Thursday, May 31, 2007

Landis Arbitration Recap

I normally don't link to anything found at the Los Angeles Times, because I find even political bias in sports columns, but today's story by Michael A. Hiltzik, in which he recounts the Landis arbitration proceedings, is a great read, and does not gloss over any pertinent details. I followed the hearing, almost live, by following the extemporaneous blog posts over at TBV, so I found no factual inconsistencies with the testimony. I've been quite annoyed with most coverage, since they can't even get the fact straight that Landis would not be the first Tour winner to be stripped of his title if he is found to be guilty of doping. To paraphrase an unemployed gasbag: "Maurice Garin. Google it."

Key facts about the incompetence at the Paris lab, LNDD, emerged from the testimony of the lab techs. The test results were confirmed as odd, or in error, by the USADA's own witnesses, and described as indecipherable by Landis' expert witnesses. And WADA's cover your ass attitude was exposed as written policy.

  • LNDD uses only one metabolite to look for excess testosterone, when there are four, and most WADA accredited labs use three, such as the labs at UCLA and in Montreal. WADA guidelines allow for the use of only one metabolite. The metabolite examined, shorthanded as 5A, was outside the acceptable delta value of minus 3, at minus 6. It was this huge number that convinced most WADA officials, despite the lax procedures and protocols at LNDD, that it had to be a result of doping.
  • LNDD never calibrated its testing machinery accurately. So badly was the calibration done, that LNDD identified a compound that was not in the specimens.
  • Another of the four metabolites from testosterone found in urine, 5B, has a close statistical correlation with 5A, and has never been found with a delta value greater than 2 from the 5A value, in any published paper, even by those published by some USADA witnesses. In Landis' sample, the peak identified as 5B was at 4 units difference. The test was in obvious error from known science.
  • So subjective were the LNDD testing procedures that the techs could not reproduce their results for observers.
  • WADA ethics codes do not allow officials to testify on behalf of athletes suspected of doping or to dispute other labs' results.

These facts presented in testimony look like a slam dunk for Landis, but in the anti-doping proceedings, the lab tests are taken as valid, a priori, and the defense must show a violation occurred to invalidate the test. However, the testing at LNDD is so sloppy, it may work in USADA's favor, because Landis may not be able to prove a violation took place. With how sloppy the lab work was, there actually might have been excess testosterone in the sample. This is the USADA's position. The best Landis can do, is to convince the arbiters that the lab work is so sloppy, the tests have to be interpreted as inconclusive, and the violation comes from declaring an inconclusive test a positive. Landis can't even use the false positive argument, because the same lab, the same uncalibrated equipment, and the same tech, tested his other B samples from the Tour, and found excess delta values in some of them. For Landis, it just meant more inconclusive tests. For the USADA, it provides some corroboration for the doping interpretation. I don't know if Landis doped, but as far back as August last year, I've been saying that the tests results don't know either.

NASA Chief Takes The Long View On Climate Change

NASA Head Michael D. Griffin articulated his views on global climate, taking in the big picture, and says exactly what I think about efforts to "change" our climate:

"To assume that it is a problem is to assume that the state of Earth's climate today is the optimal climate, the best climate that we could have or ever have had and that we need to take steps to make sure that it doesn't change," Griffin said.

"First of all, I don't think it's within the power of human beings to assure that the climate does not change, as millions of years of history have shown," he continued. "And second of all, I guess I would ask which human beings — where and when — are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that's a rather arrogant position for people to take."

Wow. Refreshing. In the AP version of the story, global warming alarmists are quickly trotted out to "balance" this rhetoric:

Jerry Mahlman, a former top scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who is now at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said Griffin's remarks showed he was either "totally clueless" or "a deep anti-global warming ideologue."

James Hansen, a top NASA climate scientist, said Griffin's comments showed "arrogance and ignorance," because millions of people will likely be harmed by global warming in the future.

I thought James Hansen was being censored and couldn't say this stuff. I guess he found a way to get past his minders. Notice that both attack a reasonable philosophical position about our current place in geological history with insults or false suppositions. Griffin said that NASA has found a trend toward warming in recent years, which knocks Mahlman out of the water and shows his own cluelessness. Hansen, of course, is Hansen, and displays his own brand of arrogance. I like the NASA spokeman's response to all this by stressing that "NASA's position is that it provides scientific data on the issue, but policy makers are the ones who decide." Too many climate scientists have become policy advocates for their theories, and the consequences of combining the roles of researchers and activists has brought us to the current state of (non)science for this fledgling discipline.

Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Some Anti-Western Bias

The lede says it all in showcasing the anti-western bias.

SINGAPORE (AP) -- Asia is bracing for a dramatic surge in cancer rates over the next decade as people in the developing world live longer and adopt bad Western habits that greatly increase the risk of the disease.[emph. added]

Actually, any population with longer life expectancy has higher cancer rates. Of course, that's not said anywhere. Also not mentioned, the cause of the longer life expectancies. Not dying from malaria is given short shrift, but the main causes are adopting good Western habits, like sewage systems separated from potable water sources, increased sanitary conditions in food handling and medical care, and not throwing garbage in the middle of the street. What about all the increased cancer rates from the horrible pollution found in most Asian urban centers? Oh, that's right. People have been dying too soon from dysentery to develop cancer. How about comparing Japan's and South Korea's cancer rates and life expectancy with the rest of developing Asia, you know, for nuance? You might not have had to bring in cheeseburgers and smoking at all.

