Brains?

Woah,
I just noticed my coffee was precariously balanced half on/half off the desk. Must correct this.
*Swig*

It's a wonderful Friday. I've cleaned the house, gone for a run and John's home taking a nap with the cat. It doesn't take much to make me content.

Found this good article from Newsweek (via Reddit)

What we really should teach kids in Science. I tend to agree with the author. I think that there should be a class to specifically set out to teach people how to think critically. I don't think we should be waiting until college level for this kind of education. I haven't yet, but next in my line up is this iTunes U class from Oxford on Critical Reasoning.

There's kind of a scare going on right now that soon we will be facing a war on science. In my opinion, a war on reason. There seems to be a feeling that science is a bunch of bull and scientists are liars. I find this frightening. If we can't trust a formula that was designed to rattle out truth, what's the point in anything?
I guess I get a little nihilistic if you take my science away.

Back to the positives. I think we should be teaching people how to think in schools. Not necessarily what to think. Of course we need to be teaching the facts and theories that we base our existence on, but don't we also need to be training people how to find these things out for themselves too? How are we going to build new sciences if we're just repeating old data?

You've got to give the man and fishing rod, not a fish!

So few people know how to analyze data. I myself am not very good at it, but it comes with practice. Most people are used to accepting things as fact or fiction based on who told it to them. This is why I don't watch the news. It's all about the bias of where it comes from.
Sure I fill my twitter feed and RSS with information sources that validate my current beliefs and thoughts, but I don't accept all my leads as facts. I try to look at the motivations behind publications.
Most of the time.

Here's a bit of fun.
Brain games from Cambridge.
I took the 12 pillars of intelligence test.
Meh, maybe I shouldn't share but, I'm in the 37%
Call it confirmation bias, but I feel this is fairly right. I know I'm not that bright, but I have a bit stronger visual memory than some.
I wasn't surprised at my inability to remember numbers. I'm terrible at numbers.
Most people are 7 +/- 2. This is why phone numbers are 7 digits long.
I can barely recall 5 numbers on a good day.
Give me more than 5 numbers to remember and chances are that I can't.

However the "select the color of ink, color spelled" test I rocked.

Fun times.

Speaking of brains, in my Zombies in Literature class I learned that the idea of brain eating zombies has only been around since this movie. 1985.
Return of the Living Dead introduced the brain eating zombie. The zombies eat brains because it relieves the pain of being undead.
It's weird how quickly the folklore of zombies has cropped up and changed so dramatically since the 1930s.

Bit o' blog...

For todays bit of blog...

 

More time spent at work.

I almost didn't go running today. Would have been my first slip on my new marathon scheduel. I woke up late, was already in the shower, telling myself I wasn't going to run this morning. Maybe I'd do it later, after work or something. Then I stopped myself. No. I knew I was lying. I wasn't going to run after work. It just didn't make sense. I would want to eat, and sleep. John would have to get up early for school and I wouldn't want to spend the 30 minutes I'd have with him on a treadmill at the gym. So I got myself out of the shower, dressed and went running. I had plenty of time and I knew it. I'm just used to having more time after my runs. Instead I only had 30 minutes or so. I was just being selfish wanting to sit around the house. I knew I would have regretted it had I acted the way I wanted to.

I wanted to act like lil cat. Lazy, lazy cat.

 

I listened to Point of Inquiry's podcast. It was a debate on how accomidating one should be on another person's views. Now I see myself as a very nice and accepting person, but as JT told me once. You don't let someone walk around believing 2+2=5. That's just mean.

 

 

Remember the old game, Lemmings? Where the little green haired guys would try to walk off of things to their death you had to stop them? (I LOVED that game, terrible at it, but good music)

Well, turns out it's all based on a LIE.

Lemmings don't commit suicide. (http://www.snopes.com/disney/films/lemmings.asp)

 

The lemming myth is based on a Disney film White Wilderness (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052389/)  where footage was faked to show lemmings killing themselves by wandering off cliffs. (The movie was also filmed in Alberta, Canada not a native habitat to lemmings) Now lemmings don't kill themselves, but they do go through population crashes about every 4 generations and people have been unable to figure out why or how.  Maybe they starve to death, maybe they're found by preditors, or maybe... they commit infantcide.

