Football Weekend 13 December 09

Saturday: Army-Navy
Of course, for me, this is the game of the year. In a defensive struggle, Navy took advantage of a couple of missed field goals and a turnover to beat Army 17-3; The Black Knights actually lead 3-0 at the half.

This is the March On; I did this three times (and had “the duty” once). West Point always looks better than we do in this area.

The Brigade of Midshipmen at the game:

We cheered long and hard.

For the curious: these are not the normal uniforms (blue jerseys and gold pants); the red trip is supposed to mimic the red trim on the dress pants of a Marine Corps officer’s uniform (the Naval Academy graduates both Navy and Marine Corps officers).

Army fought hard; this game was much closer than the recent ones. Though Navy currently has a lead, the overall series record never deviates much from .500 either way.

(photos from yahoo; here is the write up of the game with a link to more photos)

Personal note: I had to proctor a final exam during the game but watched on live feed on my lap-top (with the sound turned off).

Sunday

Game One: The Bears lose to the Packers 21-14.
In a nutshell, the Bear defense played well (save an early breakdown which yielded a 62 touchdown run)

But the offense stunk: they threw two interceptions and only gained 59 yards on the ground.

The defense did enough to hold the initial Packer lead to 13-0; a nice 80 yard scoring drive cut it to 13-7 at the half.
Then the defense came up with a bizarre “double fumble” from the Packer quarterback; that set up the go-ahead touchdown and the Bears actually lead 14-13!

But the Bears threw yet another interception to set up a Green Bay touchdown and 2-point conversion; the Bears offense was too inept to rally from 21-14 down.

Personal Note The Rams play in St. Louis against the Texans next weekend; lots of good seats are to be had very cheaply. Note that the Rams are currently losing 47-7 to the Titans.

Cowboys-Chargers
Right now the Chargers are up 17-10 with 2:42 left and are driving; the big change happened in the first half.

The Chargers were up 10-3 and the Cowboys drove the ball to the San Diego 2 yard line and had second and goal. The Cowboys tried three straight runs and got no further than the 1.

Still, the Cowboy defense got an interception and got the ball back at about the 22. Then…they got stuffed again and had to try a field goal…and missed.

In the second half, the Cowboys actually finished an impressive 98 yard touchdown drive to tie it at 10, but the Chargers responded with a drive of their own to take a 17-10 lead in the 4′th quarter.

Right now: the Chargers are about to attempt a field goal that would put them up 20-10 with just over 2 minutes to go:

The kick is good; in this quarter they’ve outgained the Cowboys 154-2x yards.

They now enjoy a 342-256 yard advantage adn the Cowboys are now at their own 14 with 1:48 and down 20-10. Ok, with the last drive it is 342-338 yards.

Ok, 57 seconds to go.

Ok, they are at the 18 of San Diego and there are 26 seconds left….stopped at the 4 with 7 seconds left. Even a score and an onside will not leave enough time. Now the Cowboys jump offside and it is now at the 9. Touchdown, Cowboys; total yards are now tied up but the score is 20-17 but only 2 seconds. That is how it will end, regardless of who covers the onside kick.

Dallas now goes to New Orleans (loss), Washington (3-9, but the Redskins will be up) and end with the Eagles (probably another loss).

(NFL photos from yahoo)

13 December 2009 (I)

Workout notes I didn’t feel like getting to the Riverplex at 7 am so I decided to get to the Markin Center (university gym) at 9 instead. I lifted weights for about half an hour and then did 5 miles on the AMT (59 minutes) and then 5 more on the elliptical (55 minutes).

My legs were heavy but the workout didn’t aggravate the injury.

Weights: I was astonished at how weak I was. I did 2 sets of 10 on the benchpress with 135, 2 sets of 7 with 135 on the partial squat (didn’t quite get to parallel), 2 sets of lat pull downs (140 is too much, 120 is right), a couple sets of 4 pull ups, 2 sets 10 of dumbbell bench presses (40, then 50), 2 sets of 7 military press (30, then 35), 2 sets of 10 with curls (25 pounds).

Note: I tried some leg presses but had injury pain upon straightening the leg the whole way; THAT is the crux of the injury.

Other posts

Feminism...and plastic surgery?