Spam King Arrested

We need more stories like this.

SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) - US prosecutors said they captured on Wednesday a nefarious Internet marketer responsible so much junk e-mail they called him "Spam King."
Robert Soloway, 27, was arrested in Seattle, Washington, a week after being indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of identity theft, money laundering, and mail, wire, and e-mail fraud.
"Spam is a scourge of the Internet, and Robert Soloway is one of its most prolific practitioners," said US Attorney for the Western District of Washington Jeffrey Sullivan.
"Our investigators dubbed him the 'Spam King' because he is responsible for millions of spam emails."
Between November of 2003 and May of 2007 Soloway "spammed" tens of millions of e-mail messages to promote websites at which his company, Newport Internet Marketing, sold products and services, according to prosecutors.
Soloway routinely moved his website to different Internet addresses to dodge detection and began registering them through Chinese Internet service providers in 2006 in an apparent ploy to mask his involvement.
Spam messages sent by Soloway used misleading "header" information to dupe people into opening them, according to Sullivan.
Soloway is accused of using "botnets," networks of computers, to disguise where e-mail originated and of forging return addresses of real people or businesses that wound up blamed for unwanted mailings.
If convicted as charged, Soloway will face a maximum sentence of more than 65 years in prison and a fine of 250,000 dollars.
Prosecutors want to seize approximately 773,000 dollars they say Soloway made from his spamming-related activities.

I really don't understand why ISP's are not more aggressive in blocking spam, instead of just giving their subscribers spam filters and tools. Spam takes up server space and bandwidth usage. This affects their bottom line. When the estimated percentage of spam for all emails sent worldwide is between 80 and 93 percent, wouldn't it be more cost-effective to shut these guys down? It already costs a spammer next to nothing to send the spam, as they employ zombie armies created from exploited computers.

I would love to hear about the big ISP's efforts on catching these guys too. At least let people know you're doing something, which would be great PR, instead of slapping bandaids on everything, just so your customers' service is not interrupted. Whack-a-mole can get pretty tiring after a while, and there will be times you can't catch up, but all the time you spend trying to whack the mole, is money that could be spent on other things.

Foreign governments are also not doing enough, since cyber attacks on business and government offices affect key infrastructure in communications and transportation. Perhaps it's time to regulate these "internet marketers." This is no longer a free speech issue, but a criminal issue, involving racketeering, fraud, and theft.

Made In America!

The F-15 Strike Eagle maintained air superiority for over 30 years. We've often heard about how much damage fighter planes in WWII could take, while still flying, but I always thought of jet fighters as rather fragile. That misconception was probably fueled by all the planes I took out of the skies with good missile hits on those flight simulators I played in the 1990's. However, the real world shows us just how well-built, and tough, modern fighter planes really are.



"...if I would have seen it clearly, I would have ejected."

h/t to Ace for finding the History Channel video

The Hockey Stick Lives! Sorta

Michael Mann, over at RealClimate, continues to defend the discredited hockey stick model with a series of hand-waving arguments, factual errors, and ad hominem attacks. Steven McIntyre walks us through the exchange, stemming from one comment, asking about the new spaghetti graph from the AR4. Par for the course, for the koolaid drinking climate modelers.

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

AP Bias or Incompetency?

In an AP article yesterday, an AP reporter brought out the old canard that Bush rejected the Kyoto Protocol in 2001. The facts are plainly against this notion, as even a different AP writer notes in this article.

DAVID RISING: The U.S. refused to ratify the 1997 Kyoto Protocol limiting emissions because developing countries were not included. Rising economic giants, China and India, are exempt, and the treaty says nothing about post-2012 cuts.

But what did the other reporter write, which I've seen in other articles, even Reuters?

GEIR MOULSON: President Bush rejected that accord, saying it would harm the U.S. economy and unfair excludes developing countries like China and India from its obligations.

What happened between yesterday and today? Is it just because it's two different writers, or is there an editorial bias in different offices? I'm not the only one noticing these differences, as Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit has noted before, and even links to another blogger writing on the same thing today. I think it's time to contact AP and Reuters to let them know that blatantly disprovable statements should no longer be allowed in their reports, unless they are direct quotes from named sources. Here is the editorial contact information for the AP and Reuters.

If enough people let them know that they can't play metanarrative games with the anti-environment Bush meme, then we won't have to endure emotional falsehoods when reporting on a policy debate that is already too short on reason.

Monday, May 28, 2007

Rocky Movie Ending For Duke Lacrosse

In another footnote to the Duke lacrosse team recovering from missing last year's season due to prosecutorial misconduct, the team made it to the NCAA finals, but lost to John Hopkins in a knuckle-biter, 12-11. But note the bias in the sports wire story:

They have done everything they set out to do following a team party 14 months ago in which a stripper claimed she was attacked by three players.

That should read: "a stripper falsely claimed she was attacked by three players." The metanarrative needs to be maintained, right NBC?

