Chris died last month. Chris was my mother-in-sin and then -in-law and before either, the mother of my high school crush then college relationship.

Chris in a mushroomy hat

Chris was an, RN, Lactation Consultant, and a breastfeeding advocate and activist. Back in the early 1990s, she raised my awareness of breastfeeding as a feminist and public health issue. I ended up reading quite a bit about it (starting with Gabrielle Palmer’s excellent “The Politics of Breastfeeding“). I ended up using this and similar reading in several of my bioethics classes in grad school.

Among so many things, I especially admire two aspects of her relationship with science. The first is science as a source of answers to deeply personal questions:

Over the next few weeks I spent lots of time reflecting on my life as a mammal. I figured if the other mammals knew how to take care of their babies without any lessons, then probably I could too, but I sure had lots of questions. Why did I get so thirsty when the baby nursed? (It was like a wind from the Sahara hitting my throat.) Why did the baby’s sucking make me sleepy? Why did my daughter smell so enticing? I had a degree from an Ivy League college, but no clue about what this small creature needed from me. I just had to go with the flow, and luckily—because mammals are designed for survival—things worked out OK.

Forty years later, I look back on thousands of hours spent sitting beside nursing mothers and babies in my career as a hospital nurse and board certified lactation consultant. The process of nurturing young mammals still enthralls me. Lactation science has answered my questions and many more that I never thought to ask, and to me it is still a marvel, the way a mother’s body, which surrounded her baby before birth, protects him afterwards…by providing warmth and touch and a soothing and soporific elixir that programs the baby’s immune system and feeds only friendly bacteria in his gut.

In response to this profound, personal experience, she changed her life and career, went back to school to be an RN, worked the night shift until she put together her own practice, and spent the rest of her life learning and sharing knowledge and love of breastfeeding. Her relationship with the science of lactation wasn’t cold, clinical, or distant, but excited, enthusiastic, and endlessly delightful. I love that.

The second was science as reality check:

During the years (most of my adult life!) that I’ve been involved in what I think of as “the Breastfeeding World,” I’ve been concerned about something I might call our “validity,” our truth. I feel as if we (at least in the USA) have been marginalised—or closeted—and our issue has been left out, overlooked, forgotten—for so long, and our struggle has been so hard, that we’re in danger of developing a skewed view of reality. You know that feeling of identity, instant understanding, acceptance that you experience when you find another lactation “nut”! “Oh, good, here’s somebody I don’t have to explain everything to—she (or sometimes it’s even a ‘he’) already understands about breastfeeding.” It feels so comfortable to be with other people who see things through the same “breastfeeding glasses” that we do.

And because of that feeling, I believe that we have to be extra careful, extra watchful, to be sure that there’s some objective corroboration for our perceptions. A peer review process is what I’m getting at, I think. We have to help each other identify deficiencies in our understanding, our presentation, or our goals and strategies. We need standards that define LCs—who we are, what we do. If we don’t do this for each other, surely our critics will, and they won’t be kind!

The rigor of the research process is one standard our profession can cherish. Another standard is a clear position on the ethics of breastfeeding supplies, equipment, infant feeding paraphernalia, and corporate sponsorship. Others might be cooperation among breastfeeding advocates of all kinds….Justice and fairness in dealing with our colleagues….A global rather than a local viewpoint….Accountability in clinical practice. And I’m sure there are others. ILCA drew up Standards of Practice about 5 years ago. That’s a start.

Her science advocacy involved a deft respect for the complex structure of diverse world views, without giving ground on rigor. I’m nowhere near as kind, yet clear, in my advocacy, though I strive for it.

Chris wrote:

If it comes down to a choice between having rights and having manners, I’ll go for rights…but I think we can aim for having both.

I’m not so good on manners, but part of my love, passion, and delight in learning, knowing, sharing, and championing is colored by her light.

This time, I’ve reason to believe the cautionee isn’t a PhD student, but is already graduated. I’ve no definite evidence, but there were some web pages wherein their name is prefixed with “Dr.” which is pretty reasonable.

Yucong Duan posted a message to very old thread that started out unpromising (“I think that there is usually a misunderstanding on the meaning of CWA vs. OWA”…starting with such a broadside puts me, personally, on my guard for kookdom) and descended into what I called “gibberish” (though, in the “nice” way).

