Statistics Good And Bad

As soon as I finished Francis Wheen's book, I found another one that has my head buried: Freakonomics, a book about the interesting pragmatics of economics and statistics.

I've only read 50 pages but it's fascinating stuff. One of the initial statistical theories at the beginning still has me intrigued. If I understand it right, they propose that the reason why crime rates in the 90's declined (despite all the predictions of higher crime rates and the rise of supercriminal youth) is because Roe vs Wade allowed more abortions (in the 70's) and thus less ghetto kids to be born whose hard-knock lives would've placed them at optimal crime activity during the 90's.

That hypothesis does explain the declining crime rate, but it just doesn't sit too well.
At any rate, I admire people who can make statistics come alive.


Well, that's not entirely true. The brass at my hospital are making budget statistics come alive by cutting down on staffing (again).

It's such a burn-out to work in an environment where the acuity of patients may fluctuate on an hourly basis, but the staffing grid stays rigid on a 12-hour shift basis. Add to that any number of new paperwork chores or new guidelines that are implemented constantly and expected to be seamlessly absorbed into the already morbidly obese policy-and-procedure part of your job.

The incongruity between the staffing ratios and patient acuity means little to the number crunchers.

But to the nurses who must work every single shift like it's a careening rollercoaster that's a hair's breadth away from flying off the tracks and plunging like a fireball of death onto the cold, hard ground below, that incongruity means __________________(fill in any angry, dirty phrase here)!








Now here it is, your url of the day:
http://mightyillusions.blogspot.com

A Little Gandhi

Ladies and Gentlemen, Mahatma Gandhi:


I like your Christ; I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.

Faith becomes lame, when it ventures into matters pertaining to reason.

Be the change you want to see in the world.

Nobody can hurt me without my permission.

Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is still the truth.

An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.



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Who's Your Daddy? Mumbo Jumbo Is.

We are experiencing a very important period. It is a time when fictional memoirs can be hawked as facts, when presidents can't offer any eloquence or sophistication but govern an entire nation using only vague bumpersticker sound bites, when religious fanaticts can hold up a goose and call it a duck and sue you if you say otherwise... It's a time in which little effort is placed in cleaning and revealing truth but rather tons of money are spent smearing it with gunk, when lies are so blatant that they are thrown at people's windows without any fear of retribution, when common morals are claimed left and right to be the sole property of any number of bully sponsors.
We are experiencing a time of backlash against the growth of Reason. Is it just another in a long series of backlashes that cry out as Reason slowly illuminates dark corners? Or is it a culmination of many festering grumbles that have found this time to be a semi-perfect storm of sorts?



Francis Wheen's book, How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered The World, highlights and pokes fun at these modern times we've endured so far.

In the introduction he paints a sloppy stroke about Enlightenment movements in history and the values they promote: "an insistence on intellectual autonomy, a rejection of tradition and authority as the infallible sources of truth, a loathing for bigotry and persecution, a commitment to free inquiry, a belief that (in Francis Bacon's words) knowledge is indeed power."
The overall results of The Enlightenment, he points out, "were apparent in the history of the next two centuries - the waning of absolutism and superstition, the rise of secular democracy, the understanding of the natural world, the transformation of the historical and scientific study, the new political resonance of notions such as "progress," "rights," and "freedom.""

This brave sailing upon the waters of Reason has brought forth much criticism, resentment, and violence from those who once kept minds tied close to shore.

Wheen's book takes a look at "the application of Counter-Enlightenment idiocy in (different aspects) of public life - politics, education, diplomacy, medicine, business, the media. My purpose is to show how in these and other realms of discourse the habit of considered and rational analysis has been replaced with notions that are usually ridiculous and occasionally sinister."

And oh what fun it is!
Wheen's topics cover such things Thatcher's Victorian, free-market society and Reagan's supply-side, trickle-down economics; the rise of Middle-Eastern fundamentalism; the re-packaging of old spiritualism in new-age bottles from Deepak Chopra, John Grey, Anthony Robbins, and the like; the marketing boom of end-world declarations and the uprising of alternative medicine; the circus of the deconstructionist and post-modernist movements (which was stomped dead by Sokal's prank); American fundamentalism and the very-worn God card; the replacement of the Cold War with terrorism; the rise of a new, highly-embellished Romanticism (if he'd waited another year to publish, Wheen could've included the James Frey debacle); globalization and its many blindspots; corporate greed and how something like Enron could be allowed to happen; the forgetting of the past and the ensuing repeating of it.