During the Senate’s debates over who should bear the cost of the nearly $900 billion healthcare bill, there emerged a surprising suggestion: plastic surgery patients. A proposed tax, dubbed the “Bo-Tax” after the wrinkle-reducing injections, would add a 5 percent additional charge to elective cosmetic procedures. The tax could help raise $6 billion over the next ten years to offset the cost of health reform. It was included in the original healthcare bill the Senate considered, and it is likely to make it into the modified bill, when the details of the newly brokered Senate compromise are finally announced. Apparently breast enhancements and liposuction can be channeled to benefit the public good. [...]

Ok, the plastic surgeons are fighting this. No surprise there. But…the National Organization of Women (NOW) is fighting this too!

These harsh economic times, however, call for a different ideology. Or so says Terry O’Neill, NOW’s new president. Middle-aged women are struggling to compete in the job market, and cosmetic surgery can help them appeal to employers. “They have to find work,” she told the New York Times. “And they are going for Botox or going for eye work, because the fact is we live in a society that punishes women for getting older.”

NOW has not taken to the streets to campaign for affordable access to face-lifts, and it is unlikely that the group will do so. But by framing it as a women’s issue, NOW’s president has given cosmetic surgery giants like Allergan, which makes Botox, a social grievance and one of its strongest arguments. Where companies and plastic surgeons might have only been able to whine to Congress about lost profits, they can now claim they are campaigning against a tax that unjustly targets women. The Bo-Tax, Allergan’s spokeswoman explained to me without detectable irony, is about “a woman’s right to choose.”

Ok…sure…

The real issue here is not whether women should have the choice to get plastic surgery. It is not a ban on plastic surgery that has been proposed, only an excise tax. What is of greater concern is that the leader of the most prominent feminist organization in the US could speak out on a topic of such minor concern when there are so many feminist issues at stake in the healthcare debate, like reproductive rights and insurance coverage of mammograms. Botox should not be further from feminists’ minds. Aligning feminism with the cause to keep plastic surgery costs low reinforces the notion that feminism is a movement for white, middle-aged, middle-class women. Feminism has needed to lose that label for more than a century.

Religion: here is a non-argument against the existence of a deity.

I’ve never understood arguments of the following type: there is no god because this or that evil exists.

Why is that an argument against the existence of a deity? The deity of the Jewish/Christian Bible not only permitted evil, it actively took part in it! Example: read the Book of Joshua. That deity killed innocents by the truckload without an ounce of remorse. Why would this deity treat modern humans of any group any better?

I don’t believe because there is simply no evidence for a deity; the existence or non-existence of evil has nothing to do with it.

12 December 09

Workout notes Forrest Park Nature Center: three 3.5 mile loops: 1:07, 1:11, 1:14. Mostly snow covered; some ice; a few brief dry patches.
During the second lap I had some calf pain; the slippery parts probably aggravated it. I also had two interesting slips (once on ice); in each case I caught myself with one arm behind me and never hit the ground.

I saw three HUGE wild turkeys and three younger deer; the deer here are far less afraid of people than the McNaughton deer.

Ultras: this one in mid May looks interesting: they feature a 48, 24, 12 and 6 hour. It is in New Jersey.

Humor You are a heterosexual male and you open a classroom door to see two “hot” females “going at it”. What do you do? Not this.

Posts

Mathematics The New York Times reviews a book on Grigori Perelman:

In 1904 the French mathematician Henri Poincaré made a conjecture about three-­dimensional space that may help to explain the shape of the universe. Although it was crucial to the growth of the field of topology, Poincaré’s conjecture resisted proof for a century. When a Boston philanthropist announced a million-dollar prize for its solution in 2000 it was unclear whether he would ever have to pay.

Then, in 2002, a Russian mathematician named Grigori Perelman posted a terse paper to an online archive. In the course of tackling a broader problem, Perelman seemed to have miraculously swept away the remaining obstacles to proving the Poincaré conjecture. Soon the mathematical rumor mill was buzzing. The proof seemed genuine, but word was that Perelman had no plans to publish it.

This was only the beginning of the weirdness. After a brief trip to the United States with his mother in tow, Perelman retreated to St. Petersburg and ceased communication with all but a few colleagues vetting his work. He declined the Fields Medal, a gesture equivalent to snubbing the Nobel committee. He then resigned from the Steklov Institute in 2005 with a letter that read, “I have been disappointed in mathematics and I want to try something else.”

