On Friday I had dinner at NYC’s molecular gastronomie center, WD-50. We ordered the tasting menu. An incomplete list of what we had:

• Foie gras, extruded into a squared-off tube, and tied, somehow, in a knot
• Deconstructed French onion soup
• Deconstructed eggs Benedict (the egg yolk sous vide, the hollandaise sauce separated, breaded, and deep-fried)
• “Pizza pebbles”

I was disappointed that “pretzel consomme” and “popcorn soup” were only available a la carte.

Last night while the Red Sox were playing and they were leading 231-2, I tried picking up a book to read but was a little too distracted. I needed something mindless but faintly interactive. So I logged on to Amazon Mechanical Turk to earn $0.02 a minute clicking on links.

Actually I was hoping there were some faintly interesting writing jobs but they were all the sleazy “write a glowing product review on this blog” kind. Instead one of the more mundane tasks caught my eye: “help refine search results.” Hey, that’s basically what I do for a living.

The task was to rank the relevancy of various web page results for a given search query. All of the results seemed to be from Wikipedia (including the Talk: pages and other material not likely to be of interest to a general audience). The queries appeared to be genuine user data.

I learned a number of things from this experience. First of all, searching Wikipedia is often nothing more than a snapshot of the day’s vandalism. The snippet from “Roman Catholicism in Myanmar” suggested that I “keep doin it you pimp!!!” Quite a few pages had no other content besides “fag”. These articles were corrected immediately, no doubt, but their cached states were immortalized by the search engine, and users’ misspellings were often exact matches for misspellings by vandals.

Happily, the query for chicken sexing matched an entire article devoted to it and very few vandalized articles containing the words “chicken” and “sex”. I wish more people knew to quote their search terms because a great percentage of the queries matched an article with those exact words as its title. Correctly quoted, Google would return these highly-relevant pages as the #1 result. Sometimes the queries would find an exact Wikipedia match but be too broad in their scope, resulting in a disambiguation page. Peevishly, I started highly ranking non-U.S. results (”Spanish Civil War” for civil war) even though I knew from context that these searches were all by Americans. A little historical perspective never hurt.

Another thing I might have learned (had I not known it already) is that search engines are idiots. I don’t know the answer to Who helped elect Arnold Schwarzenneger but I do know it wasn’t “New Kids on the Block“. There probably isn’t an answer to Who invented pi but it is definitely not “Hat“.

Often the searches weren’t so much actual queries as cries in the wilderness. I had no idea how to respond to parenting help or debt consolidation. Wikipedia didn’t either.

I stopped, eventually, not so much because I got bored or because the game was ending, but because the sad queries were getting to me. It’s like reading that page that turns up #1 in Google for the query cancel google. At first it’s kind of funny, you know, “Ha ha people don’t understand how search engines work.” Then you realize, here’s this incredible technology that has changed everything, and most people in this scientifically-advanced first world country don’t know a thing about it. And then you come to a query like the Bible says spending too much time on-line is not good, and it’s so much worse than you could’ve imagined that you just close the computer and walk away.

As I was driving home this afternoon I made a left turn and heard a tell-tale squeak from the front tire indicating that it’s low on air. At least, I think that’s what it means. I don’t know anything about cars except how to fill the gas tank, and as a New Jersey native I’m resentful even of that.

I wish that I lived in an era when gas station attendants still performed all kinds of maintenance tasks for free: changing the oil, checking the tire pressure, filling the wiper fluid. The only time I’ll check my wiper fluid is when I turn the wipers on and nothing comes out. I’m pretty sure it’s stored under the hood somewhere.

It occurred to me that people in the 50’s had it easy in a lot of ways that might not be obvious if you’ve been indoctrinated with conservative cries about the modern “nanny state.” Take the recent mortgage meltdown. It used to be that you didn’t worry about whether you could afford a house. A stern banker behind a high mahogany desk would slam down a big rubber stamp that either said, “APPROVED” or “DENIED”. If he approved and you didn’t blow all your money on space-age appliances or cars with huge fins, you’d be okay. And it wasn’t possible to end up with 10 grand in credit card debt because credit cards didn’t exist.

Today people are expected to perform all kinds of social and economic calculus that they never were before. Back when you had a corporate pension you didn’t plan for retirement, you just showed up for work every day. Someone with only a 6th grade education could manage that just fine. Now ask that same person to understand a balanced, moderate-risk, diversified 401(k) portfolio. Even if they pick an appropriate investment strategy they’re still being asked to take on risk that their parents never did.

Sure, there are some risks we are no longer as free to assume. The other day I filled out one of a those internet quizzes about how long you will live, based on actuarial data (answer: 104 years old). There were about 5 questions related to smoking, from the basic, “Do you smoke?” (no) to “Have you ever been a smoker?” (I don’t think one clove every two years counts) to “How often are you exposed to second-hand smoke?” To that last one I answered, a little to my surprise, “Never.” These days, in Massachusetts, that’s true.

