Student: I Am Your Professor and No, I don’t “Work For You.” I am accountable to you however.

Workout notes: nothing yet. Something over lunch (swimming plus some squats?)

I’ll get to the the subject of the post’s title at the very end.

Personal: Sometimes I get a kick out of reading other people’s blogs because I can relate to their experiences. One racewalking friend is coming back from an athletic injury, and the process is almost always long, slow, painful and frustrating. Yes, it gets longer when you get older.

Oh yes, her daughter said to her:

A funny kid story. Michelle said to me tonight: “Mommy, you have a big bottom!”. Um, yeah, kid, thanks.

Yes, my daughter told my wife that (when my daughter was 3-4 years old, I think). Yes, my wife really does have a big butt; the racewalker in question…really doesn’t. (photo)

Another friend is getting ready for a judged 50K racewalk; he is “feeling it” and is encouraged by a couple of excellent training sessions (here and here) Yes, in athletics, the sweetest thing is a good performance in competition (example of it here and here for me). But one of the sweet things is in a successful buildup; you start nailing your workouts and building that confidence; you just “know” that things are going to go very well! So, I take pleasure in seeing someone else go through that stage; it makes my own rehab a bit more tolerable.

Humor: I got at chuckle at this; my guess is that this was intentional.

see more Epic Fails

Haiti and Science Satellites are helping rescue workers to find the areas of greatest need in Haiti.

Speaking of Haiti: the Religious Right is just plain weird:

The Southern Baptist Convention’s Albert Mohler outdoes Pat Robertson by declaring that God does, in fact, hate Haiti in his blog post entitled “Does God Hate Haiti?” in which he explains that God is judging the nation, just as he judges every nation on Earth so that they may all come to know Jesus Christ:

In truth, it is hard not to describe the earthquake as a disaster of biblical proportions. It certainly looks as if the wrath of God has fallen upon the Caribbean nation. Add to this the fact that Haiti is well known for its history of religious syncretism — mixing elements of various faiths, including occult practices. The nation is known for voodoo, sorcery, and a Catholic tradition that has been greatly influenced by the occult. [...]

God does judge the nations — all of them — and God will judge the nations. His judgment is perfect and his justice is sure. He rules over all the nations and his sovereign will is demonstrated in the rising and falling of nations and empires and peoples … Does God hate Haiti? God hates sin, and will punish both individual sinners and nations … The earthquake in Haiti, like every other earthly disaster, reminds us that creation groans under the weight of sin and the judgment of God … In other words, the earthquake reminds us that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the only real message of hope.

Like many, I am disgusted by this statement. But I am disgusted for a different reason than many are. If one claims to be a “Bible believing Christian”, well, the deity of the Bible does curse nations (for a variety of reasons) and causes terrible things to happen to them. So, what this whack job says is consistent with the Bible.

What disgusts me is the level of superstition here that both supporters and detractors find credible! Spirits or deities cause earthquakes? Oh please, this is beyond idiotic in this day and age.

To me, this type of statement is every bit as idiotic as blaming this earthquake on the fact that Zeus was upset.

Education Yes, the internet can be a bit positive, but it can extract an intellectual price. Yes, it can be fun to read internet articles; it is like having a magazine at your instant disposal. But I found myself thinking at a shallower and shallower level; that is why I’ve decided to force myself to read books; and I’ve done that!

Now for the title of this post An undergraduate whines that he isn’t permitted to text message during class. Well, it is his blog and he can whine about anything he wants (source).

But I’ll just take issue with this statement (made in a comment)

Believe it or not, you are employed by me in this situation. “Deal with it,”

Wrong! Think of it this way: when I swim, there is a lifeguard whose salary is paid for, in part, by the extra fees that we pay to use the new university gym. So is the lifeguard employed by me? No. The lifeguard is employed by the university (and the recreational department); how good of of a job he/she does is going to be judged by them. Sure, I have the right to give feedback, complain, etc. (but ours do an excellent job…that is an aside).

When I went to the Rams game and paid for a ticket, were the players and coach employed by me? No. They were employed by the team and its ownership. Sure I have the right to not come back, to not buy team gear, etc. But they don’t work for me.

The situation is similar here: the university employs me and if I do a bad job, they can fire me, reprimand me, etc. And yes, the students do get some right to feedback; they can write teaching evaluations, complain to the chair or to other administrative staff, etc. They also have the right to leave our college and go somewhere else. They do NOT have the right to tell me how to do my job; they are not qualified to do that.

Now, of course, I am accountable to the students. I need to be prepared to give them a good course, to patiently explain things, to be available for extra help, to make reasonable expectations of them, etc. But when I say that I am accountable to the students, I am accountable to them over the long term, meaning that they should leave my course having learned the material. My getting them to do the necessary work to learn will anger some of them from time to time, and my holding them accountable to standards will also anger some of them. But that is part of what I am paid to do. I am not paid to be friends with them. In short, I’d rather that they dislike me while in the course but learn rather than like me and not learn.

Of course, there are ways to get the same message across, and antagonizing them needlessly is stupid and pointless.

Note: in fairness to the student blogger: he has moderated his comments and has boldly allowed for criticism to be posted. He deserves credit for that.

I admit that I made a classless, stupid comment on his post, and that embarrasses me. I’ve apologized for that comment there and I’ll apologize for that here as well.

NFL Playoffs 2010: Week Two Predictions

Workout notes 2200 yard swim (500 alternating back/free, 500 alternating side/free), 500 alternating 25 drill, 25 free (8 were front/free), 400 of fly kick practice, 100 fly (50 in 52), 4 x 50 paddle cool-down.

Then weights; handled 65 on the bench and 45 on the military easily. Then 1.2 mile run (incline from 0 to 5); injury felt fine, 3 on the AMT.

Disclaimer: I cheer for the Bears (irrelevant at play-off time) and for the Cowboys. That might cloud my judgment; I don’t trust the Cowboys to play well. But after a cold blooded analysis of the last 6 games of the teams:

Cardinals versus Saints: I pick Cardinals + 7, but for the Saints to win the game.
Basis: the Saints have not played well toward the end of the season, but the Cardinals are very inconsistent and make lots of mistakes. Plus, the Saints are at home.

Ravens versus Colts I pick the Ravens + 6.5, but for the Colts to win.
Basis: the Ravens have a great defense but are one dimensional on offense, and the Colts won’t self destruct the way that the Patriots did. The Colts pull it out in a nail-biter.

Cowboys versus Vikings Cowboys + 2.5, and the Cowboys to win.
Basis: the Vikings, aside from a 44-7 blowout of a Giant team that had packed it in, have been unimpressive down the stretch, even when they had much to play for. Still, they whipped a good Bengal team. Right now, the Cowboys are playing well, with two blow-out wins over Philadelphia, a win at New Orleans and a narrow loss to the Chargers. The Cowboys have given up 51 points over their last 5 games. Still, I hesitate to make this pick as the Cowboys have disappointed me in the recent past…then again when they had their last two play-off losses they were to teams that made the Superbowl.

Jets versus the Chargers Jets + 7.5, with the Chargers winning.
Basis: the Jets have played excellent football over the past 5-6 weeks and have a strong running attack. The defense looks good too. But they still have a rookie quarterback and San Diego is at home. I see the Chargers winning in a very tight game, with a mistake making the difference.

Summary:
Spread: Cardinals +7, Ravens + 6.5, Cowboys + 2.5, Jets + 7.5
Straight up: Saints, Colts, Cowboys, Chargers.

14 January 2010 (am)

I am getting ready to go into work. I’ll work out over lunch (2000 swim, weights, some on the elliptical). The calf/hamstring: slight ache this morning.

Last night Barbara took me to see Rain, a Beatles tribute band.

It was worth seeing; they performed in several sets and in several costumes, starting with what they looked like at the beginning (Twist and Shout), through their Sergent Pepper stage then to their Abbey Road stage. Note: they sang three encore songs: Imagine (ok, a John Lennon song and not a Beatles song), Let it Be and then closed with Hey Jude.

Though they were NOT the Beatles, they did an excellent job with what I would call a “faithful remake” of their songs; this was worth attending. I enjoyed it.

This is their start:

Here is a tiny clip from close up (Sgt. Peppers), and here is another:

Note: the crowd was older; there were a few younger ones.

More local Billy Dennis groans over having more BU students crossing the street (due to buildings in Campus Town being taken over by Bradley)

I think that he is worrying too much, as this is office space which will increase faculty foot traffic but probably won’t increase student foot traffic all that much (they already cross that street to get to the student apartments). Of course, faculty foot traffic might end up being MORE of a nuisance than student foot traffic.

13 January 2010

Workout notes
4000 yard swim: 500 warm up in 9:07, 5 x (25 front, 75 free) on 2 (mostly 1:50-1:55, one 1:58)
5 x 200 on the 3:30 (3:17, 17, 16, 15, 14); this was better than on Monday
500 (25 side, 25 swim; fins), 5 x (25 3g, 75 free) on 2 (1:45-48), 5 x 100 IM on the 2:15; last one had more rest and did it just under 2. Then 500 cool down (100, 100, 100, 50 with fins, side).

Note: I had to stretch just a bit as my arms and upper body are getting tighter.

Yoga: I am going to have to get back to yoga class; for some reason I did more yoga on my own when I was going to classes. It seems to be: “if I take a class, I do it outside of class too” but if I don’t take a class, I don’t do it outside of class. Weird. It doesn’t work that way with swimming, running/walking, and weights.

Football :NFL I like the names on the list (25 all time best quarterbacks), but think that the formula must be bogus to come up with this order. (example: Tarkenton ahead of Staubach? No way.)

Haiti This is the organization that I donated to: Doctors Without Borders.

Speaking of Haiti: Pat Robertson notes that Haiti “made a deal with the devil” to get from under the French. (click on the video; it is about 6 minutes into it).

A mini-clip is here:

(hat tip: Billy Dennis)

Politics Republican ideas on how to fix things: recess Congress:

Science
Nature: fastest tongues
(hat tip: Conservation Report)

Nature
How about a multi-celled animal that performs photosynthesis?

A green sea slug appears to be part animal, part plant. It’s the first critter discovered to produce the plant pigment chlorophyll.

The sneaky slugs seem to have stolen the genes that enable this skill from algae that they’ve eaten. With their contraband genes, the slugs can carry out photosynthesis — the process plants use to convert sunlight into energy.

“They can make their energy-containing molecules without having to eat anything,” said Sidney Pierce, a biologist at the University of South Florida in Tampa.

Pierce has been studying the unique creatures, officially called Elysia chlorotica, for about 20 years. He presented his most recent findings Jan. 7 at the annual meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology in Seattle. The finding was first reported by Science News.

“This is the first time that multicellar animals have been able to produce chlorophyll,” Pierce told LiveScience.

The sea slugs live in salt marshes in New England and Canada. In addition to burglarizing the genes needed to make the green pigment chlorophyll, the slugs also steal tiny cell parts called chloroplasts, which they use to conduct photosynthesis. The chloroplasts use the chlorophyl to convert sunlight into energy, just as plants do, eliminating the need to eat food to gain energy.

“We collect them and we keep them in aquaria for months,” Pierce said. “As long as we shine a light on them for 12 hours a day, they can survive [without food].”

Cosmology and calling attention to yourself Sometimes the loudest press releases get the most attention:

You might have heard the news out of last week’s American Astronomical Society meeting, that the Hubble Space Telescope had found evidence for the most distant galaxies yet discovered. Using the newly-installed Wide Field Camera 3, HST did a close-up examination of some likely candidates in the Ultra Deep Field, and found galaxies at redshifts of 7 or 8 (meaning the universe is now 8 or 9 times bigger than it was when the light was emitted). That corresponds to about 600 million years after the Big Bang, which pushes back the era of galaxy formation quite a bit.

But wait! Over at Science News, Ron Cowen points out that a team led by Rychard Bouwens and Garth Illingworth of UC Santa Cruz already has a paper on the arxiv that uses similar techniques to identify three galaxies with a redshift of 10, corresponding to only 450 million years after the Big Bang. And, as Cowen mentions in a blog post, the paper was available since last month. [...]

So why are galaxies at redshift 8 considered news, if galaxies at redshift 10 have already been discovered? As Charlie Petit talks about at the Knight Science Journalism Tracker, the difference seems to be that the former were announced at a press briefing, while the latter just appeared on arxiv.

Moral: if you are doing good stuff, you should tell others about it!

Creationist nonsense I know nothing about information theory. Jeffrey Shallit does and can’t stomach creationists trying to use “fake forms” of it to bolster their “arguments”. Surf to his article and not only enjoy the smack-down, but learn just a bit about information theory!

Religion and Society Daniel Dennett responds to this “religious people are being persecuted in the media” nonsense. Basically, what is happening is that, to a tiny degree, their ideas and results are getting a bit of scrutiny, and religious people are simply not used to that:

There is no media bias against Christianity. If it appears to some people that there is, it is probably because after decades of hyper-diplomacy and a generally accepted mutual understanding that religion was not to be criticized, we have finally begun breaking through that taboo and are beginning to see candid discussions of the varieties of religious folly in American life. Activities that would be condemned by all if they were not cloaked in the protective mantle of religion are beginning to be subjected to proper scrutiny. [...]

I look forward to the day when violence done under the influence of religious passion is considered more dishonorable, more shameful, than crimes of avarice, and is punished accordingly, and religious leaders who incite such acts are regarded with the same contempt that we reserve for bartenders who send dangerously disabled people out onto the highways.

I also look forward to the day when pastors who abuse the authority of their pulpits by misinforming their congregations about science, about public health, about global warming, about evolution must answer to the charge of dishonesty. Telling pious lies to trusting children is a form of abuse, plain and simple. If quacks and bunko artists can be convicted of fraud for selling worthless cures, why not clergy for making their living off unsupported claims of miracle cures and the efficacy of prayer?

I’ll make it even easier: If I throw you in jail for going to church, THAT is persecution. If I say “I don’t believe it” when you talk about your deity in public, that is NOT persecution. When I say “I don’t want to be a captive audience for a publicly lead prayer at a government sponsored function”, that is not persecution.

Speaking of persecution and attitudes: PZ Myers notes the results of a Pew Survey on “who would you not want marrying into your family“:

There are also some kinds of marriages that would be unacceptable. Guess who?

The survey finds that most Americans also are ready to accept intermarriage in their family if the new spouse is Hispanic or Asian. But there is one new spouse that most Americans would have trouble accepting into their families: someone who does not believe in God. Seven-in-ten people who are affiliated with a religion say they either would not accept such as marriage (27%) or be bothered before coming to accept it (42%).

Source: Pew Survey: scroll to interracial marriage. I suppose then that most wouldn’t accept an elite scientist marrying into their families at 93 percent of these are either atheist or agnostic (mostly atheist).

I am not an elite scientist, but rest assured families: the feeling is mutual.

12 January 2010 (pm)

This morning I had leftover bean soup. That tasted good…but...well, let’s just say that I looked this up:

Hippocrates said, “Passing gas is necessary to well-being.” Yup, farting is a perfectly natural and unavoidable bodily process and most people produce between 1 and 3 pints per day. But why, oh, why do we do it? Let’s see….

We are not alone- around 200 different species of bacteria lurking in your large intestines and bean induced farts are down to these millions of tiny friends in our guts. So what is happening?

Well, when we eat beans, or cabbage, or any other gassy food, it all gets mushed up in our stomach and is passed into the small intestine. Now, the types of sugar found in beans are a bit big to be taken into the body through the walls of the small intestine and we have no enzyme to break them down into more manageable chunks. This means it all ends up in our large intestine where all the bacteria tuck in and start to reproduce to take best advantage of all the yummy food. Unfortunately for us, gas is produced by the bacteria during the breakdown of their dinner – carbon dioxide, hydrogen and some methane is released and escape the body via the only opening available to them. These gases don’t smell much, but methane and hydrogen do burn pretty happily, which is why farts can be set alight. However, this is NOT recommended as the gas can ignite backwards up your bum, burning all the trapped gas in your rectum and scorching you in the most painful way imaginable. Imagine having to explain that to the A & E nurse.

