Slut Shaming the Poison Dart Frog!

Yes, some females of some frog species choose the males that either croak the loudest or that have the right “pitch” of croak.

This type of poison dart frog: well, she just choses the closest male.

Snake Fail, Frog WIN!

Here a Frog fights off a grass snake:

In this longer video, it appears as if the frog is a goner (at 4-4:30 into it). The frog keeps fighting, gets in the water and works its way almost out; then at 8:30 another frog appears (slow it down) and appears to attack the snake; a biologist told me that the second frog was probably either attacking the first frog or trying to mate with it. In either event, the snake gets chased off and swims away, still hungry and completely humiliated.

Some Science for the end of April 2013

Woo and yoga
Someone asked me how I could like yoga and be down on “alternative (quack) medicine”. Well, there have been some rigorous studies done on yoga and it CAN be recommended for physical therapy purposes (e. g. back aches). Via our National Institute of Health.

Frogs
This Tiger Frog from Ghana is a cutie:

Movies: I want to see this one:

Note: my beef with religion, at least as practiced in the west, is that too many of them require people to accept “miracles” (resurrections, parting seas, virgin births, etc.) on “faith” (sans evidence). So once you “accept” that the laws of science (naturalism) can be suspended at set times, then, well, why trust science with anything? Seriously: if there is, say, water on your basement floor and a pipe joint above that with green on the joint…well…if you didn’t SEE it drip, then maybe the water and the green just appeared because of the work of some devil or pixie? Why not…if suspensions of naturalism are allowed?

My beef is NOT with religions that don’t require acceptance of miracles.
It is my opinion that a deity/spirit/whatever that is interested in humans and human affairs makes no sense, but that is the realm of opinion.

Space:

How about a storm that has an eye 1250 miles wide and winds of 330 miles per hour?

The eye of a super-hurricane at Saturn’s north pole looks like a peaceful red rose in a fresh bouquet of pictures from NASA’s Cassini orbiter. But don’t be fooled: That rosy appearance is merely due to the false colors ascribed to infrared wavelengths.
This storm’s eye measures 1,250 miles (2,000 kilometers) in diameter, about 20 times wider than the average hurricane’s eye on Earth. The outer clouds at the hurricane’s edge are traveling at 330 mph (530 kilometers per hour), which would be off the scale on our planet. The vortex whirls inside Saturn’s mysterious hexagonal cloud pattern, and it’s not going anywhere.

How do you like this image of the moon taking from space near the earth?

Here is a picture of a solar eclipse via Scientific American:

Miloslav Druckmüller, a mathematician at the Brno University of Technology in the Czech Republic, and his colleagues were on Enewetak as the eclipse’s shadow raced toward them from the northwest at more than twice the speed of sound. This composite of 31 images from the eclipse shows the solar corona, the wispy “atmosphere” of the sun peeking out from behind the moon as well as the cratered, rayed surface of the moon itself.

Back on Earth Again
This species of fish, commonly found in China, Russia and Korea, has been found in New York. It is an invasive species.

Even more interestingly, it can actually breathe outside of water for a short period of time (days) and even hunt.

Illusions, Frogs and Civility

workout notes
Basically, the usual minus a bit of intensity: rotator cuff, 5 sets of 10 pullups, bench: 10 x 135, 4 x 180, 7 x 170
inclines: 7 x 145, 9 x 140, rows: 3 sets of 10 x 200 Hammer, military: 2 sets of 12 x 50 dumbbell, 10 x 80 machine, curls: 3 sets of 10 (dumbbell 30, 57.5 pulley, 70 machine), pull downs 3 x 10 with 160, ab set (3 sets each: crunch, twist, sit back, v. crunch). I was only a tiny bit off.

Heel: it hurt a bit; it came on late last night. Was it the run? I felt NOTHING during the run. Or was it the bad shoes I was walking in; the pain mostly went away with a shoe change.

Sickness: stomach not quite right, but ok. Full speed ahead for this weekend’s half marathon spandex chase.

Illusion Watch how your brain plays tricks on you, even though you KNOW what is going on!

Frogs
Lawsuit? Heck, I’d add a surcharge to have frogs on the property! Good thing I wasn’t on the jury…

Margaret Thatcher’s death
The Brits think about things a bit differently than Americans do; some openly celebrated (and I am not talking about bloggers or mere people on the street; I am talking about politicians too)

I saw this on Facebook (put out by a Brit, no doubt: notice how “privatized” is spelled:

Hey, Satan is a inefficient socialist, right?

This reminds me of this a bit: Christopher Hitchens was brought onto Hannity and Colmes to discuss Jerry Falwell right after his death. Fox News knew EXACTLY what they were doing when they did this; this is TV melodrama at its best.

Speaking of Christopher Hitchens, someone provided one of his quotes which explains exactly why I don’t like magazines like The Nation or Salon even though I mostly agree with their policy views:

“I had become too accustomed to the pseudo-Left new style, whereby if your opponent thought he had identified your lowest possible motive, he was quite certain that he had isolated the only real one. This vulgar method, which is now the norm and the standard in much non-Left journalism as well, is designed to have the effect of making any noisy moron into a master analyst.”

