Thursday, June 01, 2006
A Moment of Silence, Please
OCEAN CITY, N.J. (AP) - A founder of the Mister Softee ice cream company has died at the age of 78. A relative says James Conway died of cancer at his home in New Jersey. Conway and his brother started the company in Philadelphia 50 summers ago, after experimenting with ways to deliver ice cream by truck.
Hee Hee
From the Philly Inquirer:
Before President Bush touched down in Pennsylvania Wednesday to promote his nuclear energy policy, the environmental group Greenpeace was mobilizing.
"This volatile and dangerous source of energy" is no answer to the country's energy needs, shouted a Greenpeace fact sheet decrying the "threat" posed by the Limerick reactors Bush visited.
But a factoid or two later, the Greenpeace authors were stumped while searching for the ideal menacing metaphor.
We present it here exactly as it was written, capital letters and all: "In the twenty years since the Chernobyl tragedy, the world's worst nuclear accident, there have been nearly [FILL IN ALARMIST AND ARMAGEDDONIST FACTOID HERE]."
Had Greenpeace been hacked by a nuke-loving Bush fan? Or was this proof of Greenpeace fear-mongering?
The aghast Greenpeace spokesman who issued the memo, Steve Smith, said a colleague was making a joke by inserting the language in a draft that was then mistakenly released.
"Given the seriousness of the issue at hand, I don't even think it's funny," Smith said.
The final version did not mention Armageddon. It just warned of plane crashes and reactor meltdowns.
Before President Bush touched down in Pennsylvania Wednesday to promote his nuclear energy policy, the environmental group Greenpeace was mobilizing.
"This volatile and dangerous source of energy" is no answer to the country's energy needs, shouted a Greenpeace fact sheet decrying the "threat" posed by the Limerick reactors Bush visited.
But a factoid or two later, the Greenpeace authors were stumped while searching for the ideal menacing metaphor.
We present it here exactly as it was written, capital letters and all: "In the twenty years since the Chernobyl tragedy, the world's worst nuclear accident, there have been nearly [FILL IN ALARMIST AND ARMAGEDDONIST FACTOID HERE]."
Had Greenpeace been hacked by a nuke-loving Bush fan? Or was this proof of Greenpeace fear-mongering?
The aghast Greenpeace spokesman who issued the memo, Steve Smith, said a colleague was making a joke by inserting the language in a draft that was then mistakenly released.
"Given the seriousness of the issue at hand, I don't even think it's funny," Smith said.
The final version did not mention Armageddon. It just warned of plane crashes and reactor meltdowns.
College Basketball Is For Los...Winners
From Mike DeCoursey:
This is far from the first time I've visited this particular topic.
Me writing on this subject is like Al Gore lecturing about global warming.
Every year when the NBA gets down to its final four teams, I take a moment to tell you where those players came from on their way to the league. And every year I get the same e-mails, perhaps even from the same people, who refuse to acknowledge that which is directly in front of them. Look, I don't know if the polar ice caps are melting, but I know what the NBA playoffs have told me every year since I started running these numbers:
The way to win big in the NBA is with players trained in U.S. colleges.
This is the first time, however, that there's been a sense this treatise will preach to the converted -- even if those who've seen the light did so by force. With the NBA by rule no longer permitted to draft high school players, this examination no longer is as germane as it once was. But it still makes a good point.
There are four teams left in the NBA playoffs, each of which employs about eight players in its playoff rotation. The training of those 32 players breaks down like so: 28 products of U.S. colleges, three internationally trained players, and one who entered the league directly out of high school. The NBA has drafted more than 20 high school players in the first round since 1999, and only one, Dallas' DeSagana Diop, is getting time at this stage of the playoffs.
This is perhaps the most lopsided survey yet in favor of the college guys. They do not make up 87.5 percent of the league, but they're making up 87.5 percent of the players who are mattering in big games.
By my count, 14 of the 28 played four years of college basketball, six played three years and seven played two years. Their average college experience: 3.2 seasons.
