Category: Follies of the Human Condition

You are probably going to be ok

Vaughan Bell penned an insightful piece for The Guardian about psychologically recovering from disasters. Evidence and expert opinion from world leading health agencies supports the statement that the vast majority of people who experience a “disaster-level” trauma recover, psychologically, on their own.

The evidence does not support the trendy notion of “psychological debriefing” – one-off counseling immediately after events to help people “process” – in fact it shows that it is worse than doing nothing. The actual experts in disaster relief seem to be wise to the research and using methods to help identify those people who do need help, rather than “helping” people who do not need it.

*Hat tip to Ed Yong.

Collective Nouns

Bandelier National Monument (Photo by Josh Witten CC BY-NC-SA)
Bandelier National Monument (Photo by Josh Witten CC BY-NC-SA)

I’ve spent the week with a bunch of talented wordsmiths in Santa Fe. Among many discoveries, we learned that the terms used to describe groups of creatures can be wonderfully imaginative (eg, unkindness of ravens, murder of crows, etc); but they can also be dull.

We improved them:

OLD: A flight of dragons (also, weyr or wing).
NEW: A blaze of dragons.
Alternate: An ohshit! of dragon(s) (1 or more dragons).

OLD: A blessing of unicorns.
NEW: A sparkle of unicorns.

We also came up with a few new ones:

A right of wrongs.

A quixote of science writers.

Any other ideas?

I get mail

Form Letter from Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC)
Form Letter from Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC)

Yesterday, I was the unexpected recipient of a form letter from Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC). Like many others, I have sent Senator Graham missives via the internet regarding CISPA and CFAA. This would explain the first two sentences of the letter, the second of which conveys no actual information about Graham’s cyber security position.

Thank you for contacting me regarding cyber security. I believe that establishing a robust cyber security network that protect s our nation while adequately maintaining privacy is critically important to the United States.

In this time of tight budgets, you really did not need to waste the ink, letterhead, or postage on such inane correspondence. Continue reading “I get mail”

Power Up!

Blackboard with mathematics sketches - vector illustrationStatistical Power! It sounds like something a math textbook superhero would exclaim while collecting data points. I’ll be honest, even though I have a PhD, my stats background is very weak. My college major required all sorts of delightful calculus and differential equations but I’ve never taken a statistics course. My graduate work required only the most basic of statistical analysis (which lucky for me, our software could handle without my input). It turns out that I am not alone, and this is a major problem. Continue reading “Power Up!”

Quanta Sutra

It should come as no surprise to anyone who has spent more than 42 seconds on the Internet that there is a small, but erudite niche of love/sex humor based on particle physics and quantum mechanics. I like to refer to this branch of comedy collectively as the Quanta Sutra. I’m telling you this, because I recently found the following effort, at the expense of physics students, by Zach Weiner of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.


Continue reading “Quanta Sutra”