30 November 2007
NanoWriMoMadness Is Over!

And I won! It's hardly finished and needs about three more drafts & revisions before I'll let anyone read it, but it was a wonderful exercise. I'm 57,436 words into a pretty good novel, if I do say so myself.

21 August 2007
NanoWriMoMadness Begins!

I've got a plot, I've got characters, I've got research. Bring it on!

August 2007
You're just so smart.

Who said, "Better to keep your mouth closed and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt"?

Mark Twain? Are you sure? It is commonly attributed to him, but there's no real documentation for that assertion. No biggie. As far as folklore goes, there's no harm in it because it is a timeless truth - a bit of wisdom that can't be repeated often enough.

Another example of folklore that shows up on threads from time to time is that 'pressure can turn coal into diamonds.' While absolutely untrue, it has a certain poetic appeal.

But there is a bit of folklore that gets dropped on health and science threads around here that is so patently absurd it must be addressed. It is the idea that 100 years ago, everyone dropped dead at age 48 because age 48 was the life expectancy 100 years ago. To those wishing to use such a statement to somehow prove that we are living in a utopian golden age of health and vitality, please see the above quote attributed to Mark Twain.

Now for your lesson in middle school statistics.

According to the CDC, (CDC Chart Book 2006, .pdf see page 60) the life expectancy at birth was 48 years for men and 51 years for women in 1900. Wow! How dismal! In 2003, the life expectancy at birth for men was 75 years and for women 80 years. Wow! How wonderful! We have ~improved~ so much!

Life expectancy is an average. Averages are easily skewed. Even if most of the ages in sample size are in the 60's, 70's and 80's, it just takes a few zeros to pull the average way down. Suppose the fictional sample is the age at death of 10 individuals born in the same year: [ 85, 85, 75, 75, 65, 65, 65, 0, 0, 0]. What is the average age of dropping dead? 51.5 years. And yet not one person died in their 50's. Crazy how those averages work. Perhaps you remember a similar phenomenon in your teachers' gradebooks. Just a few missing homework assignments is all it takes.

Life expectancy at birth includes infant mortality. Infant mortality in the early 20th century was very high. The vast majority of the "improvement" in life expectancy is attributable to improvements in the infant mortality rate. If you survived infancy, you had a good chance of living well into your 60's, 70's, and 80's.

In fact, a woman aged 65 in 1900, had a life expectancy of 12 more years. A 65-year old woman in 2003 can expect to live 20 more years. Similarly the life expectancy for men at age 65 increased from 12 to 17 more years. A 5-8 year improvement over the course of a century isn't quite as impressive and we can't even blame it on a proper war (that kills hundreds of thousands) or a good old-fashioned pandemic (like the flu).

And before we get too carried away patting ourselves on the back over the decrease in infant mortality a hundred years ago, let us not forget that abortion is not included in life expectancy calculations. Since 1973, the ratio of abortions to total pregnancies (excluding miscarriages) has ranged from 19.3 to 30.1, or about a quarter of otherwise viable pregnancies were aborted (source .pdf). Imagine what would happen to our utopian life expectancy if these children were factored in.

Yes, we have made *such* progress since the days of our brutish, diseased ancestors!

Click the pic for a bigger version.
Also: Just the compass: smaller and larger.

10 APRIL 2007
An Act of War
What does that even mean anymore? Obviously flying planes into buildings and murdering thousands doesn't quite meet the definition, so certainly the napping of 15 British Sailors and Marines wouldn't. Our Congress couldn't even bring themselves to condemn Iran's actions. I'd hate to see what *does* constitute an act of war. WMD? (As if that term has any meaning anymore - chlorine bombs? Naaaaah) A nuke? What? I'm thankful that they were released with no serious physical harm but I am deeply disturbed at the whole situation.... especially at how artfully our media was played. And therein lies the real attack. What have we been spending our time doing? Why, making fun of the doughy little sailors waving and haming it up for the cameras, of course (notice how the handful of kids with a modicum of military bearing were cropped out of the still pics - these must have been the Marines). The result is ridicule for... embarassment of.... criticism of.... our closest ally: Britain. God Bless the British. We need to adopt the example of a stiff upper lip and support our ally as they take their lumps over this mess. Our resolve should strengthen, instead it is crumbling. Our lampooning of the Brits is playing right into Ahmadinejad's hand. I think it best not to misunderestimate madmen like him. If he hasn't read Sun Tzu, he's doing a good job reinventing the wheel:

"Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.
...
the skillful leader subdues the enemy's troops without any fighting; he captures their cities without laying siege to them; he overthrows their kingdom without lengthy operations in the field."

Think about it.

Reasons I Love the British:

• Cadbury's
• Trinny and Susannah
• Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen and Tommy Walsh
• 007
• Frightfully sexy accents
• The League of Obscure British Actors
  And I could go on and on....

