EphBlog

"You know that part of a wedding where the pastor says, 'If anyone knows of a reason why this couple should not wed, speak now or forever hold your peace'?"

"Um, yeah...." The question from my undergraduate research assistant caught me off-guard, coming as it did in the middle of a discussion on doctoral dissertations.

"Does that sort of thing happen at people's Ph.D. defenses?"

I think he was just kidding, but I love the idea.

Weddings, by design, chug slowly and verbosely toward a foregone conclusion. Although the guests invariably opt to hold their peace, except in soap operas, the invitation to do otherwise provides a moment of delicious tension while everyone wonders whether some crazy uncle or besotted friend might derail the ceremony.

Doctoral defenses, like weddings, are long, wordy, and devoid of drama; the candidate knows that he/she is going to pass. All of this is as it should be. But why not put the person's destiny on hold for a few extra seconds while the audience is offered a chance to contest the awarding of the degree? Wouldn't it be fun to imagine rival scholars emerging from the woodwork in such situations?

At the very least, this change in protocol might cause more Ph.D. defenses to be featured in soap operas.

i enjoyed my run last night, i really did. the tempo segments felt smooth and not too hard, and it was an excellent stress release. my mood had truly improved by the end of the workout. but i am having a problem -- when i get done with a run at 7 pm, there is:

a) really not sufficient time to make dinner and get to bed when i need to
b) a period of high-energy that lasts 2-3 hours after the run that makes falling asleep nearly impossible.

obviously, getting up any earlier to run in the AM is not an option, so i guess i'll just have to deal with this situation for another 8 days. the only alternative is not to run, and i have never needed the effects on mood and overall well-being more than i do now, so that is not going to fly.

PICU COUNTDOWN!

remaining call nights: counting tonight, 3!

days off still left to enjoy: 3 out of the next 11 days.

number of PICU rounds left: 8

number of times i have to actually get up this early to get to work: 5 (less than the above number because 3 of those rounds will be post-call so i'll already be there!)

of course, i do have to go back again in january for another (shorter) round. but i will try not to think about that now. happy thoughts!

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8.20.08

run: 6.3 miles total, 0.5% incline -- 10 minute warmup @ 9:13/mi, 2 x 2 mi @ 8:00/mi with a 2 minute recovery period in between, and 10 minutes cooldown @ 9:13/mi.

cooking: i found this recipe for curry chicken salad lettuce wraps with cashews and used it to make the salad (i skipped the lettuce wrap part as that just sounds like a mess). it was good but very similar to a dinner i had just made -- oh well!

also, we had these amazing pistachio ice cream bars afterwards. they are called kulfi koolfreeze -- i discovered these randomly on my last trip to whole foods and now i want to try every flavor, especially the saffron. they have an incredibly exotic delicious taste and are super-creamy - like pure ice cream, just on a stick. i guess between this dessert and my run, yesterday wasn't SUCH a bad day after all . . .

...and back at the House.

I'm back from DC, with lots of Real World Experience (tm) under my belt. And now that my benefactors cannot be held responsible for what I put on the InterTubes (tm), I'll be posting again.

Now, back to your regularly scheduled WTF (via CuteOverload):

http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/08/18/college.drinking.age.ap/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

Honestly, I think that this is a really good thing, and that's not just because I'm an underage college student. It's about time that we see a rational debate over this subject. If young people learn to drink responsibly at a younger age, then we'd probably see a lot less about college kids dying from alcohol poisoning or choking on their own vomit (gross).

No matter what groups such as MADD want to say, kids who want to drink illegally most likely will find a way, whether it's through a fake ID or getting someone of age to buy it for them, regardless of the drinking age. Illegal drinking does nothing but make kids want to drink as much as they can when they get their hands on it -- I'm pretty sure that as college students, many/most of us know this from experience.

Plus, the age old argument: if I'm old enough to buy a firearm, to choose who leads this country, and, if it's necessary, to be drafted and to die for it, then why can't I walk into a convenience store and buy a 30 or a 6 pack?

Let's hope that we'll actually see some substantial debate on this issue in the near future.

Academic research, at its best, is about asking interesting questions and then designing experiments to answer them. One of the toughest challenges is designing experiments that are both possible and capable of answering the question at hand. The gap between the set of possible experiments and convincing experiments can sometimes be a vast one.