There's really not a lot of research on how the lemmings crash every 4 years or so. This is probably due to the fact that they burrow down deep to prevent having to hibernate in the winter.  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemming)

 

Huh. So, yet again a myth of my childhood exposed. (See Lou Gerhig's disease post)

 

Today at work, two of the PA's and I laughed quite hard at this recent discovery of adrenal fatigue. (http://www.adrenalfatigue.org/)

This could be the replacement for the fibromyalgia catch-all! So, why this isn't really a diagnosis. There are several treatment options available as well as reading material.

 

Man, I've almost decided I need to take myself off of Science Based Medicine's RSS (http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/). I get too angry sometimes. Yet, again. It can be really funny to read these updates in the quackery.

 

 

 

 

Gloria's Playmate- Robbie the robot

Kids like robots and robots like kids (i.e. Robbie, thanks Mr. Asimov)

So now Javier Movellan from UC San Diego Machine Perception Laboratory has spent nearly 3 decades observing and influencing kids interactions with robots.

Babies are naturally drawn to things that look like faces. I remember reading during my OB rotation that babies will stare longer at dots that look like a face than not.Wonderful artistry by me. Even now, I'm sure you're seeing that "non-face" as a poor man who has fallen upside down.
You and your brain. Trying to make sense of things.

In 1987, Movellan and his partner John Watson found out that, even if a robot doesn't look particularly human, if it interacts with the child the kind will treat it like a human. It will respond and follow it.

This makes me wonder, if facial recognition (as far as recognizing faces as faces) starts around 6 months, and stranger anxiety (recognizing unfamiliar faces as unfamiliar) happens about 2 years old. When does the uncanny valley come into play?


Recently (Well, last January) Movellan and his San Diego pals got in a bit of trouble for making a "robot baby."
I'm sure this has to do with the Uncanny Valley. There is a severe drop in our comfort level as something seems "almost" human.
No surprize that Zombie is at the bottom. Something that was human, maybe even someone you know, however, they are certainly NOT human now.

Watch this video and gauge your own reaction to the more "realistic" robots.
Of course it could be the creepy music they chose to play, too.

In my opinion, I have no fear of Isaac (my roomba) unlike my cat.


But the Speak and Spell voice will always creep me out.
I learned to spell just so I wouldn't be reprimanded by that evil evil device!

Ramble, bamble, zombie shamble...

It was another KELLY VISIT WEEKEND!!

The bits I remember were great fun. The bits I don't remember I'm told were fun too. Apologies to both Spencer and Scott who received the brunt end of the crazy. You boys are good friends. Please don't leave... no really.

Best part of the weekend? The MUD RUN!!
A costumed 5k topped off with 300 feet of mudpit.

There were some GREAT costumes there. Several Mario Parties, Pac-Man and the Ghosts, a Flock of lost sheep, 5-6 Brides, Oompa-Loompas, and Zombies. Lots and lots of Zombies.

We started out the race jogging along and a (what's the word for group of zombies?) herd of zombies were stumbling along next to us in the Romero fashion. Then, a blood-chilling shreak was loosed and SHAMBLE SHAMBLE SHAMBLE, those zombies blasted past everyone in a truly horrifying 28 days later sprint.

Then, someone dressed as a hunter (Well, I think it was a costume. Arkansas remember?) "shot" the zombie and he flopped over dead in the field.

Good times.

We dressed as "The Flash" mostly so we could wear men's underwear on the outside. When the lady at Target learned what we were doing she made us promise to bring back photos of how ridiculous we looked. Then gave me her work schedule. I think she was serious...

The Cat's Paw

My blogging skills might take a turn for the terrible soon.
As time goes on and I'm adding mileage, my pre-work runs are going to get longer and my pre-work blogs shorter. Or they might vanish entirely. Good thing I only work 3 days a week.
So much to write about today. I hardly know where to begin!!


I think I'll start out with this.
Reflexology for Cats.

Lets not keep the pseudoscience and alternative quackery to ourselves. Get your pets involved too for a housewide experience! This author starts out by saying that the World Health Organization claims it's one of the fastest growing "natural therapies" in the world today. After 3-4 google searches using the search terms: World Health Organization, WHO, Alternative Medicine, and Reflexology (in all possible combinations.) I still couldn't find this claim. After searching the WHO website for reflexology and alternative medicine the only relevant article I could only locate was this.
A lit review bascially counting how many times articles on alternative medicines have been published over the years and how it shows an increase. However, reporting methods are vague so in the discussion the authors conclude, "Who knows?"

