33 Comments on “The Sound and the Fury”   rss feed

1. Clifton Moore on Feb 15th, 2007 at 2:10 am

   …Oh man, the speech bubbles are hilarious.

2. Douglas on Feb 15th, 2007 at 9:12 am

   Wow. THAT was over the top!

3. Hmmmm on Feb 15th, 2007 at 9:53 am

   < !I love modern day black-face comedy.....Black culture is so hilarious....You should change the names to Laquita and Lawanda and put big platnium chains around their necks......Then it will be really funny!!!!>

   (Appropriately sarcastic comment pointing out dorky insensitity of poster editted out at request of commenter)

4. Joseph Smidt on Feb 15th, 2007 at 10:04 am

   The speech in the bubbles is great. I’m with you with the visuals. Talks without visuals just aren’t the same.

5. Hmmmm on Feb 15th, 2007 at 10:07 am

   < ! Ohhhh...I have an even better idea. You should paint the faces black in photoshop and then play rap music in the background........That would make it perfect.>

   (Another equally sarcastic and correct comment editted out on request of original commenter)

6. Hmmmm on Feb 15th, 2007 at 10:30 am

   Feel free to erase my comments….I see my sarcasm has served its purpose.

7. adam on Feb 15th, 2007 at 10:31 am

   Hmmmm, that wasn’t insensitive but rather an Ali G style joke, to my mind. One I found funny, myself. Perhaps I need racial sensitivity training. Either that or you need an sense of humour. Or, you know, maybe both.

8. Kevin Runnels on Feb 15th, 2007 at 10:31 am

   Actually, I thought it was just an “urban culture” spoof and didn’t make the racial connection. I’m slow like that. It was just funny. Shame it came down. Luckily it was in my browser cache and is now on my desktop.

9. Julianne on Feb 15th, 2007 at 10:48 am

   Well, I was obviously slow like that too, but I think the initial commenters were right, and I should have been able to see the larger context. If this were the Ali G show or South Park that would be one thing, but it’s not. While the woman-in-science bit gets covered plenty here, the stereotypes that urban african americans face are way more pervasive. I played into that while pursuing a joke (which, yeah, was funny enough that I went for it without really thinking about whether it was appropriate). So, rather than asking people yet again to suck up their reactions because “I was just making a joke”, I’d rather do the right thing and take it down. It is much more of an urban (black and white) thing, but the larger culture extrapolates it way too much to all of black culture, which is wrong and absurd. Until that situation gets better, I can absolutely understand how using stereotyped urban language in a format that is not obviously satire is not appropriate. While I’m snarky enough that I see it and meant it as satire, the broader site is not satire, and showing up in that context doesn’t fit in with what my principles are (even if it took a sarcastic commenter to rightly call me on the conflict).

10. Sean on Feb 15th, 2007 at 10:56 am

    I thought it was funny and not inappropriate, but I can see how people could be bothered in context — we can’t always pretend that we’re above the problems of the wider culture. Too bad it came down, but good for you for doing so. (Would it be wrong to say “You go, girl!”?)

11. Clifton Moore on Feb 15th, 2007 at 11:41 am

    Well, I am African American, and an aspiring physicist, and I saw absolutely nothing wrong with the pictures. I’m a firm believer in that it is the spirit of the word, instead of the words themselves, that decides whether something like this is malicious, or racially charged or not. You were having fun, and it seemed innocent enough, so no harm, no foul.

12. PK on Feb 15th, 2007 at 12:59 pm

    I just came to this thread, and it is now absurdly nonsensical. Apparently I missed out on a funny joke?

13. Julianne on Feb 15th, 2007 at 1:00 pm

    I think the reason I chose those particular words is that the pictures conveyed a combination of attitude and dramatic outrage, and standard white middle-class vernacular just doesn’t do those with much interest or impact: “You’ve really made me mad.” “Well, I’m shocked you feel that way.” Urban black american culture has a much richer and inventive verbal tradition, and outsiders continually co-opt it because it’s often far more expressive. So, yes, the use of the language by the majority culture is not necessarily motivated by racism. However, when there’s a problem with larger society assuming that the language is the sum-total of the culture, I can see how it would get tiresome to have it keep showing up, and I decided to pull it.

