The dullest conversation I have on a regular basis.

Oh, sorry, I can't have those, I'm vegetarian. Thanks for the offer though! No, not that long, about three years now. Mainly the environmental side of things. Em... Beans are pretty good for protein, and eggs, and then there's tofu and quorn. Yeah, I still eat eggs and dairy. Why yes, I suppose I am still indirectly supporting the beef industry. No, I think morally there's nothing wrong with eating meat. Well if I were keeping my own animals and knew they had a decent quality of life, I don't think there'd be anything wrong with eating them, but I think I'd get attached, so I wouldn't want to. Well yeah, if I were stranded on a desert island I'd eat whatever I could catch. I don't know, eating roadkill seems like a sketchy idea anyway, if you have alternatives. You know what, I'm going to go grab a drink, I'll talk to you later!

I like to ascribe people the best possible intentions, and most people who ask about being vegetarianism are authentically trying to be nice, and to ask me about something they think I am interested in. Unfortunately, I find the vegetarianism debate pretty dull, and I think the only points worth making come off preachier than I care to be at a casual get-together. (My stock answer used to be "Mainly environmental reasons, plus you can't know without checking what conditions the animals are kept in" but I whittled it down to be considerate and avoid potentially making people squirmy.)

To set my terms, I am vegetarian for the following reasons:

• Meat production accounts for some 25% of industrial carbon dioxide emissions. (25% was the last figure I heard from a scientific source some years ago, it may have risen or fallen since then without altering the underlying point.)
• Factory farms are pretty rotten, and the laws in some countries are quite lax with what constitutes 'free range'.
• I am pretty into reducing the net suffering I cause before I die.

I am an unabashed hypocrite in the following regards:

• I still wear leather shoes. (I could say that this is because leather shoes last longer than fake leather, so it's more environmentally sound, but I haven't looked into the figure for that at all. Really I just don't like shoe shopping, and don't want to spend ages looking for something non-leather which will fall apart in six months anyway.)
• I'm not vegan. The factory farm argument I made above applies particularly to battery hens, and buying free range eggs might be rather meaningless. Also, according to someone smug at a party, the male calves of dairy cattle are still sold to beef farms if they're suitable, so really I'm not solving anything.

If people are thinking about going vegetarian, or like vegetarian cooking, those are perfectly fun to talk about, I really like food! If someone is treating it as an exciting intellectual debate, in which they try to pick holes in an argument I never made, that is simply not interesting, and there's no way to leave the conversation that doesn't come across as rude or conceding that my worldview is flawed and I am terrible.

But really, shouldn't you be looking for farms that treat the animals well and supporting those, so that they can thrive and not get pushed out of business by factory farming? What about raising your own animals? Do you check where your produce comes from, because some farmers in Third World countries get a pretty bad deal. Are you saying you care about animals more than people? What if the animal died of natural causes? But, like, meat is SO GOOD. Shouldn't you be eating the most sustainable meat? You know some people can't be vegetarian, so what are they meant to do? But we evolved to eat meat! EVER THINK OF THAT?

Some valid points, except I never claimed to be practising the optimal form of reducing meat-related carbon dioxide while also not supporting cruel living conditions. (Also: what people who can't be vegetarian and healthy should do is not be vegetarian. I don't know why people even put that to me, or anyone. And meat is delicious! That is also a non-point.) Given that the answer I give when people ask why I'm vegetarian carries the moral weight of turning off the tap while you brush your teeth, the fact that some people use me to pick apart arguments I haven't made (deliberately, because they lead to tedious conversations) rather makes it seem as though they think I believe myself to have the moral high ground, they themselves believe that on some level, and if they can get me to admit I'm not one hundred per cent consistent and rational then I will be one hundred percent wrong, and they will be the most rational and correct person in the world forever, and have no need to change their behaviour.*

That is a really big mess of insecurities to throw on a stranger just because they passed on the rummy bears.

