Tuesday, October 30, 2007

interesting

This is so cool!

I feel bad for admiring what the spammers did here, but it's really very clever and ingenious. Basically, spam bots were signing up for hundreds of free email accounts on sites like yahoo. So yahoo put in CAPTCHAs, otherwise known as those warped images of letters and numbers that are fairly easy for a human to read, but very hard for a computer to read. Clever way of sorting out the people from the computers, right? Now, presumably this solution wouldn't have worked forever, because it has to be possible to train a computer to become as good at recognizing those images as people are. But we're still pretty far from making that happen.

So what do spammers do in the mean time? They figure out how to get humans to do the dirty work for them. The brilliant stroke? use porn. You download a trojan onto your computer (likely by viewing porn in the first place), and it creates a pop-up ad of a woman who takes off an article of clothing for each CAPTCHA you solve. genius.

p.s. once you type the word porn, somehow all the other words around it seem dirtier: "dirty work" "stroke" "trojan" "pop-up" ...you get the idea.

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

women in math and science

3 related things I've been thinking about lately (i.e. they're showing up all over the blogs I read):
1. Why are women underrepresented in science and math? (is there an IQ distribution issue?)
2. Why are black people underrepresented basically everywhere where high academic achievement is important? (again, is there an IQ issue?)
3. Why are republicans underrepresented in academia? (okay, no one's seriously brought up the IQ issue here, but maybe it's because the people bringing up IQ in the other 2 cases are republicans, and they can't be the dumb ones, can they?)

There's way too much here for 1 blog post, so I'm going to focus on females in math and science (obviously the one that relates most to my own life) and maybe, hopefully get back to the other two in later posts.

The IQ issue everyone raises with females in math/science is that IQ testing shows slightly different bell curves for males and females, with slightly more males on the tail ends (in the "genius" and "retarded" categories, basically) and slightly more females clustered around the middle (in the "normal" category). And maybe, since you have to be really really smart to become a math or science professor, and there are just more really really smart males than females, that explains the disparity.

This explanation really makes me uncomfortable. I guess people should be allowed to bring it up as a possible explanation,because it would be pretty closed minded to summarily dismiss an entire avenue of inquiry. On the other hand, it strikes me as too pat, and I deeply suspect that most people championing it are latching on to convenient, plausible "just so" story about why men are superior to women, and that's just the natural order of things, feminists be damned. (On another note, I think this is part of an overall resurgence in the popularity of social darwinism, at least among the republicans who believe still in evolution, to levels that haven't been seen since the late 19th/early 20th century. I think someone could do really well writing a book or an article about this trend.)

Part of it is that I am a smart female seriously considering going into academia in science or math. Even though I went to a women's college, I have in fact, been pre-judged as not quite as smart because I'm female. (Not at Smith, obviously, but at one godawful summer internship at an Ivy League school, for example.) So it really irks me that a theory that basically amounts to, "Hey, maybe we have all these stereotypes about men being smarter than women because men really are smarter!" gets taken seriously. It's not true in my case, so I'm naturally disinclined to think it'd be true in the general case.

Beyond that, it just seems to be the least verifiable theory. Essentially, I think it's what you're left with after you've ruled out all the other possible explanations. And there are a ton of explanations you have to rule out first. An incomplete list:

What does IQ even measure anyway? Arguably, no one really knows. We think it's good at measuring intelligence, but we're not quite sure what intelligence is, and we're also not sure if we're introducing subtle biases into the testing.

What factors other than intelligence affect IQ scores? There's a really interesting blog post explaining a recent paper on the stereotype threat, which we know does affect test scores here. But we also know things like prior education affect IQ scores. So do things like nutrition. And nobody's satisfactorily explained the Flynn effect which is that everyone's IQ scores the world over seem to get higher over time for no apparent reason.

What about other factors that keep women out of academia? That stereotype effect blog post talks about one of them, the self perpetuating stereotype effect that makes women feel less welcome and less capable simly because there are fewer of them. But what about asshole professors and grad students like the one I encountered at my internship? Or what about subtle messages from teachers in the lower grades who encouraged boys more than girls in math class? There are a lot of other things that could be going on.

