - Reagan(R) vs Carter(D) vs Anderson
1984: 18.2% - 58.8% vs 40.6% vs 0.6% - Reagan(R) vs Mondale(D) vs Other
1988: 7.8% - 53.4% vs 45.6% vs 1.0% - Bush(R) vs Dukakis(D) vs Other
1992: 5.6% - 43.3% vs 37.7% vs 19.0% - Clinton(D) vs Bush(R) vs Perot(I)
1996: 8.0% - 50% vs 42% vs 8% - Clinton(D) vs Dole(R) vs Perot(I)
2000: -0.5% - 47.9% vs 48.4% vs 2.7% - Bush(R) vs Gore(D) vs Nader(I)
2004: 3.0% - 51.3% vs 48.3% vs 0.3% - Bush(R) vs Kerry(D) vs Nader(I)
I have heard various talk about how the age of television and carefully analyzed polling has made elections closer now than in past ages, as both parties cleave close to the center and tailor their message carefully. However, when I look at the results, it doesn't seem to be that strong an effect.
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February 19th, 2008
11:35 am - Pokémon Programming!
I did a little Perl programming project over the weekend that I'm rather proud of. Thanks to Danny and Liz for help and feedback.
I had been trying to think of some way to help my son get into programming. I personally am rather fond of Perl, and in some ways it is a good language to get started in. There are a lot of things that make syntax easier. For example, the default accepts bare words as strings, so you can say $a = hello rather than requiring quotes. It has many simple operations like its loops for (1..10) or sorting.
The really crucial problem with kids programming, though, is what they are supposed to do with it. Most starting programming tasks have boring applications. I noticed that my son has been obsessively going through the lists of Pokémon information -- and that it taught him how to use a search form, for example. That's data!! So over the weekend I set up two Perl modules and a CGI script for some simple Pokémon programming. The form takes standard Perl code, with a few imported functions for Pokémon data. Here's the result:
Milo's Pokémon Program Tester
For grown-up programmers, I have the underlying code online for perusal. There are many things that I would do differently if this were a module for grown-ups. Keeping that in mind, though, I'd be glad to hear various people's comments.
Notes for grown-up programmers
I have lots of ideas for extensions -- especially making it handle simple mistakes more nicely and give helpful messages. More concretely: inserting semicolons at the ends of lines if they aren't there, and re-phrasing some of the error messages returned.
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February 1st, 2008
09:23 am - First 4 Weeks at Yahoo!
So I'm wrapping up my fourth week at Yahoo! (While I do like it here, that's not enthusiasm -- the company name has an exclamation point in it, which induces some snark in me.)
Work is going pretty well. I'm helping make tools for the Operations department -- my group mostly makes Perl scripts and PHP sites, plus a few C++ utilities controlled by the scripts. Yahoo! does have an impressive set of tools compared to my time at EarthLink -- which is unsurprising considering its size, but still interesting to note. A nice has been taking the train into work, since I live right by the Caltrain station and Yahoo! has a shuttle from the station right to the offices. On the down side have been a lot of 5:00, 5:30, and 6PM meetings (especially when my mornings are meeting-free).
This week we confirmed laying off around 5% of the employees worldwide, and we just got the news of an official offer from Microsoft:
Microsoft offers $44.6B for Yahoo
So, just after I was just wishing wiredferret good luck at getting a Microsoft job, I find that I might end up working for Microsoft in the not-too-distant future.
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January 7th, 2008
10:12 pm - Happy Birthday to Me
So my first day on the new job at Yahoo! was fine. I got a badge and a cube and a desktop, a bunch of paperwork, and various orientation talks -- which was about all that I was expecting. My new boss was still on vacation, and forgot to tell the others that I was coming -- which was a bit disturbing, but he was apologetic when I called his cell phone. At least he doesn't seem like a micromanaging type. :-)
I just had a quiet nice dinner at home with cake for dessert, which was just what I was looking for.
Oh, and I got season two of Avatar: The Last Airbender! Hoody-hoo!