Short story long, I don't see any moral issue with eating meat. I also don't see any moral issue with wearing shoes. I do think that buying, say, Converse is not morally neutral, as you're implicitly supporting Nike's factory conditions. Going vegetarian or vegan means a few weeks or months of eating boring food while you try to find new recipes, means all but always getting the pasta option in a restaurant, and may not be financially or physiologically feasible for everyone. I don't think there's some moral onus on anyone to become vegetarian or vegan. (Especially vegan. No-one loves a vegan.**) I do think that people should be honest with themselves about where there food comes from, and make an intellectually honest decision, but I would rather they not bounce the thought process off me, because good Heavens, it is simply not interesting.

(I could also gripe all day about angry vegans/vegetarians, but I'll leave it at saying that the term 'carnivore' really grinds my gears because humans are omnivores, and also the term 'bloodmouth' for omnivores is hilarious, as well as a handy red flag that an argument is going to be codswallop.)

*I also get this a lot with volunteering. "Well, going to a homework club for two hours a week isn't exactly solving the problems in the education system and the disadvantages experienced by schools in underprivileged areas, is it? And some charities are more for the volunteers to feel good than to actually fix things in the long-term, and obviously there's no way to check out any charitable groups, so I'll just take the high road and do nothing at all."

** I have known and been fond of several vegans.

Joss Whedon - Nice Guy among Nice Guys

I have a somewhat childish reaction when something I dislike becomes popular. I'm quite happy to dislike something quietly until I keep seeing on Facebook or having conversations turn to how it's ORIGINAL or WITTY or GROUND-BREAKING. Like Avatar. The special effects were very pretty, and Sigourney Weaver was there. That doesn't come near trumping the fact that there was no plot to speak of, and the dialogue was bad, and it wasn't an interesting retelling of the story it was telling, and it created a world which it failed to make interesting or explore well, and if you're going to make up science you need to explain why it's not stupid or I will judge your film as stupid unless you save it by making the rest of the film not stupid, and during one of the SPLOSIONS battle scenes at the end I consciously thought "Oh god, I am so bored, when will this end," and I am not easily bored, plus I saw it in 3D, a medium which has, worryingly, failed to die a death.

All that said, the only reason I have all of those flaws to hand is because people responded to my "Eh, the special effects were good but I didn't think it was a good film," with "But what about X?" X WAS BAD. IF X IS SOMETHING THAT MAKES A FILM GOOD, AND I DIDN'T ENJOY THE FILM, IT MEANS I THOUGHT X WAS BAD.

And so it is with Joss Whedon! I like his shows, but I do not like the man. If I watched his shows and never heard anything about him, or by him, I could just switch off my brain for the misogyny and laugh at the cleverly-constructed lines.

But no. Did you know Joss Whedon is SO FEMINIST? Because his shows are absolutely no indication of that, and it seems like if you believe in something, you should maybe have you art which is directed at teeenagers express that message! And did you know he writes STRONG FEMALE CHARACTERS, it's not just that tiny girls beating people up are what he's into, he is PROGRESSIVE.

No.

The fact that there is one conventionally hot girl who wears glasses or studies science or both!, instead of being conventionally hot and a cheerleader, in his shows and she is meant to be the Thinking Man's Hot Girl is quite skeezy in itself. It comes with the implication, as in the link, that sure, Anya and Buffy and Cordelia (and every female character in the show, seriously, where are the strong ugly characters) might be hot in an OBVIOUS sort of way, but with Willow and Fred, Nice Guys like Joss Whedon see through the outer hotness to the mind underneath that shares their specific interests! Enjoy learning new things from your total bimbo girlfriends who have hobbies and aspirations different to yours, jocks!

In Cabin In The Woods - with which I might be falling into my Avatar trap, because I though it was a diverting horror film that didn't do enough with the scope it gave itself, and the internet thought it TOTALLY TURNED THE GENRE ON ITS HEAD - rather than do something clever with the Stupid Slut Who Dies First trope, he... turns a med student into the Stupid Slut Who Dies first. (... ON ITS HEAD, SUCH A TWIST.) You could argue that his hands were tied by the genre, and he makes a feeble attempt to misdirect by having somewhere say her hair dye is making her stupid, but given the misogyny of the trope, if he really cared, he could have done something clever and non-sexist with it.

There's nothing that makes my skin crawl like the early seasons of Buffy though. I get that it's a lot of wish fulfilment - the most important girl in the world befriends the hottest losers in the school! (But doesn't have anything to do with Jonathan or those creepy losers, ew gross.) The hottest losers in the school fling zingers (or what are meant to be, whatever!) at lumbering jocks who are no match for their wit! It is a bit weird to work your sixteen-year-old esprit d'escalier into a TV show you make as a grown-up, obsessive even, but whatever makes you happy! 

What I can't look past is the treatment of Cordelia. She exemplifies the self-congratulatory pseudo-feminist maxim of "I have nothing but respect for women whom I deem respectable." She's mean for no reason, shallow, vapid, gets poor grades, and probably spurned Joss Whedon in high school. In the pilot, Jesse follows her around even though she has told him to leave her alone (but she's mean, and he's friends with the people who'll be the protagonists, so it's HILARIOUS, not creepy). In the next episode, Vampire Jesse appears behind her when she's dancing, leering and getting creepily up in her space. When she tells him to go away, he tells her to shut up. She looks confused. "Okay, just one dance, she says." Because bitches like that like jerks, not Nice Guys like teenage Joss Whedon! They deserve the abuse that's coming to them! Get it? FEMINISM!

Cordelia later redeems herself by going out with Joss Whedon, I mean, Xander, which compounds, rather than diminishing, the misogyny.

I honestly do like Joss Whedon's shows, but I'd enjoy them more if not for the hypocrisy. I can switch off my brain for a certain amount of misogyny - a girl's gotta leave the house and consume some media, after all. It's the hypocrisy of writing lazy sexism and then crowing over how feminist he is. He has described himself as a "lesbian in a man's body", which is something that some people do have to deal with in daily life, but coming from him sounds like the "I wish I were oppressed" or someone who thinks their privilege is so unhip.

From here.

But every time I see that quote floating around fandoms, and I want to sit Joss Whedon down and explain some things to stop ruining not-being-sexist for the people who put thought into not being sexist, and, while he's at it, to stop being sexist.

Linguistics, accuracy, utility and common courtesy.

I went to see The Hobbit today, and I was going to write about that, but it would only have been what I liked or didn't from a fanperson perspective. Instead, here are some of my opinions on grammar!

I am a bit of a nerd for grammar. In fifth and sixth year I spent a long time considering studying linguistics. My Leaving Cert Spanish teacher once told me that it was clear from my translations and essays that I had a very good grasp of English grammar, which transferred well in understanding the underlying principles. (Thanks, I speak it like a native!) I taught myself Latin for the Junior Cert because I wanted to understand the roots of words and a more rigid set of grammar rules. I will correct my own grammar in conversation rather than hope people don't notice, because it will irk me to leave it incorrect.

In a complete non-contradiction, there are few things that will make me negatively and immediately judge someone's entire character as hearing or seeing them correct someone else's grammar, in real life or online.

To get the exceptions out of the way: You might be a teacher, they might be learning a language and have asked you for pointers*, they might be learning a first language, they might have asked you to proofread a document. If there are others, I can't think of them at this time.

There's a line by Feynman in What Do You Care What Other People Think? that I can't find by skimming through it. He explains that in school he was a poor speller, and that it frustrated him that his teachers cared so much. If it was clear which word he was trying to use, why did it matter whether there were a few letters missing or rearranged? The lesson here isn't that, if you have a good grasp of grammar or are good at spelling, you are smarter than Richard Feynman. It's that Richard Feynman didn't have time for pedanticism where it wasn't needed, and was an uncommonly intelligent man, and these two facts had nothing to do with each other.

Convention is a very handy thing, but the meaning can usually be guessed from context (there/their, you're/your), and if someone is speaking to you casually, or chatting online, or posting in a forum, the aim is surely to communicate, not write eloquent and elegant prose, or even full words. If you halt a conversation because, and to discuss the fact that, someone has offended your sense of aesthetics, you are a terrible conversationalist. People launch into histrionics like "That hurt my eyes to read" or personal attacks like "It's hard to take you seriously when you can't even run a spell-check [in this online discussion in which many people are posting balderdash as truth because they can't be bothered to check Google]" as though they hold the intellectual high-ground. As I said, regardless of what's technically correct (the best kind of correct), the degree to which someone's spelling error or use of txt spk bothers you is down to your own sense of aesthetics, and is no more high-minded than "Can you believe she thinks that top with that skirt?" Language is for communication, and clothes are for not being naked, and bad language and ugly clothes work just fine to those ends.

