26 January 2010

Humor Am I wrong to love this warning sign, which is classified as a WIN at the Fail Blog?

Anthropology, Human Evolution From DailyMail:

Evidence of surgery carried out nearly 7,000 year ago has emerged – suggesting our Stone Age ancestors were more medically advanced than first thought.

Early Neolithic surgeons used a sharpened flint to amputate the left forearm of an elderly man, scientists have discovered.

And, more remarkable yet, they ensured the patient was anaesthetised and the limb cut off cleanly while the wound was treated afterwards in sterile conditions.

Scientists unearthed evidence of the surgery during work on tomb discovered at Buthiers-Boulancourt, about 40 miles south of Paris.

It suggests an incredible degree of medical knowledge was available in 4900BC and the revelation could force a reassessment of the history of surgery.

Researchers have also recently reported signs of two other Neolithic amputations in Germany and the Czech Republic.

It was known that Stone Age doctors performed trephinations, cutting through the skull, but not amputations.
[...]

Read more; it turns out that this person lived for at least several more months. Some of the comments by creationist visitors are a hoot.

Modern Medicine and Cold Weather This article by Outside Magazine talks about what happens when hypothermia sets in (from the cold). Even more interestingly, it talks about how critical the “rewarming process” is:

In fact, many hypothermia victims die each year in the process of being rescued. In “rewarming shock,” the constricted capillaries reopen almost all at once, causing a sudden drop in blood pressure. The slightest movement can send a victim’s heart muscle into wild spasms of ventricular fibrillation. In 1980, 16 shipwrecked Danish fishermen were hauled to safety after an hour and a half in the frigid North Sea. They then walked across the deck of the rescue ship, stepped below for a hot drink, and dropped dead, all 16 of them. [...]

The whole story starts with a hypothetical man driving to a friend’s cabin; he goes off of the road and his jeep is stuck in the snow. So he decided to ski the 6 miles from where he is to his friend’s cabin….and then takes a short cut….

As you step around to orient map to forest, you hear a metallic pop. You look down. The loose bail has disappeared from your binding. You lift your foot and your ski falls from your boot.

You twist on your flashlight, and its cold-weakened batteries throw a yellowish circle in the snow. It’s right around here somewhere, you think, as you sift the snow through gloved fingers. Focused so intently on finding the bail, you hardly notice the frigid air pressing against your tired body and sweat-soaked clothes.

The exertion that warmed you on the way uphill now works against you: Your exercise-dilated capillaries carry the excess heat of your core to your skin, and your wet clothing dispels it rapidly into the night. The lack of insulating fat over your muscles allows the cold to creep that much closer to your warm blood.

Your temperature begins to plummet. Within 17 minutes it reaches the normal 98.6. Then it slips below.

At 97 degrees, hunched over in your slow search, the muscles along your neck and shoulders tighten in what’s known as pre-shivering muscle tone. Sensors have signaled the temperature control center in your hypothalamus, which in turn has ordered the constriction of the entire web of surface capillaries. Your hands and feet begin to ache with cold. Ignoring the pain, you dig carefully through the snow; another ten minutes pass. Without the bail you know you’re in deep trouble.

Finally, nearly 45 minutes later, you find the bail. You even manage to pop it back into its socket and clamp your boot into the binding. But the clammy chill that started around your skin has now wrapped deep into your body’s core.

At 95, you’ve entered the zone of mild hypothermia. You’re now trembling violently as your body attains its maximum shivering response, an involuntary condition in which your muscles contract rapidly to generate additional body heat.

That is just a little tease to wet your appetite.

