Sun, 25 Feb 2007

Grilling vs Broiling
So much for spirituality. Let’s get back to cooking. I’m always kind of confused by the whole grilling thing. What exactly is ‘grilling’? I’m never sure exactly what counts. And what the heck is ‘broiling’? And what’s the difference? Trying to answer this question, I found this page on grilling vs broiling.

posted at: 15:40 | path: /living | link

The Scientific Method- innocent until proven guilty?
I was reading over the last paragraph of my last entry, about Kuhn, and it led me to think about the status of hypotheses, or ideas, that either have not yet been investigated using the scientific method or are in the process of being investigated.

In the judicial system, we tend to go with the innocent until proven guilty strategy. We go with this strategy because we figure it would be worse to say that an innocent person was guilty than to say that a guilty person was innocent, and we recognize that people really aren’t very good at suspending judgement. We aren’t good at saying- “The person might be innocent, or they might be guilty. I don’t know, and I won’t decide right now.”

We’re in a similar situation with a hypothesis that hasn’t been tested. The hypothesis might be true, or it might be false. The general strategy in this case is to assume that the hypothesis is true, and then try to prove it false. Of course, this tends to bias the direction of scientific inquiry, because you aren’t going to be too motivated to go to a bunch of work to show that something is false if you already believe it to be false.

Personally, I think that taking a position of non-judgement about the truth or falsity of an idea, theory or hypothesis is a viable alternative in many cases- but it is certainly also a more challenging alternative, because it requires us to live with uncertainty, which in turn can make it difficult to know how to behave. As far as religious thought goes, I currently generally describe myself as an atheist because I rarely have a belief in what you might describe as a single, coalesced ‘God’, particularly one with some sort of awareness or causal powers. However, apparently there are many different flavours of agnosticism, and sometimes I’ll call myself agnostic simply to denote that I am not without an interest in the larger groking of the universe.

posted at: 12:17 | path: /living | link

Science and Spirituality
Some people (like these people, for example) argue that spirituality is hard wired into the human psyche. I have no problem believing that could be true, but it does pose some challenges for a materialist atheist like myself. At the very least, I try to be open minded, and aware of my own belief systems, and I try to expand and explore my belief system when possible. I like the term belief system because I think that that phrase gets at part of the whole hard wired thing. It’s hard to imagine a person without a belief system, and once you have a belief system it’s hard to live for too long without needing (or wanting very badly) to fill in some of the gaps in that belief system with some sort of beliefs.

One thing I do tend to put my faith in is the scientific method. And I say this coming from a place of non-naivete about the scientific method. Philosophers have been trying to tear it down probably since it arrived on the scene, but I still think it ain’t half bad. From a historical perspective, the scientific method arose in ‘The West’ because some philosophers wanted to augment philosophical methods of getting at the truth with the requirement of objectivity. It’s possible that this inherently limits science, because it means that subjective experience, no matter how real, plays second fiddle in science. It’s not completely rejected, but its role is far from clear. I think subjective experience is very important, and also very real. Consequently, it’s important not to equate valuing the scientific method with devaluing or denying subjective experience. Having said that, when something can be objectively observed, I think it could be said that it gives that thing a certain property and a certain type of power.

For me, the spiritual search is about trying to grok the universe. The term ‘grok’ was invented by the science fiction author Robert Heinlein. It became somewhat popular in counterculture in the 60’s and then was absorbed into the hacker culture. It has various definitions. According to wikipedia, the word grok “is a verb that connotes knowledge greater than that which can be sensed by an outside observer. It is an understanding beyond empathy and intimacy.”

Now, groking would seem to be outside the realm of objective experience so it’s not clear what the scientific method has to do with this. However, in my experience, people in pursuit of groking the universe tend to also become interested in the ontology of reality- the nature of reality, how it works, and what is in it. This is often combined with questions of how we ourselves relate to, or connect with reality and also how we interact with reality on a day to day basis. To me, this is where the scientific method comes in, because I think it’s pretty useful when trying to figure out the nature of reality, and how it all works and how we work in relation to it. True- as I’ve said, the scientific method is limited to objective experiences but it is still extremely useful within the context of these limits and can, I believe, be useful applied when trying to answer some of these questions.

