bearing blog

You don't have to overdo it.

Article in the NYT Well Blog: Why 4 Workouts a Week May Be Better Than Six.

And how about just two workouts a week? Really -- almost as good.

A common concern about exercise is that if you don’t do it almost every day, you won’t achieve much health benefit. But a commendable new study suggests otherwise, showing that a fairly leisurely approach to scheduling workouts may actually be more beneficial than working out almost daily...

[R]esearchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham gathered 72 older, sedentary women, ages 60 to 74, and randomly assigned them to one of three exercise groups.

One group began lifting weights once a week and performing an endurance-style workout, like jogging or bike riding, on another day.

Another group lifted weights twice a week and jogged or rode an exercise bike twice a week.

The final group... completed three weight-lifting and three endurance sessions, or six weekly workouts.

There were, remarkably, almost no differences in fitness gains among the groups. The women working out twice a week had become as powerful and aerobically fit as those who had worked out six times a week...

However, the women exercising four times per week were now expending far more energy, over all, than the women in either of the other two groups....

“We think that the women in the twice-a-week and four-times-a-week groups felt more energized and physically capable” after several months of training than they had at the start of the study, says Gary Hunter, a U.A.B. professor who led the experiment. Based on conversations with the women, he says he thinks they began opting for stairs over escalators and walking for pleasure.

The women working out six times a week, though, reacted very differently. “They complained to us that working out six times a week took too much time,” Dr. Hunter says. They did not report feeling fatigued....Rather, they felt pressed for time and reacted, it seems, by making choices like driving instead of walking and impatiently avoiding the stairs.

I have long advised people who want to become "one of those people who works out" to start with twice a week, and try to keep that up for a good long while. I only manage three times a week myself, and that is if I am lucky and nothing derails me. Twice a week can be life-changing -- it is frequent enough to see and enjoy progress, but not enough to cause burnout. Whether it requires stressful schedule juggling depends on how full your schedule already is, and on what you are currently filling your time with.

 

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A little middle-aged motivation for you.

The NYT "Well Blog" describes a study that's good news for those of us who are committed to staying fit in middle age -- or who have time to practice better habits between now and then.

[W]e are spending more years living with chronic disease and ill health — not the outcome that most of us would hope for from a prolonged life span.

But a notable new study published last week in Archives of Internal Medicine suggests that a little advance planning could change that prospect. Being or becoming fit in middle age, the study found, even if you haven’t previously bothered with exercise, appears to reshape the landscape of aging.

Here's the deal, as best as I can figure it out:  Waaaay back in 1970, a group of more than 18,000 healthy, chronic-disease-free middle-aged men and women (average age:  49) had visited  a clinic for a treadmill test to determine their aerobic fitness.  

According to the blog, the data was still around in recent years, when researchers used it to divide the group into five "fitness categories" based on the results of that long-ago treadmill test.  (Most of them fell in the "least-fit" category.)  

Then, in a first-of-its-kind data comparison, the researchers checked the same individuals’ Medicare claim records (with permission) from 1999 through 2009, by which time most of the participants were in their 70s or 80s.

What they found was that those adults who had been the least fit at the time of their middle-age checkup also were the most likely to have developed any of eight serious or chronic conditions early in the aging process. These include heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and colon or lung cancer.

The adults who’d been the most fit in their 40s and 50s often developed many of the same conditions, but notably their maladies appeared significantly later in life than for the less fit. Typically, the most aerobically fit people lived with chronic illnesses in the final five years of their lives, instead of the final 10, 15 or even 20 years.

This is pretty good news, especially if you're

• (a) already a fit middle-aged person, 
• (b) not yet middle-aged, or
• (c) just beginning middle age and thinking about developing good habits.

Moving from the least-fit to the second-least-fit category appears to have the strongest effect.  If that's so, then going from total couch potato to not-quite-completely-a-couch-potato might make a big difference in how many years you spend as an infirm adult.

