Two Social Comments….

First, this is the type of issue that I don’t care about, AT ALL:

Teen retailer Abercrombie & Fitch doesn’t stock XL or XXL sizes in women’s clothing because they don’t want overweight women wearing their brand.
They want the “cool kids,” and they don’t consider plus-sized women as being a part of that group.

[...]

It’s not surprising that Abercrombie excludes plus-sized women considering the attitude of CEO Mike Jeffries, said Robin Lewis, co-author of The New Rules of Retail and CEO of newsletter The Robin Report.
“He doesn’t want larger people shopping in his store, he wants thin and beautiful people,” Lewis told Business Insider. “He doesn’t want his core customers to see people who aren’t as hot as them wearing his clothing. People who wear his clothing should feel like they’re one of the ‘cool kids.’”
The only reason Abercrombie offers XL and XXL men’s sizes is probably to appeal to beefy football players and wrestlers, Lewis said.
We asked the company why it doesn’t offer larger sizes for women. A spokeswoman told us that Abercrombie wasn’t available to provide a comment.
In a 2006 interview with Salon, Jeffries himself said that his business was built around sex appeal.
“It’s almost everything. That’s why we hire good-looking people in our stores. Because good-looking people attract other good-looking people, and we want to market to cool, good-looking people. We don’t market to anyone other than that,” Jeffries said.
Jeffries also told Salon that he wasn’t bothered by excluding some customers.
“In every school there are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids,” he told the site. “Candidly, we go after the cool kids. We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends. A lot of people don’t belong [in our clothes], and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely.”

My response to this: So What? It is a business; no one has a “right” to buy their clothing (or whatever they make).
Of course, if some customers don’t like their attitude, they have the right to NOT buy their clothing.

Ok, I lied just a bit: I am interested to know if their model will work.
I had a friend who was in mail order. He would put an ad for something, say a pen that had a digital watch in the body. He’d pay, perhaps a dollar a piece for them wholesale and then sell them, for say, 100 dollars…..while being perfectly honest about what it was (accurate photo and description). He told me that he sold more by charging MORE for the same item; so evidently there is something to “snob appeal”.

Many recognize that, including Bikram Choudhury, the founder of Bikram yoga:

Bikram’s business goals also became more ambitious. Rather than simply own studios and train teachers, he now aims to turn his disciples into franchisees and give hot-yoga enthusiasts nationwide the exact same experience, from the poses down to the instructor’s monologue. As with Starbucks, he figures, familiarity will prove attractive to Americans—and lucrative, too, with potential for licensing deals galore. “Bikram yoga is so big—this is a bathroom slipper you buy [for] $2 in Kmart,” he says, waving a plastic flip-flop in my face. “But you put ‘Bikram’ on it, it’ll sell for $35 in a second.”

Hey, if you can persuade customers…:-)

However, at this time, Mr. Choudhury might have different issues on his mind.

Issue Two: Biochemist Larry Moran seems befuddled that those who lack scientific credentials (and expertise) seem comfortable telling experts that the experts have it wrong.

This is all very frustrating. Why do IDiots who have no serious training in biochemistry and molecular biology think they know more than the experts?

And why do they refuse to learn when we attempt to educate them?

Professor Moran: this is the American way! Advocates, be they advocates for creationism, “alternative medicine”, or knee-jerk anti-GMO advocates don’t get advice from “experts”; they give it to them! The only time they listen to experts (or someone with a “doctorate” of some sort) is when they confirm what they already (think that they) know.

What they do is come up with a heuristic that makes sense to them; then they “know” it. That their heuristic flies in the face of established physical laws is of no consequence to them; that it coincides with their intuition is all that matters. And they are smart; just ask them if you don’t believe me.

If you try to point out that their ideas are completely at odds with long established science or knowledge, you’ll be accused of: “close minded”, “being an agent of Satan, a tool of “Big Pharma” or “Monsanto”, a racist, sexist or otherwise evil person, etc. That they have no discoveries or intellectual accomplishments won’t matter at all. “Common Sense” is on their side!

It is the Dunning-Kruger effect run wild.

A case study of non-critical acceptance….

Workout notes: yes, the piriformis is moderately achy, but I walked two easy miles and did some PT, yoga, exercise ball stuff, etc. It should be feeling ok by the end of the week.

Posts

See the flaw here? If you don’t ask yourself:
1. Did Ronald Reagan collect more revenue than, say, Teddy Roosevelt? (yes, he did).
2. What happens to revenue collections when incomes go up? Remember that the proponents of supply side economics often repeat the mantra “low tax rates leads to high tax revenues”.

Of course, this is aimed at conservatives that absolutely despise President Obama, and so few ill ask if this makes any sense at all. And, yes, some won’t see why this is a bogus argument, even when it is explained to them…and many of these people see themselves as “smart”. Yes, this phenomenon is not one sided; liberals do it too.

Now for this phenomenon applied to science:

this is a viral video and I admit that the graphics are cool. But:

Well, one (correct) take away from this is that while we have a (sort of) two dimensional solar system model with the sun as the reference point, one can also take a galatic point of view to see that the sun traces out an orbit in the galaxy; therefore the planets do too. For that matter, one can take a universal look and see our galaxy (and hence our solar system) expanding within our spatial universe, but never mind that.

There are some problems with this video. For one: “vortex” isn’t the right word; the video author means that, if one uses a center of the galaxy as a reference point, then the trajectory traced by the planets is a (sort of) helix. The other thing: the planets don’t “drag after” the sun as it moves; in fact the angle of inclination of the “orbit planes” (they are slightly different) is about 60 degrees with respect to the sun’s trajectory around the galaxy and not 90 degrees; hence at times the various planets actually “lead” the sun. There are other problems as well; here is a very nice summary.

Just because something looks cool doesn’t mean that it is reality.

Back to Politics
This is expensive stupidity for the sake of helping people feel better:

To fight the specter of poor people spending taxpayer money on drugs, a Republican congressman has reintroduced legislation to make welfare applicants pee in cups to prove they’re clean.

Rep. Stephen Fincher’s (R-Tenn.) bill would require states to randomly test 20 percent of people receiving benefits from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, which spends roughly $16 billion per year supporting poverty-stricken parents with monthly checks averaging $392.

“Currently the federal government enables drug abusers a safety-net by allowing them to participate in the TANF program,” Fincher said in a statement. “Instead of having to make the hard-choice between drugs and other essential needs, abusers are able to rely on their monthly check to help them pay their bills.”

In Congress and in state legislatures across the country, Republicans have sought to implement welfare drug testing programs in recent years. Few measures have become law, as testing can be expensive and there’s not much data reflecting a widespread drug problem among welfare recipients. Civil liberties advocates successfully sued to halt the most sweeping drug screening law, implemented in Florida in 2011.

In fact, here is what happened in Florida:

Florida’s four-month drug-testing run in 2011 yielded 108 negative drug tests, according to Department of Children and Families data. Only 2.6 percent of applicants who took the test failed, though supporters of the law say that does not account for people who walked away from the application process because they were on drugs.

The pass rate was 96.3 percent, leaving the state to pay more than $100,000 to adults who paid for the test and passed. The average time an adult receives TANF is four and a half months, said DCF spokesman Joe Follick.

In short, you are paying a lot of money to screen out a few slackers (those who failed, and those who walked away). This makes no fiscal sense, but it is politically popular because “everyone is against druggies getting welfare”. No money was saved:

From July through October in Florida — the four months when testing took place before Judge Scriven’s order — 2.6 percent of the state’s cash assistance applicants failed the drug test, or 108 of 4,086, according to the figures from the state obtained by the group. The most common reason was marijuana use. An additional 40 people canceled the tests without taking them.

