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OMFG. Words fail me.

As I watched this, I decided to post it on my blog, and then my mind went through a series of possible titles for the post, but there were so many yet so few that would be appropriate. This lady is obviously crazy. Frankly, perhaps the mail carrier is crazy for not driving off with her arm in the door, but I wasn't there so it's hard to say. I should say, for context, that Hingham Massachusetts is a relatively affluent but typically fairly mighty white somewhat liberal region along the "South Shore" of Massachusetts, south of Boston and adjoining Boston Harbor. It dates back to 1635, and…

Rand Paul Rally Head Smasher was Local Campaign Coordinator

The man who stomped on the head of a woman at a Rand Paul campaign event has been identified, and it is a person close to Paul and involved in the campaign. He was one of several campaign workers who seemingly premeditated the attack, part of which was recently caught on videotape. Assailant Tim Profitt, who works for Rand Paul, and Rand Paul. Here are more details, from the woman who was wrestled to the ground and stomped on by Tim Profitt, who has been identified as one of Paul's local campaign coordinators (a volunteer position). These are the words of the stompee herself, Lauren Valle…

Shame on Oprah

"The Secret" is the latest New Agey scam; there's an excellent article on this con on Salon: Worse than "The Secret's" blame-the-victim idiocy is its baldfaced bullshitting. The titular "secret" of the book is something the authors call the Law of Attraction. They maintain that the universe is governed by the principle that "like attracts like" and that our thoughts are like magnets: Positive thoughts attract positive events and negative thoughts attract negative events. Of course, magnets do exactly the opposite -- positively charged magnets attract negatively charged particles -- and the…

Kanye West: Uncivil Rebel or Obnoxious Lover of Goats?

You all know who Kanye West is. Personally, I had never heard of the man until yesterday afternoon. But then, until yesterday afternoon I thought MTV was a cable television network that played music videos, so what do I know. But never mind that. We're not here to talk about me. We're here to talk about Kanye West... In 2006, West appeared on the front cover of Rolling Stone as Jesus wearing a crown of thorns. I'm sure a lot of Christians thought he was an asshole for doing that. But just as his very in-your-face efforts to speak out against homophobia in hip hop, he was not afraid to…

Is someone on the Internet crazy?

There is a big fight going on over at Quiche Moraine. Apparently, my friend and co-blogger Mike made a comment or two, months back, about someone and she didn't like it. So she complained to Stephanie. Well, she complained to me, and I forwarded her complaint to Stephanie. And then they got into it. And Stephanie has turned what would otherwise be a series of emails worthy of little more than deletion into an interesting study of libel, defamation, accusation and loathing. Libel and Legalistic Bullying There are a couple of lessons to be learned here. One is don't ever blog anything…

Hiaasen For Kids

I very recently reviewed Carl Hiaasen's novels. Among his fiction are two books that are written explicitly for kids. Looking just at Hiaasen's titles it may be hard to pick them out from the pack, so I'm making a special reference to them here. They are called "Hoot" and "Flush." Details follow: Hoot Roy Eberhardt is the new kid--again. This time around it's Trace Middle School in humid Coconut Grove, Florida. But it's still the same old routine: table by himself at lunch, no real friends, and thick-headed bullies like Dana Matherson pushing him around. But if it wasn't for Dana…

A couple of candidates for the Pastor Ray Mummert award...

Richard Dawkins was interviewed in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, and whips out some of his standard 'arrogance'. Q Here are quotes about faith from two thoughtful Twin Cities clergy members. What is your response to each? The Rev. Greg Boyd, pastor of Woodland Hills Church in Maplewood: "I thirst for water, and water exists. I hunger for food, and food exists. I hunger and thirst for God, so I concluded that God must exist." Dawkins: The fact that you hunger and thirst for something does not make it exist. A young man ravaged by lust might hunger for a woman he believes loves him back, but…

Why the whole "mitochondrial disease plus vaccines = autism" argument is nonsense

Since vaccines seem to be back in the news again, I would be remiss if I didn't mention a fantastic post that I saw the other day over at A Photon in the Darkness. Read it. Read it now. I've done fairly long posts about how pseudoscientists and antivaccine advocates are capitalizing on the case of Hannah Poling, who had a mitochondrial disorder that, the government conceded, may have been exacerbated by vaccines. Meanwhile, antivaccine mouthpiece David Kirby is shouting to the world that new findings that mitochondrial disorders are more common than previously thought is somehow vindication…

