Skeptics discount science by casting doubts on scientist expertise

from ars technica, via Dr. Kiki’s Science Hour (ep.64) [show notes]…

Most surveys of the US public indicate that scientists are popular, trusted figures. The same, however, cannot be said about some of their conclusions, as topics like climate change and evolution remain controversial with many segments of the population. A recent Pew survey gives an indication of why: even though the scientific community’s opinion is largely unified on these topics, the public thinks that there is significant dispute among the researchers. A study published by the Journal of Risk Research attempts to explain why this might be the case.

The people behind the new study start by asking a pretty obvious question: “Why do members of the public disagree—sharply and persistently—about facts on which expert scientists largely agree?” (Elsewhere, they refer to the “intense political contestation over empirical issues on which technical experts largely agree.”) In this regard, the numbers from the Pew survey are pretty informative. Ninety-seven percent of the members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science accept the evidence for evolution, but at least 40 percent of the public thinks that major differences remain in scientific opinion on this topic. Clearly, the scientific community isn’t succeeding in making the public aware of its opinion.

According to the new study, this isn’t necessarily the fault of the scientists, though. The authors favor a model, called the cultural cognition of risk, which “refers to the tendency of individuals to form risk perceptions that are congenial to their values.” This wouldn’t apply directly to evolution, but would to climate change: if your cultural values make you less likely to accept the policy implications of our current scientific understanding, then you’ll be less likely to accept the science.

FULL STORY

Still Sorting…

well, i finished going all the way thru 6 file drawers. still haven’t finished hubby’s files, but we assembled the information needed for our advisor. i was dreading that meeting, firmly convinced she would throw her hands up in the air and report “you’re doomed.” i was almost right – certainly hearing that our spending and expenses are almost twice our income wasn’t very good news. on the other hand, hubby believes me, now.

we’ll be meeting with her again the third week in september. in the meantime, we get to go through our budget and figure out what we can clean up by ourselves. i’m sure there’s plenty of non-essentials in there. i’m not sure there are enough of them to really pull us out of the fire. we’re going to have to work on that.

i’m still sorting clothes. i’ve loaded up four more boxes worth for goodwill. the mountain is gradually being eroded down to what’s beginning to look as a manageable wardrobe. i plan on whittling away at it until it’s all in the closet or in drawers. it’s kind of nice. i’m finding shirts i really liked, but lost track of, and suits i never really cared for. clothes that are too big, and clothes that are too small (but i like them enough to hold on to – just in case).

i also found a box that looked like it might hold my old copies of “nutshell news”. i had the hubby reach those down off the top shelf of the bookcase. the box was just a fraction of an inch too small, but hubby found a box that would do. next thing you know, we were cleaning the shelves. 15 feet of floor to ceiling shelving, and we completely reorganized them! now that’s quite an event.

this becoming an obsession.

Sorting Things Out

for the past couple weeks, I’ve been on a mad binge of sorting.

it started with a visit to my mom’s financial advisor. her estate is set up as a trust, and her advisor will be the trust administrator when mom passes on. the visit was for my brother and i to have clear in our heads what my mother’s intentions are. the administrator’s role will be to oversee the estate and ensure it continues to provide us with an income as opposed to us receiving it in a lump and having it disappear in too short a time. statistically, this is a sound move, as most estates do tend to disappear the way lottery winnings do within just a couple of years.

so, my husband and i took the opportunity to schedule an appointment of our own to try and get our own affairs in order. hubby retired 18 months ago. we weren’t ready for it. we’re still not ready for it. things are getting pretty serious. COBRA is due to run out in just another 6 weeks. we recently tried to refinance our mortgage and were turned down because there are repairs needed on the house. just those two bills alone are more than hubby’s retirement income. we’re digging a deeper hole. is there any way for us to keep hubby in retirement?

our appointment is next wednesday. the advisor needs certain paperwork to evaluate where we stand and what resources we have to draw upon. we have lots of files; they’re in about 5 different locations around the house. i spent two days going through the files in my office. i’ve pulled out all the files for 2009 and most of the files for 2008. they’re now boxed with the tax forms for their respective years and ready to be stored. the file drawer in my desk is now well-ordered; all the folders are labelled and sorted chronologically. whew! hubby’s files are another matter, completely. that’s going to take both of us a couple more days.

while i was sorting the files in the office, i kept looking at the closet in the bedroom (there are two more file cabinets in there). i tend to stack stuff wherever there’s a level surface. the tops of the cabinets were piled high with clothes and the space in front of them was blockaded with more boxes of clothes and books. time to clear out the clutter. so far, i’ve given away 6 boxes of clothes, packed another box of “skinny” clothes i hope to use again, and thrown away at least two bags of things that were past hope. i’ve given away a floor fan, a toaster oven, and two more boxes of books as well. one of the file cabinets has been emptied, and the other is now accessible. woohoo!

in the meantime, hubby decided he just couldn’t stand the lamp/table he’s been using on the loft one more night (the lamp just doesn’t work well any more). so, today, we moved that table off the loft, and rearranged the furniture and my papercrafting supplies to accomplish his space requirements. it was sort of a side-track from the files and the closet, but it’s still a sorting adventure. he now has access to a bank of DVD storage, and the space under the futon has been cleared out, too.

and do we hoard much? going through the files i found files as old as 1982! and not even our own files – they were my mother-in-law’s tax returns and social security statements. needless to say, we really don’t need to keep those any longer. i’ve also managed to throw out about 4 boxes of old magazines.

i think we’re going to keep working on this. it’s probably a good thing he’s retired – now we’ve got time to clean up.