Because the Florida law requires that applicants who pass the test be reimbursed for the cost, an average of $30, the cost to the state was $118,140. This is more than would have been paid out in benefits to the people who failed the test, Mr. Newton said.

As a result, the testing cost the government an extra $45,780, he said.

And it is the Republicans that have all that good “business sense”??

By the way, when I was in the Navy, I was subject to drug testing. But I served on a nuclear submarine; the consequences of someone serving while “high” (which did happen) were potentially catastrophic; it was a serious safety issue in that case.

Wrong, Wrong Wrong….

Paul Krugman talks about “being wrong”:

It seems to me that when readers declare that some piece of economics commentary is “wrong”, they often confuse three different notions of wrongness, which are neither intellectually nor morally equivalent.

First, there’s the ordinary business of expressing a view about the economy that the reader disagrees with – e.g., “Krugman is wrong, because the government can’t create jobs”; or, if you prefer, “Casey Mulligan is wrong, because we’re suffering from demand problems, not supply problems.” Obviously it’s OK to say things like this, and sometimes the criticism is correct. (I’m not wrong, but Mulligan is!) But equally obviously, there’s nothing, er, wrong about being wrong in this sense: people will disagree, and that’s legitimate.

His second “way of being wrong” is to make a technical error (say, a pop science author said that a “simply connected” manifold is “contractable”, which is false. is such an example. But there is no way one could expect a reporter to understand this; in fact which it comes to technical stuff this appears to be the case:

The third way of being wrong is to say something that is mind-numbingly false that can be fact checked by anyone who can read (e. g., “Obama raised income taxes on most Americans”).

I have to give Dr. Krugman credit though: he allows comments even from people who are ill versed in…well, just about everything.

If I were ever famous enough to have a specialty blog, I’d make passing some sort of exam a prerequisite to comment.

On another note

Yeah, we have to put up with a few woos but this is ridiculous!

Republican Rabbit Holes, Election Videos and Other Topics

Non-political
Science and Technology

Sad news: Dennis Ritchie, the “father of the computer language C” died. What an awesome lifetime accomplishment: to have your very own, widely used computer language.

Interesting Puzzle Security:

What could one agent be told that he would not forget but would be unable to recall? Something he could pass on (not in writing) to the other agent, but that if captured and tortured he’d be unable to reveal.

Perhaps it might be something that has meaning only to the person that the message was intended. Or, perhaps the intended person has some sort of key and what the agent would have to remember depends on a reaction to this key (say, a photo) that is all but impossible to duplicate from memory. Who knows; this is fun to think about.

Living Stromatolites: found in Europe
Jerry Coyne reports on living stromatolites being found in Europe; these are the oldest known lifeforms (evolved 3 billion years ago). It was thought that such colonies would only be found in places that had protection from predators; this was NOT the case here.

Religion
We know that Christian and Muslim fundamentalists sometimes behave very badly. Well, so do some Jewish fundamentalists. Evidently some school girls weren’t dressed modestly enough for these clowns; hence they felt they had the right to yell and throw stuff at them. Bottom line: some religious conservatives don’t seem to have a concept of “mind your own business”.

Politics
Do the state primaries “more national” than they used to be? I found this to be interesting:

The argument: cable TV (and perhaps the internet?) make national issues more important to people in the states than they used to be; that is, one does well in a state by doing well nationally rather than investing a lot of time in the state itself and talking to the local party people. I don’t know; Mr. Morriss admits that the states had a big impact in the 2008 primary elections. Will that be the case in 2012?

Michele Bachmann

Michele Bachmann got her J. D. at the now-defunct Oral Roberts law school, where religion and law were mixed. She then went to work for the IRS (yes, the government). And yes, she passed the Minnesota Bar exam. This makes me wonder if she is not as mind numbingly dumb as I had thought; perhaps she is someone who runs her mouth prior to engaging her brain.

Republicans
Yes, they are belly aching that Obama is calling them out on their obstructionism. But in fact, Republicans cannot (or will not) grasp reality, as Paul Krugman points out:

In the real world, recent events were a devastating refutation of the free-market orthodoxy that has ruled American politics these past three decades. Above all, the long crusade against financial regulation, the successful effort to unravel the prudential rules established after the Great Depression on the grounds that they were unnecessary, ended up demonstrating — at immense cost to the nation — that those rules were necessary, after all.

But down the rabbit hole, none of that happened. We didn’t find ourselves in a crisis because of runaway private lenders like Countrywide Financial. We didn’t find ourselves in a crisis because Wall Street pretended that slicing, dicing and rearranging bad loans could somehow create AAA assets — and private rating agencies played along. We didn’t find ourselves in a crisis because “shadow banks” like Lehman Brothers exploited gaps in financial regulation to create bank-type threats to the financial system without being subject to bank-type limits on risk-taking.

No, in the universe of the Republican Party we found ourselves in a crisis because Representative Barney Frank forced helpless bankers to lend money to the undeserving poor.

O.K., I’m exaggerating a bit — but not much. Mr. Frank’s name did come up repeatedly as a villain in the crisis, and not just in the context of the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill, which Republicans want to repeal. You have to marvel at his alleged influence given the fact that he’s a Democrat and the vast bulk of the bad loans now afflicting our economy were made while George W. Bush was president and Republicans controlled the House with an iron grip. But he’s their preferred villain all the same.

The demonization of Mr. Frank aside, it’s now obviously orthodoxy on the Republican side that government caused the whole problem. So what you need to know is that this orthodoxy has hardened even as the supposed evidence for government as a major villain in the crisis has been discredited. The fact is that government rules didn’t force banks to make bad loans, and that government-sponsored lenders, while they behaved badly in many ways, accounted for few of the truly high-risk loans that fueled the housing bubble.

But that’s history. What do the Republicans want to do now? In particular, what do they want to do about unemployment?

Well, they want to fire Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve — not for doing too little, which is a case one can make, but for doing too much. So they’re obviously not proposing any job-creation action via monetary policy.

Incidentally, during Tuesday’s debate, Mitt Romney named Harvard’s N. Gregory Mankiw as one of his advisers. How many Republicans know that Mr. Mankiw at least used to advocate — correctly, in my view — deliberate inflation by the Fed to solve our economic woes?

So, no monetary relief. What else? Well, the Cheshire Cat-like Rick Perry — he seems to be fading out, bit by bit, until only the hair remains — claimed, implausibly, that he could create 1.2 million jobs in the energy sector. Mr. Romney, meanwhile, called for permanent tax cuts — basically, let’s replay the Bush years! And Herman Cain? Oh, never mind.

By the way, has anyone else noticed the disappearance of budget deficits as a major concern for Republicans once they start talking about tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy?

But remember that the Republican belief in the Magic of the Free Market and in trickle down economics is utterly unfalsifiable; it is pure religion to them. No amount of data will phase them.

Here is Barney Frank being amused that Newt Gingrich continues to blame him…for policies that were passed when the Republicans had control of the House!

Here is a take on Mr. 9-9-9:

Though Dick Morris thinks that it is a workable idea:

So, let’s discourage demand exactly when we need more of it???? Oh wait…demand side economics is bad, bad, bad..except that it works.

Mitt Romney
Evidently he sees Rick Perry as his true competition; hence he freely talks up Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann:

Republican You Tube Debate 22 September 2011

My pre-debate prediction:
“Tonight’s debate: Ronald Reagan!!! Tax cuts create jobs! Class warfare! Repeal Obamacare! Border fences! Execute even more people! Get government off of our backs! Defend marriage!”