Just like the former US secretary of defense, you go to publication with the data you’ve got, not the data you’d like to have. And different data can lead to some very different conclusions, which helps explain why two competent groups of researchers can answer a question very differently.

I’m interested in questions of whether the internet, and specifically the rise of the read/write web, is broadening or narrowing the perspective of users. On the one hand, the rise of pervasive read/write media means that lots and lots of people are creating content - tens of millions by some counts - which should make a great wealth of perspectives and viewpoints available to the internet user. On the other hand, the structure of digital media means that it’s very easy to select just the media you’re interested in… a scenario Nicholas Negroponte termed “the Daily Me“.

Negroponte thought the Daily Me was an exciting thing. Cass Sunstein thought it was worrisome and wrote a book (twice!) about the reasons it troubled him. An academic debate continues to rage, pitting Sunstein the skeptic against a long list of cyberenthusiasts, including Yochai Benkler and Henry Jenkins.

This is the sort of question social scientists love to explore: thorny, complicated, but ultimately testable. All we’ve got to do is look at some people who spend a lot of time online and others who spend little and see who’s got a broader view of the world. Piece of cake. (The SARCASM > tag may not be rendering properly in your browser.)

In October 2004, John Horrigan, Paul Resnick and Kelly Garrett released a paper called “The internet and democratic debate” as part of the Pew Internet and American Life project. They didn’t lack for confidence in their conclusions, subtitling the paper, “Wired Americans hear more points of view about candidates and key issues than other citizens. They are not using the internet to screen out ideas with which they disagree.”

The first sentence of the subtitle is experimentally true - that’s what their research demonstrates. The University of Michigan School of Information and Pew IALP conducted a study which surveyed 1500 Americans, some who used the internet to follow the news, some who didn’t. They asked participants whether they’d heard certain political arguments, in favor or against particular political candidates or sensitive issues. Out of a set of of eight arguments (four for a candidate or an issue, four against), broadband internet users had heard 5.5 arguments, while respondents as a whole had heard 5.2 and non-internet users had heard 5.0.

The tougher question is what significance we should attach to this result. The study sees a slightly larger gap in knowledge between people with strong political opinions and the average respondent (5.6 for strong Kerry supporters, 5.7 for strong Bush supporters) - perhaps people with strong political opinions get broadband so they can track politics more closely? Maybe rich people have more leisure time to hear political arguments and more money to buy broadband connectivity? It’s difficult to determine which variables are correlated without doing regression analysis, which attempts to isolate the inpact of each variable.

The Pew report promises that regression analysis has been done and that “Internet use did have an indepedent and positive effect on the number of statements people heard about the candidates.” Unfortunately, it doesn’t include the analysis, and it’s not clear whether internet use is a major or small factor, or whether other factors are better predictors of having heard a large set of arguments.

More difficult for me to swallow is the connection between awareness of political arguments and diversity of viewpoint. I don’t consume a lot of right-leaning US media (to my detrminent - I’d likely be a better informed citizen if I did), and I’d heard all the arguments on the left and right of the issues presented. I’d be willing to guess that I’d heard many of the “right” arguments from “left” media, sometimes in posts that began, “The right is trying to sell argument A - here’s why it’s wrong.” I’m tempted to conclude that Horrigan et al. found a correlation between internet usage and a more-informed citizenry - a correlation that may not be causal, as one can imagine people with a strong interest in being well-informed might seek out broadband internet, or might be wealthier and likelier to have broadband.

But concluding that internet users “are not using the internet to screen out ideas with which they disagree” seems like it’s blurring an important distinction between knowing the other side’s arguments, and having listened to someone make a persuasive case for them. But the distinction quickly points to the difficulty of determining how one would measure a broadened perspective. Is it knowledge of other opinions? A softening of one’s political stances to acommodate other positions? Are we looking for knowledge, for sympathy, or for some sort of change to demonstrate an ideological diversification that comes from online media?

Henry Farrell, Eric Lawrence and John Sides are intrigued by the same question explored by Horrigan and friends. They approach the topic in a paper titled “Self-Segregation or Deliberation? Blog Readership, Participation in American Politics“. The title invokes a related set of political science arguments - Habermas and others have argued that societies depend on a healthy public sphere where issues can be freely deliberated. Sunstein’s recent research on this topic focuses specifically on deliberation, where he makes the argument that deliberation with like-minded fellows can lead to increased political polarization. (My objections to the Pew study might be summarized by saying “knowing the other side’s key arguments isn’t the same thing as good-faith deliberation.”)

