Why I Haven't Done Any Christmas Shopping Yet!

On Friday, December 21, 2012, according to the Mayan Calendar, the world is coming to an end. That's before December 25. Hence my dilemma. At the website, December212012.com, there are a number of helpful hints about what to do during the coming apocalypse. You could go to a Mayan temple and hang out and wait for the festivities to start.

You could start working on your survival skills and building your underground rescue bunker:

I think a survival seed kit would be helpful for when you come out of the bunker. You can't be sure of the form of the destruction - this time it probably won't be the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.  There are numerous doomsday scenarios: powerful earthquakes, a super volcano at Yellowstone National Park, economic and social collapse, nuclear fallout or a solar storm that destroys satellites and electrical grids. Any of those would be easier to take if you had jumbo seed packets of radishes and broccoli ready to go when you come out of the bunker in 2025.  That would keep me going through 10 years of lava flows and nuclear fallout. Mmmm! Broccoli!

Maybe you need the deluxe two person survival kit. It's currently out of stock, but could be shipped to you as early as next week.  Oh, no!

If you feel a little out of your depth, there are lots of helpful hints, like 37 Things You Should Start Hoarding Now Two Months Ago.

 Luckily Phil Plait, who writes the Bad Astronomy blog for Slate Magazine, has kept those of us who don't get our science from the History Channel or Fox News up to date on what's going on.  "Welcome to the Mayan Notpocalypse", he writes, and proceeds to explain in depth why each of the favored methods of destruction are not going to happen. So it seems that I have a busy Saturday, being out there with all the nutbags who thought the world would end before Christmas.

Ah, Science! Once again people ignore you and then end up looking like monumental whack-jobs to everyone around them. And I'm just talking about the House of Representatives Science Committee.

See you tomorrow.





   

Knights and Knaves

A recent discussion with Nate about his D and D games brought the idea of inserting logic questions into the game as puzzles. That prompted a return to the old Knights and Knaves questions that I used to use in my 7th grade math class when we studies logic. In a far-off land, all the people fell into two categories. Knights always told the truth. Knaves always lied. Your task was to decide which category each person fell into. Here is an example:   

A stranger in their country meets a party of 3 and asks to which race each belongs. The first one mumbles an answer, which the stranger cannot understand. The second says: "He said he was a Knave." The third says to the second: "You're a liar!"
Of what race was the third?    

The key is the second person's comment: no one can ever say, "I'm a knave." If they really are a knave, then they'd be telling the truth, which knaves can't do. If they were a knight, then they'd be lying when they said they were a knave, which knights don't do.  So "I'm a knave" is an impossible statement. When the second person said that person number 1 said that, he must be lying and be a knave. Person 3 therefore was telling the truth and must be a knight.    

These puzzles were popularized by Raymond Smullyan, a logician and professor of philosopher at City College in New York who wrote a book about them entitled, What is the Name of This Book? 

I was especially interested in a series of puzzles patterned after Frank Stockton's short story The Lady Or the Tiger (if you are unfamiliar with it, you can find it here). In lieu of a trial, prisoners are given a choice of opening two doors: one holds a tiger, the other holds a beautiful lady.  In Smullyan's puzzles, you should be able to find the right door if you can reason logically. Each door has a sign. For example the signs could read:  


Door 1:  In this room there is a lady and in the other room there is a tiger.  

Door 2: In one of these rooms there is a lady and in the other room there is a tiger.   

When you ask the king if the signs on the doors are true, he tells you that one is true and one is false.  Which door should you open?        

To find other puzzles like this one (and solutions) you can go here, where there is a complete copy of Smullyan's book The Lady or the Tiger. The website is part of Scribd.com, billed as the world's largest online library. Currently featured on their home page is a copy of the Chicago Streets for Cycling 2020 Plan which makes for very interesting reading and may be a topic for another day.   

Moving On, Happily!

So the leading cause of depression on the male side of the Armstrong household was the continuing constant pain and discomfort with my legs and hips. From the first week in September, when I played golf right before my knee went nuclear and had to be cortisoned through the followup visit with the orthopedist, my legs have been getting more and more pained. I mentioned to the doctor that they seemed to be weak and he did a simple test. Lying on my back, I lifted my left leg a few inches. Then the doctor said I am going to press down on your leg. You try to resist the movement as hard as you can. With the tip of his fingernail, he pushed my leg back down. "Were you resisting?" "I gave it everything I had." So I had no strength in either of my legs at all. They seemed to have weakened considerably in a very short time. I started Physical Therapy at the Hospital and found that it helped. My legs did get a little stronger and I now have a list of exercises to do to keep strengthening the legs now that PT is over. I do them diligently every day.     