Sunday, May 27, 2007

Geeking The Light(saber) Fantastic

The bro helps celebrate the 30th anniversary of the cinematic release of Star Wars along with the Get Fuzzy team. Speaking of geeking it, I've been slowly rebuilding the Helmety Goodness posts that were lost because of YouTube's reaction to the Google bid, by misapplying their copyright terms, and blanket deleting most machinima posted on their site. So, if you have time, reacquaint yourself with some old favorites. I'm still missing three of the Red vs. Blue referenced posts, and all of A Clone Apart, but look for at least one episode of the Clone series to be replaced soon. Take a look at the video hosting done by DivX, compared to YouTube's (lack of) quality.



Friday, May 25, 2007

Helmety Finale

Chad Vader's first season is over, so that means the first question asked by fans: Where the f*ck is season two?!?!!11! Look for many references to the epic battles from Return of the Jedi and The Empire Strikes Back. Because, you know, I just can't get enough of the answer to the question: "How would Frankenstein's monster fight if you stuck a lightsaber in his hand?" Ah, good times, good times. Unfortunately, this last episode also proves that, when life gives you lemons, you can't always make lemonade.



"I am most displeased with the apparent lack of progress on the new deli display."

Thursday, May 24, 2007

Decentralized Human Processing

This is a very cool idea on how to harness the internet to do the work for you. The idea of using CAPTCHA text strokes to transcribe books into digital form is genius. This is way better than the useless decentralized data processing that SETI fools people into doing, or Google image-tagging done by "volunteers." Random words spread out all over the world as images, in which people are motivated to type them correctly for their own needs, instead of some stupid altruistic game like the non-evil Google people are running. Just think of all the man-hours saved by having millions of people do this. The human genome project was a success using decentralized data processing, but this idea doesn't even need you to own a computer. I'm totally impressed.

Principled Honesty

Sirius CEO Mel Karmazin, on expressing disappointment in stock price to shareholders, compared his company's performance to its main competitor, XM: "We suck less."

What Else Can They Cram In There?

Nokia is seeking to add another feature to your cellphone:

The lightning detector could attract all types of mobile phone users, including the elderly and outdoor enthusiasts, who seek useful safety devices. [emph. added]

Useful, eh? The odds are of being struck by lightning are extremely low, and from the patent application, I see no mention of the elderly. But for people who must perform certain jobs in extreme whether conditions, I can see how adding this feature to your NexTel handset can be necessary. I just don't like how the story seems to be trying to selling this idea to people who don't need it.

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Beer Spills in Denver

Noooooo! Oh, it was only Coors. Whew! I was worried there for a second.

Blogging Later, Maybe


College kids still have too much free time.

Today is the last day of the Landis Doping Arbitration Hearing, so I'm pretty much going to be over at TBV all day. If the hearing really ends today, I may finally post all my thoughts on the kabuki theater the USADA has been trying to present with the useless testimony of LeMond and the stupid attempt at witness intimidation by Landis' former business manager, to distract from all the eye-opening testimony on how incompetent the lab techs are, and the lax procedures evident at LNDD. We'll see if I'm up to posting about other stuff. Otherwise, dance, kabuki monkey, dance.

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

UN Advocacy Group Bad At Math

I've always wondered how those extinction numbers that get breathlessly tossed around are calculated. We have tons of stories written every year about how we keep finding new species, but, sometimes right next to those same articles, we have stories about thousands of species going extinct at the same time. How do we know, when we haven't even catalogued them yet? Again, the specter of computer modeling masquerading as reality appears to give us such fright.

First, allow me to highlight the bad math part, since this "divine doubling" is how the 0.3 degrees Celsius rise in the so-called global mean temperature over the last century has been turned into 0.6 degrees. Ahmed Djoghlaf, head of the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity, said,"Every hour, three species disappear. Every day, up to 150 species are lost. Every year, between 18,000 and 55,000 species become extinct." Um, okay. If every hour 3 species go extinct, then every day 72 species go poof, and then about 26000 species are gone in a year. But you see, the real numbers from the study are the 18,000 to 55,000 species per year. If you work the 55K number backwards, we get 6 per hour. Why did Ahmed suddenly take the low end of the estimate for the hourly loss? To prevent stupid reporters from catching him take the most extreme number and highlighting the alarmism.

So, why the factor of two between the two deltas? I'd have to say that's a pretty big margin of error. Empirically, we have catalogued "only 784 species driven to extinction since 1500," and the administrator of the "Red List" explains why the reality is so different from the UN study. Craig Hilton-Taylor: "The U.N. figures are based on loss of habitats, estimates of how many species lived there and so will have been lost. Ours are more empirical -- those species we knew were there but cannot find." There you have it, alarmist numbers based on estimates of species occupying habitats, and then just poofing them out of existence when a housing development goes up. Most of those species in the estimates are bacteria, then arthropods. Both of those phyla are highly adaptable, so I don't believe the hype that they just "go away."

None of those habitat loss simulations have been proven or disproven, so, from a scientific perspective, they're just hypotheses for whether the habitat algorithm is correct, not a prediction on actual species extinction. Of course, that doesn't matter to the UN advocates whose causes appear to be threatened only inside computer simulations.

Canadians Don't Like Michael Moore Either

Ouch. And then, double ouch. As an aside, any "documentary" that does not examine the effect illegal immigration has had on the closure of trauma centers around the country is not a serious film.

