Rod

In light of his opportunistic comment that the availability of guns makes mayhem easier, after an NFL player shot and killed his girlfriend and himself, Bob Costas will want to include cars as mayhem contributors, given the reckless use of one was recently responsible for the death of another NFL player.

I’ll be taken to task by some for saying this. Wait a minute, they’ll say, the clear intention of the former was murder (and suicide), the latter, while evidently reckless, was nevertheless an accident. That’s a fair point (although legally it’s not being treated as an accident). But then the Costas objection should be corrected: Bad intentions lead to mayhem. Because intentions originate in a human mind, not the barrel of a gun.

Besides, we don’t know if, absent the availability of a gun, the murderer would not have simply chosen a substitute weapon, like a knife, the weapon of choice of another famous football player with bad intentions who used it (evidently) to kill his ex wife and her friend.

What’s the word for that crusted plug that clogs the nozzle on the ketchup squeeze bottle? The one that resists the even flow of the tomatoey goodness until it can’t no more and then suddenly BAM! everything is red except the target meatloaf, and the counter and back splash look like the Tate-LaBianca murders. Equally hard to clean up from, too.

Thankfully the forecast calls for snow. Listen to me, grateful for snow. What gives? Well, it’s not because I’m a skier, I’m not, I’m a terrible skier. Closer to pathetic really. I want the insulation and light reflection snow provides. Especially the latter. We have a feeble sun this time of year and absent snow the dark ground absorbs all the light for itself. Making morning walks with Lucy less joyful.

And the world needs more joy, not less.

Here’s something: researchers claim they can detect colorectal cancer with a breath test. My dissertation research involved the study of human colon cancer. (Side note: If the malls are closed, you’re out of books to read, the chores are done, and especially if your normal sleep aid is failing you, please click the “About” link over there on the right, and look for the link to where you can read my dissertation).

Anyhoo, interesting article. Except I believe they understated the predictive accuracy of their test, unless they have more data than what was shared in the article, or a non-standard formula for accuracy.

The breath test analysis correctly identified 32 of the 37 patients with colorectal cancer and incorrectly diagnosed cancer in seven of the 41 healthy patients. Overall, the breath test had an accuracy rate of 76% in identifying patients with cancer.

In other words, 32 true positives (TP), 34 true negatives (TN), 7 false positives (FP), and 5 false negatives (FN).

Predictive accuracy = (TP + TN)/(TP + FP +FN + TN) = 84.6%

Some commenters to the article wondered if “shitty” smelling breath would produce a true positive. Ha ha, very funny.

5.8 magnitude. Epicenter ~30 miles from Anchorage. Across Cook Inlet near Beluga.

Caused the Cabernet in my wine glass to slosh a bit.

Update: Oh boy, we made the national news. Only two items fell from our bookshelf, a mask of peculiar origin (Happy Wife I’m sure knows the detail), and a small stalactite figurine. Lucy was home alone at the time. Brave girl.

Ice is slippery, and hard. Call me master of the obvious. Inattention and worn house slippers are no match for ice. At least I didn’t drop the mail when I fell. Unlike other contexts where falls occur, on ice there is no time to see yourself in slow motion, to think, damn, this going to hurt, or even to brace yourself. No. One second you’re mindlessly scuffing along, sorting the mail in hand, and then BLAM!, you’re down. Ouch.

Moon rising over the Chugach Mountains. Resurrection Bay is still. No sign of otters, which there commonly is during the day at this spot. Half mile from our beach house.

Three weeks until the days begin to get longer! Not that we’ve noticed the shorter days too much this winter. It’s been weird this year in the sense we’ve had bluesky for weeks now, such that everything this feeble sun has to offer is unfiltered by clouds, which we haven’t seen one of in weeks. Consequently, we have almost no snow, maybe an inch here and there, barely enough to cover Fall’s leaves. Recall last year we had a record setting eleven feet of snow.

… they may reveal insights into the holy grail of life — Immortality.

Sommer kept his hydrozoans in petri dishes and observed their reproduction habits. After several days he noticed that his Turritopsis dohrnii [Jellyfish] was behaving in a very peculiar manner, for which he could hypothesize no earthly explanation. Plainly speaking, it refused to die. It appeared to age in reverse, growing younger and younger until it reached its earliest stage of development, at which point it began its life cycle anew.

Sommer was baffled by this development but didn’t immediately grasp its significance. (It was nearly a decade before the word “immortal” was first used to describe the species.) But several biologists in Genoa, fascinated by Sommer’s finding, continued to study the species, and in 1996 they published a paper called “Reversing the Life Cycle.” The scientists described how the species — at any stage of its development — could transform itself back to a polyp, the organism’s earliest stage of life, “thus escaping death and achieving potential immortality.” This finding appeared to debunk the most fundamental law of the natural world — you are born, and then you die.

A Typical (I must say amusing) Internet Comment Thread.

Ignited by this article at Reason.com re: Voluntary Taxation.

T o n y| 11.26.12 @ 4:48PM

Taxation is always about forcing. A voluntary tax is an absurd idea, especially coming from people who think people are always rational with their money.

I realize that if libertarians ever got off the hobbyhorse of condemning the poor and elderly for being moochers and started realizing it’s the wealthy who have indeed been “coddled” in recent decades, then there would be no point to you existing.

