So apparently there is a teacher crisis in Houston, so that HISD has launched an 'alternative teacher program'. This program is a short one year school for non-teachers to start becoming teachers. THe catch? It costs $3500, but apparently you will get paid a teacher's salery while in school. Essentially it's a stipend. However, from what I can tell, you start at a very low level. The starting teacher salery is around 13k. And, if you teach in college, too bad, it doesn't count.

Alternatively, you can do Teach for America, which is a 5 week summer course designed for college grads, after which you have to teach for a minimum of 2 years in a disadvantaged school. They mention that the starting saleries are generally pretty good, from 28k. And you get a student loan deferal while doing the job.

What promted this was the question of what can I get for a PhD? Apparently I can't teach high school or below, not easily, and not at a decent salary. In contrast, I can in theory get a faculty position at a institution of higher learning; a university or community college. Which is odd to me but I understand teaching second graders is different from teaching college students. However, there is no (to my limited knowledge) pediology of college teaching, whereas for high school and below, there are major requirements as far as testing and certifications go. So anyway, I found that very interesting.

Stocks down sharply today, screams a Fox article. Hmm. The major indexes are down about 1%. If you look back 3 months (as I tried to do here), you'll see that 1% fluxations are fairly normal. Since the Dow Jones Industrial Average only looks at 20 or so huge companies, it's not exactly the barometer of the economy. The S&P 500 is a much better indicator of how things are really going. In fact, one of the best investments you can make is buying a mutual fund that is a mirror of the S&P 500. Over several decades, no mutual fund has really done better than the S&P, at least to not any appreciaple extent.

Marti Gras is here, and NOLA is doing what it can. Here's a fun picture from there.

Most of these are entertaining, all have the same theme, that of a serious double standard between muslim people and media versus western people and media.

Iraq the model has more on the Golden Dome bombings and retaliation. It seems very bad, but ITM points out that most of the attacks are in Bagdad, against Salafi and Wahabi Sunni sects, and that the attacks seem to be organized by As Sadr's army. (The same one responsible for uprisings in early 2004, and wanna be dictator).

Lets hope the situation resolves itself, doesn't seem like much outside forces can do at this point.

This seems to be a general attitude in the U.S. However, I noted that since I took the safety class, I am more 'aggressive', in that I act like a car much more. I have noted that once cars figure out you are a car, they will treat you with more respect. Maybe this observation is due to a low sample size, maybe not. But I feel more comfortable riding in traffic now.

Paul Roberts has a inspirational post on biking as a route for increased spirituality. That generally seems to be true with me. Life is definately different on a bike, especially when you have been biking for hours in the middle of nowhere. I agree w/ all his suggestions, especially the saddle/seat.

So I got a chance to take the bike out for a spin to test the new geometry and seat; it's much improved, but there is still some chaffing, but in different areas than before. I'll probably have to get some petrolium based lubricant. But it definately feels alot better, more like an actual road bike made for distance riding. It's hard to explain, but my body and the machine are much more in sync. Hopefully i won't be in agony on Saturday when I do the next club ride.

Here is a short review of an article in Lancet which found that almost all 'serious' mountain bikers had scrotal abnormalities. It's pretty interesting stuff, but the recommendations fall short I feel. Anyway most people around here don't do mountain biking, and almost all of us don't do it to the extent of the study population (which biked 5000+ k/year).

Also, here is a great collection of bike info, from repair to nutrition. This is a coalation of posts on the usenet rec.bicycles forum. Here is another big compilation of bike info, at Sheldon Brown's website.

Paul Boutin investigates. Color me sceptical. Yes, nowadays it is possible make synthetic genes. The usual length is about 1000 bp, about enough for one gene, or maybe half of one. There are so many problems to building a really deadly virus and distributing it. Let's think about it.

