16 November 09 (am)

Workout notes
2200 yard swim; stomach trouble prior, but still 500 easy (9:03), 5 x 200 on the 3:30 (3:17, 14, 13, 13, 12), 500 drill/swim, 500 paddle.

This was a fun swim.

Posts

Humor
From here.

Do sports build character? It isn’t completely clear.

In fact, the study by an American ethics centre says children involved in sports are more likely to cheat in school, are learning from their coaches how to best cut corners and are more open to forms of bullying as a way to motivate people.

The findings, by the Los Angeles-based Josephson Institute, fly in the face of the most widely held view of athletics: that it builds strong character, honesty and team-building skills. Those who make their living from such activities say those beliefs still hold true.

“Participation in sports will encourage positive behaviours,” says Jean Côté, acting director of the School of Kinesiology and Health Studies at Queen’s University.

But in an era of star athletes glorified over team effort, performance-enhancing drugs being used in sports such as professional baseball and bike racing (and even auto racing in the form of fuel additives) and bench-clearing brawls, the Josephson Institute thought the matter was worth further investigation.

The two-year survey of 5,275 high school athletes from across the U.S. yielded some surprising results – at least for anyone who loves sports.

Two-thirds of the athletes admitted to cheating on an exam at least once in the previous year, compared with 60 per cent in the rest of the student population.

Football players were the worst, at 72 per cent.

“For most kids, sport promotes rather than discourages cheating,” the report says.

It would be interesting to see how, say, runners would respond.

Politics: 10 ways Fox is different than MSNBC. Ok, 9.

I’ll add another: the MSNBC audience is smarter and better informed than the Fox audience.

Paul Krugman: proposes extending Godwin’s law.

Back From St. Louis (15 November 2009)

We got back from our St. Louis trip.

The Saints-Rams game was a blast; the Saints won 28-23.

My impressions of the game:

1. The Rams really don’t have a deep threat. The offensive line blocked for the running game very well; their “grind it out” running game was solid. But all of the passing was short to medium stuff; there was nothing to really stretch out the defense.

2. The Saints were balanced; they had explosion on the running game, a 99 yard kick off return for a touchdown and other big runs.

3. True, the Saints threw an interception and fumbled the ball while going into the end zone, but the Rams also threw an end zone interception.

4. The Rams really did play hard and didn’t fold when they had the chance. But the Rams cut the lead to 28-23 with 2:44 left and elected to try an onside kick rather than kick it deep. Hence they ended up with the ball at their own 20 with a bit over 1 minute left and no time outs; they burned lots of time with over the middle throws and basically ran out of time at the Saint 32 at the end of the game.

Socially going to the game was my wife’s idea. But she is probably the worst possible football buddy; she didn’t even know what an “incomplete pass” was or what the result of it is.

Photos from yahoo.

Social

This was the view we had from our room at the Ballpark Hilton Inn:

This was the stadium; we were in the opposite end zone.

15 November 09 (am)

Up and at ‘em; did my 5 miles on the elliptical and am ready for breakfast and an NFL game!

Ok, the Saints are the overwhelming favorites, but the Rams are an NFL team too and maybe they are sick of hearing about how they are going to get creamed.

Injury note: my hamstrings cramp up when I sit for a while, and I did notice some “whine” in the calf at about 25-30 minutes; changing the incline on the elliptical did the trick.

In St. Louis, 14 November

We made it in to St. Louis; tomorrow we take in the Rams vs. Saints game. Sure, we have the undefeated Saints against a team that has only won once the whole year (against the Lions, no less).

But hey, these are NFL players and even a bad team has talent on it.

In the college ranks: USC sure looks like a mortal team this year; Stanford just outright hammered them.

Oh yes, our hotel is 6 blocks from the Edward Jones dome and this place has a good workout room; so I should get in a nice elliptical workout prior to the game.