More Stories Of The "Ugly American"

The stereotype of the "Ugly American" travelling abroad is a prevalent one indeed. But some American had to prove it by baring all:

BERLIN (Reuters) - A naked American tourist raised eyebrows when he went for a walk through a German city and told police he thought this was acceptable behavior in Germany.

"But I seen a tonna naked Germans on the tee-VEE!"

Update: The naked American going for a walk has been turned into a sprinting streaker in the AP version.

Not Sold As A Set

MADRID (Reuters) - Wedding dresses and a male chastity belt were auctioned on Tuesday with 20,000 other items lost at Spanish airports or on planes.

Oh, sold separately. Ah.

Monday, May 21, 2007

Stay Lucid

Drink! But not too much.

Green Pressure Saved The Whaling Industry

Instead of saving the whales, environmentalists resurrected whaling with overstrident activism. The BBC correspondent is not the only one warning the Save the Whale crowd about their tactics, as I did with Greenpeace's Dutch web admin in the comments to this post:

I know protestors have a cause, but respecting maritime traditions would go a long way towards jumpstarting that conversation. Right now, all of you guys look like crazy foreigners trying to take away sailors' livelihoods. Political pressure on Japan works better coming from within their insular society, not from without.

In an unkind fashion, I have likened Green activists to losers, because their causes are so tied in with their self-identities, that they can't allow themselves to win. If they ever did win, what would be left to protest about? Remember that most members of the Green movement have counter-culture backgrounds, so if their aim, such as "Save the Whale," was actually successful, would they rejoin culture, or would they find another cause? Activism is not about achieving a goal, but about reinforcing a lifestyle and a worldview. Some in the Green movement have begun to question their motivation.

If they had lowered the pressure, might they now be looking at a world without Japanese whaling?
"We'll never know; but I have thought about that a lot," says Patricia Forkan.
"It's possible, if we all passed the moratorium and we all went home, maybe."

Did they really want to save the whale, or did they just want to keep feeling morally superior? I lean toward the latter.

Via Instapundit.

Update: Greenpeace still feeling morally superior. I wonder how PETA feels about this, since those whales in that ice-filled trough are actual dead animals. That moral high ground can get crowded pretty quick...

Sunday, May 20, 2007

Just The Fax, Ma'am

When fax machines go 3-D, I'll be really worried about the different kinds of future spam.


Brewster Rockit courtesy of Tim Rickard

On a side note, don't get me started on how Star Trek totally messed up the concept of mass-energy equivalency in explaining how transporter technology works. Having a big vat of amino acids and peptides would be the equivalent of paper and toner for a real organic "fax machine."

Friday, May 18, 2007

Web Clueless Judge: I know what a web site is!

In a followup to the internet-ignorant judge, he now claims that he is "fully computer literate." Sure, I believe you. You were just seeking "clarification for the court." Right. Just because you can go tippy-tap on your computer does not mean you use the internet. In the 80's, I used a computer for almost ten years without going online. It's called using a word processor, which is apparently what you're tippy-tapping into. Is there a jury in this case that looked confused while the expert witness was on the stand? There seemed to be a lot of "I don't grasp the concept," and "I don't know what a web site is." Not a lot of "The court seeks clarification on what a web forum is." But sure, you computer literate tippy-tapper, I believe you.

IPCC Flat Out Lies

Roger Pielke, Sr. is having a cow over just two of the lies found in the 1st chapter of the IPCC's Working Group draft. The WG1 is the actual scientific (ha!) document published to match (cough) the SPM, the Summary for Policy Makers. Pielke takes to task the mischaracterization of the butterfly effect and just plotzes over the second flat out lie:

"Projecting changes in climate due to changes in greenhouse gases 50 years from now is a very different and much more easily solved problem than forecasting weather patterns just weeks from now. To put it another way, long-term variations brought about by changes in the composition of the atmosphere are much more predictable than individual weather events.”

I'm having twin calves over this myself. Here we are, in only the second decade after the usage of many multi-decadal climate models began, and to posit that their predictive powers are better than weather predictions 15 days from now, which no metereologist would ever use, is just so laughable as to be absurd. I'm stunned. There is no scientific value to that quoted statement at all. The GCMs, using data collected over the last decade, can't even predict what's going to happen in the next five years. A model is supposed to be a tool to sharpen a hypothesis, and then you go and collect the data to prove or disprove that hypothesis. But for the IPCC, and the other alarmists, the models are the reality. Just ridiculous.

Helmety Goodness Beta!

The Halo 3 beta was released recently on XBox 360 over XBox Live, so, of course, my first reaction was, "How is Red vs. Blue going to look on the new platform?" I've got questions, Rooster Teeth has answers.



"My gun is firing ketchup!"

One thing I noticed immediately, is that the color schemes on the new armor matches the first Halo almost exactly. In Halo 2, the Reds and Blues looked a little "battle-hardened," but in Halo 3, they seem to be going back to the psychedelic sci-fi palette. I mean, Donut's pink is PINK! On another note, I really appreciated the extra attention given to corpsehumping. It's faaaan-tastic!

Thursday, May 17, 2007

Big On Cycling But Small On News

It's a bit of a slow news day, so while I'm catching up on my Giro d'Italia coverage, while keeping one eye open on updates from the Floyd Landis doping arbitration hearing, please enjoy the Lego version of Monty Python's Camelot number from The Holy Grail.