Religion and Society Jerry Coyne has a bit of fun with letter writers responding to a New York Times article which said:

Our own earthquake-sermonizer, the evangelist Pat Robertson, delivered an instantly notorious defense of the calamity in Haiti. This was classic theodicy. First, good comes out of such suffering. This event, said Mr. Robertson, is “a blessing in disguise,” because it might generate a huge rebuilding program. Second, the Haitians deserve the suffering. According to Mr. Robertson, when the Haitians were throwing off the tyranny of the French, they “swore a pact to the devil. They said ‘we will serve you if you will get us free from the French’ … so the Devil said ‘O.K., it’s a deal.’ and they kicked the French out. The Haitians revolted and got themselves free but ever since they have been cursed by one thing after the other.” The Dominican Republic, he said, had done quite well, and had lots of tourist resorts, and that kind of thing. But not Haiti.

This repellent cruelty manages the extraordinary trick of combining hellfire evangelism with neo-colonialist complacency, in which the Haitians are blamed not only for their sinfulness but also for the hubris of their political rebellion. Eighteenth-century preachers at least tended to include themselves in the charge of general sinfulness and God’s inevitable reckoning; Mr. Robertson sounds rather pleased with his own outwitting of such reckoning, as if the convenient blessing of being a God-fearing American has saved him from such pestilence. He is presumably on the other side of the sin-line, safe in some Dominican resort. [...]

In his speech after the catastrophe, President Obama movingly invoked “our common humanity,” and said that “we stand in solidarity with our neighbors to the south, knowing that but for the grace of God, there we go.” And there was God once again. Awkwardly, the literal meaning of Mr. Obama’s phrase is not so far from Pat Robertson’s hatefulness. Who, after all, would want to worship the kind of God whose “grace” protects Americans from Haitian horrors?

The president was merely uttering an idiomatic version of the kind of thing you hear from survivors whenever a disaster strikes: “God must have been watching out for me; it’s a miracle I survived,” whereby those who died were presumably not being “watched out for.” That President Obama did not really mean this — he clearly did not — is telling, insofar as it suggests how the theological language of punishment and mercy lives on unconsciously, well after the actual theology has been discarded. [...]

For either God is punitive and interventionist (the Robertson view), or as capricious as nature and so absent as to be effectively nonexistent (the Obama view). Unfortunately, the Bible, which frequently uses God’s power over earth and seas as the sign of his majesty and intervening power, supports the first view; and the history of humanity’s lonely suffering decisively suggests the second.

Well, Coyne has fun with some of the “oh but God does work in (good) mysterious ways” type of responses.

I’ve experienced some of this: back after 9-11, I received a “chain e-mail” message from a friend which asked “did anyone see the hand of God in the attack on the towers; tragically 3 thousand died, 6000 were injured but over 50,000 were there. “

I said something sarcastic about where the “hand of god” really was (at the airplane controls) and that a typical military attack kills less than 10 percent (that is were the term decimate comes from).

Guess Who is Coming to Central Illinois?

That’s Right!

WASHINGTON —

Sarah Palin is coming to Five Points Washington on April 17.

The former vice presidential candidate and Alaska governor turned best-selling author and political commentator will be the first speaker in Five Points’ “Lessons from Leaders” series.

“You Don’t Need a Title To Make a Difference” is the topic of Palin’s 8:15 p.m. talk in the 1,000-seat Caterpillar Performing Arts Center.

Palin’s speech is expected to last for about 30 minutes. After her address, she’ll hold a 30-minute question-and-answer session with questions submitted in advance by audience members.

Prior to the Palin’s speech, she’ll be the guest of honor at a 7 p.m. banquet and private reception.

Ticket prices range from $75 to $200. A portion of the proceeds will benefit the Five Points capital projects fund and provide scholarships for area students.

Five Points officials and Washington Mayor Gary Manier are ecstatic about landing Palin as the kickoff speaker for the series.

During a news conference Monday at Five Points, a black curtain was dramatically lifted off a poster announcing Palin’s speech.

“Our goal with this series is to bring in nationally known speakers once or twice a year to talk about what leadership means to them, and we’ve certainly done that with Gov. Palin,” said Sherril West, president of the board of directors that operates Five Points.

“Whether or not you voted for Gov. Palin in 2008, this is a home run for our city to get her to come here,” Manier said.

Emphasis mine.