The book is PERFECT RIGOR: A Genius and the Mathematical Breakthrough of the Century by Masha Gessen. I know what I’ll ask Santa for.

Higher Dimensional Mathematics

Yes, there is another toy for math geeks:

String theorists say we may live in a 10-dimensional universe, with six of those dimensions rolled up so tightly that we can never see them. So how can you possibly visualize six-dimensional space? This year’s top gift for science geeks can help.

The 2009 geek-gift competition resulted in a repeat (geek-peat?) of last year’s outcome: Andrew Meeusen of Mesa, Ariz., received the most votes once again, this time for suggesting the Calabi-Yau manifold crystal.

Bathsheba Grossman creates the crystals from glass and offers them on her Web site for $72. They’re also available for $89.95 from Edmund Scientific.

So… what the heck is a Calabi-Yau manifold?

Surf to the link to find out. Note: by “manifold” mathematicians mean a space that “looks like” ; that is, an extremely nearsighted creature living in that space wouldn’t be able to distinguish it (in terms of topology) from regular n-space by a local experiment. Example: a sphere and a torus are examples of two dimensional manifolds; the local structure is indistinguishable from the local structure of a plane. It is possible to do two dimensional calculus on them (e. g., a flux integral is an example of such a calculus operation).

More Science: here is an article about “triple zero” German houses: the house leaks very little energy (“zero waste of energy”), is made from recycled materials (“zero waste of resources”) and actually creates more energy than it consumes (“zero energy consumption”).

Even More Science There is no “climate change scandal”, no matter how much the crackpots wish that there were:

The 1,073 e-mails examined by the AP show that scientists harbored private doubts, however slight and fleeting, even as they told the world they were certain about climate change. However, the exchanges don’t undercut the vast body of evidence showing the world is warming because of man-made greenhouse gas emissions.

True, some of the emails show many of the scientists to be cantankerous, overly political, slightly mysterious, or in some cases, downright childish. Nevertheless, the theory that man-made activities are causing Global Warming remains intact, despite the whining of Conservatives.

In the past three weeks since the e-mails were posted, longtime opponents of mainstream climate science have repeatedly quoted excerpts of about a dozen e-mails. Republican congressmen and former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin have called for either independent investigations, a delay in U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulation of greenhouse gases or outright boycotts of the Copenhagen international climate talks. They cited a “culture of corruption” that the e-mails appeared to show.

That is not what the AP found. There were signs of trying to present the data as convincingly as possible. (bold mine, not the article’s)

One of the main emails that the Conservatives have pointed to as evidence of a cover-up involves one scientist discussing a way to circumvent data gathered from studying tree rings. The Deniers have said this is some sort of “smoking gun” that proves definitively that Global Warming is just a hoax and that scientists are lying about their data.

When one looks closer though, the only hoax that’s being perpetrated on the American public is the idea that the scientists are actively trying to mislead people. An examination of this so-called “smoking gun” email bears this out.

One e-mail that skeptics have been citing often since the messages were posted online is from Jones. He says: “I’ve just completed Mike’s (Mann) trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (from 1981 onward) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.”

Jones was referring to tree ring data that indicated temperatures after the 1950s weren’t as warm as scientists had determined.

The “trick” that Jones said he was borrowing from Mann was to add the real temperatures, not what the tree rings showed. And the decline he talked of hiding was not in real temperatures, but in the tree ring data which was misleading, Mann explained.

Anti Science Here is an article about a Pew Report on woo-woos and people who create their own theology.

Of course, this nonsense is not more nonsensical than believing that eating the flesh of a resurrected Jew will somehow grant one “eternal life” and that those who reject your superstitions will somehow be eternally tormented.

Again, I am NOT talking about holding the possibility of something beyond our universe and I am NOT talking about seeing religious myths as precious metaphors for life.

Justice Yes, women sometimes lie about being raped and sometimes men go to jail sans evidence.

Racists: The Southern Policy Law Center blog is following the trial of a neo-Nazi:

Pulitzer-prize winning columnist Leonard Pitts told the jury this afternoon that his “blood ran cold” when he received an E-mail from white supremacist Bill White with his home address, telephone number and a reference to his wife.

