Category: Geek stuff

If it involves physics, math, computer science, electronics or has general geek cachet, this is the place for it.

Academic tenure

We have previously discussed the value of graduate school and the issue of seniority in unions. Academic tenure is certainly a related issue, which came up improbably in a thread on climate and capitalism, and which probably deserves a discussion of its own.

Is tenure a good thing? Does it serve universities well? Professors? Students? The general cause of academic advancement? Clearly, tenure track professors obsessed with publishing have less energy to focus on teaching students. That said, what really distinguishes universities from other educational institutions is that they are live centres for real research. This Slate article does a good job of pointing out the flaws with tenure, while debunking a few of the purported benefits.

What kind of alternative tenure systems exist out there? The Slate article suggests that renewable contracts of 7-10 years are a superior alternative, along with offering breaks in the tenure track, and allowing for part-time tenure. Would society or students benefit if any of these (or other) ideas were more widely copied?

Sign you’re living badly

Paul Graham was written an interesting piece, on addictiveness. He argues that people are vulnerable to getting addicted to all sorts of things, and that avoiding this requires you to behave in an abnormal way: “You can probably take it as a rule of thumb from now on that if people don’t think you’re weird, you’re living badly.”

This strikes me as an interesting and possibly truthful observation, and an extension of our prior discussion of the nature of addiction.

Energy in wasted food

Here’s a sobering fact: there is apparently more energy in wasted food in the US than in the Gulf of Mexico:

Americans aren’t, technically, eating an average of 3774 calories per day. This figure is calculated by looking at food produced, divided by the number of Americans. It assumes we’re eating all that, but, in reality, according to environmental scientist Gidon Eshel we really only eat about 2800 calories per day. That whopping 3774 includes both what we eat—and what we waste…

We use a lot of energy producing, transporting, processing, storing and cooking food we don’t eat. About 2150 trillion kilojoules worth a year, according to a recent study. That’s more kilojoules than the United States could produce in biofuels. And it’s more than we already produce in all the oil and gas extracted annually from the Gulf of Mexico.

This is suggestive for several reasons. Firstly, it reinforces the point that the United States cannot drill the way out of their oil addiction problems – domestic oil supplies just aren’t adequate to make much of a difference. Secondly, it is a reminder of how energy is both a critical and a largely hidden part of our society. Thirdly, it shows how people respond to economic incentives – such as the cheapness of food – by acting frugally or wastefully in response. Fourthly, it shows yet another area where conservation can help us, as we make the shift to sustainable and zero-carbon forms of energy production and use.

Cancer and the neutron

I think of cancer, and radiation therapy for it, as modern phenomena. It was surprising, then, to learn that radon ‘seeds’ were being used for radiation therapy of cancer in 1929 – before the neutron had even been discovered. Indeed, polonium extracted from depleted seeds from Baltimore’s Kelly Hospital provided James Chadwick with the neutron source for the experiment that confirmed their existence. Neutrons are critical for inducing the fission of atoms, whether in bombs or power plants, because they are not repelled by the electric fields around atoms.

A detailed account of the experiment is in chapter 6 of Richard Rhodes’ The Making of the Atomic Bomb.

Review: Canon BG-E6 Battery Grip

I have been using the Canon 5D Mark II for about a month now, and decided to take advantage of lower American prices for photo accessories and pick up the vertical grip when I was in the US recently.

Why use a vertical grip?

There are two major reasons for doing so: battery management, and changing the physical character of the camera.

Battery management

With the BG-E6, you can operate the 5D Mk II with two rechargeable batteries. It seems to alternate between drawing power from one and the other, keeping both at a similar level of charge. I have found that the 5D Mk II goes through its battery much more quickly than my Rebel XS did, especially if you have the LCD screen all the time. Even a single day of intensive shooting risks depleting a single battery, making a backup rather useful for day-to-day use, and pretty essential for travel. Of course, you can buy three batteries or so for the cost of the grip, which may be a superior option for people who don’t care for the ergonomic changes it produces.

The BG-E6 can also be loaded with 6 AA batteries, using an included insert, which could be useful in an emergency or in remote areas.

Ergonomics

The BG-E6 certainly improves the handling of the 5D Mk II when it comes to vertical shooting. It provides a useful handhold, a second shutter button, and controls for exposure and focus point selection. Because your hands are in a less awkward position when shooting vertically, it is more comfortable to compose shots. I also think you can push the shutter speed a bit lower without generating unacceptable camera shake. The grip also balances out the weight of heavy lenses a bit, making it feel like you are carrying around one big balanced block of photographic hardware, rather than a body with a heavy lens torquing it downwards.

Like using a lens hood, using the vertical grip also makes your camera system look a bit more professional, which could be useful or problematic depending on the circumstances. It might draw a bit more positive attention from potential clients and exhibitionistic subjects, but it will also draw attention from meddling security guards and muggers.