Of course, I’m also a fan of Kuhn, which means that, at the very least, I think that the application of the scientific method is greatly influenced by the biases, prejudices and predispositions of those people applying the scientific method. That’s why I enjoy coming across sites like The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine- a branch of the US National Institutes of Health. Not that I think they are free from bias, but at least it’s a step in the direction of applying the scientific method to something, rather than simply dismissing it out right.

posted at: 11:23 | path: /living | link

Fri, 09 Feb 2007

Effective Presentations
I often give workshops or presentations, and I work to make them engaging and useful. Consequently, I was really happy to stumble across the PlusOne Preformance Group website. They have a whole bunch of really great articles on presenting to groups, and other interesting topics.

posted at: 14:04 | path: /living | link

Thu, 08 Feb 2007

Getting a feel for self actualization
I’m interested in Maslow’s concept of self actualization, but I haven’t had too much luck finding something that explains it in such a way that I can get a sense of what it means or what it would be like. This page does a pretty good job though.

posted at: 22:13 | path: /living | link

Tue, 06 Feb 2007

Air Barrier Systems in Buildings
To return to the topic of stopping unwanted air flow from buildings, here’s an article that explains very clearly the different types of air flow.

posted at: 15:13 | path: /living | link

Solar Cooking FAQ
I am fascinated by different cooking technologies. I’ve made links in my blog before about solar cookers, but this FAQ is the best one I’ve found so far. It really makes me want to try solar cooking.

posted at: 13:24 | path: /living | link

Sat, 03 Feb 2007

Foam Insulation
The area in our basement around the sill plate leaks air like a sieve. Wishing to do the responsible and money saving thing, Colin wished to fill the gaps with expanding polyurethane foam insulation. Being the neurotic-eco-pain-in-the-ass person that I am (at least on occassion), I demanded that I do some research on the whole topic first before “the big spray”. Here’s a little bit about the question of whether or not the use of expanding foam has any health concerns involved. I like the idea of this Air Krete stuff, but how do I get a hold of it? Here’s a good page from Environment Canada on general air leak management. Here’s a clear and informative pamphlet from the US energystart program that explains about the rim joist of the house, and how to seal air leaks in this area. It also highlights the difference between sealing off air leaks, and insulating. Here’s a document that lists different types of sealing materials. The low expanding foam that we’ve used in the past is “an expanding foam made of polyiso and a polyol resin”, according tothis document. The document notes that there are different types of blowing agents used. The one we have uses chlorodifluoromethane. Apparently, however, you can also get ones that use carbon dioxide or water, which might be a nicer alternative although, according to this page it might not be so good for larger gaps. The resin may also be partially soy based, as is the case with this product.

posted at: 16:32 | path: /living | link

Thu, 01 Feb 2007

Pathologizing- Good and Bad Behaviours

Okay- in my last blog entry I talked about subjective feelings and objective tests. But there’s one more category yet to be discussed- behaviours. Behaviours are a grey zone. On the one hand, they are observable, rather than subjective. On the other hand, as far as our current scientific understanding goes, the source of behaviours is currently kind of subjective (“Why did you do that? I felt like it.”). Consequently, until relatively recently, behaviours fell more into the moral realm than the medical realm. (Actually, to be accurate, so did physical illnesses, until disease theory came along. You got sick, or engaged in certain socially undesirable behaviours, because you were morally weak.)

The thing about the medical profession is that it has power in our society. So labelling something as a disorder or a disease is powerful. In the case of behaviours, the medical profession has the power to take a collection of behaviours, and label them as a disorder. Now, the interesting thing is that, in some cases, it’s the people in power- the medical profession, government, etc. who try to take a behaviour (like homosexuality) and label it as a disorder. In this case, they are *pathologizing* the behaviour, because by labeling it a disorder, they’re going to gain further powers over that behaviour. Here’s an entertaining example of a reaction to this, where someone pathologizes the behaviour of mental health professionals in entertaining ways.