When he clicked a link in the E-mail and saw that White had also published the information on the Internet, he realized it was now available to anyone who accessed White’s website, including potentially violent extremists who share White’s ideology. “It’s terrifying because it makes you vulnerable in a way you haven’t been before,” he said.

Pitts, who spoke with little emotion, spent nearly three hours on the stand during the second day of testimony at White’s federal trial. The former neo-Nazi leader is charged with threatening various people with whom he disagreed, including Pitts, a writer for The Miami Herald whose column is syndicated in some 250 newspapers. White was infuriated by a June 3 Pitts column taking white supremacists to task for their propaganda about a black-on-white murder case.

I should point out that I became aware when Bill White surfed to this blog and left a “form message” about this exchange with the Miami Herald editor.

Hence my interest in following this case.

11 December 09 (am)

Workout notes 6 miles (6.22) on the elliptical, 3.1 on the AMT, 1 on Stairmaster. It went ok; no injury pain.

The pool was closed due to chemistry issues.

Holidays David Brooks has a Hanukkah history lesson; it is worth reading.

Gifts for Atheists: right here are a list of 13. Ok, I have some of those. (yes, this list is “tongue in cheek”)

Day before Final Exams, 2009

Students have been coming in for most of the day. I’ll comment on that later; all I will say right now is that part of my job is to help those who are willing to work hard to make the leap from blind mimicry to understanding: there is a REASON that the formulas and the techniques work the way that they do.

When they understand that the calculations are not some random manipulation of symbols but rather the result of concepts that have been carefully thought up and written down, they cease to have trouble.

Math History: a machine that Babbich wanted to build has been built in a manner in which it could have been built at the time; in short, a steam powered computer has been built:

Charles Babbage, the man whom many consider to be the father of modern computing, never got to complete any of his life’s work. The Victorian gentleman was a brilliant mathematician, but he wasn’t very good at politics and fundraising, so he never got the financial backing to finish any of his elaborate machine designs. For decades, even his fans weren’t certain whether his computing machines would have worked.

But Doron Swade, a former curator at the Science Museum in London, has proven that Babbage wasn’t just an eccentric dreamer. Using nothing but materials that would have been available to Babbage in the 1840s, Swade and a group of engineers successfully built Babbage’s Difference Engine — and a version is now on display at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif.

Surf to the article to read more.

Workout notes I’ve found that I always do better at noon-afternoon than I do in the morning; I often go in the morning to “get it over with” anyway. It turns out that it isn’t my imagination:

One recent study, by the late Thomas Reilly and his colleagues at the Research Institute for Sport and Exercise Sciences at Liverpool John Moores University in England, found that people’s maximum heart rates and sub-maximal heart rates were lower in the morning but that their perception of how hard they were working was the same in the morning as it was later in the day.

Dr. Reilly and his colleague Jim Waterhouse, in a review published this year, also noted that athletes’ best performances, including world records, were typically set in the late afternoon or early evening.

Greg Atkinson, also at Liverpool John Moores University, said that some researchers, noticing that heart rates during exercise were lower in the morning, reasoned the way I did — that people must be more efficient in the morning. It would mean that exercise was easier in the morning. Of course, it seemed harder to me, but I could have been deluding myself. Not really, Dr. Atkinson said. It actually is harder to exercise in the morning.

“Most components (strength, power, speed) of athletic performance are worst in the early hours of the morning,” he wrote in an e-mail message. “Ratings of perceived exertion during exercise have generally been found to be highest in the early morning.”

That seems counter intuitive, but though one exercises at a lower heart rate in the morning, one actually performs better in the evening. Surf to the link to read more.

Football College football: Notre Dame has a new coach. Will he be as successful at Notre Dame as he was in Cincinnati? One writer thinks so.

A curious dispute between the religious and bicyclists: evidently, a certain group of Hasidic Jews doesn’t like having bike lanes in its neighborhood (too many attractive women?) The lanes were removed, but “vandals” repainted the lanes (with the aid of some of the Hasidic Jews who wanted the bike lanes to stay). Yes, the decision is probably political.

Statistics
Here is an interesting graph which relates President Obama’s approval rating to President Reagan’s.

