Guns, Germs and Steel

Why are human societies in different parts of the world so different? Why do the Europeans and the North Americans have more than they need while many Africans have nothing? Why do some societies have very complex political and social structures while other peoples consist of bands and tribes and no central government? Some say it's genetic. They point out to the colour on people's face and make a racist conclusion that those with lighter pigment are smarter inside, and therefore their societies are more "advanced". Others conclude that if you live further north you need to build things to adapt to the colder environment or you die, therefore the countries in the North are richer than those further down south. This is the favourite explanation of modern Finns and Swedes but unfortunately almost as wrong as the first one.

Jared Diamond provides a compelling explanation in his book. The book is almost ten years old now, and a bestseller, but for some reason I hadn't read it before. I must say that I hadn't really given much thought about the "civilisation-level" dynamics of world dominance, apart from playing Civilization myself... But, I've had more interest in the individual and small group cognition and "intelligence". And so I've refuted racist claims that tap into these issues without trying to find alternative reasons from the large-scale dynamics.

For instance, some people claim that there are IQ differences that are associated with "race" or nationality. I've not wasted much ammo to showing how tedious the whole notions of "race", ethnic group or nation are, instead I've gone straight to attacking the validity and reliability of the IQ-tests themselves. There are several problematic issues about them. First, they (and there are various around) only measure a narrow band in the vast spectrum of human intelligence. No matter how narrowly you define "intelligence" (leaving out for instance the now fashionable "emotional intelligence", which BTW is a stupid term as such) you will still end up with a definition that outreaches the test's subject matter. Second, they are very culture-specific. The whole idea of pen-and-paper tests is very Western, but even beyond this slightly patronising notion, the tests fail to cover what's considered significant or natural in other than the Western schooling/oriented societies. Even within our societies the test only manages to measure stuff you learn at school the way you learn to learn at school; and, the way you have learned to be tested on stuff you learned at school. That's why you can't even directly compare scores from different times. The scales are adjusted following the overall rise in schooling in the population.

So, if you can't really use the test to compare how smart you are compared to your 15 years older cousin, how can you possibly compare scores across continents, to people who don't share your language, have different societies and schools, and value different things? In short, you shouldn't. The IQ tests also only measure your current performance which might differ from your actual abilities because you're tired etc. The test results have been shown to change along with your arousal level, and for example when you get to listen to your favourite music prior to the test you are likely to score higher points. The test results always need to be taken with a pinch of salt, but the pinches for cross-cultural comparison would need to be so big that they would constitute an unhealthy dose.

I'm babbling again, but as you see, nowhere in here do you need to actually answer the counter-arguments most racists are too stupid to make, but that have influenced them in the first place: the human societies are vastly different in today's world, others are undeniably more advanced, with almost any measure (not only the elusive IQ; I say almost any measure because "happiness" seems to correlate somewhat negatively with "wealth" which correlates positively with health, education, level of technology use and other measures that usually are associated with "development"). Diamond answers to those claims. He shows how today's uneven situation is a result of historical trends over at least the last 13 000 years, and that these trends were molded by environmental factors, not differences in the faculties of the people who make up the populations of these societies. He poses questions like 'why was it the Spanish conquistadores who with a relatively small troops in short time conquered the Inca and Atztec civilisations after 1492, and why didn't Atahuallpa's Incas sail to Portugal and Spain and take over Europe instead'.

The parts that are most detailed and convicing are his explanations about domesticable plants and animals in each of the continents. He sees the transition from hunter-gatherer lifestyle to agriculture as the main driving factor, as this allowed people to release some of their time from providing sustenance to themselves to innovation, political organisation, war, etc., and also motivated them to develope technology, tools and larger structures (such as irrigation and castles etc.) as they didn't need to constantly move with all their possessions or use all their time collecting food. As it turns out, the Eurasian continent is by far the richest in plants that could be (and eventually were) domesticated, and similarly boasted the best selection of domesticable large mammals, essential for agricultural lifestyle as providers of food, power, hides etc. But this is only the start, what follows is the interesting bit.

So, the folks in Eurasia had cows, pigs and sheep while the South/Americans only had their llamas. What is interesting is the fact that so much of the "technology" was adopted from others and so little was self-developed. In the whole world, the main crops were domesticated only a few times, the rest of the people got them through trade and conquest. Again, Eurasia won the race as everyone else very quickly adopted the cereal crops and animals that were domesticated in the Middle East. Here comes the second environmental accident: as the main axis of the continent lies in the east-west direction, the length of the growing season is more or less the same across a wide area, which facilitated the spread of the plants, animals, and pleasant life at the countryside. Much more effort was needed to trasfer crops in north-south direction due to rapidly changing circumstances. These, Diamond argues, are the ultimate causes for the different trajectories of human societies, on their way to becoming the haves and the have-nots of today.

Oh, the germs-part might need an explanation. Pizarro and the other conquistadores didn't need a big army, as they had people who carried smallpox and other deadly diseases. These diseases wiped out much of the population in those ancient, Southern and Meso-American empires, including their emperors. Not much was left to conquer, after the little bugs had done their part. These germs originated from the animals that European peoples shared their shelters and living spaces for thousands of years, and while they did their damage in the European populations as well, the Europeans had already developed some resistance to them, over the thousands of years of exposure. The incas hadn't, and the result was almost a total annihilation. This was unintended biological warfare, and another "gain" coming from the domesticated, settled lifestyle and the combination of animals there was initially available or easily adoptable. Malaria and other tropical diseases in Africa and Southern Asia are of course working "against" the Europeans, and as a result these areas were colonised much later, with the aid of modern medicine and the instant "adaptation" they provide to these illnesses.

The picture Diamond paints is compelling and manages to convince the reader of his main point: geographical features of the continents and the environmental "accidents" are responsible of the "ultimate causes" behind the different trajectories of the development of human societies around the world. He sees the increases in complexity of human societies a direct result of increased population size, increased technological standard as a direct consequence of the available resources and time to exploit them, and the transition from hunter-gathering to agriculture as the major shift in the history of humanity. At his timescale of 13000 years and his scope of the whole world this might be (at least for a 400+ paged popular science book) fair enough. It is however important to also look at what he leaves out.

In human evolution (which of course takes place over longer timescales than what Diamond looks at, and it can be argued that no significant evolutionary changes have taken place at least during the last 30 000 years) the emergence of language, tool use etc. have been posited to much of the same causes that Diamond discusses. Growing population sizes, food availability etc. have been seen as factors that have on one hand driven evolution as it exerts a pressure to select for certain traits, and on the other as the consequences of these evolutionary advances. Now, with this mill churning for thousands, even hundreds of thousands of years, humans had overtaken the world from other species, and thus it was the humans domesticating the pigs and not the other way around. Just as the evolution tends to be a complex mixture of forces and factors creating consequences over longer timescales, the later developments within the species homo sapiens sapiens are similarly increasingly complex.

If it's not the genes, it's the environment, but how about cognition? The early humans developed cognitive abilities far more complex than any other species, and these skills seem to be inextricably linked to the social environment of the individuals. Language, theory of mind, intentionality, music... just name any cognitive ability that humans seem to be especially good at and I show you how it benefits living together in larger and larger groups and more and more complex societies. While Diamond would argue that there are no significant differences between the cognitive capacities of a modern hunter-gatherer in Kalahari and a university professor in Cambridge, and I would agree, it would still be interesting to see how the different development trajectories were influenced by the ways these "universal" cognitive capacities were used in different places. Diamond discusses different languages and to some extent religions on a very superficial level, but leaves the rest of it to others. Of course, these are only proximal causes, as he says, not the ultimate ones, but I firmly believe that while all humans share the same mental machinery we use it in very different ways, and those differences are interesting and important. I don't like our understanding of our most fascinating organ and at the same time our understanding of ourselves as humans to be solely driven by research on Western brains and their users.

Finally, as I opened provocatively with comparing "Western" riches to African poverty, I must emphasise that any understanding of the causes of current distribution of wealth on the earth can not be taken as a valid excuse to leave things as they are. Europeans, not Africans were the ones to colonise the others' continent, and the development leading to the differences in the societies until then can be explained by Diamond's factors. But what happened then and keeps happening now was caused by political, military, and religious decisions and deliberate choices rather than "forces of nature", and the responsibility of those decisions still lies on the hands of the nations that took them.

Moreover, just as cultural evolution took over biological evolution as the shaping force of the humanity, the industrial and technological revolution should take over environmental and religious determinism and we should fulfill our moral obligation to rid the world of poverty and undue suffering. We are the first generation that can afford to do it. I believe that we can't afford not to.

