Calorie counts

The elementary school where I play volleyball has some new signs up in the gym, presumably for a class lesson they’ve started. Each sign depicts two foods and one common calorie count.

From this, we’re given to understand that a plate of rice and beans and a plate of lo mein each have the same number of calories (I forget the numbers, and I didn’t write them down). A Big Mac and a plate of fish and vegetables are 600 calories each. A hot dog matches up with a salad, and a cupcake is in some way equal to a bowl of fruit. Doughnut, or bagel and cream cheese? Machts nicht.

I don’t know how the lesson goes, but I do hope they give a strong message that calories don’t tell the whole story. I’d hate to see a kid come out of this eating more cupcakes, or opting for a hot dog or a Big Mac instead of a salad or fish and vegetables.

Anyway, yesterday at lunch time I took a walk to the local post office — about a mile and a half each way — and decided to stop for a Caesar salad at a chain restaurant near the post office. In New York, most chain restaurants are now required to show calorie counts on their menus, and as I browsed the menu I thought about the signs in the school gym.

It’s not surprising, of course, that restaurant food tends toward the high-calorie side, but some of what’s there is eye-opening.

What really struck me was that almost every appetizer on the menu came in at well over 1000 calories — I think one was around 800, the lightest of the bunch, and one was 2500. These are appetizers. They’re meant to get you started.

Yes, they’re also meant to be shared, but here: suppose you and a companion order the spinach and artichoke dip (about 1500 calories or so; this one isn’t exact) to share, and then you each get the Fiesta Lime Chicken — a moderate choice, somewhere around yellow or green on the health spectrum — at 1230 calories. That brings you right to 2000 calories, which is a full day’s allocation, and that’s just for dinner (assuming you drink water or iced tea, and forgo dessert; we won’t even think about adding dessert to this). You skipped breakfast and lunch that day, right?

I’ve often joked that “appetizer” seems to be an American idiom that means “fried stuff”. The spinach and artichoke dip isn’t fried, of course, but that’s little consolation — note that it’s full of cheese, but that’s not part of the name (it’s all marketing, you know). And most of the other appetizers are: chicken wings, fried zucchini sticks, onion rings... fried cheese.

Again, calories aren’t everything, but the appetizers are also loaded with fat and salt, items that aren’t (yet?) listed on the menu. But you can get it from the chain’s web site:

Spinach and Artichoke Dip: ~100g fat (~25g saturated, 1.5g trans), ~2300mg sodium
Fiesta Lime Chicken (including sides): 67g fat (16g saturated, 1g trans), 4390mg sodium

4400 mg of sodium in the chicken platter! So in addition to the 2000 calories you and your companion would each eat, you’d each be sucking down about 110 grams of fat and an unbelievable 5550 mg of sodium. That’s almost two and a half days worth of sodium (recommendation is under 2300mg/day). And at 9 calories per gram, the fat makes up 990 calories of your meal. That’s almost 50%, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recommends getting less than 35% of your calories from fat [reference].

OK, we’re all curious: if you do go for dessert, you’ll have to get the Triple Chocolate Meltdown, of course (what else?). It’s actually not bad, as the desserts go: 810 calories, 46 grams of fat (no trans), and 530 mg of sodium. Share it. Or realize that it’s your calorie allocation for tomorrow’s lunch.

Oh, and my Caesar salad? Not too bad: 410 calories, 29 grams of fat (no trans), 820 milligrams of sodium. Too much salt, but otherwise OK. But don’t think that the salads are healthful, diet meals. The full-sized Oriental Chicken Salad has 1310 calories, 93 grams of fat, and 1470 mg of sodium. And the Santa Fe Chicken Salad is about the same in calories and fat, but has an amazing 3420 mg of sodium.

Eat well....

Regulating the Internet?

The New York Times recently published an editorial opining that the Federal Communications Commission should reclassify broadband Internet service, from a U.S. regulatory point of view, as a communications service (rather than an information service, as it’s classified now). That will give the FCC more authority to regulate broadband providers.

The Times acknowledges that such a redefinition “would surely unleash a torrent of lawsuits by broadband providers,” and presaging that is a letter to the editor from Verizon’s Chief Communications Officer, Peter Thonis. Mr Thonis says that “the Internet and consumers have thrived” and that “interconnectivity occurred seamlessly”. He concludes:

To predict that “the odds of a rational debate” on Internet policies are “slim” ignores history. There have been scores of smart conferences. And in February, hundreds of detailed public comments were submitted to the F.C.C., including a filing by Verizon and Google.

Another letter writer, Brent Wilkes, claims that net neutrality regulation “could shield the companies that make billions in profits from the Internet” from investing in broadband infrastructure, shifting the costs “exclusively — 100 percent — onto consumers”. Mr Wilkes doesn’t give his justification for that claim, but goes on to say this:

Net neutrality could also bar broadband providers from managing, in a nondiscriminatory manner, the few bandwidth-hogging applications and services that can consume nearly all of a neighborhood’s bandwidth.

Taking Mr Thonis’s comment first: the Times does not “ignore history”. Yes, the Internet has grown up as an independent thing, and the standards that drive the smooth operation of the Internet continue to be developed openly. Ideas, services, and applications are readily available, and people share them online and at conferences. But that’s not what’s at issue here.

This discussion concerns operational policies of the carriers, and in that regard there’s increasing friction, and strong evidence that debate leading to fair policies that best serve the users of the Internet are not likely in the absence of regulation.

One major reason for that is lack of competition — lack of choice for the consumer. That’s the history. As the Times points out:

Rather than seeing an explosion of new competition, the broadband access business has consolidated to the point that many areas of the country have only one provider. Broadband Internet has unbundled into a business with many unrelated information service providers vying for space on the pipelines of a few providers.

Without real choice of providers, the market forces that would prevent restrictive policies that drive prices up and services down do not work. If Verizon and Cablevision should both decide to block Bittorrent, for example, I would have no alternative. And I’m in a good position, having a choice between those two; many residents have only one broadband provider available to them. Suppose Verizon decided that users of sites such as Hulu should pay a surcharge if they aren’t already paying for TV service from Verizon. Absent regulation, nothing’s stopping them from doing that.

It’s reasonable for carriers to establish terms of service that allow them to manage their networks, and, as I’ve said before, if that’s done fairly, it doesn’t violate network neutrality. Limiting lower-tier users to specified maximum data rates and volumes is fine, if the rates and volumes are reasonable. One difficulty is that what’s reasonable changes over time. Ten years ago, we thought a few hundred megabytes per month was a generous limit; now, that would just be the most basic service. New innovations may push the bandwidth and data volume needs up unexpectedly, and the carriers will have to respond to that quickly, lest they block the new applications and services. Regulation can ensure that they respond.