I never found this out and out claim from the WHO, but I did find several mentions of if by different websites on reflexology. (Um, citation please?)

Back to the cat.
Reflexology, a complementary or alternative medicine. Now before I get blasted with arguments of how it worked for your Aunt Bessie or whatnot. Let me give my (highly valued and greatly respected) opinion on SCAMS (So-called Complementary and Alternative Medicines per Dr. Mark Crislip) I guess it goes back to my homeschool/christian school days with Phil 4:8 Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable--if anything is excellent or praiseworthy--think about such things.

So, um. Test it. If it works, bring it on in. If it doesn't (Like the recent acupuncture issue.) DON'T CALL IT MEDICINE. Don't use it as a treatment. It's a scam. There's no evidence it will work or not. There's no reasonable belief anything will improve or change. Therefore it becomes a swindle. (Especially with how expensive medical care can be!)


Again back to the cat.

People may think that reflexology does not apply to cats because the paw is too small, it is too difficult to perform and/or generally not well tolerated. In my experience I have found that this is not the case. From my observation, many animal guardians unconsciously perform ear, face and paw reflexology because they know that it feels nice for their pets. Most people are largely unaware that they are affecting everything in the body through this simple gesture.

So why not pay $50 to get a book telling how to do something you already do unconsciously? Maybe I'm too cynical and Spock would be a more well behaved cat (Ha.) If I practiced a little Reiki as he lounged around my house.

Heck, as this practitioner from the video suggests maybe I should reiki my coffee to give it more life energy!!

Sigh.

In other news, my sister came to visit and we had way more fun that can be added to this post right now.
Look for a ramble-bamble post on life later.
For now, you'll have to deal with the science rage.

Back!

After a long talk with one of my co-workers a few days ago I realized why I hadn't been myself recently. I haven't been as happy or energetic or much of anything. I had developed an incredible apathy for pretty much everything. I was miserable and infectious.
To remidy this problem I've begun marathon training again in earnest. So today was an "off" day so it was pretty easy start. I've been running between 3 and 4 miles every other day for the past 3-4 weeks so... I'm ready to tackle this again.
I had been training back in July, but gave up because I worked myself too hard at work. Not going to happen again. So excited. I began today with some weight training I found on one of my iphone apps.
140 days until the Little Rock Marathon.
This does fill me with excitement.
In other news. I had a great geek session with Tackett at work. This is very important. There are very few people my age or gender that I can geek out with (Tackett isn't either but finding SOMEONE to talk to can be very difficult.) I had been having a difficult day and he and I spent nearly 15 minutes discussing zombies, video games, books, podcasts. Sigh, I felt so much better.
It did alert to me to the fact that I hadn't had a conversation with someone one (other than John) about things that interested me in over a month.
Transitioning into my sister is coming to visit again!
This is probably the last time I had a good conversation with someone, so she's coming back!!

I guess this is the interesting bit for today. Here's an actor that I think puts a TON of work into his movies. Christian Bale
Check this out
American Psycho 2000
The Machinist 2004
Batman 2005


How do you go from 2004-2005 without a lot of work.
That's very impressive, and a little creepy.

Augh, I should eat something before work. I don't get a break until 5pm for lunch...

Oh, fake ebola!

Go to class FREE card.

I just love Open University.

I know I'm a geek because the thought that I can take free Yale and MIT classes gets me more excited than the prospect of free cupcakes.

I just signed up for a class explaining the influence Zombies have had on literature. Awesome.
This of course is in addition to the Astronomy, Microbiology and New Testament classes I've already signed up for.
See, I'm learning useful things as well.
I went a little bezerk on cleaning today. I'm sitting in a nearly empty living room. The only things still here are couches and TV (which I'm not allowed to move by myself, seeing as how my height equals it's screen size)

I've been working on my Spanish again. I'm feeling a lot better about my abilities. Not great, but better. Maybe in a couple of years I might consider myself bilingual. Sigh, lifelong dream to speak more than one language. Then I can turn my sights on all those other languages I feel are important. I would really like to speak German, more than Spanish. However, currently, Spanish has greater application to my life. I actually NEED to speak Spanish, while I would simply like to speak German. Meh, we'll see.

Had a review class for the CEN last night. This test would certify me as an emergency nurse (and be really cool) I am so excited and nervous to take this test. Every once in a while I look around at my life and see how I've progressed toward these little arbitrary goals I set for myself. It's kinda scary sometime for me to realize how old I am getting, based on how I'm progressing through these life events.

