Official BBO Hijacked Thread Thread

[Winstonm]

Boomer Sooner.

Oklahoma had the highest rate of police violence against Black Americans, the study found.

[pilowsky]

How to random using lava lamps - Cloudflare.

[y66]

This story really got me: 52 Years in 11 Days: A Son, Facing Death, Finds His Father

[pilowsky]

I just watched the press conference where the announcement of the winners of the Nobel prize for chemistry (2021) was made.

The award was made for an impressive breakthrough in the way that chiral molecules can be produced using organic molecules.

Imagine for a moment if someone discovered a way to make squeeze play comprehensible to average club players.

The press corps was extremely well-prepared and were able to think of 6 questions before they gave up and went back to their more usual onerous tasks.

After the winner had gone back to having coffee with his wife in Amsterdam the guy from the associated press asked why the prize wasn't given to someone else.

The prize is commonly divided amongst 3 people and totals $1,000,000. This is 25% less than the person who comes second gets in a tennis game.

 

it says it's about 20 years ago that you found these uh catalysts could you briefly um summarize where um how where are you today in comparison to 20 years ago? A. Much further along.

 

um what was your first feeling when you got this famous uh telephone call from Stockholm this morning? A. Happy. (this is not always the case - sometimes the call comes in the middle of the night).

 

uh congratulations on this uh this award a professor when these discoveries were made 20 years ago did you realize immediately the impact that this would have did you foresee a little bit where this field of studies would go or has it surprised you at the same time as science has progressed on through these discoveries over these last 20 years? A. See answer to first question.

 

I wonder these organocatalysts how does it work that they only make one of these mirror images and not the other? A. Who knows.

 

What is your favourite catalyst? This is my favourite question - there used to be a show on TV in Australia called "The Inventors" where people would compete for the best invention. One of the judges invariably asked if it came in different colours.

 

What will winning do for your future research? A. ???

 

This was all the interest the international press was able to muster.

THEN:

No more questions. Prof List goes back to coffee with his wife.

 

The Chair of the committee then asked-

Any questions for the committee.

 

At which point an English reporter asked a long and winding question that went something like:

COVID blah blah - mRNA technology is important. Is this a future Nobel prize?

 

[kenberg]

This story really got me: 52 Years in 11 Days: A Son, Facing Death, Finds His Father

 

A nice story, I am glad they succeeded in reaching each other.

 

You have probably seen enough of my posts to know that I also am adopted. As to finding my biological parents I knew who and where they were, but I never made use of that. A child very much needs a father and a mother, a child very much does not need two fathers and/or two mothers. As an adult I sometimes thought of finding my biological mother, it would not have been difficult, and telling her that it all worked out well, but I decided to leave well enough alone. Possibly that sounds cold, I don't mean it to be, I could easily imagine her married to a guy who knew nothing about her earlier life. I was fine, I have always hoped that she was fine, let it be.

 

In the last few years I have been in touch with some biological relatives. We are all old enough now so that it will not disturb anyone. I have been invited to visit if I get back to Minnesota, and when covid slacks off enough to make travel easy I might do that.

 

As to a man's rights, something the article discusses a bit, I regard it as a simple matter. If you want to have a say over what happens with any children you have, you marry the girl. If you don't do that, you are out of the discussion. I realize the law now takes a different view. I like it my way.

 

 

[Winstonm]

A nice story, I am glad they succeeded in reaching each other.

 

You have probably seen enough of my posts to know that I also am adopted. As to finding my biological parents I knew who and where they were, but I never made use of that. A child very much needs a father and a mother, a child very much does not need two fathers and/or two mothers. As an adult I sometimes thought of finding my biological mother, it would not have been difficult, and telling her that it all worked out well, but I decided to leave well enough alone. Possibly that sounds cold, I don't mean it to be, I could easily imagine her married to a guy who knew nothing about her earlier life. I was fine, I have always hoped that she was fine, let it be.

 

In the last few years I have been in touch with some biological relatives. We are all old enough now so that it will not disturb anyone. I have been invited to visit if I get back to Minnesota, and when covid slacks off enough to make travel easy I might do that.

 

As to a man's rights, something the article discusses a bit, I regard it as a simple matter. If you want to have a say over what happens with any children you have, you marry the girl. If you don't do that, you are out of the discussion. I realize the law now takes a different view. I like it my way.

 

 

 

What is a man, what has he got

If not himself, then he has naught

Not to say things he truly feels

And not the words of one who kneels

The record shows I took the blows

And did it my way

[y66]

Wait, the Grail is a cup? We're looking for a cup?