The actual debate:

Perry: no specific plan, but he’ll “get government off our backs”…we’ll be like Texas.

Romney: “Obama is doing it all wrong, taxes takes from the successful and gives to others”.

Bachmann: “it is all your money”, then contradicts herself and “Obama ruined the economy”.

Santorum: asked if there should be a federal “right to work” law…Santorum would support such a bill for public employees.

Gingrich: asked if he’d extend unemployment benefits. says that training program is necessary to get unemployment benefits; it is “wrong to give people money for doing nothing”; wild applause.

Huntsman: asked about tax incentives for gas companies. Talks about a “bridge” energy sources (natural gas). He’d be ok with a start up subsidy.

Cain: asked about his 9-9-9 plan (why 9′s?) Gets applause. Says his plan is unlike Romney’s “status quo” plan.
Romney: “that’s fine” Says that middle income families; anyone under 200K pays zero tax on savings, etc.

Paul: asked about the 10′th amendment. He’d veto every single bill that violates the 10′th amendment. Wild applause from the Paul-o-bots.

Johnson: why is he here. New Mexico governor (former). He is the veto king, will throw out the federal tax system, blah, blah.

Rick Scott: gosh he looks like a thug. (giving a pep talk between sessions).

Rick Perry: social security back to the states? Mitt has been wrong.
Mitt Romney: not what was in Perry’s book. Find that Rick Perry and get him to stop saying that. Social Security is a federal government plan and should be stabilized.
Rick Perry: mentions that Romney changed his book from hardback to paper back edition (true).
Romney: said he stood by his book (which one?)

Romney: asked if President Obama is a socialist? He calls him a “big spending liberal”. Europe isn’t working, I believe in America, freedom, capitalism, etc., etc., etc…..wild applause from the dummies.

Huntsman: what about the Obama tax hike on millionaires. What say you? Notes: it is popular. He says “no…this is the worst time” (Reagan is raised for the first time!….) Dodd-Frank, repeal Obamacare, etc.

Cain: which department would he eliminate, if forced to. He said: EPA, wild applause from the morons. Says to raise a responsible EPA…now goes to a Chilean social security system…wild applause.

Gingrich: how can you slash spending? He says: 21′st century “contract with America” (Ronald Reagan…mentioned twice).
Obama’s “socialist policies”, “class warfare” policies. Note: he didn’t answer the question.

All candidates: “massive government overreach, what do you do”?

Johnson: abolish the Department of Education. Wild applause
Santorum: parents are customers (applause). Gibberish…parental control.
Gingrich: very profound reform at the state level, pell grants for K-12, wild applause.
Paul: get government out of the business of education. Noted that Republicans added “no child left behind”. Tax credits to those who opt out.
Perry: lot of good ideas, etc. Promote school choice, voucher system, slams Romney again..says he likes Obama’s race to the top.
Romney: “nice try”. “federal government out of education”. “says that class size isn’t the issue” (he is wrong), parents, he’ll take on those teacher’s unions! He praises Arne Duncan’s teacher evaluation idea.
Bachmann: I’m a mom, parents, repeal “the federal education law”, blah, blah. wild applause.
Cain: cut the strings attached. “empower the students” (get the federal government out)
Huntsman: talks up his Utah record, “say no” to unfunded mandates. localize, blah blah.

Immigration:
Bachmann: federal government is failing the states…Obama shouldn’t have sued Arizona, build a fence on “every inch” of the southern border. No tax payer benefits for illegal aliens….wild applause.

Gingrich: asked about e-verify. Should businesses have to use this? Penalties for businesses that hire illegals. It should be easy. Strongly favored 100 percent control of the border, wild applause line “English only”.

Romney: Romney vetoed legislation to provide in state tuition discount to illegal aliens. Slams Perry for signing such a law; wild applause. Repeats Gingrich, Bachmann, blah, blah, “turn off the magnet”.

Perry: asked about illegal immigrants, and in-state tuition rates. he supports Arizona…Texas Rangers to patrol the border. Defends education…”I don’t think that you have a heart”. Best line of the debate. Note: the state of Texas voted “yes”.

Santorum: “questions in state tuition”. Claims that Perry is weak on this issue.

Perry: “have you ever been”. The idea that you are going to build a fence that long is well, infeasible.
Perry is actually making more sense than some of these clowns.

Paul: fences? He is asked about the fences keeping us in. He stands by his fences to keep people in. He calls e-verify a national ID card. Attacks birthright citizenship. (Constitution).

Break II
Israel and the Palestinian State.

Romney: no space between you and your allies. He says “don’t apologize”, etc. Says to not to chastise them in public. Criticizes Obama; says Iran becoming nuclear “unacceptable”.

Cain: “peace through strength and clarity”. If you mess with Israel, you mess with the US (wild applause).

Perry: what would you do if Pakistan lost control of the nuclear weapons. He dodges the question, and criticizes Obama for not being a good ally (to India). Claims that we don’t have allies. No applause?

Santorum: don’t take troops out of Iraq ; distances himself from others, uses “victory”.

Gingrich: No more foreign aid??? Says to review it; replace government to government aid by private investments. No aid to non-allies.

Johnson: huh?

Bachmann: state sponsor of terrorism?

Huntsman: foreign policy (only one on the stage who knows): we don’t protect the goodness with our broken economy.
Santorum: our values aren’t sick (yes, they are), fighting to win…”one hand tied behind our generals”, blah, win, win?
Huntsman: “only Pakistan can save Pakistan, only Afghanistan can save Afghanistan”, wild applause.

Social
Separation of church and state: doesn’t mean that we are people of faith (wild applause from the morons)…expression where it occurs ….freedom for all people (belief in Satan?)

Gay soldier: will you reinstate DADT (any sexual activity has no place in the military?)
Santorum: Removing DADT is injecting social policy into the applause? Wild, Wild, applause from the idiots.

“Keep it to yourself”??? What the heck does that mean.

Ron Paul: on abortion. state’s issue. How are you going to police the “day after pill”.

Perry: asked about President Bush…

Cain: asked about his surviving cancer, gets deserved applause. Claims that Obamacare would have killed him. He mentions that he was able to get treatment…claims that a government official would have dictated his treatment (bullshit….insurance adjusters micromanage this stuff).

Huntsman: what about Obamacare; preexisting conditions coverage and mandates. Claims that this has gummed up our systems…let the states do it. But Mr. Huntsman: what about pre-existing conditions? Didn’t answer it…

Bachmann: vaccine and claimed a link to mental retardation. Do you stand by this vaccine? She claimed that she reported what a mother said. Attacks Perry; says that parents has to make the decision. Claims that the drug company paid off Perry.

Perry. Yes, I got lobbied. Got lobbied by a young lady who had stage 4 cervical cancer…reminds that he had a opt-out option. “I will always error on the side of life”.

Perry: your state has a lot of uninsured. Texas ranks 49′th in uninsured. He responds by blaming the federal government.

Romney: asked about Perry’s “Obama-lite”. He talked about private insurance. “between you and your doctor” claim (and the private insurance adjuster isn’t). Romeny: “Perry doesn’t know what he is talking about”.

Perry: “which Romney are we dealing with”. He is stumbling badly…

Romney: “nice try”, “I haven’t retreated from my book”

Perry: “I haven’t retreated an inch”.

That was the testiest exchange.

