Feeling Dumb

Don't know the status of this one. But here's where I got it.

There’s this thing called entropy. Physicists define it as energy not available to do useful work. Information theorists define entropy as information that’s missing when the value of a random variable is unknown.

Both definitions fit my work situation right now.

Problem is, there’s reverse entropy here as far as they physicists go – there’s energy available to do useful work, but since that useful work is partitioned off because only a certain number of writers have been authorized to do that work, there’s plenty of energy lying around for work that isn’t useful. It’s a frustrating situation, especially when those on the non-entropic side are screaming because they don’t have enough time to get done what needs to be done. But that’s government work for you.

Then there’s that unknown random variable, in this case known as layoffs. Up to 600 are planned next year, starting in January. Frankly, if I’m on the list, I’d rather know now. That knowledge might juice up my current job search – again, an application of that energy going into work that isn’t useful.

I try to remain busy and useful. I do have some work to do, just not in the amounts I’d like to help fill the days and not in the amounts I’d like in order to help those who are feeling overwhelmed. Helping out with non-partitioned documents works to a point, but that’s not where the pressure is. Unfortunately, that’s where the budget pressure is, so relief won’t be coming any time soon, though relief is close at hand, available and willing. Seems unfair in a way.

So this is why I try to maintain other pursuits, outside of work, and outside of work hours.

Dumb Journalists Like Me

There are many reasons I am no longer a journalist, and glad to be so. But here’s the biggie:

I’m dumb.

Dumb as a rock. I have a major failing in me that cripples my ability to work as a journalist, and that is I trust people. Yes, I know the first rule of journalism is “If your mother tells you she loves you, check it out.” I get it. But I’m still dumb.

Not as dumb as others, however.

This “Climategate” thing just keeps getting worse. The New York Times finally chimed in on the matter in an intelligent fashion – I don’t mind that it took a week and a half; I’m pleased that someone is looking at this stuff without a knee-jerk reaction. But what John Tierney writes in the Times really speaks to me not as a skeptic (because I’m not) but as a former journalist. Here, he’s speaking of the famous “hockey stick” graph purporting to show a marked increase in global temperatures in the last portion of the 20th century (emphasis mine):

Most of the graph was based on analyses of tree rings and other “proxy” records like ice cores and lake sediments. These indirect measurements indicated that temperatures declined in the middle of the millennium and then rose in the first half of the 20th century, which jibes with other records. But the tree-ring analyses don’t reveal a sharp warming in the late 20th century — in fact, they show a decline in temperatures, contradicting what has been directly measured with thermometers.

Because they considered that recent decline to be spurious, Dr. Jones and his colleagues removed it from part of the graph and used direct thermometer readings instead. In a statement last week, Dr. Jones said there was nothing nefarious in what they had done, because the problems with the tree-ring data had been openly identified earlier and were known to experts.

But the graph adorned the cover of a report intended for policy makers and journalists. The nonexperts wouldn’t have realized that the scariest part of that graph — the recent temperatures soaring far above anything in the previous millennium — was based on a completely different measurement from the earlier portion. It looked like one smooth, continuous line leading straight upward to certain doom.

The story behind that graph certainly didn’t show that global warming was a hoax or a fraud, as some skeptics proclaimed, but it did illustrate another of their arguments: that the evidence for global warming is not as unequivocal as many scientists claim.

So, enter the dumb journalist in me. I’m rather like Dave Barry: Maybe I’d like to go out there and, as a journalist, fight corruption. But I have no idea how to find any. And if the so-called experts – who are much more knowledgeable than I – say this graph and the data behind it is good, so be it.

So I’m no longer a journalist. I’m too dumb. As Dogbert is fond of saying, a journalist in this kind of situation can take the report, consider it, talk to other experts, work really hard and maybe, after several months, find the problem. Or he can just write up what the expert says and be done with it. Either way, it pays the same.

Nobody ought to be cooking the books or spinning the data this way. There’s plenty of umbrage on the greener side of the spectrum concerning the spin behind nuclear energy, clean coal, climate change skeptology, that you’d think those on the side of righteousness would be extra scrupulous in making sure their data was good, comparing apples to apples. Compariing apples to pomegranates to make the situation look worse, or, as Tierney says, making it appear unequivocal, is dumber than a dumb journalist parroting that information to the masses.

CRU hacker/whistleblower, thank you, whoever you are. I’d like to see one side of this debate present honest work. Still waiting. In the meantime, I can enjoy this:

Dumb As A Rock

I should probably say this somewhere along the line:

I still feel dumb as a rock.

Yes, I have that master's degree. But each day older I get, the dumber I feel. There's so much to know out there, and there's no way to keep up with it all. Not that I'm trying. But I do know this: I've got to keep up learning stuff, especially when it comes to communication and journalism -- which is still part of my career -- so I can keep up with the rest of the running pack.

