Where is the Tax Return, Mr. Romney?

Mr. Romney isn’t releasing his tax returns as other presidential candidates have (post Watergate).

I wonder why…it isn’t because capital gains are only taxed at 15 percent, is it?

Check out the site: What Mitt Pays, courtesy of the DNC.

“Sure”, you say, he is rich because he is a wealthy businessman and therefore qualified to run the economy.

Well, remember that businesses are successful when they are the most profitable; that is, when they maximize revenue with a minimum of cost. In other words, they deliver as little as they can get away with while raking the most in…and they do this by laying off workers, overworking the workers as much as they can, and by running competitors out of business.

Why anyone would want a government run “like a business” I’ll never understand; perhaps BUSINESSES should be run like a business?

Evolution, Religion, North Korea, Statism and Stuck Santa

I am about to get on the road (maybe 30 minutes from now); I have to remember to stretch a bit.

Posts
People are hailing this as an Obama victory (New York Times):

President Obama did not win much substantively with his victory Thursday over House Republicans in their showdown over extending payroll tax cuts and unemployment aid for two months. But he got a lot politically: a big start toward retiring the perception — fair or not, and even among Democrats — that in a pinch with the other party he will inevitably surrender.

Actually, I think that the Republicans may have helped themselves a bit; they showed that they can get within the shouting distance of reason if push comes to shove.

World Events How should other countries react when a despot dies? Interestingly, North Korea is upset that South Korea isn’t mourning?

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea urged South Korea on Friday to “show proper respect” over the death of its leader, Kim Jong-il, calling the South’s decision to express sympathy for the North Korean people but not to send a government delegation to Mr. Kim’s funeral next week “an unbearable insult and mockery of our dignity.”

The statement, carried on the North’s official Web site, Uriminzokkiri.com was the new Pyongyang leadership’s first comment on a South Korean policy since it announced on Monday that Mr. Kim died of heart attack last Saturday.

Though North Korea was an officially atheist country, they used “Dear Leader” as a type of public deity:

North Korea is not an example of the evils of atheism. Here are two excerpts:

Kim Jong-il, the Shining Star of Mount Paekdu, was not, of course, born in a log cabin on the mountain at all, but in exile in Siberia. (I am also unable to confirm the reports of talking birds and celestial miracles.) But the birth of a great Son to a great Father in humble-yet-holy circumstances, accompanied by heavenly signs, is very familiar, as is death and reincarnation. Mithras, a pagan sun-god, was apparently born of a virgin to great miracles, and died and was reincarnated. That story has many obvious parallels to that of Jesus Christ. In Greek mythology, Dionysius, the son of the great god Zeus, was killed and resurrected. . .

None of this is intended to mean that religious societies are all going to be like North Korea, or that religion implies dictatorship, or that all atheists are lovely people. But to suggest that North Korea is what happens when atheism holds sway in a country is equally ridiculous. Saying Kim Jong-il was a Lefty atheist is like saying that Hitler was a conservative Catholic, and we all know that that is very silly indeed.

The funniest miracle of Kim Jong-i’s life is one recounted by UK Reuters, taken from official Korean news sources:

And legend has it that the first time Kim played golf, he shot 11 holes-in-one and carded a score about 20 strokes lower than the best round ever for a professional event over 18 holes.

The first time he played golf! The man was surely a god!

The notion that dictatorships like that of North Korea are not atheist regimes but theocracies—complete with godheads, miracles, slavish worship, and sacred books—was best expressed in a talk on the “Axis of Evil” that Christopher Hitchens gave in California. I have never seen him give a better talk, and it appears to have been done entirely without notes.

This reminds me of a couple of things:
1. Remember the old Soviet Union? One of their “statist” decisions to overrule science lead to agricultural disaster.

2. Pat Robertson claimed a 2000 pound leg press. Interesting…given that Florida State football players leg press a bit more than…1/3′rd of that?

But the bottom line: one can reject the standard gods/religion and be far from what I’d call an atheist. This is also why if “making religion illegal” was on the ballot, I’d protest it. I am for religious freedom…and for persuading my friends/loved ones that there is nothing to be gained by accepting the supernatural (in any guise) or in accepting the incredible without having a substantial amount of evidence to support accepting it.

