Atomic Nerds

Bitch ran out on me again and left me crying into my vodka. She’s probably carrying on with that man again, the shameless whore. Goes out and leaves me in the lurch and comes back with a petrie dish full of other people’s writing and…

Baby, come back! I didn’t mean it! I can change! You can change!

In the meantime, have a webcomic archive. The comic itself is completed, but it was so funny during its run I’m currently going through my second or third archive binge and still giggling. Very definitely aimed at nerds, but it’s a fun slice of life comic even if you aren’t one… or, given that you read this, just won’t admit to being one. The last page is a spoiler of sorts, though not a devastating one, so I’ll link it from the first strip: Home on the Strange

In the meantime, if you’ve ever had the yen to ask me to write something such as “why do men have nipples” or along similar veins… don’t be afraid to ask. Yeah, I’m hard up.

KODOS, KANG, and STINGRAY are going about normal Friday evening entertainment. LABRAT is in the back of the house washing a fresh tattoo.

KODOS detects activity in a time and location combination where activity does not normally occur. KANG echos sentiment of alarm! STINGRAY looks out the front window, and confirms motion where motion should not be. STINGRAY grabs flashlight and heads for front door.

While descending driveway, STINGRAY observes small to medium canid nosing about where the trash was earlier, partially obscured by sagebrush. STINGRAY trains flashlight on canid, and approaches, familiar with local coyotes, most of which consider humans a menu item if small enough. Trotting forward with hand approaching strategic location on hip, STINGRAY hears a voice!

Voice: Snowball! C’mere, Snowball! C’mon back over here!

STINGRAY gains clear view of canid form, and observes across-the-street-neighbor’s small little yappy dog. STINGRAY further recognizes NEIGHBOR’S voice. STINGRAY attempts to help herd SNOWBALL back to NEIGHBOR, who is apparently baiting the local coyotes with the now-diminutive SNOWBALL and yappy little rat-dog RUFUS.

NEIGHBOR: Evenin!
STINGRAY: How’s it goin’?
NEIGHBOR: Have a good week? Sure is warm considering the snow we got today.

STINGRAY, NEIGHBOR, and DOGS engage in dog-related chit chat.

STINGRAY: Eh, not too bad. Spent the day in Albuquerque, so we missed most of it. It is nice out, considering though. Out for a walk? The dogs set up a racket when they saw SNOWBALL. Thought it might be those damn coyotes again.
NEIGHBOR: Yeah, just out for a stroll. Most folks around here are asleep by now, figured it’d be ok to have them off leash.
STINGRAY: Good night for it. Nice seeing you again, have a good one!
NEIGHBOR: You too! C’mon, SNOWBALL, c’mon RUFUS.

End.

You know the drill- I spent the day down in ABQ getting more of the current tattoo project worked on. This session wasn’t nearly as rough as the last one; color and shading suck so much less than outlining it’s not even funny. And the cactus flower Jason spent most of the session working on turned out awesome- I think he may turn out to be even better than Mark was. Things won’t be finished up enough to show off for quite awhile; the tattoo, when finished, will cover my left lower leg from knee to ankle, and quality takes time.

That said, if you want to see some of the other stuff Jason’s done, both on skin and more traditional canvas, check it out: Jason Radcliff

There may be slow/light blogging for awhile… as we head into May, my travel schedule gets insane until the end of that month for various reasons. Part of it is going to be without Stingray, so he’s either going to keep you supplied with content or I’m going to come home and discover he’s built that backyard breeder reactor he’s always threatened, taken off to be a privateer, and renovated the house. He tends to not so much “putter” as “turbo” when left to his own devices.

Last time, Stingray discussed philosophy- being in some sort of approximation of fitness for the very sensible goal of being able to handle yourself physically should the excreta meet the fanblades. Today, I’m going to talk the nuts and bolts- not a comprehensive guide to How To Get Fit and Healthy, but some general mythbusting and pointers. I’ve done it before in the context of trying to explain how to lose weight if you want to; that was mostly focused on diet, this will mostly focus on exercise.

-One of the most pernicious myths out there- certainly in the financial sense, as it’s sold uncountable millions’ worth of useless exercise equipment and worthless magazines- is the myth of spot reduction. So let me start with this one and say it up front: you do not get any choices in how your fat is deposited, and how you exercise can’t change that. You will NOT get rid of your gut by doing crunches, or your big butt by doing lunges. The body has various energy storage and usage systems, some of them relatively local to the working muscle- creatine, that’s the white powder you see bodybuilders cramming down in huge amounts with a glass of water- but most of them not. Body fat is like the federal oil reserve; it’s designed to store things stably for a long time period and not to be conveniently accessible. When the body makes the decision to burn fat, it’s dumped into the bloodstream from wherever. Fat will generally come off in the same order it went on in the first place.