Of course, the regulation must be sensible, and it’s fair for both providers and consumers to worry about over-regulation, regulation run amok. The FCC is generally reasonable, but they’ve certainly been known to overstep, and it’s easy to foresee demands for regulations that block “offensive sites”, and such. We must be careful not to wade into those waters, using regulation to ensure openness, and keeping the various special interests out of it.

As to Mr Wilkes’s comments, I just don’t see how he reached his conclusions. Regulation can ensure just the opposite of what he claims. Regulation can make sure that carriers do provide broadband access to less profitable areas, as a requirement for expansion into high-profit ones. It can make sure that their management of high-bandwidth users and uses is done in a non-discriminatory manner. And regulation can see to it that providers’ fees are reasonable and non-discriminatory as well. It’s exactly the lack of regulation that’s likely to result in the Internet dystopia that Mr Wilkes fears.

Leaving the last word to the Times:

And most persuasively: broadband access is probably the most important communication service of our time. One that needs a robust regulator.

Not so big a bang

Friends and acquaintances periodically tell me that, as someone in the science and technology field, I would love The Big Bang Theory, and I should check it out. And now the New York Times has published an article about the show.

The thing is, I have checked it out, and it’s not for me. The article notes that “many of the people who grouse [...] about the show have not seen very much of it,” and that some incorrectly think that it puts forth the stereotype of the “dumb blonde”. That’s not my problem with it; I just don’t find it funny.

I do have a bit of a problem with the other side of the stereotype: that it presents all the scientists as social misfits. Some are, yes, but certainly not all, and I’d say that it’s really a minority. People may get that perception because what such people do with their working lives is beyond the understanding of most others, but they do have lives outside of work. Most of the scientists I know are interesting people, with families and friends, with hobbies and interests, who enjoy art, culture, food, conversation, beer, and sports. They are not socially inept. (And, in fact, I suggest that someone unable to hold a conversation that doesn’t involve football is as much a “misfit” as one who can only talk about lab experiments.)

But, really, that’s a minor point: it’s meant to be silly, and I don’t take it seriously enough to be worried about that. It’s just, as I say, that I haven’t found the show funny, the few times I’ve taken it for a spin

What I really found interesting, though, was the final point in the article:

[Creator/producer/writer Chuck] Lorre said that the whole “challenge and joy” of a series like this is character development. “Maybe at the end of the day this will inspire some kids to go into physics,” he added, “just like ‘Cheers’ inspired countless young people to go into bars.”

It’s a scary thought that “Cheers inspired countless young people to go into bars,” though I suppose it’s true. That never occurred to me; I wonder whether Seinfeld prompted folks to be complete dufuses, and whether Green Acres moved people out of the cities and onto farms. What, I wonder, did Gomer Pyle do for Marine Corps recruitment?

Anyway, I can’t imagine that Mr Lorre really thinks that portrayal of scientists will encourage viewers to follow the characters into scientific fields. But maybe I’ll give the show another try.

High tech solutions to low-tech problems

Yesterday, Eric Taub reviewed an interesting device in the Gadgetwise blog in the New York Times. It’s a pair of transceivers that help you locate your car even if you’re a half mile from it. You leave one transceiver in the car, take the other with you, and then use it to find your car as you’d use a Geiger counter to find a source of radiation.

It seems, from the review, that it’s pretty slick — Mr Taub says it works as advertised. But the real point, I think, is how he ends his review:

While the product will most likely solve your lost car problems, if you don’t want to spend $80 for one, or $100 for a deluxe version that includes a carrying case, there is a cheaper and easier solution: spend $1 for a pen, and write your location down before you walk away.

If a pen is too low-tech for you, make a note of it in your BlackBerry — you can even do it as a voice note, to bump up the technology a little more while still keeping it short of brain surgery.

We have a lot of that going around. I remember the first time I saw a game you could buy in the store to play Battleship, consisting of plastic peg-boards in which you could stick plastic pieces representing the different sizes of ships, plus the “hits” and “misses”. That’s fine, but we used to play it on paper, which was easy, and free; I had no interest in buying a plastic game that cost money, took up space, and didn’t help if it was at home and you weren’t. The paper version was available anywhere you could find paper and pencil.

Later, of course, we had computer versions, and I expect there are versions for the Game Boy and the iPhone. These do have an advantage over the paper ones: you can play against the computer, so they work if you don’t happen to have an opponent handy.

The point is that we often look for high-tech solutions when low-tech solutions are easy, cheap, and entirely adequate. The plastic Battleship game is one example, and the Auto-Finder is another. You might say that the latter will save your ass — or at least your pride — when you forgot to write the location down when you parked... but you still had to remember to bring the transceivers, leave one in the car and take one with you, and turn them on. If you can handle that setup, you can probably handle jotting the location down.

On the other hand, then you couldn’t show people what cool stuff you have.

Carnivals!

Pointers to this fortnight’s blog carnivals:

• Skeptics’ Circle #135.
• Math Teachers at Play #25.
• Carnival of the Godless #140.

NEFFA

Off to NEFFA this weekend, so no blogging. Back here on Monday.

WWW

English has twenty-five letters that take one syllable each to say, and one letter that needs three syllables.

Guess which one we decided to triple in web addresses.

In the early days of the worldwide web, adoption was uncertain, web servers weren’t everywhere, setting one up was somewhat more of a big deal than it is now, and, from an organizational point of view, it made sense to give your company’s web server its own prefix. So example.com would not have a web server on it, but www.example.com would. That made sense at the time.

But since the worldwide web operates on port 80, a designation that separates it from other Internet traffic that goes to the same Internet address, there’s no real reason — certainly no technical one — why it needs to be segregated.

So, as things took off, some companies saw that it made sense to allow access to port 80 without the www. prefix. They either run their web servers on both www.example.com and example.com, or they have one address re-routed to the other for port 80.

That makes it nice. You don’t have to type “www.” all the time. But even better, you don’t have to say “dub-ul-yew, dub-ul-yew, dub-ul-yew, dot” all the time! I’ve heard people try to shorten it as “dub-ya, dub-ya, dub-ya” (which now has obvious bad connections for some of us), “dub, dub, dub”, and, my least favourite, “wuh, wuh, wuh”.

Let’s try to make it a point to Just Leave It Off. When you type in domain names for web servers, leave off the www., and see if it works. 99.9% of the time, it will. When you tell people a web address, leave it off. If it doesn’t work that way, they can always stick it back on.

