Hurricane hype and the rule of threes

It's better to plan for a disaster that does not happen, than not plan for a disaster that does.

But  does that mean it's good for cable news channels to spend 24 hours a day talking up a level 1 hurricane as a monster killer storm that could wipe out major cities on the East Coast? 

No one wants to repeat the horrendous mistakes that turned Katrina into an historic mess.

And, if you're the owner of a house that got swept away, or the relative or spouse of a person who was killed or injured, then Irene was a killer monster storm.  However, it was nowhere near as nasty as the National Hurricane Center or the Weather Channel led viewers to believe.

Coverage splits into three phases: First, evacuate, prepare, stock supplies, board your windows, and make ready for a disaster. Television is good at that. The next phase is reporting was actually happened -- or in the case of Irene -- what did not happen. The third stage is either "Armageddon" or "We missed the bullet."

New York city was not inundated. Storm surges, created by low pressure and strong winds, were not as high as predicted. The number of storm deaths was relatively low (except if you are the lost one's brother, sister, or spouse, in which case Irene was as a bad as it could be).

Hundreds of thousands along the eastern seaboard lost electricity. In Connecticut alone, about 700,000 spent hours or days without electricity, which is no treat, to be sure. 

Could Morris Cove in New Haven been flooded? Absolutely. By tropical storm Irene? Not likely.

 But police driving around and using public address systems warning people to leave or face potential catastrophe was enough to convince my family to impose on a brother-in-law in East Hartford overnight.

His power went out. At our vacant home, electricity was off for about an hour and then restored. Trees did not topple on our street, although one cracked and fell on a lawn. 

So, it turned out we would have been fine if we'd ignored the unenforced "mandatory"

 evacuation.

Other people along the coast were not as lucky. Beach houses were damaged and washed away. However, if you want to see major damage, Google the hurricanes of 1954 and 1955.

Which brings us to coverage phase three: Back-pedaling, or "We missed the bullet." WMB is a handy journalistic device because you get a story either way. Either a groan or a "Phew!"

What would have been helpful was a balanced, level-headed explanation of the storm. We know that hurricanes lose force in cooler northern waters. We know that hurricanes get tapped out when they travel over land. 

None of the news people or meteorologists seemed to wonder about what that might mean for Connecticut. New York City was the big story, and not much happened there. Phew.

The next time hurricane warnings are issued, will people  around here pay attention? Probably not as much as they should. That's the downside of the hype. 

I'm not a meteorologist, but I doubted that Irene's predicted level of  destruction was likely. If we have the misfortune of a category 4 or 5  hurricane heading straight for Connecticut I will expect major damage, regardless of what the televised people say. I will be getting away from Long Island Sound long before the police arrive.

Next time a hurricane approaches, how about a realistic discussion of the worst, best and most likely possibilities of damage. 

That's doable. 

 Fewer reporters standing in the rain, and more independent meteorologists in the studios.

Cue the lumbago

Television ads for anti-depressants are getting more depressing.

The advertisement for airipiprazole (Abilify) is a case in point. Not only is there a patient and a doctor in the animated creation, there is also a stand-in for depression.  Depression is a ovoid black, animated thing that can resemble a blob, or turn into a hole. 

The "patient" is a woman and depression is by her side throughout the commercial. She is taking notes as the "physician" describes possible side effects and counter-indications. Depression has its own clipboard and is also taking notes.

What does this mean?

Depression is a character and as real as the patient. Is depression taking notes so that it can defeat Abilify?

The cartoon woman and her family then go for a picnic and depression tags along like the family dog.  In fact, depression never leaves.  What does this say about your expectations? Aim low. Don't count on your depression actually lifting.

Same with a gout medication called Uloric (febuxostat). A guy is walking around a city carrying a huge beaker of green liquid that is supposed to represent uric acid. Gout is caused by the formation of uric acid crystals in joints. Our patient gets Uloric and the size of the beaker shrinks. 

But at the end of the ad, he still has to carry a small beaker of green liquid. In other words, this medication may improve the condition, but it will not cure it. 

Along the same lines is a medication for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD. The opening scene is of a man with COPD with an elephant sitting on his chest. A good metaphor, perhaps for chronic bronchitis or emphysema. Presumably the elephant is a computerized drop in.