Habermas believes that deliberation is an essential ingredient in a healthy society. Sunstein worries that polarized deliberation can make society worse, and fears that the internet enables this sort of polarization. Farrell abd friends point to another complication - citing Diana Mutz, they see evidence that deliberation with people who hold other opinions can lead to increased tolerance but to decreased political participation.

To test whether internet users are more polarized than non-users and how this might affect their participation, Farrell and friends look at a different set of data, the 2006 Cooperative Congressional Election Study. This is a much larger sample set than the Pew data, covering 36,501 participants, but since the researchers didn’t control the questions asked (they were proposed by a large set of researchers) they’re forced to mine the data they have. 5,481 respondents reported reading blogs, and 3,948 listed one or more blog they read. The researchers coded the blogs and discovered that 2,312 respondents reported reading one of 476 political blogs.

Using this data, Farrell and crew classified blog readers as “carnivores” or “omnivores”. Omnivores consumed both left and right leaning blogs, while carnivores consumed only right or left. There are a lot of carnivores - 94%, according to their analysis. Unsurprisingly, folks who read a lot of left-leaning blogs tend to be politically left, and vice versa across the ideological divide. The researchers see a similar pattern in television news consumption - viewers of Fox News tend to be from the right, while viewers of other networks skew left.

This polarization in consumption appears to be correlated to political polarization. The carnivores are not only more polarized than the average citizen, but roughly as polarized as US senators, folks whose political success often depends on their strong, steady party alleigance. (The CCES political opinion data is designed to be comparable to the NOMINATE data collected on senatorial votes.)

The small group of omnivores - 6% of those who report reading political blogs - don’t seem to face the demobilization Mutz warns of. All the blog readers participate at a higher level than the average citizen, other than right-wing carnivores, who participate at roughly the same level as the average respondent.

Farrell and his collaborators conclude with some confidence that blog readers are significantly more politically involved and polarized than the average citizen, a result that might seem to be at odds with the Pew results. After all, Pew’s study concludes that wired Americans “are not using the internet to screen out ideas with which they disagree.” But if we ignore Pew’s interpretation and just focus on their data, the studies are more compatible. Both Pew and Farrell see internet users as better informed than average citizens. Farrell would likely tell you that some of these well-informed internet users are carnivorous blog readers, who are knowledgeable about political arguments through their voracious consumption of ideologically-compatible blogs.

My interest in these experiments has less to do with questions of political polarization and more to do with interest in international news. Are internet readers more inclined to look for information about other countries, since they’ve got such a wealth of information at their fingertips? Or are they more inclined towards information on their home countries, since they can easily choose to avoid international news. Extrapolating from Pew’s data suggests that wired readers might consult more sources and perhaps consume a more diverse diet; Farrell’s research points to a strong homophily effect, which suggests the possibility of geographic cocooning.

Guess I’ll need to design my own experiments using whatever data I can as a proxy to indirectly answer the question… and hope other researchers find other data and other methods to challenge my assumptions.

Alden finds herself torn, like Solomon's baby, between several fierce grandparental allegiances. On one hand, her Grandma Elisabeth is a devoted Duke basketball fan, Red Sox fan, and Patriots fan. On the other hand, her Grandpa John is a Kansas Jayhawks basketball fan, a Kansas City Royals fan, and a Kansas City Chiefs fan. Fortunately, her Grandpa Bob and Grandma Seiko probably don't even know what a layup, grand slam, or field goal are, so one could argue that this tangle of conflicting loyalties could be much worse.

There are those beyond the family sphere who dare to compete for my child's sporting preference.

My colleague Clifford, for example, who placed the orange socks of his beloved Baltimore Orioles on Alden's legs.

Emboldened by her failure to protest, he draped a tee-shirt of even more garish orange across her tiny, defenseless frame.

Clifford took one look at the Orioles/Alden combination and declared that she was obviously a fan. I begged to differ. To settle the argument, we took her straight to Camden Yards to see for ourselves whether she would cheer for the Orioles or Sox.

At first, she couldn't see over the rowdy Orioles fans in front of us. And so I helped her to a better vantage.

As the game progressed, the score was knotted at 0-0. Alden looked anxious. Clearly she cared.

But who was she cheering for?

At the top of the second, Boston slugger Jason Bay hit a towering homer to put the Sox on the scoreboard. A few batters later, Boston's catcher and captain, the great Jason Varitek, who has been struggling all season, came up to bat and hit a homer of his own.

