Last Commented Science Blogs (317)

God can help,pray with all heart and God will help.
God is Good,those that believe and obey Truth will be saved.
Those that do good and do no bad,will be loved.
if you did any bad, Repent and improve and do no more bad,and you will be forgiven.
seek truth and learn.

So the blue Jays have been eating my cat`s food . Now I just place a mirror behind the cat bowel . Seems to be working..Bird see him self in mirror and freaks out-flies away..

The fearsome VIERK/Swedish Political Pathology King Olaf/Nobel Memorial Research Institutet may have stumbled onto a partial cure for severe types of Trump Derangement-Hilary Deficit Syndromes. (TD-HDS). Quite painful, and costly in time, money and possible harmful side effects, but so far, 92 out of 100 hithertoo hopeless clinical trial cases have had their scores on the proprietary political GOM (grounded open mindedness meter) raised by a full 75%. I would give details, oh my most deserving CS comrades, but we may be wired in for the next Nobel Prize in Physiology. However, for those who pay close attention to my astute blogs, I hinted at a number of hypotheses on target to the cures. All well within the past fortnight, cherubim. But for private paying patients, we do make exceptions, if the price is right. Why change the usual approach to private pay health care? Please call the Institutet at 044-69-NIXCLUBCOUP, for special offer details on our generous payment plans. Live operators are standing by. Ever onward, through the fog, for science, and the green back, is our motto.

After readying every emotion, there is understanding entering the realm. - Fortune cookie
... TAGS; Up; 5375;word up;x-apps.; no such Agency
Festivus; Air of Grievance } feet /feat of Strength
.....ball point radi O... x-mas Edition [ dee jay of Future $hock
.... [ he has early warning...he got jew-Jew eYeball...- Lennon ]
38. Child's guide to good & evil / West Coast pOp Art
05........ d3 ) psychedelic Albums.......... 29. vol.2 / W C pop art
33. Clear Light / clear light ........... 24. Easter Everywhere / 13th floor elevators
... 70. Space hymn / Lothar & the hand people
..-65. Jet propelled photograph / soft machine
.. 05. United States of America / U S of A
* * * * part 2. Check the circuit.- Spock { 1st line of Star Trek
23. Arena ) ) the U S S Enterprise
17. con Science of a King } Roddenbury, Desilu et al.
06. the Enemy Within { nimrod, broadband, coaxial- NBC TV
.....07. Mudd's Women......................... 34. Errand of Mercy
....-2. Charlie X ............................. 01. man trap... 33. Devil in the dark [ TV; the voodoo
... 05. naked Time [ Genesis 6
......... 09. What R little girls made of [?
..........01............ 8. Add. Data [ timeless Legacy
29. space seed
01. [ man is trapped ] 30. Taste of Armageddon } its going to taste & look like Soylent Green of Fresno
...part 3. MIS } musical impact segue....
10. Are you experienced / Hendrix experience
05................ ) 15. Fifth Dimension / byrds........ 04. Anthem of the Sun / G dead
.......... 02. Piper at the gates of dawn / p Floyd...01. Elec. music for mind & body / Country Joe & fish
...........03. Strange days / doors.......... 05. U S of A / ibid.
.....( ( ( welcome to 5g-$kynet ) ) ) ...
/delta / 4. } Lmtd. Attn.--- Span Theater ...
....... I ask you to remember that your Federal Government is LARGE...- LBJ, 1967
5324. Station............................... 5370. rolling Lamp
....51. father of wall [masonry...........05. father of winepress
........... 6 5 0. Strong ) radio net.
..........4 7 2 5. s p A c e } the final frontier
.........5 3 7 5. nasa (2 ) up to the sky; to deceive
1171. Baal-G'd / Lord of Fortune.............. 297. brother of Ram [ high,height
4204. C word { _on$piracy.................... 5078. throwing $$ away.....
........ 5107. a flourish of words....................... 5375. Nasa
...........268. coming from the West......................01....... c. Intel.
.........5375....................................................... 5376. NSA, from 5375, make insurrection.

...Sure, we see it often, in attempts to feel better about themselves, and just a bit better than the great unwashed deplorables. Often sourced in deep insecurities about their own intelligence or morality, as in over- and inappropriate use of words and phrases---Fascist, Nazi, racist, words ending in -phobic, antisemitic, and others. The Mona Lisa knowing smiles, the shunning of others who may have rightist, or even centrist, political views. Statements here in profiles displaying these often fear based shuns. Youthful counterphobic acts, such as the repeated Black face of the alt liberal Canadian reelected PM. But I digress. As I've written, there is likely to be racism, deep seated or otherwise, at varying levels, in all of us. From an evolutionary standpoint, it's likely hardwired into the primate genome, from countless generations of the successful immediately recognizing, and quickly dispatching, 'The Other". But historically, for understandable reasons, some groups of humans have outmatched others in perfecting all this, and putting it into practice.The Third Reich, Imperial Japan, White supremacists, Black power separatists, and others. Then there are the groups, national and otherwise, who are demonstrably less so. And how about religion, while we are on the topic. We Yanks had our Japanese war camps, and with Canadians, are still being less than fair to our First Nations folks. But on the news, much is being said about the Han Chinese and their Uiger "retraining " camps, for their own Muslim citizens. But now we hear that the PRC Government is doing the same to citizen of neighboring lands, sometimes even before wandering haplessly into China. All sorts of justifications, some perhaps with marginal validity, are used here. But methinks it's that age old curse of us higher primates, in our over concern about "The Other". Actually a topic in modern ethical philosophy as well. Can't make this stuff up, my fellow CS lemmings.