The aerobic fitness level at that middle-aged checkup did not affect lifespan nearly as strongly as it affected quality of life.   It "compressed" the years of infirmity.  To put it bluntly, this suggests that a public health effort which managed to encourage activity in the middle age years could well pay off in long-term health care costs.

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Of course, this might not demonstrate a causal relationship.  Even though all these adults were healthy and free of chronic disease in 1970, maybe the least-fit ones were unfit because of some underlying, deep condition that also caused them to develop chronic disease sooner than the fitter ones.  Maybe a choice to become fitter wouldn't have changed that.

But then again, maybe it would have.  Maybe individuals who decided to become fitter would have paid more attention to the signals their body sent them, and would have detected problems earlier.  Maybe a habit of exercise would have given them confidence to change other habits.  Maybe getting out of the house more would have improved their mental health.  We really don't know.  

I think this is really good news for my readers out there, most of whom are women in their childbearing years, and who don't see much concrete motivation to work on fitness habits.  You've got time, folks. 

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I would be interested in knowing more details about the age range and about how the individuals were divided into fitness quintiles, but don't have quick and easy access to the journal.  

(HINT HINT HINT, those of you with access to Arch. Intern. Med.   I believe this is the link.)

 

Mad dogs and humans.

Interesting article about rabies, which until recently was 100% fatal in symptomatic humans -- maybe -- and the story of the last-ditch desperate cure that seems to work -- maybe.

There is something very compelling about the narrative, in which a physician who is completely inexperienced in rabies treatment, but faced with a young doomed patient, buries his nose in the books and comes up with a Crazy Idea That Just Might Work:

[T]oday, after millennia of futility, hospitals have an actual treatment to try. It was developed in 2004 by a pediatrician in Milwaukee named Rodney Willoughby, who, like the vast majority of American doctors, had never seen a case of rabies before. (In the US, there are usually fewer than five per year.) Yet Willoughby managed to save a young rabies patient, a girl of 15, by using drugs to induce a deep, week-long coma and then carefully bringing her out of it. It was the first documented case of a human surviving rabies without at least some vaccination before the onset of symptoms. Soon Willoughby posted his regimen online, and he worked with hospitals around the world to repeat and refine its use. Now referred to as the Milwaukee protocol, his methodology has continued to show limited success: Of 41 attempts worldwide, five more patients have pulled through...

Even though his specialty was infectious disease, Willoughby knew almost nothing about rabies. “For the board exams,” he says, “you only needed to know one thing: that it was 100 percent fatal.” He telephoned the CDC to ask if there was any treatment somewhere in the research pipeline—some promising new therapy, perhaps, not yet published in any medical journal. The CDC had nothing. Not one person had ever been shown to survive rabies without having gotten at least partial vaccination before the virus reached the brain.

With less than a day to formulate a plan, Willoughby attacked the problem with quick but deliberate reading, using his limited time to review the basic neuroscience of rabies.

...Willoughby laid out a last-ditch idea, the surprising result of his day of reading and thinking. The solution, he says in retrospect, had been “hiding in plain sight.”

A pretty exciting story, but one that still remains largely unconfirmed by fundamental research. The article details some of the objections that have been raised by researchers. Still, when you are dealing with "100% fatal," it becomes much more attractive to try the untested.

On the same topic: I heard on NPR a week or two ago that there is a new nonfiction book out on rabies, called Rabid: A Cultural History of the World's Most Diabolical Virus. It sounded good, but I have to get in line for a copy at the library. The authors are a husband-and-wife team (he's a journalist, she's a veterinarian). I am looking forward to it, when I move to the head of the line.

I am really in the mood to read something fluffy and light, which for me means "almost anything nonfiction." I just barely managed to finish Kristin Lavransdatter in time to return it to the library before it went overdue, and while I enjoyed the book, it exhausted me as epic multigenerational literature tends to do. If it were not for the patronymics I would never have been able to keep track of everyone, but at least since I always had a clue as to whose daughter or son everybody was (Kristin is Lavrans's daughter, get it?), I didn't fall very far behind.