On top of all the bacterial gas, some fart gas comes from air that you have swallowed – you’ll swallow more if you gorge yourself to fast rather than carefully munching your food. A lot of the gas will be absorbed into the body but in times of stress we tend to rush food and air through the body a bit fast and this makes the farting situation worse. Finally, chemical reactions between stomach acid and intestinal juices can also produce carbon dioxide that bulk out our farts.

The article goes on further.

White Supremacists When one goes to jail, another appears:

One day soon, U.S. District Court Judge James Turk will sentence Roanoke neo-Nazi William A. White to prison for threatening a handful of people across North America.

If you thought that might curtail this valley’s ignoble reputation as place some white supremacists put down their roots, think again.

Those pea-brained bigots are just like new crack dealers who pop up on street corners after each narcotics-squad roundup. Other racist nuts already are stepping forward to assume White’s cretinous mantle.

I know this thanks to Clifton “Chip” Woodrum, the esteemed Roanoke lawyer and former state delegate.

Last week, he passed along some white-power fliers a former constituent found Jan. 3 in Garst Mill Park.

They were strewn through the Southwest Roanoke County park, wrapped in one-gallon clear zip-lock plastic bags that were weighed down by small rocks.

Each bag contained two black-and-white pitches for the Aryan Nations printed on cheap copy-machine paper.

There is more there; this reporter actually called the associated number.

Mind and Medicine Interestingly enough, we can be helping to stigmatize mental illness in our efforts to eliminate the stigma associated with it! This is explained here.

Note: this article isn’t really about the stigma. It starts out by noting that mental illnesses, or at least how people have classified them, actually differ by culture. It brings up old examples of mental disease symptoms (say, hysterics) and then talks about how new symptoms can actually be “imported” into a culture; the example of anorexia in Hong Kong. The major point:

“We might think of the culture as possessing a ‘symptom repertoire’ — a range of physical symptoms available to the unconscious mind for the physical expression of psychological conflict,” Edward Shorter, a medical historian at the University of Toronto, wrote in his book “Paralysis: The Rise and Fall of a ‘Hysterical’ Symptom.” “In some epochs, convulsions, the sudden inability to speak or terrible leg pain may loom prominently in the repertoire. In other epochs patients may draw chiefly upon such symptoms as abdominal pain, false estimates of body weight and enervating weakness as metaphors for conveying psychic stress.”

In any given era, those who minister to the mentally ill — doctors or shamans or priests — inadvertently help to select which symptoms will be recognized as legitimate. [...]

Of course, we can become psychologically unhinged for many reasons that are common to all, like personal traumas, social upheavals or biochemical imbalances in our brains. Modern science has begun to reveal these causes. Whatever the trigger, however, the ill individual and those around him invariably rely on cultural beliefs and stories to understand what is happening. Those stories, whether they tell of spirit possession, semen loss or serotonin depletion, predict and shape the course of the illness in dramatic and often counterintuitive ways. In the end, what cross-cultural psychiatrists and anthropologists have to tell us is that all mental illnesses, including depression, P.T.S.D. and even schizophrenia, can be every bit as influenced by cultural beliefs and expectations today as hysterical-leg paralysis or the vapors or zar or any other mental illness ever experienced in the history of human madness. This does not mean that these illnesses and the pain associated with them are not real, or that sufferers deliberately shape their symptoms to fit a certain cultural niche. It means that a mental illness is an illness of the mind and cannot be understood without understanding the ideas, habits and predispositions — the idiosyncratic cultural trappings — of the mind that is its host.

But what about the stigma part? Here it is:

In 1997, Prof. Sheila Mehta from Auburn University Montgomery in Alabama decided to find out if the “brain disease” narrative had the intended effect. She suspected that the biomedical explanation for mental illness might be influencing our attitudes toward the mentally ill in ways we weren’t conscious of, so she thought up a clever experiment.

In her study, test subjects were led to believe that they were participating in a simple learning task with a partner who was, unbeknownst to them, a confederate in the study. Before the experiment started, the partners exchanged some biographical data, and the confederate informed the test subject that he suffered from a mental illness.

The confederate then stated either that the illness occurred because of “the kind of things that happened to me when I was a kid” or that he had “a disease just like any other, which affected my biochemistry.” (These were termed the “psychosocial” explanation and the “disease” explanation respectively.) The experiment then called for the test subject to teach the confederate a pattern of button presses. When the confederate pushed the wrong button, the only feedback the test subject could give was a “barely discernible” to “somewhat painful” electrical shock.

Analyzing the data, Mehta found a difference between the group of subjects given the psychosocial explanation for their partner’s mental-illness history and those given the brain-disease explanation. Those who believed that their partner suffered a biochemical “disease like any other” increased the severity of the shocks at a faster rate than those who believed they were paired with someone who had a mental disorder caused by an event in the past.

This type of behavior translates into outside the laboratory behavior. What is happening:

“We say we are being kind, but our actions suggest otherwise.” The problem, it appears, is that the biomedical narrative about an illness like schizophrenia carries with it the subtle assumption that a brain made ill through biomedical or genetic abnormalities is more thoroughly broken and permanently abnormal than one made ill though life events. “Viewing those with mental disorders as diseased sets them apart and may lead to our perceiving them as physically distinct. Biochemical aberrations make them almost a different species.”

In short, when these type of things are viewed as being the result of a bona-fide illness, the victims are seen as being “different”. On the other hand, if the symptoms are seen as some the result of a trauma, “spiritual unbalance” or some other correctable thing, the victim is NOT seen as being fundamentally different. Hence, knowing the cause more accurately might actually lead to more stigmatizing!