    I still like “observational photon-collecting ho”, however, and will leave that in comments for posterity.

14. adam on Feb 15th, 2007 at 1:06 pm

    It was about incongruity, wasn’t it? A joke against stuffy physicists, it seemed to me.

15. Hmmmm on Feb 15th, 2007 at 1:18 pm

    I am sure Julianne meant nothing, and I’m sure certain people WEREN’T offended, but that’s not the point. The point is that certain people WERE offended…Remember, the people who used “coloreds only” bathrooms are still alive. People like Cosmo “50-years-ago-you-would-have-had-a-fork-up-your-ass” Kramer still exist.

    There are to many bad things in our recent history…..it’s not really funny.

    And shame on you Clifton Moore…don’t forget that your opportunity exists, in part, because people fought against these things.

16. adam on Feb 15th, 2007 at 1:22 pm

    Hmmmmm 15, are you criticising the African-American guy for not being offended? I mean, seriously? Whatever your own racial origin, that seems a bit weird.

17. Sean on Feb 15th, 2007 at 1:39 pm

    Returning to the point, the way the AAS did the podcasts was completely bizarre. I noticed them linked from Steinn’s blog, and wondered why Julianne hadn’t posted herself about her podcast — and then I saw that it was just a static picture, with none of the images included, and it all made sense.

18. adam on Feb 15th, 2007 at 1:40 pm

    Sean=point-nazi.

19. Hmmmm on Feb 15th, 2007 at 1:52 pm

    Hi Adam,

    I’m not scolding Clifton for not being offended. As a matter of fact, I wasn’t offended.

    I’m scolding Clifton for forgeting the bigger picture.

    And just to put it out there…I’m black, I have a Ph.D in physics, and I consider myself to be very successful. I’d be the last guy to have a chip on my shoulder. That’s not what this is about.

    Let me try to explain….

    My mother still to this day tells stories about how she wanted to go to college, but was denied access. We, as a nation, have progressed mightly since then because a lot of people sacrificed and fought for that progress. In truth, all of the opportunites that I have had, that were denied to the generation before me, are due those “civil-rights warriors”…..For them I’m thankful.

    It one looks at the rest of the world or looks at history it’s clear that our modern progressive tolerant society doesn’t have to exist (it may not even be a global minimum). As I alluded to in my last post; the people who lived in that “other” society arent even dead yet. So if I have to be one of those pesky PC police to help keep our modern progressive tolerant society from regressing….than that’s what I’ll do.

    Do you understand….it’s in my interest.

20. adam on Feb 15th, 2007 at 2:03 pm

    Hmmm #19: But at what stage does it stop? I would hope that no one here pretends that race relations don’t have a very unhappy history and, indeed, a rather unhappy present, but assigning a factually existent way of talking to a couple of people that don’t talk that way, for comic effect, doesn’t seem to me to cross the line. I mean, it’s not that spiteful drivel that Carlos Mencia churns out so that he can claim to be daring, is it? Sure, it’d be a different thing if it was appearing on Stormfront, but it wasn’t, and surely we can make contextual judgements on this sort of thing?

    However, it’s not like I am an expert on US race relations, nor claim to be; I’m a white man from the UK.

21. adam on Feb 15th, 2007 at 2:10 pm

    I would also add that being a white man from the UK doesn’t mean that I am necessarily inexpert on the subject of US race relations. I am a white man from the UK who also happens to be inexpert on the subject US race relations. Apologies for the clumsy sentence in post #20.

22. Julianne on Feb 15th, 2007 at 2:33 pm

    Hmmmm — you were right initially, but I’ve got to call you out on trying to shame Clifton. Not everyone sees these issues the same way, and no one is required to see them from your point of view. He’s out there walking the walk and making it in a field that has atrociously low numbers of non-anglos. He’s serving your goals just by showing up. Can you give him kudos for that, rather than scolding him for not reacting in the identical way as you?

