Famous Deaths 2012

Everyone is in such a hurry to talk about the best/most/biggest/worst/etc. of the year that lists start coming out as early as November.  I think we should save those lists until January, so anything that happens in the end of December will still count.  I still remember hearing on the radio on Christmas day that Billy Martin died in a car accident, over 20 years ago, but how unfair is that to leave him off a list because it's near the end of the year?  I had my list ready a week ago, and sure enough, Norman Schwarzkopf died, and he shouldn't have been left off the list.

A few of these are pretty obvious, but some might need some explanation.  I left off some famous deaths because I didn't have much of a connection to them, like Harry Carey - he was in two great movies, Gremlins and Back to the Future, but I didn't really remember his characters even after looking them up.  When Polly Holliday, who played Mrs. Deagle, dies, she'll be in the list for sure.

The zombie actor is there, not so much because of his role specifically or anything about the movie itself, although it is the granddaddy of all zombie movies.  Actually, it is likely that we even have the zombie industry fascination that we do have because of the copyright status of this movie.  That is, it doesn't have one.  Before the U.S. adopted the Berne Convention, you had to claim copyright to be granted copyright.  A last minute change to the title of the film and someone forgetting to put a copyright notice on the new title screen meant it was public domain, open for remixing, sharing, and a multitude of other uses, which increased its popularity.

Trayvon Martin stuck out to me because of his complete lack of being famous, yet his tragic death, which is still being investigated is what made him famous.  I didn't know or care that much about Vidal Sassoon, other than growing up knowing it was a shampoo, and it wasn't until he died that I realized it was a person.  What's worse?  Being famous for dying or for being a shampoo?

Joe Paterno - Penn State coach
Ian Abercrombie - Seinfeld actor Mr. Pitt
Bill Hinzman - first zombie in Night of the Living Dead
Whitney Houston - singer
Gary Carter - catcher (Go Mets!)
Trayvon Martin - teenager
Davy Jones - the Monkees
Mike Wallace - news correspondent
Dick Clark - TV host
Junior Seau - football player
Adam Yauch - rapper Beastie Boys
George Lindsey - actor Andy Griffith
Maurice Sendak - author
Vidal Sassoon - hair stylist
Robin Gibb - singer Bee Gees
Ray Bradbury - sci fi author
Rodney King - LA riots
Andy Griffith - actor
Ernest Borgnine - actor
Stephen Covey - author
Sally Ride - astronaut
Mel Stuart - director Willy Wonka
Phyllis Diller - comedienne
Jerry Nelson - muppetteer
Neil Armstrong - astronaut
Michael Clarke Duncan - actor
Gary Collins - actor
Arlen Specter - politician
Zig Ziglar - author
Rick Majerus - coach
Jack Klugman - actor
Norman Schwarzkopf - general

10 Rules for Students, Teachers, and Life

10 Rules for Students, Teachers, and Life by Sister Corita Kent, generally attributed to John Cage

RULE ONE: Find a place you trust, and then try trusting it for awhile.

RULE TWO: General duties of a student — pull everything out of your teacher; pull everything out of your fellow students.

RULE THREE: General duties of a teacher — pull everything out of your students.

RULE FOUR: Consider everything an experiment.

RULE FIVE: Be self-disciplined — this means finding someone wise or smart and choosing to follow them. To be disciplined is to follow in a good way. To be self-disciplined is to follow in a better way.

RULE SIX: Nothing is a mistake. There’s no win and no fail, there’s only make.

RULE SEVEN: The only rule is work. If you work it will lead to something. It’s the people who do all of the work all of the time who eventually catch on to things.

RULE EIGHT: Don’t try to create and analyze at the same time. They’re different processes.

RULE NINE: Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It’s lighter than you think.

RULE TEN: “We’re breaking all the rules. Even our own rules. And how do we do that? By leaving plenty of room for X quantities.” (John Cage)

HINTS: Always be around. Come or go to everything. Always go to classes. Read anything you can get your hands on. Look at movies carefully, often. Save everything — it might come in handy later. There should be new rules next week.

Web Design Workshop

One week summer workshops are a great option to take an intense, short-term class that teaches you some real skills to begin putting into place immediately.