Boring, prattling, life-update post.
I'll browse the internet for a bit and find something interesting later.

For now,
I'm making nachos.

Spectroscopy? There's an app for that.

When I was in high school, cell phone pretty much only played "snake." I got a phone when I
started driving (I had a fairly unreliable car) and used it to call my parents and John. No pictures, few games, not really any ringtones. I lost it on the band trip. Etc. Pretty common cell phone history. Also common was the inevitable law do not use your phone in class. It cannot be visible. If it rings or vibrates it gets taken away.
Well fine, like anyone would/could call me in class. Like there were any cool games on my phone anyway. My calculator on the other hand was awesome. Mario, Wolfenstein, a few various card games my friends wrote. I even wrote a simple textbase adventure game. Then Joseph wrote a music making program and we couldn't play with our calculators in class anymore.

Back to cell phones.
Someone has realized the ubiquitous and usefulness of these now highly advanced gadgets, Alexander Scheeline made a cameraphone spectrometer. It's available here.

Just another way to let people know how accessible science is.

I know there are apps for everything. There's even a great debate about allowing students to use cellphone apps for...well... everything. However, when I look around the nurses' station at work and see all the docs and nurses looking things up, checking drug interactions, and researching unusual conditions I think, why don't we allow students to do this? Professionals do it. I think we should be training people how to use apps and google to the best ability. Those are real life skill sets we should be training people in.
We don't have to have the periodic table memorized anymore. It can go anywhere.

MONOPOLY!

I'm a sucker for McDonald's Monopoly.
No really. It's terrible because I don't really like their food, just the game pieces. I have such great memories of playing Monopoly with my Dad, the real game as well as McDonald's version.
It's Monopoly time again and, vegetarianism on hold, I've eaten every meal there thus far.

My husband told me to enjoy my epic plunge into fatness.
Oh, I will.

I even went back to McDonald's after the box containing my Big Mac didn't have pieces on it. Yep, I'm that person.
So far I've won a breakfast sandwich.

Evidence of things not seen.

I can get a lot done when I have nothing to do.
Here's the proof of John's fall break.
Saturday- Watched House season 6, ate a pizza and made a penguin
Sunday- Watched Scrubs, and painted some minis for Last Night on Earth
Monday- I can't say I remember...

Tuesday-Had sushi with Sarah and Vito, watched zombie movies, played zombie board games and watched A Bit of Fry & Laurie.

Wednesday-Beat Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Climbed Pinnacle Mountain



GAME REVIEW:

Amnesia: The Dark Descent.

Yes, its a scary game. I recommend to play it as prescribed, with headphones and all the lights off. You can't "fight" any of the bad guys, you have to run and hide from them. If you see them, your sanity goes down, if you're in the dark too long your sanity goes down, if anything "creepy happens" your sanity goes down. When your sanity is low the screen is all wonky, fuzzy, and you can't control your character as well. Makes for running from the bad guys really difficult. You have to solve puzzles and wander around this Prussian castle to figure out who you are and why you're being held hostage. There are these undead monsters all over the place that kill you pretty quick, plus weird creepy things like pulsating pink goo that takes over certain rooms and whispering flashbacks of screaming and sounds of torture. The puzzles are not that difficult to figure out (pull some levers, mix some potions) and the game is pretty linear. The graphics are great and yes the game is graphical. No one wears clothes. I don't get it. The corpses I'm ok with them being naked but the main boss? Uh, well old wizard men opening portals to other worlds are normally clothed in the other games I've played. However, it worked. I was ok with it.
I don't want to give the plot away just in case you decide to play it. It's a good game with good graphics and a very small development team that did a great job. Get on Steam and buy Amnesia, but I recommend you have a friend to call when you can't get to sleep at night.

The cat has chewed through the last power cord for the iphones. So... can't up or download anything anymore. I have to email my pictures to myself...Sigh.
Also the Wii won't read discs and the DVD player broke. I don't know what I've done but the tech-gods are angry at me. I guess I didn't kill enough frogs...
Well, there's always the NES with Adventures of Lolo.


My husband has been reading me reddit posts for a while now.
This one is actually a good question.
What's the best thing from your childhood that you can't indulge in now because you're a stinkin' adult?
I'd say trying to get from one side of the room to the other without touching the floor. That was the BEST game ever! I would even try to get from the basement to my room (the attic) as a child, man, it would get tricky in the kitchen, that china cabinet was not too sturdy... Climbing on the furniture, taking huge leaps, man, it was great.