Unlike the 1950’s, we are expected to take on more responsibility about our sexual behavior. This is one thing we’re doing right. Again, contrary to the right-wing hysteria, teen pregnancy rates have been lower than they were when my parents were growing up, especially during the free-love Clinton 90’s. Today’s teenagers are sophisticated, and putting on a condom is easier than picking a mutual fund. Sometimes more information is better.

I’m trying to pinpoint an overarching theory to account for these social changes. The regulatory loosening that brought us “creative” mortgages are well-known. Nobody told gas stations to pare down their services but clearly that’s part of a general trend away from customer service and towards rock-bottom prices. People already drive 10 miles away to buy gas that’s 2 cents cheaper — no one will see the value in having their tire pressure checked every month in exchange for pricier gas, even though that will ultimately save money in the long run.

Maybe it’s assumed that everyone is educated enough to take on mortgage financing, retirement planning and ever-more-complex tax codes. The middle of the twentieth century was no doubt a better time to be a skilled blue collar worker: unions were strong, pensions were secure and there were plenty of jobs. Most of those jobs are now overseas. The U.S. has instead become an information economy. That’s great for me — here I am, blogging. I can do my taxes and have a sensible mortgage and I’m pretty sure I’ll be okay at retirement. I’m also a complete idiot because I don’t know how to fill a tire. Nobody should be expected to know everything.

1. Brew coffee at 2-3X normal strength
2. Fill a small bucket with ice water
3. Fill a tall metal drinking cup with ice and put it in the bucket. You may need to hold the cup down so it doesn’t float
4. Slowly pour the iced coffee into the cup

The metal will conduct the heat quickly away from the cup and into the ice water bath. You should go from scorching hot coffee to cold iced coffee in under 30 seconds, with minimal melting of the interior ice cubes.

If you take your iced coffee with milk or cream, try soy milk instead, even if you aren’t vegan. Trust me.

One night when I was about eight, I decided that I would not conclude my bedtime prayer with “Amen.” I thought that praying was like making a phone call, with a ritualized beginning (”Our Father…”) and ending (”Amen”). Only between those two incantations could God hear me — like opening a channel to the away team. I decided that if I didn’t say “Amen” I could leave that channel on and thus make my whole life one unending paean to the Almighty.

Of course being eight years old I pretty much forgot about this the next time something profound happened, like getting a new Trapper Keeper. The next clear theological memory I have is from one afternoon in CCD when I asked how we knew that the Bible was true. The instructor, some poor girl a decade younger than I am now, answered that we didn’t know for sure but instead relied on our faith. At the time I found that unsatisfying. I was looking for some corroborating scientific evidence, having recently learned what science was. Of course, her answer was the only possible one.

Harris’s book is an attack on this and all other forms of faith. Although his examples of the damage caused by religion include obvious cases like the Inquisition and the Holocaust, he’s obviously not writing to convince 16th century Spaniards or Nazis. His targets are contemporary practitioners, especially well-meaning liberal Westerners who want to have it both ways: taking comfort in the history and tradition of Abrahamic religions but discarding the contradictory or flat-out unpleasant messages in its texts.

In my Catholic high school, someone once asked if Gandhi and Buddha were in heaven. “They are,” we were told, because their teachings were in the spirit of Jesus’s message. That same year we were subjected to a guest speaker on abstinence, and part of her routine included massive amounts of misinformation about birth control. I remember thinking then, as Harris does now: why do modern Catholics politely ignore prohibitions about belief in false gods but obsess over premarital sex (a topic which did not seem to especially interest Jesus anyway)? If Gandhi’s going to heaven anyway, why not be a Hindu? The food’s better.

The End of Faith can be a difficult read, even for an atheist. He explicitly rejects any “sensitivity” towards religious belief — in fact he considers this one of the West’s greatest internal threats — and it’s astonishing how transgressive this language can be. Dismissing religion as the ravings of primitive humans is just not how people talk (outside of the internet) even if some atheists do privately. Most of us, I think, try to be considerate of our friends and family. Harris is mad at us too.

Harris has been criticized by atheists, surprisingly, for not going far enough. He claims outright that paranormal phenomena have been shown to exist, and invokes Terence McKenna more times than a scientific rationalist should (i.e., ever). The book ends with a discussion on meditation, and while I get where he’s coming from (that rationalism does not equate to spiritual emptiness or the absence of wonder), it closes on an unpleasant New Age note.

There’s something seductive — and therefore, history tells us, dangerous — about thinking you’re on the correct side of a religious argument. It doesn’t matter from which end of the political spectrum you approach the book; Harris is neither right- nor left-wing. For him it’s equally true that Islam sanctions terrorism as Christianity promotes misogyny and persecution. (Actually it’s pretty much okay to equate every organized religion with misogyny.) His great fear is that these doctrines, codified when foul weather and disease were caused by God’s wrath, now influence people with access to nuclear weapons. In Harris’s worldview, only an unwavering support (I almost said belief) for strict rationalism will save us. And hey, guess what? I’m a strict rationalist. Now I feel great.