I looked to Alden, trying to read her reaction to the events of the inning. She was not unhappy with Boston's success, but neither was she elated as one would expect a true fan to be.

I considered the question thoroughly unanswered.

In the bottom of the fourth, Baltimore's slugger Aubrey Huff belted a fastball over the fence in center field. I looked to Alden for response, and suddenly we had our answer.

Even though Boston still had a 2-1 lead, she was clearly dismayed. I tried to console her, to tell her that it would be all right, that baseball is just a game, that life is full of peaks and troughs, that true character comes from turning the other cheek, that important lessons can be learned from loss. For a moment, it seemed as if she understood. But as Huff crossed home plate and the scoreboard registered the Baltimore run, it was clear that the Red Sox fan lodged deep within my child's tiny heart had just been unleashed.

This isn't the first time during Blog365 that I have felt like I have nothing to say, but it IS the first time I have seriously considered saying, "Screw it. I'm going to bed."

• Television - Is Jon Stewart the Most Trusted Man in America? - NYTimes.com
  the short answer? yes. of course. as the show has evolved beyond the puerile humiliation of undeserving subjects to the targeting of deserving politicos, i've bought in more and more. to the chagrin of the quote unquote real media.
  (tags: tv television politics nytimes news media journalism jonstewart)

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Because she says it better than I can. Yes. YES.

Flesh-eating Zombie Radio is going on a vacation of indefinite length.

Longtime reader Good Liberal asked the perfectly reasonable question with regard to this post: what did John Nance Garner actually say about the value of the Vice Presidency? Come to find out, we're not exactly sure. But Patrick Cox, writing at The Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin (Woo Hoo Flagship institution!), looks into this anecdote. (See a fuller pdf article here.) Apparently the quotation, if it existed, refers to a bucket of warm spit, but in my heart it will always be a bucket of warm piss.

As of right now, 3:54 Central Time on August 20, 2008 we have no apparent movement on the Vice Presidential choice front. Or at least no choice seems forthcoming.

Way back in the last century while I was still a naive and gullible undergrad at Williams College, I studied Political Science. Specifically the politics of Nicaragua and the politics of Spain. My senior thesis was a comparison of the two political systems. Don't ask me what the outcome of the paper was as I don't remember, but I realize now how little I knew then.

I had a Poli Sci professor from Argentina, Carlos Egan, whose passion was Latin American politics - and North American coeds, but that's a-whole-nother story. Anyway, he got us all interested in and excited about Nicaraguan politics in the early and mid 1980's. Right around the same time the the Iran-Contra Fiasco was making headline news. He wagged his finger at American politicians and its militaristic tendencies, and we all ate it up.

Some of my classmates went to Nicaragua to see the Sandinista Revolution first-hand, but I couldn't. My parents refused to let me go there; if I wanted to study Spanish, it would have to be in Spain. So off I went to Madrid, fell in love with the country and a certain young Spaniard - but that too is a-whole-nother story.

Anyway, Carlos teamed up with the athletic department at Williams, and they invited the Nicaraguan national basketball team to come to Williams for a tournament during the fall of one of my years at Williams. They weren't a very competitive team, but they opened our eyes to the real-life situation in that Central American nation. The coach of the team went home with me for Thanksgiving that year. He had never been to a large city like Brooklyn, New York, so he spent hours each day walking around our neighborhood in awe of it all.

Two or three days before Thanksgiving, as we were beginning the long hard preparatory march to the most gluttonous feast of the year, he opened the fridge and peered in. It was on one of those days when we just wanted to dump all the leftovers to make room for the turkey, veggies, and all the other holiday fixings. He stood there looking at what we were more than willing to throw away and said, "I have never seen this much food in one place in all my life." And he was the coach of the Nicaraguan National Basketball Team.

That was the first time that all the politics I'd been studying at Williams came home to where I lived in Brooklyn.

Going to Nicaragua two and a half weeks ago had the same effect.

Twenty-five years after begging my parents to let me go, I was finally able to take the trip to Nicaragua. To hear the stories of the Sandinistas from the people who lived through them. Truthfully, most of the people I met were too young to have fought the war between the revolutionaries and the US-backed Contras. But their fathers and grandfathers fought. Their mothers and grandmothers fought too. And nowadays, while most Americans know nothing about that war and precious few care about Nicaragua at all, the fallout from the political decisions made by a secretive and powerful few Americans nearly 30 years ago is landing hard on the heads of those beautiful children we met in that beautiful country.



