Funmurphys: the Blog

Man Vs. Machine

Gary Kasparov, sometimes hailed as the greatest human chess player ever, is duking it out with another computer, Deep Junior. This is a grudge match, since Deep Blue, Deep Junior's ancestor(?) beat Kasparov in 1997, and the man alleged cheating. I can't wait for the Scorcese treatment in a few years; I'm sure blood, guts, and transistors will go flying in an outburst of creative license.

Kasparov won the first match, drew the second and lost the third. So while they're tied, mighty mo is in Deep Junior's corner. (Somebody is going to have to have a talk with those IBM guys about how to name a product.) If I were a traditional pundit, I'd draw a straight line and conclude that Kasparov won't win any more games. But I have too much organism pride (does that make me an organist?), and I want the man to beat the machine.

Do American's Care What Other Nations Think?

Random Observations answers the BBC, that hey, we American's DO care about other countries. He also points out that those sophisticated Europeans are geographically challanged, just like Americans. Maybe Jay could have an international version of Jaywalking.

Dramatic Decrease in College Students Mental Health

The American Psychological Association reports that college students have far more mental health problems than 11 years ago. How can this be? Every child is wanted now, so shouldn't their mental well being be getting better? Or perhaps this excerpt provides a clue:

"This comes at a time when students are finding fewer options for counseling and mental health care in the community, leaving the role of providing care primarily in the hands of university counseling center staff, according to the researchers."

Could it be shrinks are trying to drum up business? Or could it be with less stigma, people are more willing to turn to mental health professionals? Chronic mental illness didn't change over the period studied, thankfully.

Via Science Blog.

Great Science Blog

Astoundingly, it's called Science Blog. And who says scientistific types aren't creative? I'd say it's loaded with lots of science goodness, but that's so cliched, I can't.

Europe Is With Us

Sine Qua Non Pundit points out that many European countries do support war in Iraq - Spain, Portugal, Italy , United Kingdom, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Denmark. So why do we keep hearing about France and Germany only?

Irish Proverb 3

Time is a great Storyteller

American Idol

I didn't watch the show the first time, and I doubt I'll watch it much this time. Since I happen to live in America, I heard plenty about it the first time. And I have managed to catch a few of the open audition episodes this time around. Frankly, I don't see the attraction. You have people with a wide range of talent, from good to really, really awful (people who's singing is worse than mine, and that's saying a lot) and then three judges react. I don't know what the big deal is about Simon Crowell, he's not just being honest, he's trying to do these people a favor. Some of the contestants honestly don't seem to realize just what terrible singers they are - a candy coated rejection will keep them hanging on to their misperception. Much better to give them an honest appraisal, and be brutal to those who think they can sing when they can't. I wouldn't have thought that until I saw people who, after demonstrating their clear inability to carry a tune in a bucket, want to argue that they are talented singers. You need a two by four to get the attention of a mule; you need brutality to get the attention of the self-delusional.

Painful Childbirth

Is there any other kind? Well, this question in the NYT caught my eye: Why do humans, unlike virtually all other mammals, experience so much pain in giving birth? The answer was long and ultimately boiled down to we don't know, but there is an untestable theory. I guess if you run a question and answer column, you can't just say, I don't know.

Exercise - Good For What Ails You

Exercise isn't just good for your muscles and heart - it's good for your brain, too. One thing that's struck me about aging (now that I'm feeling the effects) is how the maintenance requirements just keep increasing. One way to stay young is through exercise. Not only does it keep your muscles from atrophy, it keeps your brain from atrophy. Aerobic exercis is best for your cardiovascular system and your brain. Researchers can measure this both functionally through congitive testing and also physically. People who exercise don't lose as much grey matter (neurons and support cells) or white matter (myelin sheaths) as they age than people who don't exercise. So people, let's get walking out there! We don't want our brains to shrivel up.

More Good News About Intestinal Bacteria

Researchers at Washington University have discovered that intestinal bacteria can cause people (AKA bacterial growth medium) to produce an antibiotic that is specific to invading bacteria. Angiogenins, thought to promote blood vessel growth, apparently are an effective and specific antibiotic (and not only bacteria, but yeast too). Our bodies don't think all bacteria are bad - not only do we need them for certain vital tasks, we take care not kill those off when we try to kill off the ones that attack us.

You might recall the big hoopla around angiogenins awhile back because researchers discovered they could cure cancer in mice with anti-angiogenic compound - they could starve a tumor by taking away its blood supply. Sadly, it hasn't seemed to work in humans. Sadly, I couldn't find a decent link, so you'll just have to rely on my memory.

The Superbowl Misnamed Again

The game, as usual, was a lopsided contest of little interest to anyone who wasn't a Buccaneer or Raiders fan. The officiating, as usual, was spotty with some poor calls. But since the Raiders only decided to actually bother to play hard for a quarter or so, it didn't matter. U2's half time show last year is going to be hard to beat, and this year's sure didn't. A couple of years ago we had N'Synch singing along with Aerosmith for a delightfully bizarre specatacle, this year we got blah. OK, Shania tried her darnedest with those dominatrix boots, but a Gwen Stefani - Sting duet in 2003 is bland indeed. Sadly, the commercials were unusually poor with only a few good ones, no great ones, and plenty of dull ones. At least some of the ones during the dot com craze were spectacularly awful; this time around, the bad ones didn't even emit a decent stink. I'd rather get an unintentional laugh than a shrug.

A little History

The Midwest Conservative Journal is smoking on Iraq today. The only thing I have to add takes off from the remarks of John Howard" (Australia's Prime Minister for those of us who aren't Al Gore):

"Mr Howard said NATO's attack on Serbian troops in Kosovo showed that UN approval was not a necessity for Allied troops to begin a military attack.