Jared Diamond 1997. Guns, Germs, and Steel: A Short history of everybody for the last 13000 years. London: Random House.

(Pic of the cover of the original edition, published by W.W.Norton & Company Inc.)

Poor use of percentages

One of today's top "news" stories in Britain has been that Britons, especially in the north of England, are drinking themselves to death. This we knew already, but now the Centre for Public Health has made local profiles in an effort to bring the issue closer to people. Also, to illustrate the seriousness of this, professor Mark Bellis, the director of CPH was saying that everyone in Blackpool and other northern regions is currently throwing away 23 months of their lives as a result of their heavy drinking habits.

And this was the mistake. When some happily drunk party-goers were interviewed for tv news, none of them thought this was serious. As one of them said, if you are going to live to be 77 or 78, what's 76 compared to that? Indeed. When you are 20, you don't exactly look forward to those last years of your life, and the difference between dying at 76 and 78 is small, or the first would actually be favoured, as it would mean that you need to spend a shorter time being a boring old-timer.

Unfortunately, this is not how it works. They were simply saying that the life expectancy in the Northern regions is 23 months lower than the national average is, and that the biggest contributing cause they can see is drinking. I think. There might be some more sophisticated stats involved, they might be able to factor out the alcohol-related deaths and the 1 to 2 years was arrived to by looking at the impact of these to the average life expectancy. I can't be bothered to check, beacuse it's irrelevant to my point. Which is that 23 months on the level of averages means that it covers all tea-totallers and church-ladies who take one sip of sherry after Sunday service. And the difference to the average is contributed by those who binge every week, meaning that they are actually likely to die at 50 when their livers implode, and not at all likely to make it to 76. Many of them actually die accidentally much earlier, and their drinking habits contribute to this either directly or indirectly.

While scare-tactics (and showing swollen livers, clogged arteries and mangled bodies in tv-ads etc.) tend to turn against themselves as well, I think that the message of this study will be thoroughly misunderstood. While the CPH was trying to say that binge drinking is very dangerous and its effects can be measured, and what is discovered is unsettling, the message the bingers take home is that what they do is relatively safe, and party on.

I'm beginning to think that differentiation on your heath (insurance) costs based on your drinking, smoking and eating habits is the only way to make a difference. While this would be nearly impossible to implement, not to mention very unpopular as a policy, perhaps threatening with it works better than threatening with liver failure and heart disease.

(Pic: legaltshirts.com)

Top irritants

A more clever way of using "research" to promote your product: Lactofree, a milk drink fro those suffering from lactose intolerance, commissioned a survey about what irritates Britons. Lactose failed to make it to the top ten, but I'm glad to see that James Blunt *gag* is officially the most irritating person on earth.

Cold callers top the list. Yesterday, yet another telemarketer called me to offer mobile phone upgrades and discounts on my contract etc. etc. I told her to call me back in the office hours. If she does, I tell her again to call me back on office hours. Et cetera. The only time I was left alone by these people for several weeks was when I actually asked them to call me back. I was planning to upgrade my phone and wanted to hear more about the deal, but couldn't talk at that time, and wanted to check the details of my current contract. So I asked the person to call me back next Monday. He never did.

In Britain, queues are sacred, and queue-jumping is the worst thing you can do. At least now that plotting against the throne is exclusively done by the members of the royal family themselves.

Traffic features high with three places in the top ten (four if you count queue-jumping). Caravans are universally loathed, and the summer holiday months have boosted their ratings. I've always seen traffic wardens as tragicomical figures, but that's probably because I don't own a car and have never got a parking ticket. People who tailgate are usually men with white vans, and as my recent driving experience was driving various white vans (I was moving house), I was doing the tailgating myself and can't really understand the small-minded slow-driving caravan-towing people in their Ford Fiestas who must have voted for this.

Ex-smokers? Surely they are the irritated ones, not the irritating ones. Ex-smokers are the people with perma-frown and no nails who make teethmarks on desks and doorframes, but I can't really see them as being annoying. It's the not-yet-ex-smokers who are annoying. Like the one who lives somewhere in our new apartment block. For a non-smoker, there's nothing as annoying and irritating as someone polluting your air and smellifying your home with cigarette smoke. It can really wind you up, and perhaps that's what this refers to - the ambulance and the police arrived too late and the irritating b***ard is now an ex-smoker.

Two people from Big Brother are also on the list. Does this mean that there are people out there who'd enjoy watching the show but whose experience is now ruined because two of the housemates are annoying? What a worrying thought.

(blasted Blogger, can't upload the top-10 list as a pic... will try again later.)

Well done, council

The council has reached a decision, and there will be no restrictions for stem cell research in FP7. In the end, the decision was reached after a vote. Luckily this issue is decided with a qualified majority, as some countries supported the restricting clause until the end. Italy and Germany withdrew their support to the restrictions after they were assured that research will be conducted under strict ethical guidelines and supervision.

The sums that will be used in stem cell research are ridiculously small, though. Only 8 million euros (only a fraction of the amount allocated to medical research) is allocated to this field in the programme, and so the FP7 funding will not have much effect to the power balance on the field - the decision still might, as it is an indicator that Europe is committed to furthering science, and while it is very strict in making sure the research protocols meet ethical guidelines among other quality criteria, it is not imposing impossible restrictions based on narrow-minded moral judgements.

Stem cells

When he's not making a fool of himself, GWB is actually running the only superpower of the world, which is also the world's biggest contributor to scientific research. And in doing his job, he has recently vetoed a bill that was already approved by the Senate and would have made federal funds available for a wider spectrum of stem cell research. In 2001, Bush backed a limited funding package for research, saying that the research should proceed with careful steps. Now he has decided that that is as far as he is willing to go, thus giving in to the ones among his supporters who loudly ask for a total ban.

The "debate" is purely a religious one, and has nothing to do with science as such. The credibility of stem cell research received a blow when some of the work by Hwang Woo-suk was shown to be fake, but for the scientific community this only tells that we are not as far as we thought we were in using this technology; not that the field as such couldn't eventually deliver those advances.

Progress is slow and there are still many obstacles before we can say that we can control stem cells and use them for therapeutic purposes. But it's progressing and the potential returns are huge: diabetes, Parkinson's, spinal injuries, brain damage... diseases and conditions that millions and millions of people suffer from, could possibly be cured or at least alleviated by stem cell therapies. As a diabetic myself, I'd gladly see the day when I no longer need to take about a hundred bloodtests each month and give the same amount of injections of insulin - day after day, while facing the risk of long-term effects of run-amok blood sugar: blindness, leg amputation, heart and kidney failure etc. Stem cells could be converted into insulin-producing beta-cells and implanted back to my pancreas or liver, and the implanted cells could take over the job from the ones that were lost as a result of some autoimmune over-reacting by my white cells.

Now, some of the right-wing conservative governments in Europe are following in GWB's footsteps, by insisting that European funds should not be used for stem cell research. This comes as the EU prepares the new, 7th framework funding programme for research. This programme would give almost 55 billion euros for research during 2007-2011. As stem cell research is complicated, expensive and requires collaboration and large units, FP7 can be said to be tailor-made for such fields of research.

Germany, Austria, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Lithuania, Luxembourg and Malta are the ones opposing. Apart from Germany they are small and have very little influence (politically or scientifically, for that matter), and they are currently only one vote above the blocking minority in the council. Considering that in most countries the conservative governments hold their office with a slender majority, and in those governments and parties stem cell research is opposed by only some of the members, it would be unfair and wrong to block funding because this minority doesn't like some of it.

What is their problem with stem cells? Well, one of the sources of human stem cell lines that are used is to take them from human embryos, usually those that are a "sideproduct" of fertility treatment, artificial insemination, that is. As only one fertilized egg that has started to develope is planted to the prospective mother's womb, the rest are destroyed. Or, they could be used to harvest stem cells for research purposes. We are talking about embryoes that are only a few days old, not growing babies on petri dishes and then harvesting their organs. Still, the opposition says, humans are humans from the word go, from the moment of insemination and thus using these embryos is wrong. They are also afraid that the technology will be used for cloning humans, and some are even of the opinion that deriving new stem cells from the existing lines is too close to cloning already and should be stopped.

This view, held by many on the religious right, including some babtists, evangelical christians and catholics, is based on a doctrine that was originally formed in need to find motivations to ban abortion. Rather than trying to determine when in gestation the embryo becomes a baby, or starts to possess a soul, they said it happens already at conception. Thus was two birds with one stone, as they could ban all contraception as well. It is not based on any scientific evidence of human development, it's basis is in the power politics of societal control that these churches wield. In the grand scheme of things, I'd have thought that the rights of, and compassion for those who suffer from these illnesses would be greater than the principled support for the human rights of what is essentially just a piece of waste tissue. Pro life my ***.

