As I've been perusing some blogs and listening to the radio today, it has occurred to me that I should write a post exclusively about California's Proposition 8, just in case some random person finds it and reads it. Since I am not voting in California (or possibly anywhere), although I almost wish I was just so I could vote NO on Prop 8, I thought I should tell others who are voting in California to vote NO on Prop 8! (I'm hoping that by voting in New Mexico where my vote for President might actually count in an important way, maybe someday the whole country can move forward towards equality for all.)
Proposition 8 is a gay marriage ban. I realize that sometimes propositions are confusing, because although you know what your position on an issue is, you may not realize how the proposition is worded, and thus whether you should vote yes or no. Since Prop 8 proposes to ban gay marriage, if you support gay marriage, you need to vote NO.
This proposition has nothing to do with religion or schools. It would simply treat some people differently under the law. Marriage outside of a church is a legal contract, and everybody, gay, straight, or anything in between, should have the right to be able to marry whomever they want (except, you know, minors).
Even if you belong to a Church that will not marry two men or two women, that is not the same as taking away somebody's legal right to marry. Taking away a legal right for one group of people is simply discrimination by the government. The churches across the country (not just California!) have pumped large amounts of money into the campaign say yes to 8, and this is overwhelming individual citizens and other groups saying NO to 8. It looks like the marriage ban may actually pass, and will in a way be decided by people who do not even live in California. So if you live in California, please vote NO on 8.
I have commented in previous blogs that I felt a bit guilty about getting married myself since not everyone is allowed to in most states. I thought it was fantastic when the California Supreme Court legalized gay marriage. In fact, our neighbor went to California to get married to his girlfriend in a joint ceremony with his sister and her girlfriend. While I originally and still do think that was awesome, as my neighbor pointed out, it's still not fair that his sister had to travel to California to get married instead of doing it at home in New Mexico. And now some people are trying to take away even that opportunity!
As a radio DJ said this morning, 15 or 20 years from now, we will look back upon this time as another stupid thing we did, like discriminating against black people. Voting NO on proposition 8 is an opportunity to end one form of discrimination in our country! Equal rights for all people. We all need to keep working to make this true. Vote NO on 8!
Friday, October 31, 2008
The (Reverse) Bradley Effect
I have been concerned for quite some time that Obama's lead in the polls was an overestimate, a result of the Bradley Effect. This was apparent in some of the primary states, particularly New Hampshire, where Obama lost despite the fact the polls showed him ahead. This is assumed to be the result of people saying they will vote for a black man, and then, in the privacy of the voting booth, doing no such thing. This effect obviously did not happen in caucus states, where there is no hiding behind a curtain.
However, in (somewhat) happier news, one of the speakers at the Conference reported that a study has found a Bradley effect in only 3 states, but a reverse Bradley effect in 12 states. The reverse effect seems to come from Christian conservatives who won't admit to their friends or the pollsters that they would vote for a black man, and but then they actually do.
So I guess the upshot is that Obama's lead may actually be an underestimate. Not that I'm counting my chickens yet. In fact, I'll be lucky if I even get to vote, and I'll never forgive myself if I don't.
New Mexico requires you to apply for an absentee ballot. They say they need to receive the application by October 25th in order for everything to work on time. I mailed in my application on October 17th. They just mailed me my ballot on October 29th. Wednesday. Presumably through the Albuquerque post office, which is notoriously the worst domestic post office ever. So I'm assuming the best case scenario is that I receive my ballot Saturday or Monday and then send it via overnight fedex to the County Clerk, who has to receive it by 7 pm November 4th. In which case I will be paying a large amount for my right to vote. Worst case scenario is that I receive it on Tuesday or even later, in which case, I will have been basically disenfranchised. Way to go New Mexico!
However, in (somewhat) happier news, one of the speakers at the Conference reported that a study has found a Bradley effect in only 3 states, but a reverse Bradley effect in 12 states. The reverse effect seems to come from Christian conservatives who won't admit to their friends or the pollsters that they would vote for a black man, and but then they actually do.
So I guess the upshot is that Obama's lead may actually be an underestimate. Not that I'm counting my chickens yet. In fact, I'll be lucky if I even get to vote, and I'll never forgive myself if I don't.