What does college give a player that many other levels of the game do not? In addition to high-level teaching from esteemed professionals, there is the chance to play for a meaningful championship in front of a passionate, demanding audience. Look around at the guys you see in the playoffs now. Antoine Walker, Tony Delk, Rip Hamilton and Jason Terry won NCAA championships, and Rasheed Wallace, Jerry Stackhouse, Dwyane Wade and Udonis Haslem competed in the Final Four. Tell me you can duplicate that experience in a Vegas high school gym during the summer club tournaments.
This is not to say a team should not draft Dirk Nowitzki or LeBron James if given the chance. What it does say is that given the chance, perhaps a James or Nowitzki would become even greater by playing in the NCAA.
This is far from the first time I've visited this particular topic.
Me writing on this subject is like Al Gore lecturing about global warming.
Every year when the NBA gets down to its final four teams, I take a moment to tell you where those players came from on their way to the league. And every year I get the same e-mails, perhaps even from the same people, who refuse to acknowledge that which is directly in front of them. Look, I don't know if the polar ice caps are melting, but I know what the NBA playoffs have told me every year since I started running these numbers:
The way to win big in the NBA is with players trained in U.S. colleges.
This is the first time, however, that there's been a sense this treatise will preach to the converted -- even if those who've seen the light did so by force. With the NBA by rule no longer permitted to draft high school players, this examination no longer is as germane as it once was. But it still makes a good point.
There are four teams left in the NBA playoffs, each of which employs about eight players in its playoff rotation. The training of those 32 players breaks down like so: 28 products of U.S. colleges, three internationally trained players, and one who entered the league directly out of high school. The NBA has drafted more than 20 high school players in the first round since 1999, and only one, Dallas' DeSagana Diop, is getting time at this stage of the playoffs.
This is perhaps the most lopsided survey yet in favor of the college guys. They do not make up 87.5 percent of the league, but they're making up 87.5 percent of the players who are mattering in big games.
By my count, 14 of the 28 played four years of college basketball, six played three years and seven played two years. Their average college experience: 3.2 seasons.
What does college give a player that many other levels of the game do not? In addition to high-level teaching from esteemed professionals, there is the chance to play for a meaningful championship in front of a passionate, demanding audience. Look around at the guys you see in the playoffs now. Antoine Walker, Tony Delk, Rip Hamilton and Jason Terry won NCAA championships, and Rasheed Wallace, Jerry Stackhouse, Dwyane Wade and Udonis Haslem competed in the Final Four. Tell me you can duplicate that experience in a Vegas high school gym during the summer club tournaments.
This is not to say a team should not draft Dirk Nowitzki or LeBron James if given the chance. What it does say is that given the chance, perhaps a James or Nowitzki would become even greater by playing in the NCAA.
More Benefits of the Traditional Family
Jeez, how long has it been since we had a good chat about comely girls? Via Dienekes, this article shows that in a sample of early 20-something girls at a Scottish university, daughters of happily married parents (HM) had more attractive and feminine faces than those whose parents either had separated pre-puberty (S) or had remained married but unhappily (UM). Color pictures in PDF here (L-to-R: S, UM, HM). As for body shape, the HM daughters had lower BMI (i.e., were slimmer) and lower waist-to-hip ratio (WHR, i.e., a more hourglass figure) than the other two groups. The authors make it clear that theirs is a correlational study that remains agnostic on the causal mechanisms, though Dienekes' post & comments discuss possibilities.
First, though, there's an interesting wrinkle: the authors and some of their references argue that the independent variable is presence of father (or parental cohesion), which yields the order S -> UM -> HM. The dependent variables are the markers of attractiveness, etc. However, the functions do not always turn out to be monotonic -- some curves decrease and switch to increasing like a U. Table 2 in the article summarizes the rank-ordering on the 3 facial markers. For "attractiveness," the order is UM -> S -> HM. For "health," it's UM -> S = HM. And for "masculinity," it's UM = S -> HM. Thus, if our graph has "parental cohesion" on the x-axis, the curve would be U-shaped for "attractiveness" and "health," though J-shaped for "masculinity." For body shape, Figure 2 shows that one variable, "impedence" (a measure of % body fat), wasn't significantly different among the groups. "Waist-to-chest ratio" (WCR) is a measure of the inverted-triangle shape of the upper body, something that men don't pay much attention to. The two important variables are BMI and WHR. On the latter, HM had significantly more hourglass figures than UM, though the S didn't differ significantly from either. On BMI, the HM were significantly slimmer than S, and apparently UM are in between.