Well, I'm sure FP7 will go through without restrictions. I'm sure one of the small countries will back down, and then the coalition will fall. With so much discussion about the competitiveness of Europe and how it's future success lies in its innovation sector and research, it would be weird if it would tie its hands based on some random religious arguments. As the US is blocking it's progress by the Bush-imposed limitations and Asian research is still recovering from the Woo-suk tragedy, this would be a golden moment to make an investment to the future and allow the European research facilities to take world lead in this sector. There are frustrated scientists facing career dead ends in US and Asia, who could be attracted to Europe by providing a more friendly environment to research. It's time to take steps forward, not back.

Stephen Hawking commented on the issue in today's Independent. In an uncharacteristically strong statement he attacks Bush and the leaders of the 8 states and says that using embryonic stem cells is morally equivalent to using the heart of a victim of road accident as a transplant. Well said, I hope his opinion (which can be seen just as personally motivated as mine, as he suffers from a motor neuron disease that could potentially be treated with stem cells) will be weighty enough to break the "reactionary" coalition.

(Pic: Uni of Utah)

Back to "work"

Yep, I'm back in the lovely Cambridge. I thought the plane had by mistake landed in Madrid, as there was this daze everywhere, the kind of wafty thin mist you get after a day of scorching heat, and all the batches of grass that used to be green were yellow.

The heat hit us in the face as we exited the plane - it was nine o'clock in the evening but it was still 28 degrees. At college, all the lawns have burnt. The bedders had closed my window so my room was almost like a sauna. I kept the curtains drawn all morning to stop the sun from shining right in. Actually, to be honest, there was no such conscious decision. I have the flu and so I stayed in bed until late, and even after I got up I didn't feel like doing any heavy household work like moving curtains.

In any salaried job, being healthy during your holiday and getting ill as you would need to go back to work would be a great thing. A few days on a sickie would extend your holiday and in case you'd spent yours abroad (or at home), they'd help you slowly adapt to the climate (or, in the absence of one, the current weather) and the surroundings before having to start working for real. But, for me this means that I will miss one of the conferences I was supposed to attend this summer. Four hours in a train tomorrow, when the temperatures are expected to stay as high as they are now, no thank you. Giving a presentation while coughing my lungs out and having to blow my nose every 30 seconds, no thank you. Writing the presentation today when feeling like shi'ite (in Lebanon) no thank you.

So, I made a trip to the grocery store and stocked up on soft drinks, tea and juices (need the liquid) and ice cream (need to cool down). And also some food even though I don't feel hungry at all. I had many things I wanted to write about but I'll leave them for later. I think I hear the CSI DVD calling. And those raspberries I bought when autopiloting through the aisles of Sainsbury's. Mmm...

(Pic: Zina Saunders)

Holiday!

Finally, I'm off to Finland! Nothing's done, everything is unfinished, library books aren't renewed, apartment rental things still in shambles, but I just don't care, since I really really need this week off. No blog entries, no cell phone, no email. I hope.

See you in a week!

Sleep for oil

I'm so glad my holiday starts tomorrow. A couple of more days and I'd be blowing things up. Not just fuses, bigger things. Like diggers. Also good, that I only have a few nights left in this room before I move out, as the construction site has now really overstayed its welcome and expended all my patience.

The building is almost finished, they are mainly doing work indoors. But as they dug a deep hole for the building, they are now landscaping the surroundings. With a crawler digger that was last oiled before it left the factory in the 1980's. Imagine a dry, rusty bicycle chain and the noise it makes. Then multiply it by a million. Add screeches like someone were running their nails over a blackboard. You get my 8 am daily wake-up call.

Seriously, noise pollution is serious and if sustained, it can flip you. I don't want to refer to yesterday's events in Berlin even though that's sort of a case in point as well, but living beside a building site has been a nightmare. I have been tolerant, thinking that they need to do these things to get the building up, but there are a couple of things I just don't understand. Why do you have to start the day with maximum use of power tools and noisy equipment? I know they think they are already making concessions by postponing the start of work until 8.00, but surely you could phase things in terms of noise a bit better. The racket they make from 8 to 9 is just unbearable. At around 9.30 things get better, because they start their coffee breaks. I swear, these guys take more and longer coffee breaks than even grad students do. And after the first coffee, things get more quiet. I guess they just need to wake themselves up with some chainsawing or pneumatic drilling before they can get to building things.

Also, it's the unnecessary noise I hate. Like this digger, for instance. It's not the first digger here, the place was crawling with them when they started digging the hole for the building. But they were never that loud, because they were properly maintained. And the whole thing is exacerbated by the debile look on the driver's face when he is crawling that digger around. I must be honest, he doesn't look like the sharpest tool in the toolbox. Or someone who would care to maintain equipment, if he's capable of doing it at all.

First I was thinking of going and bringing the guy a can of oil so he could de-noise his digger. Now I'm thinking more along the lines of delivering the oil, nah, gasoline in the form of a Molotov cocktail.

Je ne comprend pas

Pourquoi, Zizou, pourquoi??? What an earth could he have said to you?

Football makes you so irrational. So irrational, that I'm still convinced that it was all Materazzi's fault. The greatest player ever, world cup final, his last ever football match. Wh... I don't even know what to ask!!

Zizou is magical. When he holds the ball, time slows down. Sure, C. Ronaldo or Ronaldinho are agile and have quick feet, Rooney is strong like a bull, but Figo, Zidane, and perhaps even the great Finn Jari Litmanen all possess the greatest skill: they can freeze time. They never hurry with the ball, and when they take their time, they calm everyone down. No matter how hecticly the game flows, once they set their feet to the ball, all of a sudden it all goes to slow motion - you can see how they control not only the ball, not only their own game, but everything on the field. And then, SNAP!, they have made their decision, worked their magic, the ball has parted their feet and with the flick of the ankle, time fast forwards as if to catch up the time that was lost. And that means the defence will be late. The goalie is rooted to his feet. And the Greatest have scored, or given the perfect, bespoke pass.

Like Figo yesterday with his perfect cross. It feels superficial and just plain stupid to say it, in this world of hype and empty superlatives, but it is the only way to accurately describe that pass: Absolutely Perfect. And Litmanen's goals, passes, presence. Class. It looks smart, thought out, purposeful.

I'm useless in remembering dates, and I never remember who played who which year and which tournament and which game etc. But I remember several magical goals by Zidane, and to me he always epitomised class on the pitch. A cut above anyone else. And now I don't understand. How can all that purpose, class, patience, skill, leadership and presence vanish like that? For those 5 black seconds in Berlin, Zidane didn't just freeze time, he deleted it.

Ce n'est qu'un cauchemar, je me réveillerai bientôt....

C'mon techies!

We need a faster method to warm food. I went to heat a pie in the microwave and missed Germany's goal.

Well, now they scored again! Or Portugal did, but in the wrong end. Hmm, at least it looks like there will be more scoring in this game!

He's done it!

One paperclip, one year, one house. Amazing! Kyle has done what he set out to do: barter one red paperclip to a house, becoming a celebrity in the process.

Don't we have enough publicity-seeking money-for-nothing cyber-beggars out there already? Well, yes, but the thing is, Kyle isn't one of them. First of all, apart from providing his readers great entertainment, his trading up step by step has actually benefited a lot of other people. Second, when things started to get a bit stiff and money-focused he derailed and re-trained the whole project in the coolest possible move. Third, he decided to take an offer for a house in Kipling, Saskatchewan, bringing the project to a close in exactly one year.

A bit of analysis, if you don't mind... First the randomness of the first trades, things ranging from a doorknob to a ski-doo, was mind-boggling to follow. One of the points this project has made is that things have more than monetary value: something you no longer need might be very valuable for someone else. Interestingly, the first thing ORP was traded to was a fishpen. The new owners of the fish pen want to send it around the world so that people can sign their charity donations with it. A nice idea and I hope it will materialise.

Then, the brilliant, or as Finns would say "blood-stopping" move. See, a singer called Jody Gnant offered a year's stay in her house in return for a record deal (getting one step closer to fulfilling her dream). Lots of offers were pouring in, and then some businessman offered one month's stay in his luxury apartment in LA (free use of the pool and the Porsche) in exchange. Now, people started calculating how much a year's rent in Phoenix is worth, how much a month's rent in LA is worth etc. In other words, it all got a bit stiff in the comment section. People were losing the point, but Kyle didn't. He bartered the year's rent to an afternoon with Alice Cooper, and then went on to rapidly trade that to a KISS snowglobe. A KISS snowglobe, can you believe it? It has a motor that rotates the globe, but still.

