Category Archives: Humor

Things we find funny

Are our fates determined by our genes? I doubt it. It’s not that simple even for worms.

I have done some work with the C. Elegans model organism. They are fun little bugs, and the PETA doesn’t get all up-in-arms when you shoot their brain with a laser. Here are some fun C. Elegans Facts:

They are about 1 mm long at maturity
They are transparent
They have about 300 nerves
Their genome was sequenced in 1998
They can hunt down food on a plate
They have forms of memory and learning

Here are some things I have noticed: When illuminated with a blue laser, they panic and squirm all over the place. When you use a UV laser to blow up a portion of their outer cuitcle, they practically turn inside-out due to internal pressure. Some of the strains available through the WormBank have single nerve cells that express fluorescent protein, so that not only do their brains glow, but only the part you might be interested in glows.

Why are these critters cool? Well, despite being really small, they share a lot of biochemistry with humans. Their neurons function in the same way and the cellular processes that allow the worm to grow from an egg into a larva and from a larva into an adult are all analogous on a cellular level to changes in human development. But if you do an experiment on a worm, you can see what happens in a few days instead of months (rats) years (monkeys) or decades (humans). Also, there are some ethical constraints with humans that don’t apply to worms.

Here’s a new fact just released in Nature: they seem to have a sleep-like state. “Lethargus is a Caenorhabditis elegans sleep-like state” by Raizen et. al. “Conserved effects on sleep-like behaviour of homologous genes in C. elegans and Drosophila suggest a common genetic regulation of sleep-like states in arthropods and nematodes. Our results indicate that C. elegans is a suitable model system for the study of sleep regulation.”

They sleep, they eat, they learn (sort-of), they have lots of sex with themselves (they are hermaphrodites) and they make eggs. And they do it all in 3 days. And despite the fact that we know the fate of every cell in its body from birth to death – where it comes from, what it becomes and where it goes – we still don’t know how it manages most of its behavior.

I’d like to point out that this leaves very little hope for a reductionist perspective on psychology. We know every connection of every nerve in this worm’s body and the thing is still a mystery. I wrote a post recently about how foolish it is to make sweeping assertions about genetic differences. Just to reiterate the big upshot: even in the simplest case, our understanding of the causes-and-effects that make up psychology is limited. To think that a human being is perfectly predictable is… well… just plain dumb.

-Peter

a strange document from the undusted shelves of the internet

I just read an interesting essay on the subject I discussed some time ago with a labmate: does the scientific worldview imply some kind of faith… The most I could claim was that the enterprise of science rests on the idea that there are universal and consistent laws of nature… but I was forced to concede that the practice of science does not require “faith” in universal consistency. Practicing science on a daily basis only requires that these laws appear consistent to us at any given moment.

I think that science is philosophically void if physical laws are inconsistent beyond a certain degree. Interestingly, I suppose that they could be inconsistent to a certain (calculable?) extent before it would be possible to notice. But in the extreme case that the laws of nature are totally inconsistent, the both science and philosophy are bankrupt in general. So for the purposes of any discourse, it’s sort-of a fundamental premise. Even so, it doesn’t mean you have to believe science is philosophically valid to keep doing it. It might just be fun.

At the same time, all of this got me thinking. Here’s a quote that really summed it all up: “The dominant belief in all Western Cultures is that this universe runs on material causality and is thus comprehensible to reason.” -Peter Carroll

If we don’t take some form of physical determinism as a working theory, then we might as well give up on trying to figure out how the world works by science. But I don’t know if a ‘working theory’ is the same thing as faith. Certainly it’s not the same thing as the faith some religious ‘authorities’ seem to require. That ‘faith’ is just loud, stubborn (sometimes violent) insistence. Like a little kid who says ‘Yes it is! Yes it is a million times no backsies!” Faith, right?

Well, I see a stronger faith in someone who allows honest scrutiny and change… and who makes it a working assumption that the “universe runs on material causality and is thus comprehensible to reason.” A person of faith accepts this without proof… and is willing to admit that there might not be such a thing as proof for some beliefs.

-Peter

Durable goods, maintenance, the maker ethos, and the first inroad to voluntary simplicity

Durable goods:

Real durable goods last and can be repaired and maintained.Then there are consumables, things you use for a while then throw away.The problem is that some things, in order to be competitive in price, look like durables but actually are designed to be consumables.Take air conditioners for example.

The laboratory where I work bought a a consumer-quality air conditioner for ~$500.It was supposed to run in a hot lab to take the thermal stress of some of the equipment.Within a year it had failed.It seems that the fail point was a single motor among 3 or 4 of the motors in there.Now, there might be a cascade failure situation.But in the end, it’s probably one motor replacement and the thing is back in shape.But we can’t get that one motor.The company won’t sell us just a part, and they want $75 plus transportation to have a rep come look at it without any guarantee he will be able to do anything.