I do, once in a while, run into a site where the www. is required, and you can’t get there without it. Bozo web sites, those, and we ought to be complaining to their webmasters. But it happens so infrequently, these days, that it’s pretty much safe to Just Leave It Off.

Blaming the victim reaches new heights

The New York Times recently told us about a performance art exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Some of the works, by artist Marina Abramovic, involve nude performers in close proximity to the viewers, and some of the viewers are doing more than looking.

“He proceeded to slide his hand onto my ribs and back and then touched my butt,” Mr. Rawls said. “As he was passing me he looked me in the eyes and said ‘You feel good, man.’ ”

“I just turned and looked at the security guard and said, ‘This man is touching me.’ Then I looked back at my partner and left it at that.”

When his shift was over, Mr. Rawls said, he learned from a security official that MoMA had revoked the man’s 30-year membership and barred him from returning to the museum.

Another performer notes, “I didn’t think that would happen at all; who’s going to do something with all these people around?”

Who, indeed? Yet people think they can get away with pretty much anything, and always seem eager to try their, um, hand. And we best respond to that by calling them on it, and holding them accountable.

Others, though, respond differently. A few days after the article appeared, the Times printed a letter from a reader:

As a 57-year-old professional artist, I was amused by your article about the difficulties of being a nude performance artist at the current show at the Museum of Modern Art.

In my college days, and throughout my career (never achieving the lofty heights of those mentioned in your article), I have often run into performance artists with lofty ideas and ideals. But when the rubber hits the road, if you are going to stand around naked in a museum, you are going to get some unusual attention, and not all of it will be serious artistic consideration.

Humans are, after all, human.

If you can’t stand the heat, then put your clothes back on.

— H. James Hoff, Dallas

Oy.

Mr Hoff is surely right that it’s not surprising that a few people will grope. But the answer is not to have the performers stop performing, to, basically, shut down the work of art.^[1]

Furthermore, Mr Hoff implies that anyone going naked anywhere is essentially asking to be grabbed. And that’s just wrong. A bather, say, at a designated nude beach should feel safe from such attacks. For that matter, someone choosing to walk down Fifth Avenue unclothed should, in the time between starting his stroll and being arrested for it, be left untouched by the public.

Someone’s doing something that crosses one of your boundaries does not give you the right to violate his. Humans are, after all, human — not wolves.

---

^[1] Whether it is art is, of course, as always, left to the opinion of the viewer, and I’m not addressing that here (though discussion of that in the comments is welcome). The museum considers it art, and that’s all that matters for these purposes.

Program-launching on speed

An open complaint to all companies and software developers that install those damned “speed launcher” things along with their software:

Folks, your program is not the most important effing thing on my computer. Stop that! When I want to run your program, I’ll run your program. Don’t pre-load the bulk of your program when my computer starts up, taking up memory and slowing down everything else I’m running.

Further explanation for those of my readers who don’t understand what these things are, or don’t even know that they exist:

When you install (on Windows) Adobe Reader, Real Player, QuickTime, and various other programs, they install an extra process that starts when your computer does. This extra process pre-loads much of the program code and leaves it in your computer’s memory all the time, regardless of when and whether you actually want to run these programs. The idea is that when you do want to use, say, Adobe Reader, it appears to start more quickly than it otherwise would, because most of it is already loaded into memory.

But the cost of this is that the program takes up running memory in your computer from the very start, whether or not you ever use Adobe Reader (or Real Player, or QuickTime, or...). Depending upon how much available memory you have (not on the disk drive, but in working memory, RAM), the difference might not be noticeable, or it might make the computer seem sluggish.

You’re trading off loading the programs when they’re needed with loading them when you start the computer. With these “speed launchers” installed, your computer will take a little longer to start up. You most likely won’t notice that, because it’s done in the background, not while you’re waiting for something to happen. So perhaps you like these things, especially if you use the programs in question quite often.

The thing is that the installation programs don’t give you a choice, and unless you know what to do, it’s hard to get rid of the speed launchers — they aren’t exposed processes, with user interfaces that let you turn them off, and there’s not usually an option in the main program’s preferences to control them.

The speed-launcher processes are hidden in the Run key in the Windows registry. If you want to get rid of the ones you don’t need, run the registry editor (click the start button and select “Run...”, type “regedit”, and press enter). Click the plus signs to expand “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE”, “Software”, “Microsoft”, “Windows”, “CurrentVersion”, and then click on “Run”. In the right pane, you should see a list of programs — these are all started when Windows starts up. Don’t delete them wantonly, because many of these are needed to support things like your anti-virus program, your audio system, your wireless networking, and your computer’s power-management system.

You can, though, delete one of more of these, and there may be others:

• Adobe Reader Speed Launcher
• Real Tray
• QuickTime Task
• iTunes Helper

If you want to know what any of them are, and whether it might be safe to remove them, try a Google search.

You say “unique” as though it’s a good thing

Today: my third (and, I think, final) thought on the “humans are unique among the animals” thread. [First installment here. Second installment here.]

In the first installment, I quoted Guy Consolmagno as saying that humans are unique in having “this curiosity to understand.” That made me think about what other aspects of our thoughts, personalities, and behaviours are unique, at least as we perceive it. Are we the only species that would be thinking about this, for example? Are we unique in thinking philosophically?

There are certainly many who think we’re the only animals with a sense of morality. One view is that morality comes from God, and that God gave it to us alone — some consequence of an apple and a snake, and whatnot, and then a fall from grace, and Cain being the first murderer, and such.

Do other animals have morality? If it’s unique to us, what, exactly, does that mean?

We appear to be the only animals who commit arbitrary acts of murder and violence against each other. A bear doesn’t wait behind a tree to attack the next bear that comes by. A zebra doesn’t find a family of zebras at night, and trample them in their sleep. Mobs of sharks don’t gather and attack other sharks whose skin is a different shade. And two male snakes who share a nest needn’t fear from other snakes who think they’re an abomination.

We use our “uniqueness” to exert control over other animals, including each other, and it seems we’re the only animals that do that — that tell others of our kind what they may and may not do, that imprison or kill others of our kind who don’t behave “properly”. In the animal kingdom, if you don’t follow a pack leader’s rules, you’ll be driven from the pack... but you’ll be free to go off and make a life on your own, in your own way.

We’re the only ones who will track you down and make you comply or pay the price. We’re the only ones who impose the behavioural norms of some on others — who fight wars to do so. And each of us has a different tolerance for different behaviours; each of us draws his lines in different places. That makes it particularly challenging when groups with different sensibilities mix.

If we’re the only animals who mistreat each other based on different appearance, different social behaviour, different thoughts and beliefs... that makes us unique, but it doesn’t make us better.