And people were devastated; back to square one, stupid move, what are you thinking etc. Until Kyle broke the bank with announcing that he'd accepted to trade the snowglobe to a speaking role in a movie by the most famous snowglobe collector in the world, the Hollywood director Corbin Bernsen. He is known for LA Law, and has directed masses of other tv-series, and working on a new movie.

So, it is not about trading things that have monetary value, but things that have utilitary value or are completely immesurable, like fame. And then the icing on the cake, the movie role was traded to a house in Kipling, Saskatchewan. That sounds such a cool location. I bet it is very nice. But, the best of all is that the offer was made by the Kipling town council, who wanted to invite Kyle as an honorary citizen, give him the key to the town, declare 12th July as one red paperclip day, and set up an open audition for the movie role. It might be far from the madding crowd (a good thing in my books), but the deal has all the components of a good closing deal to bring the ORP saga to its end. Congratulations, Kyle!

The project I'm following now was actually brought to my attention when Kyle promoted it in ORP: Sean is trying to turn his life around, lose 250 pounds of his weight and raise $50 000 for diabetes research in the process. I'm sure he will succeed as well!

Phew!

Ah, so nice to write about progress... Just finished a data analysis project, sent the processed data to the main researcher and even though the actual statistical analysis is still ahead, he will be doing most of that. It was a long night but now it's done!

Another phew is that the Cambridge Open Days are now over. I did a shift at the faculty stand in the fair, trying to answer the questions prospective undergraduates (or mainly their parents) had about the course, life in Cambridge etc. It was a bit difficult to relate to their situation, because it's been so long since I was there, trying to decide what degree course to aim for. I had no clue what my course would lead into, and nobody could have foretold my path from there to here. I tried to be neutral and answer the questions by giving as much information as possible, even though I felt like telling the kids that they should just follow their heart, start doing what sounds good and change if it sucks. And for the parents that they shouldn't worry about their kids' future employment so much. All in due course, they need to grow up first. And figure out what it is they want. Might take a while, I still don't know.

By far the most common question was "which college is the best". This, obviously, is impossible to answer: they are all different, all good in their own ways, all bad in some others. One of our faculty members gave good advice: walk around and choose the one whose buildings you fall in love with.

(Pic: Marc Hairston UTD)

Kissing

Is it the hot weather? World leaders have been kissing around lately like there's no tomorrow. Putin had to explain his behaviour in an interview staged by BBC and Yandex.ru. A huge amount of people who sent in questions to be asked of The Czar and who voted for their favourite questions, preferred to know why he kissed a little boy to the tummy rather than engage in any boring poli-talk about Chechnya or Iraq etc. They got an answer: he just wanted to caress him like a kitten. Sweet...

The art of kissing babies is important for politicians, it shows that they are not cold technocrats but warm, loving human beings. GWB seems to master this part of politics equally well as all other domains of political life.

You could argue that Prezza doesn't really qualify as a "world leader" anymore, since he has been stripped of most of his powers. Even as a high-salaried and fancy-titled serial government committee chairman, he seems to explode a political mine on every step he takes. Not a timebomb, nor a dead man walking, but something like a cluster bomb rigged with an egg-timer. He made kissing-gestures to the photographers upon his return from the latest scandalous trip to visit Mr. Anschutz's ranch in the US. "Prescott kiss" still has another meaning, though...

I actually feel sorry for the guy. He is a talented politician, and recreates English language every time he uses it (this is not necessarily a good thing, but admirable nevertheless). And he's been bullied. It seems to me that the biggest sin in his trip to play cowboys and indians wasn't the fact that he went to visit the guy who's applied for one of the few super casino licenses that the government is about to deal out, but the fact that it wasn't a one way trip.

The press keeps hitting him, just to see him stand up again and take another blow. It's no longer about making a point or initiating change: he will kiss his political career goodbye by the next election. It's just to have a go at the easy target, in a rather cowardly fashion. The fuss is made about relatively small things. There'd be more important topics to discuss, but perhaps it's the summer heat melting all the journalists' brains as well.

(Pics: RTR, BBC/AFP, Guardian)

EU - baaad, prejudice - goooood

The new Eurobarometer was published today. According to the survey, Finns are the most eurosceptic people in EU, with 26% thinking Finnish membership in the EU is a baad thaang. Britain and Austria take the other places on the dubious podium. The fieldwork for this was done in April, so at that point the previous, current and future presidency-holders were holding the hats of top-sceptics in the survey.

Does this say something about the leadership crisis of the Union? The countries holding the presidency should be driving the union forward - legislative processes, reforms, constitution etc., as they have some control over the agenda of the meetings, and by preparing and chairing them can influence the outcomes by setting targets and committing to work towards them. One of the major arguments for rotating precidency is that when every member state is in charge in its turn, this gives everyone in the union the reassurance that they can influence the future of EU, which is often seen as a bureaucratic behemoth. So, while the elected political officers in the member states take their turn on the driving seat, they should be able not only to push the Union forward but also gain support for the project in their own electors. Deferred success on both counts, if the Eurobarometer is to be believed.

There are other factors, such as lack of definition of "forward" in the Union at the moment, which of course is not a small deal. Also, having a highly critical electorate to begin with doesn't encourage the political leadership to take leading roles on the European stage - if the people who vote for you see keeping things in a standstill as the best way forward, no amount of European pressure will make you behave otherwise. Unless you want to end your final term in office with a bang! Or at least a crash.

I have very modest expectations for the Finnish presidency. I expect everything to run smoothly in terms of organising the meetings etc. The civil servants who carry the weight of the organisation and run much of the backstage diplomacy will be top notch. But, the lack of vision and reluctance to take risks is a defining trait of the current government coalition, and this is especially clear in foreign policy. Especially with the parliamentary elections looming in March 2007, it will be low profile all around - management, not leadership. The current govt defines "forward" as "hopefully not going backwards too much". Most of the sorely needed reforms in Finland have been ground to a halt by the current government, by setting up an infinite number of committees and steering groups and commissioning an endless stream of reports and studies. I have nothing against proper background research, but when you commission a new study on an issue where the previous study with practically identical mission was published in 2005 rather than getting on with the damn legislation, there is something fundamentally wrong in the way these people see their role as leaders.

Why are Finns so Eurosceptic? We get a fair share of the structural funds, have done good work in using them, and altogether in financial terms the membership doesn't cost us all that much. The access to the European market has benefited our businesses, helped people to travel, study and work abroad. We have even gained some self-confidence from being a part of a "Western", European club instead of having to repeatedly tell everyone we are NOT part of the Soviet bloc.
Well, take the recent "survey" or a webpoll in a Finnish tabloid: they wanted people to tell them things that were better before the EU membership. OK, but you never see any polls, stories or discussion of the things that are better with the membership. These are branded as propaganda. It's no news that people are always nostalgic for the past, and running these kinds of polls just taps into the simplest fallacy in research: correlation does not imply causation. Asking people to list things that were better 10-15 years ago compared to how things are now will provide you a list of things; from people missing certain trademarks to longing for those warmer summers and more snowy Christmases. Replacing the term "10 to 15 years ago" by the term "before the EU membership" will produce pretty much the same list, but this time EU becomes the culprit.

Just as I'm fed up with the mickeymouse soundbite science, I'm fed up with the unfounded "EU will forbid this and stop that" -stories. And the "polls" described above. They are irresponsible, as much as they are wrong. It tells a lot about the media who are ready to publish anything as long as they think their readership will enjoy the laughs. I think they knew what they were doing in the poll, it wasn't just their total ignorance of how public opinion and attitudes should be measured. But as they are at the same time twisting public perception of the European institutions and what they are for, I think it's sad and cheap.

Could we please move to the next level in the discussion? Not everything in EU is good, not everything that's been proposed by the commission, council or the parliament should be put forward. We need critical discussion, but not the kind of childish whining much of the public "debate" is at the moment. Will Germany deliver? MEP's? Anyone? Media? Ahh, you're all at the beach already. Well, we'll get back to it after the holidays. After all, Rome wasn't built in a day, although it seemed to be buried in one. Anyone for Pimms?

To hack or to overkill?

I feel so stupid, sometimes. Yes, it's about those experiments and building the setup. It's practically ready and done, but I still have a choice to make. Either to learn to use a piece of sound equipment properly, so that it can handle multiple inputs and multiple outputs. I need this so I can channel my different sources of stimuli through one piece of equipment and to two participants simultaneously. The gear I'm using would do that routinely, but I would need to make an effort on how to use the damn thing and change a number of settings and defaults.