1) Making the virus, or obtaining it. You have to really know what you are doing, be a virology expert, or you will get seriously infected. Viruses like Ebola have a short incubation time (a week or so), and high mortality. Read all about it in Joseph McCormick (et al's) book: Level 4: Virus hunters of the CDC. This is a great book by renowed virus experts, they were at the forefront of many African disease outbreaks including Ebola and AIDS.

So the simple thing to do is to fly to Africa and obtain patient samples who are accutely affected, then issolate the virus and grow it up. Alas, this disease feeds on humans, and even the CDC couldn't grow it up in large titers for many years. So currently this is a huge stumbling block.

2) You could make the virus from the genome right? NO, not really, you still need a host and intact viruses. It takes life to create viruses, it's not something done in vitro currently. You need to actually have the enzymes and proteins that allow the virus the replicate, not the DNA or RNA.

3) Synthesis. Can you synthesize the genome of a huge virus like smallpox? Maybe in the future, currently this is a huge undertaking.

4) Release. This will always be a problem. The most lethal viruses have incubation times of decades, allowing them to spread silently. HIV comes to mind. If you release Ebola, you may kill 10, or a hundred people. But soon quaranteen procedures and the lethality of the disease will stop the spread. There has not recently been a huge outbreak of viral disease, such as smallpox, or Ebola. Even in primative Africa, thanks to organizations such as Doctors without Borders, or the CDC, primate quarantene procedures have been effective in greatly limiting outbreaks.

Bacteria like Anthrax seem like a good candidate, except that aerosol release is problematic due to the large amount of particles needed for infection (and that it's treatable with antibiotics). What about drug resistant pathogens? So far only evolution and natural selection has provided the means to confer drug resistance, a process which takes decades or years. In the lab, drug resistance markers have been created through decades of work, this is for penicillin derivatives (for organisms such as Anthrax). However, these bugs are still susceptible to many forms of penecillin, and new non-penicillin antibiotics. And bacteria are likely a poor candidate for biowarfare anyway. Viruses can survive much longer, and are more lethal.

Anyway, i'm sceptical, this is not a mechanism to kill thousands or millions of people. Evolution and current technology is against it. But as a weapon of terror, biowarfare can still be quite effective, witness the recent Anthrax releases.

I finally went out and got my bike custom fitted, basically this means moving the seat around alot, both horizontal and vertical, as well as elevation. This placement turns out to be critical for long rides. I did a 50 mi ride two weeks ago (when the weather wasn't god-awful), and started to get knee pain as well as saddle sore. This indicated that too much pressure was on the perenium. Anyway I also upgraded the saddle to a 'deluxe' type from Specialized, called the Alias. Another person had the same issue and reported it solved. I rode the bike the 3 mi back to my house, and noticed the perinial pain was gone, but replacing it was pain where the thigh meets the pelvis, due to constant friction. I didn't have the special bike shorts (i was coming from work), so that would help). I also plan to invest in some special lubricants that deal with saddle sores. Basically the constant friction during long rides is a real problem. I guess previously i was just used to the bike's 'quirks', I'm not sure how I dealt with it, but the pain didn't used to be so bad. The extra pounds I got during the last part of grad school undoubtedly had a role. Anyway with the new saddle and proper fit I should reduce joint/back problems, not to mention problems 'down there' (numbness and sterility can occur in people who are on their bikes 20+ hours/week - the new saddles allow more blood flow and reduce this problem). Anyway here's hoping biking will not be a constant agony from now on.

A good word for Exxon. Remember the Exxon Valdez, which ran aground in Prince Williams Sound in '89? Well, Exxon still hasn't ponied up the punative fine, now at 4.5 billion. They think they should only pay $25 million. This after making $36 billion in profit alone last year. It's mind boggling.

Glenn Reynolds is all over it, with a bunch of readers mentioning that UAE treated them pretty well, and the country has a good relationship with the U.S. So, if they are an ally, that's fine, but why didn't anyone mention this? And why is Frist and Bush threatening a showdown? Bush threatens a veto of any measure to block the deal, which Frist is now putting together. Frist, meanwhile, says there are enough votes to override the veto. As usual, Bush & Co never bother to mention the facts about this so-called ally, they never bother to sell what they are doing, they just do it. Shrug, i guess everyone is bored nowadays. Not much news to find shocking anymore.