I give up. I live in an insignificant, two-bit hick area.

26 January 2010

Workout notes Yoga with Ms. Vickie (stiff), 4000 yards (15 x 200; first three were about 3:45, 40, 35, 12 on the 3:30. Then 500 of drill/swim (fins), 500 cool down.

Then weights; first sets were a bit off; was able to handle 25 curl, 45 military, 70 bench press (all with dumbbells; one in each hand); lat pulls, pull ups, yoga leg lifts.

Mathematics/education

I remember seeing something similar to this in the College Mathematics Journal; this is similar:

Reuters today released a hilarious account marking the collapse of the Antarctic shelf. According to Reuters,

The Antarctic Peninsular has warmed by 36 degrees Fahrenheit over the past half century, far faster than elsewhere on the ice-bound continent or the rest of the world.

Huh? If the Antarctic shelf had warmed 36 degrees over the last 50 years, the shelf would have collapsed a long time ago. So how did the moron who wrote this arrive at this figure?

Ah, you see, the actual warming was only about 2.5 degrees Celsius.

Can you guess what happened?

I used this in class yesterday; most of my “off semester “brief calculus”" students were stumped though one got it right away.

Groan, 25 January 2010 edition

OH NOES, PRESIDENT OBAMA IS JUST LIKE PRESIDENT HOOVER!!!

Obama Embraces Hooverism
by eugene

From the diaries. Susan.

There are no words to describe how disastrous this news is from TPM:

President Obama will propose freezing non-security discretionary government spending for the next three years, a sweeping plan to attempt deficit reduction that will save taxpayers $250 billion over 10 years.

Really? Huffington Post (under a banner screaming “Mr. Freeze”) reports:

President Barack Obama will ask Congress to freeze spending for some domestic programs for three years beginning in 2011.

The proposal comes as Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress face public anger over growing deficits.

Administration officials told The Associated Press on Monday that the freeze would apply to a relatively small portion of the budget. It would affect money available for domestic agencies whose budgets are approved each year.

Exempt from the freeze would be the Pentagon, veterans programs, foreign aid and homeland security. [...]

Repeat: to. freeze. spending. for. some. domestic. programs.

Wonder why many don’t take Daily Kos seriously? (I quoted from a front page article, not a diary).

Oh sure, there is some legitimate opinion there too:

John Cole:

Why is it that all the people who claim to be the base turn out to be self-serving, self-promoting jackasses who have very narrow agendas and love to inform us that if the Obama administration does just what they want them to do right when they want them to do it, they will “keep the base.” Otherwise, if they don’t fulfill their agenda right then and there, they will “lose the base.” And strategically, it always works out so well- see demanding the public option be put in the Senate Bill and shutting down the Snowe negotiations.

John is a friend, so I say this with genuine respect — yes, the Democrats have a base problem. And no, it’s not because of Ed Schultz, me, Jane Hamsher, or anyone else. Let’s be real, we’re just not that powerful.

Daily Kos gets about 2 million unique visitors per month, plus maybe a couple more million reading other progressive blogs. Ed (and Olbermann and Maddow) probably get that many watching their shows every month. There’s overlap, so let’s say 3-5 million progressives reading blogs and watching MSNBC’s prime time lineup — a pittance compared to the 16 million or so that listen to Limbaugh every week, and the 2-4 million that watch Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck every night. Huffington Post is getting about 16 million unique monthly visitors these days, but 80 percent of that is entertainment, and the other 20 percent is split among business, sports, living, style, green, technology and finally politics.

Point is, our media machine is tiny. We don’t have the power to move our base around.

Kos goes on to point out that many in our base, most who haven’t a clue (or a care) that we even exist, simply aren’t motivated to show up and vote due to the fact that we haven’t show results.

Note also that the President remains popular with Democrats (myself included, though I wish he were more aggressive at promoting progressive agenda items) but he is wildly unpopular with Republicans:

Republicans have turned overwhelmingly against President Obama, while Democrats are still largely supportive — leading to the most polarized approval ratings ever recorded during a president’s first year in office, a new report by Gallup finds.

