Ken Nelson

I didn’t notice til I was a grownup and my kids started watching, but… exactly what crime did most of these fools commit?

Via awesome viral site “I’m bored”.

 
Cure depression! 

Exercise…

Subsequent trials have repeated these results, showing again and again that patients who undergo aerobic exercise regimens see comparable improvement in their depression as those treated with medication, and that both groups do better than patients given only a placebo.

This makes sense.  I wish doctors would prescribe exercise more instead of offering up the latest pill.

Alas, few studies on it because it doesn’t sell drugs. Maybe Nike should fund a study.

Watch your back Ken!

A: This Watson doesn’t back up Holmes, he plays Jeopardy.

The NY Times has an interesting article about IBM’s efforts to build a Jeopardy playing super computer.

It was just the beginning. Over the rest of the day, Watson went on a tear, winning four of six games. It displayed remarkable facility with cultural trivia (“This action flick starring Roy Scheider in a high-tech police helicopter was also briefly a TV series” — “What is ‘Blue Thunder’?”), science (“The greyhound originated more than 5,000 years ago in this African country, where it was used to hunt gazelles” — “What is Egypt?”) and sophisticated wordplay (“Classic candy bar that’s a female Supreme Court justice” — “What is Baby Ruth Ginsburg?”).

As a computer scientist, this would be interesting work.

 
Literally

The expected list…. drama, fine arts, music, theology… and horticulture.

http://hotjobs.yahoo.com/career-articles-worst_paying_college_degrees-1263

If they counted in benefits, some of these careers (teaching, social work) would be off the list.

Assuming an unlikely 10% savings rate once they start working, most of these graduates would have to save for 12 years to pay for a public college education, and 20+ years for a private school.

In other words… they aren’t math majors.

Just a video game, nothing more nothing less

Sorry… but brain training games don’t work. Your IQ is set by genetics.

"Even for the people that trained more than average, there was still no translation to any general improvement in cognitive function," says study researcher Jessica A. Grahn, PhD, also with MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, during the telephone news conference. "Some of things they were practicing, like getting faster at math, may be useful in and of itself. But if you are [brain training] to see a generalized improvement in overall function, the evidence does not support it."

No word on if they help kids with still forming brains.

"It was a bigger piece of artillery, so I used it”

Harry S. Truman
On the atomic bomb.

From the article “Is God A Mathematician” by Herman Wouk

 
Smells like industrial soap to some

Somebody I work with said they don’t like cilantro at lunch the other day. And it wasn’t just “don’t like” it was visceral distaste.  Like me and mayonnaise.

I was surprised, as I thought cilantro was pretty innocuous. I don’t seek it out, but it doesn’t bug me.

It turns ought, though, that cilantro can be a very divisive food…  Cilantro has 6 or so odor generating chemicals in it, some of which smell like bad stuff. Depending on how sensitive you are to those, your “this food will taste bad – avoid!” brain pattern might fire and you will hate cilantro – based on the smell.

The senses of smell and taste evolved to evoke strong emotions, he explained, because they were critical to finding food and mates and avoiding poisons and predators. When we taste a food, the brain searches its memory to find a pattern from past experience that the flavor belongs to. Then it uses that pattern to create a perception of flavor, including an evaluation of its desirability.

If the flavor doesn’t fit a familiar food experience, and instead fits into a pattern that involves chemical cleaning agents and dirt, or crawly insects, then the brain highlights the mismatch and the potential threat to our safety. We react strongly and throw the offending ingredient on the floor where it belongs.

Mayonnaise makes me want to throw up if I eat it. Yet I”m fine with the ingredients and I like similar mixes, like hollandaise sauce.   I hadn’t thought smell was at the root of my mayo-hate, but I betcha it is.

Here is one view of the US defense budget:

but here is another, perhaps more useful one:

The entire article is interesting. Read it here.

Slate has an interesting 6 part article on “signs”.

http://www.slate.com/id/2245644/

The photo tour of bad signs through Penn Station really hits home:

My son and I flew to Atlanta last November. At Hartsfield-Jackson Airport, we joined a long line of travelers going up an escalator into what turned out to be a smoky beer joint. The signs for baggage claim seemed to point there.    I’m not sure how many people at that point gave up and whether from embarrassment or frustration stopped for a beer.

The USA Memory Championship was held yesterday, further proof that people will compete at virtually any human endeavor. The winner validated his surprise win from last year:

"I am beyond happy because I had to prove that (last year’s victory) was not chance, so now I am totally at peace. I love to compete against myself and getting better and better," said Ronnie White, of Fort Worth, Texas.

Which begs the  question as to why he couldn’t memorize a longer victory speech (-:

I participate in niche sports too, so I’m not mocking. Not at all. I think its great that we like to compete. I hope our economic competition survives the latest onslaught.

The competition sounds tough… memorize 99 names, 100+ digits in the right order. I’d get a headache. But I’m glad somebody can do and enjoy it.

According to the Nolan Chart Quiz I just took at GlennBeck.com

Take it here is you like: http://www.nolanchart.com/survey.php

My desire to project American force abroad against terrorists kept me off the peak of libertarianism.

Hiroshima 64 years after an A-bomb destroyed much of it:

Detroit 64 years after the A-bomb hit Hiroshima:

Proving, unfortunately, that over the long term, Democrats are worse than atomic bombs.

H/T  RM

 
Future voter

The cool Constitution we love and that has served us so well til 1913 was created and ratified at the point in our Country’s history when we had the fewest percentage of voters. Only propertied, free men, above a certain age, could vote back then.

Have things gotten better the more of us that voted?  Clearly not. In fact, each dramatic increase in voting has brought with it more bad governance. This isn’t because poor people, woman or blacks are stupid and shouldn’t vote, but because by increasing the number of voters we turned our Democracy into a “tragedy of the commons” problem – by your vote not really counting, you don’t care about it as much.

Jamie Whyte has been thinking about this and believes the less voters, the more their vote counts, and the more they consider their vote, thus increasing quality of policies enacted:

The reason so many bad policies are good politics is that so many people vote: about 62 percent of adults at the last general election, both in Great Britain and in the United States. The best way to get more sensible policies would be to reduce the number of voters to less than 0.01 percent of the population.

But how would this happen?  He proposes random selection of voters, hiding that they are voters until the last minute, and then taking them away to vote in the full public eye.

To safeguard against the possibility of abuse, these 6,420 voters would not know that they had been selected at random until the moment when the polling officers arrived at their house. They would then be spirited away to a place where they will spend a week locked away with the candidates, attending a series of speeches, debates and question-and-answer sessions before voting on the final day. All of these events should be filmed and broadcast, so that everyone could make sure that nothing dodgy was going on.

I like this type of approach.  Come on admit it… you think most voters are idiots.  We’ve all talked to people in line at the polling place, or who had a “I voted” sticker, that were complete morons.  You walk away muttering “That idiot canceled my vote!”.

A system like Whyte’s would have issues. It wouldn’t disenfranchise as long as the selection is truly random (we all have an equal shot).   But he doesn’t explain how laws are introduced and vetted prior to voting.  That is why I like my idea of keeping the current Congress but adding a 3rd “Random” house that can veto.

I’m fine with Whyte’s system of picking the Random house.   I’d also be fine if small random group voted in the members of the House and Senate.

We need to do something.  The more we’ve increased Democracy the worse it has become.

Most of them I can sort out, but not the 4 circles with one blacked out. Probably obvious, but I’m missing it…

Personally, I don’t think that that tuft of grass is worth the risk dude!

http://www.bannedinhollywood.com/30-pictures-of-goats-being-crazy/