This is also, by the by, why you never see anybody with fat thighs and cheeks and carved abs. Speaking of carved abs, if you want them, you are going to need to work damn hard to get them- they’re almost entirely a function of your body fat percentage. If you’re a woman, you need to be sub twenty percent body fat and probably closer to sixteen or fifteen, depending on how your fat is distributed. If you’re a man, you need to be sub eleven percent, and closer to seven or eight in order to get that defined “six-pack” look. Your muscle definition does depend partly on how much exercise that muscle gets- that fabled “tone”, which is simply achieved by regular challenging use- but the other ninety percent or so of it is just your body fat percentage and normal fat distribution patterns. If your muscles get OMGWTFHUGE they can stand out even through a fairly thick layer of fat, as you’ll see on some of the World’s Strongest Man competitors, but if you’re reading this and you’re muscled like a World’s Strongest Man competitor you’re probably not my intended audience.

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Further proving my superiority to the entire U.S. Navy at pirate suppression operations, we find this quote from Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff:

“One of the big challenges, quite frankly, is when we capture pirates, what do you do with them? What criminal court do you take them to? … It’s a very big challenge.”

Really? Really?! Admiral, a “big challenge” is figuring out how the hell the once mightiest navy to sail has been reduced to such a nutless state that a solution very well known for over 200 years eludes its leadership. Let me explain, Admiral, I’ll even use pictures to help you understand:

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If modern sailors have lost their knot-tying skills, there is also a simpler solution, though less traditional:

See? And I didn’t even have to convene a policy meeting of very highly paid people with stars on their shoulders to figure that one out. Senators Udall and Bingaman along with Congressman Lujan should have received my request in today’s mail, let’s see if they’re highly paid enough to spot an economical solution when one volunteers.

Aside from being Gun Nuts Night, which means we spend the evening first listening to the show and then at the afterparty, it’s also patch day, which of course throws me into a frenzy of nerdery as I try to figure out new talent builds and what to plan on for second specs and whether to weep tears of the spurned geek over preferring to run as a Retribution paladin and a Beast Mastery hunter, things Blizzard obviously considers the lame choices for their respective classes. So.

Go check out Alan’s podcasts. After being called upon to pontificate on porn, Stingray was somehow convinced to stick around and make it a regular thing. I’m still not sure how that happened, but there it is. TD gave me an idea for what to do tomorrow, so we should have actual! substantial! content! Won’t that be fun?

So, our closer primate relatives are on the science-journalism radar again with one of their most reliable angles: male chimpanzees trade meat for sex. The linked article in question is also, apparently, another good example of a reporter writing what will clap the most eyes to his report rather than a faithful retelling of the actual content of the research.

The title of the article is exactly that- about female chimps trading meat for sex… “over a long-term basis”, which means that rather than a prostitute-like straight trade, males who share meat with females more often have greater mating success, moreso than if they shared other kinds of food or simple grooming and overall friendliness. Not quite as exciting, and, as the article points out, it makes sense- meat is an extremely high-value food to any omnivore, and most especially to pregnant or lactating females. Giving preference in mate selection to males that can “fund” the offspring in more ways than just the sperm donation is sensible, especially in a species where the male won’t be contributing a whole lot more.

It is not always easy, however, for a female chimp to obtain her extra protein.

“Females who are bolder or are more relaxed around males will approach the male who is in possession of meat and try to take a piece of meat or immediately start eating from the carcass,” lead author Cristina Gomes told Discovery News.

“The male will either not react to this and allow the female to eat, or will pull the meat away from the female, to which females usually react by screaming, crying or throwing a temper tantrum,” added Gomes, a researcher in the Department of Primatology at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology.

Female chimps that are unsuccessful in the attempt, or less bold in general, may resort to just sitting next to the male and whimpering, “occasionally touching the carcass or extending their cupped hand towards the male.”

All of which is interesting enough, but what makes it moreso from the perspective of looking at the reporting is that it leaves a lot out. For one, the reason this is news at all in a primatological sense is that chimps- and pretty much all other primates that hunt- don’t usually share at all, they try to keep the meat for themselves. This is why female chimps- and younger adolescent males- hunt with spears. So it’s not quite a matter of the poor hapless females having to beg males to get any meat at all. (And give sex in return.)