Marginal tax brackets

As we’ve just had income tax time in the U.S., I’ve been hearing a bunch of silliness associated with it. I thought I’d talk about two of my favourite (well, for some value of “favourite”) tax fallacies.

It doesn’t pay for me to get a raise! It’ll just put me in a higher tax bracket, I’ll pay more taxes, and in the end I’ll wind up making less than I did before.

I haven’t worked out every possibility, and maybe there’s really a way that can happen, but I can’t imagine what it could be. The “tax brackets” in the U.S. are marginal — you only pay the higher tax on the portion of your income that put you into the next bracket.

Let’s suppose you’re single and your taxable income is $33,000 in 2009. You’re in the 15% tax bracket. A 3% increase in your taxable income would make it $33,990, and that would put you into the 25% tax bracket. 15% tax on $33,000 would be $4,950. 25% tax on $33,990 would be $8497.50. The difference is more than $3500, well more than your rise in pay!

Only, that’s not the way the tax works. In fact, for 2009 you pay 10% on the first $8,350 of taxable income, and only pay the 15% on the amount between that and $33,950. And the 25% is only levied on any amount between $33,951 and $82,250.

So, in the example above, the tax bill at $33,000 of taxable income would be 10% of $8,350 ($835) plus 15% of $24,650 ($3,697.50), totalling $4,532.50. And the tax on $33,990 would be 10% of $8,350 ($835) plus 15% of $25,600 ($3,840), plus 25% of only $40 ($10), totalling $4,685. The guy’s taxes went up by $152.50. [Corrected; thanks, Ray, for pointing out privately that I put the wrong number here.]

I’m sure he wasn’t thrilled to pay that extra money, but it didn’t come anywhere close to eating up the whole $990 raise: he still came out with more than $800 more in his pocket.

Variant 1: Yay! I’m getting a big refund this year. That’s great!

Variant 2: Oh, no! I have to pay the feds $1000. That’s horrible! I’d rather get money back.

When you get a tax refund, you have given the government a free loan of your money. On the other hand, if you get more in each paycheck and wind up paying a bit of money at tax-filing time, then you have had the use of more of your money in the interim. Doesn’t the latter seem to make more sense, when you look at it that way?

À chacun, son goût, of course, but I’d much rather pay a little bit in April, knowing that it means that my money was mine that much longer.

Some people worry that if they set it up so that they owe money, when it comes time to pay it they won’t have it to hand. An easy way to fix that is to open a bank account just for that purpose, and “withhold” your own taxes — put a certain amount into that account with each paycheck. You still have the money, and it’s earning interest for you. You can invest it any way you like, as long as you can turn it into cash by 15 April.

Dilbert and pseudoscience

Scott Adams really scored a hit the other day (click comic to go to the official page):

State microbe?

Long-time readers may remember when these pages were just a few months old, and I wrote about the U.S. House of Representatives attaching to an anti-computer-piracy bill a section that designated the oak as the national tree. Silly though it be, there are lots of these sorts of national and state symbols: officially designated state flowers, trees, birds, mammals, folk dances, sports, hobbies....

Well, the Wisconsin state legislature has gone all that one better: on Thursday, they passed a bill designating an offical state microbe.

Yes, indeed. If the Wisconsin state senate goes along as well, the Lactococcus lactis will soon become the Wisconsin state bacterium. Better than having it be some Streptococcus species, I suppose.

Now, there's no denying that the Lactococcus lactis is important to the economy and life of Wisconsin: it's necessary for the production of cheese. But, really, what's the point of all these official “state &thing” designations? For the most part, they serve no useful purpose, and let's be clear about this: these designations aren't free.

It's not like someone just writes it up like I write this blog entry, and sends it to the governor, who says, “Ýeah, OK, why not?”, and signs it. A lot of legislative time is spent on this stuff, not to mention the lobbying that gets it started, and the record keeping afterward. And then someone decides that the new state animal-dropping needs to be depicted on a plaque in the capitol building, and so on.

Why on Earth do we, as a species, seem to feel the need to waste our time on this stuff?

But, hey, as long as we do that sort of thing, maybe I'll try to get a bill introduced to designate David Paterson as the New York State Dufus. Could be fun.

Update, 19 Apr: New Scientist joins the silliness, with suggestions for State Microbes for other states:

Based on its popularity there, California should surely elevate the botox bacterium Clostridium botulinum to the level of state microbe.

And the retired communities of Florida would appreciate the 250-million-year-old Lazarus bacterium, Bacillus permians, as their pet bug.

Click through for the rest.

Tweeting your way into the Library of Congress

Do you use Twitter? Millions do, to the tune of more than a billion “tweets” per month, currently, with the number increasing all the time. Some 50 million messages a day, from people of all ages, all nationalities, all walks of life, each message 140 characters or fewer. And Twitter has been around since 2006.

What do you think has happened to all those messages? Where do they go, when they “go away”?

Well, it’s the Internet: they don’t actually go away; nothing does. And now the Library of Congress will hold the archives or every message posted to Twitter, ever, since the 2006 beginning.

The library will archive the collected works of Twitter, the blogging service, whose users currently send a daily flood of 55 million messages, all that contain 140 or fewer characters.

Library officials explained the agreement as another step in the library’s embrace of digital media. Twitter, the Silicon Valley start-up, declared it “very exciting that tweets are becoming part of history.”

[Here’s the Library of Congress blog on the acquisition.]

There are privacy concerns, but they hardly seem to be legitimate when Twitter’s been set up as a public environment in the first place. Besides, the LoC folks tell us that “the archive would be available only for scholarly and research purposes.”

The tweets are becoming part of history. As Yale librarian Fred Shapiro says, “This is an entirely new addition to the historical record, the second-by-second history of ordinary people.” That means, for example, that the following will all be in the historical record, available forever... but only for scholarly and research purposes, mind:

• these cashews look like dried mini scrotums
• Fuck a burpee. Fuck a gorilla run. And fuck a duck walk. Amen.
• lol im 22 and i love cookie monster lol i aint judgin
• keep the earth clean, it’s not uranus!
• sickkkk too my stomachh!!!! i hate thiss about wat mama
• lol at boonies..naw like on private property...n da woods...smh lol
• Fizzing skittles are da bomb!
• #WhatWouldItBeLike to insert both fists into your anus?

Those are all actual tweets made not too long before I wrote this, selected semi-randomly. They will soon be enshrined in the Library of Congress, in case anyone should one day want to look back on 2010 in a scholarly way.

