Ranking UNH

U.S. News & World Report placed the university on its list of “tier one” colleges for the second year in a row. But are the numbers all they’re cracked up to be?

If you believe the hype, UNH may have entered a new era of prestige.

U.S. News & World Reports has ranked the university 110 among regional colleges in its 2012 listing of “Best Colleges,” landing it a spot for the second year among the “top tier” in the “Regional Colleges – North” category.

The category includes colleges that offer a full range of undergraduate programs, but few doctoral programs. Colleges with doctoral programs are listed in a separate national category.

Just what do the rankings say about the quality of the institution, though?

In a press release for UNH Today, President Stephen H. Kaplan reasoned that UNH's rise in the U.S. News rankings was due to “substantial investments toward expanding academic programs, enhancing student life and creating state-of-the-art campus facilities,” which have “helped us attract more high-achieving students and world-class faculty.”

Alice Aleksandrovich, a senior who is double majoring in English literature and political science, has noticed some major improvements during her tenure at UNH. “It’s more technologically advanced than when I started,” she says. “The bookstore, health services, tutoring and other student services are also much better.”

Aleksandrovich still thinks there’s room for improvement, though. She says she would like to see more housing built, especially for sororities and fraternities. She also says that too much of the material in the library is outdated.

UNH’s sustained presence on the “Best Colleges” list is certainly beneficial for the university. U.S. News is the most popular resource in the nation for comparing colleges. Being in the top tier means greater exposure among students and parents researching prospective colleges.

Perhaps more importantly, it means greater exposure within the community of academic institutions. There’s an irony to making the list: since 25 percent of a regional college’s ranking is determined by the assessment of other college presidents, simply being on the list makes it more likely that a president who has never actually seen the campus will have a favorable view of UNH.

U.S. News has come under increasing criticism in recent years for the ways in which it judges schools. In February, New Yorker Staff Writer Malcolm Gladwell slammed U.S. News for using prejudicial criteria. He called the reputation factor a “self-fulfilling prophecy.”

“When U.S. News asks a university president to perform the impossible task of assessing the relative merits of dozens of institutions he knows nothing about,” wrote Gladwell, “he relies on the only source of detailed information at his disposal that assesses the relative merits of dozens of institutions he knows nothing about: U.S. News.”

Gladwell pointed out that other proxies for quality U.S. News uses to measure the success of a college - such as professor salaries or admissions selectivity - have little to do with student engagement, the single most important predictor of a student’s success at college.

Gladwell also noted that U.S. News omits some criteria, such as cost, in its rankings. He writes: “at a time when American higher education is facing a crisis of accessibility and affordability, we have adopted a de facto standard of college quality that is uninterested in both of those factors.”

The U.S. News rankings have led people astray in the past. “Most students and parents think the rankings are important,” says Victor Rios, a double major in English and journalism in his second semester at Quinnipiac University in Hamden. “For me, I fell into that spell when I applied.”

Quinnipiac has ranked well in U.S. News. It took the number 11 slot this year. Rios says, however, that some professors allow too much leniency with assignments and due dates. He feels that the college hasn't done as much to foster his intellectual abilities as he had expected.

Rios and Gladwell aren't the only ones who have problems with the U.S. News algorithm, and a few organizations have even attempted to assess college quality on their own terms. In 2009, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a nonprofit education group, launched its “What Will They Learn?” survey. It measures whether colleges require students to take courses in seven “key subjects:” composition, literature, foreign language, U.S. government or history, economics, mathematics, and natural or physical science. A grade from A to F is assigned to the institution.

If Rios had used ACTA's rankings instead of U.S. News's, he would have gotten an entirely different impression. There, UNH gets a grade of B and Quinnipiac gets a grade of C.

In addition to his academic dismay, Rios, who was born in Mexico, says that he has been uncomfortable with some of the unintentional prejudices he's encountered.

“People I’ve talked to who work there say that the school understands the problem, and is trying to mitigate it,” he says. Nevertheless, he felt unwelcome when he first came to the campus.

Diversity is often an important piece of college life, especially if you happen to be in a minority group. Only 1 percent of Quinnipiac's population consisted of international students last year. At UNH, on the other hand, these students comprised 7 percent of the student body. U.S. News lists this information, but does not weigh it as part of a college's rank.

Professor Karen Isaacs, who teaches journalism and English at UNH and Housatonic Community College in Bridgeport, warns against placing too much emphasis on rankings.

“In any school, you're going to have exceptional departments and weaker departments. And you can get outstanding students anywhere,” she says.

She says that students need to find what they're comfortable with.

Regardless of whether U.S. News is an accurate guide or not, UNH seems poised to continue its ascent. According to UNH Today, the class of 2015 has higher SAT scores and GPA's than previous years. “The average GPA has continued to increase over the last six years,” says the press release.

Isaacs has been teaching at UNH off and on for about 20 years, and she agrees that the university is on a positive track. “I've seen enormous increases in the quality of the students,” she says.

This article originally appeared in The Charger Bulletin.

Tips on Arguing: The Moving Goalpost

Imagine that you’re playing a game of football, and you make a field goal from the 10-yard line. Now imagine that the referee decides not to count your kick. Instead, he orders the goalpost to be moved back an additional ten yards. You make the goal again. He decides it’s still not good enough, and has it moved back another ten yards.

Would you think this was fair?

In argumentation, “moving the goalpost” refers to a similar tactic. Your opponent gives a certain criteria for you to meet, or asks for certain evidence. Then, once you provide it, he or she changes the criteria. It’s an extremely common fallacy, and one that can perpetuate a false controversy for years.

Perhaps the most famous modern example of moving the goalpost exists in the anti-vaccination movement. Concerns over whether vaccines cause autism actually began in the late 1990’s, in Great Britain. According to Michael Fitzpatrick, a British physician and author of several books and articles on the subject, the controversy began with a research paper published by a gastroenterologist named Andrew Wakefield and twelve co-authors (ten of whom later issued a partial retraction) in the journal The Lancet (which formally retracted the entire article last year).

The study looked at twelve children, nine of whom were autistic, who had experienced a form of intestinal inflammation that Wakefield speculated during a press conference was caused by the MMR vaccine. The media seized on it. Many subsequent studies thoroughly debunked his claims, but by then it was too late – the seeds had been planted in popular culture.

As the aftershocks of Wakefield's claims rippled through the U.K., he brought his concerns to the U.S. Only this time, the blame wasn’t laid on MMR; it was placed instead on a preservative called thimerosal, which contained a small amount of mercury. The argument was that because mercury is a known neurotoxin, it could be causing damage to a child’s normal development. This neglected the fact that the dose of mercury was well below dangerous thresholds. It also ignored the fact that there was no causal evidence to suggest a connection.

But that didn’t matter. The goalpost had effectively been moved.

Despite further research that found no link between thimerosal and autism, the U.S. government finally conceded to have the preservative removed from most vaccines in the early 2000’s. Autism rates, as one would expect, were not affected.

Eventually, critics of vaccines had to drop this second line of argument. That hasn’t made them any more reasonable, however. Over the past few years, they’ve built a whole new campaign around the idea that vaccines contain a debilitating cocktail of “toxins.” Antivaccinationists now target this brew as the cause of autism.

In a 2008 article for the blog Science-Based Medicine, surgical oncologist David Gorski unpacked, piece-by-piece, the emptiness of that approach: “for example, they either ignorantly or willfully confuse ethylene glycol (antifreeze, which is not in vaccines) with polyethylene glycol (a polymer of ethylene glycol, a chemically different compound which is in some vaccines and is also in a number of skin creams, tooth paste, and medications, including laxatives)…they’ll also rant on and on about formaldehyde, neglecting the fact that most people are exposed in a single day to more formaldehyde…than babies are exposed to from their entire vaccine schedule.”

