Nathaniel

Nathaniel launched Difficult Run in November 2012 and ran the website alone until August 2013, when he invited the first Difficult Run Editors to join him in adding content to the site. Nathaniel has a background in math, systems engineering, and economics, and his day job is in business analytics. His real interests are science fiction, and theology, however. He is an avid runner, but not a very fast one. He is married to fellow DREditor Ro and they have two little children. In addition to Difficult Run, Nathaniel blogs regularly for Times And Seasons and writes a lot of reviews on Goodreads.

Reviews for 2013 Oct 19 (Lots and Lots of Books)

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I don’t think I’ve posted a link to my book reviews since way back in August. As a result, I’ve got a lot of books to catch up on. There are ten in this post, and it’s only ’cause I ran out of steam before I got to my review of Elizabeth Smart’s My Story, which I also finished. I’ll add that one on to my next batch. As for the other 10, here goes!

2013-10-19 Steelheart

Steelheart is Brandon Sanderson’s newest book. This one is an intentional split from his usual schtick (epic sci fi) into accessible YA. Is Sanderon angling for a movie deal and a bigger paycut? Given the ridiculous length of his previous works, he might be feeling annoyed at his relatively low salary-per-word, so it’s possible. Read my review to find out more, but the basic take is that the book is fun but shallow. 

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Scientifically Literate Tea Partiers?

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2013-10-17 Tea Party Scientific Literacy

That’s the conclusion, according to a Yale professor. It’s really not big news, honestly. The Tea Party is already known to be slightly wealthier and more college educated than the average public, so it’s no surprise to find that they are also slightly more scientifically literate.

But it’s still a sharp contrast with the way they are portrayed in the media. As Professor Kahan put it:

I’ve got to confess, though, I found this result surprising. As I pushed the button to run the analysis on my computer, I fully expected I’d be shown a modest negative correlation between identifying with the Tea Party and science comprehension.

But then again, I don’t know a single person who identifies with the Tea Party. All my impressions come from watching cable tv — & I don’t watch Fox News very often — and reading the “paper” (New York Times daily, plus a variety of politics-focused internet sites like Huffington Post & Politico).

The large difference between the image universally presented by the media and the reality is much more interesting than the small difference between scientific literacy for the Tea Party and the public at large.

Time to Push Back: Stop Enabling Predators

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2013-10-17 Yoffe Piece

The attacks on so-called “rape apologists” have reached levels of recklessness and insanity that call for a direct and forceful repudiation. I am sick and disgusted of “feminists” who attack those offering sound, reasonable, and moderate advice to help keep women safe.

Let me give you a very, very clear example of this.

Emily Yoffe, who writes the Dear Prudence column for Slate, wrote a short column with a simple message: College Women: Stop Getting Drunk. Her message is very clear and absolutely incontestable: when women get drunk they place themselves in danger. She also took great pains not to place blame on women, however, writing:

Let’s be totally clear: Perpetrators are the ones responsible for committing their crimes, and they should be brought to justice. But we are failing to let women know that when they render themselves defenseless, terrible things can be done to them.

I can’t think of a more sane, reasonable approach to this problem. And if the topic were anything other than rape this advice would be considered not only reasonable, but sort of obvious. No one thinks that when you tell college kids that they should lock up their bikes that are you some kind of bike-thief apologist. If I tell my son or daughter to lock their car doors when they park on the street, I don’t think I would be accused of perpetuating “burglary culture”. When gyms post signs advising clients to lock the lockers where they leave their stuff, we don’t get some bizarre outcry about teaching children not to steal instead of teaching them to protect their belongings. In no other area of human life do I see any difficulty at all holding these two concepts in our brains at the one time:

1. People who do bad things are bad. And they shouldn’t do them.

2. In addition to urging people not to do bad things and punishing those who do, it’s a good idea to take simple, practical steps to make yourself less likely to become a victim. (Please note: “in addition” isn’t the same thing as “instead of”.)

I can’t believe we actually have to argue about this, but apparently we do.

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Maybe We Should Take Bitcoins Seriously…

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Bitcoin

Bitcoins are a little hard to explain. The idea of fiat currency is that dollars (or pounds, yen, whatever) have value more or less because the government says so. There’s no intrinsic value to the money. Same basic idea with Bitcoins, except that instead of being backed by a government they are backed by… nobody.

But they are set up in such a way that you can’t really forge them. You have to get your computer to solve a really, really complex problem (taking months of computing time) in order to “mine” a Bitcoin, and there will only ever be 21 million in existence. They are divisible down to 8 decimal places, however, so 21 million will be plenty for the foreseeable future.

You can’t  buy a lot with Bitcoins these days ’cause most places don’t accept them, but some do. This got people all excited a while back and speculation led to a 60,000% increase in price (measured vs. good ole USD) and then a corresponding crash. But the market recovered. More recently, the FBI raided Silk Road (a black market that uses Bitcoins) and the market crashed again. But not that much. As Sam Volkering notes, the all-time high was $230 (for one Bitcoin), and the market was about $140 when the Feds shut down Silk Road. The price of Bitcoins fell, but not below $100.

Volkering’s point, and I think it’s a good one, is that if shuttering the #1 outlet for Bitcoins doesn’t totally devastate the value, they might have some real staying power. Of course, the Feds haven’t really targeted Bitcoins directly, and I’m not sure they would survive. There are a lot of advantages to digital currency, but the whole point of Bitcoins is that they are anonymous and untraceable. No government in the world is going to be comfortable with that proposition.

The Evolution of Western Dance Music

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2013-10-15 Evolution of Western Dance Music

This crazy image doesn’t really give the site credit, ’cause it’s static. Go to the actual site, and you can press play to watch the evolution unfold or even scroll back and forth carefully to follow individual paths. I’m not sure how rigorous it is, but it’s really cool!

Higgs Calls Dawkins “A Fundamentalist”

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2013-10-11 Higgs Dawkins

This is an older article (Dec 2012) and at the time people figured Higgs was a contender for the Nobel. Now we know he got it. In any case, one of the greatest minds in theoretical physics points out what I’ve been saying for years: that the New Atheists (or at least Dawkins, one of their examplars) are the mirror image of the fundamentalists that they choose to focus their criticisms on. This remark came not long after Dawkins dropped another gem, saying that “Horrible as sexual abuse no doubt was, the damage was arguably less than the long-term psychological damage inflicted by bringing the child up Catholic in the first place.”

I imagine his fans will continue to post his quotes and parrot his arguments for quite some time, but I think his credibility with most fair-minded people is pretty well shot at this point. It should be, at any rate.

Edit: In the first version of this post, I mistakenly attributed a summary of Dawkins comment to Dawkins. The summary read: “Raising a child in the Catholic church was worse than sex abuse dished out to youngsters by priests.” The actual quote is now included in the body above. HIggs’ statement is also more qualified than the headline suggest. He actually said “Dawkins in a way is almost a kind of fundamen- talist himself.”

Post on the Patriarchy: Where Do I Begin?

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2013-10-11 WalkingHomeAlone

So this article popped up in my Facebook news feed. It’s a post written by a young man who lives in my home town, is a dad to young kids, and is the sort of fellow who would go to a sci-fi book club. In other words: someone not unlike myself.

The similarities are deeper than that, however. He talks about the way he self-consciously parents to teach his children the meaning of consent with rules like:

While they are little, I’m trying to be the man who stops. If I am tickling my girls and they say the words “stop” or “no,” I stop. If they want me to start again, they have to tell me to. If they ask me to not hug or kiss them, I don’t. As they grow into teenagers, I want them to have an ingrained sense of what consent is and how people express it.

That’s almost an exact mirror image of decisions that I’ve made–probably for slightly but not entirely different reasons–as a father myself. I also stop tickling my kids whenever they say “Stop, please” and when my kids don’t want to give me a hug or a kiss I usually ask them very nicely, but don’t take one without their consent. I mean, I’m not weird about it, but I like them to have a balance of obedience (which I also emphasize) and autonomy.

So my setup is simple: this guy is a lot like me in a lot of ways. But when it comes to “the patriarchy”, everything goes completely off the rails. Here’s his story:

Recently, I was invited to join a science fiction book club that meets monthly at a pub about a mile from my house. Most of the folks in the group are parents, so we meet at 8:00 PM, allowing for family time after work. The night of the club, I helped put our youngest to bed and then told my wife, Kat, I was ready to walk over. She paused, clearly surprised that I would be walking–not because I rarely exercise,1 but because it was dark outside.

So, he gets to walk a mile on a dark city street. His wife doesn’t. That seems unfair, and it makes him mad. It makes me mad, too. It makes him mad at “the patriarchy.” It makes me mad at rapists. That discrepancy might not seem like such a problem at first glance, but it is a problem for me for two reasons. 

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Maryville Rape Case is Steubenville 2.0

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2013-10-14 Daisy Coleman

Slate has coverage of an infuriating new case of injustice, this time from Missouri. For those who don’t immediately get the reference, the title of this post refers to the Steubenville High School rape case in Ohio. In that case, a 16-year old who was too drunk to consent was raped by two members of the high school football team. The Maryville case is similar: a 14-year old girl who was also very drunk was raped by another high school football player.

This football player’s grandfather is a 4-term state representative while the girl’s family were newcomers to the community Despite ample evidence to move forward with prosecution (according to the sheriff), the charges were dropped by the prosecutor.

That’s basically what happened in Steubenville as well, where the community rallied around not the victimized young woman, but her victimizers. Eventually public outcry (including the questionable aid of Anonymous) led to a trial in Steubenville, and when the rapists were found guilty a CNN correspondent bemoaned their fate:

[It’s] incredibly difficult, even for an outsider like me, to watch what happened as these two young men that had such promising futures, star football players, very good students, literally watched as they believed their lives fell apart.

Sucks to be a rapist, I guess?

So far, however, there has been no trial in Maryville. That needs to change.

(Note: You can read more about the story here. That is also where I found the photo of Daisy Coleman. I understand that usually the names of victims are kept confidential and I respect that. But in this case Daisy and her family are speaking publicly and voluntarily, so I used her name and photo as well.)

Monday Morning Mormonism: Miracles and Shadows

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2013-10-12 God the Father by Cima da Conegliano

Today’s post for Time And Seasons asks a simple question: does God help find lost car keys? It seems difficult to imagine a God who cares about such trivial concerns given the terrible evil and suffering that takes place in this life, but I explain why I think God might care about the little things, after all.

Coldplay Head Up “Catching Fire” Soundtrack

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I’m a huge fan of the Hunger Games movie, which I think is much better than the book. I believe there’s a chance for the next movies to continue to ride high instead of crashing and burning the way the novels did, so I’ve got high hopes for Catching Fire.

This excellent Coldplay track for the soundtrack doesn’t hurt at all.