Jobs
Not asking for Jobs plan, but plan to turn the country around:

Huntsman: tax reform, regulatory reform (Dodd-Frank, Obama care), natural gas…
Cain: economic growth 9-9-9 plan, and leadership (Reagan…)
Bachmann: “brass ring” of liberty. Brings up the lie “number 1 reason people aren’t hiring is Obamacare” (a long debunked lie)
Romney: admits that there is a problem. Patriotism….this will do it…(huh)
Perry: I am a great job creator, I’ll deregulate, lower corporate tax rates, energy independence…
Paul: 20 years: bubbles, Federal Reserve, then…
Gingrich: 32 years ago, Carter was bad…Reagan. Blah blah, blah…Obama’s going to lose, blah blah
Santorum: President doesn’t understand America and doesn’t understand what America is about…Reagan…Obama is King George III
Johnson: next door neighbor’s dog has created more “shovel ready jobs”….austerity, (this guy is a crank).
admits that he doesn’t know what will create jobs (but does so unintentionally).

Wild card question: who on this stage would you choose as a running mate;

Johnson: would choose Paul (liberty, blah blah)
Santorum: Gingrich (would follow through)
Gingrich: I won’t answer ….sorry.
Paul: no choice at the moment but I am in third…
Perry: Cain + Gingrich
Romney: makes fun of the previous…I won’t do it.
Note: called out on calling Perry unelectable.
Bachmann: won’t answer…says that conservatives don’t have settle (lies about Obama’s approval rating)
Cain: would choose Romney and then Gingrich.
Huntsman: made fun of Romney fighting Perry. He’d pick Cain on ties.

Oh gosh; it is frightening to think that the debate audience has offspring.

28 July 2011: pm

Workout notes: 4.2 mile run on my hilly course; 85 F with 65 percent humidity. It took me 41:49, though I didn’t put forth much of an effort until the last 1.03 miles (9:19).

Then swimming: 2200 yards; it was so-so but the water felt good. I was near the wall, but two MILF type women got in next to me. They were horrible swimmers, but still their presence cheered me up a bit.

My swim was so-so: 250 of 3g/swim, 250 of 25 front/25 fins, 500 of alternating: 25 fist/25 swim, 25 catch-up, 25 swim.
Then 4 x 250 with no rest: pull, fins, pull, fins; with equipment changes I was in the low 18′s. Then 200 of back/breast to cool down.

Note: yes, I am almost exclusively running, but the piriformis/gluteus medius is feeling better, and running is better than doing nothing at all. It stood up to the just moving around in the stores, museums, etc. I need to be more diligent with my lunges and hip-hikes though. I have NOT given up on distance walking but rather I am staying in (minimal) shape so I can do at least a few “semi-long” walks each week; I’d love to be able to walk a marathon and a 30 miler this fall.

I’ve got two new pair of walking shoes and I want to start using them!

Posts

Sports

I admit that this post made me laugh out loud. Sure, some people enjoy sports by pushing themselves to the limit, and others just like to participate. But leave it to a beta-male humanities major to make a political statement to take down that “evil patriarchy” with it.

Note: the alpha males (AND females) in the hard sciences actually have to prove our results.

So, yes, I subscribe to The Nation, but I do a major “eye-roll” at some of the articles.

Science Yes, I love frogs (as an animal) and wince when I hear of someone eating frog legs. Yes, I know that this is illogical; I just like these ancient creatures; I always have. When I see them, I am seeing ancient life. But in all honesty, there are problems that irresponsible, over consumption of frog legs is causing.

Spot the error From Sandwalk:

(note: if Dr. A is reading this, YOU ARE DISQUALIFIED from the “spot the error”. )

Politics

Economics
Yes, I am sure that my regular blog readers already know this. But many people don’t, so here is a nice, handy reference to send to your perplexed friends and family members who don’t understand how tax brackets work.

Basically, tax brackets work the following way:
Taxable Income / Tax Rate
$0 – $10,000 / 10%
$10,000 – $30,000 / 15%
$30,000 – $80,000 / 25%
$80,000 – $200,000 / 28%
$200,000 – $400,000 / 33%
More than $400,000 / 35%
(rounded for ease of explanation). The first 10,000 of income is taxed the same FOR EVERYONE. Then the next 20,000 dollars is taxed the same for everyone. Example: if you make 100,000 a year, you pay 10 percent on the first 10,000 of your income, then 15 percent on the next 20,000, then 25 percent on the next 50,000, and then 28 percent on the next 20,000. You don’t pay 28 percent on ALL of your 100K.

Anyway, the link explains all that.

Barack Obama

Yes, President Obama sometimes frustrates me; there are times when appears too compromising and too, well, timid. I am not alone in this:

Robert Reich:

How did we get into this mess?

I thought I’d seen Washington at its worst. I was there just after Watergate. I was there when Jimmy Carter imploded. I was there during the government shut-down of 1995.

But I hadn’t seen the worst. This is the worst.[...]

But another part of the answer lies with the President — and his inability or unwillingness to use the bully pulpit to tell Americans the truth, and mobilize them for what must be done.

Barack Obama is one of the most eloquent and intelligent people ever to grace the White House, which makes his failure to tell the story of our era all the more disappointing and puzzling. Many who were drawn to him in 2008 (including me) were dazzled by the power of his words and insights — his speech at the 2004 Democratic convention, his autobiography and subsequent policy book, his talks about race and other divisive issues during the campaign.

We were excited by the prospect of a leader who could educate — an “educator in chief” who would use the bully pulpit to explaini what has happened to the United States in recent decades, where we must go, and why.

But the man who has occupied the Oval Office since January, 2009 is someone entirely different — a man seemingly without a compass, a tactician who veers rightward one day and leftward the next, an inside-the Beltway dealmaker who doesn’t explain his comprises in light of larger goals.[...]

Paul Krugman:

Obama the Moderate Conservative

No time to do any original posting tonight. But for those who missed the first time I linked to it, here’s Bruce Bartlett — an economic adviser to Ronald Reagan — explaining why Obama is indeed a moderate conservative in practical terms.

Here is the article that Krugman is referring to. Basically it points out that Richard Nixon did some moderately liberal things and that Barack Obama is pushing for some (formerly) conservative policies:

[...]Liberals hoped that Obama would overturn conservative policies and launch a new era of government activism. Although Republicans routinely accuse him of being a socialist, an honest examination of his presidency must conclude that he has in fact been moderately conservative to exactly the same degree that Nixon was moderately liberal.

Here are a few examples of Obama’s effective conservatism:

* His stimulus bill was half the size that his advisers thought necessary;
* He continued Bush’s war and national security policies without change and even retained Bush’s defense secretary;
* He put forward a health plan almost identical to those that had been supported by Republicans such as Mitt Romney in the recent past, pointedly rejecting the single-payer option favored by liberals;
* He caved to conservative demands that the Bush tax cuts be extended without getting any quid pro quo whatsoever;
* And in the past few weeks he has supported deficit reductions that go far beyond those offered by Republicans.

Further evidence can be found in the writings of outspoken liberals such as New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who has condemned Obama’s conservatism ever since he took office.[...]

As far as the bullet points: yes, many of these would have been conservative policies, back in the 1990′s. But I see many of them as the best that we can do at the moment; just how in the world was he supposed to get a Krugman type stimulus package through a Senate which was held hostage to the filibuster and the blue dog Democrats from red states? The House health care bill had a public option in it; but things changed when the Democrats lost that 60′th vote; doesn’t ANYONE remember that? As far as the tax cuts: we got an extension of the unemployment benefits, no? Weren’t those held hostage? Remember that Mr. Obama has always put governing first; he campaigned that way.

But on Daily Kos, a courageous diary author attempted to set the record straight:

Finally, I saw an article by someone who does get it. James Warren, writing for the Atlantic, explains Obama in context of his background in the Illinois State Senate and as a “deal-making community organizer.” I’ve always viewed Obama through the same lens and I suspect that’s why I’m very rarely surprised by anything he does.