It seems particularly snobbish to jump down someone's throat for a mistake in English, which is an absolute mongrel language. (Fun grammar fact! When English was being standardised, the pluralisation of 'child' fell through some crack in the system and became a double plural.)

As I said, I am a sap for eloquence, which usually includes good grammar. By all means, correct your own grammar! Let your eye twitch when someone wants to talk about "there expereince"! But say anything about it (barring the caveats above), and you are being flat-out obnoxious.

* I find it really difficult to correct someone's grammar even when they've asked me to. I worked in a language school last Summer, and when I was chatting with the Spanish kids I found it difficult to fight the impulse to speak Spanish so that we could actually have a conversation, or to correct even the most enthusiastic students, even though they were paying to improve their grammar. It's just so abrasive in every other context!

Science in cinema

for two films, a TV show, and a book. So you can't say I didn't say.

A disproportionate amount of the films and TV I've watched recently have had science as a key plot point. I'm all for creative license - I know if I were to start working in an office very few people would be as fabulous as Joan Holloway - but if a work is trying to address the issues of the day, or raise important questions, I do think they're due some regards for facts.

So, here is what I think of things I have seen recently, and one thing I have read!

-

Contact by Carl Sagan (1985)

I like this book an awful lot. I found the writing style to be extremely elegant - it's almost in the style of a report, not florid for its own sake, and yet still evocative and moving. Maybe that's just because the story is told through someone* who loves science, and hot damn do I love science. It seems as though it should be dry, and yet it's not, which I think is some feat.

One thing I love about this book is the accuracy of the timescale. It starts sometime in the eighties, and ends around the turn or the milennium. It's funny, because the back cover of my copy promises "Aliens are coming to judge us" and the book itself describes in loving or masochistic detail the waiting, and the struggles for funding, and the internal power struggles, and the politics of big discoveries, and some further waiting. Between the style and the content - the book is over three quarters of the way through before aliens make any sort of appearance, and they don't really have that much to do with it - I can see how it wouldn't be for everyone, but I really like the respect Sagan shows for the tedium.

The book is also an ongoing discussion of the relationship between religion and science. Sagan was famously good at courteously debating believers in real life, and in his book he doesn't reduce the religious spokespeople to mulishly short-sighted hillbillies, but allows them intelligent discussion. One of them is the strongest characters in the book. It was refreshing to see that degree of complexity explored, when the debate in pop culture is often reduced to "invisible sky wizard, hurr"/"evil soulless monsters spitting in God's face", depending on who the writer agrees with.

If I'm honest, I didn't like the ending - searching for the imprint of the maker of the universe in primes - but Carl Sagan is flat-out better than I, he can do what he wants.

Also, I will never say no to The Future, as predicted by the eighties.

-

Contact (1997)

Okay, I realise they can't have three quarters of the film be Jodie Foster sitting in a dark room waiting for something to happen. It was never going to compare well to the book for accuracy. It shows the squabbling for funding at the start, at has a "Four Years Later" cut-scene, but after that, it falls into the trap of having everything happen at once. They discover the message, then they discover the image within the message, then they discover the blueprint within that, the latter two within minutes of each other. Everything is discovered by the one group of people, as well. Sagan allows non-characters to make discoveries and collaborate on research, rather than have his characters be the shining geniuses every step of the way.  These are all pedantic points, but they're so commonly ignored in pop depictions of science, and the source material addressed them so maturely that it's a disappointment. As these things go, it's quite a good depiction of science.

The only part of the film that really jarred with me from a "That is not how science works" perspective was the ending. Jodie Foster leaves the building where she was being questioned about her experience in the machine, having conceded that she can't reasonably expect anyone to take her word for it, to be met by cheering crowds howling signs saying that they believe her. On a personal level, anyone would love that level of support, especially after hours of questions from a mean government man. As a scientist, I'm not sure how I would feel if I had no evidence for my findings, and people chose to believe it because it made a good story. I feel it strays from the point of the book. And science. (Also, surely she would have noticed the crowds on her way in to the building.)