14 November 09 (noon)

Workout notes Perfect conditions; walked 1 loop of McNaughton in 2:54. My right leg barked just a little bit (ok, more “yapped”; it was dull but there) and I took no pain killers.

I got home and put on the Texas versus Baylor game; it was 40-0 AT THE HALF. Texas is too strong, fast, etc. for Baylor; this really looks like a division I versus as division II team at the moment.

McNaughton notes:

Just for the heck of it, I tallied my McNaughton miles:

2003: 47 (31 during a race)
2004: 60 (50 mile race)
2005: 120 (100 during a race)
2006: 159 (70 in one race; DNF 100)
2007: 120 miles (injured so couldn’t do the race)
2008: 122 miles (52 for a race; finished a 50 but added 2 miles due to dropping out and reentering)
2009: 193 miles (100 for one race, 30 for another)

Total: 821 miles, 433 for 7 races.

14 Nov 09 (am)

I am getting ready to hike 3-4 hours at McNaughton Park…hmmm..maybe 5?

Posts

Posts

Here is Jon Stewart watching Sean Hannity’s apology.

Hat tip to Sister Norma Jean.

Politics

Yes, we can afford to spend enough stimulus to reduce unemployment.

You might hear about Republican lead filibusters of judicial nominees. Remember that these people were offering “principled” opposition to filibusters when they were in power.

Science
Here is a map which shows the geographic spread of the swine flu (Nate Silver).

Quackery

You’ve seen stuff like this (can you count the number of basic mistakes this woman makes in her talk?)

(no, we humans don’t have an infinitesimal amount of mass; what this quack means is that the volume of atoms consist of mostly space).

You sometimes see quackery talked about in the mainstream media as well:

The opposition to science doesn’t seem to know any party bounds. On the right, global-warming skepticism is the rule, evolution a minority ‘opinion’, and if WorldNetDaily is to be believed, soy turns your kids gay.

On the left, we’ve now got the Huffington Post, recently lending their voice to Deepak Chopra, who in his latest contributions to the site expounded his philosophy of the mind (or whatever you want to call it), apparently seeking to justify it in quantum mechanics. Which gives it unwarranted legitimacy and worse, spreads disinformation about the science. Being somewhat qualified to rebut this, I thought I would try.

* BluePlatypus’s diary :: ::
*

Now it’s far from the first time the Huffington Post has gone off promoting bad science, pseudoscience or outright crankery, having for instance lent its voice to Jim Carrey (in his latest role as an immunologist) preaching the ‘dangers’ of vaccines. I’m not the only one around here who seems to think they’ve grown increasingly sensationalist as well as anti-science (although this is more in the realm of ‘bad science’). [...]

This is the one quantum-mechanical property that’s relevant to this discussion, which is that in quantum mechanics, things can exist in several states at once. (called a superposition) Objects don’t have definite locations; rather they’re ’smeared out’ over space. The lighter they are, and the faster they move, the more ’smeared out’ they can be. (those who’ve read about QM before know I’m referring to the famous Uncertainty Principle)

But if a measurement is carried out on the object, it will have a certain value. Which is part of the ‘weirdness’. QM cannot predict what value will be measured, but it can predict the probability of all the possible measurement results. It can predict the average of a large number of measurements. For instance, the electron of a hydrogen atom is most likely to be 53 picometers away from the nucleus. But a single measurement could give any result from zero to infinity.

Heavier, bigger, things on the other hand, get less and less ’smeared out’, and you end up with the ‘classical’ situation, where things assume definite values for their location and speed and other things.

Chopra (and many, many others) misinterprets what ‘measurement’ means here, assuming that it has something to do with human activity, drawing not only the erroneous conclusion that human (or sentient) perception is what’s meant by ‘measurement’, but indeed that things don’t even exist if they’re not being ‘measured’. Stating: “In fact, everything you are looking at right now depends upon you to exist.”

