- David Ng is Director of the AMBL at the University of British Columbia - fancy speak for a science teacher. Follow Dave on twitter @dnghub.
- Vince LiCata is a faculty member in Biological Sciences and Chemistry at Louisiana State University (LSU). His laboratory studies protein-ligand interactions, protein folding, and biothermodynamics. He also writes plays that have been produced in a number of different US cities, and, oddly enough, in Thailand.
Too much listening to Tea Baggers (their most appropriate name?), and the 100% Republican opposition to the Health Care Bill that just passed the House (hooray!!!), and fear of violence in the streets of Haiti as justification for the slow US response there, and the many bizarre responses to what I thought was a really excellent "State of the Union" address a couple of months ago- all of these things colluded to make me wonder if the basic difference between Democrats and Republicans is the dosage of their altruism gene(s). It would also help explain why neither side can really understand how the other side can "think that way".
This gulf of mutual incomprehension seems to be common in some other genetically linked behaviors - addictions, compulsions, etc. - if you don't (or do) have them, it's usually difficult to understand people who do (or don't) "think that way". Even simple behaviors: people who keep a clean house don't understand those who don't, people who mow their lawn every week don't understand those who don't, people who talk on their cell phone while driving and kill innocent people don't understand those who don't. And of course: scientists and artists.
So why not: strongly Democratic voters have strong expression of their altruism genes, while strongly Republican voters don't. Of course, I'm certainly not the first person to discuss this possibility.
Well, here's my son and my entry for the Scienceblogs + Serious Eats Pi Day Contest:
(Warning: this entry may be frightening to children or people who know how to make pies.)
Tony and Vince's "Chocolate Pudding Meringue Pi Pi Pie (not quite)". It was designed to have the following dimensions:
Circumference = height = 2 x pi x r = 3.14 x diameter
The pie is a classic chocolate pudding pie base with a giant meringue and whipped cream pile atop it (pile is about the best word for it).
But, as you can see, we had to make up most of the height with a highly extended candle -- when put in the oven, each third of the meringue tower was 9 inches tall, but as we started to assemble them, using whipped cream for glue, they compressed - I mean super compressed, so that the stacked height was less than half the baked height, alas, so that the only way to reach up to over 25 inches was with one of the world's longest cake candles.
It does, however, fit the following description:
Height = diameter = circumference / 3.14
And we did wind up with a nice, edible version after removing the tower of compressive power:
Things are humming along! We have over 100 images submitted, 30 or so queued up for card production, and over 40 folks signed up on the forum (in fact, one set of rules is arguably close to beta testing). The response has been simply wonderful, and these numbers don't even the include the numerous comments and chats culled from coffee meetings to blog posts to tweets. To us, this outpouring is something else, especially in light of the fact that we've technically only seeded an "idea" out there!
In the Feb 26 issue of Science, the Chief Patent Counsel for GlaxoSmithKline has written a "Policy Forum" article outlining the reasons that the pharmaceutical industry needs longer and stronger patent protection on its new drugs (to fend off those nasty generics). I was kind of shocked to see such a propaganda piece in Science, but I suppose it is all part of looking at both (all) sides of an issue. Big pharma has been telling us how tough they've got it for years, and the argument that they must charge very high prices to pay for all that R&D; is so old that you can probably find it carved on stone in subterranean caverns beneath New Jersey (where many big pharma companies live). Unfortunately, many of the arguments are hollow as well - since it has been pointed out many times that over 75% (a conservative estimate) of new drugs come directly out of academic research and then get their souls licensed to big pharma. Anyway, I'm working on a letter to the editor (which only has a slight chance of getting into Science in any form anyway). Here's a first draft, which, I'm afraid, is most likely a bit too terse for Science as yet:
Dear Editors,
Regarding Sherry Knowles Policy Forum article in the 26 Feb 2010 issue of Science, it is difficult to feel much fiscal compassion for an industry that has long held the record for highest profit margins in the world. The GSK Chief Patent Counsel's suggestion for giving branded pharmaceuticals an even longer protection period from generics also elicits little sympathy for an industry that has forced the creation of literally scores of non-governmental agencies who fight daily for universal access to life saving medicines that are kept from people who need them simply because of patent restrictions and cost. It is true that new drugs cost a lot of money to develop, although nowhere near as much as the pharmaceutical industry claims (a discrepancy that has been pointed out for years by people like Marcia Angell, former Editor-in-Chief of the New England Journal of Medicine). Is it wise, however, to give even more control over branded drug distribution to an industry that is steadily conglomerating into a small number of giant profit making machines? Are a few multi-billionaire CEOs, with an eye primarily on the bottom line, the best arbiters of what drugs the world may be allowed to have access to? I'd like to see a Policy Forum discussing how to decentralize the pharmaceutical industry: how to sever the currently requisite licensing-to-big-pharma model and create a large number of small-profit-margin ventures, working closely in league with academic labs, developing and manufacturing new, critically needed drugs, and getting them to needed populations at 3% over cost. Big pharma can stay around too: there's plenty of market for more Rogaine and Viagra spin-offs.