-

Prometheus (2012)

Everyone in this film is a terrible scientist, with the exception of the geologist, and I'm only giving him a pass because he doesn't do any geologing.  The stated aim of the voyage was that it was a scientific expedition, and at no point does anyone adhere to anything resembling the scientific method.

The thesis of the two... archaeologists? Maybe? is that as the same images appear around the world, they must represent something real. That it quite a jump, and not a reason to spend trillions of dollars. It's also uncomfortably reminiscent of the argument for theism that all these separate cultures can't have come up with religions and afterlives and creation myths on their own, so there must be something to it.

When it turns out that the space-god-aliens are dead, the male archaeologist sulks and goes drinking and says that the expedition has been for nothing. Then his drink poisoned by morally ambiguous Michael Fassbender robot, so I guess that's a lesson in not giving up the second things don't turn out the way you want them to. Really, I have no idea how he completed a PhD with that attitude.

On a technique-based note, Noomi Rapace and Ford are awfully careless with the two thousand-year-old, immaculately preserved head they find. "Oh look, are those living cells on the outer surface?" Maybe, but it seems more likely that they belong to a detrivorous micro-organism than to the head! And why would they assume the brain has the same structure as a human brain when they start shocking it to see what happens? And why has their DNA apparently not diverged from humans in the interim since our creation? And why did this scene sound like the writes wrote down all the biological-ish terms they knew and tried to work them in?

On a personal note, I hope that one thing that comes out of this kind of sci-fi is that when space travel becomes common, there are safety procedures for dealing with terrifying aliens. Also space-ghosts.

-

Jekyll (2007)

I like Steven Moffat quite a lot when he wrotes short, contained stories. It's just a pity he can't carry an arc in  Doctor Who. (Hee.) This one is about a man, Tom Jackman, who learns he's a descendant of Doctor Jekyll, and begins to lose control of the Hyde alter-ego. He also gets chased by a shadowy organisation who want to use Hyde for research

This story isn't hugely grounded in science, but a theory floated by one character is that Jackman is a clone of Henry Jekyll created by the shadowy organisation, since the latter left no children.  She says that Jackman was never born, but "grown here". NOT HOW CLONING WORKS. First of all, a DNA sample is required, which means tissue that's been dead for more than minutes will be useless. Secondly, since cells can't yet be induced to develop fully - or even very far at all - in a lab, an artificially created zygote still needs a surrogate mother. The only developmental stage of 'test tube babies' that occurs in vitro is fertilisation.

The twist is that there was never a potion, Hyde was brought out by Jekyll's love of his servant, Alice. The second twist is that it is Jackman's wife, Claire, who is the clone of Alice. Claire is horrified by this revelation, insisting "I'm a real person!" I wasn't aware of that as a stereotype, that if you're a clone of someone you somehow don't count. I can't see how being genetically identical to someone affects your personhood - after all, identical twins exist. I can see how she'd react like that if she found out she were a robot that had been programmed to believe it were human, but I think writing in that horror - at the fact of being a clone, not that fact of being created to turn her husband into a weapon - shows a fundamental misunderstanding of cloning, to the point of being irresponsible writing.

-

In conclusion, science is good, and the scientific method is good, and you can't use your films to accuse scientists of playing god if they haven't performed any science, and if you're writing about hot topics you should understand them, not pander to misinformation.

* I cannot remember the term for the narrative style is omniscient, but focuses on the perspective of a single character rather than jumping between them. Writer people, help?

P.S. I had reached the bust of the top I mentioned in the previous post when I realised it was going to be too wide and rip it all out. It was very sad.

The mobius scarf.

I am going to use the phrase "Mobius scarf" about fifty times in this post so that other people in my position might come across it in their Googling and not make the same mistake I did.

A mobius strip, for those who aren't maths geeks, is "a surface with only one side and only one boundary component."

Pretty cool!  So imagine how excited I was when I discovered I could combine my enthusiuasm for maths with an enthusiasm for knitting in the Mobius scarf!  I made one of these Mobius scarves for a friend, and I like how it turned out, but as I found the start of the pattern a little difficult to work, I had to use another pattern for advice.

