Wednesday, November 29, 2023
Why I don’t rant about trump anymore
Friday, November 24, 2023
Microwave that jar safely
Tuesday, November 14, 2023
Pain is Interesting.
Friday, November 10, 2023
Ecce Homo.
Saturday, August 26, 2023
Science was invented by amateurs. TURTLES
Sunday, August 6, 2023
I almost said that I wished that God existed
Wednesday, July 5, 2023
We’re not sending our best
Monday, July 3, 2023
Alito’s “rebuttal”
Friday, April 28, 2023
Do Not think of a white horse, or a Bell Curve
A bell curve is the standard distribution of a single variable over the range of its amplitude among the total population of the data set. It's a "bell" because, when graphed, almost every individual variable has a very low number of examples at both extremes... for things we like, think "bad" and "good". Very rare or very likely. The middle part is where most of the data cluster. The shape of the graph looks like a bell, sometimes tall and sometimes flat, occasionally lopsided. Now think about what might be being measured.
How long do cats live, or how many kittens are in a litter. You can measure (or at least try to measure) anything. How fast do humans talk, or how tall are boys at age four, or how well they do on an IQ Test, or how often do they pick their noses.
Now, when you walk down the street and look at the people you live among, you might not want to consider some traits that, like virtually everything else, align on a bell curve. For example, how likely people are to believe in the moon landing in 1969, or how racist that guy in a red hat is likely to be, or think that Hitler was right about lots of stuff, or... hear me out here,
how assiduously they wipe their anus after defecating.
We really don't like to absorb what statistics tell us; maybe doing so is too painful. We humans (340,000,000 of us in the USA) fall into a broad range of things that can be measured. Things, like, what is the reading grade level and how many people might be illiterate. Or how likely people are to know the name of the president of the United States right now, or how many people believe the crazy Q ANON stuff.
Just don't think about that lefthand side of the bell curve where the "very bad" people are. And white horses, don't think about a white horse.
You're welcome, I think.
Wednesday, March 8, 2023
Free Speech
I just learned that there are women out there who will troll my wife because of things I write here.
Hurray
for (their) free speech.
Monday, February 27, 2023
You going to eat that?
A number of years ago I was listening to a program on the radio
broadcast by our local NPR station from James Madison University. The program consisted of a live interview of
an academic conducting research into inter-species gene transfer from humans to
swine. Specifically, they were trying to
perfect the transfer of a healthy human gene, for the production of insulin,
into pigs for the purpose of inexpensive high volume insulin production and a
significant reduction of cost.
Years ago, I had worked for the USDA plant Research Facility
in Beltsville, MD. While there I worked
on a great number of experiments into various treatments for fungal plant diseases
of crop plants. Most of the time the
plants, treatments, and fungal infections were conducted in petri dishes and on
seeds, but sometimes the experiments resulted in fully mature field grown crops
that yielded harvestable quantities of “home grown veggies”. When the tests were over, we often took the
resultant food home and ate it. I got a lot of free string beans that way, and
no one there turned their noses up at free the food.
This experience prompted me to call into the NPR program and
ask: “How many human genes can you put into a pig before you don’t want to eat
it?” The radio went ominously silent
for a long time, radio “dead air” of several long seconds. Somewhat flustered, the folks on the program
assured me that nobody would ever be eating the experimental pigs. I, of course knew better. Human nature being what it is, if the process
they were proposing were ever to become commonplace; there would be some pigs
eaten by humans. What this means, I’m
sure I don’t know.
Just recently, I listened to another NPR program where
researchers were successfully translating “pig language”, the grunts and groans
and squeals, into messages in human language.
The hope was that pig farmers would be able to better understand and
respond to the pigs wants, complaints, and needs. Presumably, the farmers might also be able to
communicate back to the pigs with their wants, complaints, and needs. The obvious question then becomes:
“How many people want to eat pigs that you can talk to?”