Thoughts and Words Ill-Sorted

A local fire chief is now in a body cast with his back broken in two places, thanks to another driver not appropriately pulling over as the fire chief was on his way to a bike accident site. I drove by the accident scene on the way home from dropping Nelson off at the airport and remember wondering how come an emergency vehicle had ended up off the road. Now I know. You can read the complete story here.

I’ve often been disgusted with how few people have the decency to pull over for emergency vehicles. The fire chief estimates that in his experience about 20% pull over. The other 80% are all on their way to meetings that are more important than the emergencies that fire departments deal with?? Here are my two suggestions:

1) My favoured solution would work particularly well for fire tankers full of water: mount really sturdy blades on the front of the truck and then just barrel through the traffic and watch the cars bounce off into the ditch. That way the right people end up there. Besides, I bet pretty soon most people would no longer be in too much of a hurry to get out of the way.

2) For lighter emergency vehicles, mount cameras on the front and film everything as you’re trying to get to the emergency sites. Then send the film on to the police and let them collect license plate numbers. The huge numbers of fines for failing to yield to emergency vehicles should be a substantial source of income.

Sydney

I picked seven alpine strawberries today. Granted, that’s still only about a tablespoon of food. But it was a good-tasting tablespoon-full!

Sydney

Traveling has funny consequences on your body.  I think my stomach flipped out when it realized it was in the land of fast food and rib joints.  And yes, Sydney, even the salads have meat on them: bacon and whole chicken breasts!  Everywhere we go I think, “Oh man, I’m glad Sydney’s back in New York!”

We dropped by my cousin’s place the other day, where I was happy to ditch the chatting in chairs for football with my younger cousins.  So nice to be outside and stretch a bit!  And man was I glad not to embarrass myself: I threw nice spirals and caught almost everything my cousin threw.  But the next day I realized I haven’t used those lower stomach muscles in a looooooong time . . .  still glad I played, though 🙂

Erin

I spent a good chunk of yesterday doing a clean install of a new operating system on my computer (Fedora 7, in case you’re interested). As I was reinstalling software, files, and so forth, I stumbled across two handy add-ons. Perhaps these are old news to everyone else, but I hadn’t seen them before. So, in case any of you Firefox and Thunderbird users haven’t encountered them before, here they are: Continue reading →

Lots more. Also from our excursion to Highland Park. Let’s start with two pictures of a lovely Two-winged Silverbell (the English name is pretty and all, but I also like the Latin name: Halesia diptera).

Continue reading →

When Nelson was here I became thoroughly spoiled with the ample variety of good food around at all times but the leftovers ran out a couple of days ago. So I decided to spend a few hours making myself a decent dinner, even if there is only one of me around. I made Cumin-scented Beet Latkes, Gingered Carrot Latkes, Celery and Cilantro Relish, and Apple, Onion, and Jalapeno Salsa. Yes, four recipes. As I said, it took a few hours. It was a stunning success, if I may say so. I think the beet latkes may be one of the best things that I’ve ever made. Though they didn’t taste much like beets. Still trying to figure that out, given that they are mostly made up of beets. The salsa is also really good.

The best thing about the beet latkes was when I got to take fistfuls of the grated beets and press them to drain out the excess liquid. What a glorious mess. It was almost as much fun as sliding down mud slopes on the seat of my pants as a kid in Belize. I’m pretty sure making beet latkes is the messiest thing that I’ve ever done in a kitchen. And, as Erin can attest, that is saying quite a lot.

It’s a good thing that I liked the result. I, um, was too lazy adjust the recipe quantities, so I think I now have enough latkes to feed me for a week.

Sydney

Some time ago I griped about an idiotic piece in The New York Times about how new work in biology is ostensibly posing all sorts of threats to moral philosophy as traditionally done. Well, it’s not just the Times. The last issue of Nature (vol 447, issue 7146) has an editorial with similarly silly drivel, saying roughly the sorts of things that we have to endure in papers from freshmen but that we hope to have successfully eradicated from our students by the time they are, say, juniors. I won’t bore you with the details of what the editorial says and of why it betrays a rather serious ignorance of the subject matter (ironically, it’s an editorial about the ignorance of Senator Sam Brownback; but if researchers are allowed to publish their ignorance in Nature, why shouldn’t a politician be allowed to propound some ignorance now and then?). If you’re interested in the beginnings of an untangling of what all is wrong with the editorial, see here.

I find all of this really depressing because I like to think that it would be a good thing for academics to sometimes venture out of their little specialized niches and engage with broader issues. And it seems to me that doing so with some measure of intelligence should be possible. To take the case at hand, why shouldn’t the biologists be able to understand what it is that philosophers are on about when they talk about the naturalistic fallacy? Sure, it might require some effort, some time spent learning about surrounding issues, some time spent learning what the relevant technical terms mean, and so forth. But why shouldn’t that be possible? Did the writer of the editorial just not bother trying or is this harder than I think it is?

Regardless of how difficult it is to say anything about something outside of one’s research specialty, it seems to me that it would be sensible to be aware that when one does try to do that then one should also recognize that one is much more likely to misunderstand things (after all, we have plenty of illustrations of this!). Given that awareness, before one publicly criticizes position X perhaps one should ask the people actually working on X if one has properly understood X. For example, before biologists talk about the naturalistic fallacy, perhaps they should corner some philosopher and ask them if what they were planning to say makes any sense at all.

Sydney

I seem to have brought thunderous weather with me to Oklahoma.  Major lightning, thunder, and huge raindrops.  I’ve been disappointed by the thunderstorms in New Haven and even in Ithaca, so it’s nice to be back in tornado territory, where the real thunderstorms are 🙂
Erin

One good thing about the scorching hot, dry weather we’ve been having here recently: weeds die wonderfully well in it. The weeds that I pulled yesterday looked thoroughly dead today.

Sydney

On Jerry Falwell as a Rorschach test, see here.