The past year has had its ups and downs. My main events were my outing to Burning Man in August and some trips to New York to see my family. Life changes have been Liz's health, Milo's change to his new school North Star, and my layoff and new job. Things could be better, but they could be a whole lot worse.
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December 12th, 2007
04:45 pm - My time at home these days
So I've been at home now the last few weeks, since the EarthLink SJ office closed at the end of October -- though I'm not officially laid off until December 21. I haven't been talking about badgerbag's health situation, I guess since it seems kind of personal to her, but I realize I can't really talk about what's going on with me without covering that.
Liz has owned a wheelchair since I've known her, but it has been for uncommon times when she wasn't feeling well. Her problems walking had been attributed to fibromyalgia, combined with some old hip and knee problems. However, she took a turn for the worse in March. She would often need a cane, and had to use the wheelchair for any long walks. It was slowly getting better, until at the end of October when she got nerve conduction electric shock tests to help diagnose. Then things suddenly got much worse. She had to use the wheelchair all the time, and suddenly there have been a lot of doctor visits including a new neurologist, three MRIs of different parts, and some rehab and physical therapy.
There's no diagnosis yet, but candidates include Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), Primary Lateral Sclerosis (PLS), or an uncommon type of Multiple Sclerosis (MS). PLS and MS don't have known causes -- they're really just names for collections of symptoms shown. It doesn't seem to be sharply degenerative, but it's also not something that's going to be cured. At best, it will be very slow in progress and the symptoms can be lessened with treatment.
So I'm adjusting to this. We made a bunch of changes around the house -- including a new deck outside our door with a ramp, and new french doors that go out onto our patio with the hot tub (with mini-ramp). The big thing to deal with is that it's a lot harder to go out to places.
Liz wonders how I'm going to process this, which I find hard to answer. I have supportive friends, but mostly processing changes is very personal for me. I don't like therapy or support groups, and to some degree the explicit psychological talk that goes with them.
It's not like my choices are all that hard. I'm starting my new job in January, and working to improve our house to adapt. Until my new job, I'm going to spend a lot of time with Liz and Milo, and take some time for myself as well. I am making an effort to relax more. I've been watching a lot more movies and reading books. I'm not writing all that much, partly because I don't have a good workspace. My laptop kind of sucks at this point, and the wireless on it is terrible, and I don't have a nice desk, though I have set up a stand with keyboard and mouse on the kitchen table.
Once upon a time, I had thought that my time off before the new job would be a good time for my projects. However, reflecting on this, I think relaxing and hanging out for once would be just fine. I've basically never really had time off since college. I went straight from college to grad school, from grad school to my post-doc, from post-doc to Excite@Home, and from Excite@Home to EarthLink. So I figure it should be fine for me to have no big plans.
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December 6th, 2007
10:04 pm - Thoughts on Jo Walton's "Ha'Penny"
So I just finished reading Jo Walton's Ha'Penny -- the sequel to her alternate-history murder mystery Farthing. Both are very well-written books, and I love the characters. However, I was upset at the implied portrayal of fascism and how it was used. I ended up staying up late last night finishing Ha'Penny, but then couldn't sleep afterwards.
The background of the books is that England makes peace with Germany in early 1941 after the fall of France. Subsequently, England sees a rise in anti-Semitism and repressive government. The books ask important questions about the rise of power, but I think they also misrepresent in many ways.
Killing Hitler?
Alternate histories about WWII abound, and I think that they are still relevant for the modern day. One of the most popular alternate history ideas is killing Hitler prior to or during the war, and what that would do to the Nazi party. (A variant of this appears in Ha'Penny.) This has a lot of relevance to people in our dealings with Iraq and other repressive countries. Our key mistake in Iraq came from the idea (promoted by G.W. Bush and others) that if we just got rid of Saddam Hussein, then Iraq would get better. This isn't unique to Bush, though. Clinton similarly fumbled in his attempts to snatch up clan leaders in Mogadishu in 1993.