So, aside from perhaps BMI, the facial and bodily markers suggest that the underlying cause increases thusly: UM -> S -> HM. Call it "home harmony." The biological correlate of this in the literature the authors cite is response to stress (cortisol), so perhaps in the sample the daughters of UM parents experienced greater stress from the arguing, bickering, and so on, compared to the daughters of S parents, who at least weren't frequently fighting in the daughter's presence. Remember, the sample was of university students, so it likely didn't include those from the underclass or the lower end of the working class. That suggests that, above a certain threshold of SES, having antagonistic parents stay together produces more dissonance in the home than if they separated, at least from the daughter's p-o-v.
Now on to the possible causes. Well, the first is what I just mentioned: the prevailing view that differences among father absent or father present homes reflect differences in stress during childhood. Humans have evolved a common set of responses, and those who happen to grow up without fathers turn out a different way from those who grow up with fathers. This is an environment / chance explanation. But as mentioned at the lead author's webpage and in the comments at Dienekes' post, there is also a (not mutually exclusive) genetic explanation: fathers who are apt to easily leave their wife & children, or who are too unruly for the wife to bother staying with, could be this way in part due to genes (perhaps for response to testosterone) which they pass on to their daughters.
Moreover, since it's usually not impossible to read warning signs about who's less reliable & dependable than who else, we could also look at the mothers who mate with the more flight-prone males. Such females would likely show a greater propensity for risk-taking or thrill-seeking, presumably heritable, so assortative mating could be exacerbating the genetic influence of father. It would be interesting to take a large sample of males from S, UM, and HM parents and ask them who they were most attracted to among the S, UM, and HM female composite faces. That would settle whether there was an assortative mating effect. It would also be interesting to genotype those from S vs HM parents to see if the former were more likely than expectation to have the 7R allele at the DRD4 locus -- if so, that would suggest involvement of heritable personality traits like novelty-seeking, impulse control, and so on, in both the dissolution of the marriage as well as the suite of behavioral outcomes of the daughter. It might also suggest why the daughters of S parents were judged more attractive than those from UM parents -- presumably the S parents were more "wild child"-like than the UM parents who had to "wimp out" to some degree in suppressing their impulses to split up. Perhaps greater "wild child"-ness increases one's sexiness score (since "sexy" usually connotes something more exciting or thrilling than just "attractive" or "beautiful"). The prototype here would be Angelina Jolie, who looks more than a bit masculine, who's well known to be possessed of a thrill-seeking disposition, and whose parents divorced when she was a baby.
To close, why would a tinge (though not an excess) of masculinity and rebelliousness make a female sexier, when these usually serve to make males sexier? These traits mix a "danger" component with the "beauty" component, which creates the thrill. My hypothesis is that, assuming the "cheesecake theory" of aesthetic pleasure popularized in How the Mind Works -- that art, cuisine, etc. are human devices to directly stimulate our evolved pleasure centers -- we enjoy stimulating not just the "relaxation" (or parasympathetic) division of our nervous system, but occasionally the "danger" (or sympathetic) division as well. Things that highly stimulate these divisions are, respectively, the beautiful and the sublime in an older terminology. Those whose aesthetic preferences lead them to want more than others to stimulate their "danger" system would appreciate a greater dosage of dangerous, masculine traits in females.