A humpback whale got stuck in nets off of San Francisco last december, and could not swim. Then, rescuers arrived, the amazing story is reported in the SF Chronicle. (Hattip: Mom)

As reported by himself on his blog. Seems like a good idea. I think most Americans don't like the idea of a mid-east company taking over our ports; our infrastructure should be run by American companies, not others. I don't care how inefficient they are, if we can find better American companies to do this, so much the better. But not foreign companies.

Very silly video here. It's so cold none of us biked this weekend (well, i did that wretched course, and I bike to work, when the temp was 38 outside, and I wore 4 layers. I was pretty warm, except my face. I'm glad the course is done, i won't take it again. It was pretty good but too much like drivers ed. Actually, the thrust of the course is to 'think like a car'. Well i've already been driving for 15 years, so i'm a fairly safe driver...

Some big world islamic council is having an emergency meeting about the 'issue'. They suggest...not more tolerance by the muslim community, but something else entirely. The Religious Policeman has more.

This is great, just keep scrolling.

I finally finished this space opera series and posted a short review of the third book in the series on Amazon.

Dread Empire's Fall: Conventions of War is the third book in the series. The two main characters are Martinez and Sula; both are very well crafted with a dynamic tension between the two. The book is conventional with the usual battles and strategies, but unconventional with a murder mystery and a guerilla war, which occupy most of the time of the main characters. Everything was interesting, and, while you knew the main characters would survive, you were never really sure how they'd do that.

The writing of the series I found to be excellent - all the things you want in a space opera is here. My complaint is that the reader has too much of a sense of the huge lag between battles; the battle scenes only account for maybe 10% of the books, the rest is spent on character development. These books could all be made shorter with less lag. Regardless I greatly look forward to the next book of my new favorite author.

This is, despite the article, not a new development. Evolutionary biologists have understood for years the usefulness of sex, specificially meiosis, in erasing mutations . Basically when chromosomes from the egg and sperm meet, they recombine, they actually swap chunks of DNA. This limits the amount of harmful mutations which occur every time a cell replicates its DNA. The idea is somewhat complicated, but a recent study has shown that sexually reproducing species survive longer than asexually reproducing species. In the former, the DNA is repaired during fertilization, in the later, mutations accumulate, since this repair mechanism is in place. Previously it's been shown that species that reproduce asexually actually die out pretty quickly and don't lead to new species (speciation). I wish i had the references but this was from a course 10 years ago.

What is facinating is that the whole of evolution is merely controlled by how accurate a copy of DNA is made. For retroviruses, they mutation incrediably fast because their error rate is high (around 1 mutation in 1000 or 10,000 bases copied). For humans, we evolve very slowly, our error rate is 1 in 100,000,000. Bacteria are approximately in the middle. Anyway, simple concept, profound effect on life.

These mutations in humans, accumulated through a lifetime, lead to cancer. If DNA and chromosomes was able to be perfectly repaired and perfectly replicated, we wouldn't have cancer, but we also wouldn't ever evolve. At least way, in millions of years, something else will replace us, if the planet lasts that long.

From Joss Whedon's Firefly series. According to this quiz.

You scored as Serenity (Firefly). You like to live your own way and don�t enjoy when anyone but a friend tries to tell you should do different. Now if only the Reavers would quit trying to skin you. Deep Space Nine (Star Trek) 100% Nebuchadnezzar (The Matrix) 100% Millennium Falcon (Star Wars) 100% Serenity (Firefly) 100% Bebop (Cowboy Bebop) 81% Moya (Farscape) 75% Galactica (Battlestar: Galactica) 75% SG-1 (Stargate) 75% Enterprise D (Star Trek) 63% Andromeda Ascendant (Andromeda) 50% Babylon 5 (Babylon 5) 50% FBI's X-Files Division (The X-Files) 50% Your Ultimate Sci-Fi Profile II: which sci-fi crew would you best fit in? (pics) created with QuizFarm.com

The Cheney jokes are flying after he accidently shoots a fellow hunter. Pretty funny.

