A Curious Statistical Anomaly

Today the staff of SFRevu, TechRevu, and Gumshoe Review got together for our monthly meeting. Along with catching up on each other and kibitzing about possible changes to our sites and discussion of ways to make our zines better for our readers, we take some time to get to know each other better and to have some fun. So, we have a meeting followed by food, whatever movie that got the highest vote, and then share our best website of the month. Well, one person’s best website was TED: Ideas worth Spreading.

I’d been to the site before to listen and watch a talk or two. If you haven’t been there and you enjoy learning about new things or getting a hit to the side of the head to jump you out of your regular thought processes — it’s a great site with some thoughtfully presented ideas. The talk we listened to was by Dean Kamen about how he came to work on the bionic arm. Normally, I’d embed the video but this one is long and I thought it would be better if you went to the site — besides, you’re probably going to want to poke around over there anyway and bookmark it for later visits.

If you’ve been reading my site regularly, you’ll know that I’ve had a couple of rants about how technology in the US has been falling behind. Well, Dean Kamen has raised my hopes. This arm was done in 13 months from the start of the project. Evidently, with a committed and eager group working on a project they believe in — work can be done and done well. This is now up for funding from what I’ve read elsewhere and I’m hoping it gets more funding for trials and then some fine tuning. This is so much better for people missing an arm or even two arms than a stick with a hook or a plastic and wood approximation of an arm but without movement.

Evidently, the spirit to invent when matched with the right task and the right people shows that we can still do some pretty amazing things. I just hope this gets down to the people who actually needs these arms.

Every now and then there’s one of those moments when you have to go hmmm. I was reading a CNN article about a bowling ball sized frog that lived contemporaneously with dinosaurs and had teeth. But it wasn’t until I saw a photo with the article that I thought I’ve seen that frog before. So, I thought about it a while and then went to the Leakey Cauldron site to find the picture of the chorus that sang in Prisoner of Azkaban. Sure enough there was the frog looking like the picture of the ancient one in the news article.

Of course, it might be hard to see the similarity from the two pictures but if you go and rewatch the movie, I’m sure you’ll see that they are very similar.
What this brings up for me is how often FX people get things right when they are told to do something. They didn’t get the teeth, but they sure made the size and shape just about right for our ancient frog ancestor.
I remember going to a talk by a planetary geologist who was saying he’d hired a science fiction artist to do a picture of Venus based on some information he gave him on the climate and other geological information. When the picture was done, the scientist wasn’t really happy with the flat mountains but the artist insisted that it was what would happen under that pressure. Next survey of Venus sent back pictures and lo and behold there were the artist’s pancake mountains.

Maybe artists and FX people should have an active part in scientific inquiry because they seem to think outside the box in interesting ways.

It snowed today. In fact it is still snowing. It’s supposed to snow until about 11pm and then taper off. It’s actually sticking to the ground so we might have some accumulation when we awake tomorrow. I’m sorry if this sounds whiny for those who’ve had feet of snow but I don’t think we’ve had snow on the ground in February since we moved here 10+ years ago — it may have snowed a time or two in February but not to stay on the ground.

The weather has been so unsettled lately. Just Sunday it was in the low 70’s and now it’s below freezing again. I’m sort of worried about the perennials — you see we started raking and clearing the garden area in preparation for spring planting late next month. Now they may freeze since we uncovered them. But it was so nice to see the bright green of the new growth pushing up when we got the leaves off. Prematurely, it seems now.

Haven’t been sleeping well with all the barometric changes — all those ups and downs trigger migraines. I don’t think I’ve been able to really sleep in a week now. The worst bit is when I go to say something to my husband and I just can’t think of the word I want. I can almost see it. I can give the whole definition (and usually have to) but I can’t remember the word itself. We watched a movie the other evening where the main character got hit with some sort of nerve gas and forgot her name but she could still remember English and lots of other things just not who she was.

I seem to spend a lot of time lately thinking about how people think — mostly how I think. Why can I describe something — say corduroy — but I can’t remember that word itself. The neural net is a wonderful things but I truly find it amazing how it connects one thought to another or a word to a concept.

I saw this report on my favorite tech news site (slashdot.org) and it’s sort of been in my mind swirling around with a lot of other miscellaneous thoughts. The article from the University of Michigan News Service said:

A new energy-capturing knee brace can generate enough electricity from walking to operate a portable GPS locator, a cell phone, a motorized prosthetic joint or an implanted neurotransmitter, research involving the University of Michigan shows.

