Vicki’s note: I decided to take down the previous post I had because, upon reflection, it wasn’t consistent with my website content and additionally, I can see it leading to long discussions of the type that I don’t necessarily want to have on this blog.

As an analyst, I sometimes look at code, be it in SAS or SQL, from projects past.  What I’ve found to be most indicative of good code (and  actually any past project even unrelated to programming) is, most importantly, documentation of past tasks. This is 100 times more important if you are leading global warming studies that could be the cause of billions of dollars spent in policy implementations.  I know little about Fortran, but I still think this is an interesting take on the scandal that most news people don’t talk about (and not just because Mr. B peels oranges for me on a daily basis.)

CC azrainman via Flickr

You might have heard about the big Climate Gate scandal of CRU’s emails and software being leaked to the public over the past two weeks. Everyone, from John Stewart to Fox News, is highlighting passages from these emails and pointing out damning quotes which seem to show that global warming is a myth.

However what most people don’t hear about is the software that crunched the temperature data to actually give the climate models that scientist use to make their predictions. This software is written in an almost-defunct programming language called Fortran- and it shows.

Fortran is a general purpose programming language designed by IBM in 1950, for mathematical computations. It became the language of choice of many fields such as engineering, scientific research, and economic research. This was a great leap forward in innovation and allowed many computations on a scale that was never feasible before by other means.

If it’s so great, why isn’t it used now?

FORTRAN—the “infantile disorder”—, by now nearly 20 years old, is hopelessly inadequate for whatever computer application you have in mind today: it is now too clumsy, too risky, and too expensive to use. — Edsger W. Dijkstra

FORTRAN’s tragic fate has been its wide acceptance, mentally chaining thousands and thousands of programmers to our past mistakes. — Edsger W. Dijkstra

This type of thinking is bad for each new generation of economists and scientists.

Why was the climate study data written in Fortran? Probably because whoever wrote it, knew it and was too lazy to learn something new, by using the reasoning from (1) (2) and (3) as an excuse.

The second issue is not only that Fortran is inefficient, the code also lies.   Here is some actual code from the project.

The moral of the story is, if you have important code that affects how people will live their
lives by basing their decisions on it, make sure it is easy to understand and allows you to concentrate on the problem you’re trying to answer instead of it fighting you and your colleagues with technical issues not related ot the goal. Additionally, make sure you don’t lie about it.

Note: This guest post is by @Krolik, whom I’ve had the pleasure of meeting in person for coffee before she ran off to her ballet lesson and I ran off, embarassed that I’ve never taken ballet and a bit sad that my parents denied me pink tutus.  She has a lovely blog, Project Wombat, about raising her son, and is very funny.  I’ve never had political posts before, so let it be said that I don’t necessarily agree or disagree with this post about the healthcare reform issue.  All I know is that we need to include Nutella in the bill as a healing elixir.

Unless you have already thrown your car radio into a lake, you have been hearing about healthcare reform every minute of every day.  Even major “helping you avoid thinking since 1999″ stations like 99.5 are discussing it!  It’s only a matter of time before Will.I.Am releases a kitschy video about health care reform, I expect.  Needless to say, I must get on that bandwagon.  I am sorry to see that you are along for the ride, but here goes.

Healthcare reform is tough for politicians to support – and you can easily see why if you just follow the money. The healthcare sector profits have been looking spiffy ever since Nixon did us all a favor and decided to privatize health insurance.  Other politicians continued in the proud tradition of relying on heathcare to line their pockets with more and more money ever since.  We are asking them to bite the hand that feeds them. But – and more interestingly – why are WE (or at least many of us) so much against health reform?  People have been bringing guns to town halls, for crying out loud. To pass, health care reform needs either real or poll-perceived support from all of us.

In fact, the Obama Administration has stated they want to get a bipartisan solution.  But what would that take?  And why does this issue provoke such deep emotion in people?  We are going to answer all these questions in this blog post.  Yes, I am that good.  I am awaiting your call inviting me on a lecture circuit.

In TED 2008, Jonathan Haidt gave a fascinating talk about the differences between being liberal and being conservative.  You can watch the video below – but, in short, the two groups are separated by only one metric: openness to experience.  If you are liberal – and highly open to experience – then new is exciting, and change is good.  If you are conservative – and not open to experience – then new is troubling and there is nothing worse than change.

The healthcare debate, of course, is all about change.  Our conservative friends immediately jumped to announce a doomsday scenario looming on the horizon (progressively getting more and more crazy-ass).  Socialism! Death squads!  Euthanasia! Never mind that the US already has many socialist policies, including Social Security (and just try taking that away from them), the highway system, the water lines, the public schools, the fire departments, the list goes on.

