These are the voyages...

Time for something lighter to comment on rant about. I just finished watching the final Star Trek: Enterprise episode, "These are the voyages...". This was written by Rick Berman and Brannon Braga, the two gentlemen who brought the franchise to a premature end with their poor writing and incomprehensibly bad judgment. So, what would you write if you had the chance to end a Star Trek series?

Well, I may not be a fiction writer, but it seems to me that you'd want some emotional impact. What do Berman and Braga do? They do just about everything they can to suck all of the emotional impact out of the episode. First of all, they distance the audience emotionally from the plot and characters by having them all be just a programmed re-creation on the Star Trek: The Next Generation Enterprise-D's holodeck, viewed mostly by a smirking Riker as a means for him to decide some throw-away decision that's supposed to be hard to make but isn't presented in any way that makes the audience give a damn. Second, they break the action into little pieces as Riker repeatedly halts the simulation to go talk to Troi about this or that. Hell, technically, this isn't even an Enterprise episode, it's a strangely depopulated Next Generation one (sans Picard and the other recognizable cast members save Riker, Troi, and Data's voice).

Then, they commit what must be the number one cardinal sin of fiction writing: if you're going to kill off a major character, it's probably not a good idea to have someone mention it in passing ahead of time. Basically, the audience is just left wondering -- in an intellectual, rather than emotional, way -- how Trip will buy it. And when he does, not much time is spent on it. There's a little bit of sentimentality displayed by the characters afterwards, but they get over it quickly.

I won't even go into the internal inconsistencies, which were mind boggling. Suffice it to say that six years had supposedly passed from the preceding episodes (another way to reduce emotional impact), but nobody had changed, everyone had the same job, same rank, same clothes, etc. I guess Friday the 13th really was unlucky, for us fans.

Well, I feel better getting that off my chest. Let's hope there's no more Star Trek until Berman and Braga are retired for good. Sadly, we've learned that bad Trek is worse than no Trek.

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Welcome Skeptics

The eighth Skeptics' Circle is on line at Pharyngula, linked from the title above. For those of you who came from there, this post conveys no useful information (very different than most blog posts), so welcome.

Yahoo Introduces Online Music Service

OK, so Yahoo introduces an online music subscription service, and Apple stock tanks by nearly 10% before recovering some (as I write this, it's only down about 3.5%). A couple observations of mine:

• The reason Apple's stock went down is concern that the subscription approach will cut into iTunes music store sales. Is there any evidence for this? Do movie rentals cut into DVD sales? The linked AP story also says, "Many record label executives prefer the subscription approach, Leigh said, because consumers are more likely to sample songs from relatively unknown artists, a phenomenon that helps the industry create more moneymaking stars." I believe the part about the record companies preferring subscriptions, but not for the reason they give. They prefer it because it generates an ongoing revenue stream, while music sales require continuous generation of new, desirable content.
• Part of this announcement is the new platform war. Many software vendors produce Windows-only, because they feel the Mac's (or Linux's) market share doesn't justify the expense of an additional version. Here, however, you have Yahoo (like the other subscription services) targetting Microsoft-DRM-only players. In other words, they are building a business model that ignores the dominant portable digital music platform, the iPod. The only rationale behind this would be the expectation that the iPod's market share will drop significantly, and fairly soon. Note that there's no technical reason, other than choice of DRM system, for excluding the iPod -- Yahoo's software could deposit downloads into the iTunes software's library (like podcast software does), and the interaction with the iPod would be pretty seamless. Since people who prefer to buy and own, rather than rent, music will have no incentive to go with Yahoo, I see Yahoo splitting the non-iPod subscription market, rather than taking market share from Apple.

Grading by the pound

Continuing on the theme of formulaic evaluation of papers is the article linked from this post's title, which describes evaluation of the new SAT essay. Apparently, the motto for this part of the exam must be "bigger is better". Better than getting the facts correct, even. Consider this quote of Les Perelman's (a director of undergrad writing at MIT):

He was stunned by how complete the correlation was between length and score. "I have never found a quantifiable predictor in 25 years of grading that was anywhere near as strong as this one," he said. The shortest essays, typically 100 words, got the lowest grade of one. The longest, about 400 words, got the top grade of six. In between, there was virtually a direct match between length and grade.

One might think that the College Board is using exactly the same software to do their grading as I blogged about here.

Meanwhile, the downward slide of SAT verbal scores continues, noticeable despite the attempt by the College to obscure it by renormalizing the scores in 1995.

Computer grading of student writing

Click on the title to see a USA Today article on software used to automate grading of student papers. Then consider what a colleague of mine has to say about the crappiness of the grammar checker in Microsoft Word. A choice quote from the USA Today article:

When the University of California at Davis tried out such technology a couple years back, lecturer Andy Jones decided to try to trick e-Rater.

Prompted to write on workplace injuries, Jones instead input a letter of recommendation, substituting "risk of personal injury" for the student's name.

"My thinking was, 'This is ridiculous, I'm sure it will get a zero,'" he said.