As mentioned in an earlier post, my brother's girlfriend is coming over for Christmas, and as she's a scientist I thought she would appreciate a Mobius scarf!  Alas, I couldn't find the tutorial that had helped me out the first time.  I did, however, come across a few sources telling me that to make a Mobius scarf, I should twist to join in the round.  How handy!  Alas again!  The finished product wasn't a Mobius scarf, but had a complete twist in it.  I must have over-twisted it.  No matter, start again.  This time it would be a snuggly feat of maths!

Nope.

I read this (lovely) tutorial yesterday, and something about it seemed strange to me.

"Depending on what you like, you can leave some twists to create a mobius-like effect, or get all the twists out for a more traditional scarf."

"MOBIUS STRIPS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY."

Thank you, Morbo.

So it turns out that "Mobius scarf", in the knitting community, refers to any twisted circle scarf rather than a cosy mathematical quirk.  Good to know!  For my own part, I'm surly and have changed my mind about how much she'd like it (Do microbiologists instantly like maths?  Who knows), so it's going to be a plain ol' circle scarf instead.

... 

Mobius scarf.

FO Friday: Fingerless mittens.

I really like the idea of FO Friday/wip Wednesday posts (regular alliteration!), but the former would be far and few between, and the latter would get quite repetitive.

A friend of a friend requested a pair of bright pink fingerless mittens, so these happened.

I think they turned out well enough, given that I didn't use a pattern.  I just put them on as I was knitting to work out when fingers were long enough, and where the pouch should go.

Last night I also finished a Mobius scarf to be given as a Christmas present, but realised I had put in a full twist instead of a half-twist.  Annoying times.  It's been frogged, and there's weeks yet.

The new cryostat in the lab keeps acting up and damaging my specimens!  It is ever so sad.  And last weekend I cycled out to St. James' to get some books from their library, but got lost on the way, and when I got there it was closed, even though the website told me it would still be open.  First world problems over here.

"Are you intoxicated? You're being all affectionate."

I went to Electric Picnic at weekend!  Last year I got to go for free as I went with work, this year I got to go for free by volunteering.  By chance, I was working in the boutique campsite, so my wristband let me into the campsite where my work-friends were staying.  I took advantage of this after the first night, when my brother's friend crawled into our tent in wet clothes and fell asleep on my legs.  (I did manage to fall asleep, but woke up a while later because he was shivering violently, and couldn't convince him to put on dry clothes.)

I made this bag out of two t-shirts the night before I left, as my conveniently-sized one got snatched in Lima.

Confession: The 'handmade' one isn't an old, re-used one, I just saw it on sale.  But how could I not buy it to make it into a something?

I was happy enough with it for a speedy job - though the strap was a bit stretchy, which I solved by tying a knot a few inches down it - until Saturday night, when the bottom ripped and my wallet fell out.  So now it's at the back of the drawer while I sulk about that.  That will teach me to be lazy and speedy in my sewing, especially hand-sewing (though I expect my clothes to take much less strain than bags, so first time mistake etc.)  I have a pretty low opinion of whipstitch, too.

The wallet thing was also annoying as I'd planned to go to a few Greencrafts workshops on my last morning.

Happy concert things: PJ Harvey, Republic of Loose, Jazzberries (the guy playing the keyboard lives up the road from me, and he and my brother have been friends since they were teeny, but I've never heard them play before), running into people I haven't seen since the start or the Summer, the spicy veggie burgers from the big orange stand.

A incident I'm not sure how to feel about is that when I went to buy a shirt, I asked for a men's small (babydolls sit funny on me, and men's shirts are easier to made into different things, plus the material tends to be lighter) and was given a women's small.  I asked the person who gave it to me, and he said that was all they had, and sure that'd fit me better anyway. (1. Wonky proportions, no it won't, and 2. Men's Small and Women's Small aren't equivalent size-wise.)  I ended up getting it because it was the design I liked the best, but giving a guy a Women's shirt because it was the only kind left would be seen as a weird thing to do.  It's nice to have the option to buy things from either section of the shop, which isn't really available to guys, but assuming without checking that I'll take something from the section I didn't choose this time sits a little strange with me.