Paradise, the poorer of the two desperately poor communities we visited, is inhabited by Contra fighters and their children and grandchildren. They fought a war financed by this country. They lost that war. The American funding stopped flowing. The winners of the war, the Sandinistas, felt no obligation to take care of Nicaraguans who had fought against them. So for all these years, Charlie and Paisy's families have squatted on land that they were promised as payment for their efforts. They squat and wait, hoping for electricity, for running water, for job opportunities, and for general acceptance at home and in the international community. Someday.

So I stood there in Paradise, thinking about Carlos and Poli Sci 104, my introduction to international relations. I thought about Gloria and Nicole, the Nicaraguan dance teacher and her daughter, who came to Williams while I was an undergrad. Little baby Nicole, who I held in my arms one night in February of 1987 while her mother directed and performed in a dance show in Lasell Gymnasium in Williamstown. Little Nicole whose presence in my arms caught the eye of a certain young man named Steve - who said that he watched me hold and care for that baby that night. Who said that watching me love that baby made him ponder the possibility of loving me.

Years later, Carlos died in a plane crash as he returned from Nicaragua where he had proposed to Gloria; she had said "yes."



This handsome young man was the scorekeeper for the volleyball games we played. Perched high on that pole, he felt quite powerful. And undoubtedly pretty alone. Kinda like his antecedents who fought for the Contras.
*********************************************************

So I stood there in Paradise, thinking about Carlos and Poli Sci 404 my senior seminar, thinking about Gloria and Nicole (wondering where they were at that moment), thinking about and watching my own daughter whose middle name is the same as the little baby who attracted her father to me, thinking about how the political can become so painfully and despairingly personal. And I wept.

I wept over the death of Carlos and the family he'd hoped to have with Gloria and Nicole.
I wept over the deaths of all the Contra fighters and Sandinistas years ago.
I wept because the outcome of that war affects them at every level of their existence, but seems to have no effect on ours.



Taking pinatas to hungry children. Fun for a moment.
But that candy does not fill their empty stomachs for long.
*****************************************

I wept over the ongoing conflicts that this nation is involved in around the world.
I wept over how little we know of what those conflicts will do to future generations - and current ones.
I wept over the countless enclaves like Paradise that have sprouted up and will continue to spring up because of the hopelessness and homelessness, poverty and sorrow that war always gives rise to.




And I wept because the political is always personal.
Always.

Today Bernie Mac joined Heath Ledger, Tim Russert, and many others in 2008's series of notable and often surprising deaths. Mac died today from complications due to pneumonia. He was only fifty years old.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/Movies/08/09/obit.bernie.mac.ap/index.html

Is it just me, or have all of the celebrity deaths this year made anyone else feel a lot older than we really are?



Here's a re-cap of some of the notable public figures who have passed away in 2008:

Bernie Mac—Today (August 9th)
Randy Pausch—July 25th (Carnegie Mellon Professor; famous for giving The "Last Lecture" while living with terminal liver cancer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo)
Estelle Getty—July 22nd (Sophia on the Golden Girls)
Tony Snow—July 12th
George Carlin-- June 22nd
Tim Russert—June 13th
Bo Diddley—June 2nd
Yves Saint Laurent—June 1st
Sydney Pollack—May 26th
Dick Martin—May 24th
Albert Hofmann—April 29th (Discovered LSD)
Charlton Heston—April 5th
Gordon B. Hinckley—January 27th (President of the LDS, aka Mormon, church.)
Heath Ledger—January 22nd
Brad Renfro—January 15th

Holy crap.

http://www.thethousand.net/archives/2008/08/1932.php

That page talks about how significant Michael Johnson's 200m record is - just far and away from everyone else.

And then Usain Bolt broke it last night.
http://www.nbcolympics.com/trackandfield/news/newsid=239399.html#bolt+strikes+twice+with+another+wr

I can't wait to get home and watch this.

Wow.

August 11th through 17th was the first week in which I've ever run a full 100 miles.

There's no great significance to this "milestone"; the numbers just happened to add up that way. And if anyone else out there is planning their first 100-mile week, I don't especially recommend my approach, which was as follows:

Monday: Ran home from work via Capitol Hill, including the usual time-trial segment (10th & Roanoke to 14th & 15th) in 21:02, then the neighborhood loop with Lucy. 7.6 miles.