Anyway, after having struggled through Kristin (a book which, at least, got better and more gripping the deeper I got into it), I polished off the deeply weird nonfiction book The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson in a matter of hours. This is part nonfiction and part introspection, a book about psychopathology and mental illness -- or maybe it is more about the author's investigation into psychopathology, since Ronson injects all kinds of commentary about his interviewees and his own reactions to them throughout the book. The style is mildly self-deprecating, and Ronson depicts himself as sort of star-struck by the people he is interviewing -- he is forever being amazed that he has managed to score the interviews with this eminent researcher or that institutionalized criminal or this other possibly psychopathic CEO -- and somewhere in the middle of the book I began to be convinced that the style was really just an act meant to guide the reader to conclusions about the interviewees. (Namely, that maybe the psychiatrists who study psychopathology are sometimes themselves psychopaths.)

I think I will stop here before anyone draws any conclusions about the fact that I suggested books about rabies and psychopaths as beach reads. Ahem.

Six degrees to cupcakes.

When I was pregnant with my second child, I read a simple line in a parenting book (Becky Bailey, Easy to Love, Difficult to Discipline) that resonated with me: 

"In any given moment, ask yourself, do you want to be special, or do you want to connect?"  

As a child and adolescent, I had wanted to be special more than anything, and I was growing tired of it.   More and more, I desired to make real connections.   But I hadn't seen until then that specialness and connectedness are in tension, that to emphasize one is necessarily to de-emphasize the other, and that in any moment we have the opportunity to make the choice between them.

The book goes on to say:

Unity ... comes from letting go of the need to compare oneself to others, and choosing instead to connect through a sense of equality.

I understand that, and the implied tradeoffs, much better now.

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 I like that it is phrased as a question, because it isn't as if connectedness is always to be prized over specialness; and there's a bit of a circularity to it, because one of the things that makes each person particular  -- unique -- "special" -- is the particular combination of connections he has made.  

One example: it's precisely because of my connections with my family members that I am irreplaceable to each of them.  I am a particular person -- "Mom" -- to each of my children, the only mom they have, and my husband's only wife.  Connection and "specialness" are bound up.

Another example:  It's because of their unique connections with different "networks" that certain highly connected people hold together entire communities.   Malcolm Gladwell writes about this topic in his book The Tipping Point.  Are you familiar with the saying "six degrees of separation?"  The idea that every person is connected to every other person on the globe by a chain of introduction ("I know someone who knows someone who knows someone...") that's on average only six people long?  Many researchers, most famously Stephen Milgram, have attempted to measure interconnectedness through correspondence experiments.  But it isn't just the length of the "chain," but the structure of connectedness of the whole, that is interesting.  Gladwell writes:

The success of any kind of social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with a particular and rare set of social gifts....Most of us don't have particularly broad and diverse groups of friends... In the six degrees of separation, not all degrees are equal.

Social connections aren't spread out evenly.  They cluster:  most of us have many connections within small groups that share lots of connections.  But here and there are individuals who tie those clusters together -- people who have connections to many different clusters.   By necessity, having many diverse connections mean that most of the connections aren't particularly strong.  (Gladwell says that such "connectors" have "mastered what sociologists call the 'weak tie,' a friendly yet casual social connection.  On Gladwell's web page is reprinted a brief excerpt,"The Connectors," that introduces the concept.)  But even the most highly connected people probably have a few very strong, prized connections with a few select and dear friends.  At least, that seems to be true about the connectors I know.

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Connectors wouldn't be connectors, wouldn't tie so many people together, if they weren't willing to be "special" in the sense that in each cluster they're the one person who stands out because, well, they know so many people outside the cluster.  So their numerous weak ties aren't to be disparaged:  they are extremely valuable.