How ironic is that?

Please, read the whole article. It is outstanding.

Evolution Yes, this is a complex, difficult subject. Sure there is the natural selection aspect, genetic drift (due to mutations) but there is a whole host of other factors that permit characteristics to be transmitted from generation to generation. That is why it is difficult to come up with some simplified definition of evolution. Here are a couple of the more interesting ways traits can be passed on that are a bit more subtle than simple “mutation which results in a directly beneficial feature gets selected” type process:

Like many of the concepts considered part of an Extended Synthesis, facilitated variation is largely a theoretical concept. Pigliucci himself admits that facilitated variation is a concept in waiting for illustration in natural systems. However, a recent example of the phenomenon at work in natural populations comes from a bird species that is invading new North American territories and habitats, while displaying remarkably rapid adaptive change.

Alexander Badyaev, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona, has been studying little songbirds called house finches, which were native to deserts in the American Southwest and Mexico before they began spreading throughout the United States in the 1940s through the pet trade and natural dispersal.

Badyaev tracked the birds through 19 generations over a span of 15 years at a study site in Montana, and found that the population was developing unique beak morphologies as adaptations to the new environment at a surprisingly rapid rate. According to the Modern Synthesis, beak shape should change as random mutations create a pool of phenotypes, which eventually get whittled down to those that are most advantageous. But the new habitats were so different from their original habitats, the only way for finches to survive would be if their beak shape had changed rapidly—too rapidly to have resulted from just random mutations. If that were the only way for them to evolve, the original desert-dwelling house finch populations would have been wiped out by the pressures present in their new habitats, Badyaev reasons. Instead, they’re thriving.

How was this possible? To answer the question, Badyaev looked into the developmental patterns that give rise to the beak’s structure in house finches. He found a complex interplay of processes, such as the migration of five islands of neural crest cells that constitute skeletal beak components in the embryo. Interacting embryonic processes result in an initial level of phenotypic variation greater than what would be predicted from underlying genotypic variation alone.

Because the drivers of this baseline phenotypic variation acted during development in the egg, Badyaev says, selection was essentially blind to the creation of this initial pool of phenotypic variation. It was only later, when young birds began feeding on the foods available in their new habitat, that selection could determine which beaks were more or less suited to the environment. “Selection does not see the developmental process by which this beak was produced,” he notes. “But it’s exactly there that resides the opportunity for diversification.”

In short, the variation in beaks was caused by variation in development; the bird population didn’t have to “wait for” the variations to be caused by mutations in the alleles for the beak shapes.

There are other examples discussed such as epigenetic inheritance.

12 June 2010 (I)

Workout notes I got a late start. I did weights (managed some military presses with 45, set of 10 with 65 on the bench), and included squats and two sets of yoga leg lifts (set of 20, then a set of 10 where I took 3 counts at 60, 45, 30, just above the ground).
These days, my “base” upper body routine includes dumbbell: curls, military, bench, then pull ups, lat machine, yoga leg lifts and I do this sequence at least twice. I also included squats on the Smith machine: 45, 90, 135, (10), 185 (5…not quite as deep), 155 (7 deeper).

Afterward, I ran 1.2 miles on the treadmill (ok, slight ache until I upped the incline), 3 miles on the AMT.
When I finished, my thighs felt like rocks. My legs are still too weak. My whole routine took 86 minutes.

Posts
Football Sometimes I chuckle when fans go at each other. Alabama displayed their BCS trophy at a Wall Mart and a Mississippi fan decided to have some fun with that. What you’ll see there is “People of Wal Mart” type stuff. But what is interesting are the comments; I’ll comment on a couple of the comments here:

Comment 3, from RC

I hope one of those Wal-Marters find you and stomp your ass.

Uh, exactly how is that going to happen? The people in these photos look as if they’d be strained to walk 50 feet much less get in a fight.

Comment 61, Ellis Hugh:

Anyone – from the south- who laughs at these pictures and thinks it’s something unique to Alabama – hasn’t live in the south very long.

Stop by any Wal-Mart, Knoxville, Baton Rouge, or wherever else, and you see the same thing.

True, and I’d go a bit further: go to ANY Wal Mart, North or South, and you’d more or less the same thing. What distinguishes the North from the South are the attitudes of the middle, upper middle and upper classes (economically and educationally speaking). This is discussed in the book Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State. I’ve read excerpts and it is going on my reading list.

Comment 60, Gator Fan

If the South seceded from the Union maybe other schools could win a National Championship. 8 of 12 BCS champions have been from the deep south. Try to catch up Yankee bitches.

Ok, aside from a Michigan over Florida here, Penn State over LSU and Wisconsin over Arkansas there, I’ll admit that the SEC is the best football conference in the land, at least over the last decade. But ironically, Southern fans should thank the North for that. Why? Well, if we hadn’t put a ton of pressure on them to integrate, they’d still be fielding mostly white football teams…and you can figure out how well that would work. Oh yes, those racial attitudes are a long way from being in the past. Note that in 2000 when Alabama voted to remove the (unenforceable) ban on interracial marriage, it only passed 60-40.

True, we have racism here too. But at least, we have the sense to be embarrassed by it and to NOT see it as some sort of virtue.

Other topics
Political fights Yes, lawmakers sometimes resort to physical fights. Huffington Post has a collection of them here. Surf, watch, and vote.
Here are a couple of clips involving the ladies:

(It always cracks me up when feminists bellow on about how much better behaved womyn are )

For the record, the best fight was the Indian one.