Although Gorski and others have the facts on their side, they’re unlikely to convince the opponents of vaccines, no matter how much proof is provided. As long as the goalpost keeps being moved, it remains impossible to score.

Toxic Runoff Creates "Rainbow Street" in Fairfield

When Hurricane Irene slammed into Connecticut on Aug. 28, the widespread flooding it brought along shorelines and rivers was hard not to notice.

What may have been less apparent to some people were the contaminates it dragged off the land with receding flood waters.

The pollution was obvious on Kenard Street in Fairfield, though.

At approximately 11 a.m., the tiny road that abuts the construction zone of the new Metro North railroad station was inundated with several feet of water from Ash Creek, which runs through the area.

As the water drained, it left brightly-colored stains across huge swaths of the pavement. A fluorescent sheen of yellows, blues, and pinks marked where the creek had crept across the road (see video above).

As anyone who has owned an old car knows, those stains are caused by motor oils and similar waste products. They are known as nonpoint source pollution.

According to the EnvironmentalProtection Agency, nonpoint source pollution is the leading cause of water quality problems. Billions of dollars are spent every year to test and treat water to make sure that the fish that swim in it, the plants that grow in it, and the humans who drink it all stay healthy.

Nonpoint source pollution becomes worse as urbanization occurs, because soils that once absorbed and neutralized contaminants are replaced by blacktop and other non-porous surfaces. The pollutants sit there, building up until it rains or snows, at which point they're deposited in rivers, lakes – or Long Island Sound.

The Fairfield Metro North complex is a prime example of urbanization. Last summer, the hillside near Kenard Street was occupied by a grove of trees. All of them were removed as part of the development project.

The view now consists of giant piles of contaminated soil dug up by construction equipment. The mounds became a point of consternation for the town after officials realized that the millions of dollars it would cost to remove the soil was not accounted for in the project's budget.

In the meantime, the exposed mounds (and the machines moving them around) contribute their own pollutants to the mix of runoff every time it rains or floods.

Although $7.5 million in additional funds approved by the town on Aug. 31 will pay for cleanup of the soil, Hurricane Irene has already siphoned her fair share of toxic material back into Fairfield's waters. That cost is much more difficult to quantify.

Hurricane Irene Brings Floods

A weakening-but-dangerous Hurricane Irene tore through southwestern Connecticut Sunday morning, dumping between five and six inches of rain in an area that had already been saturated by previous storms. The highest winds arrived at almost the same time as high tide, which had already been exacerbated by the new moon. The counterclockwise motion of the storm shoved water into Long Island Sound, compounding the problems.

Mandatory evacuations were ordered for beachfront properties in Fairfield, Conn., where several houses collapsed as flood waters crested. Since I live only shortly further inland along the banks of Ash Creek, I checked the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) floodplain maps for our area the night before the hurricane.

The garden in my backyard was within the 100-year flood zone, as was the end of the street, which terminates in a construction area for the new Metro North train station. These sections, as you can see in the video below, ended up under water.

Our house, fortunately, was sufficiently high up on the slope to avoid inundation.

Parsing the Paranormal Debate

UFO? Photo by Håkan Dahlström under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License.

The Connecticut Post published a front-page article on Aug. 13 about a local paranormal research group’s activities. After it appeared, an exchange ensued through the newspaper’s opinion section, with skeptics decrying the article and true believers insinuating that the skeptics were close-minded.

Seeing that the vitriol wasn’t subsiding, I jumped into the fray. The Post published my letter, which follows, on Aug. 23:

Unlike some of the skeptical commenters who appeared in the You Said It section throughout last week, I wasn't offended that the Connecticut Post published a front-page article about the Orange-based paranormal group Smoking Gun Research Agency (SGRA).

Regardless of my own skepticism regarding the paranormal, the local nature of the group and its growing popularity within the community make it a newsworthy subject.

The piece was disappointing in one major way, though: it failed to examine the standard of "evidence" for some of the SGRA's claims.

However professional-sounding it may be, the SGRA uses long-debunked pseudo-scientific tools and methods in its investigations. It also employs psychics, not one of whom has ever been able to demonstrate any ability that a well-trained magician or mentalist couldn't perform.

The SGRA's staff members "screen all material" before adding it to their library, according to the article. Yet SGRA's online library includes a title on global conspiracy by David Icke, who famously proposed that a race of shape-shifting "reptoids" from the constellation Draco were secretly controlling human civilization by posing as world leaders.

The evidence for most paranormal phenomena is scant at best. Nevertheless, I do think that paranormal research is important, as long the work is rigorous and scientific.

An open mind accepts new evidence -- after critical scrutiny. The SGRA's bar is apparently much lower than that.

Tips on Arguing: Decorative Statistics

At the end of 2008, National Public Radio commentator Frank Deford railed against a growing trend among sports aficionados that he found downright annoying.

“It's getting harder for the statistics freaks in all sports to dream up anything original,” he said. “And so I began to notice that a whole new category of stupid records was now being created.”

Deford went on to list some of the most convoluted stats he had come across, such as the following:

“’He's the only pitcher in’ - get this – ‘the last 4,113 to debut with 10 strikeouts and no walks.’”

Whoever came up with the above statistic had to work hard to make it sound impressive. And it might be effective for the casual observer, who is likely to see the words “only pitcher” followed by a large number and assume that this “record” is significant.

But look a little more carefully, and the emptiness behind the number becomes apparent.

The most glaring problem here is the seemingly arbitrary range of 4,113 pitchers. This pitcher’s record would be meaningful, if, say, it was the first time it had ever happened. That’s apparently not the case, or else the author of the statistic would have said so. Chances are that the reason the statistician picked 4,113 as a starting point is that pitcher number 4,114 had the exact same record (or better).

It turns out that 4,113 isn’t even a big number when put into context. The website MLB.com lists over 1,100 current pitchers in Major League Baseball alone – never mind the other leagues. Granted, not every one gets replaced every season. Still, it only takes a decade at most to see 4,113 new pitchers.

That’s the nature of all decorative statistics: they’re relatively mundane numbers that are tweaked to look more impressive.

Decorative statistics are rife in the sports world, but they can be found in other arenas as well.

Take movies. The 2009 film Avatar was heralded as the highest grossing movie of all time, at approximately $761 million in domestic sales, according to Boxofficemojo.com.

It is the highest, until you adjust for inflation. Measured in today’s dollars, Gone with the Wind weighs in at over $1.6 billion in domestic sales, blowing those Na’vi out of the water. Avatar doesn’t even make the top ten.

Senators Make Headway by Talking Across the Aisle

Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn. Photograph by Medill DC.

Discussions in Congress generally take on one of three forms. The most common is the individual monologue. Another tactic is the choreographed “conversation” between two or more members of the same political faction. This gives the illusion of a dialog, while promoting a single point of view.

The rarest form of discussion, though, is my favorite. In it, politicians of differing political stripes talk to one another and try to find their commonalities. I particularly enjoy it because it forces both sides to be more rational and honest.

There were two instances of this third kind of exchange in the last weekend of July, when the nation appeared to be on the edge of default, that stuck with me. On July 30, Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) gave a detailed presentation, replete with charts, on the way that governmental structure contributes to the deficit. He said he'd found multiple savings through common sense, including increasing electronic services to reduce the amount of paper printed by the federal government. He was particularly incensed that the bills proposed by Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner and Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid were both equally disingenuous, because they were calling a reduction of the overall increase in spending “cuts.”