So, what we have here is a disturbingly common situation of a consumable product masquerading as a durable product.What that means is that AC units used to be considered something you install, maintain, fix and keep around.It was durable.Maybe it cost $1000, but you expect that with $100 per year maintenance, it will last forever.Well, this AC unit only cost $500! A great deal! Except it wasn’t a durable good.It doesn’t cost $100 per year to maintain, it has to be fully replaced every year.

This is a different business model.How this works: produce the cheapest possible product in order to compete for foolish consumers’ attention.People are going to impulse buy on credit, so they are not investigating what is the best deal.So the lowest sticker price is going to get the sale.And, if the product is cheap and breaks, that’s all the better.Since it had a very limited warranty and no plan for maintenance (this thing doesn’t even have screws – it’s snapped together) it was virtually guaranteed to produce a second sale quite soon after.

Now I’m far from being the first to notice this trend; there is a growing subculture of people who are saying they want to be anti-consumers.They want to conserve and maintain.It’s a service-oriented culture that looks at making things last rather than making more things.I like that mentality for lots of reasons.It means more thought has to go into the product.It means less stress on the environment.It makes people more aware of their purchases and happy with their decisions.It’s a lower stress, higher reward lifestyle for more people. The people involved are contributing directly to the quality of each others’ lives rather than trying to produce as much crap as possible and trick each other into buying it.

-Peter

P.S. Here’s the Rev. Billy of the Church of Stop Shopping to break it down.

Inventions, patents, and how ‘great’ minds think alike

Years ago, I lived with a bunch of roommates in order to save money. It hurt my dating life, but they were a good bunch of guys. Over the course of the five years I lived with them, I had a number of epiphanies, and I would like to share two of them; both concerned dishes.

We moved out of a dilapidated cabin of a house (in which I lived in the partially finished basement) into a much nicer place we named the “Bagley Estate,” in honor of it being on Bagley street. Amusingly, I also worked in Bagley Hall at the U. of Washington. It was like I could never quite escape his legacy, this “Bagley” person. In any case, whenever roommates are involved, dirty dishes (almost) inevitably pile up due to the lack of accountability that comes with anonymity. This is related to a general school of thought about what happens without accountability (NSFW).

I hated the dish situation at the old place, and so I “invented” a “novel” solution. I gave away every piece of flatware and silverware that didn’t fit in a single load of the dishwasher. If the dishwasher was full there were no more dishes. As a consequence, there were very few dishes abandoned in the sink.

It got me to thinking, however, about the possibilities of a dishwasher designed for bachelors. It would have two halves. As dishes were used, they would be transfered from the clean compartment to the dirty compartment. Then, when the dirty compartment was full and the clean empty only one compartment need be run. Once it was clean there would be no need to unload it! Just start the process of transferring the dishes into the now empty compartment. I drew a crude schematic of the device. I considered applying for a patent.

Like most ideas, it had already been both invented and perfected. It is called a Double Dishwasher and there’s a stealth model that looks like two drawers.

If you don’t have $1000, or you don’t own your home, I have another idea. It’s a magnet that attaches to the front of your existing dishwasher. You only use half of the dishwasher and transfer dishes from the clean side to the dirty side (rinse them, of course). Since it will never have a full load, only use the “light wash” feature so you won’t feel guilty about wasting water. Pick one up for just 5.99!

-Peter

A little image of the Bachelor dishwasher magnet

Personal interactions, management, relationships and trust – Part 1

On personal leverage:

Low-level personal interactions come down to leverage. We can get into high-level personal interactions some other time; suffice it to say that they are a function of trust.Frankly, most inter-personal relations that I see are low-trust affairs. These are not bad people, and they don’t (apparently) have a dysfunctional relationship.But there is very little trust being exhibited.So they fall back on leverage.

Leverage 1: Money.This one is widely used in the workplace, home-life and most everywhere else.It can be generalized to other commodities, like sex or a place to live.The whole idea is this:”you want something that I have, and you will only get that thing if your behavior conforms to my expectations.”

Leverage 2: Being a Jerk: Another widely used leverage point at work and at home, people will motivate other people to change their behavior by treating them poorly.”If your behavior is not what I want, I will behave toward you in a threatening and cruel way.”

Leverage 3: Violence: Although not so common in functional relationships, perhaps the oldest way to get people to do what you want is to hurt them physically. It’s what people use when there is very limited communication or extremely low trust, as between warring clans of cavemen or with small children with limited understanding.”If you don’t stop that, I will spank you,” or between so-called adults, “If you don’t think this song is the greatest song ever, I will fight you.” (Ron Burgundy)

Whole books have been written about how to avoid people who use the “Being a Jerk” mode of leverage, like The No Asshole Rule. But avoidance is not the best strategy.Violence is right out.Money is the common denominator, but it’s still a weak way to deal with people.The big upshot: there is a better way.It’s about investing in relationships, not about other peoples’ behavior.

-Peter