Over the course of this past year, Obama has averaged a job approval rating of 88 percent among Democrats and just 23 percent among Republicans, according to the study released on Monday morning. That year-one 65-point margin is the largest that the public opinion research firm has ever recorded.

At the end of his first year, former President Bill Clinton averaged a smaller 52-point gap — not because Republicans liked him any more than they like Obama, but because Democrats didn’t like him as much. President George W. Bush averaged a 45-point gap; during his first year, he had almost universal support from Republicans, while nearly half of Democrats were still giving him the benefit of the doubt.

Looking at the data going further back in history, it’s evident that the country has grown far more polarized since the age of Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson.

Of course, it hasn’t helped that the Republicans have sold themselves out to the bat-shit crazy wing of their party. There are Republicans (David Brooks, David Frum, Kathleen Parker, Fareed Zakaria, even George Will at times, when he is not attempting to speak about science) who have stuff worth listening to, but they are not in control of their party.

Religion Richard Dawkins skewers those who enable the Pat Robertson’s of the world:

The religious mind, however, restlessly seeks human meaning in the blind happenings of nature. As with the Indonesian tsunami, which was blamed on loose sexual morals in tourist bars; as with Hurricane Katrina, which was attributed to divine revenge on the entire city of New Orleans for harboring a lesbian comedian, and as with other disasters going back to the famous Lisbon earthquake and beyond, so Haiti’s tragedy must be payback for human sin. The Rev. Pat Robertson sees the hand of God in the earthquake, wreaking terrible retribution for a pact that the long-dead ancestors of today’s Haitians made with the devil, to help rid them of their French masters.

Needless to say, milder-mannered faith-heads are falling over themselves to disown Pat Robertson, just as they disowned those other pastors, evangelists, missionaries and mullahs at the time of the earlier disasters.

What hypocrisy.

Loathsome as Robertson’s views undoubtedly are, he is the Christian who stands squarely in the Christian tradition. The agonized theodiceans who see suffering as an intractable ‘mystery’, or who ‘see God’ in the help, money and goodwill that is now flooding into Haiti , or (most nauseating of all) who claim to see God ‘suffering on the cross’ in the ruins of Port-au-Prince, those faux-anguished hypocrites are denying the centrepiece of their own theology. It is the obnoxious Pat Robertson who is the true Christian here.

Where was God in Noah’s flood? He was systematically drowning the entire world, animal as well as human, as punishment for ‘sin’. Where was God when Sodom and Gomorrah were consumed with fire and brimstone? He was deliberately barbecuing the citizenry, lock stock and barrel, as punishment for ‘sin’. Dear modern, enlightened, theologically sophisticated Christian, your entire religion is founded on an obsession with ‘sin’, with punishment and with atonement. Where do you find the effrontery to condemn Pat Robertson, you who have signed up to the obnoxious doctrine that the central purpose of Jesus’ incarnation was to have himself tortured as a scapegoat for the ‘sins’ of all mankind, past, present and future, beginning with the ‘sin’ of Adam, who (as any modern theologian well knows) never even existed? To quote the President of one theological seminary, writing in these very pages:

“The earthquake in Haiti, like every other earthly disaster, reminds us that creation groans under the weight of sin and the judgment of God. This is true for every cell in our bodies, even as it is for the crust of the earth at every point on the globe.”

You nice, middle-of-the-road theologians and clergymen, be-frocked and bleating in your pulpits, you disclaim Pat Robertson’s suggestion that the Haitians are paying for a pact with the devil. But you worship a god-man who – as you tell your congregations even if you don’t believe it yourself – ‘cast out devils’. You even believe (or you don’t disabuse your flock when they believe) that Jesus cured a madman by causing the ‘devils’ in him to fly into a herd of pigs and stampede them over a cliff. Charming story, well calculated to uplift and inspire the Sunday School and the Infant Bible Class. Pat Robertson may spout evil nonsense, but he is a mere amateur at that game. Just read your own Bible. Pat Robertson is true to it. But you?

