Good evening, 919 Gang. Hope lots of folks show up for
this:
GINA LUBRANO writes:
Nancy Ray's family is planning a gathering for her
Wednesday, Aug. 30 between 4 and 6 p.m. at Bully's. If you can make it, please
RSVP by tomorrow to the address below so they will know how many to plan for.
Here's the essential info:
Wednesday, August 30 4:00 – 6:00
Bully’s East Prime Bistro
2401 Camino Del Rio South
San Diego, CA 92108
Please RSVP by August 25 to RememberingNancyRay@gmail.com
If you would like to make a toast or share a memory, please
let us know when you RSVP to RememberingNancyRay@gmail.com.
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MICHAEL BURGE writes:
Visiting Kyoto is a lot like visiting Paris. In each city
you come across a church or palace so splendid that it takes your breath away.
We spent one day in Kyoto, which was not enough time to visit all 1,600
Buddhist temples and 400 Shinto shrines. Nor did we visit the grand Kyoto
Imperial Palace or stroll along the Philosopher’s Walk, where we could have
pondered life’s great mysteries and solved the world’s pressing problems. Maybe
we should have, considering the world’s current condition. But I digress.
Like Parisians, Kyoto residents are proud of their city’s
global heritage and love to show it off. They are comfortable with its status
as a unique example of the artistic heights that humans can scale, given enough
time, dedication and money. Yes, money not only makes the world go round, but
it pays for all that lovely art and architecture. I digress again. Sorry.
We took a cab from the Kyoto train station to Kinkaku-ji, a
Buddhist temple coated in shimmering gold leaf. (I learned one piece of
Japanese while there, and that is that “ji” means temple.) I was in the seat
next to the cabbie, and my wife and Japanese-speaking son sat in the back seat.
The cabbie immediately struck up a conversation with me in halting but
competent English. Beyond the aforementioned “ji,” I have no Japanese. He
picked up right away that we were Americans and said he had been to the United
States and visited San Francisco, Yosemite, the Grand Canyon and other places.
When he asked where we were from and I told him San Diego, he lit up. “I learn
English in La Jolla,” he said. “I like San Diego very much.”
He drove us to Kinkaku-ji, gave us a map of Kyoto,
recommended a couple of places within walking distance of each other, and set
us on our way. He was most helpful. As I got out of the cab and paid him, I
said, “The next time you’re in San Diego be sure to look us up,” not sure that
he would get my joke. As I closed the cab door, I could hear him howling with
laughter, so I think he did.
Kinkaku-ji, or Temple of the Golden Pavilion, is a storied
place. It was built in 1397 by Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, an accomplished shogun, or
military dictator, as his retirement villa. Shoguns don’t really retire, even
when they say they do, so when Yoshimitsu died in 1409 he really retired. The
villa and its grounds were converted to a Zen Buddhist temple after his death,
as the shogun had wished.
Kinkaku-ji survived Japan’s frequent earthquakes and fires
until 1950, when a deranged novice monk set it aflame and attempted suicide.
The monk survived, but not so the temple. It was rebuilt in 1955. The story of
the monk and the temple was retold in Yukio Mishima’s novel, “The Temple of the
Golden Pavilion.” Mishima, one of Japan’s leading authors, was a staunch
nationalist who attempted to stage a coup to restore the emperor to glory in
1970. But it all failed and Mishima committed suicide.
None of this weirdness detracts from Kinkaku-ji’s splendor.
It is best photographed in the snow, preferably at dawn, but it doesn’t snow in
July so I can’t give you that. I did my best in the midsummer sun.
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CLARK BROOKS
writes:
About the eclipse. It was not overhyped. All the hype was
about TOTAL eclipse. San Diego's 60 percent eclipse would be nice, but as Steve
Prosinski said, even 97 percent leaves you wanting. I did not know this, but I
saw it Monday.
Enroute to total eclipse here in Greenville, S.C., we got
about every possible percentage of eclipse, and they were all cool. The moon's
first tiny bite from the sun was neat. The progression to total, all sizes of
crescents, the Palmetto State symbol Chuck Boyd talked about, all of that was
very sweet.
But here is the thing about total eclipses, which Anne
Krueger mentioned: THE GLASSES COME OFF. When the glasses come off is what the
hype was about. I saw Venus bright as anything, off to the right of the amazing
and blazing ring around the moon. And much more the glasses would have blocked
out.
I am sorry the sky was not clear in Charleston, Chuck Boyd.
In Greenville, forecasters said the chance of the sun blocking the eclipse was
35 percent. So about the odds that Tony Gwynn would hit safely in any given
at-bat, which was scary.
We were on the beautiful grounds of the Roper Mountain
Science Center. Two hours before total eclipse, the sky was clear. Clouds began
to creep in, and at the rate they were going, it looked to be about 50-50. But
then the clouds receded, and we had a perfectly clear sky.
