Not all bloggers are or want to be journalists.

I’d like to add that those of us in New Orleans in late 2005 learned quickly that if we didn’t blog, many local and national journalists would write a limited or outright false narrative of and for us, not stray from it even if evidence arose to the contrary, and repeatedly drum it into the minds of the rest of the nation and world. Following that, actual policy, rebuilding solutions, and national slogans would be based on this manufactured consensus reality, these prevailing but incredibly shaky premises. *shudder*

Again, it’s not just about controlling your message, but keeping in mind that what you put out there has very real consequences, such as the information and reactions of very real people. A lot of perspectives then in many different voices is a good thing. As Ed Yong said just today, with respect to science but immediately applicable to your area of expertise, “We’re all aware of the problems of mainstream science reporting. It’s not all bad. I reckon most of it is probably quite good. But it could be a lot better. And scientist bloggers have the potential to make it a lot better.”

As blogging versus/as journalism is brought up again (for some unknown reason – thought we buried this dead horse some time in 2006), it’s important to read a recent post by Mark Folse. For those of you who don’t know Mark, he is a former ink-stained wretch and current poet-author-blogger who has published newspaper articles, books and blogs.

Blogging is a category so generic as to be almost meaningless. It would be like calling all writers bookers. If anything, this bit of the Internet has evolved from a sort of cork-board of odd pictures and moments into something else, just as Wet Bank Guide evolved from an exercise in explaining Katrina and the Federal Flood into one of explaining New Orleans.

Journalists wanting to be bloggers. Bloggers wanting to be journalists. Oh, enough already. Take my advice: Your knowledge and your voice. Take it and just write. Write for whatever reason makes you want to write and don’t let anyone define writing or blogging or tweeting or next-big-thinging for you. Write your heart out regardless of format, word count, or number of readers. Just write.

Coming back to the holy/holey narrative, how many of you scientists or science lovers began to blog as a direct result of crappy, but more importantly, spineless, agenda-based science reporting in major newspapers and cable news? Check these out: Memo To Scott McClellan: Here’s What Happened and The Smithsonian Defends Censorship. You, blogger/journalist, whatever you call yourself, don’t have to belong to the Catholic Church Of Journalism if you don’t want to. You don’t have to give in to “We were afraid for our jobs, funding and continued existence, so caved to whatever demands those in power placed on us.” You can sack it up and tell it like it is.

What is the heart of journalism really, other than love and respect for (ferreting out) information and getting it out there to as many people as possible with as little pretense and fanfare as possible? They who cease to be a student was never a student. Let’s concern ourselves more with the content and less the form and, yup, just write.

P.S. As long as anyone gets all uppity about what blogging should or shouldn’t be, what posts should or shouldn’t include, and OMG The Internet Is Serious Business Journalism With A Capital J, I will include images of LOLcats in any post on this topic. Peace out.

Athenae points us to today’s searing death ray of political brilliance: Michelle Obama’s ‘Get Moving’ Program Linked to Pedestrian Deaths. Ignore my jaw on this keyboard and keep reading.

The Governors Highway Safety Association says pedestrian deaths increased in the first half of 2010 and the First Lady’s program to get Americans to be more active could be partly responsible.

Governors Highway Safety Administration spokesman Jonathan Adkins told 630 WMAL that Michelle Obama is “trying to get us to walk to work and exercise a little bit more. While that’s good, it also increases our exposure to risk.”

… Other factors include distracted drivers, distracted pedestrians and what Adkins calls “aggressive pedestrians.”

*slowly raises hand* Hello, if I may. Is there maybe, oh, possibly, just saying, a chance that more people lack transportation now because of the shitty economy and have to WALK TO WORK WHAT A CONCEPT combined with the fact that many built-up (read: suburban) areas increasingly don’t have a comprehensive system of sidewalks? It’s a thought.

The rapidly-constructed retirement subdivision where my parents live is a great example. Each time I visit them is a chance for my nature-loving father, the veritable John Fraking Muir of Ohio suburbia, to stand and deliver: “The developers have chopped down every single tree in these gorgeous old-growth woods [never got that – why not simply cut down what you don’t need and leave the rest?], would place these houses on top of one another if they could [yards, after all, are for pussies] and are off to destroy another round of woods, ambient water table and natural topography in the next township.” Sidewalks then cost money, which neither the developer nor the township wants to pay for. Besides, you’ve now got a lovely 1.5-car garage (into which fits comfortably a standard SUV and a garden rake) and can drive to the conveniently-near mall, grocery store, church and rec center. Why ever, dear American, would you want to walk on your own blessed soil?

I don’t blame my dad for running off to Chennai for six months out of the year. Indian cities create no pretenses like Walnut Woodlands, The Lakes at Whistling Streams, or The Park of Hunter Pasture. They go straight for Gandhi Tacky Dump, St. Mary’s Putrid Badlands, and Sivasankara Malaria Depression. Take it or leave it, the next buyer awaits.