"It's only a model." "Shhh!"

Incidentally, I've found TBV's coverage of the USADA's first ever publicly open arbitration hearing far superior to anything else found on any medium. Streaming video of the coverage doesn't always work because of server and bandwidth issues from the organization providing the service, so TBV's extemporaneous transcription is the best way, in my opinion, to get near live access.

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Cat Poo Coffee?

Some people with a lot of money will buy the stupidest things, for the sole reason that those things are expensive. Case in point, the crazy expensive trend in the Australian coffee market is civet-excreted coffee beans. I don't even want to go into the animal cruelty aspect of feeding wild Indonesian cats food that they can't even digest, much less that civets are also eaten in Indonesia, but people have to collect the droppings and separate the coffee beans from the excrement. Those coffee buyers can claim everything is sanitary and clean, but Indonesia is still a third world country, so their standards are not the same as they would be in Australia. And finally, just to be totally clear on what's happening here: YOU'RE PAYING A$50 FOR 1 (ONE!!!!!111!!!) CUP OF ROASTED CAT SHIT!

Signs Of A Decaying Empire

In a terrorism trial in the UK, the 59 year old judge admitted that he does not know what a web site is. The defendants are accused of inciting terrorist acts by posting messages on an online forum, but the judge is not familiar with the terms or concepts. The judge asked the prosecutor to intevene with the computer expert witness: "Will you ask him to keep it simple, we've got to start from basics." This would be like a judge in the 1700's asking a witness what paper, ink, and newspapers were during a trial for seditious behavior. Or a judge in the 1400's asking a witness if a book was like a stack of flattened parchment scrolls during a trial on heresy. Supposedly, 62.3% of all Brits have used the internet, but that also means 37.7% have not. Gee, I wonder which side of the ledger this particular judge is on.

International Wire Service Wrong, Again

I hate having to do this, repeatedly, but revisionist history only works as a reinterpretation of the facts, not making up new facts:

The Kyoto Protocol is the only global accord on cutting so-called greenhouse gas emissions, but it lapses after 2012 and was rejected by the United States in 2001 as economic suicide because it is not binding on booming emitters China and India.

The Kyoto Protocol was rejected in 1997 by the Senate voting not to ratify the treaty, 95-0. This was a failure of leadership under the Clinton-Gore administration, not the Bush administration, which simply continued the previous policies of no emissions caps, no emissions trading, and voluntary reduction of greenhouse gases through incentives for technological solutions and exploration of alternative energy sources.

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

More Dark Matter Discoveries


Esa / Hubble

Gravitational ripples point to dark matter's presence in the galactic cluster to the left. Gravitational lensing, by unseen objects, gives the impression of "looking at the pebbles on the bottom of a pond with ripples on the surface." I actually worked on images of this same cluster back in college, but my group was interested in finding far away quasars, using the galactic clusters as the objects responsible for the lensing, so that the very far away obects would be magnified (made brighter). In the colors simulated in this picture, red corresponds to objects expanding away from us, blue is shifting towards us, and green means the object is moving at the same rate with respect to our reference frame. Presumably, everything that's the same color belongs to that cluster, and things that are "redder" are further away. My group liked finding red quasars in a group of less red galaxies. The bluish cloud you see is not actually any kind of interstellar dust or matter, but actually a scattering of the light from the individual galaxies caused by the gravitational ripples from the dark matter. Very, very cool.

Monday, May 14, 2007

Helmet Crushed, Rider Okay

As if anyone needed another helpful story to illustrate why you should always wear a helmet on your bike. Also, it's a nice plug for an American made product (Santa Cruz, California, thank you very much). Which reminds me, I still need to buy a new Giro helmet after my tangle with the pavement last week.

In China, Don't Drink The Liquor Either

In a testament to the Chinese entrepreneurial spirit, but also to their cultural lack of the environmental long term view, the water purity of one of China's name brand liquors may have been harmed by pollution by 39 illegal up-start alcohol plants built upriver from the Maotai sorghum distillery. In Beijing, tourists have to mind the water, but if they can't substitute germ killing alcohol for water, they're in big trouble. Also, I can see that the merchant class tiptoeing back into capitalism is using the mainstay of corruption and bribery to get back into business. Honestly, 39 illegal breweries and distilleries do not get built without some government official knowing about it.

Thanks to the bro for the news tip.

Clothes Shoppers Boot Up the PC

For the first time, online sales of clothing topped computer equipment. The internet continues its journey into the mainstream, away from the porn-swilling gamers who helped build it. But don't believe the hype that the singularity is around the corner just yet. Only 6 percent of all retail sales originate from an online purchase.

Sunday, May 13, 2007

For All You Laker Fans Out There

Pat Riley, head coach of the Miami Heat, on Shaquille O'Neal, after Miami was swept in the first round of the NBA Playoffs:

He knows his influence on his teammates. He's going to have to lead by example. If he wants to give back $10 million and play half a season, then fine.

Saturday, May 12, 2007

American Buzz Idol!

You can alway count on the suburban critters to solve scientific mysteries with pop culture references. I never trusted that Sanjaya kid either...


