First of all, thanks for the great comments about twitter. Very clarifying.

Now, the updates:

1 – I’m starting to think that the most important use for twitter is not news, networking, or annoying followers with useless messages. I suspect it was created with one goal in mind: report earthquakes.

2 – Remember when I said that my generation is getting old earlier than we should? Ditto. Yesterday I went to the doctor with a serious pain in my foot, and he suspects it might be gout.

Gout! I’m a woman, 29 years old, I don’t eat processed foods and don’t drink too much. We still have to wait for the result of the blood test, but this is a strong possibility.

I feel old and unhealthy now.

PS: My MSc graduation is today, so if you see someone limping on the stage of the Albert Hall today, yes, that’s me. And my very old sick foot.

This will be a quick post. Everybody is talking about twitter so much that I wanted to ask if any one around here twits, and if you people think it can be useful for science, science news, strengthening the science community or anything like that.

There is an article today in the Guardian about that – useful for those who have no clue what it is all about. (and for those who use it, there are lots of nice apps in the end of the story).

I have been twittering for some months now (twitter.com/baxt) – not about science but about the life, the universe and everything.

It can be useful for news, as long as you follow the right people (not as easy as you might think). But it allowed me, for example, to know about an earthquake in Sao Paulo, Brazil, even before it was on the news.

There is no question that our parents and grandparents (depending on your age) are living longer and longer. But I have serious doubts about all that talk that the world will be populated by old people in, say, 50 years.

Sometimes I feel my generation will not live as long as the previous ones (for you to understand what generations I’m talking about, I’m 29 years old).

My parents, who are around 53 today, were lean, active and healthy until their mid forties. Far leaner and more active than I am now.

My friends started getting fat and bald, with high blood pressure and dangerous cholesterol levels by the end of their twenties. My parents in law, on the other hand, are close to 70 now, and they started putting on weight much later than us.

My mother had three kids and continued to be thin and strong for years after that. I have to pay attention to what I eat and to my back aches today – and I haven’t had a single kid yet!

In other words, my generation looks (and feels) today the same way our parents look and feel – today!

We are precociously old even before getting old. I don’t even want to think of what will happen when we get really old (I mean, if we do).

This is Baby Thelma , a circus fat lady famous on the fiftes (or forties, I’m not sure). Only 60 years ago people would go to a show and pay the ticket to see her. Today we see people like her on the street all the time.

After a long winter (shorter than a real winter), I’m back here. I must admit I have been having some issues with the concept of “science” and specially “science communication,” and sometimes if put me off writing. This is not new, but I’ll try to explain it this time.

I once read a best seller book called Freakonomics , which most of you may have already heard of. It uses the economic mindset and economic theories to study and understand non-economic topics, like the trends in naming children, frauds in sumo championships and the behaviour of real state agents.

It was written by an economist and a journalist, who I suppose was the responsible for making the text really fluid and easy to understand. It’s not a life-changing book, but I found it interesting.

Well, that’s how I feel about science. We should approach things scientifically – anything. Instead of just focusing on Physics, Biology, Mathematics and so on.

For example: just the other day I had a huge discussion with a friend about families, and how much should family interfere in people’s lives. I believe that the extreme of too much interference is preferable to the other extreme – no interference at all, you die alone and you will be found when the body begins to smell and the neighbours notice.

She was adamant that there is no reason to think in extremes, although her family history is on the non-interference extreme. My experience, in the contrary, is of being raised by a stereotypical Jewish mother (although we are not Jewish, as long as I know), and I don’t think it’s that bad.

Interestingly, I’ve never met any other son/daughter of similar mothers saying that this is terrible. But those who have distant mothers usually say that having an overprotective mother is the worst, most damaging thing in the world.

And no, I don’t believe in balance. I think all societies tend to exaggerate in a way: too much interference or no interference.

Well, the thing is that I got so mad with all that friend said that I decided to try and analyse the situation scientifically, instead of just focusing on how I feel about that.

I don’t know very well how to do it,but I would really appreciate comments on that. Does anyone share my feelings? Any idea on how to approach the topic scientifically?

PS: Here’s a Slate magazine slideshow about Jewish Mothers.

I think you will be reading a few posters here about TED for the next weeks, at least until I get tired of that (and then take a rest and start watching thousands of talks again, getting tired again, and… well, you got the picture).

This talk by Dave Eggers is amazing. It is not about science, but education. More specifically, English education and writing, but the general idea fits any other subject.

[“science is a method, not a subject.” (Cath wrote that as a comment to a post sowhere, and I couldn’t agree more.)I will repeat that as a mantra, from now on. But I digress.]

It all started when a group of writers and people working with the English language in general decided to dedicate a bit of their time to help schoolchildren with their homework, clarify doubts about English and so on.

And they rented a small building for that. But it was a commercial building, so according to the law they had to sell something in there, the landlord told.

That’s where the story goes from “good” to “genius.”

(hm, forget I said that. I don’t want to influence your judgement.)