Anyway, the point here is that nothing on the Internet ever goes away. It’s all there somewhere, in an archive, in a backup, in the Wayback Machine. Or in the Library of Congress. Beware what you put here. You never know who will find, years or decades or centuries from now, your thoughts about cashews, or duck walks, or both fists (as opposed to just one?).

That should be sobering.

Ethics of copying for personal use

Randy Cohen writes a weekly column for the New York Times, The Ethicist. It’s usually a good read: Mr Cohen keeps an entertaining sense of humour as he gives his opinion on ethical points of everyday life. He occasionally arrives where ethics meet technology, as in a recent column that considered whether it’s OK to download an unofficial copy of something you’ve already bought a legitimate copy of.

Randy’s opinion? It’s illegal, unfortunately, but ethical:

An illegal download is — to use an ugly word — illegal. But in this case, it is not unethical. Author and publisher are entitled to be paid for their work, and by purchasing the hardcover, you did so. Your subsequent downloading is akin to buying a CD, then copying it to your iPod.

Buying a book or a piece of music should be regarded as a license to enjoy it on any platform. Sadly, the anachronistic conventions of bookselling and copyright law lag the technology. Thus you’ve violated the publishing company’s legal right to control the distribution of its intellectual property, but you’ve done no harm or so little as to meet my threshold of acceptability.

I fully agree with his evaluation. In fact, I usually take a strong stance against illegal copying. Arguments that content providers are money-hungry megaliths that deserve no accommodation hold no water. Observations that they are actually well served by “sampling”, because it ultimately leads to more sales (of other, related material) are useful, but not relevant. Reminders that there are artists who are happy to have people spreading their work around on the Internet are beside the point.

Because the point is that artists and content providers get to choose, and it’s right that they do. Wise ones will understand the benefits of liberal policies in this regard, and will embrace the technology. I’d be happy to see the rest go out of business. And, yet, it remains their choice, not ours. If they choose an antiquated business model, I’ll cheerfully wave goodbye and give my money to the more enlightened.

But then there’s the question brought up at least in the 1970s, if not earlier, when it became easy to make audio-cassette copies of recorded music. The arguments have been repeated many times since, with video-taping of movies shown on television, copying of rented videotapes, “ripping” and copying of CDs and then DVDs, time-shifting of television programs with DVRs, and so on. In fact, an entire technology — remember Digital Audio Tape (DAT)? — was derailed in the consumer market because of copy-protection issues.

The question of copying digital books is merely the most recent battle in a 40-year war between consumers and copyright holders.

The law is insufficiently clear, and has gone forward and back on the matter, but decisions generally fall in favour of the copyright holders: You generally can’t legally copy a copyrighted work, even for personal use, without permission.

But morally, ethically, when you buy — not rent, not borrow, not use over a common carrier, not view in a public screening, but buy — a copyrighted work, you expect certain rights to what you’ve bought, including at least:

1. the right to read/hear/view (henceforth, “use”) it whenever and wherever you like;
2. the right to lend it to a friend, who can use it and give it back when she’s done;
3. the right to give it away — or even sell it — when you no longer want it, transferring all rights of use to the new owner;
4. the right to keep using it indefinitely, essentially forever.

We can certainly do all of those with paper books. If you can’t sleep, you turn on the light, pick up your book, and read for a while. When you travel, you bring your book with you on the plane or to the beach. You can clearly lend the book out, give it away, trade it, or sell it. And it will always work: you can read it over and over, as long as you want, until the pages fall out.

But different media technologies allow increasing restrictions. Music files that you buy on the Internet may only be playable on the computer you bought them on, and might not be transferrable to another. You might be able to play things on an iPod, but not another brand of music player. You can’t always lend or give things to your friends, and there might be time limits on your own use.

These restrictions have no ethical validity. They’re mostly trying to protect the copyright holders from things they have reasonable rights to want to prevent — copying the material in a way that allows multiple people to use a single purchase simultaneously. But those protection mechanisms cause collateral problems with ethically legitimate uses — even if not strictly legally legitimate, because, as Randy says, the laws lag the technology.

What makes is worse, though, is when it is not accidental: when copyright holders intentionally take advantage of that lag to assert rights that they should not have, to limit use in unethical ways, simply because they can, and because they see an opportunity there.

An opportunity to sell multiple copies of a book to the same consumer, by releasing the digital version later than the paper one. An opportunity to use DVD region coding to prevent discs purchased in Europe from being used in North America. An opportunity to make fans replace their music libraries over time because of how the digital-rights-management software works.

An opportunity to mistreat their customers.

The best we can do when we see that happening is take our business elsewhere. As I said above, wave goodbye and give our money to the more enlightened.

How about the Grapefruit and Avocado diet?

Last week, there was a small item in the New York Times science section, Science Times, answering the question, “Other than celiac disease, is there any reason to avoid gluten in the diet?” There are reasons other than celiac disease for people to be intolerant of gluten, a protein in wheat and some other grains, but, as the Times item says, evidence is just not there to support health benefits of a gluten-free diet if you are not one of those affected.

Despite that, the gluten-free diet has become a fad, with all sort of claims from general well-being, to anti-cancer properties, to autism prevention behind it. None of the claims are supported by science, only by folk tales, by books and magazine articles and self-help lecturers.

But, of course, when you start talking about fad diets, you’ll get the faddists coming out of the woodwork. And so we have a letter to the editor, from a California reader:

Rather than casting doubt on the people who take on the economic, social and other hardships associated with a gluten-free diet, The New York Times should use its public platform to applaud them for taking responsibility for their health and encourage doctors to take a professional interest in what they can learn from these earnest patients.

— Tracy Haughton, Mill Valley, Calif.

Sigh. No.

Rather than believing quietly whatever bullshit people come up with, the New York Times should be using its public platform to cast doubt on that which has no evidence. And doctors should be looking at things that really work, and taking a professional interest in what they can learn from studying the real effects of foods and drugs. There’s no value in paying much attention to some vague story about how Aunt Gertrude took on the economic and social hardships of a fad diet, and her arthritis feels much better now.

People should take responsibility for their own health, and that includes eating properly. But before we start arbitrarily removing things from our diets — or, if you like, as we try removing them — we should be pushing for real studies of the effects, not accepting anecdotes and fuzzy science.

Demographics and The Supremes

Yesterday evening, as I browsed the NY Times RSS feed, I saw a headline about retiring Supreme Court justice John Paul Stevens: “Justice Stevens, the Only Protestant on the Supreme Court”. The summary in the RSS feed said this:

The Supreme Court is made up of six Roman Catholics, two Jews and Justice John Paul Stevens. His retirement makes possible a court without a single member of the nation’s majority religion.