Speaking of religion: Jerry Coyne points out that many of the (educated) religious apologists do not want to accept that many (most?) believers really do accept the magical and illogical in their religious stories. It is true that SOME (mostly educated) believers use a metaphor approach; others cherry pick miracles to accept or reject (often accepting “long ago” miracles) and some just operate with cognitive dissonance; they claim to accept science but allow for selected violations of science. Francis Collins is perhaps the best known example of that.
(and yes, he is a very smart, accomplished human being; I even like him. I don’t understand him on this issue though).

And yes, rejecting a miracle claim or a belief as “nonsense” doesn’t make you an angry person.

Some science for the road
Froggy Love (via why evolution is true)

Andrew Sinnott has contributed a pair of lovely frogs, along with the story:

I thought I’d appeal to your amphibian soft spot in submitting this photo for consideration for the website. It’s a pair of Smilisca cyanosticta (blue spotted tree frog I think is the common name) in amplexus [JAC: "amplexus" is the grasping of a female by a male amphibian just before spawning] that I shot in Belize in the summer of 2009.

I was there as a research assistant for the University of Manchester studying Agalychnis moreletii and Agalychnis callidryas and for all sorts of reasons it was really hit and miss if we saw more than a handful of either species, let alone any other, but this night was like a goldmine for an amateur herper! On this six foot wide, four foot high bush overhanging the pond there were maybe eighty frogs, of I think six different species. At one point a colleague held up a two foot twig that had six or seven moreletii males clambering over each other to get to the nearest female.

If you like frogs, surf to the link for a cool photo.

Evolution tracing: there has been a breakthrough in “calibrating the molecular clock” (via Sandwalk):

The earliest fossil examples of most animal classes and phyla appear in the fossil record at about the same time in the Cambrian (about 530 million year as ago (Ma)). This period of apparent rapid divergence is referred to as the “Cambrian Explosion.”

It seemed unlikely that this disparity could have evolved in just a few million years so many scientists have been searching for fossil antecedents in the early Cambrian and Ediacaran (635-541 Ma). Many trace fossils have been found in the past few decades, indicating that the fossil animals of the Cambrian were preceded by small wormlike creatures.

The other approach has been sequence analysis. One can construct molecular phylogenies by comparing the sequences of genes in modern extant organisms. This approach has been highly successful over the past fifty years so that we now know a great deal about the relationship of the various animal phyla. The correspondence between the old morphological taxonomy and molecular evolution is the most powerful evidence we have that evolution explains the history of life [see Twin Nested Hierarchies].

The problem with sequence comparisons has always been getting accurate dates using the molecular clock. It is hard to get an accurate date when dealing with events that occurred 500 million years ago because there aren’t very many calibration points. An accurate calibration point is a known time when two lineages diverge.

Surf to the post to read the rest of the argument. There is also a chart that outlines what is going on.

Science marches on.

Almost on the Road

Workout notes
Easy 3 mile walk on “slick in selected spots” roads. I am getting ready to travel.

Posts
Not much, but here is one consequence of voting for Obama in 2008:

David Roberts reports on the EPA’s decision, finally, to regulate mercury from coal plants:

Anyone who pays attention to green news will have spent the last two years hearing a torrent of stories about EPA rules and the political fights over them. It can get tedious. After a certain point even my eyes glaze over, and I’m paid to follow this stuff.

But this one is a Big Deal. It’s worth lifting our heads out of the news cycle and taking a moment to appreciate that history is being made. Finally controlling mercury and toxics will be an advance on par with getting lead out of gasoline. It will save save tens of thousands of lives every year and prevent birth defects, learning disabilities, and respiratory diseases. It will make America a more decent, just, and humane place to live.

Let me repeat part of that: it will save tens of thousands of lives every year and prevent birth defects, learning disabilities, and respiratory diseases. This is actually a much bigger issue, when it comes to saving American lives, than terrorism.