“We have all these programs that are broke, and we have a discussion about the debt ceiling, but we are not talking about what is the real problem,” he said.

“What are the problems?” Coburn continued. We have 100 different programs with 100 sets of bureaucracies for surface transportation alone. Why do we do that? Why have we not fixed it? That is a question the American people ought to be asking.”

A moment later, Senator John Kerry (D-MA) asked if Coburn would “yield for a question.” He agreed with Conrad about the inefficiency of governmental structure, and then pointed out that Coburn himself had been a member of the “Gang of Six” senators who had developed a bipartisan fiscal strategy in the form of a “grand bargain.”

Kerry asked Coburn “if it is not fair and accurate to say that the so-called Gang of Six...came together with an understanding that we needed balance in the approach to satisfy both sides and build a critical mass. That balance requires cuts. We have to put the big items – big ticket items on the table, and that means Social Security, reforming it for the long term; Medicare and Medicaid, which are unsustainable on their current paths; defense, where we have to find a handle on some of the procurement and expenditures. The Senator [Coburn] has joined in this. We have to close some tax loopholes and have tax reform and find some level of revenue at an appropriate ratio that allows us to fix this. That is where the problem has been. There is a group of folks in the House who have insisted no revenue at all.”

“Quite frankly,” Coburn responded, “I am willing to work with my colleagues. I have been out there. I said we have to move and eliminate some of these loopholes; we have to reform the tax code. I am willing to take heat from my side on that.”

“What I am not willing to take anymore is a Senate that will not work on the details of the specific problems,” he said. “What I am trying to do is outline where the problems are.”

Coburn explained that he didn't consider Washington's fiscal troubles a partisan problem. “Our deal is that we don't have the courage to actually make the cuts listed in here. We don't have the courage to eliminate the waste, and we don't have the courage to eliminate the duplication. Why? Because every one of these programs has a political backing. We are politicians. Unfortunately, too often, we are that instead of statesmen. It is time for us - both sides - to lead this country, to lead the country in a vision of here is the real truth of our problem.”

“We need to be doing the right things at the right time for the right reasons, considering that we make sure we take care of those who need it and demand participation from everyone else,” he added.

Kerry redirected Coburn's attention to the debt ceiling. “I am trying to help us get out of this predicament where we have a couple days before the United States defaults,” he said. “Everything the Senator has said is worthy of inquiry.”

“Isn't the key to resolving this crisis and not defaulting our ability to be able to come together on a sufficient trigger or some sufficient mechanism that guarantees we are actually going to deal with this in a similar fashion to what the Senator is raising?” Kerry asked.

“I don't disagree that those negotiations are going on as we speak,” Coburn said. “I am not a party to them.... We are not going to decide that. That will come to us for a decision. Look, I worked for a long number of months with my colleagues from the other side of the aisle. I put my name on a bill that doesn't fix it, but it was something to get us moving. It is better than where we are today. I agree with the Senator. But that is not good enough. We are not good enough yet to be where we need to be if we are actually going to solve the problem.”

A second inter-party exchange occurred on July 31 when John McCain (R-AZ) invited Dick Durbin (D-IL) to have a “colloquy” with him.

“Does the Senator from Illinois believe we are close to an agreement?” McCain asked.

“I hope so,” Durbin said.

Illinois Senator Dick Durbin. Photograph by Adam Fagen.

“Does the Senator from Illinois agree that, most likely, that agreement will not have an increase in taxes associated with it, at least in the short term?”

“I hope not.”

“You hope so?”

Durbin clarified: “I hope there is revenue included in any agreement.”

“Well, everything I have heard is that the agreement does not have tax increases in it. Has the Senator heard differently, being in the leadership?” McCain wondered.

“I honestly am not party to this,” Durbin replied. “But I can tell the Senator, as the Gang of Six and fiscal commission [Durbin sat on both commissions], we believe everything should be under consideration to reduce our national debt.”

“So I assume that would also mean the Senator from Illinois would advocate another stimulus package?” McCain countered.

“I wish to make sure we have some stimulus to the economy to create jobs and help those out of work find work with training and education,” Durbin said.

“So one would have to assume that the Senator from Illinois believes the last stimulus package was successful, which was, counting interest, over $1 trillion,” McCain said. “The Senator from Illinois and others who advocated the stimulus package and the administration said, 'If we pass this, unemployment will be a maximum of 8 percent. This will stimulate our economy and create jobs.'”

“Do you know what the Senator from Illinois and others are saying now?” he continued. “'It was not enough, that it was not enough, that we didn't make the deficit larger.' Because certainly nothing in the stimulus package was paid for. So I hope the Senator from Illinois understands – the American people understand – that just spending more money has failed and failed miserably.”

Durbin met McCain's challenge with one of his own. “I think one of the real bedrock beliefs among Republicans is that if we cut taxes, particularly on the wealthiest people in America, the economy will prosper. We hear that over and over,” he said.

“Didn't we try that experiment under President George W. Bush? Didn't the debt of the United States double under the President - and he left a shambles behind him, 2.3 million jobs lost in the first three months of President Obama's administration because of this failed economic policy which the Senator continues to espouse; that if we cut taxes on the rich, America is going to get wealthier. Haven't we tried it? Where are the jobs?”

McCain agreed. “The spending that went on in the previous administration was not acceptable and led to the deficit. But I would also say, speaking for myself, I voted against the Medicare Part D because it was not paid for. I voted against the earmark and porkbarrel spendings which were abundant as every appropriations bill came to the floor and dramatically increased spending in the worst way, wasteful and corrupt way, I will say. I am proud that at least some of us said: 'If we don't stop this spending and get it under control, then we are going to face a serious problem.'”

However, he added, “it has gotten a lot worse – a lot worse – since the last election. You can't keep up B-I-O-B. You can't keep up Blame It On Bush.”

As Kerry had done the day before, Durbin steered the conversation toward the matter immediately at hand. “Does the Senator believe that defaulting on our national debt for the first time in our history, which has been the threat looming over us from the House Republicans and others for a long period, is good for America's economy?”

Durbin pointed out that one of McCain's colleagues “on the floor from the State of Pennnsylvania has come in and said, 'Listen, defaulting on the debt is not that big a deal.' It can be, in his words, 'easily managed.' Does the Senator from Arizona agree with that thinking?”

“As the Senator may know,” McCain answered, “I came to the floor a couple days ago and made the comment that the Senator from Illinois and I are in agreement.”

“We can prioritize for a while where we want what remaining money that is left,” he said. “But the message we send to the world – not just our markets but to the world – that the United States is going to default on its debts is a totally unacceptable scenario and beneath a great nation.”

As for the tactic by House Republicans to force passage of a balanced budget amendment, McCain said “it was not only a wrong assessment; I think it is not fair to the American people to say we can pass a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution through the Senate at this time.”

“I would just say it pains me to say I agree with the Senator from Arizona, but I do,” Durbin said.

“We both feel threatening the debt ceiling is not in the best interests of the United States and both of us feel that holding out the threat that if we don't pass a constitutional amendment, we can't let the economy continue is not a good-faith bargain.”

Before they finished, McCain and Durbin agreed on one further point: they both wished that Senators would engage in cross-party exchanges on the floor more frequently.

That would be a bipartisan deal I could get behind.

Important Books: The Voyage of the Beagle

Darwin was extremely interested in geology. He produced this drawing of a “volcanic bomb” from the island of St. Helena in The Voyage of the Beagle. “Not only their external form, but, in several cases, their internal structure shows in a very curious manner that they have revolved in their aerial course,” he writes.

