21 July 09 (am)

Workout notes 3.5 mile walk with Olivia yesterday, and then I lead a yoga class (as a substitute).

Today: 3.75 mile walk to yoga, yoga with Ms. Vickie, then 4.25 mile walk back. My left “behind the knee” area was slightly whiny, but felt better when I was warmed up enough to pick up the pace a bit.

Topics The Sun is undergoing a “lower than normal” sunspot cycle:

Indeed, last year marked the blankest year of the Sun in the last half-century — 266 days with not a single sunspot visible from Earth. Then, in the first four months of 2009, the Sun became even more blank, the pace of sunspots slowing more.

“It’s been as dead as a doornail,” David Hathaway, a solar physicist at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., said a couple of months ago.

The Sun perked up in June and July, with a sizeable clump of 20 sunspots earlier this month.

Now it is blank again, consistent with expectations that this solar cycle will be smaller and calmer, and the maximum of activity, expected to arrive in May 2013 will not be all that maximum.

For operators of satellites and power grids, that is good news. The same roiling magnetic fields that generate sunspot blotches also accelerate a devastating rain of particles that can overload and wreck electronic equipment in orbit or on Earth.

There are also effects on the weather:

The Sun, the Danish scientists say, influences how many cosmic rays impinge on the atmosphere and thus the number of clouds. When the Sun is frenetic, the solar wind of charged particles it spews out increases. That expands the cocoon of magnetic fields around the solar system, deflecting some of the cosmic rays.

But, according to the hypothesis, when the sunspots and solar winds die down, the magnetic cocoon contracts, more cosmic rays reach Earth, more clouds form, less sunlight reaches the ground, and temperatures cool.

“I think it’s an important effect,” Dr. Svensmark said, although he agrees that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that has certainly contributed to recent warming.

Dr. Svensmark and his colleagues found a correlation between the rate of incoming cosmic rays and the coverage of low-level clouds between 1984 and 2002. They have also found that cosmic ray levels, reflected in concentrations of various isotopes, correlate well with climate extending back thousands of years.

But other scientists found no such pattern with higher clouds, and some other observations seem inconsistent with the hypothesis.

Terry Sloan, a cosmic ray expert at the University of Lancaster in England, said if the idea were true, one would expect the cloud-generation effect to be greatest in the polar regions where the Earth’s magnetic field tends to funnel cosmic rays.

“You’d expect clouds to be modulated in the same way,” Dr. Sloan said. “We can’t find any such behavior.”

Still, “I would think there could well be some effect,” he said, but he thought the effect was probably small. Dr. Sloan’s findings indicate that the cosmic rays could at most account for 20 percent of the warming of recent years.

Even without cosmic rays, however, a 0.1 percent change in the Sun’s energy output is enough to set off El Niño- and La Niña-like events that can influence weather around the world, according to new research led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.

Climate modeling showed that over the largely cloud-free areas of the Pacific Ocean, the extra heating over several years warms the water, increasing evaporation. That intensifies the tropical storms and trade winds in the eastern Pacific, and the result is cooler-than-normal waters, as in a La Niña event, the scientists reported this month in the Journal of Climate.

In a year or two, the cool water pattern evolves into a pool of El Niño-like warm water, the scientists said.

Because there are crackpots who deny climate change out there I feel obligated to say this: the lead scientist of the above study says that he was just ferreting out the smaller, natural changes from the larger human-caused changes. (hat tip: 3-quarks daily)

Psychology
Here is a Scientific American paper on perfectionism:

* Perfectionists can become discouraged by failing to meet impossibly high standards, making them reluctant to take on new challenges or even complete agreed-upon tasks. The insistence on dotting all the i’s can also breed inefficiency, causing delays, work overload and even poor results.
* Perfectionism can encompass some positive qualities, including a drive to succeed, an inclination to plan and organize, and a focus on excellence. So-called healthy perfectionists embrace the trait’s sunnier side while minimizing its darker features.
* In recent years researchers have developed tools to parse and measure the beneficial, along with the detrimental, aspects of perfectionism. In addition, they are developing treatment programs that push perfectionistic tendencies in a more positive direction.

Here is what I found interesting:

Perfectionists may also adopt inefficient work habits that hurt their actual performance. They may labor slowly, agonizing over every detail, spending much more time on a project than it warrants—and often without much additional benefit. They may procrastinate, because projects that must be perfect often seem daunting [see “I’ll Do It Tomorrow,” by Trisha Gura; Scientific American Mind, December 2008/January 2009]. Robert Abatecola, 42, spent five years researching Victorian plastering techniques before he got around to repairing the cracked walls in his San Jose, Calif., home because he wanted to be sure to preserve the 1896 Queen Anne–style house’s historical authenticity.

