5 Intriguing Things
1. On the virtues of "democratic secrecy."
"Regardless of the cause of this trend, by insisting upon greater transparency as a goal unto itself, critics have missed (or wrongly rejected) two separate, but closely related points. First, recent revelations to the contrary notwithstanding, meaningful accountability of secret government programs is possible even without wide-scale transparency. Second, there is an array of circumstances in which properly accountable government secrecy is not anathema to civil liberties—and where transparency, as such, might actually compromise individual rights. This is especially true where the government is protecting the confidentiality interests of third parties (e.g., under the Privacy Act), but it may also be true in at least some cases in which the government is protecting its own secrets."
2. Hiking while black: on the whiteness of the construction of "nature."
"Finney, an assistant professor of environmental science, policy, and management at the University of California at Berkeley, spent years researching African-Americans’ connection to natural spaces. In a new book, Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African Americans to the Great Outdoors, she finds that that connection is rich, but also distinct and fraught—rooted in a history of racial violence and exclusion that sharply limited black engagement with nature. Those barriers, Finney writes, would come to shape our most basic perceptions about who cherishes nature and who belongs in it."
3. Stanford has a whole center dedicated to studying the replicability of experiments.
"The Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford (METRICS) is a research-to-action center whose purpose is to advance excellence in scientific research. Our center aims to undertake rigorous evaluation of research practices and find ways to optimize the reproducibility and efficiency of scientific investigations. We aim to apply research methods to study how research is done, how it can be done better, and how to effectively promote and incentivize the use of best scientific practices."
"Even if radioactivity is the thing that makes Vaseline glass cool, it’s not what makes Vaseline glass glow, says Barrie Skelcher, who’s written two Vaseline glass books of his own. That may come as a surprise to many Vaseline glass collectors, who assume that radioactivity is the reason why Vaseline glass glows under ultraviolet light, confusing the cartoon depiction of radioactivity for the science. 'It’s the chemistry of uranium that makes Vaseline glass glow, not radioactivity,' Skelcher says by phone from England, where he lives with his wife, Shirley, and 500 or so pieces of Vaseline glass in a collection that once numbered more than 1,000. 'It wouldn’t make any difference whether the glass contained depleted uranium with the 235 isotope removed or natural uranium; the chemistry is identical. Uranium fluoresces under UV light.'"
5. Poor Google Barge, headed for the literal scrapheap of history.
"The barge carries 63 shipping containers arranged to create a four-story building. The structure was assembled in New London, Connecticut, and the barge was towed to Portland, where Cianbro Corp. was scheduled to do interior work on it, including the installation of undisclosed technology equipment... On Wednesday, a tugboat towed the barge from Rickers Wharf Marine Facility in Portland and deposited it at Turner’s Island Cargo Terminal in South Portland. Roger Hale, owner of the terminal, said the structure had been purchased by an unnamed 'international barging company' and was being prepared to leave Portland for an ocean voyage to an undisclosed location. The containers, though, will be disassembled at Turner’s Island and scrapped, said Lance Hanna, deputy harbor master for Portland Harbor."
I linked to myself yesterday, and it would be unseemly to do so again within the legitimate five things, but I did write a 6,000-word story about Blue Bottle Coffee's new iced-coffee beverage. Well, what it is really about is a very smart, self-aware person trying to go mainstream without sucking. Maybe you can relate.
Today's 1957 American English Language Tip
chairwoman. In the US, chairman is used for either sex.
A Tugboat Towed