They've changed a little, as they're now taught throughout the summer, where they used to be taught during a workshop week between two of the four week terms. I guess that would be nice if you wanted to go through more than one workshop.

Looking at their current offerings, they have workshops related to using Photoshop, creating a resume and portfolio, sign language, understanding the history of China, and appreciating fantasy fiction. Okay, maybe all of those might not be immediately useful.

The summer workshop I went through was about using Dreamweaver and Fireworks. This was over a dozen years ago, well before Adobe bought out Macromedia, and the web still had a bit of a wild west feel to it. Sites were simple, designs were kitschy, and digital cameras were low-res and high-priced. I actually borrowed a digital camera from my department to do a couple websites after the workshop, and it totally reminded me of Luke Skywalker's binoculars.

It looked like his binoculars, and the quality probably wasn't much better. Of course at that time, you couldn't print digital photos anyway, and monitor resolutions on those fat old CRTs weren't good enough to be able to tell that the quality was low. About the best you could do on old CRTs to make them half decent was to crank up the refresh rate so they didn't flicker. You wanted something higher than 60 Hz so the flicker wasn't visible, but if you went too high, you could damage the monitor, so you had to decide how much you wanted to gamble. It was always fun degaussing old CRTs as well.

Here's a photo I actually took at the time. Note the little border I added around the edge for no good reason. Then there's all the dirty noise that almost gives it an instagrammy feel. I think most people taking photos on all but the nicest cell phones these days could just upload as is and say they used an instagram filter. That's probably why people like instagram, because it makes their phone photos look like they're supposed to be old and dirty. Someone recently sent out a photo from a major work event, of over 100 posed people. It looked awful - faces all blurry and washed out. I looked at the picture's metadata, and sure enough, it was taken on an iPhone4. Why someone would waste the time of that many people to get them all posed and then just take their photo with a camera phone, I don't think I'll ever understand. We have nice cameras now - use them.

The workshop was a fun one. It was one week, several hours in the morning and afternoon, every day. We even got brownies each day during an afternoon break. We each made a personal site and showed it off to everyone. They were all terrible, I'm sure. We learned the basics of using tables, lists, font formatting options, frames (I know), linking, creating buttons that changed when you moused over or clicked on them, etc. I figured out some basic JavaScript that randomly picked a different picture to show on the home page each time it loaded. Several of us used AnimationFactory, which is surprisingly still around, to find 3D-ish animated gifs to put on our sites. I remember after showing off our sites, we sat around watching random videos. In particular, I remember showing Weird Al's music video The Saga Begins (American Pie). Still a great video.

The most important part of the workshop is that I now had a few days' worth of exposure to Dreamweaver and thus could add it to put something on my resume. The resume with that skill listed got me a job on campus at Career Services. They had various IT-related tasks that needed to be done around the office, but the biggest one was launching a new website. Don't get me wrong - I'd been making notepad websites for several years at that point, but they wanted the site done in Dreamweaver, and I was the man to do it. That job was a really fun one and a great career starter. I used it as an internship, so I'll write more about it when I discuss the internship class.

Origin of the Universe

I occasionally ponder on the origins of the earth. When I was younger I could make my brain hurt trying to think of how there could have always been something that existed somewhere and how there is no end to anything, yet everything we know is that there is always a start and end. So how did we start if there was nothing there to start it? I don't worry about that anymore. Why? A scripture in the bible solved it for me, and not the one in 2 Peter 3 about a day for the Lord being 1000 years for us, but one in Revelation of all places.

Revelation 10:5-7

5 And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth lifted up his hand to heaven,

6 And sware by him that liveth for ever and ever, who created heaven, and the things that therein are, and the earth, and the things that therein are, and the sea, and the things which are therein, that there should be time no longer:

7 But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished, as he hath declared to his servants the prophets.

So time will be turned off. It's a temporary constraint to our understanding. I don't understand what the big picture is, but I know time isn't permanent. At least I believe it doesn't, to the extent that it no longer gives me headaches.

A few days ago I saw this graphic posted who knows where, which I tried to track down, and I can't figure out the original source, so if anyone knows where it came from, let me know so I can give proper attribution. The idea is that none of us knows what is truly real. There are real things we can't see just as there are things we see that aren't real. There are always people who think they have it all figured out, whether based on their interpretation of the bible or on what Bill Nye tells them. The truth is that none of us knows the truth, and with apologies to Jack Nicholson, we probably can't handle the truth.

