Neurons, Physics, and Baseball

Several professors combined to win the Best Illusion of the Year contest at a gathering of neurologists. The illusion shows how a curveball may look like it "breaks" (the common baseball term) because it moves from central to peripheral vision. The illusion is viewable here, and it is most impressive.

Hat tip to Jeff in NC in the comments on today's wonderfully, ahem, "cheesy" Soxaholix strip.

Obama Begins to Turn

The beginning of the Obama Administration smelled good. Despite the president's hard-left credentials, he avoided pushing a strongly socialist agenda. His early flaws were forgivable rookie fumbles (an iPod for the Queen?) and spreading the already pandemic bailout flu.

Slowly, the administration is turning, like raw pork left on a picnic table. The slow stench of rich big-government interest groups twisting administration policy is wafting: D.C.'s successful voucher program getting the axe, anti-consumer labor policy being pushed through, and deficits growing to record proportions.

George F. Will, the very apotheosis of a traditional moderate, smells it too. He lowers the boom on the Obama administration in an editorial today.

The Obama administration's agenda of maximizing dependency involves political favoritism cloaked in the raiment of "economic planning" and "social justice" that somehow produce results superior to what markets produce when freedom allows merit to manifest itself, and incompetence to fail. The administration's central activity -- the political allocation of wealth and opportunity -- is not merely susceptible to corruption, it is corruption.

Of the last several presidents GW Bush, Clinton, GHW Bush, Carter, Nixon, Johnson, Kennedy and now Obama have furthered the control of the 'Federal' government over the states. Is local control and accountability doomed in America? What the Bush people never understood is that the content of Federal policy is a secondary issue to the extent of Federal control. Will the Republican Party find another leader who can articulate an agenda for responsible, limited, truly federal government?

You know your marriage is rocky if...

If this analogy makes sense to you, you might need some marriage counseling:

"Generally speaking in life, you don't want to poke a stick in the eye of a hyena," elaborates Democratic strategist Chris Lehane. "And a corollary of that is that you don't want to poke a stick in the eye of a spouse you're separating from."

Thanks to Politico for this brilliant relationship advice.

Numeracy: Data Mining

Bill Easterly has an excellent rundown on data mining, a frequent snare for the innumerate. Check out his criticisms of a particular book, but generalize them mentally to other works of agenda-driven 'scholarship'.

Whole Floor Bear

The Mystery of the Secret Solution

My porch has vexed me for a year. It's a covered, enclosed porch, and its floor needed to be repainted. There was old chipping blue paint, a few straggling plastic tiles, and lots of heavy tar holding down the the tiles. I pulled the tiles up and attacked the tar. It was intractable. Hard as wood, tough and adherent, it was impervious to scrapers.

Friends suggested using a heat gun to melt it, and then scrape it up (I didn't try this), acetone (beware the central nervous system damage), and sanding. I tried sanding it down, using a rented sander. The sandpaper gummed up in seconds, and stopped working.

I gave up, finally, and decided to paint over it, a dark green. I painted half the porch, including just a few of the tar-areas, yesterday. I didn't clean up very carefully, tossing my damp rag aside.

This morning I picked up the rag. It was still damp, and the "tar" beneath it had become a soft, pliable, olive-colored paste - yielding easily to a putty knife and washing off completely with a single wipe from the rag! I was dumbfounded. My housie Jon watched this entire exchange, and he and I simply sat laughing at my fortuitous foolishness for five minutes.

I then covered the rest of the unpainted "tar" areas with wet rags for three hours, and came back to attack it some more. The adhesive lay between tar paper and the old blue paint. I discovered a rock-paper-scissors relationship: tar paper beats water, chisel beats tar paper, adhesive beats chisel, and water beats adhesive. Thus, by alternating scraping and soaking, I had the whole floor bear within two hours.

I then proceeded to paint it all green.

And then I found five dollars.

The end.

Manny Ramirez Suspended!

Sensational news is leaking in Los Angeles: the man-child has violated MLB's drug and steroid policy and will be suspended 50 games. Expect a circus.