The Fry Side

Finally, a Tumblr feed that my whole family could enjoy! Retro Flashback: Hippy Kitchens:

(Found via The Kitchn.)

A guest poster at the Daily Dish believes Sarah Palin’s tale of her youngest child’s birth.

Another blogger responds to the guest post.

I fall into the latter camp, personally. I feel she puts forth such a false persona that regularly varies from ill-informed to bald-faced lying, often with a healthy smattering of damn near illiteracy thrown in. I will not take Palin at her word without significant evidence.

Since no journalists are remotely close to being allowed to investigate (or, frankly, slightly question) her, and she wasn’t that far from being leader of the world’s superpower, this is one conspiracy that I’m willing to give some weight.

This all leads me back to a point I have been making about Palin and her Tea Party movement supporters: it’s not even a matter of relative fact or truth, it is a matter of blatant absence and denial of fact or truth. And when there is no allowance for simple, proven fact, there can be no conversation, let alone compromise.

Chad Orzel and Neil DeGrasse Tyson nail something ridiculously important. (Watch the whole clip, and definitely read Orzel’s old post):

A great clip from his World Science Festival appearance the other night, especially the bit toward the end:

“One thing I think that as a nation we should be embarrassed by is that the scientists– you can do this experiment yourself, I’ve done the experiment– the scientists, by and large, know more liberal arts than the science that is known by liberal artists.”

Or you can read my longer, less funny version from a couple of years ago. Either way, it’s an important message: It should be exactly as embarrassing in educated company to say “I’m no good at math” as it would be to say “I’m no good at reading.” The fact that it isn’t– that it’s ok to laugh off innumeracy– is a major problem for us as a society.

Read the comments on this post…

This is actually a point I had never really thought about, and even I’m guilty of it. Of course in my family the line was closer to, “Oh, I could do any Algebra or Trig, but hit the wall at Calculus.” And of course, my family is an odd duck. I’m going to go ahead and claim I am not one of those liberal artsy folks who chuckle about being bad at math. But I’ve never called anyone out for laughing at being bad at math. Maybe it didn’t come up as much, because I grew up within music circles and music and math have a very strong relationship.

Back to their point: Orzel and Tyson are precisely right. Math should be a function like literacy. And it’s not even complex math. Arithmetic and basic Algebra should be proudly ingrained in all American brains. We don’t all need to be calculators. My wife regularly comments about how quickly I can multiply through things, but I attribute that to being quickly able to tear down problems (23 x 5 is actually (20×5)+(3×5) in my head) and having being the loot roller for more Dungeons & Dragons games than anyone else I know.

These guys don’t expect that either. They expect that it doesn’t matter what speed you can figure out a problem, they care that you can figure out the problem at all. Tyson properly goes into this with science as well. Organic Chemistry? Nuts to that. Asking how exactly something works, where it comes from, what are its limitations? Reasonable. Even if you can’t understand the specifics, you should at least be able to cut through the bullshit and see if the claim someone is making could actually be valid.

Actually, that ties into what I try to explain to my son. He’s following what advertisements are and it’s easy to see him get tripped up. He’s a knowledge hound, a precise knowledge hound, and I love him endlessly for it. So when some commercial makes a claim that its product does some amazing feat, I have to methodically walk him back and explain that ads, while not fully lying (usually), are shiny exaggerations of what something is actually capable of.

My favorite example: a box of Kix cereal. Right on the front, it claims to be a good source of Calcium and Vitamin D. Know what milk is chock-full of? Calcium and Vitamin D. So what does the Kix give you? Briefly crunchy filler. And yes, it tastes good and is easy to snack on so we still give it to the kids anyway.

To wrap up, I again agree: if someone makes the claim of being ‘bad at math’ and proud of it, remind them that it’s not okay to be illiterate in the basics of our civilization. We depend on it. I know I’m not touching on the fact math is probably not taught in the ways to reach all learners, but that’s a separate fault. I am sick of people being proud of being ignorant.