Also not mentioned in the article is that female bonobos, our other close relative from genus Pan, tend to be as actively involved in hunts as the male- that species hunts cooperatively in mixed-sex groups. Doesn’t go quite as well with the “man the hunter, female the gatherer” image that tends to reign in pop evo-psych, though.

Anthropologist Michael Gurven at the University of California at Santa Barbara believes “the study results are convincing.” But, he added, they raise many important questions.

“If hunting and meat-sharing improve male mating success, why don’t more males do it more frequently? If no additional benefits accrue by sharing minimal amounts to females, why do males share more than the minimum?” Gurven asked.

Well, Doc, it might be that a little more than just mathematical mating success ratios are involved, given that chimps aren’t machines…

He added that “one powerful result suggesting that meat-for-sex in humans is reflective of long-term pair bonds rather than just market exchange is that older men continue to hunt and share meat with their post-menopausal wives who are incapable of further reproduction.”

…And you really might want to give that idea some pondering overall, it looks like. As well as the differences between humans and chimps- there’s a goodly few million years between them and us, and we’ve all changed a lot in the intervening time period.

Easter has once again rolled around, and with a regularity that AlGore and other oracles of climate find more than a tad disturbing, the annual Easter storm has arrived with it. When LabRat first moved out to this remote neck of the woods, she thought I was joking when I told her you could set your calendar by this particular meteorological event. Now she reminds me when I carp about the clouds and wind kicking up.

So with the sky dark with clouds, the winds once again threatening to bring mean old ladies on bicycles, and a combination of rain, sleet, snow and fog thick enough to make one wonder just where the hell the “desert” we’re supposed to be in was, not much has been made in the way of progress on various projects. We did come up with an idea for an ongoing series of posts here, but it needs a little work before prime time. The Atomic Navy is shaping up well, but I’m still waiting on the official letter, and getting the ships to the right area is a bit of a logistics problem. More pressingly, tomatoes were procured for the summer garden, along with some herbs, and the hops seem to have taken the cold snap in stride.

Since it was too cold and nasty to get anything done outside, today was finally a chance to pick up and do something with the pile of ingredients I’ve had sitting in the guest bedroom for the last couple months: Baby’s Bath Ale! Supposedly, this recipe was a variant on one made by women on discovery that they were pregnant back in the days when beer was cleaner and safer to drink than water. The brew was whipped up as soon as they realized they were knocked up, and then dispensed when the baby finally arrived to aid with labor pains, and to wash the little so and so. Clearly, this means a high-test is in order, and given the amount of sugar in the wort, I think if it doesn’t taste good I can probably press it into service as a viable rocket fuel.

Steep 1lb of 40L crystal malt at 155F for 30 minutes. Add 10lbs of light liquid malt extract, 3/4 lb of dark brown sugar, 3lbs of honey, 2 oz of Kent Goldings hops and boil for 45 minutes. Dump in an ounce of Wilamette hops for aroma, boil another 15 minutes. Cool the wort, fill to five gallons, and pitch a European ale yeast. Ferment 7-10 days in the primary, then up to a couple months in a secondary. Bottle with 3/4 cup molasses. Age in the bottle until birth.

Finally, just so as to make sure we’ve got something holiday appropriate up, I’m going to drag an oldie out of the archives from last year. Given we’ve got a considerably larger readership now than then, it’ll probably be new for a good number of folks. There’s a local custom around here that simply isn’t seen in other parts of the state, or for that matter, in other parts of the U.S., so far as I know. Specifically, we get highway pilgrims. Normally they’re packed along the road densely enough to warrant the nickname “highway horde,” but thanks to the raining-so-hard-it-hurt weather yesterday, I only saw one single pilgrim between Pojoque and Santa Fe. I guess being penitent and suffering to show your love of God only applies if the weather is nice. Go figure. Either way, happy zombie diety day everybody! Keep your magazines loaded, and remember, it only takes the tiniest bite to spread the infection! Destroy the cranial vault to be sure, and stay safe!

A copy of the following (with appropriate obvious modifications to the signature) will go into the mail to senators Jeff Bingaman and Tom Udall on Monday morning.