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When I stepped back from most work other than directly meeting my family's needs, it was kind of like saying to the world:  I'm going to focus my energy on building a few connections, and reinforcing them heavily, rather than on making numerous connections that, because numerous, can't be strong.  

And that's what I do.  I have the chance to carefully supervise the connections between each child and his siblings, between these children and a few close friends, between the children and my friends and my friends' children, between my friends' children and me.  I have time to cultivate a few friendships of my own, too.   The networks my kids and I move in are small but connection-dense.   

 I do it this way not because I think it's better to have fewer, stronger connections than to be "well-connected" -- although I am learning to prefer it -- but because I think it's the kind of connectivity I'm better suited to help build.  I'm not worried that they won't be able to branch out more later.  They have time to develop a connectivity that is their own, once out of my shadow; I'm doing it for myself now, after all, at age thirty-seven, so why not they?

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But on second thought, I am a sort of connector, too.  I work to build the connections for my family in our small cluster, but the nature of being a parent is that you are a bridge to connect your family to the outside world:  a gatekeeper, if you will.  It's a small connection, but to those young people, it is an artery.

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There's another, virtual way of being a connector, and homeschooling is really the perfect outlet for it.  Ever dealing better with ideas than with people, I like moving in multiple mental worlds, and enjoying the surprising connections between them.   I like having a deep knowledge of engineering and also of homemaking.  I like being a scientist (well, sort of) and a theist.  I like being ridiculously unclassifiable on any political spectrum, which, I think, comes with the territory of examined Catholicism.  I like the challenge of standing in the middle between two groups that are foreign to each other -- not because I refuse to commit to membership in or agreement with either group, but because I like to thoroughly understand the perspectives of both -- and attempting to translate.  This is the kind of connection I like to make, and I think I am not bad at it, when I get the chance.  (At least in writing.  Never at parties.)

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I think maybe the level of connection one creates is part of  one's vocation, and so unique; after all, connections create responsibilities, and fulfilling these is what vocation is all about.   Perhaps those "connectors" among us, tying the clusters together with a mass of weak links, have a greater impact than the rest -- at least when they work to keep the links active.  A greater responsibility, even?  Maybe. 

Here's a little story about the value of being multiply connected, and a lesson that no matter what kind of connectivity we enjoy, we always have the choice to reinforce those connections -- to send a little jolt of energy across a gap, so to speak -- and that when we do send that jolt along, it can travel quite far. 

A couple of days ago I wrote about calling Poison Control from camp when my child got tree sap in her eye.  I was happy because they exist and because they give good advice; in a different universe where PCC did not exist or was run by lawyers, my vacation would have been ruined.   I believe I wrote something along the lines of "YAY POISON CONTROL.  I wish I could send you cupcakes."

Now, I may not be a connector in this particular field, but:

1. commenter/reader/three-dimensional contact ChristyP is, and she forwarded my blog post to 
2. a colleague who directs a poison control center in her state.   The colleague forwarded the email to
3.  the managing director of my local poison control center, with whom she was apparently on a first-name basis.    The managing director shared the story with 
4. the VP of professional and support services of the medical center that hosts the poison control center.  And that vice president surprised
5. "Dustin," the poison information provider who took my call, with 
6. a tray of cupcakes.

Count 'em, folks!    Too bad I didn't ask for Champagne!

But what's really great about this is the reminder that, no matter how numerous or even how weak the connections we control may be, no matter whether they are between our own family members or across town, we often get a chance to pass a little something along.  It may come to nothing, or it may "merely" make someone's day more interesting, or  -- who knows?  It could pay back far in the future.  I think I will think of this story often when those little chances make themselves known.

Non-evidence-based style.

My friend M. has been deep in the books, trying to design and redesign a good homeschooling environment for her eight-year-old son who is diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, and who really needs quite intense attention.  She is looking at various styles of teaching and how they are shown to work with real children.

