Mobile Blogging comes to Blogger

mobile blogging - this a test of the new mobile blogging system. If this goes through, I will use it sort of like Twitter - you'll get more of me but few words.

Blogs to read daily - my top 6 sources of information

The lovely red-headed wife once asked me how I manage to keep up with all the blogs, and my own blogging, without getting sucked into wasted hours on a daily basis. She has, as she freely admits, a highly addictive personality, and so she resists blogs primarily to keep this from happening to her.

My answer is really quite simple – while there are about two dozen blogs I monitor regularly, I only read six blogs daily. See, my ritual is to listen to NPR’s Morning Edition on the Metro in to work each morning, scan the on-line Washington Post while reading my morning email and having the first cup of coffee, and then take 20 minutes or so to read these authors:

Glenn Greenwald

Mike at the Big Stick

Ames at Submitted to a Candid World (where I often run into Mike as well)

Simon and James at the Baseline Scenario

Sheril and Chris at The Intersection

And secularist 10 at 100 Treatises

Granted, some of them update their blogs several times a day, but I find a good morning read is about all I need from the six sources (and the WaPo and NPR) to get a pretty good handle on the issues of the day. I may not always agree with them – I think there are days Mike would rather throttle me then dialogue with me – but all are immanently accessible, and all will provide you a great insight that can help you sort the B.S. flying around in the blog-o-sphere.

Now, of the others I read less frequently,

Stephanie Z at Almost Diamonds

Is ALWAYS worth my time as well.

NaBloPoMo 2009

That's Right, you heard it here - I'm participating! The question is - Are you?

The Project for Non-Academic Scientists - my "interview"

Over at Uncertain Principles, Physics professor Chad Orzel has set out to take ideas and suggestions from Mooney & Kirschenbaum’s Unscientific America and turn them into action. He’s posting a series of interviews on his blog from people with science training and experience who are not working as academic scientists, appropriately titled the Project for Non-Academic Scientists (PNAS). He notes:

I plan to post a series of short interviews with people who have science degrees, but are not working in academia. The idea here is to provide information on career options for scientists and science majors beyond the "go to grad school, do a post-doc, get a faculty position" track that is too often assumed to be the default.

Regular readers – all three of them – will no doubt understand that this is my kind of blog action. They will also understand, because of my status as a federal employee who must blog semi-anonymously because agency blogging policy hasn’t actually been developed yet, that I can’t answer by openly identifying myself. So I’ve answered Chad’s questions below. Hopefully someone will find my answers useful, particularly in light of my quest to define what a scientist actually is.

1) What is your non-academic job?

I’m the National Program Coordinator for Protected Species at my Federal Agency. This means I work to bring together a whole host of offices, labs, programs, and people to conserve and recover marine species that are listed under the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

2) What is your science background?

B.S. Marine Science – Biology Concentration
M.S. Oceanography and Coastal Science (with an unofficial fisheries emphasis)

3) What led you to this job?

Honestly – my kids. I’m a divorced dad, and I was living in Seattle prior to this job. That meant a lot of cross country flights to spend time with them, and not a lot of parenting. Now, I’m an hour away by plane or 7 hours by car.
In my last job, with another federal agency, I was doing salmon habitat restoration, Dungeness crab fishery enhancement, and environmental monitoring and compliance for large federal civil works and military construction projects that impacted marine and anadromous species. There, I got a lot of training in planning, project management, and regulatory writing, and so when this job opened up in D.C. I applied, and was accepted.

Prior to that I had done coastal and marine habitat restoration and scallop and clam fisheries population science in Florida. So while I was doing much more science then, I was still working for an agency (and then an NGO and a Florida county). I’ve never been an academic scientist.

4) What's your work environment like?

Physically, I sit in a corner cubicle in a modernish building in a suburb of Washington, D.C. But, being in a cubicle, in the corner, means I have north facing windows, and a 13 story view of the adjacent area. So I don’t feel as closed in or cut off as some of my colleagues. I do get to travel 5 or 6 times a year, mostly to national agency meetings, but occasionally to scientific meetings (Like Coastal Zone or American Fisheries Society).