    One of the big issues in determining whether someone “makes it” in a field or not is their resiliancy, particularly if you’re an outsider. The thick skinned have an easier time brushing off the various struggles one faces in navigating through a sub-culture that is not completely your own. What this allows one to do is to keep on doing excellent work without getting too demoralized or pissed off to move forward. This is not the same as not speaking up when the situation demands, but means sometimes conserving one’s energies for the big fights. I’m not saying that you’re “too outraged” or that Clifton is not outraged enough — it’s just that temperments vary and not getting worked up about small stuff has little bearing on whether someone would fight the larger fights that matter. To essentially equate his finding the original post funny with a failure to appreciate the civil rights struggle of the 60’s and 70’s seems ungenerous and counterproductive.

    Look, for lots of women “cunt” is an incredibly loaded word. For me, I could care less, and I’m just going to get irritated if someone tries to scold me into feeling a level of outrage that I just don’t have (though I won’t let it be said at work if it’s bugging people, the same way I took down the pictures in response to your comments). My ability to say “cunt cunt cunt cunt” without a flicker in my heart rate says squat about my appreciation for the fact that my path has been vastly easier than women of my parents’ generation. I may be post-feminist in a lot of ways, but the way I live my life and the fights I take on embody feminism, without my having to mimic a particular form of it.

    (Sorry Hmmmm — lots of cross posting so I missed the back and forth with Adam….I’ll leave this for posterity)

23. Maynard Handley on Feb 15th, 2007 at 3:18 pm

    “For scientific talks, the visuals are key”.

    (1)
    For SOME scientific talks. I listen to a large number of talks on my iPod and there have been very few where I have felt missing visuals to be a problem. Someone like Sean for example (suckup, suckup) going on about missing mass and dark energy is very easy to understand without the visuals.
    I’d go so far as to say that the visuals are very important to colleagues, who care about the precise new details in this talk, but of minor importance to interested outsiders.

    And remember science is much bigger than just astronomy. Math is basically hopeless via podcast; though visuals migh help a little, it’s much more useful (IMHO) to go through a paper or book at one’s own pace. Similarly for some types of theoretical physics. On the other hand discussions of new experiments can work very well (I thoroughly enjoyed a talk on the ICE_CUBE neutrino observatory). A lot of biology works very well with just sound, though some systems biology needs the pictures. Cognitive science works well, likewise a lot of archeology, as long as it is conceptual rather than detailed reports of a specific dig.

    (2) Of all the people in world podcasting science, by FAR the most clueful are the Kavli institute. Anyone not following their examples is being a fool. Among other things they
    - have good, searchable, browsable web pages
    - good podcast feeds
    - use standard (non-proprietary) formats (H264, AAC)
    - have a very sensible way to handle video.
    Specifically they catch a video frame every 10 seconds (I think) without any expensive human processing, and dump that into the AAC stream. This gives a file that is not significantly larger, that is playable on audio-only devices, but that will display an updated frame every so often on devices that have any (even limited) video capability, like say an iPod nano. The every ten seconds capture gets you the slides/blackboard/whatever, and the lack of motion is not something you’re going to miss except in some very specialized cases like playback of an animation (in which case the animation will generally be available on the web page for that specific talk along with the slides, the audio/video in various formats and so on).
    Really very very impressive.

    Compare to the extremely crappy jobs done by, for example, Perimeter or CalTech or MIT (lousy search, lousy browsing, streaming only Real format) and you have to wonder WTF is going on in these supposed hotbeds of smart technophiles.

24. Julianne on Feb 15th, 2007 at 3:36 pm

    Maynard — Thanks for the insight from someone who actually uses the format regularly. I’d known that Kavli did this, but had never tried it. Maybe the next big investment from Kavli would be for spreading the technology to more institutions and conferences. UW is starting to offer it to instructors when teaching large lecture classes, and so far the reaction is mixed. I think it’s a potentially powerful study aid, but the temptation to skip class becomes immense.