New Mexico requires you to apply for an absentee ballot. They say they need to receive the application by October 25th in order for everything to work on time. I mailed in my application on October 17th. They just mailed me my ballot on October 29th. Wednesday. Presumably through the Albuquerque post office, which is notoriously the worst domestic post office ever. So I'm assuming the best case scenario is that I receive my ballot Saturday or Monday and then send it via overnight fedex to the County Clerk, who has to receive it by 7 pm November 4th. In which case I will be paying a large amount for my right to vote. Worst case scenario is that I receive it on Tuesday or even later, in which case, I will have been basically disenfranchised. Way to go New Mexico!
Happy Hallowing!
October is over. I have no idea where the time went. I do know that it will be a boring, wet Hallowing at the Bailliams house. And also, I wanted everyone to share in the shock I had when I read a letter from my ex-little sister, current pen pal who misspelled nearly everything terribly, including Halloween. She is in 5th grade and earns all A's. In New Mexico. I know that not everyone, including very smart people, is good at spelling, but really, I would have thought a 7 or 8 year old wrote the letter. A bit depressing.
In other news, today is Matt's first day of work. The company is actually so nice that when Matt proposed to start on Monday, November 3rd, they suggested that he come in for at least a few hours today so that our benefits can start tomorrow instead of December 1st. What a fabulous company! I am used to companies that try to cheat me out of every benefit imaginable. (Like the 401k match I never got. Although, I must say that while my 401k is in the tank, my New Mexico Retirement fund is doing smashingly! New Mexico did something right for once! Although Matt says he heard a news story that made it sound as if New Mexico just got lucky. Shocking!)
And in other, other news, we are signing a lease this afternoon. Hopefully I'm not jinxing it by writing about it first. It's high on the Twin Peaks, so a bit of a hike from the closest neighborhoods - The Castro and Cole Valley, but it was spacious, somewhat affordable, and comes with off-street parking, on-site laundry facilities, and a balcony. Also located on bedrock, so the lowest earthquake shaking in the City from the various shake maps I looked at.
And as further evidence that we now live in San Francisco, not New Mexico, Mayor Gavin Newsom was on some random radio station this morning. He and the DJs chatted about the Halloween festivities, why Proposition 8 (the gay marriage ban) is terrible, and how the Mayor's lack of a tie made it seem easier to undress him. Really! Mayor Marty was OK and all, but this guy seems fabulous!
In other news, today is Matt's first day of work. The company is actually so nice that when Matt proposed to start on Monday, November 3rd, they suggested that he come in for at least a few hours today so that our benefits can start tomorrow instead of December 1st. What a fabulous company! I am used to companies that try to cheat me out of every benefit imaginable. (Like the 401k match I never got. Although, I must say that while my 401k is in the tank, my New Mexico Retirement fund is doing smashingly! New Mexico did something right for once! Although Matt says he heard a news story that made it sound as if New Mexico just got lucky. Shocking!)
And in other, other news, we are signing a lease this afternoon. Hopefully I'm not jinxing it by writing about it first. It's high on the Twin Peaks, so a bit of a hike from the closest neighborhoods - The Castro and Cole Valley, but it was spacious, somewhat affordable, and comes with off-street parking, on-site laundry facilities, and a balcony. Also located on bedrock, so the lowest earthquake shaking in the City from the various shake maps I looked at.
And as further evidence that we now live in San Francisco, not New Mexico, Mayor Gavin Newsom was on some random radio station this morning. He and the DJs chatted about the Halloween festivities, why Proposition 8 (the gay marriage ban) is terrible, and how the Mayor's lack of a tie made it seem easier to undress him. Really! Mayor Marty was OK and all, but this guy seems fabulous!
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Green Chile Kitchen
I have made an exciting discovery while driving through the streets of San Francisco. (And believe me, I'll never do that again! Drive, that is. Hopefully I'll make another discovery one day.) The Green Chile Kitchen. It sounds a little uppity for New Mexican food and all, but maybe that was the only way the owners thought they could sell the stuff in San Francisco. I have my fingers crossed for tasty and hot green chile.
Science and the Simpsons
www.simpsontrivia.com
What are the odds that two different speakers would use this image during their talks at the same conference? Apparently neuroscientists are also big nerds who like to think they are cool and funny. I guess maybe they are...