When I finish one of their articles, I am often no better informed than when I started the article. I guess that reading Paul Krugman, science blogs (written by scientists) and the New York Times has spoiled me a bit.

Politics
Crazy Rick Santorum might run again. I might have to back him again.

Social Policy
On facebook, I made a mistake and commented on this a bit too soon. The Arkansas State Senate passed a bill that would make people who sought unemployment benefits sign a waver to allow themselves to be drug tested (random drug testing). At first I thought “here we go again, just like Florida” but then realized that:
1. This was a different population: unemployment benefits are different from welfare
2. Many jobs require you to pass a drug test to be considered
3. This was random testing versus “testing everyone”.

It still might be bad policy; my knee jerk response was against it and still is; it “smells like” a “punish the miscreants” fetish. But I might be wrong; I’ll have to think about this a bit more.

Suicide Statistics
This is interesting:

A recent study out of the University of California, Riverside has discovered that there may be link between suicide, gun ownership and political conservatism.

Published in the February issue of Social Psychiatry & Psychiatric Epidemiology, the study found that states with high levels of firearm availability and a proclivity toward political conservatism tended toward higher rates of suicide.

However, church attendance, which is sometimes correlated to political conservatism, was shown to depress suicide rates.

The state with the highest suicide rate was Alaska, which is second only to Montana in firearm ownership. Montana, for its part, had the third highest suicide rate in the nation. Other states with high rates of conservatism, suicide and gun ownership include Wyoming, Idaho, Alabama and West Virginia.

The percentage of gun suicides were higher in the South and West than in the Northeast or Midwest.

The study measured “firearm availability” by calculating the average number of firearms per household in a given state and traced political conservatism based on the percentage of that state’s voters who cast a ballot for Republican George W. Bush in the 2000 presidential election.

“Persons living in states or localities with high suicide rates may have higher exposure to definitions favorable to suicide acceptance, and this in turn may increase their odds of committing suicide,” wrote Augustine J. Kposowa, who authored the study, and has researched the causes of suicide for two decades. “Prevailing social, economic and even political conditions in a state may further affect individual suicidal behavior by maintaining an environment in which people’s aspirations are thwarted and dreams of a better tomorrow are deferred.”

I’ll have to check out the data and cross tabs; there is excellent material for a statistics class here.

Of interest to me:
married people committed suicide at higher rates than single people, and divorced people had higher rates than either single or married (was this corrected for age?)

Whites and Hispanics had higher rates than Blacks or Asians.

Church goers had lower rates than non-church goers (not a surprise; I think that church membership DOES provide some fellowship benefits)

Access to weapons lead to higher rates. Note: this is what complicates the gun control debates. Firearm death rates (suicides, accidents, crime) are mostly caused by handguns, and it is assault rifles that have come up for debate.

Texas Drought, cute frogs and stereotypes…

Texas Drought: check out this series of photos of Caddo Lake: from all the way full to bone dry now. Things have changed since I moved from Austin in 1991.

Frogs yes, this is a frog:

more at Jerry Coyne’s website.

Minimum wage: a better policy idea that you might think; there is data backing this up.

I’m doing this kind of backwards, writing about the politics first. But I wanted to have my intellectual ducks — or rather, my lucky duckies — in a row before taking on the economics. And while I was grubbing around, Mike Konczal produced the perfect post summing it all up.

So what should you know? First, as John Schmitt (pdf) documents at length, there just isn’t any evidence that raising the minimum wage near current levels would reduce employment. And this is a really solid result, because there have been a *lot* of studies. We can argue about exactly why the simple Econ 101 story doesn’t seem to work, but it clearly doesn’t — which means that the supposed cost in terms of employment from seeking to raise low-wage workers’ earnings is a myth.

Discrimination yes, we’ve made a great deal of progress in race relations; no doubt about it, at all. But, unfortunately, some unfair stereotypes remain:

Not even the inside of a store can provide a Black man–in this case, Forest Whitaker— in New York City refuge from “Stop and Frisk.”
This time, however, the NYPD is not behind the act; it was allegedly an employee of the Upper East Side’s Milano Market who carried out the embarrassing pat down. TMZ reports that Whitaker said he was falsely accused of lifting an item off the store’s shelf and subsequently frisked by an employee. An eyewitness told the entertainment site that the Academy Award winner was frisked in plain view of everyone.
Of course, the shake down produced nothing belonging to the store and Whitaker left the establishment angry and embarrassed.
The actor’s rep told TMZ, “This was an upsetting incident given the fact that Forest did nothing more than walk into the deli. What is most unfortunate about this situation is the inappropriate way store employees are treating patrons of their establishment.
“Frisking individuals without proof/evidence is a violation of rights.”
The rep added, “Forest did not call the authorities at the request of the worker who was in fear of losing his employment. Forest asked that, in the future, the store change their behavior and treat the public in a fair and just manner.”

No darker skin male would be surprised by this. However, some of this goes down when one ages; the younger guys have it a bit worse. There seem to be tensions any time people of different races live together, and humans are a bit hard wired to reason inductively.