This week I went to see my regular doctor and explained to him that I was a little nervous about what could have caused this quick degeneration. On my list of questions were multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy, and other neurological disorders, cancer, leukemia, and any thing else he could think of. Luckily the blood tests were negative for weird things and I wasn't showing the other symptoms that go with these illnesses. Dr. Carlson's advice: get your knees replaced as fast as possible. Then you will start to see some relief. So January I go back to the orthopedist and we will talk about options. In the meantime, keep slamming Advil through the day and take it easy. Hope that Ann doesn't grow tired of doing many of the active things (walk the dog, put on my socks (nope - can't do that on my own)) for me and wait it out until January. I feel better mentally after the doctor visit. I feel better physically after three Advil. I'm sure I'll make it. On a very positive front, I have lost about 37 pounds of weight since last year. Fear is a tremendous motivator. Unfortunately, I have to lose that much weight three more times to get down to a reasonable (though still not really healthy) weight. I hope to be healthy enough to walk around Portland with Tammy and Mike next summer and to play some golf. Eventually, let's get rid of the cane, too. It might take a little longer to get to that point. We'll wait and see. Thanks for listening. I appreciate it.     

C'mon, Man!

Below you will find a request from two members of the House of Representatives  for a hearing by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce on how climate change is related to the recent Superstorm (Hurricane?) Sandy and what approaches should be taken to meet the challenge of global warming. Two especially interesting portions of the request:   

"We have written you 17 times since March 2011 to request that the Committee examine the topic of climate change.

and 

You have not once responded to or even acknowledged our requests.

One of the great results of the just finished election: the use of statistical methods (Sam Wang and Nate Silver, among others) to forecast the election. Folks, if the sciencey - math people got that one right on the money, maybe they're right about climate change. Since almost everyone in the science community agrees that climate change is here, let's stop being this guy and start talking about it.     

I think we're all tired of brushing the sand out of our eyes. C'mon, Man!

October 31, 2012

The Honorable Fred Upton
Chairman
Committee on Energy and Commerce

The Honorable Ed Whitfield
Chairman
Subcommittee on Energy and Power

Dear Chairman Upton and Chairman Whitfield:

On November 7, the election will be over.  Regardless of which party prevails, the election should be a time to return to fact-based policy making.  This is especially true in energy policy.

This week, a massive “superstorm” struck the East Coast.  The storm battered the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern states, devastating portions of New York and New Jersey and resulting in more than 8 million homes losing electricity from the Carolinas to Wisconsin.  Experts are projecting tens of billions of dollars in damages and lost business.

Hurricane Sandy is exactly the type of extreme weather event that climate scientists have said will become more frequent and more severe if we fail to reduce our carbon pollution.  That is why we are writing to request that you hold a hearing on the storm and its relation to climate change in the lame duck session.

We have written you 17 times since March 2011 to request that the Committee examine the topic of climate change.  In January 2012, we asked you to hold a hearing on the role of climate change in causing the record-setting 14 weather-related disasters in 2011 that cost more than $1 billion.[1]  After an unprecedented heat wave in March 2012, we wrote to request a hearing to examine its connections with climate change.[2]  During last summer’s devastating wildfires, droughts, and intense storms, we wrote to request a hearing on the role global climate change played in these events.[3]

You have not once responded to or even acknowledged our requests.  We hope that you will consider the vast devastation wrought by Hurricane Sandy and reconsider your approach.

 For two years, the House of Representatives has pretended that climate change is not happening and that the consequences can be dismissed without concern.  With the election behind us, we will have an opportunity to begin again and give this matter the attention it deserves.  We urge you to seize this opportunity and begin with holding a hearing in the lame duck session.

Sincerely,

Henry A. Waxman  

Bobby L. Rush

Subcommittee on Energy and Power

Way Up On My Christmas List

Now some people would say that your Christmas list is the place to put those things that you really need, like sweaters or a new hip (yeah, it's been one of those weeks again where I spent two days flat on my back, then three days slowly getting back to normal walking around). But I agree with my son, Nathan, who says that Christmas lists are for those things that you really would like, but would never spend your own money on. So this thing is going to the top of my list (and probably Steve's list, too). It's called a Makey Makey and it looks like this:

It's a circuit board that acts like an input device for a computer, video game system, or whatever.

The device gets connected to your computer input with a USB connector. Then you connect something (an apple, say) to the device with the alligator clips that are included. When you touch the apple, you make a connection, and MaKey MaKey sends the computer a keyboard message. The computer just thinks MaKey MaKey is a regular keyboard (or mouse). Therefore it works with all programs and webpages, because all programs and webpages take keyboard and mouse input. If you are having trouble picturing how this works, here's a video in which bananas play a major part:





They are available now for $49.95 from this website. Seriously, can you think of something better than a way to play the piano on bananas?