She came to me a few days ago saying (I'm paraphrasing):  "You know what's really amazing about the so-called 'classical model of homeschooling?'  So many homeschoolers put so much stock in it -- in this idea that the medieval trivium corresponds to three stages of child development -- but there isn't really any evidence for it at all!  If you go tracing back the claims that people make about classical homeschooling, they all go back to just one source --"

"'The Lost Tools of Learning,'" I said.  "The essay by Dorothy Sayers."

"...And, well, she just made it up!  She doesn't claim to know anything about how children develop.  It's just her idea.  But this entire industry has sprung up to support classical homeschooling, as if there was any evidence that designing a school the way she imagines it is something that really produces good outcomes.  There isn't any evidence.  And of course the medieval trivium wasn't at all like the homeschooling trivium that people talk about.  There's no evidence that children ever were taught the way she describes."

I thought for a moment how to respond.  "I think that the essay provides a useful organizing principle," I ventured.  "No more than that."  I did have to defend myself a little bit!

And I do think that the organizing principle behind "The Lost Tools of Learning" is so useful that I maintain it's part of the "homeschooler's canon" of educational philosophy.  

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But M.'s reminder is useful, too -- that Sayers' essay is just that:  an opinion piece.  After all, I do go around telling other homeschoolers, when I need to, that I am "oh, sort of a classical homeschooler, with a little Charlotte Mason thrown in."  Really, this is just a piece of code, shorthand for what I am not:  I am not an unschooler, I am not a school-in-a-box-er, I am not entirely disorganized (I have some kind of plan), and, well, I'm not entirely "evidence-based."  

(Even the Charlotte Mason reference is really cheating.  I've never actually read any serious books by or about Charlotte Mason.  That reference is code for "I like making my kids tell back what they've learned, and I tried keeping a nature journal for a while.")

One careful reading of Sayers' essay will show you that she never intended her imaginary school to be set up as a real place.  She breezily assumes ideal and impossible conditions:

Let us amuse ourselves by imagining that such progressive retrogression is possible. Let us make a clean sweep of all educational authorities, and furnish ourselves with a nice little school of boys and girls whom we may experimentally equip for the intellectual conflict along lines chosen by ourselves. We will endow them with exceptionally docile parents; we will staff our school with teachers who are themselves perfectly familiar with the aims and methods of the Trivium; we will have our building and staff large enough to allow our classes to be small enough for adequate handling; and we will postulate a Board of Examiners willing and qualified to test the products we turn out. Thus prepared, we will attempt to sketch out a syllabus--a modern Trivium "with modifications" and we will see where we get to.

But first: what age shall the children be? Well, if one is to educate them on novel lines, it will be better that they should have nothing to unlearn; besides, one cannot begin a good thing too early, and the Trivium is by its nature not learning, but a preparation for learning. We will, therefore, "catch 'em young," requiring of our pupils only that they shall be able to read, write, and cipher.

Did you catch that bit -- that at the start of her "school" the children have already been taught to read, write, and do arithmetic?  We're on our own for that part, homeschoolers.

Sayers' imaginary school is not, actually, a plan (and she takes pain to point this out).  Nor is it a reconstruction of the medieval trivium in any way -- significantly, she stresses, "It does not matter, for the moment, whether it [the trivium] was devised for small children or for older students, or how long people were supposed to take over it."

No, this school she describes is a rhetorical device.  The point of the description is to create vivid pictures in the readers' minds, of children arguing, or finding Cassiopeia in the night sky, or examining portraits of the Kings of England, or carefully studying maps.  This is just an illustration to motivate readers to hear and accept her philosophy of education, which she emphasizes by making it the very last sentence of the essay:

For the sole true end of education is simply this: to teach men how to learn for themselves; and whatever instruction fails to do this is effort spent in vain.

This is a philosophy that appeals to me, and it is why I go around telling people that I am a "classical homeschooler."  Not because I think my homeschool should be split up into Grammar and Rhetoric and Dialectic (although I sometimes use those terms to describe the level of mental process that is engaged by a particular book or curriculum).  I tell people I am a "classical homeschooler" because I believe my job is to teach my kids how to teach themselves.