5) What do you do in a typical day?

There are email inquiries from other offices to answer; budget and performance metric graphs, slides, and documents to write and update; briefings to prepare, give or attend, scientific papers to read; Congressional correspondence to answer, ocean science and policy factsheets to draft; and meetings on everything from the use of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles in fisheries research to ocean fertilization, to (literally) how many additional marine biologists will we need in 2012 to conduct stock assessments for marine turtles and whales/cetaceans in the western pacific Ocean. I also write the very rare, but fulfilling tech memo and grey literature paper on scientific issues.

6) How does your science background help you in your job?

As a National Program coordinator, I have 4 main duties:

· Identify key areas where our Program has emerging needs, particularly where our science is not aligned with an issue or natural phenomena;

· Develop and champion (to the Agency, Executive Department, White House, and Congress) new initiatives to meet these emerging challenges and opportunities. I do this by writing strategic planning and budget documents based on a constantly evolving dialogue with scientists and resource managers all over the country.

· Implement and track performance measures that allow the Program to judge its success in meeting its federal statutory mandates, and that describe success in achieving conservation and recovery goals. We use these data to both guide our requests to Congress, and to flesh out emerging needs and trends.

· Serve as a representative for our labs and office nation wide, providing briefings and other outreach on a wide variety of marine species, management strategies, and scientific approaches.

I would be largely unsuccessful in these duties if I did not have an extensive science background in oceanography and related issues. Because most listed or protected species are in that boat (!) due to complex and long-term threats, a lack of scientific knowledge would hinder my understanding of what is needed to restore them to their rightful ecological place, and minimize, if not eliminate, my ability to advocate for those species and the people working on their issues.

Lack of a science background would also hinder my ability to analyze the program from a budget and performance perspective. Trend analysis, for instance, can provide significant insight into a Program’s effectiveness, but only if you are collecting the right data, and only if you do the analysis in the right way. While some other disciplines teach methods for doing this (accounting, for instance) I find a more “traditional” scientific approach to be very robust.

7) If a current college student wanted to get a job like yours, how should they go about it?

First, you need a bachelor’s in a natural science. A Marine science or marine biology degree is ok, but even though I went the route of early specialization, I did so at a small liberal arts college, so I still got a fairly generalist education. While you are working on your B.S., take a couple of economic theory courses – it will really help you see why the world around the scientific enterprise works as differently as it does. I would also take a class in writing (preferably a non-fiction, non-science one); I’d take a modern history or political science course. The broader your undergraduate education – and the more willing you are to thus think outside the “science box” – the more effective you can be in a job like mine.

At the graduate level, either a degree in marine biology, oceanography, or marine policy is essential, though if you go the policy route I’d still take a heavy science load. I’d add another writing course, something on new media (if your university doesn’t have it check the local community college) and maybe a basic web design class as well. Learn all you can about spreadsheets and databases, and make it a routine habit to use such products – they come in handy.

While you are working out your thesis or dissertation, see if you can get an internship or committee member from the federal agency you want to work with. They can be tremendously helpful, and many of our scientists hold adjunct faculty appointments.

Finish your graduate degree before applying for federal jobs. At the moment I have half a dozen federal colleagues trying to balance their dissertation writing with full time employment, and it’s not pretty.

8) What's the most important thing you learned from science?

Science teaches you how to approach challenges, how to break them down into their elements, and how to test different solutions. Science also teaches you how to frame your responses, and how to remain skeptical of your own work (much less the work of others) so that you produce the best answer you can to the question you are being asked.

9) What advice would you give to young science students trying to plan their careers?

Don’t be afraid to decide –early on – that you aren’t going to go the academic career route. Explore all the choices with labels that are remotely close to your degree program. Spend some time working with university career counselors to get a feel for what type of work really suites you.

And don’t be afraid to remind your university colleagues that you are still a scientist and you still contribute to the discipline even if you aren’t in a university setting anymore. The knowledge, as a friend recently reminded me, doesn’t leave your head when you leave the university.

