Alternative Starfish

“But you can’t possibly save all the starfish,” says the boy. “What difference does it make?”

The old man throws another starfish into the water. “It makes a difference to that one.”

--
But since the minimum viable population size of starfish was 1000 individuals and the man could only save 25, they all died anyway.

--
As it turns out, this species of starfish needs at least a few hours on land every day to strengthen its exoskeleton and oxygenate its tissues, and all of its mating happens on land. The starfish the old man never got to lived long and happy lives. The ones he threw back in the water died.

--
The starfish flew through the air, landing in the ocean with a plop. It gloried in its return to its natural home, pulling water through its tube feet and preparing to seek out a tasty mussel for dinner.

And then one of the sea turtles migrating past the beach that day snapped it up. The turtles lingered by the beach for a few hours, enjoying the star-shaped snacks that fell into the water at regular intervals.

--
As the old man picks up the next starfish, it stings him. “Ow!” he says, looking in shock at the starfish. “What did you do that for?”

“How dare you pick me up! You’re infringing on my freedom. This is America, you know!”

“But...you’ll die if you stay here on the beach. I’m trying to get you back into the water.”

“Ha!” gasps the starfish, struggling weakly in his grasp. “Sounds like socialism to me! I demand bodily autonomy. You…” *gasp* “...won’t make me…” *gasp* “...comply with your rules!”

The starfish stops moving.

The old man sighs, drops the starfish, and picks up another one. “OW! Why did you sting me?”

“I…” *gasp* “...heard what the other starfish said. Freedom!” *gasp*

Suddenly the evening air is suffused with gasping, wispy cries on the ocean breeze.

“Freedom!”

“Freedom!”

--
The old man’s hands are suddenly grabbed from behind, his arms pinioned at his side. “Hey! What’s going on?”

“I’m sorry, sir, but you’ll have to cease and desist your activity immediately.”

“What? Why?” he asks the solemn man in the dark suit restraining him.

“The starfish attract plastic waste as they die and are pulled back into the water. That makes the beach more pleasant for my clients.”

“Your...clients?”

“Yes. I work for the Sparta Corporation. This beach is a favorite vacation spot for our CEO and his family.”

“But...all these starfish are going to die. Sparta Corporation is the biggest manufacturer of single-use plastic in the world. Surely, if your CEO is concerned with plastic pollution on the beach, the best solution would be to find alternatives that are more environmentally friendly, instead of forcing all these starfish to died of suffocation.”

“No, sir. You see, the starfish clean the plastic for free. Retooling our manufacturing would cost a lot of money and cut into the CEO’s stock returns. This is the much preferable solution. Now, move along, or we will remove you by force.”

The next time the old man comes to the beach, a sign at the entrance proclaims that pursuant to a recently passed town law, it is illegal to throw stranded starfish back into the ocean.

--
The boy and the old man hear a soft snort from behind them. Turning, they see another man glaring at them. “Is something wrong?” asks the old man.

“Great way to get more stranded starfish,” the man says with a glare.

"I beg your pardon?”

“Saving those stranded starfish. What good will it do? They’ll just breed more starfish that will get stranded just like they are. All you’re doing is increasing the number of starfish who are too lazy to crawl back into the ocean on their own. You should just leave them. They’ll survive if they’re willing to work hard and pull themselves back to the water.”

“But the only reason they’re here is because we’ve dredged out the sandbar where they usually live so the bigger boats can get by. Starfish help keep the algae and seaweed and invasive mussels under control so they don’t foul the boats, and they feed the birds and other wildlife that sustains our tourism industry.”

Another snort. “That’s the problem with you bleeding-heart starfish savers. You have no long-term vision. If you save these starfish now, what’s to stop us from having to support dozens of other kinds of marine life in the future? Once they know we’ll throw them back in the water if they get stranded, they’ll have no incentive to try to stay in the water where they belong. If they can’t survive without our help, they don’t deserve to survive.”

“Well, in that case,” pipes up the boy, “will you sign my petition to end the sandbar dredging and come to the town council meeting tomorrow night to oppose increasing the dredging? That would help the starfish stay in the water and not get stranded, so they don’t need help!”

The man looks at the boy disdainfully. “Are you kidding me? I might have a boat some day, and if we don’t keep dredging, I won’t have anywhere to sail it!”

Two weeks later, the man complains to his wife, “Ugh, what is that smell?”

“Rotting starfish,” she replies. “They all got washed up on the beach after the last high tide and couldn’t get back into the water.”

“Serves ‘em right,” says the man.

On the shoulders of giants...

Thanks to Dr. Isis, my complaint about the Intel ad generated an actual response from Intel. Kelly Feller apologized both here and on Dr. Isis's blog for any offense the ad caused.

I do appreciate the apology. I am sure that the intention was not to offend. And I do respect Intel's "Rock Star" line of ads in principle; I like that they're trying to bring visibility and cachet to science and engineering. I suppose when you put together as many ads as they do, a few are bound to flop. But still--maybe this incident will reduce the chances of this particular type of flop in the future.