“Say what?”, said I, bristling. “Have we gone so far back in time that we’re going to worry about the religious affiliations of our Supreme Court justices?”

I clicked through to the article, though, and I was relieved: no; indeed, that’s exactly the point of the article, that we used to care about that, but we don’t any more. It used to be a big deal to consider appointing Catholics or Jews, but now it’s not remarkable.

Instead, we pay attention to other things, for better or for worse:

On the other hand, society seems to demand that the court carry a certain demographic mix.

It is hard to imagine the court without a black justice, for instance, and it may well turn out that Justice Sonia Sotomayor is sitting in a new “Hispanic seat.” It would surprise no one if President Obama tried to increase the number of women on the court to three.

I prefer that, but what I’m really waiting for is when it doesn’t matter at all. When we put people in positions based purely on their qualifications, and we honestly don’t think it matters whether they’re men or women, and what their ethnic backgrounds are. We’re a long way from that now, of course, and for now, it’s important to have a mix. I’m glad to see — especially considering the resurgence of the importance of religion in politics — that religion is not part of that mix today.

Mark Tushnet, a law professor at Harvard, had another suggestion.

President Obama, he said, could use Justice Stevens’s retirement as an opportunity both to honor tradition and to break new ground.

“The smartest political move,” he said, “would be to nominate an openly gay, Protestant guy.”

No, that’s not it. Let’s really show that it doesn’t matter. Pick an atheist.

Or is that still beyond the pale?

Dominion, part 2

Last week, I noted a comment about an aspect of uniqueness of humans among animals, and I said that it brought up a number of thoughts. Here’s another.

I said this on Thursday:

We want to believe that we’re unique. Dr Consolmagno’s religious learning has taught him that God created us specially, created us in his image. That he gave us dominion over the animals, and so on.

Whether you believe that it’s God’s plan or not — I don’t, as you’ll know if you’ve been reading these pages for a while — it’s clear that we do have some sort of “dominion” over animals. We have the ability, with our intelligence and use of tools, mostly to be in control. We hunt and farm and keep pets, all with efficiency that surpasses what other animals can do in general. We even bring other animals in to help us, as with dogs for hunting and herding. We are the prey of no large animal.^[1]

So what are our moral and ethical responsibilities? We can use animals for pretty much any purpose we like. Should we? Should we use them as workers? Should we keep them as pets. Should we hunt and farm them? Should we use their products (eggs, milk, honey, wool... leather)? Should we eat them?

That’s where I have very mixed feelings. On the one hand, I think we should treat them compassionately and respectfully, and not mistreat them. If we have them work with us, we should treat them well and reward them for their work. If we farm them, we should do it responsibly, keeping them in good living conditions that are comfortable for their species.

On the other hand, I think that our bodies are made to eat animals. We come with the means to do it, and we need the proteins they provide. That many of us have a choice in that matter is a testament to where our intelligence and tool use has brought us... and there are people in many parts of the world who do not have a choice: it’s absolutely necessary for some people to eat animals, and use their skins and other products, in order to survive.

Of course, for those of us tho do have the choice, the question of what choice to make remains open.

And I admit to some inconsistency, some hypocrisy, in that regard. I’m willing to eat animals, but I couldn’t kill them myself (I neither hunt nor fish). And factory farming bothers me a great deal. I was driving through Delaware once, and I followed, for a while, a truck carrying live chickens. They were in tiny cages, stacked up on the truck, and their feathers were being blown all over the place by the wind whipping through, because the truck was going 50 miles per hour and the cages were not well covered. That made me feel very bad about how the chickens I eat (or whose eggs I eat; I’m not sure which these were) are treated.

I choose to wear leather, but not, say, ermine or sable. Is there really a difference? Maybe: we eat cows, and we also use the skins, so the leather can be thought of as a by-product of food production. We use ermine and sable purely for their skins. That makes the difference for me. More inconsistency?

On the difficult subject of testing things on animals, I’m in favour of doing that testing before we use the products on humans. That does mean that I put people ahead of animals; yes, I admit that. Of course, I think we need to make sure the testing is done ethically. Humanely. But I’d rather have a furry animal be blinded because a cosmetic or drug turns out to be hazardous... than have it happen to a human. I do, perhaps arrogantly, put us at the top of a hierarchy.

But none of this is cut and dried, none of it is straightforward to justify, and I think about it a lot. I know that I could live perfectly well by eating and wearing only plants and artificial fibers. I recognize that not doing so is a choice that I make.

---

^[1] Interestingly, that leaves it to the very smallest to prey on us: viruses and bacteria, tiny parasites, and such. Over those, we clearly do not have dominion.

Carnivals!

Thanks to Ray for pointing us at this wonderful product for keeping your dog, cat, or horse (horse?) free from ticks and fleas. Do click on the “Science” tab to get the skinny on how, “scientifically,” it works. The whole spiel is full of treasures, so it’s hard to decide which bits to quote, but let’s try this one:

shoo!TAG™’s magnetic strip is encoded with beneficial frequencies and resonances and an electromagnetic charge bearing a polarized energy signature, which when introduced into the bio-energetic field of the wearer produces results.

Their slogan should be, “shoo!TAG™: Because people will believe anything.”

Pointers to this fortnight’s blog carnivals:

• Skeptics’ Circle #134.
• Carnival of Mathematics #64.
• Carnival of the Godless #139.

Quiet blog today

Day of rest....

And who's driving?

I’ve often written about technology that will help us do everyday things, and I almost always advocate technology that helps, while leaving the choices with us, the control in our hands. Mostly, I think that’s what works best.

But what about when the technology is meant to improve safety in cases where we, ourselves, fail? The very point, there, is that our own choices are faulty, and the technology must fill in for us. Where’s the line between “manual override” and preventing us from casually defeating important safety protections?

We got one version of that with anti-lock braking systems. The system “knows” that people are not good at emergency braking, and that when we jam hard on the brake pedal we’re likely to throw the vehicle into a dangerous skid. Further, the ABS has information that we don’t, about exactly how the wheels are rotating and how the car is moving — at a millisecond-by-millisecond level that we can’t hope to match. And, so, apart from the fact that we control whether the brakes are on or not, the ABS controls how the brakes are applied. There is no manual override.

But what happens if the system malfunctions? What happens when it takes over the task of applying the brakes, and it doesn’t do it correctly? We’ve recently seen issues with both the electronic throttle and braking systems in Toyotas, and there have been problems with fuel injectors, cruise controls and other computerized car systems. High-end cars have detection mechanisms that augment the cruise control to keep you from getting too close to the car in front, and that warn you if there’s something behind you when you’re backing up, lest you run over something unseen. What happens when we rely on those systems and they fail?