My other option is to take two pieces of the same equipment and just use them in parallel, not having to worry about setting them up in any special way. We happen to have two of these £600 pieces of equipment that nobody else needs at the moment.

So, why don't I just jump in to the second option, why do I even bother thinking about the first? Well, because I feel so stupid about it. I keep imagining how it looks like in the write-up. The equipment section would be a ball. "For stimulus presentation, TWO units were used, mainly due to laziness of the experimenter to learn how to use the stuff properly. All the gear, no idea." Well, I would formulate it differently, but that's how it would be read (by the 4 graduate students trying to build their own research settings, the only people who ever read the methods sections).

This is not rare technology, nor extremely expensive, but I couldn't escape publicly admitting that instead of knowing how to use these things I just kept amassing more and more of them so I could use them with default settings. I'd feel so... Cambridge.

Also, I do have a basic knowledge of how to set these things up, and I would even like to learn more about them. While this is not the best time to do it, it is an opportunity. You learn by doing and my patience doesn't stretch as far as to learn these things if I don't have to put it to use somewhere. Also, I might need to keep running these experiments in the autumn when there are other people in the lab who might need some of the equipment, and so I can't keep hogging all of it.

OK, fine, I'll read the bloody manual and get on with it, and as a compromise I promise that if it takes longer than an hour I will just use the two systems and I promise not to procrastinate with this issue any longer. There are other things that need to be procrastinated about.

How (not) to publicise your research

The value of the results of scientific research is measured in the scientific system itself: references, replication. Good research gets quoted a lot, it gets replicated a lot, in some cases it generates radical re-thinking of the premises of research on that field. In short, the value of your reseach is measured in how much it advances science itself.

Wrong-o. Or, at least that's not all there is. The value can also be measured with a more common metrics: dollars/pounds and number of words printed. Look at any media that publishes science news. A new method for etching circuits to silicon has been developed - potential value of the invention x billion dollars. A new, more lightweight material developed for packaging - annual turnover of packaging industry x billion dollars. A new drug to speed up recovery from surgery - savings in the form of quicker patient turnaround in hospitals and fewer sick-days for companies - x million dollars.

Even when the science is solid, the economics necessarily aren't. For example, a new nanotechnological method for cramming even more transistors per square inch of silicon might be far away from being implemented industrially, and the actual impact very different (smaller) in mass production than in experimental circumstances in the lab. The costs of building manufacturing capacity that uses the new method could be vast, there might be regulational hurdles to clear etc. Yet, nobody even attempts to give careful estimates about the financial impacts of their new products or methods. Based on 100% market penetration and straight-forward estimations where change in efficiency is directly translated to a similar change in consumer price, the whopping headline-catching figures are made out of thin air, heated up, and served to the public.

Now, researchers need to attract attention for several reasons. These might be elaborate and eloquent but often boil down to being money and/or fame. Money can be obtained from grant authorities, universities or book deals. Grant authorities and faculties like publicity, as for both, it brings in cash - it helps to attract fresh donations and government funding, and for the universities, it helps to bring in more students, who bring money with them. When you can provide media attention in addition to the dry scientific results, the grant authority and faculty are more likely to be symphathetic for your funding application for a new gadgetoscope and 10 new dualcore MacBook Pros.

Publishers like science writers who are not too concerned with holding on to the exact facts all the time. Popular science needs to be exaggerated, animated, and simplified. And a media bulletin with exaggerated, animated and simplified claims is a good work sample for getting to write a whole book with more of the same. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate people who write popular science and enjoy the books myself. Sometimes I even dream of writing one myself. But the point is, while you are more than welcome to imagine and write a pop science book about a world where the advances of nanotechnology have profoundly changed our way of living, I don't think it is good to refer to such a world as a more or less direct outcome of your research if you have after 5 years of work managed to finally perfectly align two carbon atoms using a new nano-tech method.

OK, there's your why. But how? Well, there is the "this will save huge amounts of money or generate heaploads of revenue" -arguments, which will guarantee that your result will be published in Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Financial Times and a few dozen trade rags for the financially inclined. Another way is to ride the tide of current worries. Anyone else noticed the increase in news on face-recognition techniques and other biometrics? National security is the keyword. Another, slightly more dubious take on this theme was epitomised in today's BBC snippet about bionic limbs. They've already changed the headline, but the reference is still there - this technique can allegedly help the victims of 7/7. I guess amputees in general are not that pop, but referring to London terrorist attacks make this research part of something bigger.

Then there is the soundbite science. Research that has been carried out for the sole reason of getting 10 to 15 minutes of questionable fame. This research is directly aimed for the "funny bits" in the end of the news, rather than ever appearing in the headlines. It will never appear in scientific journals or conferences, either. It's often funded by companies (from their marketing budget, rather than R&D funds), and usually carried out in former polytechnics or colleges recently re-branded as universities and struggling to attract good academics or passable students. It's the stuff like formulae for perfect toast, dunking bisquit in tea, finding out if ducks' quack have an echo etc. In this way, the product and the researcher get some airtime, the product gets credibility from being a subject of academic research, and the researcher gets his daily bread. Plus complimantary bisquits, toast, or ducks. This kind of science is close to the kind used in marketing excercise products on night-time TV infomercials. People take you more seriously when you're dressed up in a white lab coat and wear spectacles and the letters Dr in front of your name. Funny that.

The official reasons given for the unashamed publicity-seeking behaviour of scientists usually mention public service. It is important to make sure science is not confined only to the initiated, and that it is depicted as part of our everyday lives, not just something creepy that's living in the ivory towers of the academic institutions. If the public pays your wages, surely you are responsible to them and must explain what you do with their money. Also, attracting new students to your field is an important part of ensuring continuity. Absolutely, but a difference exists between approachable and compelling explanation and just pimping your study or making outlandish claims. I don't think it's particularly productive for the public image of science if you make bogus science you can talk about for 15 minutes and then go back doing something else for the rest of the year.

Given that while some people seem to be not too busy to do all these stunts while others struggle to find time to do proper outreach-work, I suggest the most unashamed soundbite-scientists should be given community service sentences: they should give lectures and run demos at schools in exchange for polluting the airwaves with those useless formulae.

No fan of footie fans

I used to love football, the greatest game on earth. Now, I've watched a grand total of two games in the world cup finals. I can't blame work for missing all those games, I blame lack of interest to some extent, and a lack of my own TV to the rest of the extent.

The never-ending force-feeding of football in England, the unnecessary and extensive hyping up of even the most insignificant maches, and of course the ridiculous build-up to the world cup have been a turn-off. I've simply got an overdose of it, or actually, I've got an overdose of fussing about football. Just like I lost all interest in ice-hockey in Finland after years and years of overexposure to all sorts of idiots explaining how the yearly tournaments between the 5 countries where this marginal sport is played are a reflection of our national character and pride (or lack thereof), I'm now losing my interest to football. It's being used as a symbol of this and that, studied "scientifically", analysed to death and in general taken far too seriously. I'd still like the game (and love playing it), but it's just been talked to death here. And don't even get me started on the hideous puns of the sports journalists...

Also, I don't like rowdy crowds, yelling or shoving. And that's what will happen in every pub with a tv on. All the sore losers, cursing, the lunatic winners hollering and cheering as if they had something to do with it... Drunken idiots demonstrating their worse qualities. No thank you.

I hate to admit it, but I just don't like hanging arond the type of people who hang around football here in England. There are some otherwise sane and nice people who follow football, but unfortunately it seems that all chavvy drooling beer-guzzling redneck dimwits in their wife-beater shirts are football fans.

It's not a local phenomenon, every nation has its "idiots", the annoying mobs of young men that either demonstrate their infantile patriotism in sporting events or just in general exhibit their immaturity and laddishness in bars and streets. You have the latino machos, the English lads, the chauvinist slavic males. In Finland they are usually ice-hockey fans, here footie fans.

I'll try to watch as many of the remaining matches as I can, just because the games get more and more exciting. I really hope England would lose today, since that would mean the most idiotic of the lads would either kill each other or be arrested in the brawling and fighting tonight, and people in general (including journalists and columnists) would lose interest in the tournament. Then it might be possible to watch some of the remaining matches in more peace.

Planet Procrastination

This blog is not coherently about anything, I've noticed. It's not coherently about procrastination, it's not (as I've noted lately) really a PhD progress log, either, although there are some aspects of it. It's not a collection of things either of my two readers would probably find helpful in their own procrastination. Yet, writing this serves as a perfect procrastination for me. Yippee, yet another self-absorbed yet exhibitionistic blog!