First, though, there's an interesting wrinkle: the authors and some of their references argue that the independent variable is presence of father (or parental cohesion), which yields the order S -> UM -> HM. The dependent variables are the markers of attractiveness, etc. However, the functions do not always turn out to be monotonic -- some curves decrease and switch to increasing like a U. Table 2 in the article summarizes the rank-ordering on the 3 facial markers. For "attractiveness," the order is UM -> S -> HM. For "health," it's UM -> S = HM. And for "masculinity," it's UM = S -> HM. Thus, if our graph has "parental cohesion" on the x-axis, the curve would be U-shaped for "attractiveness" and "health," though J-shaped for "masculinity." For body shape, Figure 2 shows that one variable, "impedence" (a measure of % body fat), wasn't significantly different among the groups. "Waist-to-chest ratio" (WCR) is a measure of the inverted-triangle shape of the upper body, something that men don't pay much attention to. The two important variables are BMI and WHR. On the latter, HM had significantly more hourglass figures than UM, though the S didn't differ significantly from either. On BMI, the HM were significantly slimmer than S, and apparently UM are in between.
So, aside from perhaps BMI, the facial and bodily markers suggest that the underlying cause increases thusly: UM -> S -> HM. Call it "home harmony." The biological correlate of this in the literature the authors cite is response to stress (cortisol), so perhaps in the sample the daughters of UM parents experienced greater stress from the arguing, bickering, and so on, compared to the daughters of S parents, who at least weren't frequently fighting in the daughter's presence. Remember, the sample was of university students, so it likely didn't include those from the underclass or the lower end of the working class. That suggests that, above a certain threshold of SES, having antagonistic parents stay together produces more dissonance in the home than if they separated, at least from the daughter's p-o-v.
Now on to the possible causes. Well, the first is what I just mentioned: the prevailing view that differences among father absent or father present homes reflect differences in stress during childhood. Humans have evolved a common set of responses, and those who happen to grow up without fathers turn out a different way from those who grow up with fathers. This is an environment / chance explanation. But as mentioned at the lead author's webpage and in the comments at Dienekes' post, there is also a (not mutually exclusive) genetic explanation: fathers who are apt to easily leave their wife & children, or who are too unruly for the wife to bother staying with, could be this way in part due to genes (perhaps for response to testosterone) which they pass on to their daughters.
Moreover, since it's usually not impossible to read warning signs about who's less reliable & dependable than who else, we could also look at the mothers who mate with the more flight-prone males. Such females would likely show a greater propensity for risk-taking or thrill-seeking, presumably heritable, so assortative mating could be exacerbating the genetic influence of father. It would be interesting to take a large sample of males from S, UM, and HM parents and ask them who they were most attracted to among the S, UM, and HM female composite faces. That would settle whether there was an assortative mating effect. It would also be interesting to genotype those from S vs HM parents to see if the former were more likely than expectation to have the 7R allele at the DRD4 locus -- if so, that would suggest involvement of heritable personality traits like novelty-seeking, impulse control, and so on, in both the dissolution of the marriage as well as the suite of behavioral outcomes of the daughter. It might also suggest why the daughters of S parents were judged more attractive than those from UM parents -- presumably the S parents were more "wild child"-like than the UM parents who had to "wimp out" to some degree in suppressing their impulses to split up. Perhaps greater "wild child"-ness increases one's sexiness score (since "sexy" usually connotes something more exciting or thrilling than just "attractive" or "beautiful"). The prototype here would be Angelina Jolie, who looks more than a bit masculine, who's well known to be possessed of a thrill-seeking disposition, and whose parents divorced when she was a baby.
To close, why would a tinge (though not an excess) of masculinity and rebelliousness make a female sexier, when these usually serve to make males sexier? These traits mix a "danger" component with the "beauty" component, which creates the thrill. My hypothesis is that, assuming the "cheesecake theory" of aesthetic pleasure popularized in How the Mind Works -- that art, cuisine, etc. are human devices to directly stimulate our evolved pleasure centers -- we enjoy stimulating not just the "relaxation" (or parasympathetic) division of our nervous system, but occasionally the "danger" (or sympathetic) division as well. Things that highly stimulate these divisions are, respectively, the beautiful and the sublime in an older terminology. Those whose aesthetic preferences lead them to want more than others to stimulate their "danger" system would appreciate a greater dosage of dangerous, masculine traits in females.
