A couple of political thoughts but more than just that...

1. Now that Bush is almost out of office, could people maybe stop with the hate, the "dumb Bush" jokes, the "evil Bush" jokes? (I know, I know - they still sell gag corkscrews of Clinton and that bugs me, too).

2. I can't wait for Obama to actually do something so people have something to comment about other than the sort of crazed celebrity-adulation I've seen. Really, they are treating him and his family much the way Princess Diana was treated - or the way Bono is treated - or the way, I don't know, that guy in the new vampire movie gets treated.

I can't help but think that kind of adulation isn't good for a person. I may bitch and whine about how no one ever seems to notice that anything I do is any good, but I think I'd be very uncomfortable with lots of unearned praise.

Actually, I take that back: I KNOW I'd be very uncomfortable with it. And to veer away (thank goodness) from the political, back to this article that I sadly think I'm going to have to suggest rejection on:

I went through grad school with a very picky adviser. I can't even count how many times I re-wrote my thesis, let alone my dissertation. He was always quick to point out what was not good about something. (But he was also that way about his own work; he was very open about it when something he did was not up to his standards). Praise was very rare. And at times, that got frustrating. I'd start to wonder if what I was doing was any good at all, if I'd ever write something good enough to be considered "finished."

But then, once in a while, I'd do something well, and he'd kind of nod and me and go, "good job" or "that was a well-planned presentation."

And because those words were so rare, you knew they meant a lot - that a "good job" from him was equal to the most flowing and effusive praise of other people. Maybe even worth MORE.

I knew another faculty member who was effusive in his praise. And while it was fun to take a seminar from him - because EVERYTHING you did was great and impressive and innovative, after a while you started to wonder: what I'm doing really can't be that glorious. And wait, last week Dingleberry gave a really cruddy seminar and the prof talked about how great it was. Something's not right here.

And then, I'd naturally begin to wonder: was my seminar actually as bad as Dingleberry's, but I didn't realize it at the time because of the gushing praise?

And then I'd go back to my adviser, and write something, and rewrite it five times, and finally he'd say, "OK, this is good enough." And you actually felt like it WAS. Like the guy wasn't blowing smoke; what you had done was actually worthy.

And I saw other people going through grad school who got praised all the time - and they didn't really develop (or they let atrophy) the sense of critical reading, of being able to look at something and go, "This needs work" (ironically, one of my adviser's favorite phrases).

And I wonder if that's not what happened to the people writing this paper. I've seen it in some areas of the conservation community. For those of you not in the know - there are kind of three (maybe more) levels in the conservation community. Or maybe not levels, maybe just schools of thought. One is the academic. These are people with backgrounds like mine - they came through a tough, traditional graduate program. They had to work hard. They tend to expect good experimental design and quantification. And they really expect experiments be done with things like controls, or with baseline studies done before anything is changed - they are people who don't want to draw conclusions without good evidence. And then there's more of an NGO type community. They've been influenced by academic conservation, they try to use good experimental design and such. Maybe their studies aren't quite as rigorous; maybe they didn't think to take baseline data before removing an invasive species or burning a prairie. But they do want to learn from the academics; they recognize that more rigor is a good thing.

And then there's the "enthusiast" community. For them, every conservation-oriented activity is GREAT. They are SAVING THE EARTH. (and yes, they tend to SPEAK IN CAPITALS.) There's a certain amount of "woo" (to use the Junkfood Science term) at work in some people's thinking - there's a certain degree of mysticism.

Now, don't get me wrong - some kinds of mysticism are good. I like that there are mysteries of the faith, that there are things we don't fully understand. But I don't really believe that, for example, trees "weep" when they get other trees grown up around them. Oh, they may suffer the effects of competition for water or light, but they are TREES. They do not, as far as we have been able to determine, FEEL.

So it bugs me when someone speaks - in a serious and non-jovial manner - about trees "weeping" because they're surrounded by other trees, or how the land "cries out" to them, that kind of stuff.

Partly because it's not scientific - but partly because that kind of attitude is not too far off from setting yourself up as a "special" person, as some kind of "empath" - and perhaps even the "chosen one," the one who is to be the savior of that particular forest or whatever.

And so then the rest of the people working on that project, as great as their skills are, become less, because see, they don't have that "special feeling."

And I hate that.

And it leads to sloppy thinking. People who buy into this concept - who either tip over all the way into the crazy-earth-person enthusiasm, or even the people who aren't that far gone, but who are going to clap and cheer ANYTHING that is done - they tend NOT to do good experimentation. Controls? We don't need no stinking controls! We know that what we are doing is GOOD and RIGHT and we are SAVING THE EARTH!

I've actually had enthusiast-types tell me, "You scientists. Nothing would EVER get done if you ran the show. Step back and let the people who CARE do their work."

And then you get things happening like mongoose being introduced to Hawaii to take care of the rats - and then 50 or 60 years later, the scientists wind up chronicling how that killed off some of the native birds, thanks to the Law of Unexpected Consequences. But of course, the enthusiasts are long since moved onto another project, and anyway, it's not their fault that things got screwed up.

And that's the sense I get from this paper - that it was written by someone who had more caring than scientific background, someone who was so pressed to put their thoughts and feelings down on the paper that ordinary rules of organization and syntax no longer applied.

And sadly - what we are editing is a scientific proceedings, not a fan magazine. So I'm going to make what suggestions I can for improvement but I suspect they will be met with howling anger - with the "how dare this person" tamper with their lovely plan. But whatever. That's life. Unfortunately reality isn't as pretty as hope.

Which is why I'll be glad when the inauguration is over and we get back (I expect) to the work of reality. There's only so much gushing praise of someone I can stand to hear.