Tuesday: Ran home from work, then the neighborhood loop with Lucy. 6.7 miles.

Wednesday: Ran to work. 5.8 miles.

Thursday: Ran to work. Later, ran home, then the neighborhood loop with Lucy. 12.9 miles.

Friday: Ran home from work, then the neighborhood loop with Lucy. 6.6 miles.

Saturday: Slow, self-supported run around Lake Washington (starting and ending at home). 55 miles.

Sunday: Out and back on the Chief Sealth Trail with Phil in the baby jogger. 5.4 miles.

Or, to put it more succinctly: easy, easy, easy, easy, easy, hard, easy.

I did the Lake Washington loop (using a route recommended by TWBC.org) as a sort of feasibility study. I wanted to assess whether I might do well in a 24-hour race like Ultracentric. If I ran slowly enough, with regular walk breaks and copious food and fluids, could I finish the loop with the sense that I could do it again if necessary?

The answer on this particular Saturday was a resounding NO. Of course, it didn't help that the temperature hit 90 degrees that day, but the long and the short of it is that I had a moment of clarity about eight hours into the run. I thought: "Not only has running -- one of my all-time favorite activities -- ceased to be pleasurable over the last couple of hours, but eating -- one of my other all-time favorite activities -- has ceased to be pleasurable as well. What exactly am I doing out here?"

I did finish the loop, but, three days later, I'm still hobbling around, a minute per mile slower than usual. This week's mileage will probably be about 50.

in a timespan of 4 hours, i could:

- run a marathon!
- cook a (very) gourmet meal
- drive from chapel hill to DC or asheville
- get in a great workout and head to the spa for a massage and then mani/pedi
- watch magnolia in its mammoth entirety, or FOUR episodes of grey's anatomy
- get in a VERY satisfying nap

and yet, 4 hours does not seem to be enough time to finish morning rounds in the PICU.

i've never been one of those people who hates rounds, which is essentially the mulling over of each patient and figuring out the best plan for the day. until now! with all the pimping! the attitude! the inefficiency DESPITE acting obsessed with efficiency! the repetitive discussions about all the cardiac babies that we have day after day after day.

i don't know if it's obvious from my posts (um, probably), but i am pretty much miserable these days and i want this month to end.

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8.19.08

workout: did not happen.

cooking: did not happen.

but finally: i made it to bed at 8. i thought maybe i would wake up refreshed and in a good mood, but APPARENTLY NOT.

I have heard many theories about the origins of life. Some babies arrive by stork and others are found in baskets left on doorstops. Or else they arrive like mine did, mad and determined to defy the seeming laws of physics.

But just this evening, after bringing the groceries in from the car and starting to unpack them, I discovered yet another way that babies may be delivered into our lives.

There between the olive oil and the wheat squares...

...was a real live baby. It was an appealing sort of thing, sweet smelling and amiable. I checked my receipt and found I had not paid for it. And yet I did not want to return it to the Super Fresh.

I put away the cereal and the onions and the cottage cheese, but did not know exactly what to do with the baby.

And so it stayed inside the bag, as it seemed to prefer.

Later we spotted it again, this time under a pile of toys.

We like this baby. We're going to keep it.

But I'm not sure how soon I'll be going back to the grocery store.

It's not every day that bunnies hop through the set of a play, let alone appear on cue, but tonight at Quantum Theatre's production of Cymbeline that's exactly what happened. 

What I did on the Day Two of my vacation: visited an oyster farm in Wellfleet, MA. For serious. These sustainable - “call it green, sustainable, whatever you want” said one oyster farmer today - shellfish fisheries are an interesting canary in the coal mine in several respects. As we’ll see.

And while I’m aware of the concerns with respect to other farmed marine life - see, for example, the concerns regarding farmed salmon here - the oyster beds seem to be remarkably low impact, both in terms of usage and their effect on the ecosystems they inhabit.

Anyway, after listening to an interview of oyster aquaculturists and charter fishermen today, here are five things I learned.

1. Climate Change:
   Climate change - or at least perceived (see some of my inconclusive Many Eyes weather plottings inspired by Jon Udell here) climate change - is a real issue for oyster farmers. While those working the oyster beds used to fear the onset of winter ice in the bays, they’ve since come to fear the lack of it. Apparently, the sea ice cleans out the would-be predators of shellfish - principally crabs - keeping those populations under control. While the lack of ice is beneficial to the farmers - it’s easier on their equipment - it is far harder on their animals, the oysters. The last time Wellfleet had the necessary sea ice? Better than 5 years ago.
   
