A Sure Thing?

I remember having to do a history paper back when I was in the fourth grade. The title of my paper was Phoenicia, Land of the Arts. I illustrated it in an old-fashioned cut 'n paste style, with illustrations from old National Geographic magazines. In an inspired burst of creativity, I made the title page and headers out of assorted fonts and letters that I also clipped from magazines -- the colorful ransom letter effect worked well with my subject matter. It was a well-deserved "A," IMHO.
Some time later, when I had another paper to do, I used the same ransom note technique on the title page. I don't remember the paper topic or the grade, but I remember that it didn't go over that well a second time. Maybe if it had been another teacher...
The point (you're surprised that I have one?) of this anecdote is that it has a certain similarity to recent political activity. In the last presidential election, a lot of political hay was made of John Kerry's flip-flopping.
I Actually Did Vote for the $87 Billion, Before I voted Against It
Well, hey, it worked in 2004. Let's try it again. So John McCain supporters are making ham-fisted attempts at painting opponent Barack Obama as a flip-flopper on Iraq troop withdrawal (or anything else that might work, for that matter). I guess that this tiresome recycling of the "tried-and-true" is second nature for a conservative.
While we are at it, perhaps Obama has a Dukakis/Willie Horton-style spectre that we can raise.
Really, I'm only kidding.

Academic Freedom is Just Another Word

A July 9 New Scientist article, New legal threat to teaching evolution in the US, warns that "Intelligent Design" is once again worming its way back into education. Although Intelligent Design received a legal trouncing in Dover, Pennsylvania, back in 2005, the folks behind it have been hard at work putting new lipstick on that pig.

On the heels of Ben Stein's 2008 movie, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, the new wedge issue has become academic freedom. But this isn't the academic freedom that grants academics the ability to do research and publish, it is the freedom to legislate that high school teachers must teach "the controversy" and "critical thinking skills."

Yes, I can see where one's belief in a literal interpretation of the Bible goes hand-in-hand with the exercise of one's critical thinking skills.

It's sobering to hear (actually, it makes me want to do a double) that the governor of Louisiana, who is a strong supporter of this bold new interpretation of academic freedom, is on the short list as a potential vice presidential nominee for John McCain. Praise the Lord and pass the snakes!

Left Behind -- and loving it

A fool and their $40 are soon parted -- the $40 will get left behind.
You've got to love this concept: a web site, http://www.youvebeenleftbehind.com, has been established for the purpose of getting one last message to the lost (at a time when they might just be willing to hear it for the first and last time).
Programmed and run by Christians, for Christians, this site will store your message to the unsaved and automatically release it to them six days after the rapture. The rapture will have officially occurred when three of the web site's five-member team fails to log in over a three-day period. A "deadman's switch," if you will. Another three days are given to failsafe any false triggering of the system.
For a modest $40 per year fee, God-fearing Christians can store up to 250 MB of documents and have a message sent to up to 62 individual email addresses.
The "Why" is simple. After the rapture, the Christians who have left the rest of us behind will have one last chance to bring us to Christ and snatch us from the flames.

Hitting 'em where it hurts

The real reason why Australia has recently ended its ten-year opposition to the Kyoto Protocol: Climate change to impact beer.

WELLINGTON, NEW ZEALAND — The price of beer is likely to rise in coming decades because climate change will hamper the production of a key grain needed for the brew — especially in Australia, a scientist warned Tuesday.

Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it.

The March 26 NewScientist online article, Beer bellies may double the risk of dementia, fires a deadly round in the senseless War on Beer. ™

The article states that fat build-ups around the waist during middle age may cause dementia decades later. That's just friggin' wonderful. On the one hand, beer consumption is linked to decreased cancers and on the other hand you'll be too out of it to know you're healthy. Can it suck any more than this? <--- (rhetorical question)

Researchers next need to study the impact that the molecules released by body fat have on the brain. If Whitmer's hypothesis proves right, the conclusions could be disturbing – those beer bellies may be silently damaging the brain, long before old age sets in.

Game over man... Game over!

Of Scientists, Beer, and Statistics

A March 18 New York Times Science section article, For Scientists, a Beer Test Shows Results as a Litmus Test, by Carol Kaesuk Yoon, says that the more beer a scientist drinks, the less likely the scientist is to publish a paper or to have a paper cited by another researcher.

The results were not, however, a matter of a few scientists having had too many brews to be able to stumble back to the lab. Publication did not simply drop off among the heaviest drinkers. Instead, scientific performance steadily declined with increasing beer consumption across the board, from scientists who primly sip at two or three beers over a year to the sort who average knocking back more than two a day.

Oh dear, you might think. This study is rock-solid. The author of the study is Dr. Tomas Grim, an ornithologist at Palacky University in the Czech Republic. Grim's study, however, only looked at fellow ornithologists in the Czech Republic.

Some scientists suggest that biologists in the Czech Republic could prove to be an anomaly, given that the country has a special relationship to beer, boasting the highest rate of beer consumption on earth.

More important, as Dr. Grim pointed out, the study documents a correlation between beer drinking and scientific performance without explaining why they are correlated. That leaves open the possibility that it is not beer drinking that causes poor scientific performance, but just the opposite.

Or, as Dr. Mike Webster, an ornithologist and a beer enthusiast at Washington State University in Pullman, said, maybe “those with poor publication records are drowning their sorrows.”

All of this provides a classic example of how one must be careful to draw conclusions from any correlation.

Interestingly, the online article also had a sidebar link to an older (Dec. 14, 2004) article, which extolled the virtues of beer-drinking among geologists. Perhaps the poncy Czech bird-watchers are truly an anomaly.

Windows XP Users are Revolting

An interesting article in Computer Word, titled Windows XP: Going, going ... gone? talks about the twilight days of Windows XP.

One of the things that makes it interesting is that it speaks of "an incipient consumer rebellion." In the short history of computing, consumers couldn't get their updates fast enough. The product life-cycle was born, and Microsoft wallowed in profits. And Bill Gates said "It is good."

But then something happened. Windows Vista, with its demand for high-end hardware, and the difficult support for legacy hardware and applications, left consumers wanting... to stick with Windows XP.

Normally, when a new Microsoft OS makes it into production, the old OS would hit the dust bins after a couple of years. Interestingly, however, after consumer versions of Vista went on sale in January 2007, four months later companies like Dell were once again selling the majority of their machines with XP. This consumer rebellion subsequently prompted Microsoft to revise its product life cycle, and extend the freshness date of Windows XP a little longer.

Ah, but that Windows Genuine Advantage that you so willingly undertook to protect yourself from running pirated software is now going to bite you. Somewhere in that license agreement that you failed to read is a clause that says that there is a limit to the number of times you can activate your XP license on new hardware. Gotcha, sucker. This is a slight variation on the carrot & stick approach -- if you don't go after that juicy expensive carrot that's being dangled in front of you, then you get jammed from behind by the stick.