At any rate, thank you Dr. Isis for bringing some visibility (and for agreeing with me, even though I wear sneakers for non-running purposes), and thank you Intel for a quick and polite response.

Am I the only one...

...who finds this Intel ad (from the inside back cover of this week's The New Yorker magazine) vaguely insulting?

Because apparently the geniuses at Intel are far above such plebian activities as physical exercise. After all, really smart people are all skinny nerd-boys who subsist on junk food and chess. If you're low-brow enough to actually exercise, you wouldn't stand a chance against those "big brains" at Intel.

I know it's just an ad. But to me it propagates a false dichotomy: either you're smart and don't care about your physical wellbeing, or you're a gym rat with a brain the size of a ferret. Never mind the large number of studies that have found correlations between physical exercise and concentration, focus, and stress relief (something I'd imagine the Intel folks would know a lot about).

The ridiculous imbalance in X and Y chromosomes also bothers me. Yes, I realize that there is a big gender imbalance in Yoga classes (mostly XX) and technology R&D (mostly XY). But come on. If you're going to go to big lengths to show racial diversity (you can't tell me the two non-white d00ds are there by accident), at least show a chick in one of the games!

I'm not sure if the person in the white coat in the game on the far left is supposed to be a girl. But even if it is, come on, you couldn't pick someone with identifiable female features? Way to support even MORE smart-people stereotypes! (I.e., smart women don't look like women. We all have short hair, dress like men, and never wear makeup. Okay, that might be true for me. But I think Dr. Isis, among others, might have something to say about it.)

I think the folks who do the advertising for Intel deserve a big "congratulations" for taking great strides in making non-scientists even more likely to think that scientists find them stupid. Way to go, Intel!

Fascinating

Ed Yong at Not Exactly Rocket Science has a post up about the "bacterial zoo" living on your skin.

It's really pretty amazing how many different little critters are hanging around all the time--and what a huge fraction of them are actually perfectly harmless.

It makes me wonder--when you see those articles in magazines etc. talking about all the different kinds of bacteria living on your keyboard, phone, desk, etc, they never actually say how many of them are pathogenic. My guess is that, unless you've recently had a bacterial infection, most of those bacteria the media like to use for scare tactics are actually quite harmless. But I could be wrong. Anyone have any data on that?

UPDATE: Here's a link to the "official" summary of the article from Science.

Primary sources and creationism

Chad at Uncertain Principles has an interesting post up about the difference between the humanities and the sciences with respect to primary sources. I was all set to make a short comment, when it occurred to me that what I was about to comment on actually spawned a more interesting thought:

My comment was going to be that a critical difference between many (most? all?) humanities primary sources and those in science is that, in science, the primary sources (especially old ones, like Principia) are more than likely no longer totally valid. Once Nietzsche wrote down his ideas, they were there--it's not like someone could come along and "disprove" them. That's the whole point; they're subjective. Most humanities primary sources are--the point of them is to present a position and defend it, in one way or another, but the position and the defense are both subjective. They might be more or less well-supported or more or less relevant, but they're still opinions, and therefore can't be disproved.

The same can't be said for many (most? all?) science primary sources. No one who knows any better claims that The Origin of Species is completely in line with modern evolutionary theory, because we've made discoveries since it was written. (I.e., Darwin didn't have all the facts. Neither do we today, which is why biologists in 150 years probably won't be citing papers published today as definitive references.) Not having read Principia (or even Cliff's notes of it), I can't say that's the case for it as well, but I would imagine it would be. Even in my relatively specific field, there are a few "primary" references that a lot of people go back to, but only for certain things--because the rest of the article has since been replaced by something more specific. This constant reexamination, replacement, updating, etc., of the "going thing" is a fundamental part of science, and it's the reason that it's considered questionable in a lot of fields to cite papers that are more than a few years old: we might have learned something since then that totally overthrows the previous paper. (The time scale of "acceptably recent" varies field-to-field, but it's always there.)

This led me to a thought: I'm wondering what fraction of the struggles we have with creationists might be due to a fundamental difference in the perceived importance of primary sources. A lot of creationism "arguments" against evolution are based on Origin, even though any competent biologist (or, really, any intelligent person who's taken high school biology) should be able to tell you that a great deal of the text in Origin is only somewhat correct, if not flat-out wrong. But a lot of the people arguing against evolution come from backgrounds that are, shall we say, not steeped in the fundamental concepts of science. (This isn't to say there aren't scientists who are creationists; there are. But my impression is that the vast majority of creationists are not scientists and have very little scientific training.)

How much of the problem could be attributed to creationists being more familiar with the humanities "method", and therefore reading the "original" texts and interpreting them, without bothering to think about anything that's come after them? It's completely appropriate in, say, philosopy or literature to read a primary source and then draw your own conclusions and opinions about it. And your opinions are just as valid as those of others who have read the same text and drawn different opinions. (Which isnt't to say there aren't "accepted" interpretations of many famous works, or that dissenting with those interpretations won't open you to ridicule or censure.)