It then makes me wonder when I see an article like this one that purports to explain Why Marco Rubio Needs To Know That The Earth Is Billions Of Years Old. Go read it if you want. The author, who is a technology writer for Forbes (not a theologian or a scientist), calls out Marco Rubio for answering truthfully that he doesn't know how old the earth is. Rubio states that he is neither a theologian or a scientist, and none of those experts can agree, so he's leaving the debate up to them.

The interesting point that is called out of the many that could have been is that if the earth isn't billions of years old, then all our DVD players will stop working, laser surgery will start failing, and our nuclear reactors will all blow up tomorrow (Are you paying attention, Mayans?) because everything we know about science is wrong.

Awkward pause.

Just a minute while I finish looking up the Wikipedia article on logical fallacies.

One of the most important ideas that I learned about in the multivariate statistics class I took in my PhD program (which I will get to blogging about in a couple years at the rate I'm going) is the principle of parsimony. The idea is that you go with the model that is the appropriate balance between simplicity and completeness, or you start with the simplest hypothesis, with the fewest number of assumptions, and work towards the more complex ones.

Thinking about all the elements that would have had to blow up just right to form new elements and align themselves somehow into what would become self-aware beings is a bit complex for me and the basis of another big headache. That's not to say I don't believe the earth is billions of years old, or that at least the materials used to create the earth are that old. I said before that it gives me comfort that time will be turned off at some point, but that doesn't mean that time doesn't still exist and play a role in our larger existence, just that it won't be limiting as it is now.

Foes of the religious will dismiss what I'm about to say as me dealing with my cognitive dissonance, but hear me out. This is the parsimonious model I've come up with that brings together my belief in the bible and the creation and in my understanding and trust of scientists. Matter in various shapes and forms has existed for a long time, billions of years or more even. The universe has existed for billions of years. God has existed for billions of years. If we read the biblical history literally, our earth was only created maybe 10,000 years ago, depending on when the clock started ticking. It was created from remnants of other worlds and placed with our solar system into the universe that already existed.

The laws of nature, such as how light works, gravitational pull, and chemistry, are constant. They haven't changed. Our DVDs will still work tomorrow. At least I hope the laws of physics will last long enough for me to see The Hobbit. We just have some billion year old recycled pieces of another planet that happened to have animals that were a lot scarier than the ones we have now. No, dinosaurs never walked this planet. They walked on another planet, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Not reasonable? Which is more far-fetched? God recycled the dinosaur's planet in making ours or the earth and dinosaurs evolved from nothing, they were all killed from a meteor and resulting ash cloud, and then we evolved again from nothing? The scientists are guessing when they come up with their hypotheses about why the dinosaurs went away. They don't know. So why is my guess of a hypothesis any worse off than theirs? Which is more parsimonious?

I learned within the past year or two about dark matter. Granted I don't know a lot about it, but the basics of it is that there is something that exists in such a way that it increases the mass (and thus the gravitational pull) of galaxies but that cannot be seen. Wait, let's think about that. We know (or think we know) how gravity works. But something in the galaxy behaves in a way inconsistent with our understanding of gravity. So scientists hypothesize that there is a mysterious, invisible matter that accounts for 84% of the mass of the universe in order to make their previously held theory (gravity) continue to work. Now is a good time to refer back to the cognitive dissonance link in the "Foes of the religious..." paragraph above.

Understanding how the universe works seems to me to be a completely separate question from how we and the particular world we live on were created. They still don't know for sure where the moon came from. But we do know it's there and can predict its movements and measure its effects on the tides. We don't know where the dinosaurs came from or how they died, but we do know that their rotting flesh makes good fuel for powering our cars and heating our homes. Well, maybe oil comes from dinosaurs.

My pointing out the great deficiencies in the knowledge of scientists does not mean I think they are idiots but rather to point out that any of the things they say about religious folks could apply equally to them. I do respect scientists, and I believe that many useful discoveries can be made by investigating the origin of the universe, just as much as studying the operation of the universe. As of next month (December 2012), it will be 40 years since a man last stood on the moon, and I think we should go back.

