The vuvuzela is like a straightened trumpet and is played by blowing a raspberry into the mouthpiece. The player’s lips open and close about 235 times a second, sending puffs of air down the tube, which excite resonance of the air in the conical bore. A single vuvuzela played by a decent trumpeter is reminiscent of a hunting horn.

Americans wear their team colors and cheer . . at specific exciting times during the game. Soccer fans wear their team colors and blow vuvuzelas . . . continuously during the match. Oddly, the only time the drone appears to abate is right after a goal.

First there is Iron Man aka Tony Stark who’s life is dependent upon an “arc reactor” implanted in his chest that is made, in part, out of the metallic element palladium which, along with rhodium, ruthenium, iridium and osmium, is a platinum group metal with widespread uses as a catalyst, in electronics, and even as jewelry.

I have no idea how the arc reactor is supposed to generate such a massive amount of power coming from such a small device without an obvious fuel source. And what does this have to do with Palladium? Actually, there has been theoretical work done in the field of “cold fusion” (i.e. generating energy from the fusion of two hydrogen atoms at room temperatures and one atmospheric pressure) utilizing palladium as the catalyst. But no actual device has ever been created or proven to work.

However, Mr. Stark is stuck with this palladium arc reactor in his chest and it is causing toxicity from the palladium manifesting as great looking engorged veins that coarse up his chest to his neck and make really interesting 90 degree turns giving one the impression that this is . . not natural. Which is just as well since the vast majority of branching patterns in nature do not form at 90 degrees like a microchip. If anything, this should have looked like a fractal.

And what is palladium toxicity? It’s not uncommon that direct contact with palladium as with other metals can cause dermatitis which is a localized inflammatory skin reaction. There are no known systemic effects of palladium in the literature even though there have been studies showing palladium’s toxic effects on cells in vitro. If anything, Mr. Stark would have had a raging case of contact dermatitis involving the skin around the implantation site. I suppose the itching from this skin reaction alone would be enough to make him get drunk, put on the iron man suit, and go skeet shooting watermellons at his birthday party. But I digress.

And what about the “treatment” of “lithium dioxide” given to Mr. Stark for his palladium toxicity? Lithium is an element with a valence of one meaning that it can only form a single chemical bond. Two lithium atoms can bind to a single oxygen atom to from lithium oxide (Li-O-Li with two lithium atoms in place of the two hydrogen atoms in water H2O). Or two lithium atoms can combine with two oxygen atoms to form lithium peroxide (Li-O-O-Li). But there is no chemical way to get lithium DIoxide O-Li-O. Evidently, Tony Stark was the victim of medical quackery (and bad script writing) although there was quite a placebo effect on the a fore-mentioned microchip venous dilatation pattern on his skin which disappeared within seconds of being injected with . . something that was not “lithium dioxide”.

So Mr. Stark makes an arc reactor out of a new element that he synthesized himself using a do-it-yourself room sized laser. Don’t you need a particle accelerator the size of a small country to create a new element and that this element would be extremely radioactive and unstable and have a half-life measured in seconds? Ok, I’m not going there.

Probably the most realistic aspect of Iron Man 2 was when Tony Stark promoted his personal assistant, a woman with no formal business training, to be CEO of a multi-billion dollar company. This I could see happening.

The Pentagon statistics show the nuclear stockpile was reduced by 75 percent between the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and September 30, 2009, and 84 percent since its peak of more than 31,255 in 1967.

Other than deterrence, I’m sure that there was some rational reason why we had over 31 thousand nuclear weapons in 1967. It must have been based on the number of Soviet and other strategic targets rather then just an attempt to keep up with the Ivans who, at the time, had far fewer nuclear weapons.

The logic of nuclear stockpiling is confusing. On one hand, it’s understandable to think in terms of destructive yield and targets and how many kilotons of explosives are needed to destroy the enemy. But on the other hand, there is this huge fudge factor – the great unknown – about the effects of radiation, electromagnetic pulse (EMP), and sheer massive destructive potential that are all unique to nuclear weapons.