Of course, the truly liberal find ways to rationalize away much of the “historical” claims of the Bible and to dismiss much of the embarrassing claims as the result of ignorance of the times. But in all honesty, people who do this ought to give themselves another label as what they are practicing in no way resembles Christianity.

Some of them allow their deity a “ration of miracles” and then dismiss the rest of it (eyeroll).

25 January 2010

Workout notes 2 mile run (18 minutes plus 1:10 of cool down got me to 2), 2 miles on the AMT, then 2200 yard swimming: 500 warm up, 5 x (25 drill,25 swim fins), 5 x (25 3g, 75 free) on 2, 10 x (25 long reach, 25 hard) on 1, 200 cool down.

I felt body-achy for most of the workout and now, and my calf/hamstring is achy too; it is almost as if I am stiff. I’ll have to make that yoga class tomorrow.

Winters: yep, a friend seems to feel the way that I do.

Mathematics and education Here is an interesting article about high school and college calculus class. My two cents: the students who fail my calculus classes don’t fail because they botch the proof of the Mean Value Theorem. They fail because they can’t calculate the derivative of things like , etc. There are two things going on: motivation and ability, and it is my conjecture that students who lack one or the other (or both) are given good grades in high school due to parental pressure.

Of course, we have plenty of good students too; let’s not forget that!

Fun: Weird Mammals
Check them out.

Yes, this is one of them: a pangolin! Check them out!

ANIMAL CAMOUFLAGE Surf to conservation report. The upper photo is “easier” than the lower one.

Not all of my students are great at math but…

see more Epic Fails

At least they would get the joke here. I think.

Dailymotion – Cornel West’s note to Obama – January 20, 2010 – a News & Politics video

Professor Cornel West of Princeton University has a message for the US president as he completes his first year in the White House.

more about "Dailymotion – Cornel West’s note to O…", posted with vodpod

This the type of criticism that the President is getting from the left; many of us wonder if the President has made too many deals with big money. I don’t know what to think.

I do see one irony though: Dr. West warns the President to not be too influenced by “the elite”…and Dr. West is as about elite as they come.

24 January 2010 (Part II)

Halftime of the Jets-Colts; great game so far.

Students: I’d never believe that I’d find myself saying this, but in this instance, I side with the Snowflakes.

Another rare event: though President Obama spoke out against Proposition 8 in California and he favors repealing the Defense of Marriage Act, he does not support gay marriage (he supports civil unions).

Evidently Cindy and Meghan McCain (Senator McCain’s wife and daughter) support gay marriage, as do I.

Kudos to the McCain women!

Personal Comment
Yes, I still play with stuffed frogs. Yes, at times, I talk to them and give them personalities.

So, my wife claims that this is evidence that I am eccentric.

I thought about her statement. But let’s look at the facts:

1. I know that the frogs are stuffed and that their “personality” is what I give them.
2. I don’t expect the frogs to solve my problems.
3. I don’t think that the frogs have the power to change the outcome of events in the universe.
4. I certainly don’t expect the frogs to forgive the wrongs that I do.

So, now, why am I eccentric?

Note: this reminds me of this old Bill Maher clip (from 2007; the relevant part starts at about 2:35.)

Yes, Mr. Maher is completely wrong on things like vaccinations. But he is right about this.

THAT didn’t take long: Gillian Cooke Fan Page!

I was thinking of starting a fan page, but someone beat me to it.

Athletic butt, and tight (but weak) spandex. What more could a guy want?

Hey, this is nothing I haven’t wished would happen in yoga class (happening to the woman in front of me, that is. )

24 January 2010

Workout notes 4000 yard swim: 500 back/free, 500 side/free, 500 drill/swim (fins), 5 x 100 (25 kick, 75 free) on the 2, 5 x 100 (25 3g, 75 free) on the 2, 5 x 100 fist on the 2 (1:43-46), 5 x (50 free, 50 paddle), 400 of fly practice (300 with fins), 100 IM. Note: the second fin set started to bother my ankle.