My Friend

some people think internet friends are something like “imaginary” friends. after all, you’ve never met them. but how many of the people you’ve actually met know and remember your birthday, the names of your pets, what your kids do and how proud you are of your spouse.

how many of them know how you struggle with your glucose levels, or your weight loss, or your eye strain. how many of them congratulate you when you’ve learned a new trick with code? how many of them know how much you love your mother? or how much she doesn’t even like your sister-in-law? does your next door neighbor know your favorite color is green? or that you collect dragons and frogs? or that you love old time radio?

for a long time, as a member of the Other Worlds Cafe chat group, I knew a man whose sign-on was BLRWIZ. outside the O*W*C chatroom, i usually greeted him with “hi, handsome”. He was a friendly, funny fan of science fiction. we chatted online, nightly, for almost ten years before i finally learned his given name was Brad. that was probably about 6 or 7 years ago. we talked about science fiction (of course), science, fantasy, puns, magic and cats. He had a cat named Yoda, and, later, a cat named Zardoz. we talked about our family and friends, our dreams and our disappointments.

Brad and i called ourselves “lost twins”. our birthdays are just 6 days apart. we had a lot of similar likes and dislikes. we both liked to chat. and we both cared enough to listen. no matter what the time of day, Brad was always there when i needed to talk to someone. he listened to my gripes about my sons, or my husband. he listened to my praise for them, too. we shared happy events, sad events, stories we were reading or listening to, and movies we had seen. we often chatted online all night.

nearly every day there was at least one e-mail from Brad with jokes, or pictures of cats, or links to videos of magic tricks. i don’t know how he kept track, but it seems there was very little repetition, even though some of these things roll around the internet for years. i’ve kept all of them. some are inspirational, some are just “too cute”, some are simply amazing. and there are a few personal notes that are encouraging or just “checking in”.

he is gone, now. he fell. he didn’t get back up. he tried. we prayed, and hoped, and we sent words of love and encouragement. i dearly hope they helped him in his struggle to recover. but he didn’t get back up, and he is gone.

i will never again be able to greet him online (“hi, handsome”). i will never again receive an email from him with the latest LOLcats, or internet meme. i will never have the chance to meet him in person.

i am so terribly lucky to have known him. i was blessed that he considered me friend and called me “twin”. i miss him.

Brad was my friend.

Eternal student

I find I am always in a “learning mode”. Technology changes so very quickly, I am often behind what my clients want to implement. Honesty is the best policy — I usually can tell them “I’ll find out, ASAP.” What follows can often turn into a mad scramble.

This week, I finally learned how to use Google calendar. Yeah, I know — ’bout time! We wanted to add a calendar to frank’s website and WebCalendar is incompatible with PHP 5. Embedding Google calendar works just as nicely, with the added advantage of being able to view it on their iMac mail app. Remembering to share the calendar and set attributes for any entries, it has turned out to be a better solution than WebCalendar.

We added a blog to the site, as well. It’s been long enough since the last time I set up a blog, I’m having to relearn how to configure the menus and which add ons I want to be using. It’s still a work in progress. On the whole, Frank is very pleased with the results, so far. We’ve even sold one of the original paintings, even though the store is not yet “up”. Adding the store is a whole separate adventure. I’ve never actually created an online storefront before.

On another front, one of my clients needs to update his website information on ICANN. This is where my “teaching” skills need a little refinement. He was unclear on the difference between his registry and his host. I think we’ve got it straight, now. We’ll be moving the registration to another service, updating the information, AND moving to a different host soon.

The most gratifying thing about all of this? I get to do what I love to do. My clients get a professional image online and, lately, the compliments are coming in. As I consider myself more of a student than a professional, I’m always excited when something works the way I intend it. Recently we were hearing “there’s nothing on the site! I expected to see more of your artwork.” As it turned out, the ones saying that were never actually going to the site — they were googling the artist’s name.

Once we cleared that up, the visitors were well-pleased. In the end, it doesn’t hurt my morale at all when someone reports “The site looks great!” Not that selling one of the pieces wasn’t great as well.

another really “smooth” video

there a lot of online media services out there. not just YouTube, but vimeo, qik, ustream, stickam… & mefeedia.

this video by patrick jean was featured on the “daily motion – featured videos” page. it’s ever so much fun!