In the conclusion to his book, The Voyage of the Beagle, Charles Darwin writes, “it appears to me that nothing can be more improving to a young naturalist, than a journey in distant countries.”

He couldn’t have known at the time just how true those words were - for himself. The observations he made while sailing with the English ship H.M.S. Beagle would provide an underpinning for Darwin when he later formulated his theory of evolution.

The five-year expedition, under the command of Captain Robert FitzRoy, had two official purposes: to conduct a charting survey of the South American continent, and to run chronometric readings around the planet. Darwin acted as the crew’s naturalist, collecting specimens of plants and animals everywhere the ship traveled. He took copious notes concerning the geology of the places he visited.

During the trip he explored the shores of Brazil, the high plains of Patagonia, the fjords of Tierra del Fuego, the Chilean Andes, the deserts of Peru, as well as Tahiti, New Zealand, and Australia.

The Voyage of the Beagle is arranged in roughly the same chronology as that of the survey itself. There were some places, such as Montevideo, that Darwin journeyed to more than once; he often consolidates these portions of the trip into a single chapter, which can make the order of some events confusing.

The book reveals that Darwin was thinking deeply about the origins of the world’s species long before he formalized his most important theory. Most famously, he was confounded by the wealth of rare creatures to be found in the Galapagos Archipelago. With palpable astonishment, he writes:

“Why, on these small points of land, which within a late geological period must have been covered by the ocean, which are formed by basaltic lava, and therefore differ in geological character from the American continent, and which are placed under a peculiar climate, why were their aboriginal inhabitants, associated, I may add, in different proportions both in kind and in number from those on the continent, and therefore acting on each other in a different manner – why were they created on American types of organization?”

Darwin would answer his own question two decades later.

In addition to his meticulous descriptions of creatures and their habitats, Darwin recorded numerous observations of the cultural practices in each region where he went ashore. Many of these are personal anecdotes, told through the lens of an educated Englishman brought up at the height of the empire’s success. He comments approvingly of the productive potential of Brazil’s untouched landscape, and lauds the Chileans for their industrious mining efforts.

Still, Darwin bucked many of the commonly held beliefs of his own time. He continually laments the injustice of slavery throughout the narrative, and points out how, in some regions, the European settlers enjoyed a high standard of living by conscripting natives as low-wage laborers. Although he typically views “civilized” men as superior to “savages,” he seems to prefer the effort by many in his time to bring modernity to indigenous populations, rather than simply taking them over.

Although the book is primarily a scientific endeavor, the enthusiasm that Darwin felt towards the natural world comes across strongly through his storytelling. For instance, when crossing the Pacific, he was fascinated by the role of corals in building atolls and barrier reefs. He writes of these structures:

“We feel surprise when travelers tell us of the vast dimensions of the Pyramids and other great ruins, but how utterly insignificant are the greatest of these, when compared to these mountains of stone accumulated by the agency of various minute and tender animals! This is a wonder which does not at first strike the eye of the body, but, after reflection, the eye of reason.”

Both that wonder and that ability to reason are on full display in The Voyage of the Beagle.

Tips on Arguing: Don't Exaggerate

Image by Brandon T. Bisceglia.

Arguments lend themselves to hyperbole, especially when they become heated. You’ve probably had an experience similar to this: you’re trying to prove a point to a friend who refuses to see the err of his or her ways. Out of frustration you begin to exaggerate the details of the situation, until your case begins to look like a matter of life-and-death. You finally convince the other person.

But as you walk away, a voice in the back of your mind tells you that your friend now has an over-inflated and oversimplified sense of the argument – that you’ve given him or her an inaccurate picture.

There’s a real danger to allowing the facts to get blown out of proportion. Like the children’s game of telephone, the next person your friend talks to is likely to get an even more warped version of the story than the one you told. After a few iterations, the idea itself may become utterly ridiculous to those who hear it – and the people who tell it may look like nuts.

Debates in the summer of 2009 over the nature of government-sponsored health care are a classic example of this. Folks on the political right who could have made viable arguments to defend their beliefs based on economics, constitutional principles, and common sense instead turned to exaggeration in order to rile the emotions of the electorate.

The result? Comparisons of president Obama’s administration to Nazism. Claims that Britain would have allowed Stephen Hawking to die, rather than pay to treat his amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) – despite the fact that Hawking is British. Protests about non-existent “death panels.” And ultimately, the complete loss of respect for the legitimate activists in the conservative arena, whose well-reasoned objections got drowned in the din.

It can be difficult to rein your arguments in when you feel passionate about something. If you don’t do it, though, you run the risk of undermining the validity of your entire position. Staying rooted firmly in the facts and avoiding uninformed speculation will, in the end, do more of a service for your argument than any overblown rhetoric.

The Inanity of Ethnicity

My wife was born in Uruguay, a Spanish-speaking constitutional republic with one of the most historically stable governments in South America. Uruguayans live in an European culture; all of the native populations were long ago eradicated from the Eastern banks of the Rio de la Plata.

My wife can trace her own family's lineage back to Spain, France, and other areas in Western Europe.

After a childhood in the capital of Montevideo, she spent significant portions of her youth in Italy and England, studying at Cambridge before coming to the United States.

In some ways, her time in Europe has distanced her from others who were born in Uruguay. Her accent is unaccountable - a truly global amalgam cobbled together of grade-school English lessons by Spanish-speaking teachers, training in the formal British style, and extended exposure to American idiom.

In other ways, though, she retains the vestigial traditions of her youth. When Uruguay's players became the only non-European team to advance to the semi-finals at the World Cup in 2010, she was as glued to the games as any fan at the Plaza Independencia. (Soccer is huge in Uruguay - they hosted and won the first-ever World Cup in 1930.)

At Branch Brook Park in Newark, NJ during the annual cherry blossom festival.
Photograph by Brandon T. Bisceglia.

I am, on the other hand, more of a mutt. Although the bulk of my ancestors come from a virtual continental tour of northern and Western Europe, my father's side of the family also contains a dab of Native American. By any genealogical standard, my wife is the "dominant" European-American, and I am the ethnic minority.

Yet that is not how our society perceives us. I have pale skin, light brown hair, and a southern New England lilt. She has (slightly) darker skin, black-brown hair, and that inexplicable-but-unmistakable accent.

In this country, she receives the designation of "Hispanic," and I get labeled as the Caucasian. Never mind that neither of those terms has any logical meaning - we have to put something on the Census form.

When people meet us they immediately tailor their questions to their presumptions about our backgrounds. This occurs whether we're speaking with other "Hispanics" or "Caucasians."

Does that make us part of the growing trend of "interracial" marriage in the United States? As it is, first-generation Hispanic immigrants tend to view themselves as "white" at a higher rate than their own children do, making the question that much more intractable.

That these arbitrary (and often inaccurate) characterizations are still so entrenched into and codified by our institutions bothered me long before I got married, but they’ve grown more irksome to me since then. I didn’t fall in love with a Latina – I fell in love with a specific human being, unlike any other.

It is vital that we retain a historical memory of our past traditions, of course. It is helpful to know where you come from in order to understand the circumstances into which you are born.

But I also believe that each of us should be free to chart our own course from there. Ethnic identifications assure you of nothing about a person. I was born in Connecticut, yet I drink yerba mate, a caffeinated drink that's as popular in Uruguay as coffee is here. My wife, however, prefers uncaffeinated chamomile tea. Q.E.D.