More importantly, I think we should be more respectful of one another's ideas, because if I'm right, then both theologians and scientists are right. If I'm not right, chances are both of them are wrong with me as well, and neither has the standing to point out the flaws of the other.

Back to Work

I've been waiting for President Obama's recovery plan. He didn't have one during the campaign, but neither did Mitt Romney. I was excited to see this video come across the wire, in which President Obama was to discuss growing the economy and reducing the deficit.

At least I think that's what it's about. It's what the title says. I can't get past the googly eyes of the lady in the upper left corner. Go ahead, start it up. I'll wait. The lady right above him looks like she's having a hard time focusing as well. You'll notice they slowly zoom in on the president throughout the video, most likely to cut out the distracting people around him, but that just makes you wonder where the short lady standing right behind him came from. The lady in the audience at 4:21 has something going on with her eyes, too. I sure can't focus enough to listen to what he's saying.

For some reason the googly eye lady in the upper left makes me think of this.

And that makes me think of this.

And that means I still have no idea what President Obama's plan is or if he really has one now. Can anyone explain it to me? After all, you just watched it, too, right?

Political Turnover

You've probably all heard the quote from Warren Buffet about fixing the national deficit.

I could end the deficit in 5 minutes. You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of congress are ineligible for re-election.

That's a nice thought and a simple solution, but it has two major holes. The first, most obvious, is that it would be up to Congress to pass such a law, and we all know that's never going to happen. I think their new law template automatically includes verbiage that exempts themselves from whatever law they're passing. The second is that our problems go beyond whether there is a deficit. The corruption in Washington goes deeper than whether the government is spending more money than it's bringing in. We need turnover to get rid of some of the layers of corruption, which is the opposite of the current system of encouraging seniority.

A quicker way to fix some of the problems in Washington, which would suffer from the same problem as Warren Buffet's recommendation in that Congress wouldn't agree to pass it, would be to hold congressional pay at the level it was when each member is elected. So, to see how that would work, Orrin Hatch would be making $44,600 now instead of $174,000. This would help with the incentive to turn over anyone who has been there for decades.

The best way? Do not allow anyone to run for elected office while holding an elected office. If you want to run again, you'd have to actually resign your current position, even if it's the same one you're running for. In effect, there would be no such thing as reelection - only election. In the mean time, someone else is appointed to your seat for the last year of your term. If you're running for a completely different office, you show your confidence by stepping down, instead of knowing you have a fail-safe to fall back to the position you've been ignoring while running for the new office.

I don't know much about Mia Love, but one blogger pointed out that some people in the city are concerned that she has been slacking as mayor while running for national office. I wonder the same about President Obama - if he's out shaking people's hands and raising money, he's not fixing the country.

A possible way to game this would be to have two people who alternate back and forth and endorse each other, but I think once someone is out of office for a few years, they would be less likely to be sent back than if they were the incumbent.

What other ways could that system be gamed? What are some other ideas with just as unlikely of a chance of being passed by Congress that might more effectively turn things over and get some new people in Washington? Would more turnover cause more corruption than we have now?

photo by basykes

Ron Paul's Farewell

Excessive confidence is placed in the judgment of politicians and bureaucrats. This replaces the confidence in a free society.

We should have more trust in ourselves and less in the government. Too many people have for far too long placed too much confidence and trust in the government and not enough in themselves.

Why does the federal government restrict the drinking of raw milk?

Why have we allowed the federal government to regulate commodes in our homes?

Has nobody noticed that the authorities can't even keep drugs out of the prisons? How can making our entire society a prison solve the problem?

Why should anyone be surprised that Congress has no credibility when there is such a disconnect in what they say and what they do?

Sacrificing a little liberty for imaginary safety always ends badly.

To achieve liberty and peace, two powerful human emotions have to be overcome. Number one is envy, which leads to hate and class warfare. Number two is intolerance, which leads to bigoted and judgmental policies. These emotions must be replaced with a much better understanding of love, compassion, tolerance, and free market economics.

Jersey Strong

From Paul Kiesche, a friend I grew up with in New Jersey:

Proud to be Jersey Strong, our design company, Paul Kiesche Design, LLC. created this logo. It’s just one more thing we can do to help. By working together, New Jersey will come back stronger than ever.