[pilowsky]

It's 18 minutes long and includes a (wildly inaccurate) Python simulation of the game.

[pilowsky]

The Australian government is so concerned about the environment it has decided to release a FFS discussion paper.

You can discuss it, FFS, right here - https://www.industry.gov.au/news/future-fuels-strategy-discussion-paper-have-your-say

If you want to say something FFS you can even send them an email:

I mean...

If we manage to make up our tiff with the French we can form a FAUKUS alliance - to go with it.

[y66]

Fun read: Paul McCartney Doesn’t Really Want to Stop the Show

[y66]

From Helen MacDonald's review of "Dune":

 

Earlier this summer, sitting in a London cinema for a screening of Denis Villeneuve’s hugely anticipated, pandemic-delayed adaptation of Frank Herbert’s classic sci-fi novel “Dune,” I found myself unexpectedly close to tears. I’d not been in a movie theater in almost two years, and I’d forgotten what it was like. Forgotten how the light inside a big auditorium always feels dusty and late-night weary, no matter what time it is. Forgotten the particular smell of popcorn and carpet cleaner, how it evokes a childhood memory of brushing my fingers across the static on the glass of a just-switched-on TV set; forgotten the vertiginous scale of the space and the screen.

 

When the film began, I heard the thump of a heartbeat working in counterpoint to my own, bursts of percussive discordance as Hans Zimmer’s score cut in, and then harsh desert light was burning the backs of my eyes and I was somewhere else entirely, witnessing the brutal quelling of an insurgency on a distant planet — and after a while, I realized I was whispering, “Oh, my God” under my breath over and over again. Afterward, I walked along empty streets with my head full of deserts and burning date palms, vast ships, monstrous sandworms and a sense of wonderment that the book’s visions had been so exquisitely realized. Josh Brolin, who plays the warrior-minstrel Gurney Halleck in the movie, took a lifelong “Dune”-fan friend to a screening in New York, and at the end of the movie the friend started screaming: “That was it! That was it! That’s what I saw! That’s what I saw when I was a kid!”

“Dune” the movie has clear contemporary relevance: It’s an ecological epic that warns against religious and imperialist dogma and portrays a people suffering under colonial occupation, a film whose main character is forced to adapt to a new reality or die. When Villeneuve describes “Dune” as a “coming-of-age story,” it feels far more than the coming-of-age of Paul Atreides. The phrase speaks more generally of our need to adapt and evolve, shed the ghosts of how we have always lived, in order to survive. For the strangest thing happened to me after watching “Dune” this summer: It slipped into a different part of my memory than films usually do. It felt like news. Images from it have unexpectedly become part of the way I’ll always remember this summer and fall: images of burning ships and glittering sands interspersed with forest fires, the terrible legacies of colonial crimes, failed wars, the constant drumbeat of the pandemic, waves of religious and neo-religious fervor spurred by societal inequities and the constant, dreadful background knowledge that the climate is breaking down around us. “Dune” was always an allegorical novel; sci-fi’s ability to hold up a mirror darkly to culture is one of its primary aims. But “Dune” the film has somehow become part of the world for me, less a reflection than a refraction of reality, burnished with desert dust and shadow.

[Winstonm]

5 claims from social media that are total Bull-Shiite.

 

CLAIM: A new tax policy allows the IRS to "monitor all transactions involving bank accounts worth more than $600." Another new policy taxes all payments of more than $600 made through applications like PayPal and Venmo.

 

CLAIM: The owner of five restaurants in Terminal C at Denver International Airport told employees they needed to get vaccinated for COVID-19 by Nov. 1 or they would be fired. None of the cooks, dishwashers, bussers or hosts showed up to work, so there were no restaurants open in Terminal C. The owner immediately sent an email reversing the vaccine mandate.

 

CLAIM: A Delta Airlines pilot who had recently been vaccinated for COVID-19 died mid-flight within the last 10 days, forcing the plane to make an emergency landing.

 

CLAIM: A 2018 study that looked at the effectiveness of N95 masks versus medical masks found that masks don't stop the spread of viruses.

 

CLAIM: Video shows people dropping "dead" outside a COVID-19 vaccination clinic in London after receiving a shot.

[pilowsky]

Out of interest, where do you find these people and their claims?

Sometimes, when bored, I try to find them on Facebook or youtube - but they only appear when they are being mocked.

Maybe we need a thread for ridiculous conspiracy theories.

OTOH, Here is a transcript of an interview with mad King Rupert feeling a little sad about the Maldives, but oh well.

(there was an equally bananas face to camera interview with Gina Rinehart.