Over The Hedge courtesy of Michael Fry and T Lewis

Friday, May 11, 2007

AP Fact Checking? No.

In an otherwise interesting report on the beginning of the Landis arbitration hearing, the AP again demonstrates how little fact checking goes into their reporting:

He [Landis] would be the first rider in the Tour’s 104-year history to be stripped of the title, and he says he’ll retire if he loses and can’t get the result overturned in appeals.

Powerful statement there, but the AP writer would get a disappointed moue from Alex Trebek. "Who is Maurice Garin?" would be the correct question. Just like the person who pulled America out of the Kyoto Protocols. Sorry, it wasn't Bush. It was the Senate in 1997, slapping cry-baby Al Gore down, 95-0. And journalists wonder why people are losing respect in them.

Journalism Outsourced To India?

A few people have ask me to comment on this crazy story about hiring reporters in India to cover Pasadena politics. First off, the man running the Pasadenanow.com website is an idiot, because he could have gotten news coverage for free by hiring a few local journalism school students to do the same thing. Now, he's shelling out 20K for two people who can't ask follow-up questions, can have their emails to the local politicos ignored, and whose English writing skills will be questionable at best. If you think that you have to be a good writer to graduate from the Berkeley school of journalism, as one of the Indians claims, you obviously haven't been to grad school lately.

Second, if he didn't like the idea of student interns, then he should have embraced the ideas of Web 2.0, and hired a blogger to cover the beat. We're not talking full time employment to look at video streaming here, plus he would have more editorial control. The website seems to be a daily online model of those free weeklies you find at cafes, with the editorial slant to match, so finding a blogger whose voice matches the slant shouldn't be too hard to do in Southern California. Besides, the website operator thinks that the Indians might eventually do some investigative reporting. Right. By email and teleconferencing? I hope he sets them up with VoIP, otherwise those long distance charges will pile up.

And last, the dude advertised for the positions on Craig's List. We're not exactly getting the cream of the crop answering those ads. I share the concerns of the UCLA and USC professors quoted in the AP article, but none more so than fellow Pasadena resident, Bryce Nelson: "This is a truly sad picture of what American journalism could become."

...As Changeable As The Seasons

Sometimes it's difficult to read a woman's heart, but it can be dangerous too. Especially if that woman just happens to be an artificial intelligence residing in a multi-ton tank. Tread carefully, tread carefully...



"I could, I could go get a dictionary..."

Thursday, May 10, 2007

Don't Drink the Water, at the Olympics

Explain to me again, why are we having the Olympics in Beijing, instead of London? So, you might get the runs from drinking the tap water, your shoes might get spit on while walking down the street, you might be ordering something completely different than the translation on the menu, you might not get to the store counter unless you lead with your elbows, you'll have to wear a mask to avoid the air pollution and exhaust fumes, and the locals won't even smile at you. Yup, looks like the 2008 Summer Games are going to be a blast!

Update: The bro reminds me that he covered the spitting, the non-queuing, and the non-smiling before now. I covered the Chinglish earlier too. I believe the air quality and snarled traffic in Beijing is very old news at this point.

Wednesday, May 09, 2007

You Are Not Going Blind...

...nor did you just lose all the green wavelength sensitivity in your cones. Something I've been meaning to do since last year was change the background pattern to something "not brown." Ever since I found out that Glenn Greenwald's (or is that Rick Ellensburg's?) blog is the exact same template as mine, I've been tweaking the layout a bit. I finally found a blue background that I like which contrasts well with the parchment pattern for the blog body. If you have strong feelings for the original, or wish to suggest a different pattern and color scheme, feel free to make suggestions. I probably won't listen, but if it's a good idea, I might just thank you for it.

They Showed Admiral Restraint

Bizarro courtesy of Dan Piraro

With all these puns strung together, I believe that Major Damage was also introduced to my funny bone.

Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Basso Admits To "Attempted" Blood Doping

The big news over the last couple of weeks concerning the Operacíon Puerto scandal was that after the spaniards realized they could not charge any of the implicated riders under their laws, they had to close the investigation. This action allowed jurisdiction to pass to other athletic bodies, such as the Swiss Cycling Union investigating Jan Ullrich and asking for DNA samples, or the Italian Olympic Committee investigating other Italian riders, such as Ivan Basso. Italy's laws concerning doping are much stricter than Spain's, after the Festina scandal marred the 1998 Tour de France. Possibly acknowledging the more dire sentencing, Ivan Basso decided to confess to the Olympic Committee his involvement with the spanish doctor Fuentes. That bombshell admission was mitigated by more statements today, that he only attempted the blood doping for the Tour de France, but his 2006 Giro d'Italia was clean.

I am not sure if Fuentes' methods for blood doping would have been caught by the hematocrit level test currently employed, which caught Tyler Hamilton and Roberto Heras, so I'm not yet going to believe Basso's claims of innocence for last year's Giro. It seems the ethics rules for suspending riders under investigation for doping worked at last year's Tour de France, not allowing a cheater like Basso to compete. I only wish he admitted guilt at the time, instead of waiting until the Spanish authorities gave up their investigation. I also wish the Spanish authorities had let go of their jurisdiction last summer when they already knew their laws did not apply to the riders on Fuentes' contact list. Perhaps Basso, once his two year ban is over, can redeem himself, as David Millar is beginning to, but Basso has much further to fall, because he was an esteemed Lance Armstrong rival and he had the reputation as one of cycling's "nice guys." We will see.

