Author: David Gorsline

Get me rewrite

A collaboration between students at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and the Cedar Rapids, Iowa Gazette has launched the demonstration project News Mixer, as reported by NU staff. News Mixer is a local news site powered by Facebook Connect, which provides the authentication mechanism; comments made by a reader of news stories appear in that member’s Facebook newsfeed. The experimental News Mixer provides three levels of structured commenting, from short quips to long-form letters to the editor. It’s assembled from open source tools—Wordpress, MySQL, Trac, and Django—as recorded in the project’s blog, Crunchberry Project. The project is one of the early fruits of a new program of scholarships to Medill for talented programmers and web developers, granted by the Knight Foundation.

Some links: 35

The occasion of Nature‘s publication of 15 Evolutionary Gems, synopses of recent research from its pages that deepens our understanding of the process of evolution, prompted some pruning and dusting of my bookmark files. So here let us take note of

The papers summarized in the Nature document examine evidence collected by field observation, at the molecular level in the lab, and from the fossil record. Of particular note to “no transitional forms” deniers is the discussion of newly-described specimens found in China.

In the 1980s, deposits from the early Cretaceous period (about 125 million years ago) in the Liaoning Province in northern China vindicated these speculations in the most dramatic fashion, with discoveries of primitive birds in abundance — alongside dinosaurs with feathers, and feather-like plumage. Starting with the discovery of the small theropod Sinosauropteryx by Pei-ji Chen from China’s Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology and his colleagues, a variety of feather-clad forms have been found. Many of these feathered dinosaurs could not possibly have flown, showing that feathers first evolved for reasons other than flight, possibly for sexual display or thermal insulation, for instance. In 2008, Fucheng Zhang and his colleagues from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing announced the bizarre creature Epidexipteryx, a small dinosaur clad in downy plumage, and sporting four long plumes from its tail. Palaeontologists are now beginning to think that their speculations weren’t nearly wild enough, and that feathers were indeed quite common in dinosaurs.

The discovery of feathered dinosaurs not only vindicated the idea of transitional forms, but also showed that evolution has a way of coming up with a dazzling variety of solutions when we had no idea that there were even problems. Flight could have been no more than an additional opportunity that presented itself to creatures already clothed in feathers.

Upcoming: 14

The editors of Nature put in a good word for the Christmas Bird Count as an exemplar of citizen science.

Volunteer science is a win–win situation for all concerned. Scientists get to take on projects that would not be feasible for even the largest research group, while helping to increase the public’s understanding of, and support for, science.

But let’s not forget the Great Backyard Bird Count, which takes place in the more focused time period of Presidents’ Day weekend, and about which I posted last year. This year the looking and counting happens February 13 through 16.

A questioner

The Economist remembers Helen Suzman, 36-year member of the South African parliament, a progressive gadfly duing the years of apartheid:

She was the sole survivor, for 13 years a one-woman opposition to the relentless consolidation of white rule.

* * *

She was a precious mouthpiece to the world, as she was also the first resort for communists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, banned people, Coloureds resentful of their racial classification, and all the “sad harvest of the seeds of apartheid” that drifted through her office.

The recipe project: 1

So Leta was all about making recipes from her cookbook library, and I was looking for incentives to find more vegetarian options, so in a moment of weakness I said that I would join the project, too. At first my intention was just to work through The Vegetarian Epicure—sort of a low-rent Julie/Julia Project. But there are a lot of wheat-based recipes in that book, and I would like to share some of this cooking with Leta. And, while I have a lot of free time for food preparation now, I hope to be more fully occupied outside of the home soon. So I will skip around the shelf.

But I did start with this squash concoction. Maybe because I had already bought the acorn squash and was looking for something interesting to do with it.

Oriental Citrus Squash
  • 3 small acorn squashes
  • butter
  • 1/2 cup orange marmalade
  • 1 Tbs. candied ginger, cut into very small pieces
  • 1 Tbs. lemon juice
  • pinch of nutmeg

Cut the squashes in half lengthwise, remove the seeds, brush them with butter, place them cut-side down on a greased pan, and bake about 40 minutes at 350 degrees. Fill the cavities with a mixture of the marmalade, the minced ginger, lemon juice, and nutmeg, and bake 15 minutes more. Serve very hot.

6 servings.

This came out fairly well, considering how much I tinkered with the proportions. First off, I had one large squash, not three small ones, as I was just cooking for myself. And my approach to the lemon juice was a little excessive. I bought one lemon expressly for the recipe, and I didn’t foresee any other uses for the juice, so I used all the juice of the lemon. And since I was going heavy on the juice, I sort of guessed on the amount of marmalade. That’s a lot of jelly to be stuffing these squashes with. The resulting mixture came out as sort of a citrus soup. Tasty enough, not very gingery: some of my condiments are a little stale.

Trick learned: cutting the squash lengthwise. This is a good idea, even if it’s harder to do (I need to sharpen my all-purpose knife.) All this time, I’ve been cutting acorn squash around its middle, which means that the two filled halves won’t sit up straight in the baking pan.

On deck

on deckI don’t think that my shelf of books on deck to be read has been this short in years—maybe not since I started doing theater. There are a couple of things here that I’ve started and put aside, and a couple of titles that I may bail on. Watson is a promotional copy, and Nagel and Newman is a re-read from graduate school days. I thought I was done with the Carter until I realized that I apparently had never read The Bloody Chamber, one of the volumes collected in Burning Your Boats.

Good thing that there is a box of books on its way from my bookseller!

