This is just wrong….wrong I tell you.

28 September 2011 issues

Workout notes
First, walking on the university indoor track: I had a 13:46 first mile and then did: 2-1-2-1-4-1-2-1-10 where the 1′s represent recovery 200 meter laps. My miles: 13:36, 11:44, 11:29, 10:25 for 47:25 for 4.

I then swam 2200 yards; the guard didn’t open the pool until 7:15 so I had only 45 minutes. So I did 2000 yards straight in 38:00 (very slow for me) then 200 front/back pull.

College Football
So the Aggies (Texas A&M) is headed to the SEC. Good riddance. They’ll fit right in; at halftime they can start with a prayer-revival service and end with a public execution, no doubt to a loudly cheering crowd. But there are past games that I remember fondly and this is one:

Well, they held the Longhorns to only 49 points, so what the heck.

As for what Rice University thinks of the Aggies:

Non-football posts

Languages
Remember when Rush Limbaugh did this?

Well, I wondered what English speakers sound like to non-English speakers.
This outstanding web page has a collection of videos of non-English speakers imitating English. What I noticed: how they imitate English depends on, surprise, their own native language.

Here is one of the better ones (short)

and here is the best one (much longer)

Science and Health

3-quarks daily pointed us toward this post which reminds us that sometimes the solution to health problems are, well, simple.

Take what must be the greatest cheap medical fix in all of history: the bar of soap. Soap never stops proving itself. As recently as 2005, a study from the slums of Karachi, Pakistan, showed that free bars of soap (and lessons in how to use them) cut rates of childhood killers like diarrhea and pneumonia by half.

But you don’t find soap in American hospitals anymore, at least not in its classic solid rectangular form. A variety of expensive improvements have replaced it, all created in response to the various ways in which modern doctors and patients reflexively undermine good, inexpensive tools.

First, we automatically capture these things for our own personal use: Bars of soap left in any public place are likely to disappear in short order. (That is why toilet paper rolls are generally locked into their little metal houses.)

Second, we find fault with them. People will actually use the observation that bar soap is “dirty” as an excuse not to wash their hands. (Studies have shown that you will not pick up somebody else’s germs from a piece of soap, however dingy it may look.)

Finally, we ignore them. Who notices a bar of soap? It does nothing for you unless you notice it — but it is so humble and boring; and sudsing, rinsing and wiping are so pedestrian. Also, if you are in a hurry, they seem prohibitively time-consuming. Studies continually show low hand-washing rates among rushed hospital personnel. Hence the large-scale adoption of more convenient liquid products, and the slow segue into alcohol-based hand sanitizers, which obviate the rinsing and wiping.

There is more there.

Society
I remember reading in Jared Diamond’s book Guns, Germs and Steel that, right now, humans have a much lower probability of dying a violent death than at any time in human history. Now there is a book which explores (and proves) this claim, and more.

Politics

Will Governor Christie run and if he does, will it matter? Frankly, I think that Nate Silver greatly overstates Mr. Christie’s talent. Sure, he sometimes says good stuff (here and here) but on the whole, he is too thin skinned and high tempered; the national media would have field day with him. Yes, he is obese and that would have been a negative a long time ago, but not in today’s America and certainly not with today’s Republicans.

Besides, if *I* find stuff to like about him, he probably won’t play well with the Republican base.