And the thing is, even if you think IQ is actually good at measuring intelligence, and even if you think it's good at measuring the type of intelligence you need to succeed in science and math, and even if it is true that there are more genius males than females, you still haven't shown that there should necessarily be more men than women in the math/science fields. What if there are diminishing marginal returns for additional intelligence? Maybe having an IQ over 135 is absolutely vital to being able to understand the science you need to succeed, but beyond that, having an IQ of 142 doesn't help you much, while having something like creativity, or enough social skills to collaborate with your peers really would help?

It's hard to know what the real explanations are. I just really hope the IQ determinists are wrong. Luckily, that seems likely.

Monday, October 15, 2007

video and weekend

So I was just watching this video for national coming out day, and I'm like 95% certain that one of the people in it used to teach at my high school. Exciting! Back in school, I was pretty sure she was gay, but she wasn't really out to the students (then again, what was she supposed to do: make a general announcement?) so if it is her, I guess it means she's become more activist in the past few years? But now I want to verify with someone, and I keep in touch with exactly zero people from high school. How weird would it be to email my old friends and be like, "hey, how are you doing, sorry we haven't talked in a couple years. listen, look at this youtube video and tell me if you recognize X." pretty weird. I'm thinking I might do it anyway.

um, in other words, I was in Chicago last weekend and it was awesome! Yes, yes, I was a lazy bum, and Paige and Sarah and I mostly hung around Sarah's house and watched the discovery channel (which of course was kind of a typical college experience, so it was very nostalgic) but I was so happy to see both of them!

My cousin got married on Saturday evening, and it was a great wedding. The ceremony was super short (15 minutes), and the bride and groom were really cute, because you could tell they were kind of nervous, but they were reassuring each other up at the altar. Everyone had really sweet toasts, and my uncle even got to make a stupid rhyme of "geo-hydrologist and neurobiologist" which we're pretty sure he worked on for months. On Sunday morning they had a brunch, and I got to see some absolutely adorable 9 month old triplets.

I kind of did the tourist thing on Sunday after the wedding brunch. I walked along Michigan Ave and bought Frangos at what would be Marshall Field's had Macy's not taken over the entire world. It was a little sad because there were all these upscale shops that were supposed to be quite the tourist attraction, but they're basically the same shops you see in every city in the US and a whole lot of cities all over the world, too. I did buy caramel corn at garret's popcorn shop, which is actually local, and I ate it in millenium park, got sick from too much sugar, and then headed to the art institute. By the time I made it to the art institute, I'd already been on my feet for a few hours, so I pretty much had museum fatigue before I even went in the door. However, I did manage to see a number of paintings so famous that their reproductions adorn the walls of every dorm room in the country. It was actually kind of interesting to try to force myself to look at those paintings with fresh eyes. Like yes, I've seen that Van Gogh self portrait 80 trillion times so my eyes are glazing over, but hey, it was probably pretty revolutionary when it was first painted. Compare it to the earlier stuff in the other room, and it's pretty different from anything that came before it.

So the art institute was a good time. Actually, the whole weekend was a good time. Of course now I'm exhausted (the flight that got me in at 1am didn't help!) but it was worth it.

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Today is October 9th

Why is it 90° outside?

On the one hand, this unseasonably warm weather has let me fool myself into thinking it's still summer, and I'm not over a year out of college still living at home working a boring, dead end job. On the other hand, the delusion only extends so far, because it is once again dark when I leave work every night. Also, jesus fucking christ I'm going to be 23 in 12 days!

the end.

Monday, October 8, 2007

bagels, part II

I tried making bagels again last weekend, and it definitely worked out better. not great, but a step in the right direction.

I spent the greater part of Saturday in pursuit of the very elusive malt powder because I was eager to try a recipe that called for it.

a natural foods co-op, a trader joe's, a giant foods, and 2 whole foods later, I admitted defeat.