I am not sure if this is just coincidence or not; Reagan did take over from an unpopular president just as Obama did, but President Obama faces war issues as well as vexing economic ones. We shall see. I do see another similarity: President Reagan had some hard core detractors who simply didn’t see his charm, and the same is true for President Obama.

Poll on Gay Marriage: in a nutshell, the older people are holding us back on this issue; to be blunt: as they die out, we’ll see more progress in this area.

Racist Right Wing Extremists
A white supremacist is on trail for murder, but has visible Nazi tattoos. The state is paying a make up artist to cover them up!

Speaking of trials and Nazis, a neo-Nazi is on trail; opening arguments have been made:

Government prosecutor Cindy Chung told the stories of the six alleged victims who’d been contacted by White, describing how his E-mails, phone calls and Internet postings had adversely affected their lives. A woman who’d received a letter addressed “Dear Nigger Tenant” was afraid to stay in her home. After getting an E-mail with the subject line “Nigger Pitts,” Pulitzer-Prize winning columnist Leonard Pitts wouldn’t let his 11-year-old play in his yard and had armed security at his home for two weeks. A Canadian civil rights lawyer — who White said was “in need of execution” — was afraid to put his gym membership in his own name and took different routes to work. When White called the office of a university professor to say people like her should be hunted down and shot, the professor became so panicked that she was unable to call her father, whose address White had posted on his website, and had to ask a co-worker to do it for her.

“Bill White singled out these complete strangers and targeted them with a series of threats and intimidation,” Chung said. “The defendant stole the safety and security these people felt in their homes.”

Today’s update can be found here.

Health Care Reform
Robert Reich is not impressed:

But we still end up with a system that’s based on private insurers that have no incentive whatsoever to control their costs or the costs of pharmaceutical companies and medical providers. If you think the federal employee benefit plan is an answer to this, think again. Its premiums increased nearly 9 percent this year. And if you think an expanded Medicare is the answer, you’re smoking medical marijuana. The Senate bill allows an independent commission to hold back Medicare costs only if Medicare spending is rising faster than total health spending. So if health spending is soaring because private insurers have no incentive to control it, we’re all out of luck. Medicare explodes as well.

A system based on private insurers won’t control costs because private insurers barely compete against each other. According to data from the American Medical Association, only a handful of insurers dominate most states. In 9 states, 2 insurance companies control 85 percent or more of the market. In Arkansas, home to Senator Blanche Lincoln, who doesn’t dare cross Big Insurance, the Blue Cross plan controls almost 70 percent of the market; most of the rest is United Healthcare. These data, by the way, are from 2005 and 2006. Since then, private insurers have been consolidating like mad across the country. At this rate by 2014, when the new health bill kicks in and 30 million more Americans buy health insurance, Big Insurance will be really Big.

Paul Krumgan says “it could be worse”:

No public option, but a trigger which is unlikely to be pulled. But some good stuff in exchange: nonprofit plans available through the exchanges, plus Medicare buy-ins for the 55-65 set (me! me! me!).

If this is the final plan, it’s better than most of us were expecting — and definitely good enough to go with.

Nate Silver has some interesting opinions:

2b) To claim that a health care bill without a public option is anything other than a huge achievement for progressives is, frankly, bullshit. [...]

6) The case that the White House failed to achieve a public option because it was inept is much stronger than the case that it failed to achieve one because it wasn’t progressive enough.

7) Liberals have tended to underestimate what a significant political achievement it would be for Democrats to pass such a major bill that has become rather unpopular with the public. It would be going too far to characterize the Democrats as courageous for passing health care reform (if they do), because at the end of the day, the political case for passing health care reform is probably stronger than the case for failing to do so. [...]

Al Franken speaks favorably of it:

Dear Ollie,

It’s not everything we wanted, but it’s a good start.

As you’ve probably heard, on Monday night progressives and moderates reached a compromise to keep health insurance reform moving through the Senate. I still believe that a public health insurance option is the best way to bring down costs, so I was disappointed to learn that it’s not part of this agreement. However, there are reasons to be hopeful that this compromise will succeed at keeping premiums down for families.