Leaders can be important, but they aren't the movement. One of the problems I had with Walton's books was that England was vastly different politically and socially from pre-war Germany and Italy. It had a fairly long history as a unified nation and an established government. Nazism and Fascism were rooted in their countries' culture. The general agreement among historians I know is that killing Hitler during the war would have been a boon to Nazi Germany, letting the military commanders do their jobs better under a less influential leader. Killing him early on before the Nazis rise to power might have changed things, but its not clear that it would be any improvement overall.
As far as I know, assassination is almost always a misperception that killing the leader will eliminate the movement. I'm hard-pressed to think of an example when political assassination worked to achieve its broader goals. I am inclined to think that public resistance is better. This includes passive resistance, but also armed resistance to violence. Still, even violent protest is different than assassination.
Have there been assassinations that worked to improve things?
( Ha'Penny spoilers behind cut... )
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November 26th, 2007
01:30 pm - More on the new job
So just before leaving for Thanksgiving, I accepted a job offer from Yahoo! It's a hair more base salary than my previous EarthLink job that is ending in December. I had also been interviewing with Linden Labs, but they turned me down for lack of C++ experience, which is true enough. (I've done a lot of C, Perl, and Java -- but little C++.)
Yahoo! is in Sunnyvale, which is roughly as long a commute. However, it looks like I can take Caltrain down and take a shuttle from the Caltrain station to the Yahoo! offices.
I'll be working in network tools development -- building stuff in C and Perl for analyzing traffic data and network rules. I have to say that building networked Perl scripts is something I do for fun, so this seems like pretty good day-to-day work. Not an exciting end application, but work that is likely to be used and useful (as opposed to projects likely to get shelved as many of my EarthLink projects did).
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November 25th, 2007
11:55 pm - Back from Thanksgiving 2007
So I'm back from a week in Rockaway, New York -- from last Sunday to Friday. I had an old-fashioned (of sorts) Thanksgiving with parents, two older sisters, one brother-in-law, three nephews, and one niece. Also an uncle, aunt, and one cousin for the dinner.
Things seemed a bit more relaxed this trip than in some others, despite our packing in a lot of activities. Monday I went to the Natural History Museum with my mother and Milo, then back into Manhattan with just my father to see a concert at Carnegie Hall. Tuesday the other cousins arrived. Wednesday was back into Manhattan to the the Cirque du Soleil show "Wintuk" at Madison Square Garden, with just my mother and Milo. Then we had Thanksgiving on Thursday.
Milo played with his cousins a bunch. My nephew Nathaniel specifically requested a Dungeons & Dragons game, so I dungeon-mastered for the four boys age 6-8. (Lillian who is younger played a bit in the second mini-session, but she lost interest.) They also were introduced to Talisman and later played a full game. In principle, Milo can run that, but I had to oversee it to smooth out social issues. So I spent a lot of time running games for the kids.
My news was that I have accepted a job at Yahoo!, to start on January 7 (my birthday, incidentally). Also, it looks like both of my sisters will be moving to the Washington DC area -- though that isn't finalized yet. Everyone sent best wishes to Liz.
As usual for family gatherings, it was fun but I am glad to be home and comfy.
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November 8th, 2007
08:38 am - Down to L.A. for the weekend
So I'm headed down to L.A. for the weekend. I was going to visit my friend Rolfe on the weekend his film, Nightmare Man premieres as one of the eight films of After Dark Horrorfest.
The films are playing in 350 theaters nationwide, so if you're into horror films, you can check out the Horrorfest theater list to see if any of them are playing near you.
Nightmare Man is one of those cool films that keeps going unexpected places. It starts with a simple premise, and then twists around. It has some slasher elements, but it's quite the opposite of the stereotypical stalker film where victims are set up and obvious.
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November 2nd, 2007
04:43 pm - Story of Mine Posted
A story of mine appeared in my friend Shannon's project, Can I Sit With You?, which is a collection of schoolyard horror stories. Proceeds from Can I Sit With You go to the local Special Education PTA, SEPTAR. The story is from when I was in 5th grade - the year when my family moved to a semi-isolated house on the side of a mountain overlooking the Hudson. Here's the link:
Spitting Image"
In general, I like the stories in the collection a lot. I hope mine lives up.