Important Books: The Feminine Mystique

Betty Friedan in 1960. Photograph by Fred Palumbo, World Telegram staff photographer. Courtesy of Library of Congress New York World-Telegram & Sun Collection.

The Feminine Mystique was the seminal book of the women’s movement of the 1960’s. Journalist Betty Friedan exploded a myth that had seeped into post-war American culture: that a woman’s greatest potential could be found in the role of housewife and mother, and that the pursuit of any other goals would detract from this glorified position in society.

A housewife and mother herself, Friedan had begun to notice in the late 1950’s that many of the women she spoke to felt trapped and useless, though they couldn’t explain why. Many were middle-class, college-educated, with well-off husbands, healthy children, and beautiful homes in the growing suburbs. They had everything that they had been told they should want as women, most having voluntarily left college and career to start families. Yet they were, as Friedan noted, “desperate.”

The Feminine Mystique systematically deconstructs the image of the “happy housewife hero,” exploring its roots in pseudo-psychology, advertising, and the residual sexual segregationist attitudes that had pushed back against the suffrage movement that won women the vote in the United States in 1920. The mystique, she argues, encourages self-imposed cultural oppression.

Just underneath the veneer of the mystique, however, much darker trends were forming: increases in suicides, alcoholism, tranquilizer use, and other problems. Friedan argues in the book that these propensities were damaging not only to women, but to men and society as a whole.

At times, Friedan lets speculation carry her a little too far. She blames the mystique for the increasingly “overt manifestations” of homosexuality in men, positing that it causes women to engage in a “passive, childlike immaturity which is passed on from mothers to sons…” At one point, she even wonders whether the apparent rise in psychological disorders such as autism are a product of the mystique (though she is careful in this instance to point out that the experts suspected that earlier and better diagnosis was the most likely explanation).

Such speculation only shows that Friedan was, as she says of Sigmund Freud’s own mistaken explanations of Victorian women, “a prisoner of his culture.” Homosexuality was still listed in medical texts as a psychological disease, and autism was only beginning to be understood. On most matters, the book is perceptive and challenging – and did such an apt job of putting words to the inexpressible malaise so many women at the time were feeling that it helped spark a major social revolution.

Tips on Arguing: Avoid Hypocrisy

Hypocrisy is generally defined as saying one thing while doing something that contradicts it. It can be summed up in the phrase, “practice what you preach.”

Safeguarding against hypocrisy is a boost to any argument you make. When you profess to believe in something, people will look for concrete examples of that belief. If they see that you aren’t following your own example, then they may conclude that you have some other motive for what you say, such as getting money or support from a certain group.

Just because someone acts hypocritically doesn’t mean that his or her argument is invalid. A smoker who discourages her children from smoking has good reasons for doing so. Those reasons are not cancelled out by the smoker’s habit.

Hypocrisy does, however, tend to undermine the arguer by complicating his or her claims, and that’s why it helps to avoid acting contradictorily.

Avoiding hypocrisy can be more difficult than it sounds at first. In the course of our lives, we frequently change our positions on multiple issues. Someone who is a heroin addict at 18 but becomes a drug counselor at 28 might be accused of hypocrisy. Strictly speaking, though, the accusation would be wrong – the former addict’s change of action would be consistent with his change of opinion.

There are also different levels of hypocrisy. For example, the Connecticut Post published an assessment of Bridgeport Mayor Bill Finch’s “greenness” on Earth Day. Finch was quoted as saying that he liked taking the train to keep his carbon footprint low. Yet according to the article, Finch had opted to fly (a much less fuel-efficient method of travel) on three out of five trips over the past year to Washington, D.C. He only took the train twice.

If this is a major hypocrisy, another note from the article could be thought of as a minor contradiction: Finch’s family composts most of their biodegradable waste. On the day that the reporter was in his home, though, there were some cornhusks in the trash.

If the occasional item misses the compost pile, does it negate the vast majority that makes it in?

Finch admits that he’s “not perfect.” Perhaps in the quest to eliminate hypocrisy, it’s best to realize that his statement applies to all of us.

Did the Dutch Influence America's Governmental Institutions?

New Amsterdam, the early Dutch settlement that would later become New York as it appeared in 1651. The drawing appeared in Arnoldus Montanus's "De Nieuwe en Onbekende Weereld" in 1671.

Although the Netherlands had begun to colonize the North American continent as early as 1609 (1), they remained a minority ethnic enclave in the New York and New Jersey areas throughout the pre-unification days preceding the Revolutionary War. They were already under British rule by the time of American Independence, and had adjusted somewhat to certain English sentiments.

Many Dutch colonists nonetheless retained some of the ideas brought from their former homeland. Furthermore, American merchants, intellectuals, and politicians were well aware of Dutch culture, and the colonies had been on friendly terms with Holland for much of their history. Such contact and knowledge carries with it a high likelihood that the process of American nation-building was influenced by Dutch precedents. John Adams himself wrote that, “The originals of the two republics [Dutch and American] are so much alike that a page from one seems but a transcript from the other...” (2)

During the Revolutionary War, the Dutch colonists were instrumental in the patriots’ victory. In his article “The Dutch-American Guerrillas of the American Revolution,” William Marina notes that “the most accurate appraisal is that the Jersey Dutch Whig majority was solidly in favor of defending American rights.”

“Early in 1775,” he says, “New Jersey was one of those states that made the transition from Royal to revolutionary government ‘without the firing of a gun.’” (3)

Despite years of good relations with England, the Netherlands also sided with the Americans during the fight for independence. George M. Welling explains in his book The United States of America and the Netherlands:

“The city of Amsterdam in the meantime, however, started its negotiations with the Americans in secret. A plan was drafted for a treaty of trade and friendship to become effective as soon as Holland would recognize the independence of the United States. But by then relations between Holland and England had deteriorated still further on the issue of the Dutch trade with the rebels. When England got hold of a copy of the secret treaty, it used it as a pretext to declare war on the Netherlands.” (4)

Holland was the second country (after France) to join the battle on the American side, and it was the second to officially recognize American Independence, in 1782 (5). From both inside and out, the Dutch played a pivotal part in the actual effort that made the U.S. a sovereign society in the first place.

When the war ended and America was left with the task of constructing a constitution for itself, all delegates, including those from New York and New Jersey, contributed. The Dutch colonies had been lost to the British in 1664 (6). However, these colonists stayed connected to Holland and did not forget some of the peculiar institutions they had brought with them. One freedom this ethnic group had brought which did not exist in England was the free press. This concept was one of the tools used to spark and fuel the Revolution, and later made it into the first Amendment of the Bill of Rights (7).