Idaho -- No. 1 for Spam

According to the folks at Symantec, who sound like they should know about this kind of thing, Idaho now ranks as the No. 1 state in the union (up from No. 44) for receiving spam e-mails.

Symantec says that 93.8 percent -- or slightly over 9 out of 10 e-mails received -- in the state are spam. A slightly more detailed report (excluding state rankings) is here.

What I'd like to know is this:

1) How do they measure such a thing
2) Who is getting all of these messages
3) What are they doing wrong

Gratefully, it's not me. I may have received a handful of spam messages this year, but the number is small, perhaps less than a couple dozen messages this year, and that's spread over four independent e-mail accounts. That I have filters that target common spam headers and drop it in folders I only see to delete might explain why I don't struggle with spam.

It's hard to say what kind of behavior nets the fewest -- or the most -- spam messages, based on my behavior. On one account -- at work -- I receive maybe one or two spam messages (ironically, I got one this morning) a year. That's likely due to two factors: I use work e-mail for work only, and the company has some pretty strong spam filters.

The other e-mail accounts I have make less sense. We have a "family" e-mail account which we use occasionally when, I don't know, we want to pretend like we're wearing tuxedoes and formal dresses or something. That rarely gets spammed, probably because we don't use it all that often.

I also have a Yahoo e-mail account I use for random things, such as shuttling personal files to and from various locations, registering for e-mail sites, my Twitter, Blogger and YouTube accounts and such. I get some spam at this address, but not a lot, considering the uses I put this account to.

My Uncharted e-mail, for some reason, is the biggest offender. And I can't figure out why. I don' use it indiscrimanently, nordo I use it for any kind of blind and dumb e-mail registrations and such, for which I use the Yahoo account.

Both Uncharted (which is through Gmail) and Yahoo filter out the spam and put it in its own folder, which I empty from time to time. The messages pile up, but I can't say they pile up in massive amounts over time. I can't say that 9 out of 10 e-mails I receive is spam; the number is probably closer to three or four out of ten. That's still a lot, but 30 to 40 percent is a lot less than 93 percent. And since I'm below average in spam receipts in Idaho, that must mean somebody's getting more spam than I am. You can keep it. I don't want it.

Just Wait . . . Someone Will Blame This on Industrialization

Jupiter, it seems, is popping out with new red spots like a teenager whipping through puberty.

As reported in this heavily copyrighted story (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,358704,00.html) Jupter has sprouted a third red spot as its second red spot (dubbed Great Red Spot Jr.) achieves winds as brisk as its larger counterpart.

One of the theories is that Jupiter's climate is changing -- getting warmer -- a pheonomenon which is causing these greater-that-hurricane-force storms. You can bet there are environmentalists out there right now plotting how they can pin the blame for this on western Terran civilization, or at least the Bush presidency.

Here are a few examples:

1. Broadcasts of Bush speeches, policy announcements, et cetera, from Earth have been striking the Jovian atmosphere for years, generally increasing temperatures due to the interaction of Jupiter's hydrocarbon atmosphere with bombast, lies, and quotations such as "I'm the decider."
2. Dick Cheney found the secure, undisclosed location on Jupiter to be a bit nippy, so NASA has been heating the atmosphere up with giant laser beams shot at the planet from its orbiting probes.
3. So much carbon has leaked out of Earth's atmosphere that a gigantic Carbon Cloud is now enveloping the entire solar system.

These are only a few examples. I'm sure you can come up with better ones.

And they got dumber, and dumber, and dumber . . .

I do not profess to be the smartest guy in the world. Even in my household of five, there are days when my intelligence ranks below that of our dachshund. But at least I know better than this:



Nazi Germany did, of course, host the Olympic Games, back in 1936:



I don’t mind if people want to protest things. They ought to be bright enough, however, to do a little research before they make their posters. A few minutes perusing Olympics history would clearly have shown this. Apparently, the poster-maker has never heard of Jesse Owens.

It’s good to see that liberals can be just as dumb as the people they accuse of cornering the dumb market. That's the conservatives, in case you're not bright enough to figure that out.

It's kind of comforting, if you ask me, to see that dumbness knows no political boundary.

And how dare I surmise that the poster-maker was a liberal? I admit to no solid proof. But since it seems to be the (American) liberal thing to do these days to make highly photogenic protests that will amount to affecting no changes whatsoever while believing their actions will severely impact the world on a global scale, I think I'm safe in my assumption.

True, conservatives also make ineffectual protests -- and protest material. But they tend to stick to making highly photogenic protests that will amount to no changes whatsoever on the domestic scale, e.g., immigration, English as the official language, and so forth.