# blueollie

## A bit of science and math for 22 May

Workout notes Weights plus a 2.17 mile run on the treadmill (20 minutes; 9:13 pace): 10:09, 8:28 then a little bit more. I kept the incline at 0.5.

Weights: pull ups (5 sets of 10), hip hikes, Achilles, rotator cuff, bench: 10 x 135, 4 x 185, 7 x 170
ab series (3 sets of 10: crunch, v. crunch, twist, sit back), dumbbell military (3 sets of 12 x 50), dumbbell bench (2 sets of 10 x 65), dumbbell row (3 sets of 10 x 65), pull down (3 sets of 10 x 160), curl (3 sets of 10: 60, 60, 65; EZ curl bar).

It sure doesn’t seem like much.

A bit of math

Ok, a mathematician who is known to be brilliant self-publishes (on the internet) a dense, 512 page proof of a famous conjecture. So what happens?

The Internet exploded. Within days, even the mainstream media had picked up on the story. “World’s Most Complex Mathematical Theory Cracked,” announced the Telegraph. “Possible Breakthrough in ABC Conjecture,” reported the New York Times, more demurely.

On MathOverflow, an online math forum, mathematicians around the world began to debate and discuss Mochizuki’s claim. The question which quickly bubbled to the top of the forum, encouraged by the community’s “upvotes,” was simple: “Can someone briefly explain the philosophy behind his work and comment on why it might be expected to shed light on questions like the ABC conjecture?” asked Andy Putman, assistant professor at Rice University. Or, in plainer words: I don’t get it. Does anyone?

The problem, as many mathematicians were discovering when they flocked to Mochizuki’s website, was that the proof was impossible to read. The first paper, entitled “Inter-universal Teichmuller Theory I: Construction of Hodge Theaters,” starts out by stating that the goal is “to establish an arithmetic version of Teichmuller theory for number fields equipped with an elliptic curve…by applying the theory of semi-graphs of anabelioids, Frobenioids, the etale theta function, and log-shells.”

This is not just gibberish to the average layman. It was gibberish to the math community as well.

[...]

Here is the deal: reading a mid level mathematics research paper is hard work. Refereeing it is even harder work (really checking the proofs) and it is hard work that is not really going to result in anything positive for the person doing the work.

Of course, if you referee for a journal, you do your best because you want YOUR papers to get good refereeing. You want them fairly evaluated and if there is a mistake in your work, it is much better for the referee to catch it than to look like an idiot in front of your community.

But this work was not submitted to a journal. Interesting, no?

Of course, were I to do this, it would be ok to dismiss me as a crank since I haven’t given the mathematical community any reason to grant me the benefit of the doubt.

And speaking of idiots; I made a rather foolish remark in the comments section of this article by Edward Frenkel in Scientific American. The article itself is fine: it is about the Abel prize and the work by Pierre Deligne which won this prize. The work deals with what one might call the geometry of number theory. The idea: if one wants to look for solutions to an equation, say, $x^2 + y^2 = 1$ one gets different associated geometric objects which depend on “what kind of numbers” we allow for $x, y$. For example, if $x, y$ are integers, we get a 4 point set. If $x, y$ are real numbers, we get a circle in the plane. Then Frenkel remarked:

such as x2 + y2 = 1, we can look for its solutions in different domains: in the familiar numerical systems, such as real or complex numbers, or in less familiar ones, like natural numbers modulo N. For example, solutions of the above equation in real numbers form a circle, but solutions in complex numbers form a sphere.

The comment that I bolded didn’t make sense to me; I did a quick look up and reviewed that $|z_1|^2 + |z_2|^2 = 1$ actually forms a 3-sphere which lives in $R^4$. Note: I added in the “absolute value” signs which were not there in the article.

This is easy to see: if $z_1 = x_1 + y_1 i, z_2 = x_2 + y_2i$ then $|z_1|^2 + |z_2|^2 = 1$ implies that $x_1^2 + y_1^2 + x_2^2 + y_2^2 = 1$. But that isn’t what was in the article.