Bits on Climate Change

Trying to keep the typing to a minimum, again, today. So I'll link some interesting notes on climate change.

First, World Climate Report brings us coverage on more inconvenient planetary warming, this time on Neptune. The graphs on Neptune's brightness and Earth's Mean Temperature during the same period show a striking correlation after correcting for a ten year lag. Neptune is bigger than Earth, so that makes sense. These are astronomical measurements, by the way, not surface air temperature reconstructions by proxies.

Climate Science points us to an interesting hypothesis for warming biases at temperature data collection points. A change in white paint from white wash allows more infrared absorption on the instruments. Anthony Watts is going on a California weather station field trip to gather data on the different paints and wood used to house the thermometers to test his idea. When an infrared absorption profile can account for changes in temperature on the order of 0.1 degrees Celsius, which is the same order of magnitude for the observed temperature rise last century of 0.3 to 0.5, that's something worth checking.

Monday, May 07, 2007

Click-Through Posting

My arm, down from my right elbow, hurts from slamming on to the pavement, so I'll just link some stories I found interesting today.

Here's an interesting story on how Japan's working homeless are using cyber cafes for sleep and amenities. Notice the lack of the security issue.

Check out the global warming propaganda piece about warming oceans killing another coral reef. Except, the only accurate bit in the story about what's killing the reef is in the headline. The journalist doesn't interview anyone who actually said that a temperature rise has been documented around the coral, or ruled out other factors. The rest of the story is just your usual alarmism, which doesn't include the fact that the oceans worldwide have not shown any rise in heat content for two years. This makes the previous post about journalists even more relevant.

Journalists Are The New Lawyers, In Jokes, That Is

True, but ouch.


Frazz courtesy of Jef Mallet

Sunday, May 06, 2007

Sunday Friendly Cat

Unfortunately, I fell down the Internet rabbit hole in exploring the meme of lolcats. The mix of cute kitties, funny captions, and butchered English has totally grabbed my attention. It's gotten to the point, where after completing my Sunday ride, I saw a cat just hanging out in front of the cafe where my ride buddies and I were eating, and bent down to take a picture, all with the intent of converting said digital image to lolcat. However, the cat was just too friendly, immediately got up, and concentrated on purring and rubbing my legs. Oh well, maybe I can do something with that...


Oh hai, i likz ur smellz

The ride itself wasn't all that great: 19 miles with 4 flats and one crash. The crash? Oh, that was me. Never try to point out a car turning right as you cross a dip. There goes my road rash quota for the year, plus a sprained elbow. I will have another cool scar on my right shoulder, but I think its going to cover up the other one I already had. Oh hai, I can haz ice pak? Yes, yes you can.

Saturday, May 05, 2007

The Anatomically Correct Superhero

Heh. Brewster Rockit shows us why the movie version of Spiderman should have just avoided the whole web fluid question and kept Peter Parker's constructed web shooters.


Brewster Rockit courtesy of Tim Rickard

Friday, May 04, 2007

More Gears!

I'm sure people are curious, and even if you're not, I'll explain anyway, why Helmety Goodness was so freaking late today. The reason was, I woke up early to go riding and then nab some sweet loot from a monster sale at REI. I'm sure many of you have noticed that I fulfill the "Grounds" portion of this blog's name, just with the amount of coffee posts here. But what about the "Gears" part? It even comes first in the title! It's not Joeschmo's Grounds and Gears. Sure, I write a lot about cycling, but that covers road races, issues in the sport, and riding to coffee spots... Look! I did it again! So, to correct this total imbalance in the Gear to Ground ratio, bladam!


It's all about branding...
That's a Shimano Ultegra Double Crankset with Speedplay pedals.

How many gears in the back? Nine. Any pictures of that? Heh, I'll leave you hungry for more, whiner! Now, gear also has the other meaning of equipment, so I'll tell you about the sweet, sweet loot I bought... a pair of gloves. That's all, but I saved eight whole dollars! That's real savings, as opposed to imaginary savings. Can't use those at all. Lame imaginary savings. Pictures of the gloves? Hey, this isn't a fashion blog! You want that, you go to Manolo's Shoe Blog. I can see it now:

Oh, and on sale at the REI, were the gloves of the Pearl Izumi. The fit of the function works very well for the hands on the handlebars of the bicycle. And the Joeschmo avoids the annoying tan of the hole by the purchasing of the Racelite Gel! It is of the Cycling Super Fantastic! Joeschmo likes! Click!

Eh, we won't be going there. Finally, here's the view of foggy Irwindale from atop Santa Fe Dam.


Dam! Where's the water?
Obviously, by dam, they mean flood control...

Chad Vader Confronts Painful Family History

In this very special edition of Helmety Goodness Fridays, Chad Vader does guest voice commentary for Rifftrax, an offshoot of MST3K by the original producers, on different scenes from the first three Star Wars movies, and learns, for the first time, how his mother died. I can see how he might not want to be so funny after that.


"And I never did get any bottled water."