Enough with Radovan Karadzic, already! (Or, the mini-Hitler Zombie dodged)

Enough with Radovan Karadzic, already! I know schadenfreude can be a fun thing. I've even indulged in it myself from time to time. I also know that Radovan Karadzic was a very, very bad man who engaged in ethnic cleansing and genocide in the Balkans wars of the early and mid-1990s. My interest in the Holocaust and Holocaust denial makes it hard not to see the parallels between Karadzic and what Hitler wanted to do. So, wonder all the people who have forwarded me links to stories revealing that Karadzic had been practicing alternative medicine while he was on the lam all these years, why have…

A friendly word of advice to Ginger Taylor and Age of Autism's Kim Stagliano

Courtesy of antivaccinationist Kool Aid drinker Ginger Taylor, I saw this new term for those who argue against the scientifically dubious proposition that vaccines cause autism, specifically Paul Offit: Vaccinianity - (Vax.e.an.eh.te) n. The worship of Vaccination. The belief that Vaccine is inherently Good and therefore cannot cause damage. If damage does occur, it is not because Vaccine was bad, but because the injured party was a poor receptacle for the inherently Good Vaccine. (ie. hanna poling was hurt when she came into contact with Vaccine, not because the Vaccine was harmful, but…

Skeptics Circle announcement and a plea to fellow skeptics

It's that time again. Round and round the Skeptics' Circle goes, coming rapidly around to arrive yet again in less than a week. This time around, it's set to land on next Thursday, June 19 at Ionian Enchantment. Blog-specific instructions for submitting your pearls of skepticism, science, and critical thinking can be found here, and more general instructions can be found here. So, if you're a blogger who regularly likes to apply reason, skepticism, and critical thinking to dubious claims, get cracking and send Mike your best stuff before Wednesday! And, as always, if you're such a blogger…

AutismOne: A "Warrior Mother" and pseudoscience

One way that pseudoscience tries to maintain a patina of respectability to the outside world, a patina that sometimes even manages to take in researchers unacquainted with its methods, is through the "research conference" that has all the trappings of a research meeting but whose topics reveal the pseudoscience at the heart of it all. Such a conference is coming up this spring in Chicago from May 21-25. Yes, I'm talking about the AutismOne conference, which, year after year, has managed to attract luminaries of the mercury militia and antivaccination movement, along with dubious practioners…

Jewish Marriage Tied to Israel Trip

Aleks sends along this amusing news article by Jennifer Levitz: A new study found that rates of marriage outside the faith were sharply curbed among young Jews who have taken "birthright" trips to Israel . . . Over the past decade, Taglit-Birthright Israel, a U.S. nonprofit founded by Jewish businessmen, has sponsored nearly 225,000 young Jewish adults for free 10-day educational tours of Israel as a way to foster Jewish identity. . . . A study [by Brandeis University researcher Leonard Saxe and partly funded by Taglit-Birthright] showed that 72% of those who went on the trip married within…

The Science of Sarcasm

A new study aimed at confirming the region of the brain that is important in detecting sarcasm may open the door for new diagnostic tools in detecting mental illness, according to an article in The New York Times. Study leader Katherine P. Rankin, a neuropsychologist and assistant professor in the Memory and Aging Center at the University of California, San Francisco, used MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) technology and a language test to highlight the region of the brain where the ability to detect sarcasm resides. The findings, which were presented at the American Academy of Neurology's…

The poisoner among us

Last week, The Poisoner's Handbook got a great, pre-publication review in one of my favorite magazines,  New Scientist.  I was thrilled - and relieved. Hard to say which came first.  The week before publication - the book's official date is Feb. 22 - always makes me a little crazy. But much as I like my work being called "fascinating" (and I do, I do), it was the closing sentence of the review that really spoke to me: "Alas, sometimes the poisoners we seek are ourselves." Collins was referring to the findings by the 1920s toxicologist in my book that carbon monoxide was becoming such an…

Sensitive data, linked data, and the "reidentification" phenomenon

One of the truisms in data curation is "well, of course we don't let sensitive data out into the wild woolly world." We hold sensitive data internally. If we must let it out, we anonymize it; sometimes we anonymize it just on general principles. We're not as dumb as the Google engineers, after all. Only it turns out that data anonymization can be frighteningly easy to reverse-engineer. We've had some high-profile examples, such as the AOL search-data fiasco and the ongoing brouhaha over Netflix data. Paul Ohm's working paper on the topic is a great way to get up to speed. We librarians are…

