No, this isn’t me at all!

Is it?

ANIMAL CAMOUFLAGE

Have you ever wondered why a tiger is colored as it is?

Surf to the Conservation Report for a startling photo and see for yourself.

Tom Tancredo: too wingnutty for Fox News!!!!

Kudos to Fox for denouncing this.

By the way, this is what Barack Obama really said (about “fundamentally different”)

Rocket City Run 5K 2010

I really wanted to walk with my daughter at least once, so today we did just that.
This was the Rocket City 5K which I had run and walked in the past. But given my recent (15 days ago) knee surgery, I was still a bit gimpy.

Basically we started way back and Olivia and I got to mile 1 in 15:48; the knee was a bit stiff and we had some downhill (not good). I saw the runners on the way back; Pat Arnold (someone I used to see in the Riverplex at 5 am) was on his way back and won the race. But the knee gradually felt better and better and so I was able to pick up the pace somewhat. Mile 2 came at 30:39 (14:55 second mile) and the uphill final mile seemed to help. I did get one brief twinge (bad step) which persuaded me to slow down. We finished in 46:40 (46:52 official), with 16:01 for the last 1.1 miles (14:33 pace for the last 1.1). Overall pace: 15:01 minutes per mile.

Strangely enough, the knee got loser and not tighter. And yes, my stiff knee and weak muscles limited me; I was not taxed aerobically.

I took some photos too; my friend Tracy Harris went with us. Tracy took me to and from knee surgery, and was the first person I saw when I woke up after the operation.

Officially: 224 out of 234. Yuck.

Storm clouds threatened but only showered briefly prior to the race; they rolled right past us.

The clearing in the other direction.

Tracy and Olivia

Tracy with Larry McMasters; Larry is a long standing fixture in our running community and used to run a 16 minute 5K. Now-a-days, 21:xx is more like it.

I’m the one in the white beard.

This is the race photo.
I like it that Fujimo Sports gives you the image download option.

Sam Fan: RIP, my friend.

Sam Fan died yesterday.

Here he is with his wife, Lori Winters, who stood by with him until the end:

I remember Sam as someone who walked around in slacks, coat, tie, and old running shoes. He was a fixture in our local intellectual community, and active researcher, and a cello player with the Peoria Symphony Orchestra. He also played in smaller gigs and once played at a fundraiser for Harvey Gantt, who ran a courageous race against the noxious Jesse Helms (getting 47.4 percent of the vote). Sam was at Duke University at that time.

Sam served as President of the Bradley Faculty Senate and stayed active until his last semester (spring 2010); though he was very tired and ill from his cancer treatments (lymphoma), he stayed in the Senate, made valuable contributions and worked with research students. His department had to force him to not teach classes so as to conserve his strength.

Sam was also an avid runner and ran almost every day with the lunchtime running crowd; typically they’d finish a 5 mile course in 33-37 minutes. I ran with him on a few occasions and in a few races; in his mid to late 30′s he worked himself to a low 19 minute 5K run. A couple of times, he won the faculty division on campus 5K races, finishing under 20:30 for the distance.

I had many a good conversation with him about running. But he was always the scientist. When I lamented that I was slow (when I was running about a 20:30 5K), someone else pointed out that I had placed well in the race and in my age group. Sam replied: “he isn’t slow, but he is slow for someone who runs as much as he does.”

For a while, he lived 4 houses down from me (on Cooper Street) and he hosted my bachelor party the night before I got married to Barbara.
Since then, he found Lori Winters and got married; they moved to the other side of town.

Unfortunately, Sam’s good luck with health ran out when he contracted lymphoma. He put up a valiant battle, but the standard treatments didn’t work and he ended up having too few stem cells to receive that type of therapy (his family didn’t match him). Eventually, complications took him to the hospital where he contracted a fungal lung infection which eventually killed him.

He left us way too soon (56); I miss him already.

This is what he was known for professionally:

Sam Fan did his undergraduate work at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and earned two graduate degrees from the University of Illinois – Urbana-Champaign. He is associate professor in biology at Bradley University, where he served two terms (’06-’08) as President of the University Senate. He teaches immunology and microbiology for upper division science majors, and introductory cell biology to freshman biology majors. In addition, he teaches general education classes on genetics, “Biotechnology and Society,” and to graduate students in the Masters in Liberal Studies program, “Controversial Issues in Biology.” His research focuses on how macrophages acquire and relinquish functional capacities. He is an adjunct faulty member at the University of Illinois College of Medicine where he participates in the second year pathology course. In his parallel life Sam is a member of the Peoria (IL) Symphony.

Outreach Activities:

* He acknowledged BEN in a poster presentation “The NIH Videocast: A Vehicle For Curriculum And Cultural Change”at ASMCUE 2007. (Submitted to MicrobeLibrary, and being revised for resubmission.)
* He made a formal, hour-long presentation on BEN and NSDL, entitled “National Science Digital Libraries,” in the Bradley University Library “Speak Out” series, April 2008. The presentation was also e-mailed to faculty members from the engineering college who were unable to attend.
* He acknowledged BEN in a poster presentation “A Laboratory Exercise that Correlates Electron Transport, Energy Production, Cilia Mobility, and Osmosis” at ASMCUE 2008. (Presentation will be submitted to MicrobeLibrary.)