We had friends visiting from Denver. Like Anne Krueger, we
talked about traveling wherever we had to go for the next total eclipse.
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JAY JOHNSON writes:
Dear Jim Okerblom. Since you didn't name me, I'll make it
clear that I wrote "...most scientific research (scientifically speaking)
is BS." I'm doubling down on that. There are many types of research but
all are built on scientific method and reproducibility. Here's lede of BBC
article (yeah, I know the BBC is a notorious right-wing rag ;-). Emphasis
added:
>>>Science is
facing a "reproducibility crisis" where more than two-thirds of
researchers have tried and failed to reproduce another
scientist's experiments, research suggests.
From his lab at the University of
Virginia's Centre for Open Science, immunologist Dr Tim Errington runs The
Reproducibility Project, which attempted to repeat the findings reported in
five landmark cancer studies. ... Experiments are supposed to be
replicable. Sadly nothing, it seems, could be further from the truth.
After meticulous research involving
painstaking attention to detail over several years (the project was launched in
2011), the team was able to confirm only two of the original studies'
findings. Two more proved inconclusive and in the fifth, the team
completely failed to replicate the result.
"It's worrying because
replication is supposed to be a hallmark of scientific integrity," says Dr
Errington.<<<<
How many cancer patients have died because clinicians
relied on that research to select treatment pathways?
I have a master's degree in Communication Technology and
Intercultural Communication. I've done social science research. I know what P
values are. I've worked in biopharma for 30 years, which is built on the gold
standard of experiments, the randomized double-blind placebo-controlled study.
I lived with a Ph.D for 20 years and socialized with dozens (hundreds?) of
professors and grad students under pressure to publish research. I'm woke.
If you read the second article (from Phy.org), you'd see more support for
why most published research is BS, with evidence (again, emphasis added):
>>>>There
is a replicability crisis in science – unidentified "false positives"
are pervading even our top research
journals. ... No one knows what proportion of published papers
contain such incorrect or overstated results, but there are signs that the proportion is not
small.
The epidemiologist John Ioannidis gave the best explanation
for this phenomenon in a famous paper in 2005, provocatively titled "Why most published research results are false".
One of the reasons Ioannidis gave for so many false results has come to be
called "p hacking", which arises from the pressure researchers
feel to achieve statistical significance.<<<<
How many times have you
read a headline about new research report that contradicts the research
findings that made headlines previously, which contradicted the results of
previous research and on and on. That's why this video is so true and so funny This Is Why Eating Healthy Is Hard (Time
Travel Dietician)
I'm not anti-intellectual. I'm anti-sloppiness,
anti-scientific fraud, anti-"fudging numbers to make my research paper
publishable" and anti-gullible media.
JAMES O’CONNELL
writes:
I
can't speak for my friend Jim Okerblom, but I suspect his frustration springs
from being unable to change the minds of those who believe in God but don't
accept climate change. Jim probably finds it frustrating that they choose to
believe in something for which science has found no proof while refusing to
accept something for which the scientific proof is overwhelming.
REBER: We’ve been talking
about climate change and scientific BS, and I was surprised to see those topics
come together in the U-T today. Another study has come to the conclusion that
ExxonMobil was aware very early that climate change was real and humans were
responsible, but went on spending millions on advertising questioning those
facts.
The
company’s website says they were among the first to tackle the question of
human influence on climate change. So why all the BS advertising based on fake
science? Got to protect the bottom line you know.
ExxonMobil
was first brought to court on this in Texas, and the company won that case
after the judge reminded the accusers they were in oil country.
The company
has filed suit to block climate change fraud investigations by the attorneys
general of Massachusetts and New York. And it has told the New York attorney
general that seven years of emails from former CEO Rex Tillerson have been
deleted. All those emails were written using an alias. Why does the CEO of a
giant company have to hide his identity?
The
U-T story reports that the initial investigation was by the Los Angeles Times
and InsideClimate News. InsideClimate News was a Pulitzer finalist and won
several national awards for its coverage of Exxon’s deception
And
we can’t talk about InsideClimate News without mentioning 919ers Susan White
and David Hasmyer.
-----------------------------------------------------
KENT FREELAND
writes:
For two days and nights, I have been watching TV news
reports, both local and national, that the 7th Fleet commander has been
relieved of command because of recurring ship collisions. Only one report (CBS
Evening News) included his name. Most of the others included his photo, but not
his name. What's up with that? Are we now giving naval officers the same
anonymity we give rape victims? Why?
REBER: I don’t know,
Kent, but today’s U-T named the commander and ran his photo. As I recall, he
was identified as an ace fighter pilot. Does it seem strange that an airplane
pilot would be in charge of all those ships?
------------------------------------------------------------
JAMIE RENO
forwards:
Senator McCain’s Cancer
Spurs Congress, Advocates to Action on Agent Orange Glioblastoma Claims
P.O. Box 2239
Ramona, CA 92065
U.S.A.
