A Curious Statistical Anomaly

We watched the debate tonight. It was on lots of channels but we watched CNN. We didn’t watch the hour of pre-debate babble but we did stay tuned for the post-debate rehash. During the rehash of the debate I had to wonder if they watched the same debate that I saw.

My own opinion is that Obama won hands-down. Of course, I have my biases — I’m a “flaming” liberal and proud of it. I’m also pretty pragmatic and I know deep in my heart that our country is in a downward spiral and if something isn’t done to pull us out … and soon … we might as well just forget we were ever a world power. What I heard is that McCain plans to follow the same old plan that got us into this mess and continue the policies that have clearly not worked. Obama, being a pragmatist, also sees that we can’t afford this and intends to try to give us back our pride, our dignity, our place in the world by trying to extricate us from the bad decisions made in our past and to treat other countries as equals rather than acting like children in a playground demanding that others play by our rules or not at all.

McCain continually said “Obama doesn’t understand”. I think, or as far as I could tell from his answers, that Obama understood perfectly well the problems and the intricacies of the political arena — he just didn’t see things the same way that the Republican Party does or McCain does.

I understand that McCain’s party now has a video with all the times that Obama agreed with McCain. What it most likely doesn’t show is how often Obama tried to show that they both loved their country and were trying to do what’s right for it, but that they had fundamental differences in how to solve the problems. I’m sure that that video doesn’t show the exchange where Obama pointed out how often McCain was wrong.

McCain comes off as someone who just can’t see his way clear to think outside the box, not only that, he can’t let go of the bad old days — he’s a hawk. I believe that Obama could take us to war but it would be as a last resort. McCain would see it as a first or second option. Where Obama would turn to diplomacy, McCain would threaten.

The image I used for this article is the cover for the movie, Bullworth. In the movie, Bullworth is a politician who has hit bottom and has ordered a hit on himself so he has nothing to loose. He starts to tell the truth at all his talks. Suddenly, he finds himself as the top contender and listened to.
I loved the film — if only “real” politician could realize that if they spoke the truth instead of always telling us what they think we want to hear that our country would be in a much better place than it is now. If only the voters of this country would LISTEN and evaluate their politicians, we’d also be a lot better off.

I’m so glad that Obama pointed out just how much of a tax increase McCains tax reduction would be on the average citizen. McCain’s plan to give every American $5,000 dollars toward medical coverage sounds good until you look deeper into the fine print and find that the plan also would require employers to tax the money that is paid by the employer toward medical benefits as taxable income. Congrats, every working American just got a huge tax increase. Watch closely for the promises coming from McCain about how he plans to save us money — they usually come with a huge price tag that’s paid by those least able to afford it. Obama at least plans to tax those with incomes over $250,000 a year — since my family and everyone I know lives on a lot less than that, I think that’s fair. McCain complains about the poor companies that pay 37% in taxes — so what, I pay about 43-45% in taxes when you add Federal, State, County, and City taxes. I’m not crying boo-hoo about a company (like the poor oil companies) who could pay 37% but with the tax relief they get off paying less than most American’s making $20,000 a year. Yeah, McCain just convinced me that I had the right idea about these two candidates.

I just love it when science finds that not only is eating chocolate okay — it’s even good for you. Of course, not for all of us — a friend of mine gets migraines if she has too much chocolate, or even a bit of it. But then for the rest of the chocoholics of the world — go for it.

It seems that half a bar of dark chocolate per week is good for your heart. Believe me I’m not looking this gift horse in the mouth (which is why I didn’t even try to find the original research paper), but the article in PhyOrg.com says:

“We started from the hypothesis- says Romina di Giuseppe, 33, lead author of the study- that high amounts of antioxidants contained in the cocoa seeds, in particular flavonoids and other kinds of poly-phenols, might have beneficial effects on the inflammatory state. Our results have been absolutely encouraging: people having moderate amounts of dark chocolate regularly have significantly lower levels of C-reactive protein in their blood. In other words, their inflammatory state is considerably reduced.” The 17% average reduction observed may appear quite small, but it is enough to decrease the risk of cardio-vascular disease for one third in women and one fourth in men. It is undoubtedly a remarkable outcome”.

The most amazing thing is it works better in women than in men. And since chocolate also seems to lock to the same receptors in the brain that get stimulated with sex — hey, this is a really good thing on lonely nights. But I think we actually may need more than half a bar per week.

Actually, I’m really so-so on the chocolate thing but my husband is a chocoholic — big time. So, this is right up his nutritional menu plan. However, when I do have chocolate, it’s the dark chocolate that I like. I’m especially fond of bittersweet dark chocolate bits or bars. I loved the Chantico drinking chocolate that you used to be able to get at Starbucks — a bit too sweet for my taste but boy did it pack a caffeine wallop. Six ounces and you buzzed for hours. They don’t have it anymore in the winter — wonder if it’s because of the buzz.