Frenkel made a patient, kind response …and as soon as I read “equate real and imaginary parts” I winced with self-embarrassment.

Of course, he admits that the complex version of this equation really yields a PUNCTURED sphere; basically a copy of $R^2$ in $R^4$.

Just for fun, let’s look at this beast.

Real part of the equation: $x_1^2 + x_2^2 - (y_1^2 + y_2^2) = 1$
Imaginary part: $x_1y_1 + x_2y_2 = 0$ (for you experts: this is a real algebraic variety in 4-space).

Now let’s look at the intersection of this surface in 4 space with some coordinate planes:
Clearly this surface misses the $x_1=x_2 = 0$ plane (look at the real part of the equation).
Intersection with the $y_1 = y_2 = 0$ plane yields $x_1^2+ x_2^2 = 1$ which is just the unit circle.
Intersection with the $y_1 = x_2 = 0$ plane yields the hyperbola $x_1^2 - y_2^2 = 1$
Intersection with the $y_2 = x_1 = 0$ plane yields the hyperbola $x_2^2 - y_1^2 = 1$
Intersection with the $x_1 = y_1 = 0$ plane yields two isolated points: $x_2 = \pm 1$
Intersection with the $x_2 = y_2 = 0$ plane yields two isolated points: $x_1 = \pm 1$
(so we know that this object is non-compact; this is one reason the “sphere” remark puzzled me)

Science and the media
This Guardian article points out that it is hard to do good science reporting that goes beyond information entertainment. Of course, one of the reasons is that many “groundbreaking” science findings turn out to be false, even if the scientists in question did their work carefully. If this sounds strange, consider the following “thought experiment”: suppose that there are, say, 1000 factors that one can study and only 1 of them is relevant to the issue at hand (say, one place on the genome might indicate a genuine risk factor for a given disease, and it makes sense to study 1000 different places). So you take one at random, run a statistical test at $p = .05$ and find statistical significance at $p = .05$. So, if we get a “positive” result from an experiment, what is the chance that it is a true positive? (assume 95 percent accuracy)

So let P represent a positive outcome of a test, N a negative outcome, T means that this is a genuine factor, and F that it isn’t.
Note: P(T) = .001, P(F) = .999, $P(P|T) = .95, P(N|T) = .05, P(P|F) = .05, P(N|F) = .95$. It follows $P(P) = P(T)P(P \cap T)P(T) + P(F)P(P \cap F) = (.001)(.95) + (.999)(.05) = .0509$

So we seek: the probability that a result is true given that a positive test occurred: we seek $P(T|P) =\frac{P(P|T)P(T)}{P(P)} = \frac{(.95)(.001)}{.0509} = .018664$. That is, given a test is 95 percent accurate, if one is testing for something very rare, there is only about a 2 percent chance that a positive test is from a true factor, even if the test is done correctly!

It isn’t a coincidence that the tornadoes hit after we had some warm spring weather: up to know, we’ve had an unusual cool spring thanks to the jet stream dipping down lower than normal. A side effect was a lighter than normal tornado season. Unfortunately that didn’t last:

Mind: soldiers and brain trauma.
It is no secret that soldiers can suffer a brain injury which doesn’t obviously show. But here is the rub: what if a soldier had a reputation for being a malcontent prior to the brain injury and then gets one. Then:

What happened when he came home is increasingly typical, too. At Fort Carson, the damaged soldier racked up punishments for being late to formation, missing appointments, getting in an argument and not showing up for work. These behaviors can be symptoms of TBI and PTSD, and Army doctors recommended Alvaro go to a special battalion for wounded warriors. Instead, his battalion put him in jail, then threw him out of the Army with an other-than honorable discharge that stripped him of veterans benefits. He was sent packing without even the medicine to stop his convulsions.

“It was like my best friend betrayed me,” Alvaro said at the hospital, his speech as slow as cold oil. “I had given the Army everything, and they took everything away.”

But, what if at least some of this behavior was present PRIOR to the brain injury?

