Posted on December 22, 2010 by Marty Andrade
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// If I were Alqaeda, I would just send bogus emails with plausible terror plans and make the Western Satan freak out, things like using supersoakers filled w/ gasoline to burn kittens. That's a plausible terror threat. We don't have enough FBI to protect all the kittens.
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// Actual statistical research. My favorite.
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Quote:"Results of two experimental studies described in this article constituted clear experimental demonstration of how polls influence votes. Findings showed that voters tended to vote for those who they were told were leading in the polls; furthermore, that these poll-driven effects on votes were substantial. Effects of polls on votes tended to be operative throughout a wide spectrum of initial (i.e., pre-poll) voter preferences ranging from undecided to moderately strong. There was a limit on poll effects, however, as noted in Study Two: Polls failed to influence votes when voter preferences were very strong to begin with.
Additional findings of considerable interest showed that effects of polls were stronger for women than for men and also were stronger for more arousable (i.e., more emotional) and more submissive (or less dominant) persons. Especially noteworthy is my discussion of similarities and differences between the study methods and real- life political campaigns begin
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Posted on December 21, 2010 by Marty Andrade
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Quote:"They are Pomplamoose, the Marin County, California-based band featuring singer (and Justin Bieber haircut thief) Nataly Dawn and multi-instrumentalist Jack Conte. While they're not household names, Pomplamoose didn't come out of complete obscurity to land the Hyundai campaign. The duo is what we like to call YouTube-famous — they might not be topping the charts with their albums, but they consistently pull in more viral video views than many more established acts.
// They play their own instruments.
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// ugh
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Quote:"This year, temporary workers have represented a significant part of hiring. In November, they accounted for 80 percent of the 50,000 jobs added by private sector employers, according to the Labor Department. Since the beginning of the year, employers have added a net 307,000 temporary workers, more than a quarter of the 1.17 million private sector jobs added in total.
// Whoa. So the recovery in employment has basically been…temporary…
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Quote:"'Net neutrality' sounds nice, but the Web is working fine now. The new rules will inhibit investment, deter innovation and create a billable-hours bonanza for lawyers.
// The last people I want messin' wit my Internet is the govment.
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Quote:'A former FBI agent recently trained all Waste Management drivers, helpers and technicians in Rensselaer and Albany Counties to act as a mobile community watch.
"They're on these routes every day so they're used to the normal situation so they are able to recognize a non-normal situation," explains Ken Bevis of Waste Management. Trucks are now armed with a cell phone, camera and incident reports so they'll have accurate information for police and, possibly, prosecutors.
"The drivers understand their main job is to observe and report and let authorities do their job," explains Bevis.
// I thought their primary job was to collect garbage…
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Quote:"Don't starve yourself. Eat. Research shows that dieting too intensely or tracking every morsel too closely creates the perfect conditions for adding belly fat, not subtracting it.
Don't Mess with Stress
A new study tracked the tension levels of 121 female dieters for 3 weeks and showed some concerning results. Those who followed a strict low-cal eating plan — consisting of prepackaged meals totaling 1,200 calories a day — experienced a significant rise in their levels of the stress hormone cortisol. And that can spell big trouble when it comes to belly management. Cortisol tells your body to store more calories in your midsection, exactly where you don't want it. On top of that, feeling stressed-out can make sticking with any weight loss plan feel darn near impossible.
// So you're boned no matter what you do…
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Posted on December 20, 2010 by Marty Andrade
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Quote:"Within these synapses are proteins that combine together, forming a molecular machine known as the post-synaptic density, or PSD, which is believed to disrupt synaptic functioning, causing disease and behavioural change.
Reporting in the journal Nature Neuroscience, Seth Grant of Britain's Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute led a team that extracted PSDs from synapses of patients undergoing brain surgery.
"We found over 130 brain diseases involve the PSD — far more than expected," said Grant. "The human PSD is at centre stage of a large range of human diseases affecting millions of people."
