Not only is today Friday the 13th, but there will be a full moon rising tonight.
(Actually the moon isn’t full until 2:48 AM Saturday MST. But it’ll look full at moonrise.)
Background on paraskevidekatriaphobia (the fear of Friday the 13th) from previous NewMexiKen entry.
Nevada
Nebraska
Colorado
North Dakota
South Dakota
Source: The 50 State Quarters Program of the United States Mint
The 2006 edition of the Statistical Abstract of the United States is available online.
Thanks to Coyote Gulch for the pointer.
… there would be:
60 Asians
14 Africans
12 Europeans
8 people from Central and South America, Mexico and the Caribbean
5 from the USA and Canada
and 1 person from Australia or New Zealand
Source: State of the Village Report
… with countries sized according to population. Very colorful, very informative.
Thanks to Jason for the pointer.
Pistachios and sunflower seeds may be some of the best snacks for people watching their cholesterol levels.
A new study shows pistachios and sunflower seeds contain the most cholesterol-lowering phytosterols of commonly eaten nuts and seeds.
Source: WebMD
And it’s fun to spit out the shells, too.
Thomas Edison would give prospective employees a general knowledge test before he would hire them. The National Park Service has compiled two versions from original Edison questions — one of 150 questions (like the original) and another of 30 questions. They’ve made each substantially easier than Edison did by providing multiple-choice answers.
NewMexiKen just tried the longer test and scored 78%. I thought I was doing well, but by Edison’s standards I failed. Screw it, I didn’t really think the job was a good match anyway.
The tests follow an introduction. This will take you a little while.
Oh yeah, Edison’s home was designated Edison Home National Historic Site on this date 50 years ago today. It was later combined with his laboratory into Edison National Historic Site.
Exercise helps to flush a toxic molecule from the brain and causes a beneficial one to move in and protect nerve cells, research on mice shows. The discovery might help to explain why staying fit and keeping mentally active seem to fend off Alzheimer’s disease in humans.
“Our experiments support the idea that exercise is a good approach to all types of problems in the brain and that a sedentary lifestyle is a risk factor,” says Ignacio Torres-Aleman, who led the study at the Cajal Institute in Madrid.
NewMexiKen wonders if one can fool one’s own brain. Repeat after me: Surfing the web is just as athletic as surfing the Pacific.
Even if you could get more RAM for your brain, the extra storage probably wouldn’t make it easier for you to find where you left your car keys.
What may help, according to a discovery published Nov. 24 in the journal Nature, is a better bouncer — as in the type of bouncer who manages crowd control for nightclubs. The study by Edward Vogel, an assistant professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University of Oregon, is the first to demonstrate that awareness, or “visual working memory,” depends on your ability to filter out irrelevant information.
“Until now, it’s been assumed that people with high capacity visual working memory had greater storage but actually, it’s about the bouncer — a neural mechanism that controls what information gets into awareness,” Vogel said.
The findings turn upside down the popular concept that a person’s memory capacity, which is strongly related to intelligence, is solely dependent upon the amount of information you can cram into your head at one time.
Now, if I understand this finding correctly, it was right that in college instead of cramming for finals I went out to a club that had a bouncer. Is that what they’re saying? I’m so confused.
Alzheimer’s disease may be a new, third type of diabetes that shares common features of type 1 and type 2 diabetes, according to a new study.
Researchers found that insulin and the cells that process it in the brain drop sharply in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. They also found that insulin levels continue to decline as the disease progresses and becomes more severe.
“Insulin disappears early and dramatically in Alzheimer’s disease. And many of the unexplained features of Alzheimer’s, such as cell death and tangles in the brain, appear to be linked to abnormalities in insulin signaling. This demonstrates that the disease is most likely a neuroendocrine disorder, or another type of diabetes,” says researcher Suzanne M. de la Monte, professor of pathology at Brown Medical School, in a news release.
The New York Times reports that:
[O]ver the years Macy’s has quietly backed away from that assurance, internal company documents and interviews with handlers show. So tomorrow, with forecasters calling for rain and heavy winds, many untrained volunteers will help wrangle flopping towers of polyurethane through Midtown guided only by instruction sheets reminiscent of airline safety cards.
Thanks to Veronica for the pointer.
Joe Queenan reviews Generation Rx: How Prescription Drugs Are Altering American Lives, Minds, and Bodies by Greg Critser.
“Generation Rx” contends that large drug companies have co-opted the federal government, seduced the medical establishment and mesmerized a temperamentally supine public into taking far more drugs than is strictly necessary, much less healthy. Worse, Americans have fallen victim to “polypharmacy”: using so many drugs for so many ailments that they have no idea how the various medications are interacting.
…Despite the book’s misleading title, the triumph of “big pharma” is yet another national tragedy, like Michael Flatley’s career, that can be laid directly at the feet of baby boomers. As Critser writes, “The generation of Americans who rebelliously experimented with drugs is now a generation upon whom drugs are experimented, with barely a squeak of protest.”