Mike Totten is back in Iraq, in Kurdistan precisely. Seems he's have a good time; not getting shot at anyway. Supposedly Kurdistan is much safer than other parts of Iraq. The Kurds take their security very seriously. Many original members of the new iraqi military and police were Kurds, perhaps because the U.S. felt them to be more trustworthy than others.

Mike Strika does a column for FOX news, annoucing people he's pissed at for one reason or another. This time its Lance, for 'dumping' Sheryl Crow. Basically he's upset that celebs get too much face time and are 'allowed' to do things like break up. Okay, how about this. Lance and Sheryl are both people, and who really gives a heck if they are seeing each other or not? Does it affect my life? No. Doesn't affect Strika's life either. Oh well. You have to have something to bitch about i suppose.

Now they are basing immigration on whether the applicant approves of homosexuality or not.

Meanwhile, the German state of Baden-Wurttemberg has courted controversy through a new naturalization test, which seeks to ensure that the attitudes of new citizens are consistent with mainstream society. One question asks how applicants would respond on learning that their son is a homosexual. "This is clear discrimination, aimed only at Muslims," says Cem Ozdemir, a Turkish-German member of the European Parliament.

This is funny for the gay test, and the fact that somehow this discriminates against muslims (and rednecks, and the KKK, and....) Whatever!

Actually the above article was all about euro economics, the gist being that while the opening of the EU to East European countries has helped the economy of West Euros (by filling jobs undesired by West Euros, ie construction), a problematic attitutide in West Europe is that they don't like globalization, they don't like free markets, and they don't particularly like capitalism. Also discussed here and here.

The later article talks about the decline of science in Europe. We just had an international science meeting here at MD Anderson, and maybe half of the participants were from Europe. Looked pretty international to me. So this stuff about the decline of European science may or may not be true, but there is still alot of relevant research going on in Europe.

That's what the Hawaii state tourism board is saying. There were 7.5 million tourists last year, and hotels/flights are near capacity. My guess is that this level will drop sooner or later. Hawaii tends to be a once in a lifetime destination (or maybe twice) due to the smallness and the expense, not to mention other factors such as overcrowding. ANyway it's ironic that the tourism board would not try to encourage tourists to come, particularly after the 90s when tourism numbers were much lower. I think places like the virgin islands could become the next hawaii, but there is a distinct lack of things to do in the Carribean, besides water sports (and drinking, i suppose). Hawaii has so much culture going for it.

This is from our team president.

It's with great sadness that I annouce the passing of friend,
colleague, and PCC member Tony Dao. Tony was struck and killed on CR
190 during this morning's PCC ride. This was a considerable shock to
me as Tony just isn't a cyclist to me. He was my friend. While
still in college I started working at NASA as a cooperative education
student. I met Tony, who was a graduate cooperative education
student at the time from Wichita State University, in the Summer of
1990 as we both worked in the same organization. He and I worked
together in the same building for over a dozen years. Over the next
16 years we cultivated a friendship both personally and
professionally. We commuted to work together at times, and just 3
months ago I moved a few blocks away from his residence. I worked on
many projects at NASA with Tony and before today's ride we even
discussed a meeting Wednesday we were to have together.

Tony started riding before I did and he was with me on many of my
early rides. 3 years ago this month I was riding the West U Warmup
and touched wheels with another rider in a paceline. I instantly
went to and broke my hip. Tony came up to the accident scene some 20-
30 minutes later and showed his concern. The funny thing was that at
work he said he "ran into me" and everyone in the office thought he
was the cause of my accident. He took a lot of good natured ribbing
over that and demonstrated the sense of humor I knew him for.