The great unknown is how many nuclear weapons would need to be used before the enemy’s ability to fight completely collapsed. EMP waves would disable most electronics and lay waste to any modern economy that keeps its records on computers and digital storage. Large swaths of radiation would extend the fatal yield from acute radiation poisoning for days to weeks and hundreds of miles beyond the initial blast zone of any single bomb. The targeting of civilian centers (or military targets near civilian centers) would overwhelm the nation’s ability to deal with millions of injured and displaced people clogging roads and relief sites.

Our military likely knows this number to within a very specific range and I suspect that the total number of nuclear detonations of a certain yield needed to completely disable an enemy’s ability to conduct offensive operations – which is not the same thing as complete destruction – is only dozens to a few hundred, depending on the country. This is likely why there has been a gradual reduction in the numbers of nuclear weapons since this peak in 1967 while the USSR continued its escalation in the numbers of these very expensive devices during the 1970s and 1980s.

But since that peak in 1967 and continuing to today, we continue to have far more nuclear devices then we would ever need OR be able to use in wartime. In the event of a nuclear war with another nuclear power – mostly the USSR/Russia – we would be getting hit with nuclear weapons at the same time thus diminishing our ability to fight. It’s massively unlikely that we would be able to use more than a few hundred weapons before our ability to fight collapsed as well, assuming that both sides continued to fight despite such massive destruction. All of this makes the need to have more than several hundred nuclear weapons a huge waste of money and resources. The inability to understand this minimal strategic gain at an enormous economic cost is what significantly contributed to the collapse of the USSR in the 1980s.

What about a limited nuclear war? The only way we would ever use nukes against another country is if we had evidence (obvious or via investigation) that the country in question was directly responsible for a mass causality weapon of mass destruction (WMD) attack on American interests. In this case, the retaliation would not simply be retribution but an attempt at instant removal of a regime and destruction of their military capacity because of that regime’s proven intentions and ability to use WMDs.

In this scenario and in almost all cases (Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, Yemen) it is highly unlikely that more than a few weapons would be needed to obliterate the regime including any civilian strongholds of the regime and devastate their military ability to fight. Because this initial strike would need to be followed immediately by an invasion to secure the country and round up remaining forces, the fewer nukes we use the less radiation we expose our forces (and neighboring countries) to.

It is for this reason that the right wing criticism of Obama’s signing of the latest nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia is laughingly absurd. If ratified, the new treaty would limit each side to about 1,550 nuclear weapons. Obviously the Pentagon feels that this number is more than adequate as both a deterrent and the ability to destroy Russia and have enough left over to go after one or more smaller countries in a worst case scenario. This treaty is more of a clean up policy for both nations to eliminate the extra costs of several thousand nuclear weapons that are strategically irrelevant.

The Pentagon would not have signed off on such a deal as negotiated by the US if this could compromise our security. In the very least, the military would have leaked their protests to the media about their concerns that this number would be too low, thus compromising our security. This didn’t happen.

Instead, it was non-military right wingers including non foreign policy specialist and resignation expert S. Palin who claimed that the treaty would leave the US vulnerable or send the wrong message to terrorists and aggressive foreign regimes. And they based this claim on nothing more than their own ignorance (or a willingness to play this off the ignorance of their supporters for political points).

In 2006 (the latest data available), the 40% highest earning American Households paid 86% of Total Federal Tax Liabilities. The 60% lowest earning households paid just 14%.

And although Americans are not taxed at the higher total rates seen in many European and Scandinavian countries, the average US tax payer certainly does not see as many benefits as most European tax payers. Where is my month long August vacation with pay?

Then there is the absurd way that doctors who accept Medicare and Medicaid are taxed. That’s right. Our Medicare/Medicaid income is taxed in the same lunatic way that social security benefits are taxed even though these benefits were already derived from income taxes.

Given how little the average Medicare beneficiary has already contributed from their income over several years to decades  vs how much the average Medicare beneficiary actually consumes in modern expensive health care, a large percentage of Medicare funding comes from fresh tax sources and as you have already read above, most of the fresh tax sources are the 40% highest earning Americans.

In other words, a large percentage of a physician’s taxes get recycled into public insurance reimbursements for Medicare and Medicaid and then that income is itself taxed and so on and so forth. That money doesn’t get injected into the economy, it just cycles around and around the Federal bureaucracy generating administrative processing costs. Crazy, no?