09 APRIL 2007
I'm so behind...
getting all my Nancy pics done up and posted. Stay tuned, there are a few more to come. I wish she'd cut it out - it's hard to keep up with her!!

8 April 2007

01 APRIL 2007
All Hail Cold Fusion
So Cold Fusion is back. Kinda-sorta at least. This is great news! Great news because even though the first time around was a complete flop, we ended up with a great little movie called The Saint as a result. It goes without saying that I'm rooting for another Ponz and Fleischman moment.

26 MARCH 2007
Daycare and Aggression
So this morning there were several threads about a new study that links time spent in daycare to aggressive and disruptive behavior. Brought to you by the Institute for the Painfully Obvious. The study found the effect was a function of the time spent in daycare facilities, not necessarily the quality of the facility. They did note that the better facilities can facilitate better vocabularies than... than whom exactly? All throughout these news articles is an unspoken comparison to kids who receive care from their parents. Daycare kids are more aggressive than... parent-raised kids; daycare kids are sassier, I mean, have a bigger vocabulary than... parent-raised kids; day care kids are more disruptive in class than... well, you get the picture.

Now, why would this be the case? For years the Cult of Modern Womynhood has told us that the family is passe, that raising kids is a waste of a woman's resources, the fathers are more trouble than they're worth. Here's a news flash: the family is the cornerstone of civilization. It always has been and ever will be. Children do what comes naturally. They are masters at building. They build associations, they build meanings, they build it into language. And in the absence of proper formative guidance, they build games and rituals and rules and all the rudimentary elements of a TRIBE, complete with chieftans and a brutal pecking order. Adults are powerless over them. They're not part of the TRIBE, they are other: stupid and meaningless. Why follow their directions in school? Why do as you're told? Who are they? Why are they always interrupting our game?

Why, indeed? It is through the family that the code of conduct of a civilized society is transmitted. The little dahlings won't learn to control their impulses at daycare, they won't learn manners, they won't learn selflessness, they won't learn to respect authority, to shoulder responsibility, to be accountable, to be disciplined. They certainly won't learn to pray or to sit in reverence of the Lord. All of these things are the hallmark of society. All of these things are taught by families.

Have you ever read Lord of the Flies? I have. This study discovered the larval stage.

24 MARCH 2007
There's Something About Fred
So Fred Dalton Thompson looks better and better every day - and he's not even running yet! Talk about an economical candidate. Fred has what may be the most elusive ~and expensive~ quality in a candidate: celebrity. Name recognition. Face recognition. That kind of thing takes millions of dollars to build from scratch. Trying to raise the money to buy celebrity takes time away from fighting the rats and their media pimps. But with Fred, the celebrity is free. Any money he raises can go straight to getting the message out, defining himself on the issues, staying on the offense. Why fight a war on two fronts when you can hit the ground running - and that makes Fred vey attractive! Dick Morris, the creepy weasel he is, was right about the effect Hillary! and Barak the Magic Negro (lives in DC) would have on the Democrat field - namely that they'd suck the air out of the room and make it too difficult for less well-known candidates to get any traction. (Edwards who?) The buzz about Fred is just buzz but already my ears are starting to pop.

• A contrarian. If everybody else is doing it, or thinking it, it's probably wrong.

• A former chemistry teacher turned unschool advocate. Would love nothing more than to see the entire compulsory schooling system come crumbling down and be replaced with a vibrant free market of educational options. Am now working at a major research laboratory. My scientific philosophy was influenced most by Kuhn, my educational philosophy ended with an embrace of Gatto and Nock.

• A smarty pants. Will stick my nose into most threads, especially those dealing with education, land rights, national defense and the defense industry, immigration , public land management, nutrition, and pop culture (sci fi and movies).

• A notoriously poor speller.

• An exurban homesteader and domestic diva. Eat yer heart out Martha Stewart!

• A displaced desert rat. Arizona is my home, the People's Republik of Maryland is just where I live.

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A Nutrition Ping List For Those Interested in the Research of Dr. Weston A. Price

You know how these ping lists work: Send a FR mail if you want on or off the list. And if you see a great thread and I don't seem to be around to ping it - feel free to step in and ping away.

The list is currently: jahp, Kalee, Slowry, redhead, Conservativegreatgrandma, sissyjane, ReagansShinyHair, Blue Eyes, etabeta, alnick, CitadelArmyJag, skepsel, texas booster, Fractal Trader, TruthSetsUFree, HungarianGypsy, Poincare, Rytwyng, Colorado Buckeye, Sarah, since1868, nmh, Freebird Forever, Coleus, editor-surveyor, Utmost Certainty, gobucks, 2jedismom, pbmaltzman

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