And, as you watch him, be reminded of his informative pre-law school days as a community organizer in Chicago. Recall how they inspired both Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin to openly mock the term “community organizer” at the 2008 Republican National Convention, with the former New York mayor unable to contain derisive giggling as he openly wondered what the term stood for.

Well, it stands for giving power to the powerless. But, for Obama, it also meant a strategic set of notions about finding mutual agreement among people with the most divergent of motivations, according to Obama mentors whom I know from back then and David Maraniss, the journalist-author now working on an Obama biography.

He describes Obama as taking a pragmatic, non-ideological approach to making progress, which incidentally, is how Saul Alinsky describes his own approach in the community organizing favorite, “Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals.”

The column gives several examples of Obama’s work as an Illinois State Senator. The Illinois Senate drives me up the wall. The pace of progress always feels slow. And anything positive is often lumped in with something negative to appease lobbyists from the other side. But, over time they’ve done some impressive things like ending the death penalty, passing same sex civil unions, and creating a renewable energy portfolio standard. So, it doesn’t surprise me when I see Obama attempt a similar approach at the national level.

He comes from a background which assumes that taking what you can get and fighting for more next year isn’t considered a failure. Neither is getting people together for a solution that most can be happy with as long as progress is being made.

I talked about this some time ago.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: I am as far left on policy as anyone that is still in shouting distance of the mainstream. For example, I want single payer health care and I want the Bush tax cuts to expire for everyone. I want more money for education and less for wars.

And yes, while I like some Republicans on a personal level (ok, I like most of those that I actually know on a personal level) I don’t like the way that Republicans think; to me they are a collection of the ignorant, the deluded, the short sighted, the simple minded and the amoral greedy. Many are very smart but can’t move beyond their instinct to punish the lazy, or they adhere to discredited economic ideas which have failed repeatedly in the past. And too many Republicans think that compromise is a bad thing. We have some liberals that are like that (visit Daily Kos sometime) but the percentage of Republicans who think that way is far greater:

But I like President Obama because he is NOT like me; he is smarter, more level headed, wiser..and he can see the better angles in people. And he is willing to endure wrath from his base in order to govern; the man is mature.
To be fair, I started to see some signs of the latter in President Bush in the last year or so of his term; pity I didn’t see much of that during the first 6 years or so.

So, what is up at the moment?
The vote should happen soon; evidently Mr. Boehner has enough votes to pass it through the House:

On the House floor, there were some Democrats who continued to call for including some kind of tax increase, like letting the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans lapse, but no matter how events unfold in the days ahead, that seems the unlikeliest of outcomes.

After the Republican caucus broke up, more than a dozen freshmen Republicans held a news conference Thursday morning outside the Capitol to voice support for Mr. Boehner’s plan. Several members interviewed said they would support the bill in an effort to avoid a possible federal default after the government’s borrowing power runs out next week.

“This is heartbreak, for a lot of us,” said Representative Sean P. Duffy, a freshman from Wisconsin. “We didn’t come here for this. But you know what? We’re going to swallow it and get the job done.”

Representative Nan Hayworth, Republican of New York, said the bill had been tweaked enough to gain her support, and she felt the mood in the party’s caucus to be moving in Mr. Boehner’s direction.

“This is what you’d expect thoughtful people to do,” Ms. Hayworth said. “People with passionately held beliefs can evaluate the evidence, and there has been a coalescence that is developing around the idea that the speaker has presented and an appropriately amended bill that represents a very productive and constructive approach to the challenge we face.”

As their leaders got a sense of exactly how many Republicans they could count on — they need at least 217 — there would be interesting decisions in the cloakroom about which members would be given a pass to go against the leadership, and which would have their arms twisted, despite the political consequences back home, where some freshmen may have a weak grip on their seats and some members may face intense primary challenges.

Where do we go from here? Well, I actually think that Mr. Rush Limbaugh might be right (for a change):

Rush Limbaugh, rallying opposition to John Boehner’s plan to raise the debt limit:

If the Democrats get their way, the Republicans will pass the Boehner bill. It will go to the Senate, where it will immediately be announced dead on arrival. And then, dingy Harry will announce, “But, there’s enough here. We can work with this. We didn’t really realize all that was in this. There’s stuff in here — yeah, yeah. … Maybe I can get some Democratic votes on it after all.”

And then miraculously — miraculously — the prince of compromise, Harry Reid, steals the day, by compromising with just an outrageous dead on arrival bill. He gets all kinds of credit for hard work, rolling up sleeves and that magic compromise, and sends that back to the house. Okay Republicans, ball’s back in your court. Here’s your bill with a few modifications.

My guess is that it will pass. We might all win because this teaches the new tea-baggers in office that, at times, one actually has to govern.

The fact that such a routine process was turned into this circus does not speak well for us, as Fareed Zakaria points out.

Why do ants walk a geodesic path back to their nest?

Here is why: they optimize in the following way: they leave a smell when they go out by various paths. The smell is strongest in the path that took the least amount of time to traverse. So that is the path they return on. For details, read Jerry Coyne’s blog.

Think of it as a calculus of variations problem which is solved by trial and error.

Oh yes…it isn’t because Jesus loves the little ants.

7 January 2011 am

Workout/Injury The back is feeling better, but I shall rest it another day; this weekend I am planning to use the regular and arm bikes for a few minutes; if all is well then I’ll start easy running on Monday.

NFL My picks:
Straight up (who wins) Chiefs over the Ravens, Saints over the Seahawks, Eagles over the Packers, Jets over the Colts.
Against the Spread Chiefs + 3, Seahawks + 10.5, Eagles – 2.5, Jets + 2.5.

Off topic stuff
There is more to the story Terrible: the evil TSA arrests a mathematics professor for carrying a bagel aboard a flight!

If you carry bagels or other food items with you on an airplane these days, you’d better paint them red white and blue just to make sure all the passengers around you know you’re truly an American. Otherwise, they just might turn you in. In yet another case of air passengers turning into in-flight SS troops, a Florida professor was arrested, handcuffed and removed from a plane when his fellow passengers reported he had a “suspicious-looking bag” in his hands.

The contents of that suspicious-looking bag turned out to be a bagel with cream cheese, a set of keys and a hat.

But in America’s ultra-paranoid environment where the U.S. government actually encourages people to spy on each other (http://www.naturalnews.com/030648_W…), apparently just about anything can set off the suspicions of the citizens’ secret police.

Unbelievable! Oh wait….maybe there is more to this story? Yep; the professor was being a jerk:

A Florida math professor was removed from a US Airways airplane in Boston and arrested after passengers accused him of placing a package making weird noises in the overhead bin.

It turns out the “suspicious” package was a plastic bag containing a bagel and cream cheese, keys, a wallet, other food items and a hat, according to law enforcement officials.

But before that was discovered, Ognjen Milatovic, 35, also reportedly refused crew instructions to sit down and hang up his cell phone so the plane could take off.

The University of North Florida professor was taken off the Washington D.C.-bound flight in handcuffs and was arraigned in East Boston District Court on charges of disorderly conduct and interfering with operation of an aircraft. He was released with orders to return to court on March 15. [...]

Emphasis mine: hey, hold up everyone else and airline traffic because of YOUR phone call. Note: the above article does talk about a poor guy being pulled from a flight because he used the bathroom too much (thereby alarming the passengers….oh yeah, he “looked Middle Eastern”).

So yes, this “living in fear” is absurd and the TSA has gone too far; for example, on my latest flight, they were pulling people out of line to do a second check of their carry on luggage….luggage that had already been screened once. And yes, *I* got chosen (out of the 30 some odd people in line). I wasn’t the only one; someone else got it in the previous line.

