Monthly Archives: March 2006

If they outlaw evolution, only outlaws will evolve…

My friend Alex from Back In The Day™wrote an interesting post about his hope for the future of Humanity based on the democratizing effects of technology and the Internet. Except that he put it a lot more poetically. Here’s a snippet:

earthbound01: the internet is wide

broadly, there’s some kind of metaphorical Library of Alexandria here, it’s depth of knowledge wide and deep. Virtually all human learning is available here if you have the right passwords and authorization. I’m able to read scholarly journals now from a little terminal. All of our culture is slowly being uploaded, explained, digested. Perhaps one day all cultures will be there. Just think for a minute how sweet the future is going to be now that information is available broadly. Think of it though- all knowledge, all art, all human creation and technology available, or at least explicable. And communication! Instantaneous text, sound, or video transmission. Amazing!

…

There’s some kind of air-strike going on in Iraq, and I’m worried about “collateral damage”, and our soldiers, and really everyone involved. Wars are great for stopping nazis, but I am starting to think they aren’t very good for stopping concepts like or terrorism. Still, these things are temporary, and I think people aren’t stupid and are learning.
Life goes on.
and adapts.
Maybe we can tell the creationistas that if they outlaw evolution only outlaws will evolve.

Electronic Journals and Cost

Post-Katrina we are definitely having journal access issues at Tulane. The sheer cost and lack of thought toward online access from Elsevier (as mentioned in the linked article) and its peers are a continual aggravation when looking for papers to read.

Over on Kalimna there’s an interesting look at what I hope is a new wave in academic publishing — purely electronic publication. Honestly, when you can print a PDF of any article you want, and customize search feeds to aggregate articles you’re interested in as they’re released, why do you want paper journals that you often have to go to the library for and that cost a fortune?

Kalimna

Let’s get some perspective on publication costs. As BEP point out there is a cost crisis in most university libraries stemming from the monopoly pricing power, based on reputation and prestige, of large ‘for-profit’ publishing houses. For-profit publishers in economics charge around 83 cents per page of a journal article whereas not-for-profit publishers associated with universities charge around 17 cents per page: See here for data. BEP costs 36 cents.

Happy Pi Day!

It’s 3/14, also known as Pi day! Take time today to appreciate the magical number that goes on forever and comes from the ratio of a circle’s area to its radius, (and other similar relationships).

I gave up on the “street-bus”

That’s what I was calling the bus that runs on the streetcar route here in Uptown, since the streetcar line is still not fixed post-Katrina. I’ve been taking this bus to work, which could take anywhere from 15 minutes to 1.5 hours, depending on the whims of the RTA.

This was just not working. I live a mere 3.54 miles from my lab, a distance that I could often speedwalk faster than taking the bus.

I used to ride my old mountain bike, but it was stolen during Katrina, so I finally bought a new one:

Now it only takes me 15 minutes each way.

Protecting wetlands that protect oil revenues

The Washington crowd cannot even get this right.

“in the last two years [2004-2005], we have spent more to rebuild Iraq’s wetlands than Louisiana’s” (for those who aren’t sure, a large amount of oil is regularly pulled out of the gulf of Louisiana’s shoreline, shipped through New Orleans’ port system, and processed locally along Mississippi between the sea and Baton Rouge).

Quote is from John Barry and Newt Gingrich, Time magazine, 6 March 2006, reproduced here