The plain fact is, we are one step closer to extending health coverage to 31 million Americans and giving some peace of mind to tens of millions more. If this compromise includes proposals I’ve been fighting for, like ensuring that a higher percentage of premium dollars are spent on health care rather than profits and wasteful administrative costs, we will achieve the end result that I want – high-quality, affordable health coverage for Minnesota families and small businesses.

I’ll keep you updated as the bill progresses, as we’ve still got a ways to go. But there’s one thing you can be sure of – Republicans and special interests will be on the attack in Minnesota to make a last ditch attempt to distort, derail, delay, or flat-out kill the reform effort. If you can, please click here to make a contribution of $XX today to help us get our positive message out.

Thanks for all you’ve done, and all you’ll do.

Best,

Al

Science-gate

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Toward Finals, Fall 2009

Workout notes I followed up this morning’s 4 miles on the elliptical with 3100 yards in the pool; the water was like brine. My lips were puckered.

5 x 100 on the 2 to warm up (1:43-47), 10 x (25 drill, 25 free) with fins, then 1650 yards:

8:13 (500), 16:23 (1000), 24:34 (1500), 27:05

then 450 cool down of various strokes. During the 1650 set, I pushed myself to catch my department chair.

My feelings weren’t too hurt that I was 12:33 slower than Grant Hackett during the 1500 Olympic semifinal.

But I was happy that I improved on my August 22, 2008 time of 27:33.

10 December 09

Here is an interesting “model” study of speciation: does speciation occur as a result of gradual change or due to a “rare” mutation?

New species might arise as a result of single rare events, rather than through the gradual accumulation of many small changes over time, according to a study of thousands of species and their evolutionary family trees. [...]

The Red Queen hypothesis rests on the idea that species must continuously evolve just to hang on to their ecological niche. That gradual evolution is driven by the constant genetic churn of sexual selection.

A consequence of this is that all of the species in a particular family, or genus, gradually evolve to form new species at the same rate.

But Mark Pagel and his team at the University of Reading, UK, challenge this idea. In a paper published today in Nature, they compared four models of speciation — one of which was the Red Queen hypothesis — to see which best explains the rate of speciation in more than 100 species groups from the animal and plant kingdoms, including bumblebees, turtles, foxes and roses.

They looked at the lengths of branches in thousands of species’ evolutionary trees contained within these groups to estimate the time periods between speciation events.

When the team compared how well the four models fitted the groups’ evolutionary histories, the Red Queen idea that species form through a catalogue of incremental changes fitted no more than 8% of the family trees.

Conversely, almost 80% of the trees fitted a model in which new species emerge from single rare evolutionary events. The Red Queen, it seems, is not running to keep up, but jumping a longer distance and then pausing for a while1.

Of course, natural selection is a dominant process (e. g., check out bacteria which resists antibiotics) but this study is examining the development of new species.

I find this interesting is that the authors of this study are attempting to fit a mathematical model to the existing evolutionary tree.

10 December 09: 4 F

I did 4 miles on the elliptical trainer followed by some stretching.

I hate Peoria, IL in the winter.

Oh well. When it gets cold, I think of this game:

I was 8 years old at the time and listened to the game on AFRTS-FEN (Armed Forces Radio and Television Service, Far East Network) with my dad. My dad liked the Packers but liked the Cowboys too; he was a bit torn. But I was so happy to listen to the game with him.

Stewart Smacks Down Gretchen Carlson, Moronic “Impeach Obama” types and other topics

Genetics: if you get this joke, you are probably the type of person that I would enjoy talking to.

Via P. Z. Myers: Here is a link to the “doctoral dissertation” of a creationist. Really; this isn’t satire. Evidently we got our degrees at the same time. (link to a pdf copy of the dissertation)

Caught red handed: Gretchen Carlson playing dumb

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Representative Grayson: Cheney should STFU.

Morons: President Obama should be impeached for…..uh…because we don’t like him?

Public Policy Polling has another mind-bending partisan number from its national survey. Right now, 20 percent of Americans “support the impeachment of President Obama for his actions so far.” That number includes 35 percent of Republicans, to only 15 percent of independents and 10 percent of Democrats.

“I’m not clear exactly what ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’ they are using to justify that position,” said PPP’s Tom Jensen, “but there may be a certain segment of voters on both the right and the left these days that simply think the President doing things they don’t agree with is grounds for removal from office.”