Murdoch (

)

We should approach climate change with great scepticism.

um climate change has been going on as long as the planet is here and there'll always be a little bit of it at the moment the north pole is melting a bit but the south pole is getting bigger things are happening but how much are we doing uh with emissions and so on well as far as Australia goes nothing in the overall picture china has but if you talk about environment and health and smoke and so on of course we're all environmentalists we all want clean air um but in terms of the world's temperature going up the worst asp the most alarmist things have said maybe three percent three sets three sorry three degrees centigrade in 100 years at the very most one of those would come from man-made be man-made now what it means is if the sea level rises six inches that's a big deal in the world the Maldives might disappear or something but okay we've got to learn to we can't mitigate that we can't stop it we just got to stop building vast houses on seashores um and go back a little bit uh you know the world had been changing for thousands and thousands of years it's just a lot more complicated today because we're so much more advanced

 

[Winstonm]

Out of interest, where do you find these people and their claims?

Sometimes, when bored, I try to find them on Facebook or youtube - but they only appear when they are being mocked.

Maybe we need a thread for ridiculous conspiracy theories.

OTOH, Here is a transcript of an interview with mad King Rupert feeling a little sad about the Maldives, but oh well.

(there was an equally bananas face to camera interview with Gina Rinehart.

 

The claims came from an article on Yahoo.

[pilowsky]

OK, it was a bit of a struggle but it turns out that birds aren't real because the US government replaced them all with drones.

The group has a large following and sells excellent merch.

[y66]

It's pretty much peak leaf season in Maine now.

 

Photo by Buddy Poland.

 

[y66]

Came across this story after reading about Ross Douthat's experience with chronic Lyme disease which illustrates how ineffectual our healthcare system can be when dealing with problems that are not well understood:

 

Google is exploring a health record tool for patients

 

After 13 years, Google is coming back for patient health records. The tech giant has launched an early user feedback program aimed at exploring how patients might want to see, organize, and share their own medical record data.

 

The work could inform the creation of a consumer-facing medical records tool along the lines of Apple’s Health Records app. It also follows an early attempt by Google — later panned by medical experts — at creating a new version of the electronic medical record in 2008. This time around, timing may be on the company’s side: Its new effort, which is still in the early stages, came on the heels of the introduction of the federal information blocking rule, which lets patients access their medical records through health apps.

 

Google is currently recruiting about 300 patients for its health records study from community health facilities and academic medical centers in Northern California, Atlanta, and Chicago who use Epic as their medical record vendor. The study is only open to patients who use Android devices.

 

In a statement, a Google spokesperson said the company was “running a user feedback program to test features that give users the ability to collect health information from their provider patient portals,” and added that any health data gathered as part of the feedback program will not be sold or used for Google ads. The information will be encrypted and stored in the cloud, the spokesperson said.

 

While the tech giant is not directly partnering with any organizations for the program, it has reached out to at least four health systems to alert them of the effort, including the University of California, Davis; UCSF; Alameda Health System in Oakland, Calif.; and Access Community Health Network in Chicago.

 

Bob Wachter, who chairs the department of medicine at UCSF and has advised Google on its health records work on a noncompensatory basis, told STAT he was impressed but not blown away by the company’s latest health records initiative.

 

“It didn’t knock my socks off,” he said, but “I think they’re doing it in a thoughtful, measured, and mature way. And it seems like they’re making progress.”

 

Related: 5 health care projects to watch at Google Cloud

The move follows Google’s other recent health records work in Care Studio, a search tool that assists clinicians with navigating patients’ medical records. Earlier this month, the tech giant named Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center its second hospital partner, joining the hospital chain Ascension as part of the pilot program. The effort drew widespread criticism over the organizations’ patient data-sharing agreement, which Google and Ascension said was compliant with federal health data privacy rules.

 

In the coming months, Wachter said he hopes to see Google add more functionality to Care Studio, for example by smoothing its workflow integration and incorporating more features aimed at improving patient care.

 

Wachter, having advised technology companies on their health efforts since the early 2000s, said he has witnessed a number of tech giants including Google try and fail to create new versions of the electronic health record (EHR). Looking forward, he hopes to see more companies take a similar approach to Google’s most recent effort, which essentially builds assistive tools that layer on top of the existing EHR, rather than trying to reinvent the wheel.

 

“I think we’re entering an era where we have our EHR, but there are tools that help us use it in a better, faster, and safer way.”

One feature that would improve patient care IMO would be a diagostic screening tool that individuals can use to track and analyze their own healthcare data (individual life histories + family histories + DNA). Such a tool could search healthcare databases, including clinical trials, and provide a prioritized list of stuff to be pursued (concurrently in some cases) with medical professionals, preferably in near real time vs the bullshit 3 to 6+ week sequential cycles that are common practice even for people who have access to decent healthcare.