As Roberts explains, we’ve known about these costs of mercury pollution for decades, yet it took until now to get something done. The reason is, of course, obvious: special interests, hiding behind claims of immense economic damage if anything was done, were able to block action.

Paul Krugman goes on to report that there will always be predictions of economic catastrophe and that these predictions never come true. It took a while, but this is one of many things that the current administration did right.

Progress….and lies…

Social Progress
A consequence of the removal of Don’t Ask, Don’t tell: homosexual couples can openly express affection. Here is a case when a lesbian crew member won the “first kiss” lottery; the idea is that if you won, you got to kiss your partner first after leaving the ship.

Mostly, I am happy because this means that life is now more fair. But part of me is happy because I know that this will infuriate some social conservatives!

Mitt Romney: running against a caricature of President Obama:

Yet here’s what Romney said yesterday:

Just a couple of weeks ago in Kansas, President Obama lectured us about Teddy Roosevelt’s philosophy of government. But he failed to mention the important difference between Teddy Roosevelt and Barack Obama. Roosevelt believed that government should level the playing field to create equal opportunities. President Obama believes that government should create equal outcomes.

In an entitlement society, everyone receives the same or similar rewards, regardless of education, effort, and willingness to take risk. That which is earned by some is redistributed to the others. And the only people who truly enjoy any real rewards are those who do the redistributing—the government.

The truth is that everyone may get the same rewards, but virtually everyone will be worse off.

This is, as Jonathan Chait says, Glenn-Beck crazy. Obama favors a rise in top tax rates, back to their levels of the 1990s; he has enacted a health reform that is somewhat redistributive, since the uninsured tend to be relatively low-income. But nothing Obama has ever said and none of his actions bear any resemblance to Romney’s portrait.

And Romney is supposed to be the sensible, moderate Republican candidate.

So what did President Obama say?

I’m here in Kansas to reaffirm my deep conviction that we’re greater together than we are on our own. I believe that this country succeeds when everyone gets a fair shot, when everyone does their fair share, when everyone plays by the same rules. (Applause.) These aren’t Democratic values or Republican values. These aren’t 1 percent values or 99 percent values. They’re American values. And we have to reclaim them. (Applause.) [...]

[ Theodore Roosevelt ] believed then what we know is true today, that the free market is the greatest force for economic progress in human history. It’s led to a prosperity and a standard of living unmatched by the rest of the world. But Roosevelt also knew that the free market has never been a free license to take whatever you can from whomever you can. (Applause.) He understood the free market only works when there are rules of the road that ensure competition is fair and open and honest. [...] “Our country,” he said, “…means nothing unless it means the triumph of a real democracy…of an economic system under which each man shall be guaranteed the opportunity to show the best that there is in him.”

Of course, if you point out that Mr. Romney is lying, you’d be accused of bias.

Science
Oddly enough, the perception of danger can affect reproductive rates in some species:

Abstract: Predator effects on prey demography have traditionally been ascribed solely to direct killing in studies of population ecology and wildlife management. Predators also affect the prey’s perception of predation risk, but this has not been thought to meaningfully affect prey demography. We isolated the effects of perceived predation risk in a free-living population of song sparrows by actively eliminating direct predation and used playbacks of predator calls and sounds to manipulate perceived risk. We found that the perception of predation risk alone reduced the number of offspring produced per year by 40%. Our results suggest that the perception of predation risk is itself powerful enough to affect wildlife population dynamics, and should thus be given greater consideration in vertebrate conservation and management.

Interesting…

Spandex and Shooting

I love the jiggle that comes from the recoil…

Clouds, Snowflakes and Washing it off…

Workout notes
5.1 mile course in 50:25; 25:11 at the turn around. Note: the “back” is a net uphill (80 to 100 feet) and it was chilly (40′s) and slippery (light rain today and most of yesterday). 9:50 first 1.03; 9:27 for the last. I am still a bit weak.