Anyway, take another look at your milk chocolate stash and when it’s gone replace it with dark, rich, dark, chunks, of dark chocolate. Afterall, science is on our side.

I was reading some techie sites today and they mentioned the LHC Rap had more hits than the Astrobiology Rap. So naturally, I had to check this out.

Jonathan Chase loves rap and has melded it with his love of science. Even his rapper name, Oort Kuiper, is a nod to his passion for science. Anyway, according to several articles that I read (here and here), he was commissioned by NASA to develop an Astrobiology Rap for the latest edition of NASA’s Astrobiology Magazine European Edition. Luckily for us, the Astrobiology Rap is now on YouTube.

It’s rather nice to see that scientists and those who understand science are reaching out to the younger audience to hopefully get them interested in the wonders and beauty and the big questions that make science so fascinating.

Are we the only sentient race in the universe? I don’t think so — the universe is just so big there has to be another spark of life out there somewhere. The trick is to find it and to recognize it. If what we do on earth is any indication of how we’d treat sentient lifeforms — we just redefine life so that the newly found one doesn’t qualify. We constantly do that here on earth. Don’t believe me? Think about how the definition of sentient life has changed as we discovered some animals use tools, that when taught a language we can understand (American sign language), we decided that just because they made up words out of what they already knew for new items and that people could read their signing it wasn’t “real” language. Evidently, when we’re threatened with not being unique we move the bar and make it harder for anyone/any species other than ourselves to qualify.

Anyway, enjoy the rap. Normally, I don’t care for rap (who wants to be sworn at for 3 minutes), but this one is rhythmic and and has a story to tell.

Normally, I don’t pass these things on because I don’t really know where they came from. This one is different, it’s from the daughter of friend. My friend rewrote it so it could be posted and sent to others. Read and ponder, and if you can do something to help, please do so. Evidently, FEMA didn’t learn from the aftermath of Katrina and now Houston is in the same fix.

My daughter Jennifer lives in Houston outside the outer beltway. Three days ago, her electricity came back on. Since the hurricane, services that we take for granted are a hardship, even for the people who are lucky enough to have power. At the grocery store, people are allowed into the store accompanied by store employees. Only 20 people are allowed in at a time. They can get a limited selection of groceries – milk, eggs and bread being very precious and hard to get. They are then checked out using cash. The lines are long and Jenny has waited upwards to a couple hours for food. Gas lines are the same. This is still happening on a daily basis for her. Of course, she considers herself one of the lucky ones – she had emergency cash on hand and has non-perishable food to last several weeks. Now, magnify Jenny’s plight by millions. Not hundreds, not thousands, MILLIONS. 1.2 million people are still without power in and around Houston. These people are running out of cash, are having difficulty getting around to get groceries because they need gas for their cars, and are doing the best they can to survive. Neighbors and family are helping each other. But there are poeple there without that family or friend network.

Since she’s capable of caring for herself, Jenny decided to volunteer in some way to help the people who’ve lost everything, including their homes. Because the news is filled with headlines about the latest political campaign, Houston’s massive cleanup and rebuilding its infrastructure have passed from the public’s eye.

Jenny has been volunteering at a Red Cross shelter for the past 3 days. The shelter is an old big box store that was closed down. The Red Cross has set up cots, handed out blankets, and given each person a small bag of travel-size personal toiletries. Port-A-Potties and the trailer showers have been set up outside for hygienic purposes. Hand sanitizer is scattered throughout the shelter to help people keep clean. Each day, more buses arrive with more people. An entire group of mentally disabled people is now housed in this shelter. Their own facility is gone. The website says that only people who are being bussed back are in this shelter. However, Jenny says there are several people there who claim they were homeless before the hurricane. There are about 1000 people at this place. So far. There are 40 Red Cross volunteers – 2 groups are from Taiwan and Mexico’s version of Red Cross. One individual is the “mental health officer.” In trying to handle the crisis, the Red Cross volunteers have been at the shelter from 6 AM to 10 PM – without breaks. Many have had nothing to eat all day. Anyone who appears to possess food is descended upon by the clients and there’s simply no way to share with everyone. So because the Red Cross workers can’t take a break, they are simply not eating. There is no way to cook food. The Red Cross is handing out self-heating MREs (Meals-Ready-To-Eat). Tonight, Verizon donated 100 pizzas and 43 sandwiches to this shelter. Jenny said the “clients” fell on the food like starving wolves. Many of them have had little to eat for days.