No. This blog is not about supernodels.

I just wanted to let you know about an upcoming celestial event.

Tomorrow 3 planets, Jupiter, Mars and Saturn will rise near the horizon
in very close proximity in the southeast sky around 1:15 am 3/18/2020
and no bright stars will appear near, so they should be quite visible.

If you have one, get your telescope, or binoculars out.

You may also enjoy some close-ups;

.....as opposed to otherwise.... Recently went to one of those new coffee shops that form an alternative to the usually ueber liberal caffeine haunts. A growth industry. This one is named Covfefe, after an apparent blotched tweet by our supreme POTUS dear leader. Trump mugs, coffee bags, bumper stickers, pens/pins, flags, etc. , and the types of characters one might expect to meet there. The crowd were talking excitedly about President Trump's responses to Covid19. There was the usual dissing of the dissing of Trump. But no shortage of conspiracy talk. To anyone with a modicum of biological or medical knowledge, the theories were ridiculous. But I just listened, in line with my personal evolution in this present life. But I digress. These folks were absolutely convinced that the virus was created in, pick your foe, a weapons lab in NK, PRC, Russia, Israel, Ukraine, or by CIA types. Got me thinking about how and why folks assume their knowledge. Believe whatever we may, but if several personal factors around this are lacking, we might be in support of great errors, or worse. These would include: attention to the value of experience, verses novel info;- realization that science only can provide information, which must be subjected to scrutiny;-that when such "knowledge" gets turned into policy, the policy makers are far from their own political biases;-any policy must be evaluated for efficacy in an ongoing fashion;- and much more. And two other items. Where is our humility in any of this? And perhaps most importantly, what does grandmother have to say about the issue?

Having once more deftly managed my usual pathetic detractors, and gently further bonded with the man crush fellows, it's back again to shameless showing off, under the pretext of unsolicited public education. We've covered, in only a few Blogs, most of the ideas underlying basic, and even more advanced, Epid. It's origins, purposes, development, ground level technical features, and much more, were covered, admittedly only in a cursory fashion. But careful readers will have gotten the main points.
Of course, in these days of the Chinese Wuhan wet markets virus, many will want to know what Epid reveals about this latest gift to the world from the one party Han state. In doing so, many of the basic concepts which were covered earlier in the lecture series enter in.
Now we cover various features of statistical analysis, showing how closely related are medicine, Epid, public health and biostatistics.This actually is an extension of calculating the results of laboratory experimentation. It's rare to compare just two mice, or viral tissue culture Petri plates, for the differences after different exposures to experimental variables. And ideally, many attempts are made to have these, before the experiment, to be identical. Strains of laboratory animals are bred, at great expense, to be as nearly identical as possible. Of course, except in the rare natural occuring experimental situation, this is not possible for researchers on humans, unless the scientists worked in NAZI times, But I digress.
All sorts of factors in free living human populations come up, many of which relate to the outcomes of experiments. So called intermediate variables (confounders, effect modifiers, etc.), while we can try to "match" study subjects and controls in various study designs, this is far from perfect. So techniques were developed to gather such data, say smoking, or weight, and to try to adjust for their differential effects in generating results. With few such factors, simple tabular statistics, such as 2X2 table Chi square or T tests work, and with so called AVOVA techniques, (analysis of variance), even more statistical adjusting can be done.
But for many extraneous factors, and many thousands of study subjects, nore refined statistical techniques are needed. And these can also help to estimate the sizes and relevance of differences in study populations.so called "effect measures", and to guage statistical significance. As a group, these all are forms of what is called multiple regression techniques, and have direct impact on making predictions ("Models"), as in COVID -19.

Later, alligators. And I await careful reading and notification of my gramatical and other erors from my wanker detractors. Here, boys, come and get your treat. .

Hydrologists, climatologists, and epidemiologists, present company included, push them on us all. Sure they have their places, and there's the saying, 'all models are bad, but a few are useful'. And Samuel Clemens, (Mark Twain for folks like M in Dream Time), had a few choice words on the subject. "There are lies, damn lies, and statistics". My thoughts exactly, when I heard about this "500 year flood", second in a few years, in the US mid west, on Public Radio. (NPR---National Proletarian Radio) What gives?

...Half way through my second go around on Prof. Sean Carroll's DVD from the Great Courses on the topic. Pretty mind blowing. Only getting a dilettante's level of understanding, but well worth it. Plus lots on cosmology, relativity and particle physics along the way. Check it out.