Today also happens to be yet another deadline for when the 21% cut in Medicare reimbursement kicks in. I have a proposition for Congress. Let the 21% pay cut become permanent and introduce a bill to exempt income generated from caring for Medicare and Medicaid patients from Federal income taxes. I think it’s more than a fair trade off. And maybe Congress can begin to slow the decline in providers who accept government health insurance.

Properly proportioned to those in the movies 2001 and 2010 (1:4:9 – the squares of the first 3 integers).

Made of semisynthetic, organic, amorphous, solid materials (AKA plastic).

Zero (0) points of articulation.

May cause strange magnetic fields, action figure evolution, seeing things filled with stars, and/or more (or it might just sit on your desk doing nothing).

May force your action figures to learn new skills to allow them to use objects as tools and weapons in order to dominate the rival action figure clan. But I digress.

Can also be painted marble gray and used as a granite slab action figure, symbolic representation of the intelligence, whit, and mastery of complex domestic social and economic policy and geopolitical strategy of the G.W. Bush administration.

*Best 4-1 product evar!

PS: Better than Spaghetti Harvest?

PPS: Yes!

Among the millions of Texans jumping on the bandwagon of partisan criticism was Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, who called Fine’s ruling one of “unabashed judicial activism.” However, it’s unclear whether General Abbott’s use of the term “unabashed judicial activism” refers as well to rulings like Brown v the Board of Education of Topeka Kansas (1957) and Bush v Gore (2000) or to court rulings that he simply doesn’t agree with.

What Judge Fine does not seem to realize is that in order to make an omelet, you have to be willing to break some eggs! Since there is no such thing as a system that is 100% guaranteed accurate in executing only the guilty, the people of Texas have made it clear that they are willing to risk the rare innocent death in return for the greatest system of retribution in the world!

*(How did a Democrat get elected state district judge in execution alley? It’s nice to know that recovering alcoholics and drug addicts can easily get elected to hold office as state judges, governors, and US Presidents . . just as long as they are not doctors and as long as they steer clear of the Texas Medical Board).

Instead of forgetting about the incident, the student felt compelled – for reasons known perhaps only to Rushmore’s  Max Fischer – to email the professor in order to explain and defend the reasons for the tardiness. Never mind that any rationalization is irrelevant since it is the professor’s lecture and it is the professor who makes the rules. And a 15 minute leeway for tardy students is massively generous in my opinion since any late entry can be disruptive. But the kicker is the complete lack of any apology or even an apologetic tone in an email that seemed more like a arrogant complaint to the hired help for shooing one’s self out of a room that needed cleaning.

Prof. Galloway, I would like to discuss a matter with you that bothered me. . . As of yesterday evening, I was interested in three different Monday night classes that all occurred simultaneously. In order to decide which class to select, my plan for the evening was to sample all three and see which one I like most. Since I had never taken your class, I was unaware of your class policy. I was disappointed that you dismissed me from class considering (1) there is no way I could have been aware of your policy and (2) considering that it was the first day of evening classes and I arrived 1 hour late (not a few minutes), it was more probable that my tardiness was due to my desire to sample different classes rather than sheer complacency.

I have already registered for another class but I just wanted to be open and provide my opinion on the matter.

Translation: “How dare you throw me out of your class! Don’t you know who the f**k I am? I can do whatever the f**k I want!” However, the good professor is not one to be trifeled with and proply sent his response (the “student’s” name has been withheld).

Thanks for the feedback. I, too, would like to offer some feedback.

Just so I’ve got this straight…you started in one class, left 15-20 minutes into it (stood up, walked out mid-lecture), went to another class (walked in 20 minutes late), left that class (again, presumably, in the middle of the lecture), and then came to my class. At that point (walking in an hour late) I asked you to come to the next class which “bothered” you.

Correct?

You state that, having not taken my class, it would be impossible to know our policy of not allowing people to walk in an hour late. Most risk analysis offers that in the face of substantial uncertainty, you opt for the more conservative path or hedge your bet (e.g., do not show up an hour late until you know the professor has an explicit policy for tolerating disrespectful behavior, check with the TA before class, etc.). I hope the lottery winner that is your recently crowned Monday evening Professor is teaching Judgement and Decision Making or Critical Thinking.