So, I’m wondering could we eventually have a lighter weight knee brace that’s fitted into our jeans or athletic gear and it somehow stores the energy into fiber batteries so later it can be downloaded to some off-line (out of my clothes) storage battery-type thingy. I mean if walking was not only healthy for me but would reduce my electrical bill because I could generate power to charge/run small devices then … well, maybe a lot more American would be out there walking… well, maybe not — but it’s a thought.

I like to multi-task — though I’ve been told that it’s physically impossible (that got a chuckle out of me but the person(s) who said this was deadly serious and a past employer for obvious reasons) anyway so since I read on the exercise bike or knit/bike/watch TV, why not reduce my electric bill by doing something to feel good, get healthy and help to save the environment. Imagine the generator brace on both knees, both elbows and then taking a brisk walk or run (for me it would be a slow walk but it’s the thought that counts anyway).

I heard today that the Virginia Senate passed a law to remove mentally retarded from all public documents and signage — the phrase intellectually damage will be used in its place. I admit that I haven’t followed up on this to make sure it’s correct, but that’s not really important because the point is the PC (politically correctness) of such motions in general. First mentally retarded is an actual definable term (follow the link), however intellectually damaged is not so this is a change for the sake of change not a change for clarity.

[NOTE: Image is from an interesting article “A Politically Correct LexiconYour ‘how-to’ guide to avoid offending anyone” by Joel Bleifuss.]

It seems to me that a lot of the changes in language that are urged upon us in order to stop bias, negativity, and various fill-in-the-blank-isms don’t really make a difference. Over the last several decades many changes have been made but I can’t see that the world is any better for it. Hate is still alive and well and so is bigotry and discrimination. All that’s changed is our words, but the venom and emotion behind those words just moved — now the words may sound nicer but the attached emotional-negativity is still there. While changing language does do a lot in some cases for example changing fireman to fire fighter does make sense because a female fireman — well, it’s just weird. Having the job isn’t weird it’s the verbal label for the job that’s weird — the occupational title should be gender neutral. However, many of the latest changes are just a result of someone somewhere getting their knickers in a twist and thinking if they change the label the problem will go away.

Problems don’t go away when you ignore them, cover them up, hide them, or relabel them. They just go along for the ride and eventually get in your face again. You can’t change discrimination by changing labels — you must change the underlying emotional baggage that causes the problem in the first place.

As Juliet says in Shakepeare’s Romeo and Juliet:

What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;

However, a skunk cabbage labeled a rose is still going to smell to high heaven. It seems that too often we opt for the easy way out of our problems. We stick on a bandaid or give it a nice coat of paint. What we need to start doing is the hard stuff — we need to look at the underlying causes of the problems and deal with them. If you can manage to change things at the bottom the sting will come out of the hurtful words because there won’t be the emotional baggage attached.

So, do we want clarity and change, or just a bandage feel-good effort?

This is a very difficult post to write, in some ways it’s like coming into the open after hiding for years — the proverbial coming out of the closet. Though some people may say all I do is complain, I really try hard not to whine about myself. Remember I said that if I could do a post about living with chronic pain without whining or whingeing I would — this is that post.

A friend sent me a number of links, hoping I’d do a post about fibromyalgia. The first link she sent was an article in the New York Times “Drug Approved. Is Disease Real?” by Alex Berenson. (You’ll need to have an account to read the article but it’s free.) While the article is nominally about Pfizer’s drug Lyrica which has just been approved for use in managing fibromyalgia pain, it mainly insinuates that fibromyalgia is not a disease and that we’re a bunch of whiners who need to suck it up — at least that’s a major part of the subtext. The sugar coating is that maybe fibromyalgia is a problem, but it’s not a disease, and besides no one knows how to identify it or why it happens — not much sugar after the insult.

Fibromyalgia is a real problem that’s faced by many people. You have good days and bad flare days. There are times when you just don’t want to move because the effort and the pain are just too much to face. The problem is that there is no definitive test to take where the results will come back and say, “congratulations you’ve got fibro”. No, it’s a diagnosis that’s usually determined by exclusion. In other words, once they’ve tested you for everything else and haven’t found anything, well, fibro is what’s left and that’s what you got. That’s the reason that it’s so hard to define — since it’s a catchall diagnosis after everything else turned out to be nothing — fibro is probably a lot of different diseases and conditions that have gotten lumped together because they all have the same basic symptoms: pain, tiredness, achiness, and more pain.