“It’s hard to figure out,” said Maj. Gen. Anderson, who was the final authority for discharging soldiers at Fort Carson. “You are asking young captains, 30-year-old guys, platoon leaders, 25 years old, to decide if this guy is sick or this guy is not sick when the doctors don’t know for sure.”

The uncertainty sets up clashes. The Gazette has uncovered several cases at Fort Carson where doctors and commanders were in direct conflict. Doctors sent one soldier who pointed a gun at the soldiers in his squad to a psychiatric hospital, and commanders pulled him out and put him in jail. Doctors said another soldier who tested positive for marijuana could not be kicked out because he had a brain injury. Commanders discharged him anyway. Another soldier tried to commit suicide by crashing his car into a light pole. Doctors said he had PTSD and depression; commanders discharged him for damaging property.

Several doctors contacted at Fort Carson refused to comment.

It really isn’t easy and clear-cut, is it?

May 22, 2013

## Wolf Blitzer’s Dumb Question and a good answer

At least someone doesn’t think that there is a deity pulling strings on their behalf:

May 22, 2013 Posted by | religion, social/political | 3 Comments

## Slut Shaming the Poison Dart Frog!

Yes, some females of some frog species choose the males that either croak the loudest or that have the right “pitch” of croak.

This type of poison dart frog: well, she just choses the closest male.

## Tornado: Oklahoma’s and in general

This Charles Cook video is just over 5 minutes and tracks the tornado from the time it started to form (but hadn’t touched down as yet) until it hit the ground and started to do damage.

It is hard not to watch.

Popular Mechanics has a “quick and dirty” as to how these things form to begin with.

1 | Supercell
Tornado-spawning thunderstorms, called supercells, arise where a current of low, warm, moist air traveling north from the Gulf of Mexico flows underneath a higher, cooler mass of air traveling east. Shear from these opposing winds causes the entire supercell to rotate slowly.

2 | Updraft
The low, moist air is warmed by sunlight, making it increasingly buoyant. The moist air breaks through the cooler air above and rises. As it does so, vapor condenses into water droplets—dumping the heat of condensation back into the rising air, warming it and further feeding the updraft that will ultimately power the tornado.

3 | Downdraft
The updraft is counterbalanced by a downdraft of sinking air, which is cooled by rain. This cool, sinking air next to warm, ­rising air produces a pressure gradient in the bottom 3000 feet of the atmos­phere, lending a spiraling motion to the updraft—which will become the tornado.

[...]

Surf to the link to read the rest and to see the cool diagram.

NASA has some views: close up (from space) and a “global” view:

As far as the situation on the ground: FEMA has an informal “Waffle House” scale to see how close the area is to recovering after the storm:

When the main US federal emergency agency arrives at the scene of a disaster-hit area, one of the first places it turns to is the local Waffle House – and not just for its officials to grab a quick bite.

Craig Fugate, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, came up with the idea of the “Waffle House index” as an informal way of measuring the impact of a disaster. The chain, which has a large number of branches in tornado-prone areas, has a robust emergency management plan.

The index has three levels. If the local Waffle House is up and running, serving a full menu, a disaster is classed as green. If it is running with an emergency generator and serving only a limited menu, it is a yellow. If it is closed, badly damaged or totally destroyed, as during hurricane Katrina, it is a red.

There is only one Waffle House in Moore, the suburb worst hit by the tornadoes. The restaurant, located at 316 SW 19th Street and which normally offers a southern-tinged menu that includes grits, hash browns, and sausage and egg biscuits as well as hamburgers, was closed on Tuesday.

But the Moore tornado was classed as a yellow on the Waffle House index because managers were hoping to get it up and running soon. “It is a yellow because we are hoping to get a generator,” said Kelly Thrasher, a spokeswoman for the Atlanta-based restaurant chain. “Once we have the generator, we will be able to serve a limited menu, maybe a full one.”

May 22, 2013

## River City Marathon: final remarks, thoughts, photos and stuff

Workout notes Cool, overcast; did 2.06 miles in 20:50 (11:03 out, 9:47 back). I quit right at the point where I started to feel good. That is enough for today.