What’s interesting is that, in other cases, the reverse is true. In these cases, it is the people with the behaviours (e.g. fibromyalgia) who are pushing the medical profession to recognize and label their behaviour as a valid disorder, because in this case they themselves (perhaps quite legitimately) want the power that goes along with the label. And further, since physical disorders have more legitimacy for many people than psychological disorders, they want their behaviour recognized as a physical disorder, rather than as a pyschological disorder.

Which, at long last brings me to sleep disorders like delayed sleep phase syndrome. Basically, there’s a number of questions you can ask about this syndrome. One is- who wants to label this set of behaviours as a syndrome- the people who have it, or the people around them (including doctors)?” Another is- “If it is a ‘legitimate’ disorder, is it a psychological disorder or a physical disorder?” And another is “If it isn’t a disorder of any kind, does that mean it is some kind of moral, personal or social failing?”.

I happen to have been diagnosed with this syndrome at one point, and I flip flop on all these questions. For sure I can say that both prior to this and after it I have been put, as a result of my behaviours, into the moral/personal/social failing category (i.e. lazy, self-centered, weak-willed), so it is actually some comfort to me to have a possible alternate explanation- that it isn’t a moral failing but some kind of medical disorder. Having said that, since I believe psycholgical disorders to be entirely real and legitimate medical disorders, I have no problem putting it into the pyschological disorder camp. And since I don’t wish to have this behaviour, and find it quite disruptive to my quality of life, I’m perfectly willing to tackle it by psychological means. There also seems to be some growing evidence that there are some objective physical measures for people with this, and that it may in fact be a ‘physical disorder’ but I’m not sure about the treatment implications of that, since they probably won’t translate to new options any time soon. Plus, I tend to think the ‘mental/physical divide’ is kind of a crock, so there you go.

posted at: 10:55 | path: /living | link

Pathologizing- popping up everywhere
As often seems to happen when a concept is being mulled over, it starts to pop up everywhere. At work, I’ve been reading about two subjects- radical pedagogy, and issues of class (which is yet another case where two separate seemingly subjects ended up merging because issues of class come up in radical pedagogy. In that case the connection is a bit more unsurprising because Jen Gilbert got me on both subjects). And, lo and behold, what should appear but the term ‘pathologizing’.

Pathologizing is interesting because it plays into some interesting practices and philosophies of the medical profession. The first one is what counts as a ‘disease’ or ‘disorder’ in the medical profession. The first thing to realize, on this front, is that subjective experiences have a very specific role in the medical profession. Subjective experiences are things like “feeling pain” or “feeling tired” or “feeling nausea”. Doctors like to ask you about these subjective experiences because the subjective experiences can help them figure out what objective tests to run on you. If their objective tests reveal something problematic, then you have a physical ailment. If they don’t, then you have a psychological ailment. Simple.

In an interesting twist, generally speaking doctors seem to view psychological ailments as ‘less real’, to the point that, rather than refer people with psychological ailments to the appropriate doctors (i.e. psychologists), they tell them that “there’s nothing wrong with them”. A good example of this is this discussion by a doctor, who starts out by refering to a particular syndrome as not existing- they state that the syndrom “as it is currently construed DOES NOT EXIST!”- and then farther down switches to saying about the syndrom that it “is a psychiatric illness! This is not to say it is not real. On the contrary…. It is as real as depression, schizophrenia, bipolar, PTSD, somatization disorder, etc. And these are very, very real diseases.” Probably part of the doctor dilemma is that a lot of other people also think that psychological illnesses aren’t real, so then they are affronted if a doctor tries to send them off to a psychologist. What does this have to do with pathologizing? I’m getting there…

posted at: 10:28 | path: /living | link

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