A Curious Statistical Anomaly

It was 40 years ago today that man landed on the Moon.  We did it.  We wanted to get there before the Russians and put all the energy and enthusiasm into getting a man on the moon first our priority.  I remember that day, watching TV and holding my breath as the craft began its decent.  It was a momentous event.  One that would make the history books.

Ernest Lilley, Sr. Editor for TechRevu.com, also remembers that exciting day and he’s written a prose poem commemorating his memories called “Moonfall“.

Google is celebrating this occasion with the release of an update to Google Earth allowing us to take our own trip to the Moon. You can download Google Moon for free here.

To learn more about Google Moon, take a look at this video:

Now if only NASA can get itself to get fired up about exploring space with the same dedication and attention to getting the job done as it did when we decided to go to the moon. I vote for men living on Mars. It’s the most likely planet to support human life and it’s about time we started thinking about getting some of our eggs out of this very fragile basket.

Today when I opened my online news source, I was greeted with an article about the FDA wanting to pull many of the prescribed painkillers containing acetaminophen off the market. Philly.com has this article Painkillers at a crossroads as FDA decision looms. The Globe and Mail had this article, U.S. FDA recommends pulling some painkillers off the market. There was an article with an opposing view that was rather mild in my opinion.

In the Globe and Mail article, it said:

Despite years of educational campaigns and other federal actions, acetaminophen remains the leading cause of liver failure in the U.S., according to the FDA.

Panelists cited FDA data indicating 60 per cent of acetaminophen-related deaths are related to prescription products. Acetaminophen is also found in popular over-the-counter medications like Tylenol and Excedrin.

Those of you who read my blog know that I suffer from chronic pain. I found this bit about “years of educational campaigns and other federal actions” to be laughable. At one point, before my arthritis was diagnosed, the family practice doc I was seeing didn’t want to do anything about it because I was simply fat and needed to lose weight. The pain had gotten so bad that I was scaring myself with the number of Tylenol that I was taking just to manage to walk with a cane. I made an appointment and told her how much Tylenol I was taking and that I was concerned with liver damage. She laughed told me I could double or triple the dose and to just lose weight.

At the time, I was well below liver damage’s (LD 50) but that level has been lowered twice since and now I’d be just a bit below. I was so angry. I left the doctor’s office and went to see my chiropractor without an appointment. They took a look at my swollen knee and referred me to a specialist (at the time I couldn’t see another doctor without a referral). After seeing the specialist, I was diagnosed as having arthritis in both knees and later the added bonus of it was aggravating my fibromyalgia — a double whammy.

The point is that I knew more about the drugs I was taking than the malpractice-suit-waiting-to-happen doctor that I’d been seeing. Needless to say, I also changed doctors that day.

The second point is that most doctors, though they write the scripts, are not experts in drugs, drug interactions, and doses — most of the time they rely on the pharmacist to flag if something they prescribe is going to conflict with something you already have, or needs special information or training for the patient. Remember, there is a reason that so many pharmacies ask that you keep ALL you Rxs with them. It’s also the same reason they staple those informational notes to the Rx’s bag and ask if you have any questions.

If you take prescriptions be sure you understand how to take them and how often and whether you need to keep taking them if you feel better or should quit. Always ask questions if you don’t understand or feel confused. It’s your body and your life — you are the best person to take responsibility for keeping yourself healthy and safe.

Doctors have years of schooling, internship, and practice under their belts but, at heart, they are people. They know more about their fields that we ever will, but when you have a chronic condition, it’s worth your while to learn about it and ask questions, because no doctor can be an expert in every condition and disease that will walk through their office door. Mistakes and accidents happen.

My story about the doctor that suggested I take a near lethal dose of a Tylenol is a case in point. If I hadn’t read about the dangers of Tylenol/acetaminophen and liver damage, I just might have followed her suggestions. Luckily, I didn’t.

Do I think these painkillers with acetaminophen should be pulled from the market? NO. A resounding NO! Here in America many people live with pain — chronic, near crippling pain. Most people who deal with pain are under medicated and ignored. They need help. If these drugs are pulled, there are other that can be used, but we don’t have access to them in the US. Unless the FDA is going to allow alternatives they should consider leaving these on the market with strongly worded cautions and plainly worded Dosage Limits.

Even more important — the FDA should make sure that pharmacists, doctors, and the public have access to this education and training that they THINK they have done over the years. I’ve heard more stories similar to my “ignorant” doctor (used with the meaning that it can be cured) than I have of the other kind. I think information on drugs should be easier to find online, with easy to understand material explaining doses, uses, and contra-indications. Most dosage info online is convoluted or needs a chemical degree to figure out what’s too much and what’s safe — we need better resources for patients and doctors.