The actor playing the patient actually says that there is no cure for COPD. He proceeds to play pool (why pool?) and the elephant remains in the same room. Spiriva (tiotropium bromide inhalation powder) may improve your symptoms, but you're stuck with the elephant, who at least is letting you stand up and walk around. 

In ads for heartburn medicines, the heartburn is neither a character nor does it linger. Does this mean that heartburn is "curable?" Sort of. It can be controlled. Same with ads for mucus dissolver, blood thinners, and anti-cholesterol drugs. 

Mucus, unwanted blood clots and artery-clogging cholesterol are all potentially chronic diseases,  but they have no cartoon characters.  A blood clot could be like a strawberry, cholesterol lends itself to an amorphous blob shape, and mucus suggests a green critter. 

Some of these cartoon diseases may spin off their own animated features. A woman pursued by a black blob, a coughing guy and his elephant sidekick. Cholesterol as a cat burglar. 

Weirder movies have been made. 

Twist and shout

I twisted Rubik's World to an inclusive standstill, but I had the last laugh. 

Sort of.

For those unfamiliar with things Rubik, the "world" is a sphere composed of 8 pieces. It's like a 2 by 2 cube, but spherical.

I insouciantly tore the wrapper off and started to fiddle around. It didn't look that complicated.

What followed was hour upon hour of spinning the pieces, matching South America to North America, trying to get Australia in the right place, and so on. With Africa and South America in the correct spots, half of Asia was somewhere in the Pacific.

Then I managed to get most of it right, realizing that either the eastern or western hemisphere was upside down.  If I keep moving things around, I reasoned, sooner or latter I will blunder into a solution. Then I realized that that strategy is useless. 

Yes, there is an algorithm that sorts everything out, but  the knowledgeable people on You Tube either covered the puzzle with their hands, or were vague. Among the more confusing aspects of the explanations is that regardless of how the puzzle is held, the top is called the top, the left called the left, and so on.

Consequently, one second you're looking at the top, and the next you're looking at the top, which is now a side. Some day the Khan Academy will post understandable instructions on Rubik puzzles.  Meanwhile, more clockwise, up, clockwise down, left, left. etc. 

Eventually I'd had enough and proceeded to take the thing apart so I could reconfigure it in the correct position and put it away.  This is the real puzzle, I thought, as a bunch of black plastic pieces fell out. I must admit shamefully that after I got all but two of the pieces back inside, I glued the whole thing together. 

Now it is forever (relatively speaking) solved.

Are there people who enjoy puzzles? Who actually like the bewilderment and repeated false steps? Doesn't seem likely. Trying to fit the World back together was far more enjoyable than the puzzle itself. 

Part of the problem with Rubik puzzles is that they are abstract. The sole purpose is to figure out how to manipulate the thing. Everyday puzzles are more rewarding. You may think about how to fabricate a bird house, or a shelf, or some other minor wooden project. 

Consider doing this, or that. Maybe Plexiglas is the best bet.  Perhaps cut this piece at an angle, or put the frame on the outside, or build the thing out of cardboard boxes. 

At the end, you have something to show for your trouble.  If it's junk you can rip it apart and do over.

Rubik-wise, the reward seems to be the knowledge of how to solve the puzzle. People compete to see who can rearrange the cubes fastest. No one in his right mind fiddles with a Rubik's cube or world for 20 minutes a day, before taking a walk, or after breakfast. 

Having an unsolved Rubik sitting around is practically intolerable. Chess puzzles are similar. They are made to solve, not ponder. 

One conclusion has become clear: I am not a Rubik's kind of person: too many screwdrivers and types of glue.

The measure of a bridge

Measure twice, cut once, woodworkers say.

Accurate and precise measurement are the keys to 90-degree square corners, even legs, and generally, pieces fitting together properly. On a small project it's usually possible to correct errors  by cutting, planing, sanding, gluing, or using wood putty.

Now imagine you are building an enormous bridge, highways, and on and off ramps over New Haven Harbor to replace the old bridge.

The materials are way too big to measure with a tape. Can a steel fabricator guarantee that a 50-foot girder will be within 0.001 inch of the blueprint girder?  When construction workers pour concrete into stories-high wooden molds,  how are they able to make the finished product exactly the right size? Also, all of the angles have to be correct, because the bridge and associated sky ways are curved.