Dear Senator,
I am writing today to formally request issuance of a Letter of Marque and Reprisal against pirates operating in and around the waters of the African continent. Article one, section eight of the US Constitution enumerates this among the powers of congress, so while Constitutional authority has not thus far been a subject of concern for the current administration, this would actually be within the bounds of what the government is allowed to do. While such letters were banned by the Declaration of Paris in 1856, the United States did not actually sign that treaty, and honors it only as far as a gentleman’s agreement. Clearly, this is not binding, and in the face of having US shipping interests captured and held for ransom by pirates, some response above “tut-tut” is in order. Remember, the last time this situation arose, the US Marine Corps added a rather memorable line to their official hymn- one which kept would-be riff-raff at bay for over 200 years.

As recent events have demonstrated that a modern multi-billion dollar navy is no match for Somali pirates, I feel it is neither out of line nor inaccurate to note that as a private citizen using my own resources, I can perform a task the US Navy is currently failing at for a much greater cost efficiency. To go a step further, such a letter would generate revenue for the currently desperately cash-strapped government coffers, as the proceeds generated by any captured vessels would logically count to my personal taxable income. While I don’t feel it particularly fair to hand over a share of income earned by personally cleaning up after a government agency’s failings, such is the nature of taxation. Naturally, any income generated from anti-piracy operations on the high seas will be diligently reported to the IRS with the same honesty and accuracy as the very Secretary of the Treasury himself. Fair is fair, after all, and I’m sure the economy in the area where seized assets would be processed are quite compliant with the tracking and reporting needs of the IRS.

If you’re still unconvinced, Senator, consider that granting my request would benefit not only US shipping interests, but would also benefit our allies. Just as a rising tide lifts all boats, a decrease in pirates makes shipping easier for everybody. With one simple letter, the US could regain the good will of other nations plagued by these modernized anachronisms. Can you place a dollar value on the thanks of a foreign nation (and if you can, would you be agreeable to deducting that amount from what the IRS will claim I owe)? Tales of Somali pirates terrorizing vessels operating under nearly any flag you care to name have been in the news for quite some time now, and it is within the power of congress to take steps to if not eliminate, at least severely reduce the losses suffered by many countries, and many more private companies.

Finally, consider the risk-to-reward ratio. A Letter of Marque does not grant me any special assistance from the government. It will cost only the price of the stationary on which it is printed, and should I fall victim to the pirates myself, it would be nobody’s fault or responsibility but my own. When I succeed, however, the government will generate revenue, make the seas a safer place, and stop the financial hemorrhage incurred by having US Navy resources operating in the area. How many sailors are drawing a paycheck across how many ships in order to have a staring contest with one small lifeboat? My private operations would be able to save the US literally hundreds of millions of dollars once the cost of the ships and weapons are factored in, and given current government spending practices, every last penny of those savings are desperately needed.

Thank you for your time and consideration, Senator. I look forward to receiving my official Letter as soon as possible, as clearly there is much work to be done.

Sincerely,
Stingray

So, anybody know where I can scare up a crew? It shouldn’t be more than a week or so before I’m covered on paper…

The contact e-mail address doesn’t see too much action- and by the by, if you do e-mail us, don’t be surprised by a lengthy-ish delay as due to this reason we tend to forget it’s there- but we recently got an interesting reader request there, which was for accessible layman’s reading on modern science topics. It’s a good question; science writing (as opposed to science journalism, an entirely different kettle of fish) is a very tricky balancing act between not losing informational content and not getting too dense and technical. It’s very, very difficult for a writer very well-versed in his or her field to keep track of what a layman can and can’t be reasonably expected to penetrate, and to walk the line between being accessible and informative and treating the reader like a retard. Worse still is if nothing comes across at all but a wall of text.

Compounding the issue is that a great deal of science books aren’t written to provide a “guide to science”, as it were, but are written so that the author can hold forth on one particular aspect of his interest that happens to involve science, such as the impact of infectious disease and parasites on the spread of empires, or the restructuring of urban ecologies, or the problems of conserving top predators. It’s science writing, yes, but it’s for people that are either already very familiar with the science involved and just want to explore this implication or aspect of it, or else the science only needs to be sketched in lightly as interesting background details to some sort of drama. Books that are actually written to explain a field to the layman that aren’t textbooks are exceedingly rare. Such books that are also good are rarer.

So this list will be rather scattershot; I’m focusing more on authors with the skill to explain science on several different informational levels at once than I am on actually filling out a good list of good sources on all subjects. Commenters, feel more than free to kick in your contributions where you see holes.

I’m going to get my most superficially embarrassing recommendation out of the way first: the Science of Discworld series.