Blimey, the game is on already, I should go and watch it somewhere rather than procrastinate any longer! Ta ra!

Progress!

Finally. Some progress in the work. Wheaa! I think I was talking earlier about the experiments I was going to run/getting ready to run/practically running as we speak/dreaming about running etc. Well, instead of running them yesterday and today as I should have, I've done more and more tweaks to the setting. I really need to get it right... :-/

As always in "behavioural" experiments ("behavioural" as in contrast with brain imaging/ taking physiological measurements/computer modelling/growing mold in a petri dish, not as in contrast with "cognitive"), there are thousands of little things you could do differently. Some are important and will be reflected in the results. Giving people 3, 5, or 8 seconds between trials might turn out to be not only critical in terms of the duration of the whole experiment, but also having a major effect on the results - short term memory might carry over from one trial to another etc. And while most of the issues are trivial and have no effect on the outcome, many of them will still be questioned and contested by paper reviewers, examiners, future generations of scientists, and fellow PhD students eager to impress the professors in the conference crowd. Yes, even though the issues are "irrelevant". That's the name of the game... So not only do you need to know what you are doing, you will also need to be prepared to explain why you did that and not something else. (Now that will impress the professors in the crowd and help you land that post doc job...) :-)

Most of these "things" are only visible to yourself. Nobody will ever question them, nobody even knows there are other ways of doing those things. Just you. But that's enough, and it can lead to a lot of second guessing and feelings of uncertainty. And spending a lot of time trimming the trees when you should get on with landscaping the whole bloody forest.

I must say, though, that the things that have been holding me back have been in category 1; they WILL have an effect, and they will definitely be questioned. I actually bet that the first question in the conference where the results will be premiered will be about these things. It's about stimulus preparation and control, and is too technical to be included in detail in a 15 minute presentation, but the whole research will rise or fall with it. And now, finally, I can say I have made progress: I know now what I'm doing, why, and how it works formally (mathematically, that is).

I'm massively relieved even though there are still some technical obstacles before I can start running the experiment. But somehow this was such a major issue that now I feel much more positive about the whole research and even the whole PhD-business. I can literally see in front of my eyes the 5 pages in "methodology" where this will be discussed. I'd still need to write it, but now I have an idea of what I'm going to write about.

Phew. After working late and under much stress for the last few days I think I'll leave work now, and get ready for today's big match.

I'm in trouble...

Oh darn. The gaia of procrastination, the benchmark and origin of it all, the PhD-comics website has opened a forum. This means the vortex of procrastination is spinning faster than ever...

I'll get me coat...

Just went to the Buttery to get some chocolate. As I was waiting for my turn to pay, the electricity was cut off. A song started to play in my head. Yes, it was B.B. King and "The Till is Gone"... %-)

European Year of Workers' Mobility

The EU is not happy with the disappointingly small amount of people (currently only 1.5 %) who move from one European country to another to work. Free movement of people, goods, and capital are the founding stones of European integration, and while a lot has been done, not much seems to be happening. Thus, the current year has been nominated as a theme year for workers' mobility.

No wonder people are not moving. The policies focus on issues such as transferability of qualifications, waiving work permits, taxation, access to health care etc., which are of course very important as such, but ignore other, vital things such as the problems you face when trying to let an apartment in a foreign country, for instance.

Today I was told by an a*****e (no, its not amicable, doesn't fit) property agent that my grant does not qualify as income in Britain because the grant is "European", and, worst of all, it is in euros. I tried to explain that it is currently in pounds, as it sits in my British bank account, but to no avail. So, I will need a guarantor for the rent, as I'm not earning or in possession of real money. Needless to say that my family, relatives, and most friends are all excluded because they don't live in the UK. Only 16th generation independent inherited thoroughbred old money, Pounds Sterling for us, please.

Free movement of people & capital my butt. I wonder what my MP and MEP have to say about this.

(Pic europa.eu)

Plausible explanations

Scientific experiments, when succesful in producing statistically significant results, only answer the question that was asked, which usually is of the yes/no -type. Interpretation of the results is always up to the researcher. And researchers might interpret things in orthogonally different ways, depending on their background theories (or lack thereof). When an experiment produces an effect, it is often debatable what causes the effect, or what conclusions can now be drawn based on the verified existence of that effect.

A good example of very bad interpretation was demonstrated yesterday in the documentary on Channel 4. (Yes, I know, shouldn't watch C4, it's rubbish). They "investigated" the possibility that in heart transplants, part of the personality of the donor could be transplanted along the organ. This was backed up by a number of heart transplant patients whose personality had underwent a change as a result of the transplant, and their newly acquired traits were akin to those of the donors of their new hearts. In addition to the testimonies, they had some wacky Californian "scientists" explaining how there are neurons in the heart and that the network of these neurons is complex and it exhibits memory, and that's where these personality traits can travel from one person to another.

Where to start... Well, first of all, I think that organ donations should always be anonymous. In these cases, there has been mutual consent to reveal the identities of the donor and the recipient, which had then in some cases led to very emotional "let me listen to my brother's heart beating one more time" -kinds of things. This might help dealing with the loss of a relative or might be detrimental for both parties. One of the relatives of a donor who died in a stunt accident in his twenties, said he has found it easier to accept the loss now that he sees that the receiver had started doing sports and being very active, and was "making the most out of his new life". Imagine the pressure this puts on the shoulders of the recipient!

Second, I think nobody denies that a heart transplant is a life-changing event. To such an extent that it can affect your personality in many ways. People often see it as giving them a second life, so they might take up hobbies they didn't have before, or they might show a different side of their personality etc. And, often these new sides are more active, more creative, more open and agreeable than the old ones. Or feel like it for those around. Remember, the transplant is a trauma and a psychologically heavy process for the recipients' family and friends, as well. These active, creative traits are also exactly the kinds of things you tend to (want to) remember of your deceased relative. Bring the two together and you have a match.

If you take up sports after your heart transplant, it is not a surprise. It is more than likely as well, that your donor was an active sporty person, as a donated organs need to be healthy (no fatty couch potatoes dying of angina pectoris) and the donors often have died in accidents (active lifestyle, higher risk). Correlation, yes; causation, no.

Third, the neurons in the heart and them "remembering". Of course, we've known this for long. That's what keeps the heart pumping. There has to be memory in the neural network, of the previous cycles of oscillation, so that the next one can follow, and that there is stability in the system. That's all it does, however. Memory to sustain oscillation is different from memory about places, names or skills, such as poetry. Of course, our mind-body is a complex system, our cognition is embodied (I'm the first person to admit that, as it's a central tenet in my thesis), but before saying that since heart has neurons, it carries a part of our personality, you need to establish that there are sufficient, functionally relevant links between the brain (the parts we know are responsible for components of personality) and the "brain of the heart", as they called it. There are links, as both link to the same nervous system, but so do toes and all our muscles. While the neurons in the heart are like the ones in brain, functionally the connections between the two are more like the ones between brain and other internal organs or muscles than those between different regions and structures in the actual brain.

Finally, this connection between heart and the brain was what they told they were showing when they presented some experiments byt these wacky scientists. They had measured people's reactions to emotional stimuli and saw that the heart and the brain both react to them, and the heart anticipates some of the reactions. No news here: we have primary emotions that work pretty directly from perception to physical reaction (happiness, sadness, fear, anger), without needing any cortical processing. This concsious processing will then follow, leading to feelings. Evolutionarily it has been important to be able to prepare for fight or flight as quickly as the threatening stimulus occurs, without having to pause to think. We startle when we hear loud noises, for example. Our heart rate shoots up, hormones are released, muscles get ready to action etc. Again, showing this correlation is not enough to conclude that we "feel emotions with our heart and part of our personality lies there". Personality and these autonomic reactions are two very different things.

With this kind of an experiment, a "mainstream scientist" would take the results and talk about the experience of emotions and the embodied nature of cognition, and how the interlinkage between the autonomous nervous system and cognition are linked functionally and how there seems to be two pathways of processing emotionally valenced stimulus. In his/her case, the experiment has shed light on the issue and provided data based on which theories can be developed and better models built.

The wacky one would claim how he has now shown that heart thinks on its own and how the connection is so mysterious and magical that all previous knowledge about how we think is now invalid and transplanting hearts is probably bad and how it's all so new age. Muddying the waters, that is, and raising himself to a position of superior knowledge (while deciding what colour Porsche he should buy when the book advance arrives).