This is a basic misconception which has been debunked repeatedly (no doubt several times a week on physics newsgroups and message boards). Quantum mechanical measurements have nothing to do with ‘measurement’ per se, and especially not with human activity. It’s also at the basis of the Schrödinger’s cat ‘paradox’, as well as many of the early confusion about quantum mechanics.

In short, it’s a process known as decoherence. It’s not fully understood yet (although a lot of progress has been made since the early days and early confusion of QM). Decoherence is the process whereby quantum systems go from a superposition of different states to a single, definite state, through interactions with their environment. It’s ‘locked’ into this state because there’s an increase in entropy (disorder) associated with that change, making it irreversible (2nd law). It’s not fully understood yet, but it certainly doesn’t resemble the Berkleyian idea Chopra seems to have adopted.

This is an excellent article; if you like science and debunking quackery, read it!

13 November 09 (later am)

Workout 2650 set: 500 of back/free (about 9:50), 500 of side/free (about 9:40), 20 x 50 on the 0:50 (mostly 47, a couple of 48s, a couple of 46s), fins: 100 back, fly, back, fly, drill, then 3 x 50 paddle.

The 20 x 50 on the 50 set wasn’t quite as comfortable as I’d like though I did get a tiny bit of rest each time.

Social Sometimes, it is time to move on even if you like your sweetie:

My ex-girlfriend truly believes 2012 is the end of the world. She bet me 50 dollars that the world would end in 2012. I explained to her if the world is going to end, then there’s no way I could pay her. I either win the bet, or we’re all dead. With a frustrated look on her face, she doubled the bet to 100 dollars.
-Thomas, UCSD

Science evolutionary trees of life are checked and cross checked by many methods, including homology (body structure) and by genetic markers. Here is but one example. In other words, there is evidence; this isn’t just “if the rules of science applied, what would we get best-guess” type of conjecture.

Politics Is it time for Democrats to panic? “Concern for getting results” might be the order of the day. I see some bluedogs losing seats but the bottom line is that our tent is too darned big to begin with.

Religion In Cincinnati: threats have made a bill board company move an atheist billboard.

But in Chicago, groups have protested against the atheist billboards (satire)

Really: why would a sign that says “you can be good without god” threaten anyone? I’m sorry, but when religious types claim that they are “persecuted” they mean either

1. “I won’t be given a captive audience” or
2. “It is wrong that people will actually say that they don’t believe the way that I do; they should just shut up about it” or…even worse…
3. “Smart people openly disagree with me and that hurts my feelings”.

13 November early am

At one time, there was supposed to be a teacher shortage. Now there is a teacher glut…except for one subject area:

Since last fall, school systems, state education agencies, technical schools and colleges have shed about 125,000 jobs, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

At the same time, many teachers who had planned to retire or switch jobs are staying on because of the recession, and many people who have been laid off in other fields are trying to carve out second careers as teachers or applying to work as substitutes to make ends meet.

In Texas, the Round Rock school district had more than 5,000 applications for 322 teacher openings this year and saw its pool of subs almost double to 1,200, about 2 1/2 times as many as it needs even on a particularly bad day during flu season, said spokeswoman Joylynn Occhiuzzi.

“It is a tougher job market, and you get applicants that you might not normally have because of the economy,” she said. [...]

But the nationwide demand for teachers in 60 out of 61 subjects has declined from a year earlier, according to an annual report issued this week by the American Association for Employment in Education. Only one subject — math — was listed as having an extreme shortage of teachers. In recent years, more than a dozen subjects had extreme shortages.

Emphasis mine.

Smoking: didn’t fall in 2008; it was a slight rise (though I haven’t checked to see if it was a statistically insignificant rise.)

Is this a trend or is this due to changing demographics? I’d have to see the data with cross-tabs.

Learn to Speak Tea Bag

more about "Learn to Speak Tea Bag", posted with vodpod

Carly for California

“Carly for California” has an ad on Daily Kos.

But there is no reference to the fact that she is a Republican on her front page; it isn’t all that easy to find.

Why is that?