My dad is a brilliant man, double mastered in science and engineering. Knows something about everything. He’s why I’m abnormally adept at so much. But he’s a bad speller. He got screwed by an experimental method of teaching phonetics when he was a kid. He’s not proud, it’s just something he has to cope with. Doesn’t mean he can’t string a clear paragraph together or talk to someone about music or literature. So even if you’re bad at math, that’s no excuse for not being able to calculate my change at a coffee shop.

I am alive and been keeping myself quite busy. The school year is wrapping up in two weeks, but the lad’s ends this week. Plus I’ve been working on some side projects, real and virtual. Sadly this means what little I do here gets pushed back little by little.

So here’s a picture to remind me to never stop striving to be cool.

Coltrane & Davis.

Just because I finished up the 3rd season of Mad Men this week:

Hamm.

(Found via The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan.)

Andrew Sullivan reminds us that There’ll Always Be An England:

Voters arrive at the Hare and Hounds pub which is being used as a polling station on May 6, 2010 in Corsham, England. Vote early. Vote often. Vote drunk!  By Matt Cardy/Getty.

I miss that silly island very much.

James Fallows praising New York’s Response to the failed Times Square bombing:

There is one other crucial element in the Times Square case, and it can’t be stressed often enough. So far we have seen a New York-style rather than a Washington-style response to the threat. And while New York is the least “American” of U.S. cities, its emotional and social response is just what America’s should be. Let me explain: 

The point of terrorism is not to “destroy.” It is to terrify. And for eight and a half years now, the dominant federal government response to terrorist threats and attacks has been to magnify their harm by increasing a mood of fear and intimidation. That is the real case against the ludicrous “orange threat level” announcements we hear every three minutes at the airport. It’s not just that they’re pointless, uninformative, and insulting to our collective intelligence; it’s that their larger effect is to make people feel frightened rather than brave.

I won’t go into the arguments about whether creation of an ever-threatened public mood is deliberate, or what interests it serves. I’ll just say: it works against larger American interests (as argued here), and New York in these past two days has shown the alternative. That is nothing more than: being alert, but living your life and not skulking around terrified. I hate to say that when people act fearful, “the terrorists win,” but it’s true.

It reminds me of the bombing of the London Underground back in July of 2005, which also brought back readings about IRA bombings and WWII bombings. Keep that stiff upper lip and carry on, chaps! We won’t let them beat us into losing our heads. It’s not to say it doesn’t hurt, but damn it all we won’t let our pain be their victory.

It also brings back one of the first words to pop into your head when describing New Yorkers: tough.

(Found via A plain blog about politics.)

Here’s a fun little Internet meme I felt like joining in on (stolen from Ms McArdle and Mr Klein).

Go to Amazon.com and look up your very first order. When and what was it?

July 2002, my first summer of Uni:

• The Memory of Whiteness by Kim Stanley Robinson
• Epic Level Handbook
• Monster Manual II

It may have been geeky, but I still miss DnD quite a bit. I’m too timid to risk finding new people to play with, since half the fun was just hanging with my friends and saying hushcorners in between killing monsters.

No matter what side of a discussion I fall on, I will always love a good, intelligent, respectful disagreement.

As someone who adamantly prefers to call themselves a “game critic” rather than a “game reviewer,” I’ve been asked by several parties to make some counter-comment to film critic Roger Ebert’s recent post. Presumably they were all hoping for some expletive-laden takedown of all Ebert’s arguments broken up by comparisons between the man and various historical dictators and farm animals. But the thing is, I like Ebert. I think he’s an intelligent guy and well worth listening to, especially when he’s got a particularly terrible film in his sights. In my more egotistical moments, I might one day aspire to being his videogaming equivalent.

My immediate question is, is everyone really that bothered by his article? I don’t agree with Ebert’s position, but I respect it. I wouldn’t in a million years attempt to make him change his opinion, nor would I express any patronizing expectation to the effect of “oh, one day he’ll understand.”

Read both articles in full, they’re well worth your time.