2. Cost of Oil:
   The cost of fuel, the most obvious oil based derivative, is casting a serious pall on most, if not all, marine businesses. Charter captains are for the first time second guessing their regular movements; when considering whether to head to a spot 20 miles distant, they are thinking first of fuel, second of fish. It’s always a gamble, as they put it. It’s so on their minds, in fact, that they’re trying to cap their RPMs while cruising. Below 4500, they’re efficient. Above, they’re not, but faster.

Fuel is far from the only manifestation of the elevated cost of oil, however. All oil based products are affected. The petroleum derivative oyster netting which once cost $2.50 per are near 4X that now at north of $8.

The implications of oil costs for coastal communities are profound. Markets, for example, are shifting. Oysters are increasingly locally sourced rather than forwarded to markets in Boston, from which point they’d be sent to Chicago, San Francisco or even Europe. Part of that shift is in the transportation costs, of course, but it’s also a function of increased Cape demand. Changes, and big ones, are coming to coastal communities from oil.

Even if they’re not always apparent yet.

Invasive Species:
Again, as with other geographies, the Cape is struggling with the implications of so-called invasive species. With introduced predatory species like green and spider crabs, oyster drills, and a species of whelk, the delicate balance of the Cape’s ecosystem has been jeopardized. Shellfish farmers and shellfish alike battle the numerous invasive species daily, with the fate of thousands of shellfish and their economic value (which has ranged from $.40 to $1.00 per oyster, recently) in the balance. One of the farmers recalled losing 100,000 oysters in a single evening, due to a decision not to place them under protective nets.

Unfortunately, as I’ve discovered in conversations with those coping with invasive species in other regions - principally the zebra mussel in western states and the great lakes region - there is little to be done. The usual approach - introducing yet another species to prey on the newly introduced animal - tends to cause as many problems as it solves. For an example, see the hilarious documentary on the cane grub of Australia here.

Ultimately, ecosystems much adapt, but the collateral damage in between can be severe.

Laws Governing Water Usage:
One interesting tidbit that I had not been aware of: the laws governing the usage of tidal flats dates back to the 1640’s. The rights of oyster farms thus are governed by laws written literally hundreds of years ago. Also notable is the fact that aquaculture is governed by an entirely different set of regulations relative to fishing, fowling, or navigation, because it is considered farming rather than fishing.

State of Fisheries:
Near and dear to my heart was discussion of the sport fisheries of the Cape area, and while they have held up better than Maine’s, which has essentially collapsed this summer, the catches are significantly down. Worse, the same year class is being continually reduced, with little to no obvious replenishment.

This was attributed, not as I expected to the commercial fishing of striped bass and related species down in the Chesapeake region, as I expected, but rather to the overfishing of its primary prey species, including the menhaden.

The decimation of these feeding stocks - which are permissable and relatively unregulated because it’s not a human food source - has had a predictable impact on its predators. While they struggle to adapt by compensating with the addition of new items to their diet - crabs, primarily - the overall stocks are down.

Which is then felt here, by anglers all throughout the Northeast.

The above data suggests, to me, certain conclusions:

1. Climate change will continue to have massive impacts in unanticipated ways
2. Economics are the most compelling agent for change
3. Fisheries, which are themselves highly complex ecosystems, will continue to decline unless primary food and sport species - and their prey, and their preys prey, etc - are aggressively managed and protected
4. Oil costs will reshape marine industries and the towns that support them

Whether all of the above is good or bad depends, of course, on your perspective. Personally, I’m not against the changes precipitated by the rising cost of oil, but the transition is likely to be excruciating for marine communities.

None of us are guaranteed a living, as my Mom always said, but efforts need to be made to assist those subsisting off coastal harvests if families are not to go hungry.

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• ::WASP::Web Analytics Solution Profiler/Debugger::
  helps debug analytics
  (tags: firefox webstats extensions analytics tools)

The Cup schedule is out and the France's have smiled on Oxford Plains Speedway again. The TD Banknorth 250 will be held on an off Cup weekend on Sunday, July 19, 2009. Mr. Harvick claims he will not be back but who knows?