Probably the highlight of malpractice was the accusation against me of having been inconsistent and the generalization from the alleged sample of one to my whole corpus. (Note, I totally understand the latter move — I’m sorely tempted to dismiss without reading their publications because I cannot see how someone so confused could produce anything reasonable…but, of course, I can so see: they might be more careful in print, they have helpful coauthors, they might be ok in their own field, etc. Hence, no comment on the rest without reading them. Which is totally not worth my time.) Slightly reformatted for clarity:

Firstly please check piceces of your reply which i have copied as below:

(1)”…My mind reading capabilities failed to detect that you are a student(***)…”

(2)”…you mobilized was used in any standard or reasonable sense. (E.g., “notation”, “CWA”, “OWA”, “semantics”, “ontological”, “negation”). This is characteristic of naive students(***) …”

Can you see the contradiction in your expression?! I am not imagine how many similar cases could be counterred in those more than 100 papers published by you in the past five years?!

Obviously, there’s no even prima facie contradiction (they had to selectively quote to even get as far as they did). I pointed this out (with some snark) and they doubled down.

Doubling down here was clearly a really bad move. While I think that one can make a case against my use of the term “gibberish” (see the discussion on Feminist Philosophers) as being provocative, I will point out that they did not express agitation until I refuted them again and they started not getting as straightforwardly refuted by others. They spiralled into insinuations against me and my competence (e.g., challenging my authority, as if I made a claim to authority to buttress my points; however, I do have pretty good claim to authority on these issues, which makes the whole thing weird).

In the end, as far as I can tell, Yucong Duan left the conversation still not knowing how much they didn’t understand, but largely happy with the result. This was fairly predictable from the start, alas.

Look, I could be a grump or nuts in spite of my expertise or just wrong on some point. It’s good to challenge the basics on occasion. But there’s often important signals in what you might perceive as noise. It’s important to know what criticisms to dismiss, but it’s also important to recognize what criticisms not to dismiss.

That being said, per usual, and per the Feminist Philosophers thread, I have to reflect again on my still. Snark, and bluntness, and teasing can be effective and even fun for all, but obviously have the obvious downsides. I sometimes worry that my clinging to them (however tempered over the years) is like someone clinging to racist or sexist jokes and language. I can hear the similarities, which worry me.

Having been one for quite a long time, I can speak quite passionately about it. Being a passionate person entails that I probably will at the drop of a hat.

Of course, lots of the difficulties with being a PhD student are simply a matter of life. I take a special interest because it was a defining condition of so much of much life and mentoring PhD students will is and will be such a condition for the rest of my life. So when I see a massive failure by a PhD student, I’m inclined to overreflect on it.

Kindred Winecoff posted quite a silly critique of Paul Krugman which was picked up by Henry Farrell. Now, Daniel Drezner has a similar, somewhat more nuanced view expressed with rather less vitrol and hyperbole. They share the same basic flaw: A hugely uncharitable misreading of Krugman as saying that the public bears absolutely no responsibility for since it had no influence on the massively disastrous Bush and Bush era policies. (I’m risking similar problems by not doing a very close exegesis of any of the articles. Furthermore, my generally pro-Krugman bent generates similar risks as Winecoff’s anti-Krugman bent.)

(The big error in this reading, AFAICT, is to miss the dialectic at several levels. The line Krugman is pushing back against is the one which justifies austerity measures with a massive negative effect on the poor and powerless along with irresponsible give aways to the rich and powerful. While there are piles of crap justifications, the key one here is that the public is irresponsible and the elites are relatively helpless in the face of massive public irresponsibility. (Think Santelli.) Whatever responsibility the public bears, I trust that it’s pretty obvious that this line is total nonsense and that’s Krugman’s core point. And, frankly, it’s the interesting point.)

Winecroff is now in a trap of their own making (yes, like Jane Austen, use the 3rd person plural as a neutral 3rd person singular). They gave a junky critique based on a junky reading and littered it with junky hyperbole, e.g.,

If Greenspan’s “with notably rare exceptions” deserves internet infamy, and it does, then surely Krugman’s less notable exceptions should too.

(Even if the junky reading were correct these are not remotely comparable. If the junky reading were correct, Krugman would be wrong (this is what Drezner tries, rather crappily afaict, to show). Greenspan is engaged in a kind of amazing and disgusting chuzpah in the service of some rather dangerous hackery.)

When appropriately (and gently!) chastized by Farrell, Winecroff fails to do the sensible thing that many commentators urged him to do: Take a moment, reflect, and back down. Instead, Winecroff doubles- and trebles-down on the silliness. The silliness is as every level including a classic “I’m leaving thread now” followed almost immediately by several more comments.