Reindeer Trivia, Just in Time for the Holidays

With the holidays literally around the corner, what more appropriate topic to talk about than reindeer! Many animals maintain a circadian rhythm, which is controlled by a group of cells in an area of the brain called the hypothalamus. This rhythm controls many of the daily and seasonal activities in animals by telling them when to be awake, sleep, forage, migrate, mate, etc. It works great for animals in environments where the day-night cycles occur regularly, but what about arctic reindeer who live in conditions of extended daylight in the summer and darkness in the winter? Researchers Lu…

Finicky Finches

PHOTO CREDIT: SARAH R. PRYKE Things seem to pile on top of my desk too easily these days. When the stacks finally started tipping over today, I decided it must be time to clean. In this process, I came across a report that I had set aside to read in Science Magazine. So, of course, I abandoned all thoughts of cleaning in order to read this article. In this report, Sarah Pryke et al., describe studies conducted on female Gouldian finches (Erythrura gouldiae) examining their extra-pair mating behaviors. Individuals in socially monogamous species, like the finches, sometimes copulate with…

Quick notes on research and information science

Angel Rivera was kind enough, in commenting on my previous post, to say "Yes, what you do is information science." I wonder sometimes--both about the field called "information science" and about whether what I do fits within it. A snarky way to put this might be: Can you do information science if you're not part of academia? Or, Can it be information science if it doesn't appear in the form of proper scholarly articles in proper refereed journals? Not that I haven't had articles in refereed journals. I have--not many, but a few. But most of what I'd call research, particularly in the past…

A Blueprint for Reconciling Faith and Science?

The Boston Globe's Jeff Jacoby had an interesting thought-piece in yesterday's paper. Did you hear about the religious fundamentalist who wanted to teach physics at Cambridge University? This would-be instructor wasn't simply a Christian; he was so preoccupied with biblical prophecy that he wrote a book titled "Observations on the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John." Based on his reading of Daniel, in fact, he forecast the date of the Apocalypse: no earlier than 2060. He also calculated the year the world was created. When Genesis 1:1 says "In the beginning," he determined,…

For Your Consideration: 2 Oscar Nods for "Inconvenient Truth"

The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences has nominated "An Inconvenient Truth" for an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature. The announcement was made this morning. Prepare yourself for savage overuse of the phrase "liberal Hollywood elite" and its permutations between now and the February 28 awards show. Al Gore, unsurprisingly, is thrilled that the 3rd highest-grossing documentary of all-time has been recognized by the academy. "The film ... has brought awareness of the climate crisis to people in the United States and all over the world," Gore said in an e-mail statement. "I am so…

Tyler Cowen is bored by talk about standards of integrity

Tyler Cowen reacts to the calls from Mark Kleiman, Glenn Reynolds and Randy Barnett for a panel to investigate Lott's conduct: My first reaction is to suggest that we already have such a panel every time John, or anyone else, submits a manuscript to a refereed journal on the topic. Cowen seems to believe that the purpose of the panel would be to investigate whether Lott was correct in his "More guns, Less Crime" research. There is already a panel examining that question. It is the National Academy of Sciences panel on firearms research. Lott mounted a…

Successful suicide edition

Oh look, a blog that hasn't been updated in almost a month. Heh. When it comes to suicide, you've got a fairly standard list of methods to work with: firing a bullet into your head, consuming copious amounts of highly toxic drugs/chemicals, jumping in front or off of something, hanging your neck from something, slicing your wrist (vertically, of course), and drowning. Then you have the weird approaches to offing yourself, which is where I come in. Sauvageau A, Yesovitch R. Choking on toilet paper: an unusual case of suicide and a review of the literature on suicide by smothering,…

Mikael Gross on Appalachian School of Law shootings.

(All of my postings on the shootings at the Appalachian School of law are here.) Lott has a [report of a conversation with Mikael Gross](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/cgi-bin/johnrlott.tripod.com/postsbyday…) on his blog. In The Bias Against Guns Lott claims that Gross pointed his gun at Peter Odighizuwa: Only two local newspapers (the Richmond Times Dispatch and the Charlotte Observer) mentioned that the students actually pointed their guns at the attacker. So does Gross confirm that he pointed his gun at Odighizuwa? Nope. Does he confirm that Bridges pointed his…

Spanking makes kids perform better in school, helps them become more successful: study

That's the headline in the Daily News: The research, by Calvin College psychology professor Marjorie Gunnoe, found that kids smacked before age 6 grew up to be more successful . . . Gunnoe, who interviewed 2,600 people about being smacked, told the [London] Daily Mail: "The claims that are made for not spanking children fail to hold up. I think of spanking as a dangerous tool, but then there are times when there is a job big enough for a dangerous tool. You don't use it for all your jobs." From the Daily Mail article: Professor Gunnoe questioned 2,600 people about being smacked, of whom a…

Who's on Facebook?