"Look at Kosovo. There was no UN resolution on Kosovo," he said. "I don't remember too many people at the time saying that's outrageous. I don't remember it.

"I'm not saying Kosovo is a model for what might happen here. I'm not suggesting that. I'm using that as illustration that people who look for a black and white outcome from the UN could be mistaken.

"In the end we could have a grey outcome from the UN and you then have to make a judgment on merits."

Let me go a little bit further. On Kosovo, not only was there no U.N. resolution, there was no congressional authorization. The short history was there was a cold civil war in Kosovo, with atrocities being committed by both Albanians and Serbians - in fact it was the Albanians in Kosovo who originated the use of rape as a means of war in the modern Balkans, and you were more likely to be victimized as a Serb than an Albanian in Kosovo. President Clinton demanded that Yugoslavia sign the Rambouillet Accord or else, with a deadline after which force would be used. This is typically known as issuing an ultimatum. We knew Yugoslavia wouldn't, couldn't accept this Accord -- Kosovo was not only going to be autonomous, it was going to be under NATO control and occupation, and under appendix B Yugoslavia itself could be occupied by NATO. Didn't anybody remember that WWI started with an ultimatum issued to Serbia - again one that couldn't be accepted? So when the deadline passed, NATO ministers voted for war, and President Clinton ordered bombing to commence, without any congressional debate or vote. That's right the United States of America went to war, not on a U.N. resolution, not on a Congressional Declartion of War, but on the vote of NATO. Where were the cries of give diplomacy a chance?

And did we confine ourselves to military targets? No. Not only did we bomb civilian infrastructure - power plants, bridges, car factories, that could be argued were valid because of their use to the military, we bombed a Serbian TV studio because we didn't like what they were saying on it. We targeted and killed civilians not because of their possible military value, but because we didn't like their version of events. Where was the outcry? What would have happened if in the Gulf War we would have targeted Peter Arnett (like blowing up his hotel room at night) because we didn't like how the Iraqi's were using him for propaganda purposes? Don't think too hard about that, instead, wonder why when the litany of why America is considered an arrogant cowboy country, we hear about Kyoto and not Kosovo.

So please, don't tell me that Bush is a warmongerer, or that an attack on Iraq without UN apporval is illegal unless you said the same thing about Clinton and Kosovo.

Pinewood Derby

Saturday is my pack's Pinewood Derby. So I've spent the week getting ready for it. We bought a new track this year, and a new timing system to go with it, and new race software too. When the track was delivered by UPS to the head of the derby, one of the boxes was damaged, and bolts were leaking out. So we started the assymbly of the new track with a little fear in the belly that perhaps something important was lost and we would be using the old track again. That wouldn't be too bad, but we'd already thanked the boys for their fundraising on behalf of the new track and told them because of their efforts we would be getting a new one. As it turned out, only some bolts were missing. The real problem were the instructions. For both the track, timer, and software, the manuals were sorely lacking. The biggest problem was that they just started in with step one without providing any kind of overview. We worked Saturday and Sunday afternoons, Monday and Tuesday night to get it all put together and tested. Wednesday we had our final help session, and tonight my son and I finished up the car. Whew. I just finished the final touches on the planning for the pack meeting to go with it, and tomorrow night its off to school for the weigh in and taking the track apart and moving it to school to set up again so that bright and early Saturday morning we can race at the school and not in sombody's basement.

Our race committee chair recommended we purchase a plastic track (SuperTrack?) with it's timer (Super Timer) and software. The pack committee prefered an aluminum track due to durability concerns, so we wound up buying an aluminum track (Best Track) but stayed with the same timer and software. The companies that sell this stuff are mom and pop operations (I think a couple of buddies is more like it) and when you call their support lines you get the feeling you are talking to somebody at home watching the football game. And believe me, we had to call -- a lot. We'd look at the manual, read the website, look at the pictures, discuss, and then call. Sometimes somebody would suggest jumping to making the call right away, but our manly pride wouldn't let us. The most confusing was the timer because the two of us trying to install it had no idea that it provided for a remote control start, and so couldn't figure out what the solenoid was doing in the system. The help we got from the timer guy was pretty much "You should have bought my track." In hindsight, I think he was right, but the advice came too late and didn't do us any good. It was a painful process, mainly due to ego bruises, but we did manage to put it together and it is pretty neat. Now we have a track that the boys can start the races and the track announces the winner and lights up the winning lane.

Every year our car (yes, I'll admit that it is a joint project) gets better looking. I think our first one ran better than the second, but it was a shock when we showed up for the impound the night before and saw what the other kids (and parent) built - mainly in the paint job. This year somebody told us about a web site (Maximum Velocity) that gave us an idea of what to build, and other parents shared their finishing techniques. So I think the car looks pretty good and I hope will run pretty good too. I'll just be glad when it's over so I can have some free time again, so that I can get cracking on getting the annex all squared away. Then it will be time for Blue and Gold, and hey, two more years after that I won't be Cubmaster anymore. Somehow, I don't remember my parents being this busy when I was a kid.

Irish Proverb 2

The Light Heart Lives Long

Trading Spaces: Live Reveal

In typical fashion, before I get to the live reveal, I have a few comments about the other Trading Spaces episode that aired before the live reveal show, which I'll get to first, just to build suspense. And before I tackle that, I'll just mention that I'm just now getting around to blogging about a show that aired 4 days ago. I know this is the internet with its own faster time, but I'm not one to get up from the couch and run upstairs to the computer immediately following a TV show. Unless, of course, I'm going to play Civilization III or Diablo II.