Also present in the First Amendment are the words: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…’ (8) Although religious tolerance was promoted in a few other colonies, the level of religious liberty granted by the Constitution most closely follows the precedent set by New Netherland. According to Eric Foner, author of Give Me Liberty: An American History, “Most striking was the religious freedom that attracted to New Netherland a population far more diverse than the Chesapeake or New England… Religious toleration was extended not only to Protestants but also Catholics and, grudgingly, to Jews.” (9)

Some sources have attributed a myriad of other early American institutions to Dutch origins. In 1915, The Nation published a review of a paper written by H. A. Van C. Torchiana titled “Holland: An Historical Essay.” Torchiana is said to have enumerated a number of colonial inheritances:

“Even in American pre-national and colonial days, ‘we find a certain unity of political ideas’ – freedom of religious belief, proclaimed by William the Silent in 1577; ‘no taxation without representation,’ enunciated by the Netherlands in 1477; a comprehensive school system supported by taxation, easily traced in Holland to the thirteenth century and made general after the Reformation; written Constitutions, of which the Union of Utrecht, made in 1579, was one; and the supremacy of the judiciary, which in the low countries was a fixed principle in the time of Charles V.” (10)

Critics meanwhile have downplayed the strength of the connections between the American and Dutch societal developments. Sydney George Fisher argued instead that American institutions were the organic and unique products of individual circumstances. He believed that conscious influence on the Constitution by Dutch example is highly overrated:

“If it really had been an imitation from the Dutch, there would be some evidence of it in the debates of the Constitutional Convention. The Dutch resemblance would have been urged by some as a reason in its favor and by others as a reason against it. Afterwards, when the Constitution was before the people for adoption and closely discussed and criticised in numerous pamphlets and newspapers, the Dutch imitation, if there had been one, would have been surely referred to either by friends or by enemies.” (11)

Americans may not have had the Netherlands specifically in mind when they formed their new government. Even so, it is clear that Holland had at least an indirect impact on the American system. After all, Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution guarantees “every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.” (12) Years before, the Netherlands had been the first to pioneer such a foundational administrative style.

References:

1. Eric Foner. Give Me Liberty! An American History. Seagull Edition, Volume 1. (New York: Norton and Company, 2006) 74
2. Adams, Charles Francis. The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States. Vol. VII. (Boston: Little, Borwn and Company, 1852) 400
3. William Marina. “The Dutch-American Guerillas of the American Revolution.” May 1, 1983.
4. George M. Welling. The United States of America and the Netherlands.
5. Ibid.
6. Eric Foner. Give Me Liberty! An American History. Seagull Edition, Volume 1. (New York: Norton and Company, 2006) 83
7. Constitution of the United States of America.
8. Ibid.
9. Eric Foner. Give Me Liberty! An American History. Seagull Edition, Volume 1. (New York: Norton and Company, 2006) 75-76
10. Paul Elder. “Origins of American Institutions.” Published in The Nation. October 28, 1915. 523
11. Sydney George Fisher. The Evolution of the Constitution of the United States. (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippencott, 1897)
12. Constitution of the United States of America.

Mineralogy at Sterling Hill

This is the first of three pieces about the Sterling Hill Mining Museum. This article focuses on the mineral collection. The next post will explore the history of the mine, and the final installment will explain what visitors can expect to find at the museum today.

I am fortunate to be married to someone who shares my enthusiasm for science. This year, my wife and I spent a weekend at the Sterling Hill Mining Museum in Ogdensburg, NJ for our two-year anniversary.

The museum is located on the grounds of what was formerly one of the most productive zinc mines in the state. It is also the “world capital” of fluorescent minerals – the area has produced over 80 varieties, and others may still be buried, undiscovered, in sections of the hillsides.

When operation costs drove the mine out of business in the 1980's, it was converted into a center for education about history and science. The primary focus is on geology and mineralogy, but there are displays to teach visitors about such things as chemistry, and the Ellis Astronomical Observatory also makes its home on the property.

In addition to minerals from the local mines, Sterling Hill hosts a huge collection of rare and interesting minerals from all over the world, many of them fluorescent.

On Friday night, we were treated to a tour of the mines by longtime museum volunteer Bill Kroth, followed by a session at the telescope he runs. On Saturday, we again visited the museum.

Willemite (Zn2SiO4) is the most common fluorescent mineral found in the Sterling Hill mine. Indeed, the predominance of this form of zinc silicate ore makes the Franklin and Sterling Hill mines unique.

A large sheet of willemite (green) with fluorescent calcite (red) from the mine.

A slab of sphalerite (ZnS), garnet and hornblende found 900 feet below ground in the Sterling Hill mine. Sphalerite is one of the main precursors of willemite. It is transformed through one of two means: by oxidation in a siliceous (silicon-rich) environment, or by alteration from hydrothermal veins. New Jersey's willemite was made via the latter process.

Willemite lining the walls of the mine.

Scheelite (CaWO4) from Trumbull, CT. The fluorescence is due to tungstate ions.

Meionite (Ca4Al6Si6O24(CO3)) from Grenville, Quebec. It fluoresces yellow in short-wave ultraviolet (UV) light, and red in long-wave UV light.

One of several unusual malachite (Cu2(CO3)(OH)2) samples. This piece originated from Lubumbashi in the Haut-Katanga Province of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The area is known for its copper, in which malachite typically forms.

Fluorite (CaF2) embedded in calcite (CaCO3) from the Nikolaeskiy mine in Dal'negorsk, Primorskiy Kray, Russia.

This calcite specimen comes from the Romanian mining town of Cavnic.

The Deadliest Chemical

It's in your home, in the air, and in virtually every aquifer on the planet. It contributes to the spread of diseases and the destruction of weather disasters. It directly kills thousands of people each year.

Several municipalities have tried and failed to ban dihydrogen monoxide (DHMO) over the last twenty years. Yet neither the FDA nor the EPA are likely to curtail its omnipresence any time soon.

That's because DHMO is just a rarely used chemical name for water. The effort to ban it was part of a popular hoax perpetrated in the 1990’s meant to demonstrate the public’s lack of scientific knowledge.

In 1994, University of California, Santa Cruz student Craig Jackson advanced the hoax and created what would become dhmo.org, a parody website that approaches water as if it were a dangerous chemical. Among other hazards, the website lists the following reasons to be wary:

- Death due to accidental inhalation of DHMO, even in small quantities.
- Prolonged exposure to solid DHMO causes severe tissue damage.
- Excessive ingestion produces a number of unpleasant though not typically life-threatening side-effects.
- DHMO is a major component of acid rain.
- Gaseous DHMO can cause severe burns.
- Contributes to soil erosion.
- Leads to corrosion and oxidation of many metals.
- Contamination of electrical systems often causes short-circuits.
- Exposure decreases effectiveness of automobile brakes.
- Found in biopsies of pre-cancerous tumors and lesions.
- Given to vicious dogs involved in recent deadly attacks.
- Often associated with killer cyclones in the U.S. Midwest and elsewhere, and in hurricanes including deadly storms in Florida, New Orleans and other areas of the southeastern U.S.
- Thermal variations in DHMO are a suspected contributor to the El Nino weather effect.

Photograph by Brandon T. Bisceglia

What is most interesting about this pseudoscientific approach is that, despite two decades of fame, the joke continues to cause alarm among those who fail to do the most basic background research. According to a 2004 article by the Associated Press, city council officials in the town of Aliso Viejo, California became so concerned about it when a misinformed paralegal brought the matter to their attention, “that they considered banning foam cups after they learned the chemical was used in their production.”

As recently as 2007, the New Zealand Herald reported that Otago Prime Minister Jacqui Dean tried to ban DMHO in her province. She was the second MP in the country to get behind such a campaign without knowing what was really being supported.

Although it was meant to be lighthearted, the DHMO phenomenon bears the typical hallmarks of other serious campaigns that have pseudoscientific foundations. It's a revealing – if frightening - insight into how some politicians and activists operate. Understanding why anti-DHMO arguments make no sense can help us to see how skewing the facts can lead to faulty conclsions.

First, we must break the argument down into its component parts, since it is actually two separate claims. The first is that DMHO is a dangerous chemical, and the second, that it ought to be banned.

While all of the points that Jackson makes on his website are technically correct, they misdirect the reader by needlessly stoking fears that would be uncalled for if one knew the actual nature of the substance. In truth, common sense keeps us safe from many of water’s hazardous effects, while allowing us to enjoy its vast range of benefits.