They decided to open a shop with pirate supplies. “For the working buccaneer”. Parrots food, glass eyeballs, wooden legs and so on. In the back of the shop, computers, desks, books and the usual stuff you would expect (826 Valencia is the name of the place)

The store eventually started doing so well that it now makes money enough to cover the rent and some other expenses. Similar initiatives appeared in the US. A store with articles for superheroes (Brooklyn Superhero Supply Co.). A seven-eleven for time travellers (didn’t find the site, but the products are here ) . All with homework going on in the back, together with partnerships with local schools and involvement with the teachers.

And that’s it. I really hope someone opens something like that here in London. Help kids write and build their confidence, learn with them, try new flying capes, buy secret identity kits, fill my cupboard with Barbarian repellent? I would love that.

This is the website of the initiative . It explains the other things going on besides the useless ephemera, like the books the children write,events and so on.

I was going to write about other thing completely, but then my sister, who is the ultimate reader of chick-flick and chick-lit and other girlie stuff sent me a story about a scientific paper that proves that beautiful women married to ugly men are happier than ugly women married to beautiful men.
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”The Tennessee study tested 82 couples for facial attractiveness and how they felt about their marriages. While women who were better-looking than their spouses reported contentedness, according to Univeristy of Tennessee professor Jim McNulty, men who were more attractive than their mates ‘demonstrated a tendency to offer less emotional and practical support to their wives’.”
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Ok, ok… As if it was not enough of an over simplification, there comes the unavoidable part.
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Yes, you guessed right: the evolutionary explanation!
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”McNulty adds that there is an ‘evolutionary explanation’ for this behavior: ‘Attractive men have available to them more short-term mating opportunities. This may make them less satisfied and less committed to the marital relationship’.”
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Why?
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God, why?
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Why they always have to put some evolution in these silly researches? Why they don’t even consider the possibility of culture and society playing a huge part in the conclusions? They investigate a specific group, from an specific culture, and then say that the conclusions prove “evolutionary pressures”?
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Some weeks ago I read an editorial of New Scientist about how students in an university associated black people to apes (I don’t remember the details, but the original is here)
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And then, guess what? The scientists concluded that the association was ingrained in their minds because of centuries of prejudice and racial stereotypes.
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Fair enough, I agree with that. But maybe if it wasn’t such a controversial topic, they might just have jumped to the conclusion that associating dark-skinned people to apes brought evolutionary advantages to our ancestors? I don’t doubt.
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What I’d like to know is why use evolution to explain everything? Beauty and marriage are highly culturally charged topics, and it’s obvious that social pressures towards marriage, beauty and youth are quite different for men and women.
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It is a lot like people using evolution to explain unfaithfulness of men. As if we were all animals, and not products of society, culture, education and so on, combined with biological factors.
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Sometimes it just feels that some scientists (not all of them) are too lazy to try to learn anything other than what they are working with. So, instead of studying a little bit of sociology, they just go for the easier explanation, using concepts that they have already learnt.
. PS: What happened to the line breaks? I had to put periods all around, otherwise the text would be a huge block, with no paragraphs.

There are days when my mind works in two or more simultaneous tracks. Does it happen to you? While I’m reading something there is an entirely different film going on the background. Today is one of this days, that’s why it is being difficult of thinking of a single thing to post here.

Well, nevermind. A couple of days ago my mind refused to play even one single track, and I dragged myself around all day unable to choose a sandwich or to calculate the price of a soda and a chocolate. Compared to this I prefer to have a several-track-mind, definitely.

And since I’m talking about how the mind works (or refuses to work), there is a video about body hacking that I found some days ago. It’s a talk by Quinn Norton, a journalist from San Francisco who, according to herself, “comes from a family of body artists and decided to take the thing one step further.”

The talk is almost 2 years old, but I couldn’t find her more recent presentation at Etech last week. The video is a bit too long, but I think it’s worth the effort.

She discusses body modification with a purpose, like implanting a magnet in the finger (she did that!) to sense EM fields, if we should be allowed to enhance ourselves freely, if we are already cyborgs, and about a whole world of back room surgical operations made with stuff available on ebay.

Personally, I believe we are close to a world of highly productive enhanced good looking people (the rich) and, on the other side of the gap, the normal people struggling more and more to compete with the first group. I want to think that someday the whole humanity will be made of happy cyborgs, but there is one thing that prevents me.

There is a joke that says that there is no such thing as a ugly women – only poor women! And looking at some examples we can see that a universe of beauty treatments, plastic surgery, special food and personal trainers can really perform miracles.

All this myriad treatments is out of reach of most humanity, so why should I believe that mind-enhancing drugs and other stuff will be available or the masses? (hope I’m wrong)

PS: If you are interested in the topic, there is a nice article about mind enhancing drugs that was published in the Guardian last year.