10) (Totally Optional Question) What's the pay like?

Depends on the agency, and it varies across the country. Folks with PhD.’s, and several years’ federal service can make $100K in the DC area, but you aren’t living in a low-cost city either. Since I started working in the field in 1994, I’ve gone from $18K to over $90K. Federal agencies tend to pay more; state and county agencies less.

Defining Scientists - and asking self-critical questions.

Last week, I got into an interesting side debate over whether I’m still a scientist. Especially here. I have to say it caught me off guard, especially this:

“And second, I have read the work (bought off Amazon), and I have an M.S. in Oceanography (and make my living in the field, sort of) So please, do not presume to speak for me as either a scientist, blogger, or author. I can do that very nicely, thanks.”

In other words, you’re not a scientist. If you found my construction confusing, I apologize. Where scientists object to the work it is primarily on the basis of shoddy or non-existent research and poor writing.

Now, I can concede the point that, if you look at the masthead to your left, it reads that I’m not presently doing science on a daily basis. I’d also argue that it’s a gross over-simplification of how I earn a living – but the fault for that gross over-simplification is my own.

So my response went like this:

Constant,Indeed, my blog does describe me as doing strategy at present, but that hasn’t been my whole career, nor does it cover all my current work. It’s just a summary - which I obviously need to rethink.

As a person trained in science who does other thing during the day to earn money (!),

And we moved on to other matters.

Still, the question got me thinking about what constitutes the definition of a scientist. I spent the weekend mulling it over, in fact, because I believe it lies at the heart of many of the challenges we face in today’s world. Just take the climate crisis as one example. Scientists on the IPCC, and in many academic settings and government agencies, are very pointed on the nature, direction, and impacts of the climate crisis, and have a ton of research to back them up. Other people, who want to block meaningful response to climate change, place themselves in the dialogue as scientists, and the public understandably is lead to conclude that there is a controversy on climate, when, in fact none exists. So, the definition of science matters.

First, I think scientists need some kind of training in a scientific discipline. Notice I didn’t say an advanced degree in a science discipline, because I have come to know many really good scientists who are trained in other disciplines, but use the scientific method to look at the world around them. My blogging colleague Darlene highlights them all the time. Their contributions of data and observations, once informed by the proper training, are no less “scientific” then someone holding a Ph.D. in a discipline.

Second, I think scientists must, by definition, include those who do science outside of an academic setting. Too often, the biologists, physicists, and plant pathologists (to name just a few disciplines) who work in government labs on a government salary are derided as not being “real” scientists because their work isn’t “free” of any agenda. If you work for NOAA, the logic seems to go, you can’t really be doing oceanography as its practiced in academia because NOAA is a federal agency, and must ultimately answer to the White House, Congress, etc. Unfortunately, academicians who take this view are missing a key point – unless they are somehow in a n endowed research chair, with the University picking up all their expenses, they are subject to the politics of their grant funding agencies, and thus their requirements.

More basically, though, I think a scientists needs to understand and apply the scientific method to his or her professional work. They need to remain skeptical of untested hypotheses, but willing to accept those hypotheses until additional data can prove the point one way or the other. They need, also, to be able to be skeptical of their own positions, beliefs and ideals – never taking their interpretation of the world today as static.

So where does that leave me? Well, I do write strategy papers and proposals, about the strategy of doing ocean science for the nation. I read the scientific literature, and produce the occasional synthesis piece in response to policy challenges (as I am doing now on Ocean Fertilization). I even get to give occasional talks to scientific meetings. But today (and tomorrow, and next month) I am not out in the field (or on the water) collecting data. I won’t run or interpret any Analysis of Variance or check the r-square of my correlations.
But am I still a scientist – I’ll leave that up to you to judge.


P.S. Apparently I’m a Cheese Weasel now. Interesting use of both terms.