Tony left behind a wonderful family. His wife Dianne is the
optometrist and owner of Today's Vision in central Pearland. They
supported the Great Escape last year and did so again this year.
While he didn't always have time for cycling because of family
duties, it was still a passion. But not nearly as much as his wife
and two wonderful sons.

It is in this vain that today some changes will be forthcoming. The
Great Escape ride will go on, and it will be in the memory of my
friend Tony. A portion of the proceeds will be set aside for his
family. I will add a feature to the registration allowing riders to
donate extra funds to benefit Tony's family. I will also look into
setting up a memorial fund that can be accessed by riders
nationwide. It's always a tragedy when a fellow cyclist passes away
in an accident; it is even moreso when it comes so close to home.

Tony will be missed, but fortunately my memories of him will last for
the remainder of my life.

I was at the scene maybe 10 minutes after the accident. By then, Tony had already left this earth. He was struck by an SUV head-first, killed instantly. By that time many of the club members were at the scene, a popular cycling destination. It could have been any of us. We were all very shook up and saddened. I can only hope his death will lead to greater awarness in both cyclists and drivers about the need for safety. I don't know who was responsible for the collision, but perhaps if either driver or cyclist paid attention it could have been prevented (since it was a head-on collision). The image of Tony lying there I will remember for some time.

Update: Here is the story that ran today. I think its fair and well done. Hopefully i won't get in too much trouble for leaking the message to the reporter. At least my name didn't show up in the story.

Is here.. Please make a contribution if you can.

Michelle Malkin has the story.

This is all over the news. But Glenn Reynolds has pictures of Muslim protesters, completely with signs that say 'Exterminate those who slander Islam', 'Behead those who insuld Islam', etc. In English too, because, you know, it's really the English-speaking world's fault.

Houston was in the top three by Bicycling magazine as one of the worst places to bike (Atlanta and Boston also made the (failing) grade). The editors based the ranking on the absolute lack of bike-safe roads. I agree, and also base it on the terrible, bike unfriendly drivers (as witnessed on today's bike ride, more when i find the obituary). A Houston chronicle journalist disagrees, factoring in the weather and the huge MS150 (again, 13000 people will ride). Which shows a huge capacity for riding, but almost no one will willing ride within the city limits.

Too bad. Oh, well, i'm sure there will be other news (meaning, life goes on). Speaking of other news, apparently Lance is thinking of returning to competitive cycling. I'm not sure what that would prove to the French (who have accused him of doping). If 7 Tour wins (and hundreds of doping checks) doesn't convince people, nothing will. There will always be alligations. I think Lance should do what he wants, and know we all support him, but this isn't the way to make a point. Eventually he'll get beaten, then what would it do to him? I'm not sure he could handle defeat easily.

On Foxnews.. Fr. Jonathan Morris, working in Rome apparently, has a new blog. By blog, i mean, regular on-line column (which old-media calls a blog). ANyway, pretty cool. He has alot of interesting things to say. He talks about suffering in both a natural and supernatural sense. I like this, how he writes about morality and ethics, rather than 'God said so' line.

Similiarly, Fr. Troy (our wedding officiant)mentioned in church recently the power of prayer, and stated that prayer and religious life begins at home. I got the feeling that the church was willing to accomidate people more on how they choose to believe, which is a step forward. I think many Americans are tired of dogmatic brainwashing from higher authorities, whether it's government, or religion, or something else. The Europeans must be sick of it too; witness the many govt. changes recently (Ukraine, E Europe, Germany), and the religious apathy.

Dr. Helen raised the point of 'republican bashing' on prime-time TV. I commented thus:

I'm completely addicted to Law and Order, but i don't see any leftist/rightist leanings. Its more about 'we don't want to set a bad precedent' than anything else. Although these are the old episodes on TNT. I haven't watched the new ones. I think bias is inherent, if a storywriter happens to underpin his show with his philosophies (moral, political, etc), who are we to say what is right/wrong? I understand the leftist bend of Hollywood, and I'm not in favor of it, but perhaps we should realize that entertainment can not be without inherent moral underpinnings, good, bad or otherwise. We value substance in our entertainment, without these underpinnings, TV shows would deflate like a balloon. (On the other hand, lots of people like to watch truely amoral shows like cooking and decorating shows, maybe America is tired of moral lessons).