No one is a perfectionist in every situation or area of life. Some people are persnickety about the neatness of their home, others about their work, still others about their physical appearance or about relationships—for example, wanting to pen the ideal personalized note inside dozens of holiday cards every year.

And this:

The winning formula for a perfectionist, psychologists say, is the ability to strive for excellence without being overly self-critical. Those who adopt this strategy, so-called healthy perfectionists, are relaxed and careful in their quest for success; they focus on their strengths and find great satisfaction in their achievements. Bowen, the lacrosse champ, may be one of these. So may 28-year-old Jennifer Perrone of Atlanta. In addition to her career as a wildlife biologist, Perrone sells Mary Kay cosmetics. She alphabetizes her file cabinets and labels her tool drawers; she finished planning her May 2009 wedding, literally writing the last check, the previous October. Perrone believes that she is highly effective. She does not push herself beyond what she knows she can do, and other than annoying her fiancé when she bugs him to take off his shoes in the house, she says, “It’s difficult to think of a time when it didn’t work to my benefit.”

In fact, research conducted over the past 15 years has associated positive perfectionism with greater achievement, such as higher grade point averages and better performance in triathlons. Positive-striving perfectionism leads to better health and mood, more sociability and higher levels of life satisfaction. When Bieling and his colleagues separated positive perfectionists from unhealthy ones in their 2003 midterm-exam study, they found that the positive perfectionists felt better prepared for the exam and got higher grades than either unhealthy perfectionists or nonperfectionists. Olympic athletes also turned out to be positive perfectionists when assessed by Frost’s test in a small survey published in 2002.

By the way, I am ANYTHING but a perfectionist; I need to become more of a perfectionist. (hat tip: 3 quarks daily)

Side note: Yes, I know lots of people who refer to themselves as “perfectionists” and yet I see scant evidence of it in them.

Social

The Wall Street Journal cites pay inequities (difference between CEO and worker pay) as a problem??? I nearly fainted when I read this.

Marine Corps: recruiting from group homes for the mentally ill?

This is going to be short, but should get the notice it needs and the corrections in a system that is broken, in a military breaking, in many ways, because of the failed policies of the previous administration and those beating the drums of war but unwilling to serve!

Joshua Fry Was Recruited Out of Group Home for Mentally Disabled

Autistic Marine Court Martialed and Given Bad Conduct Discharge

This had just started coming out yet this kid has been jailed apparently for slightly over a year. Not only was he recruited he went through boot, in the Marines, and was integrated into the Corps with No Objections, then did time as it was going through the military system, and was sentenced to more military prison time!

A Marine whose recruitment is under investigation because he is autistic was sentenced to four years in prison at his court martial Monday, but in a plea deal he will be released for time already served and receive a bad conduct discharge.

This now Marine suffers from Autism, and known condition. The recruitment should never have happened, but how was it nobody, from Command on Down, at a number of places, stopped this all from happening.

Ok, a bit of honesty: back in 1981, I was doing some temporary duty with a recruiting station (Navy) and yes, many were screened out due to low scores on a mental abilities exam. But the Army recruited these by the bushel and, remember, recruiters are often under enormous pressure to “make goal”. So these things happened even then, though there is evidence that standards have been lowered due to the strain on our armed forces.

Health Care

President Obama is taking his case for health care reform to the internet.

In a reflection of a legislative strategy that has left no stone unturned, President Barack Obama on Monday called on like-minded bloggers to help his administration keep the heat on lawmakers to pass health care reform.

“It is important just to keep the pressure on members of Congress because what happens is there is a default position of inertia here in Washington,” the president said during an invitation-only conference call. “And pushing against that, making sure that people feel that the desperation that ordinary families are feeling all across the country, every single day, when they are worrying about whether they can pay their premiums or not… People have to feel that in a visceral way. And you guys can help deliver that better than just about anybody.”

In a roughly 25-minute session with a handful of prominent progressive bloggers, the president also asked for help combating disinformation about his health care plan.

“I know the blogs are best at debunking myths that can slip through a lot of the traditional media outlets,” he said. “And that is why you are going to play such an important role in our success in the weeks to come.”

The call demonstrates just how heated the health care debate has become in recent weeks and how much ammunition the administration is willing to bring to the table. At various points in the call, the president offered a strikingly detailed synopsis of his political strategy and health care policy as a whole.

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