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// Awesome, via Kathleen Madigan.
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Quote:"Whining PhD students are nothing new, but there seem to be genuine problems with the system that produces research doctorates (the practical “professional doctorates” in fields such as law, business and medicine have a more obvious value). There is an oversupply of PhDs. Although a doctorate is designed as training for a job in academia, the number of PhD positions is unrelated to the number of job openings. Meanwhile, business leaders complain about shortages of high-level skills, suggesting PhDs are not teaching the right things. The fiercest critics compare research doctorates to Ponzi or pyramid schemes.
// In other words, stay away from academia.
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Quote:"The population continues to shift from Democratic-leaning Rust Belt states to Republican-leaning Sun Belt states, a trend the Census Bureau will detail in its once-a-decade report to the president. Political clout shifts, too, because the nation must reapportion the 435 House districts to make them roughly equal in population, based on the latest census figures.
// Problem is, people don't necessarily change as they move. Meaning democrats in Nebraska are the same a democrats in Boston. But, most GOP states have big victory margins, so it will go against the Dems at first.
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Quote:"By 01:45, the ship's forecastle and forward well decks were underwater and the forward A Deck promenade was barely ten feet above the surface. Around this time, passengers on the deck were greeted with the strange sight of dogs running up and down the deck, including John Jacob Astor's beloved Airedale Terrier, Kitty. The Titanic was equipped with a kennel, and a crewman had unlocked it, figuring there was no point in leaving all the dogs the passengers had brought on board to die locked up.
// You never see this in the movies.
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Quote:"During Titanic’s frantic final hours on April 15, 1912, Titanic’s postal clerks, along with steward Albert Theissinger and several others, desperately tried to save the 200 sacks of registered mail by dragging them to the upper decks and possible safety. Theissinger was the only survivor to recall seeing the mail clerks alive. When he finally abandoned the seemingly suicidal task, the five mail clerks — Americans Oscar Scott Woody, John Starr March, and William Logan Gwinn and British postal workers James Bertram Williamson and John Richard Jago Smith — were still frantically at work, sloshing waist-deep in freezing water.
// Remarkable
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// Catholic Priest who assisted passengers, took confessions and gave absolution to those on the Titanic.
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Quote:"It was Joughin who fortified himself with alcohol, threw deck chairs overboard for flotation devices, rode the stern down and claims to have stepped into the water without getting his hair wet. He claims to have hung on to the side of Collapsible B for hours with most of his body submerged in the icy water, yet survived with virtually no ill effects.
// It is generally understood that Joughin basically stayed in the water until help arrived, a period of several hours. Most people lasted 10-20 minutes only. I still wonder how he did it, if it was all alcohol or something more.
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// Led an interesting life. He's controversial because he strictly adhered to the "women and children" orders while Murdoch on the starbord side of the Titanic allowed men onto the lifeboats. His biography after the Titanic is impressive, he saved over a hundred soldiers at Dunkirk, rammed a U-Boat in WWI and even played around in espionage.
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Posted on December 19, 2010 by Marty Andrade
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Quote:"The kids in the group offered low-sugar cereal options (original Cheerios, Rice Krispies, and Corn Flakes, all of which have 1 to 4 grams of sugar per serving) ate about one serving of cereal, and they were much more likely to serve themselves fresh fruit, with 54 percent of those children having fruit, compared to just 8 percent of the kids eating sugary cereal. The Froot Loops group ate almost twice as much cereal as the low-sugar kids.
What's interesting is that even though the children eating lower-sugar cereal poured on more sugar from the sugar packets, they still ate half as much sugar in their breakfast overall: about 12 grams, compared to 24 grams for the sugary cereal eaters. Add in the fact that fruit has many nutritional benefits, and that the less sugary cereals tended to have more fiber than the sweeter varieties, and it's a no-brainer; the healthier cereals made for a healthier meal, and the kids still got fed.