Is the grip worth the weight and the money? That really depends on your needs and preferences. I prefer the feel of the camera with the grip, and find that I take more and better vertical pictures while using it. At the same time, it makes the camera awkwardly large for storing in a camera bag, and does add a significant amount of weight to a body that can be quite an anchor when using a lens like the 24-70 f/2.8 or the 70-200 f/4.

Stingy grad schools

The New York Times has an interesting article on the sad story of Jason Altom – a chemistry graduate student at Harvard who committed suicide, leaving notes that blamed the graduate supervision system for his suffering.

I was surprised by a few things in the article. I knew graduate students were expected to work long hours for little pay, but didn’t realize that meant $1000 a month for 60-80 hours of work a week. I would have expected schools like Harvard to at least pay enough to live with a bit of comfort.

Net10 phones

Given the exorbitant roaming rates, using my Fido phone in New York City seemed like it would be very unwise. On the Greyhound from Albany, however, a Colombian woman recommended that I pick up a $30 phone from Radio Shack, which comes with 300 minutes of talk time.

The LG phone itself seems fine, though maybe not super well built. The service, unfortunately, is useless. I was told when I got the phone that it would be two days before I could make or receive international calls. This is so they can run some sort of security check. After two days, the phone was still useless for calling Canadian numbers as well as my friend’s UK cell phone. I checked out the Net10 website and was told that you need to apply to activate international long distance. I did, and was told I would receive a text within 72 hours that activated the service. I am still waiting for that.

In short, my plan to spend $30 and get a working cell phone for a week (which I could then give away) turned out to be a total bust. Perhaps some of the other companies selling these disposable ‘burner’ phones would have been better for my purposes.

These disposable phones certainly demonstrate something about technology and economics. A couple of decades ago, a phone this small couldn’t be had for any sum of money. Now, they are sold for $30 along with 300 minutes of airtime, and used as a disposable commodity. I wonder what specific innovations permitted the drop in cost. Of course, there is also good reason to wonder what negative externalities go uncaptured in the price paid for the plastic package, little phone, and charger.

Single player and multiplayer

I have always preferred the single player modes in games like Half Life and Warcraft III to the multiplayer modes. The latter strike me as excessively hectic, with everybody racing to destroy their enemies, generating a lot of chaos in the process. Single player games allow you to take your time and execute things perfectly, in a much more controlled way.

It has occurred to me that the two options might appeal to rather different sorts of people. Multiplayer fans may be the sort who are thrilled by immediate engagement and happy to come out on top, even when the process for doing so is risky and disorderly. If they lose 90% of their army but end up victorious, they are happy. Single player may appeal to the sort of obsessive individual who wants to find a way to beat the enemy without losing a single unit, or suffering a major setback. It is well suited to the risk averse.

In life, it does seem that the kind of skills required in multiplayer are generally of more use than those required in single player. While there are areas of life where developing a plan methodically and them implementing it is possible and a good strategy, there seem to be many more where a capacity for improvisation and a willingness to not reflect on losses and failures are more valuable. Is there any way, I wonder, to make a natural single player fan into a more engaged multiplayer user?

Pickup artists

I find the phenomenon of ‘pickup artists‘ somewhat disturbing.

Basically, these are individuals who exploit quirks of human psychology in order to get people to sleep with them easily. Human behaviour is predictable to such an extent that many tricks are effective against a sizable proportion of the population. For example, you can use a minor insult called a ‘neg’ to make a person feel like they have to prove themselves to you. A long piece on pickup artists in The Point Magazine describes how this is at the core of the technique: “the key to the method is, unquestionably, that the pickup artist ignore, tease, or even insult the targeted female, accustomed as she is to constant, beleaguering attention from men.” There is also the whole collection of cold reading tricks long employed by psychics and con artists to give the false sense that they have special insight into you.

If people were widely aware that such tricks can be effective, the practice of people using them would be less worrisome. When they are employed against unwitting subjects, however, they strike me as exploitative and potentially unethical. The article linked above contains a detailed discussion of the ethics and psychology of this unusual set of skills.

The DSM and defining mental illness

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is published by the American Psychiatric Association and contains the most authoritative definitions of mental illnesses. The current version – the DSM-IV – was released in 1994. Now, work is ongoing on a fifth edition.

To me, it seems like ‘mental illness’ often describes a situation in which a person manifests a normal part of psychology to an excessive extent. For instance, it is perfectly normal and probably even essential for people to feel things like guilt, shame, and anxiety. Any of these felt to an extreme extent, whether that means extremely strongly or weakly, could form the basis for a mental illness.

There is a danger, perhaps, in being too quick to say that someone is ill, when they simply manifest a normal tendency to an unusual degree. Doing so might make them feel stigmatize and lead to unnecessary medical interventions. It also risks making people feel less responsible for their choices and actins, since they can be ascribed to a medical condition rather than to the free expression of their will. At the same time, increased awareness of mental illness is probably an important thing for society to develop. My sense is that most people do not have a great understanding of the character of mental illnesses, and that society is generally poorly set up to assist people suffering from them.