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October 3rd, 2007
10:22 pm - Agh! Parenting Guilt!
Agh!
OK, here's the deal. Out of curiousity, I had put Night of the Lepus onto my Netflix queue. It's a cheesy seventies sci-fi horror movie starring DeForest Kelly (McCoy of Star Trek), which is known as hilariously bad in some circles because it is about giant killer bunnies. From what I knew, they had a bunch of little miniature sets, and they would herd a bunch of bunnies through them, and thus have giants rabbits on a rampage.
However, when I got it, I noticed when I got it that it was only PG. So, thinking of this would just be cheesy rampages of bunnies over sets, I invited Milo to watch it with me. At this point, it's understandable. However, they showed a body with a bunch of fake blood over it after the rabbits first rampage. The monster here was so silly, though, and thinking it might be an aberration, I didn't stop it and we kept watching. I turned off the sound so there wouldn't be scary music and we laughed at the pictures of all the bunnies hopping around a miniature mine tunnel. However, after they escaped from the mine, the bunnies racked up more of a body count in the town, with more fake blood. I had forgotten that this was the seventies, when freaking Jaws was rated PG. So I stopped it and spent some time explaining about how they did the effects to emphasize that it wasn't real, and we certainly didn't watch the rest of it.
So now tonight, several nights later.
Milo hears a scrabbling on the roof. We have raccoons living around our house, and we've heard them before. Still, it was loud and weird. But Milo is seriously creeped out. He goes on about his routine, but is disturbed and can't sit still. To reassure him, we go out with a flashlight and look around the house, and see the tail of a raccoon disappearing around the edge of the yard. Still, he's creeped out and doesn't want to follow it. He tries to go to sleep, but after a bit he comes and asks me if he can stay in my bed instead.
So...
This has almost never happened. Milo has been pretty much unafraid of monsters as far as I know, and he doesn't ask to sleep with us. But still fitful in my bed, he told me he couldn't sleep because he was imagining the killer bunnies because of the scrabbling sounds outside. The one thing he loves most in the world -- cute little animals -- have now become a nightmare! Agh!!
In principle, I can see a funny side to him being afraid of killer bunnies, but right now I'm just feeling really guilty and I don't really know what to do.
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September 27th, 2007
10:57 pm - 2008 Presidential Candidate Selector
So a little while ago I tried out someone's link for the 2008 SelectSmart.com Presidential Candidate Selector, that quizes you on your positions on various issues and how important they are to you -- and then rates the candidates in order of how closely they align to your positions. Here were my results:
  1. Theoretical Ideal Candidate (100%)
2. Dennis Kucinich (86%) Information link
3. Barack Obama (76%) Information link
4. Joseph Biden (68%) Information link
5. Wesley Clark (not announced) (68%) Information link
6. Alan Augustson (campaign suspended) (67%) Information link
7. Al Gore (not announced) (66%) Information link
8. Hillary Clinton (66%) Information link
9. Michael Bloomberg (not announced) (65%) Information link
10. Bill Richardson (63%) Information link
11. Christopher Dodd (63%) Information link
12. John Edwards (60%) Information link
13. Mike Gravel (58%) Information link
14. Kent McManigal (campaign suspended) (57%) Information link
15. Ron Paul (53%) Information link
16. Elaine Brown (42%) Information link
17. Rudolph Giuliani (33%) Information link
18. John McCain (28%) Information link
19. Mitt Romney (28%) Information link
20. Mike Huckabee (24%) Information link
21. Tommy Thompson (withdrawn) (24%) Information link
22. Tom Tancredo (20%) Information link
23. Fred Thompson (not announced) (15%) Information link
24. Newt Gingrich (not announced) (14%) Information link
25. Chuck Hagel (not announced) (13%) Information link
26. Jim Gilmore (withdrawn) (12%) Information link
27. Sam Brownback (11%) Information link
28. Duncan Hunter (10%) Information link
I don't actually know much about Kucinich, and I was intrigued that my positions aligned very closely with Obama -- at least according to their form. They have a nice form for comparing candidates' positions that has links to sources.