Take, for instance, the claim that DHMO is found in biopsies of pre-cancerous tumors and lesions. This fact means nothing on its own, but many who read it are liable to conflate correlation with causation, assuming that because it was found in tumors, it must be contributing to disease. Upon closer scrutiny, even the correlation is weak – otherwise one would expect to find that consuming less water would decrease the incidence of pre-cancerous tumors and lesions, which it does not.

This is the same kind of mistake that anti-vaccination proponents make about thimerosal and autism. Removal of the preservative did not cause autism rates to fall, but the assumption of causation remains prevalent among groups opposed to vaccines. Such diversions can have a far higher cost than the risk posed by the products being railed against, as evidenced by the needless resurgence of measles and other preventable diseases in wealthy countries like the U.S. and the U.K.

DMHO does become dangerous in certain situations. Boiling water can burn you; floods, hurricanes, and blizzards (all of which contain a lot of water) have killed thousands throughout history.

Under normal conditions, however, our interactions with water are quite safe. We drink it, bathe in it, and swim in it. If we consider the ratio between our safe encounters with water and the encounters that do us harm, the relative risk is extremely small.

This does not mean, however, that risks ought to be ignored. We are taught from a young age not to stick our hands in boiling water, not to keep electrical appliances near our bathtubs, and to stay indoors during hurricanes. These precautionary measures are important, though they only account for a small piece of the overall picture.

Once we understand the relative safety of water, it appears evident that it should not be banned. Moreover, because the benefits of interacting with water (it is largely responsible for our continued survival) far outweigh the potential risks, such legislative mandates could only cause more harm to citizens than good.

In the case of DHMO, it should also be mentioned that the sheer infeasibility of a ban ought to stop any legislation before it gets off the ground. How does one make rain illegal? It is in exploring this aspect of the process, in fact, where many of the government officials who get duped into campaigning against water find out that they’ve erred.

Pseudoscience is a two-way street; the interpretation of the facts often matters as much as their presentation. If fallacious logic and cleverly cherry-picked facts can lead to unfounded fears about something as obviously benign as water, it should be no surprise that people fall prey to misrepresentations of more complex issues, such as vaccination, evolution and climate change.

Memorial Day Parade Comes to Stratford: Photos

Stratford veterans wave at onlookers from atop an eagle-adorned float.

Members of the Stratford High band.

Students from Wilcoxson Elementary School carry the fifty states across Stratford.

Cub scouts ride down the street in their pine-box derby racers.

The line of parade marchers passes under the train tracks.

The parade is an advertising opportunity for some local businesses.

Street vendors spend every Memorial Day trekking up and down the streets.

The Creek tribe’s representatives toss candy to children waiting on the sidelines.

The Kickapoo tribe’s bubble machine.

Kids scramble for candy as the parade moves on.

All photographs by Brandon T. Bisceglia

Predictions, Patents and Politics in the Birth of News Radio

During his lifetime, science fiction writer Jules Verne dreamed up many futuristic technologies that could be used to explore new territories and expand the social progress of the human race. Over and over again, his imagined inventions became reality, often being used in an uncannily similar fashion to the way that he first described them.

One of Verne's most interesting conceptions was that of a new kind of news delivery system that involved reporters reading the news directly to their audiences – what we would now recognize as live news broadcasting. At the time he wrote about this upcoming technique, he placed it a thousand years into the future.

Little did he realize that several inventors were already on the cusp of creating the devices that would lead to the era of radio broadcasting. It would take less than half a century before newsrooms around the world were doing almost exactly what Verne had described. Radio technology would become so popular, in fact, that it would lead to a 40-year battle between two intellectual heavyweights over patent filings that would determine who got credit for the invention.

In 1889, Verne published a fanciful essay in the Forum titled “In the Year 2889” that walked the reader through a day in the life of a news baron named Fritz Napoleon Smith who owned the world's largest daily “paper,” the Earth Chronicle. Smith was so successful in part because he had developed a novel system for delivering the news to subscribers:

“Instead of being printed, the Earth Chronicle is every morning spoken to subscribers, who, in interesting conversations with reporters, statesmen, and scientists, learn the news of the day. Furthermore, each subscriber owns a phonograph, and to this instrument he leaves the task of gathering the news whenever he happens not to be in a mood to listen directly himself. As for purchasers of single copies, they can at a very trifling cost learn all that is in the paper of the day at any of the innumerable phonographs set up nearly everywhere.”

Image courtesy of wondersmith.com/scifi

Verne wrote that Smith had created this system of news delivery in his own era with the aid of “telephony,” which had been developed only one hundred years previously. In both the mode of delivery and the amount of time it would take to become reality he was mistaken.

Alexander Graham Bell had already spoken through the first working telephone to his associate, Thomas Watson, in March of 1876. Verne no doubt knew about the breakthrough, as over a decade had already passed by the time of his story. Although he did not specify how his version of telephony worked, it seems likely that Verne thought of it as a strictly “wired” technology, since that was still the primary way in which electrical impulses were being transmitted at the time.

Indeed, the New York Times reported in 1880 that new uses were being found for the telephone on a constant basis. One such use was involved reporters in Parliament for the London Times reading their reports directly to the compositor in the print office. “As the reporter in Parliament reads,” the article said, “the compositor in the printing office sets the type.”

It would not be a great leap from person-to-person calls to what might be termed a live “conference call” with reporters. Moreover, if Verne had been aware of the ambient way in which radio waves propagate, he is less likely to have posited that the news service could control subscriptions – anyone with a receiver can listen in on radio transmissions for free, rendering Verne's proposed business model obsolete.

There were people working on wireless systems around the time of Verne's publication, though. Nikola Tesla was one such inventor; Guglielmo Marconi was another. These two men would both file patents at the end of the nineteenth century for the key components of the radio.

U.S. Patent No. 645,576, for a “System of Transmission of Electrical Energy” was filed by Tesla in 1897 and approved on March 20, 1900. In it, he described a series of discoveries that he and other engineers had made about the ability of electrical impulses to pass unobstructed through the air. By devising a novel transmission-receiver apparatus with tightly wrapped conducting coils, he found that he was able to make use of this mode of electrical transport. He wrote:

“Expressed briefly, my present invention, based upon these discoveries, consists then in producing at one point an electrical pressure of such character and magnitude as to cause thereby a current to traverse elevated strata of the air between the point of generation and a distant point at which the energy is to be received and utilized.”
Tesla also noted that the devices could be rendered portable. He immediately saw a number of possible applications for his device, including to “transmit intelligible messages to great distances.”

Meanwhile, over in England, Marconi was working on a similar invention. Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Company received its first patent 1896. But when he brought it to the United States in November of 1900, he was rejected by the Patent Office because of Tesla's previous filing. He continued to file revised versions, which were all thrown out.

But Marconi wasn't beat yet. He made connections with investors, including Thomas Edison and Andrew Carnegie, who put their substantial weight behind Marconi's company on the stock market. The Patent Office reversed its decision on Marconi's patent without explanation in 1904, and he went on to win the Nobel Prize in 1911. Tesla sued Marconi in retaliation in 1915.

It was not until 1943 – after Tesla had died – that he finally won recognition for his invention. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld Tesla's patent, in part because Marconi's company was suing the U.S. Government for use of its patents during World War I.

Whether by Tesla or Marconi, the radio had been born. However, its potential in the news world – the application that Verne had envisioned – did not come to pass until several decades after the patent battles had begun.