    At the professional level, one of the things I love about the possibility of podcasting is that it offers a way to reduce the penalties on people who don’t/can’t travel. I’ve got small kids, and have cut way back on my conference attendance (i.e. don’t expect any big CV travelogues from me). Seattle is also a bit out of the way, so other scientists are less likely to just drop in, like they are at Caltech, Harvard, etc. Podcasting is a good opportunity to stay in the loop. Lots of conferences are posting PDFs of the speakers slides, and these are tremendously helpful as well. In my ideal world, I could flip through the PDF while listening to the podcast (with little “beeps” like they had with filmstrips back in the day).

25. Sean on Feb 15th, 2007 at 5:50 pm

    Actually I prefer how Fermilab does it. It’s true that they use RealPlayer, but they provide separate (synched) views of the speaker and the slides, which is really what you need.

26. Maynard Handley on Feb 15th, 2007 at 7:26 pm

    But, Sean, the Fermilab scheme suffers from the HUGE problems of
    (1) not portable — can’t listen it on iPod while exercising, driving or whatever
    (2) forces real-time playback — can’t listen to it at 1.3x or whatever speed your brain can cope with. I frequently playback science content at 1.5x and history/politics content at 1.7x.
    (3) is highly likely to not work in five years. The web is littered with various supposedly fancy schemes that try to present multiple pieces of content using some proprietary software c 1997 and that now, in 2007, simply don’t work. Believe me, I’ve hit enough of them in my time.

    Plenty of Real based systems seem to suffer from ever-weakening servers, thus delivering a really pleasant gap and jerk filled experience. Places like MIT or Princeton, which you’d figure could afford decent servers, still nonetheless have their older streams play back terribly, presumably the result of general infrastructure neglect.

    The Kavli style download of a standard format file avoids all these issues.
    There is a reason why hoi polloi mostly love podcasting, once they have learned about it, while you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who is not a whore who has anything good to say about streaming, whether via Real, Windows Media, QT or Flash.

    I mean, honestly, are we now so dim-witted that we are incapable of downloading a separate PDF and stepping through that as we listen to a talk, or incapable of hitting the Next button on a sequence of pages ala the way Kavli does it?

27. Moshe on Feb 15th, 2007 at 8:21 pm

    For what it’s worth, I actively dislike the synchronized view. Sometimes I’d like to look at previous slides while listening, or to see where this is leading etc. It is easy enough to synchronize yourself if you so choose, I see no advantage in forcing this on the listener.

28. Lab Lemming on Feb 16th, 2007 at 1:30 am

    Did they misspell Julianne, Dalcanton, or Sister?

29. Pingback from Pretty pictures | Cosmic Variance on Feb 16th, 2007 at 2:26 am

    [...] In a follow-up to Julianne’s previous post on scientific communication, I thought I’d describe a lecture I attended last week. I’ll try not to say anything overly controversial (though CV readers can be a tough crowd). The talk was by Felice Frankel, as part of the Santa Fe Institute public lecture series. The title was “More than Pretty Pictures: The Power of Images in Science”. Frankel is known for her scientific photographs. She creates beautiful images of a large range of physical systems (from water droplets to nanocrystals). She’s been responsible for quite a number of cover images for journals such as Science and Nature. [...]

30. Julianne on Feb 16th, 2007 at 10:47 am

    Dulcanton.

    My name was mispelled a different way in every single occurance in my high school yearbook. My name was mispelled in a personalized Speigel Ident bracelet in elementary school, a present from my best pen pal. My name has been mispelled in newspapers. I’m used to it.

31. Kevin Runnels on Feb 16th, 2007 at 2:27 pm

    I feel bad that only one picture from Julianne’s post got all of the comment action and there were no comments about Michael Muno’s picture. Maybe it’s because the picture isn’t very clear. He actually looks kind of like Morrissey of the now defunct 80’s band “The Smiths”. Muno is here while Morrissey is here. Spooky.

32. adam on Feb 16th, 2007 at 2:32 pm

    Kevin #31, when Julianne Dilcantrone starts spouting racist filth, how can you expect it to be ignored?

33. Lab Lemming on Feb 18th, 2007 at 5:09 am

    Julianne says:
    “Dulcanton.”

    No offense, but it might clear things up a bit if you fixed the sidebar on this website. Under the “Contributors” heading.

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