He got a five out of six.

A second time around, Jones scattered "chimpanzee" throughout the essay, guessing unusual words would yield him a higher score.

He got a six.

Maybe this is what the WMCSCI people use to referee papers.

Intelligent Design's argument from ignorance

I'm very much struck by the observation in the blog linked from the title above that the bulk of the "Intelligent Design" (ID) creationists' arguments are actually arguments from ignorance. Basically, they say things like, "Nature is so complex; I can't see how this complexity could have occurred in the absence of purposeful design by some supernatural being." An argument from ignorance says that, since I don't know or understand something, it must be false. Clearly, this is nonsense: there are many things I don't understand, but they don't require my understanding to be true. The ID creationist argument is entirely equivalent to saying, "I can't imagine why anyone would want to fly an airplane into a building, and therefore 9/11 must not have happened."

Home Science Tools: Not!

When are home science educational materials not science educational materials? When they're marketed by a bunch of religious crazies, masquerading as science education. Let me explain. In my family, we try to supplement our children's education at home. One of the things we want to do is to give them an appreciation of science as fun, and this is pretty easy, since we're all born scientists: we have lots of questions and we enjoy performing experiments (such as, "How many times must I drop this food on the floor before one of my parents explodes?"). Some of us are fortunate enough to have this reinforced when we're small; others have it pounded out of them and grow to regard science with suspicion, confusion, or disdain.

So, anyway, we are always on the lookout for educational materials for our kids. We recently received a very slick looking catalog from a company called "Home Science Tools". At first glance, it looked impressive. Lots of microscopes, prepared slides, glassware, nature books, dissection kits and specimens, telescopes, rock collections, chemistry sets, you name it. Then I come to the "science" curriculum kits. The first thing that alerted my suspicious nature was that one of the curricula was named "Bob Jones". OK, that might just be a rather unfortunate fact of life -- the publisher happens to have that name. So I turn to the curriculum section of the catalog to look at the books in detail, and my fears are justified. Here are some of the titles they carry:

• Exploring Creation with Astronomy/Botany/Zoology/General Science/Physical Science/Biology/Chemistry/Physics/Marine Biology. Except for their titles, there is nothing in the description to make one believe that these aren't legitimate books.
• A curriculum from Bob Jones "University" Press, which "...provides and excellent science curriculum that is very thorough and recognizes God as the Creator of all things." I believe it also promotes regular bowel movements.
• Advanced Physics in Creation. Apparently, there is no conflict between learning nuclear physics and disbelief of isotope dating techniques.
• The "God's Design" curriculum, including, Our Planet Earth, which covers plate tectonics, I suppose either to say that it doesn't exist or to assert that those plates are zipping along at breakneck speeds, so as to be able to have moved an appreciable distance during the 4000 or 6000 or whatever number of thousands of years that the kooks believe is the age of the earth.
• "Media Angels" unit studies, including Creation Anatomy, Creation Astronomy, Creation Science, and Creation Geology.
• An entire section on "Creation Science", with books on the great ice age and flood, creation vs. evolution (let me guess: creation wins), The Grand Canyon Catastrophe DVD (that must be some awesome footage), and Refuting Evolution, by Jonathan Sarfati, Ph.D., which "...was written to expose the flaws and misinformation in Teaching About Evolution and the Nature of Science, by the National Academy of Sciences" (one supposes that Dr. Sarfati could kick most any NAS member's ass).
• An entire "Intelligent Design" section, with all the books you've heard about lately and then some.

I could go on, as there's much more, but frankly, I'm a bit nauseated by it all. They're well on the way to completely integrating "science" and their brand of religion. The medieval church would be proud of them. They've got more pseudo-science books for home-schoolers and home education than all of the real science books written for that purpose that I've seen. And these folks aren't the only ones out there peddling this crap; they just seem to be the slickest and, what is to my mind the most troublesome, the most subtle. If I go to a web site and it says right out front that it provides supplies for Christian home-schoolers, then I know to move on. But, you really need to examine these folks' advertising carefully, reading all the way to the back of their catalog, to know the real story. So, caveat emptor. Now, I need to write them a smartass letter and ask to be removed from their mailing list.

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WMCSCI Update

A brief update on my earlier post on the World Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics.

Jeff Erickson (who coined the term "spamference") has an extensive discussion of the philosophy of not reviewing papers, plus an interesting quote from Professor Callaos' editorial in the first issue of the Journal of Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics. He also introduces a new conference: the IPSI BgD multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary conferences.

Mark Liberman has an excellent analysis of one of Prof. Callaos' papers.

Prof. Callaos comments on the bogus papers.

Look in the comments of this Blogcritics.org post for Michael Schmidt's summary of this year's WMCSCI reviewing process (note: comment authors' names are before their comments).

Greg Elin at this blog brings up one of my main beefs: that the WMCSCI folks deliberately break their spamference into a host of "sub-spamferences", thus making it harder to determine that they're all bogus. I count 11 "collocated" or "related" conferences on their web site. I'd say that I don't have the time to investigate further, but the truth is I'm just too lazy to bother.