Best. Movie. Ever. “Frogs”

Workout notes 10K walk in 1:27:50; it was dark and took me a while to get going. 1:12:18 for the first 5.1 or so (Cornstalk).

Personal: first day of class. First lesson in the books.

Movies On Hulu: the “horror” film Frogs.

Ok, ok, the “frogs” are really Cane toads (Bufo Marinus) and their “ribbits” are taking from Pacific tree frogs (Pseudacris regilla) but the story line is awesome: the “frogs” are mad as hell and aren’t going to take it anymore!!! So, the frogs direct an army of: insects, snakes, alligators, iguanas, snapping turtles and birds to do in those pesky humans. And the “frogs” win, big time! Best part: the very end when the frogs do in the main villain by….well…basically “ribbiting” him to death. Really.

Note: you can watch the film free of charge at the above link on Hulu.

Awesome movie…..must see!

(those toads are just adorable!!!)

Trailer:

I. Must. See. This. Movie.

Must. See. It.

I have a reason to live!

I slept in too late (for the warm day) and ended up cutting my long walk short (to 11 miles)

I walked to and from Bradley Park (1 mile each way) and did three 3-mile (almost 5K) hilly back and forth segments: 44:44, 44:48, 44:56.

Note: I extended the spur to the park entrance (sidewalk on Park Street) to get to 3 miles; the above shows the spur to the upper parking lot.

The walk was so-so. It took 15:06 to return home; 2:43:53 was my time (slow)

But what I saw…on the first out and back, just prior the turn around, I saw……a beautiful specimen of rana clamitans (green frog) just sitting on the bridge. I had to stop, talk to it and even pick it up. It got away; I sure wish that I had a camera with me.

That put some pep in my step; it was so cute!

Prisons, The Bible, Teachers Union, videos and photos…

Workout notes
Weights (usual) and swimming.
Weights: my 4 sets of 10 pull ups was harder than usual. Bench: 10 x 135, 4 x 180, 4 x 180, 7 x 165 (felt unbalanced), incline: two sets of 7 x 140. It appears that the recent cut-back on swimming has made me a bit weaker. It might be from the residual effects of blood donation. Not sure.

Swimming: lots of drills (500 of fist/free, 500 of front/free, 500 of 3g/free, 500 of stroke/free (fly or back), 200 of side/free.
This was a really wimpy swim workout.

Photos
I think that these are young American toads.

Prayer

I have to disagree with this photo, just a bit. This is certainly true of “requests for magical intervention” type prayers (e. g. prayers that someone’s cancer will go away, or that a storm won’t hit, etc.). But if one prays to change one’s own attitude (e. g., “make me more patient” or “help me be of service to others”) then it might work. This is NOT some deity rearranging your brain chemistry but rather similar to what many athletes do right before an event.

Since we are on religion, Jerry Coyne is reading the Bible. (Yes, I’ve read it…..ugh). Bottom line: I have to laugh at the memories of my high school English teachers solemnly telling me that it was the greatest book ever written…much of it is awful! Much of it is pretty gruesome too:

There is a mass slaughter here, bears mauling bratty kids there, and of course, The Almighty getting defeated by….IRON CHARIOTS???? Good thing that they didn’t have B-52′s.

Videos and Commentary
What is it like to go to 70,000 feet in a U-2?

Come on Girls, Science is for you!
Yep, mini-skirts, Achilles tendon ruining shoes, blowing cute little kisses at the test tubes….really GIRRRRLS…

Update: they took down the video. Here is a screen shot of the start of it:

(fortunately there is some pushback against this well intended but….well…attempt to lure women to science).

Romney’s tour
This is rather ineffective (the video, that is) but it is funny….the kind of corn that I love during election season.

Now if you want to talk about Mitt Romney and the Republican Party:

Mitt Romney takes some shots at teacher’s unions both in his book (No Apology) and on the campaign trail. I’ll talk about his book in greater detail later; I am about 75 percent through. It is worth reading, IMHO (much better than Sarah Palin’s book!) But while Mr. Romney backs up some of his claims with data, he doesn’t do that with other claims. So here is some data on those terrible teacher’s unions: basically the states with them out perform the states without them…. Yes, there may be confounding variables, but….to use Mr. Romney’s own analysis against him: there is no data that shows that teacher’s unions harms the educational outcomes.

And as far as the public sector, there are some cases in which privatization is proving to be a disaster. Prisons is one such area. My quick two cents: areas in which there is free-market competition are fine for private enterprise. However there really isn’t much competition for things like prisons (aside from one-time bids) and for a good part of healthcare (“ooohhh…I am having a heart attack….let me research the hospitals to see who is having a sale on heart procedures today….”).

It is true that one might be able to shop around for things like non-emergency blood tests, physicals…even knee surgery (non-emergency), etc.

In St. Joseph, MN

Ate dinner at the packet pickup, now watching 76′ers-Celtics on TV. Celtics up 46-31 at the half. It could be warm tomorrow; perhaps some rain toward the end.