I’ll update this when more photos come in.

At the finish line! My time sucked, but I was VERY happy to see the finish.

Note: if you ran this marathon, there are a ton of photos here.

Assorted remarks
1. At one of the later aid stations (mile 16? 18?) one of the aid station workers addressed me in Spanish. I replied back in (my approximation of) Spanish. I LOOK Mexican and I self-identify that way, as did my parents. But, at the gene level, I am European (probably Spanish?) (here and here) Evidently I do have some aleles for olive skin though. I suppose that “race”, while not meaningless, really is only “skin deep”.

2. When I get hot and tired, stupid ideas make sense to me. When I noticed the lack of mile markers (at least until mile 20), I thought “that SOB race director; he just thinks that everyone has Garmins…..in fact this is probably a conspiracy to get everyone to buy Garmins!” In fact, there was a foul up that was fixed by the time I got to mile 20. And no, his store doesn’t even sell Garmins.

The truth: early on, the lack of mile markers probably kept me from getting discouraged, and their being available late helped me be able to finish; I’ll explain later in this post.

3. Best zinger directed at me: Don (one of my friends) ran a 22:57 5K. Dr. Andy said “Don, your 5K time was about Ollie’s “per mile” marathon pace”! Ouch!

4. I had some interesting conversations afterward. I met Cassie Fox Zell and her husband after the race; she seemed happy that she beat me and beat me badly (7 minutes); she passed me at about mile 22 or 23.

I’ll just have to do better next time!

Actually, it was a fun conversation; very positive. It was her first marathon…and it was a tough one for the first one.

5. Rich Breaux (shown with his wife Anna, who is an excellent endurance athlete) passed me at about the same time. He said “the best laid plans of Mice and Men” as he passed me…

Getting beat by Rich is nothing new for me.

6. Terry Whitehead beat me by about 90 minutes. The day prior to the race, I had joked that I wanted a shaded, air conditioned bubble to run in. He responded “man up, and quit being such a pussy” (tongue in cheek). His comment got deleted before I could see it, but he saw me before the race and relayed it to me.

7. My department chair ran a fine 2:24 for the 25K, placing 135 out of 425. Not bad for an old man. We rode to the start together.

8. Ironwoman Ann Schmitt ran with Theresa Schultz (multiple marathon finisher); they enjoyed the 25K. They are two of my favorite running friends.

Statistics

As the results are corrected: I am now 306 out of 331. Note the slow median time (4:40). The day was tough.

What I learned
1. Now that I am firmly in the “second guessing mode” I wonder if I shouldn’t have made more of an effort from mile 18 onward, at which point I started to “just walk” at a 16 minute pace, save one short downhill. But I have to remember how I felt at mile 13 (roughly; I was 2:20 into it). I told a friend that I would need another 3 hours to finish; I was heating up and just on the verge of not being able to digest fluids. So, playing it very safe and going just fast enough to beat the cut-off was the right thing to do. Had I pushed it and gotten away with it, I still would have had, at best, a 5:20-5:30′ish time. More likely I would have gotten past that point and been unable to finish. Besides, I have to remember how badly I felt when I stopped; I sat down and laid down for about 30 minutes.

2. I’d love to return to walking marathons, and will if my piriformis problem becomes manageable. But even after returning to walking, I’ll still need to include runs of 10-14 miles in my preparation. Reason: I would not have been able to finish this marathon under 6 hours by “only walking”; I would have had to have mixed some jogging in, especially early. So I need to have some jogging to be able to bring in when necessary.

3. I feel the effects of age. Back in 2003, I walked the Park City Marathon (warm, altitude of 6000-7000 feet) in 5:18. I felt sick at the finish. I slept for an hour or two afterward…and then…that afternoon, went rock climbing. That was 10 years ago. I can’t do that now.
I’ve accepted the fact that I’ll never be in shape again.

More photos:

I need to fix my posture. As to the softness of my body (lack of muscularity): I don’t know what else to do. I’m coming to grips with the fact that I’ll never be in shape again. I can still have fun at events though.