Posts

Via Why Evolution is True:

A meterorologist on Reddit explains how this occurs:

Meteorologist here. These are indeed Kelvin-Helmholtz waves. What is happening is that the nocturnal near-surface layers (lowest 50-100m) of the atmosphere are much more stable than the layers above it in the mornings. Until the ground heats up due to daytime heating, the surface layers stay more stable than the air over it. Kelvin-Helmholtz waves occur when the wind shear between the layers destabilizes the topmost portion of that stable layer, and entrains the air into the unstable layer. What you see is stable air being lifted, cooled, and condensed so that this process becomes visible, though this commonly happens many places without being visible.

This happens on the large gas planets; surf to the link to see a photo of this happening on Saturn.

FAIL

WIN

see more epicfails

Off to do some errands, pack and maybe, if time permits, write about mathematics.

FACEPALM…..Reading something isn’t the same as understanding it….

Sports
Here we have someone who is talking about aging and exercise:

80-Year Olds With 40-Year Old Muscle Mass – What’s Going On?

Increasing physical frailty as you age is commonly accepted as “a fact of life.”

Until recently, most studies showed that after the age of 40, people typically lose eight percent or more of their muscle mass with each passing decade.

But newer research suggests that this is not a foregone conclusion.

One recent study of 40 competitive runners, cyclists, and swimmers, ranging in age from 40 to 81, found no evidence of deterioration — the athletes in their 70s and 80s had almost as much thigh muscle mass as the athletes in their 40s.

Really? Is that what the study said? Uh…no. Here is the abstract:

Aging is commonly associated with a loss of muscle mass and strength, resulting in falls, functional decline, and the subjective feeling of weakness. Exercise modulates the morbidities of muscle aging. Most studies, however, have examined muscle-loss changes in sedentary aging adults. This leaves the question of whether the changes that are commonly associated with muscle aging reflect the true physiology of muscle aging or whether they reflect disuse atrophy. This study evaluated whether high levels of chronic exercise prevents the loss of lean muscle mass and strength experienced in sedentary aging adults. A cross-section of 40 high-level recreational athletes (“masters athletes”) who were aged 40 to 81 years and trained 4 to 5 times per week underwent tests of health/activity, body composition, quadriceps peak torque (PT), and magnetic resonance imaging of bilateral quadriceps. Mid-thigh muscle area, quadriceps area (QA), subcutaneous adipose tissue, and intramuscular adipose tissue were quantified in magnetic resonance imaging using medical image processing, analysis, and visualization software. One-way analysis of variance was used to examine age group differences. Relationships were evaluated using Spearman correlations. Mid-thigh muscle area (P = 0.31) and lean mass (P = 0.15) did not increase with age and were significantly related to retention of mid-thigh muscle area (P < 0.0001). This occurred despite an increase in total body fat percentage (P = 0.003) with age. Mid-thigh muscle area (P = 0.12), QA (P = 0.17), and quadriceps PT did not decline with age. Specific strength (strength per QA) did not decline significantly with age (P = 0.06).

Did you catch that? First, the older athletes were compared to others and not to themselves at a younger age. Next note the p-values: 0.12. What this means is that there is a 12 percent chance that differences shown was due to randomness; hence there is insufficient evidence to conclude that there is a difference. In other words, the results were inconclusive, which isn’t a surprise given n = 40 and the possibility of large standard deviations.

Groan….

Yes, you do lose muscle mass with age even if you work out; you just don’t lose it as rapidly if you are diligent.

On a somewhat less technical note
Yes, Freddie and Fannie had problems. But no, they didn’t cause the mortgage crisis:

But why did Fannie and Freddie have to be bailed out? Basically because they had virtually no capital, so that even though their losses as a percentage of assets were smaller than private institutions, the losses were still enough to put them underwater.

None of this is meant to defend what F&F did or how they behaved. But there’s no contradiction between the assertion that F&F were bad institutions run by bad people, and the assertion that they played no important role in creating the financial crisis. The widespread belief that they did play such a role is the result of an effective right-wing disinformation campaign, not serious analysis.

Sadly, the difference is too subtle for many to comprehend. I’d love to say it was just the idiot Republicans who can’t understand what they read, but…well, that would be wrong.