Early in this season, my wife and I wondered if Hildi was still on the show. Every episode, we'd turn to each other after the designers were announced and say "still no Hildi". And since the claim was that Kia and Edward were replacing Laurie on maternity leave, maybe, just maybe, they were also replacing Hildi. No such luck. We've now had a steady diet of Hildi - including the London show with the awful Handy Andy. Too bad she didn't stay behind, but she's back. She continues her signature of wacky wall coverings - straw, records, flowers, and now wine bottle labels. NO MAS, NO MAS HILDI. She took a pretty good kitchen and turned it into the black hole of Calcutta. Laurie was her usual good self, but what was the deal with that top? Yeah, I always dress up in some expensive shirt with long dangling sleeves and no shoulders to do home improvement projects. My wife thought she was tired of being a Mom and wanted to be elegant Laurie again. And this was another episode where they get done and you say to yourself, what cost a thousand bucks in those rooms?

OK, now the Live Reveal. First off the kiss. I get quite a few hits (for me, anyway) on this site from search engines of people looking for the sexual orientation of various cast members, and Doug Wilson is one of the people often inquired about. I have no idea, and I try not to speculate, but after the kiss between Hildi and Doug, well, let me just leave it at that. I thought given the time pressure, the designers would try to keep it simple. Hah, shows what I know. I wonder if they kept to a thousand a room budget on this one. I think they both decided to go for very bold designs to spark some reaction during the live reveal. Doug continues to use Venetian Plaster. He must know how to do it right, or is expecting a different effect, because the time I did it, well, you can paint right over it and we did get a refund. Maybe the secret's in the wax. He pulled the design from Doug's cliche's -- browns, blues, chrome, and striking. I hate to say it, I did kind of like the room.

I was surprised by the celebrity cameos. Even if Trading Spaces is a hit, it still is a hit on a cable network, and it shows with the celebrities. Having Robin Leach was perfect and since he was first, a real surprise. Penn and Teller were good, the Elvis impersonator was OK, and Rita Rudner was terrible. What was the point - did she live in the neighborhood?

Hildi, Hildi, Hildi. Well, I'm glad the room wasn't a bedroom, or you couldn't sleep at night. She bought a print (in London, of course) of Escher meets Mr. Psychedelic and then tried to make the room match. She actually did a good job, so if you think a physchedelic Escher living room (minus the stream running up a waterfall) is good, you'd like the room. (Kia would have tried to add the stream running up a waterfall, despite her failure with the pyramid fountain). Doing it live actually worked, even if it was a gimmic. Both sets up homeowners, despite their bug eyed initial reactions, claimed to like the rooms. The reveals seemed to go on for longer than usual, and it was nice to see Doug, Hildi, and Amy Wynn run out at the end. I think we were all secretly hoping for a good cry or hissy fit, but had to settle for jokes about stripper poles and cries of "look, a mottled purple ceiling!"

Rabbidity

I spent some time at the end of last week over at Eschaton engaged in discussion about Affirmative Action. I found it interesting that by taking the position that judging people by race or ethnicity was wrong, I was told I might (giving me the benefit of the doubt) be a racist; others didn't give the benefit and said anyone who said anything along the lines that either you shouldn't discriminate or that we live in a colorblind society or just bringing up the word quota is racist. The interesting thing was, nobody said we DO live in a colorblind society; a few said we OUGHT to live in a colorblind society. Anyway, rabid partisans are rabid partisans whether they are on the left, right, center, or uncategorizable. They're always right and those whom they oppose are always wrong. They divide people into two categories - allies and enemies. Allies are always right, enemies are always wrong. Anything an enemy does is another example of why they aren't just wrong, they're evil. They don't need to listen or try to understand; attack, attack attack is all that is needed. As I said, rabid partisans exist all across the political spectrum (and always have). Bush haters, meet Clinton haters.

It's Not My Fault, It's My Genes

Reuters reports that an Italian researcher has linked a gene (charmingly named DD) to abnormal weight gain in men. And it's widespread - about 40% of the population (I'm not clear which population) has it. It's not as big a deal as made out, however when you read that 52 percent of carriers are overweight as compared to 44% of non carriers. That's the problem with reading the last part of an article as opposed to just the headline - the headline is always an attention grabber, staking out the most extreme position, and the real meaning is buried at the end of the article.

This Is Gonna Be Good

Everybody's least favorite hometown paper, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (full disclosure, I'm a subscriber, but only because my wife says we save more in coupons than spend on the paper), will be negotiating a new union contract as the last one has expired. Managment had a 37 page list of demands; the union, AKA the Newspaper Guild, responded by asking for an 18.6% wage hike. Oh, this is gonna be good -- well, better than the paper, anyway.

Best Model Airplane Glue

Now that PBS Media Matters has brought it up, the best, the only, model airplane glue to use is Testors. I say this as someone old enough to have bought model airplane glue as a minor before it was put behind the counter and an adult had to be present to buy it; who still has part of his collection of model airplanes, ships, and tanks moldering away in a cabinet in his parents basement; and who has inhaled far more glue fumes unintentionally as part of building the models than anyone who did it intentionally but who didn't suffer brain damage. The Foker Triplane by Revell was my first plastic model kit, and still a favorite. Susan St. James' (of Kate and Allie fame) father is the guy who figured out adding mustard oil would cut down on kids inhaling glue, which put it back out on shelves again.

And So It Begins

Last night we had our first intergenerational fooseball game (I suspect of many). The Fruit of the Murphy Loins declared that their team name was "The Shockers"; the Murphy Fearless Leaders decided to remain nameless. Despite the confident predictions of victory by the Shockers, they in fact were the ones shocked as they went down to defeat. No victory dance took place as the victors were too old and tired to bother. Play of the game was characterized by observers, if there had been any, as extremely poor in every aspect but sportsmanship.