Science, Evolution

Here is how a virus enters your body and reproduces.

(hat tip: Conservation Report)

Neanderthals: Yes, they are our evolutionary cousins; we did NOT evolve from them but we have a relatively recent common ancestor. A new discovery suggests that they wore a form of make up and jewelry:

But archaeologist Joao Zilhao of the University of Bristol in England says he’s found evidence at a Spanish excavation that might change that view. He’s found shells with holes in them, apparently strung together and worn like beads. And there’s something unusual on some of the shells.

“Glitter makeup,” he says, “or shimmer makeup … where you, over a foundation, you add shiny bits of something granular that shines and reflects. When light would shine on you, you’d reflect.”

There were also several kinds of pigments, including some that had to be mixed from different ingredients.

Were Neanderthals Jewelers Or Scavengers?

Now, in those days, jewelers didn’t engrave “made by Org, Neanderthal” on their handiwork. And scientists have argued that ornaments found at Neanderthal sites were probably made by us, Homo sapiens, the smart ones. Maybe Neanderthals picked them up out of our trash.

But Zilhao doesn’t think so, and here’s why: Modern humans didn’t migrate into Europe until about 40,000 years ago.

“These shells and the associated pigment evidence is 50,000 years old,” he points out. “So, I mean, it can only be made by Neanderthals, there’s no question about that.”

So let’s say they did paint those shells. Maybe they looked nicer that way. But to archaeologists, ornaments like shells and body painting aren’t just ornaments, they’re evidence of “symbolic thinking.” Things that represent ideas. [...]

Anthropologist Alison Brooks at George Washington University says Neanderthals were known to use pigments, but crudely, like crayons. She’s surprised by the painted shells from Spain. “OK, Neanderthals went up a notch in my thinking,” she says of the research. “This is certainly the oldest and strongest evidence for Neanderthal symbolic behavior beyond just pigment use.”

So even though Homo sapiens had developed symbolic thinking before they got to Europe, perhaps Neanderthals were figuring it out for themselves. Brooks suggests that maybe it was the arrival of those modern humans that pushed them into it.

11 January 2010 (pm)

Workout notes over lunch 4000 yards. 500 warm up (slow), 5 x (25 front, 75 free) on the 2 (first couple on 2:05), 5 x 200 on the 3:30 (3:23, 22, 20, 22, 19…very slow), 500 drill/swim (fins), 5 x (25 3g, 75 free) on 2 (1:48-50), 5 x 100 IM, 500 (alt 100 paddle, free). I felt good but could muster no speed.

Sports: Yes, Mark McGuire used steroids:

Mark McGwire finally came clean Monday, admitting he used steroids when he broke baseball’s home run record in 1998.

McGwire said in a statement sent to The Associated Press on Monday that he used steroids on and off for nearly a decade.

“I wish I had never touched steroids,” McGwire said in a statement. “It was foolish and it was a mistake. I truly apologize. Looking back, I wish I had never played during the steroid era.” McGwire also used human growth hormone, a person close to McGwire said, speaking on condition of anonymity because McGwire didn’t include that detail in his statement.

Education: college students are very stressed right now:

A new study has found that five times as many high school and college students are dealing with anxiety and other mental health issues as youth of the same age who were studied in the Great Depression era.

The findings, culled from responses to a popular psychological questionnaire used as far back as 1938, confirm what counselors on campuses nationwide have long suspected as more students struggle with the stresses of school and life in general.

“It’s another piece of the puzzle — that yes, this does seem to be a problem, that there are more young people who report anxiety and depression,” says Jean Twenge, a San Diego State University psychology professor and the study’s lead author. “The next question is: What do we do about it?”

My two cents: obviously, this isn’t my area. My guesses:

1. Today’s college students call home too much. Sometimes, parents, in an effort to be helpful, interfere too much.
2. I wonder if today’s students make as many friends on campus as we did. I remember that in my day, we’d frequently have group discussions over a variety of topics. Sure, our opinions weren’t particularly well informed, but we talked and challenged each other on our ideas. When we needed homework help, we asked a friend.
3. I think this “making the campus a “safe” environment has stifled dialogue and made people on edge. We’ve also become too sensitive; students really don’t deal with bad news or negative feedback well.

In all honesty, we (my generation) had more fun in college than today’s students do, on the whole. At least, that is what I think.

Of course, I do NOT have hard evidence to back up any of my claims; I’d love to see an experiment that ties “calling home frequently” with being well adjusted to college.

Because these comments aren’t based on anything other than limited observation (as a college professor) and opinion, I’d warmly welcome correction or disagreement from those who have evidence or even just a different argument.

Why is today’s post so lame? I am trying to ease back into the semester. I’ve been thinking about this topic (source of the paper)
Basically this is the idea: if you’ve had differential equations, you probably remember differential equations like this:
. Now if the term were missing, we’d have classic resonance. But with it in, we have a damped system whose driving function is at resonant frequency. Now suppose we change the coefficient (the spring constant) of the term as follows: , that is, we make the spring “age” exponentially by making the spring constant go to zero with time. What happens? That is the study of the paper I am reading.

Book Report: The Greatest Show on Earth: the Evidence for Evolution by Richard Dawkins

References:
Jerry Coyne: Why Evolution is True.

Ricard Dawkins: The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution.

Douglas Futuyma: Science on Trial: The Case for Evolution.