Okay, stop laughing at me, goddamn you. I know I’m a shameless fangirl, but I’m recommending these to non-fans for a reason.

Most “the science of (insert show, book, whatever” tie-in titles are discussions of the various correct representations and distortions of science in that show, and are especially popular with science fiction series. The science of Discworld books are a complete inversion of this pattern; instead, the authors- Terry Pratchett provides the framing, the real heavy lifting is done by Jack Cohen, an evolutionary biologist, and Ian Stewart, a mathematician- are using the tropes and illustrations of the fantasy series to illustrate principles of modern science. Since Terry Pratchett is quite fond of taking science and turning it inside out for purposes of plot device or in-joke, this all works far better than it should. The first book primarily covers physics, chemistry, and essentially “why earth looks and acts the way it does”, the second covers human culture and the rise of science as a system, and the third book covers causality, theories of multiple universes, and anti-science movements. One of the major reasons I recommend these is that the authors seem to have worked out a lot of methods of bridging different ways of thinking- I hate to say it was one of these that first made me really understand why just about every damn thing in the universe is either round or round-ish, but it was. The math never got through to me, but the narrative explanation did.

Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart have written several other good books, but these are by far the most generalist- the others are on more specific topics in math, biology, and complexity.

Bill Bryson, a travel journalist, undertook a fairly ambitious project to write a summation of basic science for people like him that zoned out in dry public school classes, and by most accounts succeeded fairly admirably with A Short History of Nearly Everything. I hesitate to recommend something that I haven’t actually read, but I’ve read basically everything else he’s written and he’s always done a very good job of explaining the science involved when he happens to touch on it in his travel writings, as he often did in A Walk In The Woods. Worth a shot if this kind of thing is what you’re after.

One level of complexity and general rigor from Bryson is Natalie Angier’s The Canon, which is a very similar undertaking- but written by someone with a rather more advanced understanding of science and immersion in its worlds. In other words, it’s an overlay of modern science for the layman written by the scientist rather than the layman. It also devotes more time and space to how the business of science actually grinds along and how to see the world through that particular prism, rather than “this is what happened and this is how we know it did”, which is the approach that Bryson takes. Again, Angier has written several other books- I think she improved over time after this one, too.

Quantum physics, as a subject, is an absolute bitch and a half. I never felt I understood a damn thing about it until I read Robert Gilmore’s Alice In Quantumland- which borrows the basic Carroll structures to illustrate guess what. The framing device gets rather annoyingly twee at times, but the important thing about it is that it works- it seems like it would necessitate dumbing down the concepts, but for the most part it doesn’t. The book looks slim and unimposing, but it took me about four times longer to chew through it and feel I’d understood it than most books do, and it was definitely not because it was unclear. It’s just a complex subject. This is the only one I’ve read, but it looks as though Gilmore has quite the body of work taking this approach with various subjects in physics, such as particle physics, topology, and cosmology.

He doesn’t have much in the way of “generalist” books, but one of the biology science writers I admire the most is Robert Sapolsky. His essay collections The Trouble With Testosterone and Monkeyluv are probably the best examples of his talent and skill at taking a complex or unexpected biological phenomenon and writing about it in a way that is comprehensible to laymen but interesting to experts. If you’re at all interested in what exactly stress does to your body and psyche, his much longer book on that topic is extremely recommendable; there’s some slogging for those that are really unfamiliar with hormones and the brain, but the various payoffs are well worth it.

If you want evolutionary biology and the basics thereof explained to you, much as he annoys me nowadays, try Dawkins. His anti-religious polemics are usually theologically illiterate as well as adversarial, but his real talent was always in writing about evolution and science, and those older books are still well worth the read. Have a go at Unweaving The Rainbow, probably his best, or River out of Eden or Climbing Mount Improbable.

Off the beaten path of the standard Big Three of biology, chemistry, physics- and sorry I haven’t got any chem books in here, by the way, it’s just not a subject I ever felt the need to buy such a book on- we have one of Stingray’s favorite areas, the science of cryptography. If you wish to learn yourself up good on this subject, he recommends Simon Singh’s The Code Book. Since secrets and the preservation and untangling thereof are such a very human field, this one is as much history as it is science- so if you’re into fun stuff like the code arms races of World War II and the Cold War, you’ll like this one even leaving the science out.

So, readers- what are your favorites? Speak up! Doesn’t have to be just science- philosophy and epistemology tomes in the same general for-the-layman spirit are also welcome.