I run Android phones & tablets. I have wordpress on them, and was using them because they connected easily into the hotel wifi, while the laptop, which runs Debian, did not. I have managed to rejig the phone settings and buy data, so I can now use a proper (that is, a laptop) tool to blog and read.

This has allowed me to clean up today’s egregious typos: I have large hands and typing on a 10 inch tablet (or even, worse, a phone) makes for unhappiness. This is not the fault of Android or WordPress. It was a series of assumptions that do not work in Victoria.

In most of the world, the internet is part of what you pay for if you hire a hotel room. You ask for a password, and that is that. Not in Victoria. You pay. about $10 per 100MB — it has been cheaper to put data on my cellphone than use the hotel’s.

Lesson one Pack a USB wifi system. You can always buy a SIM from the local phone people. Far cheaper

Secondly, you have to hold a tablet. This is OK for checking maps (done often) or checking email, but is useless when it comes to typing. I use all ten fingers and I want to see what I am typing, not a virtual keyboard. I have enough trouble with spelling

Lesson two Use the laptop to take notes and blog. Retyping things ten times is tedious, and putting vodka into a post this week has been embarrassing.

Which brings me to the third error. I bought the wrong bags. I used a MLB of 40 L with a 10 L day bag inside and a computer bag. I should not have bought the computer bag: it is too geeky, and the 10L bag was too short for the laptop. Moreover, the weather has been awful. The day bag did not have room for a windbreaker: I got soaked five or six times

Lesson three, Leave NZ with your bags only half full.

The conference itself has been good… lots learned, particularly in a review of genetics today. I went there because I needed to understand Genome Wide Association Studies, which look like this from PLOS One

“Conditional Manhattan plot” of conditional ?log10 (FDR) values for schizophrenia (SCZ) alone (black) and SCZ given bipolar disorder (BD; SCZ|BD, red).
Improved Detection of Common Variants Associated with Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder Using Pleiotropy-Informed Conditional False Discovery Rate
Ole A. Andreassen, Wesley K. Thompson, Andrew J. Schork, Stephan Ripke, Morten Mattingsdal, John R. Kelsoe, Kenneth S. Kendler, Michael C. O’Donovan, Dan Rujescu, Thomas Werge, Pamela Sklar, The Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (PGC), Bipolar Disorder and Schizophrenia Working Groups, J. Cooper Roddey, Chi-Hua Chen, Linda McEvoy, Rahul S. Desikan, Srdjan Djurovic, Anders M. Dale
PLoS Genet. 2013 April; 9(4): e1003455. Published online 2013 April 25. doi: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1003455

However, tomorrow I have to be at the airport early and will be travelling all day. I will either post a brief lectionary note very early tomorrow, or wait until I am back home. I won’t try to use a tablet on airport Wifi… for that would the final lesson: doing anything like that is not a good idea.

I am going to a workshop on genetics and behaviour this morning, so I read SSM with interest. You can do good surveys of sexual behaviour, but even if you sample carefully –which is much more hard than you would think –then you have to deal with the natural modesty of most people. Sex, for  most, is a private matter. People say what they consider is acceptable. I am not working at home, where I can neatly insert links, but Zippy in his acerbic way makes a point. About bias.

I doubt that researchers ever find themselves in a position to ask non-whores to wire up their genitals in an arousal study. So data comparing asked-and-agreed to asked-and-declined is like comparing data on bar sluts who gave out their number and bar sluts who didn’t.

The context was being paid to see stimuli (what we will gloss over) with a recording instrument inserted in your vagina. Most women who agree to this have had a certain desensitization: most who are not blase about such things simply would not volunteer. Unless coerced, which is another form of evil.

But on bias, nothing new here.

Try doing research on violence — which I have done and do — or substance use. Reporting bias is real to the point that I use a scale of perceived violence as an outcome.

JUDE 17-25
17 But you, beloved, must remember the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ; 18 for they said to you, “In the last time there will be scoffers, indulging their own ungodly lusts.” 19 It is these worldly people, devoid of the Spirit, who are causing divisions. 20 But you, beloved, build yourselves up on your most holy faith; pray in the Holy Spirit; 21 keep yourselves in the love of God; look forward to the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. 22 And have mercy on some who are wavering; 23 save others by snatching them out of the fire; and have mercy on still others with fear, hating even the tunic defiled by their bodies.
24 Now to him who is able to keep you from falling, and to make you stand without blemish in the presence of his glory with rejoicing, 25 to the only God our
Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, power, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.

I am going to come back to bias and the worldly. Most of us struggle with sins, and to each their own struggle. A simple example: gambling bores me. I don’t by lottery tickets.  I do not play poker. I tend not to rant about gambling because to me it is a non issue. But food… let us say the walk has to be over an hour a day. Pastry shops and cakes are very bad for me, and I want them.

The struggle is important. It forces us all to painfully realize we are imperfect.

And those who say we will never be tempted are lying. Those who say that indulging in temptation are worse.

For this is why the Erikson situation is important. A fallen church empowers one to sin, because they fear confrontation will damage self esteem. A non-worldly church sees self esteem as an idol of this age. Erikson left the non-worldly church because confrontation and excommunication is painful.

But repentance is. Struggling with sin is. We are not promised ease in this life if we are of Christ, but trouble, opposition, and pain. In fact we are told we should embrace this, as Christ did, for we have been deemed worthy to bear his name –by no work of ours but by his Spirit changing us.

Links
www.presbyterianmission.org/devotion/daily/2013/12/7/
sunshinemaryandthedragon.wordpress.com/2013/12/06/four-reasons-to-take-sex-research-with-a-grain-of-salt/