I know, it is unusual to start a report with the references. But I think it is appropriate here. Note that The Greatest Show on Earth (GSOE) and Why Evolution is True (WEIT) were published in 2009 whereas Science on Trial (SOT) was first published in 1982 and re-released in 1995.

This post is about GSOE.
Who would be interested in this book?
1. I’d recommend that anyone who is interested in learning about evolution read this book, even if you already accept it. I should point out that the fact that evolution happened is NOT under dispute in scientific circles (e. g., science departments at mainstream universities, medical research centers, scientific research laboratories). It is true that there are a relative handful of people with scientific training that deny evolution, but any field (even mathematics; see Underwood Dudley’s wonderful book Mathematical Cranks) has at least a few crackpots. But on the whole, scientists don’t spend time debating the truth of evolution.

So evolution is easy to accept; after all, science based on evolution works (e. g., vaccines need to be updated, pests evolve resistance to chemicals that are supposed to control them, etc.).

But accepting it and knowing something about it are two very different things, and reading GSOE will help you at least understand a little bit about it.

2. If you know a bit about evolution but wish to be able to explain to reasonably intelligent, fair minded individuals WHY evolution is accepted by scientists, this book is also for you.

3. If you wish to be able to talk to reasonably intelligent people about why so called “intelligent design” is not only wrong but completely unreasonable, this book is for you.

4. Of course, I’d point out that nothing in this book is going to convince the die hard believer in creationism and intelligent design; after all, the retort “I don’t know why The Almighty did it that way but I know that He did” is a non-falsifiable statement. But you might be able to convince such a person that one cannot arrive at creationism/ID by scientific means; accepting creationism/ID is purely a matter of religious faith. This is important as it is illegal to teach “conclusions based on religious faith” in public schools.

5. I should also point out that Dawkins does NOT attack religion in GSOE. He certainly attacks claims made by creationists/ID types, but he does NOT attack theists. Those thinking “gee, I’d like a good book on evolution but I don’t want to see my religion being attacked or put down” would enjoy this book.

Why is there a need for this book?
I see two basic reasons:
1. Evolution is often not taught well (when it is taught at all) and

2. Though there is no scientific debate on whether evolution happened or not, there is a public debate (albeit mostly between ignorant people). Surprisingly, I’ve known at least two non-religious people who think (or thought) that evolution is nonsense; this is a sort of a “if I don’t understand it, it must be BS” type of response.

What did I learn from GSOE?

1. There is no master plan for body development; the growth of living things depends on individual cells following local rules. ((Chapter 8: You did it yourself in nine months). Dawkins says “DNA, then, is emphatically not a blueprint.” (page 215). Basically, the body emerges from its various stages by the individual cells obeying “local rules”; that is, the DNA contains information to tell the cell “if you encounter this condition, do that” and THAT is how the cells develop! That sounds incredulous, but that is how it works.

It is a bit like people playing pick-up basketball in which each player plays man to man defense by reacting to what he/she sees without there being any preassigned “role” for that person or some coach saying “do this or that”. Dawkins then goes on to show examples of this phenomenon.

My favorite examples of how this works comes from SOT (page 48):

Take, for example, the experiments of the French embryologist A. Hampe. The drumstick of a chicken contains two bones-the short fibulaand the larger tibiotarsus. Reptiles have a well-developed tibia (shank bone)and fibula, and separate ankle bones, which anatomist have long believed corresponded to part of the bird’s tibiotarsus. Hampe inserted a thin sheet of mica between the developing tibia and fibula of a chicken embryo, and the reptilian arrangement-separate ankle bones and a well-developed fibula-developed perfectly. [...]

An even more striking experiment was reported recently by E. J. Kollar and C. Fisher in the journal Science. Even though birds normally never develop teeth, these experimenters were able to induce embryonic tissue from the jaw of a chicken to develop teeth, complete with enamel, by laying it over tissue from the jaw of a mouse embryo. The teeth developed from the chicken cells, but in response to chemical signals from the underlying mouse tissue.

Of course, these examples were included in SOT to show the connections in the evolutionary tree of life, but I think that they are a good demonstration on how cells respond to “local rules”.

2. There is an excellent section on the Michigan State experiment by Richard Lenski (pages 116-133). Basically, Lenski (and his many collaborators) ran an evolutionary experiment on E. coli bacteria. Basically they took a colony of this and divided it into separate colonies. The put evolutionary pressures on the bacteria and showed how the colonies evolved to solve the problem of having to be able to live off of a different fuel source; each colony evolved to use the “new” fuel but did so by different mutations (in a different order) and furthermore they showed that colonies with “partial mutations” that didn’t help them directly at the moment were better able to use the new fuel source.

In short, we had separate lines of evolution in the “same direction”, via different paths.

3. The effects of geologic change on evolution were discussed; (Chapter 9: The Ark of the Continents); this shows that on different islands/land masses, one observes distinctly different species which have common lineage. Also, one observes species evolving to fit an evolutionary niche. For example: why are lemurs only found in Madagascar? Why are kangaroos only found in Australia? Why can one identify the Galapagos island that a tortoise lives on by its shell marking? Evolution is the only theory that makes sense of this.

4. Chapter 11: History Written all Over us: talks about how we can infer the things our ancestors went through by our current genetic code. Also, we can infer that we were far from intelligently designed by the mess of our internal organs/veins/blood vessels. This shows natural jury-rigging. One good example: Laryngeal nerve runs from our brain to our larynx but goes around an artery of our heart! Why? Well, when we were embryos, we had some vestiges of our “fish-like” past. and the nerve ran from our brain to the past vestiges of our gills (pharyngeal arches). So when we straighten up as we develop, the nerve is “hooked” by the artery.