Luckily, in addition to stocking a multitude of odd and exotic foods you've never heard of that are not malt powder, Whole Foods has a good selection of cookbooks for sale. I cracked open Baking Illustrated and read what they had to say about bagels. First of all, let me say this book is perfect for me and I covet a copy. They explain everything. There were two pages of exposition on all the different experiments they tried in order to decide on every detail from flour type to water temperature to rising time. I love long, detailed explanations. I'm all about the wordiness. It was love at first sight.

Since I am a cheapo, I did not buy the book, but since I was with my father, a man who has no shame and never gets embarassed, I got some scrap paper from one of the whole foods employees and copied out the recipe. It called for malt syrup, not malt powder, and since whole foods does carry that, I was set.

Here are some interesting things I learned about baking:

1. The difference between bread flour and high gluten flour is that the latter contains 14% gluten, whereas bread flour contains only 12%. If you cannot find high gluten flour in stores (I couldn't), adding in one teaspoon of gluten powder (which most stores do seem to carry) per cup of bread flour approximates the percentages pretty well.

2. You boil bagels for a variety of reasons. It helps make their crust shiny, it stops them from expanding too much in the oven, and it speeds up the action of the yeast on the inside.

3. Despite what most cookbooks say, you really don't need 4 quarts of water to boil your bagels. Baking Illustrated said you only need 3 inches. Which makes sense because if the water is boiling, the bagels should float anyway, so who cares if there are 2 inches or 10 inches of boiling water below them that they're not even touching? Also, most recipes call for anywhere between 5 to 10 minutes of boiling per bagel. 30 seconds works much better.

4. Supposedly, letting things rise in the refrigerator overnight will give your baked goods a better flavor and work just as well as letting things rise in a slightly warm oven for an hour or two. In practice, this doesn't work so well if you forgot whether you used half teaspoon measuring spoon instead of the whole teaspoon one and decide to add an extra teaspoon of salt just in case. It also doesn't work if you're pretty sure you copied down the recipe wrong and you were really supposed to use 1.5 tbsp of yeast instead of 1.5 tsp. However, a little extra salt isn't so bad, and if you're disappointed by how little your baked good has risen overnight, you can still use the warmed oven trick to speed things along the next morning.

mmm bagels

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

ugh

okay, the way to get through a boring day at work is *not* to start buying things online. even things you arguably need, or things that really are for a good cause.

Here's what's been happening in my life lately:

1. On Saturday I went to the National Book Festival. I got to see Joyce Carol Oates, Diane Ackerman, Joan Nathan, Patricia McCormick, and M.T. Anderson. I did not get to see Terry Pratchett, the whole reason I went in the first place, because
a) I am constitutionally incapable of getting anywhere on time, and
b) You know how when you're driving somewhere, it's good to give yourself at least 15 minutes extra to get there, in case you run into traffic? Well, I'd forgotten when you're taking the DC metro somewhere, the same principle applies, because you never know when you'll run into a FIRE ON THE TRAIN TRACKS! Pretty freaking frustrating.
I also did not get to see the author of Sarah, Plain and Tall, and I didn't get any books signed because I hate lines. Still, I had a good time.

2. On Sunday, I attempted to make bagels. Big Mistake. Okay, more accurately, the mistake was probably using the same recipe I used last time I attempted to make bagels. My mother has this "Jewish Cooking" book that was put together in the '80s by some women at a local synagogue in Iowa. The sheer number of jello dessert (and some jello non-dessert) items should've clued me in to the fact that these recipes are very midwestern and of very variable quality. But I wanted to make bagels. And I was too lazy to turn on the computer. And literally none of my other cookbooks contained a recipe (you'd think at least Joy of Cooking would!). And this book had three. So off I went. My bagels are tiny, dense, kind of soggy, and overcooked. On the bright side, putting the garlic on top of them worked pretty well!
I had a pretty detailed discourse on why I don't think my bagels turned out, but then I realized that really, no one but me is interested in it. So the take-away point is, despite my failure, I am not deterred. I will try again, and this time with a better recipe. Maybe something by Joan Nathan.

That's it for right now, I think.