Summary
1980: 1:38/1:55 for 3:33 + 17
1981: 1:40/2:08 for 3:48 + 28
1983: ???????? for 4:24
1998: 1:50/2:05 for 3:55 + 15
1998: 1:46/2:00 for 3:46 + 14
1999: 1:40/2:05 for 3:45 + 25
2000: 1:50/2:38 for 4:28 + 48
2000: 1:46/1:52 for 3:38 + 6
2001: 1:47/1:53 for 3:40 + 6
2002: 1:50/2:07 for 3:57 + 17
2002: 1:59/2:05 for 4:04 + 6
2013: 2:26/3:19 for 5:45 + 53

walking marathons
2002 2:21/2:23 for 4:44 + 2
2003 2:33/2:44 for 5:17 + 11
2004 2:30/2:43 for 5:13 + 13
2005 2:37/2:48 for 5:25 + 11
2005 2:35/2:59 for 5:34 + 24
2008 2:45/3:31 for 6:16 + 46
2009 2:35/2:39 for 5:14 + 4
2009 2:35/2:54 for 5:28 + 19
2012 2:46/4:12 for 6:58 + 1:26 (86 minutes)

May 21, 2013

## How Bilingual People Hear Language

Individuals who learn two languages at an early age seem to switch back and forth between separate “sound systems” for each language, according to new research conducted at the University of Arizona.

The research, to be published in a forthcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, addresses enduring questions in bilingual studies about how bilingual speakers hear and process sound in two different languages.
“A lot of research has shown that bilinguals are pretty good at accommodating speech variation across languages, but there’s been a debate as to how,” said lead author Kalim Gonzales, a psychology doctoral student at the University of Arizona. “There are two views: One is that bilinguals have different processing modes for their two languages — they have a mode for processing speech in one language and then a mode for processing speech in the other language. Another view is that bilinguals just adjust to speech variation by recalibrating to the unique acoustic properties of each language.”
Gonzales’s research supports the first view — that bilinguals who learn two languages early in life learn two separate processing modes, or “sound systems.”

How this experiment was done is fascinating:

For the study, the bilingual participants were divided into two groups. One group was told they would be hearing rare words in Spanish, while the other was told they would be hearing rare words in English. Both groups heard audio recordings of variations of the same two words — bafri and pafri — which are not real words in either language.
Participants were then asked to identify whether the words they heard began with a ‘ba’ or a ‘pa’ sound.
Each group heard the same series of words, but for the group told they were hearing Spanish, the ends of the words were pronounced slightly differently, with the ‘r’ getting a Spanish pronunciation.
The findings: Participants perceived ‘ba’ and ‘pa’ sounds differently depending on whether they were told they were hearing Spanish words, with the Spanish pronunciation of ‘r,’ or whether they were told they were hearing English words, with the English pronunciation of ‘r.’
“What this showed is that when you put people in English mode, they actually would act like English speakers, and then if you put them in Spanish mode, they would switch to acting like Spanish speakers,” Lotto said. “These bilinguals, hearing the exact same ‘ba’s and ‘pa’s would label them differently depending on the context.”
When the study was repeated with 32 English monolinguals, participants did not show the same shift in perception; they labeled ‘ba’ and ‘pa’ sounds the same way regardless of which language they were told they were hearing. It was that lack of an effect for monolinguals that provided the strongest evidence for two sound systems in bilinguals.

## You KNEW that this was coming: Pat Robertson on the tornado

“If enough people were praying, he would intervine…”

May 21, 2013

## Disasters, science and curious responses….

Before you say “shut up and do something to help”: I did. It wasn’t Mitt Romney money; it was on the order of a football game ticket (college) or a race fee. I am too tired to race anyway.