Whew!
Good times, indeed.







Now here it is, your url of the day:
Tameri Guide for Writers

Kites, Koncerts, And Kong

I planned to write about the book mentioned last time, but other events intervened.

For one, my kids and I bought the coolest pirate kite and flew it all afternoon.
Kites rock!

Also, I bought a concert DVD that I've never seen but have always wanted to. It's one of those things that you keep eyeing or reading about over many years, but for some reason you never get it and watch it.
In this instance, I've read many raving reviews but have only had mild interest in seeing it. I think this is because I've had the odd perception that the thing is probably too dated, that it was great in its day but now...meh. I seriously don't know why I put it off so long, especially when the band is one of my favorites.

It's Stop Making Sense by the Talking Heads.

Exclamations x 50! Praises x 100! This concert movie is right up there with The Last Waltz! What a dumbass I was to keep passing it by! Exclamations x 50 more!

I could go on and on about it, but we've got more kite flying to do today, and my iPod is in David Byrne/Talking Head mode.

After that, it's Kong Time!








Now here it is, your url of the day:
http://squid.us

H. Pylori Panache

Check out this fabulous post on Helicobacter Pylori over at 3quarksdaily.

Mumbo Jumbo, Metaphorically Challenged, And Me

Over the past week I've been immensely enjoying the book How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered the World, A Short History Of Modern Delusions by Francis Wheen.

Wheen takes his cues largely from Charles Mackay who wrote about the same in the 19th century.

The intriguing (or hammy, take your pick) title of Wheen's book caught my eye in the bookstore last week. I'd never heard of him, but he seems to be a political writer of some fame over in England. His written several books, including one about the fascinating Charlotte Bach which is being made into a movie starring Alfred Molina.

The writing is absolutely fantastic - very enjoyable reading - and the content of the book is fascinatingly concise. I think I'll spend this week discussing the book straight through.

So far, my impression is that Mumbo Jumbo hits all my thought and views nicely. It is the book I wish I could've been talented enough to write. The overall thing that intrigues me about it is the refreshment of a writer (or anyone) pointing out truths in this age of murky lies and 'truthiness' games.
It's lovely when you have a thousand dogs barking at shadows all the time and one walks up brave enough to say, "It's just a shadow - end of discussion. You're acting like fools."
The madness of crowd mentality and crowd manipulation is the albatross hanging from mankind's neck.

If you could combine this book's ideas with a discussion about the evolution of mythology and the metaphorically challenged, then you'd have my worldview in toto.

It's so exciting to find a new author who's interesting.







Now here it is, your url of the day:
Dr. Mezmer's World Of Bad Psychology

The Real Visible Human

We went to see Bodyworlds yesterday, which is an amazing exhibit where human cadavers have had most of their skin and fat stripped off revealing the muscles, bones, arteries, nerves, and various organs inside. The cadavers are painstakingly brushed or infused with plastic polymers to preserve them in various poses.

Throughout the exhibit are also cases containing organs and body structures in various states of presentation and/or disease.

My favorite was "Drawer Man", a cadaver that had various square shapes cut anterior into him as if by a cookie cutter. These cores were pulled out like drawers in which you could see crossections of tissue.

Another was "Exploded Man", which was a huge display with everything in a human, except the skin, slightly removed and positioned outward a few inches. This was made possible by hundreds of strands of fishing line that suspended everything in the air.

While it was all fascinating, at the same time the lifelessness of it struck me. The organs didn't pulse or glisten. The muscles were dry and inert. The blood vessels and nerves were sunken and shriveled.
The only thing that gave a sense of life and dynamic to the things were, oddly, the glass eyes.

Did seeing the beautiful detail in anatomical structures up close give me more of an appreciation of their life and function in living bodies?
Yes and no.








Now here it is, your url of the day:
The Postmodern Essay Generator

Salivating Outside The Information Display Window

One of the most frustrating things about working in a hospital is the inefficiency of its information management in the light of today's technology.

