25 January 2011

Workout notes With Lynn. Yoga, then 3 mile run (2.3 miles, conked out, then .7 miles more; 10:10, then 4 reps of 0-1-2 at 9:30, then 7 minutes more), 12 minutes elliptical, then 2 miles of walking at 25:40 walking on the treadmill (some hills).
Yoga was ragged, my knee doesn’t quite straighten all the way nor does it bend all of the way.

I am getting stronger but I have a long, long, long way to go.

What I am doing: my latest blog post on Lebesgue integration and measure theory.

Posts
Here is an advance in number theory (not my area, but interesting nevertheless):

For centuries, some of the greatest names in math have tried to make sense of partition numbers, the basis for adding and counting. Many mathematicians added major pieces to the puzzle, but all of them fell short of a full theory to explain partitions. Instead, their work raised more questions about this fundamental area of math.

Emory mathematician Ken Ono is unveiling new theories that answer these famous old questions.

Ono and his research team have discovered that partition numbers behave like fractals. They have unlocked the divisibility properties of partitions, and developed a mathematical theory for “seeing” their infinitely repeating superstructure. And they have devised the first finite formula to calculate the partitions of any number.

“Our work brings completely new ideas to the problems,” Ono says. “We prove that partition numbers are ‘fractal’ for every prime. These numbers, in a way we make precise, are self-similar in a shocking way. Our ‘zooming’ procedure resolves several open conjectures, and it will change how mathematicians study partitions.”[...]

On the surface, partition numbers seem like mathematical child’s play. A partition of a number is a sequence of positive integers that add up to that number. For example, 4 = 3+1 = 2+2 = 2+1+1 = 1+1+1+1. So we say there are 5 partitions of the number 4.

It sounds simple, and yet the partition numbers grow at an incredible rate. The amount of partitions for the number 10 is 42. For the number 100, the partitions explode to more than 190,000,000.

“Partition numbers are a crazy sequence of integers which race rapidly off to infinity,” Ono says. “This provocative sequence evokes wonder, and has long fascinated mathematicians.”

By definition, partition numbers are tantalizingly simple. But until the breakthroughs by Ono’s team, no one was unable to unlock the secret of the complex pattern underlying this rapid growth.

Economics: what you know about “socialist Europe” isn’t necessarily so:

One simple indicator is the fraction of prime-working-age adults — that is, 25-54 — that are, in fact, employed. Why focus on that age group? Because employment rates for the young are strongly affected by things like student aid policy, while those for the over-55 set are strongly affected by retirement policy; so if you want to know how many of the people who really should be working are managing to find jobs, the 25-54 sample is useful. Here’s America versus the cheese-eaters over the years:

n the 90s, with US employment surging while France (and much of Europe) was having trouble creating jobs, there was a lot of talk about the European employment problem. By the eve of the current crisis, however, the European job picture had changed a lot for the better, while even a business-cycle recovery didn’t seem to do much for US jobs.

Read on and see another graph comparing the EU to the US.

Religion: well, just read:

Authorities have charged a South Carolina woman with felony animal cruelty, saying she hanged her nephew’s pit bull from a tree with an electrical cord and burned its body because the dog chewed on her Bible.

Animal control officers said Monday that 65-year-old Miriam Smith told them she killed a female dog named Diamond because it was a “devil dog” and she worried it could harm neighborhood children. Authorities said bond wasn’t immediately set for Smith, who remains jailed in Spartanburg County after her weekend arrest.
[...]

Hmm, the DOG is of the devil?

At least I like the Ad…

24 January 2011 (PM)

Workout notes I might be getting a quad/hamstring imbalance. Sometimes when I do the stretch in which you stand on one leg, grab the ankle of the other leg and draw your foot up to your butt (ideally), the hamstring in my bent leg starts to cramp.

Note: I sometimes do it both ways: note that the foot can be grabbed by the arm on the same side or the opposite side.

So, what am I going to do about it? I’ll probably have to add hamstring curls and an exercise such as this one:

Personal photos
Spot the Dork, 2011

Hint: I am dressed for indoor running and am wearing a blue shirt…toward the middle.

Spot the Dork, 1973

I am number 64 in both photos; we wore old orange Johnson High jerseys. Note how lumbering I look, though I am about to engage in a gang tackle. I’ve never been graceful in my life; note the long pad on my lower right shin; I had broken my fibula a couple of months earlier.