Salamanders’ immune systems are key to their remarkable ability to regrow limbs, and could also underpin their ability to regenerate spinal cords, brain tissue and even parts of their hearts, scientists have found.
In research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences researchers from the Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute (ARMI) at Monash University found that when immune cells known as macrophages were systemically removed, salamanders lost their ability to regenerate a limb and instead formed scar tissue.
Lead researcher, Dr James Godwin, a Fellow in the laboratory of ARMI Director Professor Nadia Rosenthal, said the findings brought researchers a step closer to understanding what conditions were needed for regeneration.
“Previously, we thought that macrophages were negative for regeneration, and this research shows that that’s not the case – if the macrophages are not present in the early phases of healing, regeneration does not occur,” Dr Godwin said.
“Now, we need to find out exactly how these macrophages are contributing to regeneration. Down the road, this could lead to therapies that tweak the human immune system down a more regenerative pathway.”
Salamanders deal with injury in a remarkable way. The end result is the complete functional restoration of any tissue, on any part of the body including organs. The regenerated tissue is scar free and almost perfectly replicates the injury site before damage occurred.

Truly awesome, no?

Now as far as this disaster in Oklahoma:

It sort of looks like a World War II carpet bombing.

Will climate change make tornadoes worse? More frequent?
“The short answer is, we have no idea,” Michael Wehner, a climate researcher at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, told NBC News. For years, Wehner has been studying the climate models for extreme weather, and he’s a lead author for the next report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as well as the federal government’s latest national assessment on climate change.
One problem is that the observational record for tornadoes has not been uniform over time. “It has a bias to it, because more people are living where tornadoes occur, and more people are out looking for them,” Wehner said. That contributes to the perception that tornadoes are happening more frequently than they used to.

The other big problem is that current climate models don’t have the resolution that’s needed to simulate the localized, violent activity of a tornado. Currently, global models are built up from atmospheric interactions on a scale of 100 kilometers (62 miles). Improvements in computer power could soon bring that down to a scale of 25 kilometers (16 miles). That should make it possible for scientists to simulate the weather phenomena that give rise to tornadoes, but not the tornadoes themselves, Wehner said.
On a larger scale, extreme weather events are expected to become more frequent in a warmer world, Wehner said. “The metric that I like to look at is the daily amount of rain for a storm that happens once every 20 years,” he said. “That storm, in a much warmer world, would happen more frequently.” For example, if the world follows a “business-as-usual” scenario, he projects that the average temperature would rise 11 degrees Fahrenheit (6 degrees Celsius) by the end of the century, and that a once-in-20-years rainstorm would come around every five to 10 years on average.
That doesn’t necessarily mean tornadoes would be more frequent, however. In fact, the current projection calls for wetter spring weather in the northern U.S., and drier weather in the Southwest — with Tornado Alley right in the middle. “There’s some evidence that there might not be a change” in the character of a tornado season, Wehner observed.

I think that it is important to say what we have a good feel for and to admit what we don’t. As far as water born storms (hurricanes): yes, more heat in the oceans means more available energy. But the mechanisms for tornados are different.

There is much more in the article I quoted including a discussion about “tornado alley”: this, believe it or not, is not the worst place in the nation for tornado damage.

Human reaction to disaster
This sort of reaction to disaster has me shaking my head:

Here, you have people who really believe that some deity actually controls events on the earth. (I still don’t understand that one, especially in this day and age). This event blew away houses, killed in injured many and terrified even more.

Now they are praising this deity for saving a soggy Bible page?????? Really???? Seriously????

One sharp response:

My initial reaction is: What a bunch xxxxx!!!!!!! What is wrong with these people???!!!!

But that would be unfair, and probably inaccurate. Statistically speaking, I am sure that many people who think this way have skills and abilities that I don’t have (being good with construction or carpentry, can run a business, can farm, etc.).

What this shows, IMHO, is the power of superstition to brainwash people and to make otherwise competent human beings say dumb and illogical things and to corrupt their thinking.

Oh well.

May 21, 2013

## A bit off….and bubbles

Workout notes
I woke up at 3:30 am and couldn’t go back to sleep.
Weights:
rotator cuff, hip hikes, Achilles. Also one circuit of very light leg weights, back stretches and 2 sets of very light squats.