It's a money issue, to be sure, but a hospital's information systems generally have evolved like a patchwork quilt - and not a pretty one, either.

Only ten to 20 years ago, everything in a modern hospital was fairly isolated, meaning each department had its hand-filled forms or computer printouts that were isolated to that department. The fax machine ruled the day (and still does in many respects).
As these things began to be connected, you had these frankenstein-type wiring jobs between departments (and different computer systems) that allowed, say, an x-ray result to be printed out at the ICU nursing station.

Only in the past ten years have most hospitals come on board with a hospital-wide system that connects all departments, and even these aren't peachy when compared to something like Google.

A big problem is obviously protecting a patient's information, so an internet-based hospital system must be firewalled up the ying-yang. I don't know if a hospital system is one of Google's brilliant projects or not, but I sure hope so.

The system in my hospital works well-enough, but I say that only because I'm so used to it. When you step back from it for two seconds and take a more objective look, it's really a hideous dinosaur.
If you google "hospital information system", you'll get a majority of systems that are less than a year old!

The days of a blood pressure instantly recorded on a patient's record, able to be accessed by a nurse or doctor anywhere, are here. I just wish most hospitals could enjoy them.

But damn it Jim, I'm a nurse, not a computer specialist!








Now here it is, your url of the day:
Medicine In Quotations

It's Good To Be Big Oil

The 60 Minutes piece last night about the Bush administration's censorship of science was just plain frightening.
You hear the administration called "imperialistic" and "totalitarian", and you think it's just so much hyperbole from angry passionate people, but when you actually see this censorship stuff on paper those harsh descriptions begin to gain more weight.

This administration's debasement of science has been so well documented (see Chris Mooney's book The Republican War On Science) that even conspiracy theorists find it too boring for their purposes.

Big Oil rides a sweet wave of public apathy along the resort beach of our government, and those tasty waves don't seem to be letting up any time soon. We need more lifeguards blowing whistles.

Mel Brooks is right: It's good to be the King.







Now here it is, your url of the day:
http://www.tomatoesareevil.com/

Links Of Mild To Moderate Wow

This is cool: a site that showcases the muscles of the face.

A quite interesting anatomy blog.

Medical Calculators galore.

John Allen Paulos' latest column.

Rube Goldberg site.

A Monty Python silly walk generator.

Motherload of old sci-fi movie posters.

I have no idea about this, but it'd be funnier if it included the real killer bunny.

Interactive mathematics.

A very cool library of nonexistent books.

The art of Edvard Munch (more than just The Scream).

Revilo cartoons.

Nostalgia galore.

Inkblots.





Some sources:
Neatorama
Linkbunnies
Metafilter
Monkey Filter
3quarksdaily

Send Your Tampons To The Nearest Lab

It seems mentrual blood is a good source of stem cells.
And it has to be from "younger patients".

Either this will solve a lot of issues or create a circus of new ones.

I wish I were a comedy writer, because this is like manna from heaven.








Now here it is, your url of the day:
Silly Molecules

David Byrne's Most Excellent Journal.

Interesting musing about Bill Gates, corporate greed vs philanthropy, and wholesome American values vs American atrocities by David Byrne.

Also check out his journals while in Australia. Great stuff!

I Am A Moderate!

I was surfing Metafilter this morning and found this thing by George Clooney about being proud to be a Liberal.

Nevermind Clooney's bad writing, he's got a good point.

I consider myself more Democrat than Republican, but I'll vote for whomever is best no matter what party they belong to. The last election was painful because both party choices were very poor, horrendously poor. I copped-out of it and voted for Nader - a poor choice himself, but not as piss poor as the other two candidates.

When Clooney says that the Democrats should shut up and stop saying "we were misled!" because they weren't (they were really afraid to be called "unpatriotic"), you can't help but stand up and say "thank you!"

And the Democrats are still afraid of speaking their minds.
Even the most eloquent of them, Barak Obama, seems afraid of speaking his mind and questioning truth. Perhaps it's too soon to tell about him. If he can stay out of that political trap and be unafraid, he could become a great leader.

I'm glad Clooney is proud of being a Liberal, but should one attach themselves so tightly to a label? There are things that demand conservatism sometimes.