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Which brings me to the problem of evidence-based teaching.  Evidence is overrated.

If I say "Evidence is overrated," you should know I am speaking tongue in cheek.  I am trained as an engineer and as a scientist, and even though I abandoned that life in its early stages, its inner life has not abandoned me:  I can never lose the engineer's problem-attacking method, nor the scientist's reflexes to observe, test, and revise.  

No, what I really mean is that the marshalled evidence often overemphasizes one kind of data to the exclusion of another kind of data that, depending on the application, may be more important.  The distinction between the two kinds of data:  that drawn from large groups and that drawn from individuals.

Data drawn from large groups can be usefully applied to help individuals, it's true.  Let's imagine an experiemental school -- would that schools would actually do this -- in which two methods for teaching arithmetic are to be evaluated.  Children are randomly assigned to two classrooms, one in which the arithmetic skills are taught via method A, and one in which the teacher uses method B  to teach the same skills.  After a suitable time, the children are evaluated, and method A comes out ahead:  perhaps more students in classroom A have achieved a certain minimum competency, or perhaps the average score of students in that classroom is significantly higher than the average in classroom B.   Perhaps A outperforms B by both metrics.  If the test is repeated over different schools and different populations, and if A consistently outperforms B, that would certainly be a strong argument for teaching with method A instead of method B.  I would gladly support this kind of approach to curriculum selection in my local public schools, who are, after all, in the business of educating large groups.

However, just because A is the better method overall does not mean it is the better method for every child in the class.  Imagine there is one particular child -- let's call him Jacob -- who responds better, in a critical way, to method B.  It's not that Jacob was one of the top kids in classroom B -- no, let's be honest, most of the "top kids" in classroom B would also have been "top" in classroom A, because every classroom contains at least a few kids who are going to absorb material no matter how you throw it at them.  No, this boy was on the margins:  Jacob was one of those who achieved competency in classroom B, did well enough.  But when the classrooms all switched to the A method -- the method that was proved superior by the average-score metric and by the number-achieving-minimum-competency metric -- Jacob did not succeed, did not achieve competency.  More of his classmates will succeed in the A environment, and that is good for them, and good for the school, and good for the teachers, probably.  It does not help him.

I am not, mind you, saying that the evidence drawn from large groups is unhelpful for the large groups.  I do think schools should use data to shape their curriculum, because that is the job of the schools.  I just want to point out that the schools have one job -- to teach the large groups -- and Jacob's parents have another -- to teach Jacob.  

This is, to me, the distinction that gives meaning to the notion that education of children is primarily the responsibility of their parents.  It is reflected in Minnesota law, at least:   Our state's constitution stipulates that the legislature shall establish a "general and uniform" system of public schools; "uniform" is supposed to provide for equal and fair access to schooling, and that is commendable and appropriate for government schools.  The statutes specify this:  "The parent of a child is primarily responsible for assuring that the child acquires knowledge and skills that are essential for effective citizenship."

My point:  You use large-group evidence to design approaches that are aimed at large groups.  If your job is to teach Classroom B, you use what you've learned from metrics that measure Classroom B.  But if your job is to teach Jacob -- and that, mind you, is not legally our state's job, nor a single classroom teacher's job, nor can it be -- it is Jacob's parents' job -- then you have to give primary weight to evidence drawn from Jacob and not to that drawn from his classmates.

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I derive a lot of inspiration from Dorothy Sayers' opinion piece, even though it is not evidence-based.  Sayers never thought that people would try to copy the imaginary school she described, and I don't either.  I follow her example -- not by trying to create in my home the school that she imagined -- but by trying to create in my home the school that I  imagine.  

