wikipedia’s “editorial row”

In the aftermath of recent edits to the Wikipedia pages on Robert Byrd and Ted Kennedy that pronounced both of them dead, the site’s founder, Jimmy Wales, is proposing a system of “flagged revisions” — in other words, every change has to be cleared for accuracy by an editorial board somewhere. The system is already in place in the German version of wikipedia, but changes can take days or even weeks to appear.

Personally, I’m altogether opposed to the idea. The whole point of wikipedia is that it’s a dynamic source of information; if that sometimes means it’s wrong, so be it. I’ll leave it to the free market of intelligent people to fix any problems that arise. Wikipedia’s purpose is not to be a rock-solid absolutely reliable source about everything; let’s not pretend it is. And any editorial board can’t possibly be more all-knowing than the masses that throng through wikipedia each day, so why not let some kid from Massachusetts who’s pretty sure his senator’s still kicking fix it by himself, and we can all go on with our lives?

steven meyers: x-ray vision

Steven Meyers’s work is a perfect example of science as fine art. Using finely attuned x-rays, he exposes beautiful arrangements of plants like this one. His website can be found here. For more beautiful portfolios of science as art, visit Seed Magazine’s portfolios feature.

the case of the robber goat

The BBC reported on Friday that police in Nigeria are holding a goat seized by a vigilante group which claims that the animal is a car thief who has changed his shape by witchcraft. The belief in magic and shape-shifting is wide-spread in Nigeria, particularly among the less educated, and goats are a favored form for the wayward magician.

Different police spokesmen have different things to say about the goat’s case, with one claiming that it is being held as an armed robbery suspect, while another insists it is simply being kept in police custody until its owner claims it. The national police spokesman, Emmanuel Ojukwu, has this gem of insight to offer: “But of course goats can’t commit crime.”

Levity aside, the “arrest” does expose some rather glaring inadequacies in the state of Nigeria’s police forces, many of whom are uneducated, and police reform activists are pointing to it as a parable of the failures of the Nigerian law enforcement system.

pterosaur take-off

Scientists have long been perplexed by the size of pterosaurs. The largest species of the extinct flying reptiles were roughly the size of modern giraffes and weighed far more than any bird, posing the question: how did they get all that bulk into the air? Birds generally leap into flight, relying on the strength of their legs, but the muscle mass that pterosaurs would need for a similar take-off would be far too great to allow them to fly at all. Some scientists have suggested that they used cliff edges or wind patterns to launch themselves, but these would have been unreliable factors, particularly in an age replete with formidable land-bound predators like tyrannosaurs; furthermore, pterosaur fossils have been found well away from any cliffs.

Michael Habib of Johns Hopkins may have the answer. Having done analyses of bone strength in both the forelimbs and hindlimbs of pterosaurs, he has concluded that they would have been capable of a four-legged takeoff, folding up their wings while on land and walking, essentially, on their knuckles. They could have then employed a “leap-frogging” launch pattern, kicking up first with their hind legs and then with their folded wings, and been airborne in less than one second.

donkey-borne literacy

The BBC carried a piece today about mobile libraries drawn by donkey cart that travel among Ethiopian villages in order to provide schoolchildren with reading material. The project is part of the Ethiopian Books for Children and Educational Foundation (EBCEP), which also functions as a publishing house for many children’s books in Amharic script.

In addition, the project hopes to teach children principles of animal husbandry. Donkeys are a common form of transportation in rural Ethiopia but tend to be badly treated. EBCEP’s donkeys, however, receive the same respect afforded to a horse.

the toughest job in america

The Obama transition team has a lot of difficult decisions on the table, to say the very least. There are plans to enact, positions to fill . . . but in its fine tradition of reporting, the New York Times has unveiled (and the BBC has picked up on) yet another decision tormenting top Obama aides: should he continue to use email?

I must confess it’s mind-boggling to me (and probably to 99% of my age cohort) that a person could get by without instantaneous electronic communication, although I suppose the President has plenty of staffers at his beck and call. But I get the sense that this is a little mind-boggling to Obama, too, who has relied heavily on his BlackBerry throughout the campaign (and will for that matter be the first president to have a laptop on his desk in the Oval Office). Now that he’s headed for the White House, though, there are concerns both over the security of email communications and over transparency laws that might require his correspondence to be opened to public view.

