tsujigiri

The editorial comments of Chris and James, covering the news, science, religion, politics and culture.

"I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day." -Douglas Adams

Tuesday, September 20, 2005

Word stinks.

Last month I encountered a funding opportunity which only accepted proposals in Micro$oft Word format. I thought this was bizarre, and I didn't quite finish the proposal. "Why the hell would anyone write a technical document in Word," I thought. Since then, I decided to write a full-on proposal using MS Word. I'm about 1/3 of the way through that proposal, and I have arrived at my conclusions regarding Word: "Why the hell would anyone write a technical document in Word?" This program sucks ass. It is very difficult to do anything technical in Word. I have spent days studying how to manage Figures and Tables and References, mostly to no avail.

I found this site over at Microsoft which offers advice on writing tech docs in Word. Some of the highlights:

  • "Word has no built-in solution for making a list of references and inserting citations to those references in the text."
  • "Although Microsoft Word has an equation numbering feature as part of its caption feature, it puts the equation number either above or below the equation, not on the same line as is normally done."
  • "A text box is the most obvious way to place figures where you want them, but it suffers from two problems. One is that text boxes tend to jump around as the document's text is edited, sometimes even jumping into the margin. I have no solution for this problem, although there is a solution using Visual Basic from www.officevba.com described here."

These problems ought to be enough to drive away any experienced LaTeX user (LaTeX will practically write your document for you, easily generate complicated equations, handle numbered and multiline equations, size and place your figures, handle caption formatting and numbering, manage bibliographies, adapt to the style requirements of your journal, etc). I thought I would still give Word a chance, though, and see what it has to say about citations. A package called "Endnote" is recommended for managing bibliographies. I went down to my University Bookstore and had a look. Endnote costs 300 fucking US dollars! What a goddamn ripoff! BibTeX and LaTeX handle all your bibliographic needs, have done so since forever, and have done it for free. In addition, LyX is available for those who prefer WYSYWIG-like GUI interfaces, and JabRef is a Java-based GUI platform for managing bibliographic databases. And they are all free, and they work great. Once you have set up a working LaTeX environment, you can write dozens of papers without ever having fuck with formatting.

Conclusions:

  • MS Word + Endnote = expensive shit.
  • LaTeX + LyX + BibTeX + JabRef = free gold!

So I ask one last time: "Why does anyone use Word?" A number of other faculty in my department use Word for their papers and proposals. Why!? It sucks!!!

Monday, September 19, 2005

Baffling Times correction

The article is "One Find, Two Astronomers: An Ethical Brawl", and it's by Dennis Overbye. You know, Dennis Overbye, Times science writer since before M1 supernovaed, the Dennis Overbye that this bio says "studied physics at MIT". The name that is as familiar to us Times science section readers as John Updike is to us New Yorker readers.

The article is interesting, about alleged professional impropriety bordering upon fraud amongst astronomers, but half-way through it says this:
Dr. Pogge was able to trace the computers through the so-called IPP numbers, which the Internet assigns to each computer on it. Those numbers eventually led him to the Web site of the Andalusian Institute. Dr. Pogge said he gasped out loud when it popped up.

Which made me say, "Huh. IPP numbers. That's odd. What does the other P stand for?"

At the bottom of the article is the following:
Correction: Sept. 14, 2005, Wednesday: An article in Science Times yesterday about a dispute between astronomers over credit for the discovery of 2003 EL61, a large icy object in the outer solar system, misstated the term for the identification number assigned by the Internet to every computer. The number, by which American astronomers were able to trace a Spanish group's visits to their Web site before the discovery was announced, is called an IP address (for "Internet protocol"), not IPP numbers.

How does Dennis Overbye not know what an IP address is?

Ghost writing? Moonshine? Willful ignorance? Or further evidence that physicists live on Mars? (Funding is more plentiful there.)

Don't think you're getting the protection you're getting.

The Silver Ring Thing, an evangelical "music and light sex-education show" operating on tax-payer funds, is enjoying unprecedented success with its abstinence-only message. Thanks to this program, which manipulates teens into taking the "silver ring pledge" to not have sex until marriage, millions of young people are convinced that abstinence is not necessarily impossible. Untold numbers are avoiding sex for years at a time. CBS news interviewed some youngsters about their pledge, and asked what their friends thought:

"They think we can't do it," says Amy. "That it's impossible. But it's not."

Amy's friends (plural) may think the program is ridiculous, but if Amy (singular) is currently committed to the program, then we can call it a success. And although Amy's boyfriend is not a virgin, they are both going to try their best to not have sex until marriage, or at least until a few weeks before their shotgun wedding at the courthouse.

According to Denny Pattyn, the Christian minister who created the Silver Ring Thing:

After three-and-a-half hours of giving them our best shot [on stage], 75 percent become convinced and put on the ring. Our goal actually is to create a culture shift in America. We want to see the concept of abstinence be the norm rather than the exception.

I think Pattyn has missed something important here. The concept of abstinence is already the norm in this country. It is the facts that never seem to live up to the ideals. You can "convince" people of all sorts of things at these "music and light" evangelical carnivals. You can get people to stand up out of their wheelchairs and dance. You can get people to commit to difficult weight-loss programs. You can convince them to become the best Amway salesmen in the country. But what really matters is what they do the day after the show.

There is one fundamental, permanent, irreconcilable flaw with abstinence-only education. I knew this when I was a teenager, a fact which has been confirmed through my years of life experience: sex is way better than abstinence. Tyring to convince young people that abstinence is best is like trying to convince them the Earth is flat.