Mostly, we need better pain management. I have my good days and my bad.  And I do it mostly without painkillers.  But today, I slipped and fell, landing full force on my knee — it sure would be nice to take something, but I can’t, because I might need it more later on and I can’t waste the few painkillers I have. (I’m not the only chronic pain sufferer who has to balance need this way, and the sad part is none of us should have to.)

The other day, I was reading a book while waiting for my husband to get through the check out line and I was so engrossed that I was giggling at all the jokes and funny scenes. I looked up to find several people in the cafe area just staring at me. Luckily hubby finished and came to pick me up to leave.

Okay, is that was weird. I began to wonder, don’t other people react to their reading material? Don’t you laugh at the funny parts? Cry at the sad ones? Get angry when the main character does something so stupid you think they should be sent to Jail and do not pass go…

I cry at movies too, or laugh, depending. But, I’ve noticed that most people don’t react at all. They sit stiff and bland and then leave when the lights come up.

I usually only go to movies during matinee periods, and if it’s a weekend there are kids there (if the movie is rated for them). Children and sometimes teens get involved in movies and react to what’s happening on the screen. Adults … not so much.

Now, I’m thinking maybe it’s the same with books and reading. Do you react when you read? Do you keep it all in if you’re in public? Do you get embarrassed if you react aloud when reading in a public place? Is that why reading is considered a solitary activity? Hmmm…lot to think about here.

In our current technologically driven society, education is the key to getting and keeping a good job. It’s not just enough to have a high school diploma for many jobs; a college education is required and often a masters or a doctorate as well. Even those who manage a good job with just their high school diploma find that they must actively keep up with the changes in their field in order to stay current with the changes technological innovations bring to all segments of the economy and job market.

So image my surprise when I saw this article On the Net: College too expensive? Try YouTube on Physorg.com. From the article:

More than 100 schools have partnered with YouTube to make an official channel, including Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Yale and the first university to join YouTube: UC Berkeley.

There are promotional videos like campus tours, but the more interesting content is straight from the classroom or lecture hall. Many schools have posted videos of guest lecturers, introductory classes and even a full semester’s course.

You can check out what’s available on the http://www.youtube.com/edu.

I was already aware that MIT had put some of their course material on line and had bookmarked the site. If you have the time check out MIT Open Courseware.

However, the article lists some other sites that are also available for people to check out. Personally, the only site that I repeated go back to because it’s got interesting talks about current issues and each is only about an hour long, is Ted Talks. It’s a nice break in my day and I can usually knit or spin yarn while watching and listening. (I hate doing only one thing at a time and it helps me to concentrate when I can keep my hands buys while my ears are listening.)

So, if you also enjoy learning new information because every bit of knowledge is a gem that will help you look at the world, life, and the people around you in new ways — check out these options to investigate areas of interest at no cost to yourself except for your time and effort. Knowledge once learned can never be taken away from you and you never know when what you learn today will be of vital importance to you.

My husband and I have always had a soft spot in our hearts for March 14 — Pi Day (3.14…). We also get a giggle out of 3:14 if we happen to notice it — Pi o’clock. Okay, we’re definitely a geeky couple and have some strange ways of getting pleasure out of a day.

But it seems we’re not the only ones who enjoy a good math moment in our lives. CNet news reports in Politics and Law National Pi Day? Congress makes it official. The Library of Congress: Thomas has information about the law and a list of the sponsors.

It’s not going to be a national holiday or anything. It just gives the day recognition as being a bit special. So, for you geeks out there, we’ll finally have some recognition for one of our favorite mathematical and physical constants usually represented as being: 3.14159265… You can read about PI at Wikipedia. But basically Pi is

Pi, Greek letter (π), is the symbol for the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. Pi = 3.1415926535…
From: The Offical Pi Day Website

Or from the Math Forum:

By definition, pi is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. Pi is always the same number, no matter which circle you use to compute it.

For the sake of usefulness people often need to approximate pi. For many purposes you can use 3.14159, which is really pretty good, but if you want a better approximation you can use a computer to get it. Here’s pi to many more digits: 3.14159265358979323846.

The area of a circle is pi times the square of the length of the radius, or “pi r squared”: A = pi*r^2

But for me I just enjoy the silliness of having a time of day and a day per year that manages to represent a famous mathematical and physical constant. What about you?

If you’re anything like me you probably wonder how we (meaning the country) got in this situation. Well, today I found a link to a great video by Jonathan Jarvis that simply explains the steps that got us to this national credit crisis.

Now that I’ve watched it several times, I understand the process and how it happened. But, I was always told that if it sounds too good to be true it probably is. Didn’t anyone along the chain of leverage ever think about what would happen if any of the the links in the chain stopped/broke/whatever. In other words this explains the problem — investors got greedy and went for riskier and riskier investments to keep the money coming in. But, and it’s a big but — as you get riskier and riskier the chances of a whopping big crash become almost inevitable — and we’re now faced with the clean up and the holding on until things get better.