Irish Proverb

In honor of my new desk calender whose pictures consist of delightful pastoral scenes of the old sod mixed with a fine assortment of pubs and the occasional distillery and once a week an Irish Proverb and no picture, I present my first Irish Proverb:

The wearer best knows where the shoe pinches.

SUV - That Says It All

I'm not someone who either drives an SUV or hates them. My wife drives a mini-van, and I drive an econo-box. We looked at SUVs when we bought the mini-van, and they were just too expensive, more expensive than the mini-van. Greg Easterbrook has an article based on a book about what's wrong with SUVs (found via Archpundit). I knew they gobbled gas, but I didn't know that they really weren't that safe. I also was vaguely aware that by being classified as trucks, they escaped a lot of regulations that cars were under. The article details a lot of those exemptions. In the end, I'm struck by how we have two lines of vehicles - those highly regulated as passenger vehicles (cars, mini-vans), and those somewhat less regulated as trucks (SUVs). I suppose what really galls the anti-SUV crowd is how many people pick the less good for you SUVs despite the high price and the faults required to be legally considered a truck. If people want to overpay for a hunk of junk, what's it to me? Why are some of the people up in arms about a supposed loss of civil rights due to the war on terror so bound and determined to tell me what my automobile has to be like; why do those who resent any intrusion in the bedroom welcome it in the drivers seat? I know, it's for my own good.

All Natural Tanning

When you mix soybean oil with an extract from oat bran, you don't get an all natural fiber laxative, you get an all natural sunscreen with no nasty chemicals, not even to make it,according to the USDA.

The Best Defense Is An Offense

No, this isn't about what the Rams need to do in the off season. Tim Mullen, computer security expert, has proposed that if a malicious process on another computer is attacking your computer, you should be able to go and kill it on the other computer -- what Mullen calls "strikeback". It sounds like a good idea to me - and oddly enough, Mullen has found that most of us outside the security business think so too. It's the security experts who are having a hard time with it. The trouble with common sense is that it isn't common.

North Korea Diplomacy

I'm sure you've seen this article by Orson Scott Card on Korea - it's all over the blogospere, although I found it via Glenn Reynolds. I think it's a pretty good analysis, although I don't think China is going to publically put North Korea under its nuclear umbrella. I'm not sure what form the gaurantee will take, but I think it will more likely be a treaty or agreement that includes China. The important thing to remember, as this article points out, not everything that happens happens in public, and not everything that can be said should be (or is) said in public.

I thought this article (in the NYT of all places) makes a fine companion piece. North Korea is a drain on China -- it exports refuges and imports food, money, and resources. South Korea is an asset to China - both as a market (third largest trading partner)and as a source of investment (fifth largest foreign investor), and I'm sure that comes with some technology transfer. In a sense, both South Korea and China would just as soon North Korea disappeared from the map, or failing that, the status quo is just fine, thank you very much. I doubt South Korea wants to try to unify with the North after the example of German reunification, and China is stuck for reasons of history and status with being its protector. So for the Chinese, any problems North Korea causes the US is OK with them; to the extent North Korea causes them problems, well, now something has to be done.

Pete Townshend

I'm sure you've heard about the arrest of Pete Townshend for downloading child pornography. I have no idea if he is or isn't a pedophile (I hope he isn't), and the only reason I even blog this is because of an interview he gave years ago on if I recall correctly, a local (St. Louis) radio station. Chuck Berry had been arrested and sued over tapes he made of women in a bathroom at a business he ran. He said it was to check for drugs or somesuch; I think it was degenerate. Anyway, the point isn't Mr. Berry's extensive legal problems, but Pete Townshend's attitude. He kept repeating "Leave the man alone" - he stated that it was wrong to hassle such a great musician, to whom we all owed a debt of gratitude, and his guilt or innocence didn't matter. He'd done so much for music, he could do whatever he wanted. I was kind of shocked.

Home Improvement - Oh How I Love Carpet!

Yesterday had its ups and downs. Problems at my ISP knocked funmurphys offline. But back in the real world, they were working away on the annex. Jerry was restoring the fence and side yard to its pre-construction state, and freezing his feet off (thin socks); the unknown carpet installers were, well, installing the new carpet. So I came home not just to progress, but an inside that is almost done -- done enough to move the furniture back out of the garage, where it has been forcing me to park outside in the cold of winter, and put together the Fruit of the Murphy Loins fooseball/airhockey table they got for Christmas. So something for everybody. What did my wife get? She got to arrange the furniture at a 45 degree angle to the walls and stuff like that. The project is rapidly going from gigantic headache to party time. And the best part is, no more dust! Well, just the normal amount.

Hypertension Risk Determined At Birth?

A German study finds that hypertension is linked to the number of nephrons in your kydneys. Nephrons are the physical structure of capillary and tubes that filter your blood to make urine. The researches examined 20 cadaver kidneys, 10 from people with hypertension, 10 from people without, and discovered that those with hypertension averaged less than half the nephrons of those without. And they couldn't find any evidence that the low count was due to loss of existing nephrons. It would seem that you are born with a certain number of nephrons, and if the number is low, you get hypertension. So get your blood pressure tested -- even if your diet and overall health are perfect, you can still have high blood pressure.

Disappointed By The Truth?

A DNA test confirmed that the man convicted of the crime was in fact guilty of it, and the project innocence lawyer said the test result was disappointing. Why would you be disappointed? Shouldn't you be happy that the legal system got the right guy? It's not like there was a question of whether a crime occured or not; the question was who did it. Maybe she was disappointed in Mr. Charron, the rapist. Well, me too.