I consider the problem that life has posed me -- and I frame it and sketch it out as How will I teach my children to teach themselves?  I make assumptions, I list my constraints, I weigh costs against likely benefits, I approximate when necessary, and in the end I do what I can with what I have.

I make a guess -- this particular sort of curriculum will interest my eleven-year-old, or arranging the school desks in that particular way will keep my eight- and five-year-olds from fighting; I try it out; I check to see if my eleven-year-old is engaged in his work, I listen to see if the squabbles have diminished; I revise my hypothesis, I try again.

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There is another thing to weigh, too -- and it is sort of outside the evidence of what sort of methods produce academic excellence.  Because academic achievement is not, actually, central to what I am trying to do here (although it's very easy to forget that, because academic achievement is so much more easily measured, and because the culture values it, and I am swayed by culture).  

What I am supposed to be doing is forming human beings who are honest, fair, kind, and wise, who have a firm understanding of their own value and of the value of other human persons, who recognize their direct responsibilities and carry them out.   And no amount of evidence of academic achievement should entice me to apply a method that undermines any of these.

Meanwhile, I am supposed to be forming myself in honesty, fairness, kindness, and wisdom -- and if I somehow form my children in ways that deteriorate my own character, I'm equally wrong.   

 To put it bluntly, if by daily beatings or regular bribes I could ensure my child a perfect SAT score, that wouldn't mean I should do it.

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Large-group evidence based on large-group metrics will only take you so far.  It isn't useless:  it's just that it is useful for purposes different from mine.  (I can, of course, use it for my own purposes:  what's good for the group may be the best thing to try first, before tweaking to suit the individual.)    This is true about education, but lots of other things too:  taking care of your health, disciplining children, deciding what sort of community to live in, deciding whom to spend time with.  Sometimes "what works" is what matters; other times it's far more important to find something you can live with, whether it "works" or not; most often it is a matter of balancing both.

Animated scale of the universe.

Speaking of the cosmos, ChristyP pointed me to this very well done, shareable-with-your-geeky-kids interactive Flash animation, and commented, "I learned some new SI prefixes from this."  Check it out.  

Metaphor collisions.

When a NYT journalist collides with a particle physics announcement, some of the resulting emissions are.... interesting.

We'll let them have "Physics' Holy Grail" on the grounds that it is a cliché, and thus within journalists' area of expertise to pinpoint exactly the right spot where the use of a cliché is good word choice.

But then we go on to....

• Confirmation of the boson would be "a rendezvous with destiny" for physicists.
• The Higgs field is "an invisible force field, a cosmic molasses."
• Particles "wade" through this molasses.
• "Without this Higgs field, as it is known, or something like it, physicists say all the elementary forms of matter would zoom around at the speed of light, flowing through our hands like moonlight. There would be neither atoms nor life." (Or hands, presumably. Or a moon. Remarkably, none of the physicists who say this would agree to be identified for the article.)
• Proton collisions leave behind "primordial fireballs" and also "debris."
• The evidence for the Higgs boson is "[l]ike Omar Sharif materializing from a distant blur into a man on horseback in the movie 'Lawrence of Arabia.'"
• UPDATE! The NYT fact checkers are on the case! Since I wrote the above quote they have changed it to read "a man on a camel." Good catch, fact checkers!
• Applause greets "data bumps rising like mountains from the sea."
• Quantum theory "is the language of particle physicists." Ah, so maybe we are dealing with idiomatic translation here. That would explain a lot.
• Encountering the "cosmic molasses" quote again, I went and googled the phrase. It turns out that the New York Times writer did not originate it. You will see it around in numerous places, such as this bit written by a British A-level student on a Q-and-A site. Come to think of it, the writing sounds familiar. But for all I know the term was originated by an actual physicist attempting to explain the actual Higgs field to laypersons. So I will give the writer a pass... except that he should have identified the source of the neologism.
• But he isn't lacking in some creativity: the cosmic molasses is "normally invisible and, of course, odorless." All right, all right, I think the writer is actually making a joke there.