Anyway, this concludes my science blogging for the time being. I hope you enjoyed reading about something besides me, me, me!
Science Tours
Being the big hydrology nerd I am, when given the choice of taking tours to say, an outdoor conservation biology site, I actually chose to go on a fluid mechanics tour. Yup. Big nerd.
However, the tour totally inspired me! The environmental fluid mechanics lab is housed in the Jerry Yang and Akiko Yamazaki Environment and Energy Building, Stanford's new energy and water efficient building, so first we learned about and walked through some of the building's features. On the south side, the windows have horizontal fins which are topped with a light colored surface. Guess why? That's right, a high albedo will reflect light back into the room, but the less direct light makes it less fierce. The building self-ventilates and maintains a temperature range of 68 to 75, making the air comfortable and high in quality. The 4-story building features four 4-story atriums.
All wood furniture comes from bamboo. The cement floor contains high percentage fly ash. Landscape is watered with lake water, the building is double plumped so toilets receive non-potable water, and on and on. The building uses 50% less energy and 90% less potable water than a similar building of normal design standards would. And they're not yet using rainwater harvesting (they claim it's not cost effective yet), and owing to some strange political pressure, only 1/3 of the urinals are waterless. Apparently there are also a lot of code difficulties that make building green difficult.
The guy giving the tour noted that the biggest obstacle is human behavior change. For example, the building has to have lights so that people can work at night, but it is hard to get people to leave the lights off during the day even when there is plenty of natural light. Of course, the lights turn off automatically after 20 minutes of no use, but this doesn't help when there are constantly people around.
Another cool thing about the building is that it houses a wide variety of programs and departments. However, the building is not organized in that way; rather it is divided by area of study - freshwater, oceans, land use, etc. Truly interdisciplinary! The environmental fluid mechanics guy works on a lot of studies related to coral with biogeochemists and marine ecologists and all sorts of other scientists. He isn't just cooped up with other engineers all day.
Speaking of fluid mechanics, I enjoyed learning about other applications for it besides freshwater stream systems and aquifers. Ocean and estuarine dynamics sound really neat too. And getting to play with wave machines and corals? Also exciting! And doing research from a boat in Australia? Phenomenal! I guess I should have expanded my fluid horizons...
The building also houses the Woods Institute for the Environment, another intriguing multidisciplanary research, training, and education center. Also check out Stanford's Environmental Portal. I think I have found my future academic home.
However, the tour totally inspired me! The environmental fluid mechanics lab is housed in the Jerry Yang and Akiko Yamazaki Environment and Energy Building, Stanford's new energy and water efficient building, so first we learned about and walked through some of the building's features. On the south side, the windows have horizontal fins which are topped with a light colored surface. Guess why? That's right, a high albedo will reflect light back into the room, but the less direct light makes it less fierce. The building self-ventilates and maintains a temperature range of 68 to 75, making the air comfortable and high in quality. The 4-story building features four 4-story atriums.
All wood furniture comes from bamboo. The cement floor contains high percentage fly ash. Landscape is watered with lake water, the building is double plumped so toilets receive non-potable water, and on and on. The building uses 50% less energy and 90% less potable water than a similar building of normal design standards would. And they're not yet using rainwater harvesting (they claim it's not cost effective yet), and owing to some strange political pressure, only 1/3 of the urinals are waterless. Apparently there are also a lot of code difficulties that make building green difficult.
The guy giving the tour noted that the biggest obstacle is human behavior change. For example, the building has to have lights so that people can work at night, but it is hard to get people to leave the lights off during the day even when there is plenty of natural light. Of course, the lights turn off automatically after 20 minutes of no use, but this doesn't help when there are constantly people around.
Another cool thing about the building is that it houses a wide variety of programs and departments. However, the building is not organized in that way; rather it is divided by area of study - freshwater, oceans, land use, etc. Truly interdisciplinary! The environmental fluid mechanics guy works on a lot of studies related to coral with biogeochemists and marine ecologists and all sorts of other scientists. He isn't just cooped up with other engineers all day.