Lack of proper controls, relying on apparent coincidences, asking impossible questions, over-interpreting the experimental evidence and mystifying rather than clarifying are the telltale signs of bogus science. Check, check, check, MindShock ticked all the boxes!

(Pic: kzone.com.au)

All those empty words...

Bingo!

Talking about a CC-license in one post and posting copyrighted material in the next... jolly old double standards? Well, first of all, this was so funny that I couldn't resist, and second, quoting is legal, and I think George Carlin says it so well: catchphrases and jargon are diluted in meaning and nothing but jingling is left after a horde of consultants has been let loose to chant them.

BTW, the bit about buying a microwave in a mini-mart and minivan in megastore reminds me of the minimega hamburger that a certain burger chain with South-Western Finnish origins used to sell...

Creative Commons

Piracy, plagiarism and copyright always seem to come up in the discussions about the internet. Most typically it's the huge music industry conglomerates who claim that the new technology like internet & p2p/mp3/CD/audio cassette/8-track recorder/phonogram/copy machine/print/wheel/fire will bankcrupt them and steal their last pennies. In actuality, music industry has profited from each new step of technology. In addition to creating new methods for sharing music outside the control of the companies, the new technologies have created new ways for the companies to distribute their products, access to new customers, and new money-making opportunities for the use of their music.

I don't approve piracy, but I also think that the "all rights reserved" -attitude is not only inconvenient but also detrimental for creativity. If you try to close your work behind the walls of total copyright, you end up giving people only two options: to steal it or to ignore it. Creative commons licensing exists to give more options. You can choose yourself which rights you want to keep and how your work can be used by others. While I think that texts in this blog do not need to be protected (from the average of 7 daily readers) by license, I went ahead and did it anyway - just to see how simple it is and to join the bandwagon of creative commoners.

So, what the license says:

• attribution: you can use, alter, quote, re-mix, etc. any text you find on this blog, as long as you mention the source.

• non-commercial: my permission would be needed for any commercial use of the material on this site. I chose this for the sole reason that if anyone would be creative enough to find any commercial use for this chitchat, I'd surely want to hear about it! I can already promise to give my permission...

• ShareAlike: this means that if you use these texts I would like the results to be shared to the world with a similar license as this one.

Ordem e progresso

This blog seems to have become a more or less random collection of writings. Fair enough. Initially I thought it would become more like a continuing log of the progress of my PhD, a description of the writing process etc. It hasn't, mostly because there seems to be no progress to talk about at the moment. Not that there's any order, or much love either, I must admit. I remember the advice I got when I was still an undergraduate contemplating doing a PhD one day. "You must really love your topic, since you will be giving years of your life to it" said this Norwegian professor. So true. I guess the honeymoon is over, and instead of living the dull everyday life with the missus, I'm even secretely dating other topics.

I tell my PhD all sorts of excuses, explain lipstick stains in the collar, get tempted and turn to look at other, sexier themes and approaches. But I know I'm stuck with this one for now. We have a prenuptial that will leave we dry if we divorce before the marriage is consummated and the first-born thesis inspected. Nevertheless: motivation, where art thou?

My thesis is like this blog entry. A brilliant idea but I keep rambling and don't have the energy at the moment to write it and polish it so that it would come across in such a form and shape that is not underwhelming and disappointing for the reader (and writer). The ingredients for this entry were: slow progress in work -> leads to order and progress -> which leads to the motto of Brazil and thus to the ongoing football championships; -> through which we get to passion and love, which is Augusto Comte's premise for the other two, order and progress, -> and while love's left out of the Brazilian motto, they are good at passion which I seem to lack in my work. Also, Comte and his positivism lead me to ( -> ) science and philosophy of science and the idea that science brings knowledge and that drives progress etc., which I do believe, even though I'm not really a fan of positivism as such -> which would lead me to promise I'd write something about the philosophy of science, as that seems to interest me more and more -> especially about the topic I've been wanting to discuss here for a while: purpose, relevance and ethics of science in general and higher education institutions in particular, all the things related to it from faked cloning research to plagiarism in student essays, and (here comes the term I'm planning to launch here this week) "soundbite science" a.k.a. how media and poor science policy drive research to unfortunate directions. Then ( -> ), I was going to make some sort of a loop back to football/love/Brazil.

Or, I could perhaps have exploited the fact that the film "O Brother, Where art thou" by the Coen brothers, a reference to which appeared by accident a few paragraphs back, is based on Homer's Odysseus -> avoiding the empty metaphore of phd as a trip or an odyssey I was planning to leap to ( -> ) Greek tragedies, the ultimate stories in this world, and how they deal with closure and destiny, and how eveI'm perhaps waiting for a deus ex machina (or should I say ápo mēchanēs theós) to save my play/thesis/"marriage".

Finally, I was going to apologise for the spurious nature of these connections and the loose associations between some of the links above, and I was going to blame Haruki Murakami's "Kafka on the Shore" for it. I'm reading (or should say devouring) it at the moment. It's a Book about fate, love, beliefs, setting things right in the cosmic order across different times, and finding purpose for lives and the missing other halves of ourselves. It reads like a thriller while being thickly intertextual and deeply philosophical with references to Greek tragedies and Kafka's surreal stories. It also has a lot of cats in it. Also, I'm 3/4 through the book and everything still hangs in the air, and while I begin to see the connections I can't wait for Murakami to tie them together. I'm reading the book when I'm supposed to do my work, hoping that it would inspire me and demonstrate how some order can finally be made, and that things can progress as a result. Seeing how someone can take multiple and seemingly non-related premises and link them in an surreal and fantastical way while still credibly talking about theories and corroborating and conflicting evidence would be beneficial, I think.

Then, if I'd be writing this entry properly, I'd probably decide to cut the Murakami-bit out and save that for a separate entry, so that I could write more about it. And I would just round off the blog entry with the triangle of love, order, and progress, and then decide to do like Kafka Tamura does in the book when things get too complicated - go to the gym.

Travelling

One of my best friends got married in Finland on Saturday, and of course I had to get there. Unfortunately, I had to get back to Cambridge immediately after the party. Because I didn't want to blow my non-existent summer holiday budget for a two-day quickie, I took the cheapest options, which meant bus to Stansted, Ryanair to Tampere, train near the wedding venue, and finally my friends picked me up and gave me a lift to the venue - and the same happened in reverse order the next day. The beautiful, wonderful wedding aside, here are a couple of things I noticed.

• words like "please", "excuse me", "sorry" and "thank you" don't exist in the Finnish language. It is also possible that the government has introduced a new tax for the usage of these luxury items. Luckily, Finns have quickly adopted strategies to avoid these taxes and become fluent in going on with their lives without having to resort to these frills.

• speaking of frills, the term "no-frills airline" has a deeper meaning than I had realised. Terminals are considered as a "frill", so are chairs in the corrugated steel huts they call "terminals". At least in Pirkkala where Ryanair flies to in Finland.

• to provide their British-bound customers a proper dose of queuing practice before coming to the "land that invented the queue", the bus from Tampere city center arrives at the airport 2 hours 40 minutes before the flight to Stansted. To ensure distractionless learning, the Terminal 1 next door with all the cafes and shops is also closed during this time.

• Ryanair apologises for no longer allowing firearms to be carried on board their planes, following a company policy that came to effect on 1st April 2003. I'm surprised, and would like to learn more about their pre-2003 policies, considering especially that after 2001, even attempts to bring sewing kits to planes have been categorised as acts of terrorism and crimes against humanity. I also wonder how many arms traders, after having thought this is just an April fools' prank, had to leave their UZIs to the security control after this new policy was implemented.
  

• There are three lanes to passport control in English airports: British, other EU/EEA, all other. There are always people who find themselves in the wrong queue(s). I don't understand this. I can see how sometimes people get tired and disoriented, and as all the airports look the same, they might be confused about where they are. But surely they should still be able to remember where they are from? Or be able to check it from the cover of the passport they're holding. My advice: next time you fail to stay at home AND fail to remember where that home is AND forget how to read, ask the staff for directions and take the "all other passports" queue. It also covers "outer space". P.S. United States is NOT a member of the EU. P.S.2 EEA is short for 'European Economic Area' and not 'USA' in French.
  

• I warmly recommend Finland as a travel destination, especially at this time of the year. It's warm, safe, and beautiful; the nightless nights, the nature. And also, the majority of Finnish idiots took the Ryanair flight FR2195 from Tampere to Stansted yesterday and are thus now out of the country.