5. Chapter 10, The Tree of Cousinship: the subsection What Would D’Arcy Thompson Have Done with a Computer (pages 308-315) discusses skeletal homology between groups of animals (e. g., mammals) and notes that the skeletons and subsections of the skeletons are related by topological homeomorphisms! (that is, there is a continuous bijection with continuous inverse that relates the skeletons and the individual bones). Actually, the maps he talks about are stronger than homeomorphisms as they preserve structures; I’d call them “smooth” homeomorphisms (diffeomorphisms), but never mind that.
Now the question is why should this be so? The answer: remember that speciation occurs as a result of mutations, and mutations act on the unborn animal; basically they say “lengthen this a bit” or “curve that a bit”, and a series of such mutations leads to speciation. More radical changes are astronomically more difficult to effect. So homological equivalence (mathematically: topological equivalence) is exactly what one would expect from a gradual evolutionary process.

Of course there is much more in GSOE than I’ve outlined here (example: people who enjoy philosophy will enjoy the section on suffering and nature).

I’d recommend reading this book and WEIT.

I find it odd that I didn’t write a review on WEIT when I finished it. There is some overlap with GSOE but there are different things there as well; there is an interesting chapter on how sexual selection drives evolution as well as more discussion on other mechanisms of evolution (natural selection, genetic drift) and how these work.

NFL 10 January: one competitive game

In the first game, the Ravens broke an 83 yard touchdown run on the first play of the game. They then sacked the Patriot quarterback on the next series forcing a fumble at the Patriot 17 and then drove it in.
It was 14-0 before the Patriots knew what hit them.

An exchange of punts followed; then the Ravens intercepted the Patriots at the 25 and drove it in again. ANOTHER interception followed, which the Ravens converted to a field goal. It was 24-0 and that was how the first period ended!

It was 24-7 at the half and ended 33-14. The stats were not that unbalanced; the Ravens out gained New England 268-196 and had 234 rushing yards; the 3 interceptions and fumble were huge. The Patriots got one score that was set up by a muffed punt.

Clearly, the Patriots are on the downslope of their dynasty. They are still good (early in the season) but evidently age and injuries took their toll. The Raven defense was smothering but will be tested against the Colts.

Game 2:

In the third quarter, it was 31-10. Then the Packers started to pass at will; they pulled to within 31-17, ran an unexpected onside kickoff which worked and then pulled to 31-24. They then fell behind 38-24 which is how the 3′rd quarter ended.

The Packers pulled to 38-31, then 38-38 . As Troy Aikman said, “no one can cover anyone” in this game. The Cardinals went up 45-38 only to be tied at 45 right after the 2 minute warning.

But the Cardinals got the ball back, moved it, but then with 9 seconds to go, MISSED a 34 yard field goal.

So it went to overtime. Green Bay got the ball first and on 3′rd down, the quarterback was sacked while attempting to pass; the ball was caught (fumble? interception?) in the air and run in…Cardinals win 51-45.

The Cardinals had 531 yards of offense; the Packers 493…and the game was decided on a defensive play.

So how did my playoff picks do?

Against the spread: Won: Jets + 3, Ravens + 3.5, Cardinals -2.5. Lost: Eagles + 4.
Straight up: won them all.

3-1 Against the spread, 4-0 straight up.

(photos from yahoo)

10 January 2010: II

Workout notes weights (curls, military, bench press with dumbbells), lat pull downs, pull-ups, yoga leg lifts. I went through this routine twice with the following weights: 25 curl, 40 military (a third set of 5 with 45), 60 bench (with a 3′rd set with 65…10 reps).

Then I did 1.2 miles of running on the treadmill (10 mpm, with 4 minutes at 9:40 mpm), raised the incline from 0, 2, 3. Then 30 minutes on one elliptical, (3.4 miles), 60 minutes on another (7.5 miles in 61 minutes) so 12 total.

Note: most of the elliptical trainers used to have a 60 minute “club limit”; now they have been switched to a 30 minute “club limit”. Therefore I will probably cancel my Riverplex membership; I fully understand having a “30 minutes if others are waiting rule” but this is a machine limit. The reality is that the Riverplex is set up for the typical “not in shape” person who wants a little bit of exercise and NOT for those who want to train. And, to be honest, were I not injured, I’d be slopping around outside anyway.

Posts

This is what it is like to have a conversation with an ID/creationist. It is a bit like trying to have a calculus conversation with someone who doesn’t understand basic algebra or arithmetic; it is all but impossible.

Nature Nature is NOT the harmonious, altruistic system that others imagine:

Scientists used to believe that prides—groups of a few to more than a dozen related females typically guarded by two or more males—were organized for hunting. Other aspects of the communal lifestyle—the animals’ affinity for napping in giant piles and even nursing each others’ young—were idealized as poignant examples of animal-kingdom altruism. But Packer and his collaborators have found that a pride isn’t formed primarily for catching dinner or sharing parenting chores or cuddling. The lions’ natural world—their behavior, their complex communities, their evolution—is shaped by one brutal, overarching force, what Packer calls “the dreadful enemy.”

Other lions. [...]

Note: this is a longer article and is worth reading. On an aside, read the self-serving comments made by the @ssholes who talk about their “big game hunts”; they argue that allowing big game hunting will give the locals a reason to preserve the lions as a whole.

What self-serving jerks. Words cannot convey the utter contempt I feel for these underendowed losers.