Speaking of fluid mechanics, I enjoyed learning about other applications for it besides freshwater stream systems and aquifers. Ocean and estuarine dynamics sound really neat too. And getting to play with wave machines and corals? Also exciting! And doing research from a boat in Australia? Phenomenal! I guess I should have expanded my fluid horizons...
The building also houses the Woods Institute for the Environment, another intriguing multidisciplanary research, training, and education center. Also check out Stanford's Environmental Portal. I think I have found my future academic home.
Monday, October 27, 2008
New Horizons in Science: Toxoplasma
Apparently Toxoplasma is well known to pregnant women. It's some sort of parasite, found in cat feces, that if given the chance at a fetus will wreak havoc with the nervous system. So pregnant women are supposed to avoid cats and their feces in particular. First I've ever heard of it. Although I guess now certain people have legitimate reasons for requiring me to keep cats out of my household...
Anyway, toxo normally functions in a life cycle between cats and rats. Toxo can only reproduce in cat stomachs, so they hitch on to rats and make the rats lose their aversion to the smell of cat urine, which causes rats to head on over to cat smells and become dinner in no time at all. Providing, of course, a route for the parasite into the cat stomach for all the reproduction that could be imagined.
Amazingly, Dr. Robert Sapolsky of - guess where - has found that in toxo-infected rats, everything else functions normally. They still maintain their other normal fears of open space; they basically function absolutely normally except for suddenly being attracted to cat urine. So the parasite targets precisely this one function - and scientists would love to have the targeting precision.
Turns out that toxo migrates to the rat brain and goes latent, but in the amygdala, which controls fear and anxiety, it causes neurons to atrophy and disconnects fear circuits. It blunts the stress related to cat odor. It actually switches the response to cat urine from fear to sexual arousal, increasing testosterone in male cats. Female cats actually prefer toxo-infected males, presumably because of the elevated testosterone.
What does toxo do to humans? Well aside from fetuses, it was assumed that it doesn't do much because it goes latent. However, one study showed that males show a slight disinhibition related to neuropsychological tasks of impulse control. And two indpendent studies found that toxo-infected humans are two to four times more likely to die in car accidents related to speeding. Apparently, the disinhibition leads to more reckless behavior. However, those 3 studies are the only ones in existence related to toxo's effect in humans.
What is the take away? Apparently, according to Sapolsky, who incidentally got lost on the Caltrain on the way to speak this morning even though he is actually a Stanford professor and the meeting was at Stanford, parasites are really cool. And, even if thousands of neuroscientists study processes such as this, a parasite will still know more than they do. Makes you wanna go hmmm.
Anyway, toxo normally functions in a life cycle between cats and rats. Toxo can only reproduce in cat stomachs, so they hitch on to rats and make the rats lose their aversion to the smell of cat urine, which causes rats to head on over to cat smells and become dinner in no time at all. Providing, of course, a route for the parasite into the cat stomach for all the reproduction that could be imagined.
Amazingly, Dr. Robert Sapolsky of - guess where - has found that in toxo-infected rats, everything else functions normally. They still maintain their other normal fears of open space; they basically function absolutely normally except for suddenly being attracted to cat urine. So the parasite targets precisely this one function - and scientists would love to have the targeting precision.
Turns out that toxo migrates to the rat brain and goes latent, but in the amygdala, which controls fear and anxiety, it causes neurons to atrophy and disconnects fear circuits. It blunts the stress related to cat odor. It actually switches the response to cat urine from fear to sexual arousal, increasing testosterone in male cats. Female cats actually prefer toxo-infected males, presumably because of the elevated testosterone.
What does toxo do to humans? Well aside from fetuses, it was assumed that it doesn't do much because it goes latent. However, one study showed that males show a slight disinhibition related to neuropsychological tasks of impulse control. And two indpendent studies found that toxo-infected humans are two to four times more likely to die in car accidents related to speeding. Apparently, the disinhibition leads to more reckless behavior. However, those 3 studies are the only ones in existence related to toxo's effect in humans.
What is the take away? Apparently, according to Sapolsky, who incidentally got lost on the Caltrain on the way to speak this morning even though he is actually a Stanford professor and the meeting was at Stanford, parasites are really cool. And, even if thousands of neuroscientists study processes such as this, a parasite will still know more than they do. Makes you wanna go hmmm.
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