In addition, your logic effectively means you cannot be held accountable for any code of conduct before taking a class. For the record, we also have no stated policy against bursting into show tunes in the middle of class, urinating on desks or taking that revolutionary hair removal system for a spin. However, xxxx, there is a baseline level of decorum (i.e., manners) that we expect of grown men and women who the admissions department have deemed tomorrow’s business leaders.

xxxx, let me be more serious for a moment. I do not know you, will not know you and have no real affinity or animosity for you. You are an anonymous student who is now regretting the send button on his laptop. It’s with this context I hope you register pause…REAL pause xxxx and take to heart what I am about to tell you:

xxxx, get your shit together.

Getting a good job, working long hours, keeping your skills relevant, navigating the politics of an organization, finding a live/work balance…these are all really hard, xxxx. In contrast, respecting institutions, having manners, demonstrating a level of humility…these are all (relatively) easy. Get the easy stuff right xxxx. In and of themselves they will not make you successful. However, not possessing them will hold you back and you will not achieve your potential which, by virtue of you being admitted to Stern, you must have in spades. It’s not too late xxxx…

Again, thanks for the feedback.

Professor Galloway

Yes Virgina, there IS a Santa Clause!

Far from being unique to NYU or even intelligent students, the modern university system is peppered with arrogant pricks who feel entitled to every excuse and undeserved leniency irrespective of their actions and have no respect for institution, little manners, or any level of humility. This graduate student is a perfect example and certainly not the brightest bulb in the tanning bed. What type of unstructured Montessori-style undergraduate institution did this student come from that he was so oblivious to the extremely common 15 minute rule? And what rational did he have for being able to determine the inherent value of a graduate course from a brief 15-20 minute exposure to the professor’s first lecture? To paraphrase Dean Wormer, “entitled, arrogant, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.”

The entitled, arrogant, and stupid (EAS) mentality extends far beyond the graduate levels. The prevailing strategy at our local university appears to be see at how low a level one can perform and still achieve a significantly good outcome, i.e. to see how many lectures and assignment deadlines can be missed and exams bombed and yet still get a better than passing grade. Once the reality of this paradoxical strategy sets in is when the excuses and complaining start to fly.

Every professor has at least one of these students. Every doctor has at least one or more of these patients. The ones who miss their appointments, don’t get their tests done or take their medications, and fail to follow their doctor’s recommendations and then turn on a dime and file a lawsuit because of and despite their compliance issues.

America has become infested with excuse making morons who feel entitled to have a better life than what one would normally expect from being an entitled moron. Maybe this is why we have so many lawyers?

At least there are a few brave souls like Professor Galloway who takes time out of his busy schedule to try and teach manners to  some entitled moron that should have been learned in kindergarten.

Recommended for ages 8 and above.

]]> http://rangelmd.com/2010/02/baby-dos-and-donts/feed/ 2 http://rangelmd.com/2010/01/ipadgiant-iphone-without-the-phone/ http://rangelmd.com/2010/01/ipadgiant-iphone-without-the-phone/#comments Thu, 28 Jan 2010 05:33:05 +0000 RangelMD http://rangelmd.com/?p=158

iPad meet Newton.

Essentially it’s an iTouch on steroids.

Apple showed off their new iPad today and . . it’s either going to become the benchmark by which home and casual computing is measured or it will fill that small niche market for people who hate Windows and find Macs too complicated and want a home version of their beloved iPhone.

For right now the iPad is literally just a giant iPhone that comes with same iPhone OS limitations. Either these short comings will steer the iPod towards a Newton-esc footnote of history or Steve Jobs and Apple will look like geniuses for convincing us that form can sometimes dominate over function.

Do we really need a 100 different I/O ports (USB, HDMI, S-video, SD card reader) on a portable computer or can we just use an adapter when we need to and keep the weight and thickness of the iPad low. Will we even need Adobe Flash or will new HTML standards replace it? Windows lets you have 11-teen thousand different programs running at once but is there much difference between switching from window to window and closing and opening iPhone apps if they do so rapidly?

Bill Gates has spent years and multiple versions of Windows trying to nuge the powerful OS to be more user friendly. With it’s much faster boot times and slick multi-touch interface, the iPad is much closer to this goal than Windows ever got. So it’s curious why it stops short and tries to be a giant iPhone. It could have been a little bigger. It should run more than one app. concurrently. It should be more business friendly. I should have been even cheaper.