Politics
From Gov. Pawlenty:

Great trailer, Governor! When does this come out on DVD??

Hey, Republicans think that reality should correspond to movies so this will probably play well with the base.

Economics
Paul Krugman uses the idea of baby-sitting coops to explain certain kinds of economic problems.

Of course, many will be closed to economic facts because it doesn’t fit their fantasies:

Something really strange has happened to the debate over economic policy in the face of the Great Recession and its aftermath — or maybe the real point is that events have revealed the true nature of the debate, stripping away some of the illusions. It’s a bigger story than any one point of dispute — say, over the size of the multiplier, or the effects of quantitative easing — might suggest. Basically, in the face of what I would have said is obviously a massive shortfall of aggregate demand, we’re seeing on all-out attack on the very notion that the demand side matters.

This isn’t entirely new, of course. Real business cycle theory has been a powerful force within academic economics for three decades. But my sense is that the RBC guys had very little impact on public or policy discussion, simply because what they said seemed (and was) so disconnected from actual experience.

Now, however, we’re seeing a much more widespread attack on demand-side economics. More than that, it’s becoming clear that many people don’t so much disagree with the idea that demand matters as find it abhorrent, incomprehensible, or both. I fairly often get comments to the effect that I can’t possibly believe what I’m saying about monetary or fiscal policy, that no sensible person could believe that printing money or engaging in deficit spending will increase output and employment — never mind that all I’m saying is what Econ 101 textbooks have been saying for the last 62 years.

So what’s going on here? [...]

He makes a point about Say’s law and then makes a second point:

Second, the reasons so many people find the notion of inadequate demand abhorrent are, in part, bound up with notions of morality. I’ve been writing a bit about monetary morality in the context of inflation and the gold standard; but this goes deeper than policy. It’s becoming clear to me that a substantial number of writers on economics find the whole idea that the economy can suffer because people are too thrifty, insufficiently willing to spend, deeply repugnant. I’m the sort of person who finds the notion that sometimes virtue is vice and prudence folly interesting; but it’s clear that a number of people find that notion just plain evil. The world shouldn’t be like that — and therefore it isn’t.

See: if something violates a moral sensibility of a conservative, then it can’t be good and the principle can’t be true! Further on:

It’s kind of shocking if you think about it. Here we have a huge, hard-won intellectual achievement [Keynesian economics], one that accounts very well for the world we actually see, and yet it’s being thrown away because it doesn’t go along with ideological preconceptions. Once that sort of thing starts, where does it stop? The next thing you know, the theory of evolution will get the same treatment. Oh, wait.

In other words, the hard headed, hard core trickle down types are the creationists of economics! That is a good way to view Republicans, isn’t it? Global warming isn’t real because, well, God is in charge? Evolution is false because it is unbiblical.

I had an argument with a Republican yesterday; he denied global warming as a hoax that corrupt scientists were pushing because, well, they were mean in some e-mails, (true, but it didn’t falsify their claims), Mars was going though a warming trend (true, but irrelevant; solar activity had nothing to do with it) and that it is cold and snowy right now!

Anyway, if want such rabble to elect you in a primary, well, Gov. Pawlenty’s reality show trailer ad will probably do the trick.

Parenting FAIL – Epic Fail Funny Videos and Funny Pictures

epic fail video – Parenting FAIL

Parenting FAIL – Epic Fail Funny Videos and Fun…, posted with vodpod

I admit it; I grew very irritated when I watched this mom and her brat….but the end was worth it. I like bright red….

24 January 2011 am

Workout notes Some stretching (not enough), sit ups, weights:
incline press: 3 sets of 135 x 7
dumbbell curls: 3 sets of 15 x 20 lbs, 1 set of 6 x 25 lbs.
rows: 3 sets of 8 x 140 (70 each arm; different leverage from the Hammer machine)
sit ups: 5 sets of 20 at inclines 9, 8, 7, 6, 5 (hard)
rotator cuff
then running; 2 miles in 19:50, break, 1 mile hill workout 0-1-2-3-0-1-2-3-0 at 9:50 mpm. This hill mile humiliated me; I was out of breath toward the end. But I know what I need to do.

Back: stiff and sore during teaching; I need to be very diligent in my PT for my back. Shoulder: zero pain last night.