Mr. FIFY| 11.26.12 @ 4:51PM

And if/when you ever realize how much hatred you have of rich people, you might come to the conclusion that such hatred has been misplaced all along and that it accomplished absolutely nothing.

Which is what higher taxes will also accomplish.

Mr. FIFY| 11.26.12 @ 4:52PM

And all that on top of your hatred of straight people, too.

iggy| 11.26.12 @ 4:54PM

And the coddling of the wealthy is the direct result of the same welfare state that breeds low income dependence on government programs.
It’s almost like the problem you’re complaining about is actually your fault.

Mr. FIFY| 11.26.12 @ 4:57PM

Almost? Shit, iggy, you nailed it. Now Tony’s going to have to flop on his princess bed and cry himself to sleep.

T o n y| 11.26.12 @ 5:21PM

Don’t whine about my jocular heterophobia if you’re going to make these kinds of comments, butch.

Mr. FIFY| 11.26.12 @ 5:22PM

Fuck you, asshole.

Mr. FIFY| 11.26.12 @ 5:22PM

Oh, and it’s not jocular if you actually mean it.

T o n y| 11.26.12 @ 5:55PM

You really fancy yourself a telepath don’t you.

Mr. FIFY| 11.26.12 @ 6:05PM

Really, no. And neither is Chris Matthews.

Another fascinating specimen seen on the beach this morning during my walk with Lucy. Big as a Frisbee.

Bigger.

Later in the morning I left our beach house to return to Anchorage, and about forty miles north of Seward I remembered I left the coffee maker on, one without an automatic shutoff. I briefly considered going back to unplug it, but decided against it thinking what’s the worse that can happen? — the house will stink like burnt coffee when we go down this weekend, or maybe the carafe will be cracked or so badly caked with burnt coffee it will be unusable. Still, when I got home I googled “mrcoffee shutoff fire.” The top hit was a forum where someone had asked if they should be concerned about having left their coffee maker on for three days, if it might cause a fire.

Reply #3 said:
If it doesn’t have automatic shutoff, you should be very worried. The apartment below ours left their pot on overnight, and by the morning there was a fire. The smoke smell was terrible. Please, get someone into your place to turn it off.

Great — that’s all I needed to hear! Fortunately, I found the phone number of our new neighbors who live in Seward year round. They were happy to help us. I gave them the number to the combination lock on the house, and asked that they call me to confirm I had in fact left the coffee maker on. Minutes later they called me back to say I had, and that already (only 4 hours) the carafe was badly burned and the house smelled like burned coffee.

And then they asked if I had seen the black bear wandering the beach while I was out with Lucy. Uh, no, I didn’t. Evidently it was spotted out there only minutes after Lucy and I returned to the house. Pretty late in the season to be seeing bears out ‘n about.

I wondered if black bears eat frozen Jellyfish.

Seen this weekend near our beach house. One might suppose this fella was frolicking (do Jellyfish frolic?) a bit too long in the surf, joyriding onto the rocks and back into water, over and over again — Whee! — blissfully unaware of the looming tide change. He wasn’t alone; we saw dozens more scattered about the beach. Bad genes? I doubt that explanation. Given the prolific nature of Jellyfish reproduction there are certainly thousands more genetically identical to this guy who were not so careless.

Did you know some species of Jellyfish reproduce asexually? In others, sexual reproduction occurs when the males ejaculate into the water and the sperm swim into the mouths of the female (no snickering guys) in search of her eggs.

Mystery picture, also taken during Thanksgiving at the beach house. And no, the rings of Saturn is incorrect.

 

Norton Malbec Reserva — 2009

winemaker’s notes:Deep red color with hints of purple. Expressive on the nose with notes of ripe black fruits, violets, and tobacco. This wine has round and sweet tannins, ripe red fruit and figs followed by a long finish.

I agree. Yummy. $13.99/bottle @ Costco.

I knew I was in California when…

 Bigger.

… leaving my hotel room one bright, sunny morning to walk to Starbucks and then to the conference, I passed by some California girls who were, well, just sorta hangin’.

During the week I was in Redwood City I must’ve walked over twelve miles. When I attend conferences, if I don’t stay in a room at the conference venue I like to stay about a mile or so away so I can walk to and from each day. This past week was perfect, I stayed in a mid-line hotel about 0.8 miles from the conference, with a Starbucks located conveniently in between. Every morning was clear, sunny, and windless; perfect for a walk along a serpentine path lined with pines and the occasional eucalyptus tree. Twice for dinner I walked to the nearby city of San Carlos, about 2 miles each way, ending up on Laurel street which is packed with restaurants, bars, and shops. No evidence of a bad economy here — the bars and restaurants were filled with well quaffed patrons buzzing about this and that, blissfully unaware, it seemed to me, of any looming fiscal cliff.

My last day there I connected with my friend Kevin. He’s gainfully employed as a scientist with Big (more like Medium) Pharma. We went for a nice 30-miler starting at his house, through the Stanford campus, out to the Portola Valley, back through Stanford, a stop at Philz Coffee, where they make it one cup at a time, a loop around Googleplex and then back to his house. I rode my old Merlin which now belongs to Kevin. It felt good to be in the company of friends.

A little shout out to the cute Stanford coed who took our picture.

Bigger.

In the dead of winter in Alaska, when I close my eyes and imagine road biking in California, this is what I envision. Kevin leads the way.