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
Now This Is Cool
Call it "Harry Potter and the Professors of Invisibility."
Fans of J.K. Rowling will recall that everyone's favorite boy magician can vanish at will. Potter just ducks under his magic cloak and swoosh . . . he is gone.
Last week a prestigious journal published two reports from scientists who have discovered how to achieve the same effect without breaking the laws of physics. Invisibility, they argue, is a matter of diverting light around an object so all the light continues on its way instead of reflecting off the object. The reports suggest using a thick shell of high-tech transparent material to do this. Even when looking directly at the object, an observer would see only what was behind it.
While Harry Potter's cloak relies on supplies found only in magic marketplaces like Diagon Alley -- the pelt of a "Demiguise" is apparently crucial -- the scientists' cloaking device would use newly developed materials that can bend light in unexpected ways. Scientists not involved in the work said the plans appear feasible but that they would require more-advanced substances than currently exist. Still, scientists said that the work represents an important theoretical advance likely to inspire new ideas in the booming field of materials science.
"It is a fascinating concept," said Steven G. Johnson, an assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in an e-mail. "But I suspect that you're unlikely to find it for sale anytime soon (except on Daigon Alley)."
Fans of J.K. Rowling will recall that everyone's favorite boy magician can vanish at will. Potter just ducks under his magic cloak and swoosh . . . he is gone.
Last week a prestigious journal published two reports from scientists who have discovered how to achieve the same effect without breaking the laws of physics. Invisibility, they argue, is a matter of diverting light around an object so all the light continues on its way instead of reflecting off the object. The reports suggest using a thick shell of high-tech transparent material to do this. Even when looking directly at the object, an observer would see only what was behind it.
While Harry Potter's cloak relies on supplies found only in magic marketplaces like Diagon Alley -- the pelt of a "Demiguise" is apparently crucial -- the scientists' cloaking device would use newly developed materials that can bend light in unexpected ways. Scientists not involved in the work said the plans appear feasible but that they would require more-advanced substances than currently exist. Still, scientists said that the work represents an important theoretical advance likely to inspire new ideas in the booming field of materials science.
"It is a fascinating concept," said Steven G. Johnson, an assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in an e-mail. "But I suspect that you're unlikely to find it for sale anytime soon (except on Daigon Alley)."
Dang It, I Missed Urban Beach Week...And Doesn't Everyone Know Gilbert Arenas Is A Baller
MIAMI BEACH, Fla. -- Washington Wizards guard Gilbert Arenas and forward Awvee Storey have been arrested on charges of disobeying police.
Storey, who played with the team last season but is not currently under contract, was blocking traffic in the middle of a busy street when an officer told him to get back to the sidewalk Saturday night, according to police reports. Storey didn't get out of the street, and the officer arrested him and charged him with failure to obey a command.
While police were arresting Storey, Arenas got out of a vehicle and walked toward the arresting officers. According to reports, an officer told Arenas to get back in his vehicle, but he refused, saying he wanted to stand next to his teammate. The officer took Arenas into custody and charged him with resisting without violence.
As Arenas was being arrested, according to reports, he said, "You can't arrest me. I'm a basketball player. I play for the Washington Wizards, and I'm not going to leave my teammate." Both players bonded out of jail Monday.
The Wizards released a statement saying, "We are aware of the situation and, until we have more information, we will have no comment."
The two were arrested as part of a crackdown on disorderly behavior among those who flocked to Miami Beach for Memorial Day weekend. According to The Washington Post, Arenas and Storey were in town for an annual celebration of hip-hop music and culture known as Urban Beach Week.
A total of 557 people were arrested between Thursday morning and Saturday night on Miami Beach. Most arrests were for disorderly conduct and intoxication. During the same three-day period last year, there were 333 arrests.
Storey, who played with the team last season but is not currently under contract, was blocking traffic in the middle of a busy street when an officer told him to get back to the sidewalk Saturday night, according to police reports. Storey didn't get out of the street, and the officer arrested him and charged him with failure to obey a command.
While police were arresting Storey, Arenas got out of a vehicle and walked toward the arresting officers. According to reports, an officer told Arenas to get back in his vehicle, but he refused, saying he wanted to stand next to his teammate. The officer took Arenas into custody and charged him with resisting without violence.
As Arenas was being arrested, according to reports, he said, "You can't arrest me. I'm a basketball player. I play for the Washington Wizards, and I'm not going to leave my teammate." Both players bonded out of jail Monday.
The Wizards released a statement saying, "We are aware of the situation and, until we have more information, we will have no comment."
The two were arrested as part of a crackdown on disorderly behavior among those who flocked to Miami Beach for Memorial Day weekend. According to The Washington Post, Arenas and Storey were in town for an annual celebration of hip-hop music and culture known as Urban Beach Week.
A total of 557 people were arrested between Thursday morning and Saturday night on Miami Beach. Most arrests were for disorderly conduct and intoxication. During the same three-day period last year, there were 333 arrests.
"Decades of Human Incompetence and Neglect"
Eugene Robinson in the WaPo:
The evidence, by now, is overwhelming: Beautiful, decadent New Orleans wasn't doomed by Hurricane Katrina but by decades of human incompetence and neglect. As far as the drowned city is concerned, the greatest natural disaster in the nation's history would have been just a messy inconvenience if not for the fumbling hand of man.
The mortal threat to New Orleans, as Katrina plowed into the Gulf Coast, was not the powerful winds -- Mississippi took the brunt of those -- but the massive storm surge the hurricane generated. We now know that the levees, floodwalls and other barriers protecting the city were, for the most part, plenty tall enough and theoretically strong enough to keep the waters at bay. On paper, New Orleans should have ended up wet and wounded, but basically intact.
What happened instead was "the single most costly catastrophic failure of an engineered system in history," according to a report issued last week by the Independent Levee Investigation Team, a blue-ribbon panel led by experts from the University of California at Berkeley and funded by the National Science Foundation.
Some of the flood barriers were built using inadequate materials, the report says. Others were designed so poorly that they provided weak spots for the waters to exploit. Still others were left unfinished for lack of funds.
The evidence, by now, is overwhelming: Beautiful, decadent New Orleans wasn't doomed by Hurricane Katrina but by decades of human incompetence and neglect. As far as the drowned city is concerned, the greatest natural disaster in the nation's history would have been just a messy inconvenience if not for the fumbling hand of man.
The mortal threat to New Orleans, as Katrina plowed into the Gulf Coast, was not the powerful winds -- Mississippi took the brunt of those -- but the massive storm surge the hurricane generated. We now know that the levees, floodwalls and other barriers protecting the city were, for the most part, plenty tall enough and theoretically strong enough to keep the waters at bay. On paper, New Orleans should have ended up wet and wounded, but basically intact.
What happened instead was "the single most costly catastrophic failure of an engineered system in history," according to a report issued last week by the Independent Levee Investigation Team, a blue-ribbon panel led by experts from the University of California at Berkeley and funded by the National Science Foundation.
Some of the flood barriers were built using inadequate materials, the report says. Others were designed so poorly that they provided weak spots for the waters to exploit. Still others were left unfinished for lack of funds.
Quote of the Day
Prince Philip says Olympic opening and closing ceremonies are "bloody nuisances " which should be banned.
In an interview with the London Daily Telegraph, the Duke of Edinburgh said he and Queen Elizabeth will have "as little as possible" to do with London's Olympics in 2012, when he will be 91.
"Opening and closing ceremonies ought to be banned. Absolute bloody nuisances," he told the newspaper.
"I have been to one that was absolutely, appallingly awful - aaaagh," he reportedly said.
In an interview with the London Daily Telegraph, the Duke of Edinburgh said he and Queen Elizabeth will have "as little as possible" to do with London's Olympics in 2012, when he will be 91.
"Opening and closing ceremonies ought to be banned. Absolute bloody nuisances," he told the newspaper.
"I have been to one that was absolutely, appallingly awful - aaaagh," he reportedly said.
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