This post will be my contribution to the collective blogging about science books. In fact, I feel it will become a series of posts, not only one…

Lots of people wrote about the books that were important in their childhood, some of them sci-fi. I decided to talk about a series of books that are not about science, but that portrait science in a fantastic way.

These books were incredibly important in my childhood, and I still love the characters (I plan to call my daughter Emilia because of that, but I still have to convince my husband). Sadly, the Sitio do Picapau Amarelo is quite unknown outside Brazil.

The name means “Yellow woodpecker ranch,” but it doesn’t sound as good in English as pi-ca-pa-u-a-ma-re-lo in Portuguese (try to say that out loud).

It’s a series of books about the ranch, populated by two old ladies, two kids, a talking doll, a talking maize (or corncob, which word is better?), fantastic creatures, a talking pig and lots more.

The author, Monteiro Lobato, has just been described by my husband as the Brazilian Tolkien. These are very different styles, but the comparison is not completely out of place, although I think there is something of Lewis Carrol in the universe he created too.

In one of the books Emilia, the doll, decides to reduce humanity size to end the war (the story was written in the forties). Suddenly all humankind is reduced to something like 5 centimetres.

When the main characters are traveling around the world to see what happened, they find that almost all humans believe that the world has become huge, except one group of American scientists who have quickly adapted to the new conditions.

They analyzed the situation and concluded that the reducing of species was a very usual thing in evolution, so there was no reason to believe that the world had expanded. Although intrigued by the suddenness of the shrinking, they quickly find ways of living.

They founded a city inside of a bucket (called “Bucket City,” in English) raised cattle (worms), dressed using cotton fibres and even domesticated bettles and small insects!

That’s is just one of the situations. Other books were about the World of Arithmetics, oil exploration, how the human body works, nature and evolution (when they decide to reform nature and make things more “intelligent”), astronomy, all of this mixed with popular culture from Brazil, like the “Saci,” the “preto velho”, ex-slaves (by that time, slavery was a close experience), etc.

Well, this post is already huge now, so I will write more some other day. Unfortunately it is hard to find material about these books in English, but there is a Wikipedia page with some information.

The images are: Viscount Corncob (original illustration), Narizinho (not related to the reduced humans story I mentioned), Reforming Nature cover, The Saci cover

Matt Brown posted a blog entry with a questionnaire about science engagement. I filled it and included some comments, that I’m pasting here. Written in two minutes it’s roughly, very roughly, a bit of what I think about it:

”In my opinion, the off putting part of the science engagement/communication/whatever is the label “science”.

The gung ho approach that “science is good!” “science is cool!” is annoying. Children and young people are interested in interesting things (pretty obvious, isn’t it?), no matter if they are usually classified as science or not. We should encourage curiosity in general.

Other point is that science should be mixed with other topics, in my opinion (therefore avoiding the “science is good” approach I just mentioned). But unfortunately this is very difficult, given that funding for science communication comes from institutions that want to focus on the “science” and the “sciency” label, many times associated with geeky kids, labs, white coats, scientists-as-weird-people, and so on.

In other words, I think this kind of approach reinforces the idea of science as something detached from the rest of the world, something “special”, different. Some people may think it’s a good thing, but I don’t.

Encourage “curiosity towards the world”, in the broader sense possible, would be the best thing to do.”

In very crude words, that’s it. Any opinions?

I wanted to write an entry about mental illness, internet personas, diversity, identity and many other stuff, but couldn’t come to a conclusion.

So, here is my train of thought:

1 – Read a New Scientist article about autistic people offended by the way they were portraied in a website (Autism Speaks) from a charity.

2 – saw Amanda Baggs video, In My Language . Found it amazing that she could speak those two languages so well. Found it extra-amazing that, being so disabled, she was able to do everything by herself. Maybe she was lying?

3 – Found websites saying that she is a liar (like this ). Not autistic, but desperate for attention.

4 – Concluded that I will never know what is her situation, and it doesn’t matter. Autistic or not, she has serious mental problems. And I hope she finds a way to live with that and be happy.

5 – But I got a little uncomfortable with the whole autistic pride stuff and the idea that if you “treat” someone with these problems and they become less autistic, they lose part of their personality. (correct me if I got it wrong)

6 – Thought of many artists who were depressed or had serious mental illnesses. If they got proper medication and treatment, would they have been the artists they were? Virginia Woolf, Van Gogh, JD Salinger. Syd Barret…

7 – Recalled the case of a friend who took some Ritalin-like medication for some months and said he started to concentrate beautifully in his work and studies. But his creativity just disappeared. “You can’t have it all,” he told me. He gave up the medication and is a creative person again. But what if he had severe attention deficit, and not just a mild case?

8 – It led me to a story I read years ago (Witty Ticcy Ray, from “The man who mistook his wife for a hat”, by Oliver Sacks) about a man with severe Tourette Syndrome who became a high functioning but boring person when under medication and decided to take it only 5 days a week, going back to his old self, witty, great drummer and tourette-ic on weekends.

9 – And so what? No idea.