Steve Case Leaves AOL

Steve Case has apparently left AOL Time Warner of his own free will. There are a lot of people who dislike Case and AOL, but I'm not one of them. I joined in 1991 (give or take, the memory grows hazy with time) and left only recently to go to broadband when Charter made me a deal I couldn't refuse. I was dissatisfied with AOL when I left, but after our long association, I was more sad than upset. And I think the AOL Time Warner merger was ego in search of justification, and Case got in over his head. Kind of like HP merging with Compaq, but that's another story. Also like a lot of us who thought we were pretty savvy investors, but discovered a rising tide lifts all boats. I have a similar discussion with my brother (who works for Cisco) about the evaluation of management when a market is growing at 30% or more a year -- how do you tell the great from the ordinary? You can't, everybody looks great. I think a lot of the internet hype will eventually come true, just not as soon or by the then players.

When I first signed up, few people would have thought AOL would turn out to be the largest ISP -- heck, it was a dial up service and there weren't any ISPs then. I think the interesting thing is that in those days, AOL was quite Mac like. Not only the interface, but the focus on the customer experience. I considered CompuServe, which was the leader, but between a notoriously awful interface and high prices I went with GEnie instead. But GEnie was cheap for a reason. So then I saw an ad for AOL, and I decided to give it a try. The user experience did deteriorate with time, and the porn spam got to be downright scary in quantity (It was amazing how many mega babes I was getting all hot and bothered). But in the early days, it offered plenty of product, a simple and usable interface at a reasonable cost.

In my opinion, when PCs got big, Microsoft wound up grabbing IBM's monopoly via the IBM compatable route (Yes Virginia, IBM was a monopoly, and Microsoft is a monopoly). Apple lost out in the enterprise market because IBM was nowhere associated with it. For the BBS's, dialups and then ISPs, there was no prior monopoly leader, and AOL won based on user experience, which the home market was sensitive to. Same strategy, different results.

Steve Case did an admirable job at growing a dial up service, at transitioning to an ISP, and in getting ISP customers. But when it came to running a giant ISP, he wasn't as good. And it turns out he wasn't any good at all at running a media giant, but I'm not sure Time Warner has had good management for some time. Somehow I can't find it in my heart to hate or consider evil businessmen who's sin is not doing a good job, or losing sight of the customer. That makes them a lousy businessman, not a lousy person.

Does God Play Dice?

Well, Einstein was just proven right about the speed of gravity. But so far, his famous saying "God does not play dice" seems to be wrong. Quantum mechanics continues to be probabilistic, not deterministic. In fact, not only does God appear to play dice, he seems to be far more fond of it than beetles. But Gerald 't Hooft is trying to reconcile the two opposite views with a new theory. Right now we have a probabilistic quantum scale giving rise to a deterministic seeming classical scale. Einstein wanted a scale below the quantum, controled by what were known as hidden variables. Well, an experiment in the '80s eliminated hidden variables as tenable science. But 't Hooft thinks he may have found a way around it; the trouble is, this new scale is so small it's far beyond the ability of current technology to measure. Ah, the joys of theoretical physics.

Gov. Ryan Commutes Death Penalty Sentences

Illinois Governor George Ryan commuted every death sentence to life without parole. I happened to catch part of his speech announcing his decision. He found that the process in Illinois was fundamentally flawed - it applied the death penalty capriciously, it convicted the innocent, and it was biased against minorities and the poor. I could understand his reasons except for one - he cited the fact that some blacks were judged, "not by their peers, but by all white juries." Excuse me, but I find that remark offensive and racist. It simply assumes that white people are biased against blacks, and it explicitly states that blacks and whites are not peers - we aren't equal.

My first reaction was that Governor Ryan had abdicated his repsonsibilities as Governor by issuing a blanket commutation. While some of the people on death row might not be guilty or deserving, certainly not all were. To excercise his reponsibility properly, shouldn't he have reviewed the cases and made a case by case decision? But wouldn't doing that be replacing the jury's judgement with his own? Wouldn't that be in effect saying that his judgement was superior to the jury's? I many of the cases, there is no doubt about the guilt of the defendent. The Post Dispatch ran synopsises of the affected cases from the Metro East, and they were all clearly guilty, and guilty of heinous crimes. But in other cases, there would doubt. And people could draw different conclusions, and perhaps to do justice in those cases life inprisonment or even release would be more appropriate. And if the system itself truly was fundamentally flawed, then how could you accept any of the applications of the penalty? You would be facing the choice of doing nothing, substituting your judgement for the jury's, or invalidating the death penalty system as a whole.

The next question is what comes next? Shouldn't he have made every effort during his term to fix the problems with the justice system in Illinois - frankly, if the death penalty process is as broken as he claims, I can't believe the rest of the system is just fine. If confessions are being coerced, then there aren't being coerced just in death penalty cases. If the application is of the death penalty is biased, capricious, and punishing the innocent with the guilty, I simply can't believe that these problems affect only death penalty cases - the entire justice system must be shot through with them. Well, Governor Ryan has tried to fix the death penalty (along with other reforms), but his efforts haven't gone anywhere in the legislature. And the incoming Governor Rod Blagojevich doesn't seem inclined to do anything either. So what we are left with is a dramatic gesture and more polarization; and rather than needed reform, we'll have a more angry status quo.

Home Improvement: The Dirty Little Secret

After the cost and delay of our room annex project, the thing that's disturbed us the most is the trash. OK, dust ranks up there, but we expected it. What we didn't expect was that nobody who has come to our house has felt the slightest need to clean up after themselves. The only guy who cleans up is the one who shows up in response to our complaints about the trash, and he doesn't do a particuarly good job of it. Old insulation lays where it falls. Spills of caulk, wall mud (I don't know the technical term, sorry), concrete stay where it falls. You know somebody's been there working by the pile of trash left behind. Soda cups from fast food places remain until we throw them away. Sometimes it seems like the workmen go out of there way to make a mess, and then ignore it. And it's not like they're working late and don't have time to clean up; it's simply beneath them. If the construction was self contained, it would be one thing. But we have to live in the other half of the room. Maybe next time, we'll stipulate women workers and see if they are any better.

