Reversing the myth of lactic acid

From what I hear, Armstrong is a freak of nature with highly efficient lungs which prevent him from developing as much lactic acid as other mere mortals from the same amount of exercise.

That's Neal in the comments to this post. But it turns out that lactic acid is something entirely different:

The notion that lactic acid was bad took hold more than a century ago, says George Brooks, a professor in the department of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley. It stuck because it seemed to make so much sense.

"It's one of the classic mistakes in the history of science," Brooks says.

and

As for the idea that lactic acid causes muscle soreness, Gladden says, that never made sense.
"Lactic acid will be gone from your muscles within an hour of exercise," he says. "You get sore one to three days later. The time frame is not consistent, and the mechanisms have not been found."

And yet, this is going to take forever to filter out to the peoples. One reason is that the lactic-acid-management method of coaching works, just not for the reason they think it does.

War on Meth's chilling effect on science

methlab by binaryninja.

Wired's Steve Silberman suggests that the difficulty in controlling methamphetamine production has led to an absurd level of criminalization of chemicals and chemistry equipment, having a chilling effect on budding young chemists.

“To criminalize the necessary materials of discovery is one of the worst things you can do in a free society,” says Shawn Carlson, a 1999 MacArthur fellow and founder of the Society for Amateur Scientists. “The Mr. Coffee machine that every Texas legislator has near his desk has three violations of the law built into it: a filter funnel, a Pyrex beaker, and a heating element. The laws against meth should be the deterrent to making it – not criminalizing activities that train young people to appreciate science.”|Wired|

This strikes me as another example of the disneyification of our society where our obsession with making everything G-rated for the little kitties drains our society of anything even remotely interesting or useful.

On a related topic, I recently quoted Danah Boyd, who suggests why this generation of kids are so attracted to online spaces:

As the real world is perceived as more dangerous with child abductors lurking on every corner, kids flock online to hang out with friends, express their hopes and dreams and bare their souls with often painful honesty -- mostly unbeknownst to their tech-clumsy parents. "We have a complete culture of fear," said Danah Boyd, 28, a Ph.D student and social media researcher at the University of California, Berkeley. "Kids really have no place where they are not under constant surveillance."

Driven to and from school, chaperoned at parties and often lacking public transport, today's middle-class American kids are no longer free to hang out unsupervised at the park, the bowling alley or to bike around the neighborhood they way they did 20 years ago. "A lot of that coming-of-age stuff in public is gone. So kids are creating social spaces within all this controlled space," said Boyd. |Wired| (emphasis mine)

Success minus sweat equals sacrifice

Mixed news this week for those of us who rest our futurian hopes on the development and acceptance of chemical enhancement of human capacities. On the one hand, Barry Bonds finally passed Babe Ruth for second place on baseball's career home-run list. On the downside, there's this:

Independent Dutch investigators cleared Lance Armstrong of doping in the 1999 Tour de France on Wednesday, and blamed anti-doping authorities for misconduct in dealing with the Austin, Texas, cyclist.

A 132-page report recommended convening a tribunal to discuss possible legal and ethical violations by the World Anti-Doping Agency and to consider "appropriate sanctions to remedy the violations."|ESPN|

So it's starting to look like Armstrong's feats might have been due to inborn talent and hard work after all. This could set our movement back by decades.

Or, maybe not.

horology

[from Greek 'horei', hour, season]

n.
1. The science of measuring time.
2. The art of making timepieces.

A true man of principle

I don't really know whether the Jefferson raid violated the Constitutional principle of the seperation of powers, though Josh Marshall seems to think that it didn't. What I do know is that this is ridiculous.

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, and senior officials and career prosecutors at the Justice Department told associates this week that they were prepared to quit if the White House directed them to relinquish evidence seized in a bitterly disputed search of a House member's office, government officials said Friday.

Mr. Gonzales was joined in raising the possibility of resignation by the deputy attorney general, Paul J. McNulty, the officials said. Mr. Gonzales and Mr. McNulty told associates that they had an obligation to protect evidence in a criminal case and would be unwilling to carry out any White House order to return the material to Congress.

Gonzales, of course, is a guy whose most notable contribution to the Bush presidency was as the chief pettifogger in charge of an effort to provide legal cover for a worlwide program of secret detention and torture.

Now we know that there's a line he just won't cross.

I still say that ninja aren't cool anymore

More: askaninja.com

New frontiers in comment spam

We've gotten a couple of hits today from this thread over at Feministing because a spambot has been leaving comments linking to this post of Jason's from a few days ago. For the life of me I don't have any idea what the spambot gets out of the deal, but let me just say that Feministing is a good blog (it's on our blogroll!) and the spambot ought to be ashamed of itself.

Really simple math

Is the purpose to raise the funds necessary to run the government? If so, then I doubt that having CEOs pay more (even much, much more) will actually make a real difference in the sum of all government revenue. There really are not THAT many CEOs making so much money that the revenue stream will be significantly enhanced.

That's from a comment by rick on this thread over Gladwell.com way.

Is he right? Well, as of 2002 the top 5% of income earning households had an average annual income of $278,790, the top 20% an average annual income of $159,298 -- source. I'm not sure how many households that covers, but the 2000 census said that there were 105,539,122 households in the U.S., which should be in the ballpark.