 

The key IMO is being honest about where the responsibility lies (it lies with individuals) and creating interfaces between individually owned data and proliferating silos (privately owned portals). It looks like Google and the consultants on its team get this. I suspect open source has an important role here also.

[y66]

Sending these out to kenberg

 

Digging by Seamus Heaney

 

Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

 

Under my window, a clean rasping sound

When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:

My father, digging. I look down

 

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds

Bends low, comes up twenty years away

Stooping in rhythm through potato drills

Where he was digging.

 

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft

Against the inside knee was levered firmly.

He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep

To scatter new potatoes that we picked,

Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

 

By God, the old man could handle a spade.

Just like his old man.

 

My grandfather cut more turf in a day

Than any other man on Toner’s bog.

Once I carried him milk in a bottle

Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up

To drink it, then fell to right away

Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods

Over his shoulder, going down and down

For the good turf. Digging.

 

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap

Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge

Through living roots awaken in my head.

But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.

 

Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests.

I’ll dig with it.

 

The Woman at the Dig by Leo Dangel

 

Tired from running a combine

all day through acres of wheat,

alone in front of the TV, I pay

attention because the show's about

scientists digging up an ancient site.

I have no special interest in bones,

pottery, spearheads, or prehistoric

garbage dumps, and I always look past

the man describing animal migrations,

burial rites, or building design and try

to catch a glimpse of the women

working at the site - one of them

might be wearing cut-off jeans

and a halter top, clearing a patch

of ground with a trowel or brush.

These women are all experts.

You can tell by the way they look

at a bone chip or a pottery shard

they understand worlds about

the person who left it. Sifting soil,

they show more grace than contestants

in a Miss Universe pageant.

Years from now, when these farms

are ancient history, an expedition

with such a woman might come along.

I could drop something for her to find,

a pocketknife, a brass overalls button.

If only she could discover my bones.

My eyes would be long gone,

But I can see her form coming into focus

above me as she gently sweeps aside

the last particles of dust - her knee, thigh,

hip, shoulders, and finally, set off by sky

and spikes of sunlight, her face - a woman

who recognizes what she's found.

[kenberg]

Came across this story after reading about Ross Douthat's experience with chronic Lyme disease which illustrates how ineffectual our healthcare system can be when dealing with problems that are not well understood:

 

 

One feature that would improve patient care IMO would be a diagostic screening tool that individuals can use to track and analyze their own healthcare data (individual life histories + family histories + DNA). Such a tool could search healthcare databases, including clinical trials, and provide a prioritized list of stuff to be pursued (concurrently in some cases) with medical professionals, preferably in near real time vs the bullshit 3 to 6+ week sequential cycles that are common practice even for people who have access to decent healthcare.

 

The key IMO is being honest about where the responsibility lies (it lies with individuals) and creating interfaces between individually owned data and proliferating silos (privately owned portals). It looks like Google and the consultants on its team get this. I suspect open source has an important role here also.

 

The Ross Douthat story had one point in common with me, although my situation was much milder. He speaks of seeing a psychiatrist since maybe his problems were caused by stress, resulting in the psychiatrist assuring him the problems were physical while the physicians thought they might be emotional. When my first marriage broke up I was quite young nf quite upset and saw a psychiatrist for a while. I had some issue resembling acute sinus problems, something that had never bothered me before. Same result. The physician I saw said it was surely something for the psychiatrist to deal with, the psychiatrist said he was certain my problem was physical and should be dealt with by the physician. In this case I believe the psychiatrist was correct since when I moved from Minnesota to Maryland the problem cleared up immediately. Something in the Minnesota air I guess, although it had never bothered me before and doesn't bother me now when I am back.

 

It would be nice if both physicians and psychiatrists were a little more willing to acknowledge their limitations. They don't have to recite five times that they might be wrong, they can just go a little easy on regarding themselves as godlike.

 

The Google effort on health records bears watching. Twenty years ago I could say that I didn't have any health records. Not strictly true, but basically my records were that everything was fine. I am not now planning on dropping dead tomorrow, I should wait at least until after my daughter's birthday party, but I do have health records, plural, and coordination can be a problem. And, sometimes, interpretation can be a problem. I think I will forego details, at least for now.

 

Oh, thanks for the poetry. I probably will stick with Robert Frost, but it's fine. Thanks.