Better Than Sliced Bread

Femtosecond Lasers. Lasers that can vaporize anything in a single pulse, but delicate enough for a woman. Or a man, since I figure I'll get my eyes LASIK'ed by these soon, which in my time frame of reference means the next decade. These lasers have two big benefits: one is they work so fast the material is vaporized before it can transmit any heat into the surrounding material, and two you can actually control the depth in a transparent material at which the vaporization occurs. Mega cool. The coming revolution, if nano-technology and gene manipulation doesn't get there first.

Presidential Advice

The Edge (yeah, never heard of them before, either) asked a bunch of respected scientists and thinkers to pretend The President had asked their advice on the pressing scientific issues of the day, and what to do about them. I read through a bunch, but I found Dennis Dutton's advice to be the best of the bunch:

"I hope your new Science Advisor comes to the job armed with knowledge of the rich history of junk science and false predictions served up to government in the last forty years. The point is not to be cynical about fads and careerism, but wisely to choose where best to support both pure science and science that can give us beneficial technologies. "

OK, it's meta advice, but I think that's better than what a lot of the responses were: variations on "Plastics my boy, plastics." I mean, how can you do any better than:

"Today, it is much easier for scientists to receive grants if they indicate their research might uncover a serious threat or problem—economic, medical, ecological. Media fascination with bad news is partly to blame, along with the principled gloominess and nagging of organizations such as Greenpeace. But government itself has played its natural part. After all, as H.L. Mencken once remarked, "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." "

One Man, One Vote, Lousy System?

Is plurality voting, also known as one man, one vote (sorry ladies, I don't mean to be offensive, just historically accurate), the best voting method? Not according to vote theorists:

"It's a terrible system," says Alexander Tabarrok, an economist at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., and director of research for the Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif. "Almost anything looks good compared to it."

It's certainly the easiest to understand. But what about instant runoff, where each voter ranks all the candidates, and the candidate with the fewest votes is recursively eliminated until only one is left? Or Borda voting, where each voter assigns points to each candidate out of a total possible per voter and the winner is the candidate with the most points? Or how about approval voting, where each voter can vote for as many candidates as he wants? Well, Kenneth Arrow demonstrated that the only voting system that works properly 100% of the time is the one man dictatorship (literally, one man, one vote total), not that either he or I advocate that. And in a two candidate vote, it doesn't matter what system you use - they all work. A good testing ground for any new voting proceedures would be primaries, where there are often a more than two candidates. And maybe the American system of two parties, plurality voting, and winner take all victories all works together such that the whole is more than the sum of the parts.

High Bad, Low Good

Hormesis. Sounds kind of odd, but it's the idea that high doses of a compound are a poison, low doses are a tonic. Dr. Edward Calabrese advances the theory of Hormesis based on thousands of studies performed on all kinds of organisms. The proposed mechanism is that the low doses stimulates the body and the response is beneficial - for instance, a low dose of radiation causes a small amount of DNA damage which stimulates the body to repair it - if the dose is low enough, the repair exceeds the damage do to the radiation. Too high, and you die. It's hard to build a therapy around, but it does mean we might not have to sweat the small stuff - for instance, there is a point past which cleaning up certain pollutants is actually counter productive, let alone pointless. And the EPA's linear dose models would need to be changed. Still, it's not widely accepted.

This passage caught my eye in the article:

In one session of the conference, veterinarian Dennis Jones, of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry in Atlanta, presented recent findings on low-dose mercury exposure. Jones analyzed data from a study at the Centers for Disease Control that tracked more than 100,000 infants. The infants were given thimerosal, an organic compound of mercury used as a preservative in vaccines. The researchers worried that giving the infants too many vaccines might harm them. But Jones found that limited exposure to mercury actually lessened the children's chances of developing neurological tics, delayed speech, and other pathologies. Jones's analysis is preliminary, so he declined to give concrete numbers. But he called the study "exquisite" and said that it "really amazed" him. Calabrese was not amazed. "In our most recent database search," he said softly into the microphone, "mercury is perhaps the most studied element showing a hormetic effect."

So while there's no scientific evidence so far that mercury in vaccines cause autism, if hormesis is accurate, then there might actually be a benefit to mercury in vaccines. I can see why it's hard to accept.

The Tomato: Good Internally and Externally

OK, we already knew that lycoprenes in tomatos are good for your prostate and your cardiovascular system, but now another compound from the tomato makes a great insect repellent too. It's as good as DEET but lasts longer.

All You Need Is Bacteria

Apparently we do need germs. Without bacteria in the gut, your intestines won't develop properly. A researcher at our own Washington University has discovered that without bacteria colonizing an infant's gut after birth, blood vessels don't properly develop and proliferate in the intestines. Maybe you really do need to eat a pound of dirt to grow up right, as my father-in-law says.

The Death Penalty

USA Today has an article about the death penalty. I think it does a pretty good job of covering the subject. Some of the main objections to the death penalty are: sometimes the innocent die, it's unfair to minorities, it doesn't deter crime, and (unmentioned in the article) is it's immoral.

Guess what - any system designed and executed by man is not going to be perfect. You cannot reject the good because it's not perfect. If we stop the death penalty because it's not perfect, why not end life imprisonment - surely there are those who are wrongly imprisoned. Ah, but we can correct lesser sanctions, although I doubt the resources will be devoted to investigating the merely incorrectly incarcerated that are devoted to investigated those slated to die. But we really can't correct the lesser sanctions - we can't give someone back 20 years of life spent behind bars. You can let them out, but you can't return to the status quo ante. Frankly, if you stand on this principle, the entire ediface of government comes crashing down because nothing it does is perfect.