The volunteers are there to help the people fill out forms to get aid, try to get them whatever they need as far as personal stuff (some only came with the clothes on their backs) and generally help people get settled with a cot and corner to call their own until FEMA and other emergency measures can be taken. From what I understand, FEMA has been so overwhelmed that the supply line is backed up and people are not getting the resources they need. The newspapers paint a rosier picture, but the reality is, thousands and thousands of people have lost not only their homes, but their livelihoods.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/us/21houston.html?em

Many of the clients come up to the Red Cross personnel and ask if they can help find a job. They understand the predicament they’re in, and are desperate for work to help themselves. Sadly, there aren’t any jobs available and even if there were, the Red Cross can’t give them one.

Up close and personal – Jenny says the biggest issue is FOOD. These people, including the workers, are going hungry. At different times during the day, she says even the Red Cross workers have broken down over the misery of not being able to alleviate the hunger. Sure, the clients are getting at least one meal a day, which is better than nothing, but for bodies used to 3 meals a day, its hard. One Red Cross worker hid under a desk so no one could see her crying. Then she wiped her tears, dusted off her hands and went back to work.

I am asking each of you to go to the Red Cross website and donate money or your time. If you can go down there to volunteer, please go give the aid workers help if its possible. If you can, take a busload of people with you – maybe your church group or your cheerleading squad or your boy scout troup. I realize school is in session and this is probably unlikely. But you could ask your schools and work to do a fund-raising drive for the Red Cross.

I realize a lot of folk were not happy with the Red Cross a few years ago due to issues that made the news. But that has changed. Jenny has volunteered to man a TV hotline for aid, a FEMA POD center and the Red Cross shelter she’s now at. She says the Red Cross, BY FAR, is the most organized, most helpful and most reliable at getting the goods and services out there. But they are being slowly overwhelmed by the magnitude of Houston’s dire straits. Here’s the link for Houston’s Red Cross:

http://www.houstonredcross.org/

Please, if you can help, donate.

Thank you!

P.S. You have my permission to send this email to anyone as you see fit.

Time. Time has always been relative. Remember when you were young and summer was just this long season of lazy days filled with nothing to do but enjoy the time off from school? Remember when you wished every day that you were older so you could do whatever it is that you needed to be older for? Then you get older and you wish you could live those earlier times or ages again and appreciate every second of that time you wasted wishing to be in a different time.

Most of us are never in the now. Of course, we live in the now in reality, but in our minds, we either are replaying the past or fantasizing about the future. We think of those comebacks and things we should have done. We plan for the things that we hope to do and we ignore what is going on around us now. However, now is all we actually do have. We can, to some degree, plan our future.  But to get there we have to live each second as it comes. We are always in the now, which becomes the past as we move to the future. But to truly live, it must be now, today, this minute, this second.

We should try to pay attention to what is happening around us; to not put off what we can do now. Live fully each second. Or, as I like to say, Carpe Diem.

So, if you’re wondering what got me thinking about time and its effects on our lives, it’s because I heard about the The Corpus Clock & Chronophage. Here’s the YouTube video.

I totally love the idea of a bug that eats time. Once that time is gone it can’t come back — at least not until and unless we learn to master that fourth dimension and that’s not going to be anytime soon. So, make every second of your life count. Don’t waste time — and just for the record, watching a gorgeous sunrise or sunset, or looking at the shapes in clouds, star gazing, spending time with a friend, comforting someone in pain — are not time wasters. Life is what happens while you wait for something else — that’s wasting time. Be in the now and enjoy your life. Don’t miss it waiting for something else.

I love teapots and have a small collection of them. So, when I saw 500 Teapots, I decided that it would be fun to see the variations on a theme that potters would come up with.

Let’s get my biases up front. I love it when form and function come together and the object is not only beautiful, but actually useful. All the teapots that I have, I use. Some more than others and some days I’ll pull something out of the back of the cupboard because that pot is just what I need on this particular day. My favorite lately is a crackled celery green ceramic pot — it make one big mug of tea and yet looks delicate and soothing. I also have several YiXing teapots with one of my favorites being a dragon — then there’s the rugged Brown Betty. I also have a few, very few, modern teapots I’ve picked up at crafts faires. What attracts me is utility and then something that just speaks to me and I know that I and that teapot will enjoy each others company.

Leafing through 500 Teapots, I found teapots of breath-taking beauty, some that made me laugh out loud, some that made me think, hmmmmm. There were also some that were just teapots with different finishes and colors, some with spirals, flowers, birds, shells.

There were also many teapots that are a teapot in name only. Either they wouldn’t hold water, or wouldn’t make very good tea — due to the shape and where the water would be versus where the spout was. To my mind, these aren’t teapots; they are works of art for display only. Something to be enjoyed for the artistry, the whimsy, or the metaphor the piece is trying to embody. Form but little function, beauty with no utility. A teapot has a function and without the function, is it really a teapot anymore?