Then 2 miles on the treadmill: 15 minutes (1.6 miles) of running, 5 more walk/jog, then 7 miles on the elliptical.

Though this wasn’t a superb workout, my joints were kind of achy from the get-go, so I was ok with the result.

It is rainy and cold here; most of the snow is gone and you could see the ice/slush in the river.

Posts
Evidently, women sleep better when men are in the bed with them, but men sleep better alone. Frankly, I honestly think that I sleep better with my wife next to me. I like the physical warmth.

Political humor My pet peeves about polls and how they are reported are outlined here.

Hypothetical example: Obama starts at 50.5 percent approval today and then “drops” to 49.8 tomorrow. The paper wants to know “why”? Next poll, he is “up” to 50.75. “Rebound” the papers say. Uh….”margin of error”, anyone?

Politics
Robert Reich understands the “mad as hell” movement but has some words:

With the mid-term elections months away, both Republicans and Democrats are scrambling to embrace the Mad-As-Hell Party as their own. Republicans are hoping the mad-as-hellers forget the gushing corporate welfare of the Bush administration and the last Republican congress. And Democrats have become born-again economic populists, blaming the nation’s problems on the same “fat cat” bankers and corporate lobbyists they’ve been cozying up to for years.

If the Mad-as-hell Party helps get money out of politics it will do a world of good. I might even join up. But if it just fulminates against the establishment, forget it. Wrecking balls are easy to wield. Rescuing our democracy is hard work.

Bottom line: the tea baggers might want a “return to the Constitution given by the founding fathers” but they are many like me who actually like progress. I might want single payer health care as do many of my friends, but the rest of my fellow Americans ARE NOT WITH ME. IT ISN’T GOING TO HAPPEN (at least not any time soon).

All of us have to work with people that we don’t see 100 percent eye to eye with. Deal with it.

Health Care Reform

Perhaps we might get the Senate Bill through the House? Paul Krugman is hopeful.

Politico reports that Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are working on a strategy that just might save health care: get the House to pass the Senate bill, while the Senate uses reconciliation — a process that avoids the need for a 60-vote supermajority — to address some of the concerns of House Democrats.

That’s very good news.

Of course, if they do this, there will be howls of protest — they’re defying the will of the 41-59 Republican majority in the Senate! This violates the spirit of the Constitution the very strange rules the Senate has imposed on itself. But I hope Democrats have learned by now that the public doesn’t know or care about such things.

Nate Silver points out that much (though NOT all) of the opposition to the current Senate Bill comes from those who don’t know what is in it:

Reasonable minds can come to the conclusion that the bill is bad policy, and people are also 100 percent within their rights to believe that the bill might be bad for them for self-interested reasons (if they make greater than $200,000 per year and would be subject to the increase in the payroll tax, for instance.)

With due respect to Megan, however, the debate over health care is not playing out like the one in elite circles of public opinion, in which Ezra Klein and I represent the pro-bill coalition and she and David Brooks the opposition. As this month’s tracking survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation makes clear, there are a lot of beliefs the public has about the bill which are objectively wrong.

The following table combines two sets of questions from the Kaiser survey, each of which ask people about the individual components of the bill. One set of questions asks people whether they believe that the bill contains each provision; the other set, which I’ve tabulated on a net basis, asks them whether they’d be more or less likely to support a bill if it contained such a provision.
[...]
What we see is that most individual components of the bill are popular — in some cases, quite popular. But awareness lags behind. Only 61 percent are aware that the bill bans denials of coverage for pre-existing conditions. Only 42 percent know that it bans lifetime coverage limits. Only 58 percent are aware that it set up insurance exchanges. Just 44 percent know that it closes the Medicare donut hole — and so on and so forth.

Silver points out that the Senate Bill is, on the whole, better than what we could get via reconciliation alone (of course, there is the idea of combining the two approaches)