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Quote:"The memo points out that even the Cuban ruling elite leave Cuba when they need medical care. Fidel Castro, for example, brought in a Spanish doctor during his health crisis in 2006. The vice-minister of health, Abelardo Ramirez, went to France for gastric cancer surgery. The neurosurgeon whoheads CIMEQ [Centro de Investigaciones Médico-Quirúrgicas] hospital – widely regarded as one of the best in Cuba – came to England for eye surgery, returning periodically for checkups.
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Posted on December 18, 2010 by Marty Andrade
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Posted on December 17, 2010 by Marty Andrade
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Posted on December 16, 2010 by Marty Andrade
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Posted on December 15, 2010 by Marty Andrade
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// I tend to think most conservative people oriented towards "science" end up in the private sector. I don't think being a conservative means yuo can't be a scientist.
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// Will The Nook ever be the same? For several decades they used a single grill with only one setting.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Comments Off on links for 2010-12-14
Posted on December 14, 2010 by Marty Andrade
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Quote:" Republican elected officials need to learn to talk about immigration in an honest, fair, and reasonable way that doesn’t further offend and enrage the rapidly growing Latino segment of the electorate; second, the reason this situation needs triaging in the first place is because too many Republicans can’t seem to approach the immigration issue without pandering to a vocal contingent of racists and nativists within their base.
// Word.
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Quote:"His pilot qualifications do not appear to be in question — he holds the highest type of license a pilot can have, a Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman said. However, United grounded him in August after his medical and doctoral degrees evaporated like contrails of the jets he flew. He resigned in June as an educator and researcher at William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Mich., after a credentials check revealed discrepancies, a hospital spokeswoman said.
Doctors who worked with the 58-year-old pilot are stunned, not just at the ruse and how long it lasted, but also because many of them valued his work and were sad to see it end.
// Captain Bogs asked "Why did United ground him"?
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Quote:"This Christmas, having received not a single invitation to join them from family or friends – I suppose a single, childless, ageing, vegan woman plonked in their midst is not everyone’s cup of eggnog – I am going to attempt to live out the rural ideal and spend the day feeding my animals.
I have 17 cats, all of whom worship at the altar of St Michael, my sheepdog.
// Yeah. That sounds healthy
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Quote:"A telling story is recounted in The Deming Guide to Quality and Competitive Position (Howard S. Gitlow and Shelly J. Gitlow, Prentice-Hall, Inc. – Englewood Cliffs, NJ – 1987, p.32) quoting a story that originally appeared in the Toronto Sun (25 April 1983):
They’re still laughing about this at IBM.
Apparently the computer giant decided to have some parts manufactured in Japan as a trial project. In the specifications they set out that the limit of defective parts would be acceptable at three units per 10,000.
When the delivery came in there was an accompanying letter. “We Japanese have hard time understanding North American business practices. But the three defective parts per 10,000 have been included and are wrapped separately. Hope this pleases.”
// Awesome
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Posted on December 13, 2010 by Marty Andrade
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Quote:"Why would the working poor pay more? Because the proposal would replace this year’s Making Work Pay (MWP) credit with a temporary reduction in the Social Security payroll tax from 6.2 percent to 4.2 percent. That’s a good deal for high earners, who got nothing from MWP (thanks to an income phaseout), but a bad deal for those making $20,000 or less.
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Quote:"Dai Haifei, a 24-year-old architect in Beijing, China, found an ingenious solution to live rent-free. He built himself a mobile egg-shaped house that is powered by the sun.
The 6-foot-high structure, which is small enough to fit on a sidewalk, is made of bamboo strips, wood chippings, sack bags, and grass seed that’s expected to grow in the spring.
The pod features a solar panel on the roof that powers a lamp in the cozy space. The house cost around $1,000 to build (6427 yen), according to China Daily.
// Awesome. I'll be living in one of those, if I'm lucky.
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// Yeah. A ban on going to the bathroom. That'll work.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Comments Off on links for 2010-12-12
Marty Andrade 