Anyway, there are interesting results there, somewhere, under the flowery language.

"It's better naked."

Marc Barnes, the freakishly young writer of Bad Catholic, has launched his new project aimed at spreading the word about NFP (mainly Creighton) to young people -- teens and college kids.

The site, 1flesh.org, is part "what you didn't know about contraception and condoms" and part "there is a better way."

Check it out here

Marc's blog post introducing the project is here:

Birth control has done nothing to reduce the rate of unplanned pregnancies, the Pill increases breast cancer risk, lowers female sex drive, and screws up the environment. We’re talking about how artificial contraception is one of the most falsely advertised products out there. We’re talking about how condoms ruin sex, how they’ve been remarkably ineffective in the fight against HIV, how they’ve done nothing to stop our modern explosion of STDs. We’re talking about the Pill and heart disease, about how the health benefits of oral contraceptives aren’t health benefits at all. We’re talking about the Pill’s potential to be an abortifacent, the bad philosophy behind artificial contraception, how contraception has increased the abortion rate, is linked to an increase in divorce, and how — in general — it’s been making relationships difficult for some time now.

And of course, we’re spotlighting the fact that there’s a much better way, all while having an absurdly good time.

I think there is still some cleaning-up to do, and I haven't had time to evaluate the evidence marshalled against birth control and condoms on the various arguments pages, but it looks like a really good start towards raising awareness among young people that, no, you don't have to take hormones or encase yourself in latex, and the benefits you are supposed to get might not even be, you know, real, let alone worth the cost and trouble.

Check it out. What do you think?

Quotable Ace on scientific overconfidence.

Here's Ace of Spades writing about the latest study to show, in the face of the establishment, that low-carb dieters burn more calories:

When evidence and data are thin, Narrative and Theory rushes in to take their place. Nature abhors a vacuum, and so too does natural science. Science -- or, I should say, scientists -- human beings with human flaws which science isn't actually burdened with -- do not like saying "I don't know." Even when "I don't know" is actually the proper, most scientifically-valid answer.

"I know" is much more satisfying. The funny thing is that we only hear "the science is settled" in the precise cases where it's not settled. No one ever says "the science is settled" as to whether the earth revolves around the sun. It is settled, of course; so no one has to attempt the Appeal to Authority to establish it.

A growing consensus says they know, you know.

So, for 50 years now, the medical establishment and the government have been telling fat people to do the exact opposite thing they should be doing.

Ace is also drawing a comparison to the overconfidence of much of the man-made artificial global warming crowd; it doesn't much matter the specific policies, though, as his point stands whatever the appeal to authority. It is a common logical flaw (or a very shrewd tactic, as it works so well on the gullible who don't see their own weakness), and the point is well put.

Every once in a while, when I write against... oh, what shall I call it... "scientism," perhaps... that belief that scientists are people with special moral authority to set policy... I wonder if I look like I suffer from sour grapes.

I trained for, and used to aspire to working in, academic scientific research (well, engineering, but to most folks it looks pretty much the same). I don't anymore, mostly because of a series of choices our family made to secure our overall happiness. So you could say that membership in the Authoritative Class was within my grasp, and I let it slip away, and now I have sort of a grumpy habit of poking at Oz's curtain.

I like to think that the training I did have prepared me to recognize the argument from authority in many of its guises, but perhaps that thought is just the argument-from-authority in another form.

Maybe if I were a working scientist instead of a nonworking one, I would be just as vulnerable to belief in the superrational powers of my own authority (at least in my own field) as journalists often are to belief in the powers of people whose work they don't understand.

 

Mathematics, music, and hearing: Vi Hart does it again.

This, one of the videos from the remarkable Vi Hart, is absolutely brilliant.  It's twelve minutes long and worth every minute.  Watch with your kids.

(Incidentally, Vi Hart has recently been hired by Salman Khan to make videos for the Khan Academy.  Hard to imagine a better match.)