Charity: I’ve run in the Race for the Cure. So that money goes for administrative costs and for research, right? Uh…some of it goes to attorneys who…threaten others who use “for the Cure” in their events.

Humor
This FAIL is funny:

see more funny videos

The shortest paper in the world Yes, you can read it even if you don’t have a technical background, and no, it won’t take you long. Who says that scientists don’t have a sense of humor?

Politics President Obama is planning to veto any bill that repeals the passed health care reform, though I doubt that such a bill from the House would survive the Senate.
True, the House could “play chicken” with the purse strings, but this might backfire on them:

The real thing happens later, when they try to strip the Department of Health and Human Services of money needed to implement the law’s requirement that all Americans buy health insurance. This could easily precipitate a showdown with the White House—and a government shutdown later this year.

On its face it’s a smart strategy for the GOP. The individual mandate is the lynchpin of the heath-care law because it spreads the risks. Without the participation of younger or healthier people, private insurers won’t be able to take on older or sicker customers with pre-existing medical conditions, or maintain coverage indefinitely for people who become seriously ill. The result would be to unravel the health-care law, which presumably is what many Republicans seek.

At the same time, the mandate is the least popular aspect of the law. According to a December 9-12 ABC/Washington Post survey, 60% of the public opposes the individual mandate. While they want help with their health-care bills, and over 60% want to prevent insurers from dropping coverage when customers become seriously ill, most Americans simply don’t like the idea of government requiring them to buy something. It not only offends libertarian sensibilities, but it also worries some moderates and liberals who fear private insurers will charge too much because of insufficient competition in the industry.

The individual mandate is also most susceptible to legal challenge. Twenty states, led by Florida, have joined together in a lawsuit to argue that the mandate oversteps federal authority. Virginia and some interest groups are also challenging the mandate’s constitutionality in federal court. In the first major ruling, on December 13, Judge Henry E. Hudson of the federal district court in Richmond called the mandate an “unbridled exercise of federal police powers” and an overreach of the Constitution’s Commerce Clause. The U.S. government is now appealing that decision.

Ok, mandates appear to be unpopular but they drive down costs. And no, this isn’t exactly the same thing as, say, car insurance or required home insurance for, say, an FHA loan. But what if this provision is really challenged? What might be the cost drive down measure?

President Obama and a majority of Democrats in the last Congress opted for the Republican model even though many Democrats would have preferred Medicare for all, or at the very least a public option. Most polls showed that the public favored such an option. But the White House hoped for Republican support and wanted to ward off opposition from health insurers and pharmaceutical companies by promising them some 30 million additional customers.

Set against this background, the current Republican attack on mandatory coverage is curious because it begs the essential question of how society would otherwise spread health-care risks. If successful—either in Congress or in the courts—a Republican victory could turn into a Phyrric one by opening the way to the alternative model, based on the system Americans seem to prefer: payroll taxes and public insurance.

And because the public already pays payroll taxes to fund medicare (though medicare is underfunded at the present time)…well, inadvertently the Republicans might deliver for us what the Democrats could not: single payer or at least a robust public option.

Science Yep, we had a snow shower. Yuck. But it is January in Illinois, after all. Here are a couple of good but short climate change videos. The second one was from a year ago, but it talks about why we have to look at the global picture to draw accurate conclusions; much of local temperatures depends on what happens with air masses.

Cancer Here is a recent insight that might help us make progress?

Without warning cancer can arise from a single catastrophic chromosomal event involving tens to hundreds of breaks in the DNA that are haphazardly pieced back together, researchers reported in the January 7th issue of Cell.

What is particularly exciting about this observation is that it points to a novel mechanism that affects the stability of the genome in a very localized way,” said Ronald DePinho, cancer geneticist at the Belfer Institute for Applied Cancer Science at Harvard University, who was not involved in the study. “This paper explains how cancer can form in a relatively short period of time.”

Normally when a cell undergoes drastic damage like the shattering of its chromosomes, what researchers call chromothripsis, it dies from a failure to pass innate cell cycle checkpoints that monitor DNA damage during mitosis. Sometimes, however, the cell attempts to rescue itself even after multiple breaks in its double stranded DNA (dsDNA). Though in most cases the repairs probably result in changes that are detrimental to the cells ability to continue dividing, Campbell said, by random chance the hodgepodge of repairs can occasionally amplify cancer genes or delete cancer suppressor genes, instigating the once normal cells to begin dividing uncontrollably.
[...]
Read more: Normal today, cancer tomorrow – The Scientist – Magazine of the Life Sciences http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/57907/#ixzz1AMGxx6yB

A little bit more progress….always a good thing. It is noted that bone cells are more prone to this type of behavior.

Vaccines cause autism fraud
We’ve heard this by now:

But how was this fraud committed? Here is a brief analysis:

The Lancet paper was a case series of 12 child patients; it reported a proposed “new syndrome” of enterocolitis and regressive autism and associated this with MMR as an “apparent precipitating event.” But in fact:

* Three of nine children reported with regressive autism did not have autism diagnosed at all. Only one child clearly had regressive autism

* Despite the paper claiming that all 12 children were “previously normal,” five had documented pre-existing developmental concerns

* Some children were reported to have experienced first behavioural symptoms within days of MMR, but the records documented these as starting some months after vaccination

Surf to Mano Singham’s blog to read the rest. What is astonishing to me is N = 12.

How the Brain develops
Can raising a child in a more fearful society (e. g., less sheltered) lead to a loss of politeness (or lessening of politeness) down the road? Note, this article is about brain development, and NOT a “these kids are more rude than we are” type of thing:

The contrast between the brash, comparatively disrespectful behavior of Americans today and the courtesy, formal manners, civil discourse, polite behavior and respect for others regardless of social status that is evident in Japanese society is striking. The contrast hits an American like a splash of cold water upon disembarking the airplane in Japan, because it clashes so starkly with our behavior. For an American, Japanese manners and courtesy must be experienced.

American children today are raised in an environment that is far more hostile than the environment that nurtured today’s adults. Children today are exposed to behaviors, profane language, hostilities and stress from which we adults, raised a generation ago, were carefully shielded. When I was a boy, there were no metal detectors at the entrance to my school. The idea was inconceivable, and there was indeed no need for them. Not so today. I wonder: how does this different environment affect brain development?

First it is helpful to consider, from a biological perspective, what “rudeness” is, so that we can consider what is lost when formal polite behaviors are cast away. People (and animals) living together in large numbers must develop strict formalized behaviors governing interactions between all individuals in the group, or there will be strife and chaos. In the natural world, as in the civilized world, it is stressful for individuals (people or animals) to interact with strangers, and also with other members of a working group and family members. As the size of the group increases, so do the number of interactions between individuals, thus raising the level of stress if not controlled by formal, stereotyped behavior, which in human society is called “manners.” The formal “Yes, Sir, Yes, Ma’am,” is not a showy embellishment in the military; strict respect and formal polite discourse are the hub of the wheel in any effective and cohesive social structure. True, many chafe under a system of behavior that is overly rigid, as do many young Japanese, but my point is that these polite and formalized behaviors reduce stress in a stressful situation that arises from being an individual in a complex society. Stress is a neurotoxin, especially during development of a child’s brain.