All this is relatively minor in the grand scheme of things: In the midst of an event like this, it’s really hard to turn oneself around. But given the systematic failures exhibited, I wonder if Winecroff is going to learn from it. If I were his supervisor (US: advisor), I would print all these out and go through them carefully. I’d probably focus more on the dialectic issues (e.g., problems with burden of proof, charity, self-awareness, tactics, and strategy, etc.). For example, it’s very unclear what Winecroff hopes to get out of the exchange. I’m afraid that bashing Krugman is core, which is really a worthless goal, esp. in this context. An easy win would have been to say, “Ok, let’s put my reading of Krugman aside (I’m not ready to give up on it, but maybe that’s because I really can’t stand him; I have to let that rest for awhile) and focus on the more interesting question of how to apportion responsibility for policy.”

This only wins if making the point is more important than making the bash. Which is why it’s a good move regardless of your goal if you are in hostile territory. It sidelines bashback for a while in favor of counterpoint. Given enough point and counterpoint, you might find your own goal moving from bashing to pointmaking. (This is not to say that bashing is worthless. Sometimes it’s very worthwhile indeed. But it needs to work, at the very least.)

As I said, Winecroff isn’t irrecoverable. I had a similar (more heated) exchange with a random PhD student on the web and they turned out just fine and we’re reasonble colleagues (I’m still a bit wary of them, though). Of course, I had a similar (even more heated) exchange which did not resolve favorably. If you find yourself in this circumstance, get as much reality checking as you can. Reflect. Talk to other (possibly critical) people. Don’t necessarily seek out supportive people, but people who will tell you when you’re off the rails. If you determine you have gone off the rails, apologize and retract and learn from the experience. In particular, learn something about your own strengths, weaknesses, and reactions.

Update: You don’t have to be a student to have major level fail as the Synthese scandal shows. The solution to such fails is the same.

However, the action Frances recommend (apologize first) works best in good faith circumstances. If there’s bad faith or bad blood admitting fault early can really, really screw you. Asking for time to think about it, or putting up similar disclaimers, can be useful. It really is the case that we fallible people sometimes can’t see the obvious. If you aren’t seeing it, then ask for some time to see it. “Hey folks, I’m seeing a lot of heat from people I generally respect but I’m not getting it. Can we hold things for a bit while I figure out for sure what’s going on?” is a reasonable move.

I found it weird because I didn’t feel much, one way or another. When I feel like that I tend to go a bit analytical, hence my query on LGM. I’m glad that bin Laden cannot further more harm. I also hope we can unwind some more of the harm he fomented. If this death brings some closure to people he helped kill, then that’s great.

And I really really wish we can get to a better overall situation.

These aren’t profound thoughts, they are just thoughts.

Discouraging overall. Need to get off my butt wrt all those recruitment and sustaining projects…

(H/T to Feminist Philosophers.)

(And, happy me, of my 7 current PhD students (mostly co-supervised with Uli, of course), 4 are women, with even more DL Lunch regulars. It’s a comfortable balance.)

And…happy making! After reading about those killed, it was really nice to read about those who have survived and thrived. I had no idea about Lynn Conway’s amazing story (she maintains this page and the TransMan successes page). I knew about, of course, “Introduction to VLSI Systems”, but I had no idea that she had transitioned, much less how IBM screwed her early in her career, much less the amazing work she did back then! Her comeback is truly inspiring (VLSI is a pretty damn good second act!). It’s hard to imagine her not getting the Turing Award.

So, remember those who were killed, but remember too those who live.

I’m starting by reading over the Wikipedia article “List of unlawfully killed transgender people”. (It’s very sad reading. Follow the links. Improve it! The discussion page is interesting as well…it’s a tricky page to get going. I tried to improve the part about Erika Keels, which had a “citation needed”, but only found a Philly City Paper article which doesn’t strongly support her death as a murder or motivated by her transgenderism. It would be good to get a follow up investigation. Whether murder or accident, her death was violent and untimely and her life worth remembering.)

These stats seem more complete and more reliable. (Such compilations are inherently difficult tasks, as the various controversies over Iraqi civilian deaths should show us. Newspaper reports are tricky and tend toward undercounting, overall. Kudos to those working on these.)

Finally, I come across what seems to be the most comprehensive and reliable report (via The Curvature).

Sorry if I go rather analytical for a bit. According to the summarization, out of 179 people reported killed, 66 had reported professions and, of those, 50 were reported to be sex workers. Sex work, at least, prostitution, is rather dangerous. This may account for some of the death rate. (Or, to flip it, a high homicide rate for transgendered sex workers could inflate the over all homicide rate.) This article cites claims for a 16x greater homicide rate for male-to-female transexuals than the (US?) national rate. Wolfram Alpha gives me a US female homicide rate of 5.4 per 100,000. Wikipedia gives me a (US?) female prositute homicide rate of 204 per 100,000. That’s 37x the base rate.