Come to think of it, every new American neighborhood I’ve visited, be it Akron, Columbus, Cleveland, Fort Collins, Orlando, Houston and suburban New Orleans, lacks sidewalks. And that’s where the two extremes of modern living – the cheap-ass apartment complex with little to no parking and the McMansion with five garages – tend to commonly occur. I’ll let you do the math. The only reason I recall the sidewalks, or lack thereof, in each one of these neighborhoods is the “aggressive pedestrian” mentioned above and his or her microscopic approximation-of-dog walked on a mile-long leash just purchased out of the SkyMall catalog that I’ve had to swerve, brakes screeching and all, to avoid hitting. It’s not that poor genetic disaster Fluffy’s fault.

Where The Sidewalk Ends (courtesy corde5 on Flickr)

Then there’s that hilarious case of where the sidewalk ends. It just stops. This is old town. Take a step forward and you’re in new town. You can now walk on yuppie grass and get shot at have nasty letters written to you by the neighborhood association. “We are a group of good Christian and God-fearing people here at The Creek of Sheffield Forest. We understand that you are a homeowner, but walking on the lawns, however close to the curb, is not allowed. We insist that you refrain from this questionable activity at once and walk only on the pavement, taking care to avoid our freshly-washed, wide-turning, all-terrain vehicles, of course. Our children are not to be influenced by such deviant behavior. This will be our first and only warning.”

But what really, truly perplexes me is this new phenomenon of people running on the streets towards your vehicle WHEN THERE IS A PERFECTLY GOOD CLEAN, UNBROKEN AND PLOWED SIDEWALK JUST THREE YARDS OVER FERCHRISSAKES LET ME PUSH YOU ONTO IT. I mean, what? Are you stupid? You’re obviously educated enough to achieve the earning power to afford that running ensemble of  UnderArmour, Ray Bans, iPod, and brand-new NBs. Why risk losing all of that, your brand new 7-minute mile and those internal organs to the front headlight of a vehicle doing the legal speed limit which has no other place to go but into you? You run at 8AM on my way to work and at 5PM on my way back from work. Speaking of which, what the hell are you doing running on the streets during rush hour anyway? Do you not have jobs to go to? Oh, and get this, get this, just this morning, one of you was even running in the middle of the street towards the front of my car WITH AN ORANGE SAFETY VEST ON because a winter weather advisory has been issued and visibility has been severely reduced.

Your dumb ass had better have voted for Obama because his wife is now taking the blame for it. Meanwhile, poor Pedro in Houston or suburban Canton and his wife have to legitimately walk on the street just to get to and from the bus stop, while avoiding people on their cellphones who have no regard for pedestrian crossings. “Health enthusiasts” risking their lives to run in the middle of the street with sidewalks present. Less-fortunate Americans who are forced to, in the absence of sidewalks and comprehensive public transportation, put themselves in harm’s way to deliver food to their family’s plates.

Good grief, what next? Simply breathing increases our exposure to risk, so could you kindly quit it? How much more barbarically partisan and deeper into the pockets of insurance companies can this country get?

For those days when I have to remind myself that merry-go-rounds make me sick while roller coasters don’t.

Now to find the scene with the little dwarves up on stage. “They’re not stolen. They’re put away!”

I am doing a lot of reading on deterministic and stochastic computational methods. If you’re in the field, it’s the usual stuff: parameters vs. probability distributions, Bayesian prior and posterior probability density factors, Markov Chain Monte Carlo, and more.

Wikipedia on the Monte Carlo method:

The term “Monte Carlo method” was coined in the 1940s by physicists working on nuclear weapon projects in the Los Alamos National Laboratory … The Rand Corporation and the U.S. Air Force were two of the major organizations responsible for funding and disseminating information on Monte Carlo methods during [the 1950s], and they began to find a wide application in many different fields.

Then, I read this over at the AGU Blog: How Nuclear Weapon Treaties Led To The Discovery That Thunderstorms Produce Antimatter

So how could we be sure the Russians were not testing nuclear weapons without us knowing about it? Easy. Nuclear fission produces a very high energy form of light called gamma rays. This extremely short wavelength radiation could be detected. So all that was needed was to launch a series of satellites that would warn us if gamma rays were detected.

Guess what. The satellites started seeing lots of gamma ray flashes. HUGE FLASHES. These flashes were brighter in energy for a few seconds than the entire Universe! Were the Russians cheating? It turns out not. The gamma ray flashes were coming from all over the sky. The military folks let astronomers in on it and, to say the least, they were very intrigued.

It never ceases to amaze me that a lot of science that extends or helps us understand better our lives on earth comes from our desire to blow each other up. And vice-versa.

That is all.

Kinda-funny, kinda-related update: China bans Bayesian statistics textbook “… told me that in China they didn’t teach Bayesian statistics because the idea of a prior distribution was contrary to Communism.”