Studies have shown that children exposed to serious psychological trauma during childhood are at risk of suffering increased psychiatric disorders, including depression, anger, hostility, drug abuse, suicidal ideation, loneliness and even psychosis as adults. Using modern brain imaging, the physical damage to these children’s brain development can be seen as clearly as a bone fracture on an X-ray. Early-childhood sexual abuse, physical abuse and witnessing domestic violence undermine the normal wiring of brain circuits, especially those circuits connecting the left and right sides of the brain through a massive bundle of connections called the corpus callosum. Impairment in integrating information between right and left hemispheres is associated with increased risk of craving, drug abuse and dependence, and a weakened ability to make moral judgments. (See my post “Of Two Minds on Morality” for new research on the corpus callosum and the ability to make moral judgments.)

Surf and read the whole thing. This is a lesson about the long term cost of us living in so much fear.

Speaking of fear and society I sure hope that there is either more to this than is being reported or that this is an isolated mistake that will be remedied. This is a Salon article about a teenager with a US passport who is being detained, maltreated and tortured in another country though he has done nothing wrong. I WANT to believe that we are better than this.

But perhaps we are not. Look at the clowns in charge of crafting our foreign policy:

California congressman Howard “Buck” McKeon is the next chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. He doesn’t have any military experience — he spent the Vietnam era on a Mormon missionary retreat and a twenty-nine year quest (1956-1985) for a BA from Brigham Young — but he did bankrupt his family’s western wear company, so he knows how to order shirts no one wants. [...]

“(The Battle of Lexington and Concord) began what gave us the liberty, the freedom that we now enjoy, to where we can congregate together like this, we can talk about things, we can have free elections. We’ve been able to have real freedom and liberty, which is what the Lord, many, many years ago said that this land was set aside for. About a little over a year later, on July Fourth, 1776, the Continental Congress ratified the Declaration of Independence, which states that we would be free to pursue life, liberty and happiness. That’s what the Lord said that this land was set aside for, so that battle began the fulfillment of the prophecy. Now there’s no guarantee that those freedoms are always to be here. We’ve continued and fought for years. Hundreds of thousands have given their lives so that we can continue to enjoy those freedoms, and that fight goes on, on a daily basis. In discussions that you hold. In the people that are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan right now. Afghanistan was where the planning, the kick-off of the attack on us on 9/11 took place. That’s why we’re there. To prevent that from happening again. It’s better that we fight there, than on the streets of New York, or downtown Valencia. I just pray that we always will be able to hold those freedoms. Elder Ballard, a few years ago, visiting with the members of the Church in Washington in the Congress, said that it’s important that we always keep this land free, because it’s the cradle of the Church. It’s where from here we send our missionaries around the world. We need to have freedom to do that. It’s my prayer that we might always retain that freedom, and I wish we could do it without continued loss of treasure and blood, but it seems that that’s the world we live in.

I think that should clear up just about everything.

Oh dear. This is disgusting beyond belief. Yeah, it could be worse; we could live in a country where people run the risk of assassination if they are too secular:

The killing of the governor of Pakistan’s most populous province has highlighted the ongoing clash in Pakistani society between secularism and religious radicalism. Some of that radicalism is fueled by resentment against a privileged and often secular-minded elite who govern the country.
The death of Punjab Governor Salman Taseer, allegedly at the hands of one of his own bodyguards, has underscored what journalist Ahmad Rashid called a “very, very severe polarization” in Pakistan.

On one side, say analysts, is what is believed to be a comparatively small but vocal and determined group of Islamic radicals, some of them extreme to the point of violence. At the other is a liberal and, to varying degrees, secular elite. And caught in the middle is the average Pakistani who is buffeted by economic and political uncertainty.

Analyst Lisa Curtis of the Heritage Foundation says Pakistan’s founding father, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, envisioned a multiethnic, multireligious society with Islam as a unifying force. But she says events have caused the country to drift further towards extremism.

“It’s been events over the past 30 years, like the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, the Islamization policies of General Zia ul-Haq during the 1980s, which has really strengthened the Islamist forces and the more puritanical sects in Pakistan over the more traditional and moderate Sunni sects,” said Curtis.

That strength has not translated into popular votes. When Pakistan has had free and fair elections, the religious parties have fared poorly, picking up only a sliver of seats. But analysts say their power is in the street, not in the ballot box.

Religion is not benign. For more on the Pakistani mess, read this essay which laments what is happening. Note: this sort of extremism can cause huge problems, even if it doesn’t win direct political power.

What about our own wackos?
One such wacko (one that I had an indirect encounter with) will be spending more time in jail. Note: this is neo-nazi stuff…not all extremism is religious in nature.

11 November 2010 pm

Running/Walking/Rehabilitation/Science
Underwater treadmills existed for some time now; these helped injured runners gradually ease into running. Now there is a more sophisticated treadmill which uses air to tailor the amount of weight that the recovering individual uses when running or walking.

Science
Cosmology/Astronomy
Gamma bubbles: yes, there are massive gamma ray plumes coming from some locations (the places where there were black holes?) These are thousands of light years in diameter! So much for the claim that “the universe was designed for life” (as Neal DeGrasse Tyson lampoons here)

Here is an awesome photo of two galaxies colliding…as ours will eventually with the Andromeda.

Physics/Mathematics
Time and space really are different!

And yes, while the curvature of space might change from location to location, the value of “pi” (which is the ratio of a circle’s diameter to circumference in Euclidean geometry) doesn’t vary by location. No, I am not making this question up as a “straw man”.

Biology/Evolution
Yes, there are genes that influence the amount of sleep we need; read about that here.

Astonishingly, fly maggots have many light receptors (“eyes”, so to speak):

An article soon to be published by Nature from the world-famous laboratory of Lily and Yuh Jan describes the astonishing finding that Drosophila maggots – and, you can be pretty sure, virtually every other kind of fly maggot – is covered with tiny “eyes”. Nobody had any idea that this was the case.

Up until today, the maggot’s “eyes” were thought to be a group of 12 cells called Bolwig’s organ.

It turns out that if this Bolwig’s organ is “killed”, the maggot will still avoid light; it still detects it!

Social Issues
Yes, raising the retirement age is problematic: whereas life expectancy (from 65 years on) has gone up for some economic groups, it has barely budged for the lowest income groups (those who need social security the most). And think about those whose jobs are physically demanding..not about those who work in climate controlled offices.

Health insurance Interesting question: should health insurance cover medical bills that result from stupid acts (e. g., a kid deliberately swallowing various items? ) That itself is an interesting question, but this finding is VERY interesting:

A potential catch for would-be sword-swallowers is that until the full panoply of protections in the health care reform bill comes into effect, insurance companies can deny coverage to prospective clients based on a history of risky behavior. Companies sometimes scour applicants’ medical records for evidence of frequent emergency room visits or revealing doctors’ notes. New rules will severely limit the factors they can consider starting in 2014. [...]

Economic theorists have long been concerned about moral hazard—the assumed tendency to engage in risky behaviors, like eating razors, because your insurer will always have your back. But recent studies have shown the opposite to be true. People who have health insurance are actually less likely to drink heavily, smoke, or have a high-risk job such as logger, airline pilot, or taxi driver. The insured are also more likely to wear seat belts and seek preventive care services. Researchers speculate that risk-loving people may perceive forgoing health insurance as just another adrenaline rush.

Another tough issue Amazon was carrying a self-published book on pedophilia. This sparked outrage. On one hand, I can see the outrage over this book; part of it was instructions on “how to not get caught”. On the other hand a book to help pedophiles (those who have these desires) to NOT ACT ON THOSE DESIRES might be useful.

And yes, there is free speech; the government has no right to censor such stuff. But citizens can decide to buy where ever they want. So no, I did not take part in the protest but I didn’t loudly back Amazon either. It turns out that Amazon gave in.