Then, on November 2, 1920, radio manufacturer Westinghouse's KDKA station used the Associated Press's election returns to broadcast the results of the presidential race between Republican Warren G. Harding and Democrat James Cox from the top of the Pittsburgh Post's building. It was the fulfillment of Verne’s prophecy, a mere thirty years after he predicted it.

Within another decade, the radio phenomenon would be in full bloom. By the end of the century, newsrooms all over the world would look much like Smith’s, with reporters at stations reading live events out to the world as they happened. The news industry would also be populated with a myriad of technologies that Verne never predicted: television and the Internet would dominate the field, producing copious amounts of content for the world’s eager news consumers. In an ironic twist, telephones themselves eventually went wireless; today they represent a burgeoning new platform for news media. Radio, too, thrives among the milieu. Indeed, the world of 2011 is much richer than the world of 2889 that Verne imagined.

Posting More of Less

I never intended this blog to be a professional endeavor. I created it for finished thoughts, essays, and tidbits that didn’t fit neatly elsewhere.

As a result, my posting is sporadic. Most months, I might add two or three pieces. So far in 2011, there were no updates for February or April.

Thinking about this has led me to a now-common conundrum. As a writer, I prefer to toil in privacy, revising and retooling until the work is as precisely organized I can manage. But if I want to be noticed in the digital culture, I need to be putting out more material in places like this more regularly.

More material doesn’t mean better material; even the best blogs sacrifice finely tuned artful writing for roundups, updates, and links. It doesn’t mean that they’re badly written, and it certainly doesn’t mean that they’re useless. But they do exhibit an “unfinished” quality that was largely discouraged in the days of print culture.

Scarce resources used to restrict authors and publishers from putting anything out that hadn’t been vetted by multiple parties. That’s changing now that everyone with an Internet connection can type up unending missives for free.

The rise of Internet speech has cluttered the field for professional writers of all sorts, making competition stiffer and creating a feedback loop that increases demand for content.

There’s a limit to how much one person can do; past a certain point, even the best writer’s work will begin to suffer if he or she is too stretched.

Many of us cut corners to meet the new demands: a journalist spins one story into five different versions for various platforms. An author blogs parts of the book that he or she is working on, thus drumming up interest in advance of its release.

But most of this content would have been considered a kind of offal in an earlier era. The repetitions, reconfigurations and drafting all used to be part of the private process that would, after much effort, result in a finished public piece. Most of the time, those earlier notes and drafts would get tossed or filed on a dusty back shelf. Today they are front and center – and will be open to scrutiny for as long as the web lasts.

I’ve resisted contributing to this milieu partially because my thinking follows the print paradigm; I want my work to be the best it can be before anyone sees it (except perhaps a trusted advisor or relative).

Perhaps I should change my methodology, though. It may be too twentieth century.

On Wings of Wax

Flowers for Algernon, Awakenings, and Man's Brief Moments in the Sun

A comparison between the thematic arc of Daniel Keyes's fictional story Flowers for Algernon and the real-life accounts of post-encephalatic patients written by Dr. Oliver Sacks in Awakenings. This was originally given as a presentation for a course in science fiction as literature.

Tips on Arguing: Quote Mining

Quote mining is the alteration of the meaning of a person’s quote by taking it out of context or removing sections of the quote. It’s a disingenuous way to make it look like something someone said supports your position when, in fact, it does not.

Quote mining is easy to do if you’re creative about it. Consider the following passage:

“One day when we were kids, Charlie spent the afternoon stepping on ants in the driveway. He came into the house that evening with a guilty expression on his face. When his mother asked what was wrong, he admitted, ‘I’m a horrible person. I committed murder today! Poor ants.’”

In context, this passage is about an innocent child coming to terms with the world beyond himself.

Suppose now that you wanted to make Charlie seem more nefarious. By cutting out just a few choice sections, you could twist the meaning:

"He [Charlie] came into the house that evening with a guilty expression on his face. When his mother asked what was wrong, he admitted, ‘I’m a horrible person. I committed murder today!'"

Technically, the new quote is correct - the words are the same as the original. But notice how choosing to remove certain contextualizing phrases has corrupted our understanding of Charlie as a "murderer."

Academic creationists have become notorious for quote mining - so much so that the term came into popular language among scientists in the 1990's to describe how their own quotes were being dishonestly used to suggest that they had doubts about the validity of evolutionary science.

In 1996, biochemist and high-profile creationist Michael Behe published a popular book called Darwin's Black Box, which argued among other things that evolution could not account for certain biological structures, such as the bacterial flagellum. These parts, he claimed, were "irreducibly complex" - that is, if you removed any one piece, the whole thing would cease to function (a presumption that was promptly debunked by other biologists).

Behe tried to shore up his case by including numerous quotes in his book from evolutionary scientists that seemed to show how shaky the science of evolution was. On page 29, he quoted from a paper co-authored by Professor of Evolutionary Biology Jerry Coyne:

"We conclude--unexpectedly--that there is little evidence for the neo-Darwinian view: its theoretical foundations and the experimental evidence supporting it are weak."

Coyne responded quickly. In the February 1997 issue of the Boston Review, he wrote, "I went back to see exactly what Orr [Coyne's co-author] and I had written. It turns out that, in the middle of our sentence, Behe found a period that wasn't there."

What the paper had originally said was: "Although a few biologists have suggested an evolutionary role for mutations or large effect (Gould 1980; Maynard Smith 1983: Gottlieb, 1984; Turner, 1985), the neo-Darwinian view has largely triumphed, and the genetic basis of adaptation now receives little attention. Indeed, the question is considered so dead that few may know the evidence responsible for its demise.

"Here we review this evidence," the paper continued. "We conclude--unexpectedly--that there is little evidence for the neo-Darwinian view: its theoretical foundations and the experimental evidence supporting it are weak, and there is no doubt that mutations of large effect are sometimes important in adaptation."

Coyne added, "By inserting the period (and removing the sentence from its neighbors), Behe has twisted our meaning. Our discussion of one aspect of Darwinism--the relative size of adaptive mutations--has suddenly become a critique of the entire Darwinian enterprise. This is not sloppy scholarship, but deliberate distortion."

Quote mining is effective because few people ever go back to read the original sources. It's easy to do, since all quotes require selecting certain sentences to keep and others to omit. The goal, however, should always be accuracy. Mining for quotes does disservice to the reader, misrepresents the person being quoted, and makes the quote miner look more like a dishonest ditch digger.

What Americans Are Missing

Left: Jose Socrates (Reuters) Right: Smokey the Cat (Gather)

Portugal’s Prime Minister Jose Socrates resigned Wednesday night after Parliament rejected his proposed austerity measures for the country, prompting renewed worries about sovereign debt in the Euro Zone. The collapse of Portugal’s government means that it may become the third country in the EU after Greece and Ireland to require a bailout from its neighbors.

I decided after hearing about this to check Yahoo! News’s top stories, just to see what they thought the most important things for their readers to know about were. I used Yahoo! as a source because many people I know look there for news, and because it’s targeted at the “average” American audience.

Portugal was conspicuously absent from their feed. What was so compelling that it took precedence over a brewing international debt crisis? Here were the ten “winning” headlines:

- Mysterious moment during NHL game
- Smart, simple skin care tips for guys
- Is Smokey the loudest cat in the world?
- How Elizabeth Taylor became an icon
- Surprising write-offs the IRS allows
- [Michael] Jordan’s cool promise to his college team
- 119-year-old not recognized as oldest
- How Olsen twins created $1 billion empire
- ‘Uglytecture’ flaunts worst of NYC condos
- High tech cloud will cool World Cup fans

Can we say “penchant for frivolity?”