I guess that's saying it's best to be a Moderate.

"I'm proud to be a Moderate!" isn't much of a rallying cry though. Plus, Moderates could be called 'unpatriotic, wishy-washy flip-floppers'. This is only if they change their positions often.

To me, a Moderate is someone who isn't a tool to some party; they must make their own decisions. A Moderate is a maverick. It takes longer for a maverick to show their strength, because good Moderates don't bend in the political wind like a limp reed. They stand strong until the fickle public stops wafting around in the hot breeze coming from political blowhards. Moderates try and keep their feet on solid truth, no matter what side of the political border it's on.

I'm proud to be a solid Moderate.







Now here it is, your url of the day:
http://www.politicalcompass.org

Links Of Some Kind Of Interest

Make Hoth the host of the 2014 Winter Olympics.
Send me money and I'll make sure you get some prime tickets!

While you're waiting, you can play with an online spirograph or Falling Sand Game.

Or you can read about Presidential Diseases (good lord, look at all the crap Reagan had!)

At any rate, you should definitely take PharmAmorin and show Big Pharm the love.

Then, while you're high you can join the Cloud Appreciation Society.

When you come down, you can check out what's been Googled this week, or the Weekly Echo.

This weekend you can travel far away by Steamlocomotive or tool along on Historic Route 66.

Don't get depressed, though.

And stay away from the Black Hole.





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Midi Chlorians Indeed

Here is a fabulous post about microbes: Germs R Us.

It's good to think about microbes more often than we usually do (like only when we get sick). Working in a hospital helps me think about them whether I want to or not.

And it's also good to think about how short a time we've been in existence on this planet.

If evil aliens ever do make it here to take our planet, they won't be inefficiently shooting us one-by-one or hovering over our major cities and blasting away.

No, it'll be a tiny little baseball-sized package of DNA-Bond Destructo Gas* that'll be dropped in some ocean.

The aliens will patiently hang out on the moon, kicking the moonbuggy around and playing with the flags as all life on Earth turns into harmless goo. They will later bottle that goo into Galactic Gatorade**.


*Patent Pending: Galactic#12488zi319fhe139d9355/2zx994
**Galactic Patent #7328829xv38923xq89z892/3xx883








Now here it is, your url of the day:
http://www.word-detective.com/

A Little Club Soda Will Clean Up That Oil Spill

In case you missed it, here's an email Big Oil sent out last week (I think it 'accidentally' had a little tag on it directing it to your trash bin before you could read it):


Dear America,

Hi, this is Daddy Oil. How are you? That's nice.

Say, listen, we spilled a little oil up in Alaska last week. Uh, you can't see it much and we don't think it's too bad... Hey, how about those Oscars! Are you psyched? I hope Brokeback doesn't win everything, you know what I'm saying?

What was I talking about anyway? Oh yeah, um...I think gas prices will stay down for a little while. Won't that be nice?

What's that over there?! A shiny object! Look! What do you think that is?

Anyway, uh...have a good day!




Your pal, Big Oil

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David Gilmour Goes Out On An Island

Pink Floyd fans can feel the love again as David Gilmour has released his album On An Island today.

Ok, let’s get the Floyd comparisons over with. There are quite a few (hey, it’s friggin’ Gilmour) but not enough to say this is more Pink than Dave.

The album is moderately concept about traveling to an island and the emotions out there on the languid sea.

In fact, the first song is a movie theme-ish journey to it with orchestration that is used effectively throughout the album.

It then docks into the absolutely lush title song with nice vocal help from Crosby and Nash. Gilmour’s guitar work soars on most of the songs, as is his trademark, and on a few he hits some extremely high stuff, impossibly bending it.

There are no stand-out guitar solos on this album though. Everything seems very relaxed and atmospheric, like early Pink Floyd.
What else do you expect from an album about an island?

The early Pink Floyd comparisons also come up with songs like Take A Breath which has faint echoes of Astronomy Domine, and the sweet, sleepy-beach instrumental Then I Close My Eyes which has tinges of The Great Gig in the Sky. In fact, there are a great many early Floyd feelings throughout this album, and they feel good.