Now some things are really open for dispute. Politifact is supposed to be a neutral fact checking group, and they labeled the claim that the Republicans (by Paul Ryan’s proposal) wanted to end Medicare. The dispute: the Republicans proposed replacing the current single payer system with a voucher-like system to buy insurance and so, in effect, they are trying to replace our current system with another system….thereby ending our current system. Paul Krugman writes:

Steve Benen in the link above explains it, but let me just repeat the basics. Republicans voted to replace Medicare with a voucher system to buy private insurance — and not just that, a voucher system in which the value of the vouchers would systematically lag the cost of health care, so that there was no guarantee that seniors would even be able to afford private insurance.

The new scheme would still be called “Medicare”, but it would bear little resemblance to the current system, which guarantees essential care to all seniors.

How is this not an end to Medicare? And given all the actual, indisputable lies out there, how on earth could saying that it is be the “Lie of the year”?

But too many times, journalists in the spirit of “balance” try to talk about “both sides” when in fact, the symmetry doesn’t exist.

Running: the impromptu race

Workout notes Weights followed by a 4 mile walk in 48:49: 12:09 (2-1), 11:37 (3-1), 11:41 (3-1). Yep, I am still weak.
The weights: I’ll just list what I did (at a more relaxed pace than normal)
rotator cuff
Rows: 10 x 180, 10 x 200, 7 x 230
curls: 10 x 47.2, 10 x 47.2, 10 x 55.2 (pulley)
pull downs: 10 x 140, 6 x 160, 7 x 160
bench press: I fiddled with the power rack:
10 x 135, 1 x 170, 2 x 170, 1 x 170, 3 x 170, 6 x 155
sit ups: 4 sets of 30 at the highest incline
legs: 3 sets of push backs 10 x 130
adduction: 3 sets of 10 x 190
abduction: 3 sets of 10 x 190
pull ups: two sets of 5: different grips. The shoulder felt fine.
incline press: 10 x 125, 9 x 125
military (standing) 2 sets of 10 with 40 lb. dumbbells.
lunges (1 set)
———————————————–
Running: if I had some imagination, I’d embellish these stories and submit them to the erotica sites under “I never thought it would happen to me”, but here they are, sans embellishment.

In each case, I was just running just to run a workout and ended up in an impromptu race…sort of.

Case One: this was at the University of Texas over a leave from the Navy; if I remember correctly it was during the fall of 1982 on a warm day. I went with my cousin who played basketball at the outdoor courts near the football stadium; round the courts and a grass field was an old running track. It was irregular in shape but was about 4 laps to the mile. It was early evening and the lights were on.

I decided not to play basketball but instead to run some laps and so I just started running. In those days, I could run a 10K in about 41 minutes or so (on a good day). I started running easily for me (maybe 8:30 minutes per mile) and just soaked up the atmosphere.
There was a blonde woman running some laps and I quickly gained on her. I moved over and started to pass her…and she picked up the pace to stay up with me.

And so it went; the pace migrated from about 8:30 to 8:15…to about 8:00 and she stayed side by side with me (I ran on the outside). We didn’t say a word to each other, but we stayed side by side for about 3 miles; eventually I stopped and so did she.

We smiled at each other and went our separate ways. No…I didn’t get her number as I was still in the Navy and was soon to move to New York (state..)

What I remember: her hair was long and wavy; she was slender but had a kind of broad face.

Fast Forward almost 30 years (to July of 2011)
I was in Chicago with my family and decided to go running in the morning; I chose a route that took me from downtown and along the Lakeshore path. I was running south toward the Museum campus.

At about 1 mile or so I came up on a 30′ish year old woman; she had long dark hair and was wearing a ball cap…she also had a white jog bra and a black spandex “skort”. I was stumbling along at perhaps a 10:30 minutes per mile pace and started to pick it up slightly. I moved to the side so as to not startle her and when I tried to pass…she wouldn’t let me.

And so we went for the next 1.5 miles; I’d start to get ahead and she’d strain to stay with me. Eventually near the Shed Aquarium she gave out and I continued on…then I doubled back to finish my 5 miles.

No; these weren’t the only times that this happened but these were the only times when someone I didn’t know did this. In other cases, people who were jogging but who knew me from races or from the gym would strain to stay ahead of me while I racewalked. But these were people I talked to afterward; there is something a bit different when it is a total stranger.