Thursday, May 03, 2007

Waste of Time

They may as well have called the recent meeting of SETI researchers and anthropologists a sci-fi fantasy convention for fanboys. The SETI boys need to concentrate on theoretical physics to make meaningful communication possible, not debate whether intelligent life can derive calculus from counting on their tentacles. Any attempt at communication based on light propagation will be doomed to failure because we don't have human social structures in place that can wait for a return message 600 years in the future. Better to have debated which is better: Star Trek universe versus Star Wars universe, and then play some D&D while chugging Mountain Dew and Jolt.

Feeling Nostalgic


Eh, not really...

Architect Insults

Get Fuzzy courtesy of Darby Conley

I'm with Satchel. I needed to google that too.

Wednesday, May 02, 2007

Nice Alternative Energy Source For Breweries

This is a very cool idea for breweries, wineries, and distilleries: using bacteria to break down waste water to generate electricity and clean water. The story stresses waste water treatment with the added bonus of cutting energy costs.

Further Proof That "Global Warming" Is Funding Buzzword

Some scientists are complaining that manned space flights are going to get more money than terrestrial observation satellites. So what do they do to make sure the media get on their side? They call the mapping and atmospheric monitoring satellites "environmental satellites that monitor global warming." Disgusting pandering to public opinion. I agree that there should be more earth monitoring satellites, but also more astronomical satellites in general. These manned missions to keep the Hubble in orbit when it should have been captured by the Space Shuttle and hanging in The Smithsonian seven years ago, has been a waste of time and money, and delayed the next generation of space scopes. Plus, the International Space Station is the biggest black hole of resources in our space program. Fine, we need more satellites, but, to echo William Gray, yelling "Global Warming!" to seek grant money is "foolishness".

Global Warming Alarmist Prediction Goes Up In Flames

In the history of global warming hysteria, we should never forget the impact that the wildfire season of 1988-1989 had on the next movement of environmental activism. Add the death of the Superconducting Super Collider and how the supercomputing budgets had to be redeployed to simulate other chaotic systems, such as weather and climate, and it's no wonder global warming described by GCM's became the new narrative in the 1990's. So, increased forest fires has always been one of the scare cards played in the hysteria game, along with heatwaves, droughts, and stronger hurricanes. However, if we actually look at the scenarios predicted by GCM's when CO2 is increased, hurricanes are supposed to become weaker, precipitation cycles will become longer because of the increased biomass from the increased CO2, and weather will become milder (although slightly warmer) because a warming world mitigates the weather extremes.

That's the theory, anyway. So, what about those forest fires? According to all the what-if scenarios, forest fires are supposed to be a climate forcing because of the CO2 released during the burning; the burn areas have lower albedos, absorbing more heat from the Sun; and the warming is supposed to increase drought conditions, meaning more fires. So, have there been more fires and more burn areas during those 20 years when all that exponential warming was supposed to have happened. The answer is no. Looking at the satellite data, we can safely remove wildfires as a feedback forcing for the supposed exponential warming during the last 20 years of the 20th century. We can also remove wildfires as a symptom of global warming. What I want to see from now on, in news coverage of out-of-control fires, is a return to environmentalists screaming about land-management policies, and stop hyping the climate change angle. Will it happen? I have very low expectations on that end.

Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Another Energy Boost Fad

After ThinkGeek.com started selling caffeinated soap, I thought, "What the hell else can they add caffeine to?" How about sunflower seeds? And it's not just caffeine in the new product Sumseeds. They gave it wings! Caffeine, taurine, lysine and ginseng have been added to the dry roasted shells. They didn't add the carbs that you find in those energy drinks, but the manufacturer, Dakota Valley Products, insists that's a selling point, because you get a sustained boost while you suck on the seeds as you crack 'em open. I love sunflower seeds, but I think this is going too far. Well, if they can make a buck off it, why not sell it?

Tuesday Bike Parking

So blue! So pretty!
Bushes in the driveway make great bike racks!

Duke Nabs 34 Cheaters

In a follow-up to my old-man rant, where an AP story inexplicably talked to Duke's executive director of The Center for Academic Integrity, Tim Dodd, about iPods and cheating, who offered no examples of how the media players are used legitimately in exam situations, we have this cheating scandal at Duke's business school. Here's the irony quote:

At Duke, incidents of cheating have declined over the past 10 years, largely because the community expects its students to have academic integrity, [Tim Dodd] said.

I wonder how 34 students caught cheating in one year affects that 10 year trend. One would think that Duke professors would have their personal hubris meters set to a higher sensitivity in the wake of their Lacrosse players being declared innocent, contrary to the 88 faculty who were convinced otherwise.

Thanks to the bro for the news tip.

Coffee's Negative Health Image Declining

At a panel discussion in experimental biology on the health benefits of coffee, backed by hundreds of research papers over the years, scientists discussed the possible causes for why drinking coffee has been correlated with cancer and type-2 diabetes prevention. So far, coffee has been associated with preventing liver cancer, colon cancer, and rectal cancer. However, there have been some correlations with heightened risk of contracting leukemia and stomach cancer, which is another reason children and pregnant women should not be drinking coffee, besides the extra caffeine content. Since, I'm not a kid, nor a pregnant woman, and to help protect my colon and my rectum, plus keeping my liver on an even keel, I'll raise another cuppajoe to my lips. *sip* Ahh!