I’m not sure that’s right either, but I don’t have a better answer.

We are having a house guest tomorrow so tonight I kicked off my vacation with some CLEANING.

Normally I am a slob, but sometimes when I start cleaning things get a little out of control and I lose all sense of proportion. For example, in the kitchen: I did not just clean all the visible surfaces. I also got on a chair and cleaned the most inaccessible of the cabinets, as if our house guest was going to show up, nod appreciatively, and then immediately begin inspecting our pantry. Actually, this particular house guest may do just that.

Anyway, I threw out anything that satisfied one or more of the following conditions:

1. Had moved with us from our previous house two years ago
2. Was in a plastic bag
3. Was unidentifiable

Curiously, almost everything I tossed looked about the same. I am pretty sure the set of six things included at least:

1. Textured vegetable protein
2. Panko bread crumbs
3. Dried coconut
4. Rolled oats
5. Different bag of textured vegetable protein

Several months ago I threw out a whole container of textured vegetable protein because it was contaminated with pantry moths. The thing is, I can remember purchasing TVP only once, and for one use (veggie chili). I like it in veggie chili but not so much that I would keep buying it. I am starting to suspect it can undergo mitosis, and then gather itself snugly into little plastic bags.

The Ancestor’s Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution is a history, in a way, of the expression of evolution. Told from the point of view of humans (who else?), it moves backward in evolutionary history visiting the major junction points where our species’ ancestors branched off from other groups. As the book progresses, the leaps (in form and function, as well as time) get progressively greater, ending with the origins of the first forms of life on Earth, estimated to be almost 4 billion years ago. The shtick of the book is that at each of these “rendezvous” between groups, a particular organism at that junction tells a “tale” which illustrates some principle of evolution.

I know a fair amount about hominid and primate evolution and pretty much nothing “before” that, so I found the later chapters more captivating than the first. It turns out I often didn’t know what our ancestors were.

I appreciated that Dawkins doesn’t shy away from the complexities in evolutionary history, but I wish the book’s structure were different. He reminds the reader repeatedly that the notion of progress as applied to evolution is pure nonsense — it’s nothing more than an expression of observer bias. To us, the notion of moving from sea to land, from four legs to two, seems obvious and natural. In reality, evolution moves in no particular direction at all, and even in our own history there are regressions and backtracking and the repeated “re-invention” of features.

Think about the evolutionary perspective of a bird. To them, mammals are an evolutionary dead-end: a minimally notable subplot in an unbroken chain from sea to land to air, from proto-reptile to dinosaur to bird. Humans managed to achieve flight only by over-engineering some unrelated organ (the brain) and constructing devices that surpass bird flight only in altitude and speed, but not even remotely in grace, agility or endurance. One imagines the pinnacle of evolution, from the point of view of a swift, of almost never having to set foot on land in an entire lifetime.

There are weirder trees to imagine: what would a fish think of the evolution of a whale? (”What a pointless digression were lungs and legs”, probably.) And the eusocial insects would be amazed that primitive forms of relatedness were still hanging around.

Dawkins can’t help but grumble about creationists throughout, but it’s mostly constructive: he cites the number of times the eye has independently evolved (nine) and there’s a good amount of space devoted to homeobox genes and their role in macroevolution. But I got the impression that he was holding back, if only because he knew he had The God Delusion in the pipeline.

Overall, it’s a good book, especially for people who enjoyed biology in school but haven’t kept up with the extraordinary discoveries enabled by molecular DNA analysis (dogs and the most recent common human ancestor are both from Asia, who knew?) Next up: The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, by Dawkins buddy Sam Harris.

I finally purchased some Pimm’s.

The story about how I became obsessed with acquiring Pimm’s is extremely boring so I won’t reproduce it here. It is enough to say that the moment this afternoon when I retrieved a case of Tremont Ale, stood on it, and reached up onto a high, neglected shelf at The Wine and Cheese Cask to retrieve my dusty prize was a highlight of the week.

The Pimm’s cocktail, as we interpreted it:

• 1 highball glass, half-filled with ice
• 2.5 oz Pimm’s No. 1
• .5oz Drambuie
• Juice of 1/2 lime
• Club soda
• Sprig of mint

Every year I buy a bunch of romance novels for our vacation. I feel compelled to mention that the guys read them too.

This year I asked Amazon for high-rated romance novels set in the Jane Austen era:

1. A Wicked Gentleman by Jane Feather
2. Sinful Between the Sheets by Barbara Pierce
3. Bedding the Heiress by Cathy Maxwell
4. The Naked Earl by Sally MacKenzie
5. The Geology of Fluvial Deposits: Sedimentary Facies, Basin Analysis, and Petroleum Geology by Andrew D. Miall

Technically, the last doesn’t count: it received only 3 stars.