It also surprised me that John Edwards was further away from me than Hillary Clinton. My vague impression from news was the he seemed a little more palatable, and even now comparing them, I'm not sure how it got that.
Definitely take it with a grain of salt (like any political thing), but I thought it was interesting.
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09:40 pm - Interesting Military Death Statistics
An interesting bit of statistics I ran across when I was talking with someone today. Talking about deaths in the Iraq war, I found a 2006 post "Those Military Death Statistics" by Robin Burk. I believe the source was a table of data from the Defense Manpower Data Center, Statistical Information Analysis Division -- available from their Military Casualty Information page. It summarizes deaths by type and ratio to total service people from 1980 to today. The early 2006 post had a graphical chart that only includes up to 2004. I extended it to add the 2005 and 2006 numbers, as show below.
Browsable Table Data
So the peak for the Iraq war is fairly obvious. Interestingly, total military deaths went down in 2006 thanks to a precipitous drop in accident rate, but the total hostile action deaths still increased. Also interesting is that over the last 27 years, the accident rate has dropped enormously, such that the 1980 death rate is roughly the same as today with two active wars. Guessing here, but I'd suspect that the end of the Cold War lead to much more concentration on safety. It was probably easier to overlook the high accident rate in the face of looming threats. Also, I think the first Iraq war made clear to people the extent of accidental deaths by having more soldiers die from accidents and friendly fire than enemy action. This probably encouraged the military to further push its safety habits.
For comparison, one should look at the National Center of Health Statistics Deaths/Mortality page. The overall U.S. death rate is much higher, but that is primarily due to illness in old people. The death rate for people ages 15-24 is 79.2 per 100k in 2004. They also have rates for different causes, but those are for all ages. For a few causes, we have:
Accidents: 37.3 per 100k for all ages civilian vs. 35.3 per 100k military
Self-harm: 10.8 per 100k for all ages civilian vs. 11.0 per 100k military
Homicide: 6.0 per 100k for all ages civilian vs. 1.8 per 100k military
How to read these is tricky. The military overall seems to be roughly 50% more dangerous than average life today for the 18-25 year-old. However, that includes all military stationed everywhere. The rate will be much higher for those on the ground in Iraq.
On the one hand, it is possible to imagine that the death rate is much higher than it is. On the other hand, a thousand dead people is a thousand dead people. That's a lot of dead people, and putting it in a statistic that is a small percentage of some large number can be an injustice.
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September 26th, 2007
10:12 pm - Nightmare Man in Horrorfest
Yay! It seems to be official now that my friend Rolfe Kanefsky's self-produced film Nightmare Man has been selected to be one of the eight films of Horrorfest in November. cf. their official list films.
That means it will be coming out on in 500 theaters around the U.S. from November 9-11.
It was given deceptive tagline for the festival, which I guess has to do with a bit of a T&A crowd of Horrorfest. (The trailer for it is a giant vampire woman in a slip rampaging through a city.) The film actually has a fair bit of nudity, but it doesn't have anything to do with what the tagline says. The film begins with a woman preparing to go with her husband to check into an asylum for her horrifying hallucinations. More than that would be spoilers, though.
It's a pretty good film, and certainly stands well as a realy horror film despite a really shoestring budget. My favorites of his would be Tomorrow By Midnight, The Hazing, and There's Nothing Out There (though partly from nostalgia).
He also wrote the original script for the Pamela Anderson / Denise Richards movie Blonde and Blonder, which will also be coming out in theaters in November -- though it was butchered in rewrites and direction and he had nothing to do with the production. Still, a big credit with big name stars in theaters, so good for him.
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September 25th, 2007
11:55 pm - Collected BM Pics
So I've collected a bunch of pictures of me and our camp at Burning Man. I've just linked them all on a page of my darkshire site.
Camp Geeksville at Burning Man 2007
There are scattered sorts of comments on there. The pics are roughly but not really chronological.
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