Using really simple math we can estimate that raising the effective tax rate on the top 5% by a single percentage point will generate close to $15 billion in revenues, while raising the effective tax rate by a single percentage point on the top 20% would generate around $34 billion.

The most recent federal budget weighed in at $2.466 trillion with revenues of only $2.119 trillion, leaving a deficit of around $350 billion.

You can't pay all of that off with a tiny tax increase, but who says the tax hike has to be tiny? Right now rumor has it that the richest households pay about an effective tax rate of about 31%. Bump that up to 41% for the richest quintile of earners and the deficit pretty much disappears.

In short, rick is wrong.

The kids call it a bleg

"Without a plan there can be no attack. Without an attack there can be no victory."

Where is that quote from? And don't tell me One Crazy Summer^[1], 'cos I ain't buying it.

----------
1 Little known fact: Savage Steve Holland remains alive.

Friday dumb game blogging, uninspired edition

I got nothing. The truth is that I haven't been playing many games lately, even though I work about 35 feet above this.

Can Gorillas Sue for Malpractice?

The answer, of course, is no. Even gorillas with a 2000 word English vocabulary may not be party to lawsuits. But this post isn't about the semantic and legal differences between gorillas and Gorillaz. I just have some questions about Senate Majority leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), providing medical care for a silverback gorilla.

Did he take silverback gorilla anatomy courses in med school? Does the gorilla have insurance? Is this representative of Frist's health care plan for the tens of millions of uninsured Americans? Did he have nothing better to do 18 minutes before meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert? Did he think gorilla musk would give him an edge in diplomacy? Were the four veterinarians, three technicians, animal keeper and veterinary dentist not adequate?

Perhaps the Senator can clarify the situation.

"Gorillas, people, men. You look at the people here, a symphonic flow of people pitching in. It's the oneness of humanity." He continued, "There's an almost spiritual, poetic component to it. This oneness, this wholeness. You can't compare it to the Senate floor. I immerse myself in it. This is my real life."

ossuary

[Late Latin 'ossuarium', from neuter of Latin 'ossuarius', of bones]

n.
A container or receptacle, such as an urn or a vault, for holding the bones of the dead.

Who knew people really talked this way?

I thought it was a particular convention of Anime, but at least on Japanese game designer talks the same freakin' way:

There is something that only I can create, and it is desired now. If I'm not going to show my strengths now, when will I? And among all the activities I could undertake, the best way to satisfy the most consumers, including those overseas, would probably be to create Smash Bros.
....
"Our guys have played Smash Bros. more than 10,000 times!"

It had to be a lie. But when I saw their battle records, it showed a terrible number of matches that were not fabricated.
....
This had to have been fate.
....
But we will not flinch! By which I mean, there will be no question about whether or not its fun.

The table has been set, so if I can't enjoy developing this game I will have failed.
Let's take it to the edge with a lot of weird stuff!

Weird.

By the way, this guy makes the best games ever.

The future of audio: Vinyl records

Who knew?

Playing Vinyl with a Laser

Morgellons Disease revisited

It's more serious than we thought. Read on.

If these fibers are the result of highly advanced nanotechnology then we have found the disease, and possible who is behind it. But what would be the purpose of forcing this ailment on the population? Torture? To create a new pandemic in order to sell a new drug for a "treatment?" According to the Texas television news report, one young man who recently contracted the painful disease has committed suicide as a result of trying to deal with the pain.

Black nodules, long and short fibers that can't be pulled out and great pain are all highly effective in destroying relationships between couples. Put another way, the suffering is so great that participating in sexual acts are the last thing that victims of the disease will think about doing. The symptoms clearly make population control one important side-effect that cannot be denied. Perhaps south Texas has been selected as an experimental hot-spot. However, the disease has also been found in every state. |Ted Twietmeyer|

Update: Hoax? (via)

Unsurprising news from the world of science

We already knew, of course, that video games make you smarter and that kids who play video games make better soldiers. Now:

Surgeons who warmed up by playing video games like "Super Monkey Ball" for 20 minutes immediately prior to performing surgical drills were faster and made fewer errors than those who did not, said Dr. James "Butch" Rosser, lead investigator on the study slated for release Wednesday.

The research involved 303 surgeons participating in a medical training course that included video games and was focused on laparoscopic surgical procedures -- which use a tiny video camera and long, slender instruments inserted through small incisions. |CNN|

It becomes clearer every day that the path to human salvation lies in video games. I only wonder how it is that video games were developed by a generation of engineers who had never themselves played video games. Truly, that is among the deepest mysteries of our modern world.

Dumb joke blogging, testudines and gastropoda edition

A turtle is walking down an alley when a gang of snails surrounds him and beats him up. He staggers to street and finds a police officer.

"Officer, officer," the turtle says, "help me! I've been slugged!"

The officer pulls out his notebook and asks the turtle to describe his assailants.

The turtle pauses, lowers his head and says, sorrowfully, "I can't. It all happened too fast!"

Bonus dumb joke:

Q: What did the snail say while riding on the back of the turtle?
A: Wheeeeeee!