[y66]

Signs of hope for western monarchs? Reports from overwintering sites in coastal California indicate western monarchs are returning in greater numbers than last year, with hundreds at some sites and thousands at others, giving hope for the struggling population. More than 9,000 monarchs have been recorded at a pair of sites that last year hosted less than 300 between them. Additional smaller estimates and observations from volunteers and the public have started to pour in from elsewhere, with numbers ranging from a few to dozens to hundreds, of monarchs. Altogether, there appear to be over 10,000 monarchs easily accounted for at the overwintering sites. This year’s official count has not yet begun (that starts in mid-November), yet these early reports signal the possibility of a rebound in numbers. Click here to read the complete press release.

[y66]

It's a cold, rainy night here. Perfect sleeping weather, and I'm going to take advantage of it.

 

Photo by Buddy Poland

[y66]

For the not seeing eye-to-eye files:

 

“Absolutely stunning” is how the University of California, Santa Barbara, described plans for a new 11-story residence hall — one in which the vast majority of students would live in small, windowless rooms.

 

A consulting architect saw it differently, writing: “The basic concept of Munger Hall as a place for students to live is unsupportable from my perspective as an architect, a parent and a human being.”

Paul Goldberger, the architecture critic for The New Yorker, said the concept showed “how far UCSB has fallen since the days when it had architects like Charles Moore.”

 

“This design is a grotesque, sick joke — a jail masquerading as a dormitory,” he said on Twitter, linking to a story by The Santa Barbara Independent about the design. “No, design isn’t up to billionaire donors.”

A jail masquerading as a dormitory sounds right.

[kenberg]

This is one of those "Oh well, I'm 82 " moments but I just found it amusing enough to post.

 

I am going in for a medical appointment tomorrow, and in order to make things move quickly, they ask that I send in some stuff. Stuff includes a photo id. So I scanned my driver's license with the printer, sent it to the computer, uploaded it to the online form that they had sent me, it looked fine, and so I pressed submit. It says "Object reference not set to an instance of an object".

 

I called and they assured me that it would be ok to show my id when I come in tomorrow.

 

But if anyone knows what "Object reference not set to an instance of an object" means, I would be happy to hear it. Gotta keep up with the modern world.

 

I sent them my lsit of meds and so on, that went through fine. The object reference must have been set to an object for those.

[y66]

This is one of those "Oh well, I'm 82 " moments but I just found it amusing enough to post.

 

I am going in for a medical appointment tomorrow, and in order to make things move quickly, they ask that I send in some stuff. Stuff includes a photo id. So I scanned my driver's license with the printer, sent it to the computer, uploaded it to the online form that they had sent me, it looked fine, and so I pressed submit. It says "Object reference not set to an instance of an object".

 

I called and they assured me that it would be ok to show my id when I come in tomorrow.

 

But if anyone knows what "Object reference not set to an instance of an object" means, I would be happy to hear it. Gotta keep up with the modern world.

 

I sent them my lsit of meds and so on, that went through fine. The object reference must have been set to an object for those.

For a user to get a message like "Object reference not set to an instance of an object" means that the software you used was so poorly written that it was unable to detect the underlying problem and clearly explain how to fix it eg upload the file again using a smaller image size or some such.

 

Technically, it probably means that the <submit> code tried to do something with the uploaded file using an object that was supposed to identify the uploaded file's location in memory but had never been created and assigned a value.

 

This is pretty funny because I ran into a variation of this problem today when doing basically the same thing. My wife also ran into a variation of this problem when trying to upload vaccination documents before traveling to Europe last month. She eventually gave up and decided to take the documents to the counter which worked out fine.

[kenberg]

For a user to get a message like "Object reference not set to an instance of an object" means that the software you used was so poorly written that it was unable to detect the underlying problem and clearly explain how to fix it eg upload the file again using a smaller image size or some such.

 

Technically, it probably means that the <submit> code tried to do something with the uploaded file using an object that was supposed to identify the uploaded file's location in memory but had never been created and assigned a value.

 

This is pretty funny because I ran into a variation of this problem today when doing basically the same thing. My wife also ran into a variation of this problem when trying to upload vaccination documents before traveling to Europe last month. She eventually gave up and decided to take the documents to the counter which worked out fine.

 

I have been thinking of a post-retirement career. The techies who write this stuff could use me as a paid guinea pig. I believe that if I can't make sense of it then there will be quite a few others who also cannot make sense of it, and the techies should then re-write it.

 

So people actually talk like this?

I won't carry this on any further, but I showed the message "Object reference not set to an instance of an object" to Becky and she broke into laughter. I will show my driver's license at the desk tomorrow. Old fashioned I know, but simple.