Back in Peoria for a few…and some science and some politics

I admit that I am a bit tired. We got back from St. Louis about noon today; I took advantage of unusually mild temperatures to get in a 5 mile run outside (49:57).

The first 1.03 was 9:50; last was 9:37. I felt ok but somewhat slow; that is to be expected.

Posts
Politics During the primary race, Mr. Romney is attempting to gain some mileage by running against the President in the delusional dreams of the Republican base:

Kevin Drum erupts in justified outrage over Romney’s statement that

This is a president who fundamentally believes that the next century is the post-American century. Perhaps it will be the Chinese century. He is wrong.

As Drum says, Obama has never said anything like that. And Romney has surely already established some kind of new record: with all the bad things that have happened in American politics over the centuries, I can’t think of any candidate who has lied so freely, with so little compunction.

But there is a method to this stuff; when Romney declares that Obama has been apologizing for America, or bowing to foreign leaders, or that he believes in American decline, he’s playing into right-wing fantasies. This, the right believes, is what a liberal sounds like.

Now as far as arguing with conservatives: all we have to do to caricature them is to quote their candidates directly.

Science
Millard Fillmore’s bathtub reports on the Comet Lovejoy which orbited around the sun and lived to tell about it. Evidently, it was larger than we had thought.

Wolf to Dog Evolution
Great article, but poor headline. What the article talks about: there is evidence that some the wolf to dog trajectory started before humans started to domesticate dogs. But this transition had everything to do with humans activity: the wolves started to evolve to a canine that lived off of human left-overs and scraps. That is, human activity made it possible for natural selection to move a population of wolves in that direction, so humans had everything to do with it…just not intentionally.

A dissenting view
Daniel Dennet talks about Christopher Hitchens and how he learned “when to be rude”:

I’ve just been reviewing my experiences with Christopher Hitchens.

He informed me, entertained me, provoked me like nobody else, and I will miss his antic spirit more than I can say. I didn’t know him for long, though I’d been reading his pieces, with mixed reactions, for years. We met in early 2007, and had dinner in Las Vegas, where we were both appearing in an Amazing Randi meeting. He kindled a happy bonfire of discussion that continued intermittently in meetings and emails.

One moment stands out, and it was, in fact, the last time I saw him face to face, in November of 2009, more than two years ago. We were both appearing in a debate as part of the program of Ciudad de las Ideas, an excellent gathering held annually in Puebla, Mexico. (It’s modeled on TED-I call it TED Mex. Go. It’s well worth the visit.) One of the speakers for the other side, the God side, was Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, and after our short set pieces, the rebuttals started with the rabbi. We each were allotted four minutes only for rebuttal, and the rabbi launched into a series of outrageous claims trying to besmirch Darwin and evolutionary biology by claiming that Hitler was inspired by Darwin to organize slaughters to ensure the survival of his race. I sat there, dumfounded and appalled, and tried to figure out how best to rebut this obscene misrepresentation when my turn came.

Christopher didn’t wait his turn. “Shame! Shame!” he bellowed, interrupting Boteach in mid-sentence. It worked. Boteach backpedaled, insisting he was only quoting somebody who had thus opined at the time. Christopher had broken the spell, and a particularly noxious spell it was.

Why hadn’t I interrupted? Why had I let this disgusting tirade continue, politely waiting my turn? Because I was in diplomacy mode, polite and respectful, in a foreign country, [...]

Actually, I disagree strongly here. Shouting down someone at a debate because you don’t like what he is saying smacks of this:

I agree with what follows here:

Of all the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” Hitchens was clearly the least gentle, the angriest, the one most likely to insult his interlocutor. But in my experience, he only did it when rudeness was well deserved–which is actually quite often when religion is the topic. Most spokespeople for religion expect to be treated not just with respect but with a special deference that is supposedly their due because the cause they champion is so righteous. Then they often abuse that privilege by using their time on the stage to misrepresent both their own institutions and the criticisms of them being offered.

How should one respond to such impostures?