Essentially I think there are two types of entertainment; that with a moral/philosphoical underpinning, and that without. In the later catagory, you have shows like cooking shows, decorating shows, QVC, and the like. In the later, you have everything else. I think entertainment is a way of communicating one's worldview, or perspectives on worldview. Basically, bias is inherent in all media; news, music, tv, movies (esp the later), newsarticles, etc. But some of these are overly strongly biased. The weekly magazines are becoming increasingly shrill and leftist, US News, Newsweek (remember the Quran toilet flushing incident, which set off riots in Pakistan?) Some things are getting more political, but many things are not. Doesn't mean there is no message there, it's just not political. For example, pick a typical rock and roll song. It's usually about sex and drugs and angst. Why are they (songwriters) so unhappy and angry? Who knows, but it's definately their worldview. See - moral lesson - to be a successful rock star, you must have alot of angst and hurt.

A worn-out spacesuit and a transmitter. The ISS crew is launching this new satellite today, and students around the world can track it by using a receiver set to 145.990 MHz. CUrrently it will pass through the US between midnight and 4am.

What is cool is that you can download this java applet (JTrack 3D) and track the ISS (or any other satellite) in real time. Unfortunately few people have access to such receivers, I think only Ham radio operators can access that frequency. Still, it's a cool idea. I guess there is so much radio interference they have to pick a unused frequency.

This is an old saw by now, but a new poll has released some interesting findings. 71% of respondents said that a $0.99 download was a bargain. 15% of them said they actually bought music to download. And 80% thought downloading without paying is a crime. So, basically, Americans want to download, but haven't. And they think music CDs are too expensive and generally suck.

I agree with all of this completely. I haven't bought a CD of a current artist in years; I just don't want to shell out $20 to the record company for a CD that i might hate and never listen to. I also don't like the space it takes up, I never listen to CDs any more. And I tend not to like the current crop of musicians, rock is dying, but being replaced by rap, which I can't stand. So i listen to my old music, and expand out into other genres.

Another thing the poll indicated was that people have exposure to much more forms of entertainment. We have 40 hours of TV shows recorded on Tivo. We have probably 200-300 hours of movies/tv shows on DVD. We have a huge music library. We have tons of books. We have live TV. But, people generally only seek one source of entertainment at a time. You can read and listen to the TV or radio, but you can't watch a movie and listen to music at the same time. So music can go with other forms of entertainment, just not much. You can read a book to it, or drive your car with the radio on, but those activities are increasingly rare (for book reading), and short (for car driving). Anyway, rock is dead, long live rock.

This is pretty big for the islands. Del Monte, a major pineapple grower, is shutting down operations. The reason is economics, it's too expensive to use that land for agriculture. The landowners (Campbell estates) likely/probably raised the rates until it was unaffordable. Which leaves hawaii in a bit of a problem. Besides tourism, which can be finicky, Hawaii will no longer have a major industry. Sugar went belly-up two decades ago. Pineapple will follow suit shortly. My prediction is that tourism will also be outsources to the carribean or other places. Its just too freaking expensive there, and tourists can get a better deal elsewhere. I think eventually the economy will have to shift to something not finicky, maybe high tech manufacturering. I dunno. It's had to have any sort of commerce when the land is the most expensive in the nation. There has to be some real fund generation, ie from tourism or agriculture, to sustain the economy. Ah, well. Another reason why professionals like me can't live there.

It's freeking hot here in Houston. The daily highs are in the 70s, which makes for beautiful bike riding weather. Last year this time it was in the 40s-50s. Turns out the jet stream is a little out of whack, sending temps all over the US higher than normal. I hope this means that summer won't be really hot.