Later Pink Floyd is mirrored in the lonely sax of Red Sky at Night and the dusky feelings of A Pocket Full of Stones and Where We Start.

This Heaven is the only song that has more excitement to it than Gilmour's imaginary island is probably used to, offering some excellent guitar work over a moving beat. But it ends much too soon; you want that stand-up-and-stretch to keep going.

All in all, a very relaxed and enjoyable album with has a several layers I can’t wait to appreciate on a few more listenings.




Ok Tom Petty, where the hell is your new album?







Now here it is, your url of the day:
Incas

Clepping To The Top Of The Cult

1. Do you seek meaning in your life?

2. Have you been suspicious?

3. Have you been really suspicious, meaning that you are paranoid and feeling paranoid makes you feel special but you aren't entirely sure of what to be paranoid about?

4. If someone told you a fanstatic tale about galactic wars, evil aliens, and sinister mind parasites, would that be a perfect round peg for your round paranoid hole?

5. When you talk about galactic wars, evil aliens, and sinister mind parasites, do people look at you funny and make you want to spend most of your time with only Dungeons-and-Dragons-type people who understand?

6. If people go further and publicly criticize your belief in galactic wars, aliens, and mind parasites, do you call them "wackos" and try to severely sue and/or libel them?

7. Do you get off on acronyms and like to refer to things like galactic wars, aliens, and mind parasites as "GWAMP", or do you love to shorten things like "I have to go to the bathroom" to "I have to GTTB."

8. If someone told you they have secret knowledge about GWAMP that you can have if you just pay them a lot of money, would you immediately get out your checkbook?

9. Are you such a masochistic esotericism whore that if the same person told you if you stick an ohmmeter probe in your ear and stand on one foot for 78 hours while staring at a kleenex box then they will let you in on "double secret" GWAMP knowledge, and then you'd not only do it but seriously think of yourself as having become a "higher being" afterward?

10. Do you like to explain the unknown, like why a coin comes up 'heads' or why you got cancer, by weaving it into a highly complicated GWAMP yarn that glorifies your life in some important, vital role and also yields more than enough convolution to keep your suspicious paranoia busy for the rest of your days?


Can you guess what cult this quiz refers to?

Hint: If you answered "yes" to all of these questions, then congratulations! You just clepped out of a lot of time and money and are now higher in ranking than the star of Mission Impossible!
Listen, this cult has it all: science fiction fun, car salesman technique, legal system savvy, blind esoteric masochism, and hey, it even has an absolutely brilliant one-step program for addicts!

Get out your checkbook and join today!


btw: the above quiz was written by John and Jane Smith, not me.







Now here it is, your url of the day:
Alchemy

Germ Factory Soup For The Soul

I was taking care of an 80-year old woman last week and she asked me if I had any children. Then she asked me their ages and I mentioned that my middle son will be having a birthday next week.
We started talking about birthdays and she commented that she thought they were "too big a production" these days, that she couldn't stand going to the "birthday arenas" where it was very noisy and everything was expensive. I guess she'd been to Chuck E. Cheese's one too many times for some grandkids' birthdays.

But I have to agree with her. These "birthday arenas" which process a kid's birthday into a well-oiled, one-hour, check-your-ritalin-at-the-door burrito of microwaved fun are the most annoying places on the planet.
Not only are they noisy, expensive, and the food bad, but they also come off as quite dreary in a way. Adults leave these places pale and sunken as if their vital essence has been sapped away by a sinister de-soulitizer zapping away upon them from the ceiling. All that vital essence is probably piped straight to George Hamilton's house.

Sure, the kids don't see it that way. They have a lot of fun, and that's nice. And to a very busy parent they are a good way to hold a birthday party without all the fuss.

But that's just the thing. Shouldn't one want that fuss? It's a birthday. It only comes once a year, and you only get to enjoy probably 10 or 11 of them with your kid before they grow out of such delight. It's nice to invite all their friends over to the house and have a little cake, a few fun games, and the like.

When did birthdays become a chore? And when did they become something that has to be a giant production?

Probably around the same time they started doing stupid graduation ceremonies for any grade under the 12th.

Soccermoms, as with everything, I blame you!







Now here it is, your url of the day:
History of Sampling