Does that keep us from relying on such systems? Should it? If something makes us safer 99.99% of the time, does that net out better, despite what happens in the one time in ten thousand when it doesn’t work? That depends, of course, upon what it’s saving us from, and how catastrophic the failure is.

For some time, researchers have been experimenting with cars with more and more computer control — even cars that drive themselves, for long periods. That research is becoming quite mature now, and looks ready to deploy in the real world soon.

What fully autonomous vehicles will be like is hinted at by an experimental car called Boss. Built by a team of engineering students at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and backed by General Motors, this robotic car scooped a $2 million prize by outperforming 10 other autonomous vehicles in a simulated urban environment created for the DARPA Urban Challenge in 2007. To win, Boss had to execute complex manoeuvres such as merging into flowing traffic, overtaking, parking and negotiating intersections, while interacting with other autonomous vehicles and 30 human-driven ones.

Boss’s computer builds a model of the immediate environment by processing data from radar, laser sensors, cameras and GPS. It then uses this model, along with information such as local traffic rules, to plan the best route and provide the situational awareness the vehicle needs for manoeuvres such as changing lanes safely, or to determine whether it has priority at an intersection.

[...]

At Stanford University in California, the Volkswagen Automotive Innovation Lab has shown what might be possible. VAIL engineers have fitted a VW Passat with cameras, cruise control radar and laser sensors, allowing it to navigate a parking lot, spot an empty space and park perfectly, with or without a driver.

The claims for such technology include not only greater safety — fewer accidents, fewer deaths — but also better throughput, better fuel efficiency, lower stress (at best, human “drivers” will be able to read, work, or even sleep, as the car takes over the controls), and other such benefits. Cars will network cooperatively to share information, creating their own infrastructure.

Will we trust all that? Should we?

Could a malfunctioning — or maliciously programmed — car send false information that causes tie-ups or collisions? Could, perhaps, a malicious base station mimic dozens of cars to create a massive problem? Could radio interference isolate a vehicle that’s relying on contact with others for its information?

On the other side, though, such cars could help us navigate safely during storms and fog that confound human drivers. They could get a sleepy driver home safely. They would avoid the normal, everyday mistakes that we make on the road that cause some 50,000 deaths and two and a half million injuries each year, in addition to the property damage.

How do we balance the risks and concerns against the huge benefit we could get from “smarter” cars?

Do electric sheep dream of androids?

On the radio program Speaking of Faith this week, host Krista Tippett talked with two Jesuits who are also astronomers. One, Guy Consolmagno, says this, as he notes the excitement with which people all over the world received his astronomy lessons and telescope demonstrations:

And it suddenly dawned on me, well, of course. It’s only human beings that have this curiosity to understand: What’s that up in the sky? How do we fit into that? Who are we? Where do we come from? And this is a hunger that’s as deep and important as a hunger for food because if you starve a person in that sense, you’re depriving them of their humanity.

That’s brought up a number of thoughts for me, which will probably result in a few entries in these pages. This is the first.

Do we really know that humans are the only animals with such curiosity? We assume it, of course, but do we know? When the cat sits in the window and looks out on the world, how do we know that he isn’t contemplating existence? Might the amazingly engaging guide dog I saw the other day have been feeling that he’s making something of his life by helping others, and thus fulfilling some sort of destiny? Who’s to say that a cow grazing in a field isn’t deep in thought as she munches?

We assume that they aren’t sophisticated enough for that, that their brains aren’t sufficiently developed. And we can stick electrodes on them and do brain scans, and see what areas of their brains respond to what visual stimuli, just as we do with humans. But those tests can’t tell us what they’re thinking.

We want to believe that we’re unique. Dr Consolmagno’s religious learning has taught him that God created us specially, created us in his image. That he gave us dominion over the animals, and so on. And it’s clear that we have unique abilities with respect to engineering, communication, and the like.

But how do we know that our abilities to wonder curiously and to think philosophically are unique. Maybe when a dog or a horse or a bird looks up at the night sky, there’s also wonder in its mind about what’s up there, and how we on Earth fit into it. That they can’t communicate it to us doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

As you travel life’s highway, don’t forget to stop and eat the roses.

— “Cow Philosophy”, cartoon by Gary Larsen

As sick as it gets

Saturday’s New York Times included an article with what is perhaps the most disturbing lede I have ever read:

New Jersey officials announced on Saturday six arrests in connection with the gang rape of a 7-year-old girl who investigators believe was sold for sex by her 15-year-old stepsister at a party in a Trenton high-rise last weekend.

The rest of the article is just as revolting; click through to it at your own peril. I’m too appalled to say any more.

Clafoutis au fromage bleu

It’s time for cooking again.

Clafoutis is a French dessert, sort of a cross between a pancake and a soufflé. It’s mostly eggs, cream, sugar, and flour, and it’s pretty light on the flour. Unlike with a soufflé, the eggs aren’t separated for a clafoutis.

The traditional clafoutis is made with cherries, but other fruits can go in as well, and I’ve made them with berries, with plums, with peaches, with apples, and with caramelized figs. Recently, I had the inspiration to try it with blue cheese, contrasting the sweetness of the batter with the tangy cheese. It turned out great!

I’m sure other cheeses would go nicely — a sharp cheddar, perhaps, or a fresh chèvre. My thought this time was something salty and a little sour. Use Roquefort to keep things French, or try Gorgonzola or a nice Spanish Cabrales.

The quantity of cheese is approximate, and a matter of taste. I didn’t measure it, but crumbled enough to sparsely cover the bottom of the pan. That’s how the fruit is placed, when it’s made with fruit. If you want to use the recipe below with fruit instead of cheese, add a pinch of salt (the cheese provides it here) and cut the sugar back to about ¼ cup.

The timing of this is such that it's convenient to assemble it when the meal is almost ready, and to stick it in the oven just as you sit down to eat. Set a timer, so you don't forget it. It will have cooked and cooled about the right amount when you're ready for coffee.

A note on pronunciation

It is not cla-FOO-tee, but it’s not really cla-foo-TEE either (though the latter is closer, to American ears, to how the French say it). French doesn’t use syllable stress the same way that English does. Try saying all three syllables with equal stress.

Clafoutis au fromage bleu

About 3 oz of a tangy blue cheese
½ cup flour
1 cup heavy cream
1⁄3 cup sugar
3 eggs
freshly ground nutmeg
powdered sugar for dusting

Preheat oven to 400F. Crumble the cheese into an 8- or 9-inch round buttered or non-stick pan. In a bowl, mix the flour, cream, sugar, eggs, salt, and nutmeg, and whisk or lightly beat to blend well. Pour the batter over the cheese. Bake until the top is golden and the batter is set, about 30 minutes. Let cool a bit, then dust with powdered sugar and serve slightly warm.