Blogging Etiquette - James Kwak on Blog-o-sphere rules to live by

Tne Number One Reason why I hate wading into the waters of the "New Atheists" vs. "religious scientists" is that BOTH SIDES violate this rule:

Another thing that follows, though perhaps a little less obviously: be polite. Bloggers are a community, and how you behave matters. If you disagree strongly with someone, express your disagreement through superior logic or mountains of evidence, not by calling the other person an idiot. There are a few bloggers out there who not only like to show that they are smarter than other people (most of us fall victim to this temptation), but come out and say that they are smarter than other people, and judging from their traffic (Alexa can show this for you) that strategy has not been successful for them. I am on good terms with some of the people whom I have disagreed with most strongly; some of them send me emails pointing out posts they think I may find interesting. Bloggers are people like everyone else; whether they will help you depends largely on whether they like you.

You can thank James Kwak, over at The Baseline Scenario for this one.

Glenn Greenwald keeps up the good fight on Torture

This may be the most cogent (and most frightening) thing I've seen on the web regarding our post 9/11 actions as a nation. It's a comment (early in the thread too) about Glenn's post today on the Obama Administrations decision to keep some sort of military commission in place to deal with suspected terrorists. PDA's response, and Glenn's whole point, are the reason Mr. Bush and his Administration were such a disaster for the U.S.

UPDATE: See the Comments Section Here and Here for my reasons in supporting prosectuions against Bush Administration officials regarding torture. I need to go lie down now.

Nationalizing the banks - that horse has left the barn!

As we all wait anxiously for the "official" results of Treasury's Stress Tests of banks (!) - ponder this from Simon Johnson and James Kwak. It may take a few minutes, to read but they aregue (based on the actual evidence to date) that we are in effect slowly nationalizing banks without using the word, but on the banks' terms, not terms that benefit the U.S. taxpayer or economy in th elong run. They also prove, FWIW, that bloggers can indeed do real journalism.

How Chas Freeman got me skinned

Thanks to my colleague Mike at The Big Stick, I’ve been reading some very interesting conservative and progressive blogs of late. I can’t say I always agree with what they write, but they write well, they are open to comments from seeming all sorts of people, and I think if the Republican Party can harness a few of them, then in 4 years Republicans might be a coherent opposition party again.

So I was interested yesterday when Megan McArdle took up the Chas Freeman Affair in her blog. She started by exerpting an Article from Foreign Policy:

David Rothkopf of Foreign Policy: “Financial trivia, minutiae from people's personal lives and political litmus tests have grown in importance while character, experience, intelligence, creativity and wisdom have fallen by the wayside.”

Then, perhaps forgetting that as a conservative she’s supposed to always rail against Democratic policies and politicians, she made this entirely reasonable point about how Mr. Freeman’s opposition had worked it’s magic:

Megan McArdle: “This new tradition of bulldogging every appointee in the hope of embarrassing the president has to stop. We should be focusing on whether or not the nominee can do the job, not whether there is some small breach of an onerous regulation in his history that can possibly be dug up. It feels good in the short term, but when ability to find a native-born nanny becomes a more important qualification for the presidential candidate than experience relevant to the job to be done, it's time for a national rethink.

While I may not agree with Ms. McArdle’s politics, I heartily agree with her assessment of the appointment process. Her commenters, however, took the opportunity to heap on as much spin as they could, to somehow deflect the fact that, when all is said and done, even Washington Post columnists think AIPAC gave MR. Freeman the shaft. So, 26 comments later, I said this:

Sadly, you have all missed the iceberg here. Mr. Freeman wasn't sunk because of these things, he was sunk because he speaks regularly and forcefully against current U.S. policy regarding Israel. Gleen Greenwald has the latest on his blog. All the things mentioned above were part of an organized campaign to discredit Mr. Freeman, without directly attacking him on this key issue. That it succeeded, and is intellecually dishonest at best, speaks volumes about the sad state of American foreign policy.
Posted by Philip H. March 11, 2009 1:29 PM

Not content to attack Ms. McArdle, they began to fire at me:

So, Philip H., what you're saying is that it's okay to be on the Saudi payroll, support the crushing at Tiananmen Square, and support the US Army firing on the Bonus Army veterans, so long as Jews oppose you? Would you have opposed Mr. Freeman on the basis of those other things if only AIPAC and the Jews hadn't been involved? Sure, I'm upset that enough other people don't seriously care about that horrific statement about the Bonus Army, about being on Saudi payroll, or about Tiananmen Square. That doesn't make me support Mr. Freeman just because I think not enough people are opposing him for the right reasons. In any case, your theory may be wrong anyway. Newsweek's sources claim that Speaker Pelosi's opposition came about because of Tiananmen Square. Of course, the Speaker and Newsweek could just be lying too...
Posted by John Thacker March 11, 2009 1:49 PM

Would if that were all true, but it isn’t. As has been noted by numerous bloggers and journalists, there is no Chinese or Tibetan human rights group on record as opposing the Freeman nomination. Nor is there any quote available anywhere from anyone who works on Chinese foreign policy and analysis that says anything bad about Mr. Freeman. What Mr. Freeman was saying, and said repeatedly, is that the Chinese government should have acted sooner to resolve the issue, whether by force or by negotiations. He never makes the case that what the Chinese did was right, just that it was done too late so that the Chinese governement had fewer choices in how to respond.

As to the Saudi payroll contention – if it’s perfectly acceptable for Republican officials to go back and forth through the revolving door of K Street lobbying firms (many of whom are also paid by the Saudi’s as well as other foreign countries), why is it not ok for Mr. Freeman?

Then I made the mistake of trying to bring this back to being a process argument, as Ms. McArdle intended her blog to be:

All, i'm not saying anything that other Atlantic Authors aren't saying. Railroading a guy out of public service because you don't like what he says is ok by me - so long as you are HONEST about it. Hiding behind supposed tax issues (unproven), or speeches (misquoted) on one subject when you really object for other reasons is LYING. That's where my problem exists.
Posted by Philip H March 11, 2009 3:21 PM

From that point, I was dismissed using many classic conservative approaches. First, I was accused of having some sort of God-like ability to discern motives which other commenters supposedly lacked (as if it is hard to fathom what AIPAC’s motive might be). This is called an ad hominum attack, BTW:

Philip H., where did you purhcase your finely calibrated motive-o-meter, which allows you to peer into the souls of people who you don't know, and thus unerringly discern the real reasons all the critics of Freeman have for opposing his appointment to this job?
Does everyone say stupid things at some times in their life? Sure. We aren't talking about some off the cuff remarks at a cocktail party here, however. We are talking about scheduled interviews, in which there was plenty of time to antcipate the questions that would be asked, and then WERE asked. To anaswer in a manner which suggests you have had a psychotic episode does not engender confidence.
Posted by Will Allen March 11, 2009 3:53 PM

Then, even though I’m trying to focus on the process by which all this was handled, the bus is backed over me because I haven’t said whether I agree or disagree with Mr. Freeman (which is irrelevant to whether he was dealt with fairly and honestly and evaluated on the credentials he would bring to the table):

so long as you are HONEST about it. Hiding behind supposed tax issues (unproven), or speeches (misquoted) on one subject when you really object for other reasons is LYING. That's where my problem exists.
Take it up with Newsweek and Speaker Pelosi, then, as they insist that her (very important) opposition was about China. They're liars, too?
But if that's where your problem exists, fine. Just answer one way or the other, Philip H. Aside from all the "opponents were motivated by the wrong reason" crap, and your allegations that they wouldn't care if someone on their team made his other statements, do you think his statements on Tiananmen and the Bonus Army were disqualifying? Do you at least disagree with them?
Posted by John Thacker March 11, 2009 4:11 PM

Finally, I am dismissed with a backhanded . . . compliment . . . . that what I’ve actually written is satire. I suppose one could argue that most political discussion these days is satire at one level or another, but clearly this is another attempt to move away from my central process thesis:

Aren't a lot of you missing Philip H.'s point? Do you really think he means to be taken at face value? He's written some pretty good satire there, and the uncertainty as to whether it really is satire only makes it better.
Posted by Bambi March 11, 2009 4:19 PM

Quite the ringer. How I managed to get away from being accused of being shrill is beyond me. Here’ the thing – Walter Pincus made the very point I was making in his article in today’s Washington Post. To quote Pincus:

For example, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), often described as the most influential pro-Israel lobbying group in Washington, "took no position on this matter and did not lobby the Hill on it," spokesman Josh Block said.