Dennet goes on to say that one can interrupt (which I don’t like) or just call them out when it is your turn. I can agree with the latter; liars, frauds and crackpots don’t get a free pass because they are claiming to espouse “religious ideas” and religious ideas don’t get a free pass from critique.

Example: if someone talks about Biblical values being desirable, I am going to ask them “which ones” and quote the noxious parts of the Bible. If they say “just pick out the good stuff”, I’ll ask “why not do that with other sources as well?”

Rams vs. Bengals: missed opportunities.

The Bengals beat the Rams 20-13. The game was close with the Bengals taking the lead for good at 13-6 with 13 seconds left in the third quarter.

The Rams had their chances; the defense set the offense up at midfield with an interception; the defense stopped a 4′th and 1 run at the Ram 43 and the special teams came up with a partially blocked punt.

Nevertheless, that netted the Rams just two field goals (they missed another). Though the offense looked better than last week (just over 300 yards), they could still not sustain an attack.

Still, the Rams lead 6-3 at the half and clung to a 6-6 lead in the third. But a big punt return followed by a personal foul set up the first Bengal touchdown.

Then came a disastrous sequence of events. A Ram big play was called back for holding, and then a lineman got flagged for unsportsmanlike conduct for complaining about the call. The complaint was inadvertently picked up by the field microphone and drew a standing ovation from the fans.

That lead to a punt.

Then a couple of personal foul calls aided a Bengal drive which put them up 20-6 with just over 6 minutes to go.

The Rams still had a shot, but a drive stalled near the 20 when a sack lead to a fumble. The Rams recovered but failed on 4′th and long.

Still, the Rams used their time outs and got the ball back with 2:15; a drive aided by a “prevent” defense lead to a touchdown with 1:08 to go. But the Rams couldn’t get the onside kick and that was it.

Well; I’ve seen the Rams play 5 regular season games and they have lost all of them but three of the losses were 7, 3 and 7 points. Then again, that is common in the NFL; the weak teams end up losing lots of close games.

And I admit: I enjoy the games; I really enjoy the high level of play.

Notes: Barbara got us a room right next to the stadium; it has a fitness room and a hot breakfast. I can recommend it.
Seats: I like getting the fist row of the terrace (upper deck) (row AA in some sections, row CC in others). These are economical and yet offer and great view of the game. You are high up enough to have a great view of the whole field but not so high up that you can’t see well; I end up not using my binoculars.

They also had Bradford jerseys on sale (2 for the price of one) so I got one for my mom for her birthday. It is something she can wear around the house and my mom likes momentos.

The Rams also gave away free Marshall Faulk hats; he got inducted into the Hall of Fame and his name was placed in the “Ring of Fame”.

It was ironic; Sam Bradford did not play due to an ankle sprain (and probably shouldn’t have played last week either).

(photos from yahoo)

Update This pair of penalties hurt the Rams but….

Science Saturday: evolution in action, arctic methane and suboptimal teaching tactics

Teaching:

You mean we can’t do things like this anymore?

LIVINGSTON, Tenn. — A first-year teacher from Overton County may lose his job after writing the word “stupid” across a student’s forehead with permanent marker, a district official told WSMV-TV in Nashville.

The math teacher has been suspended indefinitely, Matt Eldridge, director of the Overton County Schools, told the NBC television station.

“We’re here to help the children and not to hurt them,” Eldridge said, adding “One word can break a child. I mean, I’ve got three children. I wouldn’t want it done to mine.”

The incident happened last week at Allons Elementary, where a student asked a question and the teacher responded by writing on the child’s forehead in front of his classmates, Eldridge told the TV station. The teacher also wrote the word “stupid” backward on the student’s forehead, so he’d be able to read it when he saw himself in the mirror, he said.

“The teacher said, ‘I was trying to joke with him,’ and of course, I said, ‘That’s not the way you joke with anyone,’” Eldridge said.

Oh well….I suppose that is a sub optimal method of teaching.