I hope that they don’t place the whole subject as a taboo one; protecting society from the acts of pedophiles requires us knowing more about them.

Politics

Republican anti-science
Yes: John Shimkus (IL-19, from the Southern Part of the state) says that “God” won’t let global warming destroy the planet so we don’t have to worry about that.

I am utterly revolted that we have such idiots in positions of power. Evidently, the younger, better educated voters are also turned off for these reasons:

He answers in the affirmative, and proposes a reason: the Republican war on science and knowledge (Why America’s Top Students Tune Out the GOP). Money quote:

Today’s top students are motivated less by enthusiasm for Democrats and much more by revulsion from Republicans. It’s not the students who have changed so much. It’s the Republicans. … Under Presidents Eisenhower and Nixon, Republicans championed science and knowledge. But over the past 30 years, national Republicans have formed an intensifying alliance with religious conservatives more skeptical of science and knowledge. I don’t know whether discarding evolution goes against common sense; but I’m pretty sure it goes against most Ivy League-educated senses.

More along these lines here.

Such stupidity (in terms of both science and being reflexively against regulations) has a consequence as Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub points out here.

General Republican stupidity
Of course current Republican stupidity isn’t limited to science:
Here Sarah Palin (who else) attacks a non-existent program.

Then Ms. Palin attacks The Journal’s Real Time Economics for pointing out that she got the facts wrong:

The Journal’s Real Time Economics, having had the audacity to point out that Sarah Palin’s attack on quantitative easing was factually challenged, gets a blast from the barracuda. As I read it, they seem somewhat shocked — it sounds as if they’re deeply surprised at being accused of villainy simply because they pointed out that the facts are somewhat at variance with what politicians on the right are saying.

Folks, my hatred of many current Republicans comes from this. I don’t hate someone for disagreeing with me; heck I am frequently wrong about things. What I detest is this celebration of stupidity and anti-intellectualism. That is also why I liked Barack Obama so much; I saw him as a push-back against that. True, this quality of his might be hurting him politically; he doesn’t seem to have the ability to do the necessary arm twisting that President Johnson, President FD Roosevelt and President Clinton did. Then again, he did get some large bills passed, so I can’t say that he was ineffective though.

Politics: what will happen?
The Democrats are wooing Senator Snowe. I disagree with DK here: if Senator Snowe wants to defect, I say “welcome her with open arms”. She is smart and will perhaps be more moderate without the straight jacket that the current Republican party is throwing on her. Note: she proposed a “pubic option trigger” for the Senate Health Care bill which would have been an improvement over what we passed.

Don’t Cave Mr. President!
Liberals (myself included) are worried that President Obama might cave on the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. Paul Krugman is not optimistic. Robert Reich offers a way forward:

Yes, the President needs to acknowledge the Republican sweep on Election Day. But he can do that by offering his own version of a compromise that’s both economically sensible and politically smart. Instead of limiting the extension to $250,000 of income (the bottom 98 percent of Americans), he should offer to extend it to all incomes under $500,000 (essentially the bottom 99 percent), for two years.

The economics are clear:

First, the top 1 percent spends a much smaller proportion of their income than everyone else, so there’s very little economic stimulus at these lofty heights.

On the other hand, giving the top 1 percent a two-year extension would cost the Treasury $130 billion over two years, thereby blowing a giant hole in efforts to get the deficit under control.

Alternatively, $130 billion would be enough to rehire every teacher, firefighter, and police officer laid off over the last two years and save the jobs of all of them now on the chopping block. Not only are these people critical to our security and the future of our children but, unlike the top 1 percent, they could be expected to spend all of their earnings and thereby stimulate the economy.

Conservative supply-siders who argue the top 1 percent will stop working as hard if they have to return to the 39 percent marginal rate of the Clinton years must be smoking something (probably an expensive grade).

27 October 2010 pm

Books: my reading list just got longer. I went to a talk by Akbar Ahmed and enjoyed it; I’ll relate what I’ve learned after I’ve finished his book. I need to finish Diamond’s Third Chimpanzee and finish the book on the relations between the United States and the Middle East called Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East: 1776 to the Present by Michael Oren. I stopped reading at the Civil War era.

Evolution and Cats: Jerry Coyne talks about the evolution of patterns on cats (e. g., spots, smooth coats, etc.) Evidently, much of it was adaptation to their environment (e. g., hide to hunt). His post has many photos. Along with that is an Animal Camouflage post by Conservation Report.

(click to see the larger photo at Conservation Report).

Speaking of such adaptations, this post on the ghost mantis is pretty cool. This creature looks like a leaf; tell me how anyone would doubt the principle of adaptation?

Of course, people who don’t know science frequently tell the professional scientists that they don’t know what they are doing:

It is a truth universally acknowledged that, among the world-class theoretical physicists of our time, the one with the most entertaining web page is Gerard ‘t Hooft. (Even though he would be annoyed to see that WordPress refuses to display the apostrophe in his name correctly.) See for example the Constitution for 9491 Thooft, an asteroid that was named in his honor. Sounds like a place I would like to visit, once the hotel situation has advanced a bit.

I’m mentioning it because I was struck by this succinct answer to the question, “Will the Higgs be found?” Nothing especially newsworthy, I just enjoyed the spirit of the reply.

More and more frequently, I receive letters and mails from wise people outside physics, telling me that “they know” that the Higgs will not be found, that our theories are baloney, how dare we spend billions of public funds to build machines such as LHC, “to prove, against better judgment, that our theories still stand a chance of being correct”, and so on.

Well, lads, I am not going to answer all of you in person. What you have in common is a blissful ignorance of the scientific facts concerning the Standard Model. Fact is that the W+, W- and the Z boson each carry three spin degrees of freedom, whereas the Yang-Mills field quanta, which describe their interactions correctly in great detail, each carry only two. Those remaining modes come from the Higgs field. What this means is that three quarters of the field of the Higgs have already been found. The fourth is still missing, and if you calculate its properties, it is also clear why it is missing: it is hiding in the form of a particle that is difficult to detect. LHC will have to work for several years before it stands a chance to see the statistical signals of this Higgs particle. What compounds the matter even more is that there may well be several sets of Higgs fields. If there are two, which is eight quarters of the field, we will get five Higgses rather than one. This would be a quite realistic possibility but it would make the detection of each one of them even harder, because they cause more complex statistical signals that are more difficult to predict.

This type of thing happens every time an expert opens his stuff up to the general public. There will always be some clowns who, based on some half digested popular works, will proceed to tell the expert “the facts” about his/her field and expect to be taken seriously. I am glad that the experts put up with this BS because I enjoy reading their “for the educated lay-person” accounts in their books and blogs.

But given that I’ve done a modest amount of academic research (mathematics) I know all too well how little I know about my own subject.

Politics Robert Reich counters George Will. Will pointed out that the 4.2 billion spent on influencing the election was less than what America spends on many other things. Reich replies:

The number of dollars spent isn’t the issue; it’s the lopsidedness of where the dollars come from. Even if the total were only $1000, democracy would be endangered if $980 came from large corporations and wealthy individuals. The trend is clear and worrisome: The great bulk of campaign money is coming from a narrower and narrower circle of monied interests.

Anyone who doubts the corrupting effect has not been paying attention. Our elected representatives have been acutely sensitive to the needs of Wall Street bankers, hedge-fund managers, and the executives of big pharma, big oil, and the largest health insurance companies. This is not because these individuals and interests are particularly worthy or specially deserving. It is because they are effectively bribing elected officials with their donations. Such donations are not made out of charitable impulse. They are calculated investments no less carefully considered than investments in particular shares of stock. They are shares in our democracy.