The Economist has an online feature this week on Digital Nomads, people for whom mobile connectivity has become a central part of life. The piece features three videos, with the CEO of Sun Microsystems, Jan Chipchase of Nokia in Tokyo, and a podcaster and IT worker in Mumbai. The last of these is the most interesting - Abhishek Ashok Kumar documents a week in his life via voicemail, photos and video, and presents a picture of modern-day India where mobile communication is essential for everyone from mechanics, taxi drivers to IT workers.

It’s somewhat surprising that the reality Jonathan Schwartz, CEO of Sun, shows in his slideshow is somewhat more mundane than the world Kumar shows off - sure, Sun’s got a clever system that allows workers to customize a workstation with a smartcard, but “workplace hotelling” is so 1990s. Roadside repair services that advertise by painting cellphone numbers on the Mumbai streets? That’s exciting.

The dcat extended family has good news to report on the professional front.

First off, the University of Nebraska Press will be publishing Frederick Funston's memoirs, Memories of Two Wars: Cuban and Philippine Experiences. How does this tie in to dcat's inner circle? Well, Tom Bruscino has not only written the introduction, he also steered the project to the folks at Nebraska. Expect more good news from Tom in weeks to come. Congrats, man!

Second, when you sneer at me with your derisive comments, I now expect to be called Associate Professor Catsam. I rolled the dice and went up for tenure and promotion a couple of years early and the process went well. I got the official letter in my campus mailbox a few minutes ago. Giddyup!

Quote “I spent two and a half weeks in Papua New Guinea this summer and it’s my new favorite country. I think more people should visit, and I’d be happy to help! If you’re interested in going somewhere adventurous (i.e. no electricity, mattress on the floor, no cement, malaria….) for winter study, or even next summer, shoot me an e-mail and I can give you my contacts and help plan. Almost everyone in the country speaks English and they are desperate to attract tourists and show the world their country. I’m sure the Gaudino Fund would sponsor a project.”
How can U describe a country like this, REALLY?!##% This is disrespectful. Im sure Papua New Guinea has a lot more to offer in terms of their culture and national heritage. Do you think, the people of Papua New Guinea take pride in lack of electricity?
This is for you and everyone who has your frame of mind.

that is what I posted as an announcement on WSO just now. Someone please tell me that I am not the only one who is outraged by this kids post, 'travel to Papua New Guinea'. I thought Williams was doing a decent job at enlightening folks from all walks of life about all walks of life.

The speculation as to the candidates' Vice Presidential choices is in full-speed mode. And as usual, even as the guessing game continues apace, no one actually has any idea who will emerge as the second on the ticket.

As a Democrat I am most excited about the possibility that Joe Biden will be the one. He occasionally puts his foot in his mouth, but he is almost inarguably one of the most serious foreign policy minds on the Hill. In many ways I'd almost prefer that Biden be tagged for a post that will enable his foreign policy gravitas to shine -- State, SecDef (though I am among those who believes that keeping Robert Gates in that post would be a fine decision), NSC -- but from a purely political standpoint I am thrilled at the idea of a serious, experienced, smart Vice Presidential nominee who will both serve in that vital capacity of all seconds, attack dog, and who will also be able to advise Obama about the most important issues he will face abroad.

Biden is not perfect, but no VP nominee is for either party, and his strengths far outweigh his negatives. And I think the last generation has shown the Vice Presidency to be much more than John Nance Garner's famous formulation of being not worth "a bucket of warm piss" given the vital and active roles played by Al Gore (for good) and Dick Cheney (I'd argue for not so good), which means you want a serious person in the position and not merely a placeholder or someone who will provide little more than the coveted news cycle poll bump.

I once read an article about the expected "final" records we could expect to see for humans at certain distance racing events (running).

The article was stating it based on known rates and abilities to clear generate/clear the chemicals required for movement over a given distance.

It makes me curious about the equivalent for sprinting events, as the recent 100m at the Olympics has completely changed how fast I thought the limit was for a human.

• Seed: Out of the Blue
  BlueBrain is an ambitious project to model interconnected neurons with highly precise digital models. Between the "wet" work done to create accurate simulations and the programming, the scale of the task is beginning to look immense. A digital brain sometime soon? Not without major breakthroughs - "The human brain requires about 25 watts of electricity to operate. Markram estimates that simulating the brain on a supercomputer with existing microchips would generate an annual electrical bill of about $3 billion ."
  (tags: simulation neuroscience brain ibm computing philosophy intelligence AI research science)