Nevertheless, the book is a feast for the eyes. There’s ideas aplenty for those who work with these materials. For those who just enjoy looking at beautiful works, this fills that need. There is much to enjoy for its beauty, its whimsy, and what it says about hearth, home, life, and the universe.

Some of the photos, as well as including the artist’s name, name of the piece, information about materials and how it was made, also include a paragraph or two about what the artist’s intent was in making this particular pot. It’s the information about intent and inspiration that I found added to the appreciation of the piece.

So, if you enjoy a good cuppa once in a while and would like to see just how far one can go when working with function to make it stand-out, take a look at 500 Teapots.

So, we stopped in to Starbucks this past weekend for coffee (me) and hot chocolate (Hyperion) and picked up issue No. 001 September 11-17, 2008. This issue is Carbon Emissions: A Field Guide to American’s Favorite Greenhouse Gas. It’s one sheet folded in a manga size (height x width) not thickness. An advertisement for Hybrids, some sayings, and some facts and charts about carbon emissions and our good friend CO₂.

There was poster in the shop that said that this free news sheet would be out every Thursday. I’m thinking I might have to look up issue No. 002. The fact that there’s some zeros in that number indicates they plan to give it a decent run. Each week the sheet should cover a hot election topic. Not in depth certainly, but a quick over view of the topic will give a lot of people some nodding acquaintance with some of the issues. This link to a Motley Fool article goes into a bit more detail. Even the NY Times has an article (this one about issue No. 002 so guess I missed one, or so.

You can read issue No. 001 online at the Starbucks site. Take a look and check for the second issue, or is it the third, that will be out this week — I seem to have lost count. Must be lack of coffee.

Whatever the schedule or which issue is out now, it’s a great idea. You know that awkward point when your out with someone and you don’t know what to talk about next? Hey, it happens even with a partner, spouse, or significant other — you know each other so well that after awhile something like this is a great aid in helping to start a real conversation about something other then the house, the chores, the job, the weather. It’s a great conversation starter even for people who know each other very well.

I saw this in the library and picked it up. I’d been noticing it in the bookstores and flipped through it quickly but didn’t want to buy on a flip through so did my usual and got it out of the library first for a closer look.

This is a great book if you haven’t knit for a while, or you have but you don’t own any stitch pattern books — I own 6 not including this one. It has a short section that goes over some of the basics like casting on, casting off, how to read a pattern, knitting abbreviations, and other basic knowledge that lot of us take for granted and, if you’re a beginner or return after a hiatus, might need to get started. Myself, if I was a total beginner I think I’d opt for Bitch ‘N Bitch: The Knitter’s Handbook since it has a lot more of the “how-to” stuff.

Now to Super Stitches Knitting, the stitch library is laid out so that the left hand page has the instructions for the (usually) three patterns shown in the photo on the right hand side. The photo shows stitches usually horizontally — top to bottom — changing colors for each pattern. The instructions on the left are leftmost column for the top pattern, and the right most column for the bottom pattern. The problem is that they while the instructions are labeled as to what pattern it is, the photo is not labeled on the photo but in lighter lettering on the very bottom of the lefthand page. It took me a while to find the labels for the photo and I was actually looking. So the info is there.

While most of the photo clearly show the stitch definition because of the light color of the yarn, some of the patterns were in a very dark blue, making if very difficult to detect the stitch pattern unless you already knew what it was going to look like. In a book of stitch patterns, having clear photos is not only a good idea, it’s critical for the reader using it. This didn’t happen often but it was often enough to be annoying.

The book has a great mix of stitches patterns: knit and purl patterns, knit and purl panels, ribs, textured stitches (that seemed to repeat some of the knit and purl patterns/panels), edgings (some wonderful inclusions), ornamental stitches, eyelet patterns, cables, knitted lace, textured colorwork, and some fair isle.

Most of the instructions are written out in standard knitter code. There are some charts but not as many as I’d like.  But I wouldn’t let that dissuade me from getting the book. Instructions for the patterns that I read through seemed clear and easy to follow — same for the charts. Since there’s a section on how to read charts and instructions — you’ve got a primer for following which ever method you choose.

So, overall this is a great book for the beginner, a returning knitter, or someone without a stitch pattern. Unfortunately, for me there were no stitch patterns that I don’t already have in the other books that are in my library. However, if I didn’t already have so many stitch library-type book, I’d certainly be adding this one to my bookshelf. So, if you’ve looked at this quickly thinking well, maybe, take another closer look. This may just be the book you need to begin putting together your own bookshelf of stitch patterns.