Betsy Devine: Funny ha-ha and/or funny peculiar

Lots of us!

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

Here are just a few more of the fascinating people whose ideas helped make SciFoo 2010 such a treat.

Linda Stone It was great to see Linda Stone again working so energetically and creatively at pulling important ideas out of the subconscious and giving them good names, e.g. “continuous partial attention” and “email apnea.” She’s now thinking about play, or as she says, “the place where your passions find you.” Mapping the early play activities of scientists to their later work, she recommends Stuart Brown on the neuroscience of play, and wants more scientists to get in touch through her website, lindastone.net. Early remarkabilities: programmers played at building things; physicists loved games of asking why; many neuroscientists zapped bugs with electricity.

Werner Vogels I first met Werner at an early Bloggercon–soon afterward he became tech guru at Amazon–so it was lovely to see him the same Werner Vogels after an infinite number of Internet years. He made a couple of really good contributions from the floor about “Citizen Science.” Amazon’s Mechanical Turk lets people do small tasks online for small amounts of pay — hunting for porn is a popular task, and a common one as companies filter user-generated-content. One big motivation for turks is having a clear task that fits into a short space of otherwise blank time.

Yoshiyuki Sankai He is an MD whose company Cybernics makes working exoskeleton pieces. One assemblage helps people walk, using their own nerve activity to move legs and feet. He showed us some remarkable videos of people standing up and walking after years of being confined to a wheelchair or bed.

Gary Bradski Gary works on a computer visualization program called Open CV, at Willow Garage. He gave a lightning talk about perception (“harder than vision,” to quote him). “What is an edge?” he asked, showing a photo where we could see lots of them. Then he focused in on just some of the different kinds of edges we perceive … discontinuities in depth, color, reflectance, texture, and surface orientation.

Debra Lieberman Debra is a professor at UCSB who designs interactive games that promote good health outcomes. I begged her to give a talk at my virtual/visual session, but she was already committed to speaking elsewhere that session. I did repeat for my group her definition of a game, which you will notice does not involve competition: “A game is a rule-based activity that involves challenge to reach a goal and that gives feedback to player on progress toward the goal.” (This is her definition as said across a dinner table and scribbled by me in my notebook, so please blame me rather than her for any flaws therein.)

Virtual/Visual Show and Tell session

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

One of the highlights of SciFoo for me was a talk by George Djorgovski from Caltech about understanding huge amounts of complex data. It was clear that several others in his audience had also devoted a lot of work to such questions, in diverse fields, so I volunteered to be the stone in stone soup, rounding up people and getting a space for a Show and Tell on great hacks for displaying complex data. Thanks to all who took part — I have been getting lots of feedback from people who really benefited from your talks. In far-too-short summary, in order of presentation:

Betsy Devine Subjective time as a factor in understanding complex data; using games and Second Life to get people to spend time engaging with your data.

John Cacioppo Displaying complex findings from social neuroscience about changes in social networks over time.

George Djorgovski Using the interactive 3D capabilities of Second Life to examine and share complex data from astrophysics.

Gary Flake Working with Pivot, an ambitious data-display tool from Microsoft Live Labs.

Richard Breiman Interacting with 3D information from CAT scans to (for example) detect polyps or simulate a complex operation before performing it.

Michael Weiss-Malik Using Google Earth tools to explore the Moon’s surface and interact with historic maps of different parts of it.

Rick Cavallaro Ways that Sportvision is adding computer-generated data such as the virtual first-down line to TV shows of sports events.

Ian Wright Teaching students about science by having them do experiments in Second Life to figure out that world’s laws of physics (somewhat different from ours!)

Arfon Smith New projects from the Galaxy Zoo websites creating new levels of feedback to users who are exploring the Moon and other astronomical objects.

Welcome to SciFoo 2010

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

We all lined up to get out pictures taken for this year’s SciFoo rogue’s gallery.

So many interesting amazing people in one place with so many great talks planned. People are here this year from the Galaxy Zoo (Chris Lintott and Arfon Smith) and I am especially eager to hear their session which will be called I think “Citizen Everything.”

My Flickr account (linked to from the photo) will probably be the best place to keep track of what cool things I happen to see here.

Oops, I cut off Van Gogh’s ears!

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

Both of them!

Such is the fate of the amateur photographer when confronted by Vincent Van Gogh re-conceived as a giant bearded bunny.

This Van Gogh self portrait reimagined is on the wall at The Duck and Bunny on Wickenden Street in Providence, RI. If you like crepes, cupcakes, champagne, iced tea, and great art with new duck-bunny components, I thoroughly recommend this good new restaurant.

Betsy MacGyver does Stockholm

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

One small but defining aspect of geek-style pride is overcoming small obstacles with instant fixes. Here we see the misfit of a Mac plug (too loose) into a Swedish wall socket — the plug was then propped into place with several MacWorld magaizines and a light-travel-reading textbook plus two local apples.