• kind advise to some of the aforementioned idiots: it's not considered as a sign of bravery to shout stupidities about "slowness in emptying the tube" in Finnish to the non-Finnish flight personnel, who are trying to ensure that the families with small children exit the plane first. Also, it doesn't count towards your alpha-male score and is not considered as "a situation where you took charge and showed initiative and leadership skills".
  

• I've become ever so slightly British. I judge the status and respectability of estates based on how their lawns are cut. The wedding venue (a conference/golf hotel/castle) would get a perfect top score otherwise, but seeing a robo-mower parked at the edge of the rugged front courtyard lawn that was full of weeds and in general in a bad shape drops the score. It's not just that the lawn was overgrown; I could forgive it having some of those weeds (as they are extremely difficult to get rid of), and overlook the fact that the edges weren't trimmed and there was a more or less smooth transition from grass to gravel. I can see how the weight of snow during the winters and and the paths of melting waters in the spring contribute to the unevenness of the surface, and to the undefined overall oval-esque shape of the lawn. But the robo-mower is simply wrong. Just like with cutting hair, it's not only about getting it short, how it's cut also matters.

• continuing this stiff upper lipped cawing (I need to stop now, or I'll start feeling like reading the Daily Telegraph): the so called "sculpture park" around the otherwise brilliant Sara Hilden museum in Tampere is a joke, not only because of the lack of interesting sculptures, but also lack of tending of the "garden". If "how to cut it" is too difficult, at least get it short. Please.
  

• The world is small. I thought I could escape from my work for two days to ensure my friend gets properly married, and to meet friends. When I decided to get a drink from the venue's bar, the person in front of me in the queue turns around, turns out to be my aunt, and asks me why I'm there when I should be in Cambridge doing my PhD. :-) Forget Big Brother: he's an amateur, dilettante and a complete dabbler compared to mums, aunts, and the ladies next door. Anyway, very nice meeting them after a while and congratulations to my uncle on his "longest drive of the day" trophy!

• Finnish summer fashion still includes sandals with socks, belt bags and t-shirts tucked into the shorts.

• To ensure that people who return to Britain would get a smooth transition to the cold climate, the Stansted airport buses have their AC's set at 30 degrees. Conversely, to make the driver feel at home, the ones in Finland have their AC turned to 13 degrees.
  

• Consider it very carefully before becoming a North Ossetian folk dancer; you will have to wear a fur hat even when parading through the main street in Tampere under the scorching sun and heat, while performing acrobatics and singing Ossetian folk tunes.

• Finland in the summer is too beautiful to describe, and too nice to leave behind. Lack of politeness and sense of fashion, and badly mowed lawns are a small price to pay for a paradise on earth (perfect with mosquitoes).

(Pic © BAA)

Invigilation

From my perspective as an invigilator of exams, the main task during a three hour paper is to stay awake. From the students' perspective, my main task is to give them more paper when they run out. From the university's perspective, my main function is to make sure nobody resorts to "unfair means", i.e. cheats.

The exams show is run by the examination office and the various departments, and overseen by the university internal police, the proctors. I was surprised to find out that the word 'proctor' has no etymological link with the Greek word proktos, the origin of words like proctology etc. Nevertheless, I suppose anally following and implementing largely irrelevant or archaic rules is seen as part of the vital tradition of the ancient university, as the sine qua non of its academic excellence. Never could I guess that allowing only water to the exam halls would be the "Ravens of Tower" of Cambridge...

The candidates are allowed to bring a small bottle of water with them for the three hour exam. In the invigilator training this vital issue is discussed in more depth and detail than any other issue, including fire alarms and people falling ill during exams. The only thing that gets an equal amount of airtime in the two hour training is how to prevent cheating. Cheating, to my experience, is the only thing that is even less problematic in the exams than the supposed chaos and havoc caused by orange juice and Lucozade.

During the exams, the proctors go around Cambridge, from hall to hall in their gowns and mortarboards, checking that all rules are followed. Since the drink issue is of the highest importance in running the university exams, it's no surprise that the purpose of these visits seems to be to spot potentially hazardous apple juice bottles among the Evians and Highland Springs. Last week, one of the proctors found two suspicious containers in the classroom I was invigilating. One guy had a can of Red Bull in addition to a bottle of water on the floor next to him. The Proctor was clearly deeply shocked to discover this, as he twitched (on the British Scale of Expressing Emotions this equals to 6.8 on a Richter Scale), and then told me "the gentleman up there has a can of beer." This shows how up-to-speed these people are with the so-called real life, and so I advised him that it's just an energy drink. To which he stated that it is still an "illicit drink" and that I should confiscate it immediately. So I did. He then, having discovered how I had completely neglected my duties and not properly screened the room for these hazardous chemicals, continued hawk-eyeing the room, and spotted something suspicious. He pointed to me that the "gentleman in the yellow shirt" had a "non-transparent bottle". I looked up and saw this dude at the back, in a faded yellow t-shirt, and he had a bike bottle on his desk. I confessed that I hadn't checked the contents of that bottle, to which he said "you probably should". I didn't.

I think bothering people with nonsense during their exams is not the best thing you can do, when you are there to bring them more paper so they can keep writing incessantly for the three hours the exam takes. It would be rather silly, wouldn't it? But, undoubtedly the illicit drinks debackle will only gain in momentum, as next year in the training session for the invigilators they will undoubtedly emphasise how important it is to keep this issue under control, as some students have been known to try to smuggle beer into the exam halls.

Not working

Just can't start working yet. Can't waste my time in here doing boring work. Finding a proper work/space/time -combination is becoming more and more problematic. Now, it's all too nice, I like the view too much to bury my eyes to an article, or even worse, to some datasets. I feel I should have the next 4 hours off since they are going the be the last ones Edinburgh has for me for now.

This was an easy decision, and I'm kidding myself to believe it's due to the exceptional circumstances. (Not even so) deep down I realise how skipping work has become easier and easier lately, and I barely need an excuse. My attention will jump to an interesting newspaper article about genetic makeup of lemurs or the 78th anniversary of the beheading of a Kirgisian union activist like a paperclip to a magnetron. And these diversions have a gekko-like hold of my mind, while the the mountain of work seems to be made of hot-oiled nanoparticle-coated glass that is impossible to take a hold of.

Volumewise, my work has been rather down lately. Somehow the celestial constellations of work-enabled timepoints and good-vibed places have not been in conjunction. Surely, I'm droning on, doing stuff, but having lost virtually all perspective and much of the motivation it has been a struggle. I haven't been inspired, but I must say, I haven't really perspired much either. I've given up too easily; if the work hasn't been progressing or didn't "feel right" I have avoided it, tried another time, another place, but rarely successfully. And I've been annoying myself in the process, obviously. The stuff I'm doing now is important only for me and nobody else will be screwed if I do it late or leave undone. In the short run, that is. On the longer timescale, the timescale of graduations and getting proper jobs, there is of course an impact to others around me, but somehow I've not paid any attention to those issues. That's what cloudy horizons and lack of perspective do to you.

So, what to do now? As I said, Edinburgh has restored some of the motivation (as visiting nice places and getting positive feedback in conferences does) and so I guess I just have to start making better plans and force myself to stick to them. And pay less attention to those genetically modified Kirgisian gekko-lemurs and their atrocities against labour union activists.

(written 05/06/06 in Elephant House, Edinburgh)

Edinburgh

I like this city. After stuffy Cambridge it feels like a breath of fresh air. Not just academically, but also in terms of the surroundings, the hills, sea, the wind... I'm always "surprised" to see that not all of Britain is boring and flat like East Anglia. But then again, we're in a different country now.

I've been here for a couple of days now, in a conference, how else. I now have about a day of "free time" before I'm heading back down, "south of the border" as they say. And I feel revitalised and refreshed - partly because the conference was a resounding success, but also because my brain had somehow got stuck on this very short track of thoughts and the trip up here seems to have broken the loop, and my mind flows more easily now.

There's a whole different vibe here, a dynamism, easygoing but sturdy feel, that somehow is similar to Ljubljana, or actually, Helsinki. Cambridge is about keeping things as they've always been, and while it's very beautiful and nice, it somehow feels stagnated and boring. And I'm not even talking about the university yet... :-)

Our host was right - the spirit of the Scottish enlightenment and David Hume is still around.

(P.S. Most Scottish football fans have started to support Trinidad & Tobago, since they play against England in the World Cup. Similarly the German football fans are now donning Scotland jerseys - it would be too rude for the polite hosts to be openly against England, so supporting Scotland (who unfortunately didn't make it to the final tournament) is the next best thing. The jerseys they are buying en masse are replicas of the 1978 Scotland shirts, voted most stylish ever by a magazine. But, I like the political statement there more than the fashion statement.)