Global Warming and Climate Change
Here is one aspect of this: it is true that a certain percent of greenhouse gases that are being released to the atmosphere were not caused by human activity. But the warming caused by human activity is helping thaw the permafrost that had been keeping these gases from reaching the atmosphere (JUSTIN GILLIS, New York Times):

A bubble rose through a hole in the surface of a frozen lake. It popped, followed by another, and another, as if a pot were somehow boiling in the icy depths.

In an Alaskan lake, bubbles of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, collect beneath the ice. More Photos »

Every bursting bubble sent up a puff of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas generated beneath the lake from the decay of plant debris. These plants last saw the light of day 30,000 years ago and have been locked in a deep freeze — until now.

“That’s a hot spot,” declared Katey M. Walter Anthony, a leading scientist in studying the escape of methane. A few minutes later, she leaned perilously over the edge of the ice, plunging a bottle into the water to grab a gas sample.

It was another small clue for scientists struggling to understand one of the biggest looming mysteries about the future of the earth.

Experts have long known that northern lands were a storehouse of frozen carbon, locked up in the form of leaves, roots and other organic matter trapped in icy soil — a mix that, when thawed, can produce methane and carbon dioxide, gases that trap heat and warm the planet. But they have been stunned in recent years to realize just how much organic debris is there.

A recent estimate suggests that the perennially frozen ground known as permafrost, which underlies nearly a quarter of the Northern Hemisphere, contains twice as much carbon as the entire atmosphere. [...]

Evolution in Action
Jerry Coyne has an interesting article about lungfish and how they have a “near walk” though they stay in the water. In other words, perhaps the walking gait preceded walking:

The conventional wisdom about how our tetrapod ancestors invaded land (“tetrapods” are four-footed land animals that include birds, mammals, reptiles, and amphibians) was that the evolution of limbs with digits occurred about the same time as the the walking gait evolved, perhaps when a lobe-finned fish (“sarcopterygian”) like Tiktaalik began frequenting shallow waters. Those ancestors might have propped themselves up in the shallows, and eventually made forays onto land for food, creating selection pressures on both morphology and behavior to move about on the land. As this scenario goes, the typical land-animal leg with toes evolved along with the typical land-animal gait, which is an alternation of fore- and hindlimbs that push off the ground.

This scenario may have to be revised, though, in light of a new paper by Heather King and colleagues in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. What they found is that the closest living relative of tetrapods, the lungfish, seem to have a precursor of the alternating-limb gait and the ability to push off the ground, even though they don’t venture onto land. And this suggests that the common ancestor of lungfish and modern tetrapods, which lived about 400 million years ago, was “preadapted” or “exadapted” to walk. That is, that ancestor might have had its own adapted form of movement that could be co-opted for walking when its descendants invaded land. It’s a gait-first, limb-next hypothesis.

The post has a cool photo.

Adaptations by different mutations of the same gene
Here we have a case of three lizards which evolved white skin via different mutations of the same gene:

In the White Sands National Park of New Mexico, there are three species of small lizard that all share white complexions. In the dark soil of the surrounding landscapes, all three lizards wear coloured coats with an array of hues, stripes and spots. Colours would make them stand out like a beacon among the white sands so natural selection has bleached their skins. Within the last few thousand years, the lesser earless lizard, the eastern fence lizard and the little striped whiptail have all evolved white forms that camouflage beautifully among the white dunes.

Erica Bree Rosenblum from the University of Idaho has found that their white coats are the result of changes to the same gene, Mc1r. All of these adaptations arose independently of one another and all of them reduce the amount of the dark pigment, melanin, in the lizards’ skin. It’s a wonderful example of convergent evolution, where the same environmental demands push different species along the same evolutionary paths. But Rosenblum has also found that there are many ways to break a gene.

Each of the three lizards has a different mutation in their Mc1r gene, that has crippled it in diverse ways. These differences may seem slight, but they affect how dominant and widespread the white varieties are, and how likely they are to branch off into new species of their own. Even when different species converge on the same results – in this case, whitened skin – and even when the same gene is responsible, their evolutionary paths can still be very different.

A fun video: Orangutan uses a face cloth:

Note that in this state, the orangutan acts as the perfect Republican (doesn’t share his cloth with the other orangutan…)