If the death penalty is being applied unfairly, isn't the remedy to apply it fairly, not scrap it altogether? Is there something intrinsic to the death penalty that means it will be applied unfairly, but simple imprisonment won't? Nope. The stand here seems to be it's not okay to unfairly kill someone, but it's fine to lock them up until they die unfairly.

Does it deter crime? Some view murder as a crime of passion or insanity, and so obviously it won't deter crime. But what about pre-meditated murders? Certainly having some penalty deters crime; the question is does the death penalty deter murder more than life in prisonment. And frankly, I find the newer studies where going back to the death penalty lowered murder rates more persuasive than the older ones that compared states with and without the death penalty. But as Robert Blecker points out, don't certain crimes simply demand the death penalty, whether it deters or not?

And that brings us to the moral aspect. One strand of thought is that the state morally is the same as an individual. You won't hear this pronounced as such, but it usually takes the form that if it's wrong for me to kill someone, it's wrong for the state. The problem with that view is that it's wrong for me to lock someone up in my basement until they die of old age, but these same people don't question the morality of imprisonment of prisoners, since the alternative offered to death is usually a life sentence without parole. So we're left to balance the state's moral duty and status as a state to punish evil, or if you prefer, wrong behavior. And I think many of us know of a case that we say to ourselves, if anyone deserves the death penalty, it's this guy. Jeffery Daumer perhaps. The killer of Barbara Jo Brown for Robert Blecker; the killers in Valley Park who burglerized their neighbor's trailer, then worried about her identifying them, led her with her hands tied behind her back and a towel around her head to a nearby railroad bridge where they pushed her off to drown in the Meremac River for me. And to me that's the crux of the issue - do certain crimes demand the death penalty. People will arrive at their own answer to that question - one I'm still grappling with.

Dogs Dogs Dogs

I'm a dog person. I like them, and they like me. I have never been able to make any of them understand the concept of pointing though, not one. They invariably stare at my hand - they know it must be important, but they can't figure out how. Even my current dog, a Welsh Corgi, which according to the sign at Pass Pets is "highly intellegent" (another sign claimed a different breed was "very intellegent", but we didn't have time to ask the attendent whether highly beat very), can't figure it out. This fine article in Science News claims that not only can dogs do this, but they have an innnate, evolved in ability to do so. In fact, according to the research in the article, dogs are better than chimpanzees in figuring out what people's gestures mean. The test was to put food in one sealed bowl and let them find it. The researchers would then look at or point at the correct bowl and let the animal use this gesture as a way to find it. This makes me feel better, because I talk to my dogs. They don't let on they understand my pointing; maybe there just not letting on they understand my talking either. I don't just praise mind you, but on walks we have whole discussions (pretty much one sided, I have to admit). I ask them what they're smelling, what they're hearing, and a perennial favorite, are you ever going to take a dump on this walk so we can go home?

While I can't get dogs to understand pointing, they've always understood the steps needed to take a walk. Now when it gets dark outside, my dog gets excited, and likes to be close - he doesn't want you slipping out without him noticing. Certain sounds bring the dog running any time -- the sound of the closet door where his leash is kept and the sound of the front door being unlocked. When you put on a coat, he does a little dance of joy. I know just how he feels - no seriously, I do. Freshman year in college, my dorm room overlooked a bike shelter. I was sweet on a particular girl, and in no time at all I could recognize the sound of her bike security chain from all the others. I'd hear the sound of the chain, I'd go look out the window. After I let slip my conditioning to my buddy Carl Drews, good scientist that he is, one afternoon he shook a chain at random and then waited, repeated this proceedure a few times, and then shook her chain. I looked out the window, and instead of seeing her, I saw Carl grinning up at me - giving new meaning to the phrase pulling my chain.

The latest research indicates that dogs come from East Asia. When the first Americans came over the land bridge from Asia, they brought their dogs with them, just like the second Americans when they came over from Europe. And three dog night is the correct expression - it seems that 95% of dogs are descended from three lineages. They don't mention Carolina dogs; it would be interesting to see how they fit in. Since the DNA was mainly collected at dog shows, I doubt they collected any.

Sewage Can Be Fun!

Well, as long as you can read about it, and don't have to deal with it yourself, and believe me, that's the voice of personal experience speaking. The Charlotte Observer runs a story about the anniversary of two waste water treatment plants. The good stuff is what the workers find in their filters - one worker reported bought a car with the money he found over the years: "You dry it and iron it out, and it still spends." Another tried on eight sets of false teeth - none fit. Yep, it must be a ball working down at ye olde sewage treatment facility.

Worm Attacks: Invading earthworms threaten rare U.S. fern

That's the title of an article in Science News. Apparently our homeland (yech, what an unamerican word) is under attack by more than al-Qaida. I had no idea until I read the article, but America north of line between Massachusetts to Iowa has no native earthworms (no word on what happens west of there). When I read that, it reminded me of when I went off to school in California and discovered they had no lightning bugs. How can you not have worms? How can you not have lightning bugs? Anyway, some rare fern that requires a lot of leaf litter is being threatened by a particular European earthworm that does an otherwise admirable job of recycling leaf litter. I guess as an exotic European colonist myself, I can't complain too loudly about the worms. What did the early bird eat in Minnesota before the European worms showed up?

The Victimization of Nuns Continues

First the nuns were sexually abused, and now they are suffering media abuse. The Post Dispatch ran a hatchet job about a survey that examined sexual victimization among Catholic nuns. Why do I say a hatchet job? Let me count the ways.