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Wired News: Feds Rethinking RFID Passport

It looks like enough bad publicity and folks in the know asking, "what the hell were you thinking?", was enough to get the State Department to reconsider their RFID plan for passports. They still want RFID chips, but they are now open to encrypting the data and placing the decryption key information on the passport. Decrypting the data would require scanning the passport (i.e., physical contact, like swiping a credit card). This allows the holder to know when his or her data is being read. It of course doesn't explain the need for the RFID chip in the first place.

CIO Today: Network Security - Apple Mythology and Desktop Security

A very well-written article at CIO Today, linked from the title above. The author makes one of the first mentions I've heard in a trade journal of the security risks of Intel hardware, regardless of OS, and the benefits of switching to non-Intel (e.g., PowerPC) hardware, again regardless of OS. He also attempts to drive a stake through the heart of the "Macs are expensive" myth. The closing quote from the article:

In other words, if security concerns are your most important driver for desktop change, and Microsoft Office compatibility is your most significant barrier, then switching to Macs actually offers you the best of all possible worlds. Microsoft Office on Unix/Risc with a better GUI, longer product life, some cash savings and a performance bonus thrown in.

Computerworld: What IT Women Want

Computerworld had a discussion with a group of "highly successful businesswomen" after their participation in a forum sponsored by the New Jersey chapter of the Society for Information Management. They discussed the (declining) participation of women in information technology careers. Some interesting points, with editorial comments from yours truly:

• The very familiar forecast of massive looming shortage of professionals. You know, folks are always saying that there will be a shortage of computer professionals X years from now, where X>0 and never seems to decrease. Yes, developers were getting some pretty outrageous benefits during the dot com bubble, but that was merely a symptom of a mania, not a structural shortage of workers. Not to say that a career in CS or IT isn't a good choice, but a "35 million-person labor shortage" by 2031 is just a crazy forecast (like the dot com forecasts of Dow 20K).
• "If I get a call from a client and there's a crisis, but the next call is the nurse at my child's school, am I going to hop on a plane and fly to Chicago or get in the car and drive to the school? Many women would choose to go to the child. If society wants women to make that choice, how do we handle that in terms of our need to excel in our careers?" And why would we expect a man to ditch his kid and get to work? Society's mouth may say "choose to go to the child," but its lips say, "get your priorities straight" (the job should come first).
• Much of the discussion focused on hiring and career development, rather than the front end of the pipeline: why fewer and fewer women are choosing CS and IT careers.

Improving SCI submissions: A mathematical theory of citing

What with all the recent talk about fake CS papers, the linked physics paper caught my attention. I don't mean that I think the paper is fake, merely that it raises some interesting possibilities for improving the quality of fake papers (in terms of the statistics of their citations).

A CS gotcha

As Suresh at The Geomblog alerts, those unethical grad students who wrote SCIgen have been found out and their paper post hoc rejected. At least they got their money back. They are still looking to present at the conference, so if you've got a paper accepted and weren't planning to attend, please contact them. In his reply to the students, Prof. Nagib Callaos says:

I am not sure how unethical are these bogus submissions, and if there is some way to detect all of them in a large conference.

He's probably right that there is no way to ensure that no paper built upon falsified results gets ever accepted, but I know how patently bogus papers can be detected: by actually reviewing them. A reviewer who reads the submissions will be able to detect, for example two papers, combined sentence by sentence, so that the text alternates line by line between two topics.

The life of an academic

A bit of a common thread in today's reading:

I'm doing something wrong. In the past few months, my weekly schedule has filled up with back-to-back appointments. I'm wedging meetings in everywhere. I don't even have time to eat. Aren't professors supposed to spend all their time outside of class at the corner cafe discussing Chomsky over espressos and cigarettes? With summers off, so that the discussion can be continued at a cafe in Provence?
    -- A Gentleman's C, "What's wrong with this picture?"

I’m stressed out. I’ve been stressed out for a long time now. I can’t even recall last time I was laid back.
    -- Daniel Lemire’s blog, "Managing stress: I want to live past 50"

Competition can be a good thing: thinking about our colleagues' work can goad us to achievements that we otherwise wouldn't have reached or would have reached months or years later. But at what price? We see competitive athletes risking their health with steroids as a relatively new phenomenon, but sacrificing one's health has been de rigeur in academia for a long time. And we can't even say, like a businessperson might, that there are financial rewards for this. And yet, the extraordinary has now become the expected, as it becomes not uncommon to hear things such as (from a colleague at an anonymous science department), "We wouldn't hire a woman unless she's already won a Nobel Prize. Women just don't work hard enough." There it is: the expectation that university faculty will sacrifice their personal lives, their family lives, their health, to get out another paper, another grant proposal, be on another committee, (and at some schools) teach another course.

Intelligent Design Humor

I just about fell out of my chair laughing when I saw the photo of the "office suite" of the International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design in Princeton, NJ, linked to from this post's title.