One option aides are considering: letting Obama receive but not send emails. During the campaign, most memos, briefing books, and drafts of speeches went directly to Obama’s email, eliminating the tediousness (and, one must suppose, massive waste of paper) involved in printing out and delivering each and every document.

on modern feminism in america and beyond

According to a report on the global gender gap released earlier this week by the World Economic Forum, women and men in the US are 72% equal — a bit of a weird-sounding statement, but it’s based on a quantitative index incorporating measures of economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, political empowerment, and health and survival. In the US (and in most of the world) men and women are essentially equal in terms of health and education (in fact, in the majority of the world’s countries, women outnumber men at institutes of higher education). Economically and politically, though, women lag far behind men no matter where you look. Even in Norway, the country with the smallest gender gap (the report quantifies gender equality there at 82%), women only enjoy 78% economic equality and 53% political equality. (For a detailed breakdown of how these values are attained, check out the full report.)

The US ranks 27th on a global scale of gender equality; it is somewhat above average in economic equality (75%, compared to a global average of 59%), roughly on par in health and education, and slightly below average in political equality, with a score of only 14% (the global average is 16%). None of these values are exactly inspiring, but it’s the political inequality that interests me most.— the question of what it takes to be a woman and be elected to high office, because the political viability of female candidates speaks directly to national cultural attitudes toward women, which are, predictably, heavily sexualized. A friend of mine recently declared that we needed not to treat women less like sex objects but to treat men like sex objects more; after all, we all ARE sex objects when it comes down to it. This is true, I suppose, but speaking with the authority of bisexuality, it is a LOT easier to sexualize Sarah Palin’s candidacy than John McCain’s, and I don’t think that’s just happenstance.

As a self-identifying feminist, I’m offended by the fact that sex appeal seems, if not vital, enormously important to most female politicians’ success; at the same time, I’m disgusted with those who attribute the accomplishments of a smart, savvy, and sexy woman in government entirely to the last of those qualities. (I’m even more disgusted when I feel they may have a point.) But these barriers are nothing in comparison to the aptly named global gender gap. Women the world over are still in a state of subjugation, from Afghanistan to Eritrea, and to ignore their economic, social, cultural, and, yes, political plight is far more heinous a crime than to make a few lewd remarks about Sarah Palin’s boobs.

and I think my job applications are bad

You may have heard tell of the Plum Book, a comprehensive list of jobs that are filled by presidential appointment that is published every four years, shortly after the election. Begun in 1952, when the Presidency changed hands to a Republican for the first time in 22 years, the Plum Book lists 7,996 job openings this year.

Of course, everyone knows that by being hired by a politician, you automatically pose a liability to them; anything shady about your character can and will reflect on them. If you want that point really driven home, though, take a look at the Obama Transition Team’s job application, a seven-page behemoth listing 63 different topics to be addressed, from financial disclosures to recent cohabitants to a thorough listing of every public communication you have ever made. As a member of the internet generation, I find this last to be particularly mind-boggling, and am starting to wonder if any subversive tendencies might be revealed by my eight-year-old publications on neopets.com.

“breakings” by henry taylor

Long before I first left home, my father
tried to teach me horses, land, and sky,
to show me how his kind of work was done.
I studied how to be my father’s son,
but all I learned was, when the wicked die,
they ride combines through barley forever.

Every summer I hated my father
as I drove hot horses through the dusty grass;
and so I broke with him, and left the farm
for other work, where unfamiliar weather
broke on my head an unexpected storm
and things I had not studied came to pass.

So nothing changes, nothing stays the same,
and I have returned from a broken home
alone, to ask for a job breaking horses.
I watch a colt on a long line making
tracks in dust, and think of the kinds of breakings
there are, and the kinds of restraining forces.

- Henry Taylor

forget blood diamonds

Scientists at the National Autonomous University of Mexico have discovered a process by which diamonds can be synthesized from tequila. The diamonds produced are microscopic and might not be Marilyn Monroe’s best friend, but they can certainly be put to use in computer chips or to form fine cutting edges for precise medical tools.

Apparently, the ratio of elements in 80-proof tequila is such that, when vaporized and heated to about 800ºC, it deposits pure carbon crystals on a silicon or stainless steel substrate. And as the BBC scrupulously notes, the production of tequila diamonds is extremely inexpensive — even the cheapest tequilas will work.