PIXELS by PATRICK JEAN.
Uploaded by onemoreprod. – Watch original web videos.

Two Years? — egads!!

almost exactly two years since my last update. i’ve definitely been in a funk.

i was so completely griped about my last host, i yanked the site down and couldn’t bring myself to put it back up. i paid for hosting elsewhere, immediately, and still couldn’t convince myself to repost anything. the site’s been paid for all this time, with nothing in place. ah, well…

i’m very fortunate to have such faithful clients and friends. all this disconnectivity and they’ve stuck around through the gray fog. my clients are still loyal. my friends are still supportive. and they’re all cheering that i’m finally starting to get my act back in gear.

i have “presence”.

High-Five SXSWi 2010 – High-Five Montage Tribute from Henry Balanon on Vimeo.
High-Five SXSWi 2010 – High-Five Montage Tribute

Check out the original High-Five Montage here

“bulk” mail

today has been a little interesting. one of my clients has a medium sized client base, but it can be grouped into categories of clientele. he wants to send “bulk” messages to his clients, offering special services based on those categories.

well, that’s not really hard, is it? sending a copy of one e-mail to multiple recipients is possible from nearly every e-mail client available. the trick is to do it in an efficient manner and to follow a good e-mail etiquette. what complicated this little tutorial is that he uses eudora, on a mac.

i haven’t used eudora for several years. which means i’ve never used it on a mac. fortunately, eudora can be downloaded and used for free, with only a few limitations.

i imported my settings and contact info from apple mail, and set to work looking around the eudora interface. upon opening the address book, i discovered i had to enable showing of the OS X address book. once done, i created a few alternate address books. i seem to remember there’s a way to create “groups” in eudora, but this way was a little easier.

doing bulk mail this way forces the user to select the addresses in the address book. you can select multiple addresses by holding the command key as you select addresses. at the bottom of the address book panel, just click on the [Bcc:] button. Bcc:, of course, because you don’t want everyone to see all the other recipients’ addresses (that’s the e-mail etiquette i was talking about).

NOTE: duplicate addresses will only get one copy. eudora is pretty smart about that, but it confused my client, as he was trying it out by sending copies to himself. i think we’ve got it working for him, now.

new client activity

one thing can lead to another.

the minutos have been clients for nearly ten years. mostly, i keep there ‘puter running. they started with a packard bell (a cursed machine) that would completely quit working every couple of months. after rebuilding that machine several times, we finally built a new machine. from there we kept moving up, finally switching to a 24″ iMac (alum) early this year.

Frank is a professional artist — very prolific. he also teaches for the Palos verdes Art Center. Debs is a photographer, and she specializes in artist’s portfolios – photographing the originals and printing quality giclees. every once in awhile she calls for help with a project in photoshop. her call this week was to create a CD of one of Frank’ss series to present to galleries. it was an excellent time to introduce her to lightroom.

we used lightroom to adjust the images of a few of the photos and to create a screensaver of the series. we also experimented with how it would create a webpage presentation of the series. they liked the result so much, we’re finally going to put Frank’s work online! as i’ve been pushing for this for a couple years, i’m absolutely delighted.

we’re now figuring out just exactly how we’re going to upload the files. one new aspect we’re going to try is embedded videos of Frank’s “gallery statements”. we’re going to give him approximately 10 minutes to record a short description of the series, as though he were presenting it in a class lesson. we’ll probably use viddler, but (just in case) i’m going to try a few things with garageband. after showing the screensaver to another client, there’s even a possibility of having some original music for the site as well.

i guess i’m branching out into “production”.

busy, busy week

or two? i’ve been finishing up all the loose ends with taxes and such. the grandboy celebrated his 6th (!!!) birthday on friday and saturday. and i’m getting ready to go see the endocrinologist in the morning. that was a surprise; i thought the appt. was next month. thank the powers that be – one of my clients wanted a training session this week. there’s the appointment – plain as day…

i usually have my blood work done a week in advance. here’s hoping the test results arrive in time.

getting ready for the meetup with my client was fun, too. now that i have the iMac, i don’t use the laptop every day. i guess i’ve been neglecting it this month – there were TEN updates to be installed. i also wanted to be sure to install the adobe lightroom 2.0 (beta) as that’s one of the programs we’ll be working with. charged the battery and discovered the two spares i have are definitely deader than doornails. so i ordered a new battery, photoshop elements 6.0 and the print shop! i had no idea that was available for macs. i don’t use it often, but when i want to use it…

i spent a few extra minutes last night trying to trim some of the many many podcasts down to “manageable”. sigh, i don’t think it’s going to happen. iTunes reports i have 862 podcast episodes currently in the queue. granted, some of those are stories i haven’t yet transferred to CD, but many of them are tutorials. i’m going to have to get brutal over the next couple of weeks.