The article says that calling it a disease gives people permission to be ill. I beg to differ. What it does is give a person some legitimacy — doctors/medical staff finally start listening to you rather than just marking your folder with whatever code they use for troublesome patients. Yes, we tend to be whiners and complainers to our health providers, who wouldn’t be — we want the pain to stop, if not completely at least for long enough to catch our breath and move on. I had years of being pooh-poohed before fibromyalgia was recognized. Have I changed? No, I’m still me — still coping. But at least now, I have some backing that my list of symptoms are not all in my head.

What I’d like you to do now is read this great essay on what it’s like to live with chronic pain. Written by Christine Miserandino, “The Spoon Theory” is the best way of explaining to those who don’t deal with chronic illness, just how totally chronic pain impacts a person’s life. Everyday, you have things you need to do, things you want to do, and things you hope to do. You balance the needs and wants — hoping that you can maintain a semi-normal life. (Go ahead, take your time then come back and finish this post.)

Back from reading the essay? When you go to the doctors and talk about pain, you’re always asked, “On a scale of 1-10 what would you say your pain is like now?” That question always threw me. I figured that if a 10 was the worst pain there is then I must be a 3 or maybe 4 if it really bothers me. Then I found the Mankoski Pain Scale. This pain scale (the usual 1 to 10) gives examples for each level so that you know how to answer. On this scale a normal, pretty good day, for me, is usually a 4 with occasionally forays to 5. With a migraine or on a bad flare day, it’s probably an 8. I have occasionally been up to a 9 and I don’t like being there — not that anyone would. I print out this pain scale and bring it to my doctor’s appointments so we’re both on the same page when we talk pain. The other problem is that here in the United States, where I live, pain is under-treated. It’s very difficult to convince a doctor to prescribe anything for pain, especially chronic pain, because if they prescribe too many painkillers they can be audited and their licenses suspended. So, most of us just learn to live with it and use the painkillers we do get very, very sparingly (like when you hit an 8 or 9 day).

I don’t look ill so most people don’t realize that I live with chronic pain — well unless it’s a walk-with-a-cane day. Sure, I talk about my allergies — lots of people have those. Sometimes I’ll mention I have migraines, especially if I’m finding it difficult to concentrate while conversing with someone. On the other hand, I finally had to quit my job because there was no opportunity to telecommute — I can work a full day just not 9-5 — I need breaks and sometimes lots of them. I’m lucky I found work I could do at home — freelance writing, copy editing, and proofing. It’s not as much pay as being a computer analyst but it’s a lot less stress and now leaves me with more spoons (if you don’t understand this reference, go back and read the essay) than I used to have so, I can sometimes enjoy going out and being with people — and being normal (for certain definitions of normal).

I have to admit I’m NOT a sports person. To me unless you’re actually playing the sport, or one of your close friends or relatives is in the game, then watching sports events is about as exciting as watching paint dry. There’s one exception — The Super Bowl — and that’s because of the commercials.

Today I found this list of the Ten Most Memorable Super Bowl Ads. They have some of the ones I consider memorable: The Apple 1984 ad, the Go-Daddy ad, and the Zeroxing Monk.

However, they didn’t list my personal favorite — EDS’s ad on Herding Cats.
Perhaps the reason I like this commercial so much is that for years as a software developer/analyst, help desk support, and all round Jill-of-all-techie-trades, I felt like I was herding cats — big cats, big mutant cats — but cats worth the trouble. So while others may have looked forward to the game, I’m looking forward to the commercials — and I can wait until after the game when they come out on the Internet. Why suffer through that drying paint just to see some great commercials?

I love maps. It all started when I was a child and had a puzzle of the United States. Each piece was a state and the pieces had the state capitals on them and were colored some nice pastels. I used to put that puzzle together over and over and over. When I got to school the maps had the states different colors but the rest was the same.

On my first, and so far only, trip to Australia and New Zealand, I saw a map of the world with the southern hemisphere to the top of the map. It looked so weird to me but then thinking about it; why is north always to the top? Usually it’s a consensus thing a group decision on what’s important. But if you live in the southern hemisphere then your own surroundings are what’s important so that should be predominant — shouldn’t it?

So, imagine my delight when on Amazon Daily, in a bit of Neil Gaiman’s blog there was a link to Strange Maps. It’s a blog that deals with maps of all kinds: historic, funny, disease spreads, religious districts, medieval, — just about everything. I could spend even more time there than I did today but thought a link here might let more map lovers know about this interesting, quirky site.