I guess I could do that now but the layout is all wrong. My mom was MUCH better at designing obstacle courses out of furniture. ;)

Its a good day.

It's fall break for John. Which means we've been doing NOTHING since I got off work 11pm Friday.
I take that back.
We've watched the entire 5th season of House and the 1st season of Scrubs. I made a penguin out of a glove and painted some minis for our Last Night on Earth Zombie game. We've also played with little cat and had an extensive water fight that ended up soaking the bathroom and each other.

It's been good and it's only Monday.
I did have to wake up at 5 to get to the hospital though. Today was the first day of my pilot study and I wanted to make sure the shift huddles started well.

Nobel Prize for Medicine goes to.... Robert Edwards for his work on invitro fertilization. I'm sure you all know what this is, so I won't go into detail. It just seems sad to me that there is such a lag time between discoveries and the recognition for them. I guess we have to "wait and see" if a discovery is really as important as it seems before we get around to awarding people for it. I say this because the man is pretty old now, not in great health, and his partner (who probably would have shared the prize) has already died.

The ethics section on Wikipedia's IVF thread is very interesting. Sometimes I think people make up issues where they don't exist just so they can hear themselves speak. Such as the Catholic Church's argument that IVF is a separation of the marital act and therefore an immoral way to conceive children. It opposes "Natural Law," (to which my husband griped, "If it couldn't happen then it WOULDN'T happen.")

This brings up an interesting (and I feel unrelated point, but I'm going there anyway.) in the current book I'm reading (Hitler's Scientists) the argument is made that scientists are there to discover and explain things. They should not be morally bound or ethically responsible for how their discoveries are then utilized. There are so many comic book villains suffering from this it's not even funny.
Then there are real people.

So what's the thing? Invent and let others use to destroy? Or keep it to yourself and hope no one else figures it out? You can't control how people use your data. Maybe we should all just curl up in little balls and hide inside so no one can discover anything and no one can cause harm.
On the other hand, how will we ever learn to do good? How can we learn what feels good if we never get hurt?
Wow, too deep for 2:15 on a Monday...

I say knowledge is power. Do the most good for the most people. I don't think scientists can figure out every possibility that their discoveries can be used for. What if they mean well, but it is utilized for bad? Who gets the fault? He guy who invented the gun or the one holding it? Come on now. But, I know things are not that black and white.

How did we get from the Nobel Prize to Oppenheimer? The guy never won a Nobel Prize.

This does remind me of the time in high school when I memorized all the Nobel Prize winners, years and contributions. Phew. Like I said, I like to stalk scientists. Especially dead ones.


Also, a clown was just voted into office in Brazil. It seems he won, by a lot.

Habits

I'm a creature of habit. I know this. I also know I can get a bit cranky when those patterns are altered. Throw extra balls at me and if I can't figure out the trajectory in time I'll drop them, and every thing else. Quite angered too.
Not really saying this with much specific in mind, just throwing it out there.
I like to wake up, go running, listen to my podcasts, shower, eat a bit of toast while browsing my google reader and listening to NPR. Then I blog and I go to work. That's how I like to start a day. When that doesn't get to happen, I feel off all day long. Like I've missed the best parts.
Unfortunately, on my days off once I've done my "plan" I have to think of what to do with the next 13 hours.
I'm not off work today, so no worries mate!

I'm reading Hitler's Scientists. It looks at the science in Germany leading up to the WWII and how it affected Hitler's mindset as well as opened/closed certain doors during that war. I'm getting the feeling a LOT of German scientists hated Einstein. Simply HATED him. I've also learned that Hitler was a terrible scientist. Not at all the clever, scheming mastermind he's been portrayed as. If he couldn't understand something he would shake his head and walk away (good thing he couldn't understand Von Braun!) He believed in astrology and homeopathy as well as various other pseudosciences. Once I get further (heh heh) in the book I'll give a better review.

Man, I had this girl shadowing me at work yesterday that simply could not handle silence. I talk, I think I talk too much sometimes, but wow. She was amazing. I didn't handle it very well. Now I'm super aware of how much I speak. I'm working on only talking when necessary. That was a terrible experience. I like silence. It allows for thought.

Oops, work time!
Oh read this if you have time.
Individual intelligence isn't as important as we thought for group functioning!