It also explains why the first “no strings attached” bail out didn’t work — they went out and just did more of what they’d done to get us in this mess in the first place hoping somehow that this time it would work. At least now it makes a bit of sense as to how it happened.

Greeting! It’s been a while since I showed my whiskers. I just wanted to add to Gayle’s post a couple of thoughts of my own on the nature of the economy. Frankly, I’m convinced that there isn’t one. No, really … it doesn’t exist. It’s vapor … shadows … a consensual hallucination that nobody dares question for fear of things like what we’re now experiencing.

Today Citibank reported that they made a bit of profit. In response, the Dow shot up nearly 400 points. Why? Has the credit crises gone away? Are all the banks lending again? Nope. In point of fact, nothing has really changed at all. So why the rally on Wall Street? Hopes and Dreams. Back last year when oil prices were climbing like a rocket, each day the price would go higher and higher, and the analysts would report that it was because the President of Iran said something, or the Prime Minister of Iraq said something else. Had anything really changed? Did it, in fact, cost one more penny to pump, refine, and transship oil? Nope. So why did the price go up? Fear. That’s right, the entire global economy is run on hopes, fears, and desires, like some magical spell out of Faerie. Companies make huge profits or go into bankruptcy based on what some stockbroker had for lunch and how his stomach feels in the afternoon.

Everyone is so busy looking for reasons why things happen, that they ignore that, most of the time, the reasons come after the event. Nobody really knows why it happened, so they just make something up so that they can make it make sense. But it doesn’t really make any sense. It’s all just a dream that everyone is too afraid to wake up from.

Now that’s not to say that events don’t have some impact, since they obviously do. Gayle’s wonderful link above explains a lot about what went wrong when people’s desire for profit got in the way of good business sense. Greed and avarice obviously still play huge roles in human behavior. But if the markets had been based on something solid and real, then this crisis could never have happened. But the continually rising price of housing served as the engine that powered the whole circuit. But why were housing prices rising? Supply and demand to a degree, but also because that’s just what housing prices do … don’t questions it, just buy buy buy and pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

Anyway, that’s my theory. Take it for what it’s worth, but to me, it makes more sense than an invisible hand benignly guiding the stockmarkets ever upwards.

I’ve often wonder how people know things or how information spreads from one person to another.  Not so much in an educational classroom sense but those things that you pick up in daily life.  Then, the other day I ran across this article on Evolution and Facebook’s “25 Random Things”. The results of the questionnaire showed that the spread pattern of the “25 Random Things” has the same histogram chart as the spread of an infection disease.

It many ways that’s not surprising. You get the 25 things letter and it asks you to spread it to your friends who are supposed to post 25 things about themselves and forward to their friends and so on. It’s very much like the old chain letters — remember them? Well, even considering that some people don’t post their 25 things or do post and don’t forward — the spread pattern approximate that of a disease.

When you think about it. If I have a cold and then visit several friends, some will get the cold and some won’t. But those that do will visit or otherwise come in contact with other people who will either get the cold or not and so on. The same pattern of spread as an internet meme.

Richard Dawkin’s wrote about The Selfish Gene which a lot of information on memes and how they interact and work. I’ve now bumped that book up on my reading list. Soon, very soon — I’ll know more. Meanwhile, I’ll keep wondering how we pick up and process information.

I love words. I’ve been a talker since I first learned my first word — which was, as I’ve been told by others, “why”. Guess that explains how I got to be the curious person that I became.

I’ve always loved words. I’ve been known to, in the privacy of my office, to just say the same word or phrase over and over because I like the way it sounds, or the way the sound comes over the tongue and between the lips, or because of the image it causes in my mind’s eye. For example, I love some of the French words I learned because that rolled “r” makes my upper palate tingle — which usually means I don’t say the word because I start giggling but still I like it.

So, back on track, today when I came across the link for the 100 Most Beautiful Words in English, I had to check it out. The list contains some of my favorite words: adumbrate, blandiloquent, chiaroscuro, colporteur (the book seller not the wonderful singer), diaphanous (a long word for something so ethereal — a word also on the list), halcyon, inglenook, loquacious, mondegreen, peregrination, scintillate, and surreptitious among other words.

There’s also a list of ten bonus words which has one of my all time favorites — sussurous. I just love the sound of that word. Sigh. Other favorites among the bonus words: syzygy, terpsichorean, and tintinnabulation.

So, check out the list of beautiful words in English. The list has their short definition. There’s some words I’d add and some I think are nice but not worthy of the list but I enjoyed seeing them celebrated on this list.

What’s your favorite beautiful words?