Note: his newspaper obituary is here (with a link to make comments):

PEORIA – Samuel Sum Yee Fan, 56, of Peoria died Friday, July 23, 2010, after a rigorous battle with cancer.

He was born May 29, 1954, in Hong Kong to Fan Hai Yin and the late Grace Kwong Nam Chu Fan. He married Lori Winters on July 10, 2004, on Table Rock Lake in Branson, Mo. She survives.

He is also survived by his father of Hong Kong; two sisters, Felicia (Jeffrey) Campbell of New York City and their daughter, Gwyneth Campbell, and Julia (Bruce) Chik of Valencia, California, and their children, Jennifer and Teddy Chik; nieces and nephews, Cory Winters of Springdale, Ark., and Kaleb and Kylee Winters of Lenexa, Kan.; Lori’s parents, Neil and Pat Winters of Branson, Mo.; and Lori’s sisters, Lanee Winters of Branson, Mo., and Kari Winters of Charlotte, N.C.

Sam earned his undergraduate degree in microbiology from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, followed by his M.S. in microbiology and Ph.D. in immunology from the University of Illinois. He did postdoctoral research at Duke University from 1985 to 1992.

Dr. Fan was a passionate and accomplished educator. He joined the Bradley University biology department in 1992, specializing in microbiology. He touched the lives of hundreds of students who now are successful doctors, veterinarians, nurses, researchers and more. He was a proud and active participant in the life of the university. He served for 15 years on the University Senate, including two years as president.

He completed two sabbaticals at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., in cell biology.

Sam loved to teach students of all ages, serving as clinical assistant professor in pathology for the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria, teaching short courses for Bradley’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, and speaking at service clubs.

Wherever Sam was in the world, his cello accompanied him. He was a member of both the Durham, N.C., and Peoria Symphony Orchestras (PSO), and rarely declined an invitation to gig for weddings and special events. He boasted about playing with the likes of Yo-Yo Ma, but the best times he had included informal play dates at the homes of beloved quartet members and friends, and his annual trips to Bennington, Vt., for the Chamber Music Conference. Sam served as the players’ representative to the PSO from 1998 to 2002 and proudly served on the PSO music director selection committee in 2009-2010.

Sam enjoyed the networking and outreach activities of Rotary Club of Peoria-North since 2003.

He loved to travel, had a passion for good wine at a great price and was an excellent cook and an avid runner. He loved to dance. His unique brand of humor, quiet authority, brilliant mind and generous spirit will be missed.

Cremation has been accorded. A celebration of Sam’s life will be held on Sunday, Aug. 1, 2010, at 2 p.m. at Dingeldine Music Center on the campus of Bradley University.

In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions can be made to Bradley University or the Peoria Symphony Orchestra.

To send online condolences, please visit www.peoriafuneral.com.

24 July 2010

Racewalking A friend describes her success at the US Masters meet and links to some photos. Her technique is excellent.

Mind: our ideas of “fairness” are not uniquely human and are the probably the product of evolution. Here are snippets of an article by David P. Barash which appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education: (I recommend reading it all)

In a much-noted laboratory experiment several years ago, described in the report “Monkeys Reject Unequal Pay,” the primatologists Sarah F. Brosnan and Frans B.M. de Waal trained capuchin monkeys to perform a certain task for which they received cucumber slices. The monkeys performed just fine, until they were permitted to see others being rewarded with grapes, a higher-value payment. Previously acquiescent, many of the cucumber-receivers promptly stopped participating, sometimes even throwing those measly, unfair cucumber payments out of their cage. Aversion of that sort is well established among Homo sapiens as well—even though, at first blush, it appears irrational and, thus, paradigm-busting for economists trained in the Homo economicus model whereby people are considered to be “rational and utility-maximizing” creatures. Behavioral economists call it “inequity aversion”—the tendency to turn down a perfectly good offer if others are getting a better deal.

Inequity aversion makes sense for a social species like capuchin monkeys, which sometimes engage in cooperative hunting, with food rewards to be distributed when the hunt is successful; if a participant’s payoff is not commensurate with his or her effort—and if others receive a disproportionately generous return—then further participation may well be personally counterproductive. What looks superficially like spiteful grudge-keeping could thus be adaptive equity-insistence. [...]

In the “Ultimatum Game,” a laboratory setup favored by social psychologists and behavioral economists, human beings insist upon fairness, even at the apparent cost of their immediate best interest. In this simple game, one individual is given some money—say $10—and then is instructed to propose a take-it-or-leave-it division with another individual. Thus, Player 1 may propose an equal split ($5 for each), or $9.99 for herself and one cent for Player 2, and so forth, whereupon the other player accepts or rejects the ultimatum; no second chances.