I gave two "public science" talks, back to back this past week to two groups of 200 9th graders at Walker High School, which is about 20 miles east of Baton Rouge. (Two because their auditorium only holds 200 students at a time). I give public science lectures in a program run by the Louisiana Board of Regents, and I have several different talks, but this is the first time a high school had requested the talk "Funny Science: Using Humor to Convey Scientific Information". It was a very interesting experiment - and since it was two back-to-back identical talks, I actually did get to experiment. What seemed to have resulted was: Talk #1 was really enjoyed by the students, but made several teachers rather uncomfortable. Talk #2 was fine for the teachers, but less interesting to the students. Having a ninth grader in my own house, Talk #1 was geared more toward humor that skirted the edge of decency (or perhaps went totally over the edge, you decide).
I started both talks with a story about Britney Spears becoming a scientist, which always plays well in Louisiana. The last third of both talks was also essentially non-controversial and dealt with ways of portraying science via dance, and depicting the scientific method in comedic ways (I showed two different short videos at the end of each, but neither video was in any way controversial). It was the middle sections on Black Hole Humor and Evolution that made for two very different talks.
Wherein the toughest part was trying to edit down 56 minutes of great stuff into a 20 minute clip (as required by his office). Some great anecdotes here, so do pass on if you enjoy this (p.s. He gave another great talk at TED2010, so am also looking forward to that one).
Does it bother you when people say: "Wow, it's been so cold this winter, so much for global warming."? And you have to remind them that global warming means that the average temperature of the earth is increasing, and that, in fact, the average temperature of North America is predicted to get colder, by maybe even as much as ten degrees (on average). And does it bother you that many of the people that say this have Ph.D.s and work at a university? And does it bother you that this completely incorrect interpretation of our colder winters is making it into the general consciousness and feeding the conservative fallacy machine?
And does it bother you that people jokingly add tag lines like "If you believe in global warming," to random statements about the weather? Especially since there is no debate on the existence of global warming (except in the minds of extremely confused or extremely malicious people), and that the debate, if there is one, is about whether the warming is fully or only partially caused by human activities.
My goodness, it's almost like hearing someone on the street say that evolution isn't real: remember when people actually used to believe that? It's almost funny to think that anyone wouldn't believe in evolution nowadays - but believe it or not, there used to be a time when really confused and/or really malicious people used to try to even sabotage the teaching of evolution in science classes.
And let me ask you another question: does it bother you when people say that neutrinos have no mass? Again, to be generous, I think they are just re-hashing an old joke, from back when people actually thought neutrinos were mass-less, but still, there are some things that are just not funny anymore. I mean, this all reminds me of back when people actually believed it was okay to keep Cetaceans in captivity.
In case those of you (the 2 or so readers we have here) are anxiously waiting for the song on biodiversity that I promised a while back. Well, I'm still working on it (partly things have been busy, also partly I had some new recording hardware to figure out). Anyway, just to show that I haven't been slacking off, here is a draft of the lyrics:
