Marcus' World

Those Experts...They Know Everything

This amusing sentence caught my eye in the Times story today about yoga in high school: "Cheating, experts say, is a problem at high schools nationwide."

Who are these "experts?" I could have told you this in 1991, when David Wallace asked to see my homework before school one day.  (I said no, righteously.) So could any high schooler today, I am sure.

Is this why the price of my paper went up by 25% recently? For "expert" commentary like this?

But I digress. The full article is pretty interesting--yoga is one way to reduce the stress in the overly taxing environment of an affluent and achieving American high school. Since I assume that our own kids (when we have them) would attend such a high school some day, I thought I should pay attention.

Irreconcilable Differences: Campaign Edition

This week's tempest about Barack Obama's decision to tour South Carolina with "formerly gay" African-American minister Donnie McClurkin is a reminder of the irreconcilable differences facing the Democratic Party. Such divisions are also forming in the formerly monolithic Republican Party as well--between Iraq war diehards and Iraq war realists, for example.

But today let's talk about the Democrats.

Obama needs the vote of religious African-Americans in South Carolina's early primary; they tend to frown on the morality of homosexuality, while not necessarily endorsing discrimination. This is the Reverend McClurkin's stance too, according to Slate.  So he will be an effective advocate for Obama in the Palmetto State.

But Obama also needs the support (and money) of gav voters. McClurkin's conversion from gayness is not likely to impress this crowd.

How can Obama straddle this line? Will he find a way to appeal to both populations in a meaningful way, or simply resort to mouthing bromides about how he is opposed to discrimination but can't deny his love for Jesus?  The latter, I'm afraid--this is an irreconcilable difference. 

The Democratic Party has a proud tradition of supporting minority rights, but no way to resolve the tensions that emerge when the aims of different minority groups conflict. So be on the lookout for obfuscation and cliches in a Presidential campaign near you.

Facebook's Birthday Reminders

Lately I've become too dependent on Facebook to remind me of friend's birthdays.  I used to be pretty good at remembering them; now so many people I know are on Facebook that I'm losing my edge.

Lots of other people have the same dependence, it seems. Whenever anyone on Facebook has a birthday, they are flooded with good wishes. Everyone has a different threshold, but I'd have to think that after receiving the 20th birthday greeting in ten minutes it starts to feel rote. [A similar phenomenon: Activist emails that are written in advance so that you just have to push a button. Even though the convenience is very tempting, my understanding is that these usually annoy legislators rather than inspiring action.]

This week I sent two birthday greetings via Facebook--one was a hasty "Happy Birthday!" that felt too slight afterward. So the next time around I added a personal note about something I knew was going on in the individual's life, and felt better about myself. If you're going to send a birthday greeting via a social networking site, my advice is to take the extra effort to make it personal.

Ahem...Time will tell how well I follow my own advice!

An Alternative to Google Book Search

Today's front page, above the fold article about the Open Content Alliance (OCA) was a good reminder that there are alternatives to Google Book Search.  Librarians who are ambivalent about the ethics of allowing their collections to be scanned by Google--which doesn't make money directly from the scans, but can claim an indirect burnishment to its reputation--have somewhere else to go. The big differences: the OCA is a non-profit organization, and it will allow the books it scans to be accessible to all search engines (not just Google.)

Keeping those benefits in mind, the ethics of going with the OCA are ambiguous. Google will scan books for free, at a scale that will be very hard for a non-commercial entity to match. To a large extent OCA participants will have to rely on grant funds, a financing system that is inherently unreliable. In short: Google will get offline content online much sooner, even if is not as open as librarians would like it to be.

The OCA will focus on out-of-copyright works, avoiding the legal tensions that have befallen Google's plans for library books of more recent vintage. So the crucial determination about what copyright protection actually entails in the digital age is still just beyond our grasp.

Fiefdoms of Expertise

The phrase "a place for everything, everything in its place" is attributed to Benjamin Franklin.  Lately I've noticed how often people slot themselves into narrowly defined fields of expertise, assuming that we cannot contribute meaningfully in any other sphere because it is not our "area."  We define our "place," and assume that everyone else fits in another place that we cannot access without the requisite background.  Franklin's endorsement of this idea is both ironic and distressing, given the fact that he was a talented diplomat, writer, and businessman (and ladies man too, or so legend has it.)

Some cases in point of such narrowcasting, personally and professionally:

1. Personally--Yesterday I went to lunch with Helen and some other business school students. One other non-business school student is there; he's a graduate student at UC Irvine. Last week he attended a talk by a recent Nobel Prize winner (not Al Gore), even though the prize recipient was not "in my field." Another member of our lunch party asked why he went to the talk, given the fact that it was from someone in a different field.  The first person responded that it was close enough to his field--his "place," his area of expertise--that he could still get something out of it. But otherwise he would not have attended.

2. Professionally--In health sciences libraries, PubMed is the premiere journal literature database. All librarians should be  able to search it, and teach others how to do so. But PubMed is just one part of a much broader suite of databases, called Entrez. PubMed points to articles, but Entrez points to the nucleotide sequences and genetic marker databanks that underlie many of the findings in the articles.

When you speak about Entrez to most health sciences librarians--myself included--you elicit nervous reactions because most people have no idea what you'll find there. It's much easier to retreat to the comfort zone of looking exclusively for published articles...that is our place. Let's let somebody else--somebody "in another field"--tell you all about Entrez.

What's the problem with this approach?  Journal articles are increasingly becoming artifacts of scholarly work, the final record of an intellectual effort that takes place in more fluid and dynamic databases (like the rest of Entrez besides PubMed.)  PubMed is not the beginning and the end of biomedical literature searching. We have to expand "our place" to maintain vital.

Rebuttal: It takes a great deal of knowledge to know what's happening in Entrez (or being discussed at that Nobel Prize lecture). Unlike reading a journal citation, you can't just pull up a record from an Entrez database and know what's happening--this material is complex, and requires an understanding of molecular biology. We shouldn't be jacks of all trades and masters of none.

Fair enough. Obviously background knowledge and expertise matters. For example, it would be nice if librarians who discuss the economics of publishing had a firm grasp on core economic principles (something MarkD has been saying for a while.) 

My point is not that everyone should know everything, or that we should all be able to teach any topic under the sun after reading about it for a few minutes on Wikipedia. The point is that we shouldn't think of ourselves too restrictively--I do this, you do that, and the person in the next office does something else that neither of us knows anything about. This is how silos of knowledge and fiefdoms of expertise form in an organization, potentially leaving the whole as less than the sum of its parts.

We can't all be experts across the board; that's true. But we should always be trying to expand the comfortable boundaries of our "place."

Book Club Bounty

The best thing about the long commute to UCSF is that there's lots of time to read. In New York I was in one book club, in Berkeley I read so much that I can be in two.

One is a MeetUp group that I've been to three times, which represents one of my rare social outlets outside of the Haas business school community. We read challenging contemporary fiction--this month brought us Don DeLillo's somewhat impenetrable The Body Artist. Even if getting through a book is a struggle, the group's conversation always makes the read worthwhile. 

Two nights ago I attended the first meeting this year of the book club for the business school partners club. The partners have a much less intense approach; there was mostly friendly conversation and good food, with some book talk thrown in. This month we read A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini; I thought it had some good parts at the beginning, but became overwrought. Lots of people disagreed with me, but we disagreed productively. I gained modest standing in the group with my outspokenness;  hopefully my promotion of a novel by Anne Tyler next month will prove fruitful. But I'll go whatever we read.

Voting By Mail

Last week the Alameda County Registrar of Voters sent us information about voting by mail. Mail voters receive ballots within 29 days of the election, and must place the ballot in the mailbox no later than Election Day. It's different than absentee voting; with mail vote you can still be at home but choose not to go to the polls.

Alameda County encourages mail voting because it is more convenient than waiting in long lines at the polls; potentially facilitates more thoughtful deliberation about the issues and candidates on the ballot (since that ballot is sitting on your kitchen table for four weeks before Election Day); and definitely saves taxpayer money because fewer people at the polls means that less equipment and people are needed on Election Day.

These arguments made sense to me, so I signed up to be a mail voter. Helen will stick with traditional voting. Even as a mail voter, I always have the option of punching a ballot as long as I haven't mailed a ballot in already. 

So I don't have to vote alone if I don't want to.The sense of community at the polling place, with  concerned citizens gathered in one place to register their views, is certainly absent in mail voting. But usually there's not much community anyway, because people are anxious to get to work in the morning; get back to work at lunchtime; or get home for dinner in the evening. Bearing that in mind, hopefully voting by mail will feel just as consequential as voting the old fashioned way.

Draft Gore

Yesterday I read the full page Times ad from Draft Gore, and today I saw the news coverage on Good Morning America and in the paper. There's an energetic movement out there in America to get Al Gore to run for President, but so far it's been without success. One reason why I love living in the Bay Area: the Draft Gore movement (and MoveOn.org, for that matter) both started in our new home of Berkeley.

I'm one of many who thinks that the 2000 election results were not legitimate, and that the US would be in a much stronger position today if Gore were president. But he's been through this wringer before, and perhaps he can do more to save the environment as a global spokesman than he could within the constraints of the Presidency. That's for him to decide, and him only.

So I am not personally going to join the Draft Gore movement, although I appreciate its intent. But if Al does decide to run--perhaps after winning the Nobel Peace Prize this week?--I'll give him a very serious look.

Maybe Fat Isn't So Bad for You

Everyone should read John Tierney's great article in the Times today, which is about how incorrect information can too easily become conventional wisdom. This is the flip side of the "wisdom of crowds" phenomenon popularized by James Surowiecki a few years ago. Surowiecki lauds the ability of large groups of people to reach better conclusions than people working on their own, which often happens. But Tierney points out the risk that an initially incorrect conclusion can harden into dogma after it's been in circulation for a while.

The case in point: the commonly held belief (even by me, even after reading Tierney's article) that eating high-fat foods leads to a greater incidence of coronary heart disease. Tierney shows how this view became commonplace and politically expedient in the last half-century, culminating in a 1988 Surgeon General's report  that codified the consensus that fat is bad. He cites a 2007 book by Gary Taubes--Good Calories, Bad Calories--to debunk this view.  Taubes's argument is that no rigorous studies have ever proven the link between fat and heart disease. Even so, all right thinking people are supposed to believe in this link.

Taubes's arguments in Good Calories, Bad Calories could be challenged, of course. But wherever the truth lies regarding the connection between fat and diet, the larger truths that Tierney highlights about social psychology are compelling.  It's very easy to follow the leader, even if that leader is going towards a dead end. 

Larry Craig and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

I'm pleased that Senator Craig is fighting for his Senate seat even though his guilty plea from the airport sex sting was not overturned.  The vitriol that fellow Republicans  will send his way--contrasted with their soft glove approach to the concubine carousing of David Vitter--can only highlight the fact that the GOP is an anti-gay party.

The latest cover of the New Yorker, "Narrow Stance" by Barry Blitt, calls attention to another recent anti-gay moment: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's absurd contention that there are no homosexuals in Iran.  On the cover, our man Mahmoud is in a bathroom stall...for further details, check a newsstand near you.