Fun
Here are 20 of the best known movie quotes:

(hat tip: Mano Singham)

Science Fun
Here is another fine entry in the Animal Camouflage series at Conservation Report:

You might wonder: “who, upon seeing example after example of this, would doubt the power of natural selection?” “Goddidit” just doesn’t work, does it…unless “god” wanted predators to go hungry…which wonders why “god” made them to begin with…perhaps the prey and the predators are locked in some cosmic sin/punishment cycle?

Weirdness This article from The Legal Satyricon talks about a case in which someone in Nevada sued because a prostitute didn’t perform as advertised. Yes, this is Nevada and there ARE legal brothels there, but certain types of prostitution are technically illegal.

Science
This is a perfect case in which some might rolls their eyes and cry “political correctness” when in fact, the detractors are merely “correct” rather than “politically correct”:

A few days ago I posted a photo of an über-cute monkey, a juvenile snub-nosed golden monkey. The species lives in the mountains of central China, and is endangered because of habitat loss.

Surf to the link to see the photo; it is gorgeous! But to the larger point:

Curiously, in today’s New York Times’s Opinionator column, Richard Conniff details a tiny controversy about this very beast. The question is who gets credit for “discovering” the species. Conniff says:

Not long ago, for instance, I wrote that a 19th-century French missionary and naturalist in China, Pére Armand David, had “discovered” the snub-nosed golden monkey. A reader sent me this somewhat testy comment: “The answer to the question ‘who discovered it’ is actually the Chinese.” Père David had merely “observed it and introduced it (and many other animals) to the West and into the Western zoological system.”

There has increasingly been talk, in these postmodern times, about who gets credit for “discovering” stuff.

“Discover” really isn’t the word, is it? It would be more “started the detailed X study of it” where X means “genetic”, or whatever…provided that was the first time. I recommend reading the article.

Also from Why Evolution is true is a fine post from Greg Mayer about the problem of classifying animals into species (taxonomy):

Tuataras are very interesting animals: endemic to New Zealand, and the sole survivors of an ancient and once more widespread order of reptiles, the Sphenodontida, whose closest relatives are the squamates (lizards+snakes). I noted some of their distinctive traits in an earlier post. When a friend went to New Zealand for a visit during the holidays, I asked him to get a picture of a tuatara if one came his way, and he obliged.

Tuataras are also of interest with regard to the ” species problem”, which Jerry recently addressed with respect to how many species of elephants there are (with follow-ups here and here). Ernst Mayr defined species in 1942 as

Species are groups of actually or potentially interbreeding natural populations, which are reproductively isolated from other such group.

He goes on to talk about the controversy about another group of an animal of this type: is this other group really a different species? One has to be wary; some seem to follow “if you can tell the animals apart, then they are different species.” Well, no sighted person that I know of would have trouble telling a Chinese and an African apart but no one would say that Africans and Chinese are from different species (yes, I know, West Africans are very different from East Africans, and Chinese vary by region, etc.)

Politics/Economics
Robert Reich talks about what he hopes that President Obama says in the upcoming State of the Union address. Of course he won’t, but I can dream, can’t I? Upshot: corporate America is doing very well, but many people are NOT and that really isn’t sustainable…..and frankly it sucks for many people. Not that ANY Republicans care about the latter…

Paul Krugman goes on along similar lines. You know, “running the country as a business” really isn’t a great idea.

Bah Humbug!

Da Bears lose, and now there is a snow system parked right over us, just dumping away.

Curse you, FSM!!!

You know, of course, Bucky is a Republican….

“a book about “ants”"

My GOP Dream Ticket

Just saying….

23 January 2011

Yes, this is a big game around here. I haven’t a clue as to who will win…either game.

Workout notes 2 miles on the track (about 32 minutes), 3 mile walk on the treadmill (38:55; 26:44 hill for the first 2 and 11:49 for the last one), 1 mile elliptical. I did this with Lynn.

Note: I’ve been off of NSAIDS and Tylenol for a few days and I feel stiffer. I really need to hit yoga again. I was stiff when I woke up; the piriformis feels fine; shoulder is slightly sore but didn’t wake me up with night pain. I’ve had a little bit of pain in the inside part of the knee; nothing serious.

I don’t know why this is on my mind…