Author Archives: Ponderer

About Ponderer

Ponderer also writes science fiction and science-inspired rhyming poetry. Check her out at katerauner.wordpress.com/ She worked at Rocky Flats for 22 years - you may know her as Kathy London.

What Do You Do?

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“When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”

I was saddened to discover this wonderful quote is apocryphal.

Wikiquotes says a 1940 book titled A Treatise of Melancholie by Timothie Bright, attributes a close version to John Maynard Keynes: “When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir?” But this source is also in question.

Quote Investigator says “The earliest statement found… that fits this template was not spoken by Keynes but by another prominent individual in the same field, Paul Samuelson who was awarded the 1970 Nobel Prize in economics.” He used it on Meet the Press in 1970: “Well when events change, I change my mind. What do you do?”

The Economist calls the quote an “oral tradition.”

It’s such a good thought that I’m willing to believe many people bandied it about and created their own versions. I’m glad someone said it.

As Kermit Says, It’s Not Easy Being Green

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“Red or green” is supposed to be the official New Mexico question, asked about the chili you want smothering your meal. But in my little home town of Silver City, the question has been “paper or plastic,” and plastic lost.

At least, thin, filmy, single-use plastic bags lost. A ban against such bags will go into effect shortly, and since 90% of our bags come from inside the town limits, it will impact the whole county.

Silver City joins a list of cities worried about bags, for a variety of reasons. Mother Jones has an article out that says when stores charge for the bags, in one study “usage dropped to 27 percent (33 percent switched to reusable bags and 40 percent made do without).” Substitutes are not obviously better, depending on what parameter you are trying to make “better.” If your goal is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, versus single-use bags: Continue reading →

More Natural Methane Sources Discovered

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climate change blue marble

Our regular readers know we have posted often on global warming and climate change. While I don’t think a single study warrants a lot of concern, I recently read about a discovery of methane vents off the US east coast that promises confirmation soon.

“The ease of access has set off an exploration stampede, with several new projects in planning stages or already funded… ‘We’re setting the stage for a decade of discovery.'”

Unfortunately, these vents do not mark gas pockets that drillers can extract.

A study of a few seeps in 2013 found “them teeming with crabs, fish and mussel beds,” which sounds good to me. In deeper, colder waters, the seeps could be a natural laboratory for studying how methane hydrates respond to warmer oceans. There’s little in nature that’s all good or all bad. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, so releases could accelerate the documented trends in global temperatures.

For me, this discovery demonstrates that there is a lot we don’t know about the world. Also, that science is the right process for learning more. I accept that I will never know enough to make 100% sure predictions about climate change, which is hardly unique.

I’ve observed that polemics lead people to take harder and harder positions on narrower and narrower arguments. I think old political habits are getting in our way. What the global warming debate needs is wider discussion; on mitigation measures as well as reductions in human contributions via pollution, land use, etc. Balancing costs and benefits is nothing new. Let’s do it.

The Smartest Kids in the World

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smartest kidsAmanda Ripley has investigated the education mystery: why do some kids learn so much while others so little? From country to country? From school to school within America? The Smartest Kids in the World is really two books. One is an analysis of data, “education [is] suddenly awash in data.” The other presents the stories of three American exchange students who go abroad for a high school year in one of the world’s best school systems: Finland, South Korea, and Poland. (Poland? You may ask, but read on.)

While I appreciate that “narratives without statistics are blind, [and] statistics without narratives are empty,” personally I could have done with less detail on the three exchange students. I was anxious to learn how America can improve education and less interested in how a student raised money for her trip. For me, the book could be a third shorter, but at only 165 pages in the body, that’s not a significant problem.

Ripley uses an international testing system called PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) to compare schools. She explains its genesis and how it works to assess students’ ability to solve problems (not just memorize) in math, reading, and science. She makes a good case that PISA tests students’ “preparedness for life”, not just “for more schooling.”  To reinforce her point, Ripley interviews the CEO of Bama Companies (they make apple pies for McDonalds among other products). Bama opened a new factory in Poland because they “had trouble finding enough maintenance techs in Oklahoma… even filling their lowest-skilled line jobs, because even those workers had to be able to think and communicate… [they] couldn’t trust a high school diploma [in America]; graduates from different high schools… knew wildly different things.”  Continue reading →

Cut Off Your Nose to Spite Your Face

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Russia has reacted to sanctions from the West by banning imports from those Western countries. The action reminds me of today’s expression.

A snopes discussion offers Word Detective input: “it seems to have first appeared around 1200 as a Latin proverb cited by Peter of Blois, a French poet of the day.”

Another commenter says “According to Nigel Rees in A Word In Your Shell-Like: 6,000 Curious And Everyday Phrases Explained: The expression may have originated in 1593 when King Henry IV of France seemed willing to sacrifice the city of Paris because of its citizen’s objections to his being monarch. One of his own men had the temerity to suggest that destroying Paris would be like cutting off his nose to spite his face. The phrase seems not to have taken hold in English until the mid-19th Century.”  Without a written reference by “one of his own men”, this may be apocryphal.

It’s nice when Snopes does your work for you.

Either way, the phrase refers to an act that injures you more than it injures your opponent. While this phrase labels such acts as foolish, sometimes harming ourselves makes sense if it will punish a cheater. I guess, for every rule-of-thumb on one hand, there’s the other hand.

On Writing – A Memoir Of The Craft

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On WritingBoth RF_alum and I have tried our hand at writing fiction, so perhaps you’ll allow me a self-indulgent review: Stephen King’s book On Writing.

He defines stories as “vividly imagined waking dreams,” a form of telepathy between writer and reader over time and space. He also notes that “most books about writing [fiction] are filled with bullshit… shorter the book, the less the bullshit.”

The first seventy pages (of a two-hundred page book) talk about his life, mostly childhood and early influences. He started submitting short stories to magazines in his teens, when a few hand-written words on a form-letter rejection were cause for celebration. King thinks this is still the way to get started, especially to get an agent: get your stories published by little outlets (that may only pay in copies of their magazine); that’s how you build your credentials. (I should point out that the book has a copyright of 2000, so King’s advice pre-dates the recent boom in self-publishing, especially of ebooks.)

It’s a nice introduction to King’s style, but I must admit that, anxious to get to his writing advice, I skimmed much of it.

I’m going to include a lot of King’s specific advice; because I’m sure you’re more interested in his opinions than in mine.  Continue reading →