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Originally uploaded by gwydionwilliams

One of the top ten stories in Time this week is about the progress of Galaxy Zoo, which they call “Among the most ambitious and successful online “citizen science” projects to date,” saying further:

Galaxy Zoo asks its participants to help classify galaxies by studying images of them online and answering a standard set of questions about their features. For instance: Is the galaxy smooth or bulging? Is it elliptical or spiral? If it’s spiral, how many arms does it have, and are they tightly wound or thrown open wide?

I got to see some of the project’s early stages (as described in a blogpost from 2008 “Ox. docs shocks!,” so I am especially delighted to hear that their innovative work is ongoing and still so productive.

Cupcake nouveau

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

The economics of the cupcake revolution are visible here. Not one, not two, but four or five levels of promise that the cupcake is fancy and loaded with sugar and fat in plentiful abundance.

But this is not a traditional bakery product. The skilled cook who has learned to apply smooth buttercream strokes and ornate decoration is no longer needed. Much lower-waged workers can be hired to apply the poured fondant icing, fat smear of frosting whose imperfections are well concealed by sprinkles, and topped with a candy easily mass-produced.

Perhaps the most cynical thing on the entire cupcake is the retro funk message of its peace symbol. “This cupcake was created by cool people who are just like you!”

Granny D

Originally uploaded by aahsa

“Never be discouraged from being an activist because people tell you that you’ll not succeed. You have already succeeded if you’re out there representing truth or justice or compassion or fairness or love. You already have your victory because you have changed the world; you have changed the status quo by you; you have changed the chemistry of things and changes will spread from you, will be easier to happen again in others because of you, because, believe it or not, you are the center of the world.”
– Granny D, 14 May 1999

She walked across the USA at the age of 90 to promote campaign finance reform. At 94, she ran for the US Senate and gave Judd Gregg one heckuva run for his money — an indie film “Run Granny Run” resulted and can be watched on the interwebs.

She started her career as an activist rather late in life (!) and achieved a great deal in the mere ten years she gave to it. Thank you, Granny D, for the inspiration. A real New Hampshire icon has now left our planet. My thanks to Dean Barker and others at BlueHampshire.com for so many inspirational quotes from Granny.

“Don’t walk away because you are confused or because it is difficult. We have entered an amazing time, when each of us has an important role to play. That time is now. It is the best time ever to be alive on this earth, because everyone matters. Everyone is needed if we are to survive. Your creativity, your love, your courage–all of it. As the smoke of battle swirls around you, smile. It is a privilege to be alive in such a time.”
– Doris “Granny D” Haddock, 19 April 2002

Snow-covered lion on Columbia campus

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

“Not one dime! Not until Democrats pass healthcare.”

That is what DNC fundraisers who call our house are going to hear from now on.

The hacks and jackasses in Washington who took over the Democratic National Committee from Howard Dean have taken us right back to their old election-losing “centrist” techniques. Under Dean’s leadership, we witnessed the landslide election of Barack Obama and Democratic majorities in both the House and the Senate. All that advantage has been nearly frittered away.

Obama has spent the past year trying to engage Republicans in bipartisan governance. It’s been like a year of watching Charlie Brown trying to kick a football with Lucy’s “assistance.”

And when Massachusetts voters, one year after Obama’s landslide victory, re-fill Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat with a Republican? Surely something is very, very wrong. Let me just quote Howard Dean on what that something is:

If you want to win, you actually can’t sort of move to the middle and become a Republican. You’ve got to stand up and stand for the things that you got elected on and that the Democratic Party believes in and we haven’t seen that in the healthcare bill and I think that’s part of the problem.

The smartest thing Obama could do now, in my unhumble opinion, would be to beg Howard Dean to come back and run the DNC.

Update: Somebody on Daily Kos had a great suggestion about this issue: Make your own list of good progressive candidates. When you get particularly annoyed about something political, make that the occasion to send a donation to the next person on your own list.

NH strawberry season

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

Hello, 2010, you already look so appealing, even under a faint sugar frosting of newfallen snow. Farewell and very good riddance to the now-past noughties, from Bush’s Florida recount to the disasters his team left behind.

This picture is here to remind me of all the many things that are now better than they were when I was a little girl. The Merrimack River, once full of untreated sewage and factory waste, is now full of fish and dotted with boats in the summer. (Oh how Republicans complained about its cleanup!) I can find strawberries even in January, good ones, even! And I can drink black coffee any time I want to, because I’m a grown-up.

Let’s make our next decade a good one, thinking big picture thoughts and letting them guide us.

Let’s not end up looking back, ten years into the future, with head-shaking regrets. Let our 2020 vision be better than this one!