David Blei points me to this report by Lars Backstrom, Jonathan Chang, Cameron Marlow, and Itamar Rosenn on an estimate of the proportion of Facebook users who are white, black, hispanic, and asian (or, should I say, White, Black, Hispanic, and Asian). Facebook users don't specify race/ethnicity, but they do give their last name, and Backstrom et al. use Census data on the ethnic breakdowns of last names to estimate the proportion of Facebook users in each of several Census-defined ethnic categories. They present their results for several snapshots of Facebook from 2006 through 2009. Their…

Inevitabilities

Every morning I get to wake up my daughter and get her ready for school, but often that's the last time I see her until the next day. The other day, my wife took her out of school to go to the dentist (apparently the entire school became aware of this just after my daughter). Despite her initial boisterous objections, she did quite well at the dentist, and thanks to technology, I was able to share in the experience---my wife sent me an MMS of my daughter showing me her three loose teeth. My baby. Losing her baby teeth. This. Isn't. Cool. But she's excited, and she should be. No matter…

More dangerous naturopathic nonsense

After reading the Canadian Association of Naturopathic Physician's idiotic flu handout I decided to see what our American naturopaths had to say about flu. It's not good. The most effective way to prevent influenza is through vaccination. Good hand hygiene probably helps. Nothing else really does, but that has never stopped quacks from making wildly bogus claims. The American Association of Naturopathic Physicians has a page on "preparing for flu season naturally" which of course fails to mention the most effective prophylactic treatment, presumably because it's "unnatural". I'm not…

World AIDS Day---the good, the bad, and the horrific

Today, the 21st annual World AIDS day, comes at a time when AIDS has become an everyday fact of life. Conservative estimates have over 33 million people living with HIV world-wide with an adult prevalence of 0.8%. This is a common disease, but its distribution is unequal. Due in part to economic, cultural, political, and genetic differences, Sub-Saharan African has been hit particularly hard, although comparisons can be difficult. It is widely believed that some large countries, including China and Russia, significantly under-report HIV disease. Coming to terms with HIV has been hard for…

Bookends

I woke up early this morning. Rather than run out the door to the office, I showered, started some coffee, walked upstairs, and sat down on the bed next to my daughter. She turned, grunted, and said, "Too early!" I sat for a while and watched her drift in and out of sleep. "Daddy, it's too early!" "Honey, do you know what day it is?" "Early!" "It's graduation day!" A hint of a smile. She started nudging around some of her stuffed animals that were tucked in next to her. Within a couple of minutes, she was awake and we were rolling around, overcome by laughter at absolutely nothing.…

Fake journals, false dichotomies

The news broke this weekend about the unholy alliance of Elsevier and Merck to publish a fake medical journal. You can read the details from the links at the bottom of this page. We all agree that creating deceptive, fake medical information is a "bad thing". What worries me, however, is what the "other side" will make of this. What we have in science-based medicine is a method that works. It is, by far, the best way we have to approach the study and treatment of human health and diseases. But like all systems, there are and will always be problems. The strength of the system, though…

"The economy sucks, but cancer sucks more"

I have this friend. Wait, let me backtrack. I have this other friend, his name is Danny Dan. We pretty much grew up together, but lost touch as adults. A couple of years ago, I was at the mall with my little girl, and I saw a kid with a name tag from the same school as my kid. On the tag was his last name. I took one look, and I knew it was Dan's son. I'm sure Lori had something to do with it, but the boy looks just like Dan. Dan, Lori, and Hayden I know Lori was involved with making the kid because she gave birth to him. A few weeks after mini-Dan was born, she went to her follow…

AACR random blogging I

Having gone to two meetings in less than two weeks, I've noticed something different about how I approach meetings. Surgical meetings often reflect the truly bizarre nature of surgeon personalities. For example, the meeting in San Diego that I went to had one session that started at--I kid you not--6 AM. True, they did lure us in with a full breakfast, the only session that offered more than coffee and the occasional snack, but even for a surgeon getting up to show up at such an early session is a bit brutal. Back when I was younger, I would actually get up to go to that session, because it…