Logically, Player 2 should accept any offer, regardless of its seeming equity, since even a penny is better than nothing. There is considerable cross-cultural variation in the actual responses of individuals on the receiving end of such ultimatums, and yet to the surprise of many scientists, there is a widespread tendency to reject offers in which the recipient gets less than about 30 percent of the total. Most people would prefer to abandon the whole deal, so that no one gets anything, rather than be on the receiving end of an unfair distribution.

In fact, in most cases, the individual who gets to determine the division actually proposes something not too far removed from 50/50, almost never demanding a strongly asymmetric distribution. A generous interpretation is that, in addition to a fairness instinct that generates aversion to being presented with an unfair situation, people are also predisposed to be fair. Alternatively, maybe they are simply being selfish realists who intuit the fairness instinct of others and realize that a blatantly unfair ultimatum is liable to result in getting nothing. It is always possible that people are less predisposed toward genuine fairness than they are to the appearance of fairness, all the while secretly hoping to obtain an unfair share for themselves. Those yelling at political meetings may be angry at large banks receiving millions while small businesses go begging; or they may want the government to bail them out, too. Those incensed at the prospect of federal relief for people upside-down on their mortgages often yell “No fair, No fair!” since they have been paying their debts without comparable assistance. Similarly, anger over proposed immigration reform often revolves around a perceived asymmetry: Why should “they” get leniency when “my people” played by the rules?

For a fairness instinct to have evolved by natural selection, those who possessed it must have been disproportionately successful in projecting their genes for it into the future. How might that have happened? Wouldn’t each individual be more fit taking whatever he or she could get, rather than turning down opportunities simply because they were unfair and thereby sometimes getting nothing at all? Why bother yourself with what others are getting—i.e., with fairness—instead of just trying to maximize your own payoff? [....]

But since evolution favors whatever maximizes relative fitness, it smiles not only upon those who do well, but also upon those who frown on competitors poised to do better. One way to achieve the approval of natural selection, therefore, is not only to strive to maximize one’s own payoff but also to monitor that of others, and to complain loudly if it seems too high, especially if such a complaint is at all likely to better the situation of those who act as Robin Hood or who cheer him on in the name of fairness. [...]

A focus on fairness points, interestingly, to a contradiction in free-market systems: On the one hand, it is only fair that people be given a chance to better themselves, and patently unfair if they are prevented from doing so. But on the other, given the inherent differences among individuals, as well as their socioeconomic discrepancies, the outcome of freedom is certain to be unequal, and thus unfair.

Although most people agree that fairness is a good thing, they disagree as to how it is to be achieved. Hence most of the controversy—and anger—over domestic politics. For the political right wing, it isn’t fair for society to impose taxes, to use one person’s hard-earned money for the betterment of others, to restrict personal freedom (including the freedom to pursue unfettered private enterprise and even, in some cases, the freedom to pollute and destroy the environment). Yet it is fair for government to restrain malefactors. For those on the political left, it goes without saying that equal opportunity is fair. Moreover, for many it is necessary but not sufficient: Equal outcome is the holy grail of social fairness, to which the political right responds that it is unfair to insist on equality of outcome when individuals are not identical, whether in their biology, their effort, or their luck.

Morality: what about it? Here is David Brooks:

Where does our sense of right and wrong come from? Most people think it is a gift from God, who revealed His laws and elevates us with His love. A smaller number think that we figure the rules out for ourselves, using our capacity to reason and choosing a philosophical system to live by.

Moral naturalists, on the other hand, believe that we have moral sentiments that have emerged from a long history of relationships. To learn about morality, you don’t rely upon revelation or metaphysics; you observe people as they live.

Uh, how about natural selection acting over over 100,000 years? Why the “god gave it to us” option is even taken seriously, I can’t understand.
But let’s move on:

People who behave morally don’t generally do it because they have greater knowledge; they do it because they have a greater sensitivity to other people’s points of view. Hauser reported on research showing that bullies are surprisingly sophisticated at reading other people’s intentions, but they’re not good at anticipating and feeling other people’s pain.

The moral naturalists differ over what role reason plays in moral judgments. Some, like Haidt, believe that we make moral judgments intuitively and then construct justifications after the fact. Others, like Joshua Greene of Harvard, liken moral thinking to a camera. Most of the time we rely on the automatic point-and-shoot process, but occasionally we use deliberation to override the quick and easy method. We certainly tell stories and have conversations to spread and refine moral beliefs.

For people wary of abstract theorizing, it’s nice to see people investigating morality in ways that are concrete and empirical.

Ok, that section is pretty good. But unfortunately, David Brooks (who is a smart guy, even if he is a conservative) can’t stay away from giving a nod of credibility to the woo:

At this conference, they barely mentioned the yearning for transcendence and the sacred, which plays such a major role in every human society.

Their implied description of the moral life is gentle, fair and grounded. But it is all lower case. So far, at least, it might not satisfy those who want their morality to be awesome, formidable, transcendent or great.

Of course, on logical grounds he is right; many do “think” that way. But, well, never mind. I am glad that he took this topic on.

Rachel Maddow: The Obama paradox

Rachel Maddow: The Obama paradox, posted with vodpod