Who is out there with a yard stick making sure the project is built according to specifications? A cursory inspection does not reveal anyone with prospecting tools, and you do not see the workers looking at plans. Maybe this all takes place in a trailer somewhere.

Still, who determines the correct height of the mold and how is this applied in practice? How do they make the towers plumb?

Sure, there are project engineers, bridge engineers, and all of those people. You ever see them measuring anything?

Maybe they are doing the equivalent of drawing out a tape measure and marking a spot, but using unrecognizable equipment. Infrared or laser beams? Global positioning systems? 

But even if an engineer can determine that a particular support needs to be 35 feet, six and half inches tall, how do the workers possibly fabricate something that big and with such precision?

It's not easy to make six two-by-fours all exactly eight feet long, for example. However, in theory, the job is straight forward. What theory do builders use when six pieces of concrete have to be exactly 50 feet long?

Maybe all highway support columns and other construction elements are a standard size, and so all of the fabrication equipment is automatically gauged properly.  That does not seem plausible. 

Or maybe the crews just eyeball the whole thing and modify as they go. That doesn't seem plausible  either.

Same holds true for skyscrapers, dams, stadiums,  oil tankers, and all enormous man-made things.

Suppose 100 men and women are working at a site, and each one is accurate down to a hundredth of an inch. At the end, won't whatever they're building be off by at least an inch?

Murder most foul...Yawn

Why are so many television shows and books devoted to murder?

Collecting forensic evidence, looking for fibers, and unravelling complex subplots and meta-plots. Some homicides are fascinating. Serial killers are morbidly interesting, and occasionally someone does something really bizarre like puts his wife through a wood chipper.

But all of those twisting and turning plots and big surprises and shoot-outs? Life's not like that at all. You mean what we see on television is not perfectly accurate? Afraid not.

If a spouse turns up dead, the prime suspect is always the husband or wife. That's about as complicated as it gets. 

Most murders are solved through confessions, or by people who overhear other people talking about how they killed someone, or by people with information seeking to lessen their own prison time. 

Also, the ranks of police departments are not filled with beautiful women who wear low-cut plain clothes. Female detectives look like regular women. 

Moreover, there are so many more interesting topics than murder. But finding them is not as easy. Materials physics, quantum mechanics, robotics, fishing for crabs, logging, gun smithing, and history are all available on cable. Way more entertaining to see Bear Grylls eat insects or make himself a seal-skin vest, than one of the proliferating Murder She Wrote shows. 

How common objects are made, bridges are designed, ore mined, the Panama Canal widened, all more interesting than "murder."

Despite Agatha Christie and her ilk, murder is tawdry, mundane, messy, miserable, and kind of boring --  unless you're the murderer or the murdered.

Snow fools the eyes

Time to clear up some misconceptions.

We may not get any more snow now that April is here, but remember the big drifts of this past winter? The snow started out white and then after a few days, snow plowed to the side of the road turned gray and was dotted with pieces of dirt.

The typical explanation for the gray color is either "dirt" or "pollution" or dirt resulting from pollution.  However, if pollution were falling so fast that it could discolor snow in two or three days, we would notice it everywhere -- on cars, sides of houses, clothes, shoes, statues, and so on.  

Besides, the air pollution around here is tiny particulates (too small to see),  and ozone smog. Acid rain would not color snow, would it?

The drifts' gray appearance is optical. True, there are motes of dirt and assorted garbage in the snow, but the gray is the result of melting. Take a look at the ice cubes in your freezer. They are not snow white, they're gray. Snow that melts and refreezes is the same.

Snowflakes, incidentally, are clear, but very reflective. Catch a flake in your hand. It's not white. 

Ponder the color differences between rain clouds and fair weather clouds. The water-filled rain clouds are gray and the cumulus clouds are composed of zillions of clear droplets and appear white. 

Yale research has also found that some bird feathers and insect wings are colored not by pigments, but by refracted light. Same thing with snow. 

Now you know. 

The electric toothbrush jive

Just for fun, and to see how social networks function, start this rumor: Urinating while simultaneously using an electric toothbrush can cause electrocution.

This seems almost plausible if you don't think about it very hard, and is just weird enough to be true, if you don't think about it too hard.

Spreading rumors, or hoaxes, is hard work. You'll need to repeat the rumor to everyone you know, and have them repeat it ad nauseum.

What would all of this prove? That there's a reason the United States' ranking in science education is 48th out of 50.