How many creationists who think evolution = Darwininsm read Origin, interpret it in light of common knowledge, and then view works based on Origin (i.e., most of modern biology) as simply others' opinions?

I don't think this is the primary problem or stumbling block; I think that's more likely to be a combination of a poor mainstream understanding of the nature of science and the tendency of creationists to be indoctrinated into an absolute belief system. But I think this also might be part of it.

Vaccine safety and creationist nonsense

Todd W at AntiAntiVax has an excellent post up addressing some of the most common "arguments" against vaccination. Check it out.

(h/t Phil from Bad Astronomy)

I also recently found an excellent source for refutations to creationist "arguments" against evolution. It's quite comprehensive in scope, although each specific anti-argument is a bit brief.

You would think...

...that in 200 years, the anti-science crowd would have come up with some new objections to evolution. Apparently not: Check out this quote from Origin.

Long before the reader has arrived at this part of my work, a crowd of difficulties will have occurred to him...These difficulties and objections may be classed under the following heads:--First, why, if species have descended from other species by fine gradations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms?...

Secondly, is it possible that an animal having, for instance, the structure and habits of a bat, could have been formed by the modification of some other animal with widely-different habits and structure? Can we believe that natural selection could produce, on the one hand, an organ of trifling importance, such as the tail of a giraffe...and, on the other hand, an organ so wonderful as the eye?

Thirdly, can instincts be acquired and modified through natural selection? What shall we say to the instinct which leads the bee to make cells, and which has practically anticipated the discoveries of profound mathematicians?

These questions, of course, have many parallels in the standard litany of "problems" with the theory of evolution often spouted by creationists and intelligent design proponents. Is this yet another example of Darwin's apparent prescience? Or is it more accurate to say that Darwin's statements echo those of modern-day denialists because they are building on the "work" of those who came before, who undoubtedly read Darwin? If the latter, it's really a shame they didn't read the whole book. Even if they'd read a few pages further on, they would have come across this beauty:

When it was first said that the sun stood still and the world turned round, the common sense of mankind declared the doctrine false; but the old saying of Vox populi, vox Dei, as every philosopher knows, cannot be trusted in science.

Perhaps it might be better said that Vox populi, vox veritas "cannot be trusted in science." But the sentiment still holds: Just because most people think it's so, doesn't make it so. The fact that so many people argue that we should teach the Bible as science because "most Americans believe in God" speaks to a fundamental lack of understanding of the way science is done. But I'm not the first to make that statement, nor will I be the last.

The more things change...

"Tertullian expressed contempt for philosophical inquiry and ordered his flock to renounce worldly curiosity. He asked, "What has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What has the Academy to do with the Church?" He demanded unquestioning acceptance of the Orthodox position: "God's son died: it is believable precisely because it is absurd. He was buried but rose again: it is certain because it is impossible!""

(from The Alphabet Versus the Goddess, by Leonard Shlain, p. 245. Published by the Penguin Group. (c) 1998)

Effective measures

I just heard on the radio that Citigroup is cutting thousands of jobs and is taking other steps to cut costs to help it survive.

My question: How much are they cutting the pay and bonuses of the top managers? I find it completely unacceptable that top managers routinely talk about "the good of the company" but aren't willing to forgo their bonuses or seven-figure salaries to make things better. They're perfectly willing to cut other people's pay, but heaven forbid they should not get a bonus!

And don't even get me started on using bailout money to give bonuses so that people won't leave and go to other companies.

A friendly note to car makers

When advertising your giant gas guzzlers, please don't use the phrase fuel-efficient to describe vehicles that get less than 30 mpg on the highway. News flash: 23 mpg highway is not fuel efficient. Just because it's better mileage than other gas guzzlers doesn't mean it's fuel efficient. It just means its more fuel efficient than other gas guzzlers.

Big government = bad?

McCain is making a lot of statements lately condemning the Democrats' desire for so-called "big government." While I agree that unnecessary bureaucracy is inefficient and wasteful and should be avoided, I'm still not quite sure why "big government" is such a horrible thing. Who else is going to control the country, if not the government? Recent events have shown that business leaders are completely incapable of suborning their own greed for the greater good. That's the JOB of the government, for crying out loud.

And aren't the Republicans the ones pushing all the wiretapping programs and the Patriot Act and all that? What is that, if not big government? (Oh, right. Those are REPUBLICAN programs that will protect us from evil people who want to destroy us. Big government is fine as long as they control it and are using it to spy on us. But as soon as we want to use government to keep people from going broke, or to make sure everyone can afford to see a doctor when they're sick--watch out! Socialism on the way!)

Huh?

Check out this letter that was sent around a community in Virginia. Apparently, voting for a black man for President is racist, and the only way to prove you're not racist is...that's right...vote for the white guy!

So, according to this reasoning, the best way to support gay rights is to support man-woman-only marriage.

I really just don't have enough illogic to be able to figure this out.

(Thanks to Ed Brayton at Dispatches for the link.)