Actually, this argument is a bit hard to follow. Young baby boomers never protested against drugs, merely their price, quality, availability and the advisability of buying them from furtive men named Sweet Memphis or Chucky the Swede. So why on earth should they complain about drugs now? (For the answer to this question, go ask Alice. When she’s 10 feet tall.)
A cute little game to calculate your life expectancy.
From an article in The New York Times:
Households across the land are infested with vampires. That’s what energy experts call those gizmos with two sharp teeth that dig into a wall socket and suck juice all night long. All day long, too, and all year long.
Most people assume that when they turn off the television set it stops drawing power.
But that’s not how most TV’s (and VCR’s and other electronic devices) work. They remain ever in standby mode, silently sipping energy to the tune of 1,000 kilowatt hours a year per household, awaiting the signal to roar into action.
“As a country we pay $1 billion a year to power our TV’s and VCR’s while they’re turned off….”
This is one of the reasons NewMexiKen unplugs many devices when I’m away (for more than a day or two). The other reason is I once had my house hit by lightning and it was a real hassle fixing and replacing so much gear. If I’m not here, why not eliminate that possibility? It’s easy if you have surge protectors. Just click them off.
Is nothing sacred? NewMexiKen was taught that you couldn’t fold a piece of paper in half more than 8 times. The paper becomes too thick. Now I see that, “In one day Britney was the first person to set the world record for folding paper in half 9, 10, 11 or 12 times.”
First Darwin, now this. Is everything just a theory?
24.5 million
The number of military veterans in the United States. To quote Functional Ambivalent, “Find one and say thanks.”
1.7 million
The number of veterans who are women.
9.5 million
The number of veterans who are age 65 or older.
2.3 million
The number of black veterans. Additionally, 1.1 million veterans are Hispanic; 276,000 are Asian; 185,000 are American Indian or Alaska native; and 25,000 are native Hawaiian and other Pacific islander.
8.2 million
Number of Vietnam-era veterans. More than 30 percent of all veterans served in Vietnam, the largest share of any period of service. The next largest share of wartime veterans, 3.9 million or fewer than 20 percent, served during World War II.
16%
Percentage of Persian Gulf War veterans who are women. In contrast, women account for 5 percent of World War II vets, 3 percent of Vietnam vets and 2 percent of Korean War vets.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau
Veterans should be proud. Today is one of the holidays Americans celebrate on a date, not a first or second or third or last Monday, or a fourth Friday. Puts it right up there with Christmas and Independence Day. November 11 is, of course, the date of the Armistice ending World War I. More below.
Last week The Numbers Guy took a look at Lessons From the 1918 Flu.
Total U.S. spending on poppy eradication and other antidrug efforts in Afghanistan last year: $780,000,000 [U.S. Department of State]
Amount it would have cost to purchase the country’s entire 2004 poppy crop: $600,000,000
NewMexiKen began reading John M. Barry’s The Great Influenza yesterday on the plane from Baltimore to Albuquerque. The book describes the 1918 influenza outbreak worldwide — the deadliest plague in history. 170 pages in and it’s been mostly background — not uninteresting, but a little tedious and repetitious. I’ll sum up and make a recommendation regarding the book when I’m done.
In the meanwhile, some interesting tidbits:
It was called the Spanish flu because Spain wasn’t fighting in World War I and therefore its press remained free to print what was going on. Elsewhere, including particularly the U.S., the press was censored and did not report the epidemic at first.
The influenza began, more than likely, in Haskell, Kansas (west of Dodge City), in March 1918. It spread rapidly because of crowded wartime military camps and troop movements. It was worldwide by fall.
Pandemic is the term for a worldwide epidemic. An epidemic is local or national.
Influenza (a virus) mutates rapidly, even within a host cell. In humans influenza is exclusively a respiratory disease, though it may indirectly affect many parts of the body (headaches, sore muscles). The stomach “flu” we get is not influenza.
And, as you all know, antibiotics have no effect whatsover on viruses. They work exclusively on bacteria.
On August 8, 2005, President Bush signed the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which among other things changes Daylight Saving Time in the U.S.
Beginning in 2007, DST will begin on the second Sunday of March instead of the first Sunday of April. It will end on the first Sunday of November rather than the last Sunday of October.
Michael Bérubé has some considered advice on name-calling. Here’s the second half of his entry; the first half discusses the origin of the once respectable terms moron and idiot.
The other day, as my poor automobile was minding its own business, just humming along down the highway, it was suddenly set upon by a clump of drivers so reckless and inattentive that I referred to two of them (then in the act of cutting each other off in the left lane) as “idiots.” “You know,’ said my co-pilot, “we should probably retire that word one of these days.” She was right, and I admitted as much at the time. “Besides,” I added, “these guys are really assholes.”