But Block responded to reporters' questions and provided critical material about Freeman, albeit always on background, meaning his comments could not be attributed to him, according to three journalists who spoke to him. Asked about this yesterday, Block replied: "As is the case with many, many issues every day, when there is general media interest in a subject, I often provide publicly available information to journalists on background."

All I was trying to get at is this – if you are the official, employed spokesman for a political action committee, as Josh Block is, and you tell everyone that the PAC you work for has no official position even as you are meeting off the record with various journalists who grant you anonymity in exchange for the real thinking of your organization; and that thinking goes against the public statements of your organization, then you are lying. That’s one of the major reasons why our national political discourse is so broken. It is one of the things that needs to be fixed. And there is nothing satirical about my belief in this regard.

UPDATE:

Apparently I'm not the only one with the view that this is bad . . . . . .

Let's do right by the United States

Quoth Glenn Greenwald :

"It's critical that Obama -- and the rest of the political establishment -- hear loud objections, not reverential silence, when he flirts with ideas like the ones he suggested on Sunday. This dynamic prevails with all political issues. Where political pressure comes only from one side, that is the side the wins -- period."

Now, if we could just get the rest of the country to actually take up this responsibility, then the Change We Need will be come the Change We Get. Freedom is not, afterall, free, and we have to fight for it. Otherwise, the authoritarians win, and we the people loose. Again.

It's the End of Year as we know it - and liberals feel fine?

As you know if you read the teaser below, you know that I'm closing out the year in a bit of a stew. Seems that, while I am supposed to be all atwitter about Mr. Obama's election (especially with Democratic majorities in the House and Senate), I am still uneasy. You see, Mr. Obama, for all his change, is still a centerist politician. he's not a traditional liberal Democrat. Which begs the question - does America really need a liberal antidote to ultra right (or even moderate) Conservatives? And if we do, how to we make it a reality?

The "common wisdom" in DC is that we don't. After all, these supposedly learned persons will say, the Nation began to move Right with Nixon. We swung farther that way with Reagan and Bush I. Clinton was no real liberal, and Bush II just took the pendulum too far. Mr. Obama, they will close, is just setting things back. He'll regulate business (but only just so much); he'll keep the bank bailout in place (and with few requirements of those banks); he'll get the economy going again with big infrastructure spending which will also be good for business.

But will it be good for workers? Will you and I - getting up each day, going to work, paying taxes, playing with our kids - will we really benefit from Mr. Obama's Change We Can Believe In?

Cynical? Perhaps. But as a liberal who has wandered about in the political wasteland, I think I am entitled to a little cynacism. And, as a true liberal, I am skeptical that Mr. Obama, even with a Democratic majority, will infact get us back to a more liberal country. You see, he has a lot to do - restoring the rights eliminated by the Patriot Act; closing Guantanimo Bay; repealing all the last minute Bush II evnironmental and health roll-backs; and then there is the minor issue of keeping the economy from collapsing further. its a tall order.

I look forward to seeing what he accomplishes.

TEASER Alert!

Over at Mike's place, I ask a burning question for liberals these days. It's a teaser, so stay tuned.

Well, I tried . . .

to blog regularly that is, but I don't seem to be making it. I suspec that lack of regular blogging occurs . . . regulalrly . . . mostly because we all have these pesky lives to live. Mine has been increasingly busy of late, but now that I'm sequestered away from home for a week - and thus not distracted by so may other pressing needs - I hope you will stay tuned for more output.

Taking a virtual leap of faith

In which I take on big time science blogging