Paranoia soul destroyer

Lott has some more comments on the NAS panel report on firearms research. (Also posted at the Volokh Conspiracy.) Lott adds to his earlier claims that the panel was biased with this: In fact, the panel apparently originated with the desire from some to respond to the debate on that issue and to respond specifically to my research that concludes that allowing law abiding citizens to carry concealed weapons reduces crime. I originally overheard Phil Cook and Dan Nagin discussing the need for a panel to "deal with" me in the same way that an earlier panel…

Vatican watch

Pope Ratzi is getting ready to get medieval on the Catholic church—he's meeting this week to prepare to smack down those uppity scientists. There have been growing signs the Pope is considering aligning his church more closely with the theory of "intelligent design" taught in some US states. Advocates of the theory argue that some features of the universe and nature are so complex that they must have been designed by a higher intelligence. Critics say it is a disguise for creationism. If this happens, there will be much rejoicing in Seattle. The Discovery Institute hasn't made much headway…

Speaking Science 2.0...Coming Soon to a City Near You

On April 6, 2007, my good friend Matthew Nisbet and I published a policy forum article in the journal Science. A week later, we followed up with a somewhat longer commentary in the Sunday edition of The Washington Post. In both articles, we argued that scientists, while always remaining true to the science, should "frame" issues and topics in ways that make them personally relevant to broader audiences. The response was overwhelming. There was some controversy; there were also many endorsements. Most of all, there were many calls, from bloggers and other commentators, for us to expand upon…

Kenya's conflict over human origins

This story has been simmering for a while: Kenyan fundamentalists are trying to suppress the fossil evidence, so well represented in their country, of human evolution. On one side, we have Richard Leakey: He told The Daily Telegraph (London): "The National Museums of Kenya should be extremely strong in presenting a very forceful case for the evolutionary theory of the origins of mankind. The collection it holds is one of Kenya's very few global claims to fame and it must be forthright in defending its right to be at the forefront of this branch of science." On another side, we have…

A quick update on the migration to a new domain

Here's a brief update on the move, announced last week. Things are progressing, and most of my old material has been transferred to the new blog, which is located at respectfulinsolence.com. Of course, there are still some things to tweak and fix, which is why, given how insanely busy this week is going to be, given my impending trip to CSICon on Thursday afternoon, I've decided to hold off on writing new material for the new blog until sometime next week, probably November 1 or 2. I'm just gratified that there are so many of you who are still checking back and commenting. Please be patient.…

Renato Dulbecco Interview

I discovered this wonderful website: Peoples Archives. In it you'll find interviews with some of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century. I just finished listening to Sydney Brenner and Francis Crick and am now listening to Renato Dulbecco. Dulbecco, a protege of Giuseppe Levi, moved to Salvador Luria's Lab at the University of Indiana in 1947. Like many of the founders of Molecular Biology, Dulbecco started off by studying phage. Phages are to bacteria what viruses are to our cells. Back then the greatest mystery of all was the nature of the unit of inheritance (i.e. genes). Phages were…

Eric Kandel's New Book

Just saw a glowing review in the NY Times' Suday Book Section on Eric Kandel's new autobiography: In Search of Memory. Prof Kandel is one of the nicest people in science (and one of the most enjoyable lecturers). And this book seems to convey his love of work and of life. From the Ny Times review: Kandel's early studies were done using the simplest of neural circuits: a single sensory cell connected via a synapse to a single motor cell mediating the gill withdrawal reflex of the giant marine snail, Aplysia. This experimental preparation provided a complete biological system in which to…

Fine. We'll rent a submarine and do it ourselves.

Part two of four in a series about Greenpeace recent manned submersible expedition to two of the largest submarine canyons in the world, the Pribilof and Zhemchug Canyons in the Bering Sea off the west coast of Alaska. So, why would an environmental organization like Greenpeace go to the trouble of training staff to pilot a pair of manned submersibles through 2000 feet of water in the two largest submarine canyons in the world, the Pribilof and Zhemchug Canyons, in the heart of the Bering Sea? Because it's going to be a long, long time before federal agencies are willing to surrender the…

Tuesday Afternoon Roundup

As I finish off my day, three separate stories are rolling around in my head. This year's Gulf of Mexico dead zone, that fun-loving anoxic zone of death, didn't meet size expectations but is still the third largest. Is this good or bad? Texas not wanting to be outdone by Louisiana, now boasts its own dead zone. Next is a paper published in a relatively unknown journal with a low impact factor but its findings, pending a further evaluation, are intriguing nonetheless. Researchers from Saint Louis University (SLU) and Peking University in China are revealing for the first time the findings…

Happy 9th Paul Nelson Day!