After all, dear reader, it’s not as if the English language is hurtin’ for terms of abuse. If you truly believe that someone is acting unwisely or thinking incompetently, you can draw upon thousands of words that speak about performance rather than capacity, which is far more appropriate anyway (as Chris Clarke has eloquently pointed out). That “moron” you revile might just as easily be a jerk, a jerkoff, or a jackass; the “idiot” in the adjacent car or adjacent voting booth might instead be a fool, a wuss, a sap, a chump, a poltroon, a schlemiel, or a patsy. Even as you read these words, thousands of people are just begging to be called scoundrels, prigs, and coxcombs. Why, there’s even an entire Shakespearean Insult Server available online for those of you who want to hurl especially colorful and vivid forms of contempt and contumely upon your adversaries, so there’s really no excuse for failing to take full advantage of the opportunities afforded by this rich and complex language of ours.
If you’re concerned about stigmatizing jackasses, however, on the grounds that you may likening an innocent beast to a hideous human (or, conversely, figuratively dehumanizing one of your fellow men or women), you can always adopt the more politically correct term “jackass-American,” presuming, of course, that the jackass in question is -American.
So next time you’re fed up with someone and you want to call his or her intelligence or judgment into question, remember: you might be better off with insults that speak to the performance of intelligence or judgment rather than to capacity. This isn’t just a matter of politeness; it’s also a matter of proper English usage. Many, many morons and retards have very good judgment about some matters, whereas many, many ostensibly intelligent people make bafflingly, excruciatingly bad decisions. Why? Because some of them are knaves, and others gulls, and still others hoodlums and miscreants. That’s why.
Reecie is right, there were too few women in the first “Whom would you rather be?” So, here’s a few more, with a higher percentage without a Y chromosome.
Whom would you rather be?
[L]ottery winners and paraplegics revert to their usual level of good cheer or grumpiness within a year following the event that changed their lives.
NewMexiKen wasn’t certain what to make of the happiness article (in the blog entry below) and the findings it reported, though I was favorably impressed and found it all intriguing. So I did a little research. The quotations above and below are from Professor Seligman’s website, Reflective Happiness:
The scientific fundamentals most Americans equate “happiness” with are cheery emotion, a Goldie Hawn smile, and boundless optimism. Aristotle and Thomas Jefferson do not share our definition of happiness, and many thoughtful people throughout the world view our have-a-nice-day mentality as empty-headed and heedless. Positive Psychology is intended as a serious and universal approach to understanding and building emotional well being, and it is decidedly not focused on shallow, self-indulgent pleasures.
A fascinating article on human emotions from The Sunday Times (UK). A few excerpts:
“Because our brain evolved during a time of ice, flood and famine, we have a catastrophic brain. The way the brain works is looking for what’s wrong. The problem is, that worked in the Pleistocene era. It favoured you, but it doesn’t work in the modern world.”
Although most people rate themselves as happy, there is a wealth of evidence to show that negative thinking is deeply ingrained in the human psyche. Experiments show that we remember failures more vividly than successes. We dwell on what went badly, not what went well. When life runs smoothly, we’re on autopilot — we’re only in a state of true consciousness when we notice the stone in our shoe.
Of the six universal emotions, four — anger, fear, disgust and sadness — are negative and only one, joy, is positive. (The sixth, surprise, is neutral.)
*****
The more possessions and accomplishments we have, the more we need to boost our level of happiness. It makes sense that the brain of a species that has dominated others would evolve to strive to be best. …
“The things that you desire are not the things that you end up liking. The mechanisms of desire are insatiable. There are things that we really like and tire of less quickly — having good friends, the beauty of the natural world, spirituality. But our economic system plays into the psychology of wanting, and the psychology of liking gets drowned out.”
*****
In essence, what the biology lesson tells us is that negative emotions are fundamental to the human condition, and it’s no wonder they are difficult to eradicate. At the same time, by a trick of nature, our brains are designed to crave but never really achieve lasting happiness.
Psychologists such as Seligman are convinced you can train yourself to be happier.
*****
The focus of most psychotherapy is on decreasing negative emotion. The aim of Seligman’s therapy is to increase positive emotion (positive and negative emotions are not polar opposites and can co-exist: women have more of both than men).
*****
Men often complain about their wives’ volatility. Now research confirms that women really are both happier and sadder. Positive and negative emotions are not polar opposites — you can have both in your life. Women experience more of all emotions except anger. First it was found that women experience twice as much depression as men. Next, researchers found that women report more positive emotion than men, more frequently and more intensely. It all points to men and women having a different emotional make-up. Cognitive psychologists say that men and women have different skills related to sending and receiving emotion. Women are expressive; men conceal or control their emotions. Women convey emotion through facial expression and communication; men express emotion through aggressive or distracting behaviour. Does the difference lie in biology, social roles or just women’s willingness to report emotion? That’s up for debate.