I believe that it's terrible that any woman, or man, is sexually victimized - even one. But we need an accurate accounting if we want to understand the problem. The article claims that 40% of nuns have been vicitimized by priests or other nuns. How does it reach that figure? The survey asked the nuns if they had been victims of (1) childhood sex abuse (18.6%), (2) sexual exploitation (12.5%), or (3) sexual harassment (9.3%), and then lumps all three together. So the maximum number would be 40%; but since only 10% of the childhood sex abuse, less than 75% of the sexual exploitation (which includes consentual sex), and less than half of the sexual harassment took place at the hands of nuns, priests, or other religious person (whatever that is), the figure drops to 15.9% -- which is still 15.9% too large, but at least that's a more accurate number - and less than half of what is claimed. Clearly the article is trying to maximize the number and put it at the feet of the Catholic church. The correct headline should be that 40% of nuns who have been sexually victimized were victimized by anyone in the church - not that 40% of all nuns have been victimized by people in the church.

According to the article, the Catholic church discovered in 1996 that nuns had been sexually victimized, and despite running the results of the survey in a couple of religious research journals, buried it by not putting out a press release. This tells us that reporters look to press releases for stories, and not religous journals. I knew this already because I've discovered via the internet that stories, even at papers like the New York Times or the Washington Post, are often nothing more than lightly reformatted press releases with one or two outside experts comments added. What a clever way to hide something - put it in plain sight. What a novel concept - unless you actually notify the press, you're hiding something.

The final problem with the story as run in the Post is that there were no comparison of victimization rate to any other group, like women in general. The article gives us no idea whether you're more likely to be a victim of sexual "trauma" as a nun than as a woman in general. The article give us no idea if nuns are more likely to be sexually harassed in houses of worship than women in places of work. The Toronto star throws out the figure that 20 to 27 percent of all women have been sexually abused as children (a figure that quite frankly is alarmingly high) -- which indicates that nuns are on the low side -- but no word on sexual exploitation or sexual harassment. Its just one big scare story designed to cash in on the sex molesting priest scandal. Its important - does the Catholic church need to clean up its act, or does all of society?

I can't speak for the study itself, but the Post ran a letter from Janet Lauritsen, Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice who ripped the methodology of the study - only certain orders participated, less than half of those in the order responded and concluded that it was unrepresentative and that no estimate of victimization could be drawn.

No doubt this story will get plenty of play, even though its biased, misleading, and provides no context. But then, every media consumer is used to that kind of reporting.

UPDATE:

Today the paper ran a letter from one of the original researchers of the study refuting the claims of poor methodology and labeling the other academics claims "fatuous". Oooh, academic catfight. Is a 50% non-repsonse rate significant? Beats me. But this letter says the post left off two categories of sexual victimization included in the study: intra-community sexual harassment and other sexual abuse (including rape and sexual assault). So I still think the Post has done a lousy, sensationalist job of covering the survey.

The Science of Humor

How do neuroscientists study the brain's response to humor in a natural setting? They have monitor the brain activity of subjects while watching Seinfeld. They use the laugh track to synch up the jokes with the brain's response. Then to evaluate the effect of the laugh track, they have the subjects watch the Simpsons since it has no laugh track. The laugh track had no effect on the brain's response (they didn't address whether it makes a show funnier).

They discovered that humor is a two step process in the brain - first regions associated with resolving ambiguities (the posterior temporal cortex and inferior frontal cortex) are active, and then within seconds regions associated with emotion and memory are active (insula and amygdala). In other words, scientists have conclusively proven that you have to get the joke before you think it's funny. Unless, of course, it contains the word duck.

Home Improvement - The Beginning Of The End

Our room annex construction continues. My wife has informed me that she doesn't care for the term addition. It seems that her childhood neighbors had an addition that was never finished - the husband took off before completion -- and served as a junk area. So I promised her I would call it the annex (somehow I figured festering sore was out of the question). When we started, the contractor said four weeks. In retrospect, that figure was unrealistic. But it set our expectations and we figured we'd be done by Thanksgiving even with inevitable delays, even if it took twice as long. When my daughter asked if it would be done by her birthday (in February), I asked which one. The whole thing started two weeks later than originally planned, we lost two weeks while we waited for new roof trusses because the architect got confused about inner and outer dimensions. We lost another two or three weeks (they all blur together after a while) because they didn't leave provisions for the heating ducts, despite our repeated attempts to get them to explain how they were going to hook the new ducts up to the old. Finally they cut up the new floor slab to put in the ducts - which gave us a heavy coating of concrete dust throughout the house. And both these delays slowed the project down even more because the next jobs didn't get scheduled until they were completed. And then the Holidays, which we were supposed to be done by, killed us. Firms wouldn't ship materials. Contractors wouldn't even start jobs if it meant they might have to work in a week containing Thanksgiving, Christmas, or New Years - three more weeks down the drain.

With the holidays over, we figured the pace should pick up some. Yesterday, my wife had told me the electricians had been there first thing in the morning, so I knew some work got done on the addition, oops, annex. But when I got home, I was overjoyed just to see that the lumber sitting in the front yard for months had finally been hauled off. And then to go inside and see that the painters had been there, and finished - that was heart attack material. Three tasks in one day - I can almost believe we'll be done by the end of the week (the latest estimate). End of next week is more like it, but I can see light at the end of the surprisingly long tunnel. Why we only have the carpet, the bookshelves, trim and touchup, finish the siding (they ran out!), and rebuild the fence to go. Soon I'll have a brand spanking new room annex, and a sea of mud to go with it. Oh yeah, once it's done, I'll have to go to work. Furniture, decorations, and this spring, landscaping. Maybe I shouldn't be too anxious for them to finish.