This logo is completely free to use, print or share. If we get enough likes, comments or interest, we will make and sell t-shirts, stickers and possibly more. Then, we’ll donate all the money we make after expenses to help the relief efforts for this disaster and future disasters.

Here are the rights-free logo files if anyone wants it to print for any reason.

Pass it around, and let @pkieschedesign know if you're interested in shirts, stickers, etc., but of course you're free to print your own if you'd like as well. You also might comment on Paul's blog.

Political Pumpkin Walk

The North Logan Pumpkin Walk is a fun family tradition. Each year they have all the scenes made from pumpkins by anyone who volunteers to create one, and then you generally end up in a kind of current events scene. A few years ago, for example, they had a scene entitled "Martha Stewart Living in Jail" that was a great hit.

This year's culminating scene was a political one, presented without comment.

Nutrition

Science and Application of Human Nutrition was the only summer class that went the full 12 week summer term until a stats class in my doctoral program. My undergrad summer term was strange with a bunch of four week classes, a one week class, and then this one that seemed to drag on, even though it was still a month shorter than a normal Fall or Spring course.

There are few classes that make my required list for all majors. Econ is one, Family Finance (even though I never actually had to take it), English (even though none of the English classes I've seen teach writing at the level I think needs to be met), Statistics (get rid of Calculus), and Nutrition. I know the Philosophy department has some type of Logic course that I'd be tempted to add if I knew more about it. There's probably a PoliSci or History course about how our political system works that would be good to include as well.

To be a functioning member of society, you need to be able to make intelligent decisions with inherent trade-offs, know how to call BS on all the numbers you see in any news story ever, write logically and intelligibly, manage your money and plan for retirement, and take care of yourself physically. In Boy Scouts, I think the Cooking merit badge should be a required one. It wouldn't take much to push me over the edge and say that Cooking should be a required course in college as well, but Nutrition comes close enough.

I only wish I remembered more about what I learned. I do recall talking about lactic acid, which is what causes pain after you've worked out hard. Part of the process of converting glucose to energy results in excess lactate, which changes the acidity of the blood, and you hurt until the acid levels return to normal. Continuing to work out the same area will get it to a point where it is used to exerting itself and will be able to keep the acid levels balanced.

The most eye-opening part of the course is where you use a provided software program to track what you eat for something like a week, and it runs the numbers to tell you where your diet is deficient. Of course, the course goes deeper than that by showing you how the various nutrients and other things we eat interact. You consume a ton of Vitamin C, great, but too much can start blocking the absorption of copper and throw off your iron balance. Knowing the number of calories in fat, alcohol, sugar, and other foods can help you moderate.

If I'd been thinking about how it would be affecting my body, I might not have eaten a whole Brownie In A Mug last night. I don't know how diabetics feel when their insulin levels are off, but it may be similar to the I-feel-really-good-yet-really-bad-at-the-same-time feeling I had after eating it. On the plus side, making a mug-sized brownie will keep you from making and eating a whole pan. If you're going to make it, throw in a few chocolate chips and a teaspoon or so of peanut butter. And split it with someone.

Brownie In A Mug

Ingredients:
4 Tablespoons Flour
4 Tablespoons Sugar
2 Tablespoons Cocoa powder
2 Tablespoons Vegetable Oil
2 Tablespoons Water
Dash of salt

Instructions:
Mix dry ingredients in a mug. Add oil and water, and mix well.

You could drop in a pinch of baking powder if you really want, but it's very much optional and probably doesn't make any difference. Peanut butter, chocolate chips, Rolos, Cadbury cream eggs, etc. also optional. I actually added a few drops of vanilla as well, maybe 1/8 of a teaspoon. You could also swap out butter for the oil. Maybe you're getting the picture that this is a small enough and fast enough recipe that you can play with it a bit.

Microwave about a minute and 30 seconds. Maybe start with a minute and work your way up until you know how your microwave and mug interact. It will be a little gooey, which is good. A scoop of vanilla ice cream would be a great addition.

I didn't have ice cream, but I poured in a little milk at the end, otherwise I don't think I could have gotten through it. My 7 y/o was asking for more after finishing his. Oh to be young and unaware of what damage all that sugar and fat does. I'm looking forward to the phone call after he takes Nutrition in college.