It's a dying holiday, I'm sorry to say -- I completely forgot it last year. But I was reminded this year, so I'll mention it again. I think the proper way to celebrate it is simply to laugh at a creationist today. The source of the holiday is a remarkable exhibition from Paul Nelson, who like several other creationists, loves to register and present at legitimate science conferences. The barriers are low, and many conferences are intended to give students an opportunity to present, so you'll often find that all you have to do is send in a fee and an abstract and you'll be allowed to put up a…

Deep Sea Ditties #5: Drowning

I wrote this Sunday evening playing my baritone ukelele. I overlayed the guitar and a small banjo solo (with effects). Its fun to overlay instruments in separate tracks and play around with them. I don't very often because it is time-consuming. I am happy to take requests, suggestions for parodies (I'm working on Every Whale Has A Bone set to Every Rose Has A Thorn...), or put life into your own lyrics. Just send me an email! Drowning Chorus: (I Sing tonight and I'll sing it out loud For those depths will not let me go A song for the dark, no echo and how Do I stop from sinking below) Kissed…

LOLRhizocephalans: Plotting to Take Over the World

Rhizocephalan overlord,Peltogaster paguri (tubular thing sticking up on the right), infecting hermit crab. Photo courtesy of Jens Hoeg, used with permission. Rhizocephala are curious creatures. They are actually in the Cirripedia, the group containing your friendly neighborhood penis-waving barnacle. They look nothing like a barnacle (in case you hadn't noticed). We know they are a barnacle because they share the same larval stages and characteristics only found in the barnacles: cyprid larvae. Below the fold are some pictures of a deep sea rhizocephalan from my own research. This poor…

Our Newest National Monument

Today, President Bush invoked the Antiquities Act to create the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands National Monument. In so doing, he has created the single largest marine protected area in the world - at 360,000 square kilometers, the new national monument is slightly larger than the 348,000 km2 Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. This is absolutely fantastic news. The Northwestern Hawaiian Islands are a relatively untouched area with tremendous biological diversity. Although much of the area was already protected, protection came through a complex mixture of overlapping jurisdictions, with…

Letters from the Front: A Visit to the Creation Museum

Correspondent SDC, reporting in from the Land o' Hoosiers, offers an awe-inspiring account of a recent visit to the famous Creation Museum, located "just seven miles west of the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport." A teaser follows. The rest of the article (including photos), copiously dusted with SDC's dry sardonic humor, may be found here: Elitist Liberals Visit The Creation Museum. I am not particularly unusual in wanting to be there when history is unfolding. Last month I was excited about playing a tiny, tiny role in Obama's victory over John McCain. A few weeks ago, I…

Sub Two Hour Marathon, EVER?

A very interesting read in the Guardian today regarding the possibility of humans ever running a sub two hour marathon. This speculation always crops up when the marathon record is broken, most recently by the venerable Haile Gebrselassie who last week brought the mark down to 2:03:59. The discussion always divides into the "No, never!" camp and the "Of course!" chorus. On the one hand, Haile's 4:43.7 average mile pace is mind boggling to the average student of the sport and a further lowering to the required 4:34.6 seems impossible. But, the same thing was said about the four minute mile…

Recite Your ZYXs

As readers of this blog may have noted, I have a thing for patterns and sequences. Maybe it's my musical training (e.g., inversion, retrograde, and retrograde inversion of a motif) or my love of palindromes, but I have a habit of reading signs and whatnot backwards (right to left). Sometimes funny things pop up. The other day I was riding my bike (on the mag trainer, not in the snow) and sometimes I will count revolutions to pass the time. That gets boring so I might count "alphabets" (hey, it's easier than counting to 26 over and over). I thought about reciting the alphabet backwards. This…

Should You Comment On This Blog Post?

1. First, a question. What is a blog? Generally speaking (although there are exceptions), blogs tend to have a few things in common: A main content area with articles listed chronologically, newest on top. Often, the articles are organized into categories. An archive of older articles. A way for people to leave comments about the articles. A list of links to other related sites, sometimes called a "blogroll". One or more "feeds" like RSS, Atom or RDF files. ...Want an interactive website? Wouldn't it be nice if the readers of a website could leave comments, tips or impressions about the…