Let me be the first to point out that all these numbers are shaky and the calculation back of the envelope. Furthermore, they don’t tell me much about what conclusions to draw, except that sex work is dangerous and that sex worker rights are a very important issue. This study of mortality and morbidity of transsexuals treated with cross-gender hormones identified suicide as a major factor in increased mortality. I would like to see transfolk who have died by suicide included in the Day of Remembrance.

Being trans in our societies is obviously a difficult and dangerous situation. Feminists I have learned much from (e.g., Mary Daly) fell down hard when thinking about transsexuality (as well as other things; people are endlessly imperfect). I take this opportunity to remember that failing and resolve to do better.

More importantly, I remember those who have died of violence. I remember those who suffer for being who they are and showing it.

But his discussion takes an odd rhetorical turn:

If the President has the power to order American citizens killed with no due process, and to do so in such complete secrecy that no courts can even review his decisions, then what doesn’t he have the power to do?

I appreciate that difficulty of finding the right way to say what should not have to be said (assassination lists are loathsome, criminal, appalling and this argument indicates something deeply, though standardly, wrong with the Obama administration; note, that’s it’s all that when the lists are restricted to non-citizens…the fact that citizenship is no protection is a sign of the lack of any restraint; if Obama can kill citizens, there’s no hope to keep him from killing non-citizens).

However, there’s lots Obama can’t do even if he can do this (both practically and legally).

He shouldn’t be able to do this. Period. No matter what else it allows, even if it allows nothing else.

Yglesias also catches this, but with a different emphasis. His point is that in spite of the Obama’s administration’s assertion that they can kill without review, they are enormously constrained in what they can do (in general).

That’s part of what’s wrong with this rhetorical move. Obama can’t really kill with impunity. As far as I know, they don’t even arrogate to themselves the right to kill arbitrarily (being able to kill without review is not the same as being able to kill arbitrarily even if it tends to support arbitrary killing).

Obama should not have this power. No matter what else it allows, even if it allows nothing else.

I’m not really very into Twitter. I made an account last year to use for my classes. It worked semi-ok, but not brilliantly. I’m not really in the Twitter mode (though there were some fun events I participated in). I do better with Facebook.

I do miss my old bloggy, email list, and IRC (and IM) experiences which have all faded rather a lot.

One thing that I do find frustrating is managing the different services/fora. TweetDeck is sorta ok at keeping me aware of Facebook and Twitter (though it really sucks for writing to Facebook).

Basically, I want three things:

1. I want to be able to comfortably read the diverse info-streams and ignore them when I need to.
2. I want to be able to contribute (e.g., comment, tweet, whatever) in a sane and happy way as well as keep track of the conversations across multiple fora.
3. I want to be able to save/organize/gather information in a reasonably structured way no matter which thing I push it to.

For example, I like to share links that I, myself, want to reference in the future. Instead of having to paste the link to 1) several email, 2) delicious, 3) twitter, 4) Facebook, and 5) IM or having to pick a winner and be disciplined about using it, I’d like to be able to use any of these things freely and still end up with a nice collection of links. Indeed, I’d like to know of those links who I sent it to.

This is, in principle, very doable. But I need to do it.

So, a rough grammar

Sub ::= =>
Equiv ::= =
AxiomConnective::= Sub | Equiv
Quantifier ::= Existential | Universal | Counting
Existential ::= <Role>
Universal ::= [Role]
Counting ::= {number Role}
      | {Role number}
      |  {number Role number}
Restriction ::= Quantifier Concept
ConjOrDisj ::= Concept (& | v) Concept (parens if needed)
Negation ::=  ~Concept
Concept ::= Restriction | ConjOrDisj | Negation | name
TBoxAxiom ::= Concept AxiomConnective Concept.
ABoxAxiom ::= name:Concept | <name, name>:Role
Role ::= name.

So this gets us ALCQ. An example (some axioms ripped from Koala, I don’t have nominals yet):

Parent = Animal & {1 hasChildren}Thing.
DryEucalyptForest =>Forest.
Koala => Marsupials & <hasHabitat>DryEucalyptForest.
Marsupials => ~Person.
Animal => {1 hasHabitat}Thing & {1 hasGender 1}Thing.
StudentWith3Daughters = Student
               & ([hasChildren]Female
                                  & {3 hasChildren 3}Thing)
fluffy:Koala.
<fluffy, sandy>:hasChildren.

I’m not thrilled by my stealing of the nominal constructor ({}). I thought about reusing <> and [] (just adding numbers). This works really well for the existential (since a min N really is N somes, plus a little), but max isn’t that close to the universal for most people. Another problem is that using & and angle brackest means using the corresponding entities in HTML or XML which is a common typing place for me.

Binary and and or can be annoying as well.