Easter Parade

In your Easter bonnet,
With all the frills upon it,
You’ll be the grandest lady in the Easter parade.

I’ll be all in clover,
And when they look you over,
I’ll be the proudest fellow in the Easter parade.

On the avenue,
Fifth Avenue,
The photographers will snap us,
And you’ll find that you’re in the rotogravure.

Oh, I could write a sonnet
About your Easter bonnet,
And of the girl I’m taking to the Easter parade.

— Irving Berlin

Should we boo him off the stage?

Karl Rove: He was King George’s enabler. Does that make him the devil? Maybe.

Does that mean we shouldn’t be listening to him talk? Maybe. I’m quite sure I wouldn’t go hear him.

Does that mean we should prevent him from talking, prevent others from listening to him?

No.

Protesters heckled Karl Rove, the former political adviser to President George W. Bush, off the stage at a book-signing event on Monday in Beverly Hills. About 100 Rove supporters watched as Jodie Evans, the co-founder of the antiwar group Code Pink, walked toward him with handcuffs, calling him a war criminal and saying she was making a citizen’s arrest. Ten protesters interrupted the talk as he promoted his book, “Courage and Consequence: My Life As a Conservative in the Fight.” There were no arrests.

I like the citizen’s arrest bit — that’s clever and appropriate. And it’s appropriate to protest at his speech. But the protest must not go so far as to stop him from speaking. That’s wrong. That’s not the way we do things.

Now, it doesn’t say what the hecklers did, what the audience did, what the organizers did, or what Mr Rove did. It doesn’t say why he left the stage. If his skin just wasn’t thick enough to push through the protest, that’s his fault.

But if the protesters made it impossible for him to speak, that’s their fault. We need to make our points by having good arguments and being right, not by bullying.

You got a coupon?

The New York Times “Bits” blog carried an item a few weeks ago about electronic coupons, sent to your mobile device at appropriate times:

How many times have you heard the prediction that one day, businesses like coffee shops will send us coupons on our mobile phones when we walk by?

That has long been the dream of mobile marketers. Still, only 9 percent of people have received a coupon or discount code on their phones based on where they were standing, according to new data from Compete, a Web analytics firm.

This could be the year that changes. People are increasingly interested in receiving coupons on their phones, especially at the grocery store, Compete found. On Wednesday, Target announced that it would start sending mobile coupons.

When I worked at IBM Research, several of my co-workers did a project involving a retail establishment and customers’ mobile devices. They dealt with electronic coupons, as well as other uses of the mobile technology, and they wrote a paper about the project. The abstract:

Toward a Mobile Digital Wallet

Mobile phones have now made their way into a large fraction of pockets and handbags worldwide. An intriguing question is whether such phones will eventually replace the physical wallets we carry. We believe the answer is in the affirmative, though plenty of challenges abound in overcoming entrenched personal and business practices and processes. In this paper, we explore the changes that need to ripple through the ecosystem to build a vibrant set of digital wallet services that potentially interact with each other to provide users both with increased convenience and a level of functionality hitherto unrealized. We describe our initial mobile wallet prototypes on web-enabled smart phones, designed to explore some of the challenges in creating the architecture and infrastructure necessary to make this vision a reality. Feedback from users and experts across a range of industries such as retail, banking, telecommunications, and healthcare indicate that we have just scratched the surface and a substantial wave of innovation is necessary to make the digital wallet a full-fledged reality.

Would consumers want to receive coupons and other offers on their phones, or would the interruptions just annoy them, seeming to be spam? My colleagues found that customers in the pilot program liked getting the coupons, and used them. In their paper, they note these results:

1. The frequency of in-store visits was greater than the visit rate of the baseline loyalty program.
2. The electronic coupon redemption rate was several times higher than traditional paper coupon redemption rates.

Indeed, going back to the Bits blog in the Times:

Thirty-six percent of consumers said they would like to receive mobile grocery coupons, 29 percent said they want cellphone apps that scan product barcodes for an offer or discount, and 26 percent want coupons from movie theaters.

Are electronic coupons the wave of the future? What about the general concept of an electronic wallet? If we could solve the privacy and security problems, would people like using their mobile devices at points of sale, in lieu of money or credit/debit cards?

I think I would.

Bias is bad for science

The New York Times recently published an article about bias against women and minorities in science fields (and schooling). I’ve written about this before, and that was about a study from 2004. We’re not getting much better at this — or, if we are, it’s not fast enough.

Consider this:

The report found ample evidence of continuing cultural bias. One study of postdoctoral applicants, for example, found that women had to publish 3 more papers in prestigious journals, or 20 more in less-known publications, to be judged as productive as male applicants.

And this:

In a separate survey of 1,200 female and minority chemists and chemical engineers by Campos Inc., for the Bayer Corporation, two-thirds cited the persistent stereotype that STEM fields [Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics] are not for girls or minorities as a leading contributor to their underrepresentation.

Other studies have shown that papers written by women are more likely to be accepted by journals if they list their authorship by initials, rather than using a feminine first name. And, of course, women still are paid, on average, only a little more than ¾ of what men are.

We weren’t raised by wolves; why can’t we fix this? Smart, successful, technically adept women do not pose a threat to men. Quite the opposite, they add to the pool of qualified developers, researchers, and educators. And the same goes for minorities. We need them. We should be encouraging them, instead of behaving in ways such as this:

Many in the Bayer survey, also being released Monday, said they had been discouraged from going into their field in college, most often by a professor.

“My professors were not that excited to see me in their classes,” said Mae C. Jemison, a chemical engineer and the first African-American female astronaut, who works with Bayer’s science literacy project. “When I would ask a question, they would just look at me like, ‘Why are you asking that?’ But when a white boy down the row would ask the very same question, they’d say ‘astute observation.’ ”

A few years ago, there was a series of advertisements about diversity — public service announcements, really — that aired on PBS. One depicted a job applicant ending what appeared to be a pleasant and successful interview. The applicant was clearly “of colour”, and he was talking with two white men. After he left the room, the older man crumpled his application and tossed it in the waste bin. “I think we have enough ‘diversity’ around here, don’t you?”, he said.

The younger man reached into the bin, took the wad out, flattened it on the desk, looked at the older man, and said, “No. I don’t.”

Let’s move in that direction now, and let’s all help. As the tag line from the ad goes: One voice can make a difference.