Never mind that there are many countries which have the single-payer system, and yet so far not all of their citizens have been euthanized.  In fact, their citizens have a much longer life expectancy - even with the stress of death squads looming over them. Our liberal friends, on another hand, believe that adopting single-payer is the way to go.  They watched Sicko, they bought the fact that anyone in Cuba is treated like a king in any clinic, and they think that government should fix most things.  But as with all other government-run things, single-payer system makes sure that it’s difficult to get really brilliant medical care – same way as it makes sure it’s difficult to get very poor care.  Bureaucracy is good at eliminating extremes; unfortunately, it eliminates both of them, the high as well as the low.

So liberals and conservatives are at odds.  But, as Jonathan Haidt points out in his talk, one is worthless without the other.  Conservatives know how difficult order is to obtain, and how hard you need to work to preserve it.  Without them, we would be a band of gypsies still roaming across Africa as we speak.  On another hand, liberals understand that sometimes, to move forward, you must leave the dear and familiar behind.  And without that understanding, we would still be in the Dark Ages and using goats as currency. What this fundamental openness-to-experience divide tells us is that when you are trying to inflict a large change, bipartisanship between liberals and conservatives is simply not possible.

I think this is the largest part of why healthcare reform is floundering so far.  The current health care system is so dysfunctional that the new system must be built from scratch.   And anything that has words “from scratch” in it will never be supported by a conservative.  Except, may be, an apple pie recipe.  And liberals, who love change, have a hard time supporting it too – because the change is not yet clearly defined.  In its desire for a bipartisan reform, the Obama Administration has not put forth any plan of its own – and in doing so, it has left its liberal base without any concrete revolution to get behind. We have only one hope for health care reform.  Unfortunately, it requires Democrats to grow a pair, which should happen about the same time we see pigs soaring over the Potomac.  They (Democrats, not the pigs) need to realize that they have been voted the majority because the public actually wants them to, you know, act, and they should shove true, single-payer (or at least a very expansive public option) down opposition’s throat.

Because, as much as I love my conservative friends, now we need a true, big change.  We need to create a brand new system.  A system that would be worthy of the loyal, patriotic and selfless devotion that my conservative friends wish to give it.  And once it’s enacted, just try taking the comprehensive health system away – you’ll be held at gunpoint at your town hall meeting by people on all sides.

Note: While I remain in the Land of Falafel, this is a guest post from my fabulous friend Average Jane, or @awapy on Twitter, who’s bailed me out before.

Via Zeeveez on Flickr

I started working at my campus’ Hillel at 8 – piercing number 8.

I was a good, smart kid, active in Hillel, with a stellar resume, they couldn’t really say “no.” I was working for the regional director (a rabbi) and his Frummie assistant doing fundraising. There were times I would come strolling into work in my oversized, if not slightly tattered, t-shirt and shorts, interrupting her davening with a, “Gooooood morn….! Oh shoot. Sorry!”

But we got along splendidly. She gave me lessons for life. I taught her about alternative culture. She cooked for me for the holidays. I ate the food she cooked for me. About a year after I started, she said to me, “Ya know, I was scared of you when you started working here.” I was shocked! I was, and,ahem, am, one of the nicest people in the world. “At least you’re not tattooed,” she’d say in conclusion.

But what if I were?

There is a raging debate in the Jewish subculture about Jews and Tattoos. Is it against Jewish law? Can you be buried in a Jewish cemetery?  When I was getting my piercings, I thought a lot about the religious implications of body modification. I was at the piercing studio one day talking about that very subject with my favorite piercer (he did piercings 9-12).

“I know I’m not supposed to get pierced – but what’s the difference between getting my earlobes pierced and getting my tongue pierced? And if God wanted you to be buried the way you were born, shouldn’t you ask for your foreskin back?” Well, back then the logic made sense.

via Jew Tattoos

What I find most interesting is that of the Jews I know who are tattooed, most have Jewish tattoos. Perhaps it’s a way to reclaim the tattooing that was inflicted on Jews during the Holocaust. Perhaps it’s a way for Jewish youth to defy their parents in a way that their parents can’t be too upset about: “Look mom – I got a tattoo. But before you get mad, it’s grandpa’s name in Hebrew!” Or maybe it’s the latest way for Jew who feel disenfranchised by organized religion to pronounce their heritage proudly and publicly every day.

I mean, there’s also the part about it just looking awesome. Take a second and search for “Jewish Tattoos” in your search engine of choice. You’ll find beautiful photos. You’ll find Tattoo Jew the movie, and the Jews with Tattoos calendar for charity. Before you judge, look at them objectively. As art. Then think of them as the new Judaica. At least that what I do.