Meat:
5 sets of 10 pull ups
bench: 10 x 135, 3 x 185, 3 x 185
incline: 9 x 140, 8 x 140
rows (dumbbell) 3 sets of 10 x 65
military (dumbbell) 3 sets of 12 x 50
pull downs: 3 sets of 10 x 160
curls: 3 sets of 10 x 60 (EZ curl bar)

I was a bit off. Then some wondered why I was working out at all; I didn’t quite have the same “pop” to my lifts.

Politics
The Republican “intellectuals” (at least if you can call George Will an intellectual) doesn’t get it:

Obama says: Trust me, the science of global warming is settled. And trust me that, although my plans to combat global warming, whenever the inexplicable 16-year pause of it ends, would vastly expand government’s regulatory powers, as chief executive I guarantee that these powers will be used justly.

Here’s a finding that shouldn’t be all that surprising: Since 1991, roughly 97 percent of all published scientific papers that take a position on the question agree that humans are warming the planet.

That stat comes from this extensive new survey led by John Cook and Dana Nuccitelli, who run the Skeptical Science website. And it builds on earlier studies finding the exact same thing.
The authors sifted through 11,944 climate-related abstracts over the past two decades and found that 66.4 percent of papers took no explicit stance on whether humans are warming the planet (i.e., that wasn’t the main focus of these papers). Another 32.6 percent stated that humans are indeed warming the planet, while just 0.7 percent rejected that view. Cook and Nuccitelli combined those last two numbers to say that 97 percent of papers that took an actual stand on whether humans are warming the planet answered “yes.”

Poor Mr. Will; he seems exasperated that the public isn’t buying into all of those fake scandals:

Even as his administration has faced intense scrutiny over a trio of controversies, President Obama’s approval rating hasn’t suffered, according to a new CNN/ORC International poll released Sunday.
Fifty-three percent of Americans said they approve of the job the president is doing, while 45 percent said they disapprove. That’s virtually unchanged from an early April survey in which Obama’s approval/disapproval split was 51 percent to 47 percent.
The poll is one of the earliest indicators of how Obama’s image has been affected during one of the worst weeks of his presidency. As questions about the deadly attack in Benghazi, Libya, revelations that the Internal Revenue Service targeted conservative groups, and news that the Justice Department secretly obtained journalists’ phone records have fueled Republican attacks, the president has been put very much on defense.

I atribute much of this to the bubble that many conservatives appear to live in: it is almost as if they are incapable of extrapolating from what they see in their day to day lives. Hey, if everyone in the Cracker Barrel or everyone in their church seems to think X, well, obviously they must have the majority view!

They really are a curious lot.

May 20, 2013

## Up Early…

Strangely enough, I usually wake up very early the day after a long running or walking event. I sleep soundly, but for a shorter period of time.
Today I was wide awake at 3:30 AM.

I am sorer than expected. Not bad, and not as sore as after a good marathon; that is probably because what I did was really a glorified “hike” with a bit of jogging.

I’ll do an easy, slow paced weight session this morning.

Posts
This New York Times article is about a 16 year old runner who puts in 100-110 miles per week. She ran a 2:58 (good for 6′th among the women) at the Cleveland Marathon.

On one hand, I wonder if she is missing her teenage years; on the other hand: is it really that different from my putting in so much extra time in an effort (a failed effort) to become a football player?

Yitang Zhang was a bit of an unknown mathematician who managed to solve a very well known problem. It doesn’t happen often, but if you do good work, it will be acknowledged.

This article is a nice synopsis of what happened. Basically: he showed that there are an infinite collections of pairs of primes that are less than 70,000,000 units apart. Of course, the goal is “2″, but, until this, we didn’t have a proof that there was any finite number that worked. Now we have one.

On the other hand, cranky stuff doesn’t get acknowledged, nor should it.

An amusing cartoon:

Note: I very much care about providing a professional level effort in the classroom and in my own research.

Politics
Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub provides some old photos of presidents and umbrellas. I wonder if the right wing has finally jumped the shark…ok it has done so a long time ago but I wonder if they are finally getting called out on their ridiculous BS.

May 20, 2013