Silver Line progress report: 3

Via DCist, Amy Gardner reports that Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters has given the final seal of Executive Branch approval for a Metro extension to Dulles Airport and beyond.

Peters’s action releases the project to Congress for a 60-day comment period. After that, the project qualifies for a $900 million federal transit grant that state, local and congressional leaders have said is essential to its success.

Also linkable: the Post‘s gateway to all its Dulles rail expansion coverage, illustrated with a great photo of cluttery traffic and street furniture by Ricky Carioti.

Let’s start the countdown.

A message from the diving bell

Une étrange euphorie m’a alors envahi. Non seulement j’étais exilé, paralysé, muet, à moitié sourd, privé de tous les plaisirs et réduit à une existence de méduse, mais en plus j’étais affreux à voir. J’ai été pris du fou rire nerveux que finit par provoquer une accumulation de catastrophes lorsque, après un dernier coup de sort, on décide de le traiter comme une plaisanterie. Mes râles de bonne humeur ont d’abord interloqué Eugénie avant qu’elle ne cède à la contagion de mon hilarité. Nous avons ri jusqu’aux larmes. La fanfare municipale s’est alors mise à jouer une valse et j’étais si gai que je me serais volontiers levé pour inviter Eugénie à danser si cela avait été de circonstance. Nous aurions virevolté sur les kilomètres de carrelage. Depuis ces événements, quand j’emprunte la grande galerie, je trouve à l’impératrice un petit air narquois.

—Jean-Dominique Bauby, Le Scaphandre et le Papillon, p. 31

My muddy translation, with help from my dictionary and Google Translate:

[Bauby has discovered his reflection in the glass of a vitrine displaying an effigy of Empress Eugénie, 19th-century patron of the hospital where Bauby is a patient.]

I was overcome by a strange euphoria. Not only was I an exile, paralyzed, half-deaf, dumb, deprived of all pleasures, and reduced to the existence of a jellyfish, but what’s more I looked a fright. I was taken by a fit of the nervous giggles that can only end in disaster when, after a final stroke of fate, you take it all for a joke. At first, Eugénie was taken aback by my groans of delight before giving into the contagion of my hilarity. We laughed nearly to the point of tears. So then the local brass band struck up a waltz, and I felt so gay that I gladly stood up to invite Eugénie to dance, whether that made any difference [?]. We twirled down the miles of tiled floor. Since this affair, whenever I take a turn in the great hall, I find that the Empress has a mocking look.

Some arithmetic

I read about a program to convert marine waste—fishing nets and other gear—into energy. The claim is made that 1 ton of waste can power a household for 5 months. That number sounds high, but not completely unrealistic. Does it add up?

Well, a Department of Energy survey measures the typical American household’s consumption of electricity in 1993 at 9,965 kilowatt-hours per year, of which about half goes into heating and cooling, water heaters, and refrigerators, and the other half into other appliances. So 9,965/12 = 830 kWh per month.

Myself, I am somewhat more profligate, and I bought 16,290 kWh from Dominion Virginia Power for my all-electric home in 2008. Ah, but we read that mixed-fuel homes use less electricity than all-electric homes (as you would certainly expect); the average all-electric home burned 15,639 kWh/year in 1993.

At any rate, let’s use the 830 kWh/month figure, just to pick a number.

Now, how much energy can be extracted from something by burning it? Household waste has an energy density of 8 to 11 megajoules per kilogram. Bituminous coal, for comparison, comes in at 24 MJ/kg, wood at 6 to 17 MJ/kg, and gasoline at 46.4 MJ/kg. Plastics score in the coal-gasoline range. Let’s use 15 MJ/kg. Now for some conversions (with lots of roundoff):

1 ton of waste = 907 kilograms of waste
907 kg · 15 MJ/kg = 13,605 megajoules of energy
1 kWh = 3.6 · 106 joules, so
13,605 MJ · 1 kWh / 3.6 MJ = 3,780 kilowatt-hours per ton of waste

And our typical household will go through 830 kWh/month · 5 months = 4,150 kWh. So we’re in the ballpark, assuming the combustion of the waste is fairly efficient.

Makes me remember the can in the back yard of my grandparents’ house where we would burn the trash. How many watt-hours did we let escape?

On the record

In the latest of the don’t-let-the-door-hit-you-in-the-ass entries, Frank Rich assesses the George W. Bush legacy:

… [Karl] Rove has repeated a stunt he first fed to the press two years ago: he is once again claiming that he and Bush have an annual book-reading contest, with Bush chalking up as many as 95 books a year, by authors as hifalutin as Camus. This hagiographic portrait of Bush the Egghead might be easier to buy were the former national security official Richard Clarke not quoted in the new Vanity Fair saying that both Rice and her deputy, Stephen Hadley, had instructed him early on to keep his memos short because the president is “not a big reader.”

Another, far more elaborate example of legacy spin can be downloaded from the White House Web site: a booklet recounting “highlights” of the administration’s “accomplishments and results.” With big type, much white space, children’s-book-like trivia boxes titled “Did You Know?” and lots of color photos of the Bushes posing with blacks and troops, its 52 pages require a reading level closer to My Pet Goat than The Stranger.

Although Rich’s assessment of the vocabulary in the document is a bit extreme, it is indeed rather picture-heavy and dominated by bullet points. I think it’s peculiar that the administration wants to take credit for the ridiculous Medicare Part D prescription drug program. At least the authors don’t have the balls to make any claims about George Bush’s dedication to preserving scientific intergrity.