My issue with Jews being against tattoos is the same issue I have with the  Christian Right being against gay marriage: You don’t get to pick and choose which commandments are the most wrong not to follow. I suppose you can, but why? To make yourself feel better about the ones you choose not to follow? “Sure, I eat bacon and work on Shabbat – but that whole tattooing thing is the WORST! As long as I don’t do that, then I’m good, right?”

I took all my piercings out years ago, but not because I wanted to. I had surgery and by the time the drugs wore off enough to safely put them back in my face, the holes had closed. I miss them. If I ever got a job that would allow me to get them all pierced again, I would. Well, most of them. Don’t ask.

And I do want a tattoo. I want one because I think they are beautiful. And yes, I want them to be Jewish. I would love to get inked by Israeli tattoo artist Ami James of Miami Ink fame, but that’s just because I don’t want anyone to screw up the spelling.

Note: If you are reading this post, then we are in Israel and I am definitely not posting anytime soon because I am too busy eating falafel/singlehandedly fighting Hamas.    Today’s guest post is from Marinka, who is also a Russian Jew, and therefore also inherently awesome.  Except, she also has kids AND a cat named Nicki, all of which she deals with deftly and with a sharp wit, so she might just be more awesome than me.  Maybe.

The first time my American- born husband left our marital abode for a business trip, I was certain that he was going to detour into town to get an emergency annulment.  Because he thought that he could just walk out the door, with a goodbye kiss to me and an “I’ll email when I land,” completely and totally disregarding the Russian Protocol for Safe Travel.  I mean, I can’t guarantee the safety of the flight if he refuses to follow it.

“You didn’t sit on your suitcase,” I tried.
“What’s that now?” he paused at the door.
“Your suitcase, you just picked it up. You have to sit on it,” I knew that I sounded mildly insane, but I’m sure the Wright Brothers got a few odd looks in their time, too.
“On my suitcase?” He asked.  Did I just not clearly say that he has to sit on his suitcase?  Was my new groom not particularly bright?
“It’s good luck,” I explained.  I was hoping that this would suffice and that I wouldn’t have to get pen and paper for the visuals.
“OK,” he said, slowly.  Like he was a hostage negotiator or something. “I will sit on the suitcase.”
He sat on his suitcase and we looked at each other.
“Now you’re supposed to say “ne pucha, ni pera,” I alerted him.
“…”
“NE PUHA, NI PERA,” I used the time-tested technique of saying the foreign words louder to make the other person understand.
“Pe tuca, caravan,” he said. Or something that made a complete mockery of the Russian Protocol for Safe Travel.
“NE PUHA NI PERA, NE PUHA NI PERA, GOD!  I’m not asking you to split the atom here!”
“What does it mean?” suddenly my husband became an anthropologist.
“It means ” ‘Neither fuzz, nor feathers’.  Why do you ask?”
“Because I don’t understand what the Russian means, although your translation doesn’t exactly clear it up for me.”
“Oh, that,” I chuckled at his innocence.  “Yes, you’re supposed to say that to hunters when they go to hunt.  Sort of a may you not hunt any animal or bird that has fuzz or feathers.”
“Doesn’t that means that you are wishing them an unsuccessful hunt?” He asked.  It was starting to seem to me that our entire courtship was just a pretense until he got that ring on my finger and now he could start the interrogation about all things Russian.
“Not really,” I explained.  “Because you’re sort of saying this sarcastically.  Like, you’re really wishing them the opposite.  Like lots of animals with fuzz and feathers.”
He didn’t seem reassured.
“And what does the hunt for these mythological creatures have to do with my taking a flight this afternoon?”
“It’s just a short way of saying “have a good flight!” ”
“It doesn’t seem like a short way.”
“Well, not with all the explanations, no.  Usually we just say it and go on our way.  The tutorial is extra.”
“Got it.”
“Ne puha, ni pera.” I reminded him.
“Ne puhu, nu pura,” he said.  Close enough.
“K chertu,” I said.
“That wasn’t a sneeze, right?”
“No.”
“What did you say?”
” ‘Go to hell’,” I motioned him to get up.
“That’s nice.”
“That’s what you’re supposed to say.  You’re supposed to send to hell that wish that your hunt is unsuccessful.”
“Got it.  Are we done now?”
“Almost.”
“Almost?”
“I just remembered that the person staying behind should say “ne puha, ni pera” and the person leaving should say “k chertu”,” I confessed.  “So sit back down on the suitcase, and I’ll say “ne puha, ni pera” and you’ll say ‘k chertu’.”
“Make it “go to hell;” he said, “And you’ve got yourself a deal.”